Thought for the day as I head to the airport.
There is only one way to not have your life full of fish hooks. Don’t create an environment where you attract fishermen.

I read with much sadness the people in my industry and others who lie, cheat and make “commercial” decisions, (aka lying), in the interests of making a buck.

We have bankrupt developers building new buildings having left creditors owed millions, companies stealing information from other companies because they don’t have anything decent themselves to sell, politicians defending themselves as they face 40 charges of corruption, a convicted drug dealer saying he is innocent, the list goes on.

So if these people would pursue honesty and integrity in their lives and their businesses they wouldn’t end up with all these fish hooks.

You have to decide what is the moral basis for your life and pursue it with your whole heart.

I had someone yesterday wanting to do business with Massive Action because they found no fish hooks in me or my company. That was the greatest compliment they could pay me. Sure stuff goes wrong and sometimes you may have to use legal action to defend yourself etc., but that should be a last resort that happens to you once or twice if ever in your life. Integrity doesn’t attract this sort of problem, selfishness, dishonesty and self hatred do.

So if you find yourself up to your armpits in alligators just think about whether you have been breeding them inadvertently through your business and life principles.

I love Dr Coveys expression of a principled life being about finding “true north”. There are things that matter in life, laws you can’t break, powers you can’t ignore.

So I encourage you to choose……
Philippians 4:8
“whatever things are true, whatever things are noble, whatever things are just, whatever things are pure, whatever things are lovely, whatever things are of good report, if there is any virtue and if there is anything praiseworthy—meditate on these things. 9 The things which you learned and received and heard and saw in me, these do, and the God of peace will be with you.”

It’s interesting how our minds grow if we let them.
I vowed I would never ever trade, now I’m well known as a trader.
I vowed I would never look at big deals, too scary, now I look at multi million dollar deals.
I vowed I would never invest overseas, tomorrow I return to Oz to invest overseas.

Now a part of this is a process known as perturbation where you reach a ceiling emotionally and you have to consciously bust through it or you simply stay under the ceiling you have imposed on yourself.

However as I think about myself I also believe that a major part of it is simply wanting to get the best results possible and being fundamentally, well, lazy .

You see I started trading because I kept running out of deposit money.
I looked at bigger deals because they require no more effort than small deals but make much more money.

And I’m going offshore because the opportunities are too good to miss. In fact we’ll be running an event for you in February about investing in Oz, that’s how good the deals there are.

Imagine buying property with 12 months settlement and have it go up 30% prior to settlement. Imagine buying off the plans in a market where you can bank on onselling 18 months out and make 150K. Imagine being able to buy subdivisibles and have such huge profit margins you’re embarrassed to look at the numbers. Well my partner and I started doing that in September.
And we know you’ll join us after we walk you through it in February.

So some people love the “event” of going fishing. I love the “event” of eating fish. Why waste a whole day fishing and run the risk of catching nothing when I can go and buy fresh fish and simply take it home and enjoy it. Why spend a whole day out in a tin can getting cold and catching nothing if there’s a barrel full of live fish in the backyard??

I want RESULTS out of property, not just fun experiences!!
So what about you?? Are you doing stuff that’s hard work because you vowed you would never……….
That vow could be keeping you from love, life, financial reward, and genuine success!!

Stay safe Dean @ massiveaction.

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Well had a surreal day today. I attended the APIA expo in Greenlane, expecting throngs of people, and the place was deserted. I knew almost everybody there because it was primarily exhibitors, no public. In fact it was almost scary that I couldn’t walk from one stall to the next without knowing the exhibitor personally.

I thought how sad it was that an opportunity for people to learn about investment had not been advertised more widely to attract people. Opportunities to transform one’s life lay idle due to poor and absent promotion.
This made me think about things like lease options where the success or failure generally is decided by ones willingness to spend money up front advertising to find tenant buyers. You know we sometimes think that what we have is so good that somehow everybody will magically find out and take advantage of it. Today was proof of that not being true.

So after about 15 minutes to meet every exhibitor and hear them all complain about no people and the excessive cost of the stalls, we next went to the Line7 clearance sale also on site. Here was another opportunity devoid of patrons. Only this time that was a good thing for us as we spent 4 hours there buying clothes. I’ve never seen Raewyn’s eyes so glazed over with bargain fever.

The finally as we are trying to leave there was a fragrance sale also on site that had been properly promoted. The place was heaving. The bargains were amazing, like 75% off amazing.

So I drove away thinking how sad it is that our lives are now dictated by our ability to market well, rather than just the quality of what we offer. The expo was a total disaster in terms of numbers of people, as was the line7 sale, yet both had so much to offer. The perfume sale, simply through good marketing, was roaring along, even though it was arguably the least important of the 3 products on offer.

So thought for the day, sometimes image is everything. You have to sell the sizzle to get anybody to taste a real sausage!!

I am constantly humbled by people’s appreciation of what I try and share, and excited by their results. I had a consult yesterday with a young man who attended my February event having previously known nothing about trading. He dutifully followed my advice and downloaded “How to become a hunter” and got to know a part of Massey.

Even though his natural personality wouldn’t make him a trader at all he felt comfortable following my “system”. comfortable enough to try and trade. In the last 4 or 5 months he has done 5 trades in Massey and made between 20 and 40K on each one, whilst still working full time. So in half a year he has more than doubled his annual income, just by copying exactly what I do. HE is a breeze to assist to go to the next level because he trusts that I teach works, so he just does what I tell him I do and he gets great results.

I have enough success stories from students/graduates and DVD owners now to see a real pattern emerge.

The people who religiously follow the guidelines make it. They tend to do exactly what I recommend and it works. Then as they get more success they start to develop their own spin. This is exactly what I did when I started. Followed exactly what I learnt from the Academy and it worked. Followed exactly what GBI taught and it worked. What I do now is more sophisticated and gets better results and that is what I teach others to do.

I think every educator would find the same pattern.

And the people who don’t make it are those who try and figure out how to shortcut the hard work and find some magic formula. They typically totally ignore sound advice and come back later wondering why things aren’t going better.

I’ve said before that I can pick in a couple of minutes now the “will make it’s” from the “unlikely to make it’s”.

So can I encourage you to think about this. Before you do another course or read another book make a decision with yourself beforehand. Decide that if i like what I see or read and believe it is true then I will do what it says. I will try it exactly as presented to me so I can either prove or disprove it. If you’re not going to do that, stick with Coronation Street!!

Well had an interesting day yesterday driving to Russell in the Bay of Islands and back.
There was a property for sale due to financial difficulty so I got it under contract and went to check it out.

Due to its shape and location it was useful to have an adjoining property with it to enable further development. So before I arrived the agent, who I did not know at all, had contacted the neighbouring properties and negotiated with all of them to sell!! This again shows the power of a good agent!!

So I came home with 5 titles under contract instead of 2 and the opportunity to complete, (or trade) a coastal development.

The other interesting thing was that 2 of the vendors never even queried 6 months settlement and the third, who live on site, were greatly relieved when I offered to settle in a year or two.
The power of long term settlement.

It was interesting to note the value range of coastal property as it relates to views.
I have 3 properties right next door to each other, same size sites with varying quality dwellings.
One has no views or possibility of views and is worth land value only, low 300′s. The next property has possible views, land value mid 400′s. The next property has great views, high 900′s.
The 2 sites behind are more elevated and have very good views that can’t be lost, valued at 1.5 mil.

So never underestimate the power of a good agent, when you find one, stick with them!!

PS. Did you know you can receive email notifications whenever I post a new blog?? Tick the email notification HERE

As property prices increase and the market gets more complex I often think of those who have attended the speeches, read the books and done the networking but still not bought anything.

This week I have received about 10 emails form people thanking me for inspiring them through my DVD or events to get started and they are getting great results. But I also get about ten emails from people who attended the same Academy as I did or who have been “new” investors for 3 years and will “soon” start.

I really feel sad for the latter group as it is so much harder to fund our investing now than it was even 12 months ago.
Yields are on a permanently reducing trend and interest rates are high. That doesn’t mean they shouldn’t start now but why didn’t they start earlier??

What would have funded the gearing on 5 properties now might do 1 or 2.

Hindsight is a wonderful thing in PI but somewhat useless if one is unable to look at the history of another and learn from it. In theory anybody who looked at a long term residential investor and researched the value increases of property would run out and start buying. After all when you do the math it’s a no brainer. Yet many of us don’t.

I mention this to you because I am starting to realise the value of history more and more and using my research of it to keep moving forward. I regularly get asked how I stay on the so called “cutting edge” of PI. I don’t know that I really do, however what I do try and do is find genuine provable trends, (past and present), and strategies in markets ahead of ours.

As I research our economy globally it is fascinating to watch patterns unfold that are both obvious and repeating. New Zealand PI consistently follows certain other countries, and if we apply the strategies of those other countries we will always be at the cutting edge of New Zealand PI.

For example I started talking about funding negatively geared properties about a year ago and put my gearing calculator on my site and started teaching people to understand how to hold property instead of hunting for pos cashflow. A few months later I attended a Michael Yardney seminar and discovered that “MY” new great idea was something he had been teaching people to do for years. Why? Because if you look at Australia you are watching the FUTURE of New Zealand. Their yields are lower, their market similar but harder.

I’m going there next week to learn more about how to invest in New Zealand.

So please don’t sit out another 1, 2 or 5 years waiting for some magic system to beat the odds, get educated, deal with your fear and start building your future wealth by buying a property. Do it today, tomorrow it will only be dearer and harder

I spoke about some rather adventurous strategies last night at thetraders.co.nz monthly meeting. I am always wary of discussing more edgy stuff as it is not for everybody and I want people to stay safe.

After I spoke Ashley asked for a show of hands as to how many people would go out and apply what I had taught. 1 hand went up
However then he said “Who has had their thinking changed and their mind opened to ideas and strategies they had never considered before?”. Every hand in the room went up.

So that was the absolutely perfect outcome for me. I had made people think.

The reason possums die on the roads is that they sit stare staring at the headlights thinking “pretty lights”. They don’t have the ability we have to really think and get out of the way. Well investing is the same. When you read the media sentiment and consider whatever other difficulties you may see ahead YOU can either think:

1. “Pretty lights”, and wait for the impact OR

2. My life is too short to not find a way forward with my investing. I’m going to pile up all these issues and the bad press and I’m going to stand on top of it and use it as a ladder to my goals. How dare the media try and keep me from my dreams. I’m not going to listen to poor people in parliament or IRD who are trying to control my destiny.
I have a life to live, I have a family to leave an inheritance to, I have mountains to climb, countries to visit, charities to start and grow, get out of my way all you naysayers, I’m going to the top of the mountain and I am starting today!!