Serendipity or You Never Know Who You'll Meet at a Pig Roast

Summer of 2008 arrived around mid July and along with it myriad family problems, the details of which I will not burden you with at the moment. Rather than stick around Chicago I escaped to Green Lake, WI with a few good girlfriends for a girl’s weekend away from responsibilities, cell phone and boys. My girlfriend, KR, was raised on summers in Green Lake and consequently new the neighbors quite well. And so it was that I came to be at a pig roast at the home of an artist whose name I don’t know, but she had a lovely lawn and good guacamole.

Attempting to make us feel comfortable, KR’s mother introduced us to MO, the only other person under 30 at the entire shindig. As it turned out MO was perfectly friendly and talented! MO’s parents also had a lake house a few doors down from the artist, which MO had recently finished redecorating. By “redecorating” I do not mean that she went to Bed Beth & Beyond on a shopping spree. I mean she sewed matching curtains and duvets for the bedrooms, reupholstered the furniture and refinished the floors on her own! She’s wonder woman and could give old Martha a serious run for her money.

Interior design junkie that I am I begged for a tour, to which MO graciously obliged. Imagine my surprise when, in the midst of handmade duvets and power drills, I learned that MO recently moved from Chicago where she had been involved with a company called Nouveau Riche. NR taught people how to do exactly what I wanted to do: Invest in real estate!

MO eagerly offered to connect me with her contact in Chicago to which I ebulliently agreed (nice vocab for a blond huh?). From that point on MO and I were inseperable, which is to say I haven't actually seen her since as she was moving to VA a few days after we met, but we call, e-mail, text and facebook a lot which is basically the same thing.

To see what she introduced me to visit: www.newrichbdg.com

The Purpose or Why the H#!! Are You Reading This Anyway?

Allow me to step on a small but important soap box for a moment.

In our last episode I mentioned the all important maxim that knowledge is NOT power, the APPLICATION of knowledge is power. We live in a society that is completely content with merely knowing! We listen to sermon on Sunday that don’t carry into Monday, we read books on time management but are constantly late, we invest millions of dollars on nutritionists, gym memberships and exercise equipment but still haven’t lost that 20 pounds! Life is not about knowing, it’s about the doing! We all know this and yes many of us, myself included, still do not act on what we know.

Sadly I do not have the secret to overcoming this annoying pattern of behavior, but I do have some ideas. Paul, as in the one from the Bible, bemoaned this very conundrum in Romans 7:15, “I do not understand what I do. For what I want to do I do not do, but what I hate I do”. Paul is talking about sin and the law and doing what’s right etc., which isn't quite the same thing as getting off your a#% and making a better life for yourself, but it's approximately the same principle. I see this law working in many areas of my life and the best solution I know is to take massive action towards whatever it is you want and, if you fail, get right back up and keep at it, over and over and over and over and over and over…..
Getting solid information on how to do whatever it is you're pursuing, setting goals, having a plan and accountability are also great tools but I'll not go into that today, however I highly recommend Stephen Covey's, "The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People" as an excellent springboard.

And thus we arrive at the crux of this blog: to inspire you to action! For what is a story but an entertainment to motivate the soul and stir creativity in the imagination? Real estate investing is hard work. It takes time, diligent study and careful attention to detail to make it profitable. Without these things it will bury you alive: it is an incredibly powerful investing tool and one that is readily accessible to Harvard graduates and high school dropouts alike. But, no matter how educated you are, if you never use what you learn you will never become financially independent, debt free or see the fulfillment of your dreams.

It is my hope that by sharing my journey, you will gain confidence that you too can invest in real estate, or, if you already are, that you might learn a few thing along the way. Realizing your financial dream is not impossible, but it cannot be done alone or without the right tools.

Too see where I learned my trade visit: www.newrichbdg.com

How to Become a Real Estate Millionaire or Sometimes Infomercials Really Do Work

Having no plan of action, I unsurprisingly took no steps forward after reading “Rich Dad, Poor Dad”. Kiyosaki’s genius recommendation was to buy his Cashflow game as well as his next book, both of which seemed very uninteresting: I do not like being up-sold. So, like most of us who finish a good book, I marveled at what I had learned, replaced it on the shelf and didn’t apply a modicum of what I had learned. Lesson number one for life people, and especially you college kids and/or recent grads out there: Knowledge is not power! The APPLICATION of knowledge is power!

I will preface the following portion of our tale with the following. I had been feeling restless and longing for change, sort of like Bears fans after the deplorable Rex Grossman season. I felt like my opportunity to be whoever I wanted to be and do whatever I wanted with this life was slipping away and, if I didn’t act soon, I would end up a little old lady with four cats, teaching music lessons because she never bothered to choose a different path. I had an idea that real estate investing, not brokering, was the next thing I would do, but didn’t know how or where to begin.

As you will undoubtedly hear me say again, I hold firm to the truth that people are motivated towards pleasure and away from pain. I was still enjoying the newness of being my own boss, was compensated quite well and felt fulfilled by the nature of my work. I was not hurting financially so, other than wanting a little variety, there wasn’t a lot of motivation to move in another direction, particularly one that might involve hard work and/or sacrifice and risk.

Several months passed and winter, having reached its calendar end, lingered into the technical beginning of spring, as winter in Chicago is won’t to do. My condo tends to be a bit breezy, whether the winds are open or not, which makes for a comfortable living space in warm months, but an absolute ice box in winter. The chill factor, however, was an excellent motivator for getting to the gym. Thus one snowy Friday night, while avoiding my co-dependent boyfriend, whom I really needed to dump, I found myself cold and lethargic on a treadmill at X Sport.

I had plugged in my earbuds and was set to change the channel when I heard yahoos yammering about real estate investing. The interviewer, a slick white dude who could have passed for a used car salesman or stock broker, was "interviewing" a clean cut guy, who looked decent now but was probably a complete dork in high school, named Dean Graziosi about his real estate investing book called, “How to be a Real Estate Millionaire”. Their conversation was about the tanking real estate market and the many investing opportunities it afforded. The sales pitch wasa for Dean's book, which showed you how to seize hold of those opportunities.

In the end, the yahoos convinced me. I never made it past the treadmill. I spent the remainder of the workout absorbing every word and left the gym feeling like God had opened a worm hole in the universe and allowed me to peek through for just a moment.

I set out to buy Dean’s book a few days later feeling inexplicably anxious. Here was a book that held the answers for which I had been searching and yet I felt they way I imagine teenage boys must when they buy porn or cigarettes for the first time. Even after purchasing it, that book sat in my trunk for several weeks; I couldn’t bring myself to start it. Perhaps this is what some guys go through when they finally meet their future wife and, while they know she’s “the one”, they can’t bring themselves to even say “hello” and initiate that first conversation. Maybe it’s because those guys, just like me, are staring their future in the eye and sometimes that’s a scary thing to confront….

"Go up to your fears and speak to them, and as ghosts are said to do, they will generally fade away" Anon

To see where the treadmill eventually led visit: www.newrichbdg.com

The Story Begins or How Rich Dad Poor Dad Changed My Life

As is the case for many blonds, the journey began before I realized it. I don’t remember why I bought “Rich Dad, Poor Dad”, by Robert Kiyosaki, although I have fuzzy recollections of wandering through Borders and grabbing it either on a whim or because my accountant recommended it after I became incorporated (clearly he had encountered my type before!). In any event I had finished my bachelors at Loyola in pre-law and, sufficiently repulsed by the idea of law school, started my own business as a private music teacher. It was fall of 2007 and once I started that book I couldn’t put it down.

Rich Dad Poor Dad completely changed my perspective on how to create wealth, although this statement implies I had some idea of how to do that in the first place, which I did not. My long term financial plans were either a) work like a maniac ‘til 65 and hopefully retire with enough to last a few more years, b) marry rich or c) hope my parents died richer than they are now. Fortunately I read Kiyosaki and came up with a better plan.

I thought I was on the right track, as any charming, confident, self-employed and totally naive babe would think; I graduated college debt free, thanks to a scholarship I earned through the fabulously amazing Jack Kent Cooke Foundation; bought my first house, biggest mistake ever; and I was teaching kids how to play piano, an incredibly rewarding and enjoyable "job". My finances, however, were a bit dicey and I soon realized my plan had some flaws. Private teaching limited my profits since all income depended directly on the hours I taught; there would always be a limit to the number of students I could fit into a week and what I could reasonably charge for a lesson. Kiyosaki showed that, while I was a step ahead of an employee, a cash flowing business operating independently of my time was the better path. He also demonstrated that the true path to financial freedom is through real estate investing.

Fortunately naïveté and a general belief that I can do anything blinded me to the vastness of the mountain I was preparing to climb when I decided real estate investing was a good idea.

Kiyosaki’s book was a blinding revelation on how our economy “prepares” its youth for the rat race, but it fell short in explaining the mechanics of taking the road less trampled. How could I turn my teaching gig into a cash flowing business that wasn’t dependent on my limited time? Real estate investing sort of seemed like a broad topic, how was I supposed to start? While I finished the book with new perspective and a tenacious attitude, I did not have a plan of action. The seed of real estate investing, however, had been planted in my subconscious, which evidently had a lot of storage room because it took root and still hasn’t let go!

To see what I'm doing now, take a look at: http://www.newrichbdg.com/