Renegade Millionaire Blog

Recently I’ve been asking other business owners and friends a very specific question. The question is:

Can money buy happiness?

Every person over 30 years old has realized money doesn’t buy happiness. When they started their businesses, they had dreamt of massive wealth, beautiful homes, high-end cars and lots of toys. As they grew older, they began to realize that money what wasn’t what it was all cracked up to be.

Two years ago, I read a book titled “How to Get Rich” by Felix Dennis. Felix Dennis is a multi-millionaire and shares his journey to wealth throughout his book. It’s a fantastic book. In one of the final chapters, he wrote the following:

“Ask me what I will give you if you could wave a magic wand and give me my youth back. The answer would be everything I own and everything I will ever own.”

Here’s a man who dedicated most of his life to building wealth who is willing to trade it all to be young again. This is very powerful and has had a big impact on me over the last year or so. In real estate, we tend to work 7 days a week, week-after-week.

He wrote:

“Seeking substantial wealth is almost always a fool’s game. The statistics show that very few people ever succeed. Most of them should never have made the attempt in the first place….the search will take up a great deal of your waking life for many, many years….Time is finite. Which is a fancy way of saying that you only have so much of it – then it will run out.”

Felix is saying that the price he paid with his time to accumulate wealth was too high. In other words, he overpaid and is suggesting that we be careful of overpaying, too. Felix has realized that TIME IS MORE VALUABLE THAN MONEY. I’ve been fond of saying “Time is Money.” This is actually incorrect.

Back to Felix…

“If you are young and reading this, then I ask you to remember just this: you are richer than anyone older than you, and far richer than those who are much older. What you choose to do with the time that stretches out before you is entirely a matter for you. But do not say you started the journey poor. If you are young, you are infinitely richer than I can ever be again.

Money is never owned. It is only in your custody for a while. Time is always running on, and the young have more of it in their pocket than the richest man or woman alive…And yet you wish to waste your youth in the getting of money? Really? Think hard, my young cub, think hard and think long before you embark on such a quest. The time spent attempting to acquire wealth will mount up and cannot be reclaimed, whether you succeed or whether you fail.”

Here’s another great quote from Douglas Adams:

“Human beings, who are almost unique in having the ability to learn from the experience of others, are also remarkable for their apparent disinclination to do so.”

An incredibly wealth man has said that he would trade every dollar he owned to get his time back. Will we learn from his experiences?

Maybe.

I think the recession and market crash has given us the opportunity to re-evaluate what’s important in our lives. Many of us now realize that our health, friends and family are the most important of all. My concern as the economy turns around is that we will fall back into the trap of focusing entirely on selling more homes and making more money. Will these lessons we’ve learned stay with us going forward?

Consider a little more from wealthy Felix…

“Am I happy? No. Or, at least, only occasionally, when I am walking in the woods alone, or deeply ensconced in composing a difficult piece of verse, or sitting quietly with old friends over a bottle of wine. Or feeding my stray cat. I could do all of those things without wealth….”

Felix’s book, “How to Get Rich,” is 300 pages long. This little section about the price of wealth I’ve been referring to is only five pages long. I didn’t expect to find these thoughts in a book titled “How to Get Rich.” When Felix concluded these five little pages, he wrote:

“I suspect it will have little effect on you, though…. the last one thousand five hundred words was an “important bit.” In my heart of hearts, I know it was the most important bit you will read in this book.”

Felix has indicated that the most important thing he wrote in his 300-page “How to Get Rich” book is NOT to get rich. The price you must pay with your time isn’t worth it.

My favorite Ted presentation from 2010 was by James Cameron. Hopefully, you’ve heard of him because he is responsible for two of the highest grossing movies throughout history. These two movies were the Titantic and Avatar. Anyone in business should study this presentation for two reasons:

1. To learn how to turn your hobbies into income by merging your passions. (I absolutely love why he made the movie Titanic!)

2. To learn how to craft a powerful story.

Story telling is a something every marketer should study because it helps engage your prospects and keep them interested in you and your business. Cameron is undoubtedly the world’s best story teller and this is proven by his track record.

Here’s his presentation:

Yesterday I sent an email to my subscribers with “The DEATH of the Sales Letter” as the subject line. In the email, I included a link to a video highlighting the power of video sales letters. Here’s the link to the video if you missed it:

The Video Sales Letter Video

Many people replied to my email asking if sales letters were really dead? In fact, here’s part of a question I received from one of my Master Marketing Club members:

“I guess the long and the short of it is that I was intrigued by the video sales letter and am wondering if this is the wave of the future and something I should be working on in addition to the written sales letter or something to work on to replace the written sales letter?  If the video sales letter actually draws three times better than a written letter it seems to me to make sense that it’s the way to go.  Your thoughts and comments would be greatly appreciated.”

This is a very good question and I thought I would answer for everyone. Let’s spend a minute on how you can use sales letters to get new clients or sell more homes. I’ve used sales letters for the following in my real estate business:

1.To get investors to join a membership I created to buy single-family homes.
2. To get foreclosure buyers and investors to “apply” to become a client.
3. To get short sale seller prospects to “apply” to have you list their home.
4. To sell a larger investment property.
5. To promote a special home tour to buyer and investor leads.
6. To promote a special class on how to buy foreclosed homes..

I don’t personally believe the written sales letter is dead. Yes, in some instances it’s not as effective as it used to be. This doesn’t mean that it doesn’t work. I still use sales letters in almost every aspect of my business and will continue to do so going forward. Having said this, I do think it makes a lot of sense to test other lead conversion strategies, too. Testing is, and always be, a required part of your marketing.

If you see other marketers use video sales letters in their businesses, you should think about testing them in your business. I constantly study information marketers and watch how they generate and convert leads. When they repeat what they do over and over again, I feel confident that their strategy works. They measure what works very closely and can see very quickly if a marketing campaign is working or not. And guess what? They use video sales letters extensively.

I believe video sales letters are very powerful and should be used in addition to regular written sales letters. In fact, I believe you can increase your lead conversion dramatically using both in your business. Here’s an idea of how this might look with a hypothetical marketing funnel on short sale seller leads:

By overlapping the written sales letter and the video sales letter, you’ll ultimately convert more leads. As an example, let’s assume you generate 100 seller leads. Here’s what your conversion might look like using both strategies:

-8 sellers apply to have you list their home from the first written sales letter.
-4 sellers apply to have you list their home from the second follow-up sales letter.
-10 sellers apply to have you list their home from the video sales letter.

The video sales letter might help you convert twice as many leads into listing than the written sales letter on its own. Please understand that you’ll need to test video sales letters in your business. It’s not too complicated, but you need to follow certain rules with your video sales letter. These rules are in place because they’ve been proven to increase conversions.

You can learn more about creating video sales letters in this video (click on it to play):

As you watch this video, understand it’s a video sales letter. See if you think it’s compelling. Also as you watch it, think about how you might use this strategy in your business. Could you turn your written sales letter into video sales letter simply by recording a PowerPoint Presentation? Could you create a short video sales letter for one of your listings? Could you create a short video sales letter highlighting a special foreclosure home tour you’ll be hosting? Could you create a short video sales letter promoting a great deal you’ve found on the market to your database?

You’ll see in the video that video sales letters:

1. They only take minutes to create
2. Your face is NEVER on the video
3. You don’t have to use your own voice
4. May REPLACE old websites
5. They sell 300% BETTER than sales letters

My blog is about real estate and building real estate sales businesses, but I’m veering off course with this post. However, I’m going to write about your health, which is more important than your business and way more important than money.

A week ago, I was with someone, who I love very much, at a chemotherapy treatment. These treatments usually last 3 to 5 hours. There was another patient receiving chemotherapy and we were all talking. This other patient had been receiving chemotherapy, on and off, for a year or two. He was struggling with some of the side effects of the treatment. One of the side effects is neurosis, which is numbness in your feet and hands. This complication tends to be permanent and is in addition to several other side effects from cancer treatments.

At one point in the conversation, he said the following:

“I would give anything to be healthy for just one day…”

Here I was worried about various problems with my investments and businesses and he was dealing with a multitude of physical problems. All of my so called problems were trivial when compared to what he was dealing with. It became very clear that our health is something we tend to take for granted. In fact, if you’re healthy right now, you don’t have any real problems.

Cancer has impacted everyone in one way or another. More than likely, you know someone who has cancer. You may even have someone in your family who has cancer. I do and almost everyone I know does, too.

The BIG problem with cancer is we haven’t had any major significant progress in reducing the loss of life. We’ve made a lot of progress on extending  life, but not very much progress on saving lives. This is very evident in the graph below:

(I found this chart in great presentation from TEDMED 2009.)

I realize this chart is hard to read. You can click on it to increase the size. It highlights death rates from heart disease, cardiovascular disease and pneumonia/influenza in 1951 compared to 2001. We have made major progress in every life threatening illness, except cancer. As you can see on the right side, we haven’t made any progress in reducing the death rate from cancer in 50 years. 

Not good considering the millions of dollars invested to cure this dreaded disease.

The best strategy seems to be prevention.

In a TED 2010 presentation by Dr. William Li, he detailed new strategies focused on preventing cancer. Unfortunately, this presentation isn’t available on Ted.com yet. However, at one point in the presentation he said, “What we eat is our chemotherapy.” He went on to provide a slide highlighting foods proven to help with cancer prevention. Here’s the slide he included in his presenation:

There is obviously a lot more to this slide and the reasoning behind it, as discussed during his presentation. However, the key point to consider is eating these foods 3 times a day may be similar to having chemotherapy 3 times a day as a cancer prevention strategy.

Shortly after watching this presentation, I read a little article in the Readers Digest titled “How to Save Your Own Life.” The article highlighted the results of a new study showing that people who:

• avoid smoking
• exercise three and a half hours a week
• maintain a body mass index of less than 30 (the cutoff point for obesity)
• and eat a diet favoring fruits, vegetables and whole grains

Reduce their risk of developing diabetes, heart attack, stroke, or cancer by a whopping 78%. The suggestions from this new study seem to coincide with Dr. Li’s recommended foods. Unfortunately only 9% of some 23,000 people studied achieve all four of these goals.

I started this article off sharing a story about a man who would give anything to be healthy for just one day. I’d bet if he could go back in time, he would follow these guidelines religiously. The only question remaining is what will you do with this information? Do you value your health or are you taking it for granted?

I’ve made many changes to my daily routine after learning this information because I’ve seen first hand the impact of cancer. I try to exercise for 45 minutes a day. I also try and eat one of the cancer fighting foods included in the chart above with every meal. I’m also drinking green tea every day and I’m not a tea kinda guy! Cancer is a horrible disease that impacts just about everything you do and everyone in your family. You may be able to prevent this from happening. I certainly hope so.

Additional Resources & Articles:

Why We’re Losing the War On Cancer (article)

A New Strategy on the War on Cancer (video)

Jamie Oliver’s Food Revolution Presentation (video)

Chemotherapy Success Rates (Chart)

This is a guest post written by Joe Mercadante

Nowadays it seems that everyone is feeling the pain of this slow economy.  Real estate agents are certainly no exception to this.  No doubt, the real estate industry has been one of the hardest hit during this recession.  And it is expected to continue for some time.

Many agents have been forced to leave the industry as a result.  They are simply dropping like flies.  This is no secret.  It’s a fact that we all know to be too true and common these days.  I am sure we all know someone who has been affected.

But not ALL agents have left the industry.  There are still many that are doing just fine.  Many agents are actually prospering through this tough market.  I guess you can say that these are the flies that are still flying and buzzing.

There are some significant advantages to the agents remaining.  With all of the agents dropping out, the ones who stay actually have greater opportunities due to less competition.  These agents will not only survive and prosper today, but they will also prosper the most when the market rebounds.  This is because of the momentum they are gaining in today’s hard market.  They essentially will steam-roll their momentum straight through any kind of market.  They’ll actually prosper exponentially more so in a good market because of the building blocks that are putting into place today.

Gaining momentum in an agent’s business is key to survive in this market.  It’s critical to run a tight ship and stay focused for our businesses to survive.  It’s also helpful for securing prosperity and domination for when the market rebounds.

We must all be working on this.  Unfortunately, many agents don’t know where to start when it comes to gaining momentum. Here are  three quick survival tips to help you steam-roll forward right away:

1) Set Specific Goals

Many agents aren’t focused on what is most profitable for them.  They end up getting pulled in a hundred different directions and never complete what is most important for making money.  By setting specific goals, an agent can do anything and truly move forward.  Write down your goals to solidify them and then follow up with a good plan.  Outline each step that you’ll need to take along the way and cross out each step as you complete it.  Be as detailed as you can.  You’ll find that the more specific your goal is, the more likely your desired outcome will be achieved.  So be specific and focused.  Set your goals and don’t stray from reaching them.

2) Get Mentoring and Help

Many agents try to run their businesses by themselves.  They force themselves to do everything.  They do all of thinking and all of the work.  They work within a box – all alone.  Over time, they begin to see and work on only the mundane tasks that are in their businesses.  They lose site of working on their businesses.  They completely begin to overlook the big picture.  This causes many agents to overlook many possibilities and opportunities that they would see if they actively engaged their ideas and thoughts with someone else.  So find someone to work with as a mentor.  This could be another agent, friend, or business owner.  Pick someone who you know will listen and help to feed your ideas.  Ideally, pick someone who would like to emulate.  Someone who knows about what you are doing and can really help.  Make it a habit to meet and/or talk to them frequently and on a set schedule.  Don’t just pick anyone.  Be sure that they can add value and help to advance you.

3) Be Accountable

So now you’ve set goals and you’re getting help from mentors.  That’s good because you are now more focused, have some great ideas, and have a good plan.  But it doesn’t do you any good unless you’re implementing your ideas and reaching your goals.  Now you need to be accountable.  What does that mean?  It means that you have to express to others what you will do.  Simply tell your mentors/friends what you will do and when you will do it.  Tell them to keep you accountable for reaching your goals and following your plan.  Ask them to be the kick in your behind if needed.  Again, be sure to ask the right people to keep you accountable.  Don’t ask just anybody who will let you slide.  You need someone who will force you to be your best.  When the deadlines come, you should be reporting your progress and success to your accountability partner.  Once you achieve your first round of accountability and success, then you should set new milestones and proceed.  As you continue to reach your goals, being accountable will become a good habit that you’ll form and keep.

Following these simple steps will get your steam-rolling momentum moving in no time.  Yes, it will take some discipline to get your wheel to spin around its first turn.   But the more you turn your wheel, the more it will spin on its own – automatically.  You’ll steam-roll straight through this economy and through the next. If you’d like to learn more about how to stay accountable, check out the new report at: http://www.EasyStepsToSuccess.com

(Photo by hapal)

How hard would it be to catch one of these fish?

Probably not too hard!

What would you say if I told you that you could sell homes as easily as you could catch these fish?

Would you believe me?

Wikipedia defines “shooting fish in a barrel” as:  an idiom, describing an effortless or simple action, with guaranteed success.

Is it possible to sell homes in an effortless or simple action, with guaranteed success? If asked, most real estate agents would answer NO to this question.

Well, I would disagree with most agents. I learned how to sell homes with guaranteed success in a  a closed door mastermind meeting with Dan Kennedy, Bill Glazer, Yanik Silver, and several other top marketers. Here’s what I learned, in this meeting, that helped me sell homes with guaranteed success:

“You can shoot fish in a barrel in your business, if you focus on solving your CUSTOMER’S biggest problem.”

We have a tendency to focus on our problems, don’t we? Right now, we all have various personal and business problems. Our time and attention is focused on solving these problems. This means our time and attention is focused on us – not our clients.

Zig Ziglar has a powerful saying which highlights the shooting fish in a barrel strategy. Here it is:

“You can have everything you want in life, IF you help enough other people get what they want.”

Amazing things happen when you focus on your customer’s biggest problem.

In my business, we helped beginning real estate investors find, acquire and manage single family home investments. We spent a lot of time teaching our clients how to become landlords. We held special classes for our clients to teach them how to:

• Advertise their rental properties
• Handle renter calls
• Group rental showings
• What to say during showings
• How to get rental applications
• How to screen prospective tenants
• How to handle the lease and other related paperwork

Even though we did all of things to help our clients, some of them still struggled getting their homes rented to quality tenants. This was their biggest problem. After hearing this little lesson in the closed-door mastermind meeting, I began to focus on solving this big problem and what I ended up doing had dramatic results in my business. In fact, we began to sell multiple homes to the same clients and created an entirely new revenue stream for the business.

I shared exactly how I solved our client’s biggest problem in last week’s Automated Short Sale Machine Teleseminar. You can listen to this teleseminar right now at:

Automated Short Sale Machine Teleseminar

HINT: You might want to listen to this teleseminar recording to hear exactly what I did, because it may help you in your business. I’ve never shared this story in public before and I can assure you, it’s very powerful. You’ll be blown away by what I did. Check it out!

Oprah recently interviewed Jerry Seinfeld about his new TV Show “Marriage Ref.”

I absolutely love Seinfeld and made a point to watch this interview. I was blown away by how Jerry thinks about his work. Here’s a 51 second video from the interview you might find very helpful in your business. (Note: The video seems to hang for a few seconds, but the audio works fine and it’s the most important part!)

Jerry specifically said he didn’t want a TV show that required him to be there all of the time like Oprah’s show does of Oprah. He wanted a TV show where he could work when he wanted to work and not be required to work night and day like Oprah does for her show.

I found this fascinating and thought about real estate agents and our businesses.

Our businesses are exactly like Oprah’s business, because we have to be the lead sled dog. Nothing happens in our businesses unless we do it ourselves, right? What would happen if we could re-engineer our businesses so that they were more like Jerry’s new TV show where we didn’t have to participate in every single aspect of our businesses?

The reason Jerry’s comments hit home to me was because I’ve been working on a new program designed to help real estate agents automate short sales so they don’t have to be the lead sled dog or paddle a one man canoe! This program includes strategies to automate seller lead generation, listing appointment lead conversion and the negotiation and processing of short sale transactions.

Yes, I wrote “short sales!”

I believe short sales represent a great opportunity for your business for many reasons. However, you have to set things up properly so that you can handle dozens of short sale deals at the same time by automating as much of the process as possible.

I’ll be sharing the details of how to automate short sales and more information on my new program in a special teleseminar I’ll be hosting on Thursday, March 18th at 3pm EST. You can register to attend this telesminar at:

http://www.AutomatedShortSaleMachine.com

In the teleseminar, I’ll be covering the following:

- a secret I learned in a closed door mastermind meeting to drive sales and revenues through the roof. I’ll also show you how I used this secret in my business with massive success.
- business building lessons of Henry Ford and how you can apply them to short sales.
- 3 ways you can automate short sales in your business.

During the call, I’ll be releasing my new short sale program, which includes many “Done-For-You” marketing tools you can use to automate the entire short sale process. However, I’m only going to release 100 copies of my new program and they’ll be available on a first come, first served basis! If you’d like to learn how to automate short sales in your business and would like to have access to my new program, register to attend now at this link:

http://www.AutomatedShortSaleMachine.com

Sales letters have been my most valuable marketing tool in ALL of my businesses. The reason why is because they are automatic sales machines that work 24/7. They are extremely valuable assets that can be leveraged simply by generating more leads. Sales letters are powerful lead conversion tools and should be used by every real estate agent to automate their lead conversion.

A few weeks ago, I released a free report titled “Advanced Online Marketing Strategies for Real Estate Agents.” In this report I suggested copying businesses outside of real estate. A sales letter is something I watched other businesses outside of real estate use and decided to copy this strategy inside real estate.

I decided to write a sales letter for my real estate business. The goal of my sales letter was simply to convince my prospects that I was the best agent for them. I wanted to eliminate my competition and pre-sell prospects on my real estate services. This sales letter ultimately generated millions of dollars of commissions to my real estate business.  Needless to say, I’m a BIG fan of sales letters and use them extensively today.

The good news is you don’t have to be a great marketer to write a compelling sales letter for your business. Winning sales letters follow a proven template and you can easily write a compelling sales letter for your business, if you follow this proven template.

Here’s the proven template you should follow when writing sales letters for your business:

1. Grab the readers attention with a compelling headline.

2. Highlight the big problem the person faces.

3. Agitate the problem further.

4. Provide a solution to the problem. (This solution would be your services!)

5. Present your expertise and why you’re qualified to provide the solution.

6. Show the prospect what they’ll receive when using your services.

7. Provide testimonials to back up what you’ve promised.

8. Include a clear call to action to get the prospect to respond.

9. Add scarcity to create urgency.

10. Reverse the prospect’s risk by adding a guarantee.

This sales letter template is proven throughout history in almost every industry. I must admit that I’m not the one who figured out this winning template.  I simply followed the template I found in a little software program called http://www.OnlineSalesLetter.com. This sales letter software program forced me to follow the winning template and gave me suggestions for how to structure my sales letter. Looking back, this software was probably the best investment I’ve ever made. And believe it or not, I still use it today!

Throughout my journey in life, I’ve learned many lessons and I’ve always tried to keep notes of the lessons I was learning. I thought I would share some of these lessons with you in a short blog post. You may disagree with my lessons, but I’m calling things as I’ve experienced them. Here goes…

1. People cannot keep secrets.

2. Unfortunately in business, nice guys usually do finish last.

3. Time IS more valuable than money. (I used to think time was money. It’s not!)

4. It’s a lot easier to get into partnerships than it is to get out of them.

5. The old saying – “When life gives you lemons, make lemonade” might actually be the secret to success.

6. The ONLY way to get and stay rich is to consistently live below your means.

7. It’s usually best to do the opposite of what everyone else is doing. This applies to almost every area in life.

8. You can’t accomplish anything in your business, if your employees don’t fear you at some level.

9. Less really is more.

10. Golf is a waste of time.

Plus two bonus lessons…

11.  A good business book can and should turn into money in your bank account.

12. You only get half of what you deserve in live. Adjust your output accordingly.

Can you add to this list? I’m sure you can! Please add your life lessons in the comments to this post.

In this economy, we probably all know someone who has fallen on hard times. Maybe you have a family member who’s lost a job, or you know a friend whose income has dropped drastically.

Try to think of someone you know in this situation, and let me ask you a question about them:

Have they stopped eating?

Chances are, no matter how bad things have gotten, they have not given up food. Maybe they’ve had to change what and how they eat. Maybe they’ve had to be more careful about how they spend their grocery dollars – fewer meals out, more store-brand food items, more burgers and fewer steaks. They might have had to change what they’re doing when it comes to food, but it’s likely they have not stopped eating.

Heck, maybe they’ve given up cable TV, started taking the bus to work or clicked the thermostat down a few notches to saving on their heating bill. Those are the things people do before they stop buying food.

Why? Because no matter how bad things have gotten, we all have to eat.

Unfortunately, that simple logic doesn’t always transfer to our businesses.

I have seen it first-hand, and you probably have, too. As housing markets across the country have declined, agents have had to cut back. What I have seen is that one of the first areas to get cut is marketing. Want proof? Look at the size of your local newspaper’s real estate section or your area’s home buyer magazine this week compared to what it was just a couple of years ago.

Commission income drops, and so does marketing. And I’m not talking about agents simply doing less marketing; I’m talking about a virtual stop to ALL marketing. This is a mistake. And what follows when an agent stops marketing is almost unfailingly inevitable.

They are out of the business. Starved out.

Marketing generates the leads that are the food for our business. You have to have food to live, and so does your business. No matter how bad things get, food should be the last thing you cut.

Like food, lead-generation and lead-conversion are not luxuries; they’re necessities. Luxuries are the office that’s bigger than we need, the fancy phone system, the personal assistant. When times are tough, no doubt, fixed expenses need to be trimmed.

These luxuries in our businesses are the cable TV, dinners out and expensive car payments that a household trims before chopping the grocery budget. Marketing is that grocery budget, it’s the last thing you chop, not the first.

It’s vicious cycle, I know. Without selling houses, you can’t pay for marketing. Without marketing, you can’t sell more houses. But like you’d find a way to feed your family even if you had to cut everything else, you’ve got to find a way to continue to feed your business … even if it means cutting back everywhere else.

Look, we had it easy in the steak-and-lobster days of the housing boom. But just because you can no longer afford steak and lobster doesn’t mean you can afford to stop eating.

You might have to change the way you market – develop more affordable campaigns, tactics that get you more bang for the buck. You might have to get creative and find ways to stretch your marketing dollar, the way a struggling family stretches the grocery dollar, but you cannot stop marketing, just as that family can’t stop eating.

You wouldn’t let your family starve. Don’t let your business starve, either.

Believe it or not, you can learn a very valuable lesson on marketing in a unique story about two farmers. You can read the story and find the marketing lesson at   www.FreeFarmerReport.com.