Renegade Millionaire Blog

Maybe it’s a guy thing, but The Godfather movie (at least the first one) is probably the best movie in history. I love movies, TV shows and books about the mafia. I have the entire Sopranos series on DVD and have watched every single show. I have all three Godfather movies on DVD, too. This summer, I downloaded The Godfather book on my Kindle and thoroughly enjoyed it. The book is a page-turner and is actually better than the movie. I highly recommend that you read this book!

Why you might ask?

Well, it’s a great book and I’m sure you’ll love it. But this isn’t the main reason I’m recommending it for you. The main reason is because you can learn a lot of lessons from Don Corleone (the Godfather) that you can apply to your real estate business. The Godfather’s strategy was illustrated in the beginning of the book on his daughter’s wedding day. On this day, the Godfather’s friends, family and business associates could ask him for a favor, and for the most part, the Godfather couldn’t refuse. Many friends and business associates lined up to have a meeting with the Godfather to request their favor. Once the Godfather agreed to help, he would stop at nothing to comply with the requested favor.

He would use his power, wealth, influence, connections, employees and every other resource at his disposal to ensure he performed the task required. Here’s how this was explained in the book by the author…

“Don Vito Corleone was a man to whom everybody came for help, and never were they disappointed. He made no empty promises, nor the craven excuse that his hands were tied by more powerful forces in the world than himself. It was not necessary that he be your friend, it was not even important that you had no means with which to repay him. Only one thing was required. That you, you yourself, proclaim your friendship. And then, no matter how poor or powerless the supplicant, Don Corleone would take that man’s troubles to his heart. And he would let nothing stand in the way to a solution of that man’s woe. His reward? Friendship, the respectful title of “Don,” and sometimes the more affectionate salutation of “Godfather.” And perhaps, to show respect only, never for profit, some humble gift—a gallon of homemade wine or a basket of peppered taralles specially baked to grace his Christmas table. It was understood, it was mere good manners, to proclaim that you were in his debt and that he had the right to call upon you at any time to redeem your debt by some small service.”

On a high level, the Godfather was a problem-solver. If someone had a problem, they would ask the Godfather for help. If he agreed to help, the problem would eventually be solved, one way or another, by the Godfather. And if the Godfather wasn’t cool enough, consider this excerpt from the book…

“Don Corleone received everyone—rich and poor, powerful and humble—with an equal show of love. He slighted no one. That was his character.”

The Godfather obtained the respect of everyone in his community simply by helping people solve their problems. Or to put it another way, the Godfather earned respect by adding immense value to those in his community. Here’s another quote from the book to highlight the Don’s approach:

Don Corleone was gentle, patient. “Why do you fear to give your first allegiance to me?” he said. “You go to the law courts and wait for months. You spend money on lawyers who know full well you are to be made a fool of. You accept judgment from a judge who sells himself like the worst whore in the streets. Years gone by, when you needed money, you went to the banks and paid ruinous interest, waited hat in hand like a beggar while they sniffed around, poked their noses up your very asshole to make sure you could pay them back.” The Don paused, his voice became sterner. “But if you had come to me, my purse would have been yours. If you had come to me for justice those scum who ruined your daughter would be weeping bitter tears this day. If by some misfortune an honest man like yourself made enemies they would become my enemies”—the Don raised his arm, finger pointing at Bonasera—“and then, believe me, they would fear you.”

I have underlined the most important part of this excerpt. It highlights how far the Godfather was willing to go to help others with their problems. Now, I realize this is just a book, but take a second and put this into context for your life. How awesome would it be if you had someone you could go to and get their help solving your biggest problem or challenge? Once this person agreed to help you with your big problem, you wouldn’t have to worry or fret again on the matter.

It would be awesome, wouldn’t it?

This “problem-solver” would probably become one of the most important people in your life. So here’s the million-dollar question for you…

Why don’t you become this “problem solver” for the people in your community?

As I read the book, I began to think about copying the Godfather’s “problem-solver” strategy in our real estate businesses. Our community would be home buyers, sellers, renters and investors. Anyone could come to you with his or her real estate problem, and one way or another, you would help them solve it! You would use your knowledge, experience, professional network and all of your resources to solve their problem and add value to their lives.

How valuable would it be for your business if you had the reputation of THE problem-solver in your area?

You would earn the greatest respect of those in your community. Respect is far more valuable than money. The reason why is because money is replaceable, while respect isn’t.

The most valuable things in life are the things that cannot be replaced. Time, health, family, friends, etc… If you lose money, it can easily be replaced. However, if you lose the respect of someone, it’s more than likely gone forever. And because respect cannot be replaced, its value cannot be calculated.

Respect IS priceless.

To help you see the value of respect, think of respect as if it were a savings bond. A savings bond is an asset that pays you interest as long as you own it. Respect is an asset that can be leveraged for as long as you have it. Once the Don earned someone’s respect by solving their problem(s) or adding value to their lives, he leveraged the respect earned into income and opportunity. He did this using the “Law of Reciprocation”…

“It was understood, it was mere good manners, to proclaim that you were in his debt and that he had the right to call upon you at any time to redeem your debt by some small service.”

Once he helped solve someone’s problem, they were indebted to him and they were expected to repay this debt at some point in the future. According to LawofReciprocation.com…

Relationships between people or institutions are based on exchange in which all parties have a mutual understanding of their rights and obligations. Relations between members of an immediate family or between spouses are based on obligations such as obedience or respect. Relations can be forged through gifts or personal favors and bring with them obligations and expectations. For every action, something is expected in return.

Those who do favors are highly esteemed; they are recognized as people who have respect for those around them. Every previous or current situation produces expectations for future behavior on the part of the giver and gift recipient. Or maybe you’ve heard Zig Zigler’s famous saying…

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

By giving to others, you set yourself up to receive from others. The Godfather gave to others and in turn set himself up to receive from others. Every single time he helped someone, he set up a new savings bond, which would pay him interest at some point in the future. And while the book paints him as a heroic figure, the truth is, he was a criminal. You know that he was getting something out of it every time he solved a problem.

The cool part about the Godfather’s approach is there are problems everywhere – especially in the real estate market.

Each and every problem represents an opportunity for you to earn respect. The more respect you earn, the more savings bonds you add to your portfolio.

You can use the Don’s strategy in all areas of your business, including lead-generation, lead-conversion, referrals, joint-venture relationships and when communicating with your database via hard-copy and email newsletters. Take some time to really think about this for your business. As you do, remember the bigger the problems you solve, the more respect you earn.

It’s all about respect…

P.S. As I read “The Godfather” on my Kindle, I highlighted everything written about Don Corleone. I have made my highlights from throughout the entire book public and you can read each one at:

https://kindle.amazon.com/work/the-godfather-ebook/B000AG5XJW/B0022Q8CSC

P.P.S Since I referred to savings bonds in this newsletter, I thought I should also mention a report I wrote about how you can use savings bonds to pull buyers and investors off the fence and get them to buy. You can download the report at http://www.BuyersOffTheFence.com As you read this special report, please pay attention to how I’m using savings bonds to solve a BIG problem in the real estate market. This strategy is perfect for the Godfather approach detailed in this newsletter.

P.P.P.S. If you enjoyed this newsletter and found it valuable, you should test-drive my Master Marketer membership for 30 days for just $1.00 at http://www.MMClubTestDrive.com. As a member, you’ll receive “outside the box” marketing ideas, access to marketing test results, many of my valuable reports on how to attract leads, automatically convert prospects into clients, done-for-you marketing tools, press releases and client newsletters you can copy and use in minutes. If you don’t find the membership to be valuable during the 30-day test drive, simply cancel your membership by sending an email to support@renegademillionairestrategies.com and you won’t be charged another penny!

A few weeks ago, a friend of mine shared a story with me that opened my eyes up to an opportunity that I thought I would share with you in this newsletter. On the surface this story has nothing to do with real estate or selling homes. However, by the end of the newsletter, you’ll see how to use this idea in your business and I promise you’ll love it.

Sound good?

Apparently my friend had a $10 gift card to his favorite restaurant on the front seat of his car. Somehow this gift card slid down between the seats as he drove along. He proceeded to try and retrieve the gift card and in the process, he came very close to sideswiping a parked car. To be perfectly honest, this friend isn’t a very good driver to begin with, which is probably why the gift card slid off the seat in the first place.

After nearly missing the parked car, he decided to wait until he got home to fish the gift card from between the seats. As the story goes, he ended spending 35 minutes at home digging out this gift card. From what it sounded like, he needed every tool in his toolbox and two neighbors to get it.

I have thought a great deal about this story, because I realized the power gift cards have over us. My buddy risked wrecking his car to find a $10 gift card. When this didn’t work, he spent 35-minutes searching for this same gift card.

Guess what?

The gift card is simply a piece of plastic that probably cost around .35 cents. Gift cards are NOT money. However, they have the perception of being money. To illustrate the difference between perception and reality, consider these two questions…

1. Would you risk wrecking your car over .35 cents?

2. Would you spend 35-minutes of your time trying to find .35 cents?

My guess is you would answer “NO” to both questions. The reason why is because you see the gift card for what it really is – a piece of plastic. However, because the gift card has $10 printed on it, we perceive it to be worth $10.

PLASTIC GIFT CARD = MONEY

In my family, we sometimes use gift cards as presents, hence the word “gift.” We’ll buy a $50 gift card to Outback Steakhouse for my dad’s birthday. Or we’ll buy a $25 gift card to iTunes for one of my nephews at Christmas. We typically buy these gift cards at our local grocery store.

When we purchase the gift card, we typically pay the face value of the gift card. Once the gift card is activated at the register, it becomes a form of money. It has real value and is a form of currency.
Why couldn’t we have gift cards created for our real estate businesses? Once created, we could turn these gift cards into money in many different ways. You could create a gift card offering $500 off of your real estate services. Once you had your plastic gift cards in hand, you could…

1. Sell gift cards at a discount to create massive cashflow

Everyone loves a discount! You could sell these gift cards for $100, an 80% discount. If you sold 100 gift cards for $100, you would pocket $10,000. Remember these 100 gift cards only cost around $35 to print, leaving you with positive cashflow of $9,965. Obviously, you would have to honor the gift cards if they were presented to you. You would simply reduce your commission by $500 at the time of sale to credit your client for the value of the gift card. The cool part is that anytime you honor a gift card, you receive a commission check!

2. Use gift cards to help a charity & get new clients

You could offer to give your gift cards to local charities or schools to use as a fundraising tool. As an example, you could approach the Parent-Teacher Association of your local elementary, middle and high schools and offer to give them 25 gift cards each valued at $500 for free. They could sell these gift cards to the parents at whatever price they wanted and could keep every penny for the school. If they sold these 25 gift cards for $100 each, they would raise $2,500 for the school.

You’ll obviously have to honor these gift cards if presented to you, but you’ll be attracting new clients in the process. To redeem the $500 gift card, the family would have to use you as their agent. On a high level, the Parent-Teacher Association would be promoting your services to every parent at the school and you would be helping raise money for the school!

3. Use gift cards to recapture past clients & generate more referrals

When the next holiday rolls around, mail a holiday card to everyone in your database. As a special gift, include one of your $500 gift cards. Put a note in your card letting them know they can use this gift card themselves, or they could pass this card on to anyone else that might be thinking of making a move.

Remember how powerful the perception of value is from the story I shared at the beginning of this newsletter. This is a pretty cool strategy that will yield a ton of good will with your database. More importantly, you would definitely set yourself up for some great referrals in the process.

Or you could use your gift cards to get referrals from local businesses…

Imagine what might happen if you went to local businesses in your area and offered to give them free gift cards that they could give away to their best customers. As an example, let’s assume you gave a local coffee shop 25 of your gift cards valued at $500 and told them to pass these cards out to their best customers.

The owner of the coffee shop would now have a valuable $500 gift that they could give away to their best customers. This valuable gift wouldn’t cost them a penny. The people receiving these gift cards would have to hire you to receive the $500 gift card value and you would walk away with many new clients!

You could obviously repeat this process with many other businesses turning each one into a massive referral machine.

Use gift cards as a “daily deal” to generate cashflow and new clients at the same time

I’m sure you’ve heard of the daily deals websites like Groupon and Living Social. Maybe you could approach one of these sites and turn your gift card into a daily deal. As an example, you could offer a $500 gift card for just $50 as a 24-hour daily deal.

In Cleveland, Living Social has an email list of 200,000 people. An agent could approach Living Social and have their gift card promoted at a significant discount. Living Social would email the deal to their database and would keep 50% of the income from the sale of the gift cards.

If 100 gift cards were sold at $50 each, you would pocket $2,500 (50% split with Living Social) and you would set yourself up for 50 new clients at some point in the future.

If 500 gift cards were sold for $50 each, you would pocket $12,500 (50% split with Living Social) and set yourself up for hundreds of future home sales.

Living Social does not charge upfront to advertise on their site. They simply split any income generated with you 50/50. This simply means you have ZERO downside from applying this strategy. In fact, you can actually get paid to advertise your business.

Pretty cool, if you ask me!

Hopefully you’re starting to see the power of gift cards and how you might use them to advantage in your business. They really do give you the ability to create money out of thin air.
Here are two websites I found where you could create and order your own gift cards. It seems as if they offer better pricing on higher quantities:

http://www.fouracespromocards.com/

http://www.plasticcardonline.com/

Note these are NOT affiliate links! I am simply sharing them with you to help you save time!

P.S. If you enjoyed this newsletter and found it valuable, you should test-drive my Master Marketer membership for 30 days for just $1.00 at http://www.MMClubTestDrive.com. As a member, you’ll receive “outside the box” marketing ideas, access to marketing test results, many of my valuable reports on how to attract leads, automatically convert prospects into clients, done-for-you marketing tools, press releases and client newsletters you can copy and use in minutes. If you don’t find the membership to be valuable during the 30-day test drive, simply cancel your membership by sending an email to my support team at: support@renegademillionairestrategies.com and you won’t be charged another penny!

P.P.S. If you decide to use my gift card ideas in your business, you will probably have to add a disclosure in your purchase agreement detailing the gift card and the commission saved by the client. The gift card would probably be considered an inducement and would have to be disclosed! Please discuss this idea with your broker and/or real estate attorney before implementing!

Since reading “Little Bets” by Peter Sims, I’ve changed my daily “To Do” list to a daily “Experiment List.”

Peter’s book highlights how important it is for entrepreneurs to make little bets in their businesses. A little bet might be considered a mini-experiment where you try something new and see what happens. The key is not to bet the farm on your mini-experiment. You don’t want to make a big bet, until you know, without a doubt, that you’ll win your big bet. I’ll give you an example of how this might work in your business simply by layering little bets on top of each other below.

The cool part about little bets is you can make them in any area of your life. Read Tim Feriss’s book, “The Four Hour Body” to see numerous examples of how to make little bets with your health and fitness. Or if you’re a parent, you can conduct mini-experiments with your kids. Right now, my wife and I are experimenting with a new reward program. Our daughters can earn sleep overs, fun activities and more simply by being  cool to each other. You can also make little bets with investments. Experiment with different investment opportunities on a limited basis and see what happens. Invest in one tax lien and sit back and see how your investment goes BEFORE making new investments.

One awesome mini-experiment that I suggest you conduct is to create a daily “Experiment List.” Try a new mini-experiment each day. I’ve been doing this for the last week or so and I absolutely love it. It really opens your eyes up to some cool possibilities. In addition, it puts a little fun into everything. As an example, over the last few days I’ve been experimenting with a new marketing campaign for my business. On a high-level here is how my mini experiment looks:

1. Create website for new marketing campaign (I do this myself with UnlimitedSqueezePages.com)

2. Email my new idea and website to a few business associates, friends and past clients to see what they think of the idea and to get feedback on improvements.

3. Draft new lead generation advertisements for this website and post them on Craigslist, Facebook, LinkedIn, Bing and Google Adwords.

4. Track each advertisement to see which one generates more activity. Track the website to see how well it converts. If the website isn’t converting well, make any changes and continue to test with the first round of advertisements.

5. Take the best pulling advertisement from my tests and turn it into a banner advertisement and/or classified advertisement for my local newspaper.

6. If the classified or banner advertisement works in the local newspaper, turn the advertisement into an advertorial advertisement or an insert. Advertorial advertisements and inserts are more expensive and would be considered a big bet. This big bet is only made after making a series of little bets. You only make a big bet when you know the advertisement works and the website converts.

The idea is to build upon each mini-experiment and adjust as you move forward. You don’t have to invest a ton of money in the beginning of a new marketing experiment. In this example, I created the website on my own. I advertised in-expensively in platforms that can be turned on and off very quickly. Only when I have a winning advertisement and website, would I spend money to run the advertisement in the newspaper or other more expensive media. If my initial advertisements bombed, I would simply stop running them and test a new round of advertisements inexpensively until I found a winner.

This process of making little bets will help you find new opportunities quickly without having to bet the farm. You do, however, have to make your little bet a priority and you have to track everything so you can see what works and what doesn’t. A little bet provides no value if you can’t track it. Also you should know, in advance, that most of your little bets won’t work. This doesn’t matter, because each experiment is a fantastic learning opportunity.

CLICK HERE —->   How to Have Fun, Add Value & Build an Long Term Asset (PDF)

In a previous article, I wrote about “The 50th Law” by 50 Cent and Robert Greene. It’s a good book with many lessons for those of us in sales – especially real estate sales.

For this article I thought I would share a little more from the book about fear. The reason I decided to write this article was because I have had many private phone conversations with real estate agents over the last few weeks and these agents, for the most part, are fearful. It is easy to understand why many agents are operating in fear. The real estate market has been brutal and we have no idea what is headed our way in the next 2 to 3 years.

From the book…

“Fear creates its own self-fulfilling dynamic – as people give in to it, they lose energy and momentum. Their lack of confidence translates into inaction that lowers confidence levels further, and on and on.”

When we operate our businesses out of fear, we make many subtle changes that continue to hurt the business going forward:

- We stop advertising to attract new customers
- We stop communicating with our sphere of influence and database
- We stop recruiting agents to help us in our businesses
- We focus more on cutting costs rather than growing revenue
- We begin to miss “opportunities” because we stop seeing them

Slowly but surely, our businesses are dying a slow and painful death. This is sad, but true. It’s important to examine ourselves and see if we are operating our businesses from a position of fear. To do so, we must be honest with ourselves and ask some very challenging questions.

1. Do I really believe I can increase my home sales this year?
2. Do I really believe I can increase my commission income this year?
3. Am I generating enough leads each week/month to meet my sales goals? If the answer is no – why not?
4. Am I working to build a better team?
5. Am I testing new advertisements?
6. Am I talking to enough qualified prospects each day?
7. What new opportunities am I pursuing right now?

By answering these questions honestly, you should be able to “see” if you’re operating your business out of fear.

Remember Roosevelt’s speech?

” So, first of all, let me assert my firm belief that the only thing we have to fear is fear itself – nameless, unreasoning, unjustified terror, which paralyzes needed efforts to convert retreat into advance.”

In The 50th Law, the authors wrote…

“What Roosevelt sketched out in his speech is the knife’s edge that separates failure from success in life. That edge is your attitude, which has the power to help shape your reality. If you view everything through the lens of fear, then you tend to stay in retreat mode…. you will give disproportionate attention to the negative and manufacture the very adverse circumstances you dread. If you go the opposite direction cultivating a fearless approach to life, attacking everything with boldness and energy, then you will create a much different dynamic…. something strange and remarkable can occur – that margin of control over circumstance increases.”

In reality what we fear typically isn’t as bad as we might initially believe. Think about whatever it is you’re worried about in your business and ask yourself what would happen if it actually happened? I can still remember how scared I was to buy my first rental property many years ago. To conquer this fear, I made a list of everything that could go wrong and what I would do if the item listed did go wrong. I quickly realized that what I was afraid of wasn’t very scary at all.  You might find the same thing regarding your real estate sales business.

It’s more important today than ever to operate our businesses from a position of strength. I realize it’s not easy, but it IS necessary.