I got an email from Dennis in Portland last week that said:

“Help Andy! Some perspective… I can only handle one new thing at a time… my head is almost swimming!”

Dennis, I hear you brother. And I have an answer.

As a real estate investor in such a volatile economy it’s either “keep up” or “call it quits” … and I don’t know about you, but I’m passionately committed to keeping up.

The *PROBLEM* is that it’s HARD to keep up (especially during the busy holiday season), when:

1. It seems like there are new, breakthrough investment tactics surfacing all the time (like web 2.0 marketing) ..

2. New can’t-miss education becomes available on a near-weekly basis (like last week’s awesome “short sale success blueprint”) ..

3. Your local REIA is more like a depression support group ..

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Posted on Monday, 8th December 2008 in Business, Marketing | Comments (7)

Download my 60-minute “REI Marketer of the Month” interview with Michael Kimble of “Group M Marketing” …

Click to Download

By the way, Kimble is a marketing machine.

He’s one of the most esteemed direct response geniuses in the country, and he recently ran an experiment.  He wanted to see if he could take his marketing mastery - which he’s proven over the last 15 years in other industries - into real estate wholesaling.

The result: Just LAST MONDAY he flipped 4 properties in 2 hours & 36 minutes after sending ONE email to his buyers list.

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Posted on Tuesday, 25th November 2008 in Marketing, Real Estate | Comments (0)

I had the opportunity to speak at Dan Stojadinovic’s “Internet Marketing and Joint Ventures Bootcamp” in San Diego today.

I like the way Dan runs his seminars.  Very laid back, informal, & participatory.

It makes for a phenomenal learning experience for attendees.

I believe I was able to add a lot of value to the lives & businesses of the awesome 80-person crowd of primarily full-time real estate investors.

My approach was simply to tell the story of the last year of my business… exactly how we’ve been able to form the relationships & create the revenue that we’ve done, then to take live questions.

Here are some key points from my 1-hour talk…

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Posted on Friday, 14th November 2008 in Business, Marketing, Real Estate | Comments (7)

This will be my last Big Seminar-related post. Sorry.

Or you’re welcome. Whichever applies.

For the benefit of myself and anyone else who’s trying to grow a business, real estate or otherwise, here are my top takeaways from each of the marketing masters I learned from last weekend.

Joe Polish - “Stop spending time on things that don’t increase either (a) your capabilities or (b) your opportunities in life.”

You can NOT make $1 million/year with $50,000/year habits, knowledge, and relationships. If you don’t develop the habits, relationships, skills, capabilities, and the mindset… you might as well forget it & keep buying lottery tickets, checking email, watching cable, and surfing the internet.

Stephen Pierce - “The biggest success secret ever: Give More LIFE To More PEOPLE”

Have a SYSTEM that finds, gets, keeps, and grows customers (buyers, sellers, lenders, renters, etc). The key to finding, getting, keeping, and growing is *adding value to their lives*.

Eben Pagan - “The #1 priority in business today is to reduce and eliminate distraction and interruption.”

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Posted on Saturday, 11th October 2008 in Business, Life, Marketing | Comments (2)

I just finished up a weekend hanging with some of the BEST marketing minds on the planet.  How can you put a price tag on networking experiences like this…

Mark Victor Hansen (The Notorious MVH), Philanthropist and Founder of the ultimate niche product “Chicken Soup for the Soul.” Hansen said they never release the brand into a new niche until research proves they can sell 3.5 million copies within that niche. The average copy sells for $10 and “Chicken Soup” exists in 279 niches. Do the math on that.

Joe Polish is founder of The Genius Network and Piranha Marketing, has helped thousands of entrepreneurs become successful, and rolls with Richard Branson. He’s a decent guy to know.

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Posted on Thursday, 9th October 2008 in Business, Marketing | Comments (2)

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

** June 2009 Update **
Registration information JUST came out for Big Seminar ‘09!

Go here now -> http://www.BigSeminar.com

(Tickets are supposedly already half gone because Armand has been pre-selling all year at various events)

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

Posted on Monday, 6th October 2008 in Business, Life, Marketing | Comments (0)

Startled?

Don’t worry… this isn’t going to be any sort of scandalous, adults-only blog post! I just wanted to share a few recent lessons learned from the billionaire mastermind of the Virgin Group and the world’s greatest entrepreneur: Sir Richard Branson.

I just finished his autobiography, which shares the title of this post. It was a gift from a great friend & CEO of RealEstateInvestor.com, Colin Egbert.

While Branson’s early sexual promiscuity (he actually “wife-swapped” with his friend for a weekend) and his failure to recognize God as God certainly temper my respect, you can’t help but admire the way he did business.

Here are 8 notes I scribbled as I read the story of his success from 1950-2001…

1. A huge key to Branson’s success was his ability to leverage debt and protect his downside. For many years, the Virgin Group consistently overdrafted millions of dollars to finance their ventures. Why were banks willing to do this? Because of Branson’s uncanny sense of choosing the RIGHT ventures and his track record of success. Each of these ventures involved tremendous risk, but Branson was never without an awareness of where the risks were and rarely without a contingency plan.

2. He never shied away from competition. In fact, he seemed to thrive off of it. He entered the airline industry with a single plane when British Airways was dominating UK market share and eliminating smaller competitors left & right. He launched Virgin Cola, knowing that Coke and Pepsi held 70%+ of worldwide market share but seeing small weaknesses that he could exploit.

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Posted on Sunday, 27th July 2008 in Books, Business, Life, Marketing, Real Estate | Comments (1)

I’ve always felt that the best comedians are the ones who put into words things that you’ve already observed about the world, but that - to that point - you’ve never actually put into words yourself.

They’re funny simply because they make you realize “that is so incredibly true.”

Chris Rock. Sinbad. Jerry Seinfeld.

I think this particular appreciation for one’s ability to “label reality” carries over into the authors I end up recommending as well. I just finished Malcolm Gladwell’s “The Tipping Point” and it certainly appeals to a similar part of me.

It’s the type of book that makes you think “Wow, if this guy hadn’t had the unique insight & passion to write this, I don’t know who else ever would have. And the world is a better place because he did it.”

It talks about the commonalities between the epidemics of this world; an epidemic being any sudden & rapid movement, upward or downward, of a trend.

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Posted on Tuesday, 10th June 2008 in Books, Faith, Life, Marketing | Comments (1)