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)

My amigo Preston Ely, one of the premier real estate wholesalers in the country, just sent me the following story.

If you know Preston and you were under the impression that he’s always flipping wholesale deals, partying at red carpet events, shopping for designer jeans, and looking for a bigger mansion you’d be wrong …

… sometimes he just sits in front of his fireplace in a robe and fuzzy pink slippers and writes short stories.

A little odd, but the good thing for us is that his stories help keep our minds straight when the media is telling us that we should all be depressed right now.

Read below and forward it to everyone you know. It will make the world a better place.

The Story Of The Two Flippers
By Pre$ton Ely

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Posted on Sunday, 5th October 2008 in Life, Real Estate | Comments (0)

I’m about 5,000 miles from home right now, taking a breather after one of the busiest, sleepless weeks of my life!

Following the successful release of my new Virtual Bird Dog Blueprint course (thank you for the overwhelmingly positive feedback), I spent the weekend learning & networking at one of the most incredible educational seminars I’ve ever been to… REI Connect, hosted by Colin Egbert and RealEstateInvestor.com.

I’m at a lot of these things, and this event was second to none!  ANYONE who was there would agree with me on that.

Normally, you’d have to sit through the boring or elementary material to get to the good stuff, but this was simply one heavy hitter after another..

.. Colin Egbert, Than Merrill, Kenny Rushing, Duncan Wierman,
Preston Ely, Darren Dicke, Terry Hale, Duncan Wierman, Marco
Kozlowski, Sam Bell ..

.. guys who are IN the business, DOING the business, and making a KILLING doing it.

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Posted on Thursday, 18th September 2008 in Business, Real Estate | Comments (0)

My buddy Preston Ely passed along a pretty good investing tip this week.

If you’re a real estate investor - or just an average human being - and your life is not currently being influenced by his weekly newsletters, you need to get on Preston’s mailing list here.

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

I was watching an interview with Warren Buffet the other day.  It was pretty interesting.

Interviewer: Does it make sense to buy houses as investments right now?

Warren: Sure it does. So long as you buy with VALUE built in.

Therein lies the key, my friend.  Real estate is still the best and most secure investment to be had… so long as you buy with value.

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Posted on Sunday, 17th August 2008 in Real Estate | Comments (0)

I just found out one of our Teamwork Lead System Community Leaders, Charles Blair, has closed 3 bird dog-generated deals up in Maryland in the last 3 months. He and his partner Marcel are doing WORK all across Maryland. They’re true real estate junkies!

Here’s their great house hunter training blog: http://www.MarylandHouseHunters.com

I don’t know how he has the time between running the business, helping other TLS members with his 15 years of experience, and generally loving life… but I believe he does a bit of real estate mentoring as well. You’ll definitely want to get in touch with Charles if you’re anywhere near the Maryland area.

Posted on Thursday, 14th August 2008 in Real Estate | Comments (0)

This time, a standard $5,000 wholesale flip by Jason in Houston. No copy of the check on this one, but Jason says:

“I am very pleased with the Teamword Lead System for tons of reasons. 1. It has already paid for itself 10x, I closed on a lead brought through the system for a $5000 assignment fee within the first few months. 2. I have over 150 bird dogs now who are scouring my market for me bringing me leads every day. And 3. I would buy the system just for the organization. You can put ALL of your leads in this system for one simple, easy to use storage of your leads and their status.

The product is definitely worth it. You will more than pay for years it with the first lead you close on.”

Jason runs a blog at WholesalingTips.com.. check it out & give him some love. He’s adding more & more great content there.

If you’re a real estate investor, learn more about what the Teamwork Lead System can do for you at http://www.TeamworkLeadSystem.com or check out The Virtual Bird Dog Blueprint now!

Posted on Thursday, 14th August 2008 in Real Estate | 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 sent this email to the Teamwork Lead System community last week, but it’s worth posting here as well…

I wanted to share a quick wholesale tip that I picked up a couple weeks ago at the Virtual Investing Seminar.

Someone - and I can’t remember who, so I apologize! - mentioned that he always markets his wholesale deals via flat fee MLS listings.

The key, he said, is to include in your purchase contract:

“Seller gives Buyer (you) the right to relist the property with an agent of your choice”

He said this particular clause has NEVER prevented a seller from signing the contract with him.

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Posted on Friday, 18th July 2008 in Real Estate | Comments (0)

At the Virtual Investing Seminar a couple weeks ago, I had the opportunity to meet Caroline… a Teamwork Lead System Investor from New Orleans. She had started using the system a couple months before and she had previously emailed to tell me she closed 2 wholesale deals in her first 30 DAYS with the system.

That’s $11,000+ in her pocket. Here are the scanned checks she sent me..

Well guess what… as I’m talking to her on Saturday, she gets a call & learns that her third bird dog-generated deal is under contract. That’s another few grand she’s expecting.

Sunday, I’m on stage speaking & I mention Caroline’s story. As I do this, a guy yells out that she just put 2 MORE freakin deals under contract THAT morning from our system.

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Posted on Friday, 18th July 2008 in Real Estate | Comments (0)

I’m not even sure what to call what I’m currently experiencing. It’s more than jet lag. Maybe premium jet lag plus.

I’ve literally gotten 3 hours of sleep in the past 2 days. I’m in toasty Tampa, Florida for Mike Collins’s Pitch-Free Wholesaling Seminar. On Friday, the Rehablist boys found out that a speaker couldn’t make it on Saturday, so they asked me to speak for an hour.

Less than 24 hours notice, but you can’t turn that down.  A ton of real estate educators would pay to be on that stage.  So I ran with it.  It was my biggest audience to date (120+), but the response was pretty solid.

They made me feel a little more at home with a lei, some coconuts, & torches, and I opened up with my version of the Maori haka.

Mines is on tape, so I’ll try to get it up here. It was nothing like the real thing, but it definitely got the crowd in the game.

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Posted on Saturday, 12th April 2008 in Real Estate | Comments (0)