Category — Daily Rambling

Today was an awesome day for my mind. You know when you have those moments and it is like instantly your mind expands and you can see the possibilities? Well today was one of those days for me.

Today I was thinking about a property deal I am looking at doing and also thinking about my next deal and how I can best move towards my goal of becoming financially free in just 5 years (I have about 4 and a half left). Then God started challenging my mind and he was saying “Come on Ryan think bigger, stop thinking about little deals, start thinking about ways you can make a LOT more money from each deal”. So I did. I started thinking about buying blocks of units (There is a block of 10 units I want to buy that could net $150/week in the first year and even over $800+ per week in the future). I started thinking about buying a block of ten units, or buying land and building a block of ten units. Then it just hit me!

I realised that I am just one property deal away from being completely financially free. Just one freaking deal. Not 100 deals, not 50 deals, not even 10 deals just one deal away from financial freedom.

I am looking at a property at the moment that will net me about $20/week (or $1,000) in the first year, and in the 7th year it will net me about $80/week (or $4,000/year). Now that is not nearly enough money to live off. $1,000 doesn’t even pay one month’s rent for us. So this one deal won’t make me financially free.

But if you could purchase an apartment complex with 100 apartments and you could earn $20/week per apartment that is a huge $2,000/week or around $100,000 per year. In just one deal you went from having little or no passive income, to becoming financially free. BOOM!

The most awesome thing about this as well is that you don’t need any money to do it. I have been reading some of the Rich Dad’s advisor series books (thanks to my mums who hooked me up for Chrissy) and 2 of them are on real estate investing from a guy called Ken McElroy, and he is a dooze dude. He does exactly what I want to do. He goes out and buys apartment blocks that have 150+ units in each of them. He has a line of investors wanting to invest with him (because he is so good). His investors put down about $1 million and the bank will lend them something like $8 million to buy this property and Ken takes a 10% share in all positive cashflow and all capital gains. Because he is so good each deal can net him $20,000/month in passive income and he can increase the value of the property $2-5 million and pocket 10% of that increase.

I did a little online borrowing capacity calculator today and me and the missus can borrow about $140,000. Woh, step back…haha it is definately not a lot. But that is ok, because I don’t plan on relying on my borrowing power. One of the best things about apartments is that they don’t take your personal income into account, they only take the income of the property into account. So even if you work part time at a Chemist like me you can borrow $9 million if the property and your experience supports it.

So the other day when me and Timay went to the “mortgage broker” who told me the 100 reasons (that I already knew) why I couldn’t achieve what I wanted to achieve (one of the major reasons being my income) I knew that he was talking from a different reality to me. His method relies on borrowing power, my investment method doesn’t.

Granted, I don’t really have the experience needed to convince someone to joint venture with me in a multi-million dollar property deal, but soon I will. This property I want to do is the first step towards it. Anyone not wanting to invest with me now is possibly missing out on lucrative future deals (suckers). I have no doubt in my mind of how successful I will be.

“One Look, One Look, I’ll Show You One Look” – Derek Zoolander

I feel like Derek right now. “One Deal, One Deal, I’ll Show You One Deal”. One deal to financial freedom. How easy is that.

And that idea grew my brain by like 10 goodness levels today.

I work in a newsagency part time and part of my job (well most of my job) is selling lotto tickets. Last night was an OzLotto $30 Million Jackpot and I had loads of people buying tickets hoping to win it big.

It is one of my life goals to become a billionaire. I plan on doing this through investing in multi-family unit complexes. Both purchasing them and creating them. Now when your goal is to become a billionaire it really puts $30 Million into perspective.

I have always said that I don’t want to win the lotto. Whenever I pray to God the thing I ask for is wisdom, not money. Proverbs 16:16 says “How much better to get wisdom than gold, to choose understanding rather than silver” or in my translation “How much better is it to get wisdom instead of inheriting easy wealth, to choose understanding over tonights winning lotto numbers”.

I am struggling to invest because I don’t have the capital I need to buy a property. I could get a job to raise the capital, but who ever became a billionaire by simply getting a job…if you can name one person I would really like to know. Instead I am trying to raise capital by convincing other people to invest with me. If I can’t convince someone to invest $7,000 with me on a low risk positive cashflow property, how can I be expected to raise the millions in capital I will need to my apartment complexes in the future?

If I won $30 million it would stop me learning what I need to earn in order to become a billionaire. I might be rich, but I want to choose wisdom and understand over easy wealth. Then, if I lose all my money I can get it back even quicker.

Plus I want the story of going from nothing to making it big time…and I don’t plan on doing it the easy way.

Well after my emotional breakdown yesterday I feel much better today. I am back on the horse so to speak and pushing my way towards wealth.

Me and my mum have always butted heads. We are both extremely strong headed and usually we have the opposite opinions, especially when it comes to money. Even as a kid I was always very open about money and curious and my mum was more conservative. I think I annoyed her more than once asking her how much she earned.

But today my mum messaged me asking me to present my investment ideas to her. I wrote back and said “Who are you and what have you done with my mother”. Haha.

But I am going to present my investment ideas to my mum. I am not holding my breath hoping that she will want to invest with me, in fact I would almost advise her against it, but I am looking forward to the opportunity to show her how good my ideas are.

So today I learned a lot about communicating effectively to different people. I created a PowerPoint presentation for my mum because I think she will receive more info that way. My mother in law on the other hand would probably need more visual aids because she is a very different person (very creative thinking). Each person is different and if I want to be able to express myself effectively to each person. After all, it is all about communication.

Today was the weirdest day. But in order to explain today I must go back in the past.

About a month ago I found a great positive cashflow property that yielded an 11.2% return. Me and the missus tried to fund it ourselves but couldn’t, in Australia you have to have “proven savings” in order to get lending. Then a friend of mine showed interested in the property. We were pretty serious and even got to the point of going to get financing for the property.

Then the mortgage broker we went to go and see turned out to be not much of a mortgage broker. More of a “let me shove my personal financial advice down your throat” kind of person. So after being personally attacked by someone who doesn’t know me for 10 minutes and hearing him tell my friend that he would advise him not to invest with me I was kicked out of the room so the mortgage broker could talk to my friend without me. Then it turned out my friend didn’t want to invest in this deal after all…some night for me.

Note: I know the mortgage broker guy and when I was engaged he told me not to marry my wife, so I already disliked him.

I am used to people telling me why I can’t do what I know I am meant to do and why I should do what they tell me to do so this meeting wasn’t too bad for me. I can take the punches and keep going. For the next few days after the meeting I was shocked, and a little bummed that the investment deal wasn’t going ahead, but all in all I was alright.

Then today I just broke down. It was the weirdest experience. I just felt really angry and everything felt really hard. I had to help my missus return the items we hired for her baby shower. When the chairs scratched skin of my hands I felt as if someone had attacked me. The emotions were overwhelming. Then whilst carrying a trussle table one of the legs flew out and hit me in the head, leading me to eventual tears for no reason. It’s interesting having a day where you feel like you just can’t get happy no matter what. Turns out the male cure for this is …………hehe. Lucky I have a hot wife.

I think my emotions finally caught up with me today. The disappointment of putting so much work and emotional energy into something that didn’t eventuate was quite intense. It is not easy to almost achieve the near impossible but not achieve it. So my step towards wealth today was simply not giving up.

They don’t tell you how much of an emotional rollercoaster it is to try and build wealth. It’s freaking hard, no matter most people give up and settle for an office chain (I mean job) that provides a steady paycheck. Hey what can I say I work at a Chemist. I’m tied to a cash register instead of an office cubicle.

It’s pretty difficult relying on others to align with your dream and your plan. I am thinking now of focusing more energy online to raise capital so i can invest myself.

Note: To my friends who read this (especially the one who I almost JV’d with) I am ok, and not offened at you. This is simply me venting to the ether. I don’t need counselling or emotional support so don’t treat me like I do or ask me if I’m ok…it may lead to a punch in the face just kidding…but seriously. I’m fine, just had a bad day.

Turns out that getting rich with a tiny income and no money isn’t easy…not that I ever thought it will be. But that will make my success all the more incredible.

One of my goals for this year is to generate $80/month of passive income online. Well today I was busy taking my broken iPhone to the Mac store and hanging out with my hot pregnant wife that I didn’t get time to put in any effort towards that goal. But yet, due to my automated online methods, I just got $15/month closer to that goal.

It is an awesome feeling to check your email inbox and see that you have sold a product that will pay you $15/month indefinately, without even lifting a finger. Truthfully I don’t even know how I sold it, or how the people found my affiliate link, but I did. I am literally starting to get rich automatically. Admittedly it is not a lot of money (only $15/month) but hey, I didn’t have to do much to get it. In fact today I did absolutely nothing to get it.

Everything I do online this year is going to be focused on generating passive income automatically. Yes I will work online this year, but I will work in such a way that whatever work I do continues to work for me for years to come. Work I did 1-3 years ago is still generating me sales today, and I wasn’t even focusing on passive income in the past. Imagine how much more I can achieve focusing solely on creating an automatic system that will make me richer and richer each day whether I lift a finger or not.

Now that sounds like something I would be willing to spend some time on.

A lot of people will tell you a lot of things about how life should be. About how you can’t do this because of that and how you should do that because of this. I am slowly starting to realize that if you want to be someone who follows your dreams you can’t always listen to people telling you how it is.

If you are thinking that I am just having a whinge you are right. I get extremely frustrated with how small minded some people are. Just because everyone does things a certain way doesn’t mean that we should continue doing them that way.

There are a lot of big things I want to accomplish in the next 5 years so I have to be very very careful what I accept from people. I know there are a million reasons why I can’t achieve success but I also know there are a few reasons why I can. So I have to keep my ears and mind closed to the million reasons why not and only listen to the few reasons why I can succeed.

Plus even if what everyone said was true who could be happy settling for a life that is less than magnificent anyway? I don’t know about you but I want to get to the end of my life and know that I lived it. I want to be able to tell my children that they can do whatever they want, that they can follow their dreams because their dad did. Not tell them to work 9-5 to pay the bills, what kind of life is that?

When I tell people I am having a baby a lot of them say “You better get some sleep now, cos when the baby comes you wont get any”. That may be true for them but why should I accept that as fact for me? Sure I might not get as much sleep but I only work 2-3 days per week. Do the math, even with a baby that leaves a lot of time for sleeping.

Basically what I am raving on about is the fact that you choose your reality. What is fact for someone is only fact because they decided to believe it. If I want to decide differently and live differently then I can, so why bother telling me I can’t?

Generally when I get to the start of a new year I feel relieved that the previous year is over. Usually I am pretty down on myself because I didn’t accomplish as much as I wanted to accomplish and about this time of the year I am really excited to achieve the ridiculous goals I set for myself.

I must say that this year is very different. I have set three financial goals for the year and I know that if I just achieve those three goals then I will be well on my way to becoming wealthy. It is my goal to be financially free in 5 years, so this year is all about laying the foundation, learning about investing and freeing up some of my cashflow so we no longer have to live just above the bread line.

Two of my goals (investing in real estate and minimizing debt cashflow) are taking the back seat at the moment. They are slow cooking while I am working on raising capital for my investments. So the goal I am working on at the moment is to increase my passive income online so that it covers my online expenses. This means raising my passive income from $17/month (which it is currently) to $80/month. This is not a huge task and I should be able to accomplish it this year.

I have decided that if I want to achieve success this year I have to break it down and take it one month at a time. So today I did exactly that. I wrote down a list of things that I want to achieve this month, and I put them in a “To Do” list on the dashboard of my computer. I believe that not setting goals that are too difficult is the key to success in 2010. Just set goals that are baby steps towards your ultimate destination.

For example, one of my goals is to write 10 weeks of email newsletters for my email subscribers (I have about 1,300 at the moment). This doesn’t not immediately fulfill my goal of increasing my passive income online, but it builds trust and consistency with my audience, so that when I do release a product they will be open and ready for it. So today I wrote two weeks worth of email newsletters and I wrote the outline for the next 10 weeks.

Keeping Focused

I have to remember to keep completely focused this year. Even today as I was writing down the outlines for my email newsletters I started to get really excited about how I could use the same methods to make money in other niches. I started writing down a plan for making money in the photography niche, but I had to stop myself.

Last year I was all over the shop and I had no focus. I did a lot of things very poorly because I spread myself too thin. This year I am trying to calm myself down. Instead of getting excited over hundreds of things I just want to focus on my three goals and one or two methods for achieving each goal. I know that if I can focus and do one method well then it will reward me financially.

So instead of trying to do the wealth/personal finance niche and the photography niche I am going to forget about the photography niche for now. Once I have achieve a passive income in one area then I can shift my focus onto another area.

Here are my goals for the month

Online:

- Write 10 Weeks Worth Of Email Newsletters

- Write 30 Articles To Promote My Email Newsletter

- Write A Completed Outline Of My Newest Product

- Finish My Current Product

- Find An Affiliate Product To Promote

Financially

- Find Out How To Access The Baby Bonus

- Find Out How To Access The Family Tax Benefit

Real Estate

- Study my target area more indepth (I have about 11 things about my area I want to find out)

- Get Kel To Proof Read My Joint Venture Letter

So as you can see I do not have many goals for the month. But this is good because it allows me to focus. I have already started to smash out some of my goals for the month. Today I wrote a draft for my new product and wrote 2 email newsletters and I found my affiliate product to promote.

I feel like I achieved a good amount today and I am looking forward to tomorrow. My missus is home tomorrow so tomorrow I plan to research the Baby Bonus and Family Tax Benefit as my step towards wealth. I also plan on reading some more of my real estate book and getting Kel to proofread a letter I wrote to put in people’s letterboxes in the hopes of finding a joint venture partner that I can invest in property with.

Well today start my 365 day journey to wealth. Where I will be spending 365 days documenting what I do each day that moves me closer to wealth. The goal is not to become rich in one year, the goal is to take a least one step forward towards a wealthier life each day. That step might be large (like purchasing an investment) or it might be small (like reading a book or website).

Day #1 is the decision. If I want to take out 365 days of my life to take a step towards wealth then I have to decide to do that. You know the saying “The journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step”. Really the journey of a thousand miles begins with the decision to make the journey. The step is only taken after the decision has been made.

Today is New Year’s Day. A day of hangovers, Berocca, and sitting around doing nothing. It is likely that I drank a little bit too much last night and thus I will probably wake up to the heat feeling sticky, thirsty, sick and have a large headache. Thus I will not spend a lot of the day focusing on creating wealth. I will spend the day hanging out with my friends and my wife. I might even go to the beach.

But today I will decide to take out 365 days of my life to take steps towards achieving wealth. I document this not to make money from my blog, but for my own benefit. If you read this and get something out of it then please leave comments. I look forward to seeing how far I have come in 365 days at the start of 2011.

Well another year has come and gone. 2010 is here (well it is in Australia anyway). So happy new year to everyone. I hope that this year is going to be the best year of your life.

I am really starting to learn to power of focus. A few things happened last year that really taught me how important it is to focus on doing a few things well, instead of trying to do a lot of things poorly.

My Internet Income

At the start of last year I had the goal to earn a full time income online. The only thing is I didn’t really have a goal of how I was going to do that. I tried all sort of things. Affiliate marketing, blogging, article marketing, twitter, email marketing, flipping websites etc etc. This lack of focus gave me little to no success and left me extremely discouraged and I ended up dropping all of my make money online schemes that I was working on. Now instead of making money online I am paying money.

Worrying About Money

Last year I learnt about the negative impact when you are focusing on the wrong thing. Not too long after we found out that Kelly was pregnant I started stressing about money. I couldn’t see how we were going to have enough money when the baby came, and we could barely pay our bills as it was. I would spend day and night worrying about money and how I was going to generate more income.

Then one night when I was at work within the space of half an hour I lost almost all of my vision. I had all these white spots in my vision and I couldn’t see a thing. I was FREAKING out, I had no idea what was going on. I went straight to the doctors and half an hour and a splitting headache later the doctor told me I had a migraine caused my stress. Focusing on the wrong thing can do a lot of harm to your body. Not only that but I know that when I worry about money the relationship I have with my wife is stressed also.

Financial Freedom

In the last three months of 2009, I discovered Robert Kiyosaki’s book “Retire Young, Retire Rich”. It was at that point that I decided that instead of focusing on getting a huge income I would focus on financial freedom and learning to become financially free. I spent months devouring books and I went through the entire Robert Kiyosaki series. I learnt so much about investing and financial freedom.

I set myself the goal of becoming financially free in just 5 years. I had no idea how I was going to achieve it, but I set the goal none the less. This focus and determination on becoming financially free changed me completely (my wife will testify to that) and it was with this focus that I can within a nits tit (a very small distance) from purchasing a positive cashflow property that could have done wonders for our cashflow and our bank account.

What Will You Focus On This Year?

Last year I spent a lot of time focusing on a whole bunch of different things. I had no sense of direction and no direct focus. Now I know that my goal is financial freedom in 5 year that is my focus. Everything I do will be to move towards that. I have also set 3 goals for the year

• To purchase 3 positive cashflow properties
• To make the cashflow from my debt = $0/month
• To make the passive income I earn online equal to my online expenses

Now I have the focus on very specific goals for 2010. I don’t have 20 goals, and my goals aren’t vague. They are very specific and they have a very specific timeline (12 months). This allows me to focus on achieving just these things and I believe that through focusing I will see a great increase in my financial situation.

Even if you don’t believe in ‘resolutions’ as such, almost everyone has goals for things they want to achieve when it comes to the new year. I have both. I have goals, that are realistic, that I want to achieve, and I have resolutions, which are near impossible but would be nice, to achieve. I am just going to write down my goals, and this year I am going to focus on achieving these 4 things.

To Buy 3 Positive Cashflow Properties

This year we almost bought a positive cashflow property. I have gotten good at finding positive cashflow properties that can make us a lot of money. This year all I need to do is find the capital to fund these great investments.

It was funny because in my mind I had the goal of purchasing 3 properties in 2010. Being married and everything I asked my wife “How many properties do you think we should aim to buy in 2010″, and I didn’t mention that I wanted to buy 3. You know what her answer was…you guessed it 3. She said exactly the same thing I was thinking. It is good to know we are on the same page.

Our first property we plan to purchase ourselves. We will either then use that property to pay off our personal debt, or we will use that property to leapfrog into our next two properties. We haven’t decided yet. When we run out of money/available credit, we will then seek Joint Venture partners to provide the credit and initial deposit. While we will find the deals and draw the potential out. We will win, and the Joint Venture partner will get a better return on their money than if they put it in the bank or in the stock market.

To Make The Cashflow From My Debt = $0/Month

Currently our debt is stripping $400/month from our cashflow. That is both interest and repayments. It is my goal this year to make the cashflow from my debt =$0.

One way to do that would be to pay off the full amount. Seeing as we owe $18,500 and I earn less than that, then paying off the whole amount might prove a little difficult (though I know it would be possible). The way I want to do it is this. Purchase a positive cashflow property that is run down. Spend a week or two doing it up, increase rents and get it revalued. Then draw out enough equity to completely pay off our personal loan while still keeping the property positive cashflow. The people who rent my property will then be paying for the debt I have. Thus my cashflow from my debt will be $0/month.

To Increase My Online Passive Income So That It Is Greater Than My Expenses (Including Internet)

Currently my total online expenses are about $80/month. My passive income online is $17/month. This year I want to increase my passive income so that is completely covers my expenses. This means it will not put a strain on my budget and I will have more freedom to work online without worrying about how I am going to pay my internet bill when it comes around.

The $17 I am earning is coming in from Aweber’s Affiliate Program. This year I plan to market that more (probably with a free ebook and some article marketing). I also currently have a sales funnel that I have created (but I don’t have any products to sell). So I plan on creating products for my sales funnel. Once the product is created all the marketing, selling and delivery is automatic and thus it becomes passive income.

To Be A Good Dad

This is by far the most important goal for me. I am having a little girl in February and I want to be a good dad for her. What exactly that entails I do not know, and how I measure the success of this goal I do not know (especially since my daughter won’t be able to tell me how I am going). But still, it is a goal none the less.

I look forward to reading this in a years time and seeing how I did in 2010. I know I will be a completely different person at the end of the year.