Living A Wealthy Life

I have just started reading one of my Rich Dad Advisor books “How To Create A Winning Business Plan” and it an extremely challenging book.

I know that I want to be financially free in 5 years. I also know that I want to achieve this through investing in positive cashflow property. I even know my first few property deals and the return I can expect on them but I really don’t know much beyond that.

I don’t have a complete business plan to map out how I am going to get from where I am now to where I want to be in 5 years.

I think the main reason I lack a business plan is because I lack experience. Part of my ‘plan’ is to continue to learn better ways to invest in property. So I don’t know now the things I will know in 3 years time, so how can I write that down in my business plan?

Thinking about a business plan has been great because it has helped me define

My Exit Strategy - For each property deal I need to have an exit strategy before I purchase it. I hadn’t really thought about my exit strategy before, so it is helpful to start thinking about that now

How To Pay Back Capital – People investing their capital with me will obviously want to know what return on their investment they are going to get. But just as importantly they want to know when they are going to get their capital back. So I have really had to put my head down and work that out. Can I achieve that through rental income, or do I need to wait until the property goes up and refinance. How am I going to get their capital back

Worst Case Scenario – I have already gone through a few of these, but when investing by yourself you REALLY have to know the worst case scenario and whether or not you can afford it.

Scaling – Scaling is simply repeating what you did on a bigger scale. Instead of doing just one property do two, or do a unit block. In order to scale you need to have skill and capital behind you. My business plan is making me think about how I can scale my property investing effectively

So there you have it. Today what I did to move towards wealth was think about my business plan for property and I started to work out in even more detail exactly what I hope to achieve and how I plan to achieve it.

I have so many people that I just want to prove wrong. People that say

• “The only way to get rich is to get a job”
• “I need a payrise”
• “I can’t afford to invest”
• “Investing is risky”
• “You can’t become financially free by the time you are 26″
• “You can’t invest without any money that is too risky”
• “Why would anyone want to invest with you”
• “I can’t afford to have kids”
• “You need to put your head down and get a job”
• “What are you doing with your life”

There are so many people that just make me ANGRY with the things that they say. Because I know deep down in my heart that what they are saying is full of crap and completely untrue.

But today I realised that I won’t be able to prove people wrong.

Take a look at Steve McKnight. He is the Aussie guy that wrote 0-130 properties in 3.5 years. He kicked ass and proved to everyone that it can be done, but still he doesn’t have the glory of saying “In your face bitches”. He has critics smearing his name and his method all the time, saying he is a fraud and his method doesn’t work EVEN though he proved them all wrong.

I have realised that people do in fact live in different realities. As Christians we like to believe that everything is black and white, that there is right and wrong, possible and impossible. But more and more I am starting to see that many things are relative.

Like people who say “I need a job because I have bills to pay and I have to pay my mortgage”. That statement is true for them because they believe it. Because they believe it their mind won’t stretch to find other money making opportunities. It is real because they believe it is.

So even when I prove people wrong they will never understand because they live in a different reality to me. I can get rich without a job, but they will still believe deep down that you need a job to make money and they will fail to see there is another way EVEN WHEN IT IS RIGHT IN FRONT OF THEIR FACE.

It is a little annoying because most of the people that fight me live in a different reality to me, so I won’t be able to say “I told you so.”

But knowing this is releasing. If you are doing something just to rub it in someone’s face then you probably shouldn’t be doing it. So it has allowed me to drop that whole aspect and just go after it for me and my family and the people that support me in what I am doing, but aren’t able to do it themselves yet. So it is good to finally get that bad motive out of my system.

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.