Thanks guys! I thought I might be going overboard with it. I am also looking forward to Troy.
I have just about gotten to the point of too many opportunites. It gets hard to choose the right path. I am going back to the books. I ordered some books form Amazon to help me sort some things out about different houses and manufacturers etc.
I also got a book on developing with manufactured homes. This morning I went to Starbucks after dropping my wife at work so I could do some reading and do more than the usual checking my email twice an hour as I warm a chair at home.
I am sitting there listening to people doing all sorts of business at 8 in the morning and get the bright idea I may drive her to work more often and hang out in this Starbucks until I come across someone who will invest in my dreams with me. I heard a guy talking of how a bank just signed a lease on one of his properties and he is “building to suit” for them.
I didn’t feel like these two were open to my chiming in and figured I would see them again and say hello. Just then they left and another guy sits down by me. He looks like he wants me to talk to him so I go for it and ask him about the real estate guide he is reading.
Long story short, he says he just quit his job as a contractor but does lots of profitable side work that makes him enough money to own a race horse for kicks. He also tell me he is opening a coffee house and roaster here in Nashville. I have been a coffee roaster in the past and we come to the point of him offering me a partnership in the biz.
My cafe/roaster was on the beach in Oregon and was cooler than it was profitable. My feet still hurt and my wallet isn’t much better for the ride either. This guy had three places going at once and loved it and now is ready to do it again but needs a partner to help him run the place so he can keep making the big bucks rehabbing houses for attorneys and doctors.
I have lots of thinking to do now. The place is a real project but he is making serious gains and should be open in a month. His last place served 150 dinners a night. So far I have just volunteered to help him by doing some painting and clean up while we get to know each other and think and talk it through.
So far I am just getting some good excerise and have lined up a place to roast my own coffee which I really miss due to the quality you can achieve if you focus on it.
I think I excell at this because I just like people. I don’t like then while they are running me off the road but once we get where we are going I like them fine. I try very hard to ask questions and then shut up and listen. I have been very bad at listening in the past.
If a person stays at home watching the fear filled news and listening to other’s bad attitudes the world can seem like a very threatening and lonely place. I find people are receptive to someone who will listen and speak things that build up rather than the easier tearing down that often passes for conversation nowdays. When two folks meet who are out trying to do it for real they are obvious to each other.
I mentioned living at the beach in Oregon. I tried to get there for years. Once I got to my lonely little beach town (look for Port Orford OR on your map, it is as far west as you can go in the lower 48) I found that a lot of people went there to escape from other people. If you run as far from the east as you can go you end up in Port Orford.
So here I was in this wonderful little scenic town with a bunch of anti-social buttheads. It took me a while to figure out what was up. A bunch of poor people with poverty mindsets attacking anyone who tried to get close to them. This litle microcosm of negativity in the most beautiful place I have ever lived taught me something about poverty.
Poverty is just as much a mental state as it is a state of not having money. You can fill your bank account and your pockets with cash and still be poor as poor can be. You can move to paradise and hide behind your curtains fearing the world or you can go out and live for real.
I was very, very sick in my thirties, I am now 48. My health ended up with my having a heart attck at 38 years old. I was the second youngest person to survive that went through the cardio rehabilitation program at the hospital. A 37 year old lived through one and took the record.
I fought to diagnose my own health issues when they told me I was dying and they didn’t know why. I finally figured it out with the help of some compassionate hippies down at the corner health food store and fought back to okay health. I set in my mind that I would never forget the feeling I had of being a “survivor”. Every once in a while I remember to remember what it was like. It changed me forever and when I begin to forget what it means for me to have been given another chance it doesn’t take much effort to bring all of the emotion back.
I am not pulling your heart strings just for kicks. This is important stuff. People are alone in the world at times. At least they feel they are. When people write of success in investing where everyone wins they are not just pulling your leg. When someone needs to sell or buy a home they are far better off dealing with someone of character than someone who is good at playing sincere.
I have a house in Oregon still that is worth $160k or so. It is assessed at $153k. I have been trying to sell it for a heck of a long time and it is a pain to deal with from across the country. If someone offered me $135k for it today I would take it and I am a pro investor.
I had a signed contract on it for $185k last year but the lease option didn’t go through due to the buyers not being able, or trying really, to clean up their credit to finance. I am to the point of letting someone take it subject to my financing just like to folks in the books say you can buy homes. People will tell you it can’t be done, due on sale clauses etc. I promise it can be done and am wiling to sell my house that way to prove it.
I am an experienced investor. I fully understand the risks and rewards or this kind of deal. I am just motivated because I tried to sell the place and couldn’t. Now I am 2500 miles or so away and want to put that part of my life behind me. I know I can use that money to make more money.
If someone cames along and does the deal, they won’t have to keep a straight face until they can get out of my presence and laugh all the way to the bank. They can laugh right in front of me. I want to bless them with the house because I really do know I can find another motivated seller offering to give away the same equity here in Nashville so they can move on. If I was staying in my beach house and not ready to go, you would have a snowball’s chance to get a deal like that from me. I turned down better offers than that before I left town.
There is no stronger motivator than motivation. I am sophisticated but motivated. You don’t have to “beat me” out of anything to buy my house. You wouldn’t have to get psyched up or manipulate me. You wouldn’t have to deceive me or take advantage. I could win and you could win. I could even point you to the fine folks I eventually found among the buttheads so you could have some good friends like I found there.
My point to all of this rambling is this. People who give a rip about others are not as rare as the butthead next door wants you to think they are. We just fear what others think so much and let thier attitudes have way too much sway on our lives and actions.
People who think there has to be a loser in a deal so that they can win are immature and will never make it to the top of anything. If this is you decide to change for the better. People say it is dog eat dog out there. I am not a dog and I don’t think I would like the taste of dog anyway.
Those fearful and abusive people are next door because the world has a defense mechanism to weed them out and make sure they don’t succeed. Don’t listen to them and don’t stay next door to them for too long. The world is like that to them because their world is small. Their world is just like they say “the” world is. If you set the standard that there is a winner and a loser in every deal and you are not the winner yet, what are you?
Isn’t it better to see things win-win like the world’s most sucessful folks? Then you are just a person who is shedding a poverty attitude, living in a world of your own choosing where others matter and people can all come out okay. In that world, if you haven’t won yet, it is just a matter time, faith and diligence. If you think I am simplistic and naive just read what the world’s most wealthy people have to say.
I just can’t say enough about how much caring for others and being open and honest has disarmed the buttheads in my life. I would like to use other words than butthead but you get the point.
It really freaked out my guy freinds when I first started telling them I love them. I am not going to die without saying what I feel to the people I love and waste the second chance I was given. It is funny to watch them squirm and not know what to say. They do their best to return the sentiment with things like Yeah, or some other lame shot at it. Some are brave enough they finally got the guts to say I love you too. Now I can tell they like getting to the end of our phone calls because it means so much to them to hear it and say it.
I have hugged my share of very stiff friends who didn’t know how to take it. I can’t think of one of them who didn’t come back to my house. Try saying something bad about me in their presence though.
People are just way too short on compassion and respect from others. Trust me, they will notice it when they see it. I don’t want to live in that world and once I set my mind to change my little slice of it I don’t have to live there anymore. I am not an idiot and still avoid angry people, especially angry people with guns.
When I am sitting down to talk to someone about their house etc. I try to make sure I connect on a sincere level and not just to make sure I get the deal. Give people respect and time to share and shut up and listen. Make business about people and it is just a matter of time until you iron out the rest of the problems and see success.
Where is there a dollar out there to make without getting it from another person? How do you feel about giving your dollars to people who you feel don’t give a rat’s butt about you?
I appreciate all of the kind responses to this post and don’t plan on writing this in-depth a lot. If the world sucks I don’t want it to be because I didn’t do my own little part to change it. When people meet me, this attitude comes through. It comes through because it comes from a natural place in me and they can tell it.
The guy who offered me the partnership in the coffee house said later “I couldn’t beleive I actually said that”. “I wasn’t looking for a partner when we met”. The first ten or twenty minutes of our conversation was about him and his loves, his wife, kids and horses. By the time he got to asking me questions he already knew I cared enough to listen.
Some will read this and think I am trying to sell them something. Screw them. Some will read this and think they don’t hear enough about this kind of thing and will go and tell someone in thier house, or call someone up and tell them something they should have said a long time ago. Which way this effects them will say a lot about who they are and who they want and plan to be.