Boomer’s Blog

Tim Ferriss, author of The Four-Hour Workweek: How to Escape 9–5, Live Anywhere, and Join the New Rich (4HWW), majored in East Asian studies at Princeton University. Soon after graduation, he found his self-imposed cubicle lifestyle wasn’t giving him room enough to breathe, much less twirl. In 2004, Ferriss was working 80 hours a week to build his company and found himself burning out. So he put three days of clothing into a backpack and bought a one-way ticket to London … and wound up in Argentina as a world-class Tango dance champion.

Ferriss’ manifesto, the 4HWW, captures the wisdom and quixotic joy the author found when he traded his cubicle for the excitement-packed lifestyle of his dreams. Published last year, the book quickly became an international best seller.

Escape Inhibitions and Discover your Life
Ferriss urges people to shed the traditional expectations that wedge them into cubicles and create luxury lifestyles in the present using the currency of the new rich: time and mobility. This process is an art and a science that Ferriss refers to as lifestyle design (LD), and in 4HWW, he provides a deceptively simple strategy for achieving it.

Design your Lifestyle
For real estate entrepreneurs, 4HWW nails the formula for maximizing effectiveness in your endeavors. Your business may be surviving, but is it thriving? Many of us escape the regular grind only to become totally submerged in busywork that keeps us from accomplishing the more important tasks that fuel our business growth.

To really excel in this business, no true innovation is needed. When you automate and outsource your grunt work and use systems that have been proven effective, you’re well into the metamorphosis from which you will emerge a true real estate entrepreneur.

Automate and Recreate
For most of us in the real estate game, marketing easily can become a central vacuum system that swallows time and energy and rarely pays off. How can you effectively run your business when you’re struggling with lists, copy writing, mailings and postage?

If this is not your strong point, it may be time to follow Ferriss’ advice: Emphasize your strengths by delegating your weaknesses. When you’re using your strengths to build your business rather than being forced to focus on your weaknesses in mindless tasks such as marketing, your business, your income and your self esteem can reach new heights.

Give your Strengths a Workout
When you’re using an effective marketing system, such as SalesTeamLive, you know it’s working because you’re receiving a steady flow of calls from motivated and qualified sellers and buyers every day. And you’ve actually got the time to make the deals you know will take your business to the next level.

In 4HWW, Ferris successfully reminds us that time is short and we only have one chance to live the lifestyle each of us desires. His lifestyle design provides us with the necessary framework to transform our businesses and to embrace opportunity without fear or regret. Bravo, Mr. Ferris.

Look for my full review of 4HWW, coming soon.

I’ll be heading south on Saturday to check out the Los Angeles Real Estate Investors Club’s (LAREIC) Investor Essentials Seminar. I’ll be teaching entrepreneurs how to Make Tons of Cash in Creative Real Estate and explaining how their success hinges on effective marketing. There is a lot more to this than just a catchy lesson title. Clearly, greenbacks don’t raise the dead or cure cancer, but tons of cash — especially in creative real estate — is the lubricant for success.

It has been statistically proven that seven out of 10 millionaires in the United States have made their fortunes in real estate. In the meantime, the other three have kept their millions by investing in real estate. This is all true even in California, where RealtyTrac reports bank repossessions are up 557 percent over this time last year. While these figures represent devastation for many, real estate investors are beginning to see new opportunities emerge on the market’s horizon.

There is no disputing the credit crunch and the market downturns in the Golden State have taken their toll. As a California real estate investor, I know what the conditions are, just as I understand their cyclical nature. I’ve bought and sold hundreds of properties, and have seen Bay Area markets rise and fall like the tides.

But despite the market’s persistent downturn, if you’re buying right and getting the good deals, you’ve got great potential to succeed. In my business, SalesTeamLive, I see this happening every day. We have more than 800 people using our Done-For-You marketing service and we’ve sent out more than 8 million mailers for folks across the country. In the past six months alone, we’ve generated over 40,000 inbound calls. This business gives me a bird’s eye view of what’s happening in markets throughout the nation.

I see viable real estate investment opportunities in many markets, but especially in California. People are picking up properties for 50 to 60 cents on the dollar. And if they’re buying right, there are plenty of motivated and qualified buyers out there who will take them off their hands.

However, I’ve also noticed that, especially with the gloomy headlines, the credit crunch and the market’s woes, a lot of us tend to be fearful, become overwhelmed and procrastinate. This Saturday in L.A., I’m going to teach entrepreneurs how they can overcome the negativity and show them exactly what their time is really worth. Using the right tools, real estate investors can still write their own tickets to the destinations of their choice.

In California specifically we’re coming into one of the best buying opportunities of all time. If you’re using the right model and you already know what works, you don’t have to invent it. It’s easy to make money right now in this market if you have the success formula.

If you can’t be in L.A on Saturday, please remember that you don’t have to innovate to make it in this business:

• If you want success, it comes down to marketing;
• If you want survival, it comes down to automation and delegation;
• If you want wealth, it is waiting for your call.

If you would like to hear an audio preview of my presentation, recorded during a phone conversation with LAREIC President Phyllis Rockower, it is freely available on her Investor Essentials registration site.

On March 20, the blog discussed a recent article from Fortune magazine I think is essential reading for REI investors seeking build their businesses while so many others seem to be failing. The title of the story begs the question: “How bad is the mortgage crisis going to get?”

The answers from Princeton economist Paul Krugman are chilling, and they echo my sentiments that things are going to get much worse for the economy before they get better. Krugman has predicted that the crisis that began when subprime lending spiraled out of control, is likely to result in an average property value drop of 25 percent for homeowners. The domino-effect is expected to continue leveling markets — and the economy — until 2010.

Folks, I made some bold statements in Q4, 2007 that included my prediction that a major Wall Street firm other than Goldman Sacs would fail. At the time, I suggested that Bear Stearns, Merrill Lynch, UBS or Lehman Brothers were all prime candidates for disaster.

And as I write, the Wall Street Journal reports that Fed staff are literally on-site at Goldman Sachs Group Inc., Morgan Stanley, Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc., Merrill Lynch & Co. and Bear Stearns, which consented to be sold to J.P. Morgan Chase in a deal brokered by the Fed in March.

Each of these brokerages has borrowed from the Fed since it opened its temporary lending program last month in hopes of preventing another Bear Stearns style bloodletting on Wall Street — and the fall-out that would likely permeate the greater economy. These efforts represent the first time that the Fed has supported loans to entities other than banks since the Great Depression. (For details on the Fed’s temporary program that was deployed in March to provide emergency cash to ailing security firms, see yesterday’s post: “Fed Defends Bear Loans, Supplies Cash Tourniquets.”)

The U.S. Senate wants answers about how all this turmoil has happened, and a bipartisan alliance has asked the General Accounting Office (GAO) office to review the SEC’s enforcement program.

All this leads me to believe that at least one more Wall Street monolith will hit the pavement this year. But that doesn’t mean that real estate investors have to hit the ground, too.

(more…)