The Million Dollar Lab

By a long shot the biggest category in my life is the Dreams Not Pursued (for fear of failure)! This tells me that of all the things in my life that dictate a 'success' attitude is the key; having the courage to have a go.

Points to consider
1. Like yourself. You are a fantastic person and you have a massive significant purpose.
2. Get stuck in and have a go if an opportunity comes up. If the opportunity doesn't come up, make your own opportunity.
3. Be persistent. Often we give up far too early.

Key #2. Relationships and People.
Find a mentor, a friend, or a group that have the ability to keep you on course. I am always amazed at how helpful and supportive the people around us are. If the people around you aren't helpful and supportive FIND NEW PEOPLE.
I have also found that someone doesn't have to be your best buddy to be significant in your life.
A recent example of this for me is from a networking group I am a part of . I have made $10,000.00 sales in as little as ten minutes simply because an acquaintance from my networking group recommended me and my services. People, even people you've just met or have only known a little while, are often incredibly supportive of your progress if they are in the same game (they get you).

Key #3. Work hard.
In the third month of my current sales job I sold 253% of my target (2.5 times what the company had asked of me).  That month was the best month I have ever had, and it happened because for the two months prior I had simply knocked on doors from 8.30am to 5.00pm (sometimes I made up to 40 cold calls in a day). Even my boss thought I was crazy, but it worked.
Working hard makes things happen!

Conclusion
This is my To-Do list for my personal development this year. In the past I've been a chicken and missed out on some of the opportunities around me, this year I will succeed and I am going to be ticking off goals like crazy.
It's time to get busy living!!

2010 has been upon us for a couple of weeks now and for most of us the year is well and truely started. Today is the last day of my holidays and I am just taking a moment to review my goals for the year.

Kevin's Personal Goals
1. Start a business in my spare time (rental management company)
2. Double my sales volume at Xerox (from 4 Copiers a month to 8)
3. Buy my next motorbike (possibly another Black Bird CBR-1100)
4. Have the best first year married possible, make Tania the happiest wife in the world.


Quote
"Crystallize your goals. Make a plan for achieving them and set yourself a deadline. Then, with supreme confidence, determination and disregard for obstacles and other people's criticisms carry out your plan" - Paul Meyer

Why Set Goals?

So, why do "3% of Harvard MBAs Make Ten Times as Much as the Other 97% Combined" ?

The answer is a simple question: “Have you set clear, written goals for your future and made plans to accomplish them?” In 1979, interviewers spoke with new graduates from the Harvard’s MBA Program and found that :

84% had no specific goals at all

13% had goals but they were not committed to paper

3% had clear, written goals and plans to accomplish them

In 1989, the interviewers again interviewed the graduates of that class. You can guess the results:

The 13% of the class who had goals were earning, on average, twice as much as the 84% who had no goals at all.

Even more staggering – the 3% who had clear, written goals were earning, on average, ten times as much as the other 97% put together.

(Source: from the book "What They Don’t Teach You in the Harvard Business School" by Mark McCormack)

Defining Your Personal Goals

Everyone will have a different set of goals; we all value different things! The important thing is be honest with yourself about what you intend to achieve, and give yourself permission to aim for those bigger things that people around you might not understand. It's your life, making the most of it might not mean to you what it does to someone else!

My Method

1. Brainstorm - Write down everything and anything that comes to mind. We can often forget what we truly want and it takes some time to bring our purpose back into focus.

2. Focus - Go through what you have brainstormed and cross out the ones that don't truly resonate with you heart, dreams, and passions. You won't be able to do everything written down in a focused way; cut the list down to what's really important.

3. Create a plan - Goals are one thing but we must also have a plan of attack. On the same account, don't worry if you can't see a clear method or path to get to where you want to be. Start now, the answers will come.

Quote
"Until one is committed, there is hesitancy, the chance to draw back. Concerning all acts of initiative (and creation), there is one elementary truth; that ignorance of which kills countless ideas and splendid plans; that the moment one definitely commits oneself, then Providence moves too. All sorts of things occur to help one that would never otherwise have occurred. A whole stream of events arise from the decision, raising in one's favor all manner of unforeseen incidents and meetings and material assistance, which no man could have dreamed would have come his way. Whatever you can do, or dream you can do, begin it. Boldness has genius, power, and magic in it. Begin it now." Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

BEGIN IT NOW

Feel free to make a comment and share your journey and/or goals.

Kevin

Today I did an interesting experiment. Right now I am starting a company in my spare time and today I started on my market research. Part of which involved spending the day in town visiting all of my potential competitors.

I pretended to be a potential customer and at the end of my visit I spent a few minutes making notes on each business. I rated them on a variety of factors on a score card out of 5 (5 being excellent 1 being poor). The one factor that surprised me was in sales; I scored every place visited 1 out of 5.

I should note that I'm not talking about the staff or sales people themselves; they were all great friendly people. I had 15-20 minute conversations with some of them, talking about what they do, how they do it, and why they're the best. No one was rude in any way and had I have been a real customer I would have happily done business with any one of them. Finally as far as service, price, and appearance; I rated them all very highly.

However, despite the grat customer service, competitive pricing, and friendly staff, not one person asked for my business! No one asked me to buy from them, no one even checked to see if I was interested!!!!

As far as anyone knew, I was a perfectly qualified customer who wanted the service their company offered. So why were they reluctant to ask for my commitment?

1. No one wants to be a salesman
No one wanted to make me make a decision. The question is WHY NOT? If you genuinely believe in what you sell or do there is no shame is asking for the sale.

2. Fear of rejection
The fact is I could have (and in the context of my experiment would have) said no. We are afraid of rejection and hearing the word no doesn't go down well; we take it personally! But what if I had said yes? By not asking for the sale they potentially missed out.

3. Lack of a plan
No one had a plan to get me on board. How much more powerful would their meeting with me have been if there was a plan to get me signed up. In anything you do, have a plan and know where you want to end up! You might not get there every time but with a clear plan of attack the odds improve drastically!



Good honest sales people make the world go round! They pay the bills, bring in the business and keep everyone employed. Most importantly they help people get what they want.

I remember last time I bought a computer, I struck the same problem of no one asking for the sale. Only in this case I was a genuine customer. The thing is, I was a little confused about what was the best option for me. I really needed a knowledgeable, confident sales person to tell me what I needed and ask for the sale. It took me two days to find that person. Funny thing is, I bet many of the others I spoke to had the right information, the right product, and what I needed. They just didn't tell me what I should do or ask me if I would like to go ahead.

Thanks and remember, ask and you will receive!

I'm a big fan of the, "Rich Dad", series of books. I have read most of them and without exception I find them enjoyable to read, hard to put down, and full on inspiring information.
Robert Kiyosaki excels at taking a topic that could be hard to understand and making it accessible to anyone. He is also has the ability to open the reader's mind to a whole host of new opportunities.
His stories, examples, and simple way of explaining things always drive the point home that with a little bit of effort, education, and a lot of courage and persistence, anyone can escape the rat race and be financially free.

Rich Dad's Conspiracy of The Rich centres around how the super rich and government write the rules of money to their advantage. Very relevant in a time where Mum and Dad investors have lost hundreds of thousands of dollars while at the same time the very organizations and leaders that lost the money simply walk away or are bailed out (to the tune of billions of dollars in the US).
You will learn some things about money that will shock you. Like how Governments regularly print their own money while making yours worth less, and why really big businesses don't go broke. But you will also learn how to protect yourself and play by the Rules of the Rich.

The point of the book is not so much to complain about the way things are but to teach how the system works and how to work the system. Imagine you are playing a game against someone that knows the rules far better than yourself, how much better than you are they going to be? What are the chances they will win every time? The same thing is happening everyday to 90% of the population with their finances, they work hard and play hard but not knowing the rules how can they win?

This is Robert Kiyosaki's book on the big picture. If you're interested in winning in the game of money, and you want to get a better understanding of the big picture and what exactly the rules of the game are, then this is the book for you.

Why Positively Geared
A rental property can be three things: Negatively Geared (Takes money out of your pocket), Neutrally Geared (Pays for itself and not much else), or Positively Geared (Puts money in your pocket)

If we take the view point that our rentals are a business, then we want them to make us money. And for a property to make us money it must make more than it costs, ie. Rental $ is greater than Mortgage, Costs, and Rates (Taxes).

This is not to say that Positive Gearing is the only way to make money out of property; Capital Gains often make negatively geared property profitable over time. The thing is, if we want to make money from day one and we want the security of knowing our deal is profitable; relying solely on capital gains is a little bit dangerous particularly if you are spending $100 a week to hold your Negatively Geared property.

It is true that Negatively Geared property offers some tax breaks, but in my opinion this is a matter of paying $1 to get 30c back. What a lot of people don't realize is that you can often set up Positively Geared property in such a way that you will also get a tax break while making money, this is done by claiming Depreciation on the property (talk to your accountant; most often they will recommend claiming depreciation). In this way you can make money and control the amount of tax you pay on the profit!

My First Positively Geared Property
I am only just learning this game of real estate investing and so far I have done two deals.

Deal 1. Buy, Hold, Sell; made a bit of money. (The Accidental Investor)

Deal 2. 3 Bedroom Rental House. Positively Geared :)

In Deal 1 I was the Accidental Investor. I brought my first house, hated living there, the market went crazy and I sold it (mainly to escape the area) at an excellent profit. That profit bought me my first decent motorbike, and allowed me several attempts at investing in the stock market (not particularly successful but worth a shot).

I learned a lot through making some money easily and then losing some of it. Plus the motorbike was heaps of fun and despite my mistakes I had enough left to have another go and get into the next deal.

The biggest lesson learned was that markets can turn nasty, and that relying solely on capital gains is silly and could make or lose you a lot of money.

So having decided that I was much more comfortable with property than the stock market, I formulated my new strategy. Simply put, it must make money from day one! This meant finding cash flow or finding something I could change to make cash flow.

The nerve wracking thing was that the market had crashed and to be honest I wasn't sure if we were at the bottom or still heading off a cliff. What I'm saying is there was still loads of opportunity to lose money.

In any case I knew I was looking for something that would make money on a weekly basis (not easy to find, but perhaps a little easier to find in a bad market) and at the end of the day it didn't matter what the potential sell value was as long as the rent paid all the expenses and a little bit of profit.

Solve a Problem and Add Value

With the help of a friend who is a wheeler and dealer from way back I found a little property that had been gutted inside and made into offices (opportunity dressed up as hard work). The Trust that had owned the two bedroom property had left it looking pretty rough and the real estate agent was having a hard time selling it. To make matters worse for the agent concerned the local banks were wanted to make any one interested in purchasing the property put down a 30% deposit due to the Commercial/Residential nature of the building.

Despite the rough edges I could see that if the place was painted, carpeted, and had a third bedroom added, it would be a little ripper of a rental property.

Problems to be solved:

1. Property was ugly Solution: Renovate
2. Only two bedrooms Solution: Add 3rd Room
3. Bank's & Finance Solution: Convince the bank it is Residential not commercial, and bring 2nd investor on board to make the bank a little more comfortable. Deposit reduced from 30% to 20%

The end result was a property with a rental income of $1083.00 per month and costs of $953.00 per month producing a profit of $130.00 per month.

On top of the cash flow we also re-valued the property and made a 20% capital gain despite the falling market.

Keys to Finding Cash Flow Property

1. Look at a lot of property. Even though prices have fallen, positive cash flow property is still rare, you need to know what things are worth and have your mind tuned in to spot a bargain.

2. Look for the opportunity behind the face value. What can you change to lift the value? A coat of paint is cheap, little things can go a long way. I added a room, carpeted, and painted for $11,000.00. Do the math it might not cost as much as you think to make a big difference.

3. Don't give up. The deal of a life time happens every day, it is just a matter of being in the right place at the right time.

About two months ago a friend and I started meeting on a regular basis, one to two times a week. The idea was that we would work together to create new Ideas that would make us successful in the realm of business.

We are both also in sales careers so we wanted to keep each other inspired to be successful at that level.

The Rules

1. With any new Idea we must take at least the first step to see if it works

This simply meant we had to try it out, build the prototype, or talk to someone about how to do it

2. The Idea must be eventually able to work without needing us to to do that work....... We want a Four Hour Work Week Style Muse. If you haven't read the book please do! It's awesome.

The story so far

In the short space of time we have being doing this we have had some great ideas and some fairly average Ideas LOL :). The encouraging thing is that we do have what I would call Genius moments, what I have heard called Aha's. Moments when an Idea will come into focus and it's just really cool right from the start.

Ideas like a game we are in the process of producing. It started as a joke and 15 minutes later and a whole lot of card board cutouts and we had a prototype. 3 hours later my beautiful wife dragged me home. Hopefully we should have our game for sale online in a couple of months.

One of our first Ideas The Million Dollar Kiwi Pledge was designed simply to make a difference and encourage people to give money to charity. Make a difference by donating $20.00 to a charity of your choice, and tell the group about it. Collectively we have pledged to donate over $1500.00 so far. Sign up and support a charity of your own choice and tell us about it.

The more we do this the more ideas we have. Some are fun, some are silly, some will not work and some will be massively successful. And thats all part of the fun, I will keep you posted as we go along.

Kevin

As you begin to take action toward the fulfillment of your goals and dreams, you must realize that not every action will be perfect. Not every action will produce the desired result. Not every action will work. Making mistakes, getting it almost right, and experimenting to see what happens are all part of the process of eventually getting it right.
Jack Canfield