Angels All Around You

Do you believe in angels?

Aunty kind of did.  Some friends knew they were real, even saw them and heard from them.  But Aunty wasn’t sure – until meeting Estelle Small at a recent “Angels, Intuition, and Making Sense of it All” talk, and then a subsequent private consultation ($95) to learn the particulars of the team (!) of Aunty’s own angels that help fulfill Aunty’s purpose in life.

Some people have 1 or 2 angels, some have lots and lots of angels.  Aunty has 7 of them – 4 female and 3 male.

7 helpers

How do we know that they are real and good?  It is up to you to decide, and then once you do,  you are able to clear and cleanse your spirit and then ask them questions.

Aunty being Aunty, the first thing to pop into her head was being able to win in Vegas.  Ha!  Is that against the rules?  Or are there rules?  Not sure.  Maybe Aunty will try when she next goes there.

Cleanse thyself first

At the consultation, Aunty was taught how to do spiritual cleansing.  It took several tries because it involves moving hands across, and down, and shaking, and then across, up, back and down, around, down, and shaking, beginning at our 7th chakra that is located just above our eyebrows.  All the while breathing in and then exhaling, and repeating a sort of prayer, “In the name of God (or Universe, Love, Spirit, etc.), I cleanse my body and soul.”

Repeat until we get a warm glow or chills.  Aunty got goosebumps.

This sets the stage for our angels to communicate with us.  Or be closer to us.

Guardian angels

It isn’t quite like Nicholas Cage and Meg Ryan in “City of Angels” (btw, Aunty LOVES that movie), but how wonderful to know that we have our own special angels to help us along our path of life.  Even better, to be able to ask and get connected to their wisdoms to situations that we may not be sure about.

Since Aunty is a novice at this, and a bit of a scaredy cat, she will be sticking to simple questions, like, “Is it a good idea to blog about this angel thing?”  (answer was Yes) or “Would it be a good idea to go out right now and weed?” (answer was NO).

Later, Aunty will ask about Uncle, but for now, will keep it light.

Light

One practice after cleansing involved imagining a ball of white light in front of us, around us, growing bigger and bigger, enough to fill the room, building, neighborhood, island, world, space.  The circle of light was love.  This part reminded me of Master Sha’s training.  A rather Taoist practice of sending love out to the far reaches of the universe, for our souls are part of the universe.

Who are we, What is our purpose?

Aunty can list her goals and plans for the future but she doesn’t have the answers to those 2 questions – yet.

Goals are easy enough to figure out since they are usually materialistic and measurable.  Aunty has a little bulletin board filled with them.

However, if Aunty were asked, by a booming voice, “WHO ARE YOU?” Aunty would stutter and mumble something rather vague and contrite, like “ummm.  I sorta blog as Honolulu Aunty and I went to Kaimuki High School.”

If the same voice asked “WHAT IS YOUR PURPOSE IN LIFE?” Aunty would have to say, “I don’t know.”

Perhaps, now, with Aunty’s helper angels, Aunty will figure out those very important answers.  At the very least, it is quite wonderful to now be able to “hear” them and have some guidance from wiser souls than ourselves.

Your turn

Estelle Small and Patrick Kilhenny will be having another introductory session ($15 at the door) at Manoa Library this coming Tuesday (October 10, 2017) at 7:00 pm.  Aunty will be there to absorb more of this positive energy and possibly sign up for their 5-part series ($225).

More info about registering for consultations or workshops can be found at www.AngelsAndLifePurpose.com or at the Tuesday meeting.  See you there?  Aunty and her 7 angels will be.

(Actually, there are several more intro meetings, 2 on October 23rd at 1:00 pm and 7:00 pm at the Oahu Veterans Association on 1298 Kukila Street, and 2 on October 24th at 1 pm and 7:00 pm at the Manoa Innovation Center, 2800 Woodlawn Drive.)

A more in-depth 3 1/2 hour training will be available to those of us who want more tools to connect with our angels on Saturday, October 28, from 1:00 pm to 4:30 pm at Manoa Innovation Center.  Cost is $55.  More info on it can be found at http://www.spiritualgrowthkeys.com/event/technique-workshop/ and pre-registration is required because we will be receiving workbooks with the workshop.  Individual consultations (like the one Aunty received and learned about her specific angel team) can be ordered at the same time as registering for this event for a discounted price of $90.

Notes from Genius Tour – Meir Ezra

Genius Tour June 14, 2013 Meir Ezra

Meir Ezra WOWed all of us.  His presentation was filled with so many golden nuggets of information, splattered with exercises of both the mind and body, as well as some pretty funny dirty jokes in his rather strong and charming Israeli accent.  When he comes to town again (he LOVES Hawaii!!), please go.  [Update:  Meir will be teaching again on August 17 and 18 at the Hyatt Place.  To sign up, go to The Genius Tour and choose Hawaii.]

Here are the notes that I took from this intense 2 day seminar.  Most of them are stand alone ideas that deserve time to absorb:

What do you expect from the seminar? If you don’t know what you expect, how will you know that you arrived there? We must define what we want.

Essence of genius is simplicity. Know the definition of words.

A professional is one who thinks it is simple.

What is truth? Exact time, place, form and event. Does not contain continuation.  A Lie is the opposite time, place, form and event, and continues.

People are ethically good. We are the worst judge of ourselves, so when we do something bad, we feel bad. When we do something good, we feel good.

Must understand the mind – everything you deal with are minds.

How do you find a purpose, how do you find what your purpose is?  It is your Fuel of the soul.  What is your purpose?  Write down your purpose.  Look up the definition of purpose.

Ideas are conveyed by sentences.  Sentences are conveyed by words or symbols. If you do not understand the sentence it is because there is a word or words that you do not know in the sentence.  If you do not understand the sentences, you will not get the idea. Your IQ is defined by the number of WRONG words you know.  Increase the number of words that you do know, and you increase your IQ.

People become criminal because of the number of words that they don’t understand. A good man comes across a word or symbol that he does not understand, which causes confusion, which causes sins. Once you go past a misunderstood word without figuring out what it means, your understanding goes away. The more words you do not understand, the stupider you become. Learn definitions of words from the dictionary.

The first dictionary was written by Webster in order to empower people to understand words so they have power and cannot be cheated.

Ethics – ability of the individual to uphold the moral code.

Justice – when an individual violates the moral code, the group puts force to get the individual to be ethical.

Moral code – a set of standards, laws, or rules that we hold ourselves to, based on our own group consensus.

If you have a problem, look at all the data of the problem in order to find a solution. For a problem to be a problem, it must contain a lie.  If something becomes complex, it contains a lie. Find the lie and you will solve the problem. Simple brings the result immediately. (Task:  change IX to 6 using just one continuous line *see solution at end)

An authority is someone who knows good P.R. Look at their result, by their actions, you can judge how they are.

Insanity is not being there – being in the past when you need to be in the present.

Spirit – this thing that knows. We need to clear false data.

Love is the flow of admiration and sympathy. Love is very close to hate, flipping very fast. Love can be used to control and cage. Use love to take the person to full potential, not cage or control.

The view point that you take defines your life. If you think you can, you can. If you think you cannot, you cannot. 99% of the people do not try, are not willing to show up.

Clever = ability to recognize truth. Smallest number in the universe is 2 = force, counterforce.

Greatness is ability to continue to love man despite all invitation to do otherwise. If you can continue to love them, no sorrow or pain. Handle the spirit, not the physical.

 

 BREAK – after we came back, Meir had us do exercises – squat against wall, push ups for men

Prerequisite for success is to become unserious, charging toward your purpose and be sure of your success. Success is ability to experience motion, as well as the ability to control motion.

What is seriousness – when interest is intense because of penalty. Attention is stuck in the past. I better do that or else something will happen.  When you are serious, you get slow and stuck on what you do not want – one always gets what his attention is on.  You get what you validate.  Look at the problem from an unserious point of view.

Child rearing. If they are doing something bad, ignore it (non validation). Every child has a job that they have to do – it is an agreement that they help – more than just chores, it is their job and responsibility. Let your children make their own decisions in order to complete their jobs.

Competence is the ability to do what you do when you are doing it.

Any area where you are serious about you are also incompetent. The past influences your present behavior to such a degree that if you are not aware of it, you cannot control it. A being causes his own feeling. Smile when you feel lousy. Force yourself to be the cause. After an impact you make a decsion – a resolution to act in a certain way “I will never do that again” = no-no because you have taken away your free will.

Whenever we do something wrong, rather than find or make excuses of why we did that wrong deed, just be able to admit that we are wrong.

Serious people are not serious because of what is happening now, but because of what happened in the past. To combat, look at data in front of you, not what happened.  Evaluate with what is in front of you – look at everything as “interesting”.

When you are serious about something in your life, you fail.  Measure by statistics, not by feelings.

When you make a decision, you feel better. Crisis is a moment of decision. People never lose their ability, what you lose is your willingness. Easy to ignite the willingness by igniting your purpose.

The less decisive you are the more emotionally bankrupt you are.  Stress is the sum of all indecisions.

 

Cycle of action = Start, Change, Stop.

When you start something, you also need to have closure. Exercise = make a list of ALL the open cycles that we have in our life. Do a target list with closure date, and take one or two a day. Stress is only the sum of all your open cycles.

Unluckiness is too many open cycles of action. Close the cycles.

If you have a past time in your life that “money is bad”, and you change your thinking and decide that you want money, you must go back to the exact time, place, form and event that you formed your original idea and eliminate it – it is not your current truth. Anything that you know about, you can control it.

Example with daughter relationship: find the point in time that caused the problem. The problem is that you want to be right all the time, so people do not change because in order to change, you must be able to admit you are wrong. Learn correct data to make decisions to fix problems.

Production is basis of morale.

Knowledge, Responsibility, Control work together.

Fear – a state of imperception, almost always true that it doesn’t exist. Getting info from what is in your past, not the present.

Power is speed of particle flow.

A person becomes old when they think they can become hurt. Being careful = being serious = slow.

When you want cooperation, align their purposes with yours.

Force does not bring solution.

When you are in a painful or negative situation, you are missing tools. You are good in one area, but the other 6 areas you are not good at.

Coaching – what do you do, what do you want, what else do you want.  Quantify with result of result and time.  Define targets.

Training is key for success = getting better results with less effort. If no training = growing upset. Beginning of any upset is an incomplete cycle of action. Usually upset because not willing to communicate or look at the problem. Get the ability to look.

 

AFTER LUNCH BREAK

 

Difference between a professional and an amateur

An amateur

thinks things are complicated and unpredictable

happy with good enough

frustrated – he is the victim, bad luck, etc

operates from fear (state of imperception – what you do not see, feel, hear), and tries to win

avoids risk – does not confront. When you don’t confront, it becomes a lie, it stays

loves to be comfortable

focus on the past (insanity-stuck on the past)

being the problem – everything is a problem

they know what they know and accept that life is like that.

focuses on present time and future while he ignores the past being the solution –

A professional

knows things are simple and can predict the results and time

happy with perfection only, no plan B, only plan A

effective, he is the cause of the good AND the bad – trusting your decision

confident and knows he will win.

Manages risk – confronts.

Ignores current comfort level for future, higher comfort level (price of neglect is higher than the price of discipline)

Professionals learn and improve continuously.

 

Mind thinking

The past is always different from the future. We learn continuously to learn from our past, then we go forward knowing, and then inventing new truths.

Exercise to show the mind. Close eyes, imagine a cat, point to where the cat is, open eyes. We all pointed to out side of ourselves, not our brains.  Thus, our mind is not our brain, but it is a series of pictures, millions of pictures that we have taken over our lifetime(s).  Our brain takes 20 pictures per second.  The purpose of our mind is to keep us safe.  Sometimes, it goes coo-coo or on auto pilot and thus we do things that are not good for us out of fear or past conditioning.

Logical thinking is ability to see similar things as similar, different things asdifferent, identical things as identical.

Analytical is ability to take data and compute with it.

 

TONES (Aunty thinks this was one of the most powerful and useful knowledge of the seminar)

Did you ever try to communicate to a person and communicating to that person was like hitting your head on the wall.

The emotional tone scale – 24 tones on a scale from 0 – 4.0.  People have 2 tones: chronic and social.  The people with tones on the upper scale are more productive and those on the lower scale will try to bring you down.

IMG_0674

 

The WORSE tone is 1.1 = covert hostility (hostile but they don’t want you to know about it)  These are those people who Meir calls vampires.  They smile at you but stab you in the back.  If you have people like this in your life, get away, stay away from them, for they are the source of many of your problems, downfall.  Traits of the Covert Hostiles:

  1. speaks in generality (always, everyone),
  2. finds the wrong source of the problem, makes other people wrong
  3. cannot complete cycles of action, blaming others for incompletion
  4. doesn’t improve
  5. has friends and associates who do not succeed in life
  6. are never sick mentally – only their children or their friends are sick
  7. when act as relay, will only relay bad news
  8. no sense of ownership, will take your things

(in Meir’s Ethics and Finance class – he will teach how to recognize these vampires)

People are operate at their own certain tone will not be able to communicate with others on different tones. Must be at same tone level or close to the same tone.  If different levels of tone, lower tone people will want to take everyone down.

If a person is below antagonism (low tone), you cannot sell them.  Low tone people will find anything wrong with everything.

To “read” the tone of the person, listen to their communication delay or lag. If there is communication lag, the person is in low tone, i.e. saying “I don’t know” or “I’ll get back to you”, or not answering the question.

To sell someone, you must be in the same tone as them to reach them, and bring them up to a higher tone.

Marketing

Most business do not need branding, they need marketing that sells whatever you are selling. To sell, survey your customers find out what they want.

Example of veterinarian’s business. Found out that people are upset about fleas and ticks, so put ad “FLEAS FLEAS FLEAS TICK TICKS  We kill them all. Call 1 800 kill fleas”.  Give mystery, and they will call.

Example of Sausage business: did survey: 2 most important: size of cases & grills well. Changed size of boxes, put “grills well” on box. New box sold 68 times more sausages than the standard. Tone of people who barbeque – very high – enthusiastic – used bright colors.

Use written, verbal surveys of the marketplace. If you know the tone scale, know the survey results, know the business organization.

 

DAY 2

Showed us pictures and asked what was wrong. Many of us invented what we thought we saw. We see a part of what is front of us and we assume the whole. When we assume, we are incorrect. To be able to observe without assumption is to be able to see what is really there. When we assume, we can be cheated. Our responses are automatic, but we must get off of our automatic responses and assumptions, but must raise our observational skills and really look.

All the pictures that Meir showed had nothing that measured data, such as scoreboard, control panels.

In business, you must have measurements at every time period of every department, every personnel.

 Start – Change – Stop  A robot does the tasks assigned to it. When you tell a person what to do and they do it, they become robots.

When you communicate what it is you want to have (the Stop), and they figure out what to do, and they become the person you need.

 Start is what you are/mind

 Change is the doing/body

 Stop is the having/product

A product is an exchange, and exchange is a product. Product is a completed thing that has an exchange value within or outside the activity. It is not a product unless it has been exchanged.

 

Exchange is giving something for something else.

Exchange – four types

  1. criminal exchange – stealing. Giving, giving, giving to friends and you don’t demand anything back is a criminal exchange.
  2. Partial exchange – promise something but don’t deliver exactly what is agreed upon
  3. fair exchange – payment for what is agreed upon
  4. exchange in abundance – give more than what was agreed – they will give you something

Exchange either flows or it is stuck. You can improve exchange in any one or more of these ways:

1 .quantity

2. quality

3. give more time

4. extras

 

DRILL write a list of everyone that you are in an exchange relationship with and look at what type of exchange you have with them.

Make a table:  list of people, what condition of exchange they are in, what am I going to do.

Look over the list, and give in abundance, i.e. thank you letter, gift, acknowledgement,

 

What is the product?

Must be able to identify the product in order to be successful. The product must be defined. Only if you can define the product can you measure it. If you cannot see or define what the product is, then you cannot achieve it. When you do not succeed, it is because your ability to name/define the product is missing. You can measure only if you define what the product is..

 

A product of a teacher = student duplicating the materials taught and uses it successfully to improve their lives and the lives of others bringing about a new civilization.  A good teacher cares more about the students than cares about the money. “You are important to me” is what reaches people.  Rather than “I am interesting” people want to know that you are interested in them.  To be interested, you need to be a professional and not an amateur.

A product of a business owner = viable expanding, prosperous organization with increasing money to owner’s reserves and a very well paid staff.

A product of an army = an opponent with a more ameniable state of mind.

A product of a husband and wife is a spouse who maximizes their potential and is succeeding in their life. Should not be caging of the other person.

 

Business Structures

People typically do a business structure with the Director on the top with different departments under it such as marketing, management, sales, accounting, legal.

Meir’s structure is a very LONG big chart of columns that is on a continuum – a cylindrical chart, like a barrel.  Steve Jobs got from E. Hubbard the cylindrical chart of 7 areas and Apple took off.

Every company needs 7 areas, even if the company is just one person.  The area that is the lowest defines our overall product. Shows what they need to produce and how to measure.

Everyone pushes to same direction so the energy is output, not input = no fighting.

7 areas of the cylindrical chart:

  1. Executive
  2. Human Resource
  3. Sales
  4. Treasury
  5. Technical
  6. Qualitycontrol/correction division (corrected organization and its people) income/# of people
  7. New public

 

Success definition: Achieving the postulated (self created truth) results or more of the desirable results compared to an earlier time. You become the CAUSE of changes, not the EFFECT.

An individual who is not working in life to remedy or to make better the actual conditions which he finds around him is not liable to succeed. And if you want a good definition of success, it would just be that: a person who can look around him and see what has to be done, what has to be remedied, what’s actual, and then actually can do and does do something about it. And that person is about eighty-four light-years above normal.

How does one know if he has achieved more, less or the same of the things wanted? By using MEASUREMENTS.   Every area of our life is measurable.

Without measurement:

  1. one cannot know who won
  2. one cannot know if he failed or succeeded,
  3. one cannot know what needs to be corrected
  4. once cannot know if change is needed
  5. one does not know what is right and what is wrong
  6. you can not have management even if one measures but doesn’t inspect, one cannot manage. It is here that we have operating on opinions and rumors vs. operating on facts, or you are guessing.

The universe is divided in two:

  1. those things that can be measured and;
  2. those things that cannot be measured.

In business, only one thing cannot be measured:  that which has not been done or produced.

A person who resists measurements:  1. is too unorganized and so has no time for anything and is already non productive, or,  2. is producing nothing of value.

Why do we need to measure our success? Without measurements we will make mistakes. Balance sheets are for the government – to show how much taxes we need to pay. They are not a true picture of success. Many businesses that measure with profit and loss statements and balance sheets show profit, but the owner has nothing in their account.  Meir’s system is a different way of measurements, formulas, specific steps to give an accurate picture of how the business is doing, and how to improve production and profit.

 

STATISTICS

The purpose of statistics is to maintain accurate and continuous visual (graphed) records of the activities of the organization for the use of the executives and board of directors in planning future activities and analyzing past and current activities. To help the growth of the organization by maintaining a historical record of that growth.

Get your statistics, and you will be able to improve.

From info, put into graphs, look at the statistics.  You cannot get the true picture just looking at numbers.  You get the picture when it has been put into a visual picture, i.e., a graph line.

 

IMG_0697

Statistics behave 6 ways. Conditions are states of operation. Each condition has specific steps, formulas in order to improve.

  1. Non Existence – brand new, bankrupt (very low graph)
  2. TheDanger – moving but not in control (not organized yet)
  3. Emergency – handle it and go to normal, don’t handle, can go down
  4. Normal – exact formula
  5. Affluence (very fast up)
  6. Power (affluence goes to new normal)

Affluence is most dangerous stage because many people cannot handle it.  Most people will spend and lose their money when and if they win a million dollars.  If you win a million dollars, first economize, then you pay down every possible bill, invest in what already makes income for you, find a new way of affluence and continue.  This then becomes Power.

Beyond Non Existence is a liability, not helpful, but bad , then enemy, then treason (betrayal after trust), then confusion.

You inherit the condition that you fail to assign or deal with.  In an emergency situation, you must promote promote promote. Use what worked in the past. Change your operating basis, get the employees working. Economize, find the cause of your problem.

Other ways for a business to succeed other than the org. chart, statistics, ethics and money, finance: 1) no ethics, cheating, 2) product is amazing (like Google), 3) unbelievable founder (like Steve Jobs).

When the explanation for lack of success does not push the statistics up, the explanation is incorrect.

 

The Source of Delays

Normally, the CEO shoots orders, the VP level is shocked/bypassed, and the staff does policy strategy from direct orders from the CEO. The CEO gets non compliance, leads to emergencies, leads the manager to want to know everything, leads the manager to stop the flow of production. Happening because of lack of control of the manager who blocks production, tries to recreate by themselves.

The inability to correctly manage workloads by staff and executives is the main reason for delays. The solution is to have a tool to manage the workload.

The purpose of time management is efficiency. Efficiency is minimum effort for maximum result.

Your power is defined by how fast you are. The more efficient you become, the more powerful you will be. The more delays, the less power you have. People delay because they do not want to confront. When you introduce a delay, you always bring about a problem.

The prosperity of a business is directly proportional to the speed of the flow of its particles.

To prosper, service must be as close to instant as possible. Remove delays.

Anything that stops or delays the flow of a business or delays or puts a customer or product on WAIT is an enemy of that business.

Speed of service is of comparable magnitude to quality of service, and where exaggerated ideas of quality exist they must become secondary to speed. Quantity before Quality.

 DRILL:  Write down all the places in your business where speed is slow – it can be customer service, issuing of quote or invoice, answering the phone, replying to emails, etc.

 Your homework is: improve the speed of all the slow points.

Why are you not as efficient as you should be?  Executives and staff lacking workable management tools. People don’t like a job if it has been assigned to them and they haven’t agreed to it.  Important to make agreements that all parties accept and agree to.

 

CONFIDENCE

Money is an idea backed by confidence. If you can create confidence, you will have money.

Idea – a formulated thought or opinion

Backed – to support by material or moral assistance or assured.

Confidence – trustful; without fear or suspicion, faith that one will act in the right, proper or effective way.

How do you get confidence? Meir drew a triangle. These are the component parts of Understanding.  Life is about understanding. Only life trusts life.

1st point is Affinity – your level on the tone scale, a scale of emotion, closeness to each other.

2nd point is Reality – level of agreement (I like this, you like this too)

3rd point is Communication – having your ideas accepted.

Confidence is reality. If you create enough agreements, you will have a sale. You need 650 agreements to get a deal.

To be successful in sales, you must learn to create reality. There is exact technology on how to get reality, confidence.

 

The next time that Meir comes to Hawaii, he will be doing a 2 day workshop for us, spending one day on Businesses and the next day on Parent Academy. His son Michael is a fine example of great parenting, as Meir, very proudly, showed us his graduation ceremony/speech to his fellow schoolmates at a school in Florida, with a curriculum program that you could only pass with 100%.

It was an awesome weekend.  Time literally flew and Aunty’s brain felt like it was exploding in different directions.  Wow.  Hope you all can be there next time.

*2 solutions to make IX = 6 with one continuous line .  1.  Add a “S” = SIX, or 2. Add a numeric 6 = IX6 = 6.

 

 

Ken Wade’s Housing Alerts review

Aunty was subscribed to Ken Wade’s Housing Alerts because it seemed like a good idea.  I believe Frank Chen of REI Club sent me a link (affiliate link in which he gets a percentage of the sale) and I sat through a very long, rather tedious webinar that showed a super simple way of gauging whether a particular real estate market was in a transitional period (not a particularly good time to buy or sell but okay for rental income) or in a wealth phase (great time to buy and make money).

Ken is a chart freak and loves charts of every type.  He discovered that the candlestick method along with moving averages tell a great story about the ups and downs, or ins and outs of real estate investing – kind of like it does for the stock market, only much much slower.

For $99/year, you get to track one city, for $197/year you can choose 3 cities, and the price gets higher the bigger and broader the market areas you decide you want.  If I recall, $1997 will get you the entire United States and some extras such as market reports from Ken Wade himself from time to time.

Aunty picked Las Vegas (surprise, surprise), Honolulu, and Indianapolis as her 3 cities.  All three cities were in the transitional phase – not a good time to get in the market.  Vegas was recovering from an all red phase where all the indicators short term, mid term, and long term were red.  Red is not good, the market is not in recovery, and not a good time to buy.  The more recent quarters had a few yellow and even occasional green indicators, but not in the long term columns, which meant the Vegas will still not a good market for investing for the buy and flip investors.

Indianapolis and Honolulu were almost like Vegas in the readings – transitional, not good for investing yet.

Because I bought the cheap $197/year 3 city package, I only had access to the wealth phase chart and the green, yellow, red dots indicators.  In the beginning, I was an avid watcher and would check and check the wealth phase charts and indicator charts over and over to find that these charts didn’t change at all, for at least 3 months because they were quarterly charts.  The updates didn’t show up until 50 days after the quarter ended – if I wanted to see the December 2011 quarterly period, the update didn’t show up until mid or late February of 2012.

There were a few market news reports that were a bit of sales pitching, and because I was not enrolled as a regional or national member, I was not able to access the more useful and timely market reports on the current areas in movement.  However, somehow I gleaned that Bismarck North Dakota is moving right now from one of Robert Kiyosaki’s live events when he mentioned buying land and developing rental apartments in the Bakken area where fractal drilling of oil is the hot job creator and growth opportunity.

I had the Housing Alerts program for a year, and then noticed a charge on my credit card for $197 – an automatic renewal of the 3 cities enrolling me for another year of slow quarterly charts and sales pitchy updates.  I emailed and asked for a refund in order to cancel my membership.  After an initial refusal, then some muscle of  – really, I want my money back – they obligingly refunded the $197 as a credit on my card.

Just today I received an email from Ken Wade with a free downloadable ebook entitled “Go Broke Investing”.  I went to the website, clicked on the send it to me button with my email address, and received the book in my email account.  It is easier to go through than his super long, very monotone webinar pitch, and it does have good information about past markets and the usefulness of charting.  Throughout the ebook are links to his marketing webinar or site “in order to learn more.”

Here is a link to his promotion:  GoRealEstateDeals.com which will ask for your email address in order to send you the “Go Broke Investing” ebook.  This is a rather aggressive website that will ask you several times if you are sure you want to leave the page, so just insist you do and you are out, or sign up and get the ebook, along with many follow up marketing emails which you can opt out of at any time.

Would I recommend this program?  It depends.

Aunty is an impatient person.  Watching a pot of water come to boil on a stovetop is torture for me.  Because the Housing Alerts program is based on quarterly reports, it is only updated once every 3 months, and after a 50+ day lag.  And, because it is real estate, movements are small and not dramatic as they are in the stock market.

Another point – Aunty is kind of cheap.  Instead of buying the national package with all the big cities in the nation, the option for 3 cities at $197 appealed to the pocketbook, but was limited to – 3 cities (duh)!  This option did not provide me with access to bigger studies and timely reports.  Being stuck with just Indianapolis, Vegas, and Honolulu felt like wading in jello.

I believe this is a program for patient people who are willing to shell out $1997 per year for many years.  All of Ken’s marketing lessons show fantastic possible returns IF properties were bought and sold in the wealth phases.  The most recent wealth phases occurred just about everywhere, about 5-10 years ago.  I dunno about you, but that kind of information of looking backward doesn’t benefit me today.  Perhaps there are a few cities that are actually entering the wealth phase right now.  I wouldn’t know since I don’t have that kind of access.  All I know is that Indianapolis, Las Vegas, and Honolulu are all in the “transition” phase of staying out of the market (which Aunty is NOT doing as it concerns Las Vegas).

Ken Wade does do a fantastic job of charting, market momentum with moving averages, and simplifying the process of understanding with easy visuals.  However, for Aunty, it’s too slow.  It is like playing Keno and the numbers take an hour each to post, versus Aunty’s game of choice – Craps, one of the fastest moving games in the casino.

In summary, it is a good program, rather expensive on an annual basis, and takes years to gauge benefits, and not for Aunty.  If Ken Wade did individual stocks or commodities with his simplification of red light/green light for the cheapos – Aunty might subscribe.

 

Raymond Aaron’s iMarketing Genius

If Raymond Aaron comes to your town to give a presentation or class, I have a two letter word for you – GO.  Here’s a link to get more info from Raymond himself.

This recent Raymond Aaron workshop was an unusually small crowd of 25 students, which was fortunate for us since we could ask questions at any time, and because the majority of the participants were Hawaii realtors, the focus of the weekend was on the marketing strategies of realtors in business but ALL of us benefited immensely.

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Selling is a skill that must be learned and mastered.  Selling anything to anyone is easy if they want what you have to sell, and they want to pick you as their seller.

Marketing can be transactional (weak, more of the same, what everyone else is doing) or transformational (startingly, totally different).  Transformational marketing can change the whole picture and increase income tenfold.

An example of transactional marketing is to increase prices, work more hours, sell more items.

Transformational marketing using a chiropractor as an example went like this:

A chiropractor charges $40 per adjustment.  Everyone else also charges $40.  To increase his income he could charge $45/adjustment – but he may get less customers because he is priced too high.  Or, he could charge $35 but he may lose money because he is charging too little and/or have to increase the hours he puts into his business which cuts into family time.

Instead, Chiropractor writes a book “The Book on Sore Backs”.  He writes press releases and sends them off to all sorts of media outlets.  One or more pick up on the press releases, and the phone starts to ring with potential customers.  The receptionist asks “how did you find out about Dr. ___?” and if they say they heard about the doctor because of his book, they are asked if they would like to be treated by the book author for $99 or an associate for $40 (prior to he makes an arrangement with the other chiropractors if they would do adjustments for his patients at his office for $20, and he gets the other $20).

His income has been transformed from $40 to $99.  He also receives income without having to do any adjustments from his “associates”.  His business is transformed.

10 requirements of transformational marketing:  Be a Leader, Branding, Lifetime Value of Customer, Intentional Congruence, Image & Video, Copy (great wording), Social Media usage, Traffic, Buzz, and Relevant Charity.

The most important trait was being a Leader in your field so people will want to follow.

Next comes Branding, which we focused on for the rest of the day.

Branding is about you, not the company you belong to (in the case of realtors, it isn’t Caldwell Bankers, etc. that is your brand.  You are your brand.)  Your brand is not what you say.  It is what others say or think about you.

Raymond gave several examples of Brand trumping Product.  Pepsi, in a blind test challenge, was the cola of choice over Coca Cola several years ago.  However, because Coca Cola has a stronger brand name, Coca Cola sales are higher than Pepsi.  It doesn’t matter that Pepsi tastes better, Coca Cola is perceived to be a better brand so it has higher sales.

The levels of branding rise from 0 – 10 from brand absence (zer0) to brand awareness to brand preference to brand desire to brand insistence (ten).  Brand advocacy (when you tell all your friends how great some brand is) is over the top.  An example of brand advocacy is the Apple Computer Company.  Apple users love their Apples and tell everyone about the wonders and greatness of their Apple products, which gets their friends to try it and buy.  This is the best and highest level of salesmanship.

To advance to higher levels of branding, make WOWs (when people say “Wow!).  Every Wow moves you up – gradually.  Every unWow (things that need fixing) moves you down – fast.

6 ingredients of Wows = Big, Unexpected, Memorable, Positive, Extra, Relevant. (BUMPER)

Sources of Wows include your own creativity and uniquness, feedback from clients, turning unWows into Wows.

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Ways to brand yourself:

By Achievement (Lance Armstrong’s achievement of defeating cancer and winning the Tour de France several times earns him $100,000 for each speaking engagement)

By Association (pictures with famous or successful people)

By Authoring a Book

By Reciprocation (give, give, give and create relationships)

By 3rd party recognition (testimonials – especially written ones)

By charitable donation (example is McDonald and the Ronald McDonald House)

By Brand Mascots (Snap Crackle and Pop for Rice Crispies)

By Message Control (be careful of the words and stories you use – always be aware of the message/image you are wanting to convey).
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At the end of Day 1, we were instructed to create our own website with “OurOwnNameReview.com”.  Raymond has RaymondAaronReviews.com as one of his websites.  On it, using WordPress templates, he asks a simple question “What is the greatest thing that Raymond taught you that will increase your business?”

When people fill in their name, city, and occupation as well as their feedback (which is automatically a testimonial), it is posted.  This review site will be at the top of anyone’s Google name search of you which will help your branding as it serves as bonafide validation and positive reinforcement for you.

THAT is ultra cool.

[Aunty’s review website will be HonoluluAuntyReviews.com in the near future and my question would be about benefits from visiting Aunty at HonoluluAunty.com.]

Elance.com is a site like ebay – but just for services.  Post the job you want done (i.e. make a review site just like Raymond’s) and bids for your job will come in – after which you leave feedback.  This is a great resource for finding a webmaster or website developer if you need one  (they can help you make your review site – tell them to go see RaymondAaronReviews.com and make one for you just like that).

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DAY 2 iMarketing Genius

Raymond began by giving us 6 rung steps in the “Ladder of Profits”.  From a ground base of zero:

1.  Visibility – with so many channels of media on the internet, magazines, etc. build a presence and get your name out there.  Create and maintain a website.

2.  Credibility – you want to be known, liked, and trusted.  Becoming an author of books will give you instant visibility and credibility.

3.  Marketability – setting up a business to succeed where customers choose you

4.  Profitability – the achievement reached.

Starting at the base and moving downward is

– 1.  Invisibility – the majority of people as entrepreneurs, employees, investors are on this rung.

– 2.  Instability – mental, emotional, financial distress.  Insolvency.

In order to achieve profitability, you move up one rung at a time, in order.  The way to skip rungs from invisibility to profitability is to win a lottery – which has very low probability.

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Nido Qubein is one of Raymond Aaron’s coaches.  He is the President of High Point University in North Carolina, and on the Boards of BB&T Banks and Lazy Boy.  Raymond played a short video of highlights of a recent presentation.  What a WOWer of a speaker!  If you can, google for YouTube videos of Nido Qubein.

Points from his presentation:

To become great and successful, hang around with successful people.  Who you spend time with is who you become.  Figure out what obstacles are in the way in your life and avoid or get rid of them.

Over and beyond communicating is connecting.  Figure out how the other person must feel first before he/she will do what you want them to do.

Training is teaching people what to do.  Educating is showing people what to be.

Pay yourself first.  Most people pay themselves last after all the bills, etc have been made.  Pay yourself first.

Nido hates “to do” lists because they never ever end.  Instead, have a “stop doing” list.  (Raymond expanded on this concept – keep reading.)

Do only the 3 things you do best.  Delegate all the rest.  [Wow – what a wonderful possibility!]
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Regarding the “stop doing” list:

1. Write down every task, activity performed in a week, business related as well as non-business related.

2.  Identify what 3 things you are good at (A items).

3.  Identify your C things – things you hate doing, procrastinate about, and are lousy at doing.

4.  Everything else is a B item.

5.  Eliminate one C item.  [This is WILDLY transformational]

6.  Get rid of all other C’s.

7.  Get rid of B’s.
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Here are 21 steps for your Marketing Department

1.  Have a transformational Marketing Department.

2.  Strategically choose your niche – where/what do hot eager buyers want?

3.  Understand your niche – do market research – 3 actions/person involved for every sale – the decision maker, the payer, the beneficiary.  Cater to the decision maker.

4.  Organize duties – keep your core abilites (things you do best) and delegate the rest eventually

5.  Start with 5 lead sources for new prospects – referrals are most common, Facebook page, craigslist, posters, Linkedin profile, contests, billboards, speeches, newspaper ads, cards, networking groups, eZineArticles.com, blog, radio, video testimonials, etc.

6.  Add 1 new lead source every 2 months

7.  Story board your prospecting funnel – at the start of lead generation you may have 20 prospects because of response to an add, and at the end you have 1 or 2 sales.  Between the start and end, track the drop off rate and figure out why.

8.  Establish 3 levels of clients and cater to them differently.
level 1 – ones that don’t want to pay the going rate – sell them something smaller, i.e. audio CD set
level 2 – will pay standard
level 3 – will pay higher – will get more

9.  Create your BRAND – this is what people think of you.  Have a slogan, logo,         color scheme, font, URL site

10.  Create your 5 second pitch – be puzzling,enigmatic.  Give insufficient information, no selling, about them not yourself.  Purpose is that they ask for more information because you become interesting to them.

11.  Create visibility and credibility.  Write a book, self capture websites, do something to be recognized.

12.  Plan for social proof – testimonial capture system (example RaymondAaronReviews.com)

13.  Plan for referrals – on sign up sheet ask for 3 guest referrals (if you ask for 1, you get 0, asking for 2 or 3, you get 1, asking for 4 or more, you get 0)

14.  Align with a related cause – on your marketing tools “a certain portion of my sales goes to….”

15.  Management feedback data – how many clients you saw, results, numbers, numbers, numbers

16.  Soft Launch – do a pretend or test launch.  If you have a coach, ask first.

17.  Review numbers and redesign.

18.  Hard Launch

19.  Keep watching your numbers

20.  Keep delegating more and more so that you just have your core abilities tasks

21.  Check in with coach at every stage (keep getting feedback)

Without a Marketing Department, there is no leader, no transformational ideas, no focus, procrastination, time wasted on non-essential tasks, no positioning, only a few lead generation sources, no brand, no formal referral system, no strategic plan.  It is living inside invisibility.

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After lunch, Les E.???  did a presentation on marketing to sell more.

The seller must be non threatening.

Words such as experience, integrity, service, honesty, quality, reliability, the best are not important and so standard that the customer is not impressed.

Customer Espionage:

* Who is your target market

* Who are your primary competitors and what are they doing

* What would cause someone to want or buy what you want in the first place

* What problems, frustrations or annoyances do people experience when buying what you sell

* If this was your best friend, what “insider knowledge” would you want them to know

* What’s your evidence – need supporting proof

If you want massive sales success you must do all of your customers’ thinking for them.  Phrase your sales pitch with “so that you”, i.e. We service your air conditioning our way so that you will always be comfortable.

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The last part of the day was spent with Raymond showing us Intentional Congruence.  It brought tears to his eyes – because he gets it.  Truth to tell, I didn’t get it yet – but I will try out the concept.

Start with a circle in the middle of a blank sheet.  This will represent whatever your #1 source of income (write it in the circle).  Then, in a planet like arrangement around but away from the central circle, draw other circles.  Write down in each circle whatever you do that has activity or expenditure of time, other income sources, or important person (i.e. wife, family).

There are 3 kinds of arrows for this – absent, thin, and fat.

Starting with your #1 source of income circle, draw an arrow to one of the named “planets” and ask yourself how does A (#1 income source) support B (the activity or thing.)  After you have done a bunch of these, draw arrows back from B to A and figure out how B supports A.

After that, draw arrows from a planet to another planet – all or none of them if you can think of a connection in which they support each other.

At first, there will be a lot of absent arrows (no support or connection), some thin, and a few fat arrows.

The purpose of this exercise is to have a blueprint image for conscious decision making in order to have congruence in life.  Congruence so that doing something in one “planet” will benefit/support more than just itself, but other “planets” will also benefit because you intend/plan it that way.

An example Raymond used was this:

His central planet is Coaching (his #1 source of income).  One of his planets is his youngest daughter.  He has an iPad with better games than hers because he pays for his apps and she is only allowed free apps on her iPad.  On the day of the week when he is in charge of her, he has a phone coaching session with one of his clients.  Rather than have her be bored and free during that period of time, he allows her to play with his iPad, but the rule is that it must be on the couch of his workroom – while he is on his phone coaching session with his client.

The intentional congruence occurs when his coaching sessions support his time to be with his daughter, and ALSO when she is in the same room and hearing (even if subconsciously) his lessons and advice to one of his coaching students.  She is learning without realizing it (arrow from his coaching planet to daughter planet), and he has her in his vision which inspires him and is in her ear (arrow from his daughter’s planet to his coaching planet) to give really inspiring and great words of wisdom to his student that he has to spend time with – both at the same time.  He was wanting to spend time with his daughter anyway, and he had to be on the coaching session anyway.

Raymond also showed us what his coach Nido Qubein’s intentional congruence looks like.  It was mind blowing and way way out of our league.  Like seeing what a Grand Master can do with hundreds of instruments here and hundreds of instruments there, with much larger dollars and connections.

The more intentional (important word – intentional) congruences you make in your life, then every intentional action you make will bring more benefits/advances/fulfillments to more of the “planets” in your life – with less time involved.  Since you are going to do something anyway, let them be multipliably fruitful.

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Raymond’s introduced us to his 10-10-10 package (for a price) consisting of a 4 or 6 webinar program that will teach and guide anyone to produce and publish a book.  10 chapters – 10 hours of your time – 10 weeks printed.

Well, that was a WOW.  Uncle is thinking about it.  It could dramatically increase the esteem of being an expert in his field (no, it’s not fishing…yet).  And the benefits of being able to say, “I wrote the book on that” is multi-fold.

In any case, the two days spent with Raymond were days well spent and fantastically valuable.  The real kicker was that it was free – no cost at all, even though Raymond brought in his key program man, paid for travel expenses, hotel meeting room and amenities, and even gave us all the Steve Jobs biography book.  WOW, WOW, WOW!

Color Code

Ian Plummer of Color Code gave a fascinating lesson on personality/core motives using the colors Red, White, Blue, and Yellow as indicators.  The theory is that every person is born with a certain core value and life’s experiences, upbringing, etc. influence how we act and react.  Knowing what our “color” is can help us understand ourselves and knowing the color of people you associate with can guide us to a better relationship because we will know what that person needs and wants.

Here is a very very brief summary of the colors and what they represent:

RED  — These are the powerful bulldozers.  Hillary Clinton is a definite Red.  Very motivated, driven, in charge, confident.  They bring great gifts of vision and leadership and generally are responsible, decisive, logical, proactive and assertive. 
 On the negative side, they might tend to be selfish, insensitive, impatient and argumentative.
BLUE  — These are the heavy weight do-gooders, love to serve, give, help, and care for people.  Oprah Winfrey is a prime example.   Intimacy drives these people.  They are generally loyal, intuitive, sincere, and thoughtful.
  On the negative side, they tend to be self righteous, overly sensitive, perfectionists and have unrealistic expectations.

WHITE  — These are the peacekeepers, my favorite kind of people.  The Dalai Lama is definitely a white, and so is Uncle (thank goodness).   They have the ability to stay calm and balanced even in the midst of conflict, are generally kind, adaptable, and good listeners.  On the negative side, they can be indecisive, silently stubborn, unexpressive, and detached.
YELLOW  — These are the fun lovers.   They bring great gifts of enthusiasm and optimism and are generally happy, charismatic, logical, spontaneous, and life of the party.   The negatives of this group is that they can be uncommitted, disorganized, afraid to face facts, impulsive, and unfocused.

Fascinating stuff.  Some hints to working with others if you can find out their “color” are:

Reds:  make sure you did your homework before approaching them (if it is your boss), just give the bottom line, summarize.

Blues:  give them all the information and then give them deadlines.  Keep following up with them.

Whites:  don’t overload them, lead them, show them the end game.

Yellows:  be upbeat, they work best with people they like.  Keep them informed, give positive strokes.

The website to go to for the test is colorcode.com.  You can take the free test, and you will receive your dominant color results.  At anytime before or after, you can pay for the test and get a detailed report with your percentages of color, as well as a customized 20+ page report going into more detail and links to some exercises to better understanding and self improvement.  While Ian was describing the different traits, needs, and limitations of each color, I was so sure I was Red and Yellow – because I had the worst traits of both.

However, after taking the test and upgrading because of a coupon he gave at a discount, I turned out to be 36% Blue, 23% White, 21% Yellow, and 20% Red.  It was a nice surprise to be more like Oprah than Hillary, though I admire both.

You can check out the website and take either a free test, or one that you get a personal report and score of your colors.  Ian even puts on workshops on color coding to help people understand our underlying “color” as well as the underlying color of people that are close to us, and how to use that knowledge to build better relationships.

This is far better than going to psychics that seem to be able to “read” your present and future, IMO.  It was a fun exercise, as is the Briggs Myers/Jung test (free!) that I have consistently scored as an INTP for the last 40 (yikes!) years.

Mortgage acceleration payoff programs – some caveats

2013-04-17_11-58-16Do NOT waste $3000 on the Money Merge Account program from United First Financial to eliminate your mortgage in a few years.  It is cumbersome, time consuming, and limited.  All their hype about algorithms and such with the juggling of at least 2 accounts is easier achieved with chunk payments.  [This company has changed their name to “Worth Unlimited” – same players, same game.   Mahalo to Joe Taxpayer for alerting me to this on his excellent site:  JoeTaxpayer.com.]

A recent online class I took taught the basics of early mortgage payoffs with a HELOC or any other interest bearing line of credit.  This ingenuous method was the brainchild of a couple of Australian women who wanted to beat the system of the 30 year mortgage.

Take a $500,000 30 year mortgage at 5% (this will be what I will use as the example).  The monthly payment for principal and interest (P&I) is $2684.11.  Property taxes and insurance (T&I) are usually added on to this, but I will not add those in for this example, but be aware that these are additional payments required.  I will also round out the numbers to make it easier to understand from this point on.

With the very first mortgage payment of $2684 (P&I only), $2083 is interest, $601 is toward principal.  The loan is reduced by $601 for a new balance of $499,399.  The next mortgage payment of $2684 is broken down to $2081 towards interest, $603 toward principal, for a new balance of $498,796.  The next mortgage payment of $2684 has $2078 going towards interest, $606 towards principal.  This continues on with the bulk of the monthly payment going towards interest, until year 16 (!) when more of the payment starts going toward the principal because the balance of the loan is lowered enough for that to happen, and your loan principal starts getting paid off faster and faster.  If you make regular steady payments of $2684 every month for 30 years, you will have paid in almost double the amount of the initial loan!

The Australian ladies discovered this “secret”.

Use $10,000 from a line of credit, like a HELOC, to pay towards principal (make sure you specify that to the bank when making the payment).  This will reduce the loan balance by $10,000 to $490,000.  This automatically will “step” you up to month 16 of scheduled payments, and you would have saved over $32,000 of interest, because of the way the amortized 30 year payments are scheduled (16 months x ~$2000/mo interest = $32,000).

You will still have to pay off the $10,000 HELOC advance – but even if that is at an interest rate of 10%, and you pay it off in a year, your “cost” is $11,000, but you saved $32,000.  Your actual cost is only the 10% interest ($1000) but you are taking out a loan that has to be repaid, so I include the sum in this calculation.  Even so, the savings are big time!

If you can do this 18 years in a row, your mortgage will be paid off in full, 12 years ahead of time, and you will have saved $214,000 in interest.  The sweet spot seems to be in the 9th year, when the mortgage payments begin to weigh more on the principal than the interest.  For $90,000 of pre payments (9 years x $10,000), you save $178,000 in interest.

For this to work, you will need enough income to pay down the $10,000 HELOC every year.

Compare this to:  if you did nothing but pay your regular mortgage monthly payments for 30 years without any additional principal payments, you will end up paying $466,000 in interest for your $500,000 loan.

Another way to battle this 30 year mortgage debt is to pay $1000 more per month towards principal reduction.  This works out almost the same as a $10,000 principal reduction payment once a year.

You can “play”with the numbers using Joe Taxpayer’s spreadsheet (click on green “My MMA spreadsheet”, then open the xls document) which allows you to change the terms and amounts of the loan, as well as adjust any payments.  You can then see the interest savings as well as the principal balance remaining for whatever scenario you chose to adopt.

In general, it seems that the more you can put toward principal at the beginning of the loan, the greater the savings on interest.  Which has me thinking of a new strategy the next time I borrow on our home.  Instead of going for the highest loan value at the fixed 30 year rate, I might be better off getting a lesser loan, and getting a higher HELOC.

The advantage of a 30 year mortgage is the fixed rate and the length of time the loan is available.  However, the monthly payment does not change, whether you owe $500,000 on the loan or $50,000 on the loan.  Fees and points are added into the loan which can easily top $10,000 of additional cost from the get go.

The advantage of a HELOC or interest only loan is that you use it if you want or need to, and the monthly payment decreases (or increases) as your balance changes, and these are usually loans without fees or points.  The disadvantage is that the interest rate fluctuates and the loan usually expires in 10 years.  HELOCs can also be closed at anytime at the bank’s discretion.

Currently, interest rates are very low – 5% or a little less for a 30 year conventional mortgage.  These methods of paying down one’s mortgage faster makes sense, and it makes even more sense and has more interest saving advantages when the loan is at higher interest rates.

Although I would love to have a home debt free, it is also a waste of potential for me.  Sitting on a house with 100% equity is like sitting on a pile of gold.  It is great to have, but it is just what it is.  This is Suzie Orman’s ideal retirement model – owning your home debt free.  This does not, however, mean expense free.  You can still lose your home due to catastrophic medical or unforeseen expenses, to lawsuits, fraud, and your own intended heirs getting greedy.

I would rather use as much of the equity that I can in order to acquire more cash flowing assets such as rental property.  Good rental property.  These cash flowing assets can be the income used to pay the mortgage payments on our financed home.  Sweet chickens!

Additional income from your investments can pay down mortgages on the properties.  This is good debt being paid off with cash flow that is forever.

Susie Orman’s message of eliminating all debt can backfire and leave you looking like a target with limited options.  Learn the difference between good debt (used to acquire assets that put money in your pocket) and bad debt (doodads, toys, trips, jewelry, clothes, etc.).  Avoid and eliminate bad debt, use good debt to get rich.

Aunty just found a really good article over at the FinancialMentor.com about the pros and cons of paying off your mortgage or investing.  Really a good read.  Turns out he is a fence sitter, but he has a solid fence in place.

Ultimate Blueprint – Info Marketing Millions

Jeff Vacek and Ken Preuss of Info Renegades were in Honolulu this May 2012 to present a 3 day workshop entitled Info Marketing Millions Ultimate Blueprint Event at the Hyatt Regency in Waikiki.

This was an eye-opening training event.  I subscribe to a LOT of newsletters, programs, and free reports.  Much of the sales promo looked similar – as if they got it from the same book or template – the language, format, colors, layout, header, etc. – kind of like WordPress has “themes” that you can choose from for your own blog site and everyone who chooses that “theme” has sites that look very similar to each other.

Regarding the sales promo pages that all look alike, it is because – they ARE.  They “model” (I call it copy) each other – especially the most successful internet marketers.  What works for the one with the most success will work for you.

Maybe Aunty is too old school, and so this “modeling” was a turn off to Aunty at first.  Old school or not though, Aunty saw the potential of info marketing and wondered if the strategies learned during the weekend could be applied to Honolulu Aunty somehow, in a way that Aunty could accept.

We were taught 4 keys points of Information Marketing:  1) Fulfilling core human wants, 2) Thinking beyond the e-book, 3) Modeling after success by creating your own version of what already works and sells, and 4) Thinking Joint Ventures.  The emphasis was placed on Joint Ventures, and for good reason.

Joint Ventures is utilizing affiliates.  You share in the revenues by promoting someone else’s product to your email list, and they share in your revenues by promoting your product to their email list.  A Joint Venture is when 2 marketers connect to leverage their resources – subscriber lists and/or products.

The 4 most successful Joint Ventures are the sales funnels of:  Emails to Teleclass (video or audio), Email to Telesummit (a series of calls and info from more than just you), Email to Free Report (written), and Email to Affiliate Sales funnel.

One of the first decisions to make is choosing your niche.  What do you have a passion for, a genius for, a commitment to?  Ken and Jeff call this your P-G-C.

Another first decision to make is which revenue model (teleclass, telesummit, free report, affiliate) you want to pursue.  Once you have chosen your niche and revenue funnel, study the way the most successful marketers in that niche and revenue funnel message their product, and “model” them.

This workshop started off slow and uncomfortable (because of the “modeling” = twisted copying) techniques and after the first few hours, Aunty seriously thought that this was not for her – it just didn’t seem ethical.  At that point, it was almost as if Jeff and Ken could read Aunty’s mind.  We were asked if we rather be right, or rich.

We were taught to do market research by seeing what other gurus and top internet marketers were doing in any chosen niche, and how to “swipe” their sales copy in order to model for ourselves.  This, we were told, is done as the norm – and it must be true because of how similar the sales copy, opt in pages, congratulations pages all look alike in format, content, appeal.  (okay, so Aunty got a bit more comfortable with that because it is duplicating what everyone else duplicates and is acceptable in the industry, almost laughably acceptable.)

[Caveat:  a big NO NO is to copy the actual product, such as another person’s eBook because the original content of products falls under copyright laws and punishable with extracted fingernails or worse.]

Duplicate what works for others and make it work for you.  The message here was not to re-invent the wheel when it comes to marketing strategies.  Our passion, genius and talents are put to better use with product development than to start from scratch for the sales copy and materials.

By the end of day 1, we got into the “meat” of the education, and the light began to come on for Aunty, though still with some reservations.

Then, Day 2 and 3 were totally awesome and mind blowing!  (watch for Aunty’s seminar notes coming soon.)

Info marketing fulfills a need.  My favorite guru, Robert Kiyosaki, has said that we have moved from the industrial age into the information age with the advent of the internet.  People have a thirst for knowledge and are searching for solutions.  Providing those solutions is key, providing information and solutions utilizing joint ventures is explosive.

The lessons we all learned in the 3 day course of the Ultimate BluePrint – Info Marketing Millions was invaluable, and I truly hope that each and every participant at this event finds their niche and is successful in promoting, reaching out, and having their goals fulfilled.  Although Aunty’s chosen investment vehicle is cash flowing rental real estate, the possibilities of generating serious income from info marketing with joint ventures is unlimited, and it can be done ethically and Aunty’s way.

One day Aunty’s Bookstore may be born, or a mature aunty’s site will be profitable.

If Ken Pruess and Jeff Vacek come to your town to teach, run and sign up for their classes.  They are living proof that you can make millions with info marketing, and you can tailor it to the way that fits into your own standard and quality.

It is a lucrative business.  Aunty gives two thumbs up.