HEALING PRAYER
Thank you Nicole Chayka for forwarding this important issue. Dr. Masaru Emoto is a pre-eminent Japanese scientist who has done all the research and publications about the characteristics of water. Among other things, his research revealed that water physically responds to emotions. Google his name and find out.

Many of us have a predominantly angry emotion when we consider what is happening in the Gulf.  And while certainly we are justified in that emotion, we may be of greater assistance to our planet and its life forms, if we sincerely, powerfully and humbly pray the prayer that Dr. Emoto, himself has proposed.

Let us pray together and set an intention of love and healing that is so large, so overwhelming that we can perform a miracle in the Gulf of Mexico.

We are powerful.  Our united energy, speaking this prayer daily…multiple times daily….can literally shift the balance of destruction to restoration.

We don’t have to know how. We just have to recognize that the power of love is greater than any power in the Universe today. Please join me in repeating this healing prayer of Dr. Emoto’s.  Let’s take charge, and do our own clean up!

“I send the energy of love and gratitude to the water and all the living creatures in the Gulf of Mexico and its surroundings. To the whales, dolphins, pelicans, fish, shellfish, planktons, corals, algae and all living creatures . . . . . I am sorry. Please forgive me.  Thank you.  I love you.”

HOW FAST CAN YOU TYPE?
Get your speed clocked at www.TypingTest.com. My mom just got a laptop and to help her with the hunt and peck method of typing with one finger, I got her the Mavis Beacon typing program to help her become familiar with the keyboard. She went from 4 words per minute (wpm) to 31 wpm at 99% accuracy in just 2 weeks. Her new goal is to attain 40 wpm. Way to go mom. My speed is 115 wpm 93% accuracy. My sister Jan types 134 wpm. The key for speed is to stay relaxed. And being a pianist also helps.

MULTI-FAMILY BOOTCAMP
August 28-29, Edmonton, Alberta
Question: is multi-family investing your answer for creating long term sustainable wealth? My colleague Don Campbell is hosting a 2-day workshop to educate real estate investors on how to leverage economies of scale to grow your long term wealth faster and more securely. To be held at the Shaw Conference Centre at 9797 Jasper Avenue. The recent changes to Canadian mortgage rules have created more challenges for the smaller retail investor. However, commercial mortgage rules haven’t changed and is easier to finance (in my opinion). Don is offering this workshop for an amazing $587 if you register now. Click HERE for more info or to register.

BUYING ANOTHER BUILDING

Once you’ve done the due diligence on a region, you get to know the area very well. When a deal comes along, it is an opportunity to mitigate risk and get better economies of scale with an existing portfolio. This is why we are in the process of buying another 48-unit apartment building. The key to finding great deals is to niche. Some investors spread themselves too thin over a large market versus becoming an expert in a smaller market. It also takes patience, biding your time and waiting for the right market conditions to bring along the right deal. This is why it has been a year since my last purchase. I love shopping.

WEALTH TIP
The wealthiest people on the planet have one thing in common: fanatical integrity, as written in the book The Millionaire Mind by Thomas J. Stanley. He studied the habits of millionaires. He noted that the decisions millionaires make lead to building wealth, things like having a short planning window versus a long one. As John Maxwell says, “Thank God It’s Friday Oh Lord It’s Monday is a recipe for the poor house.”

PRO-ACTIVE PROPERTY MANAGEMENT – PART 9
Educating your tenants. One of the keys to successful preventive maintenance is training your tenants to take care of it for you. For example, if your properties have issues with humidity you need to train your tenants to use the fans to circulate the air to promote evaporation. This reduces the wear and tear on the apartment, reduces the incident of mold growth and damage to drywall. To view a sample letter that we give to all of our tenants, click HERE and feel free to use it to educate your tenants.

The only way to save for the future is to sacrifice some of the now. Brian Tracey

July Ono

One of the keys to successful preventive maintenance is training your tenants to take care of it for you. This requires education and training on your part. For example, if your properties have issues with humidity you need to train your tenants to use the fans to circulate the air to promote evaporation. This reduces the wear and tear on the apartment, reduces the incident of mold growth and damage to drywall.

What may seem obvious to you may not be so to other people. Instead of assuming everybody knows what you know, create a system of documents like a training manual to review important items.

One of the first issues I encountered in Thunder Bay, Ontario is that the winters are cold, really cold, like -30C to -40C. A lot of older buildings don’t have the proper ventilation or seals to prevent ice from building up on the inside of the windows. When tenants take a shower or cook, the steam goes in to the air. This humidity condenses on the coldest thing it touches which is the window – and, voila, you have an inch of ice coating your window.

The only way to prevent this from happening is to turn on the fans in the bathroom and/or the kitchen to promote evaporation.

This simple explanation gives people a reason to use the fans and in turn gives them the education to teach others.

To view a sample letter that we give to all of our tenants, click HERE and feel free to use it to educate your tenants.

CRASHING SAFELY
I survived my first test flight. Yes, that’s me in the cockpit with my instructor Jason Baillie of the Pacific Flying Club in Delta. Okay, I crashed in their ALSIM FLIGHT SIMULATOR. We took off from Boundary Bay Airport (ZBB) and landed in Vancouver (YVR) in a Cessna, did a loop, survived a stall and then I crash landed on Highway 99, all from the comfort and safety of the simulator cockpit. One of my lifelong dreams has been to pilot a plane. I was told years ago that I couldn’t be a pilot because I needed 20/20 vision. That is incorrect. It’s like driving a car, you need corrective lenses to fly. To book your appointment, you can find them at www.pacificflying.com

YOUR NATURAL GIFTS
The secret of success is to work with your strengths and delegate your weaknesses so you can focus on your natural gifts and talents. Once you identify your natural gifts, invest the time and effort to hone those gifts and become a master. Then create a business model around your natural gifts to serve others. This is one of the Success Factors in my coaching program.

PG IS PEACHY
Steve and I traveled to Prince George for our annual suite inspection. We conduct it ourselves to give us an overview of how the property and the tenants are doing. What used to take 2 full days has been reduced to a zippy 5 hours because we know what to look for now. The main issues are: closet door tracks, plumbing issues, delaminating cabinets, kitchen and bathroom fans, condition of carpet and laminate flooring. This year we noted very few issues due to the proactive maintenance that is conducted throughout the year by our onsite manager, giving this building two thumbs up.

ONCE YOU’VE GONE MAC YOU CAN’T GO BACK
I did it. I switched to Mac after years of deliberation. The straw on the camel’s back happened after I spent 15 minutes trying to connect to the wireless network and Steve opened up his Mac and he was online in under 10 seconds. Talk about an unfair advantage. My resistance was having to learn new programs. To eliminate that issue, my web designer suggested that I get Microsoft Word/Excel/PowerPoint for Mac. There are some new learnings that are somewhat inconvenient but I simply marvel at the clarity of the graphics and the supersonic connectivity. I love my Mac.

BETTER THAN GREAT – OUTSTANDING
This is my mission statement – in business and in my life. I discovered this short, simple, salient message encapsulates my values and it feels good. This is one of the first things Anurag Gupta encouraged us to discover in his 2-day Performance Breakthrough Workshop, among other things. Anurag is a $40,000 a day coach who has worked with the likes of Chip Wilson of Lululemon. He spent 2 years working with Chip who took that company to billions. It’s all about designing the architecture of your business around your customer’s wants and needs. Anurag has a very unique approach that has consistently outperformed industry standards. His mission is to provide indescribable breakthroughs. He is coming to Vancouver in October to deliver a 2-day workshop through my business coach Andrew Barber-Starkey. If you are interested in attending this breakthrough workshop to take your business to the next level, I can bring a few guests at an exceptional price. To register for the next workshop, please send an email to admin@procoachsystem.com with “I WANT OUTSTANDING” in the subject line.

PRO-ACTIVE PROPERTY MANAGEMENT - PART 8
Healthy Turns. This is one of the indicators we use to determine whether to buy a building especially in provinces with government mandated rent controls. You don’t want to get stuck with long term tenants. It’ll take years before you can raise the rent to current market valuations. The only way to get a building to be more profitable is to increase revenue and decrease expenses. To increase revenue, there should be about a 30% turnover per year. With one-third of the building vacating every year, it will take on average just over 3 years to manage the rents up, thus increasing cash flow and your bottom line.

The only way to save for the future is to sacrifice some of the now. Dave Ramsey.

July Ono

CAUGHT RED-HANDED
We caught this guy trespassing on our property. He was shoveling a truck load of roofing shingles into our garbage shed late at night. Check your local by-laws because this infraction is a $5,000 penalty in Thunder Bay. Make signs and post it on your garbage sheds. I was really upset when I lost half the photos during the download process. Thank goodness for geeks. My Manager used a ShareWare program that retrieves deleted files. And voila! He got those photos back and I got the man and his license plate. Just Google “Recover Deleted Files” to find the program. And yes, he shoveled it all back into his truck and promised never to return.

CONSPIRACY OF THE RICH
In Robert Kiyosaki’s newest book, he writes that there is $38 Billion of mortgage re-sets due by January 2012. If you think it’s bad now, the worst is yet to come. For those of you with a hankering to buy real estate in the U.S., you can use the next year to study up on taxation and other due diligence items. When the time is ripe to buy, you will be in the best position to know when to buy, what to buy and for how much. I have been watching the price of apartments drop from $50,000 a door to between $12,000 to $20,000. You can even buy foreclosed apartments at $5,000 per unit. It’s going to get ridiculous over the next few months. Banks don’t have liquidity. Currency is being devalued every day. Your best investment is to get educated so you know what to do with your money on your terms. Start up a mastermind or book club and study the masters. Start your own conspiracy of the soon to be rich.

REAL ESTATE SEMINAR: JUNE 12-13
The real estate rules have changed. If you are curious to know how high mortgage interest rates will go or how to qualify for mortgages, one of Canada’s leading real estate experts is coming to Vancouver. That would be Don R. Campbell. We have known Don since 2003 although this picture was taken in 2005 at his QuickStart Program. Don is the guy you see on tv or quoted in the newspapers for his unbiased research. I am sending you an exclusive invitation to this event which is usually reserved only for members at a fabulous price including hundreds of dollars of bonuses. Find out how the changes taking place in the industry will affect you, your future and your bottom line. The ability to take advantage of opportunities equals Perspiration + Preparation. Click here to read all the details of this exclusive event.

WORLD’S SMALLEST POLITICAL QUIZ
Left, Center, Right, Republican, Democrat, Tory or Liberal. I’ve never put a label on my political views because I agree and disagree with all of them. So I refused to be labeled until this little quiz came my way, thanks to Jon Addiss. The Fraser Institute said it’s “a fast, fun, and accurate assessment of a person’s overall political views.”  Suite University said it is the “most concise and accurate political quiz out there.” Over 15 million people have taken the quiz. The quiz pegs me as a Libertarian, support maximum liberty in both personal and economic matters, tolerate diversity and support a free market.
http://www.theadvocates.org/quiz

PRO-ACTIVE PROPERTY MANAGEMENT – PART 7
Inventory control. You may be spending a lot of money buying supplies that you already have. Storing equipment and supplies in a haphazard way leads to inefficiency. Four of our largest buildings have 1, 2 or 3 storage rooms per floor. That’s a lot of stuff and money lying around, out of sight, out of mind. Invest a day or two to sort and organize these rooms. If you can save from buying $1,000 in equipment and supplies, that’s the equivalent of having to earn $10,000 in gross income to pay for those supplies. Remember the 10% rule that I have written previously about. For every $1000 of gross income that you earn less your overhead, the average business is lucky to earn a 10% net profit, or $100 of profit free and clear to spend or invest as you see fit. For every dollar that you spend, you need to earn ten times that amount to be able to afford it. Effective management is about keeping costs under control while increasing revenues.

Money is for making things happen. Richard Branson.

July Ono

The problem with this model is: how do you know if anyone wants to buy the book. You’ve spent time and money on a business venture with no guarantee of a return. One of my mentors, T. Harv Eker, of Peak Potentials Training explained the art and science of the pre-sale.

First, you have an idea for a book. You create the outline and chapter summaries.

Second, you begin your sales and promotion now before you create it.

Third, you take pre-sale orders.

Fourth, you collect the money in advance of delivery.

Fifth, when you have the money to cover your initial costs, you place the publishing order.

The sales, marketing and promotion of this book will take about 6 to 12 months. The more time spent in promotion the better because you can collect more pre-sale orders. There is a limit to a customer’s patience which you can mitigate through continuous communication as to the progress of the book.

If you fail to produce enough sales to cover the cost of publishing, then the answer is pretty obvious. You need better marketing. And if this still does not produce results, it’s because no one wants the product. The book is a vanity project.

The principle of the pre-sale can be used in any business. Builders and Developers use pre-sales to sell real estate that hasn’t been built yet. In property management, I use the pre-sale technique to get tenants to pay their deposit now for placement 2, 3, 4, 5 months down the road.

The technique for getting the money up front is dependant on your ability to create a compelling need for the product and/or a lucrative discount or both.

LOOKING FOR A MENTOR?
I have been approached by several people to mentor them. This is a time intensive process and one-on-one is not the highest and best use of my time. If I’m going to mentor one person, I would prefer to have a dozen people in on the conversation. You can read more details here on how to sign up.

BE A MONEY ROGUE
You may have heard of Pavlov and his experiment on conditioning dogs. He would ring a bell when he fed the dogs. The dogs learned to salivate when they heard the ring. They were conditioned to respond to the bell. In the same way, we are conditioned to think about money in a certain way. When the financial bell rings, how do you respond? School does not teach us how to be entrepreneurs. We are indoctrinated in how to be good employees who follow orders. Good employees make business owners rich. Good employees have no concept of passive income; money they earn even while they sleep. You need to break free from your money conditioning and become a money rogue by starting to take control of your money. Robert Kiyosaki teaches this analogy: you are standing in front of two doors. One door leads you to financial security and the other door leads you to financial freedom. Financial security is getting a stable job. Financial freedom is starting your own business. The travesty here is that if you select financial security, you end up losing both because you are not in control of the money. As an employee you only have the illusion of security. You can start now, today. Get started by reading and becoming financially educated. You are in charge of your financial literacy. My Reading List is on my website if you need some titles to get started.

2-MINUTE MEDITATION
It’s like a two minute miracle. Taking the time to meditate has been a challenge. After several failed attempts, my angel healer Alice Brock encouraged me to shorten my expectations and create a 2-minute habit. Meditation is a practice. The focus is on the habit of sitting, not the amount of time. Research shows that meditating reduces health risks and prolongs your life span. This practice is now producing results that I can measure, most notably having fun and flow during times of stress where I would normally be anxious and uptight. Take a minute or two, for you.

SUDOKU WORKOUT
You can create new neural pathways in your brain by solving Sudoku puzzles. The brain needs to be exercised just like a muscle in order to be agile and alert by stimulating your cognitive functions to prevent your brain from atrophying. My first easy puzzle took 23 minutes. In four months, I worked my way up through medium to hard, and looking forward to graduating to hardest. Sudoku is a 9-by-9 grid of squares divided into 3-by-3 square blocks. The object of the game is to fill in the blank squares so that each of the numbers from 1 to 9 appears only once in each row, column and block. Happy solving. The game is addictive.

HABITAT FOR HUMANITY RESTORE
As part of any business owner’s ongoing strategy to reduce costs, we purchase used appliances and hardware items through Habitat for Humanity’s ReStore. Check your area for the nearest outlet. Just this month they had a special on used toilets for $20 each in Thunder Bay. They came out of a renovated hotel and were perfectly functional. It is also an exceptional way to give back to your community. Instead of throwing out your used doors, lights, fans, sinks, tubs, cabinets, fridge, stove, door trims, closet doors – basically everything in your house including the kitchen sink – donate it to HFH. Let’s choose not throw out re-usable items that pollute our landfills. We can choose to make a difference for a sustainable planet. There are window screens and trim that they don’t make anymore. The only way to replace these items is by finding them in the second hand market.

PRO-ACTIVE PROPERTY MANAGEMENT – PART 6
Templates. If you write the same type of letter repeatedly, it’s time to create a template. Templates save you time from having to re-create the same type of letter over and over. Some examples of commonly used forms are rental inquiry response, statement of account, suite inspection notices, notice to enter, noise complaint, parking violation, eviction notice, end of tenancy. Create form fields in the top half of the letter so you can merge data. Compose the main body in generic terms and leave room in the bottom half of the letter to customize the content for specifics. Have the same sign-off in all the letters to be consistent. Templates show professionalism, give the impression of a much larger organization, one that has systems and protocols. People need to know the rules in black and white. They can’t read your mind and they have short memories.

Sometimes your greatest asset is simply your ability to stay with it longer than anyone else. Brian Tracy.

July Ono

Being energetic is great. Energy dissipated in many directions at the same time is not conducive to results. Spinning your wheels is not productive. It may feel like you’re doing a lot of stuff but it’s just being busy for the sake of being busy. This is the difference between someone who lives from pay cheque to pay cheque and someone who is financially independent. I know this because I’ve been-there-done-that.

I am listening to Robert Kiyosaki’s Conspiracy of the Rich and he reminded me what real work is. Real work is 90% mental and 10% physical. The vast majority of people spend 90% of their time in physical labor and 10% or less on mental efforts. I remember the effects of being conditioned in school. Between kindergarten to Grade 7, I was a voracious learner. Between Grade 8 to 12, my enthusiasm lost steam with every year until graduating year I couldn’t wait to get out of school. We have been conditioned to think that thinking is painful and boring instead of pleasurable and exciting.

Knowing this, you can begin the shift. The first step towards change is awareness. And this is why we give ourselves unreasonable goals. We do not take the time to use our mental facility to think through the steps for achieving an unreasonable goal. Remember: thinking is linked to pain. Something you don’t want to do due to all those years of negative conditioning. Ergo, we set ourselves up for fall after fall which only reinforces the other conditioning: to stay in your comfort zone. It’s safer.

Be unreasonable.

My unreasonable goal dated November 25, 2001 was to be a millionaire by November 25, 2010. And I thought giving myself nine years was on the verge of unreasonable but I stretched the possibility that it may be possible. If I had given myself a two year goal to achieve that status, I would have given up or done things to sabotage that goal. And I definitely would not have put much thought in how to achieve it. By giving myself just under a decade, it gave me the breathing room to plan and strategize how to accomplish it. And that was painful work at first. But you work through the pain of having to think and you can create a new conditioning.

Thinking Equals Freedom. True freedom. Huge net worth. Lots of cash flow. Financial independence. Emancipation. Stop being a slave to your conditioning. Be free.

Most Canadians attend a seminar where a real estate guru makes these promises that this is the only way to hold an entity. That may be true for that person, but it does not necessarily mean it’s true for you.

One of the complications that arise is that these gurus do not know Canadian law. This is the nasty surprise scenario: You decide to create an LLC (limited liability corporation) to be on title for U.S. property. In the United States, an American citizen who creates an LLC can hold real estate in this entity and the income is taxed as a flow-through entity at their personal marginal tax rate.

Not so if you are a resident of Canada. According to Canadian taxation law, an LLC is not treated like a flow-through entity. It is treated as a corporation. All corporations that own real estate are considered passive entities and are taxed at the highest marginal tax rate (46%) with the exception of active entities. To be an active entity that holds real estate, you must have five full-time employees and show T4 slips for them. If your business meets this litmus test, then you are considered an active real estate business and are taxed at the corporate tax rate of 18% as of January 1, 2010.

When you understand this, then you can make a truly informed decision as to how to hold your real estate.

p.s.  you also need to understand FIRPTA (if you don’t know what this is then you really shouldn’t be buying real estate in the USA) and the implications of the 30% and 10% withholding taxes

Real estate investing is a business in and of itself. There is a learning curve in first understanding how real estate works, then mastering how to invest. I see many people enter this arena and give up. It’s not only frustrating at times; it’s a huge commitment of time and energy.

I’d just like to comment on something I’ve been seeing lately, and that is people suddenly switching from a business they know well to starting up a completely new business they have no understanding of. This is a recipe for disaster or mediocrity, for one or both businesses.

In my personal experience, I’ve started up over nine network marketing businesses in the past. I was in the middle of my real estate learning curve when I started up network marketing business #10. My time was split between two businesses. Neither did well for a few weeks until I made the decision to drop the network marketing business.

In other examples, Steve and I have met people who have run a business for 8, 10, 15 or more years. These people have a lot invested in their business. They’re tired or stuck or bored with the business. They want passive income. They decide to switch their time and energy to becoming real estate investors. This is all well and good, but their existing business starts to suffer from lack of attention. They want to create a passive income stream. The amount of time, energy and money that is required to invest in your start up business as a real estate investor is a hundredfold in comparison to spending that same amount of time, energy and money on your existing business.

For example, in order to create an additional $2,000 per month passive income in real estate, it took me less than two years. That was my learning curve. I spent a lot of time, energy and money investing in my education.

Now what if you spent that same amount of time, energy and money investing in your current business that isn’t doing so hot? What if you made a two year plan to systemize your business? The results are astonishing. The return on investment is huge, far more than could be accomplished in your first two years as a real estate investor. Once your business is systemized, it runs without you on a daily basis, you are making money whether you’re at work or not, you’ve created a four hour work week, now all this spare time can be used to get up to speed on your new passion: real estate.

Real estate is a fantastic business. Just don’t sacrifice what you have already built in search for greener pastures. Real estate investing takes a lot of work, just like any business. The end result is passive income but all forms of passive income require some form of active management. The more passive the investment, the less risk. That’s why a Guaranteed Investment Certificate offers 0.2% interest. This is a fraction: two-tenth per cent interest. That’s the best rate my bank can offer me.

Even if you don’t have a business right now, it’s prudent for you to observe how you spend your time, energy and money. Do you rush off to different projects, do you scatter your energy, do you start something and don’t finish, do you finish other people’s projects, how do you focus, what kind of results do you create, do you wait for something to happen? Because how you are right now is how you are in business. P.S. this is how I used to be in 2001. I didn’t have staying power. I got bored quickly. None of the many businesses that I had started had a firm foundation upon which to grow because I quit early in the game.

I’m not saying that all businesses are meant to be kept and grown and systemized. This article is meant to help you look at the highest and best use of your time, energy and talent to get what you desire faster, sooner and more. Sometimes what’s in your back yard is where you’ll find your acres of diamonds.

Do you know what “waiters” do? They wait and serve. Real estate investors are do-ers. They create results. To get the results you desire, travel to your niche market, drive through the neighborhood that you have identified as your ideal demographic, select the prime real estate in that neighborhood and make an unsolicited offer.