This is a fair question and one that you should probably ask yourself (not only about me, but everyone) BEFORE you part with your hard earned money. If you’ve been burnt before, you’re not alone. I’ve also made some poor decisions where I’ve lost quite a bit of money.

Some years ago I was a speaker at an international conference and there was a person promoting an investment offering what I considered to be unrealistic rates of returns. Because quite a number of people asked me what I thought of the investment and the promoter of this scheme, I started doing some research.

The first thing I did was to look at the information the promoter was providing to prospective investors. The documentation consisted of a number of photocopied pages, no address details and a mobile phone number as a means of contact.

The promoter was inviting people to invest upwards of $100,000 and claimed to be a millionaire in his own right. He didn’t even have a business card.

When questioned about the poor quality of information he was providing to prospective investors, he explained that his luggage had been stolen or lost on the way to the hotel and he had to quickly put something together at the hotel’s business centre so he could tell people about his wonderful investment opportunity.

Now misfortune can happen to anyone and I’m at least willing to give someone the opportunity to give me a credible explanation before I dismiss what I hear.

Sadly in this case, Allan was a total shyster. It turned out that he had borrowed the money for the airfare, that he had been sharing a house with a few other people and that he was nothing more than a conman and a penniless bum!

When he spoke, he was very convincing and sounded quite credible. So much so, that he managed to extract several million dollars from naive investors at that conference.

I was so incensed by what I heard and saw from this conman that I wrote the book, Due Diligence Made Simple.

In this book I explain how you can research an investment opportunity so you don’t get burnt.

So why should you trust me?

The first reason is that I walk my talk and that I’ve been around for a long time. I only teach things that I’ve personally done and can prove.

Secondly, my business operates from established premises (which we own) with a proper street address and a good track record. Our ABN is 081 878 499.

Thirdly, you can see from the many testimonials on my websites, that I have a large number of successful students who have learnt and benefited from what I teach.

From time to time we are asked if it is possible to speak to these testimonial providers directly. Unfortunately this is not possible, because we respect our students’ privacy and never give out their contact details. I’m sure you will understand and respect this. So you can see that these testimonials are genuine however, we often provide pictures of the people giving the testimonial and/or audio or videos as well.

Finally, I acknowledge that we cannot please all people, all of the time and that some people may have different expectations of what we provide. That’s why we back up everything we sell with a money back guarantee so you truly have nothing to lose.

I don’t know how I can be any fairer than that and what else I can do to assure you that you will be well served with the information and products we provide.

In closing this post, let me address one more comment that I sometimes hear people make. Some people say: “I’ve been burnt too many times before to trust anybody now.”

Once again, I sympathise and empathise with this sentiment, however I’d also like to point out that it can be self destructive to you as well.

It’s not very productive for you to “tar everyone with the same brush.”

There will always be good and bad operators in every line of work and in every type of business that you come across. If you dismiss everyone as bad from the very beginning or allow your scepticism to overshadow every possible opportunity, you will be doing yourself a big disservice and become a distrusting, angry and bitter person. That will not benefit you and the only person you are hurting by that attitude is yourself.

My strongest suggestion to you is to accept that you are responsible for your financial future and that you have the power to change what is not working for you right now. Don’t blame anyone else for your situation and don’t beat yourself up over mistakes you have made in the past.

Recognise that we all make mistakes and that from time to time, you will make some more.

Remember that as a young toddler when you were learning to walk, you fell over many times and collected a lot of bruises and scrapes along the way. Nevertheless, the only reason you can walk today is that your parents continued to encourage you to get up and walk and because you persisted until you made it!

Always remember this, before you let a previous bad experience cloud your judgement for the future.

Technorati Tags: Investing Wisely, Investment Mistakes, real estate investing, Succeeding in Property

Hans :: Feb.15.2007 :: Personal, Real Estate Investing, Business :: No Comments »

It’s true that the world is made up of many different types of people with an incredible array of attitudes and beliefs. It’s also true that people from all walks of life and all types of backgrounds have been incredibly successful when they have chosen to follow proven strategies for success.

What I’ve noticed about people who succeed at what they choose to do (whether it be in sport, business, family, investing or any other pursuit) is that they take responsibility for their success.

They live by the motto: “If it’s to be, it’s up to me!”

People who are far less successful on the other hand, winge and whine and blame everyone else for their lack of success without ever looking in the mirror at the person who can do something about changing their circumstances. It’s always everyone else’s fault. It’s the economy. It’s too hard. - Whatever it is, it’s never them.

From where I sit, I see both types of people.

As you can see from the many testimonials I have received for my real estate investing education programs, I have many successful (and now wealthy) students.

I also have a handful of other people whose purpose in life is to prove that what I teach cannot be done and that it no longer works in today’s market or that it won’t work for them.

These are the people that want to speak to my testimonial providers and find out how they did it and to be assured that they can do it too. These people want to make absolutely sure that they have explored every possibility of getting their money back if they should fail. These people want someone to hold their hand for the next 20 years, every time they buy a property.

These people look for strength and inspiration outside of themselves, while winners realise that their strength and motivation comes from within themselves.

Winners look at other successful people and learn from them and model their behaviour. They work on the principle that if someone else has done it, then it must be possible and they just need to learn how to do it.

Less successful people make excuses while winners will persist until they succeed.

This message is not about judging you or anyone else for their attitudes and beliefs. We are all different and thats what makes this world so interesting.

My intention is that you will see this as a message of hope, inspiration and encouragement. I want to absolutely assure you that whatever your circumstances are right now, you have the power to change them.

Even though you may have to learn to do some things differently, even though you may need to think differently and even though you may need to ask someone else for help along the way, you definitely have the power to change things if you choose to do so. All you have to do is make a choice, and that choice is yours alone.

If people want to blame me for their lack of real estate investing success, then I’ll gladly accept the blame… And once they have finished blaming me, the economy, the interest rates, the government or anyone else, I invite them to ask themselves whether their blame game is serving them, or whether it is merely perpetuating their current situation.

Some people really need to stop and think about this.

Listen to the words you are using and when you think about them, you can ask yourself whether they are empowering you or dragging you down. Then consider what you could do to change, if you choose to do so.

Once you take responsibility for your situation, it is a very powerful place to be, because it also means that you can change what you are doing. That’s my message of hope to you.

I also want to inspire you to look at other successful people and know that you can be successful at whatever you choose to do. It’s not about comparing yourself to others and finding all the areas where you have fallen short. It’s about looking at your OWN past performance and seeing how you can keep improving.

Finally, I want to encourage you to take responsibility for your success.

You see, all of us have to face challenges and hardship on a daily basis. All of us have setbacks and all of us have our ‘ups’ and ‘downs’. It’s how we deal with these situations that sorts out the winners from the whiners.

Remember: Its not what happens to you in life that matters, but how you deal with what happens that matters!

If you are not happy with your situation in life right now, or if things aren’t going the way you’d like them to be, please stop and evaluate your current attitudes and beliefs and ask yourself if you are blaming others or if you are taking responsibility for how things are. If you want to change, do so now.

The first book I wrote is called: How To Be Rich & Happy On Your Income and has impacted the lives of hundreds of thousands of people around the world. It has been published in several languages and is in its 10th print run in Australia. It has been said that this book is much more than a book about money - its a book about your life!

If you’d like to learn some strategies to improve your life, you may want to read this book some time.

Hans :: Feb.01.2007 :: Personal, Real Estate Investing, General, Business :: No Comments »

Perhaps you’ve noticed that I love to negotiate and most of all when it involves a free beer or two.

Well today we were checking out wedding venues (again) for Shaun and Stephanie’s forthcoming wedding later this year and it was a fun time of negotiating.

It never ceases to amaze me how some people succeed in business when they don’t even take care of the basics. We had arranged appointments at 3 venues and NOT ONE of them had written down the appointment time, who they were meeting and a contact number. Not one! (And we were HOT prospects!)

At the first venue, the manager was not even on site when he told us he would be. It was probably the most modern and elegant venue in the city of Orange but it was a real challenge to do business with them. The manager was arrogant and rather difficult to discuss our needs with. We had to go back twice to talk to him. When we did some more research into this venue we found that although the venue was great, there was more than one report of poor food and service that we came across. As you can imagine, we didn’t end up booking that venue.

At the second venue we were confronted with a muddle headed proprietor who once again had no idea how to present her venue in a way which would instil confidence in someone who was considering spending a considerable amount of money with her.

The 3rd option was in a beautiful historic building, but unfortunately the room was so poorly designed that it was unsuitable for the number of guests we were expecting.

That’s when we got onto the mobile phone to ring a number of venues in Mudgee which was about 1.5 hours drive away. Given that it was after lunch when we rang and had a considerable distance to drive, everyone was very helpful and was willing to stay back for us and show us their venues.

We crammed in visits to 4 more venues until about 7pm and then headed to the restaurant of the venue which was our first choice for the wedding.

The reason it was our first choice, was because the functions manager went out of their way to show us all of the facilities and assure us that they would do their very best to make our function a great success. The venue provided both function facilites, an excellent backdrop for photos and accommodation for our guests.

When we suggested that we may want to fly the bride in by helicopter, they weren’t fazed and showed us where the chopper could land. Nothing was too much trouble and we made a booking on the spot.

The meal in the restaurant was excellent too, so we were sure we had chosen a good venue.

Once we had eaten, we were all very tired and we still had a long drive back to Bathurst and then to Portland so I went over to the counter to pay. This is when I jokingly said to the cashier: “we are looking to hold my daughter’s wedding reception here and that’s why we had dinner here tonight. I was told that if we eat here, we would receive a discount. What can you do for us?”

She looked at me in amazement and said: “Oh well, in that case you can have the beers for FREE”. We had 4 Coronas which were shown on the menu at $9 each so that was a $36 discount. Given that the food bill was $117.50, this represents a massive 30% discount. That’s quite good in my books. What do you think? Would that work for you?

The important question to ask yourself is: “how hard was it to ask?”

I’m sure you’ll agree that it wasn’t hard at all. It just meant mustering the courage to ask. Now I agree that can be hard at first, however the rewards for mustering the courage can be significant.

Another important question to ask yourself is: “what’s the worst that could have happened by asking?”

Once again I’m sure you’ll probably agree with me that the worst that could have happened was that the cashier could have said something like, “Sorry I’m not able to give discounts.”

While I would have persisted, I always keep the saying in mind: “You can’t lose something you never had.”

Technorati Tags: business coaching, negotiating, wedding venues

Hans :: Jan.13.2007 :: Personal, Real Estate Investing, Business :: 2 Comments »

2007 is going to be a very exciting year for us and a very high energy year as well. We spent the day today organising a new office for our website developers and graphic artists, and doing a major clean-up job. It’s always a bit of a challenge getting all of the services connected and working when you move into a new building, however things are coming together very well.

We have been recruiting website designers and developers for this new office as well as graphic designers and we are very excited about the dynamic and creative young team we are putting together. As well as working on our own websites, this team will be available for other businesses interested in tapping into the internet marketing skills and strategies of our very successful team.

I expect it will be a few weeks before everything is at the stage where I can tell you more about this exciting new development, so if this is something that interests you, stay tuned.

In the meantime, what I can tell you a lot more about is how I negotiated an excellent rent for this office space. I must say that this is also the first time I have rented space for very many years because I generally like to own the buildings I have my businesses in.

I’d rather be the landlord and tenant, all in one, through separate entities.

In this case however, I was able to negotiate such a good deal that it is more cost effective for me to rent than to own. It is also a transition time for us while we wait on Council approval for the development of the Bathurst Business Park development. We will be building a new office and warehouse for our businesses, once all the planning approvals are received.

Here’s the low down on the negotiations for our extra office in Bathurst.

The landlord was asking for an annual rent of $15,581.17 including GST for 121 sq metres. Now if you are in a larger city you’ll probably say that’s quite reasonable and I’d have to agree with you. However you need to make sure that you compare apples with apples.

You need to make comparisons within the SAME real estate market rather than across different markets. In the Bathurst market you’d probably come to the conclusion that this was about the going market rent at the moment.

I spent an afternoon looking at various premises with a number of real estate agents before Christmas and came up with a short list of 3 potential properties within the Bathurst CBD. A few days earlier, I had sent a fax to all the real estate agents in Bathurst explaining what I was looking for, however only 2 agents actually came back to me ahead of my deadline with some options.

Some of my real estate investing students complain that the agents don’t get back to them. Guess what? It happens to me too! Don’t stress about it though. Take control and follow them up yourself.

During my afternoon of research with these real estate agents I determined that:

1. there were quite a few potential office space options available to us at the time which would adequately meet our needs
2. some office premises had been vacant for a long time (this is always a risk with commercial real estate. You can certainly get some good returns, however when the premises are vacant, they can be vacant for a long time. In other words, the returns can be better than in residential real estate. but the risks are higher too. That’s not necessarily a problem, - you just have to be aware of the risks and be able to cope with long periods of vacancy without going under.)
3. The real estate boom in Bathurst has been and gone and there were several retail businesses who were feeling the pinch and who would be closing down just after Christmas. This meant that there would be even more options available in the New Year.
4. Several new retail projects are under construction in Bathurst right now and these will be nearing completion in the next few weeks and months. This may attract new national franchisees into the local retail scene and create more pressure on local retailers which in turn could lead to more vacancies, especially in older premises.

Armed with this information and the asking prices of the 3 properties on my short list, it was time to negotiate for my preferred choice of property. Remember: if I could not get this property, I still had two more options as part of my ‘exit’ strategy.

After a bit of asking around I found out that the property has actually been vacant for the last three years.

Now as you can imagine, I was looking for a good deal, however in order to get that good deal, I also had to think about what would be important for the landlord who has had no income from this part of his building for the past 3 years.

I figured I would offer him a substantial up front payment in return for a reduced rent because that would give the landlord immediate gratification and a sum of money which would make an immediate difference to him or her.

As you may remember, the landlord was asking for $15,581.17 including GST.

Here’s what I offered:

1. $9,000 rent including GST for 12 months, paid in 2 instalments, 6 months in advance
2. no bond
3. no outgoings
4. 1 week rent free to clean and move in

The landlord basically accepted my offer but asked me to increase the annual rent to $9,500 instead of $9,000.

As you might imagine, it didn’t take me long to accept the landlord’s counter offer and we had a deal!

What I haven’t told you yet is that the office came with air conditioning and heating, an alarm system, a 6 line telephone system and cabling for a computer network which is exactly what we needed for our business.

If I had to instal all of these items myself, I would be looking at an investment of between $15,000 and $20,000 on top of my annual lease.

Do you see why I feel I got a good deal?

Can you also see that I structured the deal in such a way that the landlord was happy as well?

Because this office area had been vacant for such a long time, there was a bit of cleaning to do to and we steam cleaned the carpets. We also had to get a telephone technician in to help with recommissioning the phone system for ourselves and we have asked an airconditioning firm to clean and check the air conditioning unit. All in all, these costs will be less than $1,000 and we have ourselves a great new second office!

What can you learn from the way I approached this deal and negotiated the leasing arrangements?

Could you apply these ideas to other areas of your life or business?

Even if you are not looking to rent some commercial office space, ask yourself how you might use these ideas to negotiate a different type of lease.

If you are a landlord with a vacant property, ask yourself how you might be able to attract a tenant with a different (more attractive) type of offer.

I just love negotiating! It’s a lot of fun and financially very rewarding.

I encourage you to get good at it too.

If you’d like to become a better negotiator, you might like to check out the information here.

Technorati Tags: commercial real estate, real estate, real estate investing

Hans :: Jan.03.2007 :: Real Estate Investing, Business :: No Comments »

I’ve just jumped on the computer quickly to wish you and your loved ones a fabulous New Year. In just a few hours, my wife and I will be catching up with friends to celebrate 2006 and welcome in the New Year. I don’t know about you, but I’m really looking forward to the New Year. I’ve already planned my first holiday for 2007 (in February) and we’ve got some very exciting new developments in our business and investment activities for this New Year.

Some people wait until they are well into the New Year before they plan for the year ahead. We held a 2 day planning meeting earlier this month and worked out EXACTLY what we want to do in 2007. In fact, we’ve already set the wheels in motion so when when we return to the office on the 8th of January, our plans for the New Year are turning into reality. What about you?

Anyway, enough of that. It’s party time. I think I’ll have another beer!

Technorati Tags: Business Planning, Hans Jakobi, Investment Planning

Hans :: Dec.31.2006 :: Personal, Business :: No Comments »