Last night Channel 10 broadcast an important programme both for us as individuals and as property investors. Cool Aid highlighted how our day-to-day activities generate greenhouse gases and contribute to global warming.

I hope you saw it and decided to make some changes to your lifestyle to help save the planet.

I must admit, I’ve been a “greenie” for more than 25 years and one of our objectives in moving to the farm was to live a more sustainable lifestyle. Even though we’ve tried to minimise our impact on the environment and grow our own vegetables, there is still more that we can do and we found the suggested action steps suggested at the end of the program very helpful.

One of the guests on the program was Al Gore who has become a champion for the environment with his book, movie and DVD called “An Inconvenient Truth.” If you haven’t already seen the movie, I suggest you get hold of the DVD and watch it. It could save your life!

Another guest on the program was scientist, Dr. Karl Kruszelnicki.

He made two important points that property investors need to keep in mind.

The first one was the issue of some scientists who argue that climate change is just a normal phenomenon and is nothing to worry about. Dr Karl pointed out that there are many different types of scientists and that scientists generally focus on specific areas until they become specialists in that area.

He argued that the only scientists you should listen to on the issue of climate change are those who specialise in climatology.

While the others may still be scientists, it doesn’t mean they have any particular knowledge of the subject area and may be just voicing their opinion without having researched the matter fully.

This is a very good point and one that is just as relevant to property investors as it is to the issue of climate change.

You see, many would be property investors seek guidance from people who are not successful property investors in their own right (but who nevertheless have an opinion about the benefits or otherwise of property investment). These are people such as work colleagues, professional advisers who are not property investors themselves or friends and family.

That is a very dumb strategy!

It’s the same as asking your motor mechanic for a second opinion after your doctor has told you that you need brain surgery to remove a malignant tumour. You wouldn’t do it, would you?

So therefore, whenever you seek guidance from someone, make sure they have the credibility and experience to advise you intelligently and that they are not simply giving you their opinion. Make sure they walk their talk!

Smart investors base their investment decisions on facts, not on peoples’ opinions.

Dr Karl made another important point which will have an impact on property investors around the world. While I can’t remember the exact statistics, he pointed out that a significant percentage of the world’s population lives close to the coastline and no higher than 20 metres above sea level.

He actually stated, with the high probability that sea levels will rise in the future, there will be a significant drop in real estate values of properties which we now consider to be highly desirable and very valuable.

Can you conceive the possibility of the multi-million dollar harbourside mansions around Sydney harbour becoming next to worthless?

Ouch!

Just think of all the infrastructure that could be underwater!

How will some people catch the train to work?

Al Gore pointed out that even the World Towers memorial site could be underwater in Manhattan.

I have been saying this for about 10 years now and some people have said I’m crazy.

Now I know I’m ahead of my time a bit on this one, but I actually had a waterfront property in Sydney and sold it, so I’ve put my money where my mouth is.

As far as I can see, it is very unlikely that global warming is not a reality and that the human race has not contributed to the rising temperatures.

Just the massive population explosion over the last 100 years and the industrial revolution, should be enough to make most thinking people realise that all of this can’t simply take place without having an impact on our environment.

Fortunately we can still do something about the current situation. The changes will not occur overnight, so there is no need for despair. However, inaction will not save us either.

Here are some action steps you can take as a result of reading this post:

1. Examine your current lifestyle and make some decisions to reduce your contribution to carbon emissions in your home or business. Visit: www.coolaid.com.au for ideas.

2. Learn more about climate change and the environment and support leaders who take active measures to reduce carbon emissions and support sustainable energy and lifestyle policies. The time for talk is over. We need to take action now.

3. Consider where you live now and how rising sea levels and rising fuel prices will affect your wealth, your lifestyle and your ability to earn an income. Think about what changes you can make ahead of time.

4. Consider where your investment properties are located and how their values may change in the future. Consider not only the issue of rising sea levels, but also that some areas are receiving far less rainfall, that some areas may turn to desert while other areas may become wetter. Consider also that some businesses may collapse because they are based around certain landmarks, or natural features which may be inaccessible or destroyed in the future.

5. Ask yourself what you can do to help reverse the trend towards increased global warming, to educate others and to re-allocate your money to areas that are likely to prosper with the changing conditions. Let me warn you: it will take courage to venture into unchartered waters and some people will criticise you for it, however those investors that ignore the crowd and do what they consider to be right, often end up making the most money.

To comment on this post, please click on the comments link below.

Technorati Tags: climate change, cool aid, Dr. Karl Kruszelnicki, property investors, real estate investing

Hans :: Mar.05.2007 :: Personal, Real Estate Investing, General :: 1 Comment »

The short answer is: NO!

I’m often asked to convince someone’s “better half” that they really need to be more supportive of their partner and encourage and support them in their investing objectives.

Usually one person considers themself to be more courageous, while their partner is “holding them back or is too scared of losing everything in case they make a mistake”.

Another common complaint I hear is that “my partner is happy for me to invest, as long as I don’t use our family home as collateral to borrow against.”

These are very valid concerns, however the issue here is not one of property investing, but one of a lack of common goals.

If you find yourself in a situation where one of you wants to move forward and the other party is holding back, you need to sit down and discuss the situation rationally and find out what the true concerns are.

Remember that even if you see things differently, your partner’s concerns are true for them and need to be addressed before you can move forward together.

One strategy you could try is to take a sheet of paper and draw a line down the middle. On the left hand side write down the benefits you could enjoy by investing in property and on the right hand side identify the things you would miss out on by not investing.

Take this exercise seriously and think carefully about it and discuss it with your partner.

Then, take a second sheet of paper and once again draw a line down the middle. On the left hand side write down all the risks you see as being involved in property investing and on the right hand side make a list of how you might be able to manage those risks or who you could consult to help you deal with those risks.

As you do this exercise, you will come to realise that the biggest key to your success will be to learn to become a smart property investor. The more you educate yourself, the less daunting the risks will become and the more confident you will be about moving forward.

Probably the worst thing you can do is ask someone’s opinion who is not a successful property investor. They will be more than willing to share horror stories with you and they will know at least a dozen people who encountered problems with tenants or some other dramas in their unsuccessful property investing career.

Asking a failure for advice is a total waste of time and energy! It’s also not very intelligent.

Learn from people who are successful property investors and they will more than likely tell you how to deal with the challenges along the way.

Yes you will encounter some challenges and yes you will make some mistakes. That comes with the territory and you should be prepared for that!

What you need to do is to learn how to deal with those challenges successfully. If you want to know how I can teach you to become a more successful property investor, click here.

Technorati Tags: Investing Safely, Investment Risks, Real Estate Education, real estate investment

Hans :: Feb.21.2007 :: Personal, Real Estate Investing :: No Comments »

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 »

One of the potential profit torpedos you may encounter as a real estate investor is the presence of asbestos in your investment property.

Now before you shy away from anything that may even look like asbestos, let me suggest you ‘hasten slowly’ because there could be substantial rewards waiting for you, if you are willing to do some legwork.

Asbestos, like many other challenges you may have to face in life and as a real estate investor can be solved. All it takes is money. And…

…if it could cost you money, and you are in the process of negotiating a property purchase, you need to take the opportunity to negotiate a better deal, which will not only cover the cost of dealing with the problem, but also your time and effort in taking care of it.

Because there are many potential purchasers who would shy away from a property containing asbestos, it puts you in a strong bargaining position if you are willing to take care of the problem.

In my Super Secrets To Real Estate Wealth course, I describe this type of situation as an ‘acute’ problem, which can lead to good profits for you. While a ‘chronic’ problem is one that hangs around for a long time, an acute problem is one that can be dealt with in the short term.

One thing I’ve learnt in life is that most problems can be solved if you are willing and able to throw enough money at them. Asbestos in a building is one of those types of problems.

In some cases you may even have to demolish the building to solve the problem, but it CAN be solved.

Probably the first thing you need to do if you suspect that a property may contain asbestos, is to ask the agent about it, (preferably in writing) and the second thing is to make a note to advise your solicitor that you will want a special condition included in the contract to cover you for costs of dealing with the asbestos issue.

I say make a note, because at this stage you still have a bit of work to do before you will want to proceed to calling for contracts.

The next thing you will want to do is to determine the extent of the problem and how much it is likely to cost to rectify it.

If you suspect that the building contains asbestos, or if you’ve been told that it does, it’s a good idea to talk to the real estate agent about it. He would have a duty to disclose this to any other potential purchaser and that would scare most people off the deal for a start. (I believe that’s called eliminating your competition! )

Having done that, you would want to consult an asbestos removal contractor and obtain a quote for the removal of the asbestos. Then you’ll need to consult a number of other tradespeople to determine the cost of replacing the asbestos with a benign material. If you can obtain these quotes for free, that’s great. If it will cost you money to obtain these quotes, then you’ll need to put your negotiating hat on before you seek out this information.

One strategy might be to go back to the real estate agent and tell him that you have identified a number of contractors and ask him to talk to the vendor about seeking a quote (at the vendor’s expense) to have the rectification work carried out.

If the vendor is not interested in doing that, you’ll need to decide if you can make an educated guess as to the cost of the work required (double it for good measure), add in a cost for you to take the risk, organise and supervise the work and then start negotiating a reduction in the asking price.

Any reduction negotiated can be subject to you being able to confirm the true costs of the work involved.

Basically, the person who is willing to solve people’s problems stands to make money by taking care of the issue. Just how much money you stand to make will depend upon how well you can negotiate.

Let me share with you, two of my own experiences in situations like this.

When I bought my farm and as we were about to exchange contracts, my lawyer asked me to have a look at the plan and description of the property and confirm that what I was buying was exactly what I was expecting to buy. On checking the plans, I saw some separately designated areas and asked what they were. It turned out that they were separate landholdings surrounded by my property. Some areas were designated as crown land while two areas were owned by outside parties.

Since the agent had not told me about this situation earlier, I asked the lawyer not to exchange contracts until I came back to him with instructions.

My next phone call was to the real estate agent.

Now most real estate agents are super keen for the contracts to exchange and are very nervous if their deals are in danger of falling over. (They’ve either allocated their commission to something or already spent it in anticipation of the deal going through )

This is how I started the conversation with the agent: “James, we have a problem….(pause)…..”

How do you think the agent was feeling now?

Worried! Right?

That’s exactly what I wanted him to be. (I was about to push for a reduction in the purchase price).

I pointed out to him that he had not told me about these areas of land that were excluded from the sale and he told me that he was not aware of them either. (Even better for me!)

I therefore asked him to go back to the vendor and ask for a reduction in the purchase price. This he did and we achieved a further $10,000 discount.

When I bought my office building in Portland, I discovered that the awning needed to be strengthened. I only discovered this about one and a half hours before we were about to exchange contracts on the building.

Not knowing how much this would cost to do, I had to make an educated guess and decided on a figure of $5,000. The actual cost to repair the awning came in at just over $300.

In my opinion, negotiating is one of the most important and most rewarding skills you can develop. What is even more fun, is that when it comes to real estate deals, you can get the real estate agent to do the wheeling and dealing for you.

Technorati Tags: asbestos, commercial real estate, negotiating real estate deals, real estate investing, residential real estate

Hans :: Feb.08.2007 :: Personal, Real Estate Investing :: 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 »

On Saturday, we celebrated my youngest daughter’s engagement to Shaun Stenning who originally hails from Echuca in Victoria.

Stephanie joined me in the business in April last year and I promised her that she would learn much more (and more quickly) by working with me than she would at university. I told her that I would send her to seminars and courses and that she would learn a lot “on the job”. (I couldn’t believe I was saying that to her as she came home one evening, ready to drop out of university)

She has certainly learnt a lot in that time and has made some massive changes to her life since then too. Life in the business has been very hectic for her since she joined us and I’m sure she sometimes thinks: “life was much easier back at uni”.

Stephanie and I started a new business together and she bought a house in 2006.

Little did I know when I suggested that she should join me at an internet marketing seminar in August 2006 that this would have such a HUGE impact on her life.

You see, the seminar was held in Melbourne and I had a team of software developers who also worked for me in Melbourne. I spoke with Ben who heads up that team and suggested it would be a good idea if he and some of his key people went along to this seminar.

This they did and one of those people who came along to the seminar was Shaun.

Despite the fact that Stephanie had a terrible cold that weekend, Shaun decided that “she was the one”.

One Thursday evening back in November 2006, I came home and guess whose smiling face was there to greet me. It was Shaun. He told me he had flown up from Melbourne for the evening and would be going back home before the weekend.

Well that wasn’t to be because he joined Stephanie at one of the Tomorrow’s Youth seminars held by Brent Williams and Dale Beaumont. I think he was here for 3 weeks before he flew back to Melbourne for a few days to finalise things down there and move to Bathurst permanently.

We are delighted to welcome Shaun to our family and he has also joined us in the business and is making a wonderful contribution by heading up the team at Sure Fire Marketing.

To celebrate Shaun and Stephanie’s engagement, we had a wonderful party on the farm. Shaun’s parents, Brenda and Karl came up from Echuca together with his brother Matthew and sister Nicole.

Peter Rogers Real Estate kindly lent us their marquee for the weekend, while Grinners catering made sure everyone was well fed as we partied on till the early hours.

If that wasn’t enough, we greeted a beautiful sunday morning with a champagne breakfast on the terrace overlooking the grazing cows and calves in the paddock.

Just after lunch, it was too much for most so an afternoon nap was the order of the day to recharge the batteries.

Hans :: Jan.30.2007 :: Personal :: No Comments »

Even though I’ve been busily posting messages on this Blog for many months now, it’s only today that I’ve been able to make the proper design for this website LIVE! I haven’t publicised this site yet and there’s still a bit of work to be done before I will let the public at large know about this site. If you’ve already found this site now, it’s probably because you are one of the small group of people who have been given a link to this website.

Kiralee from Sure Fire Marketing designed it for me and Andrew, one of our programers worked for hours to do the programming. I’ve got no idea what they had to do to make it work, but I really like it. What about you?

What do you think? Feel free to leave me your feedback by clicking on the “comments” link at the end of this post.

Hans :: Jan.25.2007 :: Personal, General :: No Comments »

Have you seen that ad on TV where the kids are eating corn cobs with their heads outside the window? As the drops from their juicy corn cobs drop down onto the hot tin roof below, the father runs outside and says to his wife: “the rains are here Madge!” That’s my inspiration for today’s post.

If you live in New Zealand, England, Europe or other places where it rains quite often, it’s probably hard to imagine my excitement this morning when I woke up to the sound of falling rain. It’s a sound I haven’t heard very many times during the past 4 years.

For years now, we would wake up and see bright sunshine and hope for rain as we looked out over our parched landscape. Every day we would pray for rain in the hope of bringing relief to the many desperate farmers who were losing their stock and their livelihoods. Even large old trees have been feeling the strain and many of them have been dying.

The other day we heard about the plight of one farmer in our area who took his sheep to market where he received less for them than they had cost him and he came home and shot himself. He just couldn’t take it any more. So many farmers are desperately in need of rain and desperately in need of a good season for them to be able to survive. My heart goes out to them and I only hope they are receiving some of this wonderful rain too.

The importance of this wonderful rain should not be lost on the people of Sydney either. Often it rains in Sydney, but it has no benefit for the catchment area because most of it runs out to the ocean.

One of the creeks which originates on our property, actually ends up flowing into Sydney’s Warragamba Dam so the more rain we receive, the better it is for Sydney’s water supply. I think of this every time it rains because I used to live in Sydney and we still have a small farm which adjoins the main Warragamba to Sydney pipeline.

It was interesting to talk to some of the people in the street as they walked past our office door this morning. The rain has brought a new air of optimism and hope to the country and people are so very grateful for this wonderful rain. It’s so lovely to see the water filling up the dams and collecting in the paddocks.

Anyway, that’s enough of me prattling on about the rain. I hope you too have something in your life that you can be excited and grateful for.

Hans :: Jan.24.2007 :: Personal :: No Comments »

This morning I got up and walked around our garden before enjoying a nice breakfast with my wife on the terrace.

As my nostrils took in the crisp cool mountain air, I thought about how different it was to last night when the air was filled with smoke from the bushfires around Sydney. The birds were chirping and the frogs were croaking.

I took a moment to really be grateful for being alive and to appreciate the life I enjoy.

I purposely do this on a regularly basis because we often get so caught up in our day-to-day activities that we sometimes forget to ”stop and smell the roses”.

What about you? Do you take time out to stop and smell the roses?

Do you make time to talk to your partner, your children, relatives and friends?

It’s important you know. It’s more important than all the money in the world and the biggest and best job or business.  

Hans :: Jan.23.2007 :: Personal, General :: 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.”

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