I am going to tell you a secret today that can make you a lot of money if you apply it. If you don’t use you can still make money by investing in Michigan foreclosures but then it is harder and takes longer.

And where the heck is the fun in that?

I mean there are certain things that have to be done at a certain point in you life otherwise you really don’t enjoy them as much.

Do you want to drive a Porsche when you are 35 or when you are 53? Do you want to date a certified hottie when you are 34 or when you are 64 (well maybe both?)? Do you want to hang out in Napa Valley for 8 days, eat some awesome food while driving in some of the most beautiful scenic setting in the world (I am going in April) or do you want to do that in 2017? Money today is a lot better than money coming to you sometime in the next 15 years.

So the secret of speeding up the game is important and correctly applied will work wonders in your Michigan real estate business. Most small business owners and Michigan real estate investors are too darn lazy to do anything anyway but I hope that YOU are not one of them and you will actually do apply the strategy that I am about to disclose to you.

But first a little story – last night was Nora’s birthday so I decided to take Nora out to dinner at our favorite Italian Chop House in West Bloomfield (Spozzitaa’s on 14 Mile Road and Farmington; 3 stars from Detroit News; a killer Filet Mignon with house Zip Sauce) – a place where her and I have been going for the last 6 six years at least twice a month. When Hailey and Saige are with me; they are allowed to actually go into the kitchen and make their own pasta dishes. The owners know us. The owner’s parents know us. The wait staff argues to wait on us. We know practically everybody who works there by name.

So we are having our dinner and talking about friends, life, love and relationships and everything in the middle and Lucy, our favorite hostess who is from Albania, decided to sit down with us and join the conversation which was at that moment in time was about…

I believe that in order to make your personal relationships work, if you love someone, you need to tell them this, all the time and not just once in a while. Nora thinks that it is crazy and very hard to do. So she told Lucy about this and then both of them Nora (married 7 years) and Lucy (married 17 years) were both arguing with me that it is impossible to expect that to happen all the time just because life is busy and who really has time to do all that and we should “just know” that the care, the love, the affection is there. “Don’t need to express it dude! I mean all the time. That is too much to ask from anybody. I mean who does that?” Lucy said to me.

My answer was that I have always assumed that everybody is always “busy” – between kids, work, family, school, money, business, worship, activities – who has time? Right?

Yet the same people who are busy all the time to do anything will eventually find time, actually lots of time to talk, to talk about love and relationships, go to counseling, once the divorce papers are delivered….

Why wait for that moment? Why wait for a disaster to strike? Why wait for something like this to happen before you express your love???

Lucy thought I had a point. Nora just gave me a dirty look.

But here is the point I am trying to make – this rule, applies also in your Michigan real estate business and you should think about it, practice it, make it your corporate slogan damn it if you have to but you need to know that….

Love is the killer strategy.

You should make a consistent effort not to just know the people in your Michigan foreclosure flipping business but your efforts should be to make them fall in love with you.

Love is good for business.

The majority of real estate investors in Michigan focus on the mechanical aspects of the business – finding a house, fixing a house, selling a house – which is good and you should be doing it all the time to get checks with your name on them.

But once you have flipped 5 houses, got five checks and you want to do another 30 deals – you can make your life easy if you make sure that the people that are going to make those next 30 deals possible not only just know you but also love you.

I have written extensively on the proper feeding of REO Realtors – everybody is too lazy to do that. I like hanging out with these guys (it is almost a 100% male dominated niche. Lisa Billings is the only goddess of bank owned foreclosures that I know of in Tri-County area) and talking the biz of buying bank foreclosures, what is going in the market, what they foresee coming, what is the deal volume look like, what are the asset managers talking about Michigan cities, about city of Detroit revival, the buzz, the grapevine, the things that are said between the lines…

All there, waiting to be given to you on a silver platter if you just ask and ask with love.

So here is the question – of 31 days in March – have you allocated at least 3 hours out of your very busy (insert sarcasm here) to take the dominant REO real estate agent in your Michigan city or county out to lunch?

I have also written extensively on knowing the top dog selling real estate agents in your Michigan City for flipping houses. Kelly Thompson, my Inner Circle member, pulled that off so brilliantly that I am in awe of her right now. She got it; did it right and continue to do it over and over again.

In every Michigan City – there is a player, sometime more than one; never more than 4 or 5, which is doing bulk of the sales in that area. Think I am kidding? Get access to MLS and pick a city and do a search for houses sold in the last 6 months in that city, export that file to Microsoft Excel and sort it by Agent Name – one name will stand out; some names will stand out too but not as much.

That name is worth couple of hundred thousand dollars right then and there because he or she is the one who is the top of the real estate sales pyramid in that city. They make money so they can afford to spend money on advertising that brings them buyers, which means that any given day their phone is ringing, ringing, ringing all the time with people who want to buy houses, sell houses.

They are players and they are playing THE GAME in Michigan not sitting on the sidelines, playing Solitaire on the office computer, pretending to look busy when the office manager or owners walk by.

You should know all of them in the Top 5 List but the top dog needs to know you. Needs to fall in love with you because they will sell a lot of houses for you, like the next 30 you would like to do.

Kelly has no worries about selling houses anymore – her only problem is to find time from her full time very tiring job at Chrysler assembly line (she works midnights) and family obligations to do more deals. Selling part has been solved but building a very strong bridge between her and one of the top real estate agents in her Michigan city.

Love is good for business.

So here is my question for you – do you know who the top dog is your target Michigan City is? Do they know you? Why not? Can you take time, may be 2 hours of your extremely busy schedule (sarcasm insertion again) to do something to insure that when March ends – they will know your name???

Somebody asked me recently on why it is so hard to get private investors? Actually it is not hard at all. Most Michigan real estate investors lack two things, I said, determination is one, a good marketing system to attract the right ones is another one. That is why a small number of Michigan real estate investors get flushed with cash – the rest wonder what happened and why they are still trying to get hard money approvals on Deal #8?

Well I was partially right – I should have added that love would be nice too. I have done it over and over again – private investors actually fighting over me, to take me out to lunch and dinners, to ask me to meet their friends, to hang out with me, to teach me how to play golf (horrifying thought!) to go to wine tasting at Townsend in Birmingham with me, to argue with me trying to give me more money, asking quietly to dump the rest of the group and do business with them ONLY.

All because I understood long time before I could articulate it that making a group of rich fat cats fall in love with me would be good for my Michigan real estate investing business.

I was never in awe of them, well may be initially I was a little nervous, but I always wanted them fighting to do deals with me and not me asking them to give me money.

How could you do that? How could you incorporate love in a heartless thing as money?

Well love is all about giving? Is it not?

And what do rich people want more than anything else in life that I could help them with TO GET?

Zing Ziglar says that if you help enough people get what they want out of life, they will help you to get everything that you want.

Give, give and give some more.

No need to ask because they will line up at the door, clamoring to love you back, do deals with you on your terms, send you referrals till you will call them ask and say “ Please Stop! I don’t anymore private investors.”

All that came from understanding that the rich love two things more that above – making money (easily done in real estate) and paying less taxes (do the funding of the deal out of their IRA’s). I taught them both of the above; actually sometime helped them fill out the paperwork to roll over their funds from somebody like Fidelity to Equity Trust.

A lot was given away initially for which I could have charged but I did not and then they all wanted to give back to me – money, contacts, referrals – all came tumbling out of them without asking.

Sounds too wooky for you? Too bad because I built a real business, with a speed that most people who come to know me find astonishing by using all the above. Even Nora sometimes, who has proof in front of her eyes and in her bank account (few things are better than cold hard cash to prove that the damn thing works) argues with me that it is not needed, that nobody would do all these things, but I tell her that knowing people, building relationships with them is not enough anymore in the crazy busy world of ours.

15 years ago – how many channels were on television? How many credit card companies were sending letters out every day? Where was the Internet? How many people had cell phones?

Everybody is busy, more than ever – that also includes all the people we do business in Michigan real estate.

Love is the knife that cut through the clutter and makes you rise, above your competition, on everybody’s speed dial almost instantly.

Love is the all that is.

Love is good for business.

Love is a killer strategy

A good place to go and learn how to use love as a strategy - no chocolates needed - but more of a strategy to make all this happen pretty much on autopilot, in a matter of days and not years is is my Quick Start 2007 which is 3 days, uncut, unedited with me and me only is scheduled for March 30, March 31 and April 1 in Troy, Michigan.

I will actually give you step by step strategies to do all the above and more in your Michigan real estate business literally overnight. There is power in love, in people fighting to do business with you, on your terms, because it gives you choice to pick the best deals, the cheapest money, the fastest way to sell houses - all the important parts of your Michigan foreclosure flipping business in 2007.

Is that a lovely thought or what?

As usual there are no outside speakers, nothing to buy – just me, one on one. I am teaching, deliberately very small groups in 2007, 10-15 students max – it is more fun for me that way plus it also insures that I can actually spend time with one each student. It also means that the doors are closed early and pretty quickly so you gotta hurry up if you intend to come and spend 3 days with me. Details about the boot camp and videos are found here.