By Gregg Cohen

Infusionsoft is one of our company’s “secret weapons.”  It’s an CRM, database and marketing platform that is built for small businesses.  And it’s amazing!

I’ve been a client for over 3 years now and it has helped my business grow immensely in a very short time period.  But more important that the actual software of Infusionsoft are the people behind the product.  I have flown to Arizona and met the Infusionsoft team twice now and I’m very impressed with the caliber of people on their team.  It’s inspiring!

Consequently, I follow the Infusionsoft blog and would recommend all of our subscribers do the same.  You can check out their blog by clicking here.

I wanted to share a blog post that written by Marc Chesley of Infusionsoft and originally appeared on their bog on Aug. 20, 2010.  You can click here to view the entire blog post as well.

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Make Yourself Uncomfortable

By Marc Chesley on August 20, 2010

When you hear the word “uncomfortable”, what comes to mind? I’m guessing you have thoughts or feelings with some sort of negative connotation associated with the concept of being uncomfortable. I know that is exactly how I used to feel about being uncomfortable. Not anymore. A few months ago, I began actively seeking-out decisions, tasks and other situations that were intentionally uncomfortable. In doing so, my personal productivity, effectiveness and confidence has shot through the roof!  Let me explain…

I recently read two books that have made a huge impact on me in many ways. The first book is Linchpin by Seth Godin and the second book is 4-Hour Workweek, by Tim Ferriss. Both books are amazing and packed with gems of knowledge and inspiration.  Of the many ideas and concepts from these books, there are two ideas that I have combined that directly relate to this concept of being uncomfortable.

First, in Linchpin, Seth Godin introduced me to the concept of Emotional Labor. Emotional Labor is bringing guts, ideas, passion and love to work when you and others don’t feel like it. Godin writes about making your “work” your “art”. Seth Godin proposes that we embrace the fact that the only thing we get paid for is doing Emotional Labor. To become indispensable to your organization and become a “Linchpin”, do Emotional Labor the best and you will keep getting rewarded for it.

Next, in 4-Hour Workweek, Tim Ferriss advocates intentionally embracing discomfort and uncomfortable situations as a method for making positive change in your life. No doubt, Ferriss crafted the idea of purposeful and voluntary discomfort from his admiration of the ancient Roman Stoic philosopher,  Seneca. Tim Ferriss quotes Seneca throughout The 4-Hour Workweek. Ferriss wants us to expose ourselves to fear, to potential embarrassment, to risk.  Mentally go to the place of the worst-case possible scenario. Doing this helps us very clearly recognize appropriate courses of action. Tim Ferriss has a  great video talking about these principles.

By combining these ideas from Godin and Ferriss, I come up with Uncomfortable Emotional Labor. I have found that during times of discomfort… when we feel most uncomfortable… that the most meaningful, forward progress is achieved. Identifying and attacking an uncomfortable issue, task or situation is Emotional Labor.  Put another way, the most effective Emotional Labor is the type that feels uncomfortable. This Emotional Labor is hard, it takes guts, it fully engages creativity, and ignites passion and love.  And the payoff is amazing!  Think about it, how satisfied are you when you accomplish something routine and safe?  Compare that with the level of satisfaction you feel when accomplish something hard to do, something scary, something possibly embarrassing or risky? Big difference, and not just for your personal satisfaction, but also for results you are driving for your organization.

How do you engage Uncomfortable Emotional Labor? Identify uncomfortable tasks and decisions and put them at the top of your daily action list. Have you been putting-off holding a colleague, employee, a vendor, a relative, or (hardest of all) yourself accountable for something?  Do you see something in your life or business that needs to change, but you postpone action in an effort to not “stir the pot”? Take a look at your task list and decide what is the most uncomfortable thing on your list. Then make that item the top priority. The task list approach is good place to start, but it tends to be very tactical. Also, think more strategically and holistically by forcing yourself to think of Uncomfortable Emotional Labor in the context of quarterly or annual objectives you are driving.

Put yourself out there. Get uncomfortable.

I’d love to hear how you apply Uncomfortable Emotional Labor in your life.  For me, the more I focus on these concepts, ironically, the more comfortable I am engaging Uncomfortable Emotional Labor. Quite an interesting paradox… but, I’ll save that discussion for another time.

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How are you doing when it comes to “being comfortable” about “being uncomfortable?  Leave a comment and let us know!

By Gregg Cohen

Hopefully you’ve been following my 3 part blog post series on ways that you can acquire real estate without using any of your cash, credit or needing a bank loan. If not, here’s a quick recap:

Secret Insider Technique #1: Seller Financing is wealth-building on Steroids! (click here to read blog post)

Secret Insider Technique #2: Take over properties “Subject-To” and build your real estate portfolio! (click here to read blog post)

And that brings us to today’s topic. Now you might want to sit down for this one, because you’ve probably never heard of it before and it takes a little bit of brain-power.

So, guess what. Not every seller is going to have a free & clear property (required for a Seller Financing offer) and not ever seller is going to accept an offer to merely sell their property for what is owed on the mortgage (required for a “Subject-To” offer.) APPARENTLY, some sellers have this crazy idea that they should actually make money when they sell their property (I know, it annoys me as well ).

So that’s where this little beauty comes into play:

If you'd like to read my special report that has all 3 of the Secret Techniques, just click here!

Secret Insider Technique #3:

Subject-To and Seller Financing: A highly profitable combination!

Have no fear, we have yet another Secret Insider Technique that still won’t require any of your own cash or credit. It combines the best of both worlds of Seller Financing and Subject-To!

We can use this strategy when the following occurs: A seller wants to sell the property and currently has a loan on it, but wants to make a profit on the deal. So, anytime someone wants to make a profit on the deal we ask those magic wealth-building words once again:

“Mr. Seller, I can pay you the price you want for the property, but I’ll have to pay you over time. Can you handle that?”

We structure the deal so that we take over the payments on the current loan AND create a new loan with the seller which we will pay off over time. Using the numbers from Secret Insider Technique #2, I’ll show you how this deal would work out:

Market Value of Property: $130,000

Seller’s Asking Price: $105,000

Current Loan on Property: $100,000

Current Monthly Payment: $700

Projected Monthly Rent: $950

So, we take over the current loan just like we did in the previous example. In this case, we would now pay the $700 monthly payment to the bank. That is the Subject-T0 part of this transaction.

We THEN create a new loan with the seller where we will PAY HIM DIRECTLY. Again, whenever you are using Seller Financing, you are only limited by your own financial creativity. So let’s say we agree to take out a new loan to the seller with the following terms:

New Seller Financing:

Loan: $5,000

Interest Rate: 0%

Monthly Payment: $50

Payment Term: 100 months

So, now let’s combine both the Subject-To and the Seller Financing parts of the deal and see what kind of transaction we have put together:

Purchase Price: $105,000

Down Payment: Zero!

Equity: $25,000

Monthly Cash Flow: $200

When you use one of these Secret Insider Techniques, or a combination of both, you remove all of the potential roadblocks that stand in your way of acquiring massive wealth in real estate! You are not limited by your own cash and you’re not limited by your credit or bank financing regulations – you are merely limited by your financial creativity!

By Gregg Cohen

It’s time to reveal my Secret Insider Technique #2 for Buying Real Estate (how’s that for a marketing spin ) Just in case you missed my last blog post, I am devoting the next couple of articles on my favorite techniques for buying real estate that don’t require you to use any cash, credit or need a bank for any reason. Now, let’s roll right into Secret Technique numero dos:

If you'd like to read my special report that has all 3 of the Secret Techniques, just click here!

Secret Insider Technique #2:

Take over properties “Subject-To” and build your real estate portfolio!

Now, as you can tell from my previous Secret Insider Technique, I love Seller Financing. The only thing about Seller Financing offers is the property needs to be owned free & clear in order for them to work like I described earlier. So what happens when the seller already has a loan on the property?

Don’t worry, my good friends. This is where Secret Insider Technique #2 comes into play! This technique is called taking over properties “Subject-To” (short for “taking over properties subject-to the existing mortgage”, for you brainiacs out there!)

Subject-To investing allows you to buy a property from a seller by merely taking over their payments on their existing loan. You might have heard of an assumption of mortgage before, and Subject-To investing is similar, however there are some major differences (I want to make it clear that Subject-To investing and assuming a mortgage are NOT the same thing!)

When you take over a property Subject-To, you agree to continue to make the monthly mortgage payments for the previous owner. The loan will remain in the previous owner’s name and the bank will not be notified of the change in ownership. This means the loan will actually continue to show up on the previous owner’s credit report and you will just be making the monthly payment for the seller.

Now, why is this so powerful?

1. You don’t need any credit to do this transaction!
2. You don’t have to put any cash down!
3. You have no limit to the number of properties you can acquire this way!

Let’s put some numbers behind this to see how a deal like this would work out:

Market Value of Property: $130,000

Seller’s Asking Price: $100,000

Current Loan on Property: $100,000

Current Monthly Payment: $700

Projected Monthly Rent: $950

You agree to purchase the property from the seller by taking over the property Subject-To. Your plan is to rent the property for $950 per month.

So, you assuming you know how to handle the paperwork (we can give you a hand with that!), you have now set up the following deal for yourself:

Purchase Price: $100,000

Down Payment: Zero!

Equity: $30,000

Monthly Cash Flow: $250

Now, I don’t know about you, but that looks like a winner to me! And the best thing about this deal is you didn’t have to use any of your own cash or credit. You can literally get a deal like this done is a week! That’s some powerful stuff. So make sure you add the Subject-To technique to your real estate tool belt to start growing your real estate portfolio immediately!

And stay tuned for the next blog post where I will be revealing the 3rd and final Secret Insider Technique…

By Gregg Cohen

Thanks for hoppin’ the blog! Over the next couple blogposts, I wanted to share my 3 favorite Secret Insider techniques for acquiring massive wealth in Real Estate with no cash, no credit and no banks. These strategies we will be discussing here are the absolute exact strategies the gurus teach in their training courses, bootcamps and coaching programs.

How do I know this to be correct? Because I went to all of those guru seminars and bought their courses! And as a result of investing in our education, we’ve done over 125 deals over the past 5 years – many using the same Secret Insider Techniques I will be sharing with you!

So, without further adieu, let’s get into the meat of the articles!

If you'd like to read my special report that has all 3 of the Secret Techniques, just click here!

Secret Insider Technique #1:

Seller Financing is long-term wealth building on Steroids!

I’m comin’ out of the gates swingin’ with my absolute favorite way to acquire real estate. And if you think this is a money-maker, then I know you’ll stay tuned to the next two blogposts just to see what else I have in store for you.

This technique is called Seller Financing (aka “Owner Financing”), and let me tell you, there is no faster way to build long-term wealth. Now here’s how it works:

When people typically buy a property, they work with two major parties – the seller and the bank (now, there might be realtors who act on behalf of the buyers and sellers, but let’s forget about them to keep it simple.)

But, with seller financing, we ask the seller to BECOME the bank. We do this by asking the seller this magic question (write this down, it will make you wealthy if you apply it!):

“Mr. Seller, I can pay you the price you want for the property, but I’ll have to pay you over time. Can you handle that?”

“Paying the seller over time” is another way of saying you will pay off the loan over time. What you are doing is creating a loan with the seller, instead of with the bank.

Now here are the benefits of doing a seller-financing transaction:

1. No bank red-tape or a loan approval process
2. No loan origination fees or any other bogus fees that a bank typically charges
3. No credit needed to do a transaction like this
4. Who said anything about 20% down? How about putting $0 down!
5. Who said anything about paying interest? How about 0% interest!
6. You are only limited by your financial creativity!

I hope you can see the awesome power that Seller Financing offer have when it comes to building your wealth. Buying real estate has always been a successful strategy for building long-term wealth, but Seller Financing offers are like long-term wealth building on steroids! Start making these Seller Financing offers today and watch your wealth sky-rocket!

Stay tuned to my next 2 blogposts and I’ll reveal my other 2 Secret Insider Techniques…

By Gregg Cohen

In my last blog post, I shared with you the mental shift our team had when it came to focusing on raising private money to grow our real estate business. Basically, we realized the way to grow our business and the number of transactions we can handle each year was not by working harder….it was by building our network of private money lenders so that we could do multiple transactions at the same time.

So, the next question I always get when teaching about raising private money is this….where do you find your private money lenders?

We raised just about $3 million in private money just in 2009!

And my answer to our students is this….you’re already eating dinner with most of them!

Here’s the deal. When we started in real estate, we were 23 and had no real estate experience and very little money. My business partners and I all come from very modest, hard-working backgrounds and our families are not wealthy. But that hasn’t stopped us from raising over $4 million in private money to do our real estate transactions…and most of that has come from the people we are closest with!

We have never once sent out a piece of marketing to solicit private money lenders. We have never once held a seminar with the purpose to raising private money. All of our private money lenders have come through our relationships with friends, family and our colleague in the real estate business. And that’s the way it should be for you too! (The SEC has rules against marketing for private lenders anyways, so be careful about that.)

One ninja trick we used to raise private money when we got started was we allowed our lenders to lend small amounts of money to get started. In the beginning, we would let people invest with as little as $10,000. One thing we found is that when you let someone invest with a small amount and you return their money after the transaction is complete, they ALWAYS come back to you the next time ready to lend.

Only this time they have more money to lend! For us, its the rule of 3. If someone initially has a certain amount of money to lend, just assume that they really have about 3x as much available. All you have to do is prove it to them once, and then the rest of the money will be available next time!

By Gregg Cohen

For the first couple years in business, my team didn’t really focus on raising private money. We were so focused on our marketing and finding good deals (and staying alive as the market took a dive ) that we didn’t really grasp what private money lenders could do for our business.

So at our business planning meeting in Jan. 2009, we laid out our goals for the upcoming year. The number for 2009 was 50 deals….that’s what we we’re going to achieve. “Okay,” we said to ourselves, “now that that’s set, how the heck are we going to accomplish that?” You see, we had never done more than 28 deals in one year before, and we were basically going to have to double that. Not exactly a small task, huh?

From 2009 - 2010, our team will be doubling the number of deals we do because we started focusing on raising private money!

We knew we were going to need to make a drastic change to achieve our goal of 50 deals. And then it hit us like a ton of bricks….if we can raise private money then we can do more deals at the same time. No more waiting for one deal to close to do another deal. The more money we can raise, the more deals we can do, and the greater chance we have of reaching our goals!

So if you have been hesitant to really get out there and raise private money for your real estate business, let me tell you that is probably stunting your growth. If you don’t have plans to do 50 deals a year, that’s okay….but you still should be focusing on raising private money. It will increase your speed, increase your profits and you will build lifelong relationships through private lending.

In my next blog post, I’ll tell you how we’ve raised just about $3 million in private money just in 2009 and where we find our private lenders…so stay tuned!

By Gregg Cohen

We all know there are a ton of great ways to use video to help sell your houses quicker. The problem is that shooting videos, editing them and finally creating a finished video usually is a pain in the you-know-what.

First you have to charge the video camera, bring it to the house, make sure the lighting is correct, make sure you don’t sound like an idiot on camera, come back to the office, edit the video (which can take forever!!!), then upload it to a video site, then put it on your website….it just becomes too much hassle for what its worth. And when that happens, it just doesn’t get done.

But you do need to be taking advantage of everything video can offer. We just have to figure out a way to fit it into our busy schedules. That means it has to be quick, easy and cheap to implement….and I have found your solution!

I stumbled across a new site called www.animoto.com and it blew me away. The brains at Animoto basically created a way to create awesome-looking videos that are created from your images automatically. So basically, you just upload your images and click a button and a professionally edited video gets created. They even have free music to add to the music.

We’ve been using this is our office to create short videos of our retail homes for sale and our wholesale deals for sale. Here’s an example of one clip we put together:

Click here to see an animoto.com video of one of our renovated homes

Using videos like this, we have been able to consistently drive in 100′s of retail buyer leads per month! And there’s not much to it….it literally takes about 5 minutes to create one of these animoto videos.

Whenever people see videos that have been edited like these, there is a very high perceived value. They think you spent some time and money putting it together and instantly your company has more credibility.

They never have to know that its all available for free! So shhhhh……don’t let the secret out

By Gregg Cohen

Recently I was being interviewed by Preston Ely, one of the best real estate marketers and gurus out there, he asked me about my real estate team that will be flipping 72 homes this year. So I started to tell him about how we got started, how we found our mentors, and why we continue to be successful. I told him that we’ve spent almost $50,000 in education to learn this business and that we always continue to invest in our training and education – just like our mentors taught us. I even told him that all of the teammates in our office are required to do a book report which we present every week in our Tuesday Morning Meeting.

That’s when he started laughing….”Book reports at work? Are you serious???”

You can actually watch a clip of the interview by clicking here:

Click here to listen to a clip of Preston Ely Interviewing me

Preston couldn’t believe it, and you might not either, but everyone in my office continues to do weekly book reports. We got the idea from our mentors, Than Merrill and Paul Esajian of Fortune Builders and A&E’s “Flip This House”, and have kept the program going for over 4 years now. It’s a great way to stay in the learning mode even as we try to accomplish our goals of flipping so many houses.

I’d recommend you do it as well in your real estate business. If it’s just you in your business and you don’t have a team surrounding you yet, challenge yourself to read one book a month (at least.) If you are working with a business partner or spouse, rotate weeks and make sure you present to one another. The act of getting up in front of an audience (even if it is only one person) will also help you fine-tune your public speaking and presentation skills.

And if you are very experienced in real estate and have flipped a dozen or so homes, don’t fall into the trap of “thinking you know it all.” In fact, you need this weekly book report more than the newbies, because you are at a point where you can generate a lot more income just by learning one new skill.

Sadly, however, as soon as a real estate investor starts to experience some success more often than not that investor stops investing in their education. And, unfortunately, they find themselves working very hard, often for less money than they were originally anticipating. Does this sound like you or someone you know?

Make a very small, manageable change in your routine and institute book reports in your weekly routine and you will immediately see the benefits.

If you’d like a great recommendation of the first book to read, go out and get The One Minute Manager by Ken Blanchard. I just read it this weekend….amazing book!

By Gregg Cohen

If there’s one thing we’ve found after 5 years or so in business, it’s that the willingness to embrace technology – rather than avoid it – has been a key factor that has contributed to our success. And if you’ve ever met me, or any of my teammates here at Real Estate Proven Profits or Progress Home Buyers (our real estate development company), you know that we ARE NOT techies!

Basically, I really like when technology works, and I get really bent-out-of-shape when it doesn’t. I’m talking annoyed, crabby and generally in a bad mood. So what do I do? I don’t put myself in a position where I need to be the one to figure out how to get the technology working. I ask others for help. And guess what? They’re usually pretty excited to show me exactly how to make it work for me.

This allows me to continue to embrace technology and keep my business growing at a fast rate, rather than lagging behind the times.

If you're not using skype in your business, you're crazy!

A good example of this was when our team upgraded our inter-office communication and switched to Skype. We had been using AOL Instant Messenger before, and it was okay, but Skype completely blows it away! Here’s some of the really cool features Skype has:

• instant messenging
• video chat
• calling with one click (just like paging someone in another office)
• share your screen with your teammate
• organize a group conference call
• organize a web meeting (gotomeeting) where everyone can share their screen (and record for later too!)
• send files instantly

All of this is absolutely free. All you have to do is set up your teammates (both in your office and outside your office) with Skype accounts. We’ve only been using Skype a short while and I already can’t remember life before Skype!

Grandpa on Skype!

I’ve been so excited about Skype that I’ve been telling everyone about it. I was just up visiting my grandfather in South Carolina and I got him on Skype too! (better way of keeping in touch with the grandkids). If I can get my grandfather (who just turned 80) on Skype, don’t give me any of your “I hate technology” excuses!

So do your real estate business, or any business you have for that matter, a favor and get your team set up on Skype today…you’ll thank me later!