Wes Mahler

Supporting RSS and the Open Web

Sat, 22 Aug 2026 00:00:00 GMT

This blog will be fully open.

With the resurrection of wesmahler.com, I’m choosing to publish its full content through RSS, without restrictions. I believe an open web is worth supporting. The purpose of this site isn’t to maximize ad revenue, page views, or clicks, so I’m not going to force readers to visit the website. The purpose of my writing is to help us discover and fulfill what matters most to ourselves and our lives.

If sharing one idea, one sentence, or one principle helps someone else the way it has helped me, then it’s worth sharing openly. That’s why I’m committed to supporting RSS and the open protocols of the web.

If you’re not familiar with RSS, I encourage you to explore it. RSS lets you subscribe directly to the writers and websites you choose to follow, without third-party algorithms deciding what you do or do not see.

I believe we should be able to connect directly with one another. RSS helps preserve that direct connection between writers and readers.

If you’d like to subscribe, here is my direct feed.

What's Most Important

Fri, 21 Aug 2026 00:00:00 GMT

It’s different for everyone.

“What’s been most important to you lately?” is a question I find myself asking others more and more. Usually I frame it around the time since I last saw them.

As time goes on, time itself feels more precious than ever. Because of that, I find myself caring less about the trivial and more about understanding what is truly important—to ourselves, and our lives.

This question has helped me get to the root of what people are really pursuing and why. It often leads to conversations that are far more meaningful than the usual updates or small talk.

With the finite amount of time we all have, I’d rather understand what matters most to you than spend our conversation on things that don’t.

What’s been most important to you lately?

I’d genuinely love to know, and I wish you all the best in pursuing whatever it is that’s calling you.

Back Online After Ten Years

Sat, 01 Aug 2026 00:00:00 GMT

I’m feeling incredibly happy, joyful, and exhilarated that this site is finally back online after being shut down for almost ten years.

It feels like I healed an injury and restored my health and well-being.

In 2016, a hacker compromised a huge number of WordPress blogs, mine being one of them. I couldn’t recover it easily. With everything else going on, I was saddened, shut it down, and redirected everything to Medium.

It’s not a move I would have made had my site not been hacked and damaged so much. I wrote a little bit on Medium, and I never loved it. Going from my own platform to something else never felt right. It showed ads and featured other things that weren’t essential to what I wanted to share.

I wasn’t interested in setting up another WordPress blog either. My last post talks about wanting to switch several years ago. A long time later, it’s finally done—and even better, without WordPress.

Finally, with the advent of AI, this has been made easier than ever. We’ve been able to restore most of what we could retrieve, and recovering over 20 years of writing has been incredibly meaningful to me.

I started publishing when I was 19, over 20 years ago. Looking back at what I wrote brings up a variety of emotions. Most are positive, although some make me cringe. Some make me laugh out loud. Others remind me of pivotal moments in my life.

I’m not the same person I was back then. Now, at 39, with a lot more life experience and personal development, my outlook has changed completely. My beliefs, my writing, my community, and the way I look at the world are all different.

I thought about not putting my old posts back up. In the end, I decided to embrace them. They help me understand the journey I’ve been on and the thought process I once had. They’re a reminder of where I came from and how much I’ve grown.

Nowadays, I do a lot more private writing in my journals—handwritten, digital, and voice memos. Without using social media as much, I also tend to share more with the closer, most important people in my life. I haven’t shared nearly as much publicly as I once did.

As I’ve gotten older, I’ve realized my true passion is helping others fulfill what matters most to them. That’s the core reason I’ve continued to share throughout the years, even if the way I’ve done it has changed.

In the past, I mostly wrote about entrepreneurship, investing, real estate, and internet marketing. Now I find myself writing more about what matters most in life. Honing our values. Getting clear about the principles we want to live by. Becoming the best possible versions of ourselves in each moment.

That’s what I want to share here, along with the other random things I think are meaningful along the way.

With AI proliferating, I currently don’t see the need to allow comments anymore. It’ll become harder to know what is really from you. Instead, if you’d like to comment, you’re always welcome to reach out and say hello.

I’m also going to be starting a long-overdue personal newsletter. It will be separate from my blog, and I don’t expect to simply republish my blog posts there. What I most want to do is capture timeless principles and share them with others. I’ve been writing a book around those ideas, and I’ll be sharing some of them along the way.

If I’m being my best self, I’ll write about what matters most to me. The things that have shaped my life. The ideas and principles I believe will have the greatest impact throughout the rest of the time we have together.

That’s what I’ll strive to do.

Thank you for being with me. I hope you have a wonderful rest of your day. <3

Time to Write Again

Sat, 13 Apr 2024 00:00:00 GMT

Sharing my heart, soul, and words through blogs in the past made a profound and lasting impact in my life. It many beautiful ways, and in some challenging, testing, interactions with the critics.

Some things change, and many things do not. One that does not, is the extraordinary power of our written word. Words have the ability to change ourselves, and others. They can last, a very long time, and reach, incredibly wide. In future posts, I may share how impactful writing has been for myself and my life. However for now, it’s clear, it’s time to start writing again, even with imperfect writing, occasional typos and bad grammar, in the face of all the critics.

For writing, both privately and publicly gave me one of the biggest gifts in life, and it’s easy to share with others. It excels at doing what makes humans extraordinary, facilitating the ability to more deeply connect with others through language. To write more, feels to be more human, a more connected human, connecting with others to continue co-creating this extraordinary story of life we all live together.

It’s also time to move off Medium, on-to Wordpress, so I can have better control over the narrative and what we want to share, without noise from everything off. Had my old wordpress not got hacked, it’d still be up. It’s time to restore writing and sharing again, through a self-expressed blog.

Minute by Minute

Sun, 19 Mar 2023 00:00:00 GMT

If thinking about the long-term future feels extraordinarily heavy, burdensome, and challenging, and the current moment is filled with exhaustion, anxiety, and nervousness — try reducing the enormity of it all by focusing on shorter timeframes. Concentrate on getting through the next minute, and only that. Focus on navigating the next minute in the best possible way you can imagine. Get through one minute, and then another. There’s no need to dwell on the distant future with such weight; sometimes, simply getting through each moment is enough. Time will pass, and eventually, we’ll make it through the longer-term period, doing our best minute by minute along the way.

Stop lying to yourself and others. Get in touch with reality. Identify what’s true.

Thu, 10 Jan 2019 00:00:00 GMT

Stop lying to yourself and others. Get in touch with reality. Identify what’s true.

The best way to make decisions is to…have the most accurate data, or the truth, as much as possible to make the most informed decisions.

So often we live in a fake reality, we live in our minds and believe what we think is true without actually stress testing them in the real world, or getting the actual numbers to be right. So many people make up numbers, or stories and it’s not what’s true and real. We need to live in and understand reality to actually be effective in shaping real world outcomes.

This is as important in business and investing as it is in personal relationships or anything that matters. We can only really make profound changes if we get in touch with reality, and identify what’s true. It’s better to do it sooner than later, to avoid having the pain of a reality check because you are just plain wrong in your assumptions.

Did our ego get in the way because we didn’t want to be wrong? And or, were we just too lazy to actually find out the real answer? Trying to convince ourselves or others that something is true, when in fact, it’s false or grossly off.

Is what you’re saying actually true? How can you find out if what you say or believe is true? How do you know you’re not wrong? How often do you say something but if you looked back, you actually just made it up and it may not even be right?

In the world of investing and accounting, it’s an exact science of measurement. It’s black and white, it’s one area of life where we don’t need to have any gray. There should be little room for error or making up important financial numbers, but it happens all the time. I myself and many others have made the mistakes before. It robs us from actually knowing how well we did or did not do.

re·al·i·ty

noun

1. the world or the state of things as they actually exist, as opposed to an idealistic or notional idea of them.

How the Economic Machine Works

Wed, 02 Jan 2019 00:00:00 GMT

I’m a huge fan of Ray Dali’s work. He put together a beautiful way to easily understand how our economics work. This summarizes so much what I’ve learned, over a long time, in such a short and succinct manner. A must view.

Q&A #1 — Beginning in Real Estate

Sat, 01 Dec 2018 00:00:00 GMT

A few people have started sending me questions. I thought it may be best to share my responses with everyone. If you have any of your own questions, feel free to post them in the comments, and I promise to reply.

“What are your favorite 2–3 instructional books or resources on real estate investing? If someone had to teach himself, what would you suggest they use?”

1 — rich dad poor dad — kiyosaki
2 — cashflow quadrants — kiyosaki
3 — millionaire real estate investor — by gary keller

What are the biggest wastes of time when someone is starting out?

1. Not actually looking at deals in real life, in person, seeing the properties. Many newbies try to pencil everything out using spreadsheets, which is great, and is necessary, but then every single property is different, some have deferred maintenance, some do not, some have value adds, most people waste so much time actually penciling everything without going to look at anything in person.

2. Bay Area people thinking they don’t have enough to invest because it’s expensive where they live, when they could start out in another cheaper city. Live where you want to live, and invest where the numbers make sense. I lived in the bay area for 10 years, and bought property elsewhere.

3. Not talking to a bank and getting pre-qualified early on, so you know what you can afford and not. It doesn’t cost anything, bankers always have my information, I always know what I’m qualified for, and then when I find a deal I can close. People make mistakes falling in love with something and then doing it the other way around.

Who are the most impressive, lesser-known teachers in real estate investing? Who trained you or influenced you?

1. Robert kiyosaki
2. The real estate guys

Our family has been doing real estate for 100+ years. Picked it up from family, read a bunch of books, rich dad poor dad book changed my life. That was the start. I’ve generally created my own communities, first being an investment club in college where I taught people how to invest. I still do this today.

Fortunately, most real estate is pretty basic, it doesn’t change quickly like technology, and a few core good ideas and you’re on your way. You don’t need too many teachers to know most of what you need to know.

The real estate guys have a podcast, I followed them before it even existed, almost 10+ years ago.

Have you trained others to do this? Have they replicated your results?

1. Yes I do a lot of coaching, and am writing a book on investing in general.

2. No, it’s too long of a cycle. We make money actively on the internet, and invest into passive real estate investments which take a while to really gain wealth. Unfortunately, most people focus making money, those who have done it successfully, generally… end up losing their money because they don’t invest. They never learned the key principle from rich dad, what an asset vs. liability is, in the rich dad sense, bought liabilities and quickly lose everything. I’m 31 now, and many people I know who made it, lost it, and now are re-making it, are starting to realize after they lost everything to invest and start rebuilding and will invest and save, for that reasons, no not a lot of them, and they have a lot of limiting beliefs and trying to buy things in SF and California. Some of the most expensive markets in the world.

What are the biggest mistakes and myths that you see in real estate investing?

Myths…. That all real estate people have a lot of money. Some do, but it takes a long time. Most people’s properties are full of debt, and cashflow is generally pretty scarce, it takes a while to build up equity and have enough extra cashflow over debt service to make any real money. It’s faster to make money on internet. But the wealthiest families who know how to protect their money over generations, have put it into gold, art and real estate. Through wars and famine, they’ve been able to hold onto their wealth. Biggest mistakes is people not reading a single book about financial independence, or personal development in general after school, and fail to understand even the most basic of finance investing, compound interest and other variety of topics.

Disclosure: If you want to go “active” into real estate, you can build wealth fast. That will be any sort of active development, flipping, adding value/equity, syndicating deals and doing other things. That’s a business. If you want to be “passive” investing into real estate, you’ll generally get slower returns. The best is just to build an “active” business that spits out excess cashflow (real estate or the internet), and invest, invest and invest it into “passive” deals, and not needing any money from your investments to live.

Most people screw up their regular cashflow, and then sell all of their investments to cover their loses, and get out because they don’t plan their day to day living and reserves properly.

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PS: My goal is to create a simple investment book by the end of the year which I’ll share with everyone. If you would like updates on new blog posts, and the release of it. Please give me your email here, and I’ll add you to my list.

Infinite Returns

Mon, 05 Nov 2018 00:00:00 GMT

When we invest, if we’re always required to put and keep our capital in the deal, it can become difficult to grow our wealth quickly. Simply because, you’ll always be constraint by how much capital you have to grow.

Invest $100 into a deal, and have it be worth $200, there was a gain of 100%.

Invest $0 into a deal, and have it be worth $200, there was a gain of infinite returns.

How is this possible? I’ll explain shortly.

If you were able to get infinite returns, how many deals could you do?

As many as you’d have time to do. You could do many infinite deals, because you wouldn’t be constrained by having to have more capital to invest each time. You’d be able to keep investing, over and over again. If after every deal you did, you still had the same cash as you had before, you could go on forever.

This is done, all the time. Infinite returns are how people become extraordinarily well off. It accelerates the speed at which you can do more deals.

Here’s a basic example, of how this is done in real estate.

Say an investor purchases a house that has been neglected and in need of work. The house is sold at a discounted rate due to these factors. The real estate investor negotiates and purchases the house at a great price, less than asking, and what it was really worth. They purchase this house for $75k, with a 20% downpayment of $15k.

Original Purchase:

House Purchase Price: $90k
Mortgage Debt: $72k (80%)
Equity in House: $18k (20%) — The downpayment

Since the investor did their job, like an experienced one would, and purchased it at the right price. Making money when they bought the property. The bank appraises the house at $100k, $10k more than the purchase price. This increases their equity by $10k.

**Appraised Value, with Adjusted Debt/Equity Ratios:
**New House Appraised Value: $100k
Mortgage Debt: $72k (72%)
Equity In House: $28k (28%)

The investor knows this house has upside, and needs work. They invest an additional $12k into the property. They choose the right improvements to spend their money on, which will result in the largest return. After the renovations, the house is now valued at $130k. An increase of $30k in house value. This adds an additional $30k to their equity.

The total amount of money that has been invested so far is $30k. $18k from the down payment, and $12k from remodels.

After Renovations:

Post-Rehab House Appraised Value: $130k
Mortgage Debt: 72k (55%)
Equity In House: 58k (45%)

They investor now has a lot more equity. They now have $58k in equity, far more than the $30k they’ve invested in the building.

Now that their equity is increased, they work with the bank to get all of their original investment capital back. The investors do what’s called a cash-out refinance on the property. This will allow them to take borrow against the house. Since the house has gone up in value, they have more equity and can get cash out. The lenders still require them to have some equity, and require them to keep at least 20% equity in the house. They are willing to loan up to 80% of the house value, an 80% LTV, referred to as Loan to Value. This is what it’d look like.

Cash-Out Refinance Offer:

House Value: $130k
Mortgage Debt is: $72k (55%)
Bank Will Loan Up to: $104k (80% LTV) against the property

Difference between current debt, and 80% LTV: $32k

The bank performs a cash-out refinance. They pay off the old loan ($72k) and establishes a new loan ($104k). The difference between the two amounts is $32k, this is the money that the investor will receive back in cash.

After the Cash-Out Refinance:

Current House Value: $130k
New Mortgage: $104k (80%)
Equity in House: $26k (20%) — reduced by $32k
Cash on Hand: $32k — received cash from equity in house

The investor has now achieved an infinite return.

They originally invited $30k into this deal ($18k down + 12k remodel).

After all said is done. They still own the house, they have a 20% equity stake, and they received all of their cash back, plus a little extra. They can now rent out the house, receive all of the awesome benefits of the real estate investment, and be able to repeat this over and over again. They are out no money.

The return on their investment, is now infinite…

This is the power of infinite returns.

This is a simplistic example. Of course ,in the real world there would be mortgage costs, the banks may have different loan to value requirements, or a whole slew of other challenges could have occurred. Regardless, the principle is what’s important. The principle that is is possible to get infinite returns, and this is basically how it’s done in real estate. It can be done in many other fields as well.

It may take some time and experience, but it is possible. This can be replicated on deals of all shapes and sizes. You don’t need a lot of money to make money. You need to ask how can I, make a lot of money without a lot of money. If you don’t have the money yourself, you can always raise it from others, and have none of your own money in the deal, you’ll always then be receiving an infinite return on your money, because your investors and bankers would then be financing 100% of your deals.

What would you rather do? Have to invest in deals, in which you constantly need to get more capital in order to invest again in something else? Or be able to get infinite returns on your deals, so you can continue going, without being resourced constraint?

I’m not saying it’s easy. I’m saying this is what it is, it’s possible and is done all the time. I had a friend who purchased around 10 properties within 2 years, using for the most part, the same capital that he started with on the first house.

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PS: My goal is to create a simple investment book by the end of the year which I’ll share with everyone. If you would like updates on new blog posts, and the release of it, please subscribe to my email list.

Meeting Rich Dad

Fri, 02 Nov 2018 00:00:00 GMT

Rich dad!

Got to meet Robert Kiyosaki, author of Rich Dad Poor Dad, while in New Orleans.

Diversification — An argument against

Sun, 21 Oct 2018 00:00:00 GMT

Diversifying your investments has pros and cons. It’s fairly clear, most everyone understands the pros, and why you do it. Most financial planners will generally say… diversify, diversify, diversify, but generally speaking, they’re not rich, because wide diversification usually doesn’t make people rich. If you want to get rich, take the advice from rich people.

More often than not, most rich people generally made their money through a very concentrated ownership of a few things at most, and they would double down on what worked. This is true for both investors, and entrepreneurs, as entrepreneurs create their own stock, make it valuable, and then sell it to the public. They. in many ways, like a hyper-focused investor, have their portfolio high concentrated into one stock or two, generally their own.

Warren Buffet and Peter Thiel, both extraordinary investors, couldn’t be further away from the types of companies they invest in.

Buffet, likes to invest into companies, that he can see won’t change in 20+ years from now. Corporations that are cashflow positive, lower risk, generally not technology and investing into great companies, at a good price.

Thiel on the other hand, invests in starts up, likely to change dramatically in the future, generally with no positive cashflow, very high risk, and at sometimes, at extreme expensive & high valuations.

Although as different as they are, there is one thing they both agree on, neither of them like diversification.

“Diversification is protection against ignorance. It makes little sense if you know what you are doing.” — Warren Buffet

Although Berkshire Hathaway, Buffet’s company, owns a variety of different companies today, there is a general, concentrated theme among them. A lot of similar businesses, and industries. Warren would rather do extensive research and ensure he’s investing into the right company, for a long period of time, when the time is right vs. simply diversifying for diversification sake. What’s lost in diversification, they make up in experience, and doing extensive due diligence when purchasing a company. Buffet likes to put “meaningful amounts of money, into a few things.” Him and his partner Charlie Munger, think investing should be like marriage, for life. When they have cash on hand, and the time is right, instead of looking at other companies, they will just continue to buy more stock in the same companies they own, until they own it all. Why continue to look at others, when yours are already doing so well, and you believe they’ll be well in 20+ years from now? They just continue to concentrate into what they have, because they know it’s good. And they will wait, until the company they love, becomes discounted again, and they’ll buy more of it.

“I think that people would say that they spray and pray because of some sort of portfolio theory, some sort of diversification theory. And if that’s true that might work. I don’t actually believe that to be true. I think the real reason people spray and pray in their investing, is that they’re lacking in any conviction, and perhaps because they’re too lazy to really spend the time to try to figure out which companies what companies are ultimately going to work.” — Peter Thiel

Peter believes wide diversification, is like treating you’re investing like the lottery. As once you start to believe there is a small probability of a big pay off, then you’re thinking in lottery terms, and not thinking clearly, or at all. Like the lottery, you’re likely to lose money and have below average results. He, like Warren, believes it is best to really know the company, the founders, the mission, and really understand and believe if they’re going to be the absolute best in the future or not.

And like Warren to a degree, he is investing for a long period of time. It takes a significant amount of time before VCs get the money back. They aren’t traders, they are investors.

Someone I knew closely, shared with me, their super diversified portfolio. They had bought everything 10–30 years ago. Because they did not know what to buy, they diversified, and bought every type of financial service they could think of. Varying from individual stocks, some domestic, some foreign, mutual funds, a lot of different ones, many types of life insurance products, all types of IRAs, traditional retirement accounts, roth accounts/, and real estate, in several cities, some owned outright, and others as tenants in common, ran by others. They figured, why not try them all, and hopefully that’ll work.

Now this isn’t bad. It’s much better than doing nothing. In fact it’s great. But if you want to get rich, you’re going to need to do more on top of it. And if one is working well, then learn and readjust it. After reviewing them all with them, it was clear there were really only a few winners over the last 30 years. The winners were dramatically better than the others. We helped them rebalance their portfolio and refocus on what worked so well. Today, they are much much better off. The banks don’t understand why we’re not more diversified these days, but we do, we have a few asset classes we love, that work well, and we continue to just reinvest into what works best for us.

In my own world, I used to be an active tech entrepreneur. Instead of buying things like the index funds, which are super diversified, I’ve always choose to invest into my core competencies. Investing into companies I knew and believed where the best in the spaces I worked in. Many of the tech companies I’d invest in, I was a customer of, and I knew without a doubt they were way better than the others. So I invested my money into the same companies that I spent money with. Due to having experience in this, I choose very well. I did my research, I understood the companies, their business model, I knew it worked for me and others, and I monitored their financials on a quarterly basis to make sure they still have room to grow. Had I just chosen index funds, or even worse, mutual funds like everyone else, my portfolio would have suffered.

If you want to really grow your portfolio, you will likely need to be a lot more active, than the regular passive investors. Those who see to get normal returns, can invest into normal things, and diversify like normal people. While being active, doesn’t mean you’ll find one what works well, it does mean that you will monitor it, think, learn, evaluate, and adjust as time progresses on what’s working and what’s not. Most people, setup their portfolios and never look at them again, or even worse have others manage it from them. It’s important to understand what you want, and as you gain more practice investing, winning and loses, you’ll get clearer on what works best for you. If you’re good, you’ll start to realize a few patterns, and focus your investments on what’s working well, and really make it work. Diversification is not bad, but it does not produce huge returns.

— —

-Wes

Rebalancing Your Portfolio

Thu, 11 Oct 2018 00:00:00 GMT

As time progress, asset values continue increase or decrease, and new cash, for future investments is continually added to your portfolio. It’s a good idea to consider rebalancing your portfolio, changing your asset allocation if necessary.

Let’s use the stock market, and a stock brokerage account for example. Consider the difference between brokerage accounts that hold the following.

100% invested into stocks, 0% cash

75% stocks, 25% cash

50% stocks, 50% cash

25% stocks, 75% cash

0% stocks, 100% cash.

When there has been a bear market for an extended period of time, the market is low, the stock prices are cheaper, and thus generally, less risky, as there is more potentially to gain. You may consider going more aggressively into the market, and allocating your portfolio, 75% into stocks, and holding 25% in cash.

You could also consider going 100% into stocks, and retaining 0% cash on hand. This would be the most aggressive and invested portfolio. It’ll be tremendous if it goes up, and if it goes down further, you won’t have any additional cash to invest to ride it back up.

Or maybe the stock market is up, you are fully invested into stocks at 100%, with no cash on hand. You made a lot of money and road the bull market up. Feeling it may be too high, you could consider reducing stocks to 50%, and having 50% cash on hand, or even further to 25% stocks, and 75% cash. Holding on to at least some stocks, because you don’t know if it still has more to run up or not. Rebalancing your portfolio to have a higher percentage of cash would require you to sell more stocks, or add a bunch more cash to offset it.

The important point to understand, is to consider rebalancing your portfolio as the market changes, and your asset values change. It’s important to not forget it entirely, check back up on it, and see if your asset allocations feel right to you, based on where we are today.

If you do what we recommend, automating cash transfers to your account, you should always have more cash being added. There are many things you can consider rebalancing, cash & stocks was just an example, but there are others, like restructuring what stocks you have. Maybe some stocks are too risky now, and you want less risky, you can change that allocation as well within your invested stocks. Maybe one stock has jumped up in a huge value, and now it too much of your portfolio.

Ideally, think about your wealth holistically, and rebalance your entire investment portfolio. You can also use real estate and a variety of other assets. The stock market is high, and you feel like real estate may be a safer bet. Exchange your stock assets for real estate, and hold onto that. Maybe you think cryptocurrencies are the next biggest thing, allocate some into that. Restructure, restructure based on what you feel is best.

Stocks rise in value quicker than real estate, but it’s a lot more volatile, when we had large gains in stocks, a lot of people like to reallocate the profits to long-term, more stable real estate.

Maybe you think you have too many real estate buildings in one area that is at risk, consider restructuring which assets you have and exchanging them for different ones. Interest rates low, maybe you want to restructure your debt and lock in better rates. Think about all of the pieces in your portfolio, and how you may want to rebalance them as time moves on.

We are not recommending just to sell or buy because the market is high or low, it’s something to consider, and there are always so many factors at stake to determine what’s best for you and your family.

Cashflow is King. Not Cash.

Mon, 03 Sep 2018 00:00:00 GMT

You’ve heard the saying, “Cash is King.”

I want you to consider that “Cashflow is King.”

First, let me acknowledge cash. The term cash is king, obviously is still incredibly important. You want to have cash. You want to be able to do deals, and purchase them with cash if you so choose. You want to have the security, and the options to make deals or do things at any time. But case in of itself, is just the future possibility of spending or investing your money at a later time.

The problem with cash, is it gets easily spent over time. Take for example, the startups that raise millions of dollars, yet have cash flow. Sure they have a boat load of cash, and the possibility of making money in the future, but they aren’t making any money and are in many ways worthless. They won’t be worth much in the future, unless they acutally have cashflow. And yes, these companies could be acquired, for billions of dollars, without ever being cashflow positive, but some day, eventaully they must be cashflow positive, or else they will go out of business and are in fact worth noting.

With only cash, you can go out of business. But with positive cashflow, you can stay in business, and you really got something.

In most cases, it is much better to have positive cashflow than just cash itself. I’ve known so many people who have lots of assets, only to spend them away because they constantly burned at a negative cashflow. If you’re negative every month, you will eventually run out of money, it’s just a matter of time.

There are generally 2 ways to become financially indepedent.

The first commonly accepted idea, is to have enough liquid assets, that you won’t spend in your life time. Basically just having enough cash to survive, and hope you don’t burn out by spending too much to quickly.

The second, and the much better idea, is to have more passive income than your expenses, in other words, to have enough positive cashflow, that you could sustain indefinitely.

Key term here, I’m not saying more pay check than expenses, I’m talking about cash flow from businesses, and passive investments that are actually helping you have time freedom, and be financially free. Cashflow is King, it’s a very specific kind of income, that can set you free.

You should always have cash on hand, for reserves, and to take advantage of opporunites when the time is right. And you want to build up your cashflow, because you need that on-going, consistent, passive income that will set you up to be financially free, without worrying about running out of cash.

Working Undisturbed on Your Mac

Mon, 03 Sep 2018 00:00:00 GMT

One way to be more focused, is to remove distractions.

For Mac users, the simplest and most effective way to do this, is by enabling the “Do Not Disturb” feature, and hide your dock.

Using these 2 features, you will have a fully focused productive work space. You won’t have any notifications occuring, and you won’t have any red badge notifications appearing in your dock. Which happens every time someone messages you.

The latest MacBook Pro updates make this even easier to achieve with their touchbar. You can add a “Do Not Disturb” button right to your keyboard.

Instantly turn this on, and start your productive, distraction free day.

Enjoy.

PS: This only really works great if you don’t have to speak to anyone for awhile.

Become a Better Investor by Becoming an Entrepeneur

Sun, 02 Sep 2018 00:00:00 GMT

It’s no surprise that many of the greatest investors are or were at once great entrepreneurs. Because as investors, generally, most often, if not basically always, you’re investing into businesses, enterprises and capital markets. The better you understand business, the better you’ll know what a great business is, and what a great investment is.

This is not to say, you have to be an entrepreneur to be a great investor. However, being an entrepreneur and understanding how to build a business, will help you greatly as you choose which businesses to invest in.

Forced Savings Mechanisms

Sun, 02 Sep 2018 00:00:00 GMT

For most homeowners, in their later life, their house is generally their largest and most valuable asset. (We don’t think your primary residence is a good asset, but we’ll explain that another time). But generally, the value of their home equity far exceeds a lot of their other investments like their 401Ks, SEP-IRAs, or other small brokerage accounts.

Why do people’s home generally become their largest asset? Why, even if the stock market had large gains since they time they originally invested versus their house, their house is now generally worth so much more?

There are actually many factors in this. One out of many, is it helps having bank leverage to maximize your return, because with a mortgage you’re able to gain appreciation off the total value of the house, and not your initial down, giving you a more leveraged rate of return. Another, real estate is also generally a safe and good investment vehicle.

But there is another missing factor, one of the most important factors.

One of the main reasons that most people’s house becomes their greatest asset, is because their mortgages act like a forced saving mechanisms. That forces them to constantly save and continually invest money into their house equity.

Becoming rich is all about, spending less than you make, saving that money, and then investing it over time. Consistently and religiously. Thus you must first be able to save the money to invest later.

Unlike other investment vehicles like stocks, bonds, and other vehicles, real estate essentially forces you to pay your mortgage (save money), and continually investing into your house, because if you don’t do that, you’re going to foreclose and be homeless. There is too high of a risk, to not pay your mortgage. Your mortgage becomes the first thing that gets paid, and you are forced into saving on a regular basis.

If those same people had the discipline to also invest their money into other assets on a regular basis, they could also do as well, and those other assets would be just as big if not much larger than their home. The problem is, they don’t have to save. They’re not forced to do anything, they have no pain associated with not saving and investing regularly.

When the end of the month rolls around, they likely won’t save it, and then almost for sure won’t just randomly invest it. Or they just spend all their money too soon. There is nothing forcing them to do anything, and they then don’t constantly continually invest their money for the long term.

This is why we highly recommend people to automate everything. This is one way to ensure you’re forcing yourself to save automatically. Mortgages are a great way to enforce this habit, because they are a forced saving mechanism. People get this benefit without ever realizing the psychological reason, that their homes are now their greatest investment. It’s the one area which they constantly continued to invest in over time, without fail and now it’s worth a lot. Had they been able to realize how important that was, and do it in other investments, they could have done extraordinarily well.

Figure out how to discipline yourself, automate, and setup forced saving mechanisms. Ensure you don’t fail, by not ever trying to invest in the first place. We want to be saving without having to think about it, during strong and bad earning months. You never want to stop it.

How can you set yourself up with forced saving mechanisms?

How can you figure out how to set yourself up, to be an automatic millionaire?

The Power of Unrealized Gains

Sun, 02 Sep 2018 00:00:00 GMT

Unrealized gains are one of the most powerful tools in becoming rich, and it is one of the reason why some some never pay any taxes. It’s the reason that some investors, can continually compound all of the money they have invested, unlike most, who pay taxes and start the next year with less, only to have to gain to get back where that left off before paying taxes. Unrealized gains are also so often misunderstood. Most people think you will have to realize them eventually, and the truth is, not necessarily. You can get value out of the assets, without having to realize them. And in estate planning, the cost basis of unrealized gains can be completely reset, without ever selling a thing.

First, what is an unrealized gain?

An unrealized gain is a profit that exists on paper, resulting from an investment. It is a profitable position that has yet to be sold in return for cash, such as a stock position that has increased in capital gains but still remains open. A gain becomes realized once the position is closed for a profit.

In other words, you buy an asset, it appreciates in value. You have a gain in asset value, but it’s unrealized, because you haven’t sold. The moment you sell it, the gain is realized. Once you realize a gain by selling the asset, you now have to pay taxes on it, for that tax year.

Here’s why it’s a huge deal.

The investors that understand and utilized unrealized gains, will be far ahead of those who don’t and are consistently paying taxes along the way. It doesn’t mean that paying taxes is bad, and should be avoided at all costs. It means, that if it possible, consider that you may be able to avoid taxation, and letting your assets grow pre-tax, is much better than growing assets post-tax.

Let’s compare a day trader to a long-term investor for example.

YEAR 1: Say both people start with $100. Their stock portfolios both gain 30% in one year. At the end of the year, they both have $130, with a $30 gain. Since the day trader is buying and selling, he has a realized short term gain of $30. The long term investor, bought and never sold, they had an unrealized gain of $30.

YEAR 2: The day trader must pay taxes, let’s say ~33%. So their $30 realized gain is taxed $10, and is now worth $20 after tax. So on year 2 the day trader starts with $120. The long term investor, never sold, has no gains, and starts year 2 off with their full amount of money $130. Now let’s say again, they both increase their portfolio values by another 30%.

Day Trader: $120 + 30% gain = $156 (gain of $36)

Long Term Investor: $130 + 30% gain = $169 (gain of $39)

Now let’s assume, that every year moving forward, the day trader keeps paying a 33% tax on their gain, the long term investor pays nothing, because they never realized a gain, and they each continue to grow their portfolios by 30% each year, for 30 years.

YEAR 10:

Day Trader’s portfolio would be worth $619.

Long-Term Investor’s: $1,379

YEAR 20:

Day Trader’s: $3,834

Long Term Investor’s: $19,005

YEAR 30:

Day Trader’s: $23,744
- taxes paid so far: $11,820
- unrealized gains: $0

Long Term Investor’s: $262,000
- taxes paid so far: $0
- unrealized gains: $261,900

Here’s what that looks like in a table:

First, the day trader.

Now the long-term investor:

The numbers are staggering, and speak for themselves. This was just off an initial investment of $100.

Now wait, you might be saying, 30% is unrealistic to gain each year, and the long term investor still has to pay those gains later on. Hold on.

What’s important to understand here is the big picture, the big concept. Don’t get too caught up in the little details. First you can now clearly see that there is a big deal with starting each year off with 100% of your initial capital, and not paying taxes each year. It doesn’t matter if we reduce the gain amount to 5 or 10%, regardless, the person who defers their gains, and taxes will ultimately be better off if they get the same rate of return that someone who is constantly paying taxes each year and starting out with less. Compound interest is one of the most powerful forces in the world.

What you’re seeing, is the power of unrealized gains, and why it pays to think and invest long term.

Now let’s talk about those gains, as most will certainly ask about that, and argue you still have to pay taxes on it, so maybe it’s not that much better.

Worst case, if were the long-term investor, and later you did realize all of your gains and pay taxes on the last amount (20% as of 2018). You would still be way ahead of the day trader. First because, you’re portfolio value is obviously higher, and your net outcome after taxes would be way more. Second, you’d also be paying at a reduced long-term capital gain rate, and be taxed at the lower 20% (for 2018) tax rate, compared to ordinary earned income rates, which can go near 40% for federal.

But you can get value out of unrealized gains, without having to realize them.

The super rich know, that lower taxation on unrealized gains is just one of the benefits to having long term investments. While yes, you could pay your 20% tax, even better is to get value out of your investments without paying any taxes at all.

One method is simply borrowing against your assets. In stocks, you can borrow on Margin, against your stocks. In the example above, your stocks may be worth $262,000 as the long-term investor, you could easily borrow $30k against it, and use it however you like, without even paying taxes on that. You can get the value out of your assets without paying taxes.

Now a caveat of course, you have to pay deductible interest, and margin on stocks has risks. If the stock value goes down, you may be forced to do a margin call and put that money back in, but that’s besides the point. The point is, you can borrow against your assets, getting value without paying taxes.

It keeps getting better. Now that’s just a stock example, in real estate it’s even better. If you buy a property, it appreciates in value, you can borrow against the asset, and get a long term 30-year fix on it. You deduct the interest, and can use the money to purchase additional assets. Better yet, unlike a margin call, the banks generally don’t have anything like that, and it’s a lot less risky way to get value out of your buildings.

In addition, in real estate you can sell your assets, without realizing your gains if you do a 1031 exchange. A 1031 exchange allows you to sell your asset, and purchase a larger property, if you do this, the IRS will allow you to defer your gains and roll in your low cost basis into the next building. Essentially allowing you to sell your asset, get a new one, without ever paying any taxes! Even better yet, as real estate investors you start an entirely new depreciation schedule.

So what are we going to do with those unrealized gains, eventually we must pay them right? Not necessarily, only if you realized the gains, without doing an exchange will you have to pay taxes on it. If you never sell it, you never have to pay gains on it, and you can defer it until you die. Borrowing against your assets for as long as you want, avoiding the taxation, and letting your portfolio grow every year, at it’s full pre-tax value.

Finally when you die, if you give your assets to your future hiers, they inherit the assets with a stepped up basis!

What that means is, they inherit it as of today’s market price. In the example of the long-term stock investor, who after 30 years has $262,000 in stock value, with a original cost basis of $100, if they sold, they would have a gain of $261,900.

But if they let their kids inherit it at death, the kids would receive the assets with a cost basis of $262,000. So if they they were to sell their $262,000 worth of stock tomorrow, because their cost basis was $262,000 they would have 0 gains on the sale….

This is is the power of unrealized gains. You can compound your money faster. You can get value out of your assets without realizes gains. And later in life, you can give away your assets at death, with a stepped up basis, and they never have to realize any of the gains. (accurate as of 2018).

Maintain Control — Worth it’s weight in gold

Sat, 01 Sep 2018 00:00:00 GMT

You’ve likely heard, how important in business it is, to maintain control of your company, generally more than a 50% voting rights. This is so you control your destiny, what happens to yourself and your life.

Control is just as important in investing as it is in business, and way too many people give up control over their investments. Here is why it’s important to retain control, and later, why it’s so bad to lose control.

When you invest into anything, have a clear understanding of what you’re expecting to achieve. How long do you want to hold it for? What are you looking to get out of it? Why are you investing in it? What will you do with it if the market goes up or down? Ideally, each time you have an investment, you should reflect on this, write it down and then later on reflect when you get raid of it, what happen, and were your assumptions right or wrong? Doing this will help you continually improve your ability to invest better in the future.

We would much rather buy individual stock securities than mutual funds, because we retain more control over what happens. Later I’ll write about, why we think mutual funds are a poor investment, this will be one of many future reasons.

One of the reasons mutual fund suck, if you’re trying to get rich, is the fact that, the fund managers can buy and sell securities within their fund at any time. Every time they do, it causes a taxable event for you. You may or may not want the taxable event. Generally, we don’t want random taxable events. We want to be able to control exactly when we have a taxable event. We don’t want to leave it up to a 3rd party who can at any time trigger taxable events for us.

We generally time our sales when we do other investments. We try to have deductions lined up in advance, before we sell, to offset any gains. For example…We commonly do this in real estate, by exchanging our stock gains, into real estate, which when we buy, we get new depreciation schedules and can use that to offset the gains. If fund managers were just buying and selling stocks whenever in their funds, we’d never be able to time our other buys right. We’d just be paying taxes whenever fund managers buy and sell, and a lot of them, like doing that because they may more money on fees.

This is also why when we invest into real estate, we don’t buy any condos or townhomes. We don’t want to be tied up with any HOAs. Last thing we want is to lose control of our investment, and have another person run it. They may mismanage the HOA. They may spend money we think is unnecessary. Some maintenance item could be deferred that we wished to do it. There are extra politics, dealing with the committee. Most of them aren’t on the path to becoming rich, so we wouldn’t’ want them handling our investments. There is also the problem, that some HOAs setup where only a certain percentage of units can be rentals. If that percentage was reached, then suddenly we’d possibly lose control over renting out one of our condos. If the HOA and the building has issues, banks may not to loan against the building. This makes it even harder to sell out. Overall, we absolutely don’t want this. We don’t want to lose control over our real estate investment to some HOA committee.

We want to control our assets. We want to control both the building and the land. If the building falls down, at least we own the land (in the US), and not some percentage share of it. We want to be able to dictate, when and where we spend our money. We want to be able to do what we want to do with our property, and rent it out to whomever, without leaving it subject to an HOA committee to make decisions. Tear it down and rebuild if we want. We don’t want to have to sit and discussion with others what we can and can not do. We want to be able to make our own decisions, and run with our life and our business. This isn’t just good for business and investment sake, it’s a better way to have control over your life.

Lastly, in general, you want to have control over your assets. If you don’t know what you’re doing, you’re likely going to have someone else doing it for you, and they may or may not be doing a good job. If you want to be rich, you really have to want it, learn how, and learn how to manage money. Most other people helping you, or managing your money aren’t rich, they may make less and earn less than you, and how can you really expect them to help you do something they don’t do in their own life. Be careful who you accept advice from, and maintain control over your assets and your life.

Prevent Selling Yourself Out at a Loss

Sat, 01 Sep 2018 00:00:00 GMT

One of the best ways to get rich through investing, is being able to invest into long-term assets, for 15–20+ years, allowing them to grow and keep compounding, without having to realize any gains on it along the way. Unrealized gains are one of the most powerful tools to compounding your wealth. Every time you have to realize a gain by selling an appreciated asset, you pay your tax and start over with less money.

The problem that most people face, is they may buy an asset hold it for awhile, but they haven’t managed their day to day, month to month cashflow well. They have a deficit, and suddenly need to sell their investments to get more cash. They made several wrong decisions here. One, you should never invest money that you need. Because two, the moment that you lose money that you needed to live, you’re going to be forced to sell your assets, and you may be selling yourself at out a loss. If the asset is up, great, you’ve made a bit of a gain, but now you have to pay taxes on it, which you may not have wanted to do. You need money and you’re now incurring an additional tax expense. But if the asset value is down, even worse, as you’ve ensured your loss because you must now sell regardless of the price. You lost control of when and for how much you would sell for.

This happened a lot during the 2008–2012 US real estate market crash. Most of the people who lost money, were forced to sell their assets because they did not have enough cash or cashflow keep them afloat during the downturn. Although not all US markets are back up since the crash (2018), a lot are, and most of them that held onto their real estate during the crash and the rise, are now better than they were before. Those who were keep their assets, had additional cash reserves, or enough cashflow to withstand any downturn, and ride the wave back up. They were not forced to sell themselves at a loss.

Another example. When the stock market crashes, people panic. The problem with stocks, unlike real estate, is it only takes 1 second to sell yourself out at a loss with the click of a button. Unlike real estate, it takes a longer. You have to think about selling, list it on the market, likely work with a real estate agent, negotiate with the buyer, and hope they come through with their financing to close. In real estate, it’s harder, to sell yourself out at a loss because you’re not as quick to sell at a loss when something goes bad. Being able to sell your stocks at rock bottom prices in 1 second, is a quick way to lose money in seconds.

On the flip side, what is great about stocks, is when they crash, you can instantly buy it at a discount. Unlike real estate, it’ll be likely another 15–45 days until you can close on a transaction.

Manage your cash flow well. Have positive cashflow, spend less than you earn, and have cash reserves. Never be in a situation where you’re forced to sell your assets because you didn’t manage your finances well. This is a quick way to financial ruin.

I’ve had so many friends who bought wonderful stocks, sold them because they had to, and missed out huge gains in the future. Because the businesses were great, but they couldn’t manage their money right, and their investments suffered huge opportunity costs.

Prevent yourself from selling out at a loss, or when you didn’t want to sell.

Trading vs. Investing

Sat, 01 Sep 2018 00:00:00 GMT

People get theses two mixed up all the time. Specifically, they consider their trading activities investing. We disagree, we believe they are two different things. One is not necessarily better than the other, you need to be both a great trader and investor, doing either or, when the timing is right.

Investing or investments, for our definition, is investing into assets for a long period of time. When we invest into real estate, we are buying to hold the assets for a very long period of time. We are investing into the real estate and the local economy. We aren’t trading real estate, we’re investing in it to hold. Someone who is doing fix and flips, buying and selling, would be more of a trader in this sense, buying and selling, although they’re a little different because they’re adding a lot of value to it. But none the less, they aren’t really investing in the real estate, it’s a quick way to make money, and that’s really it.

When you raise capital for your startup from investors, you’re not looking for traders. You’re looking for people to invest in you, your vision, and the company for a long period of time. You’re not looking for people to just buy shares of your company and turn them around for a profit within a short period of time.

When people start day trading stocks, or even cryptocurrencies, buying and selling them short term. They think they’re investing, but they’re not, they’re actively trading. Looking at the prices all of the time, and getting in and out based on short term news and trends. This isn’t investing. Investing would be going long on a specific stock or cryptocurrency, investing in the company long term, your money would be invested to fulfill their growth, or holding value in the cryptocurrency ecosystem for the long term.

In the US, the IRS has two definitions for gains. Short term and Long Term Gains. Short term gains, are assets bought and sold within 2 years. Long Term are assets held after 2 years or more. Short Term Gains are taxed at a much higher rate, the ordinary rate you’d pay on your ordinary actively earned income. Long term gains, you get a discounted tax rate, generally 20% for the highest of income earners (2018).

If you generate short term gains, you’re more of a trader, and if you’re getting long term gains, we consider you more of an investor.

As mentioned earlier, one isn’t necessarily better than the other. You need to be both good at trading and investing to become truly rich. You need to find assets to invest in, long term that provide you a lot of value over the period of time. But when there is a necessary event to sell them, like the company is no longer going to be relevant, and you’re sure of it, or the asset values went up so high that it just makes a ton of sense to capture a gain, then it’s time to trade. You invest, and then you trade when the time is right.

Are you trading, or are you investing?

Know the difference when you do deals.

“You’re Not Listening” — The most overused and worthless phrase ever

Thu, 26 Jul 2018 00:00:00 GMT

People commonly say “they don’t listen”, or “he/she doesn’t listen”, or “you don’t listen to me”, and from my experience, it generally completely misses the actual issue at hand. People who continually say it, I generally feel like don’t have much power, because they decide to think everything is as simple as saying someone doesn’t listen to you. They have a complete lack of vocabulary to describe the situation in further detail, which hides specific actions that could be taken to improve it.

First off, if you are to say that about someone.

Are you even good at getting someones attention in the first place?

Are you good at articulating exactly what you’re trying to convey to someone?

Are you good at making sure the other actually, and truthfully, understood your message, and made you feel sure, by repeating back in their own words what you said, or some other method that made you felt understood?

Or are you just over simplifying everything, and saying “you didn’t listen”, because people don’t take you seriously based on their past experiences with you, or you don’t know how to actually be seen, heard, command attention, get your point across and make sure they understood what you communicated? I argue, it’s generally the later, and if it isn’t true, it’s better to believe it, because at least it gives you power to realize, you can improve and be communicate better. Because people ain’t listening to you…

Then there is another part to the misunderstanding, when people will say “they didn’t listen to me”, because the the other person, did not take some specific action, or possibly failed.

I’ve had people say I don’t listen at some points. And there have been occasionally were I really wasn’t paying attention at all. And maybe in fact, I did not hear them, but then there other times people will say it, and in fact listened to them and heard them, but I just don’t agree with them, and didn’t acknowledge that I would do XYZ.

You can’t really say, someone else didn’t listen to you, just because they didn’t do what you asked them to.

For example, someone says “I really wish you would get that tooth fixed in your mouth.” (dumb example I know). But unless the other person agrees to get that done, the other person can’t just say they didn’t listen to me and their tooth is still messed up. Don’t get confused between listening and hearing someone, from someone acutally agreeing to do something.

Did they even agree with you in the first place, that they’d do what you requested?

Maybe they listened to you, and heard you, but just flat out disagree with you and don’t do it. When they take the action you disagree with, you lose power by saying they didn’t listen. In my opinion, they did listen, but they just decide to do it different. What would be more accurate is “They listened to me, but decided to do it differently.” At least then, it gives you power because you have separated someone listening, hearing you, understanding you, from actually doing something. They shouldn’t be confused, one word listening, shouldn’t imply that much meaning.

So when someone else says to you, “You’re not listening”, dive deeper into it.

Is it true, that you’re actually not paying attention to them whatsoever. Can’t stop thinking about things, and focus on what they’re communicating for 30–60 seconds. Maybe so.

Maybe you do hear them, do you make the feel understood, is that why they say that?

Maybe you heard them, made them feel understood, and agreed to do something and you diddn’t. Then maybe they consider that not listening, to me that’s you just being out of integrity, and not following through with your word.

Maybe you heard them, made them feel understood, and just disagreed and decided to go on your own bought. To me, you heard them, listened and choose to go another path.

People who constantly use the words “he/she doesn’t listen”, are lacking in vocabulary to more accurately describe the situation, so they could do something differently than just blaming others for “not listening”.

Be careful in the future when using those, because it may not be true. There may be more words to describe what is in fact happening. Consider in the future using:

I couldn’t get their attention — I don’t feel like you’re paying attention to me, why?
I couldn’t get them to listen to what I said (just on hearing you…) — Are you hearing what I saying?
I couldn’t get them to understand — What do you understand from what I said? Say or write it back to me
I couldn’t get them to agree — Will you do XYZ?
I couldn’t get them to follow through — You didn’t do XYZ, why not?

And change it to I, so you, have the power to make the change. I couldn’t get them to listen, is different than they don’t listen to me, spoken so commonly by people who have little power to affect change in their lives. Because it leaves them out of control and blames their communication skills on the another.

It’s unfortunate that even the dictionary’s example misleads us. The definition of to listen, a verb is “give one’s attention to a sound.”.

Then it gives a bad example:

“take notice of and act on what someone says; respond to advice or a request.” Obviously, I disagree with this definition. And all the sudden it turns listening into way to many meanings. Take notice of. Act on what someone says. Respond, or a request.

no·tice — attention; observation. (makes sense)

act — take action; do something. (take action listening maybe, but not doing what someone says)

re·spond — say something in reply. (different than giving attention to a sound)

The better our vocabulary for describing any situation, may it be emotional well being, a challenge, or problem, the more clarify you will have in understanding it, and commencing action on the right way to resolve it.

Knowing you’re mad (broad) vs knowing your jealous (a more specific, detailed feeling of mad), gives you a better understanding on how to deal with it. Being jealous has a specific set of things you can do to feel better. Being mad, has some too, but it’s too broad and you’re less likely to resolve your issue.

The same applies to vocabulary related to listening, hearing, seeing, understanding, responding, responding, etc etc.

Building, Growing & Protecting Wealth — and how quickly it can really be lost

Tue, 17 Jul 2018 00:00:00 GMT

So often have many people I’ve known, including myself, after gaining wealth, ending up losing it all. The more people I’ve met, and read about it, the more I’ve realized how problematic this is a huge majority of us. It become a rarity to meet a person who not only built their wealth the first time, has kept it all, grown it and structured it to be sheltered from future creditors.

The first part of our journey, is determining where we are going, having a vision, raising capital, learning skills necessary, to make money, to sell, to market ourselves, to grow our businesses, or as employees to save up and invest our money. The first part of our journey, is really focused on making money. Hopefully we get to the point where we start paying taxes, then later we’ll figure out how to reduce it. But generally we don’t get there. Shortly there after…. the common pitfall is, once we’re financially successful, we get big egos. We think we’re unstoppable. We think the money will always keep coming. We did it once we can do it again. We start feeling it’s luckily. It was purely us that made it happen. We can do anything. Our poor money habits before are masked, and we think we’re on-top of the world, and all is ok now, it all paid off. All of this can’t be further from the truth.

Many of us end up making poor mistakes on future businesses. Going all in, losing everything, spending way too much, being overly ambitious. Not just on business, but on everything. Many of us, are humbled by another business fail, or carelessly manage of our lives, that we end up losing, far more than we gained… Almost always, it ends in ruins.

This happened to me. When I was 22, after I sold my first real company, Tracking202, for $1.5M, I ended up losing everything after getting into a lawsuit with the company who acquired us. Not only did I lose practically lose all of the financial assets I have, it was an incredibly stressful period of my time, the most stressful period of my life. One that is ingrained in my experience, and my story.

I must have not learned. I started another internet marketing company soon thereafter. About 9 months we gross around $3.7M million with around a 20% profit margin or about $700,000+ in net profit. We were pretty happy about it. But we were only to lose it all again in litigations. I will not go into detail about those at this point in time, as they are not the the purpose of this share.

Those were the most devastating experiences of my life. At the age of 23–24, I had so much pain associated with being in legal disputes, I never wanted to be in them again. To make it worse, I was working crazy hours, for weeks and years at time. Grinding tons of hours, hunched over at the computer screen. Causing issues with my neck & spine, and on-top of that having little to nothing left after the experiences, except for some very strong, and valuable life lessons.

I wouldn’t be the only one. Many of my friends who took their own entrepreneurial paths, who had successful runs, ended up colorfully losing everything, and many times, ending up in debt. I can’t even count on the number of hands of people I’ve known this has happened to. Everyone thought they’d continue to hit it out of the ball park every time.

I love reading about entrepreneurs, especially those who are no longer with us. They share some of the greatest insights. I cherish those who are willing to be self-expressed, sharing not just their life, but key principles, and lessons learned during their life, to enrich and improve the life of all future entrepreneurs and risk takers after them. Going through a lot of these stories, it’s apparent that this is a very bad, recurring theme for most of us. And it makes perfect sense.

We spend our whole life figuring out how to make money. Little do we learn, until later once we have it, how to really grow and protect it. Hopefully, we have enough energy to go through the second round of rebuilding.

There is a way to prevent this. It’s by first being aware, that most people end up losing everything once. Painfully it can happen several times. It’s one you can avoid though, if you’re aware of it going in, and create a plan to avoid the mistakes of so many.

I will likely go into greater detail on this later, on some methods on how you can protect and growth your well, just know that it’s even quicker to lose than it is to make. A few simple errors in judgements can cost you everything, in no time flat, and it certainly will if you’re not incredibly careful. And if not you, likely your family will lose it, all and more, if you they are uneducated in the ways of building, growing and protecting the family’s wealth. This isn’t an easy feat. We must be extraordinary in most areas of life, to live truly the life we want to design for ourselves. The weakest chain, in any area of our life, will break everything.

As one of Warren Buffet’s favorite quotes:

“Rule No 1: Never lose money. Rule No 2: Don’t forget Rule №1”

PS: If you’re interested in getting emails from me, I’m building a personal newsletter and would be happy to share more with you. Please comment on the thread and I’ll reach out to you if so.

The best time to raise money, is when you don’t need it.

Wed, 11 Jul 2018 00:00:00 GMT

When you’re in need of capital, especially last moment, it’s harder, and more expensive to get.

When you don’t need capital, it’s easier, and cheaper to get.

Lenders love to give you money when you’re financials are strong and don’t need it, but they’re a bit hesitant if you’re suddenly needing cash last moment. In business and investing, it’s always good to be prepared to have capital on hand, or unused line of credits, to pursue an opportunity when the time and price is right.

Automation

Tue, 12 Jun 2018 00:00:00 GMT

One of my 2018 goals is to write a short & simple book on investing. I’m passionate about the subject, do a lot of it and have been both teaching and coaching people on it for quite some time. Instead of sharing the same ideas over and over again through my spoken, and sometimes written words, I wanted to put a bunch of notes together in a small read. I liked the Tao of Charlie Munger, and I’m going to write mine like it. These posts will be a series of random ideas, which I’l later refine and put into a simple, self-published book. My goal isn’t to get rich of this, be a best selling author or anything. My goal is simply be able to share, in a succinct way, all of the key ideas/principles/philosophies/best practices and short cuts to investing for those who want to become financially free sooner.

Becoming financially free is all about continuing to invest your money, over and over again into assets that grow in value. Ideally providing you both appreciation value and cashflow to live the life of your dreams. The more money you earn, save but then quickly invest, the faster you’ll reach that goal. Thus the more effective you’re able to do that, the better off you are. Automation is one of the most effective vehicles to help you do that.

Like everything in life, getting good at something generally requires persistent effort, and eventually building good habits. With automation you can get there quicker. Once you know the rules, you can automate some of the actions to help you win the game quicker.

One of the most challenging parts of investing is the psychological one. Most humans have a tendency to spend what they earn, many, more than what they earn. When you see your spendable income in front of you, it becomes a lot easier to just spend it. One of the absolute best ways to reduce this tendency, is to just not have the money at all.

When you generate profit as an entrepreneur, or receive your payroll as an employee, instead of manually transferring money to a savings or investment account, automate it. Ideally, on the date you receive profits or payroll, automatically transfer it to the following accounts; savings and investment accounts, possibly brokerages, and or other vehicles.

Not only will you then not have access to spend all of your money, even if you spent it all, you’d be ok, because you already saved and invested your money. This is much easier to manage, and you don’t have to think about it. Not only does it save you from spending, your money is now growing. Even more important, you’ve done what most people will never achieve, to consistently invest.

You’ll hear time and time again, that if people continually to invest throughout periods of time, they’d be ok. But because most people don’t do it in an automated fashion, they just don’t do it and lose. And just because you’re automating your savings and investments, it doesn’t mean you still can’t do your manual transfers when you make a large profit or bonus.

We have a saying, that savings are for losers. I don’t recommend just saving a ton of money in cash always. It’s good to always have at least 6–12+ months of cash on hand, but after a certain point it’s advisable to put your money to work, because inflation will eat away at your savings. Even though I recommend automated savings, when it gets high I’d recommend moving your assets to other vehicles, i.e., stocks, real estate, peer2peer lending, or any other chosen investment vehicle of your choice. This savings, is essentially cash to invest later. I’ll write another post on asset allocation and re-allocation later, as it’ll be an ongoing thing throughout your life.

You can automate transfer to your stock brokerage account. You can have the account setup to automatically buy certain stocks, or index funds if that’s your thing, or just have it sit in cash, and invest when you see a good deal. If you check the stock market regularly, by having a few companies you believe that will do good 10–20–30+ years form now, you can monitor them for dips in the market, and buy when you feel like it’s a good price.

For those just starting out, I always love recommending peer 2 peer lending. While the returns aren’t the best in the world, around 10–12% net if you’re investing in higher interest rate loans, it at least is one of the first places people can truly start to automate their money. With as little as $25, you setup automated investments into Prosper.com, and be on your way to being an automatic millionaire. It’s not about the money. Even if you’re broke, I advise starting out with $25/month transferring, or $1/month. The principle is more important than the money. It’s important to build the habits and starting to automate your investments. Most people I set this up with, they soon have more money than their checking & savings combined, and time never seems to end. Compounding does happen.

There are some things that can’t be automated well. I personally love real estate, for a ton of reasons, for which I’ll save for a later post. Generally once my savings, stocks, peer2peer notes, or other investments may be doing well. I will sell some, realize a gain, and swap assets into more stable real estate investments. The automated investments are really a way to build cash, build quick investments, and then for me, later roll those into large, more leveraged, more cashflow, more controlled, more value-added, and more tax saving real estate deals. Purchasing real estate can’t be automated as well, unless you’re buying REITs, but that’s not quite the same, and there are some crowd sourcing real estate deals, those which provide K-1 and depreciation benefits that may be good. But again, I’m getting off track.

Automation can be taken further. I used it to automate building my credit score. I’ll write another post on this, where I have 10–20 credit cards, with my own merchant processor, I charge them all a few dollars every month on auto payment, and have them all setup to paperless statements with auto-pay. It automatically builds my credit score and the credit scoring agencies think I have amazing credit because of my low usage, and tons of history.

Habits are the key to an extraordinary life. Automation with computers allow you to create habits instantly.

Don’t worry about the amount right now, even if it’s $1. If you can’t figure out a way to physically, create an automated habit, with a computer program with a small amount then you’re going to have trouble accomplishing much. Most people think they can’t afford it, yet they waste money on liabilities all day, all month, all year and their entire life and say they can’t afford it. It’s nuts, don’t let that be you.

Simplicity

Sun, 10 Jun 2018 00:00:00 GMT

When investing, the simpler the business you’re investing in is, the better.

It’s important to be able to easily understand how a business runs, how to read its financial statements, and how is it really making its money. When you trying to analyze the financial performance of say a conglomerate, it’s very difficult to see what’s going on. You do not really know what the main business drivers are. The more complicated something is, the easier it is to mess up.

A company’s accountants may do some fancy financial engineering, trying to devise all sorts of ways to make a balance sheet or p&l look better than it really is. When this happens, the investors suffer, because what beings appearing on the statements are strange one off items, exceptions and or weird cashflow calculations and methods. This was the example of Enron and so other many companies, financial statements can be engineered to look but, but really in the future they’re soon about to explode, and show some massive losses. A straight forward, simple to read and understand financial is worth it’s weight in gold.

Simplicity when making deals is also worth a lot. The more complicated a deal is is, the easier it is to fuck up. When we sold our first company back in the day, we got 1.5m in cash, a 2–3% equity in the acquirer and a 2–3% gross earn out from the sales our company did. We received our cash and never received the latter, why is too much for the purpose of this share. Although we lost the other 2 parts, we were happy to get our cash up front, because originally we were potentially going to sell our company on a payment plan, over time. We were strongly told by our advisors to get cash up front, as everything else may not happen and we were bad we did. We bought to make the deal simpler, you buy the company, and give us cash. That was a smarter and simpler choice, had we got paid over time, we would have likely never been paid. Everything else is way to complicated, contingent on way to many future events happening, and everything working as planned.

In my industry, the internet marketing space, a lot of companies make how they generate money, very complicated. We generally revenue from a variety of companies, selling a variety of different products and services, spending money to acquire customers all over the place. With all of these moving parts, it becomes even more difficult to track what’s going on, how profitable you really are per marketing channel or product sold, and causes a lot of issues. The moment we later tried to simplify our business, create one excellent product, sell it ourselves, optimize 1 or 2 marketing channels and basically control everything including the processing, our business simplified and we were able to scale.

It is hard to make things simple. When you do, it’s well worth the effort. When investing, the simpler the better, and the more complicated, it’s risker, and the worst it generally is. Especially when you consider, they’re are generally always simpler, more straight-forward options to accomplish what your objective is.

Know the Rules

Wed, 11 Apr 2018 00:00:00 GMT

When you know the rules, you know how to win the game, and it changes everything.

It’s a beautiful day in Manhattan. The sky is bright, and it’s cold. Walking around with an extraordinary successful entrepreneur, looking at some of the largest developments being built in our history. I ask, “what is the best way to get started developing properties.”

“Know the zoning, know it cold, know everything there is to know about it. There are so many opportunities most will overlook. If you know the rules, you can maximize your ways to win. You’ll know exactly what you can do when most people don’t know what’s possible. Did you know that the New England patriots review the rules for the game every year, just to find an advantage in the rules that they can use to win? Those rules about the new tax laws you shared with me, those are game changers, look how much of a difference it makes.”

The realization hit me like a ton of bricks.

Although I’ve always gained an unfair advantage when I knew the rules to any game, specifically in business, ranging from; tax rules, lending rules, credit rules, ad network rules, adword rules, email inboxing rules, etc etc, I never really thought about how big it is, to understand the game.

If you study the rules, to any game, you can have an unfair advantage. Tim Ferris in his book 4-hour work week talks about, how he won fighting championships. He wasn’t a great “fighter”, he learned a rule that if you just push an opponent out of the ring, you’d win. He became the best at pushing people out of the right. Maybe not to find to watch, but he won the championship, all by understanding the rules to the game.

When my credit score got hit for having a $5 charge be 30 and then 60 day late. It pissed me off, and I vowed to learn everything about it. Once I understood the exact credit scoring rules, I was able to reverse engineer exactly how it worked and have 800+ scores. A good thing to have when you’re using your credit a lot like me. I learned that they wanted to see a lot of lines, being used, with high limits, but low balances, consistently was the key. So I setup 10+ credit cards, charging them myself using one of our business merchant accounts $1+ dollars a month, putting them on auto-payment, and paperless statements. I let that grow and now my score is amazing, and when I apply for new line of credit, it barely affects my average credit history length, all because I knew the rules and I played them to my advantage.

We use rules in our email marketing business. We understand the rules required to deliver emails to Gmail and Yahoo. Once we learn the rules for what they want, we can deliver it.

There are so many tax savings, that which I won’t even go into this point. But understanding some tax rules can save you so much money, and not all CPAs even know them.

Learning the rules may be boring, but if you know the rules, it’s game changing, and you find out so many more ways to win.

When you’re feeling down or something isn’t working right… You know what to do.

Fri, 16 Feb 2018 00:00:00 GMT

When you’re feeling down or something isn’t working right… You know what to do.

Eat Right. Exercise. Be with Others. Be complete with your thoughts and get it out of your head. It makes us crazy. Write it down, Journal it. Be with others. Share your thoughts and feelings with them. Realize you’re not alone, and you have support. Think it through. Put together a plan to get through it. Execute on it. Celebrate what you have now, be Grateful. Do this, then be at peace with your thoughts, mind, plan and the action you’ve taken. Then for the spiritual, sit, meditate, pray, and believe in the best outcome for yourself and your life, because you’ve done your job, you’re complete because you’ve … taken care of your body, mind, work, relationships, and spirit. You let the universe or your God’s work take care of the rest in that moment.

Start another day and do it all over again.

It won’t be long until it’s resolved.

Are you investing into cryptocurrencies? Consider investing in it’s infrastructure.

Fri, 01 Dec 2017 00:00:00 GMT

Cryptocurrency is here to stay. What we do not know, is which cryptocurrency will win. And if one does, when will itself get disrupted. The fiat system is now being disrupted. Just like our governments’ fiat currencies, it is just a matter of time until Bitcoin BTC is disrupted. Etherum ETH from my understanding has been created to improve upon the old BTC code. While I’m not saying ETH is better, and there are more out there, what you might want to know is that they may always be changing.

As a person who builds software for a living, I can’t imagine technologically…BTC will likely be the end all crypto… because like most software, it eventually becomes out of date. That does not mean that legacy software like BTC can’t stay around awhile. It could still be dominate for quite some time. Email is a perfect example of a legacy system, that could be updated. It’s an open protocol that anyone can use. Even though it’s archaic, it works good enough. It’ll continue to be used unless our world chooses to create and use better open protocol for communicating freely through the internet. As developers, and humans as a species, we always strive to be better and improve, so it wouldn’t be unreasonable to assume that the email protocol too some day will be replaced by something else.

So if you’re investing into BTC or any currencies, also consider this…

One way to play the game, is to not buy any cryptocurrencies at all, but invest in something entirely different. There is a famous quote by someone who made a fortune during the San Francisco gold rush. He never mined gold himself. He became a multi-millionaire though, and back then, that was an extraordinary amount of money. “The money is in the shovels, not the gold”, he said and created an empire selling shovels. He sold the underlying tools, services… the infrastructure needed for businesses to pursue their gold mining opportunities. Like Cisco Computers, they sell routers and switches that support our entire internet’s infrastructure.

To participate in selling shovels to cryptocurrency opportunity seekers, it could be as simple as investing into the companies that are support this entire business, miners, software, wallets, platforms, etc etc, there are many companies in the space racing to compete in this business. What services does the entire cryptocurrency services need to operate?

The second and most common way play the game is to continue buying the currencies themselves. Ideally finding the currency you think will be the best performing asset that fits your personal investing style & portfolio goals.

The third way, is to do a mixture of both. Investing in the both infrastructure and the actual currencies if you believe in it all.

I believe in cryptocurrencies and the positive impacts they can bring to our world. Which currency will be the best, I really have no clue.

You think real estate is getting expensive, the world more crowded, and work more competitive than…

Fri, 01 Dec 2017 00:00:00 GMT

You think real estate is getting expensive, the world more crowded, and work more competitive than ever?

We haven’t seen anything yet.

This isn’t a local, city, state or country game anymore. It’s a world game. Welcome to the 21st century of globalization and the internet. In the next 5–10 years, we’re going to connect the remaining 50% of the world, the other 3.5B people to the internet… You’re not competing with just the person down the street or in another city anymore, you’re going to to be competing with the young girls and boys in India, Africa, China and many other developing countries with a just a smart device, a huge purpose, passion and drive to succeed for themselves and their family.

Every day (after deaths) we add a net new population of 200,000+ people to this earth. Although some of the developing countries are now tapering off, there is plenty of the world, most of the world, that isn’t and are growing rapidly. They want to provide the best for their families and will compete to live in the best cities and compete in the largest of companies.

Let’s not also forget computers and their accelerating growth which continues to disrupt jobs across the world.

We can’t expect our government to protect us from any of this, they can’t, because even the US is only 300 million people, which isn’t even 10% of the world population. Globalization is here, and the rest of the world is coming online fast.

What’s missing every time investors talk about Warren Buffet and Charlie Munger’s “words of wisdom”.

Wed, 04 Oct 2017 00:00:00 GMT

It is true, Warren Buffet and Charlie Munger are extraordinary investors. However, there are some very important background concepts/lessons that are sorely overlooked when all of the authors talk about the lessons we should all learn from some of the world’s greatest investors.

Generally, investment writers describe their lessons as simple ideas such as; buying amazing companies at fair prices, waiting for the right time to buy, and having cash available to buy them when the opportunity comes available. While there are of course many more lessons to learn from them, and they are all valuable… a lot of it really comes down to being patient, and buying when the opportunities are right. Being greedy when others are fearful. These are lessons I take to hear myself, and every investor could benefit from understanding their philosophies and trying to put them into action.

But what’s overlooked is the fact that…

Berkshire Hathaway is an incredible profit center. It generates huge sums of excessive cashflow, that will continually be built up. Whether or not they deploy their capital and invest in something, they’ll always constantly have more money to deploy.

Having businesses that spit off a considerable amount of extra cashflow makes investing all the easier, because you do not “need” the money that you’re investing. You can literally invest it all when the opportunity arises, you don’t rely on it for jack. You can also think and invest for the long-term, which is what they attempt to do. It’s always easier to go for the long term when you don’t need the money. Now of course, this is a investing 101, you don’t invest money you don’t need. Because in a time of bind, you’re going to sell it, generally at a huge loss, and likely pay taxes. That’s just about everything you could do bad.

However, what’s important here is that, they do in fact have business that generate excess cashflow. A ton of it. They are always in a position, to think and buy long-term because of the amount of capital their companies are generating. Even if they spent most of their capital, they’d have a lot of it recouped in no time. So when people think it’s extraordinary that they’re sitting on so much cash, it’s also not surprising given how much cash they generate…

#1) If you want to replicate their success, you also need profit centers, that generate so much excessive cash, you’ll always have more capital to deploy.

Warren and Charlie are extraordinary investors, and they are extraordinary entrepreneurs. They know how to raise capital, and have a team of A+ players to run their businesses. They’re also leveraging other peoples’ money to invest, they’ve all started funds and their getting a larger return off other people’s money.

#2) They ain’t just self-funding everything. They know how to raise capital, and go faster than money people would trying to save up all this money to invest.

Their insurance businesses are also very interesting, in the fact that they have “float”. All of the premiums that their insurance customers pay them are not considered income to their businesses. This is because they may have to pay out those premiums back to customers in a form of claim later on, so the IRS does not consider it as income. They have to hold onto the money for the customers. This allows them to hoard a ton of excess cash in “float”, and while it’s not being used they can invest it. As of 2016, they’ve collect over $91 billion dollars in float, which they haven’t had to pay any taxes on. They then use this to buy out other companies, and just always have more money to ensure they can always pay their claims in case anything happens.

This is extremely wise on their part. Their like a bank, in which they can invest money from their customers without paying taxes on the float. They of course have to be careful, but it’s beautifully designed.

#3) Their business is very cashflow efficient. They have “float”, and have extra capital to deploy like banks. I think they discovered this on accident, and this is also the reason that they are so focused now on buying insurance companies. It helps them invest more.

When you have all of this excess cashflow and float, it’s much easier for them to buy and hold for long-periods of time, and defer their capital gains.

So if you want to be a great investor like Warren Buffet & Charlie Munger, you’re going to want to develop profit centers that can continually create excess cash that you can invest. If there isn’t anything to buy, you don’t buy, and continually to let your capital grow.

Now even when they did not have excess cashflow, there are true examples of Warren Buffet actually giving back money to his investors because he could not find anything to buy. So those lessons you learned about being patient and waiting are absolutely true. However, as time progressed, Warren doesn’t have to do that any more, they’re not just an investor any more, they run business. Investing is just a side thing when the opportunity comes right, outside that, they’ll just collect their dividends and cashflow.

Berkshire Hathaway isn’t just an investment fund, it’s a conglomerate of companies generating significant revenues. Even without investing any more, they’d just be fine.

CircleCI 2.0 Configuration for Laravel 5.5 with Laravel Dusk

Mon, 11 Sep 2017 00:00:00 GMT

Spent a day figuring this out. For anyone who needs help on how to configure it, here you go.

https://github.com/t202wes/circleci-2.0-with-laravel-5.5-and-laravel-dusk/blob/master/.circleci/config.yml

# PHP CircleCI 2.0 configuration file

# Check https://circleci.com/docs/2.0/language-php/ for more details

version: 2
jobs:
build:
docker:
- image: circleci/php:7.0-browsers
working_directory: ~/laravel
steps:
- checkout

  #https://askubuntu.com/questions/594656/how-to-install-the-latest-versions-of-nodejs-and-npm  
  #We are using Node JS 6 because that's the current version on our local vagrant/homestead machines  
  - run:  
     name: Download NodeJS v6  
     command: curl -sL https://deb.nodesource.com/setup\_6.x | sudo -E bash -  

  #sqlite needed for laravel database  
  #nodejs6 needed to run \`npm run watch\` later  
  - run:  
     name: Install PHP sqlite and nodejs 6  
     command: sudo apt-get install -y libsqlite3-dev nodejs  


  # Leave this for future use if php-zip is ever required  
  # If you remove the flag 'composer install --ignore-platform-reqs\`  
  # composer will require php-zip to be installed. It appers that  
  # this isn't currently needed, so we are removing this from CircleCI  
  # to save 30 seconds of build time. The php-zip package isn't currently  
  # used by anything. If it ever does need to be used again, this can be  
  # uncommented.  

  #- run:  
  #   name: Install PHP libzip-dev  
  #   command: sudo apt-get install -y libzip-dev  

  #- run:  
  #   name: Install zip package for PHP  
  #   command: sudo docker-php-ext-install zip  

  - run:  
     name: Setup Laravel testing environment variables for CircleCI test  
     command: cp .env.testing .env  

  - run:  
     name: Update composer to latest version  
     command: composer self-update  

  - restore\_cache:  
      keys:  
        - composer-v1-{{ checksum "composer.json" }}  
        - composer-v1-  
  - run: composer install -n --prefer-dist --ignore-platform-reqs  
  - save\_cache:  
      key: composer-v1-{{ checksum "composer.json" }}  
      paths:  
        - vendor  

  - restore\_cache:  
      key: dependency-cache-{{ checksum "package.json" }}  
  - run:  
      name: Install NodeJS Packages  
      command: npm install  
  - save\_cache:  
      key: dependency-cache-{{ checksum "package.json" }}  
      paths:  
        - ./node\_modules  

  - run:  
     name: Create SQLite Database  
     command: touch database/database.sqlite  

  - run:  
     name: Migrate Laravel Database  
     command: php artisan migrate --env=testing --force  

  - run:  
     name: Compile Javascript & CSS for Browser Testing  
     command: npm run production  

  - run:  
     name: Start Chrome Driver  
     command: ./vendor/laravel/dusk/bin/chromedriver-linux  
     background: true  

  - run:  
     name: Run Laravel Server  
     command: php artisan serve  
     background: true  

  - run:  
     name: Test 1 - Run Phpunit for Server-Side HTTP Requests & PHP Unit Testing  
     command: vendor/bin/phpunit  

  - run:  
     name: Test 2 - Run Laravel Desk for Browser Testing  
     command: php artisan dusk

Healing Neck & Shoulders from 10+ Years of Deferred Maintenance

Wed, 16 Aug 2017 00:00:00 GMT

It’s time to heal my neck and shoulders. This time for good. The time is now. I will do it, and I won’t let anything get in the way of my health.

Over the last 10 years I’ve took for granted my neck & shoulder health. I’ve worked a tremendous amount of hours, especially on the computers. I learned how to type quickly playing Ultima Online, the world’s first real MMORPG. Back then you’d have to type everything you want to say. Running around, attacking people and typing at the same time. My experience was always being tense when typing quickly. I believe I’ve carried that experience throughout the rest of my life, and now I’m learning how to relax while typing quickly. This is one, of many factors, that have caused my neck & shoulder muscles to degrade.

Overall my health has been fantastic. I’m now 30 years old. Diet and nutrition was never an issue. I spent a lot of time learning about it in high school from Tony Robbins. Even though I just knew the basics, it served me for a long time. I always prouded myself without having to do extensive workouts, in fact, any at all, to almost maintain my body, shape and weight by simply eating. What was missing though, is the needed consistent exercise to keep my spine, neck and shoulders in optimal health.

I recently got done traveling around the world, for several years, for months and months on end. I’m now settling down back in my home town in Portland, Oregon and it feels great. I’m building up a new routine, and this time it’s solely focused on health first. I want to have amazing health to do everything I want in life. Without it, I’m unable to contribute to myself or anyone else.

I’ve put together the following plan:

Sun Salutations Daily
Yoga 1–2x a week
Workout 2–3x a week
Cardio 2–3x a week
Massage Therpary 2–3x a week
Hired two personal trainers (online + local)
Signed up for a gym
Journalling about my health 3–4x a week
Drinking 90 fl.oz of water a day (already a habit)
Drinking a 100% veggie green smoothie in the morning (already a habit when not traveling)
Doing my best to be awake with the sun, and going to bed at night time (I used to stay up late, but prolonged computer work just isn’t for me any more)

While I’ve had plans before, this time it’s different. I’ve always known what to do, and sometimes I did it. But I was never consistent. I know the key to most things in life is just showing up and being consistent.

I’ve made a decision that this is the last time I’ll ever have issues again, and I’m excited for my transformation.

PS: I just recently setup medium, and I’m excited to start sharing publicly again. I’m excited to share about health, wellness, entrepreneurship, investing and building tribes.

Time to try Medium

Wed, 16 Aug 2017 00:00:00 GMT

All I want to do is share, and my Wordpress blog keeps getting hacked. I’ve wasted so much time self hosted that buggy piece of software. Although I did not want to give up control over my data, I’m going to try medium. Let’s see how it does.

Consider removing the word “should” from your day to day conversations, here is why…

Thu, 14 Jul 2016 00:00:00 GMT

Consider removing the word “should” from your day to day conversations with other people. Don’t “should” all over someone.

Here’s why…

Should isn’t a great word to use when recommending or suggesting actions to anyone else.

You should do this, you should do that.

What’s the definition of “should”?

“should” a verb:
used to indicate obligation, duty, or correctness, typically when criticizing someone’s actions.

—

That’s not very good. Especially when we say it to other people, we’re strongly recommending a correct course of action to them, even though you’re not them. And when we do it to ourselves, we’re just being highly critical of ourself.

Here are 2 healthy alternatives.

“You might consider” or “you could”.

You could do this, you could do that.

You might consider doing this.

—–

What feels better?

I should go to the gym.
I should save more money.
I should call my best friend.
I should start a business.
I should find a job.
I should get married.
I should break up.
I should go to school and get a job.
I should quit and start my own business.

vs.

I could go to the gym.
I could save more money.
I could call my best friend.
I could start a business.
I could find a job.
I could get married.
I could break up.
I could go to school and get a job.
I could quit school and start my own business.

Here’s how could is defined,

“could” a verb:

used to indicate possibility.
– “they could be right”
used in making polite requests.
– “could I use the phone?”

—

It’s a lot lighter, it’s also full of possibility.

Everything is possible, you shouldn’t have to do anything, everything is an option. You could do that, you could do this.

Isn’t that the reality anyways?

I mean we all could do absolutely nothing, and decay, and be fine with it. We cause ourselves so much distress of everything we should do, acting like if we just did that, life would be better. It’s all an option. You could do anything.

Choose your own life, you could do this, you could do that.

Be free from feeling obligated and guilty if you don’t do something.

You could try removing the world should from your day to day conversations, or you could not.

You can choose!

You might seriously consider it though if you want a greater piece of mind!

Better to write, than to not write at all

Tue, 26 Apr 2016 00:00:00 GMT

I decided a few days ago, that it is better to write something, even ever so small, than to write nothing at all.

I got this from one of the Hive Global Leaders Program at Harvard University Unconferenced sessions. The session was on effective story telling. One of the key concepts was to write out all of the main events/concepts that you wanted to share in a story. Although somewhat obvious in my opinion, however, what I thought what was great about it, was that you don’t necessarily need to add anything more if you don’t have time to share.

If you want to share the story about the lord of the rings and the hobbit — you could probably share the story by talking about 5-8 distinct events that happened during the story. If you have more time you can add filler to all of those, making each event/section longer. However, if you don’t have a lot of time, you could just leave it with a sentence per event. If it’s short enough you could actually tell the high level ideas of the story to someone on an elevator ride in 15-30 seconds.

SPOILER ALERT FOR HOUSE OF CARDS: For example, here’s the events/key concepts for Frank Underwood’s character in the House of Cards.

Now without ever watching it, you get a fairly good understanding of what’s going on.

What’s nice about this is, I don’t feel like I have to now share a full blown story now every time I want to share. Many times I’ll come up with an idea for a blog post and I’ll write it in my to-do list. But generally, the blog post doesn’t get written. Now, I’m committed just to writing out the key concept, if I want to share anything else, I’ll add to it, just like I’m doing now. Otherwise, I’ll just leave it super short and that will be it.

I don’t need to share an entire story each time, I need to share the important parts about it, and that could be a few sentences or even just one.

So this is why I’ll now write something, just to write, instead of writing nothing at all. I’m looking forward to some super small blog posts now. And maybe, I’ll proofread if desired, maybe not.

About Me

Sun, 11 Oct 2015 00:00:00 GMT

Hello! My name is Wes Mahler. I’m passionate about helping people feel empowered and pursuing their dreams. I believe in the potential of every human being. I want to unleash the power that every human being has in-themselves to realize their full potential.

My dream used to be moving to Silicon Valley, creating and selling a tech company. I did that in 2009 when I was 22, and sold my company, Tracking202, but I was left unfilled. I ended up losing everything I earned in a lawsuit with the company who acquired ours shortly afterwards. I started a few more companies afterwards, with just the purpose of making money. Ended up losing that too, in more legal disputes with low integrity companies we were working with at the time.

After losing everything now twice, I was stressed out. At the age of 25 and working 80 hours, I felt like my life wasn’t working. I felt like a failure because I never reached the financial level of success I thought I would be at that time. I felt super burnt out working on startups, in an office all of the time and felt like I needed a real change, I had never been out of the country in my life. I decided to live the 4 hour work week life style, inspired by Timothy Ferriss’ book and my friend, Josh Wexalbuam. Shortly after, I started making passive income from selling informational products I created & actually had free time to travel. I finally took my first vacation & trip out of the country, on a Caribbean Cruise ship. It felt great to finally be free financially & physically free for once.

I had always wanted to attend a seminar from my favorite hero of all time, Jim Rohn. He unfortunately passed away before I realized that goal, however, his student, Tony Robbins, one of the most successful human potential leaders in the world was still going strong. I decided the next best thing was to enroll in one of his courses. My friends and I enrolled in Tony Robbin’s Unleash the Power Within program. Through that program I decided I wanted to create a company that’d live past me and make a difference in the world, I thought about everything I cared about at the time and started follow.net. After starting it, I decided to open up a new possibility for myself. Creating a startup and traveling around the world at the same time. I was intrigued and my girlfriend wanted to travel too, so we went for it. For the next year, my girlfriend and I traveled around the world. It was a fantastic experience and being able to have free time and explore what I wanted to do with the one I loved was something I’ll never forget.

As great as it was though, after a year of it I felt like I needed a new challenge. A challenge like when I first moved to San Francisco, dropped everything and pursued my dream and had no way or idea of how I’d make it work. I decided I wanted to work on more projects that I was passionate about, that’d help me come alive and would take advantage of all of the resources I had available to me in Silicon Valley, to where I moved. I decided I wanted to become a a real missionary entrepreneur, a term I would discover after watching Jeff Bezo’s speech during an AWS:ReInvent conference online.

My hero & role model at the time, Ryan Allis, started an organization called Hive. Their purpose was to train purpose driven leaders under the age of 40 to make a profound and lasting impact in the world. I immediately signed up and got accepted into their first ever, Hive Global Leaders program. It was an outstanding program, I got to be around the people I wanted to become, purpose driven leaders who were making social impacts in their community, doing what they love, and many of them too, making a great living from doing so. I was inspired, I wasn’t sure what I was going to do. I decided that I wanted to do something related to personal development because I always got so much out of it when I read all of my books as a kid. I wanted to give that gift to others.

After attending the Hive program and several others, I started realizing what I cared most about was not helping companies acquire more customers online which I did at Follow. While I thought it was the company I wanted to build for 100+ years, it was not. I started it with that intention but ultimately, I decided I care way more about helping people realize their full potential and fulling in life what matters most to them.

I recently attended the Singularity University Executive Program & explored ways of using exponential technology to impact the lives of a billion plus people. I decided to combine my passion for helping people reach their full potential with, data science & artificial intelligence. As of writing this today, I’m enrolling in the Self Expression Leadership Program from Landmark Worldwide. We have to make a project for the community, something that is a self expression of what we care about.

I decided to create a new organization; our purpose will be to empower anyone, anywhere, anytime with the ability to have access to a mentor (human or AI) that’ll help them pursue their dreams.

That is a little bit about me and what I’m up to now.

PS: I’ve decided to leave my old bios for anyone to read. I actually thought about taking down some of my old blog posts because they don’t really represent who I am anymore. However, I thought it’d be more powerful to leave them up to share with anyone who cares, my journey and that we’re all on the path together of figuring out what matters most to us in our lives and then acting on it. It’s taken a while to get here and it’s still a practice of acting on & living out fully, what I care most about and making it a reality. My story really has been about changing from an entrepreneur who wanted to help other entrepreneurs make money, to becoming someone who wants to make a difference in the world and enrolling others to now do the same, because I feel it’s the best way for them to also achieve their wildest dreams & ambitions. I hope you will join me on this journey of making the world whole & complete. Thank you.

My Self Expression Leadership Program Project

Sun, 11 Oct 2015 00:00:00 GMT

I’m enrolled in the Landmark Curriculum for Living courses. They were recommended by my friend, Ryan Allis. The third program in the series is the Self Expression Leadership Program. Your objective is to create a project that’ll impact the community. The project is suppose to be a self expression about what matters to you in your life.

I decided to take on a project that’d help anyone, anywhere, anytime get access to a mentor (human and or artificial intelligence) that’ll help them pursue their dreams. My goal is to have at least 50+ young adults being mentored on the platform before April 2015. I’m super excited for this project. I’ve always enjoyed helping people pursue their dreams. I use to do it when I was involved in MLM and with our 15+ meetup202 events around the world, where we taught people how to make a living through internet marketing.

Increasing your vocabulary of words to describe your emotional states

Thu, 08 Oct 2015 00:00:00 GMT

How are you feeling? How many emotional states do you know? Which words do you use to communicate how you feel?

Increasing your vocabulary of words to describe your emotional state can improve your emotional intelligence & well being. When you’re able to more clearly understand the exact emotion you’re feeling, by describing it with the right words, you’re then able to respond to it accordingly.

For example, if you start feeling angry, you’ll know, generally that you might want to calm down. However, if you dive into the deeper reason and find a word for exactly why you’re angry, i.e., you’re mad & jealous about something, you’ll have even more clarity of how you’re feeling and then how exactly you might be able to resolve that specific feeling. If you’re angry because you’re jealous, you have a much better understanding on how to treat the jealously than to just try to stop being angry generally.

Experts in any field have their own advanced vocabulary, that they know better than anyone else to describe exactly what’s going on. I may have pain in my neck, but a doctor might be able to describe exactly what type of pain I’m feeling, where and what’s going on in my neck. Having that clarity gives them access to be able to help me better than I may be able to.

Next time you’re feeling something, anything, try using this feeling wheel. Increase your emotional intelligence by pin pointing the exact words to describe how you’re actually feeling.

Words are powerful, they have the ability to change you

Sat, 26 Sep 2015 00:00:00 GMT

My friends & family went to Oprah’s Live Your Best Life Weekend Tour last year. It was amazing! I’d highly recommend it to everyone in the future if they ever restart their tour. Many of the talks were on words and the law of attraction. We literally create our own reality with the words we use in our language. My favorite moment during the event was when Oprah shared her story when she visited Maya Angelou’s house for an event.

There were many people Maya’s house. In the living room, there were two people making jokes about gay people. Maya Angelou overheard them, walked over them and asked them to leave. Oprah understood that it wasn’t appropriate for them to make these types of jokes at anyones’ house, but she was surprised that Maya Angelou didn’t just correct it and let them stay. Oprah asked Maya why she kicked them out, her response was…

“Words are powerful, and I don’t want those words sticking to the cloth on my couch because every time I walk in that room, I’ll feel those words and words have the ability to change you.”

Be mindful about your language, the words you use, both a loud and internally, because they do, literally change you and your energy every time you use them.

What words are you using?

How are they changing you?

What reality through language are you creating for your life?

After hearing that, and so many other good stories. I felt empowered to ensure that our home was only filled with words that made us feel positive, happy, joyful & empowered to pursue our dreams everyday. A house with no words or images on our walls now feels like it’d be empty. I want it to feel alive and empowered, everyday I wake up. Here are some of the vision boards & language you’ll find in our house. This is just my office, we have these all over our house.

Build an organization to make a difference, not to last forever

Tue, 15 Sep 2015 00:00:00 GMT

I was scrolling down my Facebook News Feed today and saw that Mark Zuckerberg was talking live, in a Town Hall Meeting. I went to check it out & was fortunate to watch the last few minutes of the talk because I found a few of his ideas very insightful.

An audience participant asked him the question, if he was scared of seeing Facebook die in the future because of other social media companies in the past not working out. I didn’t think that question mattered very much, because he was talking about how companies like MySpace failed before. However, Mark put an interesting spin on his answer.

He said he doesn’t think much about that at all, the companying dying. He thinks it’s actually quite strange that a lot of companies have the objective to live forever. Facebook’s objective is to make the world more open & connected, and that’s all that matters to Mark. If they’re able to do that, they did their job and that’s what was important. Not if they were able to last forever. Making a difference was what was most important, not longevity, he’s always asking himself if he’s doing the right things to make their mission become a reality.

I found that useful, because when I started Follow, I wanted to build an organization that would last long after I died. As I meet more missionary entrepreneurs that’s what I wanted to do, have a big enough mission & build an organization that stands the test of time. Which I still think I’d like to do. However, after hearing Marks talk, I don’t think that’s really the point and I think he’s right. The objective of the organization is to achieve it’s purpose, not to live forever. Obviously their purpose is huge and Facebook may be around for a long time in order to accomplish it, but lasting forever vs. achieving your purpose is an important distinction to understand, they’re both different objectives. The later, achieving your purpose, is really the most important. That’s what your organization exists for.

Highly Recommended Activities

Sat, 08 Aug 2015 00:00:00 GMT

Highly Recommend Books (Audio or Reading)

Highly Recommended Programs

Hive Global Leaders Program
Landmark Forum
Tony Robbin’s Unleash the Power Within
Art of Living Happiness Program
Oprah’s The Life You Want Weekend
Singularity University Executive Program
Search Inside Yourself

Highly Recommended Videos

Highly Recommended Learning Tools

Cashflow 101 Board Game

Highly Recommended Products

Highly Recommended Activities

Creating bucket lists
1. personal bucket list
2. you and your significant other’s couple bucket list
3. family bucket list
Creating vision boards & placing them around your home
1. personal vision board
2. couple vision board
3. family vision board
Creating a gratitude mirror

Other Peoples’ Lists

Ryan Allis’ List

What do you think I’m missing?

Lost Digital History

Tue, 04 Aug 2015 00:00:00 GMT

Many people setup their WordPress blogs a long time ago, including mine in 2006. Since they have all been setup, many of them have had deferred maintenance and are broken. It’s unfortunate, a lot of great content has been lost. However, humanity currently produces so much digital content every day now that I guess it doesn’t really matter.

Almost every time I’ve wanted to blog on wesmahler.com, something has been wrong with the blog. My servers have been slow, they’re constantly being brute forced attacked & in the past they actually were compromised so there were many malicious executanle files saved on my web server.

One of my first websites that show me the potential of online advertising was, rotaryengineillustrated.com, which I bought for $3,000 during high school. The site ran on Joomla, but it wS so out of date I decided to pretty much leave it broken because updating it to the current versions of jooma would have been way to much work. The site still has some old static .html files that render content correct and it still makes, even today around $100/month from Adsense from it. I’ve had it since 2004. Its kind of sad that I put so many hours of work into that as a kid in high school just to have let it decay past a feasible point of returning it to normal.

Rebuildingrotaryengines.com, a site that we used to show videos on how to rebuild a rotary engine no longer has it’s videos any more because they were all hosted on Google Videos at the time but that’s been shut down. I did recover a few here and there.

I thought about just paying $5/month and starting a new blog, but I didn’t want to start all over again so I just spent another day during my last day in London and I believe I fixed it all for good. I’ve lost a few images from my blog because I hosted many of my images and videos from several sources. Had I just hosted them all through the WordPress Media application I would been able to save them all easier. At one point I switched over to using Facebook’s commenting system because I had so many spam comments. I thought it might be the best platform to collect comments. It’s had a lot of limitations though so I’ve switched over to Disqus now which I think will be much better. I was able to import all of my old comments however I wasn’t able to import all of my latest Facebook comments. More history lost! Last year I also unfortunately lost 30,000 of my personal photos due to a OS X Time Machine bug that does not back up your iPhotos library when the iPhotos app is open. I’ve lost all of this digital data as someone who knows how to program and administrate servers, I can only imagine all of the digital data everyone else has lost.

That’s finally all being solved now. For my blog, I’m moved it to a new set up Amazon EC2 & RDS instances using ElasticBeanstalk. The code is backed up in Github, CloudFlare is used to serve the site quicker, put extra security on my WordPress logins that still continued to get attacked daily, and all of the future WordPress media images that I upload are stored and hosted via S3. It’s kind of expensive to pay $30/month to AWS to host my blog and a few personal sites, but it feels nice having control over my public digital journal, my blog.

For my photos, I’m now using Google Photos. It automatically backs up all of your images, across all devices for free for 1080p quality photos. That’s ok for me because I just use my iPhone to take photos. iCloud photos currently sucks because it doesn’t allow you to store photos remotely without having a local backup. Google Photos allows you to store all of your images remotely without taking up any local space on any of your devices.

Now that’s all clear, I can start writing again without having my blog be unresponsive & broken every time I visit it. That’s great because I have a lot to write about. As I continue my journey to becoming a missionary whose set out to positive impact the world, I’ll need to be good at sharing the ideas that will inspire others to do the same.

I’m attending Singularity University’s Executive Program in September

Sat, 18 Jul 2015 00:00:00 GMT

I’m very excited to attend Singularity University’s Executive Program this September (2015). Ryan Allis from Hive recommended it to me last year. I’ll be attending with a beginners mind, starting fresh & learning about new exponential technologies that’ll profoundly impact humanity in the near future. I’ll likely start a new purpose driven organization after attending this program.

I’m currently transitioning out of the internet advertising industry because I don’t believe online advertising is the greatest problem for me to spend my life on solving. Some potential future areas of focus for me may be in; education, finance, renewable energy and or artificial intelligence.

I’m really looking forward to it! I feel a bit uncomfortable about it because I’ll be entering into entirely new waters. However, I cherish this process of being on the edge of my seat and doing what’s uncomfortable because it’s always made me feel the most alive.

The first part of my entrepreneurial journey was to create businesses primarily to make money & provide financial freedom. The second part of my journey will be focused on contributing to humanity in the greatest possible way I know how, and to do that, I’ll have to build purpose driven organizations that can scale & make the positive changes we want to see in this world.

“The Singularly University’s Executive Program (EP) is a week-long workshop or custom program that offers corporate executives and entrepreneurs the tools to predict and evaluate how emerging technologies will disrupt and transform their industries, companies, careers and lives.”http://singularityu.org/executive-program

WordPress xmlrpc.php brute force attack

Wed, 20 May 2015 00:00:00 GMT

The server that hosts this blog has been down consisnelty for the last several months. Every time I restart the server to make it work again, a few hours later it would crash again. I figured some malicious activity was occurring. I finally found someone trying to brute force attack my wordpress blog using the xmlrpc.php file thousands of times per second, causing my tiny micro AWS EC2 server instance to stop working due to CPU overload.

I tried moving all of my DNS to CloudFlare and turning on DNS protection, but that didn’t seem to fix the issue. Finally after digging deeper into the issue, they were attacking the file directly using my ip address, because my wordpress blog would render when someone went to the IP address of my server, skipping my actual domain name. This allowed them to get around my DNS firewall.

I just decided to block the IP address for now, hopefully that’ll do the trick.

$ iptables -I INPUT -s 162.251.161.98 -j DROP

My HTTPD server logs basically looked like this:

162.251.161.98 – – [21/May/2015:05:37:22 +0000] “POST /xmlrpc.php HTTP/1.0” 302 – “-” “Mozilla/4.0 (compatible: MSIE 7.0; Windows NT 6.0)”

162.251.161.98 – – [21/May/2015:05:37:22 +0000] “POST /xmlrpc.php HTTP/1.0” 302 – “-” “Mozilla/4.0 (compatible: MSIE 7.0; Windows NT 6.0)”

162.251.161.98 – – [21/May/2015:05:37:22 +0000] “POST /xmlrpc.php HTTP/1.0” 302 – “-” “Mozilla/4.0 (compatible: MSIE 7.0; Windows NT 6.0)”

162.251.161.98 – – [21/May/2015:05:37:22 +0000] “POST /xmlrpc.php HTTP/1.0” 302 – “-” “Mozilla/4.0 (compatible: MSIE 7.0; Windows NT 6.0)”

162.251.161.98 – – [21/May/2015:05:37:22 +0000] “POST /xmlrpc.php HTTP/1.0” 302 – “-” “Mozilla/4.0 (compatible: MSIE 7.0; Windows NT 6.0)”

162.251.161.98 – – [21/May/2015:05:37:22 +0000] “POST /xmlrpc.php HTTP/1.0” 302 – “-” “Mozilla/4.0 (compatible: MSIE 7.0; Windows NT 6.0)”

162.251.161.98 – – [21/May/2015:05:37:22 +0000] “POST /xmlrpc.php HTTP/1.0” 302 – “-” “Mozilla/4.0 (compatible: MSIE 7.0; Windows NT 6.0)”

162.251.161.98 – – [21/May/2015:05:37:22 +0000] “POST /xmlrpc.php HTTP/1.0” 302 – “-” “Mozilla/4.0 (compatible: MSIE 7.0; Windows NT 6.0)”

The blog should now be back online. I have several sites hosted on this server, so I wasn’t sure which site was the issue, now it looks like it was this blog and specifcally they were directly hitting the IP address & trying to brute force attack a wordpress file, which seems to be a common issue: https://blog.sucuri.net/2014/07/new-brute-force-attacks-exploiting-xmlrpc-in-wordpress.html

Hive.org – Creating an Extraordinary Life – Day 3

Tue, 21 Jan 2014 00:00:00 GMT

Today was all about how to create an extraordinary life at Hive. I’m calling it day three, but it’s actually the official 2nd day of content out of the 3 day training course. It was another amazing day of great people, presentations, discussions, reflection, massages, food & san francisco views.

It started off, like each day, with an amazing breakfast at the change.org office. Following breakfast, we had an incredibly fun yoga session, lead by a local instructor. We practiced yoga individually and together as a team. Doing yoga poses as a group was the funnest part for me. For instance, we did a group chair pose with 30+ people all relying on each other to make it work. It was just a really fun and challenging thing to do together as a team. Ok, it wasn’t that hard, but some people almost fell over a few times. We did that and many other group poses.

Today, the Hive team offered something new for everyone. They put together a whiteboard which would allow people to sign up for 20 minute massages throughout the day, offered by Message Pointe, a local massage therapy company. As much as I wanted to sign up and receive a massage at some point, everyone else was super excited about it, so I didn’t sign up for any spots so everyone else could instead.

The discussion topics for today were:

Creating an Authentic Purpose
Designing Your Life Plan
Life Plan Feedback and Mentoring
Impactful Public Speaking & Confidence
Becoming Unreasonable
Creating a Personal Financial Plan
Holistic Mindfulness & Health
Connecting With World Class Mentors
Peer Group Discussion

My and everyone else’s’ favorite session, was the Holistic Mindfulness & Health training, lead by Rich Fernandez from Search Inside Yourself. Why did everyone love it? I think it’s because Rich did an outstanding job showing technically how the brain reacts to certain situations. Then with the group, doing meditation practices that’ll acutally help you to be mindful and think about how to react to those situations intelligently, instead of acting out with our primitive flight or fight responses.

I’ve had conversations about the amygdala before with my best friend, Cam. The amygdala is the actual physical, primitive part of our brain that developed first for human survival, it’s the part of the brain which signals the flight or fight responses. Cam previously worked at Google previously and attended these mindfulness sessions, I believe by the same person. He received a lot of value of of them. Cam would always rave to me about the newest findings and tell me about how the primitive brain works. But during this session was the first time I really heard it from the best speakers about it, and I finally got it. It was incredible to learn directly from Rich and try mediation practices that’d help you to be mindful of the amygdala and how to control it.

We practiced two different types of meditation. One was where you’d focus on your breathing and try to have a clear mind. The normal type, from my limited knowledge of meditation. The second type was where you focus on everything external, listening, feelings, smells, sensations and everything else around you. I enjoyed doing both of these because you could then switch between the two occasionally. This was a great way for me to keep my mind clear, because I didn’t always have to do it the full time. I could better have a clear mind after I let my mind wander a bit, focusing on everything external to me for a while.

Before leaving to lunch, we really got into the core purpose of the day. The purpose of the day was to start helping us design our life purpose & plans, which we’d work on for the day and following day.

Hive believes in order to be an effective leader, you need to be able to simply & clearly articulate your life’s purpose.

Now, some say, and I’ve read in a book lately that disagrees with the idea of having a life’s purpose. Some argue that sometimes life is just about exploring, and that you don’t have to stress yourself out if you don’t know your purpose yet. You may or may not find it. They say if something comes up you can go for it, but that you shouldn’t feel obligated and bad if you haven’t figured out your life purpose yet. But they don’t really emphasize on ever getting to finding it either. Now Ryan, in his presentations talks about the fact that there are periods in your time where it could be good to be exploring, without having a life purpose, but, eventually and hopefully that not after too much time, you should figure out what it is that you really want to do with in life.

I am inclined to agree with Ryan and Hive’s major emphasis of how important it is to have a life purpose. People’s life purposes, or I’ll also call missions, don’t always have to be all the way defined at first if you’re just starting out. But a general direction, or even just the simple idea of you want to roughly do in life, whether it be “helping people” or “becoming an entrepreneur” even by itself can create a huge difference in your life.

I speak from personal experience about this. The only reason I’ve been able to live my life, and do some things, which I think are pretty amazing; traveling around the world for a year, building a company remotely, selling a company, helping people become entrepreneurs, becoming a pilot, having an awesome relationship & much more, is because I was fortunate enough to have the simplest of idea of just wanting to be an entrepreneur when I was growing up that’s now allowed me to do all of this.

Having that one simple mission, or in my case a desire to own my own business, even before I knew what the world entrepreneur meant, has made all of the difference in how my life’s turned out. Having this simple idea in my head of starting a business is the reason that I was able to drop out of college without being scared was because I knew what it was I wanted, it didn’t require a college eduction. So many of my friends and colleagues never figured out what they wanted to do in life. Even after college they are still not sure. Unfortunately, the reality is, without having some kind of life purpose, they never really make any meaningful change in their life. It’s only until they do, they’ll really start making significant process. It is incredibly useful in your life, to figure out, how you want to spend your life living. Now, I’m not saying everyone has to have it figured out right away, but my gosh, my life has been made so much simpler knowing the simple fact of me wanting to be an entrepreneur, that ever since the age of 14, I’ve been able to work towards that goal and now be where I am today. Without that idea, I would have never done what I’ve done. I would just be a ship floating around the ocean with no sail, no direction of where I’d want to end up.

What was also so great about the simple concept of wanting to be an entrepreneur, my single purpose at that time, that I only realized until lately, is that it was so broad that it allowed me time to figure out the specifics of how I would use entrepreneurship in my life’s purpose. I didn’t know that I wanted to be a technology entrepreneur that’d be focused on helping small businesses acquire customers online & showing businesses how they can make a difference in the world. All of that came later. I was fortunate enough to have such a broad concept of my purpose, just being an entrepreneur, it was so flexible and opened ended I found out a way to make it work. With the concept of just being an entrepreneur, you can do so many things. It’s almost impossible not to find a way to be happy being an entrepreneur because there are so many ways to do it. But over time, you’ll figure out what type of entrepreneur you really want to be, and that’s what the difference between now and when I was in middle school was.

So for me, I believe having that simple idea was the only way that I would ever be in this position today. Otherwise, I would not know what I wanted to do. So I think for everyone, the earlier the better, if you can figure out what you want to do, you’ll be able to start earlier and go for it. Even if it’s the wrong purpose, you can always change it. Just start making progress on something you believe your passionate about, if you find out you’re not passionate about it, you just have to change your direction. But at least you gave it a shot, you’ll eventually find out all of the things you don’t want to do to find, and only be left with things that you enjoy doing.

So if you don’t currently have a life’s purpose. Your purpose can start broad, maybe it’s you just love movies, or you find the ideas of entrepreneurship, writing, helping people, sharing, speaking, entertainment, energy, technology, games,health, spiritual, food, engineering, space or anything else interesting to you. Find some broad sector or category that you could be interested in. Those simple ideas, once you start working in then, you’ll eventually figure out exactly what it is specifically in those broad topics that you want to focus the rest of your life one. Eventually, you’ll figure out what your purpose in life is.

For instance, your interest could be in food, and leave it as general as that. Maybe then you’ll end up creating a catering company that bring awareness to businesses of the types of sustainable foods they should be eating, and why it’s important to the health of their employees. A simple interest in space, could have you reading websites all day about space and eventually landing you a job at nasa or a company like spaceX. For me, a general interest in wanting to be an entrepreneur, has now lead me want to be a technology entrepreneur who helps business create a more joyous, abundant and sustainable world.

So at Hive, they recommended you to try and come up with a 15 word sentence. A sentence that describes what your life’s purpose is. It’s supposed to contain, what you want to do and a method of acutally measuring it, if your mission was successful. For instance, instead of your purpose to preventing global warming, your purpose could be better defined as preventing the earth from going above a specific temperature.

On the last day, everyone would share their life’s purposes. Creating these purpose statements was difficult, it seemed most people found this task difficult. I think most people have the difficulty of trying to make their purpose too specific but then, not too broad. I shared a similar challenge. To give us some time to reflection on our life’s purpose, we went and took a field trip to Bernard Heights.

There we reflected by ourselves and tried our best to write in our notebooks, what the purpose of our life could be. We wouldn’t have fully polished purpose statements yet. Today was just the practice, on the last day, all of the leaders from our group (everyone is considered a leader), would share their life’s purpose with everyone else.

After writing in our notebooks and reflecting, we had an amazing lunch on the hill. We’ve had great food, every meal. Hive’s done a great job feeding us. After eating, we took a fun group photo, shown here. I’m on the left.

After lunch, Hive brought in some mentors to work with our groups (we split into groups of 3-6 people always) and help members in our group better define their life’s purpose. Moving towards the end of the day, Ryan lead a discussion on how to be financially free in life. While I think initially at first, some people challenged the idea of why you’d want to potentially be a millionaire, because they want to be selfless leaders and share everything. They question why they should want to have a million dollars or net worth. I think eventually who needed to hear it, got his point about doing it to be able to take care of yourself, so then you can take care of other people.

While of course, myself, being an entrepreneur, I completely agree with importance of mastering money, so you can use it to assist you in your life’s purpose. While your goal may not be to acquire wealth in life, you should be aware that finances are very important part of life, it’s energy you need to pursue your mission. If you want to affect change in the world, you need to know how to invest & save your money, so you’ll have the financial resources to take care of your family, take risks and pursue your life’s passion at the same time. If you don’t have your financial plan figured out, you’ll never be able to have the time, resources and energy to do what the world needs you to be doing. It’s extremely important.

To end the amazing day, the entire group traveled to Treasure Island. Hive put together an outstanding dinner at one of the old converted military buildings there. While I’ve been to Treasure Island many times, I’ve never ate dinner there, so it was even a new experience for me that I throughly enjoyed. The team at Hive has done an incredible job showing the class some amazing views of our city, San Francisco. Dinner would close at 10, and after that, I needed to go to sleep. I went to bed at 2am, and I’d have to wake up at 6:30am to prepare for the 3rd and final training day.

Hive.org – Becoming a purpose driven leader – Day 1

Sat, 18 Jan 2014 00:00:00 GMT

I just got back from my 7 month trip in latin america, i will write about it more. We’ll later go to asia for another 5-6+ months soon. But before we go we stopped back in san francisco and I was lucky enough to arrive the day before the Hive leadership training, which started today and I’m going to share with you now.

I recently applied to, and was accepted into the first hive.org leadership class. Hive is a leadership organization that trains and connects extraordinary leaders between the ages of 21 and 39. It was started by my friend, Ryan Allis and Adam Pumm, whom I just recently met. Both amazing people.

In addition to the amazing organization’s volunteer group, there are some outstanding individuals in our class from 16 countries, ranging from a 2012 Olympic Gold Medalist, to a co-founder of a multi-million dollar business focused on social impact, to a Rwandan genocide survivor who is now a touring public speaker and many more.

I joined Hive because I wanted to lead a more purpose-driven life. I want to be more than just an entrepreneur who creates businesses. I want to become a missionary entrepreneur who will create a sustainable & long-living organization that’ll positively change the world, and teach other entrepreneurs how to do the same.

Today was the first event, a dinner at the “starship,” basically the headquarters of both Connect.com, Ryan’s startup and the Hive organization. We were able to network and meet many of the 30+ individuals that were accepted into the group. I’ve never networked with so many social entrepreneurship & non-for-profit leaders. It’s been incredibly interesting to meet & learn from these people who have a huge passion for helping the world. It’s much different than our normal networking events at various difference entrepreneurship or internet conferences where people are always just talking about money and building “successful” companies.

While it’s great to learn from the rest of the group, on how others are making a difference in the world. I see a need, and I’m excited to share my knowledge with them, on how to make the financial aspects of their organization grow so they can fulfill their purposes in life. The intersection between wanting to help, and being able to help people while knowing how to drive a financial vehicle that’ll fulfill that mission, is really, where I believe, all of the magic lies in. I’m excited to bridge that gap with some of the people here.

For me, it’s learning how to have a better purpose that helps others. For them, it’s how to become better at driving the entrepreneurial vehicle that’ll allow them the financial independence and capital to see their mission succeed.

At the dinner, we split up into groups of 6. We shared out stories, what we wanted to get out of our life and the event and learned a lot about each other. In our group was;

Lauren Burke, an outstanding leader who helps developing immigrant youth, human trafficking rights and much more. She wants to change the world by having every human to be recognized of equal worth, despite birthplace and nationality.

Jessica Steffens, a 2 time USA Olympian with a silver and gold medal in water polo who wants to change the world by inspiring active, healthy lifestyles that both appreciate and improve the world.

Peter Bonanno, who works in social enterprises and is helping bring enlightenment to schools. He wants to change the world by giving everyone a greater well-being, sanity, peace and happiness.

and Nadia Anggraini, an Indonesian native who works in an organization who funds social enterprises and wants to change the world by using business to alleviate poverty in Indonesia & Southeast Asia.

Last by not least, Yasi Baiani, our fearless group leader who is a volunteer at Hive. She’s from Iran originally, and wants to help people in the middle east reach their full potential like she was able to do.

I have yet to really meet everyone else in our class, but I’m looking forward to the rest of the weekend. The dinner was just to kick things off. The next 3 days will be all day training, I’m excited to see what the hive team puts together next.

PS: If you’re interested in checking out Hive, they’ll have their next Global Leaders Program during March 21-24, and CEO program from Feb 21-24. You can learn more about it by going to their website, hive.org.

Hive.org – Understanding Our World – Day 2

Sat, 18 Jan 2014 00:00:00 GMT

It was another amazing day. Today, was the first, of our 3 day training for Hive. The first day was really just a fun networking event, but now we’ve started the core of the training. The training took place at the change.org office in San Francisco.

This is a list of all of today’s curriculum:

Day 1: Understanding Our World

Species-level Philosophy (John Rawls & The Original Position)
Global Key Performance Indicators (KPIs)
Human Progress Measurement
How to Create a Sustainable & Abundant World
Systems Thinking
The Future of Science & Technology (Clean Energy, Nanotech, Genomics, Neuroscience, MedTech, NUI, Mobile, Big Data)
Understanding Exponential Technologies (Taught by Singularity University)
Using Business for Scalable & Sustainable Change
Philanthropy & Impact Investing
Peer Group Discussion

The key points I personally took away were:

Species-level Philosophy – How to feel empathic for & think in terms of what’s good for not just yourself, your family, community, nation, gender, humanity, but all species, everyone, everything in the world and even outside of our world.
Future of Science & Technology and our everything is exponentially growing – One of the things I didn’t realize, or at least think of this way. Is that I’m familiar with 3d printing. But I never realized 3d printing is now a method of people of sending, digitally, physical products to other people. For instance, you could buy a “clock” from someone online, and then print it out in your home. It almost feels like transportation of physical goods, but it’s just re-printing structures and I never thought of it in that way.
Using Business for Scalable & Sustainable Change – I’ve already started talking about this concept of creating businesses that serve huge purposes that affect positive change in this world. But it was great to re-affirm it and see more examples of how it’s being done.
Integrity discussions & presentations – While I’m unable to share my exact experiences on this blog because it’s so personal, it was great to dive deep into learning & discussions about an individuals integrity and how little everything can affect everything. While I already know, and most people know that integrity is important, it’s acutally a huge challenge and opportunity to really have full integrity. It’s more than just being a good person, it’s also about being committed and following through, doing everything you said you’d do, whether they were for to yourself or expectations you’ve set with other people.

All of the food was being catered by one of our class members, Rebecca Jean Alonzi who runs a catering company. All of the food was amazing. Lunch was served at the change.org office. For dinner, after arriving on a crazy hive.org bus with loud dance music. We all went to an art gallery, networked and ate dinner together.

Being Uncomfortable: My 14 Month Travel & Work Trip Around The World

Mon, 29 Jul 2013 00:00:00 GMT

I believe a life well lived, is a life full of great experiences. Trying new things, lots of things. Experiencing everything that life has to offer you. Try new things that excite you, scare you, challenge you and make you uncomfortable from time to time. It’s those experiences that you’ll never forget and cherish when you’re older. We don’t look back at our lives and think about all of the things we did that were “comfortable” and “easy to do”, we look back at the things that really challenged us, made us grow, made us think, made us ponder, made us better and how we eventually overcame those obstacles and went on to do something amazing with our lives.

I personally love the feeling of being uncomfortable. I love the feeling of having your heart flutter a bit because you’re thinking of doing something that scares you. You know what I’m talking about, that nervousness you get when you’re about to do something you’re scared to do. Many people will back down form whatever they were going to do when they feel that way because it’s uncomfortable & scary, they’d rather not do it because they want to feel comfortable & safe. Whenever you feel that way, I challenge you to go after it and do what was scares you anyways.

Whenever I start feeling uncomfortable before I do something that scares me, I just do it and dance with my fears. Once you dance with your fears and do whatever it is that was scaring you, you’ll realize it wasn’t that bad and you’ll feel outstanding afterwards, because you faced your fears and overcame then. The old saying goes, “live an uncomfortable life now, so later on in life you’ll live comfortably”. It’s true. If you constantly dance with your fears by going after things even when you’re feeling uncomfortable, you’ll start to actually enjoy that state and really cherish the growth you’ll gain from constantly pushing yourself.

For me that’s what this trip is all about. My beautiful and loving girlfriend, Gissel and I have begun our 14-month trip around the world. We like to say world, but it’s really half the world. As much as our trip sounds fun, which it is, it’s also incredibly uncomfortable because there are many uncertainties surrounding it, specifically around how I will get my work done. It’s a little nerve-racking, but that has made the trip even more enjoyable & exciting than just taking a vacation for 2 months and not working at all. Half of the fun will be realizing a dream that it is possible to make more money while traveling than staying at home and having more fun doing it. That’s a fun thought, isn’t it? To be even more successful, traveling all the time than you would be staying at home. While challenging, it is possible to be more successful while traveling (or taking a vacation as some would say), it’s a different belief and it can be true if you believe it. So going after that challenge, that’s fun, going after that goal is rewarding in itself without the things I’d see everyday traveling.

About our trip! Our journey starts in Mexico, afterwards we’ll continue to Colombia, Brazil, Argentina, then to Thailand, China & Japan. We’re basically doing Latin America for the first half, and Asia for the last. Each country we’ll be visiting for about 1-3 months, we don’t want to just travel quickly to the countries, we really want to live in different places and see what it’s like to be there. A 2 week vacation is just too short, having a month plus in each country gives us a lot more depth than we’d ever have going to and from places quickly.

I’ve been in San Francisco for almost 5 years now. It’s been an amazing city; I’ll come back to it when we’re done traveling. Silicon Valley is just amazing and I love what bay area is doing here. I could pass on the expensive living of course, but I love everything else about it. Although as much as I love the city, I’ve been here too long, it’s time to try something new. Of course other people have lived here longer, but I’ve lived here long enough to figure it out and make it work. That’s the problem. My biggest growth curve was dropping out of college when I was 19, getting in my car and moving down to downtown San Francisco by myself with no friends and starting a company. That was scary, but incredibly fun and exciting. It’s been one of the most rewarding experiences I’ve had in my life and I’m incredibly happy that I did it. It’s the best thing I’ve ever done in my life.

Now a days, although there is still of course always more to learn there, I’ve been doing the tech thing for awhile now and it’s really gotten a bit boring. It’s getting a bit routine. Routines are scary for me. I’m not growing like I did when I first moved here and put myself in an impossible situation that I had to succeed. Living here has gotten to comfortable because I know I can do it. Once you know you can do something, there’s no more growth from doing it. What’s important is doing something more that you never thought you could actually do, challenging yourself. We need to try things that we think might not actually be possible and then make it possible. Once you start doing things you know you can do and do it, you will never grow any more, you can’t get any better because you already know how to do it. Push yourself, become more, try to do things you don’t think you could do, once you try it you’ll surprise yourself.

So for me, traveling around the world for 14 months feels like dropping out of college when I was 19 and moving to SF to start my first web company, Tracking202. This trip is about challenging myself and seeing if it’s possible to provide even more value to the world through entrepreneurship than I could if I was staying at home. I love it. This trip is seeing if I can do something I’m super passionate about and figuring out a sustainable income from it instead of just creating businesses for the sake of “making money”. It’s the challenge of seeing if we can have an even more productive team working remotely than if we had a team of people showing up to an office everyday. It’s about seeing if I can have an even better & improving relationship with my girlfriend while building a better company at the same time. It’s an exciting time, it’s a growth time and I highly recommend to anyone out there reading this to try something like it if you haven’t done it before.

I have to say thanks to my buddy Josh Wexelbaum who shared his story traveling while being an Internet marketer for 2 years with me. It was his story and having other friends travel all the time while I was sitting at the office that eventually pushed me to do this trip. That and my girlfriend wanted to teach English in Spain for a year but we decided to do something a bit more challenging and exciting. If you will be traveling to any of those countries and would like to come visit us please send us an email. If you’re stuck in the office working all the time, challenge yourself and see if you can do it remotely for a month. Traveling doesn’t have to be a vacation; it can be a lifestyle and a productive one if you change your beliefs about what’s possible and start working on it to make it true. So challenge yourself and explore the world if that interests you!

Missionary vs Mercenary CEOs

Sun, 02 Dec 2012 00:00:00 GMT

Missionaries build better products and companies than mercenaries do. This is an idea that both Jeff Bezos, the founder of Amazon.com, and John Doerr, a legendary investor at Kleiner Perkins both agree upon.

Over the last several years, I’ve started to have a great admiration for certain CEOs; leaders whom have built companies that generally awed me. I always knew I liked them, but I could never exactly articulate the reasons why. Finally, after watching Jeff Bezo talk about the difference between Missionary and Mercenary CEOs this weekend, I finally found a clear framework that could explain my feelings better than I could say them myself. The CEOs who I admired were the Missionary CEOs.

The main difference between the two is that the Missionaries are entrepreneurs who are deeply passionate about their mission; they’ll do whatever possible to achieve that mission. The mercenaries on the other hand, are primarily interested in making money. Although making money is not the primary motivator for missionaries, they still do understand the need to run a profitable business because it’s essential for them to fulfill their mission.

Mark Zuckerberg is a good example of a missionary CEO. Mark said that his mission was to help people share more, he was not interested in creating a business. But eventually he had to create the business because it was the only vehicle that would allow him to carry out his mission; to make the world more open and connected by helping people share information.

The mercenary is likely to have a specific amount of money they want to make, and they’d feel like a failure if they didn’t make it. A Mercenary CEO goes into their business wanting to demolish other competitors by acquiring all of the competitors customers, but not necessarily by providing the best products & services possible to those customers. Their primary objective is to reach their monetary goal and they’ll create a business around it to achieve their financial goals. They would more likely be in it to flip the company and that’s all they care about. They want to make money quick and they do not generally care as much about their customers, their customers are only there to provide them with what they want. Instead of measuring their success by the impact they are making in the world, they are primarily measuring their success by reviewing their financial statements.

You probably know of some mercenaries already; they would be someone whose told you that they want to make X amount of money in a certain amount of years, or Y amount of month per month: not about how much they want to change the world.

A missionary would say something different; they might say something like they want to help X amount of companies in the world or affect Y number of people positively during their lifetimes. The missionary CEO gauges their success by the value they provide to the world, not just the amount of they make. They want to provide the absolute best service possible, and don’t take many shortcuts. They would only sell the company if it genuinely helped them to achieve their original mission, and not because it would just be a huge financial windfall.

This is why both John Doerr and Jeff Bezos prefer to work with Missionary CEOs. The Missionary CEOs build better products, and greater and longer lasting companies.

The irony of it all, says Bezos, is that the Missionaries are the ones who generally make more money than the Mercenaries in the long run anyways.

In the past I was a Mercenary CEO. While I was in high school, I saw an article about Kevin Rose in BusinessWeek; that this kid made 60 million dollars in 18 months. The article of course, was misleading, but that point doesn’t matter. What was important, was that after reading it, I decided that I would drop out of college later, move to Silicon Valley, start a tech company and sell it. And that’s exactly what I did, just like a Mercenary would do. But after all of that, something was missing, it felt a little empty because that’s all that it was. It was a quick race to get in and out; there was nothing grander than that.

While what we built was admirable at the time, we could have done a lot more if I was more of a Missionary CEO who had a larger vision of where we could be in the next 10 years and be dedicated to getting there. Instead I came with a Mercenary plan, to build the company and exit it. I built something a lot less impressive than I could have had I not been so persistent in wanting to sell a company. I thought that was success. I should have started a company that I wanted to continue growing and be apart of long term, something that I was genuinely passionate about. If I had that, it’s possible that I would still be building some great today with huge value, and not starting all over on a new company again.

The companies making the largest impacts in the world are mostly being lead by Missionary CEOs. Think of CEOs like Mark Zuckerberg, Elon Musk, Steve Jobs and Phil Libin of EverNote; all of these CEOs have a passionate mission for building something great by doing whatever they do are doing. Phil Libin has said he wants to build a company that’ll last over 100 years; he is thinking long term and fulfilling a mission to simply help people securely store their notes forever. He does not care about selling the company, he wants to build something amazing, because he cares. He is passionate about it and that is why he will build a better product than someone else who simply wants to build a note-sharing app flip within 5 years. Steve Jobs went back to work for Apple without pay for a period of time, he was genuinely interested in helping Apple fulfill it’s mission to provide the best computers possible. If he were a mercenary trying to make a profit, the Apple company we know today wouldn’t be the same.

I should say before ending this too, that there is nothing wrong about being a Mercenary. It’s just a different path. But it’s good to understand both of them because it can make a profound difference in your entrepreneurial future, 3, 5, or 10+ year’s from now (if you even still continue to build your company). I know many Mercenaries that are happy with what they do; they are not trying to change the world. They know that, some of them. They are in business to provide a lifestyle they want and desire, and that is what they do, and there is nothing wrong with that too. But now you know the difference. Do you want to just make money, or do you want to go on a mission to solve a huge problem? What are you right now, a Missionary or a Mercenary, and what will you be in the future?

If you liked this article, please “Like” it, share it and comment below.

Extra Reading:

Why You Should Share More & The Blog Is Back!

Thu, 29 Nov 2012 00:00:00 GMT

Sharing makes you bigger. If you hear a good idea, share it. If you share a life changing idea with ten people, they get to hear it once, but you get to hear it ten times. So it’s in your best interest to share it with others! We call this, “enlightened self-interest.”

Enlightened self-interest is a philosophy in ethics which states that persons who act to further the interests of others (or the interests of the group or groups to which they belong), ultimately serve their own self-interest.

I plan on doing a lot of sharing this year. I want to share ideas through this blog, to help both you and me. I want to help you learn from my experiences. And I need a place to write and reflect on everything that has happend to me. This blog will be my sharing platform, and I hope to give you every ounce of quality reading material I can possibly create for you.

So I just threw together a quick amazon EC2 server and RDS server, updated my wordpress and we are back online! It’s been over three years since I last wrote on this blog. A lot has happend since then. The blog still needs to be updated and will be shortly. But as far as what to expect, I have a lot of experiences to share with everyone and it’ll be a fun read. This blog will include articles about entrepreneurship, personal development, philosophies, books, great ideas, relationships, both business and personal, legal matters, technology trends, flying, traveling and working abroad, great food and how to get the most out of life. Oh and we’ll show you how to go from zero to one million dollars a year in sales too, this blog’s headline is out of date and we can now share with you how to do it :).

Please subscribe to my RSS feed if you haven’t done so already. More post will follow shortly!

Tracking202 Has Been Acquired!

Sat, 21 Nov 2009 00:00:00 GMT

This is the email Steven Truong wrote and sent to our users on November 21, 2009, announcing the Tracking202’s acquisition by Bloosky. The deal was also covered that day by TechCrunch.

From: noreply.newsletter@tracking202.com
Date: Sat, Nov 21, 2009 at 3:54 PM
Subject: Tracking202 Has Been Acquired!
To:

We have some BIG news to announce today. As of a little over a week ago, Tracking202 has been acquired by Bloosky, another company within our space. We wanted to give you details about everything that has been going on that has lead up to this point as we’ve always been 100% transparent with our users and would want to remain so. We felt this acquisition was beneficial for everyone and there are a lot of things we wanted to disclose in this blog post to clarify why this deal makes a lot of sense for all of our users.

Tracking202 was founded a little over 2 years ago and have grown tremendously in the short time span we’ve been around. Many may not realize this but we’re still very much a bootstrapped startup operating out of our house! Literally we have desks in the living room, bedrooms, kitchen, etc… Its not what you would have probably have imagined for the growth we’ve seen and support shown from all of our users around the world. We appreciate everything and all the love you’ve given us. But as you may have realized, we were perhaps growing too fast.

As some of you may have noticed in recent months, its been getting harder and harder to answer support around the clock the way we use to in the early days. The number of users grow larger every day and unfortunately we didn’t have enough resources, staff, or funding to keep on doing support and everything else without infringing on time spent innovating on the technology everyone has grown to love. Above all else, we only have two full time programmers on board, one of them being Wes himself who’s pretty much coded 98% of everything we have today!

Having said that, we were limited on growth in several areas and with the launch of our new network, had a hard time keeping up with the sheer volume of affiliates that were getting on board with our software and network. Lately, its felt like we were in a catch-22 situation, working hard just to maintain things, even when we gave our best efforts its been difficult to continue to grow the company and help the community the way we have wanted to.

Several months back, we had the privledge of meeting with the founders of Bloosky. At the time, we were thinking of strategic ways the two companies could work together to help each other out. Wes and I were also debating about bringing outside funding to continue growing the company. Although we were affiliates early on and for the most part, have self funded Tracking202 with all the campaigns we’ve built in our early days, it got to a point very early on where we no longer had time to run any campaigns and went full steam into Tracking202. With that, the company grew based on what it was able to bring in itself for revenue in terms of software subscriptions, advertising, and of course now network revenues. However its difficult to scale when you have limited resources, time, staff, and funding to continue to grow.

After debating long and hard about bringing on venture capital (VC) to grow the company who probably wouldn’t understand our business, we decided we didn’t like that option. We felt it was in Tracking202’s best interest as well as the interest of our users and the community we created to keep VCs out of this. What started as just a discussion on a simple business partnership ended up becoming talks of a potential buyout. This made a lot of sense to us because Bloosky was already involved in the space and more than just funding, they had extensive knowledge and ideals that complemented Tracking202 VERY WELL. After long talks, the deal made a lot of sense.

Before I dive into why I think this partnership is great, I wanted to give you guys a background on what Bloosky does for those unfamiliar with the name. Many companies in the space know who they are but they don’t have such a strong presence among the affiliate community. The reason for this is because most affiliates don’t deal with Bloosky directly or run Bloosky’s offers. Over the last couple years they have focused on working with other types of publishers, emailers. The other thing they are known for is their advertising relationships and focus on providing advertiser services. They have call centers, creative services and a strong ad sales team. They pull in an average of 60-100 new offers per week!

Tracking202 on the other hand as many of you know, is a publisher focused company with a strong affiliate base and technology that control several traffic sources such as search, social, contextual, media buys, etc… basically other than email. Like two halves of the same coin, the combination of the two companies made perfect sense. So what does this mean to our users?

Wes and I are staying on board to continue our vision of what we believe Tracking202 should have been since day 1. This deal gives us an equity stake in Bloosky and allows us to gain valuable resources necessary to continue doing what we do best. Above all else, Bloosky shares the same passion, values, and vision we have, which is one of the key reasons we were excited to do this. We would never compromise our values or visions for anyone, hence why we didn’t want to go the VC route when we could of. With this deal moving forward, this allows us to put more emphasis on support where it is needed. We now have more resources and funding to accelerate on the growth of the technology side building faster and bringing more tools, and to help the community as a whole to help our affiliates better. We saw several positives in this and Bloosky have been very supportive of everything we’ve done and wants to see our goals achieved. We hope with this, you’re able to get a glimpse of things to come and see why this is so beneficial on so many levels. We hope to make Tracking202 an even greater company in the near future. Thanks for everything to every one of you guys out there! We couldn’t have done it without the support and love you guys have shown us. The ride had been wild and it’ll only get wilder from here on out =]

Kindly,

Steven and Wes

The Team On This Day July 29th, 2009

Wed, 29 Jul 2009 00:00:00 GMT

Here is a snap-shot of our team on this day. We’ve recently brought on a lot of help.

Wes Mahler Chief Executive Officer (CEO) Twitter: @wesmahler Username: T202Wes September 2007	Steven Truong Chief Operating Officer (COO), President Twitter: @steventruong Username: T202Steven September 2007	Jennifer Louie Web & Graphic Designer Twitter: @jenniferlouie Username: T202Jennifer Since August 2008
Aaron Glinski IT Support Rep, Video Production Manager Twitter: @paperdonut Username: T202Aaron Since January 2009	Man Ma Software Engineer Twitter: @t202man Username: T202Man Since February 2009	Roland Navarro VP of Business Development Twitter: @reachroland Username: T202Roland Since April 2009
Nana Gilbert-Baffoe VP of Sales Twitter: @nanagilbertb Username: T202Nana Since April 2009	Justin Barr Publisher Manager Twitter: @justinbarr Username: T202Justin Since July 2009	Feldo Nartapura Publisher Manager Twitter: @wheresfeldo Username: T202Feldo Since July 2009
Wes Moehlenbruck Advertising Manager Twitter: @masterlesamurai Username: T202Brooks Since July 2009	Alexander Tsatkin Publisher Manager Twitter: @tsatkin Username: T202Alex Since July 2009	Rachelle Navarro Operations Manager Twitter: N/A Username: T202Rachelle Since July 2009

Denver Affiliate Conference Keynote On Transparency, Collaboration, Trust and Innovation

Thu, 16 Jul 2009 00:00:00 GMT

MediaTrust CEO, Peter Bordes, gave the keynote presentation at this year’s Affiliate Convention in Denver. He talked a lot about the need for transparency, collaboration, trust and innovation. He was joined by Steve Hartman of eBay, Wes Mahler of Tracking202, Steve Schaffer of Vertive and Rebecca Madigan of the Performance Marketing Alliance.

Here it is in it’s entirety.

Introducing Alerts202 – Offer Email Alert Notifications

Thu, 16 Jul 2009 00:00:00 GMT

Alerts202 is a new product we are proud to release today. Alerts202 is a simple offer alert notification system that we’ve built using our new Offers202 API. The alerts service allows you to monitor new offers being added into Offers202.

Here’s how it works. Let’s say you want to see all of the new “credit report” offers coming out. Simply login to Alerts202 and add a new offer alert for “credit report.” Now any time a new “credit report” offer is added you will receive an email notification telling you about the offer.
Now you will know every time a new “credit report” offer comes out. This is especially useful if you are an advertiser. Now you can monitor your own niche and see anytime a new advertiser comes out with a competing product or service. You will always be up to date every time a new offer comes in that you’d like to know about.

Alerts202 is a free application; you can use it by logging in our Tracking202 Dashboard and clicking over to the Alerts202 tab. We have also have created an Alerts202 API for any developers out there.

Here is an example screenshot from an “acai” offer alert, shown in gmail. Click the image to enlarge it.

Mark Pincus’ Two Core Philosophies In Building Their Succesful Gaming Company Zynga

Sat, 11 Jul 2009 00:00:00 GMT

I wanted to share two core philosophies that Mark Pincus @markpinc had on building his company Zynga. We sat on this interview during the Startup2Startup event, you can see the whole interview here.

Mark Pincus On The Inspiration Behind Social Games And The Future of The App Economy

Last night Dave McClure interviewed serial entrepreneur Mark Pincus, who has run the social game development firm Zynga for the past two years, growing it to over 300 full-time employees and an estimated $50 to 100 million in revenue.

After speaking briefly about his past entrepreneurial experiences, which started in the 1990s with Pointcast competitor Freeloader and most notably includes the early social network Tribe, Mark dove into the inspiration behind Zynga and social games in general. He described how his experience with Tribe taught him that he was more interested in building extensions, or plugins, for social networks than the social networking containers themselves. So when Facebook prepared to open up to 3rd party applications in 2007, he jumped at the chance to become that network’s premier social games provider, even though many people – including Facebook’s own Dave Morin – doubted the viability of social games at the time.

Aside from believing that games were simply the “coolest thing” for people to do together on social networks, Mark believed they fit two particular insights. First, since Tribe had suffered from user engagement, with its most engaged members actually costing the site much more than they gave back, Mark was looking to build a product that aligned engagement with monetization. Gamers tend to spend more money the more they play, so Zynga was established with the idea that it could make money from the early days and enjoy even greater revenue as engagement increased.

Mark also realized from his own gaming addictions that people were willing to spend money to beat others in competition. Gamers who don’t have the skill to beat their online opponents without assistance are often eager to pay for advantages, or power-ups, that make it possible for them to win faster and save time. Zynga was therefore predicated on the notion that virtual goods should impact gameplay, not just add extra value around the edges.

So far these insights have paid off, with Zynga exploding in growth over the past year from about 60 employees to over 300. This has been a managerial challenge for the company, and it has required the institutionalization of corporate processes that were vital if irksome to many employees. He described how startups need to introduce delegation at around 50 employees and really start to bend under the weight of 200+ employees. For Zynga, this required painful changes to how things are run, but Mark says these changes have laid the foundation for another doubling in the company’s size.

Mark’s most intriguing remarks of the night were about how he predicts online distribution and monetization to change over the next 5-10 years. He believes that we’re moving towards an app economy where most internet services with be distributed over platforms. These apps will derive most of their revenue from digital goods and services, not advertising. Basically, users will begin paying for things online at a much higher volume, and developers will use metrics and game mechanics (even with non-games) to maximize engagement and profitability. A corollary to this trend will be making all consumer services more fun, since enjoyment encourage users to pay for more virtual goods and upgrades.

This paid goods vision of the web hinges on the availability of better and more pervasive payment systems. However, Mark thinks it’s still to-be-determined how the payments market will play out, and he anticipates that there will be many players at many different levels of the ecosystem. Because of his optimism for online payments and the app economy in general, he encourages all of the big players (Google, Microsoft, Yahoo, etc) to get more involved as platforms or risk losing out on the more private corners of the web.

Source: http://startup2startup.com/2009/06/30/mark-pincus-on-the-inspiration-behind-social-games-and-the-future-of-the-app-economy/

Video Interview On The Importance Of Transparency & Innovation In The Affiliate Marketing Industry

Wed, 08 Jul 2009 00:00:00 GMT

Peter Bordes, the CEO of Media Trust was kind enough to invite me on the keynote panel during this year’s Affiliate Conference in denver. After the event I had a chance to do an interview with Scott Parent from Relevanty Speaking, this is a short video clip of the interview. It is also great to know that California is not allowing the affiliate tax to pass here. This is mentioned in the video.

Our 4th of July Revolution202 Launch

Sat, 04 Jul 2009 00:00:00 GMT

written by steven & nana

Happy Fourth of July to everyone in the U.S. and everyone who chooses to celebrate this holiday with us today, also known as Happy Independence Day! Today marks the launch of our new network, the Revolution202 Partner Network! It has been a long journey getting here and launching our own network but is also a natural progression in the growth of where 202 is headed. It is with this in mind that I wanted to announce our launch today. However, this is only a pre-launch and although we’re accepting applications starting today, this is currently invite only, meaning we’re limiting the number of affiliates who gets to be the first to join our network. Be one of the first to join and apply today!

With that said, it is important to note that if you are a current 202 user, your 202 username and password is universal across all 202 services. When applying for Revolution202, please login using your existing 202 username if you have one as this will make things much easier for you. If you’re new, don’t worry, you can still apply and create a new 202 account.

Today also marks a huge national holiday for the U.S., Independence Day. It is the anniversary of when the United States Declaration of Independence was signed 233 years ago, on July 4th, 1776, when the United States (the thirteen originally British colonies) officially gained its independence from the British Empire. This was the day our nation celebrated the birth of the United States; so in essence, the United States itself is celebrating its 233rd birthday.

The history behind how the United States were formed as a result of declaring its independence from the British Empire was the result of the occurrence of the American Revolutionary War, also known as the American War of Independence. The war began as a war between the Kingdom of Great Britain and thirteen united former British colonies on the North American continent, and ended in a global war between several European great powers. This war was the culmination of the political American Revolution, whereby the colonists rejected the right of the Parliament of Great Britain to govern them without representation.

In 1775, revolutionaries gained control of each of the thirteen colonial governments, set up the Second Continental Congress, and formed a Continental Army. Petitions to the king to intervene with the parliament on their behalf resulted in Congress being declared traitors and the states in rebellion the following year. The Americans responded by formally declaring their independence as a new nation, the United States of America, claiming sovereignty and rejecting any allegiance to the British monarchy.

The sources and interpretation of the Declaration has been the subject of much scholarly inquiry. The Declaration justified the independence of the United States by listing colonial grievances against King George III, and by asserting certain natural rights, including a right of revolution. Having served its original purpose in announcing independence, the text of the Declaration was initially ignored after the American Revolution. Its stature grew over the years, particularly the second sentence, a sweeping statement of human rights:

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.

All this came about due to a change or shift and as a result of the American Revolution. The term “Revolution” can be defined as a sudden, momentous, radical, or complete change; a dramatic change or fundamental shift in the way of thinking or visualization; and activity or movement designed to effect the fundamental changes in the socioeconomy. It is with this definition in mind that we find it fitting to launch our Revolution202 Partner Network today. What are you waiting for? Join the Revolution!

Picture Of The Team, On This Day, June 23rd 2009

Wed, 24 Jun 2009 00:00:00 GMT

Capturing history is one of the treasures to pass along to your friends and family once your gone.

So here is a photo of our team as of June 23rd, 2009. The ever growing 202 family. Entrepreneurship

is a lot more fun, when you have great people working with you.

Top: Steven Truong, Jennifer Louie, Roland Navarro, Aaron Glinski, Nana Gilbert-Baffoe

Bottom: Wes Mahler, Man Ma, Feldo Nartapura

Some New Desks In The Office & A Quick Look Inside The 202 House

Tue, 23 Jun 2009 00:00:00 GMT

There were a few people who wanted to see the new desks I twittered about. So I shot a quick video of it. Yes I have something on my face if your wondering, no makeup in this film. This was taken an hour ago of posting this.

The Myth: I’m Going To Work Hard Now, So I Won’t Have To In The Future

Sun, 21 Jun 2009 00:00:00 GMT

Video Interview With Paul Bourque From UberAffiliate On Becoming An Advertiser

Wed, 10 Jun 2009 00:00:00 GMT

Paul Bourque is an extremely successful pay per click affiliate, runs the blog UberAffiliate.com and is now on route to becoming a large advertiser in our space. Paul is mainly known for his blog UberAffiliate.com which is focused on sharing tips and tricks to help you generate more revenue using PPC. You can find all of his articles by going to his Affiliate Marketing Guide. Please go through his guide if you have not had a chance to see all of the articles there. Many times we will simply read the most recent blog posts, but we forget that there are a lot of great posts that were also written in the past.

In this interview Paul talks about becoming an advertiser. After you’ve been in the industry for awhile you’ll notice once Affiliates start taking different paths. Some will create large affiliate networks, some will become advertisers, some will become service providers like us and of course some will continue to become bigger and bigger players in the affiliate space. Paul has decided to make the move to become one of the advertisers in the space and in this interview we’ve talked about his experiences and challenges in doing so.

You can read Paul’s blogger over at uberaffiliate.com, and you can follow him on twitter at twitter.com/uberaffiliate.com. If you’ve enjoyed this video post a comment to let us know what you think.

If you haven’t already, you can catch our recently posted video series through TV202:

If you enjoyed this interview, please subscribe to our blog, follow us on twitter and join our newsletter.

How Jonathan Volk Scaled Past $300,000/month (video interview)

Mon, 01 Jun 2009 00:00:00 GMT

We had a pleasure to interview Jonathan Volk, one of our very good friends, and a very successful affiliate marketer. Jonathan is the founder of Surge Marketing, a performance marketing company. Jonathan is best known for his blog “JonathanVolk.com” where he blogs about tips & strategies people can use to increase their PPC marketing efforts.

During Ad:Tech SF 2009, Jonathan and I had a lengthy interview about scaling PPC campaigns. Specifically we asked how he has scaled to over $300,000+/month in commissions, to learn how he did it watch the video! To read more of his stuff, visit Jonathan’s blog, or follow him on twitter at: twitter.com/jonathanvolk.

Stay tuned for theses up and coming interviews:

Paul from UberAffiliate – on becoming an advertiser
Josh Kopac from EliteCommission – on incentvized marketing

If you haven’t already, you can catch our recently posted video series through TV202:

If you enjoyed this interview, please subscribe to our blog, follow us on twitter and join our newsletter.

Meetup202 Ad:Tech SF 2009 – Event Video

Sat, 16 May 2009 00:00:00 GMT

Check out our video from our largest Meetup202 event which held over 400+ people during Ad:Tech SF this year. We want to thank our sponsors, Hydra Network, ClickBooth, WebTraffic2Go and CPA Fuel for helping us put it together. Enjoy the clip!

PS: Be on look out for the next video. We will show the presentations from the speakers during the event.

Ryan Pamplin Video Interview On Affiliate Marketing & Operations

Fri, 15 May 2009 00:00:00 GMT

Ryan Pamplin is a good friend of ours that we first met at Affiliate Summit East 2008 in Boston. Ryan is the founder of Ryactive, a performance marketing company and is the co-organizer for the Meetup202 New York event. Ryan talks about general affiliate marketing, how to scale, how to setup partnership deals and affiliate deals with companies. Enjoy the interview!

Stay tuned for theses up and coming interviews:

Jonathan Volk from Surge Marketing – on affiliate marketing and PPC
Paul from UberAffiliate – on becoming an advertiser
Josh Kopac from EliteCommission – on incentvized marketing

If you haven’t already, you can catch our recently posted video series through TV202:

If you enjoyed this interview, please subscribe to our blog, follow us on twitter and join our newsletter.

Should You Increase Or Decrease Your Marketing Budget During A Recession?

Mon, 27 Apr 2009 00:00:00 GMT

I found this video over at the MediaTrust Blog and thought it was good enough to share. It’s a short video with some good content that is pretty valuable, I especially liked the part about sometimes the competitors lose belief in what they are doing and don’t do it as well when they should be doing the opposite. Of course that is true, but sometimes it takes someone to put it out there, to sit back and realize we all do that to ourselves sometimes and undervalue what we have, and that we are solving problems.

Stats202 Beta Launch

Sun, 19 Apr 2009 00:00:00 GMT

We are currently accepting beta testers for our new service, Stats202. Stats202 is a hosted application that will automatically update all your subids for you if you are currently using Tracking202 or Prosper202. As a result, you no longer have to manually log into each affiliate network to update your stats saving you lots of time, particularly if you run campaigns on multiple networks.

In addition to automating your earnings report, there is also a mobile web app for you to check your stats on the go if you have an Apple iPhone, Google G1, or Blackberry! Use of Stats202 is free during beta but please be aware that this will be a paid service. Try Stats202 today!

I Do Not Use Email Any More – Letting It All Go

Sat, 04 Apr 2009 00:00:00 GMT

Every week our team gets together and goes over what we call our ROCs. The ROCs stand for (Results, Objectives and Challenges). Our small team of seven will go around the room: review what we were trying to accomplish for the previous weeks, see how well we did, what our challenges were and set our goals for the next 7 days. We starting doing this after meeting with our mentor who we get together with every two weeks. Every friday we do this and this friday I had some challenges.

My challenge was that there were now so many people to talk to that I was not getting any coding done on our applications. Our support requests, which started at slow 18 months ago has now turned into a monster that demands a full-time person. Most people don’t realize this, but Steven and I have mainly answered every support ticket that has come in together for free all this time. To date we’ve probably answered over 10,000 support tickets in over 500 days.

Last month I spent probably on average around 2-3 days on support and over 30+ hours a week talking to other people. Any more I felt like I couldn’t keep coding if I was distracted talking to everyone. So at this team meeting we’ve decided to take a dramatic approach to this issue; I’ve now been cut off from email entirely and I won’t be handling any more support.

Not using email any more is a somewhat exciting and scary thing at the same time, but with more pros than cons.

It’s scary in that I’ve now let go and someone else is now in control. Support is entirely out of my hands; so I can’t be there to make sure it’s done correctly. I just sort of have to hope it does well, but because our of team I know it’ll get taken care of with the best of our ability. Talking to JV partners and other business relationships are now out of my hands so I have to rely heavily on the ability of our team to talk to everyone else and make sure everything goes accordingly.

And I don’t mean I won’t just not have a business email any more, I won’t have a personal email any more either. If you email me it’ll return a message saying I no longer check email and that my emails will now be forwarded to someone else.

That even means if my mom emails me, someone else in my department will get it and take care of the situation and notify me if it is important or not. If our book-keeper tries to email me I won’t get it. Although it is tempting to jump in my email and respond to some stuff because technically I still have access I just have to cringe and let it slide knowing that someone will take care of all of the answered emails. Isn’t that a fuzzy feeling? Somewhat scrazy, but in a way somewhat exciting and a relief.

But we believe it will be a good thing.

Finally now that things are growing we can start scaling out the team and divide the tasks between people. Steven and I no longer have to do everything, with a team of 7 people we are starting to of course get dedicated tasks that each individual needs to accomplish. I can now actually focus on what I do best and develop full-time without distraction. I only use to code full time when we had no customers because I didn’t have any distractions.

A key thing to remember. If you are trying to stay focused on task, the way you do it is by limiting all of your distractions that will take your time away from the task at hand.

For me that is talking to everyone one: completely eliminating that will allow me to focus on building our out applications and development team.

Realize that those 2-3 hours of support each day diddn’t just kill the time I spent on support. It’d killing several more hours because when your working on something and get a distraction it will kill your mommentum. If you have to deal with something else and then jump back it’ll take you a alittle bit to get in gear and you ended up wasted double the time. Time to do the distraction and extra time getting back in gear doing what you were focusing on at the time.

At at heart, the objective of killing email is to protect my time from distractions.

If we can limit distractions I can continue to develop full time and teach Man, who is our new team-mate and how develop on top our platform. Man is steven’s old friend and has quit Microsoft to join our company. So all of my time is now able to be focused on developing myself, and teaching others how to develop on our platform in a team.

So that is it for email now, I won’t be using it.

In all likely hood in the future I will probably get another email, but for now and at least for the next couple of months I won’t be using email any more and I will let everyone know how it goes. Realize that the only reason we did this is because of my situation. I’m the main developer currently and it is important that I spend most of my time doing that, if I was in any different role I’d still have email and be talking to people on a daily basis and building the company that way. But I have to focus on building the internals of our company which many people won’t ever see, but it will be there servicing all those tracking requests all day.

It’ll be interesting. I had some anxiety the first few days of it, but now I’m getting used to it, and we are moving and building momentum. I don’t know anyone else who has completely got raid of their email, I’ll be the guinea pig on this one. The only reason this can work too is because other people can handle everything else now, and I’ll be working full-time, but just all internally from now on.

This picture represents the anxiety of letting it all email go. And the anxiety that goes with it, but at the same time the relief of not having to stress about it any more. So yes I’m a lot harder to get ahold of now, thats the whole point of it really. But you still can through twitter, facebook or if you have my number you can always call. And if you really do email, it will get read but I won’t be the one who replies to it.

I’ll let everyone know in a maybe a month how it goes and if it was a good solution or not.

Interview with Dr Ngo ( Charles Ngo ) On Media Buys

Sat, 14 Mar 2009 00:00:00 GMT

Meet Charles Ngo, better known as Dr Ngo. Dr Ngo is an active member of the WickedFire community and is known for his Media Buy expertise. A fast rising super affiliate, he has some very insightful tips to share with those looking to get into Media Buys as well as explaining what Media Buys are for those who are unfamiliar with the term.

We had a chance to interview Dr Ngo during the Affiliate Summit Event in Las Vegas earlier this year among several other interviews we did. With the major rise of niches such as Acai and Facial products, Media Buys were one of the major outlets for running such offers. Here Dr Ngo shares some tips that has made him successful. Check out the interview below.

Stay tuned for theses up and coming interviews:

Ryan Pamplin ( Ryactive ) – Affiliate Operations & Affiliate Deals

If you haven’t already, you can catch our recently posted video series through TV202:

Ad Hustler and Ian Fernando on Affiliate Partnerships
Neil Turner on Facebook Marketing
Andrew and Kris from CashTactics on PPC, SEO and PPV.
NickyCakes on PPC, SEO and PPV.
Jason Akatiff aka Smaxor from Ads4Dough
Ralph “Ruck” Ruckman of Convert2Media

If you enjoyed this interview, please subscribe to our blog, follow us on twitter and join our newsletter.

If you are interested in being interviewed and have something worth sharing with the 202 community at a future event, please contact Steven for further details.

If I Had To Do It All Over Again

Tue, 10 Mar 2009 00:00:00 GMT

In every one of our interviews I asked the other person, “If you had to do it all over again what would you do differently?” It was interesting to see the responses from people and for the most part they said they’d do it all over the same exact way. But if I look back on my past and if I had to do it all over again, I absolutely would not have done it the same way. In fact I know had I done it differently I’d be in a much better position years ago than I even am now. Even though maybe they said I’d do it the same all over again because their lifestyle is good now, I still find it hard to believe that if they know what they know now, they’d repeat and do the same things over again. Here’s what I’d do differently and this little bit of wisdom could easily shave off around 4 years of your learning curve, especially if your planning on trying to build a company and create your own product.

If I had to do it all over again I would not have wasted my time trying to build out several different unscalable businesses that would never get to be big over the course of 4 years. Four years…. I wasted alot of time, had I only known.

I was watching a presentation from Gurbaksh Chahal [vid1, vid2, vid3], and what really struck me is how he built a company from the age of 16, and sold it in a few years for 40 million. He’d sign a non-compete agreement for about 3 years, after it finished he’d then do it again and later sell Blue Lithium which was sold for over $300 million. What was most interesting to me about the whole story was not about his humble beginnings of having nothing and then becoming a successful serial entrepreneur who now in his later twenties is now worth hundreds of millions of dollars, instead what was interesting to me, is “How He Did It,” but even more than that, it was most interested that “How he got the idea to begin with.” And HOW he got the idea the way he did, resulted in him being positioned in a marketplace with a product that had an exit that could be capitalized with a high probability if then just executed.

Gurbaksh was 16 and he was trying to make some extra money, he actually applied to work at McDonalds and got denied. From there he just decided he could make money on his own. He began researching how to make money and he found a company called DoubleClick. He thought to himself, “DoubleClick seems to be doing good, maybe I can just do what they do”. And what a good idea, and a great place to start. Right there at that momment he was about to build something, that if he excuted would be worth something, right there he positioned himself in a marketplace that had alot more potential. And he saw that DoubleClick had an ad-serving technology that was performing well and G, which is Gurbaksh’s nickname, decided to make a DoubleClick Ad-Serving Compeitior. Which he did. And then he begun programming the thing at the age of 16 and then later sold the thing in several years for over $40 million dollars. That company was ClickAgents.

Now heres the lesson to learn, and learn it well because this can really help you if you plan on building a product and re-selling it. What G did, and why it became a quicker success is simply because he took an existing model that was already working well and copied it. His business plan was simple, make an ad-serving technology like DoubleClick, do some things differently or whatever, and build out a technology that “already has a demand for it” Build a product that already has a market and a high chance of making money if he could just execute.” And just by having the right idea, and jumping into an already active and lucrative market he was able to position himself to make alot of money if he could execute properly, which he did, $40 million dollars worth of execution before he was even 20……

And then look at me. I was building an eBay business in high-school re-selling peoples stuff, I started a car audio and installation business during that time, and then trying to build small websites at the time. Only if I had chosen something a little more scalable like G did when I first got started… I spent about 2 years doing that, and working a job. Which was great, but it would have been better if I started doing a doubleclick when I was a kid, instead of working a job and trying this ebay thing.

Then leaving high school I thought it would be great to build a craigslist for colleges. I spent 9 months on that, which we built well, we built culture just like we do with meetup202 now, but later that’d fail. Why was I wasting time trying to build a craigslist for colleges, to sell textbooks?

Then I got in to multi-level marketing which honestly was great because I learned so many personal development skills, sales, presentation skills and communication skills, but I spent 6 months on it and that diddn’t materalize. After the college sites and MLM I now offically spent a year on two businesses that weren’t really scallable. I diddn’t know what I was doing.

I would later quit that try to do real-estate for 3-6 months, then go back to school where I’d then spend 9 months building a local rental site for college campuses. Then finally my friend introduced me to affiliate marketing, which was a quick way to produce income for myself, and my friends Sean and Noah over at GetClicky created an analytics company GetClicky that was doing well. I then decided we could do some type of search analytics for affiliate marketers and Tracking202 began. I only wish I would have jumped into Tracking202, or even just a more scalable sector more early on.

I mean lets compare, here I’am for 4 years trying to develop some cool website and try to develop my own business model around it, and at age 16 G copies DoubleClick, an already succesful enterprise company and jumps into a competitve market, executes then a makes a fortune.

Do you see the difference? It’s so simple. Because he started with a better idea mocking off an existing idea he instantly put himself in a better position for growth. While here I’m figuring it out, I would have been so much better had I even just picked a product and competed with the other companies in the space.

Know that competitors in the space qualifies the market because something is there. And it sometimes sucks being the first in the marketplace with a new product, it is extremely difficult. You have to pioneer the business model and make everything work. And if you do succeed and finally make it work, you’ve qualified the market and now competitors will jump in. If you just take an existing product that is already doing well and already sells tons of items, but you can simply do it better you’ve already put yourself ahead of the game than some silly web 2.0 internet entrepreneurs trying to make some crazy widget that has no model or no business model.

Listen, I wasted so much time, I hope you can find some value off of this. If I had to do it all over again I would have chosen a product that already had an existing market, I would not be trying to develop some new web 2.0 product that has no real business model or something that I’m trying to invent. Luckily now we have finally found a product with a real business model, there is plenty of competitors in the space, most of our competitors are VC’d backed and there is a market here. And we have many different business models we can spin off of Tracking202 and its all now because we are entering a market that other people are already in and we are going to try to do it better than what everyone else is doing. I still have friends making silly websites that will never become anything.

Just Keep It Simple:

Wes, age of 16, tries ebay, working job, local craigslist, mlm, real-estate, local rental sites, and then finally finds PPC Analytics a finally scalable product and begins. compared to.
G, age of 16, said “Ah DoubleClick looks like a good business to get into, bam— does it and sells outs for $40 million”
— G would later do it again selling Blue Lithium for $300 million, by again, making an ad-serving technology.

I hope you get the picture.

Learn from my mistakes, this is one of the things I would do differently had I do it all over again. I wish I woulda have saw a better model to start with and copy, I wasted 4 years of my time experimenting and only now coming to understand the importance of it. And the funniest thing is I don’t even think G recognized that idea when he got started. He just saw that seems like a good idea, I thought ebay was a good idea. I should have programmed an ad serving technology 6 YEARS AGO, but I didn’t know.

This is just one of the things I would have done if I had to do it all over again. Another short thing to tack on to this, I should have moved to Silicon Valley 4 years ago and dropped out of college or even high-school honestly. G grew up in the silicon valley when his parents moved as well, so that also helped him. Your location does affect your startup. If you don’t agree with me, try moving to alaska and doing a web 2.0 startup… Location does matter, its about being in the best spot you can be to build your business. For us that is here, and its one of the best business moves we’ve ever made. If your serious about web development, you should really be here.

If you found this interesting, please comment and let me know what you think. -wes

What I Was Doing Before 6-9 months before Tracking202

Mon, 09 Mar 2009 00:00:00 GMT

Before I got into affiliate marketing I was helping my friend, Marques Alexander build what used to be called “BeaverRent,” which was a local college rental site for Oregon State Univeresity. It’d later expand to other universities including but not limited to University of Oregon, Washington State, and Texas Tech. Although the article states it was both Marques and my idea, it isn’t true, as I actually at the time didn’t want to do anything of it and move to SF to build a “user feedback generation website technology”. That was my goal anyways. It was completly Marques’ idea and I was just going to help him build the website for a small % of the company and then leave. However, it ended up taking much longer tan I ever expected and I spent around 6-9 months on the project. Had I do it all over again, bless Marques and his new team, but I should have moved down to Silicon Valley earlier and I would have been 1 year ahead of where I’am now.

After a while I said I have to leave and pursue what we needed to do. So I told Marques and Chris I had to leave, and left down to SF which I would spend almost 5 months living in a studio bootstrapping and trying to get Tracking202 coded. I wanted to post this however to show what my old business partner and doing, and how their project is progressing. I just saw this pop up in my google alerts and I thought I share it with you. Yourcampusrent.com expands to reach 633 universities – News. The original site I built can be found here: developer.beaverrent.com/ it has since changed and completely re-done by Chris Montes and Marques Alexander.

Interview With Ralph Ruckman From Convert2Media

Sun, 08 Mar 2009 00:00:00 GMT

Your about to meet Ruck, one of the co-founders of Convert2Media. Ruck is an active member of the WickedFire community and is known for creating the affiliate marketing blog CashTactics whom we interviewed earlier, that is now run by Kris and Andrew Payne.

We had a chance to interview Ruck during the Affiliate Summit Event in Las Vegas earlier this year. Convert2Media is an up and coming network in the affiliate marketing industry, you can signup for their network here. They are also building a full service internet marketing agency that can help every aspect of launching a new affiliate program. Check out the interview below.

After watching the video interview, if you like to signup for Convert2Media, please use our referral link here to help support 202.

Stay tuned for theses up and coming interviews:

Charles Ngo ( Dr. Ngo ) – Media Buys
Ryan Pamplin ( Ryactive ) – Affiliate Operations & Affiliate Deals

If you haven’t already, you can catch our recently posted video series through TV202:

Ad Hustler and Ian Fernando on Affiliate Partnerships
Neil Turner on Facebook Marketing
Andrew and Kris from CashTactics on PPC, SEO and PPV.
NickyCakes on PPC, SEO and PPV.
Jason Akatiff aka Smaxor from Ads4Dough

If you enjoyed this interview, please subscribe to our blog, follow us on twitter and join our newsletter.

If you are interested in being interviewed and have something worth sharing with the 202 community at a future event, please contact Steven for further details.

Interview With PepperJam about Tracking202

Mon, 16 Feb 2009 00:00:00 GMT

Kris Jones from the PepperJam Network recently did an interview with me, you can find it here: http://www.pepperjamnetwork.com/blog/2009/02/16/pepperjam-network-“meet-the-affiliates”-interview-27-introducing-wes-mahler/

Meet Jason Akatiff aka Smaxor from Ads4Dough in our Video Interview

Sun, 15 Feb 2009 00:00:00 GMT

If you’ve ever heard of the network Ads4Dough, you are about to meet Jason Akatiff aka Smaxor, the owner. Jason is sporting his signature blue baseball cap even in our TV202 interview! The Ads4Dough network is one of the rising star networks in our affiliate marketing community and here, Jason talks about being an affiliate and running his network.

Jason has a personal blog over at oooff.com which he talks about affiliate marketing and coding. We had a great time interviewing Jason and you can join his network by going here. I had the opportunity to meet all of the Ads4Dough affiliate managers during the last summit; John Yu, Roger Edwards, and Brandon are all great guys to work with. Without further ado, here is the video we did with Jason.

After watching the video interview, if you like to signup for Ads4Dough, please use our referral link here to help support 202.

Stay tuned for theses up and coming interviews:

Ralph Ruckman ( Ruck ) – Network Owner ( Convert2Media )
Ryan Pamplin ( Ryactive ) – Affiliate Operations & Affiliate Deals
Charles Ngo ( Dr. Ngo ) – Media Buys

If you haven’t already, you can catch our recently posted video series through TV202:

Ad Hustler and Ian Fernando on Affiliate Partnerships
Neil Turner on Facebook Marketing
Andrew and Kris from CashTactics on PPC, SEO and PPV.
NickyCakes on PPC, SEO and PPV.

If you enjoyed this interview, please subscribe to our blog, follow us on twitter and join our newsletter.

If you are interested in being interviewed and have something worth sharing with the 202 community at a future event, please contact Steven for further details.

A look inside our Meetup202 Culture ( Video )

Wed, 11 Feb 2009 00:00:00 GMT

We had a pretty ridiculous Meetup202 SF event this saturday. There were over 65+ attendees and the place was overbooked. There we SEM professionals, high volume emailes, affiliate networks, facebook, advertisers, and of course affiliates. And if Meetup202 Bay Area wasn’t big enough, at the same time we had our event, the one and only Jasper and the Meetup202 LA group were having their event with, and held over 30 people!

Aaron Glinski the master-mind behind all of our new video series shot this one, and added in some effects. Although this video doesn’t do it absolute justice because at the time we shot it many people had already left. Most of the group after the meetup got something to eat, and then we went to a lounge and talked till almost 3AM in the morning. Prosper202 isn’t just a product, Prosper202 is a community of like-minded people getting together and helping eachother succeed. This is what Meetups are all about, and in this video you’ll get a glimpse inside of our culture.

And if you’ll be heading over to the Ad:Tech SF event coming this April, make sure to register on our group to check out the Meetup202 event we’ll be hosting while everyone is in SF.

About Meetup202

MeetUp202 is a place for affiliate marketers to meet with other like-minded marketers locally. Get together with super affiliates in your area, grow your personal network of contacts and share tips and tricks with fellow marketers. Each MeetUp202 event is different, headed by different organizers, they are generally causal networking events at placing that sell food and provide WiFi access.

If you are interested in starting a meetup, please contact us.

If you’re interested in organizing a MeetUp202 in your local area and wish to help us spread the 202 name while networking and meeting with other affiliates, contact Steven for more details on how to start your own MeetUp202 locally.

NickyCakes Video Interview At Affiliate Summit West 2009

Tue, 10 Feb 2009 00:00:00 GMT

This is the fourth video of our up and coming Affiliate Summit West 2009 interview series featured on the new TV202. This interview is with Nick from NickyCakes.com. Nick talks about how he got into marketing and his strategies on launching a new campaign. He talks about not specializing but trying everything, and unlike most people–he starts most of his campaigns on MSN scales from there. Nick was speaking on Affiliate Marketing on one of the panels during the event.

Stay tuned for theses up and coming interviews:

Jason Akatiff ( Smaxor ) – Network Owner ( Ads4Dough )
Ryan Pamplin ( Ryactive ) – Affiliate Operations & Affiliate Deals
Ralph Ruckman ( Ruck ) – Network Owner ( Convert2Media )
Charles Ngo ( Dr. Ngo ) – Media Buys

If you haven’t already, you can catch our recently posted video series here:

Ad Hustler and Ian Fernando on Affiliate Partnerships
Neil Turner on Facebook Marketing
Andrew and Kris from CashTactics on PPC, SEO and PPV.

If you are interested in being interviewed and have something worth sharing with the 202 community at a future event, please contact Steven for further details.

Kris Trujillo and Andrew Payne Video Interview on CashTactics

Mon, 09 Feb 2009 00:00:00 GMT

This is the third video of our up and coming Affiliate Summit West 2009 interview series featured on the new TV202. This interview is with Andrew Payne and Kris Trujillo from CashTactics. Andrew focuses mostly on paid search with the big 3 ppc networks and spends alot of time with the content network. Kris specializes in search engine optimization and tries to rank offers organically once they find the converting keywords.

CashTactics is an internet marketing blog, once formerly ran by Ruck of Convert2Media. They have created several case studies that have been widely popular, you can find all their posts on their blog at CashTactics.net.

Unfortunately we had an issue with the sound quality during Julian’s interview and we had to scrap the video. We will try to catch up with Julian at one of the later up and coming events.

Stay tuned for theses up and coming interviews:

Jason Akatiff ( Smaxor ) – Network Owner ( Ads4Dough )
Ryan Pamplin ( Ryactive ) – Affiliate Operations & Affiliate Deals
Ralph Ruckman ( Ruck ) – Network Owner ( Convert2Media )
Charles Ngo ( Dr. Ngo ) – Media Buys
NickyCakes – General Affiliate Marketing

If you haven’t already, you can catch our recently posted video series here:

Ad Hustler and Ian Fernando on Affiliate Partnerships
Neil Turner on Facebook Marketing

If you are interested in being interviewed and have something worth sharing with the 202 community at a future event, please contact Steven for further details.

Neil Turner Interview on Facebook Marketing

Tue, 27 Jan 2009 00:00:00 GMT

This is the second video of our up and coming Affiliate Summit West 2009 interview series featured on the new TV202. This interview is with Neil Turner from NeilsWeb. Neil is an internet marketer who focuses his time on Facebook marketing almost exclusively. Naturally we made the topic of this interview about marketing on Facebook.

If you want to learn more about Facebook marketing, feel free to visit NeilsWeb for more info, or you can follow Neil on his Twitter page. You can find all of Neil’s facebook posts here. We have also included some of the most popular items below.

Stay tuned for theses up and coming interviews:

Julian Aceves ( Affiliate Instruction ) – Young Affiliate Marketer
Jason Akatiff ( Smaxor ) – Network Owner ( Ads4Dough )
Ryan Pamplin ( Ryactive ) – Affiliate Operations & Affiliate Deals
Ralph Ruckman ( Ruck ) – Network Owner ( Convert2Media )
Charles Ngo ( Dr. Ngo ) – Media Buys
NickyCakes – General Affiliate Marketing
Kris Trujillo and Andrew Payne ( CashTactics ) – General Affiliate Marketing

If you haven’t already, you can catch our recently posted video series here:

Ad Hustler and Ian Fernando – Video: Affiliate Partnerships

Meet Ad Hustler and Ian Fernando – Interviews from Affiliate Summit West 2009

Mon, 26 Jan 2009 00:00:00 GMT

Like last year, we put together some interviews for the 202 community. This year, we’ve refined our processes slightly and have a much more solid video production run. Before I just had one camcorder; now we use three camcorders to get 3 different angled views. Our video guy Aaron Glinski is helping put the videos together, it has been a pleasure working him this far. We shot almost ten interviews during this year’s Affiliate Summit West 2009 convention. The first interview we did was with Ad Hustler and Ian Fernando, which I’ll be showing below. You’ll notice the new TV202 website, this will be our future video storing house for anything we produce in the future.

New Year’s Accountability

Mon, 26 Jan 2009 00:00:00 GMT

It was interesting to see all of the bloggers write their New Years Resolutions when the 1st of the came around. But I thought to myself — how many of theses people declaring their new goals actually accomplished their last years goals? Or how many actually remember what they sought out to do last year and kept themselves accountable?

New years is not only about making new goals for the year; but it is also the end of last year, and the supposed deadline that you were to accomplish last year’s resolutions. Many bloggers forgot to write about what they planned on doing last year and if they succeed or failed. I mean what good is a new year’s resolution if we fail to be accountable and check whether or not we accomplish the goal a year later?

The most frightening thing I’ve seen is that some peoples’ New Year’s resolutions have the same thing as last year. Which of course means they didn’t do it last year, and simply forgot to post about it?

We can’t go around being lazy with our commitments. Because if we fail to commit to things, telling ourselves we are going to do this or that–we lie to ourselves. And lying to ourself over time weakens our mind, body and soul. Remember that goals are a double-edged sword, if they are repeatedly failed over and over again–it really shows how much that person understands about goal settings. And they build a habit of failing goals repeatedly. And sooner or later they fail enough goals to become weak at setting any more goals, and every goal from there on out seems so elusive. Remember that, “Everything let down in your performance affects the rest of everything you do.”

And hitting the goals for what it accomplishes isn’t what is important. What is important is the person you become during the process. Are you becoming a person who lets yourself down repeatedly and fails to accomplish goals? Or are you becoming a person that is becoming consistent at making commitments and keeping them?

So if you did make new year’s resolutions this year. You also need to look backwards, and check your last year’s resolutions as well–because if you didn’t what’s the point of setting any goals if you never look to see if you accomplished them.

Here was my last year’s resolution: was I accountable? This is a snippet from Jan 08 of last year.

There is going to be a lot to come, I’ve made my next goal at the top of my blog, you will see us Alexa ranking 20,000 by the end of the year, and we will hit it, I promise you, I’m going to put on my intense goal setting and make it happen, honestly we should probably be 10,000 by the end of the year, but 20,000 is already a done deal, I’ve decided to make it happen. [source]

. Now Alexa isn’t really important at all, in-fact Alexa is pretty worthless as it isn’t worth really anything. But what is important, is that is that slowly but surely we are building a track-record of setting goals and achieving them. That we don’t mess around, and we mean business when we say and declare a goal we make it happen. That is more valuable than the Alexa ranking any day of the week.

Just setting goals does nothing– accomplishing goals is what is important. Not just setting, but accomplishing them. Setting goals won’t change your life. Accomplishing goals, and becoming a skilled and accomplished goal setter can change your life. So are you just setting goals, or are you actually accomplishing them?

So check yourself right now. If you set any goals this year; lets stop right now and check up on our progress. Any real goal setter who knows what they are doing actually follows their progress on a daily basis and can tell you whether or not they are on track to reaching your goal.

If you just recently set a goal this year, and haven’t checked on it yet…. It’s already been 26 days, and it means your probably not good at setting goals and achieving them if you fail to check your progress. (that is goal setting without goal commitment) and has little value, if any at all–because it does no good to set a goal and do nothing with it.

So if you set your goals–check to see where you are now, and if your on track, and if your not you better get to work. New Years has passed, and its now about being accountable to what you said you were going to do.

Are You A Hedgehog Or A Fox?

Fri, 28 Nov 2008 00:00:00 GMT

What’s with this idea that having tons of “projects” is a good thing? Although it may be true that being a shareholder in several businesses that run without your involvement profitably is an ideal situation to be in, but to many aspiring entrepreneurs seem to think having lots of projects for the sake of having projects is a good thing. Most of the time entrepreneurs try to do way too much. And the great gift we all have to see an opportunity and go for it, becomes our Achilles’ heel because we then try to chase after all of them.

Success is not determined by the amount of projects you have going on. Even though it might sound cool to have several things going at once, to me it sounds amateur. But not lets just take what I have to say, let’s take a look from Jim Collin’s point of view as well, the author of Good To Great, a book that took 20 years to study the greatest companies in America and what they have done to outperform all of their competitors exponentially over the century. One of the concepts he talks about, which I absolutely love, is the Hedgehog concept, which I’d like to share with you:

“The fox is a cunning creature, able to devise a myriad of complex strategies for sneak attacks upon the hedgehog. Day in and day out, the fox circles around the hedgehog’s den, waiting for the perfect moment to pounce. Fast, sleek, beautiful, fleet of foot, and crafty—the fox looks like the sure winner. The hedgehog, on the other hand, is a dowdier creature, looking like a genetic mix-up between a porcupine and a small armadillo. He waddles along, going about his simple day, searching for lunch and taking care of his home.

The fox waits in cunning silence at the juncture in the trail. The hedgehog, minding his own business, wanders right into the path of the fox. “Aha, I’ve got you now!” thinks the fox. He leaps out, bounding across the ground, lightning fast. The little hedgehog, sensing danger, looks up and thinks, “Here we go again. Will he ever learn?” Rolling up into a perfect little ball, the hedgehog becomes a sphere of sharp spikes, pointing outward in all directions. The fox, bounding toward his prey, sees the hedgehog defense and calls off the attack. Retreating back to the forest, the fox begins to calculate a new line of attack. Each day, some version of this battle between the hedgehog and the fox takes place, and despite the greater cunning of the fox, the hedgehog always wins.

Berlin extrapolated from this little parable to divide people into two basic groups: foxes and hedgehogs. Foxes pursue many ends at the same time and see the world in all its complexity. They are “scattered or diffused, moving on many levels,” says Berlin, never integrating their thinking into one overall concept or unifying vision. Hedgehogs, on the other hand, simplify a complex world into a single organizing idea, a basic principle or concept that unifies and guides everything. It doesn’t matter how complex the world, a hedgehog reduces all challenges and dilemmas to simple—indeed almost simplistic—hedgehog ideas. For a hedgehog, anything that does not somehow relate to the hedgehog idea holds no relevance.

Princeton professor Marvin Bressler pointed out the power of the hedgehog during one of our long conversations: “You want to know what separates those who make the biggest impact from all the others who are just as smart? They’re hedgehogs.” Freud and the unconscious, Darwin and natural selection, Marx and class struggle, Einstein and relativity, Adam Smith and division of labor—they were all hedgehogs. They took a complex world and simplified it. “Those who leave the biggest footprints,” said Bressler, “have thousands calling after them, ‘Good idea, but you went too far!’ ”3

To be clear, hedgehogs are not stupid. Quite the contrary. They understand that the essence of profound insight is simplicity. What could be more simple than _e = mc_2? What could be simpler than the idea of the unconscious, organized into an id, ego, and superego? What could be more elegant than Adam Smith’s pin factory and “invisible hand?” No, the hedgehogs aren’t simpletons; they have a piercing insight that allows them to see through complexity and discern underlying patterns. Hedgehogs see what is essential, and ignore the rest.”

So are you a hedgehog or a fox?

I try to be a hedgehog. And this is how it relates to my life and business, so you can take this concept and if you like it you can apply it to your own life.

Our hedgehog concept is simply this, we need to become the absolute best software provider in the ppc affiliate tracking space. Anything other than that matters nothing to me, real-estate is not important any more, or making money online in general, or starting another project, or even personal affiliate marketing for that matter. I will only do whatever it is that helps us become the leader in the space, anything other than that is not important whatsoever. And until and only after we do become the best at that, then we will maybe move on and try to dominate another niche. It may take 10 years to become the best in the space, that’s ok, because we’d rather be the best in the space than 2nd place somewhere else.

If we are unable to become 1st place in whatever we do, we won’t do it. We were thinking about doing some large high volume email marketing with over 15-25+ million email addresses with rev-share deals with affiliate networks. We could have made a significant income, once email gets going it isn’t uncommon to hear mailers make anywhere around $5,000-$15,000 or more in a drop. We could have done this.

We also could have done mass internal search campaigns and utilized our technology only in-house and made a fortune which some other super affiliates have decided to do. We’ve shown almost half a dozen individuals how to earn over $10,000/day through affiliate marketing, and we could have done this for ourselves as well, but we did not. We could have scaled out our affiliate marketing business to over $50,000/day or more, and although you think we may be bluffing we have friends who do that and more, even past the $100,000/day barrier on some rare occasions. But we did not, and I have not worked on any personal campaigns for over 6 months because doing it does not help us become the best software provider in the ppc affiliate tracking space. We have to give up the opportunities to chase one opportunity, and do something we can really become the best at.

Whatever it is your going to do, do it, focus on it, and really make a big impact when you do it. If we rated everything we were able to do on a 1-10 efficiency scale, it would be fair to say that most things we can do at about rating of 6 most people wouldn’t want to see. But things that we could do at a 9 or even 10 rating, people would pay to see. Do something you can really be proud of, not to be ok at several things, be the best at one thing, once you are the best at that, then move onto something else.

Don’t focus on your weaknesses, your weak at them, focus on your strengths. Don’t waste time working on a small side project, when you could be building one really big project and make a huge impact with it. Stop getting distracted by all the opportunities out there, and chase after the one opportunity that you can do the best. Distractions are the killers of dreams….

Here is a real-life example of this at work. My friend Rob is one of the sharpest people I’ve ever met, he is one of the most successful entrepreneurs that I personally know in our age group. Here is an example of someone who has spent the last 6 years working full-time on his businesses. Although he started with one, web-hosting and built his customer base, and started acquiring other hosts. After some time he brought on a partner to manage operations so didn’t ‘have’ to be there every day working on the company

Then he went to build a voip business, and spent a large amount of his time doing that when I first met him. He has built some technology in house, and after over a year has now hired a full time president of the company to take over, he pays him salary and the manager now runs the entire business. Rob is now able to work on other projects, because he has built them correctly and then he can move on. He is now starting a new business with my other good friend and starting to do the same thing. Build it, and then put people in place to manage them.

See the point is this, when he goes and does something, it doesn’t do it ‘half-ass’ he goes in puts in his 10 hours a day over 10 months in a row and goes to work, after he builds it, then and only then he puts someone in place to manage his business. He isn’t working on 100 things at once; he does things, actually does them, and then puts people in place to manage the projects. That is the model you want to follow, Rob has done it extremely well and he continues to do it up until this day. There are several people that rob has manage his projects now.

Take his story and then compare it with a new entrepreneur, trying to “do several projects at the same time.” The inexperienced entrepreneur tries to do everything Rob did at once, while Rob did one at a time, then put people in place to manage them. The inexperienced entrepreneur trying to do them all is unable to focus his time to really build one project huge, he is to scattered, like the fox trying to do to many things. They do all their businesses half-ass, and the result is a bunch of half-ass projects, when they should have just focused on one and built it. The inexperienced entrepreneurs excuse is, “having multiple streams of income is good,” even though none of the projects provide any streams of income at all. If anything they provide streams of distractions and lost progress that could have been made. In this scenario the inexperienced entrepreneur is the fox, and rob was the hedgehog.

If you want to learn more about this concept read the book by Jim Collins, Good To Great. Are you a hedgehog or a fox? How many projects do you have going now? If you have 3 or more, you are most likely a fox.

Why Building a Fortune is better than Building Passive Income

Sun, 23 Nov 2008 00:00:00 GMT

I used to believe that building passive income was the absolute best way to achieve financial independence. This idea of having passive income was so attractive to me earlier on; I told myself that I’d never work on any project that doesn’t pay me for the rest of my life. And that has been the path I’ve taken for the last three years.

A lot of time was spent on building passive income, some of our projects succeeded, many of the them failed. Although at this point I still have some stuff I worked on the past that continues to pay me until this day, but had I do it all over again, I would not have focused on passive income.

If someone is to build an empire of Adsense Sites, or long-term ppc campaigns and or start purchasing lots of rental property for instance (what I’ve tried to do) then you will end up with your monthly residual income. And you will be financially free, able to retire after a few years of building your nest egg of passive investments.

After joining the affiliate industry, which is for lack of better words, crazy, I’ve begin to think differently. It is not uncommon for someone to be able to generate a large amount of profit in a relatively short period of time and although what they have produced isn’t life-time residuals, they will come out ahead within a short period of time.

So much so, that the capital they were able to raise in 3-5 months, was now enough to invest in other projects. So I started seeing things a little differently, if you are able to generate $100,000 to $1,000,000 within a short time, you could then easily invest in passive income sources easier anyways. And you’d be moving a lot faster than if you tried to build passive income from the get-co. Because you’d now have capital to move even faster.

Which is better, $20,000/month net passive income? Or $1,000,000 in your bank account?

Besides. Who needs passive income if you have $50,000,000 in your bank account? You don’t need passive income at all, you’d have a fortune at that point. And I bet building the fortune was funner than trying to build a bunch of small little projects and slightly increasing your monthly net income over the course of a few years.

Again, passive income is still awesome and is one way to be financially free, Although any more, we don’t have time to waste. We’re not here to build a small amount of monthly income, we want to do big projects with high-impact and build a fortune and a large amount of prosperity.

I have been able to free myself from focusing solely on passive income projects now, and now we focus on building a fortune. I’d rather sell a company for $50 million than trying to build sites every-day, or buying 100 houses and renting them out. It is personally more exciting for me, and passive income is a sure-fire bet, but is is slow, and not that exciting.

Just keep this in mind. Building passive income is extremely slow, although building a fortune can be done quicker than you might ever imagined… think about it.

Passive Income, or a YouTube… a fortune (thats the difference…)

Will be in LA this weekend, let’s meetup.

Thu, 13 Nov 2008 00:00:00 GMT

Hey everyone we’ll be driving down from San Francisco to Los Angeles this weekend, for our LA Meetup202 event to talk with local advertisers and some other software companies. If anyone is in the area and wants to get together, feel free top stop by our meetup and say hello. Look forwarding to seeing everyone there.

In Partnerships. Don’t Make The Plans Yourself, Make Them With Everyone Involved.

Sat, 04 Oct 2008 00:00:00 GMT

If you’ve been in a partnership before, you may have come across this dilemma before. Over the course of days by yourself, you have come up with a brilliant plan for your business. You have thought of everything in and out. You have layed out the perfection execution strategy for reaching the intended objective. The plan you put together can surely not fail, and you think everyone on your team will just love it.

And then you goto pitch this plan to your associates, and immediately the do not see eye to eye with you, and are no-where near as passionate about executing the plan as you are. And this plan that you’ve spent so-hard-and-long on, and got so passionate about, was not being seen in the same-light as your partners. And this new plan you’ve spent so long and hard on, that you thought would be so highly regarded, isn’t looked upon at all. It’s like the hours of time you took to write it, seems to have been pointless because it feels like your partners read it just in the course of a few minutes if that.

Or your on the other side, and your partner brings you this plan he has developed, and thinks so highly of, and you look at it and don’t think its great at all. And he was so passionate about it, but you don’t really see it. And so the plan that they worked so hard on is really disregarded.

So if your someone who has been in partnerships before, I’m sure you’ve come across the above scenarios many times before, and it sounds familiar to you. We’ve done that many of times in our startups, and after many trials and errors I believe there is a much better way of planning. And it is simple, but extremely powerful, and will save you lots of time in the future. Instead of building theses gigantic plans yourself and then trying to pitch them to your partners, instead build the plans with your partners.

When you plan out everything with the people you work with a-couple things will happen. Not only will the plan most likely be better because you’ve involved more smart minds, if the plan is good everyone on the team has contributed and said together this is a great idea, and everyone will want to execute it. And along with that, because everyone is involved, and if everyone likes the idea, together, your teams will all be passionate about doing what everyone has just layed out. And this plan will now have a significantly higher chance of success to being completed, and done faster than it ever would have if you made the plan yourself and then just tried to pitch it to your partners.

Effective partnerships are directly proportional to the amount of effective communication going between the two partners. And trying to plan something big, by yourself, which is really for everyone, should really involve everyone during the plan. So its simple, next time when your working with someone else, together, collaborate and build out the plan, and think of ideas, and then together lay out the execution plan. Now instead of only you spending time to develop a plan that your motivated about, now you will have a plan developed with the team, that everyone will be passionate about executing, because everyone together has agreed that this plan is a good one, and no one has to be sold to get to work, and make things happen.

Having a ‘Balanced Life’ Is Over-Rated.

Sat, 13 Sep 2008 00:00:00 GMT

It seems everyone likes to preach to others, “live a balanced life-style”. It’s more the idealistic way of thinking, and a lot of book gurus will preach the idea of being ‘balanced’ as something to ‘strive for!’. And although there may be some merit in it, a-lot of people are justifying extra wasted time as being balanced, and enjoying life instead of just getting what they should be getting done…

If you take a look at some of the most successful entrepreneurs, most, if not all were did not live a ‘balanced’ life-style when building their businesses. They were, building their businesses. A lot of them had to work 80 hours a week for several years to get to where they needed to be. They had their goals set out, and if something wasn’t relative to what they needed to do, they diddn’t do it, and just sticked to their guns and did what they needed to be done. And in result, they did not live a balanced lifestyle like most people would preach is a great-life-style. And that has made all the difference.

YouTube, sold for over a billion dollars. Do you think the co-founders were balanced at all? Absolutely not, if you’re geeky like me and watched the video on how YouTube scaled their infrastructure to support their millions of videos being uploaded and streamed daily you’ll understand that there is absolutely no time for balance. And that balance goes out the window, and instead what produced amazing wealthy and prosperity, and soon-to-be-happiness for the co-founders, was their ability to be extremely biased in their activity and doing what they needed to do, Scale, and forget everything else, forget being balanced…

And what happened after their months of burnout, of extreme hard work, it paid off, and for those being balanced for that month, not much happened… we don’t hear about those stories.

The developers of YouTube were daily having system crashes, and they could not keep up with their growth. What do you do when you have 2 days left of storage for videos to be uploaded? What do you do when you find out your folders can’t hold any more images, that you spending money on hosting like crazy. You have so many scaling problems you can’t even sleep, because when you do something goes wrong. Day in and day out problems occur, there is no time for being balanced, and this is the time, where you are so concentrated on your work and focusing on it, that extreme wealth is created… The result of how-ever long it took them to build YouTube to a billion dollar buyout exactly I do not know, but I do know that entire time they weren’t living a balanced life-style at all.

Although I agree living a good-life and having some fun is important, and of course being healthy. I see way to often, a-lot of ‘want to be successful people’ preaching their doing activities for fun, because they live a balanced lifestyle, and can’t work all day. And theses are the people more often that not that don’t make much money, doing many things that don’t produce a-lot of results.

Most, if not all of the young-entrepreneurs I personally know & met who are millionaires under the age of 25, are all extremely un-balanced. They work extremely hard, and don’t care about being balanced, because they know being balanced in many different aspects of life doesn’t produce much money. And the major difference to understand is this, perusing money isn’t necessarily a bad thing. But ‘a lot of people’ who want more money in their lives, go about their days saying they are balanced as an excuse to not get real work done. While the others who as well want money, and really make it happen are the ones, the few who really go to work and don’t care about-balance and infact don’t want it.

I think being-balanced, personally, is over-rated, for us to get to our next stage, ( a new version of our software coming out soon ), we need to be extremely un-balanced and just get 80 hours of work a week done, to get it done, as soon as possible. And that’s all that’s really important, most people I know who are really balanced, who do a-lot of fun things, aren’t really that successful from my personal experiences. That being said, to each his own, if you want to be balanced go for it! But being balanced doesn’t produce much net-worth? Do you want to be rich? Or do you want to be balanced? What do you think about being balanced?

Grabbing the Tab At Dinner (all-the-time) Can Sometimes Create Tension

Sun, 24 Aug 2008 00:00:00 GMT

Yesterday I noticed in slightest of forms of how I can sometimes generate tension between other people trying to be as nice as possible. I have a bad challenge of sometime wanting to grab the tab every time I go out and eat with other people, and although it may seem good in nature, and does have some benefits, there are sometimes drawbacks as well. I’m not taking about the money aspect, I’m talking about building relationship tensions.

I’ve noticed if done repeatable it can create a slight bit of tension between I and the other person with whom I’m eating with. Now let me forewarn you, this isn’t like a hating tension, we are all still good friends in nature, but by covering sometime and not allowing the other party to it can create the slightest bit of tension between you and the other person. Because now they feel like they owe you, and weren’t able to ‘clear the deck.’

The main reason that I try to grab is that we are in the relationship building business, we are in the entertainment business, like most of the companies in this industry we like to take very good care of our customers, and it isn’t that they are just our customers, in what we do relationships are huge in this business, it is a small industry of very powerful individuals. So anytime we can do someone for someone else we work with, we will always go all out in trying to do what we can to serve.

So naturally we want to cover the costs for whatever it is, especially of course when it is at one of our own-hosted events. But what I noticed yesterday is that doing so repeatbly, over time can create tensions. For instance if someone wants t pay, we should let them because it allows them to clear their deck, and feel like they contributed, and allow them to not feel like they are indebted. (which they aren’t really, but I can see how the other party may feel that way.)

See I think, (I think) it’s fine, if you want to grab the tab at the first get-together with new people, but if later that day, so you eat again and do it again (for instance going to dinner) and you want to grab the tab again, you may be (and may not be), in the slightest of way building tension with the other party because they might want to chip-in too, and your not allowing them to do so.

Only after reading the book by Guy Kawakasi, which I reflected on a short chapter here, I was able to see it. Last night we were at the Seattle Meetup, we had grabbed lunch and paid for everyone to go to the gaming place, which really isn’t that expensive and we were planning on hosting it because it was our event naturally. But at the last dinner James paid for the dinner, which was cool, that allowed him to help as well. But what I noticed (seeing it from the other side, of not paying) that another member was interested in chipping in, but James went ahead and grabbed the whole tab. Which is what I’d normally done, but now sitting in the other persons’ shoes, even though I didn’t want to grab the tab, I could feel the other person really wanted to chip-in, because they felt like they owed us for the previous stuff we did. But only after a day I realized it, and noticed that it does cause some tension and that the way to do it is to simply allow them if they want to, to chip-in. Now James is a great guy! And I’m not saying anything bad about the situation, everything at the dinner was good, everyone is good, but I noticed that it can cause tension with others (but not everyone), depends who it is, but now seeing that it can cause tension with certain people. It was my fault for creating that atmosphere, of ‘I got it, don’t worry about it’ and paying for dinner in the first place.

But again, everything is fine in our relationship, James is awesome and did nothing wrong, and of course I’m not calling out, but this post is more about ‘reflecting’ and noticing ‘the smallest’ of improvements that can be made, and challenged to see if we can’t improve upon them.

This post is about having more finesse in your relationships, even though everyone is in good standing, as an entrepreneur for someone who wants to be really successful we need to look at the smallest of improvements we can make. It is about trying to become a master communicator, and not that I’m one, but I will try my best and study it, and notice even the smallest of areas which were we can improve upon. Even though grabbing the tab is good and its doing favors, it’s more the best way to build relationships, a higher-level of more sophiscated relationship mastery is needed, and that’s what I hope we are all trying to achieve.

The athletes receiving medals this year at the Beijing Olympics didn’t earn their medal when they crossed the finish line. They earned their medal in the gyms and working out everyday, in the gym where they practiced their sport everyday is where they became a gold medalist. Only in public everyone saw they were a gold medalist, but they became a gold medalist in the daily workout routines they had.

Remember. It isn’t the big things in life that matter, it is the smallest things in life, the things that don’t seem to matter at all, the things we did every day that make the big differences in our life.

Getting More Unproductive As Your Business Grows.

Sat, 23 Aug 2008 00:00:00 GMT

Although it may appear from the outside looking at a company as it moves forward, and becomes more successful that stuff is now getting done faster and faster. And in some respects they are, but in a lot of aspects they really aren’t.

Unfortunately I have noticed a decrease in overall productivity in the last 1-2 months and only until now I’ve really started to ask myself why and found the root core reason why it is. I’m staying busy sure, but being busy, and being productive are two completely different things. The core reason I’ve found now that I’ve been unable to develop as much as before, as the company has moved forward there are a lot more obligations to take care of, and we are actually a smaller team than before as well. But even as general, there are more people to talk to now than ever before, and all of that takes away from what I need to focus on.

At the early stage of any your startup there is won’t be much demand for your time. Your flexible and you don’t have any customers to respond to or big contracts you need to keep track of, and because of that you can just focus on doing that one thing you need to do, for me it was programming the first beta of Tracking202.

I moved to San Francisco on about a passive income of a little more than $1,000, barely enough to live. But it forced myself to succeed, because I had to, and not knowing anyone in the city and not yet having any customers to talk to, or anyone else really for that matter, I was able to go to work, and be productive and not just bus.

But now the complete opposite is true, as we have moved forward it has been becoming increasingly difficult to get even just the simplest of things done. Where as before we were bootstrapping and all we had to do was code all day, now, we work with many people, we have customer support posts/twitters/aim/emails to respond to, affiliate networks want to work with us, we are going to events, we are putting on events and simply talking to a lot of people. After we have gained momentum the world load, more so the relationship maintenance has gone up considerable and has taken us away from our business, which is developing software products. Going on AIM any more is a disaster, as with over 400+ affiliate marketers on a single AIM name you can expect to get nothing done when logging on anymore. That is why starting next month I’m going to probably remove AIM completely and switch entirely to email.

There are many distractions attacking for our time every-day. I’ve only now in the past two months realized the core reason that I wasn’t getting anything done, its not that I haven’t been busy, I’ve been working, but talking with everyone has replaced programming, which is what I should really be focused on.

So what is the point of this post? That as you start to move forward your going to get distracted, more things come up to do, and you are only one person, you either have to scale out the team, or go-back in a cave and focus on that one thing you do best, which is generally the best route. Make sure to focus on what you can be the absolute best at in the world.

Stay focused on what your doing, you can really get 200% of the work done, in ½ of the time, lately I’ve been distracted, but starting next month all AIM is going off, and we’re going to launch a new product. That is what we need to do. And I hope you can focus on what you need to do, I’ve lost 2 months of productivity, maybe this post can share some insights into the future distractions that will arise for you and you’ll know about them in advance and be able to adjust better than I was.

Should I Program Myself, Or Pay Someone Else?

Fri, 22 Aug 2008 00:00:00 GMT

Have you asked yourself this question before? “Should I program myself, or pay someone else?” It is a question asked every day by internet entrepreneurs, and it is a good question. I too had to figure out what direction I would take years ago. In this video I will share some of my thoughts on which direction is best to take, depending on certain your situations.

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To sum it up though, learning how to code can never really be a bad thing for your business. In that knowing an extra skill like PHP and MYSQL for instance will only be benefical to you in the future, and is probably not a bad thing to take a step back and learn some time.

Really if you have a small project, it is general ok to pay a freelancer. But if you want to build a web 2.0 company with some really innovative software unless you plan on doing it right, don’t do it at all. And if your going to pay and fund a large web 2.0 startup you need to invest alot of money, and hire a team of programmers, and potentially an IT consultant, and vest ownership over several years. See if you really want to build sometime long-term you’re going to need long-term people, you can just pay someone in another country for $500 to build you something that is going to be bought out for millions of dollars. Sorry its just not going to work, and I have seen people try to outsource big ideas to cheap freelancers and it almost fails every, single, time…

Trust me a $500 freelancer can’t just build a Tracking202.com and I can’t scale and keep making a better tracking system by paying some rent-a-coder online whenever I need them. You need long-term employees who will build it, or you need to build it yourself. If it is a big project, either do it right, hire a team of full-time employees to do it, or build it yourself so you are the system artitect, and later on hire other coders to build off your existing platform.

Cloning Dinners

Mon, 18 Aug 2008 00:00:00 GMT

Cloning Dinners is a simple, but powerful concept to maximize your time networking with others. I wanted to say thanks to James Seligman from the Seattle Meetup202 Group for recommending Never Eat Alone, the book that I read this from. It’s an awesome book, I highly recommend it. An example of a super cloned dinner is Ian Fernando’s IANteract dinner, where he took out 20+ people and paid for dinner. This helped strengthen the relationship with Ian, and other affiliates at the dinner.

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Some Ideas On Running a booth/table at an Expo Event

Sun, 17 Aug 2008 00:00:00 GMT

Ok, don’t make fun of me now. This is my first attempt at using some new video equipment, it’ll get better as it progresses. I’m going to switch from text to video blogging, and see how effective it is. The studio is modeled after the one over at the gurumastermindvideoblog.com. Have to give credit, where credit is due.

Max over at MoneyBites.com asked me to make a short video post for his new startup BlogGears, which you can find here, and which I promised to link-back to.

Ok in this quick video I wanted to share some ideas I had running a table over last week at the Affiliate Summit. Because everything was pretty unorganized this first time around, I forgot 2 things. Add theses to the list. It would have been nice to re-do everything and make it nicer, but sometimes we just need to get things out and not try to be perfectionist even if there is some flaws with it.

It’d be a good idea to have more than 2 people at the booth/table because it is hard talking to everyone with one person, it just won’t work.
If you can get others in the crowd walking around with your t-shirts, this was of course easier for us because we already had users that liked our product at the event, but none-the-less, others could do the same as well.

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Before its to late. It isn’t until you lose something that you realize how important something was.

Sat, 26 Jul 2008 00:00:00 GMT

Sometimes it isn’t until we lose something that you then later realize how grateful we should have been to have what it is we had in the first place.

What I mean is, there are many things we take for granted, and the things we take for granted are exactly the things that will be taken away from us! And it isn’t only until it is taken away from us that we then realize that what we had before was incredible. Although this could be applied to many things, that we only realize how important something is and how important we should have made it until we almost lose it, I will put in relationship to health. It is like health, when you have it before, we take it for granted, and it isn’t until we almost lose our health and vitality that when then look back and say WOW, what did I have before and now I’ve lost it, when maybe I could have prevented it….

Life and Business are like the ever-changing seasons. That being said, this month will go down as being a winter in my life. There are times in our life where everything seems to go bad, one bad thing after another and they accumulate on-top of each-other, bad thing-after-one-another. If you’ve ever had a bad month you’ll know what I mean, I like to call theses the winters’ of our lives, when everything goes smash. Although on the bright side, like the seasons which are always consistent, after winter is summer, so I look forward to next month as things can only get better from here on out.

Although there have been a lot of challenges this month, the worst thing was going out hiking last week. The coastline of San Francisco is incredibly beautiful, a-sight to be seen, HWY-1 is a great drive, especially with the S2000 with the top down and enjoying the sun and looking out over the beaches of California. But what lurks in this coast-line is an incredible vile plant called the Poison Oak, and this plant is quite possible the worst thing you could ever encounter while hiking.

I ended up getting poison oak all of my body, I had shorts on, and a t-shirt, with sandals. I got the poison oak on my legs and got it all over my arms as well. Poison Oak is one of the worst things you can ever get on your skin. If anyone has encountered it before they know the horror stories of what comes after you get poison oak on your body, and if you have never encountered it, let me share with you how bad it is so hopefully you will never have to run into it yourself!

Poison Oak is all-over the coastline of California, surprise to me! If you touch any leaves you have to get the poison off from your skin within 5-20 minutes, after that it seeps into your skin and it is now in your bloodstream. After it is in your system 2-10 days later you will start noticing a break-out of what first appear to be bug bites, but they are blisters in the skin. They just sorta appear, and the poison says Hello, I’m blossoming in your skin, that’s probably the best way to describe it. After the poison starts coming out it also develops into rashes and pretty much just makes it way throughout your body until all the poison is gone. If you have the guys, you can see some pictures here. Now if you want to see my-pictures, I’m probably not going to show you, but it isn’t as bad as some of those on there, but it isn’t good either.

For the last several days i’ve been unable to do any work, there was a spree that in the first 70 hours I was only able to sleep for 2 hours because the irritation was so bad. In fact, I don’t even know if I could consider that 2 hours of sleep because I was pretty much waking up every second while just trying to sleep. I’m now on some pills from the dermatologist, I’m on a heavy regime (top one modified slightly if you want to see it) trying to remove all the poisons from my body. It has been some of the worst days of my life this past week dealing with this poison oak, fortunately I believe it is finally starting to heal after spending all-days trying to do whatever I can to heal myself. There was even a point that it got so bad, if I could spent $10,000 to get raid of it I would have, but of course there isn’t any way to do this, which brings me to the point of this blog post.

Although I have generally been happy that I’m young (21) years of age currently, and don’t have any serious problems, I only realized really how good my youth is (and yours) on a highly appreciative level after I lost it this week. In that I’ve been grateful before, but now I’m super grateful because I know what it is now like to not have my health and I can now say that I’m much more grateful now than I have ever been that I’m able to have the energy and vitality, everything that goes with being young right now. I don’t know if you ever encounted a bad-health problem in your life, maybe its breathing problems, maybe its back-problems maybe its something else, I don’t really know, but if you have, you’ll look back on yourself and say wow I had it really good before, and you’ll really have a greater appreciation towards being healthy than you ever had before.

Because you had it, took it for-granted, and then you lost it, and then after losing it realized that wow, what I had before was really great, and I WISH I could have maintained what I had before, and I could have, should have, but… diddn’t…

What I mean to say is, things like HEALTH we take-for-granted, but there are many things like health that we take for-granted, and it isn’t until you lose it that you realize how important it was before. And the problem is, that just when you realize how good you had it before, just when you really appreciate what you had, and WISH you still had it, it is at that point when you lost it that you realize this, it is that point when you lost it and you now can not go back and fix it, and that you COULD HAVE and SHOULD HAVE, but DID NOT.

Don’t wait till its to late, to do what you wish you would have done.

Don’t take your health for granted, it isn’t until you almost lose it like me this week that you will look back and say wow how good did I really have it, and WISH you had it back. (and you could have done something to stay healthy, but only now realize it, to late.)

Don’t take your family for granted, it isn’t until you LOSE someone that you realize Wow how important they were, and wish you could have gone back and spent more time with them, when you could have.

This post is to serve as a warning. There are things you have right now, that are extremely important to you, but you might not realize it yet. There are things you have right now that you will lose, and it is only after you lose them you’ll wish you would have realized how grateful you were before to have it, and that you could have done something to keep it, but didn’t.

So don’t let it be to late, your going to be old one day, and lose your health for instance. And when that day comes you’ll say two things. One I did a great job in keeping myself healthy and there isn’t anything I could have done better, and I’m glad I did it. Or two, I was so healthy before, I wish I had it the way I had it before, but i lost it, and I only realize now… that I had it really good but there isn’t anything I can now do to return myself to the way it was before.

Or it could be family as well in another instance. Someone you know and love is getting older and you might not be able to see them later. Come the day they will pass, just like you and I, and you’ll say to yourself two things. I’m so grateful that I took the extra time out of my life to spend it with my relative and I can’t think of anything better we could have done in the last years of our life than what we have spent our time doing together. Or two, oh my, it isn’t until now, that I realize how important they were in my life and I should have spent more time with them, I wished I would have, but did not, and now it is to late, I only know realize how important they were to me after I have lost them, and I wish I would have spent more time with them had I only realized back then, how important they really were to me.

3 Habits of a Billionaires

Fri, 11 Jul 2008 00:00:00 GMT

Steven Truong found this, the source is from Escape From Pianosa. I thought it was valuable enough to share with everyone.

Forbes.com interviewed several of this year’s top billionaires, and as I was reading through some of them, I noticed three things that repeated over and over again:

1. Exercise daily.

2. Follow your passion.

3. Read. A lot. At least two hours a day, but many said they read four or more hours a day.

The reading is the key point, read more, I think I need to do some more reading this week. If anyone needs to read this week its me. Looks like readers group voted on: Secrets of the Millionaire Mind: Mastering the Inner Game of Wealth

GetClicky.com – Web Analytics 2.0

Thu, 10 Jul 2008 00:00:00 GMT

I have to give a long and overdue shout out to my friends: Sean and Noah over at GetClicky.com. Tracking202 was actually inspired to be created based off their service, and revenue model. We currently use the that Sean suggested to use, there is also a bunch of other stuff that Sean and Noah has helped us out with, that I won’t mention here. They’ve been a big help I should just say! And I want to say thanks and give them a shout out here, they have a great product for anyone who is in the web-business. Pretty much all of you!

It was a great product, extremely residual, and it has had steady success, and analytics was then something I was interested from there on. I thought what a great idea, web-analytics as a product, so we decided to make a PPC-analytics. Well everyone knows how that story went, the PPC crowd is just a “wee” bit different than the general webmaster crowd, and does not like hosted analytics that track their keywords! And the PPC crowd is probably 1/100th, if not 1/10000 the size of the general web-master crowd.

The service is acutally called Clicky, but they had to register GetClicky.com, because the name was taken. I still acutally call it GetClicky anyways, but the official name is Clicky!

About the service, well I’ll keep it straight and to the point. The best part about Clicky is it allows you to have a real-time view of all the visitors on your site, the SPY view, like the DIGG SPY, lets you see live time page actions happening on your site. It also allows you to customize your service, and track and follow each user throughout your website. So instead of a general: “you have 1000 visitors today” you can see, “this user, this user and this user came to the sit, and looked around at theses pages” and see what users are acutally using their software.

You might consider really just checking out their live DEMO, to see it for yourself. I too wanted to use a live DEMO for tracking202, but um, that wouldn’t of worked because everyone would see all the KEYWORDS going through the software! But their demo works great! check it out, they have a free trial, and an upgradeable preminum account if you exceed 1,000 visitors a day.

My buddy over at Developer Hut, Jon Waraas also uses Clicky! One of his reasons is so google can’t see his stats any more. (maybe he’s doing something he isn’t suppose to?) Just kidding, Jon like others doesn’t use Google Analytics so Google can’t track you as easily. So they have a free trial, check it out. I want to say thanks to Clickyfor everything they’ve helped us with, and they were the inspiration to run what we have going now.

GetClicky.com

Favors – Why Asking For Favors, Can Be Good

Tue, 08 Jul 2008 00:00:00 GMT

So I always use to think, up until now, that doing a lot of favors for others builds the relationship with the other person, and try to ask for as-little back was the way to build a great report with someone. But I can see the opposite side now, on why it is good to also ask for favors in return as-well, because it can relive the pressure of someone feeling like they owe something to you. If you keep giving and ask for nothing, they will be less likely to ask for more favors, and in doing so you will be less likely to receive help from the relationship if you ask nothing in return, and give give and give.

But if your only giving and don’t allow yourself to receive the relationship is not as good as it could be: because we have stopped the giving AND receiving of favors to one’s self. I just read this and I’d like to share it with you here, the last part is what made me re-think a significant part of how I try to do as many favors as possible for people, but I can see why it wasn’t always the best way to just keep giving, and try to ask as little as possible in return.

“GIVE FAVORS: There’s a karmic scoreboard in the sky. This scoreboard tracks what you do for people. If you want to be a world-class schoomzer, ensure that you’re hugely positive on the scoreboard. You accomplish this by helping people-especially folks who seemingly can’t do anything for you. And do this without expectation of return. Eventually, the scoreboard will take care of you.

RETURN FAVORS: Since I believe in doing favors, I surely advocate returning favors. When something is done for oyu, you have accepted a moral obligation to pay it back. Great schoomzers return favors and do so with joy. This not only moves the scoreboard a little in the positive direction but enables you to ask for more favors.

ASK FOR THE REUTRN OF FAVORS: Counterintuitive as this seems, you should ask for the return of favors. Doing so reduces or removes the pressure from a person who feels he owes you somethign. Thus, it provides an opportunity to clear the deck. Then the other party can ask for new favors.”

The Art of Start – Guy Kawasaki,

Tech Wisdom – More Quotes

Thu, 03 Jul 2008 00:00:00 GMT

Ok for those who know me by now, I love quotes, because they sum-up alot of powerful information very quickly. I stumbled across an article of upcoming tech-entrepreneurs, and each successful entrepreneur got to post one lesson that they’ve learned, and I’ve included them here so you can see them for yourself. It’s always a good idea to be surrounded by good ideas, even though may not everything is applied, it is still always good to be in a constant flow of what good ideas are, especially ideas about building business if you are an entrepreneur:

“The way you become successful is not by hiding your great idea, but by including people around you and asking for advice,” Radfar says. “And you have to believe in what you are doing.” – Hooman Radfar and Austin Fath

“When you have a position to fill, figure out who would be the best in the world at that role—somebody so good it would be unimaginable that they would take the job,” Frame says. “Once you determine who that is, figure out how to hire that person.” – Andrew Frame

“Try to figure out what the absolute coolest thing to do is, because cool as a condition brings employees and investors,” says Kopf. “Cool makes every day worthwhile.” – Jared Kopf

“Being resource-constrained to begin with focuses you on the essential things,” says Miller. “Also, London is a great place to launch a global enterprise, the way it’s plugged in to the rest of the world.” – Richard Jones and Felix Miller

“There is a very small group of people in this industry that run nearly everything, and that it’s incredibly important to know who they are and be connected with them,” – Dalton Caldwell.

Success in technology is now “becoming a function not of the size and resources of the company that builds it, but of the size of the community that supports it,” – Eric Ries

“Choose who you take advice from carefully, but once you’ve chosen them, listen to every word they say,” Cunningham says. “I’ve set out on a journey, and I have no map and no idea what the landscape is going to be. But there are people around me who have taken similar journeys, over similar landscapes.” – Paul Cunningham

“There are some days when it looks like everything is going to blow up and other days when things look insanely good,” says Altman. “If you let that get to you, you never actually get any work done.” – Sam Altman

“Stay open,” Dorsey says. When Twitter launched, the software required a phone number to join. Once he allowed users to sign up using their e-mail addresses, expanded the service to include IM, and added a programming interface for developers, the number of users and posts shot up. “All made Twitter more approachable by a greater number of people,” – Jack Dorsey

“Everything in life seems to be about relationships,” says Bowman. To build his company, Bowman’s had to quickly meet influential customers and investors. “The power of networks is exponential,” – Jud Bowman

“Listen to the customer before you build,” he says. “It’s very easy to construct a monument to a problem and end up with something that no one will write a check for. You need to understand what issues are business imperatives, what’s keeping someone up at night, and what management is screaming about.” – Todd Graham

Being self-funded has its advantages. “We’re not running toward some sort of exit, so we can take our time and build a proper business,” – Mike Cannon-Brookes and Scott Farquhar

“If you think you have a good idea that could make for a good business, surround yourself with smart people, and go for it,” – Seth Coe-Sullivan

Elite MasterMind Forum – If Your Serious About Reading and Personal Development

Tue, 01 Jul 2008 00:00:00 GMT

For anyone who is serious about reading and studying success, we have just put together the EliteMasterMindForum. This was a long-overdue idea that I wanted to implement over a year ago, and posted about doing it last week here. This is an open invitation for anyone who is interested in reading, this is not another business, but more just a way to read great books and discuss them with other people. Anyone is welcome to join, although most people will join and quit because reading one book a week is extremely difficult, yet extremely rewarding.

There is a tremendous wealth of knowledge that great people in the past have discovered, and shared with us by writing the ideas into books. The Elite MasterMind Forum’s purpose is explore the books, and re-discover the great ideas of the past to learn them ourselves so we can implement them in our lives and make quantum leaps in our self-development and business life.

Each week we read a life-changing book that can help us in any aspect of our lives we are wishing to improve at the time, topics such as: business success, health, financial success, relationships, sales, marketing, entrepreneurship, communication, networking and anything else we feel necessary. In our forum we discuss the ideas from the book; debate ideas and talk about how some ideas we could apply to our life.

This forum is about discovering the great ideas that leaders from the past have learned; this forum is for like-minded-success-oriented people who are looking to become better, stronger and wiser. The Elite MasterMind Forum is dedicated to studying success, and implementing successful ideas in our lives.

One Book A Week

Thu, 26 Jun 2008 00:00:00 GMT

Hey everyone, just wanted to give you an update on the elite mastermind reading group. I’m in process of setting it up right now, I was going to use BaseCamp, which we used before in another collaboration group but it got to spammy after-awhile because it replied on email, I’m programming a simple script for us to collaborate on, it’ll be ready soon.

Share Brass, BrassTV : the money side of life.

Tue, 17 Jun 2008 00:00:00 GMT

Bryan Sims is someone whom I highly respect as entrepreneur; not only in his ability to generate a highly profitable company, but more so in the way that he does it, by educating the younger generation how to become financially free through his company Brass Media has asked me to show everyone BrassTV. I was fortunate enough to know Bryan sims personally, he went to the same college as me, Oregon State University, and like all of the now succesful entrepreneurs I know dropped out of college to build a company.

Bryan has recently joined Ben Casnocha, and Ryan Allis in becoming one of the new top 25 young entrepreneurs by the Entrepreneur Magazine. I wrote about Bryan Sims awhile ago here. The reason I like Brass so much because their whole business is essentially empowering the younger generations by teaching entrerpereship, investing and showing examples of young entrepreneurs making their dreams come true. He has done something that I respect him very highly for in offering free seminars to students, this is something I wanted years ago, and I was happy to see that he is actually doing it.

BrassTV, which is seen on ShareBrass.com, is a new division of BrassMedia. BrassTV will be a TV show that features young entrepreneurs making things happen and educating people on how to become financially independent.

Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking

Thu, 12 Jun 2008 00:00:00 GMT

Blink was an interesting book about the first two seconds of looking–the decisive glance that knows in an instant. I just finished reading it on my Kindle. The book centers on the concept of how fast we really do make judgments, called “thin slicing”, and how deeper analysis can sometimes provide less information than more. It is all about cognitive speed. If that doesn’t make any sense at all, its hard enough to try to explain. I made a lot of notes on the book and I’d like to share them with you here, there is a lot of information here.

“There is one emotion that he considers the most important of all: contempt, if Gottman observes one or both partners in a marriage showing contempt toward the other, he considers it the single most important sign that the marriage is in trouble.”

“What it suggests is that it is quite possible for people who never met us and who have spent only twenty minutes thinking about us to come to a better understanding of who we are than people who have known us for years. Forget the endless “getting to know” meetings and lunches, then. If you want to get a good idea of whether I’d make a good employee, drop by my house one day and take a look around.”

“Sometimes we’re better of if the mind behind the locked door makes our decisions for us.” (the guy instinct, he is referring to, that we get in a blink of an eye about something)

(in reference to 6 minute speed dating) “If you are enjoying the connection, time goes quickly. If you aren’t, it’s the longest six minutes of your life,” she said contagious, winning spark. “You know, girls are really smart,” Jon, a medical student in a blue suit said at the end of the evening. “They know in the first minute, Do I like this guy, can I take him home to my parents, or is he just a wham-bam kind of jerk?” Jon is quite right, except it isn’t just girls who are smart. When it comes to thin-slicing potential dates, pretty much everyone is smart.” (in reference that within just a short time, we really can gather enough information about something to make a decision yes/no)

“We need to accept our ignorance and say, ‘I don’t know’ more often.”

“Most of us, in ways that we are not entirely aware of, automatically associate leadership ability with imposing physical stature. We have a sense of what a leader is supposed to look like, and that stereotype is so powerful that when someone fits it, we simply become blind to other considerations.

“If you buy a car from Bob Golomb, he will be on the phone to you the next day, making sure everything is all right. If you come to the dealership but don’t end up buying anythimg, he’ll call you the next day, thanking you for stopping by. “You always have to put on your best face, even if you are having a bad day. You leave that behind.”

(in reference to trying to remove prejudice) “It requires more than simple commitment to equality. It requires that you change your life so that you are exposed to minorities on a regular basis and become comfortable with them and familiar with the best of their culture.”

“Insight is not a lightbulb that goes off inside our heads. It is a flickering candle that can be easily snuffed out” (in reference to that even though we might in a blink get a gut-feeling of something, we can easily be fooled and misinterpret the situation)

There are, I think, two important lessons here. The first is that truly successful decision making relies on a balance between deliberate and instinctive thinking.”

“The second lesson is that in good decision making, frugality matters. John Gottman took a complex problem and reduced it to its simplest elements: even the most complicated of relationships and problems, he showed, have an identifiable underlying pattern.”

“Because buying jam is a snap decision. You say to yourself, instinctively, I want that one. And if you are given too many choices, if you are forced to consider much more than your unconscious is comfortable with, you get paralyzed. Snap judgments can be made in a snap because they are frugal, and if we want to protect our snap judgements, we have to take steps to protect that frugality” (in reference to most times we over-load ourselves with to much information and block ourselves from taking decision action in the right step because we have to many choices, or to much information to think of a good decision quickly)

“Cheskin was convinced that when people give an assessment of something they might buy in a supermarket or a department store, without realizing it, the transfer sensations or impressions they have about the packaging of the product to the product itself. To put it in another way, Cheskin believed that most of us don’t make a distinction–on an unconscious level– between the package and the product.”

“They served two hundred people Christian Brothers Brandy out of an E & J bottle, and the E & J Brandy out of a Christian Brothers bottle. Which brandy won? The Christian Brothers, hands-down, by the biggest margin of all. Now they had the right taste, the right brand, and the right bottle. The company redesigned their bottle to be alot more like E & J’s, and, sure enough, their problem was solved” (E&J and Christian Brothers are both brandy drink companies. What they found during taste testing, that regardless of which companies brandy was in E&J’s bottle people said it tasted better than the Christian Bottles bottle. Even though they swaped the acutal drink between the two bottle, when ever people drank the brandy out of the E&J bottle it was better, even if it wasn’t E&J brandy in it. It even went as far to say that the taste testers said now that Christian Brothers’ Brandy that was in E&J, tasted better than the E&J in the Christian Brother’s Bottle.

“The general rule is, the closer consumers get to the food itself, the more consumers are going to be conservative. What that means for Hector is that in this case he needs to look pretty literal. You want to have the face as a recognizable human being that you can relate to. Typically, close-ups of the face work better than full-body shots. We tested Hector in a number of different ways. Can you make the ravioli taste better by changing him?” (in reference to ravioli can on the store shelfs)

“Masten picked up a can of Hormel canned meat. “We did this, too. We tested the Hormel logo.” He pointed at the tiny sprig of parsley between the r and the m. “That little bit of parsley helps bring freshness to the canned food.”

“When Del Monte took the peaches out of the tin and put them in a glass container, people said, ‘Ahh, this is something like my grandmother used to make.’ People say peaches taste better when they come in a glass jar. Just like ice cream in a cylindrical container as opposed to a rectangular package. People expect it’s going to taste better.”

“When you are in product development world, you become immersed in your own stuff, and it’s hard to keep in mind the fact that the customers you go out and see spend very little time with your product,” says Dowell. “they know the experience of it then and there. But they don’t have any history with it, and it’s hard for them to imagine a future with it, especially if it’s something very different. That was the thing with the Aeron chair. Office chairs in people’s minds had a certain aesthetic. They were cushioned and upholstered. The Aeron chair o course isn’t. It looked different. There was nothing familiar about it. Maybe the wod ‘ugly’ was just a proxy for ‘different.'”

“if the Aeron had just been a minor variation on the chair that came before it– the act of measuring consumer reactions would not have been nearly as difficult. But testing products or ideas that are truly revolutionary is another matter, and most successful companies are those that understand in those cases, the first impressions of their consumers need interpretation. We like market research because it provides certainty– a score, a prediction; if someone asks us why we made the decision we did, we can point to a number. But the truth is that for most important decisions, there can be no certainty.”

The first impressions of experts are different. By that I don’t mean that experts like different things than the rest of us–although that is undeniable. When we become expert in something our tastes grow more esoteric and complex. What I mean is that it is really only experts who are able to reliably account for their reactions.”

“If you were to approach a one-year-old child who sits playing on the floor and do something a little bit puzzling, such as cupping your hands over hers, the child would immediately look up to your eyes. Why? Because what you have done requires explanation, and the child knows that she can find an answer on your face.”

“But one of the things that Van Riper taught me was that being able to act intelligently and instinctively in the moment is possible only after long and rigorous course of education and experience. Van Riper beat Blue Team because of what he had learned about waging war in the jungles of Vietnam. And he also beat Blue Team because of what he had learned in that library of his. Van Riper was a student of military history.”

It’s the kind of wisdom that someone acquires after a lifetime of learning and watching and doing. It’s judgment. And what Blink is–what all the stories and studies and arguments add up to–is an attempt to understand this magical and mysterious thing called judgment.”

Judgment matters: it is what separates winners from losers.”

“Hooker choked, and I hope that after reading this far, you recognize the characteristics signs of judgment’s fragility. From experience, we gain a powerful gift, the ability to act instinctively, in the moment. But–and this is one of the lessons I tried very hard to impart in Blink–it is easy to disrupt this gift.”

“This is the second lesson of Blink: understanding the true nature of instinctive decision making requires us to be forgiving of those people trapped in circumstances where good judgment is imperiled. There’s a third lesson in the Chancellorsville story, and in the time since Blink was published I’ve come to think that it is the most important lesson of all. Lee outthought Hooker, even though he knew far less about Hooker’s army than Hooker knew about his. Hooker was the only one who knew exactly how many soldiers his enemy had. Hooker was the one who had two hot-air balloons up in the sky giving him perfect aerial reconnaissance of his enemy’s position. Le won the battle despite knowing less than Hooker. But now that you’ve read Blink, you’ll know that I think we ought to turn that sentence around, and say that probably Lee won the battle because he knew less than Hooker.”

(in reference to instead of pre-judging musicians before they stepped on the stage to see if they were good enough to be hired, they would put a screen so the reviewers couldn’t see the person and would just rate the performance based on the music alone, not their appearance, not their sex, not their race.) “It was only when the screen went up that the maestros’ judgment was restored. Think about it. How much of the “information” in an audition is visual? Seventy percent? Eighty percent? It’s mostly visual. An audition is supposed to be an exercise in listening. But mostly what we do is look. How is the musician dressed? Is she tall or short? How does she hold her instrument? How does she carry herself while she’s playing? In the classical music world, 80 percent of the information available to the maestros was removed, and lo and behold, the maestros suddenly exercised much better judgment. As I’ve talked to people about Blink over the past few years, I’ve been amazed at how often this point has come up. In fact, I would venture to say that no argument in the book has resonated more with readers than this one. We live in a world saturated with information. We have virtually unlimited amounts of data at our fingertips at all times, and we’re well versed in the arguments about the dangers of not knowing enough and not doing our homework. But what I have senses is an enormous frustration with the unexpected costs of knowing too much, of being inundated with information. We have to come to confuse information with understanding. “

“The key to good decision making is not knowledge. It is understanding.”

(in reference to the court systems like the musicians, how some people are pre-judged before they even get to say anything are are condemned more often just because on peoples biased opinions.) I think that the accused in a criminal trial shouldn’t be in the courtroom. He or she should be in another room entirely, answering questions by e-mail or through the use of an intermediary. And I think that all evidence and testimony in a trial that tips the jury off to the age or race or gender of the defendant ought to be edited out.”

This is the real lesson of Blink: It is not enough to simply to explore the hidden recesses of our unconscious. Once we know about how the mind works–and about the strengths and weaknesses of human judgment–it is our responsibility to act”

That is all my notes from Blink, took awhile to read? I hope there was some valuable information here, it sure took a long time to type this all out! What’s your thoughts on this format after you have read the whole thing, is it good, did you find something like this with points highlighted from the book good. I put them all here, was it to much or to many? What’s your thoughts on the ideas, and more specifically this post, and if I should do more like this on each great note I can find and share with everyone!

Sharpening Your Edge – New Mastermind Group and Looking For Serious Entrepreneurs

Wed, 11 Jun 2008 00:00:00 GMT

During the 18th century two brothers walked out to the forrest, both had axes in their hand. They planed on cutting down as many trees as they possibly could within six hours. The two brothers, Abe and John are about the same age and have the same physical build, they are equally strong. It is a bright early morning, and they figure there is about six more hours of sunlight, so they will see how many trees they can cut down within the six hour time period.

As they walk to the cutting area John decides to challenge his brother Abe to a competition, “Brother Abe, I bet you that I can cut down more trees within 6 hours than you can.” Abe replies, “Oh really? We’ll just have to see about that.” The two brothers agree to see who between them can cut down the most trees within the six hours.

At noon they arrive to the area where they are supposed to start axing. John starts right away and beings axing immediately. After about an hour he cuts down his first tree and looks over his shoulder to see that his brother Abe has not cut down any trees at all. In fact, he notices Abe isn’t cutting at all, instead he is just sharpening his axe. John shrugs in disbelief that his brother is sharpening his axe, so he continues to axe himself and after another hour he cuts down a second tree. After he cuts down the second tree he looks over to his brother Abe again whom he finds is still sharpening his axe!

“What are you doing Abe? I’ve already cut down my first two trees in two hours! I’m going to beat you,” yells John laughing at Abe. Giving no attention, Abe continues to sharpen his axe. In disbelief John turns around to the trees and begins cutting down his third tree. After another hour John has cut down his third tree, he is cutting about one tree down per hour. John feels confident that he will win, because he has already cut down three trees so far, and his brother Abe has not even begun axing yet.

As John starts to start cutting down his 4th tree, he sees his brother get up and start axing. Within 20 minutes of cutting John hears a big thud, he turns around to see a tree was just cut down by his brother Abe. Abe had cut down his first tree within his first 20 minutes!

“He must of just got lucky,” John thinks to himself. But then another 20 minutes passes and Abe cuts down another three, while John is still working on his tree. The next 20 minutes Abe cuts down a third minute, he has now just cut down three trees within an hour. John finally cuts down his forth tree. So on the the fourth hour, John has cut down four trees already, and his brother abe has cut down three!

It appears that John is cutting down a tree every hour, but his brother Abe with the sharper axe is cutting down 3 trees an hour! Six hours finally comes out, and John’s total is six trees cut down, and his brother Abe who spent the first three hours sharpening his axe, cut down nine trees in the last three hours.

Who cut down the most trees? Abe did.

Abraham Lincoln once said, “If I had six hours to cut down trees, I’d spend the first three hours sharpening my axe, and the last three cutting down the trees.” Lincoln was a smart man.

Even though John spent the whole six hours cutting down trees, his axe was so dull that he was only able to cut down one tree every hour. While on the other hand Abe invested the time sharpening his axe and was able to cut down three trees per hour. So what’s the point of this whole story?

The point of the story is to cleary show that someone who invests the time to develop their own personal skills has a great advantage over someone who doesn’t take the time to invest in-themselves. The person who avoids studying and becoming a better entrepreneur fails to someone who has taken the time to invest in themselves and become a better entrepreneur.

It shows the dramatic difference between entrepreneurs, that for example, in ten years two people starting out at the same spot can have completely different levels of success because one person took the time and invested in himself, learning how to be a great entrepreneur from people have already done it, when the other simply just put hard work into his business but never learned the best possible way to build his business.

Now the actual story that I told you was a fake one, I made it up. Although the quote by Abraham Lincoln is a real. Then why the story? Using stories is a great way to teach a piece of philosophy. Philosophy by itself is somewhat boring and engaging, but throwing it into a story makes it fun! Rich Dad Poor Dad the book is basically about two things, number one, we should increase our financial intelligence, and number two, buy assets and not liabilities. But it was his story he told that you remember, and the story that taught the lessons which made it a new york time’s best seller. So that is why I embed the lesson with a story, you’re more likely to remember the story.

How do we sharpen our axe? There is two primary ways of learning new things, and becoming better, stronger and wiser. Simply broken down they are: Learned Knowledge and Activity Knowledge.

Learned Knowledge is more passive knowledge that you gather from reading books, going to seminars, listening to audio books, reading quotes and learning from other people. The other, Activity Knowledge is knowledge you acquire by doing and learning things sometimes the hard way.

We need both types of knowledge to really excel. If you just try activity knowledge all day you are learning the hard way, you don’t have to read any more. You’ll figure out what works by trial and error, and you’ll learn new things. And if you just read all day, what good would that do?

The sharpest and brightest people in life, in my personal opinion are those who are constant learners of good information, but then apply the knowledge immediately. They switch off between learned knowledge and activity knowledge daily, and do both, and excel at what they do. Each day they do what they do better.

I personally know older entrepreneurs that have small businesses that they have grown to 1-5 employees. They have been working for 10+ years in their business, their business now looks about the same it did years ago. The reason the business is about the same is because as of today entrepreneur of the business is the same as they were years ago. In other words, the entrepreneurs businesses haven’t experienced any growth because the owner hasn’t changed himself. They have the same old ideas and tricks they had years ago and use, and doing the same things they did before are getting them the same results. In other words even though they are working hard at their business, they aren’t getting any better at it, so they find themselves after 10 years at roughly the same income level as before and frustrated. They think they know everything there is about their business and refuse to accept the idea that there is anything else they can do, so they fall into the trap. They fall into the trap that there business won’t grow any further because they won’t grow personally. They are so busy chopping away with a dull axe, they completely forgotten to sharpen their axe, and if you give them a book, they say their to busy.

Here is a key note to remember: “Your income seldomly exceeds your level of personal development,” Jim Rohn. To receive more in life, we have to become more.

So let us together, not become someone who works all day with a dull axe. Let’s put in the time axing away at our business, but lets spend time also sharpening our axe. So that each day we become better than the next and really grow.

I myself have been failing in some aspect on sharpening my axe lately. Studying personal development has become like a roller-coaster, one month I will read 3 books, and then the next month none. I tried once to read a book every week but I failed, miserably.

Although I just received my Kindle in the mail today, probably one of the best devices for learning I have ever come across of. I liked it so much I bought one for my dad the same day. Now I have access to all the best business books and books on philosophy in a second, I can download through the air instantly and read them immediately. All my library is now on a single device which is must easier to read than a single book, I strongly believe now with this tool I can really read one book a week. I’m going to give it all to start this up, if I can read one book a week that is over 56 great books on entrepreneurship in a year.

I plan on sharing as many ideas from the book with you as I possibly can, it’s good for you and me.

I would also like to extend an open invitation to anyone who is serious about entrepreneurship to join me a new mastermind personal development group. I thought about putting together one over a year ago, and now were going to do it. If anyone here is interested in reading one great book a week and discussing them each week please comment here and we’ll get together a group of 10-20 serious people who are interested in seriously sharpening their skills.

In order to read a book each week you will be probably have to dedicated an hour to two hours per day in order to accomplish this, it is a lot of work, and it is not for the light-hearted, reading one book a week is extremely hard, yet I believe, it will be extremely rewarding if we can get it down. I need your help, sometimes the best way to get big things done is to get work-out partners who help each other get through. If I find you slacking on reading I’m going to get on you, and I’d expect you to get on me. So if your interested in joining me in a new reading mastermind mind group, please let me know and we’ll do this. I might require everyone to have a kindle, as a serious requirement, its $359, but the best money you can spend is money invested into self-development. Don’t short-change yourself when it comes to your own education. I’m not asking anyone to buy a piece of junk, I’m asking you to invest in something that if used, will earn you literally millions maybe billions if you are really sharp, in the near future.

I hope you again found some value in this post. Remember the story and the quote by Abraham Lincoln, “If I had six hours to cut down trees, I’d spend the first three hours sharpening my axe, and the last three cutting down the trees.” How many hours this week did you spend sharpening your axe?

Do What You Said You Were Going To Do

Thu, 05 Jun 2008 00:00:00 GMT

Do you open up your email inbox, read the emails and then think to yourself, “I’ll just reply later?” And then 50% of the time we never reply with our follow-up email?

Why does this happen so much? Well if you want to know the real reason, it is mainly because a lot of us simply lie to ourselves. Think lying to others is bad? How about lying to yourself, that is just as bad, if not worse.

For example, we are lying to ourselves every time we say we are going to do something and we don’t do it. The reason we accidently lie to ourselves in most cases like this is because we generally try to do way more than we actually can do. For instance, you get 10 emails, you tell yourself, “Oh I’ll reply to them later.” In good faith, you do honestly intend to reply to them later, however, later on you have a less chance of replying to the emails, especially the somewhat unimportant looking emails.

What happens later is that some of them done get replied, and as you told yourself earlier you would reply to your emails, we didn’t, and we lied to ourselves. We lied to our self because we tried to do too much than we actually could do, and then of course we failed at it because we set unrealistic goals that couldn’t be accomplished.

Lie to yourself enough, and you’ll become a liar. I’m sure we’ve all been there, lying to ourselves, telling ourselves were going to do things and then they just don’t get done. Soon it gets bad and whenever you tell someone your going to do something, it generally never happens. How many times have we told someone we would do something, and then don’t? Ouch, to many of those and your in trouble.

Hey, I’m not perfect either, but I do try to remember, to do stuff, and I will say No, I can’t do this because I know it can’t get done, so I won’t lie to myself telling myself I can get it done when honestly I won’t be able to. So lets be honest. To ourself. Be honest to yourself and get the things you said you want to get done, done. The more we fumble the weaker we get, and the worse we become at getting thing dones.

That’s why I like to say, if you set goals month after month, and they don’t happen. I bet none of your goals are hit. Your goals just become words and fun things to think about, but nothing gets done, there is no momentum, there is no accomplish. It is just one weak goal after another, over and over again. And then nothing gets done.

I’ve taken a very long time to practice goal settings, what if I told you I could consisntely hit every goal on target, every time over and over? You know when your good at goals when you say your going to do something, and you make it happen on the day your going to do it. Then you make another goal and it is done exactly when you said it would be. Then you gain momentum and nothing can stop you. Is it possible to hit 100% of your goals, 100% of the time? I tell you yes it is.

Stop failing goals. Start hitting goals, every time. Can you do it, it’s not hard, and that’s why most people aren’t where they are in life. Let’s stop lying to ourselves, and lying to other people. Get consistent at being on-target, every-time. I have seen so many people doom themselves because they always say their going to do this and that, never do it, and they cycle into a negative momentum of never accomplishing any goals over and over. There words become weaker at each failed attempt and they ultimately give up because they aren’t doing what they said they would.

Do what you said you were going to do. A very simple concept, like focus. But it is extremely hard to do. Try not to lie to yourself even just today, and you’ll see how difficult it is. Say your going to do something, and do it.

And think with me for a second. If you actually mastered the simple concept of being honest and doing what you said you would do, you would have everything in life you wanted. If you are like the rest of the 250,000,000 people in America who say their going to do something and then don’t do it, you’ll live an average life style. One simple concept, one person does it, the rest do not.

Do what you said you were going to do.

Will be in Seattle, and Portland next 2 weeks

Sun, 01 Jun 2008 00:00:00 GMT

Hey everyone, I will be in seattle from the 2nd of June, to the 8th, and Portland from the 8th to the 15th. If you live around here and want to meet-up, please give me a message here on my blog. Looking forward to attending SMX Seattle, Meetup202 Seattle, meeting up with Steven Truong, Noah Merrit and Sean from GetClicky, my old partners at Prolegic Enterprises, and of course my parents. If your around and want together shoot me a message, would love to meet other serious entrpreneurs and affiliates if your around.

This is fun: Tracking202 in the past.

Tue, 27 May 2008 00:00:00 GMT

I don’t mean to post the same stuff on my blog, as I post on the prosper202 blog. But when something fun like this comes around I’ll surely post it. I just posted some screenshots what Tracking202 looked like 8 months ago. You can see all the work we have invested over the time and see where it has come. Hope you enjoy the pictures!

http://prosper202.com/blog/blast-from-the-past-what-tracking202-looked-like-8-months-ago

Remember that a person’s name is to that person the sweetest and most important sound in any language.

Fri, 16 May 2008 00:00:00 GMT

“Remember that a person’s name is to that person the sweetest and most important sound in any language”. – How To Win Friends and Influence Them by Dale Carnegie

How to win friends and influence them is one of the greatest books of all times, it is probably the greatest piece of literature ever written about mastering the art of communicating with other people. It has sold of 15 million copies globally and it has been on the NY Times Best Seller List for over 10 years. If you have not read this book you are cheating yourself from being enlightened with possible some of the greatest insights on human relationships and communication skills you will ever come across in your entire life. We are going to explore one of the ideas in this book and how we apply it to our business.

One of the principals in the book talks about how powerful it is to use another persons’ name during communication. Don’t you feel a great sense of importance when someone 2 years ago remembers your name personally? It is extremely powerful when someone remembers your name and you will notice it.

You know the people who always say, “I’m bad at remembering names.” What they are really saying is, “I don’t pay enough attention and I don’t put enough effort to try to remember your name.” Start getting good at remembering names; let us not be like the average joe who can’t even remember a name, and even worse, brags about it! The ability to remember names can pay you huge dividends in the future.

Michael Gerber, the author of the E-Myth, another incredible book to have in your library, talks about an experience he has going to the local 24-hour fitness. Take a note at the simple, yet extremely powerful automated system 24-hour fitness has created to achieve a very high level of client fulfillment and membership retention.

“Here’s another example I love. When I check into my exercise club, 24-hour Fitness, I swipe my membership card into a similar system, and each time I do, the person at the counter hands me back my card and says, and this happens every single time, ’Have a good exercise, Michael.’ Have a good exercise, Michael. Can you believe it? Every time that happens, Sarah, I feel seen! They know me, even though they don’t. Just like me, your client wants to feel seen, and using their name is one of simplest ways to satisfy their need.”

an excerpt from Michael Gerber’s E-Myth Mastery, page 311.

What an incredible little system 24-hour has there, swipe your card and they’ll say have a great workout Wes. Incredible? I thought so when I first heard it, driving down to San Francisco in my car during my move listening to my audio books. It just made me say WOW. You know when you say WOW when an athlete, say, an NBA player makes a huge dunk or does something incredible. Well I say WOW when I hear about entrepreneurs implementing incredible systems and processes. I mean when I walk into a McDonalds, I say WOW, seriously. What an incredible attention to detail the entrepreneurs have put in place here to create a multi-million business that a HS student can operate after reading the Operations Manual, or simply the How To Run a McDonalds manual. That is world-class entrepreneurship at work, that excites me! Wow some of the innovations and systems that entrepreneurs have put in place amazes me.

But lets get back on track instead of learning about how Wes says WOW every time he sees cool business systems at work shall we?

When we can see a great simple concept at work, like the one they put together at the 24-hour fitness, we could easily implement this ourselves too. So here is a little trick that I’ve been using for the last couple months when talking to customers through AOL Instant Messenger.

Anytime someone new, whom I’ve never talked to before messages me on AIM, they’ll ask their question and I’ll of course help them out. But while were talking I will always end up asking for their name. Why? So when the next conversation comes around, I check my message history with meebo (which stores my message history so I can go back in the history and lookup their name, and is also web-based, so I can access it from any computer). So with meebo I can look back in my message history and find their name, of course this only works if you asked them for their name in the last conversation which I always do. Then I can respond back to the 2nd time we talk with a completely customized and personalized reply. Now instead of “sure what can I do for you,” it turns into “Sure absolutely what can I do for you John!”

And they will notice that you remember. And they will think to themselves, “they remembered my name? Cool.”

It is even best, and this does happen quite a bit when someone messages and says, “Hey wes, we talked earlier, you might not have remembered me but, I was wondering if I could get help on ……”

My response?

“Hey Joe, of course I remember ya! Sure lets go ahead and fix this issue for you.”

Now that’s what I call exceeding customer expectation! Do this with 1,000 customers, and guess what. You just exceeded 1,000 customer expectations. Can I get a wow, that’s pretty cool?

You can apply this simple concept too now. Just remember the principal that peoples’ names are important to them. And just make sure you catch their name on the first conversation so on the next one you’ll know their name!

So remember names, never let yourself be caught saying, “I’m bad at remembering names.” Those are the lazy people who can’t remember names because they simply don’t understand how important names are and they don’t put any effort into trying to remember names. But you will. So now you can say, “I_’m good at remembering names._” How many times do you hear that?

So till next time! We have the bay area meetup202 event on the 31st this month. There were 16 people there last time, and out of 16 brand new faces, I have spent the time to remember each and everyone of them. They were: Matt, Jeff, another Matt, Pete, Claudia, Luba, Jimmy, Christian, Nana, Michael, Giovanna, Silver, Justin, Lana, Alexander and Amy. Oh also, the Café owners are Amy and Andrew.

I hope you received some value from reading this post today. Take charge, and take care. Start the process of becoming a skilled communicator, and the world is yours.

Comments

8 from the original blog

JasonMay 16, 2008, 7:43am
Using someone’s name also causes a break in their unconscious pattern and throws them out of their current state. That is usually why it gets people’s attention so easily.
PhillipMay 19, 2008, 2:37am
I agree Wes. How to win friends and influence People is one of the best books on personal development I have ever read. I think its a book everyone should read. It really makes you think about how your relating to other people, and lets you know what you are doing wrong and shows you how to fix it.
JasonMay 19, 2008, 8:47am
Thanks again for that Jim Rohn stuff. He is awesome and incredibly inspirational.
Wes MahlerMay 19, 2008, 4:28pm
Hey Jason np man! Phillip your the man!
vladimirMay 22, 2008, 5:56am
Hello. I would like to talk with you about the advertisement at your Blog (www.wesmahler.com). Could you please contact me via email.
Waiting for your email.
Thank you
Wes MahlerMay 24, 2008, 2:23pm
sorry vladimir, I don’t have any advertisement on my blog!
PeterMay 25, 2008, 10:24am
Hey Wes, Just wanted to give you a quick ping.
Bandwidth Limit Exceeded The server is temporarily unable to service your request due to the site owner reaching his/her bandwidth limit. Please try again later.
When I try Uk.worldproxy202.com
Wes MahlerMay 25, 2008, 2:01pm
Thanks Peter,
I will get this fixed, looks like it has been used alot.

WorldProxy202 – proxies from around the world at your fingertips.

Sun, 11 May 2008 00:00:00 GMT

I’m pleased to introduce you to WorldProxy202, a proxy designed for International affiliate marketers. WorldProxy202 is an incredibly simple, yet powerful tool which provides international affiliate marketers with the ability to quickly view offers from different countries through the use of our proxy servers located around the globe. When previously their IP address may have been blocked from viewing international campaigns, they can now easily view them by using WorldProxy202.

If your viewing a site through our US proxy, you can with a click of the mouse change the website to see it as if you were in Canada through the use our of Canadian Proxy site. When you check it out for yourself you’ll see how easy it is to move around from country to country. And of course we wanted to make it look good, proxy sites are normally hideously ugly. But we have created a nice clean user interface, the kind you’ve come to expect from us.

But wait, there’s more! We also have a downloadable Firefox WorldProxy202 toolbar. Just download the .xpi file, and open it with firefox to install it. With this bad boy installed, anywhere, anytime you need to view a site from a proxy, simply load up the toolbar, select what country you’d like to view it from, type in your url address and go! You must have firefox to use our toolbar, and you can download the toolbar here. Our toolbar gives you access to proxies from around the world at your fingertips. I hope you enjoy it.

What about my privacy?

Well like all of the products we have created, there is always a huge concern about privacy. Our proxy sites monitor traffic like any other regular website using traffic analytics software. Although we do not intend to look at anyone’s surfing habits, as we like to keep our users information private, if there is however, any illegal or suspicious activity we will examine the logs to see what is going on.

What about the toolbar privacy?

The toolbar does not track your browsing usage in any way shape or form. The toolbar does not send us data every-time you visit a web-page. We have no knowledge of what your doing on the internet by simply having our toolbar installed. The toolbar doesn’t even ping out to check for updates currently, when we do add in the update alert feature it we will have it ping the official firefox server for updates so we remain as far away as possible from your browsing activity.

The only function our toolbar provides, is the ability to quickly select your country, type in your url address and load up the appropriate WorldProxy202 domain for you. But we do not have any knowledge of any of your surfing activity whatsoever besides when your actually on our websites.

Until next time.

Take a look at WorldProxy202, download our firefox toolbar, because if marketing campaigns on the web, this will come in handy. Make sure to follow the official Prosper202 company blog to know about new toolbar releases, they won’t be posted on my personal blog most likely. Well thats about it for now! I look forward to hearing your comments, thanks everyone.

Meetup202 Seattle – New Meetup Group

Fri, 09 May 2008 00:00:00 GMT

We just launched a new Seattle Affiliate Marketing Meetup group. If you live in the area feel free to meet with us and other affiliate marketers in the Seattle, Washington area. These are casual meet ups. The goal is to gather a group of like minded individuals together to collaborate, network, and essentially have a fun time.

If your wondering why we have a meetup in Seattle when I don’t live Seattle, it is because, Steven whom I work with on Prosper202 lives there. Steven is active in the affiliate marketing industry and knows his stuff, I wouldn’t be working with him if he didn’t! If the Seattle group can grow at the same rate of as our Bay Area Meetup group did, I will be flying out to Seattle to go to the May Meetup event and SMX Seattle.

What’s taking us so long?

Wed, 07 May 2008 00:00:00 GMT

Distractions are the killers of dreams.

Why is it that there are so many tasks that we want to do, that we could honestly accomplish a lot quicker than we are trying? If we look back on a lot of our personal accomplishments, there are many examples of ourselves succeeding at big tasks in sometime extremely short periods of time. Although maybe not all successes happened quickly, but many of the big successes we we have I’m sure many were accomplished in short periods of time.

If we look around us, it is quite clear that many of us are in pursuit to do something, but for many reasons we aren’t doing it fast enough, or not at all. There are many things that we, myself included, are trying to do but we sometimes just do them so slow. Why is this? Why do we move like snails sometimes, when we could be moving like cheetahs? Is there a good reason for not being able to finish what we want to do in half the time? It better be a good one if so. Or is it that we just are to lazy sometimes, and that we could really accomplish more quicker if we tried?

Being slow to accomplish tasks that we really want to do is the killer of our dreams. There are many projects that we wanted to do which we could have done already. Products that we thought of years ago, and only now started working on which could have been done earlier had we just made a consequence effort to get it done faster. Goals we wanted to hit, but haven’t yet, but we could have if we really looked back upon our efforts and did more to make our goal happen. People we wanted to meet, but for whatever excuse we haven’t done it yet? What’s taking us so long sometime?

What is the answer? You can only answer that yourself. You have to be the one who tasks responsibility of your life. And look into yourself and find the areas that you could improve, which will help you accomplish your dreams faster.

The reason I’m posting this is to serve as a reminder to us all, myself included, that what we really want to do, we can really make it happen alot quicker than we ever imagined. And that if we focus on a solution to our challenges and do the work that needs to be done quickly, we could living the life of our dreams sooner than we ever imagined.

I’m running into people all the time who have wanted to do something for a long time, and now are just getting to it. What took so long? Why do we move at snail speeds sometimes? I mean how is it that we entered in the field of software products and there was already several competitors before even begun starting developing our products and we passed them by developing 2 products, then making it self-hosted, while they haven’t done anything else this whole time? Is it skill? Are special or something? No not really. We are just focused on getting more things done in half the time it normally takes most people to get done.

I mean, I even ask myself sometimes, why do we only have two products, I could have made four by now? I need to pickup my personal effort too, and make things happen quicker than they are happening now. Again this post is to serve as a reminder to us all, myself included, that some of the projects we are working on could be completed faster if we figured out how to make it happen quicker. My boss once said, “it’s not how hard you work, it’s how smart you work.”

Let us get 200% more work done, in half the time. Heres my personal push; I’m pushing myself to launch another product before this upcoming Monday, May 12th.

Is it possible to go from $0, to earn over $100,000 in three months? Yes it is.

Is it possible to take someone earning $100,000 a month to reach $1,000,000 a month within 30 days? Is it possible, of course it is. Is it hard, heck yeah it is. And that is why most people won’t do the disciplined effort to make it happen. But you will.

Why is it that I know someone who just went from $50/day to over $3,000/day in affiliate marketing within 30 days? When 50 other people I’ve seen stay at roughly the same level in the past 30 days? Is it skill? Is it luck? No not really, the people doing huge things, in short periods of time, have made a consisence decsion to make it happen, and they did just that, they made it happen. And you could do the same thing…

It is possible to dramatically increase our productivity level if we just put our mind to it: plan it out what you intend to do, break down the goals into smaller steps, focus on doing each step, one by one, limit your distractions, gain momentum after completing each task, and accomplish everything you want to in life, quicker than you ever imagined possible.

Phantom Cash Flow, Fast Word #2

Tue, 29 Apr 2008 00:00:00 GMT

Let us continue on our journey of exploring the language that accredited investors use to build wealth quicker by using Fast Words. We are now on Fast Word number two.

Phantom Cash Flow

This is an interesting term, have you heard it before? Phantom Cash Flow is something you might overhear a sophisticated investor using. Phantom Cash Flow is basically referring to income or cash flow your making, but you won’t actually see the cash itself, because it is kind of Phantomish. Let me explain using real estate as a teaching example.

If you own a piece of real estate as an investment, that real estate is like a mini-business, it has income and expenses. And at the end of the year you have to file a profit/loss also called a ( P & L) at the end of the year. You got to file taxes.

One of the great tax deductions that real estate offers is called Depreciation. Depreciation allows you to write off a percentage of the value of your building each year over a certain amount of time. Basically if you own a building Depreciation is a nice write-off that you can declare as an expense and reduce your net taxable income for a long time. See the government made this tax rule that if you own a building, they recognize that your building is sorta falling apart over time and is depreciating in some what, so they let you incur this as an expense that you can write off, which will reduce your net taxable income. If you reduce your net taxable income, you of course pay less in taxes.

Let us say that an apartment building you own brought in $200,000 in revenue this year. And that your building depreciated about $20,000. So now on your taxes you can put an extra $20,000 of depreciation on your apartment expenses. This is basically an expense that you can write off. So what happens is your net taxable income was originally $200,000 is now $180,000 because you just wrote off $20,000 worth of depreciation expense. See the deductions again; lower your net taxable income. This in return will make you pay less tax at the end of the year.

See, this is an example of Phantom Cash Flow. You were able to decrease your net taxable income by $20,000 by using depreciation as an expense. This reduce in net taxable income means you essentially make more money at the end of the year because your paying less in taxes. So this is extra money in your pocket that you are going to receive, more as a savings because you are paying less int axes. But it is still money extra your earnings/saving, this is why its called Phantom Cash Flow.

If we can reduce you from paying $50,000 in taxes to only having to pay $30,000 in taxes. You basically just gained an extra $20,000 in cash flow because that was extra money you saved! You kept an additional $20,000 in wealth, but you diddn’t really get the cold hard cash to say, but it is extra income because you just saved a bunch of money on taxes. Money you earned but your not really seeing. This is why it is called Phantom Cash Flow. Cash Flow that is being earned, but you don’t see it, thats why it’s sorta Phantomish as I like to say.

Now you know what Phantom Cash Flow is. If you were with us last time you learned what an accredited investor was. Till next time, let us keep using fast words. If you change the way you think and talk, you will change your life. Is this the first time you’ve heard the term Phantom Cash Flow?

Meetup202 – Bay Area Affiliate Marketing Meet-up was Awesome!

Sun, 27 Apr 2008 00:00:00 GMT

Yesterday we had our first Meetup202 event in downtown San Francisco. It was a huge success, there were almost 20 people there. Some were first time affiliate marketers, PPC users, to more experienced affiliate marketers that did it full time and some SEO gurus. Giovanna from SEOBook was also there, was great to network with everyone there. We look forward to the next event on May 31st, you can find details at Meetup202.com. If you were in the bay area and diddn’t go for whatever reason you missed out is all I can say. I learned a lot there. I ended up talking with people for 7 hours during the event and had dinner with a few too. Here are some of the people who joined us. And pictures below.

Matt (sk1tech), Amy, Jeff, Matt (Kwandom), Pete, Claudia, Luba, Christian, NanaBaffoe, Michael, Giovanna (SEOBOOK), Silver, Justin, Jimmy and Lana

Say Hello to Prosper202, (Tracking202 and Export202 Self-Hosted), and were giving it all away!

Thu, 24 Apr 2008 00:00:00 GMT

Prosper202 is what everyone has been waiting for.

Prosper202 is a self-hosted PPC tracking solution, it is the same code used on Tracking202.It also comes with Export202 which allows you to duplicate PPC campaigns from network to network.This software is powerful, self-hosted and fast. All you need to do it get started is simply download the files, upload them to a dedicated domain name and run the 5 minute installation script. It’s that simple.

We originally launched T202 with the idea that we would never give away the software as a self-hosted application. But we received lots of feedback from users requesting we make a self-hosted version. So you know what, we listened, and now we are going to give the users what they wanted. Self-hosted software. I like to call this, success through customer feedback.

So how much is Prosper202? We are giving it all away for free.We have decided to make Prosper202 free for the same reason we made Tracking202 free. We are excited for the opportunity to help thousands of affiliates earn more money and make an impact on someones future. What gets me most excited is when we receive emails from users telling us how much our software has helped them make more money. It is a great feeling knowing that you have been able to help someone out, the best feeling.

PPC Affiliate Marketing will never be the same!

Check out the Prosper202 website, download your application and start installing it on your server! Join our newsletter so you can receive email alerts when we release new updates. Discuss with other Prosper202 users on our affiliate marketing forum. If you like RSS follow our new official Prosper202 company blog to stay up to date with what we are doing. And finally if your in the Bay Area, come to our Meetup202 affiliate marketing event to meet other local affiliate marketers.

I want to say thank you to Scott Weaver over at Affiliate Toolbox who helped refine some queries to make Propser202 compatible with MySQL 4. I want to also thank all of our users who have provided feedback on our applications and ultimately helped us get to where we are now. And thank you, for your interest in our services. I appreciate the opportunity you have given me to work with you, I look forward to making our relationship a profitable one. Thank You.

Something Is In The Air

Wed, 23 Apr 2008 00:00:00 GMT

Oh boy, I’m excited. Something is in the air, and no it’s not a macbook.In 12 hours Tracking202 and Export202 self-hosted are going to launch. Also this Saturday we have our Meetup202 group getting together, we already have 39 members and growing! At this rate our meetup group will have over 365 members within a year, all learning, associating and growing together. Should be a blast.You’re going to like what you see in 12 hours. It’s time to see the all the seeds our team has planted now grow into trees. It’s been 8 months of long development to get to this stage, this should be good. We’re going to announce something crazy with this release, you probably won’t believe it when we tell you what it is.

Hiring A Hacker

Mon, 21 Apr 2008 00:00:00 GMT

Everyone needs a hacker!

We just we just started working with someone who tests the cyber-security state of a financial institution for a living. I was fortunate enough to meet them at ad:tech. (again another reason why going to the events is priceless)

I won’t disclose their name because I assume they want to remain anonymous. They are testing the security of our self hosted applications to make sure everything is secure before releasing it to you! So far everything has been secure on our applications and the code I’ve wrote, which is awesome.

How much does a hacker cost if your curious? Well I’m sure prices vary, but if your curious, our guys are about $150/hour and they’ll test whatever you need tested. It’s a great feeling to know already that most of it is secure already and no loop holes have been found yet. In 2006 I was concerned about security and began studying it, so security has always been a huge concern for me as a developer. And it should be for you too if you want to develop something big that lots of people use.

Thanks for everyones’ interest in beta testing our self-hosted applications which will be released this week. We will be shipping you a secure application that you can feel safe using. So stay tunned.

And for any programmers out there, before you release your product into the wild I’d recommend having a penetration tester run through all of your code to make sure it is secure too. Most people don’t think about security, but you will.

If your not going to the events, your dying. ad:tech was awesome.

Sat, 19 Apr 2008 00:00:00 GMT

The real education isn’t the information you will find on the public blogosphere, or even my blog. The real gold mine of information, I mean the really valuable information, the few tips and tricks that could earn you tens of thousands extra each month are found when talking person to person, face to face. Although you can make alot of money personally by focusing online all day, if you were to also attend more events you would find yourself even further ahead and networked than if you did not. My personal opinion.

There are people in your life that you will meet, that will have dramatic difference in your life. Whether it is learning some good ideas from them or you end up partnering with them for instance, there are some key people that can and will make a major difference in your personal and business life. And the events are important because it will put you in a better position to meet the people who can really help you and give you insightful information that can accelerate your learning curve by several years. It is all about being at the right place, all of the time, and going to the events can place you in the best position for growth at that specific time.

Ad:Tech for me started 2 days prior to the event. What I mean is I had meetings before official ad:tech event started, and then would have meetings during the 3 day ad:tech spree, and then 2 days after ad:tech as well. For me, ad:tech was a 7 day event of face to face contact with all of the people I’ve been talking to online, and even meeting some other powerful people in the network personally. It has been great, and have made great new connections, and strengthened existing connections.

Although I can’t blog about every meeting I had of course, I did get a chance to goto the ad:tech blogger dinner, who I believe Ms Danielle put on. This was a lot of fun getting a chance to meet other bloggers in person, and really build a relationship.

[left to right] Greg Morgan, Garret Gee, me, Ian Lee, Gloria, Bob Buskirk, Ms Danielle, Ian Fernando.

The best part the event was 5 blocks away from my apartment in san francisco. I believe also the web 2.0 conference is next week just a few blocks away too in downtown san francisco.

The real information isn’t in the public blogosphere, it is at the events, at the dinners and at the parties. And even though I never went to a single party during college because I was working, I will goto them during the conferences because its business, and I get to exchange ideas with others. I was able to meet other local web 2.0 startups and even 2 people from a venture capital firm.

The next events I will be going to will be to our event, the meetup202 event. The media breakaway conference and affiliate summit east which we both already have passes for. If your at all serious about the affiliate marketing industry be there. To get different results you have to do different things. And if you are unsatisfied with your current situtation, not making enough affiliate income, and you are not coming to the events, well?…… You really gotta change what your doing then and start coming to the events if your trying to change your game. If you want to be someone who makes a serious amount of money in this business I will see you at the events, and if your not there, I won’t see you there at the events and I’ll be working with everyone else who did show up.

Sometimes success is so easy, we just have to do it. To many people message me everyday saying there going to do this and this, and then don’t do anything at all. So I no longer listen to what people say, I just watch what people do. If you tell me you want to make some serious money and then you do not go to the events, your not serious about making money. Ok……

Now some people could be the exception to the rule and they already know most everything and already earn a large amount of money might not need to be at every event, and just need to implement what they already know. Thats fine, because they already have the knowledge, the skill and their network built up already. And I’d argue that those who are already grandmasters at what they do have been to the events before and networked with key people who have helped them, and whom they still work together with today. But the key to remember is, these people already earning a large amount relaxing now have invested their time before and gone to events and networked in the past to help them get to their current stage.

I challenge you to be one of the people who is results oriented instead of talk oriented. Someone who actually listens to good ideas and then goes and applies them and then says next, I’ve accomplished this, now what do I need to do, and then does it all over again. I say goto the events, and then people don’t go and then they ask me if there is something else they can do to build their business. Don’t they get it, I already gave the tip to goto the event, and if they want to get to the next level of knowledge they first had to implement the first tip, which was having them goto the event. If they don’t goto the event, and then ask for more tips, they didn’t implement the first tip, and I can’t help them get to the next level. What am I suppose to say to them? They already know what to do, they just have to do it. I can’t share tip number two, if they’re unwilling to implement tip number one, why waste mine, and everyone elses’ time?

What I’m saying is, if you want to take your skill to the next level, be at the right place all of the time. And you can do this by being at the events that are in your specific industry and put effort into making the most out of each event. Invest the time to search, and find the key people that will be able to help you out. I challenge you to come to theses events with the few who make it. If you are serious about affiliate marketing, let’s see it, so lets meet at next event ok? I look forward to meeting you there, take care, take charge and take none of this as an insult, but as a challenge to push ourselves and really make it to the events, and meet some key people who can increase your learning curve by several years. Make it happen!

New Alexa Ranking System

Thu, 17 Apr 2008 00:00:00 GMT

I check alexa quite a bit, and I noticed today that the rankings have been dramatically changed. It seems like alot of websites got hit pretty hard on the ranking. Some top 5k alexa ranking blogs have now dropped to about 20,000. Where some of the previous 20,000k alexa ranking blogs have dropped down to 70,000. However on a good note, tracking202 has benefited from the new alexa rankings and ours has risen! You can find more information here on the new april 15th alexa ranking changes here. Below is our tracking202 alexa graphs.

Fast Words, Faster Words That Create Wealth Faster. An Introduction: Accredited Investors

Wed, 16 Apr 2008 00:00:00 GMT

One way to dramatically increase your net worth over time is by changing the words you use. A long time a go I talked about fast words, how you could simply create more wealth faster by using a faster vocabulary of wealth build terms than slow terms.

You will often find accredited investors using faster words more often. What is an accredited investor, don’t worry, I’ll explain below. That’ll be a new fast word for you to begin. But let me give you a quick example of the old fast words post if you don’t have the time to read it now.

a slow word is saving money, a fast word is raising Capital.
a slow word is appreciation, a fast word is Depreciation or “Phantom Cash”
a slow word is high paying job, a fast word is Cashflow

Do you see the difference in language, that rich people generally talk with stronger, more powerful faster action words than poorer people. The rich and poor don’t talk just differently, they talk the complete opposite. And you understand this. I’m sure you already talk much differently than your friends if your already more successful. And now of course realize, there are even more successful people talking even strong and faster words than we do that were not even aware of.

I once heard that your IQ increases as your vocabulary increases. So lets increase our vocabultarys sohall we? So I will start to post one for now, and in later posts, new fast words that you might not be aware of so together we can increase our vocabulary and our IQ. But of course I’m not just going to talk about any words, were going to explore fast words that by using them will increase our income making abilities by ten folds because we are using faster money making language whichw ill affect our actions and ultimately, our income.

The first fast word today, is about “accredited investors.” I mention it earlier in this post about how accredited investors more often say fast words than non-accredited investors. Let’s first explain what is an accredited investor.

**Accredited Investors

An accredited investor is actually a term defined by the IRS to describe a high-net worth individual or couple. You are either an accredited investor or not in the eyes of the IRS. Here is what describes an accredited investor as an individual.

A personal or couple, has a net worth exceeding $1 million dollars
A single person who has earned over $200,000 in the last 2 years in a row, and is expected to do the same next year
A couple who has earned over $300,000 in the last 2 years and is expected to do the same or more next year.

In essence, an accredited investor is someone defined by the IRS who makes money, or either has a lot of money. But the real question here is why does the IRS have a definition for accredited investors, they didn’t just decided to say people making money were accredited investors for no reason, there is a specific reason they have defined a person as accredited and I’ll share that with you.

It can really be summed up as this, the IRS believes someone who is accredited has enough financial intelligence to take part in risky investments. Because of this, they have made it illegal for some non-accredited investors to invest in certain things. You see a non accredited investor can only invest their money into a security managed by the SEC, while the accredited investor does not.

So for instance, if you wanted to invest other peoples money into stocks for example, if you were not registered for the Securities and Exchange Commissions, it is illegal to invest peoples money if they are non-accredited investors. The SEC regulates all securities, and the reason the do this is because they are trying to protect the non-accredited people from loosing their money in a risky investment. So they make it illegal if you aren’t accredited to invest into certain things that aren’t regulated, non-regulated SEC securities.

Basically the IRS doesn’t think that if you aren’t accredited you are more likely to be scammed by someone. And if you were an accredited investor they believe you are smart enough about money that you have enough intelligence to invest into something un-regulated.

Now if again lets say you wanted to invest other peoples money in stock, and you had your business your security registered with the SEC already, the SEC has already made sure that you are doing legitimate business and now anyone can invest into your security. The SEC regulates securities and makes it illegal for you to invest the money of poorer people so you can’t take advantage of people if you are selling an registered security. But you could invest the money of an accredited investor because the SEC manages they can handle their own money and make the investment.

So on the legal side of this all, the person who would get trouble is the deal maker, and if you put together stock deals or real estate deals for instance and you weren’t registered with the SEC, you could come under serious legal attention by the SEC if you were putting deals together for non-accredited investors.

So to sum this up, the importance of this post was to tell you what an accredited investor is, and that there are investments that not all people take can in part in. If it is not regulated by the SEC you have to be an accredited investor to take part in it. So you want to be an accredited investor.

Have any questions on what an accredited investor is?

The Scorpion and the Frog

Mon, 14 Apr 2008 00:00:00 GMT

Everyone should know the story of the Scorpion and the Frog.

One day, a scorpion looked around at the mountain where he lived and decided that he wanted a change. So he set out on a journey through the forests and hills. He climbed over rocks and under vines and kept going until he reached a river.
The river was wide and swift, and the scorpion stopped to reconsider the situation. He couldn’t see any way across. So he ran upriver and then checked downriver, all the while thinking that he might have to turn back.
Suddenly, he saw a frog sitting in the rushes by the bank of the stream on the other side of the river. He decided to ask the frog for help getting across the stream.
“Hellooo Mr. Frog!” called the scorpion across the water, “Would you be so kind as to give me a ride on your back across the river?”
“Well now, Mr. Scorpion! How do I know that if I try to help you, you wont try to kill me?” asked the frog hesitantly.
“Because,” the scorpion replied, “If I try to kill you, then I would die too, for you see I cannot swim!”
Now this seemed to make sense to the frog. But he asked. “What about when I get close to the bank? You could still try to kill me and get back to the shore!”
“This is true,” agreed the scorpion, “But then I wouldn’t be able to get to the other side of the river!”
“Alright then…how do I know you wont just wait till we get to the other side and THEN kill me?” said the frog.
“Ahh…,” crooned the scorpion, “Because you see, once you’ve taken me to the other side of this river, I will be so grateful for your help, that it would hardly be fair to reward you with death, now would it?!”
So the frog agreed to take the scorpion across the river. He swam over to the bank and settled himself near the mud to pick up his passenger. The scorpion crawled onto the frog’s back, his sharp claws prickling into the frog’s soft hide, and the frog slid into the river. The muddy water swirled around them, but the frog stayed near the surface so the scorpion would not drown. He kicked strongly through the first half of the stream, his flippers paddling wildly against the current.
Halfway across the river, the frog suddenly felt a sharp sting in his back and, out of the corner of his eye, saw the scorpion remove his stinger from the frog’s back. A deadening numbness began to creep into his limbs.
“You fool!” croaked the frog, “Now we shall both die! Why on earth did you do that?”
The scorpion shrugged, and did a little jig on the drownings frog’s back.
“Because I’am a scorpion”
Then they both sank into the muddy waters of the swiftly flowing river.

Why do I share with you the story of the scorpion and the frog? I share the story of the scorpion and the frog with you because it has always served a great reminder to myself, that in life you will sometimes be stung for reasons that make no sense to you at all. The story provides an important reminder to be cautious at all times when dealing with situations, and that literally some people in your life do harm to you because they are scorpions.

I’m sharing this with you not because I was recently attacked by a scorpion, but I have been before, and far too many times at that. But I was recently talking with an associate about how hard it is to find great people to work with, I mean really good people, people that you could trust your life to. I’m sure you can think back when you have been stung by a scorpion before.

Whenever you feel uneasy about doing something with someone else due for whatever reason, generally it is a good guideline to go with your gut feeling and not work with that individual. I’m sure many of us have done to many deals with other people who we were first skeptical about doing business with, did it anyways and then have regretted it later on. The worst part about it is we knew it all along, follow your gut instincts, if you feel a bad vibe always remember the story of the scorpion and the frog. Think the opposite of the Nike slogan, just don’t do it.

Again I’m not posting this because something has happened to me, everyone I’m working with is great. But I believe everyone should know the story of the scorpion and the frog. Let the story of the scorpion and the frog be a warning to you, to be careful in dealing with some people which will save you years and years of pain.

What did you think about the story? Is there some more lessons from the story that I missed? Share. I’d like to learn too.

Veni, Vidi, Vici

Sun, 13 Apr 2008 00:00:00 GMT

Veni, Vidi, Vici :: Latin for, “I came, I saw, I conquered.”

Well it has been a year since I first declared I would drop out of college and move to Silicon Valley to build an internet company to one million dollars a year in sales. A lot has changed since that time, and it took six months after that blog post to actually start the move. I’ve been here for about 6 months now and I’m excited to say, “Veni Vidi Vici!” I have reached a point that I was able to pay off everything and now focus on building an internet company full time and not have to worry about living expenses.

Upon coming to the bay area I did not have sufficient income to support myself here, I moved with a head full of dreams and with abunch of credit cards! Two months in a row I had to pay my rent using business credit cards. *I avoid placing any un-secured debt in my personal name, so it does not hurt my personal credit score.

My rent is $1,300 a month for a studio apartment in downtown, plus $200/month for my parking space with a $1,500 deposit. So total rent is about $1500 a month, at the end of all the additional random living expenses I was paying about $2,500 a month to live down here with out much of a *positive* net income stream. I’d then spend an additional $10,000 on server equipment I couldn’t really afford at the time, but we needed it so we had to make it happen. Then hosting the servers was also expensive, over $750/month for our full rack down in San Jose, and then additional attorneys at about $475/hour and paying my accountant. All the while I had to also remember if my tenants moved out of my house in Portland, it’d leave my rental home unrented forcing me to dish out an additional $1,500 a month for mortgage when I didn’t have the cash. Luckily they never moved out.

Well after several months of this, I accumulated close to $23,000 in unsecured business debt on my credit cards. Although this may not be a lot of money to some of you reading this, I understand, but appreciate the challenge, not the actual amount. Moving to one of the most expensive cities in the United States without a job and a real steady income stream trying to bootstrap a company isn’t exactly easy. And for those who have done it, I know you all do very well now, and I am happy to join the inner circle with you everyone who has done this before me and made it. Good luck for some who didn’t make it, which there were some switching to full time entrepreneurship who I talked to who didn’t make it work so well and had to go back to their jobs to get income again because their online gig wasn’t supporting it full time yet. However, for all of those who have tried, and are trying, keep going, try again sooner or later you will succeed. You only fail when you stop trying.

So I’m excited to say I have now stabilized all of my living expenses down in one of the expensive cities in the United States, and even a little extra, enough to fly 3 days out of the week! I was able to pay off all of the unsecured business debt and now have money even left over and growing. It is a great feeling to know you’ve made it, or at least made it to the point where you no longer have to work anymore if you didn’t want to, and can do about anything you want to.

The below chart is a Break-Even Analysis chart, it shows the typical cashflow situtation of most businesses. On a personal level I was way in the red down there for awhile, but I’m now in the green zone and life is flying *literally.*

But really the most exciting thing is now that I have enough passive income to live off of so now I can full time build a fortune. Key note to remember, making a living, and making a fortune are two completely different things. The goal is to first make your living, the money you need to live and sustain, and then as soon as possible you want to switch over whenever you can, to start to build your fortune full time.

See when your start out, you might not have the 100% passive income yet to support yourself without working. So you might to work a job to make your living, but on the side, make sure you are working on building your fortune, at least in your spare time. If you are still working on making a living, always always, make sure on the side you are still building your fortune even if its part time. Because building your fortune is what is going to make you successful, and ideally you want to get there as soon as possible *without giving up other important things too, I should add.*

Once you make your living income passively, then you can start to build your fortune full time. What an exciting thing to be able to do. I can now focus on building my fortune full time, with no distractions, and nothing holding me down.

And this is what this post is about, it is about achieving financial freedom to live without working now, so that I now have the time to work full time on building a fortune. It is about getting to a turning point in your life where you can now start to become incredibly valuable to the marketplace. It is time to develop like no other, it is time to work on building my fortune full time.

So where are you on the break-even chart? I hope you’ve at least started in it, if not what are you waiting for? If your in the red good luck, because the next thing after red is green and your already on your way! And if your in the green like some of you are already, lets make it even greener!

So lets make a fortune then shall we? And how long is this going to take?

Making a fortune can take 15-20 years, sometimes less, sometimes more. What is exciting though is when you are truly focused on building a fortune, it will start to grow exponentially after some time. But it takes a long time to get your exponential growth going. At the first it is slow like a snail, and then it picks up pace and keeps building, sooner or later it just keeps going with or without you. Then you know your really in for something good.

If your progress seems slow, just remember, its supposed to be that way. To get to a sprint you first start out slow, and then after some large steps you will start to gain speed and momentum. To many people start the process only to be disappointed with the results after a day or two, or 2 weeks, or even 3 months. Whats with the giving up attitude? Just make it happen, this is for the long run, you need to work your butt off, you really do, and it is going to take some time, alot of time. But I promise you it will take off sooner or later, and it won’t seem like anything is happening for the longest time, and then sometime in the future you will hit it, and you will succeed, and you will be a success. I promise you it if you just keep going! The graph shows the exponential curve, where are you on the curve?

See the curve starts out slow, very slow, extremely slow. And after a long time it starts to build, and then all the sudden you will have so much success you won’t know what to do with it. But it might take 3-15 years to do it. So make it happen, I’m still in the beginning too, I’m not quiting, so you better not neither. Start doing 200% more work in half the time.

And soon you’ll also be able to say!

Veni, Vidi, Vici

Twitter :: Follow me and I follow you!

Sat, 12 Apr 2008 00:00:00 GMT

I actually had a Twitter account for over a year now, although it seems like everyone is on it, so I’m now actually using it. Follow me, and I’ll follow you. I definitely won’t be spending as much time as others on here, but it looks like an additional tool to use for networking. Already looks beneficial if used correctly. Twitter is a micro-blogging web 2.0 community that allows you to post status alerts on yourself, see what others are doing, and communicate in an almost real-time fashion. You can find my twitter here: twitter.com/wesmahler.

Looking for Self-Hosted Beta Testers

Fri, 11 Apr 2008 00:00:00 GMT

We have some applications we are releasing here shortly, they are currently in the beta testing stage. We are looking for some PPC affiliate marketers, who would be interested in beta testing some self-hosted applications. Yes, self-hosted, where you can host the software on your own domain. For helping beta test the product, you can see first hand what we are coming out with and use it at no cost while you help us find the bugs.

We are looking for about 10-20 people only, please message me here if you would be interested in beta testing some self-hosted applications from the Tracking202 team. We are looking to establish some long-term relationships with people who are welcome to test software, in return for free usage. If you do PPC AM, I’d highly recommend being able to see whats new in the industry and being able to test tools for free will give you a great advantage over others in the industry.

So if your interested, please reply below or send me an email, introduce yourself and we’ll see if we might be able to work with you. If you have a blog that would help your ability to become a beta tester. We want to know who the people are using the products/services, not just anyone.

Comments

12 from the original blog

WayneApr 12, 2008, 6:46pm
Hey Wes, its Wayne. I wouldn’t mind helping out. As you know I am a beginner in Affiliate Marketing. Not sure if you need a little more experienced AM’s then me. If not, I am more then happy to help out.
Wes MahlerApr 13, 2008, 1:01am
Sounds good wayne, I’d be happy work with you.
kkimApr 14, 2008, 9:59am
Hey Wes. I’ll be glad to help. Let me know when it’s ready
Matt LApr 14, 2008, 6:36pm
Love to help if the offer still stands. Have a blog that doesn’t talk much about aff marketing on the affiliate side unfortunately but I do work a bajillion clients who are predisposed to pay for performance. I’m also annoyingly detail oriented
Matt LApr 14, 2008, 6:37pm
Forgot to mention the most important part - we do quite a bit of affiliate marketing. Sorry for the double post.
RotpadaApr 15, 2008, 8:23pm
I have multiple web sites where I use SEO, CPM, CPA, CPC strategies on all of them. I won’t list them publicly, but I would be happy to share with you if you want include me in the beta.
Wes MahlerApr 15, 2008, 10:56pm
Hey everyone I have your emails and will send it to you when its ready
Ok sounds great rotpada, no need to send the websites at all!
will send email
KarlApr 16, 2008, 12:20pm
If still need another beta tester i’m up for it, i just started out affiliate marketing and am learning the strings
AmitApr 19, 2008, 11:36am
Hey Wes, Thats great..I love self hosted software more than hosted ones…will it be free?
Wes MahlerkApr 19, 2008, 2:05pm
If you help beta test it yes absolutely, thanks karl got all you guys too email address. It should be ready before the end of this month.
JayrockadwordsApr 20, 2008, 8:44pm
Hey Amigo,
Looking at the chance to be a Beta Tester!
Jay Rock
gabrielApr 20, 2008, 8:55pm
HeY Wes,
I would love to beta test your product. Sign me up.
Gabriel

Ad Tech San Francisco - April 15-17, 2008 | MOSCONE CENTER

Thu, 10 Apr 2008 00:00:00 GMT

Hey everyone I will be at Ad-Tech on April 15th through the 17th. I already live in San Francisco so I will definitely be there. For those in the area they have a free hall pass, definitely get registered if you live in the bay area and head over here. Send me a message on my blog or on AIM if you want to meetup!

Comments

2 from the original blog

iantrepreneurApr 11, 2008, 6:56am
word im registered bro and im goin to be there for real for real - cant wait to see your mansion202 for real for real
Wes MahlerApr 12, 2008, 4:19am
I got a studio202 no mansion202 yet!

How much does it cost to get your Private Pilot Certificate – First Experience – Cessna – D-Jet and More!

Thu, 10 Apr 2008 00:00:00 GMT

Today I had my first real time flying an airplane. Everything was great except for I was extremely air sick during the first flight and my stomach almost didn’t make it during the first flight. I wasn’t aware of all the turbulence in the sky, and doing some maneuvers made me airsick to the point I wanted to throw up almost. *I know gross* but this is how I felt and I got really sick to my stomach! I freaked out my instructor lol. But I barely survived and I have schedueled my 2nd flight on this Saturday. I will probably be flying every other day for the next 3 months from now, until I receive my private pilot certificate.

For anyone who was interested in doing it as well, I’ve taken the cost from the Tradewinds Aviation website and pasted it below for anyone who is interested. Tradewinds is operated out of San Jose and this is the place where I’m getitting my private pilot certificate. I think the prices pasted below are a little out dated, it looks like it will be around $9,000 to $11,500 dollars over the course of 3 to 4 months to get my license from Tradewinds. After I receive it, I will be able to fly where-ever I want, practically when-ever I want and visit friends and family around the country. I can’t wait, talk about freedom.

I also had to purchase an airplane pilot headset: they varied from about $350 to $1000 in price, $1000 being the absolute best, top of the line you could get. I went ahead and got the absolute best, top of the line. Of course! For $1,000 I picked up the BOSE Aviation Headset X, with active noise canceling and declared best from everyone at the facility.

From here on out, it looks like it will cost me an average of approximately $3,500 month for the next 3-4 months overtime to get my private pilot certificate. Affiliate marketing will be paying for the whole thing. It will be worth it in the end. It’s like going back to school all over again, I got homework, books to read, cds to listen to, and I have to schedule appointments with my instructor. But everything is flexible and I can take it as slow, or as fast as I want to.

Before 2010 would like to own a personal jet plane, my favorite right now is the D-Jet, personal jet planes aka “very light jet (VLJ)” is what they are called, go for about 1.5-3 million dollars. Surprisingly, there are only 2 very light jets you can purchase at this moment, it’s not like a car where there are thousands of them. There are only 2 different kinds you can purchase right now! The D-Jet will be the 3rd personal jet plane in production when it comes out this year. But all in good time though, I won’t have $1,500,000 anytime soon this year. But it will come, within 2010 it would not be unreasonable to assume I should be able to afford a personal jet plane. Thats a long time to build up some major passive income streams. Here is a picture of the D-Jet. To afford a plane like that I assume you’d probably need about a $100,000/month net passive income stream to afford that type of plane. You could probably go in it with several people, maybe 3-5 people, and split the cost, making it a potential $400,000 investment per each person. *now its starting to sound affordable, right?*

Well maybe not, but spend some years focusing on entrepreneurship, and the sky is the limit. Or maybe space is the new limit?

But anyways, if anyone is interested I posted the price layout from the website below. The place I’m going to be is probably alitle bit more expensive than most, so cost will vary, however, I don’t think it’ll cost you much more than it is costing me down here in the Silicon Valley area already because mines already on the high side I believe.

55 Hours – Cessna 172P	$98/Hour	$5390
40 Hours – Flight Instruction	$48/Hour	$1920
20 Hours – Ground Instruction		$960
Cessna CD-ROM Interactive Flight		$299
Training Kit
Additional Supplies		$100
Medical Exam Fee		$80
Written Test Fee		$80
Practical Test Fee		$300
2 Hours – Cessna 172P (Practical Test)	$98/ Hour	$196
	TOTAL COST	$9325

So your looking at least a $5,000 to $11,000 investment however, if your interested in flying around personally in your own plane someday, I think it is a worth while investment. Even though I almost puked on my first run, I’ll train my body to get used to it and try again! I shall overcome flight sickness! Here is the aircraft I’m flying, its a 2007 Cessna 172SP G1000. It retails for around $280,000. The G1000 is the new navigational system and dual LCD display which is in most of the newer planes, and was recommended I train on. If your in the bay, look to the sky and you might see me sometime. Ok maybe not, but I’ll be there!

I would rather earn 1% off the efforts of 100 people than 100% off the efforts of myself

Wed, 09 Apr 2008 00:00:00 GMT

“I would rather earn 1% off the efforts of 100 people than 100% off the efforts of myself.”

Jean Paul Getty (December 15, 1892 – June 6, 1976) was an American industrialist and founder of the Getty Oil Company. He was one of the first people in the world with a fortune of over $1 billion U.S. dollars.

This guy sounds pretty smart, wouldn’t you agree? There is some true wisdom in his quote, let us see how we could apply it to affiliate marketing shall we? It is easy to find information on how to increase your personal earnings from the hundreds of affiliate blogs, but let me share with you some different information, on how to build up an additional income not dependent on just yourself. I’m going to quickly share some tips on how to start the process of building your referral affiliate income.

But just how much money is in referrals? Well last month, my friend and affiliate mentor who introduced me to affiliate marketing in October 07, now earns over $750/month passive net income from me each and every month because he referred me to cpaempire.

Now $750/month isn’t going to make him rich. Yet. But hey, $750 a month is pretty good for not having to do any work at all. If he had ten referrals like myself going at my current rate, he’d have over $7,500/month in passive referral income. I’m not sure how many referrals he does have, but I do know that he has referred more people than just myself. Just imagine if you referred an UberAffiliate or someone like Ian Fernando, a Dexter Domingo or a Jonathan Volk?

So build your personal income primarily through your own efforts, but then on the side also start to also earn 5% of others’ efforts too. Just like in the quote. Now I’m going to show you how I built a small referral base of over 35+ affiliates who now generate myself an extra passive income stream of $200+ a month from other peoples’ efforts. Here is a snapshot of my CPAEmpire referral account as of today.

CPAEmpire Affiliate Referrals

Affiliate Code Referral Bonuses Status so far this month (April 9th, 2008)
CD15986 $0.00 Active
CD16113 $58.60 Active
CD17255 $0.00 Active
CD17350 $0.00 Active
CD17385 $1.93 Active
CD17519 $20.40 Active
CD17526 $0.00 Active
CD17547 $8.85 Active
CD17586 $0.00 Active
CD17598 $0.61 Active
CD17612 $0.00 Active
CD17631 $0.21 Active
CD17634 $0.00 Active
CD17678 $1.73 Active
CD17912 $0.00 Active
CD17956 $1.02 Active
CD18101 $0.00 Active
CD18134 $0.00 Active
CD18158 $1.61 Active
CD18211 $0.00 Active
CD18281 $0.00 Active
CD18361 $0.00 Active
CD18852 $0.00 Active
CD19099 $0.00 Active
CD19187 $0.00 Active
CD19492 $0.63 Active
CD20182 $0.00 Active
CD20466 $0.00 Active
CD21120 $1.09 Active
CD21391 $4.74 Active
CD21517 $0.00 Active
CD21623 $0.00 Active
CD22278 $0.00 Active
CD23842 $0.68 Active
CD24021 $0.18 Active

Empire Affiliate Referral Commission Earned

Earned Date Commission
4-2008 —–$102.29
3/2008 —–$286.94
2/2008 —–$232.02
1/2008 —–$174.76
12/2007 —-$238.10
11/2007 —-$271.51
10/2007 —-$70.05
9/2007 —–$6.58

Total Earnings $1,279.96

Pretty cool right? Again, its not going to make me rich anytime soon. However, it is a nice passive residual income stream that continually grows overtime. So how did I do it, I didn’t really do anything out of the extraordinary.

All I basically did was educate people. On my blog I basically made an open invitation to anyone who wanted to learn about affiliate marketing to contact me via AIM: T202Wes, which you could still do now. Then I would schedule conferences of about 5-10 people over AIM at the same time and teach people over the AIM chatrooms affiliate marketing with PPC. At some points we had over 15 people join the chatroom.

I’d let people login to my CPAEmpire account, and my Yahoo Search Marketing accounts. We had a lot of fun and everyone learned a lot. I basically walked them through everything right over the AIM chatrooms, and then people got started the next day. Showed them PPC, the basics, helping them understand EPC and CPC, showing them how affiliate offers worked, and how to setup a Yahoo PPC campaign from my own account. I no longer do theses personal consultations as much, I just refer them to my video now.

We even had semi-large email group going for awhile, we later shut it down as it became overpopulated and for some other reasons. But we basically educated people who wanted to make money online, with an open invitation from my personal blog, helped others network, make money and then they were given an opportunity and I’m rewarded was, and still am, being rewarded in return for helping out others.

I truly live by this quote from Zig Ziglar, “If you help enough people get what they want in life, you’ll have everything you want in your life.” And what better way to do that is empower new people to the affiliate marketing scene, show them affiliate marketing, help them make a significant income stream, and also be paid to do it? Enrich others’ lives, and be paid to do it, it doesn’t get much better than that.

“The most rewarding experience in life is having your name appear in another person’s testimonial.” – Jim Rohn

It is the most rewarding experience, when someone says thank you, for showing them information that has made a impact on their lives. Sharing is a great gift to give to others. But sharing isn’t just beneficial to others, if you share a good idea with ten people, they get to hear it once, but you get to hear it ten times. It’s good for you too because you heard it again. It’s called, enlightened self-interest.

So share more. The more sharing you do and the more you give away, the more that will be shared upon you in return. Sharing is called, Enlightened Self Interest, remember that. I’m now going to share with you some of the quick tips on how to build up your referral base.

**We are looking for people who are practically brand new to affiliate marketing.
**
We are not trying to recruit super affiliates here, because all of the super affiliates already work with their networks. What we are looking for is helping brand new people to affiliate marketing, finding them by simply posting on your blog (or other creative methods) that you will educate others on how to make money online, and showing someone brand new affiliate marketing. You want to be able to show them the ropes, and have them get started with the network of your choice, which should be a 5% referral based network. We are looking to build new people up, the next super affiliates. So we need to find people who just want to make money online, and show them how to do it through affiliate marketing and earn referrals from it.
You need to refer only to networks that have a lifetime referral program only
We are only looking for passive income. A lot of networks will turn off their referrals after 6 months or a year, we don’t want that. Referring someone to a network that only pays you for 6 months is a waste of your time. You want lifetime referral networks. You should also focus on those that give the highest referral of 5%, like CPAEmpire and Hydra Network both give out lifetime 5% referrals.
Focus only on building one strong network with referrals
You should start all of your new referral affiliates on one next, and build that one network up instead of spreading out to thin. I always refer new associates to CPAEmpire, where I have build a long-referral list, and I receive the highest rate 5% lifetime from all of my referrals. Instead of a couple referrals here, and a couple referrals there, focus on building up one network.
Build up your referrals network and knowledge
We want to make sure we give our referrals the highest chance of succeeding, this can be done by continually messaging them helping them out, and keeping them informed of things they need to be aware of. I’d always help our team network with each other, so each person had a better chance to succeed. Introduce them to other people who are at a similar level so they can network within themselves. And then also give them access to tools. I’ve given lots of people access to my paid keyword tools like WordTracker, and I have even given several people $100+ Yahoo accounts with funds to help them get going completely free.
Make sure you have all of the IM clients
AIM, MSN or GTalk make sure you accessible via everyones’ different IM clients.
Collect emails when referring them to the network, make sure the referral synced to your account
Alot of times when referring people the referral will actually not sync up correctly to your account. There are many times when we’ve referred people and then they do not show up on our account as a referral. Your affiliate manager can sync up your referrals, just make sure you collect everyones email and name, and then tell your affiliate manager to sync up any referrals that accidentally fell through the system. Watch and make sure everything syncs up to your referral account. This is key.
Create a small forum, or private email group for your new team
You want to create a synergistic environment that allows your referrals to network with others and share tips. Having an environment oriented towards growth will help your affiliates earn more money faster without you as much because they can rely on others. Setup a Yahoo email group or install a private phpBB forum on your server.
**Once you get a large amount of referrals see if you can increase your commission percentage rate from referrals.
**
Remember in affiliate marketing, everything is negotiable you refer enough people and do a lot of volume you can negotiable payouts. I have not got to this level yet, however, I know it can be done, I just don’t have the volume yet myself to do this to request a higher affiliate referral commission level yet.
Once you become to busy online showing people, create some videos that show them while your gone
Although showing someone a video like I created here, works. It isn’t as hands on and personal as talking one on one with the individual. It was a blast to personally walk people through the process, although after a while it takes to much time, and I had to automate the process. Once you get to that point you might consider creating your own video showing people, and then getting involved in your group instead of doing it in person each time.

So there are some tips, remember the key is the goal were looking to show new people affiliate marketing and build them up to the super affiliate level. We are not looking for people who have been in affiliate marketing for one year, we are looking for new people, to get started with your network and help them grow. This is how my friend now earns over $750 a month just from me, by helping me, and this is how I earn helping other peoples increase their income. Your welcome to message me if you still need help to, anytime, I’d be glad to help out. In return, I ask people to help others. But I challenge you instead, to start your own group and help others.

This post was all about building a referral base, it is really quite simple, help people get started.

“If you help enough people get what they want in life, you’ll have everything you want in your life,” Zig Ziglar.
“I would rather earn 1% off the efforts of 100 people than 100% off the efforts of myself, “J Paul Getty.

Do you feel like there is more tips that we should add to the list? Please comment, I’d love to add more ideas to the bulletin list above. What should else could we add?

Learning How To Fly

Tue, 08 Apr 2008 00:00:00 GMT

I’ve always wanted to fly a plane, and see the world from up above in the driver’s seat. Fortunately I work with Rob Norton who already have experience flying and he has helped me put flying on the agenda this year. Next month I’m going to begin flying classes, surprisingly, flying really isn’t as expensive as I thought it originally was. Looks like the first class is $159 for a 2 hour lesson, I will be there. If your in the bay area, come along!

http://www.tradewindsaviation.com/introductory-flight.asp

This will be the beginning of my flight carrier. Although I haven’t decided exactly yet on a specific goal to own a plane of my own, by the end of 2009 it would not be unreasonable to assume I’ll own a plane of my own. It looks like it costs around $5,000 to get your pilots license, after 40+ hours of flying time.

Best of all you can still fly around without owning a plane at first, there are clubs you can join for a one time fee, and then use the club’s planes by paying for every hour your in the air. It doesn’t look that expensive, now that I have some passive income from affiliate marketing I will definitely be in the sky.

Just looking at that picture of freedom in the air makes me happy 🙂

Follow your bliss, it’s such a great feeling to know you can do

whatever it is you want to do, whenever you want to do it

because you’ve earned it and helped others do the same.

Lets go Flying! I’ll cya in the air my friends!

Meetup202 – Taking Off

Sun, 06 Apr 2008 00:00:00 GMT

Meetup202 is gaining ground, we have over 30 members now and growing. There is already a lot of people who are confirming that they will attend the event. We will be having our first event on April 26th, 2008 in downtown San Francisco. Also thanks to Jonathan Volk, a highly successful PPC affiliate marketer for also promoting the event. Jonathan Volk will also be at the event, he earns over $70,000 a month via affiliate marketing. We will have many people generating lots of revenue at our events.

Being in Silicon Valley is already paying dividends, there is a lot of networking here, and networking is extremely important. Your networth increases as your network increases.

Another great meetup down here is SF BETA, this is a group of over 2,000 web 2.0 entrepreneurs in the Silicon Valley area who meet each month at a bar downtown San Francisco. I will be attending next month, I was unable to go previously because I was not 21 at the time.

Meetup202 – Bay Area Affiliate Marketing Meetup
SF BETA – Web 2.0 Internet Entrepreneur Meetups

Heres 2 other meetups I goto on developing applications:

Is there a meetup in your area that you could attend? No? You might consider starting one then!

Busy Bee

Sun, 30 Mar 2008 00:00:00 GMT

Haven’t posted in a little while, just been pursuing goals and deadlines.

And of course, making progress. Lots of action, and little talk.

I hope your making progress as well, because thats what is important.

“As I grow older, I pay less attention to what men say. I just watch what they do” – Andrew Carnegie

It’s the end of march. What did you accomplish in the last 30 days?

Did your income grow in the last 30 days?

If it didn’t, what are you doing?

Is this the way you want to live?

*seriously*

———-

Congratulations to everyone who is making it happen,

Keep up the good work.

———-

Make Progress. What are you waiting for?

Subids.com – How Subid Tracking Works and Examples

Tue, 18 Mar 2008 00:00:00 GMT

I just got a pretty good domain for SEO, it is subids.com.

What is surprising, is that I believe the domain was registered before, maybe not, but I remember trying to register it and I believe it was taken. Anyways it is now avalaible, and of course I registered it, it should get some nice organic traffic. You can see subids.com here. Just a very simple site, won’t ever be much to it, except for holding a good domain with some good content relevant to subids.

Meetup202: Calling All Bay Area PPC Marketers

Sun, 16 Mar 2008 00:00:00 GMT

Do you live in San Francisco, or around the Bay Area? Join our meetup.com group

We are putting together a Bay Area meetup group for Pay Per Click Affiliate Marketers, although if you do SEO, or email marketing your welcome to join us too. We will be putting together the first event next month, April, after Ad:Tech. The date has not been determined yet, but we have just posted our meetup group to prepare for April.

Get together with other super affiliates from the Bay Area, we will meetup in and around the Bay Area, at spots that have food, drink and most importantly, internet access! Network, Associate and Meetup with other bay area affiliates.
To join meetup202, visit our meetup.com page at:

http://affiliate.meetup.com/39/

We look forward to networking with other PPC Affiliates in the bay area, definitely join the meetup if you are anywhere close to the bay area! Only so much information can be learned from blogs, the best tips are generally when you are talking to someone personally. Lets meetup!

http://affiliate.meetup.com/39/

Wes Mahler,
San Francisco

AIM: T202wes

Corporate Tax Returns Due Money

Fri, 14 Mar 2008 00:00:00 GMT

Opps, I was thinking the corporation tax returns were due also in April. However, I forgot Corporations have to file in March, although luckily you can file extensions with the IRS. Have a corporation and haven’t filed the taxes yet? Make sure to send in your extension tonight!

How To Get The Same Amount of Knowledge As A Book, In About 3-5 Minutes.

Tue, 11 Mar 2008 00:00:00 GMT

Being able to read, learn and study from books that teach us how to be stronger, wiser, and better are so valuable. Lately I have failed to get a lot of reading done, it has been a lot of focusing on programing applications instead. But I can still find a way to get knowledge in, and one of the ways I have enjoyed to gain new knowledge is simplify by reading a few very meaningful and insightful quotes from the most successful people in the world. A lot of chapters in books are normally to summarize a point, and sometimes the longer chapter does help up the lesson being taught. Although I still believe books are a great source of information, sometimes some of the most profound learning can be read in 2-3 seconds. Let me share some simply powerful information to you, and I think you’ll agree, the information is valuable, compact, powerful information in a sentence or two. Enjoy, here are some of the best ones I’ve found.

“The real money’s in the shovels, not the gold.” – Samuel Brannan (1819-1889)
The first publicist of the California Gold Rush bought every shovel in
San Francisco before he ran through the street shouting, “Gold! Gold!
Gold from the American River!” Cisco Systems has become a $32B company
using a similar strategy, selling the routers and switches that form
the backbone of the Internet.
“Cut out the middleman.” – Aaron Montgomery Ward (1844-1913)
Ward founded the world’s first mail-order business, Montgomery Ward
Co., in 1872. Countless other catalog-based companies have followed in
his footsteps, including information-age retailers like Amazon.com.
“Sell the razors cheap and the blades dear.” – King Camp Gillette (1855-1932)
Gillette’s loss leader strategy has been replicated by countless
companies, Hewlett-Packard makes billions by peddling $30 ink
cartridges for its $100 printers. And while Sony loses money on its
PlayStations, it cleans up on the games.
“Long ago, Sir Isaac Newton
gave us three laws of motion, which were the work of genius. But Sir
Isaac’s talents didn’t extend to investing: He lost a bundle in the South Sea Bubble,
explaining later, ‘I can calculate the movement of the stars, but not
the madness of men.’ If he had not been traumatized by this loss, Sir
Isaac might well have gone on to discover the Fourth Law of Motion:
For investors as a whole, returns decrease as motion increases.” – Warrent Buffet
“As I grow older, I pay less attention to what men say. I just watch what they do” – Andrew Carnegie
“I would rather earn 1% off a 100 people’s efforts than 100% of my own efforts.” – John D. Rockefeller
“The way to make money is to buy when blood is running in the streets” – John D. Rockefeller
“The finest pieces of software are those where one individual has a
complete sense of exactly how the program works. To have that, you have
to really love the program and concentrate on keeping it simple, to an
incredible degree.” – Bill Gates
I have looked in the mirror every morning and asked myself: “If
today were the last day of my life, would I want to do what I am about
to do today?” And whenever the answer has been “No” for too many days
in a row, I know I need to change something. – Steve Jobs
“Tis better to be alone than in bad company” – George Washington
“High expectations are the key to everything.” – Sam Walton
“There is only one boss, and that is the Customer, and he can fire
everybody from the chairman on down, simply by spending his money
somewhere else.” – Sam Walton
“Success is not to be pursued; it is to be attracted by the person you become.“ – Jim Rohn
“One of the highest forms of human maturity is accepting full responsibility for our lives” – Jim Rohn
“You can get everything in life you want if you will just help enough other people get what they want.” – Zig Ziglar
“If I could live all over again, I would buy every square inch of Manhattan. “ – John Jacob Astor (First Millionaire in the United States)
“The first hundred thousand — that was hard to get, but afterwards it was easy to make more.” – John Jacob Astor
““The two most important requirements for major success are: first,
being in the right place at the right time, and second, doing something
about it.”” – Ray Kroc – McDonalds
“Money equals business which equals power, all of which come from character and trust.” – J.P. Morgan
“When you expect things to happen – strangely enough – they do happen.” – J.P. Morgan
“The major reason for setting a goal is for what it
makes of you to accomplish it. What it makes of you will always be the
far greater value than what you get.
“ – Jim Rohn
“Why is it with all the information available today on how to be successful in small business, so few people really are?” – Michael Gerber – E-Myth
“If You Shall Search, You Shall Find.” – The Bible

Enjoy? Find More all over the place, I’m going to try what Steve Jobs does everyday from here on out. WikiQuotes.

Remember: Knowledge isn’t power, knowledge applied is power.

It’s all about applying the good ideas, if you found one good one here today that you like, use it, if you just use ONE idea from here, and actually implement it, you are going to do great. The rate at which we implement new ideas that are good, will be a major determining factor on how well we do in life.

Speed of implementation, not just implementation, but how fast we gather new ideas and implement them. Key.

Win A Nintendo Wii From Tracking202 – Contest

Mon, 10 Mar 2008 00:00:00 GMT

Tracking202 is giving away a free Nintendo Wii! This post is copied from http://tracking202.com/blog/nintendo-wii-bonus-prizes-giveaway-contest-2.This is a Tracking202 Contest, not a WesMahler.com contest, but of course I support the Tracking202 Contest.To win a free wii follow the contest rules below, to see if you can get this popular gaming station for free!

Hello everyone! As many of you know, we’ve had some crazy traffic growth lately thanks to all the big reviews we’ve received by some big names in the industry and as you can see from our daily growth on alexa, it’s getting better and better! Barely a month old and we’re already breaking the alexa 56k three month average. Quite an impressive achievement if we must say so ourselves. Our user growth has been tremendous as well and we definitely want to keep the momentum going.

CONTEST

As great as the traffic and buzz has been, and how much better it will get, we’d like to take it one step further. So naturally we’re doing what most people have done to drive more buzz, a blog contest! The prize? A brand new Nintendo Wii! As many of you know, this is a pretty hot item on the market and in most places, is still SOLD OUT today ever since it was released! Amazingly most stores get new stock in each week and this thing is flying off the shelf like hot cakes. We’ll include the gift receipt shown below incase you already have one and would prefer to exchange it for something else (assuming they’re okay it’s over 30 days; it’s a hot item anyway meaning easy to resell). Do whatever floats your boat. Now that you know what you’re getting, here’s how you can participate.

REQUIREMENTS

1. All you have to do is write a short blog post about this blog contest describing as best as you can the rules and requirements and the prize giveaway. The review must be a minimum of 250 words which isn’t hard if you include these rules. You must link to our homepage using the anchor text Free PPC Affiliate Tracking Tool, our blog using the anchor text Affiliate Marketing Blog, our blog contest using the anchor text Free Nintendo Wii, and our forum using the anchor text Affiliate Marketing Forum as shown here. Be creative on what you have to say. Do this and you’ll automatically get 5 entries to the prize drawing. Once you’ve completed the above, leave a comment on this blog entry with a URL to your post so we can verify your entry (this is important otherwise you will not get credit for the drawing; do not email us or send us the link on AIM).

2. Your blog must be at least 90 days old and have a minimum of 30 blog posts at the time of this contest. If you do not meet this requirement, we’re sorry, you can not participate. The main reason for this rule is because we want to weed out people making extra blogs just to get extra entries and we feel it’s only fair to link to those who have been active with their blogs. If you fall under this category but feel you should be qualified to enter, shoot me an email or contact me on AIM at T202Steven and I will review over it with you. We will be checking whois to verify domain age as well.

RULES

1. The contest is only valid if we get 100 or more linkbacks aka participants.

2. Contest will end at Midnight PST on April 15th, 2008 (Tax Day). Winner will be announced within a week. IF for any reason we do not reach our goal of 100+ participants due to the short contest date, we may extend this to give more people a chance to enter but we may not so don’t count on this.

3. You must complete the requirement for the Bonus entries to count (more on bonus entries below).

4. Contest is open to everyone WorldWide so we’ll ship anywhere. However if there is a duty fee or tax fee for your country if you live outside of the US, you’re on your own. We will ship it as a gift in situations such as this and help alleviate any fees you might have to pay as much as possible.

BONUS ENTRIES

You can earn bonus entries to increase your chance of winning. Here are some ways you can get additional entries:

1. If you were one of the people who signed up for Tracking202 early on prior to this contest and have been “ACTIVE”, you automatically get a bonus entry in our appreciation for being a user. This is merely a way for us to thank those who put faith in our services. (Keep in mind all bonus entries are only valid if you follow the requirements above; please contact me if you’ve entered with your blog so I can verify your username and bonus entry).

2. If you subscribe to our newsletter, blog RSS, or Stumble, Reddit, and Digg our site, we will add 2 additional entry for each of those earning you potentially 10 bonus entries. Just send us a screenshot proving your RSS subscription (feed and/or email), Stumble, Reddit, and Digg (and email us your user name for each) and the email used for verification of newsletter subscription, and you’ll get your additional entries. If you are already subscribed, we’ll count those entries too (If you unsubscribe, the entry goes away; please send all screenshot, emails, etc to us ).

3. Leave a comment! Please note leaving your post URL and following the above contest rules do not apply. By leaving an actual blog comment, we will include 1 extra free entry to the drawing as a bonus. Multiple comments will not earn you multiple extra entries.

ADDITIONAL PRIZE GIVEAWAY

As another added bonus, the person that drives us the most traffic (base on our analytics stats), will get a free Tracking202 T-Shirt separately!

So start posting and enjoy! Please also look forward to future contests and freebie giveaways.

PS If you want to help support Tracking202, feel free to contact me on how you can Donate or Advertise with us. Thanks.

PICTURES

Digg It

Why The Web Is Free

Sat, 08 Mar 2008 00:00:00 GMT

This was a great interview I saw on TechCrunch that I really enjoyed, the first part was with Chris Anderson, author of the Long Tail, and he is talking about why the web is free, and why services even like Tracking202 is free. We are just following the trend of successful online mega businesses with our philosophy on giving away services. The last part is with Michael Arrington who has some great thoughts about technology in general.

Michael Semira with CXDigital Video Interview

Fri, 07 Mar 2008 00:00:00 GMT

Mike Semira is my personal affiliate manager at CXDigital, I was very impressed with their presence at the Affiliate Summit West convention last month. They had a great booth location, and everyone in the company was great to talk to, we also had a lot of fun at the gathering they put together during the event. Enjoy the video interview, Mike Semira with CXDigital, check it out!

The video that accompanied this post was published in a DivX player that no longer exists, and the file itself has not survived. The write-up is kept here for the record.

Adam Dufresne from MaxBounty Video Interview

Thu, 06 Mar 2008 00:00:00 GMT

This is an interview with Adam Dufresne from MaxBounty, unfortunately this is the interview that had the most audio interference out of all the ones we did. However, Adam emphasis communication is extremely important in getting the most of your relationship with your affiliate manager. He also emphasis continuing education by reading blogs, and taking action by putting what you learn to use.

Adam was one of the first affiliate managers to actually beta test the product themselves, Adam has been a great help and is a great person to talk to online and offline, make sure you talk to Adam when you get started with MaxBounty. I have loved working with MaxBounty so far, and I highly recommend them to anyone. There interface may look outdated, but their tracking works wonderful and they pay on-time, every-time.

The video that accompanied this post was published in a DivX player that no longer exists, and the file itself has not survived. The write-up is kept here for the record.

Jonathan Van Clute with LPGen Video Interview

Wed, 05 Mar 2008 00:00:00 GMT

Jonathan Van Clute is an experienced PPC Affiliate Marketer who resides in San Francisco Bay Area. Jonathan developed a landing page generation product, LPGen, which is designed to help users increase their quality score on the different search engines. Jonathan had kept LPgen to himself for quite awhile but due to demand released it to the public. The LPGen software can be found at LPGen.com. LPGen stands for Landing Page Generator. LPGEN dynamically adds content which is relevant to the keyword being searched for so Google rewards you with a higher quality score.

The video that accompanied this post was published in a DivX player that no longer exists, and the file itself has not survived. The write-up is kept here for the record.

AffSpy Video Interview At the Affiliate Summit West 2008

Tue, 04 Mar 2008 00:00:00 GMT

AffSpy is a new tool for affiliate marketeers which will allow you to find the best offers to promote. The tool aggregates of all the campaign data from all the networks into one simple location to access. The tool is free, and it should be a great resource for anyone marketing affiliate network campaigns. This was a quick promotional video we did with them at the Affiliate Summit West 2008 in Las Vegas, NV at the Rio Casino.

The video that accompanied this post was published in a DivX player that no longer exists, and the file itself has not survived. The write-up is kept here for the record.

Comments

2 from the original blog

joeMar 4, 2008, 1:21pm
Can you not put this as you tube or even flash? A lot of people are not going to install yet another plug in.
Wes MahlerMar 4, 2008, 5:34pm
Hey Joe,
Sorry we run it all in DivX because it is a much higher display quality which youtube or flash doesn’t provide at this time.

John Chow Video Interview At Affiliate Summit West 2008 - TheTechZone and TTZMedia Founder

Mon, 03 Mar 2008 00:00:00 GMT

John Chow is a highly recognized successfully blogger, and affiliate marketer with his website JohnChow.com, and TheTechZone.com, he also has his own affiliate network, TTZMedia. This was an interview with Steven Truong and John Chow during the Affiliate Summit West 2008 in Las Vegas, NV at the Rio Casino Hotel.

John Chow emphasis continuing education, networking, attending events and focusing on the campaigns that will generate the most revenue for you.

The video that accompanied this post was published in a DivX player that no longer exists, and the file itself has not survived. The write-up is kept here for the record.

Ian Fernando Video Interview at Affiliate Summit West 2008

Sun, 02 Mar 2008 00:00:00 GMT

Ian Fernando is an internet entrepreneur and active blogger at IanFernando.com. Ian runs Ianternet Media, his own company and is starting to heavily dive into PPC Affiliate Marketing. This interview was taken with him at the Affiliate Summit West 2008 in Las Vegas, NV at the Rio Casino Hotel.

Ian Fernando, check out his blog.

The video that accompanied this post was published in a DivX player that no longer exists, and the file itself has not survived. The write-up is kept here for the record.

Comments

2 from the original blog

iantrepreneurMar 2, 2008, 4:25pm
wow - I think my interview was one of the shortest - that is what you get for being first - lol I look mad funny in the video - and I think I need new glasses
Wes MahlerMar 2, 2008, 5:22pm
Hahaha you did better than I! Sorry about the length man next time will make it 60 minutes lol! no jk, we shall reshoot again!

Doug Davis With CPAEmpire - Interview

Sat, 01 Mar 2008 00:00:00 GMT

This is a video interview with Doug Davis from CPAEmpire. Doug has been with CPAEmpire for awhile now and was my very first affiliate manager. He has helped me out alot, and I had a chance to interview him at the Affiliate Summit West 2008 in Las Vegas, NV at the Rio Casino Hotel.

Apologize in advance for some of the static interference, if you want to get started with CPAEmpire just goto our resources page, and click the link for CPAEmpire. Make sure to request to be with Doug Davis, he is an awesome affiliate manager and one of the best I’ve worked with so far during my affiliate career.

CPAEmpire check them out.

The video that accompanied this post was published in a DivX player that no longer exists, and the file itself has not survived. The write-up is kept here for the record.

Paul Bourque - UberAffiliate - Interview at Affiliate Summit West 2008

Sat, 01 Mar 2008 00:00:00 GMT

Paul Bourque is a quote unquote “super affiliate”, he is recognized for his affiliate marketing blog UberAffiliate.com. UberAffiliate is now a well known name in the affiliate marketing industry, he has already attracted over 1,000 readers in a relatively short time. Paul likes to blog about how his affiliate marketing efforts are going, he gives tips and tricks to his readers all the time. Some of the most recognized posts Paul Bourque are his posts of his earnings, and some of his guest blogs on other large blogs.

I read UberAffiliate.com on a daily basis because it is important for me to be actively following the industry we are in. I highly recommend anyone to read his blog that does affiliate marketing. I had a chance to interview Paul at the Affiliate Summit West 2008 in Las Vegas, NV at the Rio Casino hotel. Below is the interview, this interview was also broadcasted on the Tracking202 blog, and the UberAffiliate.com Blog. This is one of the eight interviews we put together at the Affiliate Summit West, be sure to check in later to see the rest of them, one interview a day, back to back on the Tracking202 Blog, and the WesMahler. There is a little bit of audio interface in the video, but most of it is great. UberAffiliate.com check it out.

The video that accompanied this post was published in a DivX player that no longer exists, and the file itself has not survived. The write-up is kept here for the record.

Affiliate Summit West and The Datacenter

Fri, 29 Feb 2008 00:00:00 GMT

If you were not here to attend the Affiliate Summit West, you must attend next time. This event was incredible, it was awesome getting a chance to meet everyone you talk to online in person, and of course others, it was terrific networking.

Before the Summit

I must have been the only one crazy enough to drive down to the event. I drove 10 hours from San Francisco to Las Vegas and back when everyone else flew in by plane. Unfortunately I even got a speeding ticket on the way back from Las Vegas to San Fran going 86mph on cruise control in the 70mph zones. Luckily the copy was friendly and only cited me for going 80mph in the 70mph zone. Next time I’m flying.

But my Affiliate Summit West weekend actually started 3 days before the event. Robert Norton, our Vice President of Technology, our system administrator, a damn fine business partner, flew out from Phoneix to San Francisco so we could setup our datacenter. He stayed over at my place during the trip and we went to work in our new datacenter.

As of right now I have invested a lot of my working capital in the server equipment that will run the Tracking202 platform. The current investment is approximately $10,000 worth of server equipment, not including any hosting costs.

Rob flew out, and we drove to our new datacenter located in San Jose, the capital of Silicon Valley. It is a high-tech facility 24-hour surveillance, lots of coolers, backup power generators, security cameras, big heavy doors with security keycard access panels, and of course, lots of server racks. Rob is the master in disguise; he knows a ton about system administration, more than I ever thought. Here is a picture of our rack before anything was installed, and then here are some pictures of the server equipment as we went ahead and installed everything.

Pictures of Rob and I

There is more than just “servers” here; we have several other units that do other things, which actually manage the servers, units that make things easier to work on and units that we can remotely control the units easier.

After we had 2 exhausting days of working on the servers all day, we drove down to Las Vegas NV, in the Honda S2000. There wasn’t much room in the S2000 and whoever was in the passenger seat had to also hold some of our luggage on their lap because the trunk could not hold everything.

Rob drove most of the way to Las Vegas, and the when we got there we stayed over at the Boulder Casino, we would later move over to staying at the Excalibur instead because it was on the strip. On the first night we met up with Steven Truong, Tom Luong, and Souriya from Portland. We would then get together with Harrison. We had a meeting lined up with the AffSpy group the following day.

Day 1 – Table Meet Day – CXDigital Party

The objective of the first day was to meet the AffSpy group who is developing a product that was going to actually compete against ours. When we headed down to the Affiliate Summit we were on route to launch a new product, Offers202. Offers202 was supposed to be a site that aggregated all of the campaigns that every network promoted, so at one location you could see all the offers from all the networks, and see difference payouts that each had.

We knew about AffSpy before the event so we were originally planning on competition with them. Although the guys over at AffSpy were smart, and they approached Tracking202 and asked to see if we could work together and then long story short we are now working together in a mutually benefical way instead of competing against eachother. The AffSpy team is an extremely sharp and talented team, they know what they are doing and I look forward to working with them more.

Once we established at the first day, that we would partner with the AffSpy team, we changed our goals for the weekend, which was originally partnering up with all of the affiliate networks on Offers202. Because we figured out we would work with AffSpy now we switched our objective to seeing how many interviews we could put together. Rob and I drove all around prior to the event and picked up over fifteen hundred dollars in video equipment so we could record some High Definition interviews with super affiliates, and people in the industry. We managed to gather 8 interviews by the end of the weekend, a great turnout in my opinion.

Later on the first day I would later meet up with the following people, Jared Atchison, Dexter (ddventures), Ian Fernando, Stephen Gill, Gaby, Arymen, Doug Davis of CPAEmpire, Mike Semira with CXDigital, Adam with Max Bounty. We were with Ian Fernando alot during the Summit, he was a blast to work with.

Ian Fernando and I

Dexter (ddventures) and I

John Chow and I

More networking would happen later at the night! I’m very grateful to Mike at CXDigital for inviting me to the CXDigital party, they had rented out the MTV Real World Suite at the Palms, there was about 60 people everyone was extremely successful. Everyone there was successful by most standards, and it was extremely good networking with powerful people in the industry. We had a lot of fun, there was an open bar and everyone had a lot of fun. I don’t normally drink but I had a few there and we had a blast, for this I said I owe Mike at CXDigital a Super Affiliate!

Bobby from bluebobbo.com, George Spanoudakis, Nicolas Kokkalis, Alan Rafaeli and Adam of RockSolidColo, Kenneth Chen, Konrad, Brendan, Hagai, Matthew (socialmedia), George, Nicholas, Kevin, Justin, Raz, Kenneth, Johnathon Van Clute, Kyle and Richard Tarjeft. Pictures below:

Gaby (AffSpy CTO – Developer) And I

Mike (CXDigital) And I

Debrani (CXDigital) And I

Because all of the Tracking202 team was asleep when the party was over, I couldn’t get back in the hotel room, so I stayed over at Dexter’s place, a tracking202 user, and a friend from the bay area.

Day 2 – Booth Day – TAO Party

On day two the booths were opened up, there was a little bit of networking but not much happened on the 2nd day of the affiliate summit. The goal of this day was to simply set up interviews for the same day, and the day after. At the end of the day we had an interview with Ian Fernando, Jonathon Van Clute, and John Chow. And setup some more interviews for the following day.

Verla (COPEAC) and I

At the end of the night we went over the to Tao Party at the Venetian, we got their late, it was extremely loud and only half of the team got in. I ended up staying so I could network with a few other individuals, although I can’t say I met a ton more people. I mainly got to meet with some of the S. California affiliate marketers, with Mr. Gary Lee, Ms Danielle, Jonathon, to name a few.

**Ms Danielle, Ian Fernando and I

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Day 3 – Going Solo

On day 3 all of the Tracking202 left for home by plane, except for me. I stayed behind and did what I needed to do, get more interviews done. I would end up at the end locking in 5 additional interviews with key people. Although I was alone though in terms of Tracking202, Dexter was there to help me out, and I owe much to him for helping me put together the rest of the interviews.

On the last day I went to the event and did the interview with Mike Semira at CXDigital, then we had an interview with Paul Bourque with UberAffiliate.com, Doug Davis at CPAEmpire, then Adam at MaxBounty.

After that was all done we went to the last event at Affiliate Summit West, the road rally, here they would give away prizes, and there was a toy car race, the winner would win a booth at Affiliate Summit East. The AffSpy team won.

At the end of this event we had the last but not least, final interview with the AffSpy Team. After the event it was about 4pm and I begun my drive back to San Francisco in the same day. I would get a speeding ticket in the way back, fall asleep at a rest three different times, and then continue the drive back. Trying to sleep in a Honda s2000 isn’t fun.

Affiliate Summit West 2008 was awesome; I plan on attending all of them from here on out. I will also be going to Ad Tech in San Francisco, of course in April! Unfortunately I don’t know how it happened but I missed seeing NickyCakes there, Jon Waraas and GrayHat!

Some of the interviews we gathered are mentioned below, and they will be posted on here next, back to back when they are ready this week.

Wes Mahler – Interview with Doug Davis at CPAEmpire
Wes Mahler – Interview with Adam Dureferise at MaxBounty
Wes Mahler – Interview with Mike Semari at CXDigital
Wes Mahler – Interview with Ian Fernando
Wes Mahler – Interview with AffSpy
Wes Mahler – Interview with UberAffiliate
Steven Truong – Interview with John Chow

How To Always Know What Your Competitors Are Doing With Almost No Work

Sun, 17 Feb 2008 00:00:00 GMT

War can be a good analogy when you think about battling with your competition. Competition is fierce, some people will get injured and hurt, others will prevail and dominate the competition. In war there are thousands of factors that will ultimately be the reason that one country will win versus another, in competition there are many factors that will be the determining factor on whether one company ultimately succeeds or looses.

One of the huge factors of succeeding or dying in combat is your ability to harvest strategic military intelligence on your enemy. When you have espionage in place you can watch your enemies form their armies, you can see where their moving, and then you can strike accordingly because you have vast knowledge on what exactly it is your enemy is planning. You can counter them instantly and take an extremely leveraged position on the playing field and dominate. You want to dominate the playing field by number one, understanding the battlegrounds, and number two, knowing exactly what it is your enemy is planning on attacking, and number three keeping your army hidden.

Know your competition, watch your competition, study your competition, and dominate your competition.

You know, we weren’t the only one to have the idea of making a PPC Affiliate Tracking system to be marketed online. There are a lot of people who have made some, and actually quite a few people who were planning on creating one. I have studied the competition, I have keep tabs on the competition, I know what they are working on, and I know where they are going. Not only was I aware of existing products in the market place, I was aware at some of the new people who declared they were entering the industry, and take note of this, I was also even aware of some of the products/services my competition was planning on releasing that has never even had any information released about it into the public domain.

Because I was aware at some of the other competitors entering the marketplace, I acted accordingly, and I’d assume I even killed off one of them who was going to enter the market (there are many but one in particularly I think has been hurt extremely bad) and this because they leaked to much information about their army and I did my homework on them, and so when we launched I made it a point to make it extremely difficult for them to enter the marketplace now. They will have a tough time gaining much ground and by the time if they d choose to enter the marketplace, we will have already moved onto bigger and better things.

We have a better product than the competition, at a price that is cheaper than the competition, that comes with better customer service than the competition and is marketed better than the competition. And we know this because we have studied our competition, and continually monitor our competition, so we can beat the competition.

Although this article could now become very lengthy in the art of gathering military intelligence, I really just wanted to share with you one simple trick to you can use to easily track your competitors’ progress. This is not the only thing you should to do keep watch of your competition, but I have found it extremely useful, and now I always know exactly when my competition states anything in the internet about what they are going to do next. I know immediately of new information so I can take swift action accordingly. Here is the key words to remember , I have an automated systematic way of easily knowing what my competitors are doing.

I found this simple, but quite powerful concept when I was writing about Ryan Allis. Every time I seemed to post something with the words Ryan Allis on my blog, Ryan Allis would appear and comment on the blog post. Ryan Allis is not subscribed to my RSS that I’m aware of, and I noticed when he came into my website he would always come out of a his email inbox’s, I’d see this in the visitor referrer.

Ryan is a world-class entrepreneur who has a highly scalable company that does over ten million dollars a year in sales, I watch what he does and do my best to do what is working for him. And simply all is had done is setup the Google’s Alert tool to notify him anytime someone says anything about his name. To use Google Alert you simply type in a few keywords, and then you’ll get an email every time something new in the Internet appears with the keywords you have typed in. Basically you can get email notifications every time someone says something about anything, so you can keep tab on anything you want.

So for him, he keeps track of his personal brand, his image, by monitoring every time his name appears on the Internet so he can check it out. And I assume Ryan will be reading this one too, hello Ryan. Because Ryan is alerted and is always aware what is being said about him, and his company.

So what I have done is I of course also have alerts now on my name, so if someone blogs about me, or Tracking202 I instantly know what people are saying, and this is great because it literally gives you an alert any time someone mentions your name, or your company name on the internet.

So I assume you have guessed it already now, but the easy way to track the competition is to simply setup a few Google Alerts, for your competition. You’re competitors’ company names, and the competitors’ executives’ names you can use as keywords in google alert, that way you can keep tab on their company, product and or the actual people running it. You’ll always be notifed what they are up to next, this is extremely helpful when you are like us, and you have alot of competitiors to keep an eye out on.

So you might consider setting up email alerts for your name, your company name, and your competitors’ businesses, and your competitors’ executives’ names as keywords with Google alert tool. Know what the competition is doing. And using this trick gives you an easy way to automate the process of gathering military intelligence on your competition.

Google Alerts can be found here: google.com/alerts

PS: Just for those who weren’t aware, this blog is not about Affiliate Marketing and this blog is not how to make little money online. If you want to learn about PPC Affiliate Marketing, read our Tracking202 Blog, there we had some great articles and videos on how to make money with affiliate marketing. But if you want to learn about building a company that does over one million dollars a year in sales, this blog will shed some light on that for you.

We talk about here building wealth at the top 5% level, big business entrepreneurship.

Here you will not find out how to make “money with your blog”, no. Here you will learn how to build an application that thousands of make money blogs could use, like MyBlogLog, that empowers bloggers and then is acquired for multi-million dollars. The money is not in the blogs, the money is in the applications that bloggers use.

Instead of blogging for small time money, we focus on building the WordPress, or MyBlogLog, or BlogRush, or Technorati, or Feedburner’s of the industry. Serious products, that are highly scalable that have a serious opportunity to be acquired for millions and millions of dollars. That is how we build wealth here. We are about building the next WordPresses of the industry. We Mean Serious Entrepreneurship. And I hope to see you build some unique products you can market to the marketplace soon too.

The Best Way To Do Your Accounting Is To Not Do Your Accounting.

Mon, 11 Feb 2008 00:00:00 GMT

Anyone who has been into entrepreneurship for more than a year or two knows that personally keeping track of your finances can be quite a hassle. I have tried it many times, with several different methods, from doing nothing, to using Excel, to eventually using QuickBooks Pro. Although at the end of the year I have not been up to date, and everything I did was totally a lost cause because it is such a hassle to every day type into your computer little expenses, and income here and there. Have you tried to keep track of your accounting profit/loss only to find it a complete mess too after even just a month?

I believe the best way to do your accounting now, is to not do your accounting at all, instead, have someone else do it. Keeping tracking of finances every day, day in, day out is a hassle and everyone who tried to keep their finances clean every day, will probably agree with me that it is a hassle. It is a lot of work, and it is most likely not where your time is best spent either.

A more efficient, faster, systematic and ultimately better way to making sure your bookkeeping is up to date is to simply outsource your bookkeeping monthly to an accountant or an accounting firm. This way at the end of each month you can just gather up all of your receipts and send it off in the mail to your accountant and they will deal with your financial mess. Each month they can send you a report back on how you are performing and make sure your books are kept clean for the IRS, or even any potential acquirer of your company. If someone is going to acquire your company, trust me, they will be looking over your financials and they better be clean.

Wouldn’t it feel nice to just send all your stuff to someone else, and have him or her do all your financial reports, payroll, taxes, and monthly net operating income reports for you? If you have someone do it for you on a monthly basis, now you can focus on what you do best, and as an entrepreneur, that should be building systems.

Wes, but isn’t outsourcing your accounting work every month expensive? No, not really, it doesn’t have to be. My friends, although I won’t mention their names, generate over $6,000 a month in new monthly memberships for their web product, and what they do is simply pay an accountant in the city they live in about $100-$200 a month, each month, to keep their their books clean, and run their payroll for them.

At the end of the year your books are extremely clean, organized, and done correctly. Best of all you were able to focus on what you do best, and let someone else deal with all theses receipts. Also doing this method will allow your accountant to advise you early on what you should do to minimize your taxable income. If you send your accountant all of your financial files at the end of the year, that year is done, and there is nothing they can do to save you money on your taxes. But if you were continually meeting with your accountant on a monthly basis, and letting them handle everything, they would be able to tell you before the end of the year what you need to do before it’s to late. (At the end of the year, you’re accountant will now probably be able to help you save more money than you spent to have them keep your books monthly for you. Getting a monthly accountant is not a liabilty, outsourcing your accounting monthly is an incredible asset.)

If you do this, I’m sure you will agree with me, at the end of the year your company’s financial department will be a lot better off than if you had tried to keep track of everything yourself tediously in QuickBooks or even worse Excel. It will be better off someone who is experienced keeps track of everything, instead of you trying to multi-task every day and do to much, when someone else could to it better, faster than you could.

If you have seriously dived into, and studied entrepreneurship, you should understand that true big company entrepreneurship is really about building systems and processes. Systems and processes that your company will use, so it can operate with or without you 24/7. The biggest mistakes are those, which are made early on, making a mistake early like doing everything yourself, only to find yourself 5 years down the road as a self-employeed entrepreneur who got himself into a job instead of a big business.

What I’m saying is, if your going to do something make sure you do it the correct way, not the wrong way. And make sure to start the correct way, not the wrong way, by doing it right in the begining, because in the end there will be a huge difference in outcomes. Just by being aware of a simple concept like this can dramatically effect your company down the line in the thousands if not millions of dollars. And I believe if you want to build a world class company, or even do $1,000,000 a month with affiliate marketing, you should have someone else handle your books for obvious reasons, but more specifically it would be wise to outsource your accounting work on at least a monthly basis so they can keep it all clean and organized for you.

Tracking202, Inc is currently looking for an accountant in the Silicon Valley area, we will be outsourcing our accounting for a couple hundred bucks each month. And if someone chooses to acquire us later on they will be in awe at how well are finances are done. Start the process of building your business in a systematic way, begin the process of working on your business, not in your business. Start your business with the right mindset, that you are ultimately putting people and systems in place for you so you do not eventually have to do work all day if you do not have to.

And to do this I’d highly, highly, recommend outsourcing your accounting work each month instead of doing it yourself. It may cost you alittle bit of money each month, but if you make any money at all, at the end of the year it will have saved you money. And by meeting with your accountant often you will be increasing your financial literacy, which is more important than the money itself. Will you outsource your accounting, do you outsource your accounting now? Why not? What do you think?

“The Best Way To Do Your Accounting Is To Not Do Your Accounting.” – Wes Mahler

Why Is Tracking202 Free – My Mistakes – Launching Under Fire

Wed, 06 Feb 2008 00:00:00 GMT

I’ll have to admit, we have made some mistakes during our launch, but I’m the one to blame. Although we are still gaining momentum in our marketing push the initial launch was quite shaky, if we had to do our initial launch into the market place again I’d absolutely do it differently. But what is done is done, and now we must work quadruple hard to improve our situation as much as possible.

It is quite clear that the product we have just introduced into the marketplace is quite controversial due to the required information that our product must store in order for it to work correctly. What has happened, and although we expected their to be some hesitation to use it, I’m not sure we fully grasped the magnitude of the situation to know that prior to launching we should have spent significantly more time in building our credibility.

The basic fundamental question that is being asked about our product is not if the actual product is good, in fact, even some of the negative (but helpful) feedback that some people give mentions that, “they think the product looks absolutely fantastic, but they feel uncomfortable that their PPC information is stored on the Tracking202 servers.” Almost everyone agrees the product looks great, what the question of the day for everyone is if our company has integrity and if they can trust their data with us.

What we did wrong is that we mainly focused on the product, building the features, adding this, adding that, and while all that was great, what was more important, than the product was that we should have invested as much, if not more time, into thinking of ways to make our product more credible. We showed how the product worked, we have videos, we have screenshots, we have hours and hours invested into our product and although we also invested time into explaining the reasons behind Tracking202 being completely free, we should have spent more time explaining it clearly.

My focus has now shifted into seeing how we can make Tracking202 a more credible company, whether its adding HackerSafe Icons, or moving more towards self-hosted scripts, or showing pictures of the world class datacenter we are moving into, or gathering more testimonials from users or networking with other influential people in the industry who can help us gain credibility, this is what I will be focusing on now. Here are some lessons that I have learned, and I will share my lessons with you.

When you are handling other peoples’ information, especially information related how people make a living, you should focus on making your product feel safe, secure and as trustworthy as you possibly can. You absolutely have to make sure your users data is completely safe on multiple different levels of security. If you manage peoples’ information, the success or failure of your company can be attributed to the effectiveness in which you handle other’s data.
When you build a company, the marketplace is going to judge you as an individual and your personal integrity and ability to accomplish what it is you say your going to accomplish. This goes on understanding that YOU, branding YOU, becoming AWARE that people are going to watch you and judge YOU everything you do. They are going to ASK if I can trust this person, can this person deliver, is he or she true to their word? Your customers will google your name, look at your blog, look at whom you’ve been interviewed with and they will make a conscious decision on whether or not they like you, which will either make you look good, or it will make you look bad. Be very cautious with your name, and what you say on your blog because people will read it, as many people are now reading mine to see if the CEO of the Tracking202 program has good values, and if they would trust him.
If you plan on marketing your products through forums, it would be wise to invest some time first to contact the administrator of the forum and bounce your idea off to them prior to launching a promotional thread on their forum.
Be as personal as you can in your company while it is small, you want people to feel they can contact you directly if they have a problem. They should believe if they have a problem or question, you are there to answer it immediately because you have always been prompt in responding. Customer Service, and replying to questions AS SOON AS POSSIBLE is extremely important. Whether it be a business, or even a blog, respond to your emails.
When you decide to make a long-term decision, in our case, making our product completely free (which is now going to affect us for several years down the road) it would be wise, when making a long-term decision, to take a very long-time in really thinking everything through, before making a decision. Take a long time, before making a decision that can have a long-term effect; make sure you think it, the last thing you want to do is make a quick decision that ends up begin a negative one for a very long time.
If there is controversy about you, your company, or your product take a considerable amount of time, and explain your reasons for why it is, you, your company, or product is doing what it is and the way it is. In that specifically I’m addressing the fact that I failed, I failed to explain in-depth why we have decided to launch our product free, and I’m going to spend a considerable amount of time in explaining to everyone why it is we are doing what we have done, and our strong reasons behind it. Be clear about yourself, don’t allow people to second guess, or question you, explain your reasons well, so there are no questions, and that you provide reasons and even examples of why you choose to do what it is you are doing.

I’m now going to being the process of explaining first on my blog why it is we decided to make our product free to the market place, and our reasons behind it. This will be the start of what will most likely become a very in-depth article explaining the main reasons why Tracking202 is free. And let me start out by what tracking202 is not.

Tracking202 is NOT free because we want to steal peoples’ keyword information and use it to our own benefit.
Tracking202 is NOT free because we want to shave off peoples’ traffic and use it to our own benefit.

Here is why Tracking202 is free, and here is why even though it is free it can still generate a significant revenue stream without taking advantage of anyone’s data. We are simply following the business model of one of the most successful companies in the internet industry, Google. Google provides a variety of free services that people use, you know many of them, and they have lots of products that I’m sure you use on a daily basis. Google had free a free search engine for several years and for the longest time they did not make any money, but they gained a user base, a dedicated user base, and overtime their user base became so big that they were eventually able to develop additional products and services towards their users which will ultimately made them one of the most profitable companies in the world today.

We are offering a free product like Google once did. The goal of Tracking202 per say isn’t to make a bunch of money to begin with, if it was we would have charged a monthly subscription fee for it, which was the original plan. But instead we decided we would rather build a free application for the Affiliate Marketing industry, we are interested in gaining a large user dedicated user base of people who use our applications. To keep it alive during our time we are going to generate money through advertising, and negotiating referral agreements between affiliate networks for referring affiliates to them.

As all of you know hosting a website isn’t really that expensive, the costs aren’t extremely high. Even though I have invested thousand of dollars into server equipment and our hosting is going to be in the thousands of dollars soon a month, that isn’t anything a couple good advertisement deals couldn’t support. We are just simply trying to stay alive in the next year or two, and eventually come with additional products and services to our user base and generate significantly more income than we would have if we just charged for our tracking services.

That is the real reason that Tracking202 is free, I hope that explains it more clearly in-depth our reason for making a free product for the industry. Our product has had a lot of controversy about it now, and this is my answer to explain our reasons so there is no questions left unanswered to the affiliate marketing community. This is our reason, and it is the real reason why Tracking202 is free for you and anyone else to use.

To be 100% genuine and honest to everyone out there, I’m not a super affiliate and I do not plan on ever being a super affiliate. I’m a web 2.0 developer who invest into real estate, I do affiliate marketing as of now because it is the best way I know of right now that I can generate enough income to live on and program at the same time. I even wrote it on my blog post before I got even to involved much with Tracking202, if I focused and hit a monthly net income of $20,000 a month doing affiliate marketing I would completely stop doing AM and start to program full-time.

And the reason I would stop completely is honestly everyone, I do not want to have to put up campaigns all day, I have been working full-time for the past 3 years almost 10-15 hours a day consistently, day in and day out, I will keep going but I get tired sometimes, I’m human and I honestly do not want to have to work setting up PPC campaigns every single day! That does not excite me, that isn’t what I want to do, that isn’t success to me personally.

We had someone offer over $100,000 for our product before it was even released into the public, I don’t need to be low and steal other peoples’ information to make a living and ruin my personal image, My Name, on the internet over someone’s keywords that I could have just found myself by using a keyword generation tool, or someone else text ads when everyone can see them anyways when you search a keyword, or someone’s landing page where again anyone can simply copy and paste their html and use it themselves.

If we needed money that bad, we could raise a round of investment right now for a percentage of the company and have enough money just from that to live on and continue to develop the application full time. I’ve already had an offer by a family member but I’m not interested in doing that, because we don’t need the money; we are a bootstrapping web 2.0 startup that has expenses, but they are maintainable. At the end of the day, and you might disagree with me on this but if you actually look at my ‘ACTIONS’, because actions speak louder than words, you can take a look at me and see if I’m ultimately telling the truth.

At the end of the day, I will generate more personal net worth, maybe not (cashflow) but I will generate more net worth using my knowledge of (AJAX, PHP, MYSQL and other Web 2.0 technologies) developing internet applications and services that can be used by potentially millions of people, with options of selling out, or doing an IPO than I ever would setting up campaigns all day. That is not to say setting up campaigns is bad, my friends and associates make way more than me right now, but that is not how I build income, my friend said to me once, “to each his own,” in that there is a lot of money in PPC AM, but that isn’t my interested, that’s not what I’m passionate about, that is not what I’m best at. I’m best at developing web 2.0 applications on the Internet that people use and it is what I enjoy doing.

And I think if you were to go back, and look at my previous blog posts, you would see my PASSION about building a world class company, and potentially selling it for several million dollars in the future is all along, what my focus has been. If I don’t need the money from Affiliate Marketing, I’m not going to work on affiliate marketing because my energy is better investing into building a world class company that over one million dollars a year in sales, which is highly scalable, highly systematic, that employs people and has a serious opportunity to be acquired in the future.

And I believe you can see if I’m telling a truth because you do not have to believe what I say, because you can look at what my actions, because my actions speak louder than words. As I grow older I do not look at what another says, I watch what another does. Those were the great words spoken by Andrew Carngie, and I ask you to apply them to me, ultimately you will see my actions will prevail. I have moved to another city, Silicon Valley to build an internet company, I’m bootstrapping and doing everything I need to do to stay afloat.

I spend my time reading PHP and MYSQL books, books about FlickR and how they scaled their website, books on PHP Security, geek stuff about how apache security works, how SSLs work, how MySQL indexes work, how to setup load balancers, memcache servers, mysql replication servers, backup servers. I go to PHP and MYSQL meetups and talk with other developers, I spend all the time I possible can programming and learning how to program, I only do affiliate marketing 2-3 hours a week just because I have to have some sort of income to live off of. Other than that I would personally rather not work on any campaigns.

I have so many features I have to program it’s not even funny. There is so much work to do and the to do list gets bigger by 5-7 items every day, and I can only program so much per day. All my affiliate managers know my personal affiliate leads in volume has gone down significantly because all I do is develop the application, they know that, and they would tell you that if you asked them. I’m not a super affiliate, and I do not plan on being a super affiliate because I do not want to be a super affiliate. I want to be a successfully webpreneur who is known for developing website application that thousands and millions of people use on a daily basis and be immersed in the web 2.0 startup community and really be apart of the innovation of web technologies.

I wrote this out of my heart, I poured a lot out here and I really hope you can get a better glimpse into Tracking202 and my personal philosophies in life. If you are a PPC Affiliate Marketer I hope you would give us, and yourself a chance to really see how the Tracking202 product works and test out its features. And just remember there are bad and good people in the world, some people would return a wallet they have found lost on the ground, I hope that you give us a chance to show you that we are one of those good people who are really trying to help others.

From Zero To One Million – The Book

Tue, 05 Feb 2008 00:00:00 GMT

Ryan Allis, the Co-Founder and CEO of iContact, someone who I admire has launched his book today and it is already #4 on the best seller of Amazon.com as of right now. If your interested in entrepreneurship his book is by far one of the best books I’ve read in entrepreneurship and a guide to building a company to one million dollars a year in sales. Alot of the ideas we are using in Tracking202 is going to be from his book, I promised to post about it for him because his ideas have been a great help. Great book, I’d highly recommend it, the link is here:

http://www.amazon.com/dp/0071496661/

Tracking202 – PPC Affiliate Tracking 2.0

Sun, 03 Feb 2008 00:00:00 GMT

I’m excited to announce that we have launched our product out in the wild today, Tracking202 a highly advance PPC Affiliate Marketing Tracking Software. There have been over 6 months of long days developing this application, almost $10,000 in server equipment, a move to another city, building a team and we have finally launched open beta.

Before I post exactly what Tracking202 I should clear up one thing. A lot of people will think this is the Web2.0 Company I have been trying to build for over a year and a half, in fact is not. After over a year of trying to develop it, I decided to change focus and build and PPC Analytics instead, I felt there would be more potential and a more mature market for what I was about to offer.

The best way to show you Tracking202, is for you to see Tracking202, by going to our website at http://tracking202.com. In the following posts I’m going to copy our about us page, and write it on here so you can read about it. We decided to do something crazy, and make it 100% free to all the Affiliate Marketers in the industry.

We are going to have a little objection at first because the idea is somewhat new, and people might be confused why we have decided to make it publicly free. The best thing I can say is at the very minimum we will be able to charge a premium for advertising to keep it funding. Tracking202 is great, there has been a lot of thought that has went into it, and most important a lot of dedicated, and focused action to get this thing ready. It wasn’t easy, and it’s going to be a lot of work, you’ll see some interesting stuff to come on the Wes Mahler Blog, on how it is going.

I would like to give special thanks to all of our wonderful private beta users, everyone has helped out a lot and to rattle off some names. Steve Ramil, Ross Gordon, April M, David, Dan Huang, Sean and Noah at Clicky, Dexter, Steve Bowers, GrayHat, Liam Rose, Michael Yager, Nicky Cakes, Johnathon Van Clute, Harrison, Doug at CPAEmpire, Adam at MaxBounty, kkim812 (Matt), Glenn and Gregg, Joseph at Alyrica, Gabriel, Deron Sizemore, Jared Atch, Matthew Rossetto, PHPGeek86, Benneth, Scott (shotsix), Ian Fernando, Steven Troung and last but not least, Robert Norton.

There are so many people to thank, if you feel I have missed you please let me know so I can add you to the list, there have been so many people to thank, so thanks everyone, and thanks to my readers for following my story, I hope to share some insights to you, which will be of benefit to you as well. Thank you.

What is Tracking202?

Tracking202 Inc., also commonly referred to as T202, is based in San Francisco, California and primarily a Pay-Per-Click (PPC) Affiliate Marketing Analytics company. T202 offers advanced features such as keyword cloaking, keyword tracking, spy view and much more. If you would like to learn more about the people behind this product and how to contact us personally, please visit our team page.

Common Challenges for PPC Marketers

Until now there has never been a simple way to track, monitor, and calculate all your PPC accounts and campaigns. When you have multiple PPC accounts and campaigns running, effectively managing them can be a tedious task. What’s more, tracking converting keywords vs. non-converting keywords requires custom programming or expensive software that isn’t intuitive or user friendly. I am sure we all can agree that tracking by hand or via MS Excel is no way to go.

Like other affiliate marketers, you haven’t had a choice if you want to track how well campaigns and keywords are profiting.

Until now…

T202 is the Perfect Solution

We created T202 to provide affiliate marketers an easy way to track PPC campaigns large or small. With T202, you no longer have to spend hours just to see which campaigns are making you money.

T202’s real-time tracking gives you to up-to-the-second data on all your PPC accounts! With easy to read graphs, automatic keyword trackers, and automated profit calculations, you don’t have to waste time logging every one of your PPC accounts and affiliate networks to manually record data.

T202 has the Most Features!

Most of the current tracking programs out there don’t have nearly as many features as T202. Plus they can only track a few of the bigger PPC networks such as Google Adwords, Yahoo Search Marketing and MSN Adcenter. With T202, you can track any network, big or small. And unlike PPC networks, T202 tracks clicks in real-time-you see every click as it happens.

EPC Calculator

T202 maximizes EPC (Earnings Per Click) calculations. How would you feel if you knew exactly what you needed to bid for a keyword for it to be profitable? Then you could adjust your bids accordingly and turn a profit within seconds.

Know your EPC:

EPC per Keyword
EPC per Text Ad
EPC per Referrer
EPC per PPC Account
Much More!

Spy View

Spy view is a feature you will only find on T202. With Spy View, you can see real-time actions your visitors make with your ads. What’s more, you can subscribe to your own Spy View RSS feeds to get up-to-the-second information anywhere!

Top-Performing Keywords

T202 tells you which keywords are making you money and which ones are losing you money. So you can weed out the losers and turn any campaign into a profit monster!

Keyword Cloaking

T202 gives users the ability to cloak their keywords from advertisers and affiliate networks-so all of your top-performing keywords are a secret.

Why risk your Affiliate Manager or the Advertiser finding out your best keywords, copying them for their own campaigns, and putting you out of business?

To be successful at Affiliate Marketing you must track your keywords and they must be cloaked.

Direct Linking a Landing Pages

T202 works with direct linking through PPC campaigns or with your own landing pages. Now you can track whether your campaigns profit more with direct linking or landing pages.

Forum

T202 is not only a world-class PPC tool, it’s also a thriving community of Affiliate Marketers and PPC experts. Get answers to questions and network with pros in our community forum.

Tracking202 Respects Privacy

Tracking202 respects the privacy of our clients. To currently use Tracking202 services, T202 does not require our users to provide us with their PPC accounts or Affiliate Network logins and passwords. Tracking202 services is able to keep track of all of the above services and more utilizing real time click tracking and subID submits. We understand privacy is a major concern for our users and at no time would be want to impose on this. You can read more about this on our FAQ page and more about our stance on privacy on our Privacy Policy page. Thanks

What Are YOU Waiting For?

T202 is constantly being updated with new features, tools, and other cool things. Why not test drive T202 today , it’s free.

Comments

4 from the original blog

StevenFeb 3, 2008, 11:42am
Hot Shit!
Ben CruikshankFeb 3, 2008, 2:35pm
Congrats Wes, you’ve made amazing progress in the few months I’ve been involved with this project. Thanks for letting me be a part of the beta!
EvanFeb 5, 2008, 10:21pm
Hey Wes,
Saw what happened over at wickedfire and lost quite a bit of respect when I saw you were banned and they edited your post. That to me is just plain low.
-Evan
Wes MahlerFeb 6, 2008, 4:03am
Thanks Evan,
Yeah that got a little out of hand over there, appreciate the support! It is also my fault for not coming up with a better way to promote it on their forums, but yeah that was an un-smooth launch over on the WickedFire forums. Lesson learned

How To Register A Trademark And What’s The Difference Between TM and ®

Mon, 28 Jan 2008 00:00:00 GMT

If you are coming out with a new company, or product, or tag line you are going to bring to the market place, and want you own the name. You should look into getting a trademark; they can be easily registered online at the United States Patent and Trademark Office.

We have just filed the Trademark on our company name, trademarking is generally around $275-350 depending on what exactly you need to trademark. In order to trademark you do not have to have a business entity, ie a corporation or LLC for instance. You can own the trademark in your own name if you like, and of course, what we did, was register the trademark in the corporations name.

You only need to trademark something if you want to protect its name, just because you might have a business does not mean you need to trademark the name of it. IE: I have a real estate holding LLC, that all the entity does is hold real estate. There is no need to file a trademark on the entity name because I could care less if someone steals the name, my entity; my LLC is just a holding company and nothing I want to trademark.

To register a trademark just go here: http://www.uspto.gov/, and hit trademarks on the left to get started. You do not need an attorney to file a trademark for you, you can do it yourself and make payment online with a VISA card, or any other major credit card.

There’s many things you could trademark, not just the company name, but one of your products name, or even a method of doing something, trademark to own the name. Once you register a trademark it has to get approved and can take quite some time, there is two symbols to denote the differences.

What is the difference between TM and ®

The TM stands for a Trademark which is pending.
The ® stands for a Trademark which is registered, and complete.

So on a big company like Coca Cola, you’ll see the ® because it is a registered trademark, they own that, it is there, registered. On a newer company who just filed their trademark they can denote it with a TM, which is a pending trademark. And they may or may not get that trademark; it is pending and can be denied. Trademarks can take years to be finally registered completely.

Trademarks, TM and ® now you know!

Comments

4 from the original blog

Dan HuangJan 28, 2008, 4:36pm
Cool Wes - Didn’t know there was a difference between T and ®; glad to know now.
Btw, my main PC should be good to go sometime this week. Snatched myself a 24″ monitor in the process. Time to get crackin on that affiliate business.
How’s that mac treating ya? I got to play around with those new iMacs, wow they are a real beauty. The keyboard was what amazed me the most. Awesome feel in such a slim device!
StevenJan 28, 2008, 7:44pm
Dan,
It’s TM, not T, although I am sure that was a typo. There is also SM for service mark, and another one which I completely forgot what it was.
Wes MahlerJan 29, 2008, 12:26am
Lol T
StephenFeb 2, 2008, 2:48pm
Yeah hoo! I know something now! Wes, you should of found that visual for the “more you know” from NBC to play at the end of your post :)!

The Crunchies

Sat, 19 Jan 2008 00:00:00 GMT

Yesterday my best friend, Cam came with me to go to the Crunchies awards; it was an amazing an event. The best part was just seeing all of the successful people in the industry in person. It was truly great to see all the big names in person at the awards ceremony.

How To Register Your Business With The State – It’s Easy

Wed, 16 Jan 2008 00:00:00 GMT

Registering a corporation legally is easy

I just filed our new company’s entity, a California Domestic Stock Corporation, also referred to as a C Corporation. (aka, I just registered a C Corporation).

A lot of people seem to get very overwhelmed with everything you have to do to open a new business. It is actually quite easy to simply just open up an entity, ie: LLC or a Corporation you really just need to file 1 piece of paper with the state.

All you need to do is file one document; the Articles of Incorporation, this document will register your company with your state. You can find this document from your State’s Secretary of the State. You can just search it online and you will find the articles of incorporation document you need to register.

All entities have their own articles of incorporation that you need to file to register. LLC articles of incorporation, a C Corporation (domestic stock corporation), and S Corporation (domestic closed corporation), General Partnership, Non-For Profit, they all have their own articles of incorporation. So to register your business you just need to find the articles of incorporation for the type of business you are going to register, fill it out, and send it in with payment.

So to officially start you business just go to your State’s Secretary of the State website, find the articles of incorporation that you need. You will just simply fill out the name of your business, your address, and then you just need to send it in via fax, mail, or hand it in typically with a check or a visa. This one document will register your entity; in a few days you will receive confirmation that you have officially registered an entity with the state.

Once you have received confirmation that your entity has been register, you are now ready to get your companies Tax ID number, also referred to as an EIN (Employer Identification Number). All you need to do to get this is simply go to the IRS.gov website, click apply for an EIN and do a 2 minute application and instantly online they will give you a EIN number.

Your now officially in business!

What is an EIN, or a Tax ID number? (Their the same thing), I’ll try to explain it a little bit.

First the EIN stands for Employer Identification Number don’t worry if you don’t have employees, it doesn’t matter, it’s just called that, basically the EIN is your companies TAX ID number with the IRS. And at the end of the year this EIN needs to report its earnings to the IRS, this is the company’s identification number with the IRS.

Your EIN is basically a separate entity; you personally have an SSN, which is your Tax ID number. You with your SSN can go out a get a drivers license, buy a car, buy a house, and the government attaches all theses things to you, they attach it to your SSN. When you have credit score report checked, you are seeing your own personal credit score; it is your SSN’s credit score.

Think of an EIN as another person, an EIN will have its own credit score. The EIN can own stuff in its name, the EIN can have its own bank accounts.

See for instance when you make money at a job, you are recording income under your own personal SSN. That is why at the end of the year you file income for your SSN.

See when you have a business, when you take in money you record that income under the EIN, and the at the end of the year the EIN files its own taxes.

Now with your tax id number, whenever you make money, you record the money earned under your company’s EIN, its tax id number. So then at the end of the year when your company files its taxes (when your company’s tax id files its taxes) you simply just file the profit/loss/net gain for your EIN.

So remember, the EIN is just a separate entity, it will have its own credit score, just like your SSN has a credit score. The EIN can own stuff, just like you can own stuff. The EIN can make money online and then at the end of the year the EIN must pay taxes on that, and like you if you make money online and record income under your SSN you have to pay taxes on that by filing a personal tax return.

Once you have an EIN you can open up your companies’ bank accounts, its really quite simple. Your EIN will make money, and then you will have your EIN file its own tax returns at the end of the year.

#1. Register with the secretary of state your articles of incorporation
#2. Get your EIN from the IRS.gov

This is on a basic level, how to legally register your company, it’s really quite simple. Questions or comments, feel free to ask. Start a business today!

Vesting Ownership/Shares, The Golden Handcuffs?

Thu, 10 Jan 2008 00:00:00 GMT

As your company grows bigger it will require more manpower to keep it going. When you start having more tasks than you can complete alone, you either need to hire employees, outsource the work, or bring on additional partners for a percentage of your company.

If you choose to bring in partners into your company there is a way of distributing equity that you might not have heard of. I was not aware of it until about a year ago and it was an interesting concept, a very simple one and an extremely powerful one. Sometimes venture capitals will refer this as placing the “Golden Handcuffs,” on the owners. It is called vesting owernship, or vesting shares in a corporation.

Instead of bringing on a new partner into your corporation and giving them their full percentage, say 20% upfront. You can now vest the shares overtime over a specific period of time. For instance you may choose to vest to your partner 20% equity in your company but it is vested over a five year period.

So the partner now will only receive their full 20% equity after the five years of work are put in accordingly. You can see how this can become very powerful, and it is just good business. When venture capitalists invest millions of dollars into a startup company they will sometimes vest the shares to the people running the company to make sure they stay in, they put the “golden handcuffs” on and make sure their people are doing the job right.

This concept isn’t because you do not trust your partners; it is just that as a world class entrepreneur you and your team have to have tremendous dedication and focus to do one million dollars a year in sales. Vesting ownership makes partners earn their equity in the company. If you had a partner who agreed that they would get their shares vested overtime and they left a month later, they would not receive their full share because they left early.

I bring this up because I’m going to be currently vesting ownership to other partners to help build a company to one million dollars a year in sales. If you were to take a look at my specific situation, I have invested thousands of dollars into my startup, and over 6 months of time, I work on it full time. For me to bring on another partnership and just give away the percentage up front is to risky, because I’ve already put in 6 months I will vest the ownership to the other partners overtime to make sure everything goes accordingly.

The last thing we want when trying to build a world class company is to loose your partners, and then even worse to loose your partners when they still own a large percentage of the company and are no longer working on it. This is why vesting is important, and this is why Venture Capitalists use it. Now you know of vesting ownership, a powerful concept you can leverage in your business, for when you shoot for one million dollars a year in sales.

Be At The Right Place ALL Of The Time!

Thu, 03 Jan 2008 00:00:00 GMT

While reading the Millionaire Real Estate Investor book I found a good piece of philosophy I’d like to share with you now. Instead of saying, “he was lucky because he was at the right place at the time right,” we should say instead, “it is not about being luckily at the right place sometime, it is about being at the right place all of the time.”

Let me repeat that again, **“**It is about being at the right place ALL of the time.”

You want to get good at positioning yourself in growth oriented environments, in order to succeed at a world class level you need to be at the right place all of the time. For building a web 2.0 company the right place is to be in Silicon Valley, that is where I’m. The right place to be in Silicon Valley when building a web 2.0 company is to be at the various internet entrepreneur meetups, the PHP/MySQL developer meetups, joining the silicon valley email groups and being aware of the Web 2.0 news by following tech blogs. If there is a web 2.0 meetup, I need to be there, we need to be at the right place all of the time.

I write this post because today I was absolutely at the right place at the right time and it is not by accident. I attended my first Silicon Valley meet up today after moving down here, it was the San Francisco PHP Meetup group. Although the event was very informal it turned out to have extremely good information. As I wrote this blog post, our company is currently running into scalability problems. I will not get to technical here, but there were some simple concepts the speaker mentioned to not use overloaded development frameworks in every website we develop. Although he mentioned frameworks can be good in certain instances, for me personally I learned that using a framework can potentially be more detrimental than productive in our current situtation. New information I did not know which I needed to hear. Pictures below.

What was interesting is I come down to the PHP Developer’s meet up and the some people in the audience personally know the big players in the industry, for instance one of the guy personally knows the authors of several PHP books I’ve read. It is interesting to read a book or two, and then there is people sitting next to you that know the authors personally. It is exciting because I know that I’m in the real serious PHP development game now, working with the experts in the field. They live down in Silicon Valley and I’m surrounding myself with people that know how to build scalable websites. They know how to do what I want to do, and I’m going to learn from them.

I found out during the meetup that there is another event happening next week from a different group of developers, it is called the Geek Sessions located out of Silicon Valley. Yes it is really called Geek Sessions, aren’t we geeky? Anyways the next gathering is an event about PHP Performance and building Scalable Systems. One of the speakers is the Lead Engineer of Facebook, and another is the Lead Engineer of Flickr. For only $25 I can attend this session, I will absolutely be at this event. Theses sessions can exponentially increase my learning curve. In order for me to succeed I need to be better positioned than the competition’s programmers. If there not here, I’am, and me being there gives me an edge over my competition.

I’m going to learn about how to scale a website from the Lead Developer of Facebook. Facebok is pretty much the largest PHP and MySQL development in the world. So one of the biggest experts in scaling the coding language I use is going to be here, also the author of the O’Reily Building Scalable Websites will be there too. You know I will be at the right place at the right time, and for me that is being downtown San Francisco at Geek Sessions on Jan 15th at 6pm.

So remember, “we want to be at the right place all of the time.” Are there entrepreneur meetups in your area that you know about and for whatever reason not going to? Or even worse, are there meetups in your area that you aren’t even aware of because you have never even searched for any? Be at the right place all of the time.

Are you at the right place all of the time? If your are not, your are loosing to someone who is.

About Me

Wed, 02 Jan 2008 00:00:00 GMT

Hi there, my name is Wes Mahler, I’m an internet entrepreneur and real estate investor.

More specifically I build highly scalable systematic internet businesses through entrepreneurship and then take the excess corporation’s profits and leverage them by putting down payments on long term real estate investments which are managed professionally. In short I aggressively make money on the internet and invest into very low maintenance passive real estate investments.

I’m a product of the many books I’ve read that have given me some philosophies about business that I use on a daily basis. I strongly believe that personal development, learning and associating with role models is important. I highly advocate reading personal development books and listening to audio CDs. Most of the greatest ideas I’ve received is through the audio books I’ve downloaded. There is a wealth of information, study what you want to get good at.

I’m currently in the process of building my own company to one million dollars a year in sales; my role model is Ryan Allis a successful internet entrepreneur who wrote a book at the age of 17 years old on how to build a company to one million dollars a year in sales. I’m taking his ideas from the many ideas I’ve gathered and am using them to help aid me in my goal to do one million dollars a year in sales.

I work about 60-70 hours a week, pretty much all of my free time. I have dropped out of Oregon State University two times, once I had failed, this time I shall succeed. I have moved from Portland, OR to San Francisco, CA to build an internet company in the most active internet area in the world, Silicon Valley. I own my own rental property in Oregon but have since shifted my focus towards entrepreneurship. I’m going to build this company to one million dollars a year in sales, once it becomes profitable we will hire employees that will help maintain it, 3-4 years down the line we will raise a strategic round of investment to boost our company to the next level. I have not decided whether or not to take the company public in the later years at this time.

If you would like to meet me please send me an email and we’ll talk, provide value to me, and I will provide value to you. I feel the best way to achieve success is simply through helping other people achieve success for themselves. One of my philosophies of life is from Zig Zigler, “If you help enough people get what they want in life, you’ll have everything you want in your life.”

I have come to believe one of the most needed traits of a good entrepreneur is the ability to master the simple concept of focus. Although focus may seem simple it is actually a hard skill to master, the entrepreneur by nature is an opportunistic person who sees many areas where they can generate a profit. This means the entrepreneur is always looking at new opportunities and focus is easily lost. This idea of chasing after things becomes a negative because you will see many inexperienced entrepreneurs try to do to many things at once.

The best way I can describe focus is to think of a magnifying glass, in that when you try to focus on something through lenses you can only focus on one thing, the other objects are always blurred. You can not focus on two things at the same time. If you have 1 project that is fine, if you have 2 I would bet that you aren’t as focused as you could be. Even with two projects you have already split your effort in half, focus on one that will provide the most reward. Focus so simple but so hard, get good at it, focus is key, one of the concepts you’ll need to master if you too want to build a company to one million dollars a year in sales.

I look forward to meeting you, my name is Wes, and this is my blog.

Wes 2.008, a new image

Wed, 02 Jan 2008 00:00:00 GMT

Hey thanks for bearing with me, everything is fixed now, WordPress is working like a charm now and I’ve switched laptops. I apologize for some of my posts; they were so badly written it just makes me look bad when people read them. I know this because I’ve had many comments over the months saying how bad my posts were typed and all sorts of stuff. That’s all going to change.

The reason it is going to change because every bad post hurts your personal image, people do not take you as seriously as they should. This hurts when I’m in the process of trying to build serious strategic partnerships with others because if they read my blog they might think I’m not a serious entrepreneur because I do not proof read my sentences.

Here is a good quote by Jim Rohn, “Every let down affects the rest of your performance.” He said every time you let yourself down, performing not the best you could it affects the rest of your performance. Every let down affects the rest, but the good thing is, every improvement affects the rest. So I do not want to have something so small like my blog affecting my personal pysche for everything is, when I let down my performance on my blog I’m letting down my performance on everything. So from now I’m going to improve my blog’s image, because every improvement is another step towards improving my personal brand.

You can still probably tell however, I’am honestly not a world class writer yet, and not sure if I ever will. But I you will see that there is more effort into the blog posts to make reading more understandable. I will do my best to communicate effectively to the world, communication is so important. A skill I need to study and improve.

You may have noticed my blog has changed it is a new theme; I decided to choose a single column because I personally prefer websites now with the top header navigation. Most of the time if a website has a right bar it is normally used at the top like, having a top right navigation, but as you scroll down its just used up space. So I have a new theme to reflect a new image, the old blog is gone; we are evolving into a higher caliber entrepreneur.

I felt the single column was good because I don’t plan on having advertising on my blog, this blog isn’t to make money but itself. Although, by building personal brand image the money will follow just by becoming a more valuable person to the market place. I’m going to make my money building a company to one million dollars a year in sales and that is my 100% focus.

My mission has also changed, it is no long “Great Wes, now what the heck are you doing,” which shows a confused entrepreneur who doesn’t have any focus on doing one thing. It is now, 100% focus on building a company to one million dollars a year in sales. I use to be intrigued with the idea of having Yahoo or Google purchase my company for millions of dollars, but now I don’t want them to buy me, they can make offers but I want to compete with the big dogs. Maybe take the company public at some point, big business, investors, raising capital and the whole deal, world class entrepreneurship at a high caliber level.

The blog title, Zero To One Million, is not mine, it is actually taken from my role model Ryan Allis, a successful, young internet entrepreneur and he wrote a book at 17 years old on how to build a company to one million dollars a year in sales. If I had a role model to follow, he is it; he is where I will be in 3-5 years because that is the time it will take to build my company to one million dollars a year in sales.

So what is new? Well things are going great, I have just ordered 4 more servers, and this will accompany the first dedicated server I purchased. My hosting for the web servers is going to jump up to over $500/month; here are some pictures of the server hardware below.

My main concern with my project is that is scalable, in that it needs to be able to support rapid growth and be online 24/7. We are going to be doing some intensive server load and it is crucial that we stay online. Those who do not know what I’m going to launch it will go open beta this month, I’ve already had an offer to purchase what I’ve been working on for over $100,000. Although I appreciate the offer I had to decline as I want to build this big, but that was good to know I mean so soon someone already is interested in purchasing it and investing, it is a good sign and it hasn’t even been seen by the public.

I have just been programming this thing full-time, the database is starting to grow big, and there is a lot of AJAX and all of the web 2.0 concepts installed in it. Although I’ve struggled with maintaining my servers, the APACHE, UNIX, LINUX and all of that stuff is beyond me. I can try to learn it but it is difficult, sometimes it is best to have someone else join in with complimentary skills to aid. I may be bringing on someone to help me be the systems administrator for the entire Web 2.0 server setup, there is a lot of work, especially when we have 10+ servers here soon. He has asked to be anonymous at this time so his name will not be posted but I’m getting help, he knows his stuff and I think we may work together on the project. The goal is if he can help me scale this thing and make sure all of the servers are working great we can build this thing to Alexa 10,000+ ranking and really make this profitable.

We have just started networking with some of the leaders in the industry we are going to dive in, there has been so far great interest in the product that we are developing and things are looking promising. We are getting ready to do our open beta testing in January; the main objective is to make sure our servers are ready to support a high number of users.

In personal life I’ve been spending a lot of money on servers, even though I made a lot of money last month I seem to have spent it all on servers, I spent over $4,000 this month in hardware which dives right into my net profit dramatically. As I haven’t been working on my campaigns everything is sliding, I’m not even sure if I’ll hit $10,000 this month, which could look bad but honestly it’s not on my priority. What I need to do is focus on the 20% of the things that will make me 80% of the money, and that is the Web 2.0.

Each server was about $1,000+ each, they have 2.4ghz dual core AMD processors, and 4GB of DDR2 667MHZ each. I also order a fourth server from my ISP provider that is just a slower development server. The picture of that is here. This will put my total server count to 5 dedicated servers. The first one I bought was a SuperMicro 3.4ghz dual core processor with 4GB of ram, however, I have an 8GB of ram upgrade on the way.

I have thought about bringing on some investors to take a percentage of the company so I can live off of and work on it full time, in that right now if I could obtain $100,000 capital into the business, I just need about $2,000 a month to live on to barely get by so I can focus on this. However, I’m going to stick to my guns and limit investors, later on 2-3 years I’m thinking we might raise some capital in the millions of dollars once we are doing one million dollars a year in sales.

There is going to be a lot to come, I’ve made my next goal at the top of my blog, you will see us Alexa ranking 20,000 by the end of the year, and we will hit it, I promise you, I’m going to put on my intense goal setting and make it happen, honestly we should probably be 10,000 by the end of the year, but 20,000 is already a done deal, I’ve decided to make it happen.

PS: The title of this is Wes 2.008, if you were wondering I took it from Web 2.0, and mixed it with 2008. Wes 2.008.

WesMahler hits $10,000+ this month, and growing

Thu, 27 Dec 2007 00:00:00 GMT

Wow, I seriously can’t believe this, I’m really starting to not like wordpress While writing this blog post wordpress totally freaked out on me, I tried upgrading nows worse, its giving my post in the worst possible format, I just got another computer and now wordpress breaks.

This point was good but wordpress stoped me from writing more, wow. I’m not going to use wordpress for much longer.

Blog post that was here. I apologize about theses crazy blog posts, you must understand theses things are seriously breaking on me, here is a video of how broken my keyword actually was. http://wesmahler.com/keyboard, when you see how bad my keyboard was I think you can understand why I couldn’t type, and then to have it fixed and wordpress not working on me is really making blogging to difficult to do something so simple it becomes a huge pain.

The errors, breaking up crashing, paragraphs not working, and putting invalid characters in my post is really driving me nuts, I hope you can understand writing a simple blog post is taking 1-2 hours because of all the errors that keep poping up, unable to even complete it. I almost feel like this and the last post probably should not have been posted at all, but this is an important post, and an attempt to post it with a broken wordpress.

Well actually almost 5 days ago I hit $10,000/month, this was my goal I set back acouple months ago with a process of setting goals which I’ve never failed, and I knew I wasn’t going to break my winning streak of never failing a goal with my goal setting process. And here I’am 3 months later and I’ve hit my goal of doing $10,000/month income by Dec 31st. Did you doubt me? The following are pictures reflecting some of the affiliate commissions, I’m not going to tally everything up because I never do normally but the stats are about as following:

Kontera: $30
Text-Link-Ads: $40
Azoogle: $45
Propser: $200
Adsense: $300
COPEAC: $650 +
HydraNetwork: $1,200+
Rent Income: $1,625
MaxBounty: $2,200+
CPAEmpire: $6,150+

Total is alittle over $12,000+ GROSS, so far this month. Fantastic. Here are some screenshots below:

Life is great, and it should be, if you watched me earn $10,000/month by Dec 31st, I made a decision. The decision is the death of all other options, once it was made it was a done deal, there was no doubt in my mind that I was going to hit it, it was already done when I set the goal. I don’t just set goals like most people do, I’ve studied it, I’ve practiced it, I’ve learned from other people who were good at goal settings. See if you can get to the point where EVERYTIME, and i mean EVERYTIME you can 100% succesfully hit your goals, then you know you are good at setting goals, become a master goal setter and you can achieve anything you want to in life.Someone mentioned you can set goals for the start, so you’ll land among the high areas or whatever. I don’t do that, I set a goal a definition action and hit it.Do you know how powerful this is if you really think about it, because I’ve goten better over the years I’ve developed a system that I can 100% hit my goals everytime, I’m not talking about ridiclous goals, I wouldn’t set those, because I couldn’t hit them you see.

The greatest value in life isn’t what you get, the greatest value in life is what you become, and although its great that I’m now earning what only 11% the US population earns, what is more important is the person I’ve become to do this. Being able to hit your goals 100% everytime gives you the power to do some amazing things, imagine being able to say, I want to earn $50,000/month, in 6 months, and you do it, or I want to earn $1,000,000/year and you can do it, because you got good.Get to that level of goal setting, it takes some time, and maybe another blog post I’ll talk about setting goals, I do some pretty serious stuff and it goes several of the books on how to set goals, here are just a few of what I do. First before setting goals, I myself must know my mission in life, what I want to become, what is the ultimate thing I wish to do, this is what you can ask yourself, “what would the last words at my funeral be said about me”, what would I like them to say. See in able to get leverage on yourself, hitting your goals has to be apart of your overall mission and what you are trying to do in life, their needs to be a higher purpose than the goal itself, and the goal is just aiding the mission.

First you decide what you want you’d like to be remembered as, and then you set goals that help satisfy your overall mission.They have to ‘fit’ so to say, to your overall personal dreams and passions.One of the most basic things is to write down your goals, so many people say they have their goals in their head, theses are novice goal setters, weak goal setters, more so dreamers. The dreams are in your head, and dreams written on a piece of paper with a definite action plan and end date is a goal, dreams on paper with deadlines.Also my goals always have an action plan, a step by step what I need to do, remember if you followed me, it was to earn $1,000 my first month in AM, $2,500 in my 2nd, $5,000 in my 3rd, and finally $10,000 on my 4th.

Then you break down your goals into little chunks, the journey of a million miles starts with a single step. You can break large goals down into smaller ones, first the time intervals, but then u can do, I need to hit $33/day to hit $1,000 a month.To hit $33/day, I need to have maybe 1-2 campaigns going. To get 1-2 campaigns going I need to talk to my affiliate manager to see what offers to run, I need to setup my Y! MSN and Google accounts, I need to spend x amount of time to setup each campaign. You can literally break down a goal to do $1,000,000/year into hourly steps, even by the minute. Think of writing a book, that’d take forever, and believe me I’ve attempted, and failed. Its alot of work, but could you write one page a day? Ok, even one page a day can be tedious, how about one paragraph a day? Thats really easy to manage. All the sudden one paragraph a day for a year and you have a 100+ page book. You could even do, just one sentence a/day.

What I’m saying is do this in your goals, also you need to write down your goals where you see them everyday, I assume your on the computer alot a goal right infront of your computer screen where you see it everyday. My fail proof plan is I also have one above my head when I sleep at night, so when I goto bed I know what my objective is and subconciounsly while sleeping my mind is thinkin about my goal, and when I wakeup, the first thing I see is my goal, my objective, and it fits into my life plan.Also when writing goals put it into the present, a weak goal writer will say, I want to get $1,000/month next month.A better goal writer will say, “I’AM EARNING $1,000/month by JAN 31st, 2008”, putting it into the presnt, “i’am”, and a definite date, and following that would have each of his steps on what to do.Also the secret is very key here, and from the Think and Grow Rich, one of the most incredible books ever, if you haven’t read it, what are you waiting for? You must read it aloud to yourself in faith, and believe that you have actually accomplished, ‘I’am”, visualize it, see it close ur eyes feel it smell it, be it, put yourself in the state. And you must always 100%, I mean always believe that your going to hit it, the momment you say I can’t your right. Remember, when someone says I’m going to try, I always think to myself, try sounds like lie, don’t try, do and do it right.

And again, do the crazy thing the secret video shows, I visualize myself driving my ferrari just like they do in the video with the sounds and everytime, I walk through my house, it becomes real, so real one-time I bumped into my counter walking around my house in visualization mode.What else can I say, I’m not sure, there is more stuff I do, but as you see, goal setting for me isn’t just writing about a piece of paper and forgetting about it, I even put goal boards in my poster, vision boards all around my room, even cards in my wallet sometime that remind me, get leverage on yourself, thats another thing I do, I publicly declared my goal, you think I’m going to make a fool out of myself infront of everyone on this blog? I put a challenge to myself, and my WHY gets stronger to succeed.And of course, none of the goals I set are crazy, they are good strong goals, very good production compared to most people in terms of building wealth, but I like the idea of hitting goals everytime 100% of the time, I’ve used my method which maybe I’ll explain more indepth sometime and I’ve been able to say succesfully for the past 3-4x I’ve used it the exact way I’ve beendoing it, I’ve hit my goals 100% of the time.

Whats the next goal? I haven’t decided yet, see the words, once I decided, I mean really decide, the death of all other options, for me, its a done deal, failiure isn’t an option.

I diddn’t mean to make this into a long blog post about goals, but hey, 5 days ago I hit over $10,000/month, I’m already on track to doing almost $20,000 by the end of this month on a serious note, once things get going, they really get going. If your stuck in the mud you don’t crawl outa the mud, you gota EXPLODE outa the mud. And you can explode out of the mud only with MASSIVE ACTIVITY, because it is with massive activity you gain mommentum, once you learn focus and mommentum and goal setting it is amazing what you can do.Understand, the greatest entrepreneurs have momment, the only way to get mommentum on something is to have focus, the two go together. Focus, such an easy concept, but how many people do you know really have focus. I’m unforunate to say most even my internet friends dont have focus, I only maybe a few that have focus, it took awhile for me to figure out, but I use to do all kinds of opporunties. There are so many things to do but it is the focus on one thing, that will make it work.

Focus, such an easy concept, but another skill like goal setting that becoming master at takes time.I can now say I’m super focused which is why my income gone up, I spend 90% of my time working on my web 2.0 project and AM funds it, its perfect combination and you’ll see why later, I have no distractions, people ask me to help them do more projects, I can’t, my focus is laser sharp, and I’am a sprinter gaining mommentum faster, and faster, if I turn my head I might stumble and loose my mommentum. Focus, so key, grayhat, amazing focus, one thing I admire about him he has focused so hardcore on affiliate marketing, it is ungodly what he does now, hes got it. I’m asking you to get it. So What is Next?Well AM is going great, Web 2.0 is going even better. The server I purchased is full operational, I’m in process of picking up 3 more servers, 2 slaves, and 1 dev server. The dev server is simply a server I can mess around with the configuration, the slave servers are to support heavy database reads. It works like this.

HOW TO – Affiliate Marketing with PPC Overview [VIDEO]

Sun, 11 Nov 2007 00:00:00 GMT

Here is a video I compiled for anyone who is interested in affiliate marketing with PPC Marketing. This video was made for the people whom I work with, however, if your on the web your welcome to take a look to. Others have shared information with me that has helped me, and I can do the favor by helping others out with information that has affected me by sharing it with others.

So if you find a good idea here, share it, sharing makes you bigger.

If you enjoyed this video, and appreciated the information and would like to get started, if you were to use my referal link on the right side of my blog to the affiliate network, I would much greatly appreciate it. Also, on the right side of my blog are other affiliate networks that you can join, they all have my referral links, I appreciate it if you were to help me, after I’ve put together alot of information to help any random person on the internet whom I haven’t had a chance yet. This is WesMahler, video, enjoy.

Did you watch this whole video? If you can, drop a comment and tell me what your thoughts were, thanks so much. And again, if you decide to get started, if you were to use my referral links on the right side of my blog, it’d be much appreciated. Have a super fantastic day, because I’m having an incredible day.

Disclaimer: This is the most basic, and blunt way how to do affiliate marketing, I’m showing you the DIRECT LINK method, linking directly to the affiliate ad, there is alot more advanced stuff, like using landing pages, dynamic keyword insertions, tracking conversions, using subids, optimizing campaigns and so much more. But this enough to get you started.

Although the video shows CPAEmpire, we now have our own affiliate network: Revolution202 – you can sign up here.

Old WorkStation [Video]

Tue, 06 Nov 2007 00:00:00 GMT

Here is a short video on the place I’ve been working out of for some while, it is a short walk through of my old office that I won’t be working in any longer. Wes Mahler unedited, no makeup, or no cleaning the room before shoot, this is how it looks!

October Overview – Progress Towards $10,000 a month and much more.

Thu, 01 Nov 2007 00:00:00 GMT

October Income – Progress to $10,000/month

Well things have been a rocking, and those who have taken the advantage, the people who are action oriented know what is going on.

I’m still on my goal to making $10,000/month and everything is going planned, how did I do for October? My goal in affiliate marketing was $1000/month by Sept 30th, [accomplished], it was $2,500/month by October 30th, and $5,000/month by November 30th.

To accomplish big goals, its good to break things down, breaking down goals into smaller goals to reach an objective is how to make a big task, seem easy with little tasks.

Well even though my of my campaigns were deactivated so I could switch them over to Tracking202, I still haven’t got them done, but I still pulled in past my goal. This month roughly:

Rent: $1625
RotaryEngineIllustrated.com & RebuildingRotaryEngines.com ~ $500
- adsense
- direct ad sale
- kontera
- TLA
Prosper ~ $100
Dividends ~ $33
Affiliate Marketing : $3423 personal commissions

So I’m pleased, it puts me around $5600 + this month in gross income. Which means I doubled my income in 2 months. Although its easy to double income when the income is low. In the affiliate marketing world people would probably laugh at my commissions, but hey, from starting only on 8/23/07 and to 10/31/07 with a total commissions at $4393 in a little over 2 months, for just starting?

**Prolegic Enterprises
**
This friday I’am signing more of the prolegic enterprises ownership over to my partners who are going to run with the business, this will free me up as I mentioned in my previous post to work full time on my web 2.0 project. On friday I’m signing over the bank accounts, and the domain names over to the business partners, and then I’m almost 80% out, but I still have some help I need to aid in before I’m completly out. What takes long time to get in, more often than not, takes a long time to get out of.

**My House
**
Just today, I have officially signed over my house to a property management company here in Portland, they will be taking care of everything they charge $130/month to manage my house, and 1/2 of the 1st months rent of a new move-in when someone moves in. I have 4 people renting my house, unfortunately on paper only 2 of the bedrooms are legal bedrooms, because the basement windows are egressed. I will be doing some work to the house should be a couple thousand dollars to legalize the windows downstairs. With a property management company they cannot legally rent out a 4 bedroom house, if on paper its only two, unforuntately, I’m going to take a hit here.

**Affiliate Marketing Mastermind Group
**
The affiliate marketing group we’ve been working with is seriously doing incredible. I’m quite in awe how well everyone is doing. Every who has started, and actually DID WORK, I mean did SOMETHING, that attended our online conference has already made more than $100 within 2 week period.

There is basically a 100% success ratio for everyone who has started, everyone who is doing it, is already making money. Several of the guys were doing $10/day pretty quickly, now there up to $20-$30/day, and some are even at $50/day ALREADY. within about 2 weeks.
**
That is incredible, to generate an extra PASSIVE INCOME STREAM of $50/day commmissions within less than 2 weeks work?**

The reason they are able to move fast is we have a 2-3 hour conference explaining everything, how it works, the tools, a support team, help, a collaboration center to aid out. We are able to move much faster when someone who is already doing something can help us out. Having a mentor can dramatically increase your learning curve by several years.

So everyone is doing awesome, I may be closing off the group soon, if your still interested you can contact me if you wish to join. However I’m getting pretty full and not sure how much I will be able to do the introduction soon. What I’m mostly interested in is making a real mastermind group with a group of 10-20 people, which is about how many people who are in the group now, all contacted, via instant messenger, to make $10,000/month individually, a powerhouse of association.

Law of Association – You become the combined average of the five people you associate with the most, and the books you read.

San Francisco and Silicon Valley

I’m currently back in Portland right now finalizing my business with prolegic enterprises, and my house [done]. I attended the Silicon Valley CodeCamp, the first of many networking events I will be attending down in Silicon Valley.

I did successfully find a place it took awhile, I needed a place that didn’t require a 1 year lease, and that had parking. Parking is not very available in San Fran, and EVERYONE wants a 1 year lease. But I did find a place downtown, check this out. $1500/month for a studio, included is parking, on a 3-month lease. 15 hundred a month for a studio. I love it, it costs more, because there is a lot more money to be made there, its all relative.

Here are some pictures from codecamp, you know your at codecamp when u see free parking by google. “I must be in the right place!” Thanks to my buddy Steven Truong, who told me about this event. He is another internet entrepreneur and has a blog. check him out too.

My black honda s2000 all the way down to Silicon Valley from Portland for the win!

I met a lot of people there, unfortunately there wasn’t as many entrepreneurs as I expected. Most of them were microsoft .net programmers, working for big companies. But I did manage to meet 3 other entrepreneurs. One had a software product they sold to big financial companies for $100,000 every quarter, they had a bunch of clients, so he was making money. He programmed it himself, marketed it, now they have referrals and he has employees program it, he is still the lead developer. [awesome, i met someone who does what I want to do].

Alot of people have linkedin profiles, not facebook profiles, so I’m going to be making a linked in profile soon. I did meet another gentlemen I’m getting together with when I move down to san fran permantently next week, he moved from New York, New York, to Silicon Valley to start a web business. The strangest thing ever too, so he just moved like 2 weeks ago to DO EXACTLY what I want to do, start a web company in silicon valley moved his whole family down here, hes interested in adsense so were getting together. We started talking because we had the same laptop, I HAVE NEVER met anyone with the same laptop as me, it is a really unique laptop an ultra-portable one that was pretty expensive, and it was so interested first time I meet him he has the same laptop, that none else has, and were both moving to the silicon valley in the same month to start an internet company, and now were meeting together. Incredible.

You know what a FREAKIN AWESOME BLOG TIP is, that I have never seen, and don’t really care to much because I don’t wana be another wannabe blogger who copies what other people do. But

PICTURES, make a good blog, I bet u don’t see that tip. why, A PICTURES SAY A THOUSNAD……

WORDS.

**Try more pictures in your blog. ps: if your not blogging, ur missing out, its the greatest networking tool 2nd to facebook and social networking sites.
**
Wes, Why are you moving to San Francisco?

I’m actually surprised at how many times I get this question. Silicon Valley is absolutely the best place to start an internet company, all of the resources are down there all of the big names. I get asked this so much, yes, I could start a internet business out of my house in Portland. Yes I could even do it in Alaska.

There are SO MANY networking events in Silicon Valley for internet entrepreneurs, the angel investors are down there, alot of money is floating around, almost 75% of the startups you’ll see making it big on the internet are located in silicion valley, the big events are always down there. Google is down there, apple is down there, facebook is down there, alexa.com [I drove by it without even knowing] is down there, prosper.com is down there, techcrunch is down there, digg.com is down there, meebo is down there. There all freakin down there.

So I’m there eating in some random restaurant, and guys are talking web across the table. Everyone drives around in BMWs and porches, or higher-end cars, when most of the housing in san fran is over 1 million, people have spendable income more than Portland.

In short if you still don’t understand, you really should check it out, just look around and see all the successful entrepreneurs on the internet, and MORE OFTEN THAN NOT there in the silicon valley.

You can gamble in most states, but Las Vegas is where the action is. MAJOR DIFFERENCE
if you want to be an actor, there is probably a studio in your town too, but LA, AND HOLLYWOOD is where u want to be.

TECH IS NO DIFFERENT, even though its on the WEB. u can gamble anywhere, but LAS VEGAS is where the action is at. Silicon Valley is where the action is at for web 2.0 internet entrepreneurs, period, ask any big web 2.0 entrepreneur and I bet they’ll agree with you. I plan on meeting many people who have very successful internet businesses, and I forgot to mention, there are TONS of programmers down there. You can even go into an internet cafe and its loaded by wifi programmers. This one company went in, asked if anyone knew PHP or something like that, a couple people stood up, and hired them on the spot in a freaking wifi cafe.

Silicon Valley, is the spot for internet entrepreneurs. I’m going to make it happen, so I’m there.

Decision, the death of all other options. I’m going to do it right this time, I’ve failed enough I’m almost ready, maybe not quite yet, but getting to the point with activitiy knowledge, learned knowledge, books, conversations, education, networks, that I’m ready or almost ready, to build a company to over one million dollars a year in sales like Ryan Allis.

If WesMahler doesn’t convince you, heres the first blurp on silcion valley on wikipedia:

Silicon Valley is the southern part of the San Francisco Bay Area in Northern California in the United States. The term originally referred to the region’s large number of silicon chip innovators and manufacturers, but eventually came to refer to all the high-tech businesses in the area; it is now generally used as a metonym for the high-tech sector. Despite the development of other high-tech economic centers throughout the United States, Silicon Valley continues to be the leading high-tech hub because of its large number of engineers and venture capitalists.

Notable companies

Thousands of high technology companies are headquartered either in or near Silicon Valley; among those, the following are in the Fortune 1000:

Adobe Systems

Advanced Micro Devices (AMD)

Apple Inc.

eBay

Google

Hewlett Packard

Intel’s headquarters, the Robert Noyce building

Intuit

Oracle

Yahoo!

Additional notable companies headquartered (or with a significant presence) in Silicon Valley include (some defunct or subsumed):

3Com (headquartered in Marlborough, Massachusetts)
Adaptec
Amdahl
Aricent
Atari
Atmel
BEA Systems
Cypress Semiconductor
Computer Literacy Bookstore
Foundry Networks
Fujitsu (headquartered in Tokyo, Japan)
Gaia Online
Hitachi Global Storage Technologies
Knight-Ridder (acquired by The McClatchy Company)
McAfee
Memorex (acquired by Imation and moved to Cerritos, California)
Netscape (acquired by AOL)
NeXT Computer, Inc. (acquired by Apple)
Nintendo
OPPO
Palm, Inc.
PalmSource, Inc. (acquired by ACCESS)
PayPal (now part of eBay)
Rambus
Redback Networks
SAP AG (headquartered in Walldorf, Germany)
Silicon Graphics
Sony
Tesla Motors
Tellme Networks
TiVo
VA Software (Slashdot)
WebEx
VeriSign
Veritas Software (acquired by Symantec)
VMware (acquired by EMC)
YouTube (acquired by Google)

Silicon Valley is also home to the high-tech superstore retail chain Fry’s Electronics.

So Whats Next, For November

Here comes November, well, on the 1st I can move into my new apartment, so in early November, I will officially be moved into my new apartment down in San Fran.

I will generate more than $5,000 / month via affiliate marketing in November, to reach my goal of $10,000/month income by the end of the year.

There is already some web 2.0 entrepreneur networking events that I have planned for November this month.

I may be diluting two of my Corporations, TempName ONline, Inc and Jingyee, Inc, and converting them both into an LLC. And then creating a new C CORPORATION, in CA or OR, I haven’t decided yet which state, to build a big business out of.

The affiliate marketing group most members will be at about $500/month+ easily this next month, and we will be going on stage 2 of our conferences, which is more in depth dynamic keyword insertion, tracking keywords, optimization, utilizing landing pages, and much more fun stuff.

I just got an iphone so in San Fran, I won’t get lost anymore. My dad just ran into my s2000, so were getting it repaired on wednesday, and then on thursday November, I’m in San Fran.

I found abunch of events in san fran, by simply tools like Meetup.com Eventful.com, everything is at your finger tips, if you haven’t looked, there are probably events in your area already that ur missing out in. I went to events in Portland, but in Silcion Valley its like x20.

Oh I’ll include this, they just sent me another check, I thought I had switched over to direct depoists, this is income earned from 10/1/07 to 10/15/07.

want to get some checks like this, AIM me at chinkeyez 09. Don’t email me, please. You can join our group for a little bit longer. Its going to be cut off soon, if you hate AIM, use meebo. if u refuse to use aim, sry, you can’t join our group then!Oh and I guess last thing, my dedicated server is now all set up, I’m going to be switching tracking202 over to dedicated hosting, came just in time. Anyone using tracking202 I’ll send out a mass email before we switch over to new server, there should only be LIMITED downtime, at unpeak hour, for sure. You’ll be notified so you know when it’ll happen.

Progress, Goals Modification, Affiliate Marketing, Checks in the Mail, Silicon Valley, Moving, New Life, Massive Activity To Produce Massive Results

Mon, 22 Oct 2007 00:00:00 GMT

Its 1am right now, I’m getting ready to head down to San Francisco tomorrow morning to look for a place to live. I’ve been wanting to go down there for over a year now and it is even bad of me to not have done it earlier, but I’m extremely focused right now and going to do what I have to do, and that is build a large C Corporation Web 2.0 Internet Company that has a highly scalable, systematic, duplictable internet product that will sign up people for a monthly subscription basis, build a huge client base employee people and build a company that does over one million dollars in gross sales. Since I made this blog over a year ago, I have never changed my above description because it is my mission. So I’m going down tomorrow in my new Honda S2000 to look for a studio or 1bedroom apartment in the heart of San Francisco.

San Francisco is like the coolest location ever, just looking at an aerial view, it is surrounded on 3 sides by water, San Francisco has the most expensive real estate in the united states last time I checked, more expensive than new york, When u look at it from aerial, you’ll see wow thats a cool spot.

All I need is a roof over my head, laptop, wifi, food, car, business suit, and a list of all of the networking events in San Francisco for internet entrepreneurs to develop this company. All I’m going to do all day is program and goto networking events, read business books on building businesses, and associate with other internet entrepreneurs down there who have the lifestyle I want already and have them mentor me, in return I’m also going to help other people do it in the process.

In order to accomplish what I need to do, I need to focus and figure out my objectives, my goals are now going to be somewhat shifted now for a change of focus, the goals I had were mainly own three (3) pieces of real estate before the end of the year, and make $10,000/month by the end of the year. I can still do both of them and was working towards them both, I’m acutally still going to do $10,000/month by the end of the year, with affiliate marketing, as I had thought, I’m getting up to the extremely quickly and well on my way to reaching it before November ends.

What I’m going to drop out was my goal to own three pieces of real estate property, instead of doing that, which it’s ultimate goal is just to generate more investments, more personal net worth. Instead, I’m just going to build a lot more net worth in a more faster paced net worth building activity, entrepreneurship. Entrepreneurship is harder than real estate, it takes alot more skills and it generally pays a whole lot more than real estate investors. Real estate investors do extremely well, but the entrepreneurs that have the skill to generate a systematic big buisness that works whether or not their working on it without them is the person who in my mind creates the wealth.

So instead of owning three properties in which I could make some change, I’d rather make a fortune doing what I’m most passionate about. So I’m dropping the real estate goals and going to build my company instead. In able to get what we really want, we need to focus, and to focus like the picture below, we need to be zoomed into the thing we want to focus on. And we can only focus on the thing we want, when we remove everything else, your eyes can not focus on two things at once, the mind isn’t much different. So I’m doing some cutting out in order to do what I need to do, heres the plan.

I’ve started to realize one of the most important traits of a good entrepreneur is the silly skill of focus, which every entrepreneur by nature [who seeks opportunity] can loose focus in a second, and that second can turn into forever until we realize what we had lost. When I returned to school as a sophmore, I decided to drop out and focus on building my company, I dropped all my classes, and made plans to move to San Fran this was in Feb, I was getting better at focus and it was the only thing I wanted to do was just focus, one time, on something that I really wanted to do. I failed, I picked up another project that has become increasingly profitable, our rental sites with Prolegic Enterprises.

My good business who I loved doing business with, this guy is one of the most motivated people I’ve ever worked, and always is active in building the business with, Marques, is sharp, and he came to me with the idea to build this database of rental sites. I liked the idea, but I lost my focus I ended up working on it now over 8 months, I originally planned to work on it one month and just get a small percentage, it turned into a long-time project and has just been hurting me ever since because I haven’t been able to do what my blog says I’m going to do.

So I came to my partners and I’m relieving my position in the company handing over all of the equity I built over 8 months to the guys, we have another programmer that is resuming my place, he is very good and works at Intel. Long-Story short I’m freeing myself from things that remove my focus, the business I will still probably help out Prolegic Enterprises, because once your in something for some long time just like when you leave a job you need to give leave of notice and phase out, it will be some time before I’m completely phased out because I programmed the site, and because of that there will always be questions for some time asking me how I programmed it, and I would still want to see the company to succeed and lead ideas. But it will not be my focus point. To get different results, we have to do different things.

With my property in Portland, I’m moving it over to a property management company, I just looked at the property management company signs for buildings in my general area, one place is asking $130/month, and 1/2 of the first months move in on a new tenant to manage the building. DEAL! So many people say just manage it yourself, its easy [yeah, its easy it doesn’t pay much], plus as someone who wants to have freedom we need to put in the systems in place to create income without being there, self-managers are self-employed people who don’t understand that my time managing my house for rent is not as worth as it for me to build a highly scalable internet company in silicon valley.

I’m going to also tell all of my other real estate investment partners I was working with that I’m not going to be doing the deal with them any more, and I hope they still do a deal, but I gota do, what I gota do, and I need to do it. What does that leave me with, total freedom, like this bird below soaring through the air doing what he feels like because there is no hold on him, he can go wherever he likes because he has nothing holding him down to pursue what he wants.

So Here Is What I’m Going To Do…

Ok my last months income was around $3,000, which about $1000 of that was about net income. That isn’t enough to live on, this month as of today 21st, I’m alraedy at $5,000 gross income because i’ve done over this month alone $3000 in affiliate marketing, which aproximately half of that is to live on. Affiliate Marketing has been going pretty well and I’m confident at this rate that it will generate enough money for me to sustain off of.

Is Affiliate Marketing another distraction, yes matter of fact it is, but in a way it is a sort of unavoidable distraction as of now. My main goal with affiliate marketing is to generate $20,000/month passively, I’m doing affiliate marketing to make a living, I’m building a giant C Corporation to make a fortune. The problem with a job is it gets in the way of getting rich.

Affiliate Marketing when I was working on it was growing by almost 200% a week, I have since just deactivated all of my campaigns which I promote via PPC marketing because I just generated a tracking program.

Anyways last week with affiliate marketing I was doing over $280/day for a whole week, I have since disabled all of my marketing and redoing them to re-route through my tracking202 service. Tracking202 was originally designed just for my own personal use, but because my friends and I (over 10 people) that work with me are doing affiliate marketing I have made it so individuals can use the program to, and its completely free tool. My goal is not to make a bunch of money with this tracking tool, that isn’t my focus, but for now its available to the public in BETA. It is currently on a shared hosting right now but I’m moving it to my high-end dedicated service I purchased and will be hosting it on their beginning this week. With a highly intensive tracking program that redirects peoples paid traffic to their affiliate landing pages, [as an internet entrepreneur it is very important to make sure your product is working 100% at all time, otherwise you loose your clients, so it must be on a dedicated hosting, good thing I bought one last month and it’ll be ready on Monday].

We are currently building an internet affiliate marketing mastermind group, as the below post, if your interested in Affiliate Marketing please contact me by posting a comment, or you may contact me directly via AIM at : Chinkeyez 09. For now we will be working with new people, although I had no idea there is alot of interest in it, and I can only show so many people, lately several people a week have wanted to see how affiliate marketing has worked and I’ve had a 1-2 hours ession with all of them and not only that I invite them into our group to associate with other affiliate markterers, provide free access to tools, training, mentorship or whatever to get into the buisness.

If your interested in affiliate marketing please contact as soon as possible, because in a month I probably won’t have the time to show anyone new how any of this stuff works, and the team all starting at $0/day, but [now some are at $20/day] already within a week, are growing together. Groups need to associate with like minded people going in the same direction, some groups are futher ahead, some are waiting to be developed. The high schoolers of tommorow will have their own entrepreneur groups, you are welcome to join ours as it is in our formation of over 10+ people who we work with and do the business.

Every week there is a boat going to become rich, and there is people aboard that boat. All the time there are boats going to the land of richness. I’m welcoming you aboard our boat to richness, you just need to help us paddle. and we’ll get their together.

So anyways, things are exciting this post is pretty long, I’ll end it here. I gota wake up and drive all day tommorow, I have my stereo system hooked up with my ipod that has audio books on all different personal development topics, and I’ll be in drivetime university for 8 hours tommorow on the way down to San Francisco, maybe with the top down. Till next time.

PS: to anyone who has left me a comment about learning affiliate marketing last time, I have got your comments, and I have emailed all of you guys, please just take the initative and grab me next time I log on to aim, lets use AIM, because the team uses AIM: Chinkeyez 09 is my screen name, we will be hosting another how to do affiliate marketing 101 via PPC marketing on AIM in our chatroom conference this tuesday. Join us, I’ll email everyone too if I don’t hear from you on tuesday, all week I will be looking for my place to live in San Fran so i’m shooting for tuesday night PST.

If I help 10 people make $10,000/month, you know I’ll know how to make $10,000/month. You get everything you want in life if you just help enough people get what they want – zig zigler. How can I help?

If you found a good idea here, pass it along to someone else. Who knows how far good ideas go. If a good idea touched you share it with another. Sometimes people try to do things for me in return, all I truly want is the abilitly if I can help someone, is them to help someone else. Because when I was in process of becoming a “mature” personally developed [what I consider] being, someone helped me along the way, share with me some ideas, really got me thinking, you know that booked help me out, pass the gift of learning to others. And learning is self-interest, if you share an idea with 10 people, they hear the idea once, but you hear it 10 times, it is more beneficial to share.

Lets make some money :P, I’ll cya in Frisco!

Wow, Just Wow. Month 2 Progress. Did I already hit $10,000/month?

Sat, 13 Oct 2007 00:00:00 GMT

Wow, just wow is what I’ll call the title of this blog post.

Things have been going super incredible fantastic. Affiliate Marketing CRAZY MONEY.

I haven’t posted my results yet for week 4, but I’ll post some results today. and It’ll give you a rough estimate on where I’m. I’ll just do the end of month result this month, because I might have just already hit near $10,000/month.

As I believed earlier, my affiliate income has completely skyrocketed, I’ve had about a 200% increase in gross income every week. Here is my statistics:

$10,000/month is only about $333/day.

With affiliate marketing brining in over $280 today so far. [day not even over at time of posting this]. Rent estimated daily income is $50/day, and then include adsense $10+/day, and then other stuff. But just stopping their, if today this thing again, can we say I’m on track?

Interested in Affiliate Marketing? Contact Me, my buddy GrayHat showed me, this guy is PRO. You’ll get everything you want in life if you just help enough people help get what they want.

The key to success is through helping other people becoming successful, thats why GrayHat associates with others, has helped several people get started in the industry. The one who makes the most money, is the servant leader who helps other people make a living.

I’m wiling to work with you, and join myself and other as go for $10,000/month, now $20,000/month in affiliate marketing. Contact me via here, lets talk, I love to network anyways. Thanks to GrayHat, and JonWaraas, Doug my affiliate managers, for showing me some things.

Daily Affiliate Statistics From 2007-07-01 to 2007-10-13.

Date	Comm
2007-08-23	$0.00
2007-08-24	$0.00
2007-08-25	$4.00
2007-08-26	$0.00
2007-08-27	$0.00
2007-08-28	$0.00
2007-08-29	$8.00
2007-08-30	$12.00
2007-08-31	$4.00
2007-09-01	$0.00
2007-09-02	$0.00
2007-09-03	$0.00
2007-09-04	$20.00
2007-09-05	$8.00
2007-09-06	$16.00
2007-09-07	$8.00
2007-09-08	$20.00
2007-09-09	$20.00
2007-09-10	$12.00
2007-09-11	$4.00
2007-09-12	$16.00
2007-09-13	$12.75
2007-09-14	$17.00
2007-09-15	$8.50
2007-09-16	$12.75
2007-09-17	$34.00
2007-09-18	$25.50
2007-09-19	$63.75
2007-09-20	$59.50
2007-09-21	$42.50
2007-09-22	$29.75
2007-09-23	$63.75
2007-09-24	$55.25
2007-09-25	$140.50
2007-09-26	$54.00
2007-09-27	$40.50
2007-09-28	$40.50
2007-09-29	$49.50
2007-09-30	$67.50
2007-10-01	$94.25
2007-10-02	$57.75
2007-10-03	$137.50
2007-10-04	$93.75
2007-10-05	$66.50
2007-10-06	$122.25
2007-10-07	$78.25
2007-10-08	$96.00
2007-10-09	$109.50
2007-10-10	$76.50
2007-10-11	$207.20
2007-10-12	$136.95
2007-10-13	$288.75
Totals:	$2,534.65

Week 4 Progress – Month 1 Results – Goals, The Double Edge Sword

Mon, 01 Oct 2007 00:00:00 GMT

I’am in Columbus, OH right now, it is 8:21AM, I haven’t been able to get much work done here because I’ve mostly been visiting with family. However, I may be doing a real estate deal with my uncle now, and canceling one of the ones I had in Corvallis due to difficulty of renting it out in a college town when everyone has found a place to stay in.

So how was week 4, lets run the numbers.

Adsense: $72.72

CPAEmpire: $425 [~100% increase from last week]

Kontera: $9.47

TLA: ~$13

Prosper:~$23

BeaverRent ?? [not even going to count it any more]

Overall everything is going pretty goal, I hit my first objective to obtain $35/day gross income via affiliate marketing, I have accomplished that for September, next month is to obtain $85/day gross income via affiliate marketing. Shouldn’t be to hard, I was able to hit over $100+ in one day this week so I know it is not that far away.

For the month, here is the income, I’am no longer including BeaverRent income into my goal to $10,000/month, more so because I’m not sure if it is even making what I projected earlier this week, so I’m going to just going to leave it out.

Income for Sept 2007

COPEAC: $4.75

GetClicky: $19.99

TLA: ~$45

Kontera: $52

Propser: ~$100

Adsense: $313 [A huge drop lately]

CPAEmpire: $941

Rent: $1625

Total it comes out to about $3,100/month passive residual gross. Cool, so this first month I was able to almost generate an additional $1000/month via AM. Next month, I will hit $2500/month via AM, which will boost my monthly income to $4,500ish. The following money after that, my AM income will grow to $5000/month, and will put me around $7000/month passive income by the end of November.

The other $3000/month I have determined I will achieve via rental properties.

Goals the double edged swords. One of my goals is to own/co-own three (3) pieces of real estate by the end of the year. I’am all ready to go to purchase a building down in corvallis, however, I’m looking at them, and I could potentially buy one right now and fulfill my goal of having 3 buildings but it would seriously handicap me. Because of the market if I was to buy right now in a college town I would be sitting on a vacant house for sometime, in that my goal to purchase one house down there before the end of the year would put me in a financially bad situation.

Sometimes trying to hit a goal, can cost to much. In that you may hit something, but at what cost, was it worth it? There are many goals that can hinder you, and goals that you hit but at the cost of not having any family interact, or the cost of not taking care of your health, or at the cost of buying a building just to own 3, even though it would be a negative outcome for your finances?

So I’m running into the dilemma, 3 months left, and my house in corvallis is not going to work. It would be easy to say, and have a lazy mind, turn it off and say wes, this just isn’t going to work, maybe I just won’t buy three because…… No, shut up, is what you gota say to yourself, and instead I need to find another way. It will be difficult, but hard, I always have the how can I attitude, so you can immediately take a situtation and look for ways to make it work. It is going to now be extremely hard for me to purchase 3 buildings before the end of the year, but I’m going to make it happen.

Keeping an open mind, I’m here in Ohio and I actually just spoke with my uncle, and together we now may just purchase a house in Portland, OR and do a 20% downpayment, the investment will cost around 40k down payment, I will split the down payment between us. This will give me the abilitly to get prequalified to purchase a non-owner occupied investment property at 20% down, and buy something in a even more appreciating market with a market that it is easier to rent it out in.

I’m calling my mortgage broker today and see what I can do, my other friend from the military just arrived in Portland today, I will meet with him on Wednesday, and we will be getting going with him to purchase a house between us, and another friend, which will be the 3rd. So always keep an open mind, so goals can be a double edged sword, they can do good, but they can also do bad.

Here is a tip: If you set goals, and you don’t hit them, it can hurt you. Setting goals and not hitting them is like lying to yourself, making commitments and not following through. Have you ever set a goal, missed it, and then set it again next month, only to miss it again. See everytime you miss a goal you become a goal failiure in someone who is unable to set goals, and misses them everytime and then just doesn’t ever seem to hit goals. The goals are elusive and they escape from you, setting a goal you can’t hit, might as well not set a goal at all. Everytime we fail a goal it throws off our pysche, and it becomes a negative, because we look back at all the times we have failed to hit our goals, and it becomes what we do best, failing goals. That is why we need to have a goal process that we have developed ourself in a way that you can hit your goals 100% of the time every time, I have set my goals in that way I’ll blog about it later.

It is bad to set goals and not hit them, because it starts the process of failing your goals everytime. Its not a positive, its a negative, and can, and does hinder from ever being able to confidential believe in yourself to be able to hit goals and accomplish them.

So this month went great for AM, it went horrible for my real estate goals, first buying a building that I couldn’t rent out, so we pulled out, and then come to the realization that for my past 2 months effort to buy something in Corvallis, another city, if I do it now before the end of the year, its going to hurt me. So I have to re-change my plan and now shoot for reorganizing goals, new game plan, and take immediate action. Massive activity to produce massive results.

Say Hello My Dedicated Friend

Thu, 27 Sep 2007 00:00:00 GMT

I just got my dedicated server today, came in a huge box. Got it and drove down to Corvallis, and dropped it off at where it will be located. This bad boy is going to run my dedicated web 2.0 server, I can’t wait till it gets bogged down so I can upgrade to two servers, its going to be a strong foundation to build a blazing web 2.0 application on. If you have a strong foundation, you can go way way up.

I spent over $1,800 on this thing, just paid for it. You can rent them, but I’m passionate about hating to pay rent, why would I pay someone rent on someone else’s server so I pay off their server for them when I can afford to just buy it outright. Below are the specs on this guy, there are 4 hard drives in it, if one fails you can swap it in and out, called hot swap, even while its running. So if one crashes, the others are still going. The thing is pretty heavy and pretty long, I believe its noisy. Hosting is going to run about $125/month, I realize thats expensive, but I’m getting more than hosting, a lot of additional hands on support on call and stuff like that. Anyways should be good, I’ll be leaving on a plane to Ohio in 3 hours to visit family for the weekend, visit family when your able to.

(1)SDR-5015P-TRB

SERVER CHASSIS (Black Chassis version)	Supermicro 5015P-TRB Black Barebone w/ (integrated PDSMP-i board)(SY4308)
INTEL® CPU PROCESSOR 1	Intel Pentium D 945 3.4GHz -OEM(CP1119)
IPMI Management Card	No IPMI Management Card(–)
IPMI RISER CARD (Required for AOC-LPIPMI-LANG)	No IPMI RISER CARD (Required for AOC-LPIPMI-LANG)(–)
MEMORY DIMM 1	Kingston 1024MB DDR2 667MHz KVR667D2E5/1G(RM5071)
MEMORY DIMM 2	Kingston 1024MB DDR2 667MHz KVR667D2E5/1G(RM5071)
MEMORY DIMM 3	Kingston 1024MB DDR2 667MHz KVR667D2E5/1G(RM5071)
MEMORY DIMM 4	Kingston 1024MB DDR2 667MHz KVR667D2E5/1G(RM5071)
RAID CONTROLLER	INTEGRATED INTEL ICH7R 4-PORT SATA CONTROLLER (Supports RAID 0, 1, 5, 10)(MC9029)
HOT-SWAP HARD DRIVE 1	Seagate SATAII 250GB(HD1272)
HOT-SWAP HARD DRIVE 2	Seagate SATAII 250GB(HD1272)
HOT-SWAP HARD DRIVE 3	Seagate SATAII 250GB(HD1272)
HOT-SWAP HARD DRIVE 4	Seagate SATAII 250GB(HD1272)
NETWORK CARD	INTEGRATED Dual-port Intel® 82573V Gigabit PCI-Express Ethernet (Tekoa) LAN Controller(MC9040)
VIDEO CARD	INTEGRATED On-board ATI RageXL graphics 8MB Video(MC9001)
RAIL SET	Supermicro PT51 – 1U Mounting Rail Kit(MC9031)
OPERATING SYSTEM	Entry Server – NO O/S(BS1401)
SOFTWARE
KEYBOARD
MOUSE
UPS
LCD KEYBOARD
LCD KEYBOARD KVM
WARRANTY	1 YEAR DEPOT LIMITED SERVER WARRANTY(WRH001)

Leverage It Up

Sun, 23 Sep 2007 00:00:00 GMT

As someone who desires to be a sophisticated investor we should aim to have leveraged assets building, whether it is the leverage of other people working for you, leveraging other peoples’ money, leveraging other peoples ideas, or leveraging yourself with goals and deadlines that make you commit, the way to make fast is to increase your leverage.

If your fortunate enough to have extra cash available it is wise to find a way to leverage your money. A sophisticated investor should at least be earning 50-100% ROIs on their money each year. 5%, 10% are you joking? I have people who tell me they invested 10k into long-term cds at 3%, ok [I realize that every product can serve a specific need at a specific time] but if your below 30 years of age and trying to aggressively build your portfolio you should be aiming 15-20% and upwards. 15-20% is easy ROI, I can get a 20% ROI NET [calculating risk in it to] just online via PROSPER. 20% ROI is good for the noob, but crap for the sophisticated investor.

Aim for a much more leveraged, higher ROI, more tax beneficial and more cash flow.

If you DO NOT have the cash, we need to BORROW it from someone else, and then invest it into something that PAYS MORE THAN WHAT WERE BORROWING IT FOR.

The reason I bring this up because I’m going to be in a cash bind before the end of the year to hit my goals, owning 3 houses, which means I have to buy 2 more with down payments is going to put me out of money. I won’t have enough money to invest, it is good because my cash will be earning 50-100% ROI per YEAR utilizing up towards 500k of other peoples money for my own good.

I may take out a personal loan of 10-20k via the internet, or a bank loan to fund my investment. Did you know even if I paid 20% interest on 20k, I could still make a SIGNIFICANT amount of money paying a high interest rate. INVEST OTHER PEOPLES’ MONEY AT A HIGHER ROI THAN YOU PAY IN INTEREST TO BORROW THE MONEY.

Thats the reason I don’t recommend paying off student loans immediately, they are LOW interest rates, 5%, why would you pay off a student loan at 5% when u can make 20% ROI somewhere else. Think about it. Put it like this.

If you have 10k student loans at 5% interest rate, if you paid that down, just think of it in your mind that paying it off is like investing YOUR 10k at a 5% interest rate. Would you ever invest into something that pays you 5% interest?

If you had 10k in student loans, and just earned 10k and had decided to pay off your student loans at 5% interest, this would probably mean you don’t know how to make more than 5% ROI investing yourself.

Take person A, has 10k in student loans at 5%.
And person B, has 10k in student loans at 5% also.

They both earned 10k cash in the summer.

Person A decides, WOW, I can pay off his student loans, pays off his student loans, he now has no DEBT, and also has NO CASH.

Person B decides, hey 5% interest, thats not crap. I’ll take my 10k and invest at 50% interest. After one year, person B has 15k CASH, he made 5k, and could still pay off his student loan whenever. Year two person B has 20k CASH, and he made 10k so far, now just DOUBLED HIS MONEY, because instead of paying off his student loans at 5%, he was smart and invested his money into something that would pay him SIGNIFICANTLY MORE than the interest he was paying.

I hate all of the financial people that say get out of DEBT, cut up your credit cards. What a bunch of losers, seriously, cutting up your credit cards makes u feel miserable [I’ve done it before], and NOT ALL DEBT IS BAD DEBT.

here is the serious question to ask yourself.

Who is going to get richer, someone who waits to SAVE one million dollars, or someone who BORROWS NOW one million dollars at 10% interest and invests it at 50% interest.

Its like my friend, says he doesnt’ use credit cards. COOL MAN! what u gonna do, buy a house cash? By the time u save up 250k for a house, I’ll already have 10 houses because I borrow other peoples’ money.

So I like to say, “leverage it up!” I want to put my money in leveraged investment vehicles.

I should note, that there are good times to have a safe and slow plan, as the plan I’m currently advocating is a fast high growth, highly leveraged, financial return on an investment so an aggressive wealth building plan. In this plan I’m advocating a highly leveraged, highly debt serviced investments, that means purchasing houses with, little or no money down thus owning an investment with as little cash as possible.

Everyone’s plan is different, have a plan, this one may not be for you, but for me, I want leverage, and lots of it, and that means borrowing lots of money, and using OPM to make me rich.

**Leverage [wikipedia]
**
In finance, leverage is using given resources in such a way that the potential positive or
negative outcome is magnified. It generally refers to using borrowed funds, or debt, so as to attempt to increase the returns to equity.

Week 3 Progress – I came I saw I conquered.

Sat, 22 Sep 2007 00:00:00 GMT

Week 3, does time go fast or what? Pretty soon we’ll be dead…ly rich.

Ok here goes week three, just been rocking it, on avg work time ~12-16hrs/day for this week.

Adsense: $69
Proser: ~$23
TLA: ~$13
Kontera: ~$15
BeaverRent: ~±200?
CPAEmpire: $246 [a 200%+ increase from last week]
COPEAC: $4.75
GetClicky: $19.99

Watch my affiliate income grow to $5,000/month next month. I’m way ahead on my 1, 2 and 3 month goals leading into november to be on my way to $10,000/month. I’m 150% confident that I’m going to reach my goals.

Goals AGAIN:$10,000/month by Jan 1st, 2009, 3 houses by Jan 1st, 2009. I might be deciding to be in San Fran on the Jan 1st 2009 also.

I’m going to be making several offers this week to purchase my second house. f yea. AM is crazy business. Much props to my mentor Gray Hat, this guy is awesome knows the business makes enough money to put him in the top 1-5% of US population. He has helped me out, and it is because of him, his help, and my determination and my big WHY that I will pull through and make things happen/

I may also add an additional goal to own a yellow ferrari F355 F1 Spyder in 2008, although I haven’t decided on it yet, but I will probably make a decision sometime soon. Goals, need immediate goals, and with mommentum to carry you through to the next level. After this month I’ll have the momentum of a train with 50 cars attached to the back of it. try stopping that train.

You know your in financial momentum when your cashflow and networth is steadily increasing at a faster and faster rate.

You know you have been at the computer to long when

Fri, 21 Sep 2007 00:00:00 GMT

you’ve been working non-stop for 14 hours and your wrists now suddenly hurt EVEN with your ergonomic setup. But you just have a little bit more work to do [8 hrs] and continue to work because you know your going to make bank the next day with your affiliate program.

Study – PHP Security – Affiliate Increase

Thu, 20 Sep 2007 00:00:00 GMT

If you ever want to get something, study it.

If you want to be rich, study wealth.
If you want to be influential, study influence.
If you want to have happiness, study happiness.
If you want to be good at seo, study it.

I’m building a very intensive web 2.0 application that will be targeted towards internet entrepreneurs, I have been trying to develop it for over a year now and have made 3 betas, and hired one programmer, threw it all away, and re-modified the business model, and programming myself now.

If your developing an intensive web application it is extremely important to make it secure, so study security. You want to know what you can do to make your web application secure, the last thing you want is someone to penetrate your website, steal your data, spam your users, sabotage or files or anything else. When you store someone else’s’ data and loose it, you will look extremely bad and it could be a potential fatal blow to your business.

Imagine if PayPal had several security breaches, I’m sure they would probably keep going, but loose massive customers because of security issues, and those customers would switch to something else if possible. So make security a study when you are going to develop an intensive programmed piece of software yourself.

Here is $90 in books I just ordered online to aid me in my studies:

For PHP Security, Chris Shiftlett is the man, he knows the guru at it. He has a blog, and you’ll want to read his book, Essential PHP Security [must read].

The pimp himself, Jon Waraas who makes alot of money at home I know studies SEO a ton, and it is by his studying, knowledge acquisition put to into action that he receives over 300,000 uniques visitors a month via organic and natural visitors from wherever.

$10,000/month, I study people who earn over $10,000/month, and have been studying affiliate marketing. I’m excited to say that yesterday I was able to hit $63+ in commissions in a single day. Once I average it out to that on a daily basis that will be an additional $1,500 gross income towards $10,000/month. Affiliate Marketing is good money if you study the art of it.

If you want to get good at something, study it.

On Track To $10,000/month?

Wed, 19 Sep 2007 00:00:00 GMT

While I was down in San Francisco not doing much work, my affiliate income was hard at work. I’m excited to say that I really truly believe I’m on track, of course! What is needed this month is $1,000/month via affiliate income, which equates to $35/day. On the 17th I pulled in $34 in affiliate commissions [gross], this is very good as it is half-way through the month and I’m right on the brim of averaging what is needed to pass the first deadline which puts me on track to reaching the big deadline, January 1st at $10,000/month passive residual income.

I just added 50k more keywords for my campaigns with Y! Search Marketing, MSN Adcenter, and Google Adwords to promote my affiliate page. What is my affiliate page? I’m not going to show it on my blog because other people will just copy my hard work, but its out there. Most affiliate marketers won’t show you most of their pages anyways, because they are easily copied and a lot of them are very secretive.

On Track, Are You?

Week 2 Progress – Affiliate Income Needs Boosting

Sun, 16 Sep 2007 00:00:00 GMT

I’m in San Francisco right now, my future home, I haven’t been able to do work at all down here, but whenever I’m not at the computer, I’m reading my books, the 4-hour work week and PHP security [awesome]. I’m going to track down the 2nd week of income, I’m still short from my affiliate goal, the affiliate income this month needed is $1,000, which is $35/day, I’m at around $15/day right now so I’m half way there, and it is half way through the month. On track it seems.

Income for second week of the month, towards $10,000/month

CPAEmpire, $90 [a 80% increase from last week]
Text-Link-Ads, ~$13
Propser, ~$23
Kontera, ~15
Adsense, ~57.90
Rental Income, 1625
BeaverRent 200±?

I have just officially got 100% pre-qualified to now purchase a home in Corvallis for business, so I’m now ready to purchase house #2, and my buddy is now back from the military and we are getting rolling in 2 weeks on purchasing #3. In order to generate $10,000 month I have a decided that at least $5,000/month will be needed to come from affiliate programs. So I have set goals to reach $1,000/month. [break down your goals into smaller goals].

My goal for the end of the month, September is $1,000 a month. In October, $2,500/month, and in November, $5,000/month. In order to reach my first goal of $1,000 a month it breaks down into $35/day, I’m currently around $15/day, so I’m 50% the way there. all I need to do is do what I did the first time, and double my income from affiliate programs. This should be cake walk and if I’m unable to increase my income level to $35/day by the end of this month I’m not on track to making $10,000/month by the end of this year. So this week I’m going to invest approximately 24-48 hours to generate an extra $15/day, that is about approximately how long it should take.

I think what I might do is run with this goal to reach $10,000/month by January 1st 2008, and own/co-own 3 building by January 1st 2008. Immediately after completion, move down to Silicon Valley and build the web 2.0 company. Earn $10,000/month enough to live on and then focus energy, build momentum building a high-scalable residual internet product in the heartland of the web 2.0 startups. [Take advantage of the resources available to you in your current environment, and then move on to the next place with some serious momentum], ie: establish my 3 pieces of property and income from Portland and not just move down to Silicon Valley, but move down to Silicon Valley with some serious business momentum to carry me through.

Tomorrow I’ll be in the car all day.

Importance of Tracking Affiliate Stats

Fri, 14 Sep 2007 00:00:00 GMT

Thanks to GrayHat for recommending to start tracking affiliate stuff, I’ve did what he said.

After running two landing pages for one campaign, I have concluded the results as the following:

landing page 1 : hits=1330 converts=157 with a conversion rate of 11.8%

landing page 2 : hits=515 converts=130 with a conversion rate of 25.2%

Thus, the importance of tracking which landing pages are converting. In this example it is very CLEAR, that one landing page has more than DOUBLE the conversion rate, and makes MORE THAN DOUBLE the amount of income than the other landing page.

If you are interested in getting into affiliate marketing use the signups for the right for copeac, cpaempire, and maxbounty they are with my affiliate code, if u want to work with me it’d be in your best interest to work in my affiliate team so there is incentive to do my best to help you out. Otherwise good luck,

Do you have momentum?

Tue, 11 Sep 2007 00:00:00 GMT

Do you have momentum, you know momentum is with you when you are steadily making progress every day towards your goals and momentum is building. When every day is getting better, you just tell yourself, damn, man every day is getting better. Are you in momentum? If not get in momentum, even if I’m headed in the wrong direction I’m still moving, I could be lost, but I’m moving fast always.

I just dropped $4,200 on a programmer for my web 2.0 project, I wasn’t satisfied so I’m going to program it myself, momentum is in the works and things are moving together quicker and quicker every day. I hope they are for you. If you don’t feel like your making progress, you probably aren’t. To get different results we have to do different things.

How to gain momentum, momentum is gained with focus on a specific project. gain some momentum, once the online money train starts, you will be surprised at the end result. When we don’t have any momentum we aren’t focused enough to get anything done, and aren’t making any progress.

I just decided to post this, because I’m in a state of momentum and every day just gets better. To gain serious momentum one must put in tremendous activity, or else you will find negative momentum, we don’t stand still. either going up, or going down, there is really no sideways. Life is good when you gain momentum, gain some momentum.

Week 1 Progress

Sat, 08 Sep 2007 00:00:00 GMT

While I’am waiting for some DNS changes on beaverrent [doing a huge update] I’ll go ahead and blog my progress on my goal of $10,000/month by January 1st 2008.

I’m going to make this pretty short because I have a lot of work I need to do: here is income so far this week [Sept 1st- Sept 7th]:

Adsense: $79.26
Kontera: ~$13
Direct Ad Sale: $50
Prosper: $23
CPAEmpire: $52
Credit Card Affiliate: $44
BeaverRent: $300+
Text-Link-Ads: ~$10

I’m not going to include any exact figures on BeaverRent, because it is a buisness with other parents and they might not to disclose information but it does make over $1000/month from sales, so I’m putting down $300 for the week.

What does it add up to? I don’t care, I’m short, my affiliate stuff has been increasing to $10+ a day, the goal is to get $1000/month through affiliates by the end of the month which will put me on track.

I almost bought a building this week to, it was a 6 bedroom house, the deal was ready to close accepted offer, and I went to check it out looked good, but found out we could not rent 3 of the rooms legally. So unfortunately I won’t be getting it, we almost had it pre-rented for $1850/month. Which I would have added to my gross income goal towards $10,000/month so unfortunately that fell through and I’ll be looking for another.

[

](/posts-assets/2007-09-08-week-1-progress.jpg “wes mahler house”)

here was a picture on what I thought was going to be my 2nd house. I’m holding 2 fingers with my hand to symbolize the 2nd house, but I won’t be buying it now because the rooms on the left of me, are 3 bedrooms and the city won’t let me rent them out as rented on the MLS.

back to programming.

Keep on trying, untill you succeed

Fri, 31 Aug 2007 00:00:00 GMT

Ok for the past year I have been trying to get someone to help me build my rotary engine websites. They are a steady source of income, anyone interested can help out on them. I will help generate traffic from existing traffic of over 600 visitors a day and over 2000 page views a day.

I have tried to work with over 6 people now, trying to have someone help me setup the website. I even spent a whole weekend with someone and his Macintosh only to have it fail, I did have my buddy work on them for awhile but he was very unskilled at it and added only several videos. So I just tried to hire a couple kids a week ago from a family friend’s high school students. I never got a call back so here goes my elance bid:

http://www.elance.com/c/rfp/main/jobInfo.pl?jobid=12635196&catId=10208, maybe I’ll get someone on there this time for a monthly paycheck. Generate an extra $400-500/month, always good to reinvest back into the business. I’ll update to see how the elance job goes, leverage yourself with the combined effort of multiple people working on projects.

Its been one complete year I’ve tried to get someone on it, so this time I shall succeed with elance.com, I hope. If not, I’ll try again.

Wes Mahler is earning $10,000 a month by January 1st, 2008

Fri, 31 Aug 2007 00:00:00 GMT

Here goes nothing, I’m am going to complete my goals for January 1st, 2008. I’ve wrote them on here many times, and it is a great reminder to yourself to push yourself. I’m pushing myself to make an exponential increase in my skill, in my income, in my mindset to make my goals. To have more you have to become more.

On January 1st, 2008
My businesses are making $10,000 a month
BeaverRent is a world class company
I have multiple streams of leveraged income
I own/co-own three (3) buildings
I have 100% integrity

—

“If you think you can, or think you can not, you are right” – Henry Ford.

I can, and I will, and here is why I know: From personal experiences and testimonials we know what is possible is possible for us. People have done it before, some of my friends, and I’ve heard many stories, I can too.

I’m on track for two buildings, today my friend and I are making an offer on a building in Corvallis, as a rental property. A good deal came up and another partnership a 50/50 deal between my friend and I to own a building in Corvallis. Our offered will probably get denied, but we will continue to offer on buildings. This deal will help me pickup a 2nd piece of real estate.

I’m on track for three buildings, I have already setup another partnership between one of my best friends from middle school, and another friend, we are going to split a down payment 1/3 1/3 1/3, and my friend is coming back to the miliarty in about 1-2 weeks. We have already got our downpayment seasoned now, we are going to do the loan through him and make offers on a building. This building is on track and will be purchased in Portland.

Both of theses buildings soon be done before my deadline: Both real estate deals should be complete, there is alot of time, 1/4th of the year remains, that is 4 months, that is over 120 days to accomplish my goal.

The reason I’am able to move forward on this deals is because I have written my goals above my bed, I see them when I wake up and goto bed every day, they are constantly their. The thoughts are in my head, “Wes, 3 buildings, $10,000/month.” “Wes, three buildings, generate $10,000 a month.” “Wes, I’m making $10,000 a month by Janaury 1st, 2008, and I own three buildings.” “I’m on my way, 3 buildings, and $10,000/month.”

With your goals infront of you every day you are able to constantly remind yourself of what you need to do. All day I’m thinking about, ok is this helping me towards what I need to do, and I have a focus and most everything I’m doing is to direct me towards what I want because I have clarified my thinking.

$10,000/month this is going to be the most difficult and challenging of all the goals. My goal is just to gross $10,000/month. Now you might say, well gross doesn’t mean anything and that net means the most. Well tell me something, I don’t know many people who make $10,000/month net if they aren’t grossing $10,000/month. You can’t tell me a company that does $1,000,000 a year gross isn’t moving. Ok they are, and I realize it is not net, but all I’m shooting for is $10,000/month income.

Where I’am right now is currently around the $3,000/month income stream from businesses. That is $1,625 a month from Blue tail Properties, $500/month from Jingyee, Inc, $1,000/month from Prolegic Enterprises LLC, and BW Online Inc is on track to generating $500/month this month.

Where I’am going to do is generate $7,000/month in additional income within four month. I will then be in the top 10% of the population, as less than 10% of the population earns $10,000/month. To where from there, well it will be onto $20,000/month and join the top 8% of the population and just keep going and going and going.

How I’m going to do it well one of the great things about the law of attraction is setting your goals, I set my goals originally for $10,000/month in 2009. I moved it to 2008, we need to be able to write down goals even though we do not know how we are going to do them. It is by writing down something far out there, that we then find a way to accomplish it.

$5,000/month income will be generated through affiliate marketing, one thing you need to know and is figure out is how you are going to decide it. The only way I figured out I’m going to generate an extra gross $5,000/month is from marketing affiliate marketing. Why? Affiliate marketing I like to call insta cash. It is quick money, and it is quick because there are companies that pay you money on a commission basis, you can join theses companies in a day or two, once your accepted you can immediately begin earning commissions off sales/leads/clicks. You can have a commission program it, market it immediately and make money immediately.

Weekly reviews will be place on WesMahler.com to show my progress and how I’m doing. Feel free to kick me in the butt if you think I’m slacking, I more appreciate anyones’ help to push me harder and faster in the game of life. I’m going to review starting the beginning of this month, each week how much income is earned, on the 7th day of the week Sunday. I’m going to post it here, and then at the end of the month, tally it all up, reflect and learn from the past, see what can be improved.

In order to meet goals it is important to know where you are in your progress, how can you earn $10,000/month if you do not even know how much your making right now, how do you know, lets tally it up. Or I will.

So there is the challenge, I will make it happen, and those who read this blog will see it for yourself. I’m going to push myself, I’AM GOING TO FIND A WAY. There is a way, I just have to find it, I need to deserve it, and I need to do some serious studying of wealth building in a short time, and immediate action towards my objectives. Maybe after I complete my goal, you’ll take a look at yourself and maybe it’ll inspire you to push yourself into the top 10% of the population in a short period of time. You can do it, there is a way, people have done it before, the question isn’t can you, the question is will you?

They Say Money Doesn’t Make You Happy And The Love Money Is Evil

Thu, 30 Aug 2007 00:00:00 GMT

What a bunch of crock, if you are interested in money go after it. When I look back and when I was in debt with credit cards, I have $10 in my bank account, matter of fact I over drafted 3-4x. I tell you, what makes you unhappy is not having enough money. The love of money is evil? The love of money serves no purpose, I don’t think anyone actually loves money, because loving money serves no purpose. It isn’t the money, it is what the money can do you for you, it is HAVING THE FREEDOM OF BEING FINANCIALLY INDEPEDENT, where you can DO WHATEVER YOU WANT.

My aunt says wes you work all the time, don’t you want to be a normal college student. You going to miss the college life. No I don’t want to be a normal college student, what would I ever want to be normal The average household has over $6,000 in credit card debt, the average household makes less than $100,000 a year, the average student will work for someone else, the average college student will never set a single goal in his or her life. So no, I don’t feel like associating with it, I’m going after freedom.

I’m reflecting, today, I’m making another offer today on another house. It is so blissful to do what you love, and start to earn more income, it has been going better. I remember one saying, “They say money doesn’t make you happy”, then they responded “poor people made that up.” What money will do is magnify your personal brand, it will make u brighter or dimmer. I’ve been happier ever time I’am able to earn more income, as of right now I don’t have high min payments, I have a house, I’m moving towards my goals, I can actual afford food if I want to [seriously] and I can have some freedom, i would argue in most cases money can make you happier by giving you options in life.

The people who tell me money isn’t that important or don’t want that much, are always the ones complaining about how expensive stuff is. WELL, that is why I’m working on building wealth, so the things you want, a vacation, a horse, a new car, ability to pay for your schools’ college, I can do without HAVING TO WORRY. Is not the money, it is what the money can do for you.

Money is not the root of all evil, MONEY IS THE ROOT OF ALL PROSPERITY. Competition allows people to strive for greatness, and schools compete for better classrooms, money is a good thing that empowers people to do more. It is an incentive that helps bring GOOD things to our lives, businesses, googles, microsofts, fords, the companies are the true unsung heros of America, and money is the root of all prosperity.

My Favorite Business Model [subscriptions]

Wed, 29 Aug 2007 00:00:00 GMT

Well exciting times, things are moving, even more so for my buddies at GetClicky.com, Analytics 2.0.

They are going to be doing a business partnership with a very large website, which should make their company do over one million dollars in sales. Not bad, the company has been in existence for about one year right now. Their success reminds me of the best revenue model in my opinion.

It is exciting to see your friends move ahead, some of my friends say, they are jealous of me [that i got a house, and some other things]. Well, when I see my friends taking off, I don’t get jealous, I get excited, and apprecative for what they have done. I’m excited for them, and wish them even more success, even if it means they are going faster than me. I want my friends to do better than I, so when our friends do good, say thats awesome, and instead of a jealous feeling that someone else is doing more than you [which just makes you feel bad anyways] be excited for them, because as your five closet friends start earning more income, they will normally help you out too by sheer association with successful people.

Especially more true because the project I’m working on now [or actually the programmer i hired] should have a beta test done pretty soon. I told him if he could get the beta test done by the end of this month I’ll give him another extra $100 cash, we’ll see what happens. As a friend’s business starts to move, there is always opportunity to build off of it. One of the things I’m going to do it latch onto their success and they may be helping me market a viable product that will have similar target market. They are doing my favorite business model, and I’m going to do the same type of model.

So what is my favorite business model, well it clarified the thought after I read Ryan Allis’ book, Zero To One Million, sharp 23 year old, who now has a company that does over 3 million dollars a year in gross sales, http://icontact.com – email marketing software. Awesome. He also has the model I love, and which makes so much sense. So what is it?

My favorite model is from the book, and a quote by Paul J Getty, known for a famous quote, “I’d rather have one percent effort coming from 100 people rather than 100% effort coming from myself.” You’ll hear that one alot. But he also said was this, not specific quote. But here it is:
**
“Build a company that offers a product/service that you can charge a monthly/yearly subscription fee for, that way your new sales are always building off of old sales, and soon you have a massive overlapping residual sales every year.”**

That is so awesome, think about it, that is the way I’m going to do it. My service towards internet entrepreneurs will be something I’m able to take in a monthly subscription from users, and then my sales will continue to build.

This is how IContact.com now does over 3 million dollars in sales after several years, sales they made 6 years ago are still on the books. 24 Hour Fitness a huge fitness business has reoccurring people who go in every month to work out, they have so many customers now. Although I can’t disclose how much getclicky is making they are generating sales every month, and pretty soon they will be hitting their 2nd year, and they will be getting new sales on top of their old sales. Or take Ben Casnocha, a 19 year old entrepreneur out of Silicon Valley, his product is a government feedback generation, their reoccurring software fees are about $10,000 a year, and they have a bunch of customers. Image those residuals.

My favorite model, an online software product you can sell for a monthly subscription.

That is what I’m going to do, and it will work, I’m confident in this web 2.0 project when it is released will be the ticket to financial freedom after 3 years of working every day non stop, trying to make something work. The ants work all season long, lets keep working so we can catch that next boat to financial freedom.

Leverage Yourself – Hire Other People

Sat, 25 Aug 2007 00:00:00 GMT

The way to make more money, is to do more and more with less and less. One way to do that is leverage yourself by hiring other people.

One of the things Tim F recommended in the four hour work week was to hire a VA a “Virtual Assistant” for about $5/hour and have them do all of your unimportant work that anyone can do. Well being one to take the advice and actually apply it, I did search for some VAs on elance.com, but never followed through with it. I’m going to instead hire someone else’s kid I know and pay him.

Once you are earning some residual income you may consider starting to pay someone else to do your work for you. Employees are to replace yourself and have them do your work for you.

So with Jingyee, Inc the internet holding company for two websites is currently now bringing around $500-$600/month, it just makes sense to pay someone $300-400/month to keep building that internet company. So I called my dad’s contractor who has three kids, and I’m going to hire one of them to do computer work for me and expand the website business. The engine sites are pretty basic, it just adding content about engines and Mazda’s, simple enough. I will just go ahead and pay them, and then later on if they get good, they can have a residual piece of the money once it is generating more money.

With extra income, instead of buying a toy, you may consider paying someone else to work for you.

Putting Together a Real Estate Deal For Someone Else

Fri, 24 Aug 2007 00:00:00 GMT

This is a long post, you may or may not want to read it.

One way to be an owner in a real estate transaction is to simply retain a percentage of the building for doing all of the work, and have another party invest the money. You would then receive a % of the building for the work you put in. Now technically this may or may not be illegal depending on if the person who is invested, is an accredited investor. Next post will be on accredited investors.

So one of my family members is interested in real estate investing, he lives in another state and is considering moving here. So I see the opportunity and he is interested in doing a deal with me. I will put the deal together, do all of the work and receive a cut off a building. The following is a proposal I sent to him, with many typos but he likes the idea, and its not the typos its just a general sum of information about real estate investing. But before I get here, I want to stop and take a look at one philosophy.

A lot of people believe it takes money to take money, that isn’t necessary true. What I found out, is it takes a number of things to make money, and they are the following three commitments: Skill, Time, or Money.
See if you have a lot of money, you can have someone invest all your money for you and make money.
But if you are low on money, and you have a lot of time, you can invest someone else’ money and get paid for your time.
If you are very skilled at putting together deals and you can quickly put the deal together with investors and the wrokers, you can make money, so its three concepts, you need skill, time and money.

In order for it to work, you either need alot of one commitment: ie: a lot of money, or a lot of time, or if you have a little bit of both you can make it happen and make some money on investments.

So this idea, and this propsal Im showing you that I wrote out for a family is someone coming from me having skill and time to invest, and the other party having money. In this case, once the deal is complete I will technically be owning part of a building with no money down, but I did put something down, I put down my skill and time.

Seriously, we need to stop saying we don’t have enough money to invest. When you have time or skill you can invest. If you just had alot of money, and u diddn’t know how to invest you’d suck anyways.

The following is the letter I send to my family member, names of the other party have been removed for privacy, but you can see what the heck wes mahler is doing with real estate investing.

—

Memo

Hey John Doe,

Here are some thoughts I have jotted down on this letter. Please realize I haven’t gone through and proof-read everything. So I apologize in advance for things that don’t make sense, I’ve never facilitated a real estate deal for someone else as of yet, (although have been trying to do that for 5 months now). So I created this document while you were here, and finished it today. It is some just notes on the transaction, what types of returns, how long it would take, the money required, what it would cost, and how it would sort of all play out. This should be a good start into the real estate investing into Portland deal. Again, not the most professional paper here, but it should get the job done.

You can call me at anytime on my cell at xxx.xxx.xxxx.

Warmly,
Wes

Real Estate Investment for John Doe

Idea: To facilitate a real estate investment in Portland, OR for John Doe through purchasing a residential rental property, 4 units or less and managing it for a long-term investment. Property would be located in inner Portland, it would be 4 units or less, and be nice enough to be a potential place for John Doe to move in-to at a further date if necessary.

Investment: The investment on the building would be 10% down, the investment can go up or own depending on the sales price of the building. The estimated sale price on a building that may be of interest to us, a single family house or duplex, will be approximately in the range $200,000 – $250,000. $250,000 would be on the higher end, this would be located in the inner Portland district, and have at least 2 bedrooms 1 bath per unit, preferably one unit with more bedrooms for John Doe if he decides to move in at a later date. With the proposed sales price, which is based off a rough estimate of the median sales price for what we are looking for, it will be approximately at $20,000-$25,000 investment for a down payment.

Although there would be additional costs in purchasing a building, the down payment would be the bulk of the money. There will be some closing costs associated with closing on the property, estimated around 2% of the sales price, so on the estimated sale price on an investment it would be fair to estimate around $4,000 in closing costs. Now of course we would most likely be negotiating with the seller and have them contribute the money towards the closing cost in negotiation.

Additional fees and services would be minimal, there would be a home inspection, which will be around $250-$400 to have someone come in and inspect the foundation. If there is an oil tank on the property it will be an additional $150 roughly to inspect for an oil tank leaks, the only other inspection that would potentially really be necessary would be a sewer inspection, other than that, theses inspections would be the cost on doing the due diligence on the property.

The rest of the remaining cost would be associated with general maintenance, although we would do our best to find a property that is a rock solid investment, and do our due diligence to make sure no work is needed any time soon, and if needed, we have the seller pay for the repairs before we purchase.

How it could be put together

The real estate transaction could be put together in several months; the proposed time from starting to finish (closing on the property) would approximately take around 4 months as a rough estimate. The two (2) weeks would be spent getting all of the lending requirements done, getting pre-qualified for a “residential investment property loan at 10% down.” Once we had pre-qualification and a good faith estimate on what the monthly payments would be and percentages, we could then start to look at properties and run numbers to make sure they fit the right parameters necessary to make a good investment.

Finding a property could take considerable time, much of it would be determined by the current market conditions. Currently today (August 2007) it is a good time to purchase real estate because it is a buyer’s market, from what I know a buyer’s market is when real estate is sitting on the market for more than 6 months. There is plenty of real estate for sale and there are many properties that could fit our investment parameters.

Finding a building, I (Wes Mahler) would be working with my realtor, who is a real estate investor themselves and would locate a building that would make sense on the numbers. We would determine the net operating income (the rental income, minus vacancy loss, minus property tax, minus insurance, minus maintenance, minus utilities, and minus and property managers) and then only purchase a property where our NOI (net operating income) is equal to, or greater than out monthly mortgage payments. In short, we would only buy an investment that would at least break even on the cash flow (even with vacancy, maintenance, and everything factored in) or find something that is positive cash flow even after maintenance. We would do our best to get it right on, unfortunately because the housing prices are going up; it has been becoming increasingly difficult to find a property with 10% down to break even or cash flow, so it will be most likely that the property investment will be breaking even.

So finding a property would take time, estimate around 1-2 months in order to find a good property worth investing in. After that we would proceed on making offers on the building, we would be making offers on several buildings, lower offers, get rejected a couple of times and make sure we are getting a good deal when we buy. My philosophy is, if they accept your offer, we are paying too much for the building. So we offer a little less, get rejected a couple of times to find a better deal, with a motivated seller.

Making offers and running through negotiations should take around a month in time, we will probably get accepted on several offers and then run the due diligence on them, due diligence will take approximately 2 weeks in order to complete. Some buildings will fail the due diligence process so we will be looking at several properties and being very selective on what we buy. We are not needy or emotionally attached to any deals, we just look at the numbers and the numbers will tell us what to do.

We will run through the several inspections as mentioned above, and once we find a property then we will begin to close. Closing will take approximately one week, and it will require the owner of the property to be around to do the signings, unless a power of attorney is used to allow someone else to act in his or her name. Regardless of what route is chosen, closing is fairly easy, at this time, we have already spent money on due diligence (paying inspectors) and at this time will be simply providing the down payment for the property, which will included payments for the taxes and insurance for each year.

At time of closing then the property would need to get rented, we would be able to put the property on craigslist and rent the property out immediately upon closing. We have the documents and contracts necessary for doing the rental applications and would be able to get the properties filled. We understand that we don’t want any one, and that it is better to have no one renting the property than a bad person renting the property from us.

Management would be full-awareness task, not necessarily full-time, but full time available in the incident that someone is needed over at the property. It could be done two ways, that either I would be able to manage the building, or finding a company that could manage it for you that would still produce a break-even monthly cash flow or better.

In the time that a large repair needed to be made we will work together in order to fix the problem, if we do it correctly we should have bugged in expected maintenance into our cash flow equation.

At the end of each year taxes and accounting work will need to be done. We will our accountant go ahead and work on the tax filings, what would probably happen is we would place the real estate asset into an LLC (limited liability company) because it is one of the best entities for real estate investments due to the accessibility of the cash flow and relatively ease to set it up and operate it. The costs associated with starting an LLC would be approximately $100/year for the entity, and having the accounting do the work would cost approximately around $500-$700/year depending on how complicated the finances are.

What the returns might be

If we take the above proposed example of investing in a building around $200,000 I can give some rough estimates on the return on investment.

· 10% down payment

· $20,000 down to control $200,000 worth of real estate.

For the last 5 years Portland has appreciated about 13% each year, although it wouldn’t be surprising if it continued to appreciate by around 10% each year, let’s just say conservatively it appreciated 5% the near year.

During the 1st year, with a 5% appreciation figure, your building would now be worth $210,000.

There is now an extra $10,000 worth of equity due to appreciation growth.

With in respect to appreciation, your $20,000 investment just earned $10,000 in equity appreciation, a 50% ROI in 1 year with just appreciation figure.

With amortization on a $200,000 year loan, taking into consideration that the first payments are more interest heavy, that is they are primarily more interest than paying down the principal. It is safe to assume the mortgage is paying down approximately $150/month on principal in the first year. This would result in amortizing the loan around $1,300 for the 1st year.

The cash flow from the rent would be breaking even, although, we would have a considerable tax deduction by writing off the depreciation of the building, potentially carrying over to another tax return.

What it might cost to put it together

I wasn’t exactly sure how much to do the deal for, so it took awhile to figure it out.

The proposed plan would be doing all of the work, everything, from helping setup the finances for the loan, to finding the building, to analyzing buildings, make offers on the buildings, due the due diligence on the building, closing on the buildings, forming the LLC, advertising the property go get it fill, managing the property, getting the accounting done, and filing the necessary tax returns at the end of the year for the LLC, and of course be available 24/7 incase on site assistance is needed at the property.

I came to the conclusion that it would work at a 20% for putting everything today.

Well, I also must clarify what the 20% of it means, it would just means for instance, that if we invested $10,000. For putting together everything and managing it, my ‘work’ equity would have interest in $2,000 of the down payment.

So if we purchased a $100,000 building with $10,000 down. (Our equity in the building would only be 10k, because the mortgage would be $90,000). I would ask for 20% basically of the equity in the building that we owned. I hope that makes sense, it is basically like me getting interest in 20% of the down payment for the work that I would be putting into the transaction.

Here is why I figured 20%, I was thinking 10% would be too low because for instance, if we purchased a $200,000 building with 10%, or $20,000 down. If I was to get 10%, I’d only have $2,000 at the start.

If the building appreciated 10% in one year, resulting in our building being worth $220,000, our equity in the building would now be, $40,000 (our original down payment + appreciation equity). If I was at 10%, that means after 1 year of appreciation growth (while I was managing the whole time) I would have earned an extra $2,000 for one years of work. $2,000 in one year of managing a property when I looked at it like that was just not enough money; it would be less than minimum wage for a whole month of working at McDonalds.

I came to conclusion that 10% is just not worth it for me, and 20% would make it worthwhile for me to put in a significant time investing and you would still make a large return on investment. If for example in the above situation, if the building appreciated 10%, and you put 10% down on a building, you would have earned $8,000 in one year, off a $10,000 investment. Or a 80% ROI (if our building went up 10%, and we put down 10%). Hope that makes sense.

The 20% would be a lot higher than a stock broker would charge on a commission for a stock transaction, but this is completely different. Whereas a stock broker can get a commission for a buy recommendation or whatever, I’m going to be putting in many hours of work, running around, negotiating with sellers, working with mortgage brokers, on call, a long-term residual person who works for you throughout the whole deal, I’m going to be doing 100x the work of a stock broker, and I’m going to make more money than the stock broker can be.

Real Estate Vs. Stocks

Here is why I don’t like stocks.

If a stock plummets to $0/share you are screwed, if your building burns down you have insurance.

If you want to liquid your stocks you have no real way of avoiding capital gains, with real estate you can defer your capital gains by doing a 1031, and pay NO capital gains on your real estate appreciation.

With stocks you always have to buy a stock at what its current value is, with real estate you can buy a house less than the appraised value and immediately have equity in your pocket. In other words, with real estate, you can make money immediately when you buy it right. In stocks, you can’t do that.

In stocks there is practically no leverage in the portfolio, (unless you do some sort of risky options). But if you have $10,000 in stocks, and you get 10%, that’s not that great. Whereas in real estate, with $10,000 as a down payment, u can control $100,000 worth of real estate, and get a 10% ROI on the $100,000.

If you got a 10% return on $10,000 in stocks, you would have made $1,000 in a year. You would have only made a 10% ROI on your 10k.

If you got a 10% return on a $100,000 building, you would have made $10,000 in a year, or a 100% ROI on your 10k.

—

Then there are also no every year tax benefits to holding stocks, but there is in real estate. Every year you can deduct the depreciation of the building, and the expenses, and mortgage interest off of your taxes, you can dramatically reduce the taxes you pay every year just by owning a building.

The banks will loan you most of the money you need to buy real estate, let’s try asking a bank to loan us money because we heard of a great new stock tip. Not happening.

With real estate you can make your building be more valuable with sweat equity, with a stock, there is almost nothing you can do to increase its value.

In real estate, you do not even have to sell your property to get the money out of it, like you are familiar with you can always put up equity as a line of credit or re-financing your mortgage. With stocks you are forced to sell and pay capital gains.

With real estate, they are not making any more land, as population continues to rise, most of real estate in specific places will continue to rise.

As the economy gets worse and more people lose their home, and as the depression come, there will be more renters, and renting demand is increasing and the price to purchase a home is going up.

Welcome Cody – The Siberian Husky

Sat, 18 Aug 2007 00:00:00 GMT

My parents and I just picked up a new dog today. We got a Siberian husky, I’d always wanted a Siberian husky, our old dog molly passed away about 2 months ago now. Isn’t he awesome, his name is Cody and is three years old, we were lucky to get him, as there were many holds on him, but everyone else sorta missed up for whatever reason. We is strong, maybe he can help me program my web 2.0 project, teaching him php has been difficult so far.

When the idea is hot, take action, action pronto, action immediately!

Fri, 17 Aug 2007 00:00:00 GMT

Well as I was taking a break from programming BeaverRent.com, I had an idea that I will pursue.

Whenever you have an inspired action, thought, or idea, you should take immediate action towards it. As Anthony Robbins says, before you leave with a great idea, start the task immediately, just take ONE step towards doing what you want to do. Do not leave the idea without taking some sort of ACTION towards achieving it once you had the idea. Take ONE ACTION towards the idea before you leave the scene.

So of course, I took action immediately on the first step towards the idea.

The idea was to start writing up another book, but only so because I feel I have found a title worth writing about, and have an interest in doing it. I have though about this book for several months now, and it finally hit me, if I had a book by the title I just thought of, it would well, imho be a best seller.

The book I was previously writing was about the law of association, and how you become like the combined average of the five (5) most people you associate with the most. I was writing that book, I had 50 pages done, until my computer crashed, and I literally lost the entire book. I later never started it back-up for lack of enthusiasm about the topic, and doubt that it would not be that successful of a book in itself.

When you are thinking about starting a long-term project, like a book it sure takes alot of work. One philosophy to making the work seem easier is breaking it down. If you had to write a whole book of 100 pages. You could break it down, and write one page a day. One page a day to difficult, how about one paragraph a day, every day. The key is every day, and only do what you are suppose to do in a day, don’t go past, what we want is not a sprint acouple days, but a continual steady slow disciplined progress towards completing the task.

You could even do one sentence a day, and after a while you have a book written. (One sentence a day, thats pretty easy.)

When the idea is hot, take action, pronto, action, immediate!

I’m going to be starting my one-page a day again, on my new title, this should be good. I will not be disclosing the information about the book until it is ready, this one I’m going to go through with certainly, my gut feeling is in this one.

When the idea is hot, take action, action pronto, action immediate!

Caculating Networth

Tue, 14 Aug 2007 00:00:00 GMT

If focused on building your asset base, it is good to know where you are upon your journey. A good way you may consider tracking your progress is by creating a simple personal net worth statement.

The net worth statement lists all of your assets, and then deducts all of the liabilities you have, you end up with what your total net worth is. The Millionaire Real Estate Investor book had the concept of reviewing your net worth every week, or every month to make sure it is growing.

What is your net worth, do you know exactly? Got five minutes, calculate your own net worth, its fun, if your able to try using this excel sheet every month or so, to see how your progress is going.

Go here, and download the free personal balance sheet. It is a shopping cart setup, but it is a free download,
http://millionairesystems.com/pages/products_free.jsp

Just do it.

Sleep - 4 minutes of info to help thousands of hours sleep

Thu, 09 Aug 2007 00:00:00 GMT

I’m not sure if you ever searched on the internet the ideal sleeping position and what is best for your spine in different sleeping styles. For the personally developed, it would be good to know what is the best sleeping method for your spinal cord. Wouldn’t you think it’s important.

A lot of people sleep without even thinking of it, how will you feel after 50 years of sleeping improperly, won’t that feel wonderful on your spine.

—-

First off, sleeping on your stomach, especially on a saggy mattress can cause back strain, and be uncomfortable for your neck.

If you sleep on your back that works pretty good, although do you sleep with a pillow under your legs? If you have no support underneath your legs it puts unnecessary strain on your lower back, try putting a pillow underneath your legs you’re back will immediately feel less trained.

All you have to do is put a pillow beneath your legs if you sleep on your back at night, try it.

If you sleep on your back, you can also try using a back support (lumbar support) at night to make you more comfortable. A rolled sheet or towel tied around your waist may be helpful.

——

For an even better sleep with even less strain on your lower back, is if you sleep on your side. But in order to make sleeping on your side the most helpful put a pillow between your legs, so it supports it. This is one of the most ideal ways to sleep, it has the least amount of strain on your lower back.

………….

So give it a shot, all of theses assume you have a pillow underneath your head too. In short, put a pillow beneath your legs if your on your back, or a pillow beneath your legs if your on your side. Imagine the slight edge difference over 10, 20, 30, 40+ years if you slept in the best position for your back over those years.

But check this out, sleeping on either your right or left side has an impact. The aboslute best side to sleep on (if you don’t have a baby) is sleeping on the right side, because the left lung is smaller than the right one and the pressure on the heart is less than on the left side, it also helps your digestive system.

Bad: Don’t sleep on stomach
Bad: Sleep on back without any leg support
Fair: Sleep on side without any leg supports
Good: Sleep on back with leg support, (pillow beneath legs)
Great: Sleep on side with pillow between legs
Best (if your not pregnant): Sleep on your right side with pillow between your legs

Give this a shot guys, see how you feel at night, I’m interested in hearing, guess what position I sleep in. On my right side with a pillow beneath my legs. PS, a firm mattress is also better than a soft one.

Have a good night’s sleep. Try it out, just get an extra pillow, and test it out, see for yourself.

PS: if your pregnant, the best side to sleep on is the left side

Comments

5 from the original blog

Bryan BakerAug 9, 2007, 5:23pm
great wes. from now on i’ll try out sleeping on my right side with a pillow b/w my legs.
interesting you posted this b/c i just read an article earlier today while researching this same topic about how we might only need 2-4 hours of sleep a night…and 7-9 is really just a bad habit from childhood.
interesting stuff, but i don’t really buy it. anyway great post.
StevenAug 10, 2007, 5:23am
Dude, just do what I do. Get a tempur-pedic bed. It molds to the shape of your body for optimal support at all angles. Problem solved. No strains LMAO.
BryanAug 14, 2007, 3:53pm
well a few nights of sleeping this way and i don’t notice a difference…i probably roll onto my back right after i fall asleep anyway! haha
Richard P.Dec 30, 2007, 9:21am
Totally agree with the right side thing…I’ve had two back surguries, and two things have allowed me to sleep, after 2 years post-op: a firm mattress, and sleeping on my right side, with a pillow between my legs. I still sleep this way, if I can. Bad news is, now my right shoulder is messed up!!
HSApr 17, 2008, 6:39pm
Hello,
Thanks so much for sharing this. I was actually googling such a thing and this came up. Reason I was googling it was because…I used to sleep on my stomach..and then it changed to sleeping on my back apparently, don’t know how. But now I realize there’s less of the curve on my waist and I know that will badly affect my spinal cord cause it will eventually make the upper part of my spinal cord bent and put more pressure on it. So yeah, I must start sleeping on my right and using a pillow for my legs…
By the way, this is SO OFF topic and you guys might not even care but it’s great how this position of sleeping )sleeping on the right) is recommended in Islam as the Prophet used to sleep this way and we’re encouraged to do what he does. Sorry for the random comment…but it really excited me how Islam is so accurate. :$
Thanks again for sharing. HS

A meeting every two months.

Fri, 03 Aug 2007 00:00:00 GMT

I’ve set up a meeting with my CPA every two months now, it is always good to know the best methods of moving your moving around for tax purposes.

Why?

It is always good to have insight on the year’s taxes with a certified account (someone with experience). Cashflow is a fast word, and sometimes it is best to have someone else look at our situtation to give us a different insight. Unfortunately, so many times, myself included think I have everything on lock down as far as finances, but they would look horrible when my accountant looks at it.

This way, my accountant can get in my face and say, “Wes what the heck are you doing with theses finances” you are spending to much, this investment is performing horrible, we should move some of theses assets in a different area, with your several corporations there must be a better way to do this for tax purposes. You know if you did this with your finances you could….

Outside help from someone who is well qualified in a particular area is great, have you consider meeting on a regular basis with some sort of advisor or mentor?

Comments

8 from the original blog

cooliojonesAug 3, 2007, 10:16pm
When they can get paid exclusively with my Google AdSense check, then sure! But no, it’s really a good idea.
Wes MahlerAug 4, 2007, 12:43am
lol thats how I have to pay mine, with adsense!
Wes MahlerAug 4, 2007, 12:43am
although we can always exchange services!
StevenAug 4, 2007, 4:40pm
LOL How much are you making on adsense now? What is your total “net” earnings? You can message me the stats later online.
Paypal2u BloggersAug 4, 2007, 7:27pm
errr, could you mind telling me more about CPA?
Wes MahlerAug 4, 2007, 8:00pm
CPA also known as an accountant, if that answers your question?
Bryan BakerAug 5, 2007, 7:22pm
hmmm…i want to talk to you about this online/phone soon. cao
Lewis EmpireAug 13, 2007, 10:39am
I couldn’t agree with you more. It’s amazing how much money can be wasted trying to get your finances in order at the last minute every year.
Especially if you’re running a business or making a great income online, you need a CPA to advise on your business. I meet with mine about once per quarter.

Time to put on the boosters! Goal Review – Analyze – Action!

Tue, 31 Jul 2007 00:00:00 GMT

Setting goals is great, a lot of people set goals, and then a few people actually review their goals frequently, and then others review, and analyze their progress and readjust goals accordingly. As my friend Ryan Allis mentions in his blog, to review goals, analyze, critique and see how things are going.

So here are my goals again:

My businesses are generating $10,000/month by Jan 1st, 2008
BeaverRent is a world class company
I have multiple streams of leveraged income
I own/co-own 3 buildings
I have 100% integrity.

A lot of my friends have set goals, and honestly, most of them never met them, I’m going to do my best to do what others (including some of my friends) do not do, so tomorrow I’ll have, what others do not. Anywas some of my other associates told me they will increase their income by the end of the year, although I haven’t heard much from them on their progress, but I’m moving.

To note on my goals, I have never failed in achieving my goals when I have had my goals written and pasted above my bed, when every night I see them and remind myself of what I’m doing.

I set a BHAG (big harry audacious goal) of generating $10,000/month by Jan 1st, 2008. In 4 months my deadline will be set, that means I need to start increasing my income significantly in the next 2 months.

Where am I now?

100% Integrity

I believe I’m doing fairly well in this category, in no means I’m not blatantly lying to people, I’ve been making my appoints on time and phone calls and been following up with my duties. There are some things however that are important to do, and sometimes there are less important things to do that get pushed aside.
But I believe I was more soley focusing on the integrity, being a good overall person and just being honest, trustworthy, and someone who could be relied on. I have to say going up 20%+ in efficiency in this area.
This goal is less measurable.

**BeaverRent is a world class company
**

We are in process of doing this, things are going better, more world class every day, this still needs some work and basically what we’ll need is more finished processes and systems that run our business.

—

**I have multiple streams of leveraged income
**

I think I’ve achieved this in sort, although it could be maximized. Currently have several leveraged income sources, (leverage referring to money leverage, and OPT, other peoples’ time leverage.)
Owning real estate with a 90% debt leverage ratio is one source of leveraged income
Having several partners, over five (5) on several projects allow me to focus on one business but have others grow at the same time without me.

I have other investments, but they aren’t really as leveraged. So I do have multiple streams of leveraged income now, I just need to significantly increase the income that they provide.

I own/co-own three (3) buildings (I assume Jan 1st 2008 on this one)

I already have one
It is going quite well, I’m in process of doing a deal with two of my friends, one in the military, and another from middle school. We have figured out financing now, we are starting to allocate funds, and we should be on track in owning a property by around November. 1/3 1/3 1/3 ownership.
I may also in process of purchasing a property in Rochester, New York, this one is an extremely cheaper property at around $43,000 – $73,000 purchase price for a house-duplex. So this one is the cheaper one.
So I’ll do one in NY, and then the last one with my friends.
Both are on track, New York has all of my mortgage papers in process, and now I just need to find a buidling.

**My Business are generating $10,000/month by Jan 1st 2008
**

Now this is the difficult one, I seriously have to re-think my strategy isn’t fast enough. In order to get different results, you have to do different things.

I’m currently a little behind to say the least, but I will pull it off, some how (I’ll find a way, if you think you can, or think you can’t your right.) there is a way, I just need to find it.

My goal is pretty vague, in that my businesses are generating $10,000/month not a personal income of $10,000/month, but the businesses I’m involved with significant ownership (not like shares of apple or nothing) real businesses as myself a majority shareholder, entrepreneurship.

I’m currently around $3,000/month currently. $500/month from my engine websites, $1625/month from rental income, $50/month from hard money lending, and $1000/month from beaverrent.

I’m short $7000/month, all I need to do is what I did two times again. (thats an easy way to look at it)

I’m purchasing the 2nd building with my friends, that should put me around an extra $1,400+month.

A building in New York will estimate me around $1,400/month gross also.

That would leave me at around $6000/month, thats just not enough.

—

What I’m thinking now, is what I may do is try to be a 4th owner on a commercial real estate property, something over half a million dollars that generates over $5,000/month gross for one building. I’m currently looking at a 15 unit apartment building, I don’t have the money for it, but I just have to find people to work with to invest with me on something like this.

Although I should keep in mind, within another month or two, BeaverRent should be around $1000/month extra.

Ack, exciting, I can’t wait till I accomplish this goal, this will be interesting,

The question to ask, remember, its not “awww I don’t have that much money.”

For wes it is, “Wes…. how CAN I? earn $7,000/month more within the next 4 months.”

I have never failed with my goals above my head, I’ll be damned if I let myself fail, failure is not an option, I’ll try to shoot for an extra $1000/month income by the end of this month, which would put me at $4,000/month passive.

What about your goals, how are doing them? write them down a forget about them? might as well not make goals at all if your not going to review them and follow up on them. Lets make it happen, hey, you don’t want to be left behind do ya.

Unhappy with current situtation, you’ll likely be unhappy in future situtations.

Tue, 31 Jul 2007 00:00:00 GMT

After I’ve begun reading biographies it has been clear, some of the most super successful individuals sort of empty towards the end of their lives. The house of Morgan, the family who built JP Morgan, to name one in particular is a family of super successful financiers, with amazing success only to feel insecurity, doubt, and emptiness while being one of the richest people in the world.

I think part of the difficulty for some of the super-wealthy is although they might have had extreme amounts of wealth, their “why”, or mission in life in areas other than money might not have been clearly defined, thus leaving a void, an emptiness in their life that was never filled. No doubt about it they lived a fun, exciting life, and one well worth living, their was absolutely as described by several authors of successful people that something was missing when they got older, a feeling of emptiness with super financial abundance.

Why More is Less.

It is interesting to note that a lot of the time people are feeling unhappy about things they don’t have, whether it is a fancy car, a mate, a body, a lifestyle, friends, finances, a house, debt free, it is normally something out there, things that we don’t have, when we focus on them, tend to make us feel unsatisfied with our current situation.

Now regardless that it can make us feel sad, I still believe it is a good thing to be moving forward and trying to obtain what you want. But here is what is interesting, come to the point where you obtain what you were looking for, you will immediately want something new, a new experience, a new toy, a new something.

Because it is once you achieved what you have, you have it, it no longer seems so valuable now, because you have it. Once you reach $10,000/month you’ll tell yourself it is not enough, or I want more. You’ll shoot for $20,000/month, and say I’m better than that. My friend makes $50,000/month and is shooting for $100,000.

That is awesome, but if your sad about your current results and only dwelling on future hopes you’ll likely always be in a sadden lifestyle. I believe that we will typically almost always be wanting more, and it is wanting more that you don’t have can make you unhappy.

So what I’m trying to say is this, there will always be things we haven’t achieved, or obtained yet, we will always want more typically, once we achieve something we want, something else is on our plate. So this continuous need for more is constant typically, and if your unhappy when you think of what you don’t have, what I’m trying to say is you’ll be unhappy for a long time, because there will always be things you don’t have.

So here is the secret, it is fairly easy. You can keep wanting what you want, but let us be happy.

We should be grateful for everything we have, and appreciate the current situation we are in now, and enjoy it.

You could be in a bad relationship gone bad, a business crashed on top of you, debt up to your eye balls. But you know what, if we can appreciate the discipline of doing the work when we have little, and appreciate what we do have, and not focus on what we don’t have, you can experience happiness.

All we need to do is look at what we have now, and what we think is good to give us that slight edge of a happier philosophy. Because it is what you currently have, and then what you will have at any present moment that you should focus on what is good about it, because you have it.

So instead of hoping and feeling sad, feel grateful for everything you had. Instead of looking at how much you need to do, or don’t have yet, look at how far you have got to this point, amazing.

The Paradox of Choice, “why more is less,” explains this principle quite well if you would like to go in depth on the reasoning.

Lets not try to set appointments with others, and then never go through with it.

Sat, 28 Jul 2007 00:00:00 GMT

One of the great lessons you learn when doing sales for awhile is the attitude that if someone says no to your product or service, in your mind, it’s “great, who’s next.” In other words, you never dwell on a prospect or someone, you don’t bug people by calling them always and trying to get them to sign up with your service, or product.

Look, it isn’t like I’m special or rich or anything, but lately people have been interested in getting together with me and talking about real estate, making money online, entrepreneurship or whatever. I say alright, I’m available here, here and here, and then I never hear anything back from the other people.

If your not serious about learning real estate or whatever lets not get in contact with me showing interest but no serious intention. It isn’t helping peoples’ image when they don’t follow up with what they are interested in. Again, I’m not rich or super successful (well I’m in my own mind) but don’t hurt your own image by not following through.

I’m sure if you asked some of the people who I help with real estate, or entrepreneurship most of them would say I’ve been help to them. I normally provide people with not a to-do list, but helping others understand the philosophy of living good, which is normally read more number one, and associate more with others who are doing what your interested in number two.

When we approach someone to learn something, follow up after they have spent time saying to you when they are available. I’m not sure of the big education in this post, but a lot of people keep asking me to get together and then never get together, I got better things to do than to tell you when I’m available if your not serious about getting together later.

This isn’t anyone in particular at all, if your in contact with me regularly I’m not talking about us, more so lots of requests lately of new people interested in learning, but thats all they are, interested, but not serious. You can be interested in being wealthy, but if your just interested in being, you’ll probably be poor.

So lets get serious when you ask to get together with someone, get together with them, or don’t bother asking.

Why should you have more than one line of credit, or credit card.

Thu, 26 Jul 2007 00:00:00 GMT

I was eating dinner with my old boss and other business associates I work with on RebuildingRotaryEngines.com, when it came time to pay the bill I pulled out my wallet. They said you sure got a lot of credit cards, they didn’t see half of them.

I asked them if they had credit cards, they did, most of them had one personal credit cards. Their reasoning was I already got one credit card, if I need it I’ll use it. I would 100% agree with that, there is no reason to have lots of credit cards, unless of course you want to be a stronger borrower when you purchase a piece of real estate.

When you go to apply for a real estate loan they’ll of course run your credit. If you have a high score thats credit, but then the next question is how stable is your credit. Bankers would ideally like to see three (3) lines of credit.

A line of credit is for example one of the following:

a car loan
a student loan
a credit card
a business loan
a house mortgage

A line of credit is basically any type of money you are borrowing and paying back. Make sense?

So what they would like to see is three (3) lines of credit with at least a one (1) year history ideally.

Keep in mind, if you have a student loan and are not currently making payments on your loan, it is probably not affecting your credit score for the positive. They are looking for three lines of credit with history showing that you are able to make your credit payments, so they know you will be able to make payments on your house mortgage. Make sense?

—–

So if you want to be a stronger borrower, keep in mind you can still get a mortgage without three lines of credit, but ideally three lines of credit with a one year history on each of them is going to probably help out the process, and potentially get you a lower rate.

Have one credit card, or one line of credit, you may consider getting another one if you are serious about purchasing a piece of real estate and going to be getting a loan.

—–

I did not know this when I got my mortgage, had I do it all over again I would get three lines of credit immediately when I was 18, not just one. I got a credit card immediately when I turned 18, that helped a TON, I had 2 years of history on that line of credit. But what I did not know, is they want to see a good credit history on three lines of credit.

If you like to apply for personal credit cards, you can visit my affiliate site at http://apply-for-personal-credit-cards.com.

—

So remember, we want three (3) lines of credit with at least a one year history ideally.

Of course, history with LOW or NO balances on the credit cards, and PAYMENTS ONTIME in full or more than the min balance. Three credit cards with late payments for one year will hurt you, obviously, so be smart, three is what you want with good history on each other them ideally.

Favorite Posts

Mon, 23 Jul 2007 00:00:00 GMT

Here are some of the best blog posts that people have learned from:

You know you’re personally developed when….
So do you really want investment real estate now? Get raid of laziness haunting your mind.
$100,000 within 3 months
Intelligent Self Interest

So do you really want investment real estate now? Get raid of laziness haunting your mind.

Mon, 23 Jul 2007 00:00:00 GMT

I’m working on putting together a real estate transaction with two of my close friends, I met them in middle school. They are excited about putting together a deal and so am I, one of my friends has a little doubt about the situation, for sure feeling doubtful is being productive. (sarcasm)

If you really want a piece of real estate now but you doubt your ability, you doubt having enough money, you think now isn’t a good time, you don’t think you can do it, you don’t think you have the time, or you for whatever reason decide to doubt your ability to do a deal.

On my last post you know your personally developed when…, I talked about one philosophy that simply changes the phrases, “but I don’t have,” with “how can I.”

You know it is easy to simply say but I don’t have, thats a lazy mind at work, you can simply put your mind to rest, and say but I don’t have any money, and you can stop thinking about being productive because you already killed ANY CHANCE of you doing a deal anytime soon. If you like being lazy just keep saying “but I don’t have (this) or but don’t have the time, or don’t know how” and you’ll be really far ahead in life.

We have to stop thinking about what we don’t have, and focus on what we do have.

So let me run you how you could purchase a piece of real estate, I’ll bring up some quotes I hear all the time from a portion of peoples’ lazy minds and bring them to life, here is some typical things I always hear.

Now is not the right time
I want things to settle down first
I’m to busy
I don’t have the time
I don’t have the money
I don’t know how to get start
Real Estate prices are to high to make any money
I’ll do it later
There is no way I can buy a piece of real estate
But I have bad credit
But I have no credit
But I don’t know how

Above is some quick examples, it is really bad if someone says all three. Now keep in mind, I’m talking about people who are already interested in real estate, but doubt their abilities.

What if you just changed those sentences to the following,

How can I find the time?
How can I make it happen even though I’m busy?
How can I get the money?
How can I get started?
How can I still make money even though real estate is expensive?
How can I do it now?
How can I find a way to buy a piece of real estate?
How can I buy a property with bad credit?
How can I buy a property with no credit?
How can I find out how to buy a property?

I’m going to propose, that if you really wanted to, you could put together a real estate deal if you were somewhat personally developed right now. There is solutions to everything, the question is: will you open your mind to the possibilities of finding a way to do it, or just be lazy and tell yourself you can’t.

Now lets run through of theses How can I’s and break them down, into easier steps. We are taking our doubts and turning them into thinking of how we can accomplish something

**Now is not the right time >> How can I find the time?
**

If you do not have anytime, you might want to take a look at what your doing. I’d first assume when people tell me they don’t have anytime, typically it is because a lot of them waste a lot of time and just lie to themselves and say they don’t have enough time first off.
But what if you are working a full-time 40 hours a week, ok, well you still have the whole entire weekend to do a real estate deal, you know there is a program out there called the weekend millionaire real estate investor. Yes, that means they do real estate investing on the weekend.
Well Wes I work 60-80 hours a week, well find a way to make it happen. If you are seriously working that much, you should be having extra cash, and you can pay someone to find deals for you and put together a deal.
See you gotta understand, if you don’t have any money, you have time
If you don’t have any time, and you can spend money you can get people’s time
If you don’t know how to do anything, you can pay people to do things
If you know how to do a lot of things, you don’t need much money, you can put deals together
Ok so you work 60-80 hours a week, and for some reason you don’t have any money, maybe your working a job paying for school, in school too, well, use the help of your friends to help you put a deal together. If you don’t have any friends you got a worse problem.

**I want things to settle down first?
**

So this is your reason for not buying a piece of real estate when you want one. What a horrible reason, i want to let you know unless you are in a crisis there is almost never a best time to do a deal, there will always be something getting in the way. Stop putting off something important for little things that come up during the day, if it is a crisis well figure that out, but don’t stop yourself from buying a building when you are waiting for the PERFECT timing, because guess what it is never going to happen. The best time to get started is now, and if u don’t think you can, FIND A WAY.

**But I don’t know how to get started?
**

Well start reading books, goto seminars on real estate investment, join a real estate club, start associating with other real estate investors, study real estate investing

**Real Estate prices are to high to make any money?
**

I hear this so much it is stupid, first off, we need to stop looking at our own city for real estate investing. You can buy property in other states for $5,000, so is real estate to expensive now. If you think $5,000 is to expensive for a piece of real estate you have other problems.
People look around their neighborhood and say gosh real estate is to expensive I don’t have any money to invest, crazy. You don’t have enough to not invest in real estate if you don’t have any money. You think prices are high now, guess what they are most likely if your in a good area keep on going up.
How many people do you hear say gosh I wish I’d buy more property. Almost every real estate investor has always said, “I wish I had bought more property.” John Jacob Astor, the first millionaire in the United States, a real estate investor, quotes, “If I had to do it all over again, I would buy every single piece of real estate in Manhattan.”
So what real estate prices are to high, find a cheaper area. I’m in process of purchasing a property in new york for $40,000 – $80,000 for a duplex, duplexes in Portland are $200,000+. To expensive, stop being lazy, look for cheaper places then.

**But I’m not in another state, I can’t do that
**

Hey I know people that buy property in other state without ever seeing their property, let alone visit that state. There is still a way to do it, don’t say but thats another state, no, “How can I invest in another state”
They look on the internet and find real estate clubs, people in that area, they call finance people to get them qualified for loans across their state, they find lenders in that area with google, they find property managers with google search. I found mine through a referral, find a way you can do it.

**I’ll do it later
**

Yah, I’ll do it later, ever heard of that before. First off, if your serious about buying a piece of real estate now, you should never say I’ll do it later. I’ll do it later, what the heck does that mean, you might as well say I’m not interested in buying a piece of real estate now. If you really want something now, find a way to do it now. Yes it might take some time, but what I’m really talking about lying to yourself, and telling yourself you’ll do it later. If you are planning to do it later, and saving up money, putting together resources and making it happen now currently to do it later that is ok. What I’m talking about is just saying I’ll do it later, so I’ll do NOTHING now. Doing it later but working towards doing it later is not what I’m talking about. Find a way to work so you can do it later, not just say you’ll do it later and do nothing now to do it later thats being ignorant.

**There is no way I can buy a piece of real estate
**

If you say that yourself, your correct. There is no way you can because your to lazy to think of possible ways to do it. Instead of saying this, we need to just turn our mind into, “how can I purchase a piece of real estate.”

**But I have bad credit
**

Well at least you got credit, you should start to fix your credit first of all, and just complain you have bad credit. I’ll just tell you know, if you have bad credit you shouldn’t buy apiece of property because the reason you probably have bad credit is because you are way over your head in unnecessary unsecured debt like credit cards, make min-payments and late on your payments. I wouldn’t lend you money if you had bad credit.
Ok but this is how can I, I’m just saying if you really have bad credit you got finance problems of your own and need to figure it our first before you foreclosure on a piece of real estate and go bankrupt.
But even if you have bad credit you can still buy real estate:
You know there are people called hard money lenders, or private money otherwise, I have a person who will lend me money on a building without even looking at my credit, they are looking at the deal, yes it is higher interest rate but the fact is I can buy a property with no credit, because I found a way.
You can also co-sign on a loan with another person who has good credit
Or if you have a friend who has good salary you can partner with them, although you got to have good friends who are serious, and again, if you don’t have any serious good friends you got another problem worse than trying to buy a piece of real estate
You can also do a seller-finance, where the seller finances your mortgage, you just start making payments to them.
There are ways to purchase real estate if you have bad, or no credit, those are just a few options. you can also do a tenant in common and throw your money into a collective group of investors, the loan is then serviced to everyone collectively.

**But I don’t have the money.
**

You been waiting for this one, because of all excuses, this is the most annoying and most said, “well I just don’t have the money.” Thats great, you know what thats actually a blessing in disguise not having money, just think if you could buy a property without having any money, you know how valuable of a person you’d be, creative, leadership, putting together deals, all the money in the world will be yours if you can master putting together deals when you have nothing (or at least your bank account would say so)
First off if you don’t have any money, I’m basically referring to the down payment you need. You gota get clear on what you mean by you don’t have any money, or the money to buy a property. Do you not have a liquid cash to do a down payment, or just don’t have any money to pay for a property. Either way you confuse the hell out of yourself when you say you don’t have enough money because you don’t have enough money for WHAT, a down payment? Or don’t have money to cover bills, what do you mean when you don’t have money. So I’m going to break it down with you

**But I don’t have money for a down payment.
**

First this is to clear you, there is no law stating you have to have a down-payment. You can buy a property with no down-payment that is called 100% financing. You can get 100% financing loans without having any down payment, yes your interest rate is higher, but you can still purchase a property with a down payment
And to clear some stuff up many people think they need 10% down for a property, that is not true, there are many people who can buy a piece of real estate with 5% or even 3% down, through an FHA loan or whatever, there is different loan programs. 3% down on a $100,000 is only $3,000. My friend paid $3,000 for a down payment, you think thats a lot of money, a min wage job could get that in 2-3 months tops.
You can also do as mentioned above a seller-financing, where you can either make payments to the seller or just continue his/her monthly payments
Be creative, you can also work with several friends and have them put up the down payment in return for services, either you finding the deal, putting it together, managing it, or helping make monthly payments at your job.
Or you can also do a 100% financing with a private lender, and negotiate that they pay for the closing costs and whatever, and negotiate terms. As long as they know the building is a good buy and it makes sense for them as like if you default they are getting the building back and making money if you make the payments or default they’ll do it.
Or, why don’t you get a down payment. You know today, I could get you $10,000 liquid if you were willing to pay around $300-$400/month. In other words, if you have a steady job, I can get you a sum of cash for a monthly payment. $10,000 is enough for a good down payment. So just because you don’t have liquid cash, if you have a monthly cash flow from a job, you can in return for payments get a large sum of liquid cash, which in turn you can use it for a down-payment. If you don’t have any liquid cash or don’t have any monthly income, well you need a job, you got bigger problems.
Heck if you have some credit cards you could pull out cash on your credit cards if you needed a small down-payment, I wouldn’t recommend it, but just like above as long as u can make monthly payments on a small loan of $3,000-$10,000 you can easily get enough for a down payment. You can get a down payment through prosper.com if you wanted a down-payment for monthly payments.

**Conclusion:
**There are ways to buy real estate, you just need to “find a way.” “If you think you can, or think you can’t, your right.” Find a way, think you got some more reasons you can’t purchase a piece of real estate comment below with them. Or I assume you will agree with me that you can, if you really wanted to, and dedicated, and yes, have a life with at least some money, obviously you can’t really be a bum (although you could still put together a deal for other people and retain a percentage of the building).

Find a way

New Company Logos

Thu, 19 Jul 2007 00:00:00 GMT

We have created new logos for three of our sites, they look great take a look:

You know you’re personally developed when….

Thu, 19 Jul 2007 00:00:00 GMT

I thought this would be an interesting blog post, if you have some concepts to throw in it that would be great.

You know you’re personally developed when…

When someone runs into your car, and you are able to keep a cool, calm, and even be in a happy positive state dealing with the whole situation.
When you assume full responsibility for everything that happens to you, that you blame no one else for what you currently have, you assume responsibility.
When you assume responsibility for the actions of other people, even when it might seem logical to think otherwise, you take responsibility of the actions of others.
When you communicate with other people, instead of using the term “you”, like, “will you.” You change it to “can we,” or “lets”
When you seek first to understand, then to be understood.
When you listen more than you talk
When you stop using the word “problems” and just call them “challenges” instead.
When you understand that failure is a few errors in judgments repeated every single day, over six years will result in failure. That it is not the hamburger, but the hamburger every day for weeks, months and years repeated.
When you also understand that success is a few simple daily disciplines repeated every single day, over six years. That it is not the one salad you eat, it’s the habit, of eating healthy every day which is the main difference.
When you understand that everything we have in life is attracted by the person we have become
When you decide to “get from the day,” not just “I’m trying to get through the day”
When you greet everyone with a smile, and enlighten the days of everyone around you
When you have decided what you want in life, set goals, and are taking actions to what you want in life.
When you are humble, and understand you can learn from everyone, that when you look at another person you can tell yourself, “this person knows something I do not, what can I learn.” You are humble, and do not think you know everything.
When making a deal with another person you emphasis the benefits of the other party, not what you will gain.
When you understand the 80/20 principal and that 80% of your results will come from 20% of what you do
When you consider yourself “I’m always a student” and always trying to learn new things
When you visualize an outcome before starting your task
When you understand we become like the combined average of the five people we associate the most and the books we read
When you have mentors that you have sought after
When you think, before you act
When in negotiating, you try to see yourself in the other person’s shoes, try to see it from their point of view
When you truly, I mean really believe in this statement: “if you think you can, or think you can’t, your right.” When we understand that anything is possible and believe it
When you replace the lazy mind who says, “but I don’t have,” with “how can I”
When you someone attacks you, physically, emotionally, or mentally, you refrain from attacking back. When you are like Ghandi, or MLK we refrain from attacking the other party at all costs.
When you understand what has happen in the past is the past, and you don’t dwell on the past, you look forward at future expectations
When you don’t expect praise and recognition for your actions, and especially don’t get frustrated, angry that people aren’t verbally acknowledging your deeds. Like a mother who can’t believe her kids don’t appreciate everything she has done for them, we must not expect praise and appreciate because it will surely lead us to disappoint in the future when we do not get it. So when we give without expecting any praise in return.
When you don’t care what other people think about you as you are following your bliss
When you don’t accept the advice of other people more screwed up then you are
When you smile
When you become genuinely interested in other people
When you remember that a person’s name is to that person the sweetest and most important sound in any language
When you make the other person feel important – and do it sincerely
When you know the only way to get the best of an argument is to avoid it
When you show respect for the other person’s opinions. You never say, “You’re wrong.”
If when you are wrong, you admit it quickly and emphatically
When you let the other person feel that the idea is his or hers
When you being with praise and honest appreciation
When you call attention to people’s mistakes indirectly.
When you talk about your mistakes before criticizing the other person
When you ask questions instead of giving orders
When you praise the slightest improvement and praise every improvement.
When you understand that you get, what you give to others. If you want appreciation and recognition, be so busy giving everyone else recognition and all the recognition will be yours
When you lead by example
When you share, by understanding that by sharing an idea with 10 people, they get to hear the idea once, and you get to hear it ten times. When you share and enlighten other people’s life.
When you understand you learn the best, when you teach stuff to other people
When you are grateful for life, and appreciation what you have
When you something that makes you unhappy happens, you are only in a negative state for less than five minutes and decide to immediately change your attitude and think about the good things.
When you are good at turning around your attitude from unhappiness to happy quickly.
When instead of dwelling, feeling sad, and hoping about everything you don’t have yet, you instead look backwards and say, “wow look at how much I’ve accomplished to get to where I’m now,” so when you look backwards at what you have accomplished, and not what you haven’t.
When you talk positively about yourself every day
When you realize failures are a part of success, that in order to succeed we may encounter many failures throughout our lifetimes.
When you understand that there is no perfect timing, everyone is waiting for that perfect time to get start, “when things settle down,” or “when the time is best.” But not you, you understand that the best time to get started is now.
When you refrain from making reasons to prevent you from taking action, and instead, give reasons for taking actions
When instead of looking at a task you are currently doing with pain, you instead look at the pleasure that will accomplish completing the task.
When you are on the path towards being financially independent when you are older
When you reflect on the past, and learn from situations
When you encounter a huge challenge, that may seem horrible, bad, unproductive or just a strain on yourself and you decide to attack the challenge, and ask yourself “what can I learn from this situation.” You take an otherwise unproductive time, and turn it into a learning experience.
When something just doesn’t make sense, like the actions of another person that just seem to make you mad, instead of getting mad, you just say, “isn’t that interesting.”
When you understand life is like the changing seasons, there are summers, winters, springs, and falls. Life and business are like the seasons, in winter sometimes everything goes smash, a business, a relationship, a family member, but after every winter comes spring.
When you understand that after every down, every challenge, comes opportunity and success
When you lead others by example
When you become the change you wish to see
When before you criticize others, you take a look and see at all the times you have messed up
When follow up with what you say you will do, which is harder than it sounds.
When you have integrity, when you say something, the other persons know you mean it, and will do it without hesitation.
When you understand we get paid by the value we bring to the marketplace
When you understand in order to get more, we have to become more
When you understand what we get in life is not whats important, it is what we become. The important question to ask isn’t “what am I getting here,” thats not important, what is important is “What am I becoming here”
When you keep on working towards what you believe is important, even when it is not showing any results, we never give up, like an ant who works all seasons.
When we realize we don’t get what we want in life, we get what we deserve, we ask ourselves, “How can I begin the process of deserving good things or [fill in the blank]”
When we put ourselves around things that make us feel happy
When we feel absolutely great, every single day because of all of the opportunity that is available to us, the progress we’ve made, appreciating what we have today, and believing that the world is full of abundance.
When you continue to study how to become more personally developed.

I could put more together but this is most of them, I’m proud that I have now understand theses principals and that 90% of those listed above were off the top of my head. This post has some depth in it to really take advantage of philosophies. Philosophies are the back-bones to success.

Everyone wants results in life, but how do you get results? Actions lead to results.

Actions >> Results

So you want results, you have to have the right actions. Actions are important, without the right actions, I’m sorry you won’t get your results. Actions are the labor that produces fruits. So we need actions, the right actions, and to get the right actions, we need to think properly. We must really think before doing actions, any actions worth real value that is.

Thoughts >> Actions >> Results

So by selectively choosing our thoughts we can think the right course of action to take which will lead us to our results. So it is important to be able to think clearly and correctly. Imagine if you thought maxing out your credit cards was a good thing, you’d surely go into debt. But if you thought instead that investing 10% of your money was a good thing, your actions may be of an investor rather than a spender.

A lot of people will tell you knowledge is power, I disagree with that statement. Unapplied knowledge isn’t power, it’s just more knowledge, unapplied knowledge can’t be power. Here is power, knowledge applied is power. So let’s understand that in order to get results, we have to have the right actions, and in order to get the correct actions we need to have the correct thoughts that govern our actions. Make sense so far?

So we want to have the right thoughts in our mind, but how do we develop our thinking? There is actually something before thinking that most people don’t understand, but we do, what precedes our thinking process is our philosophies about life.

philosophies >> thoughts >> actions >> results

If you don’t have the right philosophies in life, you won’t have the best results in life. Here’s an example: If your philosophy was, “If I think I can, or think I can’t, I’m right.” You could encounter a huge problem, but because you believe if you think you can accomplish anything, you’ll ask yourself, “How can I achieve this,” you will find a way. You will try to find a way because you think you can, so your mind is working to find a way, and you will find a way, because you are searching for one.

Another philosophy would be, “well sometimes just aren’t possible.” With this philosophy of life, in the above problem, you will instead not even try to think of a way to achieve something. Your philosophy is wrong, you can’t even think straight or productively, you kill your potential results because of your philosophy of not thinking you can accomplish that above task, whereas before, your philosophy was I can find a way, and would have better thoughts > actions and a final result.

Hope that makes sense:

The above are all examples of philosophies, a guiding way of living. So you are also personally developed when we understand that the art of exceptional living is understanding philosophies and having the right philosophies about life.

Have you heard this quote before, it is the same thing broken down.

Thoughts lead to actions, actions leads to habits, habits lead to character, and character leads to your destiny. – One thing leads to another. Your philosophies are the major determining factor of living a good life.

Did you have big plans this summer?

Wed, 18 Jul 2007 00:00:00 GMT

Are you like most people who had big plans this summer, oh this summer I’m gonna do this this this and this. Especially related towards business on all the productive things you were going to do. Well, for most people this isn’t happening, I’ve been told by several people of all the things they are gonna do once they are out of school.

Realitly Check in a month and a half you’ll be back in school, are you where you wanted to be? Or have you been procrastinating, I’m just here to remind you summer is almost over.

Is your network growing or staying the same size?

Mon, 16 Jul 2007 00:00:00 GMT

One of the great things about the internet is it has totally connected people together. On the last post about the law of association, and how you become like the five most people we associate with the most, we should always be trying to expand our network and associate with more people like ourselves, or people we want to be sort of like.

The point of this post is to help shed some lights on some easy ways to associate with more people, either in person or on the internet. Its always be good to be aware, know everything you can do. You’d rather know everything you could do and not do some of it, then to arrive at the end of your life simply not even knowing everyone you could do.

In my personal networks, I always goto networking events, for entrepreneurs, real estate investors and personal development events if I can find them.

Real Estate

For example, I’m associated with the Northwest Real Estate Investment Club, a club of over 200+ real estate investors who meet several times a month, many of the people in this club make a signifcant income. They also help more people achieve wealth, I already have many potential access to hard money, lenders, a few realtor’s, inspectors, attorneys, foreclosure people, wholesalers, short sellers, fix-er flippers, landlords, you name it.

I’am also attached their their internet email group, they have a Yahoo Group where members can keep each other informed, and tell each other about real estate deals available. Lots of deals going through our email system every day. Consider it, being I’m plugged into the real estate market here.

I’m coming across some deals, its not that I’m at the right place at the time time, its that I’am at the right place all of the time. Thats how you are at the right place a the right time, by always being in the right place all of the time.

If your interested in real estate their is most likely a real estate investor club in your area, if theres not, you may consider starting one. Become the change you like to see, start it.

**Entrepreneurship
**
I’m also associated with several entrepreneurship groups, while at Oregon State University we always had an entrepreneur come in and speak about their business, every Thursday. While everyone was intoxicating themselves with alcohol on Thursday, called thirsty Thursday at OSU, I was studying and associating with successful entrepreneurs.
When I left the University, I still found more speakers to goto, my buddy Noah Merrit, NowTowns and Roxr Sofware founder introduced me to SpeakerLunch. A Corvallis lunch-en that featured a successful entrepreneur every month.

Internet Business

I’m also part of a of an internet entrepreneurship group located out of Portland, Or. They get together on a bi-weekly basis and talk about internet startups, legal issues, raising capital, and everything of the sorts.

Misc Business Networking

Although I haven’t gone lately due to silly reasons, I’m also a-part of the YPOP group, the Young Professionals of Portland, they have over 200+ people at networking events. No formal event, just free food, dress sharp and tons of young professionals to network with.

Internet Networking

Networking on the internet is really easy, if your interest in real estate, find a real estate forum, or chat room. Find an entrepreneurship forum. I use to be part of the YoungEntrepreneur.com forum, but rarely go there that much, but there is resources out there. On facebook I’m apart of the entrepreneurship groups, and so on so forth.

Reading

One really great way to associate yourself with successful entrepreneurs, is read books written by them. I just purchased a biography of John Rockfeller, the richest man in the world in ratio of wealth throughout time still today. I also purchased books on JP Morgan and the family, Einstien, Buffet, Richard Bransom. I have lots of books by Donald Trump, Robert Kiyosaki, even the lady on TV suzie orman. Theses people have poured their hearts into writing, to help others learn, get around theses books, is a quick way to associate yourself with the successful mindset of the writers.

Some Resources:

Its easy, lets just see some simple resources to find stuff:

Google – Just search for what your looking for
Meetup.com – This site has all types of meet-ups for entrepreneurs and other groups
Eventful.com- This site is the same as meetup, lots of entrepreneurs meeting up, will you be meeting up?
Yahoo Groups – There are tons of Y! groups with mailing lists of successful entrepreneurship groups talking all the time
Facebook – Many people don’t know but 80% of my business partners I met strictly through facebook, I typed in “real estate” or “entrepreneurship” as interests and found them. I’m partners with some of them today.
Internet Forums – Find some internet forums/chatrooms with your interests.

It should be pretty self-explanatory.

Get around groups, they are out there. Guess what, they’d like you to join, and be apart of the group you want to be like. You can’t hang around Donald Trump, Robert Kiyosaki, Einstein, Bill Gates, Oprah Winfrey, and those type of people without being somewhat affected in most likely, a positive way.

Incredible – My energy has SkyRocketed, I feel the best I ever had, Alkalise

Thu, 12 Jul 2007 00:00:00 GMT

Over the past several weeks, I’ve noticed a decline in my energy. Although I’ve had energy and eat fairly healthy, my energy was not sufficient. Something was lacking, I wasn’t sure what it was. I’d go out an excerise a little and to see if that’d surpse me up, it diddn’t.

What I did not know, is how much acid my body has obtained over the years and years of having an acidic diet. I’d say 90%+ of the population has an acidic diet. It comes down to the basic principal of alkalinity and acid, most of us are too acidic in our diets, we have to much acid in our body. One of the things I pride myself, is when I read the self-help books, and entrepreneur books, I actually do the activities. Even some of the crazy one, in Think and Grow Rich he mentions doing an excerise every day, writing down your goals in the present, like I have a millionaire dollars, and verballing saying outloud to yourself by looking at yourself in the mirror, in the morning when you wake up, and right before you goto bed.

In the audiotapes if it says to stop right now and do something, I do it, whether its a breathing exercise, a mind exercise, I don’t just read, I apply knowledge. Some would argue that knowledge is power, I sorta agree, but what I agree most with is, knowledge applied is power. If you found some qualitly information on this blog or anywhere, and you don’t apply it, what good does it serve you?

We gotta be able to take in good ideas, and then have the personal power to actually do the activities.

—————————

As I was running around my neighborhood, I have my ipod 30gb, which only contains audiobooks. I decided to listen to Anthony Robbins, a section on energy, I was low in energy at the time. During the day I would just loose energy, at the end of the night my head would be extremely tired, I thought it was normal, like I overthinking, or overworked, everyday, just sorta almost crash…

But I heard some great information about this alkalinity and acid, I’ve heard it before, but now i got it.

Many of the industrialist nations are over acidic, almost everything we eat has to much acid in it, lots of meat, lots of sugars, lots of starch, processed foods. The problem is we have to much acid in our bodies, this acid eats away your energy storage. We are lacking a significant amounts of alkaline in our bodies, alkaline we can achieve by eating vegetables, green foods, basically everything your mom wanted you to eat the green stuff. Well it makes a difference, ideally with the Acid Alkaline lifestyle of eating it is recommended to be around 80% alkaline/20% everything else, or 70% alkaline/30%.

What happens is most of the food we consume is very acidic and it slowly eats away our storage of energy, as it depletes our energy storage it also attacks our fat storage. In short, by having an acidic lifestyle you are energy deficient, you are not only using all of your energy up, your depleting your energy storages. Instead what we should have is incredible energy, and reverses, at the end of the day we should still be strong with energy, yes maybe tired, but enough energy to keep on doing whatever it is you need to do. You should feel energized throughout the day, if you at all feel sluggish it is probably because your body is overly acidic.

We don’t get what we want in life, we get what we deserve.

The reason I’m feeling fantastic is because I deserve it, I’m building my library, I’m investing $ in self-education, I’ve picked up the audiobooks, I’ve purchase the ipod, I’ve uploaded the songs to my ipod, I’ve listened to them I’ve paid attention, I did what they recommended to do, and you know what I deserve good health and thats what I’m now obtaining.

Its like money, don’t tell me you should be earning more money, when you do nothing to deserve it. You get what you deserve. You don’t deserve a 6-figure income if you don’t do anything to achieve it, or you don’t pickup a book that teaches you how to earn a 6-figure income, especially when its avaliable at the library, how much is the library card, its free. 3% of the population has a library card, 3%, the rest couldn’t be bothered they rather specialize in happy hour instead. So you want to deserve good things, a good question to ask is: How can I begin the process of deserving …… (whatever it is you want).

So back to energy, currently I’m in the process of doing a complete cleanse, a complete liquid super hydration of green drink for 2-3 days, I’ll try to go 7-10 days. I’m already having amazing results off of the first day, the goal is not to always be straight liquid diet of an alkaline and clear my body of all the extra acid my body has acculmated. I can already think clearer, feel more energetic, just happier in life, and really feel excited that I have found what I have been looking for.

Theres a great phrase in the bible, “If you search, you shall find.” Finding is reversed for the searchers, if you want good ideas you have to go searching, rarely a good idea will find you without searching for it. So I’m searching, I’m seeking, and I found what I needed, because I became qualified to deserve it.

If you want ultimate energy, and to feel just incredible, get hold of Anthony Robbins’ program “Get the Edge”, go to session #6, listen for 45-50 minutes, and take action on what is suggested. You’ll deserve to feel great.

Before giving any other data or links, but u can find, getting the program and listening to the audio program is the absolute best way currently to really understand. We need 100% of the information, I’m not an expert, I’m only able to give you 10% of the information, go directly to the source, don’t take my word for it. But I feel great, will you? I mean seriously, it’s an insane difference for me personally, it’s so exciting to go searching, and finally to find the answers you’ve been searching for. Step 1, you ready? Start the download now.

It’s easy to tell how much you make, lets just look at your friends.

Wed, 11 Jul 2007 00:00:00 GMT

Law of Association – “You become like the combined average of the five people who you associate the most with.”

Am I making such an unrealistic suggestion that I can roughly tell how much you earn by looking at your friends? I would argue that by looking at one’s associates it is easy to tell what type of person he/she is, and yes what potential type of income they might have. Is it absolutely true, not necessarily but I’d argue it is a good gauge.

If all of your friends work a min wage job, isn’t it a pretty good guesstimate that you work a min wage job.
If most of your friends play basketball, isn’t probable that you play basketball too?
When all your buddies used to smoke whatever, you’ll probably be smoking right along with them.
If all of your friends get straight A’s, I wouldn’t be surprised if your doing fairly well in school
If most of your buddies dropped out of school, it’s likely you might too.

You may strongly object this idea that we are like the people we associate with, if you are one to say, “I’m not like my friends.” And maybe thats true, but most of the time, it is easy to tell what a person is like by simple seeing the people around them. And whether you like it or not, your friends are always influencing your decisions for good or bad. We are all affected by our environment, some more then others.

One of the most profound ways to help you achieve your wildest dream, is to associate with, those who have done it before. Get around those who have been where you want to go, who have done what you want to do, who have what you want to get. You can dramatically excell your learning curve by 3, 4, 5, 10, 15, even 30 years potentially by getting around an expert who has already done what you want to do.

What is a friend? The dictionary defines a friend as, “a person attached to another by feelings of affection or personal regard.” So you could be 20 and have a friend who’s 60 years old with a child, who does complete opposite work and has complete different hobbies than you. Your not really like your 60 year old friend, I know that.

Law of Association is “You become like the combined average of the five people who you associate with the most.”

I would argue, that you have some similar interests, mindsets as the friends you hang out with the most. And it is the close inner circle who I would argue you are like, or else why would you associate with people so much if you didn’t share the same sort of interests as each other. Maybe your different, but I don’t very often, I will sometimes, but not really engage myself a ton in associating with people who are only interested in going to school, and then getting a safe secure job. Or people who aren’t that motivated in life, are satisfied by working a min wage job.

Steve Jobs and Bill Gates

You wouldn’t see Bill Gates hanging out with an employee of McDonalds acting as a fry flipper, absolutely not. Bill Gates will associate himself with Steve Jobs, the founders of Google, High-Up executives, people in the tech industry, successful. Just as the McDonalds employee will hang out with other employees that work with him. Junius Morgan, the founder of JS. Morgan and Company, which would later become JP Morgan, one of the largest and most successful financial company in the world, raised a son named Pierpoint Morgan, would would later run the JP Morgan, and company buisness. Junius Morgan knew the power of association with his son, so he made sure his son while growing up was around the peers who were most successful. Now whether you like the idea of a father basically telling his child who most to associate with is right or wrong is not the point, the point is he understood something, he understood the power that association has.

If you were a parent and raised kids, you wouldn’t want them hanging around all the other kids who were doing drugs all day, and dropping out of school. Why, because you’d fear your child who do the same thing. And hey, I’m not dissing on McDonalds, they are a equal opportunity employer. But I would argue that if you know someone working at McDonalds, they probably don’t associate themselves with a lot of people who are reading books on finances, learning how to invest, learning how to become financially indepdent, maybe some of them, but most aren’t.

So I got a chance to meet my buddy Steve Truong‘s friends, we associate a lot now, he is a real estate investor and an internet entrepreneur. Thats why we talk, I don’t think we’d be talking if we didn’t have similar interests, actually, I know we wouldn’t. I thought most of them were just casual friends, well they were, but almost all of them were doing things, particularly real estate. Out of the 7 or so people, 5 of them were real estate investors. One real estate broker agent, one mortgage broker, two house flippers, Steve an investor, a young 17 year old Donald getting into it, and myself, a real estate investor. Once you understand the law of association, you notice things. I said wow, he really does got some people he associates who do the buisness, no wonder he is doing well with real estate, all of his friends are doing it. All of his friends are making money, I know he makes money.

If you get a chance, you can really just sit down, and see if your friends are helping you achieve your goals, or are holding you back. Are your friends going the same direction as you, if there not, get around some who are going where you want to go. If you want to become rich, associate with rich people. If you want to become a professional athletes, associate with professional athletes. If you want to become a straight A student, associate with straight A students, watch them, study them, see what they do, how they do it, when they do it, adopt their very psychology. Want to become a successful real estate investor, get around them. Thats why I goto a real estate investment club, to help someone up, you have to be on higher ground, are the people around you on higher ground who can help you up to where u want to be?

**Who are you associating with?
**

Depressed? Follow Your Bliss : What Excites You?

Mon, 09 Jul 2007 00:00:00 GMT

It amazes me how many people sorta go throughout their day, negative, depressed, and not sure what to do. The for sure way to be depressed is to look at what you have, and focus on what you don’t have. Thinking of all the things you wish you had in life, but looking at everything you don’t have is a sure way to miserable. Instead, sometimes its best instead, to look back and see how far you’ve come up untill now, your current point.

I believe one of the main reasons that most people are unhappy because most people just sorta go about life, and taking whatever life gives them, which is being broke. Sorta like going to work a random job just because you need money, instead of working a job because it is something that excites you. Or doing things that don’t make you happy because you feel like your obligated to do them. Tell you what, your not obligated to do much of anything.

The problem is most people will never define what they want in life, so they are like a ship in the middle of a sea with no sail, no destination. How far do you think christopher columbus would have got if he was sitting in the middle of the ocean just sorta scratching his head.

What is it you want in life, and if you definite it and go after it you are going to be doing something that excites you. Throw away all the crap that doesn’t make you happy, follow, and pursue what excites you and interests you.

Here is a good question, and life changing if you actually do it, and most people won’t even write down an answer to it. Will you?

What would you do, have or be if you knew you couldn’t fail?

Answering this one question will put you in the top 20% of the population.

Making an action plan to achieve your desires will put you in the top 20% of the top 20%.

Doing your plan will put you in the top 20% of the top 20% of the 20%.

Guess what percentage your in if you don’t answer this question, the 80% of the broke population, the 80% of the people who have no idea what they want in life, so they just sorta linger around, trying to get through the day. Just surviving every day is what animals do.

So what would you do if you knew you couldn’t fail? Do you know, have you done it. Sit down and do it right now, or tonight, don’t procrastinate read this blog post and then leave. You might not as well read this if your not going to take any action. It’ll take some time to think of what you want, but it is very important. Will you do it, I dare you, most of my friends won’t do it, will you?

If you’ve done it before, do it again, unless you can whip up the one u created in 5 minutes or less, its time to create a new life mission. What would you do if you knew you couldn’t fail?

Follow your bliss, don’t be depressed, figure what it is what you ant to do, focus on what you have, see how far you have come, know whats possible is possible for you, know people in worst situations have done incredible things, realize that whether you think you can, or think you can’t your right. Know that there is people that will help you along the way, life is short, and for john lennon life was extra short. You don’t want to wind up 20 years later and realize that you could have done alot more.

Thoughts become actions, actions become habits, habits become character, character becomes your destiny.

Now lets think pro-active, one of the habits of the seven habits of highly effective people are taking a proactive stance on action. What is it you want, write it down, figure it out.

My Library

Sun, 08 Jul 2007 00:00:00 GMT

Here are most of the books/audibooks/programs in my library. I have an ipod nano which has 95% audiobooks on it, and a new 30gb ipod video which is 100% audiobooks only. No music just personal development, interesting.

— Book Library —

How to Read a Book
Good to Great
The Lessons of History
The Magic of thinkign big
What’s your exit strategy
7 Stratgeies for wealth & happiness
Inspire any audience
The winning Attitude
Developing the leaders around you
Becoming a person of influence
Life’s greatest Lessons
Getting to Yes
Life is a series of presentations
A random walk down wall street
How to talk to anyone anytime anywhere
Profiles of Success
Six Great Ideas
Exit Stragedy
The Slight Edge
SELLING-tom hopkins
THe paradox of Choice
The worldyphilosophers
The E-myth
E-myth mastery
The tipping Point
Think and Grow Rich
The Leader in You
How to develop self-consicese and influence people by public speaking
the quick and easy way to effective speaking
How to stop worrying and start living
How to win friends and influence people
Public Speaking for Success
Little ed Book of Selling
Bulletproof Asset Protection
The Ultimate Gift
Grinding It Out: The Making Of Mcdonald’s
Business @ the Speed of Thought: Succeeding in the Digital Economy – bill gates
Buffett: The Making of an American Capitalist
The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin
he Autobiography of Martin Luther King, Jr.
Losing My Virginity: How I’ve Survived, Had Fun, and Made a Fortune Doing – Virgin Empires
Andrew Carnegie – biograhpy
Einstein: His Life and Universe
Adolf Hitler: The Definitive Biography
Titan: The Life of John D. Rockefeller, Sr.
Sam Walton: Made In America
Gandhi
Mellon: An American Life
Success Acceleration
Ideas and Opions

— IPOD Library —

77 Laws of success with women and dating
9 Steps to Financial Freedom
America’s Greatest Tatx Screts Revealed
Becoming a Sales Superstar
Big Picture Investing
Cougar To be Rich
Cultivating an Unshakable Character
Decisions
Designing your life
Effective Manager
Financial Freedom
Get the Edge
How to be a NLP
How to Be a winner
If it ain’t broke, break it
Laws of Money, lessons of life
Lessons in Mastery
Live with Passion
Manifesting your Destiny
Master with Women
Personal Power
Personal Power IIPositivity
Psycology of Winning
Accelerated Wealth
Revolutionary Wealth
Road to Wealth
Total Estate Planning
Total Lawsuit & ASset Protection
Sales Dogs
Secrets of the Universie
Secrets to Success
Sell your way to the top
Success and the Self-Image
The art of Exceptional Living – MUST SEE
The Cerfiable Salesperson
The fountain of Wealth
The weekend millionaire real estate investor
Transforming debt into wealth
Unlimited Financial Success
21 irrefefutable laws of leadership
Never accept advice from anyone more screwed up than you are
Unlimited Power
The seven habitits of highly effective people
mastering the seven habits
Jim Rohn’s weekend mastermind program

— Video Library —

The Secret

What the heck is wes doing update!

Fri, 29 Jun 2007 00:00:00 GMT

I haven’t been updated on current status issues with life and the 4 projects that are being worked on!

Well it has been exciting, my income has increased after leaving school again. I finally passed the $500/month gross passive income bracket to the $2,000/month gross passive income bracket. You may say, $2,000??? Wes, I make that at my job.

Well thats great if you make $2,000/month at your job. I said passive, I’m making $2,000 without working a job. I’am making $2,000/month in my sleep. Exciting, so what happened?

Jingyee, Inc

Jingyee, Inc is my internet website holding company, it runs RotaryEngineIllustrated.com and RebuildingRotaryEngines.com, they are two sites that have a niche market and pretty much just make money off Google AdSense, they generate approximately $15-$20/day passively without working, which is an extra $500 a month approximately.
Jingyee has pretty much just been a holding company for the websites, as I don’t work on them much any more. However, I’ve tried a couple of times to get people to write articles for my websites and have them get a cut of the residuals that the articles bring in. I have failed with two different people, I need to just keep going and then sooner or later I’ll figure out how to do it. Success through repeat failure.
We are still filming new videos for the rebuilding site, and it has helped the income increase slightly, right now my sites are going down in the SERPS compared to wikipedia and howstuffworks.com, they just dominate the SERP.

TempName Online, Inc

TempName Online, Inc is supposed to be my friend Bryan Baker’s and I’s finance company. Sounds cooler than it really is, what we did is start a S-Corporation, so it has its own unique EIN. And what we do is borrow money at low interest and then lend it out at higher interest. Basically what the banks do, right now we don’t have that much money, we’ve been accepted for one 0% APR credit card out of 4. Right now we only have $500 being borrowed at 0% interest, and gaining around a 20% ROI through the peer to peer lending system, Propser.
We are going to be pushing credit card affiliate programs, and other types of affiliate marketing, and make it a whole round about way to generate income online through affiliate programs and by our original idea making money off of money. We are currently building our credit score for the company, it now has made 2 payments to our buisness credit card, thus giving us a two month’s credit history.

Bluetail Properties LLC

Bluetail Properties LLC is my real estate holding company, currently it services my single investment property. A 5 bedroom, 2 bathroom home located in Portland, Oregon. I put a 10% down-payment, and now I control $240,000 worth of real estate with 10% down. I got a no-documentation loan (that means I don’t provide any income documentation verification), and I have a 6.25% interest rate, on a 30-yr fix, no pre-pays, or points paid.
The monthly mortgage payments are about $1,598/month. But it brings in $1,625/month in rental income.
As an investment, Portland is appreciating about 13% steady year after year, that would result in an extra $24,000/year in equity appreciation growth just by owning the building. $24k a year without working, not bad. Just need to buy more.
I was in process of purchasing a 4-unit apartment building in Corvallis. It was a great deal, they were asking $250,000 for a 4-unit well below value, but I’m an investor and tried to get a better deal I sent out two offers, one for seller finance full offer, and one a lower offer with traditional financing (home mortgage from lender). Anyways, I got denied, so I’ll make more offers.
I’m currently in process of getting my real estate license, but I’m not sure if I want to actual finish it and get my realtor’s license, I don’t feel like working for a 1 time commission. I want residuals.
I’m in process of purchasing another investment property, I’am already pre-qualified to purchase another home around $220-$250k. Not bad, I’m only 20 and already own a house, and its just going off my credit score, I had a 740 credit score when I got my first loan.

Prolegic Enterprises LLC

But perhaps the most exciting company that I’m working on right now, and is taking up most of my time is Progelic Enterprises, which is the holding company for our college campus internet rental sites. Currently we service 4 markets, and theses are active sites. BeaverRent.com, DuckRent.com, RaiderRent.com, CougarRent.com, when we got started we started franchising our system out to more people. Thus creating a win-win situtation.
We are expering some great growth, we were mentioned in the barometer, we now after 2 months of being live have over 3,000 accounts. We have had over 600 instant messages sent back and forth about roommate searches. We have sent properties over 300 property leads, we have had over 20,000 views on our buildings. We receive around 250 unique visitors a day to all of the sites combined, and around 2,500 page views a day.
We have now brought more people to the team. The company currently works with 9 individuals.
We now have brought on our first board of director, Bill Syrios, a very successful real estate entrepreneur. We have also added Chris Montes to our team fairly recently, he helps us with our marketing documentation, and franchise agreements.
We are expanding this month to Washington, we are excited.
We are excited about the new facebook platform that is being launched, we plan on taking full-advantage of this and making things really happen with it.
We have some new features on the sites, and our traffic continues to increase, we now have 10% of the OSU student body that has beaverrent.com accounts. Incredible
The sites are making around $100/month currently in adsense, and just going up.

Life

Although I dropped out of school, I still read more books than most college students ever will in their entire life. I’m building my library right now, its so joyful to be able to see your library and all of the books you’ve read to help you get to where you are. Every 5 books I read my income seems to go up, this is 100% for real too. I have books about primarily wealth building. If you want to be wealthly, study wealth. Do you want to be wealthy? Are you studying how to become wealthy?
Mentoring, people continue to contact me about real estate investing and how they may be able to make more money. It is a great experience being able to help others, I strongly urge anyone to get in contact with me if your interested in talking. My friend G and I, I showed him what I knew about real estate, and we are going to looking at houses together. Maybe I’ll buy some while we are looking. A fellow friend I met in the middle of the street, him and I are getting together to talk about real estate investing. My buddy Adriel in Ohio is going through some difficulty with his online buisness, so I try to help him out. Sometimes I could be more helpful, and then just people on facebook a lot of people contact me asking about wealth building its great, and I always shed information, and primarily try to set them on the path of personal development, which is really the key to all great things.
Programming – I’ve been programming alot, for BeaverRent, and things are moving ahead. I primarily spend most of my dad on the computer, and driving around and collecting my rent.

What else?

Well I’ve also played some video games too lol, I’m not going to lie. Sometimes in the midst of work we gotta just relax for awhile. My goals are set, written above my head, when I goto sleep at night their they are. When I have had my goals above my head, I have never failed acheiving my goals. Serious comment that last one is.
Oh and finally, my web 2.0 projec, which I’ve never disclosed any information about on this blog, is still in process, I’ve shifted focus because I can’t work on it much after involving myself with BeaverRent.com, I was working on it full-time before I was approached to work on Prolegic, I have now outsourced the work and paying a full-time programmer, and brought in another founder to help me. So I can contract on Prolegic Enterprises, but still have people help me get my super passion done. I’am going to build a web 2.0 community and sell it for millions and buy abunch of real estate investment property with it.

End Note

My blog is called what the heck are you doing, because I can certainly appear like a loose cannon, you see doing all theses projects. Although I’m learning now, focus is key, it really is, but sometimes, you can make it work, where you can leverage yourself and spread the work out and get more done with the help of others.
Thats it for the WesUpdate, hopefully next time I’ll be closer to purchasing my second home, I need the gross income to reach my 2008, January 1st goals.

2008 Goals

I’ll end it with my January 2008 goals, so you see where I’am, and see where I’m going. Remember theses goals are real goals, written and PASTED above my bed, I see them everyday, and visualize having it now.
My businesses are making $10,000/month by Jan 1st, 2008
BeaverRent is a world class company
I have multiple streams of leveraged income
I own/co-own 3 building
I have 100% integrity

The Miracle of Personal Development by Jim Rohn

Mon, 25 Jun 2007 00:00:00 GMT

The foundation of good living, is built upon an individual’s level of personal development. The code I live by:

One day Mr. Shoaff said, “Jim, if you want to be wealthy and happy, learn this lesson well: Learn to work harder on yourself than you do on your job.”

Since that time I’ve been working on my own personal development. And I must admit that this has been the most challenging assignment of all. This business of personal development lasts a lifetime.

You see, what you become is far more important than what you get. The important question to ask on the job is not, “What am I getting?” Instead, you should ask, “What am I becoming?” Getting and becoming are like Siamese twins: What you become directly influences what you get. Think of it this way: Most of what you have today you have attracted by becoming the person you are today.

I’ve also found that income rarely exceeds personal development. Sometimes income takes a lucky jump, but unless you learn to handle the responsibilities that come with it, it will usually shrink back to the amount you can handle.

If someone hands you a million dollars, you’d better hurry up and become a millionaire. A very rich man once said, “If you took all the money in the world and divided it equally among everybody, it would soon be back in the same pockets it was before.”

It is hard to keep that which has not been obtained through personal development

So here’s the great axiom of life:

–To Have More Than You’ve Got, Become More Than You Are–

This is where you should focus most of your attention. Otherwise, you just might have to contend with the axiom of not changing, which is:

–Unless You Change How You Are, You’ll Always Have What You’ve Got–

http://www.jimrohn.com

TIMING

Sun, 24 Jun 2007 00:00:00 GMT

Timing is incredibly important with success, sometimes the timing for idea is great, you can launch it and the marketplace is ready for your idea. Sometimes, your idea is to far ahead, the timing isn’t there yet.

The key is to be active, and always seeking the best opportunity, and always store your ideas so you know when the right timing is for your buisness to excel, or your time to do whatever it is you’ve wanted.

Some people will say, OH HE WAS JUST THERE AT THE RIGHT TIME.

What abunch of bullcrap, what it is, is BEING AT THE RIGHT PLACE ALL OF THE TIME!.

Are you in the right place right now to be apart of some big opportunites? We are, were going to be doing something huge with the facebook platform, and their developers, because we were busy working, and we ARE READY WHEN THE TIME HAS COME. DON’T WAIT TILL THE TIMING IS PERFECT, GET GOING ON WHATEVER IT IS U WANT TO AS SOON AS POSSIBLE.

Bye Molly

Fri, 15 Jun 2007 00:00:00 GMT

Molly is our family dog, we’ve had her for 15 years, wow. Thats a long time, I remember, ever since the 1st grade we had molly, the black australian shepard mix, who knows what the other mix was, but molly was our molly. Alot of dogs are named Molly.

After 15 years, we had to put molly to sleep, she was very sick, she wouldn’t eat any more, had cancer, and was becoming very weak. She’d look you in the eyes in the last weeks of her life, and just sorta say, I’m not feeling to good.

Although we had alot of fun during the last 15 years, now that she is gone, another individual can experience joy, death and new life are joined together, and the joy of a new begining will normally become after a death of a long journey. So lets turn ugly situtations into bad.

When you get an F on a final, you failed, but your not a failure, “our greatest achievements come after our greatest disapoints.” Hey, you hit rock bottom an F is as low as you can go, you can get Strong, you can get Better, and you can get Wiser. Make a note of those three words, Stronger, Wiser, Better.

All of your failures are good things, opportunities dressed up in disguise. I lost a pet, and lost my neighbor who commited suicide, I’ve practically lost a brother for the last couple of years due to mental illness, and yet, I’m happy for everything that has happened.

Learn to appreciate the challenge of life, learn to appreciate when times get rough. Its the winters of our life.

Here is a good phrase, life and buisness are like the changing seasons. The winters of our life, when everything goes wrong, smash, we call them the winters of our life. Then fall comes, its time to plant, its summer time, your a student, now is the time to plant your seeds of entrepreneurship, and making your spare time productive time, plant those seeds. because here comes spring, and the only people who are harvesting planted seeds in the fall.

God asks, Who is this fool who comes to me with his wants for a harvest when he has planted no seeds.

And then, the winter comes, and wipes out the harvest, and we build again.

So what does this have to do with my dog molly. Its a winter, and right after winter, is fall, and spring, god is a genius. Learn to appreciation the ugliness of life, learn to appreciate failures, learn to plant your seeds, and get through the rough time.

Life and buisness are like the changing seasons, thats the best way to illustrate life.

HEY! GET GOING, START SUMMER OFF WITH A BANG!

Fri, 15 Jun 2007 00:00:00 GMT

Here’s one of the secerts to success. the idea of mommentum, mommentum builds, you want mommentum. You can only gain mommentum with activity, and achieve large mommmentum with massive activity.

If you want to start your summer off with a bang, the FIRST THING TO DO after your done with your last class, IMMEDIATELY GET TO WORK ON WHATEVER IT IS YOU WANT TO DO FOR SUMMER.

Get it started immediately, I mean right after class, don’t take a nap, start it, and take a nap later. Start the mommentum, or else u may find yourself in, uh, I’ll do it later. no start NOW, TODAY, ACTION, = RESULTS.

You want results, well what are you waiting for, get started IMMEDIATELY.

Everyone tells me about their ideas, and yet only 5 of my friends actually do anything. Are u one of the 5?

America’s First Millionaire

Thu, 07 Jun 2007 00:00:00 GMT

Did you know America’s first millionaire was a real estate investor. The astor family, the famous family, the most wealthly family during the later 1700’s and the most of the 1800’s. This family was of German desecant,

**
John Jacob** (originally either Johann Jakob or Johann Jacob) Astor (July 17, 1763 – March 29, 1848) was the first of the Astor family dynasty and the first millionaire in the United States, the creator of the first Trust in America, from which he made his fortune in the fur trade, real estate, and opium [1] industries.

Real estate and retirement

if i could live all over again, i would buy every square inch of Manhattan.
—John Jacob Astor

In the 1830s, John Jacob Astor figured that the next big boom would be in the build-up of New York, which would soon emerge as one of the world’s greatest cities. Astor withdrew from the American Fur Company, as well as all his other ventures, and invested all his proceeds on buying and developing large tracts of land, focusing solely on Manhattan real estate. Foreseeing the rapid growth northward on Manhattan Island, Astor purchased more and more land out beyond the current city limits. Astor rarely built on his land, and instead let others pay rent to use it.

– as he quotes, “if I could live all over again, I would buy every square inch of Manhattan.”

He would pass his legacy onto his sons, Jon Jacob IV, an american millionaire would board the Titanic in is later years, the richest man aboard the ship, and sunk down refusing to get into the lifeboats before all of the women and childern did.

History, is so wonderful, you can take a look at the past, I was reading on the titanic, the important people who passed away during the ship sinking. The wealthiest people on board where entreprenuers, and most of them sacrificed their lives, the males to refuse to board the lifeboats before all the women and childern were on board.

But its interesting to note the first millionaire in the US was a real estate investor, he he understood that real estate is a good investment. Matter of fact where not making any more land, population keeps going up, so housing demand keeps going up, and guess what real estate prices keep going up.

Will you invest in what the first millionaire in the united states wishes he would have bought more of? A millionaire back in the 1700s, that is alot of money. The astor family.

Ron Paul – 2008 – Champion of the Consitution

Wed, 06 Jun 2007 00:00:00 GMT

I’am not big into politics, and neither really dem or rep, but just seeking who is the best candiate from whatever party. I’am going to be voting for Ron Paul, I believe the founding fathers of our country, would choose Ron Paul. Less government intervention, I don’t think we should “police the world,” our currency and federal income tax system is failing us. Just look at the US dollar falling faster and faster.

Remember, we can’t complain about the way things are in the US if we don’t use our right and vote. Have you looked at Ron Paul, take a look yourself to see if he fits your views:

Are you in fear of Credit Cards and Debt?

Tue, 05 Jun 2007 00:00:00 GMT

Well you shouldn’t be! Are you building credit, having a history of credit is very very important if you want to do real estate deals. You can of course do it without credit, but a world class investor will always have some sort of credit history. Are you building credit history?

If you are not building credit history, you should start if you ever plan on owning a piece of real estate, or leveraging other peoples’ money. Debt can be a double edged sword, there can be good debt, and there can be bad debt. There are many people who keep telling me they’d rather do cash, and they don’t want to be in debt, what they are ultimately saying is the fear presence of credit cards and having debt. They are scared that a credit card will put them in debt.

In can absolutely put you in debt, but it can also make you rich. Learn how to use the power of credit cards, and building a credit history. The only reason I was able to borrow $200,000 from the bank to buy a building, was because I had established a 2 year history of my borrowing money, off a credit card. I have credit cards and no debt, when I use my credit card I pay them off immediately.

Or my friends tell me they’ll keep looking for the best credit card. Only it really doesn’t make much different at all, unless you plan on carrying a fat load of balance on your credit card. I don’t care if the interest is 100% APR a year, because for me I pay it off, I don’t pay interest. Now of course, I probably would get another card that wasn’t the highest, but in my opinion for just building credit you don’t need to nickle and dime your interest rate unless you are planning on being in DEBT and not paying off your remaining credit card balances at the end of the month. Unless you plan on spending more than you are making and go into debt and really screw yourself for sometime.

Hey, we just purchased a $220,000 house, using OPM other people’s money. How long is it going to take u to save $220,000. I wana pay cash? Ok wait 10 years to save up that much and pay cash for the house, by that time we who use leverage will be financially indepedent by the time u buy your first house, and have to SAVE all of your money to buy a house.

I’ve probably said this scenario acouple times, but it is key. A person who understands the power of debt leverage will get ahead financially far beyond someone who does not UNDERSTAND the power of debt leverage. Live in appreication of debt, and use it, don’t fear it. Cutting up your credit cards won’t make you happen, that just makes you miserable. And I’ve done it before.

Now I’m not suggesting get in debt, I’am suggesting be wise, learn, understand debt leverage so you can make educated moves.

Another way Bryan and I are using debt leverage with BW Online, Inc is getting 0% APR credit cards, on balance transfers for 12 months, and then lending the borrowed money out at 25% APR on prosper.com.

Making money out of thin airs, learn how to use debt leverage to help you financially, or else it will be a slow process becoming financially indepedent, seriously.

HURRICANE KATRINA, EVERY SINGLE MONTH

Tue, 05 Jun 2007 00:00:00 GMT

By 2010 the first of the baby boomers are going to retire, 75 million people. We are going to be hitting a large recession my in opionion, alan greenspan has made comments and it just makes sense. Just take a look at the figures.

Once the begining of the 75 million people start to retire, lets just say each person takes $1,000 a month from the social security market. That is 75 BILLION DOLLARS A MONTH COMING FROM SOCIAL SECURITY.

**THAT IS THE SAME AMOUNT IT HAS COSTED FOR THE WAR, OR HURRICANE KATRINA FOR COMPARSION. every SINGLE MONTH
**

We can also conclude that theses people may start retiring $1,000 a month from the FINANCIAL MARKETS, I honestly don’t see how this market is going to be going UP. Massive Foreclosures right not, we are at a HISTORIC HIGH OF DEBT. Our current president has put our country in more debt than the last like 20 presidents. WHY WE WANT YOU TO BE RICH, there is going to be a separate between the rich and poor, in the future there will be no middle class.

SAVERS ARE LOSSERS, TRUE, BECAUSE of a BILL that took the dollar off the gold standard. Our money has been turned into a CURRENCY, and CURRENCIES loose money. Simply SAVERS are loosers are because the fact is the AMERICAN DOLLAR IS GOING DOWN. American dollar is going down faster, than normal right now. The PESO is gaining more value than us.

BETTER BE PREPARED, WE NEED TO STOP LIVING IN A ‘WELFARE STATE’ AND THINKING EVERYTHING SHOULD BE HANDED TO US.

WE NEED MORE PEOPLE TO PROVIDE JOBS, ENTREPRENEURS, and some people who actually understand ECONOMICS AND INVESTING IN OUR GOVERNMENT.

Have you seen HDR Images Before?

Mon, 04 Jun 2007 00:00:00 GMT

HDR imaging is a process, well I’m not a photographer, but they take different exposures of the same picture and then combine it into one. I saw this about 6 months ago when my friend Cam showed me, idk why I’m posting, but they are very interesting if you have never seen them before. Take a look:

Wild hu? To see more HDR pictures you can goto flickr.

http://www.flickr.com/groups/hdr/pool/

BeaverRent, our Buisness on the Frontpage of the Barometer

Wed, 30 May 2007 00:00:00 GMT

http://media.barometer.orst.edu/media/storage/paper854/news/2007/05/30/News/For-Rent.Your.Summer.Guide.To.Corvallis.Housing-2910212.shtml

My buddy Marques is doing a super fanastic, excellent and incredible job in marketing our buisness. We were just on the frontpage on the Barometer, this is the 2nd time that one of our buisnesses were on the frontpage of the newspaper. Last time, and previous in Feb 05, Jingyee, Inc was featured as a buisness in the barometer.

The article is shown below:

So where will you living this summer?

For students staying in Corvallis, the decision must be made. Some may choose an apartment, others a house, and some may be planning to take advantage of opportunities some Oregon State students aren’t aware of. Living arrangements are plentiful, with tools and options to suit almost every need and style.

One option for those sticking around is to take advantage of the countless off-campus houses and apartment complexes scattered around town.

Aside from the numerous bulletin boards found around campus, students have taken to the Internet to find roommates and places to stay through the summer and into fall.

One of the most recent Web establishments to help get the job done is BeaverRent.com. Launched earlier this month by students Marques Alexander and Wesley Mahler, BeaverRent.com allows students to create a free account and search for roommates, housing and miscellaneous items ranging from carpets to refrigerators to calculators.

Another popular Web site is Facebook Marketplace, which runs through the college social networking site Facebook.com. It operates in a similar fashion to BeaverRent.com, allowing any of its members to post advertisements or contact others searching for what one may have to offer.

In addition to off-campus arrangements, many accommodations are available through the university.

West International House will be open for operation this summer, leasing rooms to students for a weekly fee. The prices are $60.20 for a double, $70.00 for a single, $80.50 for a double as a single (a double room with no roommate), and $88.00 for a meal plan. The meal plan students use over the summer is equivalent to the university Preferred Plan, which provides students with $506 during a regular 10-week term. Single rooms are limited, and applications can be accessed online at the OSU Web site.

“I think living on campus during the summer is a great opportunity,” said junior Melissa Williams, president of the OSU Residence Hall Association. Williams lived on campus last summer and enjoyed the experience.

“You have the ability to walk to all your classes and be eco-friendly,” Williams said. “You are close to where your meals are prepared, and you don’t have to do the dishes. Living on campus gives you the opportunity to meet new people and live in a safe space.”

Several fraternities, such as Lambda Chi, Delta Chi and Delta Upsilon, are leasing rooms to students for the summer. Rooms at the Delta Chi fraternity are open to both men and women and run at $500 for the summer. No Greek affiliation is required.

“It’s a different situation if you haven’t done it before,” said Kyle Waletich, a junior in liberal studies and member of Delta Chi. “It’s like a dorm but nicer. You get a bigger room and meet new people you might not have otherwise met.”

For those returning home for the vacation, the hunt for summer housing does not pose a problem. But for students who choose to remain, a large variety of options are available.

Decisions, decisions.

Trip to San Fran, and Massive Personal Development

Wed, 30 May 2007 00:00:00 GMT

I split descion went down to San Fran this weekend to visit the grandparents, they are now 91 years old. Orignally from China, and moved to america with nothing, they now financially secure, through real estate investing, lots of buildings paid off. They are chiense, in china they built a statue of my grandmother, or we call her ‘lau lua’ for her contributions as a teacher, and a $1,000,000 donation to the school at their 100th school aniversary in china.

I can’t wait to be able to build our buisnesses, and become financially indepedent so I can see where my hertiage (chiense side) has come from. One of the reasons is to be able to be free, and experience life.

Although it is fun to be in another city, all I really wanted to do is get back to my office and do some more work. My buisness partners Marques and Chris are doing very well working on partnerships agreements, and getting things done. I felt like I wasn’t contributing while I was in San Fran. So I’am glad to be around the family, every 6 months I see my grandparents, one of the blessings in life to see the family and not have to worry.

While I was down there, I read/heard about 3-4 books. Amazing, in 3-4 days not bad.

I read, Why We Want You To Be Rich, by Robert Kiyosaki and Donald Trump.

I read, The Weekend Millionaire Investor, by Mike Summey, and Roger Dawson.

I read, ZERO TO ONE MILLION, by Ryan M. Allis (almost done), although I’m not done with the 3rd book, I was listening to many different audio programs too so I got a ton of information.

You may consider reading more, every buisness leader reads, heres a good quote, readers are leaders. I dare you to find one of the most successfully people who never read, who never associate who never inspire themsleves, or who don’t learn new things every day from people who are more successful than them. Read more, I promise you, every book you read will get you faster to the things you want. No I don’t mean the junk, I mean the good stuff.

I just purchased 2 new books: The Millionaire Real Estate Investor, and the Little Red Book of Sales.

Want to be rich? Read a book on becoming rich, its that easy. Are you reading, if your not, your probably not acheiving the results as quick as you like if your not reading. You may consider it, $5 book can make u millions.

My New Earth Moving Machine, 1st Deposit and New Company!

Mon, 21 May 2007 00:00:00 GMT

So I purchased a new vehicle today, it runs on disel. I heard if you dig far enough into your soil sometimes you can find treasure. Which I of course would sell on ebay, so shoot, sounds like a great idea.

I could be a comedian hu! 🙂 Um, because the oil tank was leaking, we had to decomission it and put in a new gas furnance system (was able to negotiate seller covering all costs!!!) So the guys were out today putting in the gas line, the contractors were putting in the Furnance.

I also was able to open the bank accounts for my new real estate holding company, which is under a single member LLC. And I was able to receive my first rent deposit today, the guys are moving in on the 5th of june. Asking $1,625/month for rent, month to month, they pay utilities, except for garbage and I take care of grass. Mortgage payment is $1,600 a month.

Not bad! I’am not in process of trying to raise some capital and purchase a 4plex for $369k, I need to contact the seller and get things moving. The goal is to own/co-own three pieces of real estate by January 1st, 2008.

Photos of my new house!

Tue, 15 May 2007 00:00:00 GMT

After 2 years of planting seeds, starting in HS I always knew I wanted to get an investment property asap. When I turned 18 I immediately got a credit card, as of last week my credit score was 740 enough to get me a great rate on an investment property. So I planted my seeds, I watered the garden, and now I’m harvesting the fruit.

So here is my house, purchase price $219,000. Appraised for $238,000. YOU MAKE YOUR MONEY WHEN YOU BUY YOUR INVESTMENT PROPERTY. BUYING IT AND ONLY GOING FOR APPRECIATION IS SPECULATION. investors, make money whne the BUY.

I made money when I bought, the property is currently going to break-even, and already put 20k in equity in my pocket. My mortgage payment is $1,600 a month, I just believe I got it potentially rented for $1,625 in the first day of advertising today off craigslist. Anyways here is the photos, I need to continue doing programming for BeaverRent.com which is blazing onfire, 130 accounts within 2 days. We are exanding to Texas, and Las Vegas, and Eugene now.

Leverage and Your Financial Future

Sat, 12 May 2007 00:00:00 GMT

If you would like to be someday financially indepedent and never have to wory about financial trouble again, the quicker way to do it is using some form of leverage. You can do it without leverage, but it will take an extremely long time, maybe 30-40 years, saving your money and investing a portion of it every month, every year, and slowly building a nest egg.

Although the above route is best for the non-risk takers, those who would like to achieve more results faster must employ some sort of leverage. There are many different forms of leverage, the obvious one that comes to most peoples’ mind is money. We are all well aware of the power of leverage, some people fear it, and other’s abuse it, while some can get rich off it.

Leverage is a double-edged sword, it can help you, or it can dramatically burn you. Learn the harness the power of leverage. The simple explain is this, who do you think will get rich faster, someone who saves up $100,000 and then invests it, or someone who borrows $100,000 at 10% interest, and invests it at 20% interest.

Who do you think the bank would want to loan money to, someone who understands the power of leverage, or someone who fears it. It is so funny to talk to people about credit cards, “Oh I just use cash,” “Oh I don’t need a credit card,” “I want to avoid being in debt.” Most of theses people fear the use of leverage, the are scared of the use.

Most of the richests people in the world in real estate are deeply deeply in debt, Good Debt. I’am now in debt $200,000. But my debt is good debt, good debt gets you rich, bad debt gets you poor. I’am using financial leverage in my financial plan, are you. My $200,000 debt is GOOD DEBT, good DEBT because it is debt that makes you RICH, this debt is being paid off by the mortgage, I’am able to get MASSIVE returns on my orignal investment because of the leverage.

Learn to harness the power of debt leverage, but debt is just one form of leverage. See the problem is many people use obsolete forms of leverage, I won’t go into it, but as times change, alot of peoples’ strageties haven’t. I’m talking to people who plan on potentially relying on social security, I’am sorry, but if you plan on relying on social security your basically planning on being poorer after you work for 40 years. I don’t mean to sound rude, but its the truth, I don’t want to rely on the social security system which looks very bad right now.

What are some other forms of leverage, words, health, an obvious one, relationships, knowledge…

Words being leveraged, lets take a look at that, you might have seen in my previous pictures of my office, FAST WORDS, let me explain that:

Words have an extreme amount of abilitly to change everything around your while, by changing your words, you change your realitly the way you think, the way everything you do.

So fast words, I use fast words, and only fast words, if you learn to use fast words to, you will by default, get richer faster. Just because you are using words that help you achieve this. So lets compare:.

Slow word is saving money, a fast word is raising Capital.

Slow word is appreciation, a fast word is Depreciation or “Phantom Cash”

Slow word is high paying job, a fast word is Cashflow

here are some of the fast words I have on my wall:

Depreciation
Leverage
Cashflow
Raising Capital
Regulation 53d
1031 Tax-deffered Excange
World Class
Phantom Cash
Systematic
Mommentum
Networks
OPT – Other peoples’ time
OPM – Other peoples’ money
Exit Strategy
Duplication
Infinite Returns
Association
DealsFranchising
Deals
Brand Recognition
Resourcefullness
Activity
Help others
Royalties
No Money Down
Investors
Passion
Information
Distrubtion Channels
Viral
Gain Control
Focus

Learn to use leverage, or lose to others who do.

Interesting Experiences From This Blog

Wed, 09 May 2007 00:00:00 GMT

I’ve started to have some quite intersting experiences from this blog, at one point I was going to take it down.

One person decided to go through and read my whole entire blog and make me look bad when I was selling my RX-7 a while ago, it had some body damage prior to the sale and he decided to call me a completle fraud with my name which was harmful. But then I’ve had alot of great experiences, strangely people have contacted me, some out of the country, commenting on my blog, and then some say they read it and thought it was great, others were inspired, some found some interesting information.

I guess I really don’t know whos reading my blog I found out, although there aren’t many comments, someone is reading, its syncing right up with my Facebook account so everyone in my friends’ network can read Wes Mahlers’ rants on entrepreneurship and whatever is going on in my life. But more good than bad.

It will be interesting to see what happens next with this blog, I don’t plan on making a bunch of money on it like most other blogs, this is just a place for my friends to know what I’m doing, and help other people see someone else on the pathway of choosing freedom over security.

Good News, on Thursday I will own my first home, completly in my name, Wes Mahler, without Co-sign, I had a wooping 740 credit score, I got a credit card the day I turned 18 because in HS I always new I wanted to own a 4plex, I don’t know why that is, but 2 years later after work I can see my plants start to grow. What seeds are you planting now?

Facebook Classifieds

Sun, 06 May 2007 00:00:00 GMT

Facebook will be launching a classifieds sooner than later. While working on CorvallisClassifieds.net a year ago, I always consider the thought if they will probably do the classifieds. So it looks like they are moving on it: http://mashable.com/2007/04/18/facebook-classifieds/

For entrpereneurs around college campus’ we will have to be aware of whats happening, and use services to take advantage. We also need to find our niches and see what we can do to separate ourselves. There are alot of classifieds sites out for for textbooks, I assume in the thousands, I being one of the many many many I’ve met. But of course, I dropped it knowing that facebook, and craigslist would arrive, sooner than later.

Not to run away, but to find something else that I can provide more leverage in. Good for BeaverRent.com however, a local classifieds is not what BeaverRent.com provides, and Facebook will not be able to provide the Corvallis Apartment Database like BeaverRent.com

The value in BeaverRent.com is the fact that we have people we go out there and recruit property management companys onto our system, they use our system, it is not a classifieds, it is a grass-roots go out there and get the properties on the site. Not just an online classified system, which will not have most of the property mangement companies on there in the first place, or any of the home owners.

Thus, as also, you can also use the Facebook Classifieds system to promote your exisiting, or potential student based, buisness. The internet world is going to be controlled by a few major companys in the future, is what it seems like, just like corporate america, notice how big giant companys, internet companys keep buying smaller companies, Mircosoft to buy Yahoo, and Yahoo to buy Ebay, all sorts of stuff. FYI.

Today is a GOOD day, what am I talking about, every day is a GOOD day!

Fri, 04 May 2007 00:00:00 GMT

Well today is a GOOD day, like yesterday, and the past days. But whats good about today.

I like to blog and listen to music, for some reason I keep playing the same songs over and over again for like an hour. I haven’t got much sleep the past couple of days, but just been steadily working on my buisness, BeaverRent.com.

We will be showing our first profit this week from one of our, VERY HAPPY CLIENTS. We came in today to see how things were going and they said, “We’ve been getting so busy lately, all theses leads from beaverRent.com!” Wow, I guess abunch of girls came in with abunch of beaverrent leads printed out and got some apartments from our clients. They mentioned they have filled 8 VACANCIES WITHIN THE PAST 2 DAYS. Thats VERY good for a property management company, its GOOD for the students, and its GOOD for the city. We have an incredible service that helps students find properties, and property managers fill their vacancies. Its also GOOD for america that we are inspiring entrepreneurship, and its GOOD for Corvallis, OR in generating more buisness for the community.

—————-

House:

So bank of america decided to change their loan program on my like 1 week before closing, so I’m now going with a different lender. You know, its difficult to get a loan when you 20 years old and don’t have a steady employement, and your entrepreneurial buisensses in the past showed failure, “which is good because its always a learning process, and I’m doing better now”.

But on thursday, I should finally be an offical real estate investor, I’m now planning on getting a realtor’s lisence, to #1 buy my own houses with, #2 sell my owner houses with, and #3 most importantly, it allows us to get a referral commission from BeaverRent.com, mutiple streams of leveraged income. Automatic, systematic, duplicatable buisnesses.

Life:

We become like the combined averages of the five people we associated with the most. FACT, in my opinion. But its true, and it is, and lately I’ve been harnessing the power, all my friends, I have choosen out of thousands, all entrepreneurs now. Most of my buddies are now making $5,000 a month without jobs, some $30,000+ a month, get around those people. Hey if you think I’m a cool guy, contact me, lets talk, thats one of the cool things about blogging, is you can read other peoples’ stories. Contact me, contact those entrepreneurs, shake those hands.

You:

I hope you are making progress, if your not, and your not happy about not doing what you think you could be doing. Lets no longer do that. Remember that success is a progressive realization of a worthy ideal, in other words, success is doing what you want to do, because you love it, and you are doing a good job at it. Even if its being a gas station attendant.

Today, I was driving out of my house and it took 20 minutes to get on the freeway, which was literally 4 blocks away. People were ANGRY, HONKING, most people loose their emotions, lets not get to emotional angry, angry, mad, jealous are all negative feelings. Instead when you get mad, just ask yourself, “ISN’T THAT INTERESTING.” And turn the situtation from negative to, hmm, thats interesting, and learn from the situtation. Some things fall under the unknown mysterious of the mind, hmm isn’t that interesting? That people are all honking at eachother, and I got a smile on my face in my car thats falling apart and making fun out of not so fun situtations. Hey, getting angry doesn’t solve your problems normally.

Untill next time, oh! one more thing. I’am now raising capital on my first house, I have an investor for $10,000 who will invest, with negotaible terms. This allows me to use more capital at a good negotiated rate, so I can purchase more real estate, OPM other peoples’ money. I can’t wait till I do good with this one deal, then, once you get good at that, I hear you will start getting calls on how to help other people generate an income.

When you help everyone get what they want, you’ll have everything in life you want. SO TRUE.

So start helping others, my buddy I met on the internet on the forums, who lives across the country, I’ve never met him, I’m going to be walking him thru at the age of 17 how to get into a piece of property.

If your not to sure about sharing, read my post on intelligent self-interest.

…

But Wes, you can’t afford it, your going to need to wait!

Tue, 01 May 2007 00:00:00 GMT

Buisness is going GREAT! We have 29 properties on BeaverRent.com currently, and in our first 2 days we have had 25 people register for accounts. It will be great once everything is programmed in, our marketing features, and we are getting more and more properties. My partnership is going very well with my Buisness partner, Marques Alexander.

Again for my own re-affirmation, and for those who don’t know. My main focus is #1 build an internet company and sell it, and invest it into steady real estate investing. Internet Aggressive Buisness, and Passive Real Estate on the side.

Most of the wealthiest people in the world were able to do it through building a systematic, duplicatable, distrubtion channel, viral buisness. Enterpreneurship, freedom, awesome. So were going to do that.

I’m closing on my first house on the 10th. And I called my banker today, I said, How can I purchase another piece of property after this one, or what do I need to do. Well I got some bad news, more challenges mixed with opportunity. Instead I now have to put 20% down on the house which is completly destorying my cash reserves.

So How Am I Going To Own/Co-Own 3 houses by the end of the year with no cash?

I find cash, they say, Wes your going to have to wait. Maybe 6 months untill we can do buisness with you again, “getting a loan.” Family asks, well Wes ur not going to have any money to buy a property. Hey, Having No Money is a Blessing In Diguise!.

I’m going to force myself to raise capital, find investors, put the deal together, and I don’t need a bank, there is seller financing for that. So there is ways to make it work. Here is the ultimatium which really comes down to this philosophy. Don’t say, I can’t afford it, instead say HOW CAN I AFFORD IT?

Once you understand the human mind, the potential we have, the leverage words have, you can do anything you want. I CAN, I SHOULD, I AM ABLE TO, Own/Co-Own 3 pieces of real estate without having to use my own money. Its possible, you can do it. BY SAYING, OH I CAN’T AFFORD IT, THATS TO HARD, I CANT DO THAT - THATS THE WRONG ATTITUDE TO HAVE, A LAZY MIND, THATS NOT WHAT WE WANT.

Push yourself, ask yourSELF HOW CAN I AFFORD IT, HOW CAN I DO THIS, I MUST DO THIS. AND DO IT, FIND A WAY, ANYTHING IS POSSIBLE, **YOU CAN HAVE, BE, OR DO, ANYTHING YOU WANT TO IN LIFE. **

Join me in doing what others think is impossible, and lets show others what is possible!

BeaverRent Buisness Cards

Mon, 30 Apr 2007 00:00:00 GMT

The acutal buisness card is smooth:

But Whatcha guys think?

Looks Pretty Web 2.0 To Me!

Hey What About Your Idea?

Mon, 30 Apr 2007 00:00:00 GMT

So many ideas, so many thoughts, so many opportunities, what to do with them all. All the abundance around the world is amazing, opportunites underneath challenges. I’m listening to music right now and writing on my blog that everything is going good.

We are launching BeaverRent.com, which shows Corvallis Apartment Rentals around Oregon State University. Like normal I’ve been working for months without pay on trying to establish buisnesses. My problem, my challenge, my opportunity in diguise is staying focus. I’ve created several different buisness ventures, and all have started to bear fruit after 6 months, and I left them after a good amount of time to pursue something I thought was better.

I do think they are better, and I’m just excited this time, I’m discipling myself to go through with this one, big time, fulll time, I will not be denied attitude, and work untill it works, bootstrap the venture and make it happen. Things are moving. So many ideas, hey what about your ideas? I know your reading this and have had alot.

I use to think ideas were worth alot of money, they aren’t. Ideas without action is worth nothing. But faith invested into action to pursue an idea is worthwhile. My friends have ideas, I have ideas, but most of the time I don’t see people acting on their ideas. You have alot of ideas, lets write them down. Writing down ideas clears the mind and allows you to fill your mind with more ideas, freeing space for more ideas.

Lets make it happen, hey what about your idea last year. I bet you its still good, are you working on it? Some of you are, but if you aren’t, you may consider get going now.

:), as corny as I sound, I’m in a happy mood. My car today, I was working on it, and now my door drivers’ side door is stuck. I literally can’t open it any more, I don’t know what happen, I was trying to fix it, but I made it worse. I think the lock-mechancism froze up. Its bad when you can’t open your drivers’ side door, you work on cars all the time, or use to, and don’t know whats wrong. Anyways, what am I talking about? I was thinking well, maybe I should buy another car, an S2000 would be nice, but for $14,000 I can not spend that kind of money any more after reading so many books. So I may buy a junker car to get around and be a true investor.

I have written above my head, and I will be: Making $10,000 a month by January 1st, 2006. BeaverRent is a world class company. I have mutiple streams of leveraged income. I own/co-own 3 real estate buildings. and I have 100% integrity.

Surprisngly, everytime I’ve written goals above my head, and I read them every day. Thats the only way to make your goals work, I’ve done my goals. I’ve done it three times and have amazing results, I’ve posted goals around my house, in my shower, in my closet, on my hands, in my wallet. But the best, and the most productive, and most results I’ve seen is from putting your goals, above your head, when you wake up in the morning you see them. Every day, every night, they become you. Everytime I’ve done it, it has worked, when I put goals elsewhere, they don’t seem to work that well. Thats for me.

Hey what about your idea, I’m sure you have some ideas your interested in. I dare you to put them above your head, when u see them every day, and every night. Don’t mind what other people think, I have people look at them all the time, and they don’t understand the power of the mind.

Marques and I are going to franchsing our product soon, making it systematic, duplicatable, with distrubtion channels, royalties, leverage. networks, viral, and with an exit stragedy. Fast Words.

End of my 3am rant in my office. Its April 30th, 2007th. I’m 20 years old now. My goal was to be financially indepedent before I graduate from college, even though I’m not in college any more that would be aproximately, 22 years old.

You can do it too, just do it. Don’t know how? Well the knowledge is out there, people write their stories everyday on how they achieved it. 3% of the population has a library card, do you have one? I have one, the wealth of the world at your finger tips. Lets make it happen guys.

People Calling Me

Thu, 26 Apr 2007 00:00:00 GMT

This has been a good week. I went over to another city to raise some capital for a real estate investment possibility, it came out with an interesting result. My old buddy from high school, EL called me, he said “wes I need to make some money, I thought I call you because you know how to make money.” lol, great, even though I’am not making alot of money right now, I’m on the way to and things are moving.

I will be making $10,000/month on January 1st, 2008, passive.

I had some interesting experiences and people contacting me looking for help on their ventures. I greatly appreciate this reason and look forward to helping everyone I can in reasonable time. Tommorow I will be talking with a local internet company Peak Internet, because they showed interest in our BeaverRent company which is launching on May 1st.

My Home Office!

Sun, 22 Apr 2007 00:00:00 GMT

Yeah, I got it super clean. No paperwork, all digitalized!

Now lets lets make $10,000 a month out of it!

BrassMedia and Bryan Sims’ WHY

Fri, 20 Apr 2007 00:00:00 GMT

Things are moving, just recently went to several speakers. One including BrassMedia with Bryan Sims, a very dynamic speaker, young entrepeneur making things happen. What I appreciated most from his story was his “why” his motivating factor, as Jim Rohn always says, “If your WHY is big enough the HOW doesn’t matter.” His why, is that if he did not succeed, in building his buisness, that his parents would go into bankruptcy.

Another reason why is WHY is even strong is because there is reason outside of ourselves. During the world wars, one of our ships sank in the ocean, the men were freezing cold, they were out there for so long. Some of them survived, many of them passed away. Although those who survived where helping eachother, and encouraging others to stay alive. Sometimes hope was lost, for themselves, they would die, and figure they would just give up, it was just thinking of what they were doing in the water, useless. But others had a different mind, some of the sailors would encourage those who were quesitoning of surviving to think outside of theirselves, who is it that is depending on you at home, who is it that you haven’t met yet that is depending on your survival, what about that person who may not even been born yet.

This motivating factor OUTSIDE of themselves, made it commited, and made their WHY stronger, because people are relying on them. Bryan Sims’ family was relying on him to succeed or else they would go into bankruptcy. That WHY is strong, a motivating factor, and I contirbute in my mind to his expolosive growth in the industry.

As another guy said at SpeakerLunch, Chris, he is on a salary, he is comfortable there is at the moment, NO CONSEQUENCE FOR NOT SUCCEEDING, so it is more difficult for him to have expolosive growth, there is no WHY, there is no MOTIVATING FACTOR, or maybe not as much as Bryan Sims’ WHY.

So I encourgage you to figure out WHY you are doing what you are doing, if you do not have a WHY, you can begin on what you would like to achieve in life, what places you want to travel, who do you want to see, who do you want to meet, what is that dream toy you want, and then why do you want that car, why do you want to travel to that spot, why is it that you want to get that color of car, why do you want to meet that person, and keep asking yourself, why you want to do to this, and then why again driving deeper and deeper.

This WHY is a futurist WHY for what you want to achieve, and then you can use it to motivate yourself, that if you don’t succeed, what you want is at risk, your WHY, create a WHY. Because if the WHY IS LARGE ENOUGH, THE HOW WILL TAKE CARE OF ITSELF.

Full time entrepeneurship.

Sat, 14 Apr 2007 00:00:00 GMT

I’ve been working non-stop this week, and every week and finally we are starting to move on several things.

My good friend Marques Alexander has really surprised me, I’m very impress with my buisness partner marques who has taken the iniative without ask, and pro-actively building the BeaverRent.com company, which is going to launch for students soon. We are out making sales, and presentations to property management companies.

We actually had a chance to talk with the President of Sterling Property Management in Corvallis, one of the largest, if not the largest property management companies in corvallis, we just might be striking a deal. So we are gratiful for their time that they spent with us, it has been great. Website is still always in developing, merger with other local student site is going as planned, and we received our filings from the state this week, so next week we are able to open our our LLC’s bank account either at US BANK or WASHINGTON MUTUAL because they do not charge fees for their buisness checking accounts.

BW ONLINE INCORPORATED, is moving also, we just finished opening up our bank account with US BANK, with a $300 deposit and we applied for a line of credit from CHASE bank, if all goes well we should be profitable within about 3-4 months. It’ll be interesting to see how this company does, this one isn’t to make a fortune just some very passive, residual and leveraging interest income profit, like a bakn does.

JINGYEE, INC is doing good, website is still generating revenue it is grossing about $500-600/month passive, without working on it. My buddy Chris Conkling is doing good right now and we are developing a new site, he is the wrtier currently and I’ll be the webmaster, we hope to expand the rotary engine scene, and create some more websites linked together with similiar themes to create passive income.

WHATEVER I WANT TO NAME IT LLC, is going to be the real estate holding company for my new 5bedroom/2bath house located in NE Portland, OR. That will be an income property. We are currently dealing with the oil tank situation right now, it it possing some problems and delaying closing, but after it is all said and done we should be in there by the 30th of this month, or next month on the 30th. If I’m projecting correct, modestly, the house even as it is right now is creating aproximately $2,000 a month passively in equity.

I’m reading Ryan Allis’ book ZERO TO ONE MILLION , it is quite impressive to see another entrepenuers story right there in a book at a similiar age level, he is about 2 years older than me, although he is further along than me of course even at his current age level, its nice to know that I’m on a similiar pathway, thinking and mindset as he appears in his book, IMHO.

I plan on going back to Central Catholic HS, I did it once last year 2x to speak to the entrepeneurship class there, that has been great. I plan on going to Grant HS, and Central Catholic HS, to donate time and try to help high-schoolers learn entrepreneurship and help them get started, those who are aspiring buisness owners, to get going, and help others.

I just re-organized my home office, I purchase a new laptop for $600, WideScreen 1.73ghz, 1gb ram, 100gb harddrive, all that stuff, strictly for accounting. With the 4 companies, its going to be difficult managing finances. I also purchased two backup harddrives, because as Ryan Allis says in his book, you’ll lose your stuff once and realize you need backups, well last time my backup hard-drive failed, so I purchased TWO. If two break I’ll be damneD! but they better not!

I should be in line to make at least $5,000 a month PASSIVE by the end of this year, I’d like to do $10,000 and just haven’t quite figured out how yet, how I’ll do that, I’ve been making some plans, but at least $5,000, sounds like I need more planning to do.

Northwest Real Estate Investment Club

Tue, 10 Apr 2007 00:00:00 GMT

Last Developments:

Officially closing on my house on the 30th this month right now, got favorable terms with the seller. They are compensating me for the oil tank problem, on the 30th I have begun my journey, learning curve to maximize the power of leverage.

I’am borrowing 180k from the bank.

Question? Who do you think will make more money faster, someone who is trying to save 180k to invest, or someone like me who borrows it right now and invests it. The person who knows how to use debt leverage to his or her advantage has a signifanct advantage of someone who does now know how to harness the power of leverage. It’d take someone AWHILE to save 180k, while by that time I’ll be done, financially indepedent.

Got a buddy who is going to help me develop my engine sites for me, +1 leverage.

–

I also joined the Nprthwest Real Estate Invesment Club, this is my new education, learning how to invest into real estate. I goto theses things with like 40-200 people, who network, talk buisness teach real estate investing, and learn abunch, teleconference calls.

I’m the youngest one in there by what I can tell, by at least 11+ years, and I have asked around. They say, “Looks like you just got out of high-school.” Gota love it!

http://www.northwestrei.org

My buddy BidProdigy online is killing me though he is now making 35,000$/month, my gosh.

Ack! Oil Tank

Wed, 04 Apr 2007 00:00:00 GMT

Well we did our inspections on yesterday, the house was pretty good except for the oil tank. The oil tank is leaking and it needs to be decommissioned which is going to cost around $2,300. Um, it may cost more though, it was higher on the levels of fuel in the ground and now its going into a second testing, they potentialy could have to remove the soil which would be around $10,000.00.

I would of course make the seller pay for that in the subject to’s.

Um, but thats just to remove/decommission the first tank. Then we have to install another one, which is around $2,300 also or put in a gas furnance which is around $4,500-$6,500, plus the piping which would be aorund another $300 or so.

If your purchasing a property with an oil heating system, be sure to get the oil tank TESTED, aprox $150-$200 to test. Home Inspection was $345.

Ggreeatt!! More negotiating, gota love problems!

Freedom or Security?

Sun, 01 Apr 2007 00:00:00 GMT

I finished my last couple days at the RISE Conference, an incredible resource for Finance Majors, of course thats not me, but for anyone interested in the world of stock investing, the economy, life, real estate and much more. It was interesting to see.

It was not really my crowd, everyone is interested in working for other companies, managing stocks, portfolios, analyzing securities, stuff I’am not particuarlly interested in. The common theme was, what is your dream job. Of course, I don’t have a dream job, dream is sort of a weak work, dream is dreaming, a goal is a written determination to accomplish something.

Here is what I’d like to ask, is what you want freedom or security.

Security is working at a job where you have an expected pay check, there is not much fear here, not much uncertainly, your destiny is decided by you, and the company you work for. That is what most people want.

But freedom is doing what you are passionate about. There were so many people at the RISE Confernence students, who want to work for other people. That is fine, but there is a few select group of people who were interested in starting buisnesses, dreamed of being a buisness owner, but AS STUDENTS, SOCIETY HAS ALREADY CONDITIONED THEM TO THINK ITS RISKY, AND THAT THEY ARE NOT READY YET TO DO A BUISNESS, ITS TO HARD, AND THEY WOULD RATHER WORK FOR SOMEONE ELSE BECAUSE IT IS MORE SECURE.

Theses people are GIVING up their FREEDOM 40hrs + A WEEK TO DO SOMETHING THEY originally DID NOT WANT TO DO, but are AFRAID OF BEING INSECURE, AFRAID OF TAKING RISKS, AFRAID OF DOING SOMETHING SOCIETY DOESN’T RECOMMEND, SCARED OF FOLLOWING THEIR BLISS. Its really quite SAD infact, I’m just listening and learning to other people. Don’t go get a job because other people think you should, or you think you need to.

Comon everyone, what do u want to do, JUST DO IT. Don’t be SCARED AND CONDITIONED TO DO WHAT EVERYONE ELSE DOES. MOST EVERYONE IS NOT LIVING THE LIFE THEY DREAMED OF AS A CHILD.

Freedom or Security. WHAT WILL YOU CHOOSE.

I’m choosing the path of freedom, I’m following my bliss. I’m working on building my asset base. I know what I want to do, and I’m doing it, I don’t let other people tell me to get a job because most people get a job. Don’t listen to peoples’ CRITISCSM.

IF YOU ACCEPT SOMEONE’S OPINION YOU ACCEPT THEIR LIFESTYLE. YOU HAVE TO BE VERY CAREFUL TO THOSE ADVICE DO YOU LISTEN TO, ARE THEY DOING WHAT YOU LIKE?

My uncle makes a good amount of money as a stock broker, and he thinks I should finish college so I can get a job. Well, hey, thats great but I’m NOT LOOKING FOR A JOB, its a different thing, you cannot really honestly take advice from people who don’t do what you do.

What is it what you want, are you afraid that you might fail, or it may be hard, or that your idea won’t work. HEY, THATS GREAT IF YOU FAIL, ITS DIFFICULT AND YOU FALL ON UR FACE. BECAUSE IF UR NOT FAILING THAT MEANS UR NOT TRYING, and if YOUR NOT TRYING AND FOLLOWING UR PASSION YOUR **NOT LIVING UP TO WHAT U REALLY WANT, AND SLOWLY BUT SURELY ITS AFFECTING UR OWN PHYSYCI. **

FOLLOW YOUR BLISS~~~~

First day at the RISE Conference | Stocks Vs. Real Estate Investing

Thu, 29 Mar 2007 00:00:00 GMT

Well today was an exciting today at the RISE Conference, there was a ton of spakers. Including some of the ones I enjoyed the most were Peter Coors, CEO of the Coors brewing company, Ralph Avarzes, CEO of McDonald, and abunch of other analyists and economists. This conference is definintely for Finance Majors, idk if I would go again, we still have acouple of days but its not really entrepreneurship.

I didn’t find myself networking a terrible alot because everyone is focused on getting jobs as portfolio managers, stock analysits, and finance sort of stuff. Nothing wrong with that, but when I talk to abunch of people all oriented going that different just not something I’m that interested in.

Like the Richard Parson’s visit from the CEO, I had front row seat, infront of 1,200. Front-row seating, I could see everyone, eye contact with the speakers, just arriving early. The information in the front is different than the back seats. Always sit in the front if you can, I had the straight, middle seat, in the front row infront of everyone. It was awesome!

Well as much as there was interesting information it is really interesting to see peoples’ views, everyone here it seems like is very biased in stock portfoilios. I’d personally have real estate portfolios for tons and tons of reasons over stocks. While stocks are good, I’d like to emphasize a couple of key points why real estate is potentially a superior investor for most people.

They were talking about how house prices may go down, and the housing bubble. And yes, theses people probably know alot more than me, but in the last 40 years, how many years have the medium house price gone done? That would be none. Even if housing prices are bad, just like the real estate deal I’m doing right now. I’m purchasing it below price because you can negotiate.

Theres one main thing I want to impact on though, and those that participated in the real estate club will understand this factory. Everyone is saying stocks are better investment that real estate, although what I found out what they were saying is stock investing vs. REITs, or real estate investment trusts, or basically stocks that invest into real estate. But they were even talking about the real estate market.

They are like well on average you may be getting 5% appreication on your houses. Compared to 15%ish on the stock indexes. Well, like theres a big difference there, and there is. But for most of the students they don’t get it. 5% appreication on your house, compared to 15% on the stock, of course the stock sounds better. But here is what MOST students don’t understand, and most people don’t understand why real estate is actually in some cases alot better.

Say ok, well you get 5% appreicaiton on your house, will a little bit of homework, you can easily get probably 8%+, 5% is really low.

But here is the difference.

Lets say I have $100,000 in stocks, ok, great, that goes up 15% lets say. I know have $115,000 I grossed $15,000. Pretty good

and my piece of real estate was $100,000 and it appreicated say only 5%, so my property is worth $105,000, so I grossed about $5,000.

But heres the catch, see in real estate, what if you just put 10% down to controll that $100,000 piece of property. Like in my example, I’m putting 10% on a downpayment.

So then recaculate here, if I put 10% down on $100,000 property, that means I’m putting $10,000 down. Well, my house appreciated 5%, my $100,000 house appreciated 5%. Ok so my house is worth $105,000. I made $5,000.

Well, wait a minute, I made $5,000. I invested $10,000. How much did I gain, I made a 50%!!! return on my investment compared to a 15% ROI on my stock transactions.

SEE THE RETURNS IN REAL ESTATE ARE MAGNIFIED BECAUSE OF THE LEVERAGE OF USING OTHER PEOPLE’S MONEY. I MAY ONLY GET 5% ON APPREICATION, BUT I’M GETTING APPRECIATION ON THE MONEY THE BANK IS LENDING ME. I’AM MAGNIFIYING MY RETURNS BECAUSE OF THE LEVERAGE FACTOR.

And btw 5% is garbage, north portland is appreication 16% a year for the last 5 years. With 10% down, that means I’m getting a 160% return on my investment each year. Stocks beat that, banks won’t lend u money to do that with stocks now will they.

So thats just one example, don’t be fooled when people tell u well real estate appreicates less, and the housing market is going to crash. They are obviously not real estate investors, and most people don’t understand how leverage works.

There really isn’t any leverage in stocks unless u do options and stuff.

And to top that,

not to mention the tax beneifits, 1031 tax-exchanges, you can save all ur money on capital gains. Can’t really do that with stocks unless u have an IRA.

More tax benefits depriciation, you get writeoffs because of depreciation of your building.

Amoritization, you have a rental income, you got that mortgage. The renters are paying for that.

Had if your stocks crash, you’ll loose all ur cash. My building burns up, I have insurance to cover it, and besides I still own the land.

You have to buy stock at its current going rate, in real estate, you can negoitate and get a steal deal.

Those are just a few of the reasons I prefer real estate over stocks, yes stocks are good, I’ll do stocks, I do stocks right now, but I’m going to do MAJORITY by FAR in real estate. Leverage, Leverage Leverage, used properly will make you rich.

Your thoughts

Dayton OH, 3 Buisnesses And Real Estate

Tue, 27 Mar 2007 00:00:00 GMT

at 7am I’m headed off to Dayton, OHIO for the RISE Conference, a congolmerate of 200+ colleges, for the Global Student Investment Forum. Paid mostly by the Finance Club, which I of course signed up for, and why most people diddn’t I don’t know, one of those mysterys of the unknown!

Lets make sure we take advantage of opportunities!

OK Dayton OH, 3 Buisnesses and Real Estate!

Well OK, maybe 3 buisnesses is an exadoration, but its official now.

My buddy Bryan Baker and last week filed our new corporation, BW Online Incorporated, what we will do is basically be a middleman for money, right now the current idea is getting lines of credit from the bank at 10-12% interest, and then trading our funds on the prosper market for 22%+ interest. If you haven’t seen prosper check it out, http://www.prosper.com, we will be starting a whole blog about it, my buddy bryan will be leading it.

We filed the corporation, so we get our EIN, Federal Tax ID.

While I’ve hammer getting focused on buisnesses one at a time, this is going good, I’ve started to learn how I can leverage myself with other people and accomplish more, get more done, and be able for me to focus on what I do best and get them all done within resonable time.

This one is pretty passive, prosper has 3 year loans, our lines of credit are infinite pretty much. We get $10,000 cash. Note: We are not using our money, OPM, OTHER PEOPLES’ MONEY. The key word is leverage, and who is leveraging you, we know we don’t have leverage when we aren’t making money in our sleep.

So thats #1, the corporationf iling sohuld be done pretty soon, we’ve been going to all of the banks in corvallis and researching the bank rates, once thats done we are going to file, and I’m using my credit score, and doing the loans, bryan will be doing the accounting, and the blogging for the most part idea right now, and we will be fair to eachother and work things out. This is pretty residual about 1-2 months worth of work, for a 3year on-going income producing asset.

On a $10,000 loan from a bank we are planning on making an extra $1,000 a year. Not that much, but its residual thats just off one loan, my buddy Stephen over at GoobTech suggested getting a 7% apr credit card, we might do that, to increase revenue by almost DOUBLE!.

—-

Thats buisness #1, a residual buisness. As I mentioned earlier, and you should maybe consider this too. I don’t work on anything that doesn’t provide a passive income. Why would I, work for something that doesn’t pay me for the rest of my life, yeah, you could if its a big one time job, but honestly I don’t, me personally, I won’t work on anything that doesn’t have residuals. If you want to get rich thats one easy concept just to take, just work on residual passive producing income.

—–

Buisnesss #2 is almost ready for launch we just filed BeaverRent Incorporated, which will be located on BeaverRent.com, more about this buisness to come. I’ve been working on getting the nitty gritty done for the last month, my buddy is putting together the marketing plan. We are merging with a successful student site in corvallis, again more details on this.

The important part to take away here, is I’m doing the programming, web design, accounting, filing, legal stuff, and I’m going to be merging with the other student site. While I just do that about once, and yes spend some tim ehere and there, my friend is going to be making the sales, calls, and setting up appointments. Again, another residual leveraging my efforts once and then that goes.

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#3 buisness is Jingyee Incorporated the already established one, that right now is producing around $500-600/month passive. On RotaryEngineIllustrated.com, and RebuildingRotaryEngines.com

—

Real estate actually qualifies as another buisness, which is also extremely leveraged, and passive. I’m working on that right now as I mentioned. We had an accepted offer on my counter, which was REALLY LOW. And I’m surprised they accepted, and we did a walk through yesterday all looked good.

Schedeueld inspections, home inspection and oil tank inspection for $500 schedueled for Tuesday next week I’ll see if the property is good. And then I’ll rent out 5 rooms for about $1,750 a month passive.

—

Everything on the list is pretty passive, the websites are 100% passive, I haven’t worked on them very much at all in the last 6 months. The BeaverRent will be passive, because I’m just doing the website and once done, I’m not working on it much just collecting checks. The Propser is passive because once we have the money at 10% interest we are loaning it out for 3 years at 20% interest, thats extremely passive. The real estate is passive, in theory, it takes work, but thats passive too.

A combination of passive producing income from C-corporations invested into real estate is the goal.I ts spring break, hope you my buddy are getting at it too! CYA in dayton! Lets get it done guys, you could make $100,000 within 3 months if u really wanted to. So the question is if we are going to make it happen.

OH man! I’m excited

Fri, 23 Mar 2007 00:00:00 GMT

Wow, just talked to my buddy Cody Willner, hes working too.

I had just had one of my counter offers accepted for a house. Sreaming good deal, I can’t wait, looks good tommorow I’ll sign the paperwork. Can’t disclose details on blog any more due to asset protection but I’ll post on here if goes through.

How about $40k ish off original asking price, plus seller pays closing?

This is the time to make it happen

Fri, 23 Mar 2007 00:00:00 GMT

So the school is shutting down pretty much. Everyone is going to break, some people are going to party, while some of us are going to work. Most people gain mommentum towards their goals in their free time.

My buddy Stephen with Goobtech.com just bought 3 houses, and he is putting together a team of buisness partners and launching an online site this break. My buddy marques is starting a buisness in corvallis and making stuff happen, my buddy bryan is out for surgrey but just filed a company BW Online, Inc and he is going to be rocking here soon right after his surgey is done. And I’m working programming, and now potentially lcosing on a house pretty soon from the offers I made in the past.

So whats your plans this break, we have 7 days. Lets make something happen and 7 days is alot of time. Alot of people will be ‘Taking it easy’, ‘going to hang out’, ‘relaxing’. I guess, but is that what you want?

Spring Break, we can tell what you are up to by ur spring break plans! Lets get going.

Blog

Tue, 20 Mar 2007 00:00:00 GMT

Um I haven’t posted in awhile but I’ve been working. Since last post:

Made 6 offers on different properties, looking at one in particular in N portland, 3b/2b house for $229,000 trying to get them down to $215,000 ish.

Shifting temp focus on local buisness in corvallis, different than web 2.0 project, putting on hold for 1-2 months. I’m programming, doing technical, will do the billing service, and friend will do promotion. We might do a potential merge with another student site here in Corvallis, and then my friend is seting up marketing plans and going to probably become president of the company for most operations.

Working with my friend Bryan Baker, starting a corporation BW Online, inc is the current name which we will be gathering lines of credit and investing into assets, more on that later.

Setup a prosper account to start investing money, peer to peer lending, threw $100 into account.

Working on redoing RebuildingRotaryEngine site, finish mailing list, start email marketing campaign.

Trying to, but not doing so well yet, in getting a writer for the RotaryEngineIllustrated site to share residuals with.

And then I have a test tommorow which score, will not look pretty.

Paying for help is expensive

Thu, 15 Mar 2007 00:00:00 GMT

Ohh, when I already lost enough money this year. In 2006 I was able to generate around $15,000 in gross profits from buisnesses. Although I spent like $20,000 in expenses. It really doesn’t matter how much money you make its how much money you keep and how long it keeps working for you.

I just got hit with a $600 bill to pay my accountant to fire my corporations tax returns, ouch. and Another $200 I think is coming for my personal taxes. All is well though, a good year of negative returns, making mistakes is setting up a good 2007 year with a strict budget, maximize profits, utilize money in generating more cashflows in different means, and learning how to create a positive cashflow buisness by failing last year.

This is why you want to be in Silicon Valley for web companies

Mon, 12 Mar 2007 00:00:00 GMT

My uncle sent me this article,

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2007/03/11/MNGKKOCBA645.DTL&hw=neo+nomads&sn=001&sc=1000

You don’t have to read the whole thing it is so amazing. I knew it was good down there, but not this good. You goto theses coffe shops and there are like 20-50 people with laptops programming, startup theses internet startups letft and right. I can’t wait to get down there, skim through that and you will be amazed. This is crazy web 2.0, that is the place to be.

Although I’m ging to be switching my plan alittle bit, so I can go down there with some momentum. I’m going to go down there but tweaked my plan.

Instead of going down there immediately, I’am going to get this real estate internet buisness for Corvallis established that should take 1-2 months, in meanwhile I’m going to purchase an investment property in N Portland. So I have an equity producing machine.

N portland appreciated 16% last year, that means if I had a 300k proeprty, I would have made 45k off appreciation alone. I can’t miss this.

I appreciate the input from my friends and I like the idea, exhaust all of the resources where you are currently and then move to the next destination. In otherwords, there are opportunities all around us, I’m going to take what I can, do what I can, get the real estate transactions going, so if my internet buisnesses fail crash and burn, which I’m sure some will, I will have a real estate buisness steadily growing on the side of everything.

I do this, get the property, get the company down in corvallis established which I haven’t mentioned on here yet, focus on that, then go down to San Fran with some serious entrepreneurship momentum, and then rock it down there with the web 2.0 project. I’am still working on it, but putting it on a quick hold for this week and focusing on the real estate buisness, and real estate purchase.

Although I’m going downt o san fran this week, and going to talk to the family down there, and plant that seed. So San Fran 6 months to a 1 year, did you look at this article: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2007/03/11/MNGKKOCBA645.DTL&hw=neo+nomads&sn=001&sc=1000

I can’t miss out on that, but I’d like to already have some 2 etablsiehd websites, and a real estate producing equity propert,y and then go down there, I’ll have an edge, momentum, focus, and really blow it up down there.

Theses guys above got mommentum, this will be us! Come down there rocking, and make it happen, alot of compeition down there, and lets blow them away, do what they aren’t doing. Have access to more resources up here, take advantage of that learn the process of using up what you can, and take it down there, and really blow it up.I’m excited too beacuse the web 2.0 company I’m developing is basically a system which allows theses guys to get help from one antoher!! Wow.

Blast From The Past – What Happend To Me In HighSchool

Fri, 09 Mar 2007 00:00:00 GMT

This post may be kind of long, and is a reflection on myself and an outlet to share some experiences which has happend to me during high school. But it is interesting what can happend when humans are surronded by good and bad choices which ultimately determine our destinys.

After middle school, with the influence of my good friend Stephen, he suggested I go to Central Catholic High School. I did not know anything about this high school, little did I know it would be one of the best things that could have happend to me as I look back on it now. And I just took that little suggestion and I went and became a student at a prviate high school, which I’am so gratiful for because of what it has done for me. About 75% of the students are on scholarships to pay their $8,000 a year tution.

I left a public schools to start to attend a private school, it was a major turning point in my life. There was such a dramatic difference it was incredible. I’m gratiful I was able to experience both worlds, both the public school system and the private school system which has really made me be able to communicate with a wider arrange of people.

Middle School to High School was a transition, most of my friends were going to the public high school in the neighborhood, Grant High School. There is nothing wrong with Grant High School, although for some individuals unless you had the dedicated like my friend Cameron, who had a record of good grades, and being on top of things with scholaistics, you would have a trouble finding yourself around that environment grade wise if you did not have the proper work ethic. For grades, I did not have that, my best gpa ever in middle school was my final semeseter of a all B’s, for a solid 3.0, other than that I would regularly get Ds, Fs, Cs, maybe an A or there, and really just not get good grades, to be honest I was just playing to many video games during middle school.

I hit this concept very hard in my book, when explaining how it is that we become the combined average of the five people we associate with the most. What happend, and is happening now is that the slight edge difference between myself and my friends who went to public high school is a dramatic one. Most of my friends I met, went down roads I would hate to go down. Although success is the progressive realization of a worthy ideal, in my mind, most of my friends who have dropped out of high school, worked min payment jobs, have an apartment (think they are doing good, because they have that car, with a loan, they pay rent to a landlord, and are ~making~ working for money). 90% of my friends went into the direction society would call not a success, and it is really sad to see, that I would have been with them had it not been for a simple change in school.

My freshmen year was a new change for me, on the school days after school I would hang out with my friends from my old public school and we would smoke marijuana. Which you may or may not consider a bad drug, I feel it is bad for me, an I use this do this like every day for a long period of time. Not knowing the consequences, I got in alot of trouble, parents are not happy to see their child abusing drugs. I could not SEE the future that was in hold for me if I continued down that path. But school was going ok, I was struggling with my grades. There was one funny, or maybe not so funny incident that happend during school. After 9/11 when the towers were demolished, fell down, the day after I was in my programming class at Central Catholic.

Well I had gone to Computer Camp, yup thats right! And I learned a trick, how to message everyone on the whole entire network, I can’t even really remember it right now. And this message went to everyone throughout the entire school lol, all the teachers computers, every computer in the WHOLE school. Well we were in class, and I showed everyone this, and we were having a ball sending messages back and forth, and everyone was freaking out. I just knew that little command to do that so, then my friend and I did something stuipid, he said what if I type, “Fuck You” In that system, I said that probably wouldn’t be a good idea, I said what if we write, “We Are Taking Over.” Well after we said we are taking over the all over the computers in school, I was suspended for a day for basically hacking or whatever silly they called it.

What happend as a freshmen, is my brother and I sold a DVD player, and as a freshmen in high school, 14ish years old we got an eBay account. That would start a path, that would start a journey of becoming an entrepreneur. Because I had a eBay really excelled my entrepreneurship career. I started an eBay store, and soon enough at store I was considered the eBay king, or whatever you want to to call it. I was the goto person to buy something on eBay, or to sell it on eBay, whatever you got I would sell for you.

I became a PowerSeller in highschool, my ebay account has over 330+ feedback just because of high school. That was a major turning point in my life. I would sell peoples’ stuff, and charge others to get stuff on eBay. I would charge 10% to list something, and just take that out of the final value. What I sold the most of was Nike Shoes, and misc stuff around I could find to sell.

Most of my sales at school came from purchasing stuff on eBay. I would purchase watches, and jewerly walk around school with them, no joke, and try to sell them to students. I was successful at what I did, and I did make the sales, I got out there. Everyone thought my stuff was stolen, but everything was just off eBay. You see those movies, were the guy has all those watches in his coat, that was me. I had a breifcase with watches in it, jewely all kinds of stuff.

I even remember purchasing a wholesale box of laser points, and I sold them for a dollar each. So then everyone at school at a laser point, well the teachers loved that!. Well my entrepreneurship teacher did :).

So I started my eBay store as a freshmen in high school, it diddn’t really take off untill later in my school. As a sophmore I did some sports, Cross Country, and Track (Sprinting) , nothing really exciting there except for some good, and not so good times being exhausted running cross country. In the summer of sophmore year, I started working at Pineapple Racing, a race shop which rebuild rotary engines. I made $7/hour, so it was nice to have income.

Whereas most people would go out partying every week, I found myself, working on my car instead, I distracted myself from getting into more trouble with my car. Of course this whole time I was still under the influence of weed, which was not helping me. I was still hanging out with my buddies from middle school and the path was slowly and surely growing between us. No body really knows this at my high school, but as a sophmore I got myself into some real trouble. I do not say this because I’am proud about it, matter of fact I’m ashamed of it, and have done some things to retribute myself, I more say this because, I’ve been in trouble and did drugs, I never drank alcohol, to show that I’m human too, and that I’ve been lost confused, and unguided for a large portion of my life like most other people. And that you know that I’m just telling the truth of what happened to me, and I’m sharing my story.
So what really happend, is my junior year, things started to be picked up. Things are strange, it is strange why some things just happend when they do. I got my car broken into, and I had alot of custom installed stereo equipment stolen, subwolfers, decks, amplifiers. And because of that simple stuipid little act of something breaking into my car, and I must say, after having my car broken into twice it is a horrible feeling and that is such a bad feeling to ever put on someone. So with a stolen stereo, and I did not know how to work on electrncis at the time, I learned how to install a cd player, to a whole stereo system, to a whole complete alarm system with remote start-up, automatic door locks, automatic roll down windows, trunk acutators, and the whole deal.

Because of this I had a new skill I could work on cars. So as a sophmore, I started a car stereo buisness in high school. What I would do is purchase everything off ebay, and my garagae was a stereo shop basically I had about a clinet or two a week, mostly random people come in and I would ‘hook up’ there car with whatever they needed. Here is my website of my goods http://www.geocities.com/oregonelectronics

So that was interesting, I would now walk around school with stereos, and of course everyone though they were stolen. If you saw a half asian kid walking around with 8 stereos in school I guess I would think they were stolen too, but they won’t I would walk around with stereos, amplifiers, batteries all sorts of stuff. I remember I produed myself with walking into school with one new piece of stereo equipment a day. And I would try to sell this stuff, I mean walking around with big amplifiers for car subs, I would walk around and ty to sell them.

I even went as far as one day, I brought a 12v car battery, put it in my backpack and walked around school witha HEAVY ##$ backup, and then I powered up my car stereos with it. So in class, I could power up a Touch Screen Alpine Deck, I even had car stereo speakers so I could show off the whole system, DECK, Speakers with SOUND in class, powered off a car battery in my back pack. And I’d walk around, and again try to sell stuff.

So that went pretty, good my eBay career, the above is my store, then I sort of transitioned out of this. And I’m going to type quicker, this post is becoming longer than I thought, I’am at the point of NO RETURN!

So as a junior I was still doing some drugs, and by this time some of my friends were already starting to drop out of public school… This was a pretty big turning point in my life, and I started hanging out with less and less of my friends.

As a senior, I finally made a decision after getting caught for the 7th time smoking that I would quite smoking marijuana, and I did, what a wonderful feeling to make a life changing decision and stick with it. I have been smoke free for almost 3 years now. And Although smoke sounds relaly bad I did not do cigaretts, and only smoked on occasion the green stuff, but smoking is smoking.

That right there was really the biggest impact I had on my life. Even my friends from my private school did drugs. Honestly about 95% of the people I know, if not almost 100% of my friends did drugs. HOW are you suppose to get away from this stuff that society puts on US which is what EVERYONE does. It is very hard, it was challenging, it was challenging for me, and it was one of the reasons I believe our school system is failing our kids, there are so many drugs in high school that are destorying peoples’ futures.

But what basically happend as a senior in HS, I finally made a decision to start minding my own buisness. I stopped hanging out with everyone because everyone was doing what I did not want to do. All of my friends, and I do all of my friends, and if your reading this right now I’m sure you can relate to me if you were with me in high school. So I found myself always working on my eBay buisness, and I wasn’t really lonely by myself. One kid, out of 200 in my class, who had a different view than everyone else. It is no wonder that I don’t associate with anyone from my high school now, I don’t really associate with anyone from middle school either. Why would I, they aren’t going down the same path as me.

It has really been a hard time, finding those people who have work ethic, and want to do big things.

This is a long unproof-read rant, and I’m finding myself lost in it at the same but. But basically, I started understanding theses philosophies of life. That I would rather be by myself, than to associate with everyone doing what I thought was wrong. I found myself realizing, that over time, each day, each week, each month, now 3 YEARS of following my bliss, and avoiding the crowds of everyone else, that simple little things over time would make a big difference.

I would always tell myself, that all my friends are out having their fun now. Well, I was trying to build some assets, and in the future, they are going to be the ones going to work, and I’m going to have my fun. And guess how much fun I’m going to have when I’m 25 and financially indepdent when they will be stuck in the rat race for 40-50 years of their lives if not the whole one. “woah wes, that was pretty negative.” I’m just being real, and I’m just stating the fact that most of the people who I choose not to associate with will be in the rat race, struggling with the financial decisions. And not only have I offered an access out to associate in clubs and stuff, they aren’t interested which is fine.

You realize that only about 5% of the population is financially indepedent, that makes basically ALL of your friends, the majority of them, won’t make it to become financially indepedent one day. Were not talking about being rich, just financially indepedent.

So as a senior, I started that slight edge path. Failure is a few simple errors in judgement repeated every single day, Success is a few simple disciplines repeated every single day. There is already a massive different in between my friends and I, I can’t even really talk to them any more, and would not want to anyways, but we don’t speak the same language.

I can’t really put it into words its looking like, but basically basically everyone I was associating with is going down the wrong road in my opinion. And to each his own perspective and opinion.

Then as a senior, working at Pineapple Racing. I purchased a website Rotary Engine Illustrated.com, put some ads on there and it started making around $300/month so from that point I wanted to build websites and create passive income from it.

I stopped doing eBay because of this simple fact, and car stereos. Yes you could make money, but it was linear, if I did not make a sale I was not making any money, there was no residuals in there, so I stopped doing eBay, car stereos, working on people’s websites, cars, and everything. And then stepped into the passive income mode.

I never knew what was an entrepreneur till I took a class on like entrepreneurship. THAT DAY, when I went to class and learned what an entrepreneur was, the NAME entrepreneur that I had never heard before, which is what I was trying to do, build a buisness, is WOW, thats me, thats what I like to do. And I decided as a senior in high school to become a successfull entrepreneur and that long story but short, has basically made me where I am today in short.

So after I found out what entrepreneurship is, and how websites can make money. My senior year, I started my first, official on paper company, Jingyee, Inc with cam.

Oh, how I found OSU. I diddn’t really have that good of grades, although they picked up in HS, I ended up with a 3.2 gpa acculmative, after attending the entrepreneurship class. There was a newspaper on the entrepreneurship colleges in OREGON. What a coincidence, its werid how things happen when they do. I saw weatherford, and then THATS where I’m going, to the entrepreneurship program. I only made one application to OSU, and got my one application accepeted.

While I was a senior, I had an idea to create a website, and I did make it. Which would have everyone’s contact information about eachother so we could keep in touch. I thought what a great idea that everyone could keep in touch with everyone in the future, I was thinking for buisness, hey if one of my classmates become an attorney, that free advice hu. So I made a online website, and handed out flyers, and basically collected information from all my class mates, and I made a website www.central05.com which is no longer up where people could keep in touch.

Although this may be a BIG STATEMENT, but I honestly believe, and I diddn’t know it, if Facebook wasn’t already out at the time when I entered school I would have created it. I say this because I was already doing something similiar with all of my class mates, we would even share homework on our class website forum, just for students, and we were in contact.

I was going to do the same thing for school, I even told my friend Rafael, I said this, I bet you I can get everyone’s phone number in this school, facebook has everyone’s phone numbers pretty much. I was going to make one of those for OSU a freakin facebook, I diddn’t even know about myspace and facebook at the time, all I can say, is I was developing one of those too but I diddn’t know the others existed. Interesting hu?

I must say, after 4 years, I found my passion, I’m lucky enough, to avoid the trap of drugs. I stopped associating with everyone I knew practially. And still to this day, Its hard to find people who have values and share similiar passion as me. I still have yet to find my 10 truly good entrepreneur friends, although they are slowly emerging.

And during my senior year, my friend and I would go on to start developing out first web company selling textbooks instead, and we would enter the college years. Which I will share too, which is also quite interesting. Which lead to nextwork marketing, dropping out, traveling being lead on to a multimillion dollar scam, and much more!

$114 PASSIVE in 6 days!

Wed, 07 Mar 2007 00:00:00 GMT

Cool, so I was just checking my adsense revenue today for my two engine sites. March is looking like a pretty good month so far with an average daily advertising revenue of $19.00 a day, if it continues to go at that rate, that’d be an extra $570 a month passive not that bad.
To my friend Bryan Baker, at first when I showed him this, everyone thinks thats alot. Which to an extent is. In Relationship to what though? Now Bryan and friends are being introduced to the blogosophere and my $570 is looking like pocket change hu? I know I know, its not going to buy me that Yellow Convertible Ferrari F355 F1 Spyder, with the tan interior, navigation with the custom lisecence plate, and vinyl sticker on the back of the ferrari that says you can have be or do anything you want. But its a start!

After this web 2.0 project is complete, there should be no problem generating $100/day from advertising. The revenue you are seeing is off 1,000 unique visitors a month towards a niched engine site, which devliers contextual ads to people learning about cars. Now just imagine if we had 10 of theses sites, or 1 big one? Good stuff, lets make it happen, that is from like 2 years of work of putting together a site. I don’t even know how many hours into it, probably at least 6 months-full time went into making that happen.

Blast From The Past (Elementary/Middle School)

Wed, 07 Mar 2007 00:00:00 GMT

I was browsing on the internet on my old friends site back from 2000, I think was around 12 then! Anyways, it was interesting to see the work I did back then and how it has progressed to becoming an individual passionate about entrepreneurship. This is just a self expression about myself growing up, and some of the major influences on my life and really how it made a major difference in who I am today.

Most important thing in middle school would be meeting my best friend, Cameron, who is my age. He and I had an interest in computers, in the 3rd grade I had access to a computer and the internet, and it all started from there.Cam and I would later start Jingyee, Inc a company that focused on building a web company that focused around student notes, corvallis classifieds text book exchange, and showing off student works.

Nothing really incredible happend in middle school, I went to a public elementary school, Laurelhurst, and don’t really keep in touch with anyone from there. I got hooked on this game called Ultima Online, a massive mutliplayer online game, the best in my opinion.

Here is a video I made in middle school, one of the several flash productions I did:

Wes Mahler’s First Fighting Video

That went on for several years, in elementary/middle school I thought it would be cool to become a computer programmer. I ended up at a public middle school, Fernwood, where I would meet one of the most influential people that has affected my course of life. Although he does not even know about my blog, and I don’t in touch with him much now, he was from a good family and was very entrepreneurial.He was always coming up with ways, and ideas on how to create income. He was reading books on accounting, rich dad poor dad, the stock market, this is in middle school. He was a very attractive person at the time, not in that way, but attractive in the sense that I’d like to be around someone of that character, someone who was doing stuff out going.

Well he was also interested in computers, and then he and I would start a little buisness together in middle school. It was Yaffice, a web design company. We mainly just made websites in frontpage templates lol, and we had a client with a restaruant, we started to work on the website but I don’t believe we ever finished it. Maybe I was not a good worker at the time, but I don’t remember finishing it. He might of done some more things.

That kind of got me started, meeting an indivudal who was interested in entrepreneurship. I diddn’t even know what the word entrepreneur was untill I was a senior in HS, and little did I know what would happen then.

I will always be gratiful for meeting someone who has had an impact on my life, and I say thank you whenever I get the chance to talk with him over the phone. Although we are not in touch really lately, it has been a blessing to meet someone who got me started.

I was developing flash macromedia graphics at the time, Stephen and I became the teacher’s assistant for the computer class. Cool Hu! We thought so, we knew that network inside and out, and got into some computer mischief I probably shouldn’t detail, lol.

Um, middle school wasn’t a good time for me grade wise, I got around a 1.5 GPA and, 2.0s I got alot of Ds. I ended up finishing middle school with like a 2.0 gpa average, of course that doesn’t matter, although in realitly it does, it set me up for horrible grades in HS. I was kind of a trouble maker, I got suspended 3 times for fighting kids at school, I guess thats normal though.

At the time we were having trouble, my brother was having troubles at public school, and my parents did not want me to goto public school. I look back now, and had I taken the road my brother had gone down, I would be, um, I’am not exactly sure but it wouldn’t be pretty I’d be failing out of school, partying, not being productive, behind on my dreams, and like some of the unfortunate friends have wound up that I’ve associated with.

Although middle school was good, I agree with my English teacher on this one, that high school was the most influential period of my life which would be the major determing factor in where I’am today, and will be in the future.

Backup Harddrives

Mon, 05 Mar 2007 00:00:00 GMT

What a joke!

Sometimes, I think you’ll agree with me all of this technological stuff is awesome but it just breaks. This is a rant but I purchase a backup harddrive for all my pictures. And my book, I spent a couple months writing a book I have 40-45 pages of a book, pretty much completly written. I did not find my passion to continue with it and found my topic beated to death. But anyways all on this backup harddrive, with my pictures from years ago.

Well of course, the back up harddrive has got to crash. Although it looks like I might be able to restore it, this is crazy. It seems all the time, I’m loosing my history, my pictures taken years ago. Harddrives crash, and windows crashes, and you always got to reboot. The search feature on my computer like isn’t even working right now.

Sometimes, I don’t understand how theses pieces of technology, are quite frankly very very unstable and unreliable. I’am from now going to store my important data with my host, who better not loose it and they have all types of backups I’m sure.

Although I’ve been a PC user for quite some time now all of my life. My next computer is going to be an apple, to see the reliability issue. I’m sorry but having to have a fresh new boot of windows every year because it gets all jumbled and messed up is unacceptable. And backup harddrives, it looks like you need a backup harddrive for your backup harddrives. Comon.

I honestly think that the more technology changes, Richard D Parson, says the more things stay the same. Technology advances faster than humans can adapt the technology normally. If there is a way to desimply things, make it an idea less rely on technology sometimes it can be a good thing I’d think. I don’t know where I’m going with this, I just know, that none of this information we store on our computer really lasts, unless its backup x3 times.

Don’t buy a MAXTOR harddrive I should probably say now too. I might be loosing almost 200GB! of 2 years of history of projects, pictures, my book, and all sorts of stuff because. Yes I diddn’t back it up, well I did, but I diddn’t backup the backup. I know you’ve had probably problems with loosing stuff, this is just a rant, but just wow!

Comments

6 from the original blog

Bryan BakerMar 5, 2007, 8:25am
Good post Wes. Reference to Richard Parsons, CEO of Time Warner, he is a true entrepreneur at his core.
Sorry about your crazy technology crappin’ out on you. Maybe my next computer will be apple as well…I’ve had to reformat this AMD64 countless times already, and I’ve only had it for around 2 years. Time to upgrade I guess. Haha.
I’m happpy to be your top commentator!
Cody WillnerMar 5, 2007, 11:50am
Oh snap! That sucks. I use a Smartdisk FireLite 8G0GB external USB hard drive and it works just fine. I have all of my real estate files and music and such on there. I hope mine doesn’t crash any time soon.
Bryan BakerMar 6, 2007, 6:52am
80GB…shieeeeet. Hey Wes…you familiar with AdWords and how it works?
DanMar 7, 2007, 12:44am
Dude, don’t go Apple! That’s all I have to say.
Consider Seagate hard drives, they are rock solid compared to that Maxtor crap.
Even the cheapest Seagate HD has a 3 year warranty.
Cheers,
Dan
StevenMar 7, 2007, 1:58am
Hey Wes, check this post out and see if I missed anything…
www.goobtech.com/agloco.php
I think its pretty complete but I could be wrong.
Qwerty_Mar 18, 2007, 11:09pm
Have you thought of trying linux?

Whats New

Sun, 04 Mar 2007 00:00:00 GMT

On Friday we shot 2 more videos on the rotary engines for my website.

Today, I have been programming for the past 13 hours. It took me 10 hours to learn AJAX, and I’m still learning, 10 hours to learn how to develop a little digg like feature, which allows you to do actions without having to refresh the screen

I’ve had alot more people recommend me going to school, and then once the buisness starts picking up, then to leave. Again, I appreciate that people are just looking for my best interests, although my mission is to create a web 2.0 buisness, develop it, sell it, invest the money into real estate, and create personal development schools/seminiars for those who could need help. And thats what I’m going to do, and thats what I’m going to focus on.

People really think for some reason that my buisnesses are going to fail, and then how am I going to get a job. Common. Well no anger here, they just don’t understand. I would have 3 more years, at 40 hours a week to do school.

But I’m going to spend 3 years, full time 80 hours a week developing a buisness. Can you imagine the difference? We’ll find out I guess, but its not like I’m not going to class, and just sitting at home all day. I put in 10-16 hours a day, every day working ON my buisness, creating a SYSTEM that will work with or without me.

Enough with the rant, its 5:30am, and I’m going to keep going. Keep going, wes, keep going.

Comments

1 from the original blog

Bryan BakerMar 4, 2007, 5:36am
Why are entrepreneurs like ourselves up this late(early?) on a regular basis…zzz…zzzzzz.
Good night Wes.

Bryan Baker Dot Com

Wed, 28 Feb 2007 00:00:00 GMT

I never knew so much about the blogosphere untill my buisness friend I met on YoungEntrepreneur.com, BuisnessProdigy, showed me a blog of an individual by the name of Jon Waraas. Now however much of a loser Jon Waraas is, (I say loser, because thats basically the themes of his sites.) He had some interesting information about making money through affiliate programs and arbitarge, a 19 year making I heard around $20,000-$30,000/month. Little did I know, the community of success driven people was just a click away.

There is a tremendous amount of entrepreneurs on the web that we can network with and talk to, it is always intersting to see what others do. There is a Donald Trump blog, a blog by Ryan Allias, a 22 yr college drop out who has a 5 million dollar per year company, there is John Chow, some crazy affiliate guy who makes acouple thousand dollars a month of his blog. And all types of people, a wealth of information, that I never knew about.

So I figured I get started, my personal blog isn’t so much about whats the latest and greatest way to make money, or increases traffic on your site, or that sort of stuff. It is more just a perosnal out, where I rant, and type without spell check and just flow… from my mind!!!

So I’ve found it an interesting source a way to express ideas, and of course there are good ideas in here, but the main goal is to connect, and let my friends know what is going on. I helped my friend Steve Ramil start a blog, although he had a couple of posts there hasn’t been anything lately. Then I helped Marques Alexander get a blog going, but he never got to it.

But then I helped my friend Bryan Baker get a blog going, and he would have goten one already, but no only does he got a blog he has been actively promoting it, and building it. Now introduced to the whole affiliate, and google adsense environment which may not have been a realitly a while ago. It is cool to see people. As my first return, and 2nd term back from school my focus has really been to help people and inspire people with the OSU Real Estate Club, I believe I did a fair job, and alot of room for improvement. 8 weeks of recruiting and promoting, and then 9 weeks of more promoting and actually doing public speaking and setting of events.

I’ve really been able to sharpen my sword, I’ve been reading books on how to better present, and anyways, I was writing this post because my friend Bryan Baker is doing some good stuff on his blog, and I think you will find some helpful information and another entrepreneur, whom is going to have massive success in life. And the simple little disicplines starting now, is already, dramatically, greatly, separting, if not separated himself from the crowd. So lets continue to do new things, and try new things, and fall on our faces by failing a couple times to reach succeess on the high self.

Its 4am, I’m just programming away with my web 2.0 project, wow I got some cool stuff, its going to work! 500hours put in, and 500 hours to go!

Wes get back to work hah!

Although, I really try to be positive, and I am, and always positive around other people, and be inspirational. But sometimes, and for a good reason, I just have to get down to buisness, and just tell people the facts. Like most people won’t even read a book on how to become successful, or like the scenario I just ran with the RISE conference. Why don’t people do theses things?

Well wes, maybe they don’t want what you do, but I would guess if we asked them, they would want to be successful, maybe they just don’t know. Maybe I’m just sometimes to hard on people to think, why don’t they do this, it could help them out so much. I guess just some of the mysteries that I will never know.

But check out http://www.bryan-baker.com/blog for some good information, updated daily. Besides, then you don’t have to listen to me rant about crazy stuff at 4am in the morning when everyone is asleep, I’m working on a buisness project.

Lol just realizing that, its funny 🙂 I work while others sleep.

Hahaha Oops

Wed, 28 Feb 2007 00:00:00 GMT

So I’ve been searching for my little note pad with stuff to fix and stuff to add on my web 2.0 company. I walked into Wells Fargo, made a deposit, and I believe I left it there. HAHA! I laugh at myself, note to self! Don’t leave your buisness ideas in public domain at the bank. Opps 🙂

RISE Conference

Wed, 28 Feb 2007 00:00:00 GMT

Still programming.

Oh, I accidently missed a midterm today, lol. Good news however, plan is in effect to travel to Dayton, OH March 28th-31st, for the RISE conference which is the 7th annual Global Student Investment Forum with over 200 colleges a ttending.

Some of the spakers include:

Ralph Alvarez

President and COO, McDonald’s Corporation
Paul S. Atkins

Commissioner, U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission
Peter H. Coors

Chairman, Molson Coors Brewing Company
Robert C. Doll

Vice Chairman, Global Chief Investment Officer Equity, BlackRock
Pat Dorsey

Director of Stock Analysis, Morningstar.com
Dr. Bob Froehlich

Chairman, Investor Strategy Committee, Deutsche Asset Management
Dr. James E. Glassman

Senior Policy Strategist, J.P. Morgan Chase & Co.
Dr. Jan Hatzius

Chief U.S. Economist, Goldman Sachs
Reverend Jesse Jackson

Founder & President, RainbowPUSH Coalition, Inc.
L’Ubomir Jahnatek, CSc

Minister of the Economy for the Slovak Republic
Knight Kiplinger

Editor in Chief, Kiplinger’s Personal Finance
Marc E. Lackritz

Co-CEO, Securities Industry and Financial Market Association (SIFMA)
Louis Navellier

Chairman and CEO, Navellier & Associates, Inc.
Dr. Guillermo Ortiz

Governor, Bank of Mexico
Robert L. Reynolds

Vice Chairman & Chief Operating Officer, Fidelity Investments
Dr. Myron S. Scholes

Chairman, Platinum Grove Asset Management and 1997 Nobel Laureate in Economics
Michal Seweryński

Minister of Science and Higher Education of Poland
Dr. Gary H. Stern

President & CEO, Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis

To name a few, best of all the Oregon State University College of Buisness, Department of Finance is paying for most of it. Hmm, it rewards to join organizations which offer growth opportunities.

The Finance club has about 20 active members, there are 3 people going on the trip. Wow, an event like this, with that many great speakers, you’d think more people would join of course. It is only costing the people going $275, and the school covers the rest, for a 3-day workshop with presidents of banks, and all types of people, international colleges coming.

Comon, this stuff is so easy, we just got to position ourselves to where we can take advantage of opportunites. And more importantly, when they present, act.

Alot of people are going to miss out, beacuse they’d like to have fun in spring break…….

Back to work wes.

Is it risky to leave school to work on your business?

Mon, 26 Feb 2007 00:00:00 GMT

Alot of people have expressed their opinions to me that leaving school is pretty risky. But is it really?

I’ve dropped out of school a year ago, worked on buisness for 6 months and came back. It is really not that risky to leave school. Just to make this clarification, when I left school, I left, and did I leave quick.

I worked, worked, and worked everyday while I was out of school building my network-marketing buisness, Prepaid Legal Services, which by the way do provide a very great plan. Anybody who has payed for an attorney knows the are expensive. So here I was trying to build my buisness, after about 5 months everything sort of hit the fan.

I was lost, my buisness had crashed and I met another gentleman, his name was Richard G, and little did I know, that we would embark on another buisness project in the hopes of making a fortune of an excess of $100,000,000+, yes thats millions. Although, I’am not 100% certain, it pretty much turned out to be a scam, called a Federal Trade, and we worked 3 months trying to put together, little did I know, the transaction I was trying to put together was a scam. I diddn’t know, so I was working my butt off, we even flew to Sacramento over night to meet the buisness partner there to dicuss details, we getting funding for a Language Company, that was supposively developing a product that would let you speak over a phone to another person with a different language, and speak with 100% fluency.

Well turned out the five founders of the company, or I should say two of them, were raising capital and stealing everyone’s money.

Anyways, after about 3 months of that, I was back at my house, that crashed too obviously. I diddn’t even continue, I don’t want to get arrested for something stuipid. So, I started working on my Engine Site again, for a month, untill I school was starting.

I decided to go back, and I thought I would have to go through a long process. I called OSU, and they picked up, and said all I have to do is register my classes online, like I would normally do if I was enrolled.

As long as you leave in good standing(which I sorta diddn’t do because I dropped out and diddn’t take my finals, resulting in bad grades). You simply have to register your classes again for the next term.

So it is really not that risky, if you are interested in maybe taking a term off to focus on your buisness project, simply do not sign up for classes the next term. Do your buisness, and if you like to return to school, just register for the classes as long as you are still in good academic standing. So you can give it a shot, you can return, not a problem, at least a Oregon State University.

So should you, you can, it really depends on what you would like to do. But you can, you can always go back, pretty much whenver you want, so you can take a risk. Hey, whats missing 2 terms really going to do in the scheme of things?

Programming

Sun, 25 Feb 2007 00:00:00 GMT

My web host was down yesterday, so I created another Rotary Engine Rebuild Video, read a book on Exit Strageties (Selling Your Business), and created a logo for my new web 2.0 company. Not much to post right now.

Although there is now 102 referrals in my agloco network.

The ants are busy working in the winter!

Plan Set Into Action

Fri, 23 Feb 2007 00:00:00 GMT

This was a very interesting visit to my parents this week. We are having alot of family issues, my parents are talking about moving, my home is litterally like a warzone. It is seriously, not even safe for me to be there, and I do mean that literally.

I’ve withdrawed from 2 of my classes, I’am going to complete the last 2 I’m enrolled in, finish out the term and take leave. After discussing with my parents, they were surprsingly recepetive to the idea of me leaving to San Fran, and we are going to make things work. Things are moving, and I’am already starting to focus on what I’d like.

Alot of people are suggesting that I goto school, and then when the buisness starts to take off, leave school then focus on the buisness. Although it is like, why should I goto school, and then leave after the buisness starts to take off, is it not inevtiable that I will probably leave anyways? Why not focus on the buisness first, instead, so I do what needs to be done now, and not put school in the way for no reason at the moment.

Within 6 months from now I should be down in San Francisco, building my web 2.0 buisness. Although I’am doing it as we speak, if you are not familiar with web 2.0, my friend Bryan Baker put an awesome web 2.0 video explanation on his blog.

I’m Done With School - San Fran

Thu, 22 Feb 2007 00:00:00 GMT

I’ve decided I’m going to take my second leave from college, and this time for good. For the past week I have been very passionate about building my business, I want to build a business and that’s really mainly, what I want to do.

As this is a bold statement, and in the works, this is what I’m going to do, and its just a matter of time within 6 months before it is truly done but here goes.

I think this time is for good, I’ve decided I’m going to move to San Francisco. I’m going to live in an apartment, and full time build my web 2.0 company, I must succeed and I’m going to rock it.

I dropped out of school in Feb 06, basically, exactly one year from now. I came across next-work-marketing and was having success at it; I left the University received horrible grades on that term, instead of taking my finals I just didn’t take them at all.

After about 6 months after leaving, my business was crashed, and it was no longer fruitful, I was lost, very lost, I did not know what to do, so I continued to work on my other residual business which was working, and continues to work, http://www.RotaryEngineIllustrated.com.

The only reason I’m going to school is to #1) Start up a real estate investment club, which is to help other students achieve success. #2) My Chinese grandparents are paying for my tuition. #3) Was to simply meet people.

I was not enrolled in the University to get a high GPA, my goal was to build a business, and before I graduate be financially independent. Every time in class, especially lately, I can’t focus on school, entrepreneurship runs in my blood feeds my mind. That is why I left 2 terms in last year, and which is why I’m going to leave terms into this year. I’m not even a sophomore technically yet.

The real estate club is going well, although I need to focus on my business now, and I’m going to use the education in a completely different way. Instead of going to class on math, biology, statistics, I’m going to enroll in personal development courses, relationships, speaking, business, seminars, books, and continue to learn, but a dramatically different education than most.

I’ve been working 3 YEARS trying to build something, and I’ve finally failed enough times to know something good when I see it. I’m going to build this web 2.0 company, and sell it, and set up personal development schools, free wealth building, free personal development seminars, and give everyone the gift, of personal development is my mission.

I’m looking down the road, at my goals, at what I want said at my funeral, it says to, “Inspirational, Loving Service leader who helped people, no matter who they were, and someone who lived to create a better world for the future.”

Let me ask you this question:

If you know what you want to do, and are pursuing it, is that not success? Some people think you have to go to school to be successful. Success is the progressive realization of a worthy ideal. The janitor who is a janitor, and wants to be a janitor, and is doing a good job at it is a success, he is doing what he wants to do.

So figure out what you want to do, for me personally, my success does not require school in order to reach it.

So this is in a nut shell what I’m going to do.

I’m going to move to the Silicon Valley, California is the 5th largest economy in the world. Silicon Valley is where the tech startups are, where the action is, where the networks are to be formed, and the fortunes to be made, in my personal opinion. Yes you can do it in Corvallis, but wouldn’t you have more success as an actor in Hollywood, well the same is true for techs.

I’m going to move to San Francisco, in the heart of the city, have my car, cell phone, hi-speed internet, some clothes, high-speed internet, and my laptop.

I’m going to create a mastermind group, a group of people who get together on a weekly basis, people who are going in the same direction, web 2.0 partners and together we help network and give each other ideas on our projects and grow.

To meet people, I’m simply going to go to business networking events, professional events, seminars, networking events, and more networking events. I’m going to associate myself with successful people. If I can’t find a group, I will make one myself; this is a separate group than my mastermind group.

I will still keep my current contacts, and contact friends through email and phone, and those who are interested in building web 2.0 environments will be working with me, and I hope everyone does well, although this is something I’ve wanted to do, and have decided, I’m going to do.

“Every great leap forward in your life comes after you have made a clear decision of some kind.” – Brian Tracy

You can not imagine, the feeling, of being able to do, whatever it is, that you want to do, that we can leave today, and start a whole new journey, a new life, a new path, we can, have be or do, anything we want to in life.

As you can see, it is a high up there goal, to pay for everything in San Francisco, I’ve thought it out, and have been thinking about moving down there for 4-5 months right now.

It looks like my current GPA for this term is a 2.0. I don’t get that good of grades, I could get a 4.0 if I wanted, but I’m not going to. Its time to take action, I’m going to be 20 in March 23rd, I’m going to make $100,000 a year by helping internet entrepreneurs improve their business, and provide a valuable service to the community.

Is it risky to move to San Fran, yeah, don’t you love it? But it is riskier for me to stay in Corvallis, at OSU studying Buisness and back core classes for 4 years, when I could be doing what I’m passionate about instead.

Here is a picture of my friends, Bryan Baker, Chris Dudley, Matt, myself (on left) and Richard Parsons, the CEO of Time Warner. We become like the combined average of the five most people we associate with the most, I’m planning on meeting many individuals like Richard Parsons, who can raise me up another level, and I will be helping others up.

It is time.

Just keep planting those seeds, most of my seeds have died in the sun, strangled by roots, but, I will keep planting, and I will be harvesting. Harvesting is reserved for the planters. We don’t get want we need, we get what we deserve. Start the process of deserving.

Ummmm, what happend!

Tue, 20 Feb 2007 00:00:00 GMT

It is 2am, on monday, I have class at 8am!

This weekend was incrediblly productive, I had turned off my cell phone and kept communication to strict min.

Today, although I was working till 5am, I slept till around noon, went to class at 3-4pm, studied for test till 6pm, got done, came home did some programming.

I turned on my cellphone, had acouple messages, some buisness friends called me cool, not a problem, sending some emails to buisness partners cool, they send back to me.

Review friends buisness card, friend in portland message me about real estate deals, work on my friends online website http://www.gizlio.com, um eat, friend calls wants to play tennis, ok, come back talk to 4 more buisness firends and help them out, played gears of war with tennis buddy cause he wanted to play ok….

Um, get back on and helping out Kang in malaysia who I’m helping start a business, and friends IM. Wow!

Looks like if you want to be unproductive, turn on ur cellphone, turn on emails, and turn on yourinstant message, (for me anyways because my whole buisness involves me right now, programming this web 2.0 project).

Out of control, Cool, Challenges, Incredible. Its 2am, :), Yikes!
Do you know what I mean? Ok that was a pretty bad rant, but just reflecting, getting maxxed out on entrepreneurship friends almost, I have to harbor relationships, and with to many people, I can’t do that. 🙂

If you want to get some work done, sometimes we just need to shut it all out. Turn off all of those devices we tire ourselves to, and just work, undistracted. Every distraction costs double the time the distraction took, it takes your focus on, and then u have to refocus figure out what you were doing.

Sometimes, its good to just shut it all out, and have no distractions for lengths of time to do the work, to move forward on your plans of achieving financial indepedence.

No news on the real estate deal, still waiting for answer back from seller who lives in UTAH, comon dude, my offer was suppose to be replied to on saturday!

$100,000 within 3 months

Sun, 18 Feb 2007 00:00:00 GMT

Well this weekend, I decided to block out almost all communications, and work, start that process of deserving….

I ran a scenario with everyone at the OSU Real Estate Club, here it was, and its a question for you. Could you right now, make $100,000 within 3 months, right now, I mean right now do it. Think about it for a second?

Well maybe, like most people, we wouldn’t think we could do it. (given your not already making that amount). Most would say, no way.

But let me turn it around for you, and ask you this.

What if your parents were kidnappped, your grandparents, and your basically your immediate family. Your looking at them, and there are terrorists holding them hostage, and will kill your family members, your mom, your dad, your siblings, and your grandparents, if you do not deliver the kidnapper $100,000 within 3 months of right now.

Would you do it? Could you do it?

Would you? think about it, everyone would be murdered, your family… if you diddn’t deliver. Wouldn’t you do it?

—— think for a second before reading —–

———————————————-

Is there really doubt in your mind, if your whole family is on the line, for you to come through for 3 months! to generate $100,000 wouldn’t you do it. Its more like, is there any question in your mind if you would do it or not? Of course you would, you would give your all, you’d do it no matter what.

You wouldn’t know how, you just know why, and you will find a way, regardless of the situtation. Because the WHY is SO LARGE, the HOW doesn’t matter. The amazing things about humans, is that if they put themselves on the line they can produce amazing results. If you had to, if you had a big enough reason, there would be nothing to stop you.

You could generate $100,000 in 3 months, if you had a big enough WHY. Agree with me on this?

So whats the problem then, well, most people don’t have a WHY, I’ve finally to educatedly guess why most individuals aren’t that productive (and you are not one of those, for you wouldn’t be reading this). but most people, don’t know what they want, and why they want it, there is no motivating WHY to move them forward.

Now this situtation is simply to SHOW YOU, that YOU HAVE ENOUGH POWER, to do WHATEVER YOU WANT, if you have a big enough reason. This is simply to show you, you can produce tremendous results, you could be financially indepedent within several years if you wanted to, and really needed to.

Of course, the main question, at what cost? But the point is you could, and probably we could do whatever we want in 1/4 of the time, if we just did it.

So this weekend, I’m doing what I’m trying to teach to others, and not just preaching but doing. Turning off my cellphone for the weekend has been great, I’ve been able to focus on my web 2.0 project which is getting ready for launch pretty soon, a partnership is going to be in formation soon with another website company, and everything is moving.

I’ve decided, I can produce tremendous results in shorts amount of time if I want, and I want it, I have my WHY written on my wall. ASK YOURSELF, WHAT WOULD YOU LIKE THE LAST WORDS SAID AT YOUR FUNERAL TO BE? I have mine written on my wall, I see it everyday. I know mine, do you? Do you have a mission statement, and a reason why you want that mission statement. You may consider making one, it could make a dramatic difference in your energy level, productivity, success, and contribution to the world!
One of mine is to be inspirational, and I’m going to be real about it though.

Comon my friends, we have all theses great buisness ideas, and they will work. But, comon, when we just talk about anything and do it. Seriously do it, start doing the work. What I found out is, alot of the super successful entrepreneurs diddn’t necessarily have a great idea, they even could have had a bad idea, but had a VISION to keep working on their buisness, and they worked, worked, worked, worked, and worked, and did MASSIVE activity and just made it happen.

MASSIVE ACTIVITY = MASSIVE RESULTS.

TALKING ALOT ABOUT OUR BUISNESSES = NO REAL RESULTS

My friend told me to catch up, he is 19 years old, lives in Texas, he generates around $20,000/month. I took that words to heart, he said ‘catch up’, well I’m catching up now, just doing the work. Get it done, start! don’t talk, I don’t wana hear any more buisness ideas without actions taken place, actions SPEAK louder than WORDS. Lets show eachother with actions.

If your having trouble with STAYING FOCUSED ON YOUR BUISNESS, write theses two things down, seriously do it. Just Do it.

Donald Trump, “WHAT SHOULD I BE THINKING ABOUT RIGHT NOW?”

OR, “WHAT IS THE MOST PRODUCTIVE USE OF MY TIME RIGHT NOW?”

——

JUST DO IT! You can generate $100,000 in a month if you needed to, so lets JUST DO IT! Comon Everyone,

2nd Real Estate Property - NO GOOD

Wed, 14 Feb 2007 00:00:00 GMT

Well this friday I made an offer on a three unit, apartment building in N Portland. They were asking $295,000, I made the offer of $295,000 and the seller pays $5,000 in closing cost. (Which would net the seller $290,000). And earnest money of $2,500.

I thought my offer was strong, however, it was not strong enough, they took another offer over mine! They took another offer over mine! INCREDIBLE, now I can look for a better deal. But instead of just denying my offer, they decided that if the other offer diddn’t go through they would use my as the second offer, and then counter my offer for $305,000 and seller pays $5,000 closing cost. (Netting seller $300,000), they also wanted to limit my inspection period to 7 days, which is alot different than the 15 I originally asked for. Regardless, thats like a shaft deal for me, so I said, GOODBYE, and GREAT, I’m going to find a better deal.

As always, for some reason, I logged onto aim today at 1am, (I work till 4am, and then goto school in morning too) and then because of networking 4-5 different buisness partners contacted me and we talked till 4:30am, wow, although I did not get any work on my website done. It opened my eyes!

My friend, Steve, in N Portland is purchasing 3 HOUSES. WOW, and here I’am just trying to get a small three plex, he has 3 houses accepted offer, total networth around 600,000k, he did his figures, 5% down, and will cashflow. That is amazing, anyways it got me inspired! I started looking around on loopnet, and found a 9plex for sale in N Portland, for half a million (lol that sounds big,) but its $505,000, and of course (guys!! I don’t have that cash, the bank does, they loan it to me, and renters pay for the property(simplified verison)). So, I’m going to make an offer on that one I think, it brings in $53,000 gross a year. combined with current website that’d be $60,000 gross a year, on reach to my goal to acheiving gross $100,000 a year by January 1st, 2009.

So you may say, well wow Wes, I can’t do what you do. Well, I’ve been working, not partying for 4 years now, trying to start buisnesses, and this is acculmated over time. Its called the slight edge, and hopefully your on the slight edge to success.

Success is a few small disciplines repeated every single day, over, and over again. Stuipid little things, maybe I’m a square not going out and getting wasted (no offense, I use to party, a very little), but I’ve been working dilligently on my buisnesses, buidling assets. And I knew it would happen, and most people don’t know whats happening, all my party friends are getting further behind, and will be working for the rest of their lives, while we, the successful people who sacrifice FUN, for work NOW, will be enjoying expoentially more freedom, fun, friends, and lifestyle which others think someday they will have.

Don’t be apart of the somedays. Someday someday someday, and someday never happens. This is what I hope you are going after, “I WILL DO TODAY, WHAT OTHERS DO NOT, SO TOMMOROW, I WILL HAVE WHAT OTHERS DO NOT.” You can do whatever you want, separate yourself, thats what I’ve choosen to do, and if you want financial freedom, well, most people aren’t, so don’t go where most people going.

IF YOU HAVE NOT SEEN THE SECRET, you must see this video: http://www.thesecret.tv

You are a success, and I will see you in the winners’ circle. Don’t accept advice from anyone more screwed up than you.

Comments

1 from the original blog

Bryan BakerFeb 14, 2007, 9:49am
Nice blogging Wes. Good job with the real estate…you’re a few steps ahead of me, then again you’ve been doing this a while longer. You’ve got a lot to teach. Keep blogging for our sake!

Great Deals Move Fast & The Secret

Wed, 14 Feb 2007 00:00:00 GMT

Yeah, looks like I was to slow on that 9plex for $505,000.00 that would have been a great deal. Someone made an offer on it and I’m a little late to the party. Well thats great, I’ll use the same techniques, to find another one, and this time I’ll beat them to the deal.

Well, I do have a backup property. There is a small one in Corvallis, one block away from I live. Not nearly as exciting, it brings in $17,500/yr GROSS compared to $50,000… its $236,000 compared to $505,000. Intersting though isn’t it, the one for half a million, is double the price, but brings in 4 times the cashflow…. What a deal that was!

Here is the property. Anyways, tommorow we are throwing out an offer for $210,000. Hopefully that will go through, I have a prequalification letter going out with this one. If you want your offer to look more appealing, and stronger, more serious, make sure to include a document showing that you have been prequalified for the loan amount, to buy that certain property. That is what might have killed my 3plex deal, no prequalification letter.

And today we had an awesome gathering at the real estate club, we watch the Secret, one of the best personal development movies I have ever seen. http://www.thesecret.tv

5 Lines of CREDIT?!?!

Tue, 06 Feb 2007 00:00:00 GMT

So I was talking to our family Bank of America banker today, Liz Miller who has been treating me very well. Because my parents have a preimer banking account relationship with them I was able to get a killer rate. Here is the difference, and its good to shop around, for the best loan, and interest rate for you:

Heres the DEAL:

House and Duplex, for $310,000
Seller pays $10,000 closing cost.
10% down

1st Mortgage Quote

80/10 mortgage, interest only, 5/6 arm, 3yr pre-penalty One point on the first, and one point on the second
Interestate rate around %7.35 on the first, and %12.375 on the second
Monthly payments around $2,100 a month
11,000 closing costs

Preimer Banking Quote

80/10 Mortgage, interest only, 5/6 arms, no prepayment penalty, no POINTS!
Closing costs at around $5000
Interest rates: %6.375 on the first, and $7.375 on the second
Monthly payments around $1,900/month

THATS A $200 a month difference, PLUS no prepayment penalties, and LESS THAN $5,000 ON CLOSING COST, W/O POINTS.

That is a HUGE! Difference, and but what I found out today. Is that I don’t qualify because I don’t have 5 lines of credit. 5 Lines of credit, as in 5 credit cards, a loan counts as a line of credit, payments, credit, 5 lines. I only have two lines, a personal credit card with Wells Fargo, and a personal credit card with Bank of America. Although I have another Card in my corporation, it doesn’t count because its a corporation. So surprisngly with this killer rate, I was not accepted!

But, that is super fantastic, I’ll just co-sign with my parents and everything will be ok.

So futher note to anyone, do you have credit? My credit score is 725 as a 19 year old, if you don’t have a credit card, or building your credit in some way, start building credit, if you want to use the banks money to purchase a property, stop delaying, do it. Anyways, looks like more lines of credit is better for, Bank of America, or at least, required in order to get a loan through them.

I’m doing incredible and so should you. I know there is spelling errors, but who really cares? My employeer? LOL!!! I’ll be honest, I’am ANTI JOB, because JOBS just make someone else RICH. I’am a millionaire or I Is a millionaire, does it really matter? IS You a millioanire too, you can be, and we’ll do it together, build your credit score so you can use the bank’s money to purchase investment property that the renters pay for

I wish you, and your family massive success, look forward to being at the next OSU Real Estate Gathering with you all, and helping you, achieve success.

Sometimes we can network too much!

Tue, 06 Feb 2007 00:00:00 GMT

In the law of diminishing returns, it talks about sometimes the more you do something the less benefit you get. Just like when we eat that pizza, sure tastes good at first! but after 10 pieces, NOT SO MUCH!, ya know what I mean?

So I’ve been thinking alot lately, that there have been alot of people I’ve been networking with, and people networking with me. Sometimes, as of lately I’m trying to focus and like my friends are talking buisness with me about real estate, stock investing, entrepreneurship, flipping houses, passive income books, and woah woah woah. Sometimes, its great, there are alot of people who have befriended me, I appreciate that, but sometimes I get overwhelmed, with so many people that nothing ever gets done on my side.

Its great to build a network but the more I think about it, a super large network of people isn’t really that great if the relationships aren’t that strong. I’d rather have a few key people and harvest the relationship, instead of having 1000 people who I’m kinda friends with, its just not strong. Not productive, and its diminishing returns, so sometimes, I’m getting to many networks. And today, I’m about ready to shut off my cellphone for 2 days, and just work on this web 2.0 project which I’am getting behind on, and NO longer am I am, and have a workout partner, but people talking buisness 24/7 is great, but sometimes very very unproductive.

I noticed, and realized that, you too, reading this blog, we could have massive success in a relatively short time, if we actually just did the work, did it, focused on it, and build momentum, just like Donald Trump says.

Focus, and Momentum is required to do anything. Something that I have challenge with, and I see a big opportunity with, I hope to launch within 5 years and really do something to change the paradigms in the world.

Anyways, untill I do it, it means nothing, actions speak louder than words, yeah its great I like to blog, and just type my mind out as I can, but lets just do it, and get it done, instead of talking about what if, and talk what we are doing……

So lets get it done, what are we waiting for? So many distractions, less keep them to minimum.

You are successfully, and I hope you share it with other people along the way.

Comments

2 from the original blog

DanFeb 7, 2007, 1:03am
Like the famous Nike tag line…
Get out there and “Just do it.”
Wish you well in the business world, my friend!
-Dan
Bryan BakerFeb 13, 2007, 1:20am
Hey Wes, Sorry we didn’t get together this weekend. I also realized I forgot I have an appointment up in Portland on Wednesday, but I do want to get Bryan-Baker Dot Com up soon.
p.s. you going to update this blog more often? haha. keep up the good work Wes.
Bryan Baker

63 AGLOCO Signups

Fri, 02 Feb 2007 00:00:00 GMT

Well AGLOCO continues to move, it is starting to take off. Already within a week there is 63 sign-ups, not bad with 7 direct referrals. I believe most of the individuals who signed up were personal friends in me, and willing to invest their time into building something because I referred it to them. I truly appreciate the input, and gratitude to my friends, if it were not for you guys I would not be where I would be today.

Some people are scared of the idea of installing a toolbar on their computer, although most of everyone already has a google toolbar installed. It is similiar concept, yet we get paid when other people install the browser. Simply because, instead of google getting paid massive amounts of money when people use their search engine, and click on their ads, they get paid. We now get a share of the revenue, did you know, YouTube is going to move towards giving revenue back to their users I hear.

If you are still wondering about AGLOCO, and curious message me. There is no cost to get started, easy to do, and it could be a huge thing in the next two years. If you are too scared to take risks in anything, and free is to big of a risk for you, I wouldn’t be reading this blog. Seriously, unless you don’t like the idea, the AGLOCO idea has some major potential is spreading across the web, and to think its to risky is crazy, it doesn’t cost a thing.

There were tons of people who were generating large amounts of income off the old toolbar, the company crashed, they paid out to many commissions, now they are reverting to shares/cash, so they do not crash again. I believe the will suceed, and focusing some of my efforts to building an AGLOCO team. This would put three assets in my pocket. My adsense buisness, real estate income, and AGLOCO income, all passive, all residual, all working without me.

Never will I work for a paycheck. Neither should you have to, to signup for AGLOCO click here.

Comments

2 from the original blog

Allen.HFeb 2, 2007, 4:24am
It’s nice to see you working hard and 63 is a nice achievement, but AGLOCO isn’t gonna free many people from their boss. That is becoming one of the more used cliches used nowadays.
Allen.H
Wes MahlerFeb 6, 2007, 8:23pm
I agree with you Allen!
I use that to much, but I still feel storngly about it like robert kiyosaki!!!

My Primary Objective

Fri, 02 Feb 2007 00:00:00 GMT

“What we focus on grows.”

I have been unable to focus on my web 2.0 project, and sometimes lately its been almost, a, what shall I say, disapointing idea that I have not been working on it. Although I have been focusing on other areas. Sometimes, I just need to write stuff down. By writing down ideas, plans, thoughts, or whatever, when you write something down you clear your mind of that thought, and open up room for new ideas. If you do not write down your ideas, your mind is to busy focusing on remembering what you have said, so its good to write everything down to make room for more.”

So my focus this week is:

Real Estate Investment Property (Searching, Offering, and Closing)
The Real Estate Investment Club at OSU
School
Agloco
My current website buisness (REI and RebuildingRotaryEngines.com)

What is your focus? Don’t know what your focusing on, what we focus on grows. Laser Focus, something I’m working on, whats your focus, lets do this together.

Some Properties Are To Much Trouble

Fri, 02 Feb 2007 00:00:00 GMT

Today was an awesome day, I woke up at around noon, killed a econ 201 test, and then went ahead and did the visual inspection of the property on Kings Blvd for sale. My first offer was for $284,000 and the seller pay $9,000 closing cost, he declined with no counter. A week later, I offered $305,000 and then requested he pay $12,500 in closing cost, he countered, and then I accepted a counter offer of $310,000 and he pay $310,000, netting him $310.

The property, well, although the property looks very nice from the MLS pictures. There is alot of problems with the property, the landlord did not particuarly take care of the property like I would, alot of things were what I called, “Band-Aided” together, quick fixes. Quick fixes, in anything is horrible, the worst way to go, quick fix, relationships, quick fix problems, just end up being needed to be worked on in the future. Well this property definintely had some quick fixs to it, actually, a whole lot of them.

The car port was falling apart, the paint was feeling like it was coming off the walls, the duplexes were extremely small, and cracked windows. There were cracks in the foundation, a cheap roof on both buildings, and the wiring was extremely old just to name a few. The property was dirty, and unfortunately not a very nice feeling property, I don’t know if I would like to live there.

I appreciate my father, greatly, he came down from Portland and helped me do the visual walk through. We are not even bothering with paying for an inspection. Sometimes, properties need so much work, it is not even worth purchasing the property when you can buy other properties at similiar prices, but don’t need the work.

I’am now focusing on a 4plex unit in N Portland, where I believe it is poised for some rapid appreciation. There is alot of buildings in that area which are doing improvements, “when the neighbors are improving their buildings, making them nicer, it raises the value of the homes around it, this is what you want.” Unlike this area, no body was making their homes nice, it almost looks like everyone was letting their house fall apart around here? Maybe its just there area in corvallis I was looking at. So I’m passing up my offer with the house and duplex, and now focusing on some other units.

We actually looked at two houses, and walked through them one for $179,000, and another for $199,000 which were also very very nice, and I may be interested in throwing an offer at with my realtor, Cody Willner.

Sometimes I’m feeling overwhelmed

Tue, 30 Jan 2007 00:00:00 GMT

Sometimes after many weeks of putting together transactions, organizations, clubs, mentoring, school, partnerships, events, planning, networking and favors there gets a point where it is quite overwhelming. Although leaders can’t show hurt, it doesn’t mean they don’t feel hurt at points. When people ask how I’m doing, I respond, “I’m doing super fantastic,” and I’m doing great but lately just been hammered down inside, my mind, wear and built up stress building.

This is a rant, and one way for me to express my feelings, and experiences with other people. But as projects, partnerships, events, and organizations begin the grow, as the demand for my personal services increase, the less secure I sometimes feel. I remember once John Addison mentioned the more successful we become, the more fears, and less secure a person can become. I can truly relate to the experience now, as this real estate transaction continues it is placing a large deal of mind power to continue with the deal. There many people to communicate with, our personal banker to create the money transfers, my insurance agent to network with my mortgage broker to get the insurance ready, negotiating with the seller of the property, deadlines now on an accepted offer, communicating with personal real estate broker Cody Willner on what’s going on, talking to mortgage broker to compare cash flow, now preparing statements to show proof of rental history, backup funds.

The experience is definitely making me grow, I can now see why some people are just to afraid to experience success, they don’t want the hassle to go into success. Then I’m having an exciting challenge putting together the real estate organization by recruiting, event planner, gathering speakers, movies, preparing speaks. Then onto the Finance Club were I’ve decided to become a sector leader and lead a group of individuals who want to invest into stocks for our $50,000 portfolio. Exciting stuff, and now we have a third organization that I will be putting together shortly, I think, a group of internet entrepreneurs who are interested in making money through advertising programs. Although I’m no expert, I truly believe that we can work something out with everyone and make a winning organization that works on internet projects.

Back to my loan and real estate transaction, I just found out my payments are going to be $100 more a month than originally planned, so it has thrown my net cash flow on a monthly basis to negative $345, so I’m becoming a little bit more moved away from the deal. I can get the loan payments down, but might continue searching. I’m going to have to skip class on Thursday in order to do a visual inspection with my father, and look over the property, see what he thinks.

I’m also doing my friend a large financial favor right now, and its been on my mind every day. I just have some cash tied up and very eager to receive the cash back and be finished with the favor to my friend. It’s a significant amount of money to me, and the process has been made longer because of the financial institutions.

Everything is going incredible however; sometimes I’m just a little overwhelmed, I just need to take a break. I’m going to the OSU Car Club gathering this Friday, something I helped setup with a couple buddies. http://www.osucarclub.com, so that should be exciting. I look forward to seeing what happens, growing, and taking on even more challenges in the near future. The main challenge right now is having focus.

When you are an entrepreneur and have been in the game for a little over a year, it gets to the point where you have so many good ideas, that it is entirely inconvincible to try to run them at the same time. It is literally abundance overload, a good problem to have, but sometimes, we are stretched out to thin. I’m still doing my video production in Portland, OR every Thursday, while people go out to have fun on Thursday, I’m working on my business, I call it Productive Thursdays, instead of Thirsty Thursdays. End of rant, looking to grow from theses experiences and more.

It’s so incredible, I talk to some random person in class, as I like to do, (the person to the left, person to the right, front, and behind me, and sometimes I have to introduce them to each other because they don’t talk). But anyways, it’s so funny to hear a student who’s just taking a small amount of credits, tell me he is to busy to do anything else, because he is in school. Common guys, if you are just going to school, not working, or something, I’m sorry, but I don’t believe your that busy, sometimes excuses like that are one of those type of, weird strange words that make me almost cringe, and its like, “are you serious.” And they are, they can’t hold much at the moment, hopefully they will grow.

What we focus on grows.

Donald Trump, “You have to have momentum to get anything done, and focus is entirely necessary, if you don’t have focus you will not have momentum, they two go together.”

Things are going crazy!

Mon, 29 Jan 2007 00:00:00 GMT

Well I have some positive challenges coming up, busy day for monday.

Set date to, appointment to get property inspected
Run numbers with mortgage broker to figure out cashflow situation
Call banker, have them prepare earnest check for property
Talk with father about date to go down and see the property
Meeting with Marques A about internet real estate buisness
Meeting with Jimmy N about internet buisness
Find out about a 4plex for sale in Corvallis, another property
Call prepaid legal attorneys, check if my buisness idea is feasible
Study for BI 102 exam, and take exam same day (least important) haha!

Sounds fun! Sometimes I’m to hard on myself and don’t think I’m not getting anything done.

Why not get paid while you surf – Agloco

Sun, 28 Jan 2007 00:00:00 GMT

Well AllAdvantage is back! For those who don’t know, AllAdvantage was a site that paid you to surf the Internet. Whats more, it paid you when you refer other people to surf, and paid you again if those people referred other people – down four levels.

AllAdvantage 2.0 comes with a new name, AGLOCO, which stands for A Global Community. This time, the founders are doing things a bit differently. They said that AllAdvantage failed the last time because the timing, and not the concept, was bad. They may be right, and there is certainly nothing wrong with trying again. If they can sign up as many people as they did last time, and the advertising market doesn’t implode, I say they will have a success on their hands.

The AGLOCO Viewbar

The Viewbar that is installed at the bottom of the browser is back but instead of paying a flat fee per hour like the last time, it will give you a share of income the Viewbar earns. In addition, that income may be paid in stocks as well as cash. This avoids the mistake of paying out more than they make, which was what AllAdvantage did.

The Viewbar features privacy protection, spyware protection, phishing protection, member IM and voice communications, RSS feeds, broadcast communication, community tips and other functions.

Sharing income with users is nothing new. Tons of sites and many revenue sharing forums do that already. What is unique about AGLOCO is their multi-leveling marketing model.

Network Marketing

When you run the AGLOCO Viewbar, AGLOCO will pay to you to surf the web (currently up to 5 hours/month). Once the five hours are up, you can turn the Viewbar off until next month. However, you also make money on every hour for people you referred when they surf, and income is made for every hour for people they referred down to 4 levels. There is no cap on how much you can make because of this.

According to the AGLOCO member calculator, if you sign up 10 people and those referrals sign up 5 people, and those sign up five all the way down the 4 four levels, you would earn 9,767.50 per month! However, before you start doing jumping jacks, that figure is not a dollar amount – it reflects earnings in both cash and stock of the company. The stock price has yet to be determined.

AGLOCO plans to be a 100% member owned company. The amount of shares you own is based on how many members you refer. The company will share advertising and affiliate revenues with its members. Company management will gets 10% of revenue as their fee for running the place. The remaining amount will then be distributed to company shareholders (the members). The amount you make is based on how many shares you own, which in turn is based on how many people you refer.

Before AllAdvantage died with the dot com crash, my friend signed up over 10,000 people and made over $25,000, so I know the concept does work. Will I be able to make $25,000 from AGLOCO? That remains to be seen but I’m looking forward to trying. This looks like another case study in the making!

Once you sign up you will be given a user ID. Use this ID to sign up other people. The easiest way to do that is the put the ID into the URL. For example. is my URL. Just replace the BBBF5267 with your ID and youll get credit for all signs from your link.

You can sign up for AGLOCO here.

Wow – Internet Business and Real Estate

Sat, 27 Jan 2007 00:00:00 GMT

It is extremely difficult to pickup a large programming project when it has been left alone for a month, due to school I have not been focusin on my internet web 2.0 project. However, I’am starting to get back into the rhytm with things and the real estate club, real estate investing experience, school, working with video production, is all falling into place.

I just made a second offer on a house, and duplex investment property in corvallis Oregon. I’am now awaiting for the seller’s response to my offer, hopefully he will accept it. Again, unwilling to tell of the exact amount of money on the line due to liabilitly exposure on the internet. But all is going well, the website is working too. The new site, RebuildingRotaryEngines.com I’ve created is now producing around an extra $3/day, which results in an extra $100/month towards expenditure. Although I’m putting more time and effort into it, but it is producing a residual income stream which should almost never stop.

Back to programming, I look forward to getting together with some of my real estate friends who are interested in getting started in the buisness. I’am going to pour out everything I can to help them achieve their dreams, goals and aspirations.

Real Estate Gathering – Week 2

Wed, 24 Jan 2007 00:00:00 GMT

We had an incredible presentation today talking about the real estate process, and equity vs. growth investing. My friend Alexander Neighbors spoke about his real estate experiences, and cody and I tried to tackled the process, simplified about how to go and invest into a property.

Unfortunately, I can’t believe I forgot to hit record on my camcorder which was suppose to record the event. Incredibly two people from the last 15 individuals showed up this time, its so funny, people want to become successful, we the event planners invest hours, ontop of hours, and our own personal income to create an event to help people. And others allow small, and little things to get in the way of large opportunities. I find it truly incredible.

We had about 20 people show up this time, an increase from the 14 at our previous event. Every event we are growing, we are always building momentum. We were truly rocking this time, we had some fun, a quiz, two videos, some personal experiences, give aways, and although our event went alittle longer than planned, we still had a great time.

Unfortunately, we are unable to affect everyone in the room, sometimes the timing is not there for other people. Although some people we could have been the fourth event, fourth speaker to unlock the final code to the lock, and so they can start to achieve more in life. So I do not know where the audience is all of the way, which is one thing I will be working on next time.

I’am currently heaviling involving myself in the process of public speaking, and studying the art of it, by reading books from Tony Jeary, who is called Mr. Presentation. I’m currently reading Inspire Any Auidence, if we have a crowd at our real estate club and I’m not constantly improving my craft I’am failing them.

So good things, we are moving, my friends Josh Brown, and Jimmy Neyhart are getting together this weekend to discuss possibilities about real estate investing together, I will be getting with them. They are both very sharp individuals and sure to experience success, and most importantly going after there and taking action. I will challenege myself with what I may be able to help them achieve, and in return learn from helping them as well.

Warmly,
Wes

An incredible amount of projects, and people to network

Mon, 22 Jan 2007 00:00:00 GMT

This last week has been incredibly exciting, like every week. It is almost getting to the point where there are to many people to network with, on facebook, and I apologize, there have been so many people trying to get ahold of me to network that I haven’t really had a chance to respond to everyone. With to many messages, and feedback it is almost crazy to have an indepth conversation with everyone.

Networking is great, although it seems as there is a point where to many networks is not that great. I’d almost rather have a large network of people I personally know well than a huge network of many people I barely know. Which is almost what happens when networking with people all over the internet.

Regardless, made an offer on a mutlifamily unit here in Corvallis for $284,000.00 but the owner declined my offer, he is asking full price, but don’t want to give it to him. Will be trying to purchase another property soon, as there are not many avaliable here in Corvallis.

I’ve begun to shift focus towards the OSU Real Estate Club. Here is one challenge to all of the seeking entrepreneurs who are going to be massive succesfull, yes alot of you reading this. Lets try to help other people achieve success along the way, MLM/direct-selling/network-marketing have a built in advantage, but its one thing to generate a large sum of success for yourself, but its awhole other game helping others achieve success to. So I’ve been focusing on helping people achieve their dreams, help them build their dreams with the real estate club. I could do it myself, but we are exponentially more valuable, and success when we are able to help others achieve success.

“If you help enough people get what they want, you’ll have everything in life you want” – Zig Ziglar

Friend’s new online startup venture

Mon, 22 Jan 2007 00:00:00 GMT

Well this is a plug for my friend Adriel who has begun to start his own online empire this week by launching his first two sites. We have been talking alot, sent him the cashflow game by robert kiyosaki, and some CDs. Our relationship is a good one of two entrepreneurs seeking success through mutiple streams of income, and we of course, will achieve it.

He was able to get two sites up, which is a phrank calling system, where you can type in someone’s phone number, and a message, and a electronic voice leaves a message on the phone. There is also http://www.gizlio.com which is a service that allows students in HS to access websites like myspace, facebook, which are typically banned on the High School’s computer network.

I’ve been trying to help him work on some projects, however, I’ve been loosing my focus and have not been able to do everything I could to help. Regardless though, we have goten to the point to get the first projects off the ground. Even if they don’t make millions, just the process of getting started on the first venture has alot to say. If you are interested in networking with him, his name is Adriel, screen name Adrizzle05. We met eachother on youngentrepreneur.com

Progress On OSU Real Estate Club

Mon, 08 Jan 2007 00:00:00 GMT

Well after a good long break of productive activity, planned events are now finally coming into swing. We’ve had a lot of help from Justin Shanks, and Professor Yang, the president, and adivsor of the OSU Investment Group respectively. Dr. Yang has now moved us towards a potential room in BX 102, which would allow the OSU Real Estate Group to have a large room dedicated towards helping students learn about real estate investing.

We were having a challenge find an advisor for our club alone, so we did the next best thing, athough it will probably turn out to be better this way, we are collaborating, and joining the ranks of the OSU Investment Group, therefore increasing the membership base for both clubs, and helping both clubs expand their image more. So it will be an interesting event.

RebuildingRotaryEngines.com

Fri, 05 Jan 2007 00:00:00 GMT

With the partnership between Pineapple Racing and I, we have been developing “How To Rebuild, Rotary Engine” videos. Putting them on the websites, which is to build a residual traffic base, and expose their buisness to more people. Which is to help their sales, and also create more personal income so I can donate more money to the public.

It is a database driven site, simple, and using the Google Video system to promote the videos. Here is the website address: http://www.rebuildingrotaryengines.com. I’m also creating a mailing list, opt in so we can mass email people to get up to date information on new video releases. After I finish working on this computer, and doing taxes, I’ll refocus my energy back on the web 2.0 product that I’m developing.

I’ve also become 100% qualified for a personal loan for around $300,000-$450,000 because my credit score is 725, so I’m currently seeking an investment property to purchase. Unfortunately, I doubt I will be able to disclose as much information as in the future, it will be to much exposure to potential asset liabilities and lawsuits against me for theives who are trying to steal wealth.

The Most Rewarding Experience

Thu, 28 Dec 2006 00:00:00 GMT

I believe that the most rewarding experience in life is having your name appear in another person’s testimonial. After my mentor Mr. Sean Mikael a very successfull multi-level marketer who was my upline for several months got me started. Although I was already reading some books, he sent me some CDs that dramatically impacted my life. CDs that gave me philosophies, guidance, and wisdom about becoming more successful, in all areas of life.

I truly must say that I’am gratiful for him, and that he will almost remain a figure in my life. He got me started.

As I mentioned in another article about intelligent-self interest, sharing. I have begun the task of helping people achieve their dreams. There is a painter at our house by the name of Jason B, I have known him for several years now and only till recently I’ve had enough knowledge to positively affect other peoples lives. Awhile back ago I gave him a CD on success philosophies by Jim Rohn. He enjoyed the CD as he told me a week or so later.

After that I was excited as well, not only can the audience be transformed, but so can the speaker. So I gave him some more material to help him. Personal Development material, among them were how to become financially indepedent, and the art of exceptional living by Jim Rohn. Now, less than a week later he has begun reading books building a library. He is reading a bilbography on Hitler, and Ghandi. One to see how high you can go, and one to see how low and disiciplicible a human being can become. He has picked up some more books on programming your mind for success, one on parenting, one on philosophies and his wife has given him some CDs on becoming by Anthony Robbins.

Today, I know understand fully why I take the time to help others. Because it is the most rewarding experience in the world. Today he say, you got me started, thanks because of the CDs you have given me it is changing my life for the better, I appreciate that, thank you.

And wow, being in someone’s personal testimonial, Jim Rohn was right, that is one of the most rewarding experiences in the world. He is a contractor, and there is a book by the E-Myth company about why most small contracting companies don’t worry. I have more CDs, but he has taken the step to purchase them himself, and now he has ten books and over 8 CDs for personal development. He told me, “I Started My Library.” Wow.

He started telling me all the wonderful techniques that he had learned from Tony Robbins, we had a fun time because I could whole-heartedly relate to him. And we both seemed to talk like the speaker Jim Rohn. This has all happened in less than a couple weeks, and I believe he will continue the craft after listening to Jim Rohn. I believe Jim Rohn, on the art of exceptional living is the foundation for all successful living in my personal opinion.

Starting a Library will change your life. I’am now learning how to mentor other people, it is something I believe I want to do, I’ve considered becoming a personal development professional like Anthony Robbins although I have not decided yet. Regardless, I would like to give him more information, but alas, to much overload is not a good thing either. So what I’m going to do, although he has already purchased books, I was going to buy him another book on the contractors, and then with a note attached, a gift, that says only open this after you have read the book, with a gift ceritifcat to a bookstore near his house to continue his craft.

I’m off to San Francisco for the weekend to visit my grandparents, who I’am so terribly gratiful for.

The Scorpion and the Frog

Sat, 23 Dec 2006 00:00:00 GMT

Do you know the story of the Scorpion and the Frog?

One day, a scorpion looked around at the mountain where he lived and decided that he wanted a change. So he set out on a journey through the forests and hills. He climbed over rocks and under vines and kept going until he reached a river.
The river was wide and swift, and the scorpion stopped to reconsider the situation. He couldn’t see any way across. So he ran upriver and then checked downriver, all the while thinking that he might have to turn back.
Suddenly, he saw a frog sitting in the rushes by the bank of the stream on the other side of the river. He decided to ask the frog for help getting across the stream.
“Hellooo Mr. Frog!” called the scorpion across the water, “Would you be so kind as to give me a ride on your back across the river?”
“Well now, Mr. Scorpion! How do I know that if I try to help you, you wont try to kill me?” asked the frog hesitantly.
“Because,” the scorpion replied, “If I try to kill you, then I would die too, for you see I cannot swim!”
Now this seemed to make sense to the frog. But he asked. “What about when I get close to the bank? You could still try to kill me and get back to the shore!”
“This is true,” agreed the scorpion, “But then I wouldn’t be able to get to the other side of the river!”
“Alright then…how do I know you wont just wait till we get to the other side and THEN kill me?” said the frog.
“Ahh…,” crooned the scorpion, “Because you see, once you’ve taken me to the other side of this river, I will be so grateful for your help, that it would hardly be fair to reward you with death, now would it?!”
So the frog agreed to take the scorpion across the river. He swam over to the bank and settled himself near the mud to pick up his passenger. The scorpion crawled onto the frog’s back, his sharp claws prickling into the frog’s soft hide, and the frog slid into the river. The muddy water swirled around them, but the frog stayed near the surface so the scorpion would not drown. He kicked strongly through the first half of the stream, his flippers paddling wildly against the current.
Halfway across the river, the frog suddenly felt a sharp sting in his back and, out of the corner of his eye, saw the scorpion remove his stinger from the frog’s back. A deadening numbness began to creep into his limbs.
“You fool!” croaked the frog, “Now we shall both die! Why on earth did you do that?”
The scorpion shrugged, and did a little jig on the drownings frog’s back.
“Because I’am a scorpion”
Then they both sank into the muddy waters of the swiftly flowing river.

Why do I tell this story, well because simply, there are Scorpions in our lives, and they do evil, just because they can, it’s there nature. At 3am I was awoken by my car alarm, in the morning it turns out that someone slashed my rear left tire on my Integra, and threw a large rock at my driver’s side window in attempt to break it. Although I do think I know who did it, I won’t publicly say so on here. But I believe it to be the same person who also keyed my car, and keyed another one of my cars, and also totaled another one.

After I realized it today, I thought of the story of the Scorpion and the Frog. Sometimes, things just don’t make sense. There are people like the Scorpions in our lives, who do bad, just to do bad, and it is just their nature. Everyone should know the story of the scorpion and the frog.

Heres An Idea

Wed, 20 Dec 2006 00:00:00 GMT

Well I’m sure like yourself, as a fellow entrepreneur reading this forum you have had, and have many buisness ideas. Sometimes we can not sleep at night, we seem to goto bed more excited than during the day. Here is an interesting philosophy.

If you have lots of ideas, or whatever in your mind. Write them down. When you remove the thoughts from your mind, put them on paper, you open up your mind to new ideas, and allow them to flow in. Otherwise you are trying to remember everything, and forget stuff.

Anyways, I had a little simple invention which I’m not going to pursue, I know what I’m going to do for the next 2-3 years I’ll tell you guys too after my website is done. But if you own a corporation, or home-based buisness you can save money on your mileage in your car. Well, I seem to forget to log my miles every time I get in the car. We are suppose to write down how many miles we drove, when, where we went, and what purpose it was.

It would be nice, and its just a matter of time before it is implemented. A device when you get into the car, voice prompt, “is this drive for business.” Ok, “what purpose is the business” and it electronically logs your mileage into the device, and you can print it out at the end of the year and save. What $0.45/gallon?

Ever heard the phrase, Food For Thought? Our minds need ideas, just as we need food, to keep them going, keep them thinking. Maybe this will spark an idea for you. And if you have an idea, just do it. So many people have ideas, that are incredible, they are capable of doing it, but the difference is some takes action, while others do not.

COULD, SHOULD, DON’T

even stronger,

COULD, SHOULD, WON’T, don’t could mean your careless, won’t probrably means your stubborn. But here is what we should be thinking and doing.

COULD, SHOULD, WILL. and do, take action!

The Ants Are Busy Working All Season Long

Wed, 20 Dec 2006 00:00:00 GMT

Well I made a mistake, another one! Incredible! I messed up, I thought the kid wanted to a full trade, but it turns out he wants cash in addition to my car, which I’m not going to do.

Regardless, I have been busy working on my web 2.0 website, it is really starting to come together. It is so incredible, to have an idea, and be able to manifest the creation before your very eyes by programming a website. I’m spending about 8 hours a day on my website, it is basically occupying my time full time.

I want to say, I appreciate you guys for helping me. The readers of my forum, I appreciate your guys’ comments, suggestions, and wanting to network with me. I really believe we are all going to do big things, are we are going to work together. Let me extend even more appreciate and help you get started with a blog, I can even potentially host it for you as a friend who wants to help others succeed.

Regardless of this strange rant, I’m making progress, a couple simple disciplines repeated daily, over and over, and they are having an incredible slight edge affect. I can probably show you guys my website pretty soon, it is not really top secret, I just want people to see the final product when it is done. However, it will show everyone how simple you can make something that fills a need in the market place. My inspiration, I have a vision board. Is Kevin Rose, the Digg creator on my wall that says, “How this Kid Made $60 Million in 18 months.” Thats were we are going.

Can I Make An Extra $5,000 – $10,000? Of Course.

Sun, 17 Dec 2006 00:00:00 GMT

Well, after thinking about how much time and money I’ve spent into getting my car ready for sale. It is paying off, I would not normally talk about selling a car, because it is just a car sale, however it seems to keep getting interesting. This 19 year old student is selling a 94 Red Toyota Supra, Twin Turbo, although I said sell, he is actually looking to trade it for a Mazda RX-7, 1993.

It is funny how much you can find out about people, after searching his screen name on google, I found that he was a member of the Supra Forums. After searching through posts, I actually found a thread he started, asking others what he thought his car is worth. He originally posted it for $36,000, but now is taking $33,000 for it, however, everyone in the community that was high, but could probably get around $30,000 for it. And he wants to trade, for a 3rd generation RX-7, and likes my RX-7 which is worth ~$20k. Exactly, that is a $10,000 difference. He lives in Irvine, CA, I live in Portland, it will cost about $400 in gas to do the transaction. But an interesting offer, I will post more details when it goes through.

But long story short, getting my car detailed, put back together, and creating the sales page, spending almost 30 hours in getting it ready is starting to pay off dividends, I’m currently waiting for him to call me back. As I now want to do the transaction asap, trade my RX-7, and sell the Supra. Giving me more than $25,000 to invest in property. Combined with an already $35,000 I would now have $60,000 for a downpayment on a property, at 10% down, that is a $600,000 invsetment property. After that, I’ll buy a Ferrari instead of an RX-7.

Maximizing Learning – Online Conference

Thu, 14 Dec 2006 00:00:00 GMT

My good friend Stephen Ramil had a good idea to maximize the learning we do from reading books. His idea was to get together and teach eachother the concepts that we learn while reading helpful books. I think it is a great idea, and we thought it would be cool to do an online conference call, with visual, and interaction with a flashtalk system. Consider it like a weekly free, session on creating wealth, or becoming more successful in any field for free via the web. A web conference where you can log on and learn, the most important part free.

Flash talk allows people on the internet to get in a conference room, see visuals with powerpoint, and direct users to websites. (where we would have an interactive learning tool, to increase learning as well). Learn about the different levels of learning.

Whats in it for the speakers, well the speakers receive intelligent self-interest, by teaching, and sharing to others. They hear the concept 10 times, while the audience hears it once. If you teach a subject, “for the most part,” the teacher always knows it best, has studied it, and thus increasing his or her knowledge and the audience. If you are interesting in being apart of a web conference like this, please comment here.

Website Progress – Foundation

Thu, 14 Dec 2006 00:00:00 GMT

It is about 5:45AM right now, I woke up at 5:30PM today. Although there have not been to many interesting ideas to post as of today, which I can share at the moment I should add. The website has been making steady progress and several times today I saw a great need for my service which will be great.

I like what Zig Ziglar has to say about building a character foundation, he quotes some of the tallest buildings in the world, have the largest foundations in the world. The larger the foundation, the better it is, more stable, higher integrity the higher you can grow. This is applied to people in how we need to build a character foundation, so we can be able to go way way up.

For my website, it has taken sometime, but instead of doing a whack job programming it, I’ve learned the backbone of the php and mysql, but most importantly have now understood the security side to it. I’m making the site very secure, and understand it better now, and deleted all my exisiting code and just rewrote the whole thing to make it more efficient.

One things I just did was removing the variables from the URL:

Instead of: /?userid=wesleymahler
It turns into //wesleymahler

If you are not familiar with Search Engine Optimization, the 2nd example, the after-product, is ideal for search engines to pickup the keywords in the url. I currently now have the user registration ready, editing user, and then the fun stuff beings today.

I’ve also shared some MP3s now with a fellow entrepreneur in Texas I believe, he was interested in learning stuff about creating income online. I met him through facebook, and the cds I sent to my friend in Ohio should be arriving soon. He he is getting close to finishing Rich Dad, Poor Dad, and already his mindset is set, his navigational thinking, set on building a buisness for himself. And he understands the taxes, and has said thanks to me. So I appreciate that.

And still working on the book, 1 page a day! I’m now in editing mode! I’m thinking about creating an online library like Ben Casnocha so I can see all the books I read and look at my progress. Taking a picture of my library every month.

Oh, and for some reason my RSS FEED broke, so if your using a reader it won’t update. Incredible!

Today will be incredibly… productive..

Tue, 12 Dec 2006 00:00:00 GMT

It is 6am right now, yesterday I was so tired after applying my no prcastination technique that I found myself keep doing chores throughout the day without hestitating to do them. Needless to say I was able to accomplish quite a bit of chores that I needed to do anyways. Having a Bank of America personal account, Wells Fargo buisness account, and Wells Fargo personal account does not make life easy when you want to purchase checks, sign up for overdraft, sign up for new credit cards and lines of credit for each individual account. You would think it’d just be 2 calling locations, but no, it is three because Wells Fargo personal is a different department than the buisness.

Anyways, I just do no understand why Wells Fargo has so many fees, I applied for overdraft poretction. I thought that with overdraft protection they would not charge you, at least Bank of America Doesn’t, when you overdraft your account. Although Wells Fargo decides to charge even when you have an overdraft with overdraft protection, wow. Does not sound like much of overdraft protection to me when I still get a fee for overdrafting. Anyways, I was also to get my 93 RX-7 close to being able to sell with removing, and replacing the stereo back to OEM, I’m going to be installing it today and putting my Integra back together this week. I can not wait to sell the car and get my thousands back to place it into my bank accounts and stop preventing all the Wells Fargo Fees.

Because I have several accounts with Wells Fargo, and they are not at the minimum balance to receive no fees, I have to pay $20/month because I do not have over 4.5k spread out throughout my accounts, that $20/month is $240/yr just paying away to fees.

But regardless I’m headin in a new direction, I do not have to go back to the same situtation I was before with overdrafts weekly. But today I’m excited because I’m able to work on my new web 2.0 communit all day today and believe I will get a majority of the work done today for it. The last couple of days I have been doing research on how to make the site secure, I never knew how easy it was to hack into peoples’ accounts on the internet on some of theses less secure sites. I’m also doing about an hour of personal development a day, and increased it from 30 minutes a day, as Jim Rohn says, one hour a day will help you to become rich, although 30 minutes a day, half rich isn’t bad either.

My friend in Ohio, Adriel, the high school student I’m helping out has just started reading Rich Dad Poor Dad, by Robert Kiyosaki and to say the very least he has enjoyed the reading so far. He has read about 70 pages in 3 days, a great momentum to work on himself, I had him teach me what he learned because I know that if he teaches others, he will retain the information the best over all other methods. He also read my book, and recommended that I finish it, so I have been working daily on that, I have now sent him down several CDs of personal development to listen to. I will be so interesting to see where this friendship lands up.

It is one thing to read a book, but it is another thing to get the most out of it. This graph shows you why I don’t just congradulate him on reading the book but have him teach me the principals he has learned. So I can hear them again, and so he can too.

We Learn / Remember:

10% of what we READ
20% of what we HEAR
30% of what we SEE
70% of what we DISCUSS with others
80% of what we EXPERIENCE personally
90% of what we TEACH someone else

Now the above table is different on most different sources, but they all agree that we begin to retain more information when we are actively engaging ourselves. Where as reading is usually on the bottom of the list, it is not that active, while teaching is on the top. Consider why teaching is on the top? Now you know the how, but if you know why, you’ll make it better.

Free Wealth Building Seminars In Large Cities

Mon, 11 Dec 2006 00:00:00 GMT

I’m greatly interested in setting up large seminars, which would be free to the public teaching others how to generate wealth in various ways. This concept is contrary to the typical pay for seating at large seminars. I have a passion to teach others, and a strong passion to get on stage and be able to do public speaking. This is one of my main driving factors to establishing the OSU Real Estate Club at my University and I’ve even thought about doing free wealth building seminars for any apartment tenants of mine.

Most people do not think this way, they are thinking of a lose win situation when teaching other people they rely on, how to become successful. Unfortunately, I’d almost feel bad if my tenants where living in my investment property and someone never shared with them the ideas for success like others have done for me. “Do unto others, as you would like done for yourself,” as the phrase more or less going. When I’m an extremely successful people, I’d love to mentor people, inspire them and more importantly, lead them to take action.

I feel that after I graduate, I will start free wealth building seminars in Portland, then moving towards downtown. To raise funding for the building would be contacting business to have them sponsor the event, a much more difficult route to providing funding, but the seminars would get so much attention banks, and other programs would love to attend. I can see MLM recruiters, Loan Officers, Venture Capitalists, everyone being there to network and learn how to become more successful, for free.

Here is the real question, would you attend a free weekly seminar, a professional presentation that taught you how to create wealth through various means, or success in general. Please comment if you would, or would not, let me know what you think on the idea. I believe it has potential and will help a lot of people, and would be incredibly rewarding and fun to do. Would you attend? How would you fund the event through other means than people paying to get in. Maybe an optional membership to sit up front, but money not required, ideas?

Time Invested Is Worth A Fortune

Mon, 11 Dec 2006 00:00:00 GMT

After moving all of my furniture to a new apartment In corvallis, and celebrating my mother’s birthday today I’m now going to focus 95% of my energy on creating the web 2.0 community. There is aproximately one month, and when the time is invested properly what a fortune it can create. With the technique described below I’ve been eliminating procastination and just doing it. After speaking with my great friend, and buisness associate Nick Boushay we both agreeed that alot of success has to do is not necessarily intelligence, but just taking action and doing what your passionate about.

Two Simple Philosophies to Help Take Immediate Action

Sat, 09 Dec 2006 00:00:00 GMT

After reading several books and listening to audio CDs, not only have I learned the philosophies in the book, but I have started to apply them and they are simple ways to help take action immediately.

It is quite clear that after studying success through books, seminars, and audio CDs which talk about personal development, there are many different techniques that we are able to use in our daily lives to improve our performance. There is a significant amount of recommendations to try everyday, but with to many ideas, it can sometimes become unapplied knowledge because there are simply to many to use. However, theses two, combined together, from different sources in my opinion are a powerful, less than a 20 second method to maintain a slight edge advantage and avoid the procastination by taking action which I use every day now.

The first philosophy is from Jim Rohn’s “The Art of Exceptional Living”, to ask ourselves the following question, “Will the errors in my present judgment of philosophy, what’s that going to cost me in one year, six years. One month, six months? I’m telling you the money costs, and the health costs, and the success costs are is to gigantic if you look down the road a little ways and say, are there errors in my current judgment like an apple a day vs. a heresy bar a day.”

In short, what Jim Rohn is saying, is that you should look at your current actions, the actions you are taking everyday, and ask yourself what is that going to cost me in the future? For example, have you heard the phrase, an apple a day keeps the doctor away? Here is a good question for you, what if that is true? See some people have it all messed up; someone else says a heresy bar a day. Noooo, it is not heresy bar. So ask yourself, what is going to be the future cost of the errors in my present judgment of philosophy.

The second is from the book, “The Magic of Thinking Big,” which is a must read for anyone who wants success. In this book there is a suggestion that simply talks about the following. Every day there are chores, and tasks that we must do in order to be productive. Whenever you get the urge to put something off, to procrastinate, to think about not doing it, do it, right then and there. So when you even start to procrastinate, just do it at that moment, right at the moment.

Combine the two together you have an awesome tool to use to your advantage, asking yourself what your errors in your judgment are, and if you seem to procrastinate on doing the task, just do it immediately without thinking any more about doing it. So for example before I wrote this blog, it is almost midnight I’m very tired and about to goto bed. I sit on my bed for a second and lay down, and think to myself oh, I haven’t written my page today and brushed my teeth. Like everyone does for the most part, laying there comfortably, ah, what a pain to do those chores. But then I remember, and use the knowledge I had. Procastinating on those two is a current error in my judgement which would affect me later on, the habit, and then right then and there, without thinking any more I uncomfortbly got up wrote my page, and did my brushing up before bed. After that, I felt good, and that is called “personal power,” the ability to take action.

t is late at night and I started to decide if I should write my one page today, or go to bed. I also needed to brush my teeth, as I sat there and started thinking about it, I just went ahead and immediately wrote my page, went to brush my teeth. And ladies and gentlemen, that is called “personal power,” taking action.

Although I still struggle with this sometimes I constantly try to immediately take action and think about future results. It is so exciting and you do it more and more often, it becomes more natural and you start to gain control. It is so incredible when you know that you are doing the right activity, applying knowledge, and being productive, it is an incredible feeling. So here it is one more time, and think about applying it in your life.

**Asking yourself, “What will the errors in my current judgment cost me in the future?”
**
And, whenever I start to even think about procastinating anything, immediately take action, do whatever it is you are procastinating about without thinking twice about it.

You can apply it to all areas in your life. Incredible.

The Best Investment Possible, Is Investing In Yourself

Fri, 08 Dec 2006 00:00:00 GMT

As I was programming my website today I came across a ton of information about making my site secure. Unfortunately, I did not know how easy it was for people to hack into sites. After reading an article by a security guru, I decided to book and found my self going on a shopping spree. But what would Wes buy, I’ll show you.

The best investment you can make is investing in yourself, becoming a better person. I’m going to have the privilege to be a public speaker at our upcoming events, I’m going to start this web 2.0 community for a sellout, and learn how to program. What better way than to learn from the experts themselves. I went ahead a purchased a bunch more books for my library. In life, they put the valuable things on the top shelf, in order to reach them we have to stand on the books we read. Take a look at this post for a perfect example of an 18 yr old, who has a multimillion dollar company because he has become a multimillion dollar person by developing himself.

In other words, as Jim Rohn says, “Learn to work harder on yourself than you do on your job, if you work hard at your job you’ll make a living, if you work hard on yourself you’ll make a fortune.”

Investment in Books: $ 150

I’m sure you will agree with me, that I will go a lot more value than $150 out of theses books. What are you reading? “The person who can read and doesn’t, is the same as someone who can not read at all.” In other words, if you can study success in whatever field you want to pursue, and don’t read books that teach you how to have success in certain fields, than you are the same as an individual who can not read books. Take a look at the books I just purchased for myself, wouldn’t you agree that they will help me. Wouldn’t you also agree that they would probably help other people if they read it. The challenge is, that most people simply do not read life changing information.

Here the books are that I just purchased, I’ll take a picture of my library in progress. All houses over $200,000 have a library in them. Why is that? It’s a clue, start a library it’ll change your life.

The Quick and Easy Way to Effective Speaking - Dale Carnegie
$4.25 - Quantity: 1 - Usually ships within 1-2 business days
Sold by: tanamana
7 Strategies for Wealth & Happiness: Power Ideas from America’s Foremost Business Philosopher - Jim Rohn
$2.94 - Quantity: 1 - Usually ships within 1-2 business days
Sold by: whitehouse9
E-Myth Mastery: The Seven Essential Disciplines for Building a World Class Company - Michael E. Gerber
$12.00 - Quantity: 1 - Usually ships within 1-2 business days
Sold by: bargainbookstores-com
Inspire Any Audience - Unknown
$4.49 - Quantity: 1 - Usually ships within 1-2 business days
Sold by: whitelucy2004
How to Stop Worrying and Start Living - Dale Carnegie
$2.60 - Quantity: 1 - Usually ships within 1-2 business days
Sold by: cancelo_book_club
How to Develop Self-Confidence And Influence People By Public Speaking - Dale Carnegie
$3.99 - Quantity: 1 - Usually ships within 1-2 business days
Sold by: any_book
The Leader in You - Dale Carnegie
$3.36 - Quantity: 1 - Usually ships within 1-2 business days
Sold by: any_book
What’s Your Exit Strategy?: 7 Ways to Maximize the Value of the Business You’ve Built - Peter Engel
$5.00 - Quantity: 1 - Usually ships within 1-2 business days
Sold by: _athenaeum_
Inspire Any Audience: Proven Secrets of the Pros for Powerful Presentations - Tony Jeary
$3.08 - Quantity: 1 - Usually ships within 1-2 business days
Sold by: cseereader
The E-Myth Revisited: Why Most Small Businesses Don’t Work and What to Do About It - Michael E. Gerber
$4.50 - Quantity: 1 - Usually ships within 1-2 business days
Sold by: striking_images
Success Acceleration Second Edition - Tony Jeary
$6.98 - Quantity: 1 - Usually ships within 1-2 business days
Sold by: mickmonroe
Public Speaking for Success - Dale Carnegie
$2.30 - Quantity: 1 - Usually ships within 1-2 business days
Sold by: a1booksdotcom
Life Is a Series of Presentations: Eight Ways to Inspire, Inform, and Influence Anyone, Anywhere, Anytime - Tony Jeary
$2.50 - Quantity: 1 - Usually ships within 1-2 business days
Sold by: lgtruex
Essential PHP Security - Chris Shiflett
$12.47 - Quantity: 1 - Usually ships within 1-2 business days
Sold by: bunches_of_books
136 Effective Presentation Tips - Tony Jeary
$9.95 - Quantity: 1 - In Stock - Eligible for Amazon Prime shipping rates: join now
Condition: new
Sold by: Amazon.com
Exit Strategy: A Practical Guide to Selling Your Business - Graham Watkins
$22.99 - Quantity: 1 - Usually ships in 3 to 5 days - Eligible for Amazon Prime shipping rates: join now
Condition: new
Sold by: Amazon.com

Comments

1 from the original blog

Wes MahlerDec 8, 2006, 12:24am
Opps, looks like I bought two of the same book.

I’m Excited School & Programming

Wed, 06 Dec 2006 00:00:00 GMT

Today was a good day, I studied for my math, and geology final for tommorow. I should be doing above average on both of those tests and did it fairly quick. I do not understand how some people spend several days studying for exams, but I’m sure they do not understand the entrepreneur risk taker either. Regardless, after that I spoke with my realtor, got a new good faith estimate so we are going to be look at some properties together soon.

He recommended me not to rush into an investment property which I whole heartly agree with him. Although most people wouldn’t appreciate my new facebook image I created, the personal developed would. Funny enough, I spent to long making the visualization but everytime I log into facebook it is there, showing me some of the experiences I will have. I found out the maximum picture for a facebook profile image is 200×600, so I decided to create the largest one. Profile images are also a good way to advertise your buisness or whatever because how large they can be, and at how many people see them. I’ll create a blog later on the power of networking, but unlike most books, networking in the web 2.0 community through forums, emails, instant messaging, blogs, etc.

I got back to programming my website and all is good, it has taken me a couple hours to figure out how to let someone log into my site, and start to edit their information. Although it is a great experience, and after this break there will be nothing stopping me from releasing my new web 2.0 product that will attract some heavy traffic.

It is 2:27am right now, I have a test at 9:30am. Today is the last day of finals, then I have the full month’s break to be productive and finding a new roommate because Steve is graduating today. Although I think I found a roommate, or two off my website CorvallisClassifieds.net, there is also a corvallis apartment database I created for anyone searching for apartments in corvallis. If you are reading this, and going to be in Portland, OR area and interested in creating some residual income please contact me through email. I’am not going to pitch you on anything, but would welcome you if you want to join a team of individuals who are going to be creating websites on the internet for a large sum of income + residuals.

Only 2 Hours and 10 minutes late to my final exam today!

Wed, 06 Dec 2006 00:00:00 GMT

This morning I will was up till about 6am after working on the book, websites, reading blogs and my book, Six Great ideas. I set the alarm on my laptop, because my orignal alarm broke. Thought I was ready to go, had to wake up at about 7:30, so I would have had an hour and a half of sleep. Well it turns out, for some odd reason, I don’t know why my laptop alarm clcok did not go up, and while my GEO final started at 9am I was asleep. Please note that I’am like a 10 minute drive from school, so I get up and look down at my computer which lost its battery power and is dead.

At first glance, I’m alittle confused and then realize I’m WAY late for my final exam. Anyways, instead of stressing about it like most people do I thought of the best case situtation in my head, which was approaching the professor during the last minutes of the exam and asking for another retake. Although I knew it was greatly to my benefit that I sat in the front row every class so the professor saw me there everyday.

Bolting out the door, I got in my car and had to park in the teacher’s spot! I ran to Wiegner 151 where the tests were takin place, I walk in theres like only five people finishing up there exams. They kinda look over at me like I’m a crazy guy, what, coming to class 10 minutes before the final exam is due. But always feeling positive about the situtation, after talking to Dr. Lillie he was more than happy to allow me to take the test tommorow at 6pm, which I better not miss because I sat in front of class everytime. I then took my math final after leaving, came back to my car and luckily there was no ticket there.
Anyways, I thought that was pretty cool. Don’t think about the negatives, just think about the positive outcomes that will arise from the situtation. Yes there is negative, but think 95% positive about everything. It also helps to sit in the front of class where the teacher can see you as it builds report, had he never seen me before, I’m sure he woulda said no way wes. Also make sure you got a working alarm clock. Wow, that was sketchy.

A Semi-Typical Day In My World

Tue, 05 Dec 2006 00:00:00 GMT

Well I’m finishing this blog at about 6am, it is not uncommon for me to go to bed very late because I’m normally up working on my laptop. With the 24/7 activity on the world wide web, it really doesn’t matter whether or not I’m working at 9-5pm, so as an entrepreneur, we are able to set out own hours and work whenever we want. It is a great experience.

Today, my friend Charmon helped me study for a Sociology Test, which I took today. I’m unsure what grade I’ll get in the class, and then I studied for my math final on Wednesday. After that it was about 9pm, however, it was the start of my business productive day. After getting home I talked with Marc Rogers, an individual in Portland, OR who is helping me find an investment property to purchase in North Portland. Then, I went ahead and talked to the mortgage broker to give me some more good faith estimates to see compare the numbers on different loans. My real estate transaction is going along well. I saw several multi family units in N Portland, however nothing to exciting. They all bring around 22-25k gross per year, they are all around 300k for a three units. The pictures were some of the properties that I have been looking at as possible investments. And for those people who don’t understand leverage, no, I do not have 300k liquid cash sitting in my bank account. Not yet anyways, but no, I’m borrowing the money from the bank. To many people say I do not have money, if I did I would invest. Well don’t kill yourself mentally, OPM, other people’s money, use the bank’s money not your own.

Then I logged into Facebook, and there were several messages from other entrepreneurs who I have began to network with. One individual is starting a next work marketing company selling personal defense weapons, and devices; although I respectfully declined it was quite interesting to see what he was doing. Another individual was creating an online community for aspiring entrepreneurs; his site blulite thought was very hard to navigate. Another guy Adrian is a ETF trader and creating a good sum of cash working part time, but producing full time income.

I also got in contact with Ben Casnocha, as listed below, I emailed him and he replied back giving thanks. I’ve just been recently at aw on the great people I’m able to talk to. With almost everyone I know going places, I’m going with them, and my other friend Chris, had his lyrics featured in Source magazine. That is incredible, working with Snoop Dogg, and he has Nas who is interested in his beats. Wow, everyone is doing great, and I’m just living it with them. Anyways, afterwards I had fun working on writing my book on the law of association for about an hour and a half. Read some other entrepreneur blogs, some interesting news on Donald Trump, and then started to work on programming my new web 2.0 community which is starting to look good. I also made an offer on a domain name I’m interested in purchasing, however I still can’t tell everyone what the web 2.0 community I’m creating untill it is already launched.

So this is a random rant on what’s go on in my world, and a pretty typical day of networking, and working on sites. I’ll finish it off by reading 10 pages of a good book, Six Great Ideas, by J. Mortimer Adler.

The Journey of 1 Page A Day, Begins Again, For Good

Tue, 05 Dec 2006 00:00:00 GMT

Several months ago I decided to write a book on the law of association, “How you become the combined average of the five people you associate the most with.” For several months my books was moving steadily along, it had accumlated over 50 pages of brain storming material, a table of contents, layout, outline, and was getting closer to being ready. Then for some reason my negative thoughts were clouding my mind and I lost interest in writing the book. So for about the last two months I have stopped writing my book, and it has been sitting as a useful resource loaded with typos that I ended up letting my friend up in Ohio read.

As I mentioned in my previous blog I’m helping out a fellow aspiring entrepreneur start his first internet venture, we are talking online and I hope to help him achieve his future goals. We talk alot about buisness, reading books, and general fun stuff, its great to know that he relates so well to me. I’m encourgaging him to work on himself, so I’m sending him some CDs in the mail tommorow and went ahead and sent him my unfinished book. Why Not?

Well after he read the book he mentioned he enjoyed reading it, thought it was good and suggested I complete the book. I agreed with him and want to finish the book, and after studying how the mind works I’m able to write the book with more enthusasim. See what was happening is my daily page a day started to get on my nerves, I’d wait till way late at night to do it, and hammer out one page a day.

With one page a day, after a year that is 365 pages of a good book written. That was my goal, but I was loosing my daily discipline. So after learning the Silivia Mind Control method, it mentioned the following. “If you want to regain enthusiam about something you are doing, review the benefits.” Know why you are doing it. We do not wash our dishes, to wash our dishes, we wash our dishes so we have a clean kitchen with dishes ready to be used. I was looking at the negative aspect of writing everyday, while instead, I should have, and now I do, look at the positive side, the end result of being able to write a book.

So heres my why, the why makes it all worthwhile. I’am writing a book so I can give back to the community which has helped me out throughout my life. It is a chance for me to share some quality information that has positively affected me, and I’m able to share it with others. It gives me a credible source to referr to when selling myself when people want to invest in me and my buisnesses. Although I do not necessarily like titles, it would be nice to know that at age 19 I have successfully writen a book and call myself an author. I’m able to inspire, instruct, and help others succeed with the knowledge in the book. And maybe, it will provide me with some residuals from the book selling (even though I might just make it for free), and bring more attention to my works.

See how much more compelling the why is, other than, I want to just write a book. This is why, I’ve regained focus and will continue to publish the book and will probably just place it on my site for free so someone can read it. Then possibly make the next book a best seller, maybe, if I really want it.

What is so funny about the whole situtation is my writing is very basic, in high school I read about 2-3 books, and did not enjoy writing. Now all of the sudden I’m writing a book and barely pass my writing classes, but the grades won’t stop me, its just ironic. I would have never thought I’d do this. You will be reading it if you stay in touch with me.

To Many Buisness Ideas, No Focus, No Progress

Mon, 04 Dec 2006 00:00:00 GMT

If you are an entrepreneur you have probably came into the challenge of having to much abundance in your life. If you are like me, an individual who wants to achieve massive success, there is always to many ideas to pursue. So many infact, that if you tried to do all of them you would literally never get anything done at all. The current most efficient way I can solve this is by cutting out buisness ventures.

My friend Alex Neighbors wanted to do a buisness with me on a local scale in Corvallis, which would be oriented towards Google for a sellout later for some millions. Great idea, can work, and it has massive potential if he sets his mind to it. With his enthuasiam got me excited about the idea and I went for it. Although in the back of my mind, I’m always deciding with if I should join or not. I helped him a little bit for the first week, but after thinking, and looking back more I have decided to drop it and focus on my other objectives.

Right now I’am already battling with five priorities which take up a signifcant amount of time already. And can take up as much time as I want to devote to them:

School
RotaryEngineIllustrated.com and my partnership with Pineapple Racing
Setting up a solid foundation for the OSU Real Estate Investment Club for the winter 2007 term
Purchasing an investment property in N Portland
Programming and Starting a new web 2.0 buisness, which I will reveal to everyone within a month after completion
Writing 1 page of my book a day on the Law of Association

Those are the main tasks that I’am facing, although yes, I could add more to my plate, I would loose focus. I love the MP3 by Donald Trump, if you have not heard it you should definintely check it out. Visit Why We Want You To Be Rich website, and you can download it for free. It’s an incredible MP3 which Donald Trump tells us of his philosophies of buisness success most important he says the following.

You have to have momentum to get anything done, and you must have focus. The moment you loose your focus you will also loose your momentum, the two go together. When I heard that, it made sense, and has been something I’ve been having a challenge with for almost two years. To much abundance, although I will cut out some more of my activities above to, the best I can do is start to lead others(I don’t like the term dictate) the tasks to other people who can pursue the vision of each mission.

It would be best if I just had one focus, so stay focused on whatever you need to do.

Wow, What Personal Development Can Do

Mon, 04 Dec 2006 00:00:00 GMT

I discovered the blog of this young 18-year old entrepreneur who makes over a million dollars a year with his company off the America’s Best Young Entrepreneurs by BuisnessWeek for 2006 or something. Although I was going to merely add his blog to my blogroll because I’m so humble towards this individual I was astonished to see what his backing his that has made him so successful.

Ben Casnocha has been listed in several magazine articles, has one of the top 25 blogs in Las Angeles, very successful, has done public speaking seminars for large universities, is a writer and an avid reader. But again, I want to hit on the point what made him so successful. See everyone wants results, but most people do not know how to achieve their results. This is how it works:

Philosophies -> Thoughts -> Actions -> Results

In other words, if you have the right philosophies you will be able to create the right results in your life. What are some philosophies? Here are just a few examples.

Learn to work harder on yourself than you do on your job
Profits are better than wages
Buy Assets, Minimize Liabilities
You become the combined average of the five people you associate with the most
The Slight Edge
Failure: A couple errors in judgement repeated daily over and over. (Imagine 6 years)
Success: A few daily disciplines repeated over and over.
If you think you can, or think you can’t, your right

See it is the philosophies that we have toward life that direct our thought patterns. Our thought patterns determine our actions we take in life, and our actions create the results we have in life. So this is what got me so humbled when I saw this information, the time he has taken to work on himself, and the personal development he has achieved. Jim Rohn quotes, “In life, we put the nice luxuries on the top shelf, in order to get them you have to stand on the books you read.“

I’m currently building a library for myself, but will be stepping it up a noch. I want you to look at Ben Casnocha’s book list for two years in high school. When I saw this, I was quite humbled. No wonder this kid has a company that produces around a million dollars a year, look at the person he has become, look at the books he has read alone. I’m telling you those books have changed his philosophies, he continues to read, and is going to write books. When I saw that book list, I must say, I was greatly impressed by this. If he can do it, I can do it to, and so can you.

I Work, While Others Study

Sun, 03 Dec 2006 00:00:00 GMT

Although studying for finals is extremely important in getting good grades in school, I tend to focus my time on creating a business that will provide residual income. It’s interesting to point out my mentor’s philopsophy, Jim Rohn, “If You Could Do Better, Should You.” I agree with his statement to a point, that we should do better, but only to a point. It seems that you can only do so much better to a degree where you have to lessen the degree of other influences. For example, I can focus on school and buisness, but lean more on the other.

Despite this, as an entrepreneur I still do all of my homework and get fairly decent grades. My average GPA is around a 3.2 which is majority B’s and Lower A’s. Although I could get all A’s if I really wanted to, and some say I should, in my mind the grades will not determine my net worth. I appreciate school, dropped out, and have returned but think they are overrated. In conclusion I tend to work on my buisnesses for most of dead week while everyone is studying, and thats what I just been doing.

I hate to sound almost negative towards grades, I do think they are actually quite important. The further I look back upon my grades has made a huge impact in my life. With out a strong grade ethics in middle school, and an average gpa around 2.3 during middle school lacking focus, during my high school years I also had a low gpa. This low gpa has influenced where I have gone to school, and grades have opened and closed doors.

When I relate it today, if I had better grades during middle school, my grades probably would have been higher during high school which would of helped getting into a higher class university. Oregon State University is great, although there is much more action and opportunity in living in the Silicon Valley which is where I plan on moving potentially. At my current point in life, as a college student, I’m still lost in respects to where exactly I’d like to go. At this moment I’m at OSU studying buisness, and working on a project that I believe will expand throughout the world even if I’m in corvallis. And when the Real Estate Club gets going, I might not want to leave it, but continue to build it. What I’m saying in my current stage is that if I’m going to stay at OSU it really makes no difference if I’m getting all A’s, or all B’s, I don’t get C’s and don’t get D’s. So this is the end of my studying, school, and buisness conflicting rant.

I’am So Happy and Grateful Now That

Sat, 02 Dec 2006 00:00:00 GMT

Here are my goals for the next three years, which I will accomplish. It’s so powerful to have your goals infront of you everyday, it keeps people focused, and leads individual’s towards their destinys. But instead of just saying my goals, I say, “Im So Happy and Grateful Now That,” because in my mind I’m visualizing it in the present tense and it’s so much more powerful.

I’m earning $100,000 a year on January 1st, 2009 from several websites that generate money from advertising. I’m also earning passive income from my four plexs, that I own under my corporation with tax write offs.
RotaryEngineIllustrated.com is making $100 a day on January 1st, 2008, from Google Adsense. The drop shipping business is completely setup earning a passive residual income stream. There are 3 people working full time on the site receiving checks by my corporation.
I’m mentoring three students and helping them achieve their goals. I also have a mentor for real estate investing, entrepreneurship, and a general mentor.
I attend every personal development seminar that I’m able to attend to. I’m reading everyday, studying wealth, relationships, health, real estate, entrepreneurship, and the lives of successful people.
I’m living in the Silicon Valley in 2008-2009, and enrolled in a University studying entrepreneurship.
I’m the owner of a four-plex investment property, which produces a positive cash flow and great appreciation in 2008.
I’m traveling throughout China, visiting the Great Wall, my Chinese grandparent’s birth place, then traveling to Japan, Korea, Mongolia, and learning from other cultures.
The Real Estate Club has 50 dedicated people that attend weekly during the winter 2007 school term.

Should I Program Myself?

Sat, 02 Dec 2006 00:00:00 GMT

I’ve been debating whether or not it would be worthwhile to program my new web 2.0 project myself, or have someone else do it for an equity share. I’m closing the idea to having another program it for a one-time fee because it will result in me having to re-program someone else’s work in the future. Here is what I came up with.

Why wouldn’t I?

The only reason I wouldn’t program myself is:

I did know how
I was to busy
I felt my time could be spent on other areas of the business more productively
There was to much work

Why Should I?

Well after reviewing the reasons why I wouldn’t, I can do all those in the above list just fine. It just takes work, will take alot of time finish it, and then after the website is complete bringing in residuals then I will outsource the programming once I can pay out. I’d almost be lazy to not program it, is what it looks like now.

Disadvantages of Programming Myself

Uses my own time
I have to learn new languages
Everything will rely on me
I will be able to spend less time promoting
Venture Capitals would not invest in my projects if I was solo

Advantages of Programming Myself

Know the system thoroughly
Easier to edit, update, and change functionality on the website
Able to own the site 100%
I know exactly what is going on in the code
I’m able to hire programmers more efficiently.
I would learn valuable skills to create more sites.
I would not have to rely on other people.
I would not have to share the company with other people
Keeps the intellectual property safe

Conclusion

It makes sense for me to program my own websites, it puts me in control, I determine how stuff works, and I own 100% of the company. I have already 6 years of programming experience; once the site was fully operated it would not need any much more programming. At that point anyways, when the job was getting to big I would be able to hire programmers’ full time to work on the site in any respect. Thus, I will program my own site and close it off to 3rd parties programming my websites for me.

Why I’ve Created This Blog

Sat, 02 Dec 2006 00:00:00 GMT

To whomever is reading this,
I’ve created this blog because I felt that it could provide some useful information to those who were interesting in seeing what I was up to. This also creates a viable medium for me to share some useful information and post it on the internet. I see it as being a great way to follow my progress in achieving some goals that are always in my head. It will serve as a reminder to me, and everyone else for how much potential we have. And a place for me to write my thoughts down, I once heard it is good to write thoughts down because it lets you remove them from your mind and open the mind to new ideas.

Wow, Blogs Are Incredibly Useful - I Never Knew Till Now

Sat, 02 Dec 2006 00:00:00 GMT

Little did I know that reading other entrepreneurs’ blogs would be so englightening. It is true that you become the combined average of the five people you associate with the most. So if you want to become a bum, associate with five bums, I’m telling you the bums will tell you everything on how they came to be. But if you want to be successfull associate with five successful people. I’m not going to go into exactly why this works, it’s covered in my book, which isn’t published but just take it as its mostly true. You are affected by the people around you.

Regardless, reading other entrepreneur’s blogs on the internet has been incredible insightful to what is going on. It is a community of success driven people and you can start to read, and understand their philosophies for buidling wealth. A great way to learn from people who are doing something. JonWaraas.com, is a 19 year old entrepreneur who makes some where around 20-30k/month I presume, while JohnChow.com, is another webprereneur that knows all the new trends and posts them on his site. Regardless, the blogs is an incredible resource to learn about entrepreneurship to whats going on. Lastly, this other guy has a blog about how he is going to make a million dollars in 90 days, another has a guy with 1.8 million dollar in debt from investing into 8 houses with no money down.

Check it out, explore the blogs, they are very very exciting and interesting to read other peoples’ stories. All sorts of stuff very enlightening if you want to learn about anything from personal experiences, and funny enough they all have link circles so it is easy to view just about everyone. They all know eachother.