All Forum Posts by: Max M.

Are you considering involving them in your work/business dealings? When I was a boy what I hated the most is my dad never let me get involved with his work and other projects. Most children are being insulated from these things, I bet they would love to be involved with it in some capacity.

I think this captures what attracts people like me to this business. The excitement of finding deals and then pouncing on them. The thrill of the hunt and closing the deal. It awakens the predator instinct.

I think this is what keeps people in the game after they already amassed more money than they know what to do with.

Robert Ringer's book is one of my all time favorites and it contains a lot of real estate wisdom too. I think i'll be needing it for some of the guys here LOL.

LOL @ the girlfriend thing.

Oh, forgot to mention. The second friend pretty much goes on about how evil someone is whenever they're making a profit.

Your posts remind me of my two friends. One always told me I won't do anything, ever. He lives with his mom sharing rent on a 1 bedroom apartment and his plan is to work his $12/hour janitor job (used to work with him) until he retires since he has a retirement plan thing with the company now. He will probably be dead before then, given his health and habits.

The other friend doesn't actually try to tell me I'll fail, or anything like that. But if asked his opinion on business and anything involving earning money, it's pretty much all about "they're idiots" and "you can't do that." He lives with his dad and brothers and hasn't had a job for 15 years. For a short period of time his dad invested in some bitcoin/litecoin mining hardware and he's been managing those machines. When I asked him about the profitability numbers he hemmed and hawed and never gave me any actual numbers. In a couple years it seems they lost money on the whole deal. I told him if he holds onto the coins and they blow up in value then it will be worth it. But they will probably just sell to recoup the losses somewhat.

Living in properties you buy and renovate waiting for a nice high sales price actually sounds like a pretty cool lifestyle. It's like a nice combination of high profit investing work + chilled and relaxed.

Here's my stance on Phil. He seems like a real expert who probably runs a great mentorship program, but as far as I can tell, you need to have at least 8-12K to start up with it. I don't know if this is operating expenses or an upfront fee. By the time I earn that money I will no longer be in need of such a mentorship. It might be a good investment later down the line when I have 50-100k built up. The problem with his mentorship program is that he's marketed the hell out of it and can probably cherry pick from thousands upon thousands of applicants. Many thirsty newbies are out there with 20-100K to their name and this will definitely make them more desirable as candidates. Even worse, there many be many experienced investors who are already successful that want to join up with the program, and they will be even more desirable. Essentially the entire thrust behind the program is designed to saturate the U.S. territories and Canada with as many students as possible to extract profits as far and wide as possible down the funnel of the program. That's all well and good, but it's too large of a phenomenon now. When I see something getting too big my gut reaction is to think I should focus where others aren't focusing on instead of try to jump in the meat grinder with all the competition.

It may well be possible that joining that program could be wonderful for investors of any caliber, but to me it seems like more of something to just "mess around with" once I'm no longer thirsty as a potential avenue of increasing profitability. I'm too thirsty now, and too poor. These mentorship programs are useless to someone starting all the way at the bottom. Success breeds success, and success seeks success. If you're a failure, newbie upstart you can pretty much expect to go your own way because nobody will be motivated to reach out until they see actual performance.

@Ryan Mullin @Account Closed re: creative business implementation with zero $ - We'll see what happens first. Me coming up with a good idea or acquiring menial income. Maybe both. Sometimes ya gotta knock a few things around before something goes into place. Some of my best ideas came after implementing very bad ones. It's like you gotta pay yer dues or something before the magical idea fairy grants you a gem. That's the fun thing about moving forward in these things. Sometimes you just gotta apply anything just to dredge up the next thing. No matter how empty the idea bucket is there's always some half-cocked idea waiting to be executed on.

 The cool thing is thinking about my past is motivating me a lot for this, which is one of the reasons I posted about it. These days most of my time is spent thinking about my plans for this business. Identity is like a coat you wear. Think of my presentation as a uniform I put on just for BiggerPockets to express what brought me to this point.

These days I don't get sad about the past, I get angry about obstacles or objections to my plans and then savor the feeling of imagining myself crushing through them. For someone like me it's war, because my entire life I've funneled the totality of my actions mostly into being a loser. Now it's time to start making deposits into my "winner bank account". Attention and focus are the most immediate and precious resources that must be managed. That's one of the reasons I came here now.

Talking with other business minded folks in this field is helping me focus more. And I'm getting a lot of flak calling me on my potential BS that's basically sending me the message "follow through or you're just another a-hole" and I agree with that sentiment

@Brie Schmidt I actually grew up in Chicago and then Skokie. I came to Palatine when I was 21 or so. Funny you call it P-town. I think that's what all the gangsters around here call it. Are you sure you're not a thug??? I better watch out...

Funny thing. I actually was walking across the street the night some dude here got shot 5 times. I actually thought it was firecrackers. LOL. Until the squad cars stormed the area. I didn't learn of the shooting until reading about it in the blotter later on.

Perhaps you're familiar with the two hotspots I refer to. I live across the street from the complex on Baldwin & Gardenia. The shooting happened a few blocks down Gardenia at the complex on Hicks & Gardenia. What's amazing is that in between these two hellholes is a virtual suburban utopia, minus ambient noise from the local highway (sometimes it can be heard more than others). It just so happens that the house across the street from the shooting is now for sale (I think it was being renovated for quite a while, or just cleared out, there was a huge dumpster in the driveway for 2+ months). Many guys hide from the cops behind its wooden fence, I've seen it a few times. Maybe the owner got sick of these shenanigans? LOL. The funny thing is, move 1 house down in either direction and the thugs never touch it. Hell, they hardly even walk past them. It's almost like these complexes are cages holding them in, and that's very sad. The state of societal affairs that leads to these things is a serious problem. When I was 12 I was housed with some chicago gang members for a while and a lot of them are really good guys if you get to know them, but their situations are very unfortunate. It's like a downward spiral that sucks people and communities in.