Have you missed me? by Paulie Sabol

I've been learning how to make my blog even more valuable.

And a day or so ago, I lost a 2 hour post the Money Mindset Matrix III and it discourage me

However, I have started posting and hosting my bog at

http://www.pauliesabol.com/blog

See you there!

Paulie

The Money Mindset Matrix Part 2 by Paulie Sabol

I've been learning how to make my blog even more valuable.

And a day or so ago, I lost a 2 hour post the Money Mindset Matrix III and it discourage me

However, I have started posting and hosting my bog at

http://www.pauliesabol.com/blog

See you there!

Paulie

Remember me?




Quick review. When reading the Money Mindset Matrix, you first go to the most objective measure, ...bottom line... how you make your money. Which is ironically the top line of the Money Mindset Matrix.

Then, once you've selected where the bulk of your income is generated, go down deep into your cognitive makeup and think of your mindset.

Where these two meet money and mindset, you know your current position on the matrix. And much like a game of chess is positioned to win by focusing on the middle squares, my desire for you is to become an "insider" in those four inner squares.

Let's look at each from the mindset perspective.

Think and FLOW Rich

If you think like a "Fixer", you mind is telling you that you're the deal. It is because of your skills you should be earning (regardless of why you really are). When you're in alignment with this core cognitive value, here's how you approach the different ways you're making money.

A designer knows perfection is achieved
not when there is nothing left to add,
but when there is nothing left to take away.
Antoine de Saint-Exuprey
Author, The Little Prince

If you actually make your money perfectly in alignment with your cognitive value, that is because of your capabilities, you are the PROfectionist. There's no denying that you're an expert in your area. Your specialized knowledge is vast and applicable. You pride yourself on doing things right--that is if you ever feel they are right.

You would benefit by remembering, from time to time, that finished is often better than perfect.

If you know people who are PROfectionists, be sure to employ them in your team and add them to your advisory board. Just be sure take their cautionary ...it's just not perfect yet... advice with a healthy dose of immediate action.

I considered self employment
until I learned the nut I'd be working for

The wealth-employed, is a person who manages to convert capabilities and skills possessed into the achievement of goals related to investing and financial leverage. This person uses their status as a self-employed individual to fund SEP plans and other retirement accounts provided only to the self-employed.

Similarly, they look for work which acts like an investment. It has an upside and a residual. Contingency consultants are a classic case. The consultant doesn't look for the immediate cash, but rather offers to render services for a continuing part of the savings or increase revenue.

I recently meant with a property tax attorney who argues to reduce your taxes for a small amount of the savings each year. This is the classic Wealth-Employed entrepreneur.

A consultant is someone who saves his client almost enough to pay his fee.
--Arnold Glasgow

The skill based earner who thinks like an owner is the systematic resultant. Rather than the consultant who "takes you watch away to tell you the time", the resultant knows how to produce consistent, expected outcomes that depend on the efforts of others.

The resultant knows that an owner needs to have results that exceed the cost of the achieving the results. As such, they put themselves in the shoes of the business owner.

I'm not unemployed, I'm a consultant

The Imployee is the impressively skilled professional who has no sense of the immense value of the skills brought to bear or who lacks the ability to successfully market those skills.

When you can, hire these people. It fits their mindset and they clearly have skills. Additionally, there's an opportunity if you have marketing skills to "resell" them at the right dollar value.

In the next installment we'll focus on those who make their money based on their hours. The "income outsiders" as I call them, the self-employed skilled people and the employed wage-earns who focus on security over opportunity.

Business Building Buzz by Paulie Sabol

I have started posting and hosting my bog at

http://www.pauliesabol.com/blog

See you there!

Paulie


There are four philosophilal paths to building your business.

1. - Direct propspects though direct response devices -
   
2. - Discover a high market demand niche need and deliver on it -
   
3. - Demonstrate and educatate to create smart consumers -
   
4. - Develope raving fans who do the "work" for you -
   

In the first case, you take up space in the world (though advertising and direct resonpose marketing) to buy space in their mind.

When the copy - words that sell - is read, it compells the buying behavior creating a customer.

Very often, this kind of continuity marketing with direct response campains runs at a loss and response rates of 2-3% are seen as successful.

In the next case, you take up your time to reveal a niche market.

Having found that niche, you actively survey and ask buyers what they need and want. This kind of strategic marketing can reduce costs and increase reponse because of the higher ability to locat and target sales messages to ideal prospects.

In the third case, you give food for thought and expand the mind creating room for you to be the well positioned expert.

This kind of consultative sales is the best cominbation of startegic marketing and personal sales skills. The education process allows one to poise the prospect perfectly to purchase while enhancing the likelyhood of success though client education.

Finally, in the last case. you're given a place in their hearts and heads.

Buzz marketing and branding is a function of building a business that tells a story that seeks to be retold.

I think of Krispy Kream donutes. If I had 30, I had 300 people asking me if Krispy Kream was near me before I ever saw one. Needless to say, the first time I found one of these donut shops, I had to enter and was predisposed positively toward the vendor.

Which business buildling posture do you naturally take?

Would it be worthwhile to consider an alternative appraoch?

How can you most quickly create success with all four?

Six steps to asset protection success by Paulie Sabol

1) Seek self-education about asset protection
2) State and prioritize your asset protection goals
3) Select an asset protection team to achieve the goals
4) Start your asset protection plan immediately—don’t wait
5) Support you asset protection plan with upkeep or maintenance
6) Sleep well at night knowing your assets are protected “on purpose”

“If you think education is expensive, try ignorance.”

The first step in protecting you personal and business assets from lawsuits and other economic risks is to get educated on asset protection.

Set a goal to gain a basic understanding of the tools of asset protection, tax reduction, and anonymity. You don’t have to “know it all.” However, you do want to know it well enough to come up with a few critical questions to qualify potential team members, as well as, to understand the distinctions between person asset protect and business liability shielding.

“If you don’t know where you want to go
all roads are essentially very long dead ends.”

When you take a moment to get very clear on the goals and purpose of your asset protection, you’re able to make better choices and get to the ultimate goal of sleeping more soundly and safely securing your legacy.

There are five main “goal” groups for asset protection entities, tax avoidance, personal asset protection, business liability shielding/lawsuit protection, anonymity, and having say or control when incapacitated with illness and after death (estate planning).

You may want to rank these and note which are the most important to you. Of course they are all important; however, sometimes we have to give up a little in one area to maximize our advantage in another. Consequently, it’s useful to have your priority list to help in deciding.

“Especially if you can do it all yourself,
you’re too valuable to be doing it at all”

While you may have been able to skip step one because you’re an asset protection specialist, you still will want to assemble a team to implement your asset protection strategy because there’s other things to be doing than filing forms.

You team will naturally include an attorney to review your operating agreements, articles of incorporation, etc. However, you can often get by without paying the attorney to actually draft the original.

Some of your team members can be “virtual” (through web based tools, books or home study courses). Others will be people you meet with face-to-face while still others will be distance team members.

“Time and health are two assets we don’t appreciate
until they’ve been depleted.”

Even if you’re beginning or “behind” in the acquisition of material assets, you have a large number of non-tangible assets. Many of these assets are protected by the immediate application of your asset protection strategy—even if it predates the purchase of any material assets.

For example, your reputation, your credit, and your time are all protected by a good asset protection and business entity structure. Should something go wrong in your new business, as is the statistical most likely case, you will not be personally seen as the failure, you will not be personally at risk if loans are guaranteed by the corporation only, and you will not have to fight back to get to ground zero (no you just form a new entity and go!)

“My mom said the only reason men are alive
is for lawn and vehicle maintenance”
- Tim Allen of Tool Time

If only our lawns, cars, relationships, bodies, etc. would run perfectly forever without any additional inputs or efforts. However, this just isn’t so, and it’s no more so of your business entities and asset protection.

Set up a check list of all the activities you need to do each year (and the basic timing) to maintain your entities. Actually, put these tasks into you yearly schedule and be sure to tickle your schedule when you’re getting close to the due date.

The good news is, like a well maintained body or relationship, a well maintained corporation actually becomes better with age, gets stronger, and richer.

Beyond the simple task of keeping up with filings, meetings, minutes, resolutions, accounting, tax reporting (if necessary), etc.; you also want to create a task to review your goals each year.

Perhaps the initial purpose of your asset protection strategy has changed. Maybe in the last year you’ve started a family, gained fame and become a larger target for law suits, moved into higher tax brackets, or bought or sold a part of you business(es).

Whatever the reason, be sure your current asset protection plan supports your current highest purpose.

“If I do dream, would that all my wealth would wake me.”
William Shakespeare

The real sign of a successful personal asset protection and business structure plan implementation is that you sleep well at night. However, if you should have a restless night, let it be for the reason identified by the bard.

Business Top Ten Lists by Paulie Sabol

How to have more website traffic to help you business get a presence online.

10. Consider joining or creating a safe list for your niche. The idea of a safe list is it's decidedly opt in and more of a community. In the community there are posting rules, however, the posting rules enable advertising/promotion.

9. Like blogs naturally do, set up a blog or a website to allow people to read some of your better articles or ideas without having to opt in, accept cookies or give any personal information.

8. Consider offering items that allow you to assess the skill level of your visitor. For example, give away software and/or monitor the times when people download things like Adobe Acrobat Reader (making you the first source of .pdf files).

7. Use ethical bribes to get good link backs from high traffic sites with the same theme or prospect as yours. Link backs are when other sites refer to yours as a source for expertese. For example, consider offering a site an exclusive article reprint in exchange for a link back.

6. It's wise to ask your past customers and ideal prospects what were you can improve, what you should be offering, etc. And while asking them, be sure to ask them to "invite a friend." Viral traffic is smart traffic. (Even consider an affiliate program where people are rewarded financially to refer.)

5. Keep changing your landing page (home page) and your content. Offer different things and keep the free or nearly free bonuses coming.

4. Plan your marketing activity, promotion, advertising, public relations, etc. Plan it with daily actions, monthly / quarterly traffic goals, and a yearly budget.

3. Give people many ordering options. Include things like paypal links even if you're like me and find it confusing and counter-intuitive.

2. Use testimonals on your website. Make them highly credible by including a digital photo, a digital "signature", audio or video recordings, and contact information. Oh, and definetly use a full name none of this "Paulie's Blog is Great" B.F. --Egypt

1.The number one way is original content. Frankly this surprised me. I guess content is still king and original content is supreme.

The Money Mindset Matrix: Cash Flow Crosshairs by Paulie Sabol

Okay here it is my Cash Flow Crosshairs.


Fig1: The Cash Flow Crosshairs demonstrates your money mindset when you reference how you
earn you money with the attitudes you learned about money.

I will write much more about this, for now, take a look at the image. The top CASH acronym refers to the way you earn you money. The FLOW acronym refers to how your thinking is alligned.

If you earn you living based on on you skills and Capabilities, you're a C. If you earn you living base on the income from you Assets, you an A, and so on. However, how you actually earn your money may have nothing to do with how you view yourself.

If when you think or are very comfortable making money, do you think like an employee Wage earner? Or are you an Owner of a business system or a Leverage oriented investor?

When you line up the way you earn with the way you learn and think about money, you can see your personality type on the Money-Mindset Matrix.

I'll write more about each personality type in a future blogpost.

Regards,

Paulie Sabol

Don't trust a land trust unless you must

It must be the most common question I get from real estate investors after I explore with them the PREMES: Professional Real Estate Multiple Entity Strategy. "But where do I put my trusts? I have all my properties in land trusts."

A land trust is the "poor" person's asset protection or the paranoid person's anonymity confusion. In fact, I can think of only reason to use land trusts and I'll explore that at the end of this post.

First let me use an analogy to compare a land trust v a chartered corporation or limited partnership.

A land trust is the asset protection equivalence of a fire wall. A business entity, like a corporation, limited liability company (LLC) or limited partnership (LP); is much more like a back up or restore disk.

Basically, a fire wall will prevent the casual onlooker from being able to damage your files. However, a skilled and persistent hacker will get past it. (Ironically, one of my sites was hacked this weekend by a hacker!) And once behind the firewall, all the files are at risk. It's open season when you get over the wall.

That's how it is with a land trust. The land trust is a deterrent to the casual litigant. They don't know who owns it and this is supposed to deter them from suing. However, let's really think about this.

1) Who owns it isn't important. Only who to name in the suit. And that is known by any first year law school student. The land trust trustee.

2) Who would have a land trust? The average Joe? Or would it be reserved for the kind of person seeking to remain anonymous? You got it, a land trust can give the sue-happy litigant just the kind of adrenalin rush needed to file a suit. After all, they might consider the owner to be a "trust fund baby" (Although land trusts are very dissimilar.)

3) To determine the owner and destroy the anonymity is very simple. You just depose the trustee or get a judge to order it. Few people are going to go to jail or pay fines for contempt because he/she refuses to give you name over as the beneficiary of the trust.

What most ironic is most of the alleged benefits of a land trust are actually earned by using a business entity for your asset protection.

1) Since the business entity is the title holder of the real estate property, who owns it? Not you, the entity does. But someone can just look up the public record registering the entity, right?

2) In the case of limited partnerships used correctly for real estate investing, you as an individual will show up no where on public records even if you receive the benefits of 99% ownership of the property! The entity that shows ups have very little ownership interest, hardly enough to care about. And, if you personally show up on any records at that level, and it's possible to avoid it, there's no reason to assume because you're a president or manager, that you're the "owner" of the 99%.

3) There needn't be a "someone else" who can be involved in the case to say things against your interest. This is one of the most overlooked advantages of business entities over land trusts. A land trust requires a trustee. The more legitimate the trustee, the more likely it will cost you more money to have this asset protection the more active you are in your business. However, with a corporation, you're the deal and the decision maker. You still keep from "owning the property" but you don't have to get assistance from someone else to get financing, sell, or the like.

And ultimately, returning to our analogy. If there's a problem with an entity and you've used equity stripping (see a future blog post), you have nothing to lose. If a lawsuit even comes your way, bankrupt the company and start a new one (or activate one you have waiting in the wings). It's like using the restore disk to bring yourself back to normal prior to the "attack" of the plaintiff.

Now, while you're seeing clearly the advantages of a business entity over a land trust, even for holding title to real estate investment properties; let's return to the one way in which you may want to use land trusts.

Land trusts facilitate the transfer of real estate by purchasing "subject to" the underlying financing which protects the property from the "seasoning" challenges faced by real estate quick turners. (People who buy real estate low from motivated sellers and sell high(er) to motivated buyers.)

This is the single reason I would use one and only when my intent is to buy and sell the property quickly.