#Is Real Estate Investment Trusts a Good Career Path?

[cubicalone]

Is Real Estate Investment Trusts a Good Career Path?

Introduction In the dynamic landscape of career choices, the question often arises: Is real estate investment trusts (REITs) a good career path? This article digs into the multifaceted world of REITs, exploring their advantages, considerations, opportunities, and challenges, and even providing insights from industry surveys. Through this comprehensive analysis, we aim to help you make an…

[pennycallingpenny]

Is Real Estate Investment Trusts A Good Career Path?

Imagine a way to be part of the real estate world without owning properties directly.

That’s where Real Estate Investment Trusts, or REITs, come in. 

REITs are like a team effort where people invest their money together to own and operate different properties. 

This could be office buildings, apartments, shopping centers, and more.

But here’s the exciting part: 

REITs also offer a possible career path.

Instead of just owning a single house, you could be a part of a big real estate adventure. 

In this blog, we’ll explore what REITs are, how they can be a career choice, and why they’ve become such a big deal in the real estate industry.

To read more, visit now - https://www.pennycallingpenny.com/is-real-estate-investment-trusts-a-good-career-path/

[shayarikitab]

Skills and Qualifications Needed for Success in REITs

People often wonder, ‘Is real estate investment trusts a good career path?’, but with the right mindset and plan, it is a unique way to diversity.  Unlike traditional real estate roles, working in REITs requires a unique set of skills and qualifications that go beyond buying and selling properties. Success in REITs demands a deep understanding of real estate markets, financial acumen, strategic thinking, and the ability to navigate complex regulatory environments. This article outlines the key skills and qualifications needed to thrive in a career with REITs, helping real estate agents and professionals prepare for and excel in this specialized field.

1. In-depth Knowledge of Real Estate Markets

Importance: Understanding real estate markets is fundamental to success in REITs. Professionals need to analyze market trends, evaluate property values, and understand the factors that influence real estate performance. This knowledge helps in making informed decisions about property acquisitions, dispositions, and portfolio management. Key Skills: Market Analysis: The ability to analyze local and national real estate markets, including trends in property values, rental rates, and economic indicators. Property Valuation: Proficiency in assessing the value of properties based on factors such as location, condition, and income potential. Understanding Supply and Demand: Knowing how supply and demand dynamics in various markets affect property prices and investment returns. Example: A professional working in a REIT might be responsible for identifying high-potential markets for new investments. By analyzing market data and trends, they can recommend the acquisition of properties in areas poised for growth, contributing to the overall success of the REIT.

2. Strong Financial Acumen

Importance: REITs operate at the intersection of real estate and finance. Therefore, professionals need a solid understanding of financial principles, including investment analysis, portfolio management, and financial reporting. Financial acumen is crucial for evaluating the profitability of investments and ensuring that the REIT delivers strong returns to its investors. Key Skills: Investment Analysis: The ability to evaluate potential investments based on financial metrics such as net present value (NPV), internal rate of return (IRR), and cap rates. Financial Modeling: Proficiency in creating financial models to project cash flows, investment returns, and the overall financial performance of the REIT’s portfolio. Budgeting and Forecasting: Skills in developing and managing budgets, forecasting financial outcomes, and adjusting strategies based on financial performance. Example: A financial analyst in a REIT might build complex financial models to project the long-term returns of a proposed property acquisition. Their analysis helps the REIT’s management team make informed decisions about which properties to add to their portfolio.

3. Strategic Thinking and Portfolio Management

Importance: Success in REITs requires a strategic approach to managing a diverse portfolio of real estate assets. Professionals must be able to think long-term, balancing risk and reward while optimizing the portfolio to meet the REIT’s financial objectives. Key Skills: Portfolio Diversification: The ability to strategically diversify the REIT’s portfolio across different property types, locations, and risk profiles to maximize returns and minimize risk. Risk Management: Understanding how to assess and manage risks associated with real estate investments, including market fluctuations, tenant defaults, and changes in regulatory environments. Strategic Planning: Developing and implementing long-term strategies that align with the REIT’s goals, including growth, income generation, and capital preservation. Example: A portfolio manager in a REIT might decide to diversify the portfolio by investing in industrial properties in emerging markets. This strategy could provide higher returns while spreading risk across different property sectors.

4. Understanding of Regulatory and Compliance Issues

Importance: REITs are subject to strict regulatory and compliance requirements, both at the federal and state levels. Professionals in this field must be well-versed in the legal and regulatory aspects of real estate and finance to ensure that the REIT operates within the law and maintains its favorable tax status. Key Skills: Knowledge of REIT Regulations: Understanding the specific regulations governing REITs, including those related to income distribution, asset composition, and taxation. Compliance Management: The ability to develop and implement compliance programs in real estate, that ensure the REIT adheres to all legal and regulatory requirements. Legal Acumen: Familiarity with real estate law, contract negotiation, and other legal aspects of real estate transactions. Example: A compliance officer in a REIT would be responsible for ensuring that the trust complies with all SEC regulations, including those related to reporting and disclosure. Their work helps maintain the REIT’s legal standing and protects it from fines and penalties.

5. Strong Communication and Negotiation Skills

Importance: Working in REITs involves frequent interactions with various stakeholders, including investors, property managers, brokers, and legal teams. Strong communication and negotiation skills are essential for managing these relationships, closing deals, and presenting investment opportunities effectively. Key Skills: Investor Relations: The ability to communicate effectively with investors, providing them with clear and accurate information about the REIT’s performance, strategy, and outlook. Negotiation: Proficiency in negotiating property acquisitions, lease agreements, and other transactions that affect the REIT’s portfolio. Presentation Skills: The ability to present complex financial and real estate information clearly and compellingly, whether to investors, board members, or potential partners. Example: An asset manager in a REIT might negotiate lease terms with a major tenant for a commercial property. Effective negotiation could secure a long-term lease at favorable terms, boosting the property’s income and enhancing the REIT’s overall performance.

6. Project Management and Operational Expertise

Importance: REIT professionals often oversee the development, management, and renovation of properties within the portfolio. Strong project management and operational skills are crucial for ensuring that these projects are completed on time, within budget, and to the desired quality standards. Key Skills: Project Management: The ability to plan, execute, and oversee real estate development and renovation projects, ensuring that they meet the REIT’s strategic and financial objectives. Operational Efficiency: Understanding how to optimize the operational performance of properties, including managing costs, improving tenant satisfaction, and maintaining high occupancy rates. Vendor and Contractor Management: The ability to manage relationships with vendors, contractors, and service providers to ensure that properties are maintained and operated efficiently. Example: A project manager in a REIT might oversee the renovation of a multifamily property. Their ability to manage timelines, budgets, and contractors ensures that the project is completed successfully, enhancing the property’s value and income potential.

7. Relevant Educational Background and Certifications

Importance: A strong educational background in fields such as real estate, finance, business, or economics is often required for success in REITs. Additionally, professional certifications can enhance an individual’s qualifications and demonstrate expertise in specialized areas. Key Qualifications: Degree in Relevant Field: A bachelor’s or master’s degree in real estate, finance, business administration, or a related field is typically required for roles in REITs. Professional Certifications: Certifications such as the Chartered Financial Analyst (CFA), Certified Commercial Investment Member (CCIM), or Real Estate Financial Modeling (REFM) can add value and credibility to your qualifications. Continuing Education: Staying current with industry developments through continuing education and professional development programs is essential for long-term success. Example: A professional with a master’s degree in real estate finance and a CFA designation might be well-positioned for a senior role in a REIT, where they can apply their knowledge and skills to manage the trust’s investment portfolio and deliver strong returns to investors.

Conclusion

Success in Real Estate Investment Trusts (REITs) requires a unique blend of skills, qualifications, and experience.  Professionals in this field must have a deep understanding of real estate markets, strong financial acumen, strategic thinking, and the ability to navigate complex regulatory environments.  Additionally, excellent communication, negotiation, and project management skills are essential for managing relationships and ensuring the successful operation of the REIT’s portfolio. By developing these skills and obtaining the necessary qualifications, real estate agents and professionals can position themselves for a rewarding and successful career in the dynamic world of REITs. Whether you’re looking to enter the field or advance your career, focusing on these key areas will help you achieve your goals and thrive in the competitive real estate investment landscape.   Read the full article

[synkdup]

Is Real Estate Investment Trusts (REITs) a Good Career Path?

The world of finance and investment is vast and varied, offering individuals a plethora of options to explore when it comes to building a career. One such avenue that has gained significant attention over the years is Real Estate Investment Trusts or REITs. But is REITs a good career path? In this article, we'll dive deep into this question to provide you with insights that can help you make an informed decision about pursuing a career in the world of real estate investments.

What Are REITs?

Before we delve into the career prospects, let's understand what REITs are. Real Estate Investment Trusts are companies that own, operate, or finance income-producing real estate across various sectors, including residential, commercial, industrial, and more. REITs offer individuals the opportunity to invest in real estate without the need for large sums of capital typically required for direct ownership.

Why Consider a Career in REITs?

Now, let's explore the reasons why a career in REITs might be appealing:

1. Diversification: 

REITs provide diversification within the real estate market. As an investor or professional in this field, you have the chance to work with a wide range of real estate assets, from apartment buildings to shopping centers to office complexes. This diversity can be intellectually stimulating and financially rewarding.

2. Income Potential: 

REITs are known for their income-generating capabilities. They are required by law to distribute at least 90% of their taxable income to shareholders in the form of dividends. This can result in a consistent stream of income, making it an attractive option for those seeking financial stability.

3. Market Stability: 

Real estate markets often exhibit stability compared to other asset classes. While there can be market fluctuations, real estate tends to be less volatile than stocks, providing a sense of security for investors and professionals alike.

4. Career Growth: 

The real estate industry, including REITs, offers ample opportunities for career growth. Whether you start as an analyst, property manager, or investment specialist, there's room to climb the ladder and take on more significant responsibilities.

5. Impactful Work: 

Careers in REITs involve managing and investing in tangible assets that have a real impact on communities. Whether you're developing affordable housing or revitalizing commercial properties, your work can make a positive difference.

Challenges to Consider

While REITs offer numerous advantages, it's essential to be aware of the challenges as well:

1. Market Sensitivity: 

REITs can be sensitive to interest rate changes and economic conditions. Economic downturns can affect property values and rental income.

2. Regulations: 

The REIT industry is subject to specific regulations and tax requirements. Professionals in this field must have a solid understanding of these rules.

3. Competition: 

The real estate industry can be competitive, and securing opportunities in REITs may require dedication and networking.

Conclusion: Is REITs a Good Career Path?

Ultimately, whether a career in REITs is right for you depends on your interests, skills, and financial goals. If you are drawn to the real estate industry, value income stability, and are willing to navigate the regulatory landscape, a career in REITs could be a fulfilling and financially rewarding choice.

To read a detailed article on the topic, click here. This article delves deeper into the intricacies of REITs and provides additional insights to help you make an informed decision about your career path in the world of real estate investments.

[online-income-factory]

Is Real Estate Investment Trusts a Good Career Path Opportunities and Benefit, Real Estate Investment Trusts (REITs) are a popular investment vehicle that allows individuals to invest in real estate without having to own physical property. Essentially, REITs are companies that own and operate income-generating real estate properties such as apartments, shopping centers, office buildings, and hotels. Investors can buy shares of these companies on the stock market just like any other publicly traded company. Read Full Article Real Estate Investment Trusts

[reddoormetro]

How Many Jobs are Available in Real Estate Investment Trusts?

Explore the world of Real Estate Investment Trusts and learn about the job opportunities available in this field. Find out if it's a good career path and what the best paying jobs in this industry are.

Real Estate Investment Trusts (REITs) are becoming a popular investment option, and as a result, the job market in this field is growing rapidly. Whether you're just starting out or are looking for a career change, REITs could be an interesting and lucrative path for you to pursue. In this article, we'll take a look at the job opportunities available in REITs, what it takes to be successful in this industry, and what the best paying jobs in REITs are.

How Many Jobs are Available in Real Estate Investment Trusts?

According to the National Association of Real Estate Investment Trusts (NAREIT), the REIT industry is growing and creating new job opportunities in various fields, including finance, accounting, legal, marketing, and property management. NAREIT reports that there are over 200 publicly traded REITs in the United States, with many more private REITs. This growth in the industry has created a high demand for professionals with experience in the real estate sector, and it's a good time to start exploring job opportunities in REITs.

Is Real Estate Investment Trusts a Good Career Path?

If you're interested in finance, real estate, and investing, then REITs could be a good career path for you. REITs offer a unique opportunity to invest in real estate without having to own physical property. This can be a great way to start a career in real estate, especially if you're looking for an alternative to traditional real estate investing.

In this field, you'll have the opportunity to work with a variety of professionals, including property managers, accountants, lawyers, and marketing specialists. You'll also have the opportunity to gain a deep understanding of the real estate market, which can be valuable in other areas of your career.

Best Paying Jobs in Real Estate Investment Trusts

The best paying jobs in REITs are typically in management and executive positions. For example, CEO, CFO, COO, and other senior executives often earn high salaries in REITs. If you're looking for a job in REITs, you may also want to consider positions in finance, accounting, or legal.

Here are some of the top paying jobs in REITs:

CEO

CFO

COO

Senior Investment Manager

Senior Financial Analyst

Senior Property Manager

Head of Marketing

General Counsel

Director of Real Estate

While these jobs tend to pay well, it's important to note that salaries will vary depending on the size of the company and the specific job responsibilities.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is a Real Estate Investment Trust?

A Real Estate Investment Trust (REIT) is a company that invests in and manages income-generating real estate assets. REITs provide investors with a way to invest in real estate without having to own physical property.

What are the qualifications to work in REITs?

To work in REITs, you'll typically need a bachelor's degree in a related field, such as finance, real estate, accounting, or marketing. Some REITs may also require additional certifications or licenses.

[rajeshchopra]

Hard Work And Honesty Together Make A Person A Successful Businessman

Rajesh Chopra is a known name in the business world of real estate. He has succeeded as a real estate investor, Business mentor, and realtor. His extensive experience on both sides of the fence has made him an invaluable asset to many budding entrepreneurs and investors. In this article, we will look at Rajesh’s career path, achievements, and advice he offers others on getting ahead in the business world. We’ll also look at some of the challenges he faced along the way and how he overcame them. If you are looking for an inspirational story about someone who has achieved success despite adversity, read more about Rajesh Chopra.

Who is Rajesh Chopra? Let’s start by introducing him.

Rajesh Chopra is a realtor, investor, and Consultant who has been in the industry for over 18 years. He has vast experience and knowledge in the field and has helped many people to invest their money and time. Rajesh is a highly respected individual within the industry, and his advice is often sought after by those looking to succeed in their businesses & investments. Rajesh is also a regular mentor in the industry. Those in attendance highly value his insight into real estate and investing.

Rajesh Chopra’s reputation in consulting on property investment comes from some companies that have earned an impression through hard work, dedication, or honesty and have succeeded in creating their coveted areas.

He conducted his business through a government project. Rajesh Chopra is known for providing precise information regarding his present situation and lifestyle after viewing any property or location. He’s already informed them of any new developments happening in his area. Because of the expertise that he has gained, he can inform his customers before us about the investments and the locations investing in property that could provide them with benefits or ensure their safety. His assistance can assist them in staying informed about all government policies and details about social gatherings, as well as information that will assist in making the business grow.

Why is Rajesh Chopra successful?

Rajesh Chopra is a successful realtor, investor, and Consultant because he has a deep understanding of the Indian real estate market and a proven track record of successful Investments.

He has succeeded by taking advantage of the opportunities the Indian real estate market presents. He has a strong network of contacts & investors and can identify investments with high growth potential.

His success is also attributable to his mentorship program, which helps entrepreneurs launch their businesses & startups. He provides them with the necessary resources and guidance to help them succeed.

What are some of Rajesh Chopra’s tips for success?

According to Rajesh Chopra, there are a few key things that lead to success:

Always have a long-term vision and focus on your goals.

Secondly, always be learning and investigating new opportunities.

Thirdly, take calculated risks – don’t don’t be afraid to try new things, but do your research first.

Finally, surround yourself with positive people who will support your dreams and aspirations.

What did Rajesh Chopra do to maintain the trust of the people?

As a realtor, it’s essential to build people’s people’s trust, so he did his work honestly and passionately. He makes every investment transparently. He maintains his space in the real estate industry with good dealing and behavior.

Conclusion

Rajesh Chopra’s impressive resume speaks for itself. His dedication to real estate, investments and Businesses has helped many entrepreneurs, investors & business people realize their dreams of success. Rajesh is truly an inspiration to all who strive to make a name for themselves in the business world. He has demonstrated that it is possible to rise above adversity and carve out a successful career path with hard work, determination, and resilience. We congratulate him on his accomplishments and wish him continued success in all future endeavors! He also believes that, along with hard work, honesty is necessary. This makes a person a successful investment & business.

[billionairesitgirl]

Hey girl I love your content, you are incredibly informative and the epitome of what I want for my future self. Getting there is the real task. I’m from London I’m aware there is lots of wealth here, but I have not strategically placed myself there as I come from a WC background. My question is how? Im graduating with a physiotherapy degree and I want a career path, but one that will lead me to sponsors. How can I edge my way into the corporate world? Inner circles? With no foot in the door.

Yes there is... You are sitting on top of a lot of it. 

With a Physiotherapy background i think you can apply to professional futbol/soccer team... That is one way in.  I mean hanging around professional premier league soccer players should certainly help  in opportunity to seduce a player or even an owner. 

First step is to get your foot in... The rest is all about strategy. 

For Corporate world: 

(Are you white or black?)

FINANCE

I ask cause It is very typical in New York to meet an Analyst (mostly Caucasians) who majored in photography or philosophy but still ended up with a 6 figure starting salary. 

As the world is unbalanced and unfair it is easier for white people to jump into a different career path than they studied in the corporate world... However that shouldn’t deter you...  Be resilient and try.

To try: Try getting an internship in a corporate company  (look at hedge funds family offices, real estate investment firms etc) . An internship is a way to get your foot in. And certainly helps if you decide to go the finance route. 

TECH 

Internship in a tech company 

go to founders meet up (You can find those on meet up and network)

If you have money. Pay and go to tech networking conferences . Because you are paying for this have 3 goals in mind 

A.) Network and meet someone who can get your foot into the door of their prestigious startups/companies

B.) Network and Meet and stay in contact with a couple of up and coming next Unicorn founder (or even a smaller founder... they also tend to have broad networks that can eventually work for you)... Main goal is to meet some tech founders in early stage of their companies even those seeking seed funding ... (Vet their startups well and see if they have potential...) You can offer to join in. 

C.) Meet an old experienced founder/CEO (For work or as an unsuspecting future sponsor)... Note that i said Unsuspecting future sponsor.

PS: do not go there dumb... Read, brush up. create an imaginary shadow company that you are looking to start someday  etc...  Be savy.

START YOU OWN COMPANY (if you can)

At first this will be lonely. But when you do, push yourself to network with people in the industry you started. Network, network, network.

You will find that most times, your network knows a person or two... and you expand from there. 

If you can afford something like a We work working desk or co-working space desk... get one and network with other founders there. You’d be surprised at the type of friends and caliber of people you meet there.

DATING APPS

Most people use dating apps to find sponsors, date or even escort.

Use dating App as a networking Mecca... Trust me, I have used it as a networking device to increase my circle of Important platonic friends (If done right... ) There are a lot of benefits. 

You either walk away with a mentor, a good network or even a sponsor or even better a sponsor who could get you into places. 

If there is any specifics you want to know... or i didn’t touch on... Let me know.

#sugardating #sugardatingtips #sugardatingadvice #sugarbowl #sugardatingtip 

[illegalastrology111]

DECEMBER 2020

Planet:  Sun Sign:  Capricorn Date:  December 21st - January 20th 2021

The Sun being the Will, that is the core of a person’s true Self,  inner confidence and the desire to do the best job possible, is in the sign of Capricorn, initiating a need for organization, structure and disciplined effort.    Getting things done with precious and caution is important during this transit.

Capricorn represents career, goals, ambitions, authority and power and is ruled by the planet Saturn.  Capricorn is an Earth sign, practical conservative and materialistic.  The quality of Capricorn is cardinal, meaning it’s one of the signs that initiates change, the other signs being Libra and Cancer. These are the overall signs that begin each respective season throughout the year.   They are restless and goal oriented in nature.

Capricorn possess the ability to withdraw form life, biding their time until the time is right for then to put their plans and objectives into action.    Capricorn rules the knees, skeletal system, bones and skin, which correlates with the signs drive to keep climbing, persevere and overcome obstacles., hence the symbol of the Mountain Goat.    Sometimes they can appear to be “tethered”, stagnated, striving in vain achieving little or nothing.  Positive traits include reliability, practicality, efficiency, persistence and patience.  They have a good dry sense of humor.  Negative traits include being cold, pessimistic and overly conventional.

Because Saturn is the ruler of Capricorn, they are slow to develop, taking more time (Saturn) than others, often achieving success in their later years, even to the point of aging at a slower pace.

During the Sun In Capricorn transit , building a strong foundation for career goals and ambitions will be important, as well as securing material stability.  It’ll be easier to focus with discipline, especially as the year comes to a close.

Saturn rules karma and time, therefore timing will be everything and also learning from past experience and mistakes, applying the lessons to current situations.

Planet:  Moon Sign:  Sagittarius Cycle:  New Moon Solar Eclipse Date:  December 14th

As the year comes to a close, it winds down with a New Moon Solar Eclipse in Sagittarius.  This cycle is an indication of old beliefs/behaviors coming to an end, that haven’t been supportive or helpful to growth or expansion.    New doors open,  influencing beliefs  and deeper understanding that there is “light at the end of the tunnel”.    Sagittarius is a fire sign, therefore the push for new beginnings, laws and change will be very strong.  

People form far away places and other cultures will play an important significant part in this cycle.  Looking back to the Full Moon Lunar Eclipse in Sagittarius, June 5th,  This New Moon Solar Eclipse in the same sign, heralds new beginnings and solutions for social and racial issues and discrimination, hopefully for the better.    This is a time to have brighter outlook for the future, seeing the “light” where there’s been “darkness”.

Planet:  Jupiter Sign:  Aquarius Date:  December 19th - May 13th 2021 July 29th 2021 - December 30th 2021

Aquarius is the sign of the future, inventions, humanitarian concerns,  uniqueness, independence, computers, electronics, space, aviation, groups, friends, hopes and wishes.  With Jupiter being in this sign for the majority of 2021, it will act as a “magnifying glass”  for the best and worst of all the above.    Success in any of these areas is likely to be unexpected, as Aquarius ruled by Uranus, has characteristics of being sudden and out-of-the blue.  

This is a transit when a boarder view of life and things in general,  will enhance and highlight garnering attention and the ability to stand out amongst others who have amore traditional perspective.    Jupiter will also be joining Saturn in Aquarius , bringing attention to the fact that past investments, experience, friends provide new beneficial opportunities and commitments, that fulfill long-standing and current hopes and wishes.

This is a time to have the courage to take a “leap of faith” with unique knowledge/ideas in groups/public scenarios, which will bring prosperity/personal fulfillment. Self-trust is key, because not only does Jupiter in Aquarius attract sudden good fortune,  it is often spread to others  who are within the Jupiter Aquarius radius

Sharp intuition is another attribute of this particular aspect coupled with a strong sense of idealism, which can be good and bad. As long as a person stays in touch with reality, Jupiter in Aquarius will lead the way, showing the path to follow. A path few have the courage and confidence to follow.

Jupiter in Aquarius bestows uponan individual  magnetic charm (Uranus, ruler of Aquarius,  represents electro-magnetic energy). People who are attuned to unseen forces and energies will find their abilities become laser sharp during this transit .

This is a cycle to explore parts unknown, unfamiliar territory, without fear, insecurity or doubt.  To share information from higher levels of intuitive knowing, in  a way that helps expand circumstances/growth for everyone.

Unexpected ideas will come with unique ideas to create and invent, a chance to let self-expression open doors of opportunity and prosperity, because Jupiter in Aquarius activates a worldly humanitarian view, in which the affirmation “another’s need is my command, my needs are already the command of the Universe” applies. A chance to help others and help Self in the process.

Planet:  Saturn Sign: Aquarius Date: December 17th - March 8th 2023

Saturn joins Jupiter in Aquarius bringing a focus us on preservation, security stability in the areas of job, home and identity.   Short-term investments will fail during this cycle, the long-term is the key to prosperity.  A time to improve what has already been  gained, selling/buying real estate, will have prosperous outcomes, as long as forethought is applied.   All the above could happen without warning , at least the opportunities will present themselves    Decisive actions and decision making taken during this cycle will have long-term affects.  Far reaching goals are now attainable, in addition to goals from the past that have the potential to be groundbreaking in nature.

Throughout this transit, it’s important to be aware of when to act with power/strength and when to lay low.    Staying safe and away from danger/dangerous people is strongly advised, especially when Jupiter moves out of Aquarius into the next sign of Pisces, for a brief moment in the summer.  Not a good tine to take unnecessary risks that could be potentially harmful to well-being.   Jupiter is the planet of protection and therefore the sign it’s in for any given time receives its beneficial “shield of armor”.  

[bigskydreaming]

remypix said: So. How do we get you to become the main writer for Dick at D.C.?

LOL! I appreciate the flattery, but tbh, I don’t really see that ever happening. Its something I’ve thought about a LOT, to be honest, and went back and forth on for years before I ultimately arrived at the conclusions I did and figured out what it was that I really want and what matters the most to me as a writer.

So the following ramble is just my train of thought on all of that, in case its of interest to anyone else for whatever reason. LOL, no scraps of meta to be gleaned from this particular wordvomit-bomb, so don’t feel you’re missing out on anything by skipping past it, its pretty much just how I went about working through my own personal priorities in terms of career goals as a writer, before settling on what path I want to take ultimately, and what paths I’m not really interested in working towards.

But yeah....although I absolutely invested a LOT of time and dream real estate in envisioning my future writing for DC or Marvel someday, came up with entire Giant Size lineups of my own X-Men characters I couldn’t wait to make canon and actually wrote out honest to god To-Do lists for things I wanted to do with certain characters once I got my grimy little hands on them before anyone else had a chance to realize what a mistake that’d been to allow.....

Now, tbh, I don’t really see that as ever being likely....largely because its no longer a career goal I have any real interest in pursuing.

Not because I don’t aim to write professionally - I’ve made a living at it before, and expect I should be able to manage to again once I’m out the other side of my living situation of the past few years where my body only tolerates my attempts to get it to like, function, for a few hours at a time. Writing professionally is a hustler’s game, lol, its not enough to just do the writing, you have to be prepared and able to follow up on any opportunities that come your way quickly and that’s just not in the cards right now. 

But I know how to do it, have done it before, I know how to network and while there’s no such thing as guarantees, there is such a thing as my single-mindedness and refusal to quit even when I probably should, so with that thrown in and all other factors considered, I do think I COULD potentially work my way up to at least a trial writing gig at either Marvel or DC someday, if I focused my efforts on that career direction specifically. Like its possible, I think my skills are at the requisite level, I’ve got the drive, etc, etc.....

But I just don’t see myself likely to set myself on that course ever, at least not any time soon. Not as something I’d need to commit to for a considerable period of time in order to break in and land the right opportunity, because the one thing I know myself well enough to know I lack completely and totally.....is my willingness to ‘play the game.’ The politics that go along with working in a corporate creative environment like Marvel or DC, particularly at the very bottom rungs of those corporate ladders, where I’d inevitably start out and need to kiss a lot of asses to have any chance of someday working my way far enough up the ladder to have any real kind of creative control over what I was writing.

*Shrugs*

Part of the problem is, as much as I love the characters DC has to play with, I do not love the structure that playground is formulated around. Like I’ve talked about a fair amount recently.....for years now, a huge creative problem with DC’s content is how disparate and isolated the various characters and franchises are kept from each other.......and while I know I COULD come up with stories that worked within those kinds of limiting parameters, I wouldn’t really WANT to, you know?

Like as much as I love the idea of writing Dick professionally, making canon stories for him.....in all likelihood, I wouldn’t even have the option of bringing in most of the other characters I’d want to draw upon as supporting elements in those stories. Dick is my favorite member of the Batfam, granted, but like I;ve said before, I do actually like all of them, when written well. I don’t WANT to write a Dick Grayson who’s kept isolated and solitary by editorial mandate, and at most allowed a guest appearance by one or two other Batfam members, as long as its kept brief and nothing significant enough to potentially impact their own storylines occurs in those appearances. 

And you just can’t really write a family like that, at least not well. Not without being severely hampered, to such a degree that even if I did find workarounds to allow me some pagetime with the characters I needed/wanted to include, figuring out a way to make that work creatively within whatever limitations are put forth, like, that would no doubt be stressful and exhausting and the complete opposite of the entire POINT of creative endeavors in my opinion. 

There’s not really a whole lot about that scenario that I’d enjoy, that would make the experience worth the time and effort it’d take to get to a point where its even a possibility......and chances are, it’d be more likely to sour me on the whole creative process of dreaming up and writing stories about this character I love so much, and potentially even leak into my ability to enjoy him, just because of how much personal negativity I now associated with it.

 And then the other aspect of things is just.....there’s a degree of game-playing that’s expected and even required of working as a writer for major companies like Marvel or DC, where you’re one little cog in a very big machine that quite frankly, doesn’t give a damn about your opinions beyond thinking you should be really careful about not expressing any that potentially reflect badly on them or any of their content....not if you want to KEEP working for them for any length of time. Trust me, I’ve known writers and artists who’ve worked for both companies, even known some pretty well, and I wasn’t kidding about the ass-kissing that falls under the heading “job requirement” thanks to a lot of the egos that sit very high up on the creative ladders there, and in key, critical positions that mean you can’t afford to piss them off or seem overly critical of them or their own content or work.

And that’s just....not me. Not anymore, anyway. Don’t get me wrong, I’m more than capable of holding my tongue when necessary, and doing and saying the right things to advance in those kinds of environments. Like I said, I’ve done it before, and quite well, and for years. Hell, forget the writing for a second, just in my acting career alone....working as an actor is nothing BUT networking, and to get and keep any kind of jobs at all you have to be just as good at that side of things as you are at actual acting, if not better, and well, I worked pretty steadily. I know how to network, how to keep my mouth shut, how to DO it and just focus on my end goal and where all that networking is hopefully going to lead me to.....

I just don’t WANT to, anymore.

Because it really is exhausting. And more than a little soul-crushing. I absolutely LOVE acting, as in the actual craft, just like I love writing, and creating in all kinds of forms. But the hierarchies of bullshit and egos and completely unnecessary power plays that go hand in hand with a lot of the professional work in those fields, is just......really, really draining. 

I’m not someone who likes keeping my mouth shut when I feel I have something to say.....having things to say is for me a huge, integral part of what draws me to story-telling in its various forms in the first place. And for me, that doesn’t begin and end just with what I write and act in myself, it also applies to the atmospheres and environments AROUND what I write and act in and where I write it and act in it. I love big, immersive shared universes like DC and Marvel because of their scope, their potential, the inter-connectivity of it all, and just how BIG it all is, and how big it allows stories to be, how big it allows various characters and their impact to be. But to actually be a PART of one of those myself, on any level, to be one of the pieces that make up its whole, my work a representation of it and thus all of it, to some degree, a representation of me....it wouldn’t be enough for me, to just be proud of what I create in that environment, I’d want to be able to also be proud of what my work is a part of, the other pieces surrounding that. 

And the reality is just.....for all that I like about Marvel and DC, there’s a shit ton I don’t like, and most of that falls under the header of specific tropes and trends and MINDSETS. And I don’t need things to be perfect, or ideal, or exactly as I want them to be personally, I really truly don’t.....because nothing is perfect, and unlikely to ever be perfected within any person’s lifetime. I know that. I understand that. But a lack of perfection doesn’t mean that things can’t constantly be worked on, improved upon, made BETTER, at least heading in that DIRECTION.....and the thing is, I don’t bitch about the various things and trends and mindsets I dislike in my fandoms, in the media I consume and enjoy, like, just to do it. Just to be negative. For me, criticism exists in order to point out existing flaws or areas where something is lacking or could be improved upon.....so that at least the OPTION of improving upon those things even exists.

 If you truly think there’s a flaw in something, something that makes a story or character or creative work less than it could be, holds it back, limits or detracts from its enjoyability at least in some small ways.....the one and only guarantee that exists, is that there’s not even a chance of those things being worked upon, tried a different way, being CONSIDERED by their creators or even just given more thought when creating along similar lines in the first place.....if like, nobody who has a problem with it as is ever like, MENTIONS having that problem with it, or seeing it as being lacking, or less than it could be, in these specific ways. To improve upon a thing, one must first be looking at what could stand to be improved upon, and SEEING it as something to potentially make better or do in a better way, instead of just....exactly the way it was already made.

Criticism is integral to making things better, stronger, MORE than what they already are, and I honestly think the truly great writers and artists of all kinds are the ones who are not just open to criticism, but who THRIVE on it. Who see it not as a judgment, but an opportunity. Who take whatever they can get from it and know how to leave behind the parts that have nothing useful or productive for them.

And Marvel and DC are just....not environments that I see as being all that open to hearing criticism, whether from outside or inside. In fact, I think that’s a huge part of the problem both have, something that’s stagnated them considerably......they’re never really improving upon any of the many areas they’re criticized for, because they refuse to hear that criticism, regard it as having any validity, and when you won’t even LOOK at something that needs improving upon as something that you acknowledge as needing improvement, FOCUS on improving, make that criticized flaw something you focus on rather than ignore, so you can LEARN from its mistakes rather than deny any mistakes exist at all....

Then the only way anything ever gets better at all, whether a little bit or a lot, is by pure blind chance, by just happening to not make the same mistakes next time out or because you focused on a new direction and were lucky enough to avoid stumbling into any particular pitfalls.

And that’s just....not appealing to me at all, even a little bit. Not something I care to be a part of, and I think its a waste of my time or energies, to work for a company that has a lot of problems that I see very specific areas that could be made better and not just for the sake of pointing out flaws, but because I also see various ways they could do things differently and potentially improve upon things......but working for a place who churns out content I think has a lot of flaws, or that I see and hear other people pointing out and commenting on those same flaws and others I didn’t see myself at first but saw after they were pointed out.....and yet knowing that company more than likely wouldn’t be receptive to hearing any mention of existing flaws, but would rather I just keep my mouth shut and just focus on my own story, no matter how I worded any criticism of the broader universe or directions or went about trying to raise said criticism or float it out there even as a hypothetical to consider......

Nah. No thanks. Not for me. 

I know how to play these kinds of games because I was raised playing them and surrounded most of my early life by nothing but game-players, people who played games with everything from the truth, to peoples’ lives, to social issues and politics, all of it was the same and they played games with it all just because they COULD. And I was tired of it a loooooong time ago, and at this point in my life, especially looking back on the last several years that I can’t help but view as largely wasted, because I flat out didn’t even have the OPTION of doing any of the things I wanted to do, was so consumed by day to day survival to such a massive degree that there literally wasn’t even the possibility of trying to work towards the longterm or do anything to advance any of my various career paths or goals.....like, that’s over three years now, going on four, that have just come and gone with nothing to show for them in terms of things I really want for myself and my career, things I actually want to do, things I want to say, stories I want to tell, NEED to tell....and in light of that in particular, like, I honestly can’t stand the thought of wasting potentially years more of my life keeping my mouth shut about things I see problems with purely for the sake of towing the company line, when literally NOBODY benefits from allowing problems to exist unacknowledged and just fester and grow and become entrenched.....not even the company itself.

*Shrugs* It just seems wasteful to me, and I’m already chafing at the bit as is to get back to a level of health and energy and focus, not to mention financial security/stability enough that I can even START moving forward with my actual careers again, working on selling and putting out there the kind of stuff I really want to put out there, put my name to.....it honestly just makes me shudder, thinking about the likelihood of wasting years more of my life in service to priorities that aren’t mine and that I don’t agree with, for the sake of egos I have no stake in, just because the company in question is full of people who are perfectly content with everything they create as is, who don’t aspire to ever be any better than they already are, are okay with already having PEAKED......just so long as it means they don’t have to listen to anyone insinuate or outright state something that everyone already claims to already be aware of and thus shouldn’t actually be all that hard to hear: that perfection doesn’t exist, its unattainable for everyone, and thus the things they’ve created and are working on right now....aren’t....perfect. Meaning, by extension.....they could be made better. Improved upon. Grown or evolved or honed into something that reaches MORE people, resonates MORE strongly, touches MORE hearts, changes MORE minds.

Why don’t people, artists, want that for themselves? For their work, that they put so much of themselves into, expend so much time and effort to make? I’ll never understand. Can’t relate.

And the real kicker for me, the thing that ultimately helped me make up my mind on this awhile back, and more than that, make my PEACE with the possibility of never getting to work professionally on these characters who mean so much to me already, even though I think theoretically I’m capable of it, could potentially make that a reality....

Its that....I don’t HAVE to waste that time, catering to those other peoples’ priorities, just to tell the stories I want to tell. Aiming for that particular path, constraining myself in ways I’m not really comfortable for the sake of people I don’t really like and messages I don’t actually agree with.....its not actually anything I need, and doesn’t actually offer me anything.

I do love Dick Grayson and other existing characters, and want to write them the way I truly see them, and immerse them and surround them with other characters I like as well and think SHOULD be around them, supporting them, their narratives entwined with them......and I already can do that with fanfic. *Shrugs* I can write the stories those existing characters inspire in me, that I really want to tell, and not worry about the oversight or by-committee mandates or approval of uncreative DC higher-ups holding me back or limiting me or telling me I can only use certain characters and only to certain degrees or in certain ways. I can scratch that itch, I can put those out there without DC, and an audience exists for them, and always has and always will. Yeah, its a limited audience, compared to the platform DC has and the greater number of committed fans their Brand Name and existing properties help direct to every new writer who works for them or new story or new characters....no fanfic I write will ever reach the number of eyes Tom King’s or Scott Lobdell’s stories get in front of.....but honestly? I’d MUCH rather have a limited audience, than be limited in the stories I can tell.

And as for reaching wider audiences, getting my content, my stories out there in front of more eyes.....I have my original content for that, and I’m fully comfortable and confident in my ability to create characters and build immersive worlds that can be just as compelling as anything existing, whether that’s actually self-confidence or hubris, lol, who knows and who cares. Point is, I love DC’s characters but I don’t NEED them in order to have characters to play with, and I don’t need to try and break into a playground that honestly seems full of a ton of crap for every square foot I’m ACTUALLY interested in and there for.

I can make my own, and have, and will continue to do so. I’ve got my own superhero universe called The Ellis Eighteen that I’ve been building most of my life and might not have the history or scope of DC’s decades of existing content and hundreds of creators, but its still more than enough content to keep me busy for the rest of my life, even just that one universe of mine alone, and when my problem with that particular project is not having enough time or energy as is to write all the stories I already want to write there with just my own characters and universe and narratives........there’s absolutely no reason for me to settle elsewhere.

Because similar to what I was saying about why I’m okay with writing just fanfic for Dick, even if that puts a ceiling on how far I can ever go with that......its about personal priorities and everyone ultimately needing to figure out what matters most to them in terms of personal ambitions and longterm goals, and in a world where nobody can ever get everything they want all the time, exactly on their terms.....figuring out where you’re most willing to cut losses and what you most strongly feel you need to do your way.

My own original superhero universe could be the best thing anyone’s ever seen and leaps and bounds above anything DC or Marvel create, and it doesn’t matter - the mere limitations inherent in creating new characters and universes in an already saturated market, the struggle to compete with household names and give people a reason to direct even a second glance towards characters they’ve never heard of when there are four different titles out this week containing even just one of the characters they already know and love and have been reading for decades, the basic math of one individual creator’s content never in a million years ever going to have the real estate or reach that even the least popular and worst written of DC’s titles enjoys just because association with all their other established and proven content gives them an automatic boost that I’ll never be able to match or replicate on my own with original characters....all of that is real, and a factor and things I’ve considered and accepted. 

Because at the end of the day, I decided the most important thing for me is bottom line, I like telling stories. But I like telling MY stories, the ones that only exist because I came up with them and thus will never exist for anyone else unless I write them the way they read to me in my head, the stories that CAN’T exist without me to tell them. And I like to tell my stories my way, in the sense that they may not be perfect and they might have areas of their own in which they’re flawed or lacking or could stand to be improved upon, but they at least don’t make the mistakes I see as mistakes in others’ work, and they prioritize the things that are important to me, and tell the messages I want to tell.

And with all that in mind, I would much rather devote myself towards walking a much longer, much harder road with absolutely no guarantees of ever gaining the kind of audience I might have if I worked for Marvel or DC......as long as it means that for all its drawbacks, every step I take on that road, I get to take while telling MY stories, MY way, the way I think they were meant to be told and without people I don’t respect or agree with backseat driving as I tell them, trying to give me directions as if they know how to get to where I want to go with my stories better than I do myself.

Compared to having a (comparatively) shorter even if no less difficult road to GET to a place where Marvel or DC hired me to write for them....at which case they’d shuttle me off in whatever direction they wanted to send me on a shortcut that admittedly gets me to a much wider audience in a much shorter time, and with far more guarantees of profit and thus a smoother ride.....but every step I take on THAT road, I ONLY ever get to tell the stories they allow me to tell, the ones that they like personally, and only after I’ve run them by them for approval first, and reshaped it into the form THEY want it to have and read the way they want it to sound, before ever reaching a single other person’s ears, with that vast audience only ever getting to read those versions of the stories I came up with....rather than the versions that read the way I originally wanted them to, that tell the stories I REALLY wanted to tell.

Again - its not about not being willing to compromise or settle or an insistence on things being the way you want them to be and no other way.

Its about the fact that everyone has to decide for themselves what they’re willing to compromise and what they aren’t - because it is OKAY to have things you’re not willing to budge on, you’re not rigid or unreasonable for having SOME things exist as dealbreakers for you, that make or break whether you head in a certain direction when a multitude of other directions are open and available to you.

And similarly, its up to the individual to figure out for themselves WHERE they’re willing to settle and in what ways....and where and in what ways they have to stand firm because settling there means sacrificing too much of what’s most important to them.

Like I said, for me, personally? The journey and the destination are the same thing. Whether I’m acting or writing, I view it as just different forms of story-telling. THAT’S the career I secretly dreamed of even as a child.....it was never that important what medium I told the stories through or logistics or superficial elements....the important part was the story, that was the point, that was the endgoal. *Shrugs* That’s all that’s really most important to me, priority uno at the end of the day: finding ways to go through life maximizing my ability, my freedom to spend my time telling stories, MY stories, the ones only I can tell because I’m the one that came up with them and they don’t exist outside my head, and telling them the way I truly want to tell them, the way they seem to me are MEANT to be told - because there’s only so far and only certain ways you can deviate from a story as you initially conceive it before it becomes actually a different story, that says something other than what you actually meant for it to say.

Big audiences and large royalty checks and movie deals and getting to use characters that others created but I fell in love with and see myself in all the same - all of that is great and has its place. But to me, the stories themselves are the point, they’re what any story-telling skills or talents I have seem FOR....

And if I’m going to bust my ass telling as many of the stories that pop into my head as I can, to the best of my ability, in hopes of them reaching the most people in ways I WANT them to reach people, resonate with them, speak to them, always trying to become better with each story I tell, each criticism I’m given, not out of some expectation I’ll ever actually craft a ‘perfect’ story or some sense of moral superiority, but rather just because stories IMO are meant to be enjoyed, and the better each story is, the more people are likely to enjoy it and what else is even the point of story-telling if you ask me personally...

Well. I’m just saying. If I’m gonna put in the best work I can either way, put in the time either way, and basically spend the majority of my effort, time and life telling stories one way or another.....

I’m sure as fuck only doing all of that so I can tell MY stories. Not someone else’s stories. 

Because when writing for DC, even for the chance to write characters I’ve loved for most of my life....also means having to shove each story I want to tell through a woodchipper that shaves it down according to someone else’s priorities, expectations and rules for how and in what ways I’m allowed to use which characters and to what ends or what degree - or worse yet, a whole COMMITTEE of someone elses - when all of that is going to whittle away whatever story I WANTED to tell, to such an extent that by the time it actually ends up in front of readers, it stands as much chance of being the story one or more of them actually wanted out there as it does of still being or saying anything I actually wanted or intended.....

Then as much as I used to dream about writing the X-Men or Green Lantern or Nightwing as a kid.....now, I’m more than comfortable saying nah, hard pass. I’ll go my own way with my own characters in terms of professional content and output, even if it never gets me as far as working for Marvel or DC might. And it costs me absolutely nothing to do so. I lose nothing in making that choice.

Because for me, its the alternative that would actually feel like settling.

And if any writers out there prioritize differently or choose differently or see all this differently and writing Dick or Bruce or Jason or some other existing character is still the dream, and the goal they still focus on working towards....there’s absolutely nothing wrong with that, as long as its what works for you, and aligns to what YOU prioritize as most important for your career, art, goals and how you want to spend your time and effort as a writer.

[astrology-with-charu]

Full moon in Sagittarius gives us an opportunity to culminate something in one area of our life over next two weeks, brings to forth our sense of adventure, faith, spontaneity, vigour & hunger for life of the archer. Below briefly mentions what part of your life its expansive influence is on.

‪17 Jun-2 Jul #Astrology #Horoscope ‬

Full Moon at 25°53” Sagittarius - A Flag Bearer In a Battle

Full moon in Sagittarius tonight which will give us an opportunity to culminate something in one area of our life over next two weeks, brings to forth our sense of adventure, faith, spontaneity, vigour & hunger for life of the archer .

Life is a Mission & we are the warrior with a cause. There is restlessness to experience life, to start a new adventure, to act on our impulses that our guiding us to hold ourselves & others to higher ideals. Big picture of our life comes to forefront of our consciousness as we are very idealistic & want to stand up to any limitations, any intimidation, crusading our personal understanding of truth.

Anyone or anything that comes between us & our purpose our cause our ideals will be met with retaliation cause we feel inspired to stick our neck out over beliefs even if there are no concrete proof which is the definition of faith. We have the courage of our convictions & not afraid to show that no matter the magnitude of opponent.

Jupiter Neptune are creating a fog to inspire us, create an over the top idealistic energy that questions any past limiting beliefs. Sometimes a bit of fog is important to enable us to walk on clouds without fear. Through crisis of consciousness, our past ideologies as a society are being dissolved for the new structure of our future to emerge. Crisis is mental & its pushing us to form a new way of looking at life.

Misinformation, aggression, arrogance will be galore in our surroundings for everyone thinks their truth is THE truth. The moon on galactic center & Neptune stationing makes it amply clear that only person you can trust is you. For what’s true for your soul is THE truth so why listen to hoi polloi. Neptune prompts us to walk with God’s not mortals’ lower frequency thinking cause it’s an opportunity to connect with source & know what’s the purpose of our existence. If only we shut outside noise we can hear it loud & clear.

Universe is screaming out our future if only we stop wasting this frequency in negating other persons belief & listen to our own mission. Universe is abundant as is this full moon.

Manifest your truth.

Full moon is happening with fixed star of Aculeus which is known to cause eye problems & blindness so few can experience eye problems. But most will be blinded with current reality or with rage or over the top emotions. Use this to envision beyond current circumstances to make a vision for you instead of loosing touch with reality.

Publication, travel, trade, education, spirituality, foreign relationships, causes, purpose, legalisation are highlighted as global themes under consideration.

As ruler is retrograde, we will see this manifestation continue all the way to August or even November (14th) when Jupiter revisits the point of full moon. So this has implications beyond next two weeks.

This full moon is activating key axis of United States & is next step in 7 Dec 2017 new start so if you initiated anything in December 2017 you might see fruits of that.

[Let’s get into individual signs or see video](https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCvSvY3h-vAPU0qnXPJM32PA) -

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

♈️ #Aries

Full moon of faith, where positive karma, sense of adventure is coming home as it’s very much required for the new phase of life we are about to embark on. Travel, high education, expansion of mind, publication, legalisation, mentor, Father, foreign trade & ideologies come to focus & culmination. We have a belief in abundance of universe & universe very much delivers the same. Whatever you believe in expands so careful what you wish for. Motivation in life is high, we are higher minded here, enthusiastic about what’s to unfold with an optimistic philosophy as our epic journey begins. Endings are unevitable cause you can’t have a new life without dissolving what’s not your reality anymore, the new normal is being ok with you being different from your past so embrace that.

♉️ #Taurus

Grand rebirth is the name of the game as you know you want more financially & in intimacy. So we bring to end any powerlessness in partnerships of personal or professional nature - but keep in mind merging your talents, resources can create expansion for you but it’s got to be on better terms. Death rebirth of sorts gives birth to new abundance. Mini crisis helps you see purpose of life. Reading, traveling to foreign lands, Father, Teachers, mentors give you guidance on what’s that purpose.

♊️ #Gemini

Closing on that partnership, contract, commitment that is so ideally suited to expansion of soul is the aim here. Or shifting existing partnerships to match this new vision you have of your life is the goal. Partners can help to give guidance on future path as well show you a bigger world. Partners can be teachers, foreigners, different from you & that’s why it fits.

♋️ #Cancer

Finishing a project or changing job, work environment & health routines seems to be the Mission. You have seen a new path & no one can stop you from getting there. Element of serving others, helping others in meaningful ways, being a mentor, teaching, guiding, uplifting those in need can convert a job to mission, career to purpose. Mind body connection comes to focus where you know a mindset is affecting your health.

♌️ #Leo

It’s risk on for our heart is on fire to get what we deserve, passion, fun, romance, children, creativity is on agenda as we meant to dissolve the blues to giveaway to light. We are drawn to romance from afar, multiple opportunities of passionate outlets, Long distance travel or mind travels for fun. This is you in all your glory, being you against all odds. This is lucky karma, passion, child like joy finding you & regenerating your heart chakra for the forward journey. Receive💕 & never forget this Bold self expression is who you are

♍️ #Virgo

Closing on a real estate, home, family, security matter or shifts in family set up, personal life to make the new start in career work for you is in order. Remember where you came from & how far you have come - you deserve comforts, security & love. Your inspiration, expansion, hope, meaning is in good family & personal/inner life and it needs balancing with career focus - that’s highlighted in this full moon & you rage a war to make sure you & yours are taken care of in the best way as you normally do. All heart as always 💕

♎️ #Libra

Lot of important news, messages, talks about purpose, path in life, mentors, travel & future that’s about to unveil in front of you as you future is shifting in terms of career path or important restructuring at work might be about to come. Gossips will be galore as well as distractions - filter the busy overload of information to what can be practically used to self promote or in forward progression. You have a compassionate philosopher mind which is admired & loved by many so don’t miss out on social high of this full moon. Collaborate, learn, travel, add to your skills through day to day interactions while standing guard to gossip.

♏️ #Scorpio

Values, our abundance, big growth plans & material wealth is focus but we are on a Mission which is bigger than money, it’s purpose of life, higher thinking, travel, publication, foreign ideologies, international exposure, being a citizen of the world - which will get us there. Abundance is a by product, we are going after a creative high of our talents & mind. You are the final product, the skill set which will reap material fruits all life which is in making here & you see results of your investment in you.

♐️ #Sagittarius

This is all about you, who you want to be & show up as to the world, your physical body, your soul - ask & it’s given, so why not ask for more. Show up as you truly are - you are grand, you are fire, you are hunger for adventure, you are the blaze that everyone follows, you are the archer who aims higher and further than anyone - for most can’t see what you see. It’s going to be emotional as old phase might be coming to an end - completion of what we started 6 months back or in ‪Dec’17‬ but it’s required to allow you to be you. The adventurer with a new quest, new Mission - ready to start new life 💫

♑️ #Capricorn

Private life, bed pleasure, faith, spirituality, self care - all the things you normally sacrifice to deliver all of you to the world are brought to focus. For we have gotto take care of you, close a few loops before we get into your eclipses. You are already working on starting your new chapter of life which eclipses bring. But whats brought to focus now is our fears, our unconscious beliefs which we need to remove, throw light on & handle for once as they cannot continue in new phase in life. Inspire yourself by catering to your soul, connecting with yourself even if briefly through travel, religion, faith, charity, compassion which brings to forth your hidden strengths & we need it all for your new start.

♒️ #Aquarius

Networking, joining people, teaching big groups, socialising, uplifting large set of people with your vision is your aspiration, your expansion, your abundance, your belief which fills you up. That’s highlighted through travel, teaching, interaction with your network / fan base at this time. This is joy, you find meaning with your friends, your large network, you receive higher perspective through your friends. You have big goals for yourself & this full moon shows you rewards for some of them as well as gives you forward looking inputs on how to create big wealth or apt returns for your investments.

♓️ #Pisces

Your career, social status & authority is brought to focus as you are given centrestage as a leader. Results of past work done, recognition for it comes through as well. At the same time vision is seen on how to expand your social status further which could require new philosophy, teaching, education, travel, foreign influence which you welcome & embrace. Always stay on high rise as you normally do as your morality will also be in focus.

Love & light 💫

[hamiltoninternationalestates]

The real estate investment trust (REIT) is used for firms that own, operate, and fund income-producing properties. The most common types of REITs are equity, mortgage, and hybrid.

[ourmrmel]

Personal Development and You with Mel Feller and Coaching For Success 360!

Personal Development and You with Mel Feller and Coaching For Success 360!

Coaching For Success 360 a Texas-Utah Company

Mel Feller, MPA, MHR with Offices in Texas and Utah

Mel Feller Seminars, Coaching For Success 360 Inc. /Mel Feller Coaching          

See www.melfellersuccessstories.com and www.melfeller.com

  Are you ready to take your life from zero to hero in a New York minute?

Do you want to run fast and furious with intentional direction and an intentional destination?

 Are you ready to learn how to be more effective in every aspect of your life, which will result in greater happiness and success?  Are you tired of just drifting through life, without really achieving and creating the life, you have always dreamed?

If you answered yes to one or more of these questions – I totally understand where you are right now because I have been there myself!  You are READY! You are WILLING! You are ABLE! You are just looking for the right person to lock arms with and RUN!

  Success happens in action.  “Playing Large” in life means you are working and collaborating with other people. Whether you are a successful executive or entrepreneur ready to take your life to the next level or you are a dreamer just starting to REALLY dream so you can create your magical life, you are a perfect candidate for my exclusive coaching program!

 IT IS ABOUT... UNLEASHING …. THE POWER IN YOU

 My mission is to unleash the power in you. No matter your race, religion, past, or outlook, Mel Feller will help you address the issues you want to look at and enrich your life. Mel Feller is a safe place with no judgements and no agendas, for people to reflect on their life and chart a path ahead. Folks come to Mel Feller and Coaching for Success 360 from every lifestyle, some simply wanting more joy, peace, and direction and others at the end of their rope.  We meet you where you are and helps you heal and gain tools to live in the present with passion and purpose.  

  As we travel through life, we are hurt, hurt others, and lose our dreams. These wounds continue to influence our lives, self-esteem, and relationships. Wounded people wound… hurt people hurt… We can choose to allow the cycle to continue or we can break it transforming our life and those around us. Mel Feller and Coaching For Success 360 provides this place… a place of non-judgement, support, camaraderie and acceptance to find freedom, peace, joy, passion, and purpose, but more importantly the life time tools you need.

 Mel Feller has its beginnings in the 1980s while studying the lives of psychologists Joe McGraw, Thelma Box, and Phil McGraw. Finding that divorce rates in their family practice were no better than national rates, Mel Feller in turn developed a program that focused on individual healing and growth. The is the true basis for your personal development journey.

 These are the Steps Mel Feller Focuses on to Leave Your Past Behind and Set Yourself Free

 Do you find yourself stuck in the past? Do you regularly regret thinking about the decisions you made in the past? Do you feel that no matter what you do differently, you end up at the same point? You set the same goals again, but are not able to accomplish them? People do not realize that they create their life by keeping their past with them and recreating it repeatedly.

 We have to realize that there is a reason for the experiences that we have gone through and there is a purpose for them. We all have a past and that past could be the reason many people are not able to overcome it. Each lesson in life makes us stronger. The challenges that we face in our life contributes to the personality that we have today.

 We need to know what keeps us stuck in the past.

 We often evaluate our decisions and the results that come out of them. Everything that we see in our lives at present is the result of our actions in the past. Therefore, if we are not happy or satisfied today, we need to make better choices.

 It is not the past, that gives bruises to our heart, but it is what we took out of it and the meaning we gave it!

 It all depends on how we label things, how we take things, positively or negatively! If there is a snowfall outside, it is not good or bad, it is just the way it is! The same method applies to our past, when we think about it, it is not good or bad. It is just that the things turned out that way with the consequences and as per our actions.

 There may be many mistakes made or many opportunities lost, but those will not return to you. You need to let go, live, and work on what you have in hand presently. The present and future are in your hands to make it beautiful.

 Here are the steps to leave your past behind and set yourself free:

 Give your mistakes, disappointments, failures etc., a name; write them down on a paper. Call them by a name and burn it afterwards. Promise yourself not to repeat them and take this as a new start of your life

 Look back at your past mistakes and respect yourself for committing them! It is because of these mistakes you learned a lesson and you are a better person now.

 Because of the past mistakes, do not ignore and diminish the achievements you have achieved in life.

 Do not let your past to be your life story! Do not let your life be overshadowed by your mistakes. Leave the past and move on!

 Do not ruin your present by thinking about the past. Remember you can make your present and future beautiful!

 Never forget the lessons you learned from your past mistakes.

 Forgive, as it will help you to move ahead and set you free!

 Use your experiences to help others who are facing the similar situations.

   Mel Feller a Texas /Utah Personal Development, Business, Real Estate, Realtor Trainer, Branding, Business Funding and Finance Coach.  In addition, Mel Feller has served in a variety of executive leadership roles for medium and large organizations, including multiple Fortune 500’s.  He is a charismatic leader who has facilitated change and growth in all sized organizations, including non-profit and Board development.  Mel Feller has successfully led organizations in the areas business development, marketing, real estate and Realtors, sales, team building, operations, and the like. Mel Feller is in Texas and is in Utah with offices, staff and investments in both states.

 Mel Feller is committed to serving.  In the Texas / Utah community, he chairs several organizations.  Mel Feller volunteers his leadership at two churches in a variety of ways, including serving on council, bible study facilitator, and more.

 Mel Feller has been a featured speaker for career professional is groups, business leaders and continuing education sessions, and aspiring business startups.

 When he is not coaching, you can find Mel Feller reading, listening to podcasts, exercising, fishing, or with his kids and grandkids exploring the greatness God has gifted us all.

 Mel Feller states, “An effective coach is someone who tells you what you may not want to hear, helps you navigate around your blind spots, and helps you identify opportunities…so that you can be who you’ve always known you can be” Mel Feller

 Mel Feller’s purpose is to add tremendous value to those business owners/entrepreneurs by helping them reach their potential.

 Mel Feller is an effective, charismatic and powerful speaker, corporate advisor, and best-selling author. In 1998, Mel founded Coaching for Success 360 to help professionals worldwide design subtle changes in their presentation, attitude and leadership style that increases their personal and professional effectiveness and subsequently their financial status.  This also includes both real estate as an agent and/or investor.  See www.melfeller.com  and www.melfellersuccessstories.com .  Now with offices both in Texas and Utah.

As a business, executive, personal development, and real estate coach, I work with a wide range of professionals and offer a highly personalized approach tailored to each individual in concert with the organizational environment.  In a supportive atmosphere, I work to build trust and support the professional in the attainment of goals and measurable outcomes.  

 Mel Feller offers sessions, both in-person and virtual.   We will start with an initial assessment to clearly define your short and long-term goals, everything from communication skills to personal acceptance. We will use these goals as a foundation to create a strategy and build the path for attaining these objectives.  Change is typically a major component of reaching goals and sustainable change becomes more likely in a coaching partnership.  

[timespro30]

6 Reasons to Pursue a Career in Wealth Management

Over the recent past, the Indian middle class has boomed in size and affluence. Today, this demographic is younger and has an increasing disposable income. And, picking up trends from the higher classes, has started learning practices from them. Some have picked up rampant consumerism, buying everything in sight. Others have started investing in real estate. And a lot among the above, have started investing in their future. They, along with High Net Worth Individuals in the economy, are growing in number, and accumulating an increasing amount of wealth.

This increase in wealth has created a demand for wealth management, which is emerging as quite a popular career among B-school graduates, who are opting for the field in large numbers. Wealth management jobs today include various services, like deals under assets like debt, equity, mutual funds, insurance and expert services such as succession planning, estate management, tax advisory, etc. Thus, a wealth management career path is one full of challenges and opportunities. You have the potential to make it as a renowned wealth manager, and take care of portfolios worth hundreds of crores. At the same time, it is not as intense as other branches of finance, so you can still have some semblance of a personal life. Here’s why a wealth management career path is very rewarding.

Career-fulfilment.

Wealth management offers a very satisfying career path because it gives you a chance to make a tangible difference to your nation’s economic health. You can do so through profitable investments and adapted offerings that have been customised to different customer segments. Being a wealth manager, you know your client’s aspirations and dreams, as well as their priorities. These people depend on you as a trusted advocate and advisor, because anything you say impacts them, and their loved ones. You are in a position to meet the financial goals of individuals and families. Think of it like where Wall Street meets the main street. You get to pursue the excitement of the financial markets while giving real people value. The main benefit of working in wealth management is that you deal directly with people, who will confide in you. Whether you’re helping them build a retirement fund or a college fund for their kids, you will be helping people realise their dreams, and making a real difference.

Build a career and life skills.

The skills that you pick up as a financial advisor, will help you throughout your professional and personal life. You will learn savvy financial skills, as well as some important soft skills. It’s a great career to start your professional life with, as these are important skills that can help you at a later stage. You get to exercise your communication and interpersonal skills, as you’ll be needing them in your daily interactions with your clients. Your job as a Wealth Manager is to influence and persuade your clients to overcome their fears, so they subscribe to the products you recommend or financial solutions you suggest. Your clients need to trust you to handle their affairs efficiently. You also pick up skills like networking, consulting, problem-solving amongst others when you begin a career in wealth management.

Managing wealth can help you earn more.

Wealth management is a very rewarding career because the compensation is very good. You get a base salary and an incentive for exceeding certain benchmarks. As you grow in the firm and build a larger roster of clients, you grow revenue, by increasing the assets under management, selling investment products and issuing new loans. As revenue grows, so does bonuses. Firms compete against each other, in picking up the best wealth managers, and compensate them handsomely. Today, wealth management is rapidly growing, with global firms constantly seeking seasoned financial advisors. As a good wealth manager, you’ll always be highly-coveted by the best firms, and the better your list of clients, the better the chances of a nicer job and a fatter signing bonus.

Create a list of impressive clients.

As a wealth manager, you’ll be guiding clients from diverse backgrounds and industries. You will have a chance to create lifelong relationships with your customers, giving them customised financial products, tailored to their financial situations. You are responsible for generating value for them and increasing the prosperity of their financial portfolio. And if you are successful in doing so, those clients will stay with you. A good financial advisor might go on to manage the wealth of the rich and famous. For example, take the instance of Divesh Makan, a Goldman Sachs group advisor, who in 2004, secured many of Facebook’s first employees as clients, like Mark Zuckerberg, and Sean Parker. He and his team left Goldman Sachs in 2008 and moved to Morgan Stanley, receiving a cool $20 million signing bonus. Ultimately, Mr. Makan and his team formed their firm and boasted of an impressive client list. Now, if you pursue a wealth management career in India, and are good at it, then you could also manage the portfolio of rich industrialists like that of the Birla’s or Ambani’s If you are a successful wealth manager, you can one day be an advisor to the influential.

Amazing networking opportunities.

As a wealth manager, you have access to a wealth of useful, high-net-worth individuals, who in the course of time can become friends and even business partners if you decide to start something totally different from wealth management. For example, if you are managing the portfolio of a real estate magnate, and you want to invest in some real estate yourself you have someone who can give you solid advice.

Provide diverse solutions.

As a wealth manager, you need creativity, to explore and innovate a huge range of financial products and services. These include initial public offerings (IPOs), managed account services, discretionary investment accounts, provision of brokerage accounts, tax planning, real estate, secondary stock issuances, retirement planning, accounting services, and other financial services. No two days in a wealth manager’s life are the same. This is one career that you will never get bored pursuing.

Hence, wealth management is a very lucrative field for young, hungry finance professionals. It is recommended that those interested also start accumulating professional certificates in the finance realm, so they can work in the role of a financial advisor. The industry is still at its nascent stages, so for those eyeing the top spots in the wealth management arena, the time is quite ripe. Moody’s Analytics, in collaboration with the Association of International Wealth Management and TimesPro, offers the internationally recognized Certified International Wealth Manager (CIWM®) program. Enrolling into relevant wealth management courses online in India will not only help to add value to your career but will also aid to serve clients better.

To know more: https://timespro.com/wealth/ciwm-certified-international-wealth-manager.html

[bettydgunter90]

111: How to Stay Out of Entrepreneurial Hell – Interview w/ Paul Moore

  Today we’re talking with Paul Moore. Paul has found great success in multiple domains as an entrepreneur, including but not limited to the real estate investing business.

Paul has flipped over 50 homes and 25 high-end waterfront lots, appeared on HGTV’s House Hunters, rehabbed and managed rental properties, built a number of new homes, developed a subdivision, and started two successful online real estate marketing firms. After helping with three successful developments, including assisting with the development of a Hyatt hotel and a very successful multifamily project, Paul ventured into the commercial multifamily arena.

With decades of experience and an impressive resumé, Paul offers a fresh perspective on creative real estate investing and philanthropy in 2021.

Links and Resources

WellingsCapital.com (Paul’s Website)

How to Lose Money Podcast

The Fast (and Slow) Roadmap for Real Estate Investors

The One Things by Gary Keller

Who Was George Muller?

Malachi 3:10

Memos From the Head Office by Perry Marshall

Compassion International

World Vision

Anthropoid Film

Paperstac

Share Your Thoughts

Leave your thoughts about this episode on the REtipster forum!

Share this episode on Twitter, Facebook, or LinkedIn (social sharing buttons below!)

Help out the show!

Leave an honest review on Apple Podcasts Your ratings and reviews really help (and I read each one).

Subscribe on Apple Podcasts

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Thanks again for listening!

Episode 111 Transcription

Seth: Hey, everybody. How’s it going? It’s Seth Williams here and Jaren Barnes and you’re listening to the REtipster podcast. Today we’re talking with Paul Moore. I first heard about Paul and saw his stuff, just some YouTube videos he had put together for BiggerPockets years ago. He has always just stood out as an authoritative guy who knows a lot of stuff.

Just a little bit of background about Paul. He began his career at Ford Motor Company after earning an MBA from Ohio State. And after five years of working at Ford, Paul started a staffing company with a partner. Paul and his partner sold it to a publicly traded firm five years later for $2.9 million. And along the way, Paul was a finalist for Ernst & Young Michigan Entrepreneur of the Year two years straight.

Paul later got into the real estate sector where he flipped over 50 homes and 25 high-end waterfront lots. He appeared on HGTV’s House Hunters. He has rehabbed and managed rental properties, built a number of new homes, developed a subdivision, and started two successful online real estate marketing firms.

After helping with three successful developments, including assisting with the development of a Hyatt hotel and a very successful multifamily project, Paul ventured into the commercial multifamily arena.

With decades of experience and an impressive resume, Paul offers a fresh perspective on creative real estate investing and philanthropy in 2021. Paul also is an experienced podcast guest, having appeared on over 60 shows and counting. And we’re just really glad to have him here. So, Paul, welcome to the show. How are you doing?

Paul Moore: Hey, it’s great to be here, guys. Thanks for having me on.

Seth: I know we discovered a lot in that intro, but it almost makes you wonder just right off the bat with all the stuff you’ve done since… Was it like in the mid-nineties when you got into real estate and was that your first foray into real estate?

Paul Moore: I invested in commercial real estate passively in 1999, but I really started full-time into real estate in the year 2000.

Seth: With all of this stuff you’ve seen, all the different market changes, times when real estate has been in the tank and other times when real estate has been really hot, kind of like right now, what would you say are some of the lessons you’ve learned? Anything super important standout about how to handle yourself when the market is constantly changing and the rules are different from year to year?

Paul Moore: Yeah. One thing that stands out, it came from my bio and that is, I got tired and kind of bored listening to you read it. I actually used to think, I remember years ago, I’ve got this drawer in my desk where I keep all my business cards. And I’ve got business cards, I, unfortunately, don’t have one from the staffing company, but from over a dozen different things I’ve done since then, I thought I’m going to put a serial entrepreneur on the card. And another time I thought I’m going to put a full-time investor on it.

And you know what? Being a serial entrepreneur is not cool. And I’m sorry if I’m offending you guys or anybody else, it can be, Elon Musk has done it really well, but he hasn’t actually done marriage and parenting as well from what I’ve heard. At risk, as I told you before the show of the same thing, because when you’re always chasing two rabbits as Gary Keller quotes, then the one thing, you’ll probably catch neither one.

And I chased shiny objects for years, and I would be down the road with a startup and see a new opportunity and go turn my attention to that. And Barry, my business partner, who actually was in Indiana for many years and Michigan. And I know you guys both are from both those places. But Barry said, once he ran for governor of Colorado a few years ago, he said I rubbed shoulders with some billionaires and really successful people recently. He said the most successful people took Gary Keller’s advice and stayed on one thing for decades. And they became very, very good at it. And that might’ve even been boring or looked boring, but boring is cool.

In fact, I am thinking about writing a book called “The Boring Investor.” I’ve got 21 chapters outlined for it. And I started on a plane recently with this burst of inspiration. If you look at Warren Buffett’s life, guys, we couldn’t handle a week of his life. It’s so boring, seemingly. But Paul Samuelson, the first U.S. economist to win the Nobel peace prize said “Investing should be boring. It should be more like watching paint dry or watching grass grow. If you want excitement, take $800 and go to Las Vegas.”

Jaren: Yeah. I just recently watched an interview with Ramit Sethi. He was saying the same thing. He was being interviewed by Tom Bilyeu on Impact Theory. And he was asking him about finances and Bitcoin and all these hot items as it were. And he said the same thing. He said the reality is if the majority of the time, the large hedge fund companies and all these big wigs on Wall Street don’t end up beating the market, statistically, you would be better off just parking your money in an ETF or mutual fund that just matches the market. He says the exact same thing that your finances should be boring because they’re supposed to give you the resources to go live an amazing life. They themselves are not supposed to be the end all be all.

Paul Moore: Right. That’s so true.

Seth: Yeah. I don’t mean to take us off course, but I just put together a blog post. I actually did it several months ago, but it just got published last week. It’s all about the fast and slow roadmap for real estate investors. And it was based on this thing that I heard a really smart person tell me a few years ago. He told me that you make your money in your business and you preserve your money in the market, not the other way around.

Paul Moore: Oh, I love that.

Seth: Yeah. If you equate that to real estate, it’s like, if you want to get there quickly investing in passive “buy and hold” investments and that kind of thing, that’s not the fast way to get there. That is the boring way.

Paul Moore: As an entrepreneur, as this high-energy serial entrepreneur that became a full-time investor at age 34 when I sold my company, guys, I blew it. I blew it. I wanted to keep investing like I entrepreneured. I just made that word up. But anyway, the point is I guess I became an entrepreneurial investor and it was a big mistake and I lost a lot of money doing it. I mean, I’ve got a podcast called “How to Lose Money” after all.

Seth: Maybe you can explain what you mean by that. What exactly did you do wrong? Were you trying to flip properties fast or something? Let’s pick that apart.

Paul Moore: Yeah. I just chase things with little due diligence. I heard about a guy who was doing foreign exchange investing and he was able to make a 3% profit a month and he would keep a 1% and give 2% to his investors. And you know what? I did due diligence, but not much. I just trusted what another guy told me about and I invested $100,000. I actually went to see him in Charlotte to take him another $100,000. And I got this sinking gut feeling that something was very wrong. And so rather than do what I should have and pulled the $100,000 out, at least I didn’t put another $100,000 with him because a few weeks later the FBI raided him. And he’s now in year, I think, like 20 of his 158-year prison time. It was a Ponzi scheme and he still won’t tell people where he’s kept the $18 million that he stole from 2,000 to 4,000 people. I’m not clear how many.

But I just didn’t do enough due diligence. Investing is when your principal’s generally safe and you’ve got a chance to make a return. Speculating is when your principal is not at all safe and you’ve got a chance to make a big return. And either one is okay. I mean, it’s okay to speculate in Google, if you’re the Stanford professor 20 years ago or whatever. Or it’s okay to speculate in Amazon, if you’re Jeff Bezos’s parents 27 years ago, who turned $300,000 into $30 billion or whatever.

But let’s face it. There’s a lot of other people who speculate are now driving pizza for Domino’s. And so, the sure path to wealth is slow and boring. Jeff Bezos asked Warren Buffet, “Why doesn’t everybody just imitate you? It’s not that complicated.” Buffett said, “People don’t want to get rich that slowly.”

Jaren: Hey, Paul, I want to go back to a point of conversation we were having a minute ago, because you said something really interesting to me. You were talking about how you as an entrepreneur for years got the shiny object syndrome and you would be pursuing all these different opportunities that presented themselves.

One of the things that I struggle with a lot is the fear that if I give my “yes” to something, I inherently have to give my notes to a bunch of other things. You even said earlier that the guys that are billionaires, your partner Barry, was rubbing shoulders with billionaires and they just stuck to one thing and made it work.

The thing that I really struggle with is I always doubt if I am actually doing the right one thing. Because that is the million-dollar question. If I give my life to building set adventures and it’s not good soil, it’s not a good place to see, then I could legitimately ruin my entire life and waste my entire life or waste all my potential.

Do you have any insight or any wisdom that you could speak to in that kind of predicament? Because I think that’s where a lot of entrepreneurs struggle. Without me kind of catching the shiny object syndrome and doing a deep dive for a couple of months in apartment syndications, I would never learn whether or not it’s for me or not.

Paul Moore: Yeah. It’s so true. And I don’t have a great answer. I remember Gary Keller in the book “The ONE Thing” said, “Just saying yes to your one thing means saying no to a thousand distractions.” And I would say more like 10,000 distractions along the way. And that can be on an hourly basis, a monthly basis, a lifetime basis. And it is hard. And wouldn’t it be terrible to get to the end of your life and realize that you were acting in a play so to speak, but you didn’t know the plot.

That’s why I love to step back from my business. And in fact, I like to step back every morning when I get up and take some time to journal, to pray, to meditate, and to really remind myself of the plot of my life.

It’s interesting, Jaren. Like I said, we’ve had a show called “How to Lose Money” for four years. We had interviewed 230-some guests and we learned tons of lessons, but two that stood out, one was “Don’t quit, persevere.” Like all the posters on the walls of your office. “Persevere, never quit.” The frog grabbing the pelican by the throat, “Never give up.”

The other lesson we learned that stood out was “Quit quickly.” You got to know to turn it and cash in your chips soon. We interviewed lots of people who told us about ways they didn’t stop soon enough. And as a result, they lost a lot of money. We invested almost $400,000 in a wireless internet company in North Dakota that I co-founded after doing this super successful multifamily deal in North Dakota in the same town.

And about $100,000 into the burn of that $400,000, we should have pulled the plug. We could have given investors. And I was the largest investor, backed three-quarters of their money. But instead, we burned it out for about seven years and it turned into zero. And if we would have just pulled the plug on that, the first winter, when the radios didn’t work, we would have been a lot smarter.

So, I think both are true. The question is, how do you know if you’re on the right path that you need to keep persevering on or barking up the wrong tree, so to speak. And I think the answer partially comes from wisdom. wisdom of mentors, wisdom of counselors and coaches, but also your own wisdom that you gain over decades. And a lot of that comes from pain. And that’s why we called the show “How to lose money.” We tried to give people an opportunity to learn from other people’s pain.

Jaren: Yeah, that’s really insightful. It’s really hard to figure out, man, because I can be very certain on some days are even an hour of a particular day. And then a few hours later, something can derail me, and then I’ll be second-guessing the decisions that I’ve made. For me, I guess it’s a form of FOMO.

Paul Moore: It is.

Jaren: I don’t know when you should quit versus when you should double down, get gritty and go hard because there are people in ditches on both paths. So, I guess it’s just one of those entrepreneurial conundrums.

Paul Moore: It’s really tough. There was a guy named Lance Wallnau that you might’ve heard of. And Lance Wallnau has a thing where he talks about when all your education, training, successes, failures, strengths, weaknesses, the things you enjoy, the things that give you life versus the things that feel like you’re going to die to have to do it, when they all come together and you just have this moment of clarity, he calls it convergence, and you can find stuff like that on YouTube and on Lance Wallnau’s website. But convergence is when that all comes together. And when that happens, you often can tell, “Oh yeah, I’m in the zone of convergence.”

Unfortunately, he says a lot of people don’t come to that moment of clarity until their fifties or sixties. And so, eat right, stay healthy because if you are like me and didn’t really come to that moment of convergence until my mid-fifties, you’re going to have a long road ahead because hey man, I can never retire.

Seth: Yeah, totally. Paul, I know just from your bio, it sounds like you’ve got some experience with investing in vacant land. Since that’s a big part of our audience and there are a lot of them who are interested in that and I’m interested in this too, what is your experience with that? What kind of land did you buy and invest in and what was involved with that?

Paul Moore: Yeah. When we sold our company to another company in Detroit when I was 33 and 34, I moved to a mountaintop in the Blue Ridge Mountains of Virginia. We tried to start a nonprofit organization. Our neighbor had 450 acres and he was very, very old. And we asked him if he wanted to sell. And he said, yeah. So, we actually spent like $6,000 or $7,000 getting the timber evaluated without a written contract with him.

He basically said, okay, I’ll sell it to you for a thousand dollars an acre. This is mountaintop land. And that’s about right. And while the timber was worth a thousand dollars an acre, we found out that it was in a bad market in 2000. And so, we went down the row with him, but his wife caught wind of it and she shut the whole thing down. We didn’t have a signed contract. I wouldn’t have wanted to hold it to him anyway and cause marital strife, he was a friend of mine.

My son never forgot that. And actually about 15, 16 years later in 2016, he started in that business full-time. And actually, that’s what he does. He buys land that has a variety of uses. I mean, he can subdivide it. He can rent it out for hunting land. He can rent it out to a cell tower company. He can rent it out for solar. He can do carbon tax credits though we don’t know exactly how to do that yet. I know people do it and he can also cut timber. He just bought a 201-acre parcel. He’s going to select, cut the largest trees off, and let the rest grow for 25 more years. What a great retirement plan for a 28-year-old.

So, that’s my main involvement in land. The other would be I bought and flipped about 30 or 40 waterfront lots over the years at Smith Mountain Lake in Virginia. And one of them was a five-acre parcel that I had to subdivide to make work. Talk about speculation. We were counting on the market to continue to go. Well, of course, everybody does that in a sense, but we were also counting on the Vita Virginia department of transportation granting us a public road in front of the lot. No speculation there.

And after two or three years of trying to hope that would happen—hope is not a business strategy—and so, we were not able to make that happen. That almost got me to the point of bankruptcy in 2008, but I ended up actually going from $2.5 million in debt to completely debt-free through a series of amazing events that happened through the year of 2008.

Jaren: Do you mind diving into a little bit of that? That’s a major cliffhanger.

Paul Moore: Yeah. I told you, I do this morning meditation thing and it was a Sunday morning, in November of 2007. And I was sitting there one morning realizing, man, I’m $2.5 million dollars in debt. 10 years ago, to the month, I had almost $2 million in the bank and now I’m $2.5 million in debt. But I didn’t feel scared. And it’s kind of odd to me now that I didn’t. I guess it’s because I didn’t know how bad the 2008 recession would be. Of course, nobody did.

And so, we’re about to hurdle down this black hole called the great financial crisis. And I was sitting there and I had this really strong impression like “What would George Müller do?” Well, for those of you who don’t know George Müller, which is probably most of your audience, he lived through the 1800s. And he actually was a hellion in Germany as a young man. And he went to England and he became sort of a saint, so to speak. He actually housed and cared for 10,000 orphans total over his lifetime and beyond in these large orphanages he built, using the model they had at the time for orphanages.

He actually was able to raise what we believe was around a quarter-billion dollars in today’s dollars, possibly up to half a billion. And he never ever asked for a penny from anybody or told anybody he had a need. He actually just believed if he was fully aligned with God, that God would provide him every cent he needed. And apparently, he did.

So, I thought, “What would George Müller do?” Well, he was really opinionated. Like he didn’t believe in marketing and sales and all kinds of things. But he also didn’t believe in debt. And I thought, well, George Müller wouldn’t be in debt, but if he was, he would do something really crazy and outlandish to get out of debt. And so, actually that morning, the pastor of my church talked about George Müller and I’d never heard him mention his name ever in like 14 years. And so, I thought, okay, I’m on the right track. And so, I went to my family and four young kids and my wife and I said, “Hey, family gather around. We’re in a lot of trouble. We’re going to start giving our way out of debt.” And then I met with two concerned friends, me and two others. And they said, “You’re going to obviously have to declare bankruptcy, right Paul?” And I said, “Well, it would seem, but I’m going to start giving my way out of debt.” That went over really well.

On January 1st, 2008 with no idea how we’d get out of this mess, we started giving aggressively to some nonprofits, charities, et cetera we were committed to. Four weeks later, I was in a Subway restaurant and had this random conversation seemingly with an experienced real estate developer who gave me an idea how to subdivide the five acres of land into five one-acre parcels, which was my goal all along.

And I said that won’t work because of this law. He said, well, think about it. And I have this incredible moment, like, “Oh, I know what to do.” And I got out of the Subway restaurant, called my surveyor, and explained it. He thought it was a terrible idea because he said that law prohibits you. And I said let’s go to the county planning and zoning office anyway. So, two days later we’re sitting there and he’s sitting there like embarrassed while I’m presenting this outlandish plan to use their law that prohibited subdividing to subdivide the land.

And the lady looked up at me and shook her head. She said “I’ve been working here for decades. No one has ever come up with such an outlandish plan, but you somehow found a loophole in the law. You’re right. You can do this.” And I still had a lot of work ahead. I had surveyors and attorneys and soil scientists. I had to find five buyers in the midst of the worst downturn since the great depression. But I did, it happened and I was completely debt-free in 13 months.

Jaren: That is awesome.

Seth: Wow. Maybe I missed it when you were talking, but in terms of giving your way out of debt, what else was involved with that? Were you giving to a certain cause or something beyond that?

Paul Moore: No, I guess I really believe and people all around the world, believe in what some people call karma. Some people call it the law of sowing and reaping. I was just giving, believing that that would actually matter. I didn’t know what would happen. I thought we could have ended up broke and bankrupt. And for some reason, I didn’t lose any sleep over that. I didn’t think we would, but I thought we might.

Oh, and I forgot to tell you. Right in the middle of all that, my business partner quit. He had half the debt and he handed it to me. And if he hadn’t quit, I couldn’t have become debt-free because when I sold those lots, I would have split the profit with him. And I told him, I’m going to figure this out. And he said, I got to quit anyway. And he missed out on some profit, but anyway, that’s what happened.

I just really believe that the universe, God, whatever you want to call it, will all align when we give generously. And when we give of our time, when we sacrifice money and somehow or another, things come to us that wouldn’t have come otherwise. George Müller believed that. And I tell you what, I do too. And I don’t think it’s a magic formula though. I don’t think I can just put a dollar in like a vending machine and get a soda pop out of a machine. I don’t think it’s a vending machine, I think it is just a principle that’s generally true.

Seth: Yeah. There is a Biblical basis for that. And all the atheist and agnostic listeners out there are probably going to roll their eyes at this. But Malachi 3:10 says “Bring all the tithes into the storehouse so there will be enough food in my temple. And if you do, I will open the windows of heaven for you. I will pour out a blessing so great that you won’t have enough room to take it in. Try it and put me to the test.”

God is actually challenging you. Like, see if I don’t come through for you. I think there is something to that. There’ve been a few times in my life. I wouldn’t say I was recklessly giving, but I intentionally gave to the point of inconvenience, like it hurt me to do so. It never stayed a negative thing. I don’t know where it comes from, but somehow you end up further ahead. And I think it probably has to do with giving with a cheerful heart and that kind of thing. But there is something to that. At least that has been my experience and I haven’t heard a lot of people who have done that and it hasn’t worked out for them.

Paul Moore: I know. And Seth, I’ll tell you. Actually, I shared this on a podcast a few months ago and the host said, check this out. And he showed me a study, I think it was a Catholic guy in New York. University of Syracuse did a study on this and proved that people who gave generously actually ended up wealthier. And they actually dove in deep because it didn’t make sense to him. He didn’t believe the results. He dove in deeper and pulled it apart and figured out “why”, some reasons why it could be true. And for anybody who’s listening, if you want to hear that message he gave about, it’s a short message, 35 minutes. He gave it at Brigham Young University. And I want to say 2009.

Seth: Yeah, it’s fascinating.

Jaren: It’s interesting how in life the principles of success are universal and sometimes they’re counterintuitive, but people from all different walks and all different stripes and colors and backgrounds and all of that, they all typically stumble across some version of the financial, like the tithing principle or whatever. It’s really, really interesting that even if you have no faith in God whatsoever, if you do this kingdom principle, it works and it works across the board.

Paul Moore: It’s true. AA – Alcoholics Anonymous, those principles work for people who have no faith at all. I will say that I think that there are probably deeper, longer-lasting and work better for people who really do have faith, but they do work. It’s amazing, it’s just like gravity. It works for everybody.

Jaren: Yeah. I like that. Paul, you’ve mentioned a couple of times about meditating and that’s really piqued my interest because if I’m honest, I don’t know what meditation is or what’s supposed to happen when you sit down and try to meditate. And I would love just some insight as to what your meditation practice looks like, if you have any pointers. I know that there’s a lot of diversity and all of that in wanting practices and what have you. And I’ve tried to do, there’s a really ancient type of Christian meditation called the Jesus prayer. And I’ve tried to do that and I’ve tried to do some other things, but I don’t know exactly what is supposed to be happening when I’m sitting there for 20 minutes or whatever. Can you dive into what that looks like for you and why you find it beneficial? I mean, if you’re committed to doing it every day, that’s a pretty big deal.

Paul Moore: Yeah. I’m going to show some weakness here. I don’t know what I really know. In an experiential way, the best way to do it, I sort of call it meditation. Well, I will say this. There is a form of Eastern meditation, which I’ve heard though I haven’t experienced it. It is emptying your mind of all thoughts. And I think that they’re the Western form or the Christian form would honestly be to fill my mind with thoughts, to set my gaze on heaven, and to set my gaze. I mentioned earlier, getting to the end of your life and not understanding the plot of the story. Just reading the lines as you went and not getting it.

Well, in this way in meditation, I’m actually reframing myself every day to remember the bigger story. To remember that I’m not here just to make money or succeed in business. That I’ve got kids who need me. That I’ve got people I’m mentoring who really need time with me. And though I’m tempted to work till midnight tonight, I really do need to stop at dinner time and do these other things.

So, it’s reframing practically. I’ll tell you that my meditation looks like this. It looks like having the scriptures out and having a blank piece of page on a journal and just starting to write thoughts. And sometimes those random thoughts end up with some kind of brilliance that I wouldn’t have come to otherwise. For me, my mind is racing so fast with business ideas almost all the time, I would say.

This is my own theory. No one’s ever told me this, but when I’m writing, I feel like the effort that my brain must use to write actually somehow opens up a channel for me to actually hear from my inner brain. Maybe tapping into a comment that I heard on a podcast once or a book, a paragraph of a book I read, or a scripture. I feel like when I’m writing, I get ideas that I cannot even believe sometimes how brilliant they are. And then I remember that I heard that somewhere, but I wouldn’t have remembered it otherwise.

Jaren: Yeah. That’s really interesting. I don’t know if you’re familiar with a guy named Perry Marshall.

Paul Moore: Perry and I are friends. I love Perry and I’ve got his book right over here.

Jaren: Yeah. He just came out with a book called “Memos from the Head Office.” And I actually was at one of his seminars, and he was sharing how he actually got an academic published article for the 80/20 principle in Italy. And he actually in his journaling practice, wrote down verbatim 80/20 academic articles coming out published. It’s going to be published, like all this stuff. And he actually read it and he’s like, this happened, I don’t know what the timeline was, but let’s just say for sake of examples, like six months or a year before it was even on the radar. And so, he actually has gotten a lot of insights. This new book that he just came out with, it’s probably worth dropping in the show notes, Seth.

Paul Moore: I absolutely agree. “Memos from the Head Office,” I’ve got stories of my own like that as well, including the time I tried to invest in a deal and I got a fax. I kid you not. A fax from somebody advertising something that made me want to call the number, a fax. I kid you not. And I called the guy and it turned out he knew the guy I was going to invest with that day. And he told me he was a scam artist. And I found out later he was a scam. It was true. He was a scammer.

Because I called the guy before I wired him the money. I said, “Hey, one more question.” And I asked him and he practically hung up on me because it was true. Can you imagine that talk about a memo from the head office?

But Perry’s book, I’m looking at it here, I’m guessing it’s about 190 pages. I think it’s just shy of 200 pages and it’s full of stories like that. That is absolutely impossible to explain apart from supernatural intervention.

Seth: I got to check that out, it sounds fascinating.

Jaren: What’s really interesting about Perry’s world is that he’s not exclusively Christian. I’ve been to “Memos of the Head Office” and it was really fascinating because you have people that are getting memos from the head office that have no grid for God or are completely agnostic or whatever. And they go to these things and they get radically touched and they get life-altering words from the head office.

Paul Moore: What’s amazing about that is God actually cares about everybody. He cares about people. He cares about our civilization being better. I mean, I believe he probably gave Elon Musk his ideas, even if Elon Musk has no regard for him, from what I’ve heard. It makes sense because he cares. He really does.

Jaren: Yeah, he does.

Seth: Yeah. Paul, just to turn it a little bit and pivot into a different thing. Before we started recording here you mentioned something about how you’re using real estate to fight human trafficking. That sounds really interesting. How are you doing that? What is the connection there and how can real estate be used to end that?

Paul Moore: About six years ago, someone put in my hands a copy of a documentary called Nefarious from Exodus Cry and it shocked me. And what I learned was that human trafficking is a reality, a horrible reality in our world today. Did you know if you took the record profits, not the average, the record profits from General Motors, Nike, Starbucks, and Apple combined—their record profits together, triple that number, that’s the approximate revenue they believe is generated by human trafficking every year?

I thought about it and I thought man, if I were alive in the 1800s, I want to believe I would be abolitionists fighting against slavery like William Wilberforce. And I’d want to believe if I were an adult in the 1960s, I would have been fighting for civil rights. And while this is a civil right, it is slavery and it’s happening right under our nose. And so, our company Wellings Capital does our very best to vet. The best operators to give people an easy on-ramp into commercial real estate investing.

Well, we thought, wouldn’t it be great if we could vet the best non-profits and other organizations who are effectively fighting human trafficking? And so, we’re doing that right now. In fact, I’ve got an interview with a guy today about this and we’re vetting these organizations. Our goal is in a very short time to be able to tell investors, hey, you invested with us and we’re taking money out of our pocket from your investment to invest to free one slave. And we hope to be calling you within three to six months with the story of the raid that freed a slave and what’s her status right now, typically in Cambodia or Thailand or Belize or wherever. And then we’re going to give our investors a chance to get more involved if they choose to.

Jaren: That’s awesome.

Seth: Isn’t it that a lot of that human trafficking happen in the U.S.?

Paul Moore: Yeah, it really is.

Seth: I don’t know. I mean, I don’t fully grasp all of that, but from what I know of it, it’s some sick stuff. Just talk about the rotten parts of humanity and evil inflicted upon each other. It’s messed up. I don’t know how anybody who is involved with that in any way can live with themselves, but anything that can be done to fight that is worthwhile.

Paul Moore: It’s absolutely true. I’ve seen the devastating effects firsthand of people in my family who had one or two incidents in their past, and just the years and even decades it’s caused devastation in their lives. Some of these people, including a girl I heard about the other day, who was 17, I don’t even want to say the words on the show, but she had over a hundred incidents a day, for years, she claims. And she was rescued from New York City. It’s just unimaginable the torment and what she’s going to need to heal.

Jaren: It’s really inspirational to hear how you’ve been able to use your path in business and in real estate to make a social impact like that. Because for me, maybe it’s a matter of the season that I’m in or what have you, but it’s tough because you see a lot of injustice in the world and it’s really easy to just kind of default to “I don’t have any control over these things. I can’t really do anything.” But I always tell myself when I’m in those moments, well, if I doubled down and I become ultra-successful financially, then I’ll be in the position where I can actually do something about some of this catastrophe and evil things that happen in the world. And it’s just really inspirational. This side of the conversation, to see that you actually have done that. And it’s pretty awesome. So, thank you for what you’re doing and thanks for sharing.

Paul Moore: Yeah. Thanks for sharing that. That’s very kind of you. I would say that everybody can get involved at some level in some way, wherever they are.

Seth: I remember talking to my dad about that once. Just this idea of if I want to make an impact on the world of how I want my business to be more about me just making money and then I live my life and I die and it’s all over. If I really want to make that impact, one way to think of that is, well, someday in the future, when I have money, when I’ve gotten there, then I’ll start going nuts and doing that. My dad was just encouraging me to “No, do it now and do it then. Do it before you’re ready. Make sure you go out of your way to make a difference for every day that you’re alive. Any day could be your last. So, don’t let your life end without doing something meaningful like that.”

And it’s not really that hard. There are all kinds of organizations, world vision, compassion, you can sponsor kids. It’s not so much about ending human trafficking, but just about taking people in hopeless situations and giving them a chance. And it’s not that expensive. It’s kind of amazing what you can do to change a life through just giving $40 or less per month to that kind of cause. Pick something and make a difference and don’t wait on it.

Paul Moore: Yeah, I agree. That’s a good word right there.

Seth: I know something that a lot of real estate investors are going to have to be thinking about, and probably they always did, but even more so now with a lot of money being pumped into the system from the government is inflation. How do you use real estate as a hedge against inflation? What is just the general principle that you adhere to in terms of making sure that your money is protected through real estate?

Paul Moore: Yeah. I heard for years that real estate was a great inflation hedge, but I really didn’t think it through, until it started hitting again recently. This is a $10 trillion bill from Zimbabwe. And I don’t think the United States is going to go into that type of hyperinflation. I think there’s a lot of reasons we won’t, but obviously inflation is heating up and a lot of us believe it’s worse than the government is reporting.

It’s an amazing moment in history though, guys. When I was a kid, I remember gas lines in the 70s and grandparents and neighbors having their savings account and pensions ravaged. Somebody who got a pension check that would cover two months’ rent, now it only covers half a month. And that was real.

Well, at the same time as inflation in the late 70s and through the 70s and into the 80s, interest rates were often very, very high to match. And that was done intentionally. Well, we’re in a time where inflation is heating up, but the Fed and the government are boxed into a corner where they can’t raise interest rates very high. And so, interest rates are at roughly 5,000-year low. Yep. There’s actually studies on this 5,000-year low, but inflation is heating up.

The opportunity to buy 10- or 12- or even 30-year fixed debt at like 3% for a commercial loan right now, for a mobile home park we just invested in and then see inflation increase rents and therefore revenue over the next decade or two or three, it’s creating a huge potential as a hedge against inflation and a huge potential to actually increase wealth and to at least keep up or beat inflation along the way.

Seth: Yeah. Basically, you just don’t want to hold too much cash. That is kind of the bottom line. It’s going to rapidly lose value as long as it’s in cash form versus real estate or something else that’s going up in value to beat inflation.

Paul Moore: That’s right. But the problem is, as we all know, it’s really, really hard to find deals that make sense right now in multifamily with people paying 10%, 20%, even 30% more than the sensible value of an asset. Residential, single-family, not much better. And so we’ve got to really figure out a way or partner with people who have an inside track on deals that have a lot of meat on the bone, a lot of value add left in them, or it’s going to be really, really tough to make a profit unless inflation does keep up and inflates away the risk, if you will. Which is possible.

Jaren: Yeah. That’s one of the reasons why I’m super thankful for the land flipping business. I hear from my wholesaler friends that do houses and I hear from people from a number of different types of strategies and what have you, that it’s just really, really, really tough. But in land, I’m sure in some areas, some counties, competition might be increasing or whatever, but it’s still very predictable and very feasible to get deals. Property does take a little bit longer to sell compared to some other asset classes, but it’s pretty awesome.

Paul Moore: Yeah. I don’t think there’s a better time I’ve ever seen to be in the land business because you’ve still got people who are sitting on inherited land or whatever, that it’s just a pain to them and they just love to get rid of it. At the same time, the demand for semi-rural and rural land is just off the charts. So, what a great time to be in the land business.

Jaren: Yeah, it’s really interesting because my primary market is Florida. And you just described to the T the exact situation of the Florida market, you have a bunch of people that have land out there, or have even property out there that was a secondary home, or it was intended for that, but life got in the way and they’re just wanting to get rid of it. But at the same time, you have this huge influx of people moving there. So, it’s just this weird discrepancy that is pretty easy to capitalize on.

Paul Moore: Yeah, that’s awesome.

Seth: Paul, I don’t know if you fancy yourself an expert who makes predictions about market trends and that kind of stuff, but do you think it’s going to get back to normal or whatever that is anytime soon? Or do you think this is going to continue throughout 2022? Do you have any insights on the next year or two on where things are going?

Paul Moore: Yeah. I was reading Howard Mark’s “Mastering the Market Cycle: Getting the Odds on Your Side” and also some stuff from Buffet. They refuse to make predictions, but they actually say it’s more important to behave rationally for where you can see that you are in the cycle. So, that’s my first goal is just to behave rationally for where we are, where we seem to be in the cycle.

That said, I don’t necessarily think things are going to go back to normal anytime soon. I was actually sitting in an airport in Belize, a tiny little airport getting ready to go to the real estate guys summit on sand recently. And the guy sitting next to me, I can just tell he looks smarter, successful, or something.

So, I started talking to him, it turned out it was Doug Duncan, the chief economist of Fannie Mae. And I said, “What do you really believe?” He said, “I really believe what I publish. That we’re going to see inflation of 5.5% or so this year, and back down to like 3.8% next year.” And I said, “Why do you think so low?” And he’s like, Paul. He actually didn’t say Paul. He didn’t know my name. He said, “3.8% is really, really high.” I said, “Really?” He said, “Yeah, that’s double the Fed’s target.” He reminded me of 1.9% or so he said 3.8 it’s double. He said, “That is really, really high. And I think that’s where it’ll go.” And he gave me all these reasons.

But he did say that the housing market, since 2014, he’s been crying out that there was a massive housing shortage and a growing discrepancy between the number of people wanting to buy houses and the actual number of houses. And that would include multifamily and all that as well. And so, he said, he thinks the building boom is going to go on for years, which makes me think that the inflated prices of lumber and other construction materials and construction, labor, and all that is going to continue for years as well.

Jaren: Yeah. I got a buddy who works more in the Wall Street world and he has his ear to the ground of what’s going on. He’s kind of at the forefront of the moving trends. I mean, that’s what he gets paid to do is figure out where to make people money and all that. And he says something really similar. He says there are some things that could sideswipe what his prediction is, but by and large, he thinks that the data is showing that we actually are going to be doing well for the next seven to eight-plus years. And there might be a reckoning that happens. History might be repeating itself. We might be sitting in a situation with COVID where it’s parallel to the Spanish flu or whatever. And we had the roaring 20s and then we had the great depression in 1928.

Paul Moore: It’s the roaring 20s again. Right?

Jaren: Yeah. I mean, that might be the situation. Who knows though? Who knows?

Seth: Do you ever find it frustrating Paul when you got to relearn the rules? I find it frustrating sometimes because when I first jumped into real estate seriously, it was the 2008 crash. And that was kind of a world I got to know originally where everything is cheap. No, you can’t sell real estate. It’s hard. And now it’s the total opposite and you got to just relearn what normal is and what normal prices are and competition and all this stuff.

Given how much you’ve seen in your history, is it easy for you to see the opportunity when things change, or do you get frustrated where you’re like, “Ah, man, I got to relearn all this stuff all over again”? What is your thought process there?

Paul Moore: Well, I think that that has been true overall for me over the last 20 years or so, or actually I could even say 29 years of being an entrepreneur. But actually, I think we’ve tapped into a formula that has worked really, really well. And I feel like it is sort of recession-resistant.

My company is actually investing with companies who have a long track record as in before the great recession of finding mom and pop deals. It’s sort of like what you’re doing with land. Finding mom-and-pop-owned deals where the current owner doesn’t have the desire or the knowledge or the resources to improve the income and therefore significantly improve the value.

And of course, with commercial real estate, the value is not based on emotions. It’s based on math. It’s based on a simple formula, which is sort of like the PE ratio in stocks. The value or the value change is the net operating income divided by the rate of return. So, the net income is divided by the cap rate.

And therefore, because it’s based on math, these operators are really skilled at finding opportunities where the net operating income is significantly under what it could be. Sort of like what Warren Buffet saw in Apple, when it was trading for $28 a share. And he started snatching it en masse in 2015 I believe even though he didn’t like investing in technology and he made a fortune for his investors.

While we’re doing something a little similar, we’re investing with these operators who were able to see intrinsic value where other people would just see a worn-out-looking mobile home park. Because of that, we think we’ve tapped into something that is going to do well in almost any economic cycle. For that reason, I can tell you pretty confidently that’s the track I plan to stay on for the rest of the foreseeable future.

Seth: Gotcha.

Jaren: That’s a good place to be.

Seth: Yeah. I know we haven’t gotten into a lot of the nitty-gritty of your past, like all the different projects. I’m sure we could talk for several hours about all that stuff. But when you look at everything you’ve done and everything you’ve seen, is there anything that stands out to you like, “I never should have done that. That was a bad idea. I shouldn’t have gone down that road.” And if so, what would that be and why?

Paul Moore: How many hours do we have again?

Seth: We’ll have to do a part two on that.

Paul Moore: Yeah. How to lose money again and again with Paul Moore. There were a lot of things like that. A lot of them were based on times when I didn’t do thorough due diligence. I invested based on a friend’s recommendation who I really trusted, but found out that they didn’t do enough due diligence or maybe the due diligence was done and somebody just didn’t figure out something.

Like I mentioned, the Bakken oil in North Dakota. Listen, the guy we invested with should have been as wealthy as Bill Gates right now. And I mean that literally. He had come up with a way to tap into oil reserves that nobody else had figured out yet. And that’s a fact. I have a petroleum engineering degree. It doesn’t mean I can correctly evaluate that, but that was my original degree.

I understood what they were talking about. It made total sense. He hits six out of six oil wells, these massive untapped oil reserves. Six out of six with some of the money, a bunch of us put up and he never produced a gallon of oil because it turned the tar somehow in the pipe in the 10,500 feet between below ground and the surface.

So, you never know. The due diligence was right on that one and it just didn’t work out. It had to be viewed as speculation, no matter how certain it looked. And geologists to this day say he hit it right on the nose. He did come up with some special way of doing it.

Sometimes it’s not that. Sometimes it’s just the fact that you’re out of your game. I used to try to talk to investors like these private equity firms. This was like years and years ago, building a multifamily in North Dakota over a decade ago. And they’d say, “Well, we’re not into multifamily. – Yeah, but can you see this opportunity? – Yeah. But that’s just not something we know about. We like to stay in our lane.”

Well, here I am, 11 years later, guys. I so believe in that. I know a guy right now doing an Airbnb play. He’s making a killing. He wanted me to invest with him. I believe you, but I just don’t know much about that. And I don’t want to go have to learn. People need to stay in their lane.

Jaren: But again, going back to my question at the beginning of our conversation. If you take that approach, you are inherently missing an opportunity. I guess if your current opportunity is good enough to make it worthwhile to double down and say, focus on that then cool. But for a lot of people that are just getting started in their pursuit of financial freedom, or what have you, they’re just starting their real estate journey, or investing journey, financial education. Really for those in the beginning stages to some degree, it’s like this Catch-22 thing, stay focused and stay in your lane. But on the other side, you also have to be exposed to know what your one thing is or should be.

Paul Moore: I totally agree. And the FOMO thing has been a plague for me since high school, the fear of missing out. I remember in high school, like this 12-string guitar, I got to have that one. I can’t wait until another one comes along. And I remember blowing my whole summer savings to buy that 12-string guitar.

It’s been a continual problem for me and I’ve had to learn to be disciplined. And one of the ways I did that was I brought on a business partner who was almost the extreme opposite for me. He’s very unemotional. He’s very rational. He bugs me and I say that with the dearest respect for him. Because I’ll go in with “You won’t believe what I have found.” He’ll be like, “Yeah, I will.” And I’m like, “Okay, thanks.”

But it’s really good for me because by submitting to him and by both of us mutually submitting to each other, it saves a lot of rabbit trails that I would be tempted to run down. And he also is pulled into a lot of things that are things that he would not have ever looked at. Like he didn’t want to look at self-storage and mobile home parks when we were deeply entrenched in multifamily for years. But you know what? That has been the best thing we ever did.

Jaren: Yeah. It seems like you just have to ride that tension where it’s like, I like that you have a partner that can come from the other side because then you can bring the new ideas and the opportunity and then he can shut down 90% of them and then ride the ones that are worth writing about. I like that. But when you don’t have a partner like that, it can be pretty hard to navigate those waters.

Paul Moore: I agree. When I was solo, and sometimes I’ve partnered with people who have my exact same personality. It was a lot harder.

Seth: Yeah. I can see that. Well, looking at the clock here, why don’t we navigate to our final three questions here? Paul, what we do here is at the end of a lot of our interviews like this, we go one step further beyond just real estate stuff and ask three little bit deeper questions about you and just how you think, how you operate. It just kind of gives us some more insight into your brain.

Paul Moore: Awesome.

Seth: The first question is what is your biggest fear?

Paul Moore: Amazingly Seth, when I had my back up against the wall and had $2.5 million dollars in debt, I don’t remember losing a bit of sleep over that, but I have lost sleep over the way my wife and I treat each other. And I fear that I’ll never be the husband and father that I know I’m called to be.

I’ve seen clearly what that looks like. I saw it in my dad, I’ve seen it in others and I am jealous of that. I fear that whether it’s through working too many hours, being distracted, chasing shiny objects in my personal life, whatever it is, I fear that at the end of my life, I will have not made the deep imprint on them as is evidenced by how hopefully their adult kids are going, how they’re doing. I fear that I won’t have been all I should have been in that realm. I think that’s my biggest fear.

I guess second to that would be a similar thought. And that would be that when I leave this earth, I won’t have left a history-making imprint on it. Even if it’s only with a handful of people, I want to make a difference in people’s lives.

Seth: Yeah. And difference meaning what exactly? What would you consider a good enough difference?

Paul Moore: Yeah. I just started a mentoring role at my church with six or seven other leaders. So, I’m going to be mentoring them. They are millennials, which I love. And they’re actually leaders of small groups. And those groups typically have anywhere from 6 to 12 or 15 people in them. And so, I want to leave a deep impression on them. I want to be somebody who role models being kind to the waiter or waitress, having a smile on my face when the bank account is almost empty. And not that that’s happening regularly, but it could.

I’m looking at a country that’s not the same country I grew up in, guys. I don’t know what’s going to happen next, but it doesn’t look super positive from my point of view. And I want to be somebody who boldly and bravely stands up for what I believe and doesn’t collapse in that. I just saw an amazing movie called “Anthropoid.” It’s not well-known. It should be. It’s the story of some heroes in the Czech Republic who stood up against Hitler. In the movie, the most poignant moment was when they quoted Shakespeare, I believe who was quoting Julius Caesar saying “A coward dies a thousand deaths; a hero or a brave man dies but once.”

Seth: Yeah, I know what you mean.

Jaren: I would bet money that Paul’s Enneagram is type three.

Paul Moore: It’s funny. My business partner in my former business, in the staffing company and he’s actually involved in our company Wellings Capital now. He’s an Enneagram three. I have a very good friend who’s in Enneagram three, but I can’t remember if I’m six or seven. I think I’m seven wings six, if that helps.

Jaren: Yeah. It’s just interesting. The way you are talking, it’s like you’re reading my heart. My internal dialogue and the things that I think about and value, I have the same fears.

Seth: Yeah. For sure.

Jaren: Paul, what is something that you’re most proud of?

Paul Moore: It’s so funny how similar this is going to be to the first question in my answer, I guess. And that is that even though my wife and I made a lot of mistakes in our marriage over 34 years, we have a strong marriage. And even though we made a lot of mistakes in child-raising over 28 years, 28 down to 16, four kids, they’re all doing well. And so, I’m really proud of those things. And even though my kids can readily tell me some of the mistakes we all made, me really, when they were younger, we still have a great relationship. And I just got off the phone with a friend a few hours ago who is agonizing. I would’ve said that his wife and he are better parents than us, but for some reason, their kids are really, really struggling in ways that I don’t understand. And so, I guess that would be it.

Seth: Cool. Yeah, that is something to be proud of for sure. What is the most important lesson you’ve ever learned?

Paul Moore: I think from a business point of view, it’s what I said earlier. I’m going to go back and highlight again, and that is the difference between investing and speculating. And the fact that true investing should not be entrepreneurial, it should be more on the boring side. And I think that’s most important for me, and there are so many others, of course. But that one just stands out because it has made a major difference in my investing and in my finances. And since I do a lot of podcasts, a lot of blogging, hopefully it’s helped a few other people along the way as well.

I’ll tell you, I learned that mainly from Warren Buffet. I’m actually writing a book called “Warren Buffett’s Rules for Real Estate Investors.” And I learned that concept mainly from him.

Seth: That is interesting because you never really know the future, even when you’ve done all your due diligence and you know everything front and back, you’re never a hundred percent. So, where do you think the line is between, “Okay, you’re officially speculating now”? How would you define that?

Paul Moore: If things go south, you could literally lose your money. Okay, sure. I get that that’s true. I get that Apple could go bankrupt tomorrow. It probably won’t, but General Motors. That’s one aspect of it. But I have another one that I think is a little easier to get my arms around.

And this is a little bit of a long answer, but what is true wealth? Well, true wealth is having assets that produce income. And if you have assets that produce income in a reliable way and you don’t over-leverage them, then you have true wealth. Well, I would say that the line between speculating investing is just as simple as whether it produces reliable predictable cash flow or not.

Bitcoin. I’m not against it at all, I have some. But Bitcoin doesn’t produce any reliable, predictable income. It doesn’t have any income at all unless you invest it in those certain types of ways where it somehow produces interest. So, I would say that that’s where my speculation line is, and that’s why I love commercial real estate and real estate in general.

Seth: Cool. Well, Paul, again, thanks a lot for coming to the show. It’s been awesome to talk to you and get to know you a little bit better. Hopefully, we can connect at some point in the future again. If people want to find out more about you, where should they go? What should they do?

Paul Moore: Yeah, they can go to wellingscapital.com. And I spent years, guys, trying to figure out how to get from residential into commercial real estate. And so, now I created a 60-page guide for people who want to do the same. You can get that at wellingscapital.com/resources.

Seth: We’re going to include the links to that and Paul’s website and his podcast and his books and a lot of other stuff we talked about in this conversation at retipster.com/111 because this is episode 111. So, Paul, thanks again. I appreciate you. And I wish you all the best with the stuff you’re working on and hopefully, our audience will become new raving fans to all the stuff you get.

Paul Moore: Awesome. Guys, it was really an honor to be here. Thanks, Seth. Thanks, Jaren.

Seth: All right, folks. There, you have it. That was an interview with Paul Moore. Did you have any closing thoughts on that, Jaren?

Jaren: To be honest, when I read the bio coming into the podcast today, I was like, “Oh, this is going to be just another one of those kinds of run-of-the-mill large apartment syndication kind of guys”, but he was a breath of fresh air for sure.

Seth: Yeah. It seems like there were a lot of different directions we could have gone with that. We didn’t even really get much into the land investing stuff that he or his son had done because they were just a lot of ground to cover there, but it sounds like the guy’s a wealth of information and hopefully, we can stay in touch with him in the future. Do you want to do one of our closing questions here?

Jaren: Let’s do it.

Seth: What is something that people think makes them look cool, but actually makes them look ridiculous? I guess this is probably like a fashion trend thing maybe. Maybe it’s not limited to that.

Jaren: Yeah. I don’t know. My brain just went to being braggadocious. That is where my brain went. Because you run into it a lot in the real estate world where people are just like, “Yeah, I’m the greatest thing ever.” And I think they do it to try and raise their level of the pecking order or whatever, but to me, and maybe I’m just weird and I’m like, I’m not a part of that pecking order or whatever. I just don’t operate in it. But to me, I see what they’re trying to do and I’m just like, “Dude, just calm down.”

Seth: Yeah. I have to agree with that. I don’t know if it’s like an insecurity thing. Like I better really come out quick and prove how awesome I am or people are going to dismiss me. I don’t know what the thought process is or if it’s like, “I just want to feel and look amazing. And so, I’m going to find anything I can and just make myself look as good as I can.”

There’s a book Lucas Hall recommended to us way back when we interviewed him called “How to Lie with Statistics.” It’s basically about how you can make anything sound amazing if you just focus on one metric and ignore the rest. For example, a person could say “I’ve done like 20,000 deals” or something, but they’ve lost money on all of them.

So, let’s not talk about that. Let’s just talk about the number that sounds good. And even when it’s not about numbers, but just kind of like the arrogant tone or just trying to come across as like, “Oh, I’m amazing. You’re lucky you’re getting to talk to me right now.” That kind of thing. There is a lot of that in the real estate world.

Jaren: I don’t know what fuels it, man. Maybe they don’t really have high self-esteem so they’re trying to overcompensate or something. I don’t know. I’ve just never understood it. I have vivid memories of getting started in real estate and talking to other investors and them like verbally walking over me or like putting me down or whatever, again, in the whole like pecking order thing. And I just never played the game. I don’t know what fuels it. I mean, I guess it’s kind of the same question that fuels bullying. It’s kind of a similar energy or vibe.

Seth: Sometimes I feel that too. I don’t really know how much it matters what people think about. I don’t know, money I’ve made on a deal or how many deals I’ve done or whatever. Whatever you want to tie your value to. Sometimes I feel like I need to say something to prove that just to earn reputation points in people’s brains and maybe that’s completely illogical thinking. But I’d be the first to admit, I get the pressure. I understand why people do it.

Jaren: Well, I think it depends. There is a degree where you have to let people know that you know what you’re talking about and that you are reliable and that you have a track record. But you don’t have to do it in a way where I’m like, I’m the center of attention and I’m the greatest thing ever. And I’m better than you. Some of the conversations are they are sizing you up. How many deals have you done? I remember going to some conferences with you and some of the conversations that I’d be having are weird. What investing do you do? How much money do you make? How many deals are you doing? I’m like, “Dude, my favorite color is blue. I like long walks on the beach. Let’s get to know each other before we jump in and all of that.”

Seth: Yeah. I almost feel like it takes pressure off just mentally for me, if I can just get it out there that I’m not the best. You’re probably better than me or let’s just frame it up that way so we can just establish that. I can stop comparing myself to you immediately. And maybe it’ll come out at some point that maybe I’ve done something that impresses them. And it’s just kind of like a nice little surprise, but I don’t like to lead with that. Sometimes I feel like I have to. And I don’t know if that’s flawed thinking or if that is like what you’re saying. I think there is a point where you need to establish that you are credible on some level. But I think beyond that, it’s kind of just like flexing your muscles and trying to feel more special than you are or something. It’s something that bugs me and I don’t fully have it figured out in my own mind, but I know when I see it and I don’t love it when I see that.

Jaren: These days, whenever I run into it, I’ll just egg them on. So, if they start talking like, “Oh my gosh, bro, you did that? You are so amazing. Oh my gosh, that’s so awesome.” I will be like super over the top and I don’t know if they get that I’ve been over the top, but it’s fun in my head.

Seth: Yeah, I hear you, man. I guess that wraps it up then. If you guys want to check out the show notes, again, retipster.com/111 and you can see a lot of notes and links to the stuff we talked about.

And again, if you guys are listening on your phones, feel free to take out your phones and text the word “FREE” to the number 33777 and you can stay up to date on all the stuff we got going on at REtipster. Thanks again for listening. We’ll talk to you again soon.

The post 111: How to Stay Out of Entrepreneurial Hell – Interview w/ Paul Moore appeared first on REtipster.

from Real Estate Tips https://retipster.com/111-paul-moore/

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