#hey which seth do you think people will associate her name with first?

[bluberimufim]

I just discovered that there's a biblical figure named Seth who has absolutely nothing to do with the Seth that I named my protagonist, Seth, after

[punkiesocialonline]

WWE College AU Chapter 1

Summary: Annalise Ruiz (My Oc) is a college sophomore with a group project due soon. The only problem is who her group partners are. The Mayhem they cause and the trouble they get her into is maddening, but Annalise is down for whatever as long as her crew is with her.

Oh, great. A group project. On top of all the homework.

Ignoring for the moment the “juicy” gossip her tablemate was telling the girl behind them, Annalise looked up to the board.The list of both familiar and unfamiliar names continued on and on until she found hers. Her group consisted of herself, obviously, and three male students, only two of which she had known. One being her long time friend and class clown Samuel Zayn, who refuses to answer to anything other than Sami. The other was his trouble maker best friend Kevin Owens. Kevin caught Annalise’s eye from his seat in the corner of the room and waved, his smirk letting her know he had no intention of helping on this project. With an annoyed eye roll, Annalise looked back at the board. The last name assigned to her group was Roman Reigns. Annalise had no idea who Roman was, but her tablemate, a petite blonde with pink highlights named Alexa, certainly did. 

“Oh my goodness, Anna! You got Roman “Hot As Sugarballs” Reigns in your group!”

Annalise’s confused look gave away her lack of knowledge of Mr.”Hot As Sugarballs”. Alexa gasped in surprise and turned back to her gossip buddy behind her.

“Sasha! She doesn’t know who Roman Reigns is!”

Sasha, the darling girl with beautiful, brown skin and dark eyes looked unamused. She tossed her blue dyed hair behind her shoulder and shook her head at Alexa. 

“Not everyone is as obsessed with Reigns like you are, Bliss.”

“I’m not obsessed!” Alexa protested. “He’s just, so hot.”

Before the conversation could go any further, the bell rang and Annalise sighed in relief.

“Saved by the bell,” she thought as she grabbed her books and started to walk to the door. 

“Hey! Annalise, wait up!” 

“Spoke too soon,” she told herself as she turned around and was met with two of her partners. 

Both Canadians smiled down on their shorter classmate. Kevin leaned against the desk he stood next to while his red-headed counterpart jumped with excitement. Both had a piece of paper in their hands.

“We were thinking of some ideas for the project,” Kevin said bordly. 

“We made lists!” Sami said, happily shoving his piece of paper into her hand.

“List of Jericho?” Annalise joked, referring to Kevin’s former friend Chris Jericho.

Chris was an upperclassman who used to write lists of people who annoyed him. Annalise got herself on a list by telling him how truely annoying he was.

“There’s a big difference,” Kevin explained. “These lists were written by two actually intelligent people.”

Annalise chuckled and skimmed through Sami’s list, taking note of a few really good ideas she liked. She nodded and gave the list back then outstretched her hand for Kevin’s. With the same sly smile as before, Kevin handed her his list.

Annalise noticed almost instantly that the paper was mostly blank. Only one bullet point was written at the top of the page;

Let Sami come up with all the ideas 

“Wow,” she said sarcastically as she handed the paper back. “These are great and all but apparently we have one more person in our group.”

Both boy’s eyes lit up. Kevin’s smirk grew and Sami’s jumping intensified. Annalise furrowed her brows at their reactions. 

“Yeah, the big dog,” Kevin said, standing up straight and leading Annalise out of the classroom with Sami following them. 

Her confused look returned to her face. She quickly tried to go through her memory and put a face to the name. She allowed herself to be led throughout the halls as she did so. 

“You really don’t know who he is? He’s pretty hard to miss,” Sami remarked after she had visibly given up.

She threw him a wild glance and raised an eyebrow. 

“Don’t we have the same math class Sami? I tend to miss a lot,” the girl responded as she continued to walk. 

She really didn’t care where they were going. She knew most of the school like the back of her hand and their last class was her final class of the day, so rather than going back to her dorm alone, an adventure with the two reasons their last science teacher quit was more than welcomed. Annalise also wanted to know more about this mystery man everyone else seemed to know. 

“Well, you know Seth, right?” Kevin asked as he made the latina turn a corner. 

Her two toned friend came to her mind instantly. She went to highschool with him and witnessed his glow up first hand. She loved the guy, but what did he have to do with Roman Reigns?

“Rollins? Yeah, I know him.”

Kevin had her turn another corner into a hall she had no idea even existed. She didn’t have time to ask where they were going before he responded.

“Roman is his older brother.”

Annalise’s mouth dropped open. She tried to think back to highschool, certain that Seth had introduced her to an older brother, but the name that came to mind was not Roman.

“I thought his older brother was Ambrose. You know, Dean Ambrose?” 

The mention of the upperclassman made Sami shudder. Dean was an even bigger trouble maker than Kevin, and Sami knew all too well what it is like to get into a confrontation with him. Dean was the king of detention back in highschool and Annalise was pretty sure she'd seen the lunatic hanging out by the dorms more times than she could count, but she had no classes with him and never saw him in the halls. And surely no one was dumb enough to get the name  “Dean Ambrose” confused with “Roman Reigns”. 

“Yeah, that’s ONE of his older brothers, but he got another, Roman,” Sami explained as he fixed his hat.

“Everyone calls him the big dog,” KEvin added, coming to a stop at an opened locker.

With a nod, Annalise stopped with him. She looked around and noticed a few upperclassmen she recognized. Randall Orton, Natalya Hart, Drew Mcintyre, Lacey Evans, even Alan Jones Styles. Some waved at Annalise and glared at her companions, others did the opposite. And while she did enjoy seeing them all and exploring this new hallway, Annalise saw no reason for her friends and herself to be there. 

“Why did you take me here?” She asked, leaning against the lockers.

Kevin smirked once again and glanced at the locker. 

“To see our other porr assignment sucker,” he said as he slammed the opened locker shut.

Before even a breath could be taken, Kevin was pushed into the locker. Sami and Annalise jumped back and looked up at the mountain of a man that was responsible. He was much taller than the three sophomores, with long, black hair tied into a bun and grey eyes. Part of Annalise wondered if he was wearing contacts, another part was wondering how high she would have to jumped to slap him for pushing her associate into the locker. 

“Hey, ride or die. Even for these fools,” she thought. 

As she took a step towards the male, Kevin spoke.

“Woah, woah, woah, big dog, chill” 

With wide eyes, Annalise realized that THIS was Roman Reigns. For once she could agree with Alexa, he was hot.

And she did recognize him. She remembered seeing him picking up Seth and Dean back in highschool. She also remembered seeing him sitting in his car, watching carefully as Dean pushed her into a bush while she was walking with Seth. She even remembered seeing him standing off to the side as Dean tried to awkwardly apologize the next day. How come she never noticed him here? 

“Because you’ve been too focused on school,” She thought. “And….other stuff.”

She was pulled back into reality when a deep, deep voice rattled her chest. It took her about five seconds to realize it was Roman talking. 

“What do you want, Owens?”

Annalise’s dazzlement soon turned back into anger as he pushed Kevin once again before he could answer.

“You’re our partner in a project,” Annalise nearly growled. “You would’ve known that if you had the common sense to show to class.”

The samoan’s cold gaze went from Kevin down to the small latina and the hint of amusement in them filled Annalise with more rage. 

“I know you,”he stated, studying her.

She felt his eyes look over her green dyed hair. She felt his eyes bounce from her pierced eyebrow to her pierced nose. His gray eyes stared into her brown ones, then those very eyes skimmed over her appearance. Annalise felt her face heat up as she got angrier. 

“Oh?” She said, trying to keep her composure. “Well, considering that I just found out who you are two seconds ago, I can officially say where you stand on the popularity chart.”

The tall man’s eyes lost all amusement in them. Kevin noticed and stood up straight, ready for a fight. Behind Annalise, Sami glared at Roman, trying, and failing, to intimidate the bigger man. 

Then Roman started to laugh. If Annalise thought his voice rattled her, she was not prepared for his laugh. 

“You’re gonna be fun,” Roman said between breaths. “A project, huh? Alright then, you three can come by my dorm around, let's say five?” 

The Canadians looked between themselves and their female partner. Satisfied, all three nodded.

“Alright, your dorm at five,” Annalise mumbled, keeping a wary eye on him.

His demeter changed in a blink of an eye. He no longer looked so big and bad. His smile lit up the hall as he playfully punched Kevin in the arm. A playful punch Kevin returned.

“Wait,” Sami interrupted after a moment of deep thinking. “Are your brothers going to be there?”

Roman shrugged. “Seth is my roommate, so he’ll probably be there. “ He glanced at Annalise as he said that. 

Annalise knew he saw her smile at the mention of his puppy-like brother, but she hoped he thought nothing of it. Don’t need that rumor going around.

“And the other one?” Sami tried to ask casually. 

Almost everyone knew about Sami’s confrontation with Dean. During an argument out in the courtyard, Dean brought Sami’s sexuality confusion into the mix. Now there was a rumor going around that Dean felt sorry and didn’t actually mean to bring up such a touchy subject, but Sami didn’t believe it. He told anyone that believed otherwise that Dean could never keep the truth from his eyes. When he started calling Sami out, in front of multiple classmates no less, his crazy eyes told Sami that he meant and believed every word. Dean’s crazy eyes turned into black eyes by the time their confrontation was over. Sami, on the other hand, had a broken nose, a busted lip, and a bruised pride.

Roman’s gaze softened at Sami’s nervous-like behavior. He was there when the argument went down, he was the one who pulled Dean off of him. Roman had felt guilty for not telling Dean to stop once he got to dangerous waters, but Dean was his little brother. He was taught to stand behind his family, no matter the choices they make. Even if they are really dumb ones. 

“Dean is….unpredictable. He may be there, he may not. If he is, I swear he’ll be on his best behavior,” Roman assured him. “And Samuel, Dean really didn’t mean to offend you, he was losing an argument and took a low blow.”

Annalise and Kevin looked at each other at Sami. The ginger was staring off down the hallway, trying to stay calm and act cool. He finally looked up at Roman after a moment of silence.

“It’s Sami.”

Roman seemed to understand that the smaller man was not trying to hear him defend his brother’s actions. The samoan simply just nodded and checked his watch.

“I have to go, see you three at five,” he stated, glancing up from his watch.

“Yeah, see ya,” Sami mumbled, already walking off. 

Annalise and Kevin followed silently, leaving Roman Reigns behind them.

“Well that was...interesting,” Annalise said, falling into step with Sami on his left side.

“Yeah,” Kevin agreed, walking on Sami’s right. “You okay, Sami?”

Sami took a deep breath and nodded. The further they walked, the clearer his eyes became.

“Yeah,yeah, I’m fine.” He said. “I think I’m going to skip my next class though.”

Kevin wrapped his arm around Sami’s shoulder. Annalise intertwined her fingers with Sami’s. Sami glanced at both of them and smiled.

“Well,” Kevin said, flicking Sami’s ear. “If you’re skipping class, so am I.”

With a chuckle, Annalise nodded. 

“I’m already finished with my classes for the day, wanna head to my dorm and get beat in some video games?” 

Both boy’s smiles grew. Ignoring the look some classmates like Bobby Lashely and Daniel Bryan threw their way, the three of them walked to the doors.

“You’re on, grasshead!” Kevin exclaimed, making Sami laugh. 

And while they walked out, Kevin discreetly flicked off the students who dared to look at him and his friends funny.

Bobby and Daniel certainly got the message.

[amplesalty]

Halloween 2020 - Day 1 - The Stand (1994) - Episode 1 The Plague

Gee, an epic post-apocalyptic story about an out of control pandemic. Never heard that one before.

Much as we like to tie the Halloween season to the Christmas one by opening up with a festive horror movie, why not link back to the TV binging that provided some content to this blog earlier in the year by partaking in this mini series? We’re only covering part one here today as this is like four feature length episodes. In a worst case scenario, the rest will serve as backups that I can plug in if I’m having an off day so to help me from falling behind. But ideally they’ll go up once a week on the same day as a standard movie post. You manage to go back to actually doing 31 entries for the first time in donkeys years and it all goes to your head and you suddenly think you can do 34!

This has actually been on my list for quite a while now, we do love a good (or bad) Stephen King adaptation around here and I have a distinct memory of seeing this on TV when I was a kid. I’m guessing it must have played over a few nights over here at some point or maybe over a bank holiday or something? Not that I really remember much in the way of details, just the cornfields and a creepy face which we’ll get on to.

It’s something that’s stuck with me over all these years, I actually got a copy of the book at one point in what must have been the early to mid 2000’s. Still have it actually, I dug it out for the sake of this entry. Seems it’s a version from 1980 from it’s first run as a paperback in the UK. Seems to have a page or two missing near the start in amongst all the copywright business but otherwise it’s in okay shape.

Even has some writing on the first page that I can only make out in parts, one section seems to read ‘an old man beats a mule’. Or perhaps, more pertinently to this story, a mute...

Cover seems a bit dull and non descript compared to the various other ones that have come out over the years. There’s something interesting to this original version with the two figures fighting, very much a literal take on the good versus evil nature of the story with one figure dressed in light colours and the other dark. The dark figure is wielding a scythe which is obviously closely associated with the Grim Reaper. Seems to have some form of beak sticking out of its hood too and the robes and shoes seem to be almost harlequin or jester type clothes?

I wasn’t really expecting much going into it, especially based on the 1990 mini-series of It. I think because of the nature of It being partly set in the 60’s, as well the contemporary portion which just looks very 80’s, gives it this image in my head of being very dated. Outside of a few actors like Tim Curry, John Ritter and Seth Green, there’s not really any notable stars in it either and even though, Green’s notably arguably came much later on. The Stand though? This thing has some names, even if the bigger ones are just small cameos. Amongst the main cast you’ve got Gary Sinise, Molly Ringwald and Rob Lowe. Obviously Ringwald isn’t a massive star or anything and is only really known for that string of John Hughes movies in the 80’s but around this time was peak Sinise. He’s not long removed from starring in Of Mice and Men (...and men....and men...) and would have roles in Forrest Gump, Apollo 13 and Ransom in the following years. Plus that big stretch in CSI:NY in the 00’s. But then you’ve got people like Ed Harris and Kathy Bates showing up, albeit briefly but these guys have some clout. I mean, Bates had just won the Academy Award a few years prior for her role in Misery so maybe she felt compelled to do more work under the King umbrella. Even the more minor roles seem like a roll call of ‘hey, it’s you!’ with Ken Jenkins (AKA Bob Kelso from Scrubs), Kareem Abdul-Jabbar and the proprietor of Joe Bob’s Drive In, Joe Bob Briggs.

The landscape of TV feels very different today with actors much more willing to work in the field as it’s taken on much more artistic integrity. The greater availability of shows after they’ve aired, be it through DVR, home media or streaming, has enabled people to watch in far greater numbers. There was a time when the big break was deemed to be making it to Hollywood and starring in motion picture epics but it seems more and more that story tellers are moving away from the relatively cramped 2 hour-ish format of the silver screen to having their vision play out over a long form story and the big name actors are following suit. I feel like things would have been very different back in the early 90’s so to have these names attached.

Seems for a long time there were plans to turn this into a movie, it’s even referred to during a ‘making of’ feature on the blu-ray (pretty much the only feature on there I might add) as a ‘motion picture epic’ but this must have been done way into production so either they were confused or trying to mislead viewers for some reason? Apparently in the early 80’s the idea was for the success of Creepshow to finance production of The Stand but took until the early 90’s for everyone to finally settle on the miniseries.

Very much a big budget affair too for a TV Show, $6m per episode. And it’s needed given the scale of the story, taking place in all these different locations, the special effetcs and with so many characters involved with over 125 speaking roles across the series. It’s definitely a jump up from It, even though that had the two different time periods, it only had a budget of $12m across its two parts compared to the $24m here across four parts.

But to finally address the massive elephant in the room, this story centers around an outbreak of a strain of influenza seemingly created in some shadowy government facility. After something goes awry in the lab, a doomed insider pleads with the guy watching the main gate to seal the facility but he instead piss bolts for his nearby house and hurriedly bundles his wife and child into their car as they make their escape. Everyone else is not nearly as fortunate though as the camera pans the facility, lifeless corpses strewn throughout that have seemingly dropped dead in the middle of their everyday activities, there’s even one guy doubled over on a ping pong table. All of this is set to the sounds of BOC’s Don’t Fear the Reaper and culminates with the image of a crow picking at a doll dropped by the child in the rush out of the front gate. The crow features prominently on the front cover of the blu-ray I have, perched atop of a skull. Though, I know they’re going for the whole post-apocalyptic vibe but what about the superflu is causing the road to burn up and crack like that? The bird also shows up a fair bit throughout the episode, I was going to talk about it being a raven and how such birds are linked with ill omen and death but it’s a crow apparently. Who knew? Not me, I’m no ornithologist. It also seems to be very closely linked with a mysterious figure that is alluded to throughout, a ‘dark man’ or monster.

When the original carrier of the disease makes his way into Arnette, Texas, and crashes into the gas station that Sinise’s character Stu Redman is working at, his dying words are of his efforts to escape from a dark man that was chasing him and that no one can out run him. Maybe in that moment you’d think this is just a state of delirium and he’s speaking oddly poetically about trying to outrun Death himself but as the show goes on, more and more people speak of this dark man, almost as if everyone in the grip of this disease comes to share this vision.

And speaking of visions, we can’t forget Mother Abigail and her cornfields. Both Lowe and Sinise’s characters are whisked away in their dreams to the middle of nowhere where a centurion on her porch warns of them of an ominous future. Think Mama Murphy from Fallout 4 only with much less chem addiction. The only thing Mama Abigail needs is her bread. What is it with King and fields anyway? You’ve got In the Tall Grass, plus the corn fields here and in Children of the Corn. There’s probably more I’m forgetting too. It’s either cornfields, writers in distress or killer ‘whatever I can see in front of me whilst I’m pitching this story’ with this guy.

In a way though it’s good that the show takes this supernatural turn because otherwise this would be a little too on the nose to be watching in this current climate. It’s very eerie to see such similar events play out on screen, starting with the widespread rumours and misinformation. It starts out innocently enough with talk of this so called superflu being downplayed, covered up by the government as an anthrax attack or outbreak of swineflu. I remember back to those more innocent times at the start of the year when COVID was naively dismissed as little more than another flavour of the month disease like the swineflu, sars or ebola that would be here today and gone tomorrow. But then you’ve got things like the sense of paranoia suddenly surrounding a simple cough or sneeze, talks of quarantines, social distancing, the implementation of masks (which one reporter describes as not being able to stop a flu germ with a hangover) to the more disturbing scene of lethal force being used against a TV news crew who refuse to surrender footage they’ve shot of army troops disposing of bodies. Granted, we never got anywhere near that level, I think the worst we had was that guy from CNN getting arrested or that Aussie reporter being pushed over.

They even managed to mirror how universal a pandemic like this is, from the common man to the height of celebrity. One of the characters we’re introduced to is a singer who, whilst he seems to be one of the few lucky to have some immunity, still sees his mother succumb to the virus. Just like we saw with the likes of BoJo or Tom Hanks, it really is a great leveller and, as a wise man once said, ‘You might be a King or a little street sweeper but sooner or later you dance with the Reaper!’. I guess we can take solice that we haven’t quite had the societal collapse that this show manages to pull off in less than a week, with Times Square on fire and a guy running around shooting people like he’s in Falling Down. That’s not to say we wont get there, we seem to be hovering more around general civil disobedience right now with the growing frustration of lockdown and PPE spilling out into protests.

It makes for compelling viewing to see how quickly things break down from simply a man having the sniffles to people being rounded up from their homes and ushered into army vehicles. There’s a lot to take in as the show has to establish the events taking place and introducing it’s multitude of characters so there’s not really much room to breathe. Hopefully episode 2 can relax a little now and give the cast some time to grow. There’s still some standout performances though such as Redman’s growing frustration at being cooped up in a test facility, lashing out at the doctors and nurses coming in in their hazmat suits, prodding and poking him. It would have been nice to see more scenes with him and Dr. Dietz. They have one argument where they nearly come to blows before having a big showdown by the end, with the Doc being one of the last staff members left alive, seemingly crazed by their inability to find any answers in Redman’s tests and he threatens to take his frustrations out on Redman by shooting him. He might be immune to the virus but I bet he’s not immune to a bullet. Dietz starts out with this complete lack of empathy, almost to the point of having a rather cheery deposition considering the circumstances, as he finds some fascination in the speed at which the virus causes death. But he becomes more and more short tempered and threatening as the days wear on and it would have been good to see a more gradual descent.

The aforementioned Ed Harris plays General Starkey overseeing the initial bioweapon project and the fallout of it’s outbreak, perhaps overseeing to a fault as it becomes pretty clear from his ever increasing five o’clock shadow, dishevelled clothing and massive bags under his eyes that he’s slept very sparingly since the initial breach in containment. I think for the entire time we see him, his screen never changes from a shot of one of the cooks at the base of the initial outbreak slumped over, face down in the meal he was preparing. It makes a bit of a change to go from the quite verbal exchanges of Redman and Dietz to Starkey’s physical appearance and facial expressions putting across his mood.

[whumping-whumpees]

A New Home -- Ex-Sacrifice

AN: Hope you all enjoy! This is the third piece in my Sacrifice story. Things are heating up!

Part: 1 ,  2

Also, if anyone is wondering why he’s so ‘defiant’ even after going through so much, he’s learned only to be afraid and submissive to The Elders, and he associates them with pain and repenting. Other people he just doesn’t trust.

Warnings: mentions of past abuse, lots of self-deprication, trauma, hitting/pinching, implied abuse/belting, swearing

Blood. The Elders. He couldn’t move. He couldn’t breathe, Please, please stop, it hurts, it hurts so much it hurts-

“Kid! Hey, hey, wake up, it’s just a nightmare, you’re ok!” The Sacrifice realized the person he was struggling against was none other than the agent, Nathan Scott. He blinked, looking around in confusion as he remembered where he was. Right. The Ceremony failed. He jumped as Nathan put a hand on his shoulder. Nathan, to his credit, took his hand away. “Sorry, are you alright? Sounded like some dream you were having.” The Sacrifice glared, shrugging off Nathan’s concern.

“Yeah, it was actually! A good dream. I was back, and the Ceremony actually was completed this time.” He huffed. “No thanks to you.” Nathan Scott chose not to comment as the Sacrifice sat up, running a hand through his tangled hair.

“You were crying in your sleep.” Nathan looked thoughtful, not accusatory, as the Sacrifice put a hand to his cheek. It was wet. That wasn’t right, why would he be sad when he dreamed about the Ceremony working? He was happy, it was a good dream.

“That’s just, that’s just because I’m sad you’re taking the Elders away!” Yeah, that was it! It wasn’t because he was scared of dying, or of the Elders hurting him more. Of course not, he was sad they were leaving! Nathan didn’t look too happy about his answer. He stood up, and walked over to his desk, where files were strewn across it. Nathan then smiled, reading something on a file.

“Oh, about that! I found a couple who wants to take you in!” The Sacrifice’s head shot up at that. Take him in? Someone... wants him? “Angela Lynwood is the sister of one of the agents here at the office, and when she and her husband, Victor, heard about what happened they offered to let you stay with them, because they knew about your... situation. They seem very nice!” The Sacrifice’s heart sank. They weren’t Elders, or even people part of the The Gathering... but he couldn’t help but feel relieved at that, which puzzled him. He should want to be with the Elders, but he just couldn’t bring himself to feel that. He was worried, maybe that was why the Ceremony had failed? Because he wasn’t pious enough? Nathan Scott brought him out of his thoughts.

“We thought it best not to room you with people from your... community.” Nathan seemed to be picking his words carefully, which just irked the Sacrifice. Nathan just didn’t trust him, that was it. He frowned, for some reason the thought of Nathan not liking him hurt. He was the first person ever to be, well, nice to him. Nathan Scott waved him over, and he reluctantly got to his feet. “C’mon, I’m gonna drive you over, let you get settled in.”

Most of the ride to the Lynwood’s was uneventful to the Sacrifice. Nathan had offered to go buy him some clothes, but he just shook his head. He was fine in the white T-shirt and pants the agency had given him. He just stared out the window, ignoring Nathan’s attempts at conversation.

“Hey,” Nathan said, and the Sacrifice’s eyes briefly glanced over, as they drove through the streets. “What’s your name? You never told us.” Name? The lady agent, he didn’t know her name, asked before, but he just never answered.

“The Sacrifice doesn’t have a name.” He finally answered. He had been told that many, many times before. He wasn’t deserving of one, he didn’t need one. “I’m just... the Sacrifice. That’s what I’ve always been.”

Nathan hummed, thinking. “Well, I suppose that just means you can pick your own name?” The Sacrifice just deepened his frown, and shook his head. He wasn’t going to ‘pick a name’. He couldn’t! That went against what he was taught! He wasn’t allowed! He was the Sacrifice, and he always would be. Only used as a catalyst for The Reckoning.

“No, I don’t think so.”  He picked at his shirt, not looking Nathan in the eye. Truth be told, he did want a name. Something more than just a title. More than... The Sacrifice. He glanced to Nathan, who was drumming his fingers on the car.

“Here, let me throw some out there. It might be nice to have a name to introduce yourself as to the Lynwood’s, after all.” Damn, Nathan did have a point there. “How about... John?” He wrinkled his nose and shook his head. “Ok, how about Eugene? Charlie? Seth? Miles?” All of those got a headshake from the Sacrifice. He sunk lower into his seat. None of those were good. Nathan seemed to pick up on his growing despair.

“You know kid, you don’t have to pick one right away. Just, take your time.” He turned into a driveway, but the Sacrifice’s attention was turned completely to him. “It’s ultimately your decision.” His decision? He got to choose? He was so used to the Elders deciding everything for him, because they were smart and good and he was weak and useless, needing their guiding hand. This, was wrong, was it? Nathan trying to help him? It was all so much.

Sacrifice left the car, wanting to escape the weird conversation, heading to the door. It was a risky move, Nathan might hurt him for his insolence, but Nathan hadn’t gotten mad at him yet, so he was willing to test his luck. He stood on the front steps, too hesitant to knock. He had a bad feeling about this. Though, he had a bad feeling about everything.

Nathan ended up ringing the doorbell for him. A smiling young woman opened the door. The Sacrifice didn’t even attempt a smile back.

“Oh, you must be Agent Scott! And this is him?” She extended a hand to the Sacrifice, who gave a flinch, looking at her warily. Why would she want to shake hands with him? She just laughed. “It’s so good to meet you!” Angela gestured for them to follow her as she turned back into the house.

Nathan nudged him in the door, and he reluctantly followed the woman back to the kitchen. “We were just having breakfast!” She called.It was a nice house, he guessed. He didn’t really have anything to compare it too, but it was nice nonetheless. He entered the kitchen, shuffling his feet a little. His stomach let out a growl as the smell of pancakes, sausage, and syrup hit his nose. He never ate food like that before, the Elders didn’t let him, but he had seen it being cooked in The Gathering’s kitchens before.

A man in a nice suit with a scowl written over his face as he read the newspaper, glanced up as his wife entered. He gave her a smile and a peck on the cheek, and he surveyed the Sacrifice. He shifted his weight self-consciously.

“Have a seat,” Victor said in a nicer tone than expected. “Welcome.” Nathan extended a hand and Victor gave it a shake.

“Well, Mrs. and Mr. Lynwood, it was a pleasure to meet you two. And I’m so grateful that you’ve stepped up like this.” Nathan spoke.

“Oh, of course of course! Please, call me Angela. And I’m happy to do it! He’ll fit right in, right after we find the perfect name for him!” She reached out to cup his face, but he moved back, glaring. He looked at Nathan before he could see her reaction, and he gave him a smile.

“Well, I have to get going. Lot’s of paperwork to do.” The Sacrifice felt his heart pick up. Nathan was leaving him, just like that? But, but... No matter. Good riddance! Yeah, he didn’t need him!

“You can’t stay even for one cup of coffee?” Angela offered. Victor spoke up.

“Angela, dear, let the man go. Thank you Agent Scott.”

“No, no, it’s me who should be thanking you!” The Sacrifice’s panic, not panic, he didn’t care, must have shown on his face, because Nathan turned to him, and handed him a card. “Don’t worry, I’ll be back to check up on you. Here’s my card, if you ever want to talk.” He pocketed it, not planning on using it. But he couldn’t bring himself to rip it up in front of Nathan, even though he wanted too. He was so angry at him for leaving him alone- No! He was angry at Nathan for taking him from his home! That’s it.

Nathan left, with another chorus of goodbyes, and The Sacrifice stood awkwardly as Angela came back into the room, having walked Nathan out. He thought about what Nathan had told him, about names. He, he did deserve a name! His heart raced at this blasphemous thought. He decided to take a chance. These weren’t his Elders, after all, and if they didn’t find out...

“Uh, my n-na-” He struggled to even say it, Angela looked at him, interested. “You can call me, um, Arthur.” He felt a rush. He had always liked that name, how it sounded. He never thought to put it to himself. But Angela just laughed, and he looked up, surprised.

“Arthur?? Oh, honey, that’s such an old-fashioned name!” Arthur The Sacrifice felt his heart sink and he hunched his shoulders, face heating up in embarrassment. He flinched as Angela pinched his cheek, but it was too fast for him to move away. “No, we need a good name. One all my friends will love. Love, what do you think?” Victor looked up from his chair, unamused.

“I don’t see why we have to go through the bother of naming him.” He said, and The Sacrifice just stared at his feet.

“Aww, Victor, that’s no fun!” Angela exclaimed, looking over the Sacrifice, to his discomfort. “If you truly don’t care, I’ll pick one.” She thought for a moment. “I’ve got it! Kyler! It’s perfect, it’s trendy, it’s new... my friends will be so jealous!”

Kyler?? Kyler?? The Sacrifice opened his mouth to speak, anger getting in the way of self control. “That’s the stupidest name I’ve ever heard! I picked one, why don’t-” he was cut off by a sharp slap to his cheek. He brought a hand to his stinging face, shocked. It didn’t hurt that much, but it was surprising.

“Kyler, is that anyway to talk to me?? After all I’ve done?” He supposed she had a point. She did let him have a name, even though it wasn’t what he wanted... She continued. “So rude! Victor, will you teach Kyler some manners?” Victor stood from the table, looking at, well, he guessed he was Kyler now, with immense anger.

“Of course.” He strode over, grabbing his arm, tight enough to leave bruises.

“H-hey, ow!” He struggled against Victor, but he was far too weak.

“I’m gonna teach you to talk back to my wife like that!” Victor dragged him to what The Sacrifice assumed was their bedroom. Victor shoved him to the floor, grabbing a belt from his dresser. The Sacrifice looked at him in fear, mind flashing back to when the Elders used to torture him, to teach him how to be better. “You’re gonna learn your place, you brat!”

Learn his place. Yeah. He could do that. He closed his eyes, preparing for pain.

Tag list for Ex-Sacrifice: @theycomeinthrees

[roogerriffic]

Love to Hate - Chapter 1

A/N Thanks goes to @nicknchris09 for the story title!

I have lived in L.A for a few years now. I am a pastry chef that specialises in making celebration cakes. That’s my business. I have built up an unbelievable name for myself to the point where I’m booked out at least 6 months in advance. Majority of my customers want to spend 1000’s of dollars on a cake, and more often then not, my cakes are for high profile people. I worked hard to get where I am, my business used to struggle but I kept at it and it’s paid off. I have a handful of employees which without them I wouldn’t be able to take on anywhere near as much as I do. Even though they are my employees, we are all close and consider each other friends. They all think I’m annoying as hell to work for because I am a perfectionist right down to the tiniest detail. My best friend Laura has just graduated from college as a surgeon. She asked if she could live with me as she wanted to move to L.A to start her career. I was more than happy for her to live with me as I had just bought a huge house and I was living alone. When Laura moved in, she was surprised at the size of the house, it has everything. She laughed because I created a room at the back of the house especially so I can take my work home with me. I enjoy my work so much, I find it relaxing and just zone out. I refer to it as my cave. After Laura had been living with me for a week, she was utterly disgusted about how poorly I look after myself. I barely eat, I smoke and live off coffee and energy drinks and get very little sleep of a night. I quite often get lectures from her about my habits.

Laura is 2 years older than me, she sometimes acts more of a mother towards me which is annoying, but her reasoning is that someone has to do it because I’m a bit of a loose cannon. That’s her way of saying I don’t know when to keep my mouth shut, I speak my mind and if someone pisses me off, they know about it. She has also said that I have been single for far too long and she thinks a man will settle me down. Recently Laura has started bringing her boyfriend Justin, around. I hate him with a passion. Everything about him is just a stereotypical high school jock. Just pure arrogance. I have told Laura, she of course didn’t like hearing it. She also gets the shits with me when I outright ignore him or make smart ass remarks. It’s early in the morning, I’m just about to leave to go to work, Laura slowly appears out of her room, rubbing her eyes, half asleep still.

She says sounding groggy “Hey Ash, I heard you up, I just wanted to catch you before you go”

I ask “Why?”

She says “I’m having a couple of people around for dinner tonight, Justin is bringing a friend you might be interested in”

I shut her down completely “Already hate him, I’m going, goodbye”

I grab my keys and walk out the door. I am in the middle of a quick smoke break at work, I check my phone, I have a message from Laura “At least give this guy a chance, I have met him, he’s really sweet”

I don’t bother replying. I don’t even know why she is trying to set me up. It’s obvious that she has invited a few people around for the pure purpose of making this guy feel less awkward. It’s now 7pm, I’m still at work, totally engrossed with putting fine details on a cake. My phone rings, I know who it is without even looking at the caller ID, it’s Laura. I answer “Hey”

She’s pissed off “Don’t hey me, Ash, get your ass home now”

I ask “Why? I told you I already hate this guy, I’m not interested”

She snaps “What’s he done that’s so wrong? You haven’t even met him”

I reply “For a starters, he’s a friend of Justin’s, that alone is enough for me to hate him”

She sighs in frustration “Alright, just do it for me, please”

I ask “Why is this so important to you?”

She says “Because all you do is work, you always bring your work home and never get out, I think it will be nice for you to spend time with someone”

I sigh “Fine, but I’m not making any promises”

She gets excited “Thankyou, I will see you soon”

I have no intention of socialising, I bring work home with me to make sure I have an excuse to not socialise. I get home just after 7:30.

I walk inside and I’m instantly greeted with excitement from Laura “Hey Ash”

I look at her and raise an eyebrow and say “Hey”

The first thing I do is walk to the fridge, grab myself a can of energy drink, open it and start to walk outside not paying attention to anyone.

Laura stops me “Ash, I will introduce you to everyone”

I know they are all watching me, but I don’t care. I reply “I’m having a smoke first”

She gets stern “No you aren’t for two reasons, 1, it’s bad for you and 2, don’t be rude”

I say annoyed “Fine”

She introduces me to Shae and Kat, then she gestures over to Justin’s friend. I instantly recognise him. It’s Seth Macfarlane.

She says “And this is Justin’s friend…”

I cut her off “Yeah, yeah, it’s Seth, I know who he is, can I please have my smoke now?”

Justin isn’t impressed “Don’t be such a cow”

I tell him “I already hate him because he’s your friend”

I walk outside and light up a smoke. It’s instant relief. I hear the door open, I’m just waiting to hear Laura’s voice, but I don’t, It’s Seth’s voice I hear. “Tell me again why you hate me”

I reply “I hate Justin, and you are his friend, so therefore, I hate you”

He laughs in disbelief “Really, you are that shallow?”

I reply “Yep”

He shakes his head and say “Ok then, I have no words”

I tell him “Good, now fuck off back inside”

He walks back inside. I finish my smoke then down the rest of my energy drink in one mouthful before I head back inside. Once I’m back inside, I head straight into my cave and work. It’s my hideout spot where no one disturbs me. I’m in there for about half an hour, I hear a knock on the door, I don’t even get a chance to speak before the door opens. I don’t even look behind me to see who it is at the door.  I hear Laura’s voice. She asks “What is wrong with you?”

Totally engrossed in what I’m doing, I don’t pay any attention to her, I reply “I told you, I’m not interested in being set up with anyone”

She says “But you were an outright bitch”

I tell her “I was only speaking my mind, If that makes me a bitch, then so be it”

She asks “So you aren’t the slightest bit interested in Seth?”

She asked that question purely because I hadn’t looked up from what I was doing and haven’t realised Justin and Seth are with her.

I reply “He’s hot, but he’s also Justin’s friend. I would hate you too if you weren’t already my best friend”

Before she says anything else, I sigh with annoyance “Why did you come in here?” that’s when I look up and turn around to see Laura, Seth and Justin there. I glare at Laura. She knows that I don’t like anyone in here, and having Seth and Justin in here while I admitted that Seth was hot just infuriated me.

I snap “Just get the fuck out of here”

Laura smiles “You admitted that Seth is hot”

I throw a lump of fondant icing at her head. It hits her head, she immediately rubs the spot where it hit.

She smiles “Alright, alright, we are going now. FYI you aren’t going to live that down” They walk out and Laura shuts the door as she leaves. I focus on my work again. Not long after I start getting into it, there’s a knock at my door. Again.

I yell “What the fuck do you want?”

Laura says “Can you please come out and be sociable with everyone?”

I get up out of my chair, walk up and open the door.

I tell her “They aren’t my friends, they are your college friends and Seth is Justin’s friend, so to answer your question, hell no”

She says “I think you and Seth will actually like each other if you get to know each other”

I say flatly “Nope, not happening, I hate everyone and everything associated with Justin”

She rolls her eyes.

I tell her “I will be going out there to make myself a coffee and have a smoke, then I’m coming straight back in here”

I squeeze through the small space that’s inbetween her and the door and walk to the kitchen.

Seth sees me and says “You really are a bitch you know that?”

I laugh “You only just figured that out? Not exactly the sharpest tool in the shed are you?”

He hits back “I’m betting that you are on your period”

I warn him “Choose your next words wisely”

He laughs “Why? You didn’t like what I just said?  Well suck it up princess”

I reply “Put it this way, this is me not on my period, imagine what I’m like when I’m on it, I look forward to seeing your reaction”

Seth asks “You really think I’m worried?”

I finish making my coffee I say as I am walking outside “You’re a fucking knob if you aren’t worried”

I don’t give him a chance to say anything back. I just wanted a peaceful night. I’m really hoping I don’t see Seth ever again. I will be one very happy chick if I don’t see him again, but somehow I don’t think it will be the last I see of him. Laura and Justin are still in the honeymoon phase of their relationship and knowing Laura, she will want her friends to socialise with his friends so everyone is apart of one big happy fucking family.

Next Chapter   Masterlist

[culebral]

CHARACTER CHART.

Character’s full name.  Richard Gecko. Reason or meaning of name.   ‘Ric-’ is associated with old norse, german and english, meaning ruler, leader, king as ‘-hard’ meaning strong and brave tends to be respectively. Squish them together and you got yourself a name fit for a king, or a ’powerful leader’ in this case and…we all damn well know that a ‘Gecko’ is a lizard, lol. Reason for his name, though? Nope. Can’t even begin to imagine a Boozehound like Ray putting any sort of thought into his name and we all know his wife’s on the same train. They were probably watching Murder by Death and Dick Charleston came out like, ‘Jackpot’, half-ass their kid’s name on the spot cause one’s a drunk ass fuck and the other’s got one foot out the door, gettin’ ready to hotfoot it out there, lol. Character’s nickname: Dick, Rich, Richie, Richie Rich, Ricardo, Richardo, Four-eyes, Specs, Glasses, etc. Reason for nickname: Mostly shorthand versions of Richard and/or subtle, little prods at the fact he’s wearing glasses. He also gets a few choice names here and there cause he can be, as the name implies…a fucking ‘prick’. Birth date: 11 | 03 | 1987

PHYSICAL APPEARANCE.

Age. 30. How old does he/she appear.  Early to mid thirties. Due to change since he will in fact, age but only inwardly. Meaning he could be in his late fifties, sixties, and even eighties and he will still look early to mid thirties. Weight. 112.4 kg  ||  247 lbs. Height: 193 cm  ||  6′2. Body build. Beetroot. Rounded on top, wide shoulders, large chest, a tad bit of tummy ( just a tad ) with narrow-ish hips and legs. Shape of face. It’s both oblong long and round broad. Think of a square face but softer angles. The cheekbones are the widest part of his face and has a defined jaw. Eye color. Arctic blue that seemingly burn holes into whatever they’re affixed to. Glasses or contacts. Glasses. Skin tone.  Warm beige, leaning towards pale and oily as shit. Distinguishing marks. Little one just above his top lip, on the left. Predominant features. Piercing eyes, scowling 99.9% of the time, skyscraper tall. Hair color. Dark and sable as fuck. Type of hair. Has a lot of volume under the thirty pounds of cisco weighing it down. In short, though. It’s thick, straight, and very prone to get oily as shit quick.   Hairstyle. Frontal crest ( located at the crown part of the head ) is just a tad bit longer than the rest; usually well kept but the fringe gets in his face if not kept tame by pushing back with gel. hairline is narrow as shit. Voice: Low and guttural. Overall attractiveness.  He’s indifferent to it. Being as observant as he is, though…he does notice the way people react to it and can and will use a person’s attraction for his person gain. Unless you wanna be that guy he’ll toss aside like a used napkin once he’s done whipping his runny nose on ya, do try to be careful round this guy Physical disabilities. ��Pass. Usual fashion of dress. Black blazer, white collared shirt, black slacks with black metal capped oxfords. Favorite outfit. see above. Jewelry or accessories. Glasses, tie, watch, and a taurus judge ( if it counts ! )

PERSONALITY

Good personality traits.  Dedicated, intelligent, witty. Bad personality traits.  Reserved, overly ambitious, greedy, smart ass, bored easily, traitorous. Mood character is most often in.  Annoyed. Sense of humor.  Dark, absolutely not for the faint of heart. Character’s greatest joy in life. Improving himself. Character’s greatest fear.  Failure, being second best. Why? It’s peppered all over seasons one and two, I went in depth about this in a different post which I’ll definitely be linking once I find it! What single event would most throw this character’s life into complete turmoil?  Falling back into the bank robbing ditch and being unable to get out after all the ‘growing up’ he’s done. Character is most at ease when. Being alone, watching movies, driving through the night. Most ill at ease when.  Opening up. Enraged when.  People want to take the reigns or don’t acknowledge him. Depressed or sad when.  The train starts falling off the rails regarding anything he’s put his whole heart and soul into planning/doing. Priorities.  Himself. No one else, lol. Life philosophy. The world is a snake pit: people bite you if you don’t bite first. -s. two, e. nine. If granted one wish, it would be. to be on the top of the world for once. Why? cause he’s tired of his potential being overshadowed by his brother in this case but mostly for himself. May or may not want to show others on the side, especially those who doubted him and/or dubbed him as the dipshit portion of the Gecko sibling pair. Character’s soft spot.  Eating, watching movies, listening to music, driving. And dogs. Is this soft spot obvious to others?  Close others, yes. Greatest strength. Intelligence. Greatest vulnerability or weakness.  Greed, definitely. Biggest regret. Killing the innocent bank teller in s. one, e. three. Legit, I’ve yet to see this hard shell of a man be regretful with anything else but. Minor regret.  Leaving Seth to his /fate/ s. one, e. nine to go with Kisa/Santan after literally everything he’s done. Seth has been nothing more than selfless, trying to get his little brother to El Rey ( fake or not ) to get some peace of mind; jepordizing his ass all across Uncle Sam and he just straight up leaves his ass, lmao. Felt regret for like, six seconds but then figured he was doing all this improvement shit for himself mostly. Biggest accomplishment. S. two, e. eight. Snagging the keys to the mere fraction of an ancient mesoamerican kingdom. Still remember all the hate he got for it both inside and outside the fandom but c’mon. He may not have been in chains but he still always did resort to doing the shit people told him to do, first dad then Seth then San, he is ! !!!! d ONE. Wants to call the shots now. Minor accomplishment. Not being thoughtless, tbh. Past failures he/she would be embarrassed to have people know about. Hmmm. Why? I’ll get back to you. Character’s darkest secret.  It’s a secret. Does anyone else know? Who knows.

GOALS.

Drives and motivations. Seeing that cash flow, improving himself. Immediate goals. Not being the man his mother was. Or father wasn’t for that matter. Long term goals. See drives and motivations. How the character plans to accomplish these goals. See immediate goals, lol. How other characters will be affected. Depends on the character in question.

PAST.

Hometown. Kansas City, Kansas. Type of childhood. Lived in a nice house with a not so nice dad. Didn’t get the daylights beat out of his ass as much as Seth had but still had enough bandwidth for a steaming hot cup of emotional and verbal abuse, too. You’d think going to catholic school would be an escape but lol, no. Pets. A dog he, ironically enough…rescued from her captors once. Had her in chains all the time and he wanted to set her free, he was about…ten. Really smart kid. First memory. His brother lying in bed next to him. Most important childhood memory. Seth roughing up the bullies that used to pick on him at school, a headcanon I’ve been meaning to share with @thieved for the longest: hey kids, ever wonder how Seth Gecko became the ace fighter he is today? How despite, being somewhat small in size; he can still rough up guys two to three times his size? He used to fight off Richard’s bullies all the time! Why. Read above. Childhood hero. Definitely Seth. Dream job. An engineer. Education. Finished high school with amazing grades and a high GPA. Dropped out of university just before finishing due to a few things regarding his mental instability. Religion. Grew up Catholic, lost faith eventually. Finances. His dad was a boxman and despite landing pretty good scores every so often, he had a drinking problem and liked to spend his money on shit that’d eventually leave ‘em in below average conditions.

SNAGGED FROM THIS! 

[bettydgunter90]

066: Real Estate Investing in Portugal and Uganda – Nathan Amaral Explains How it Works

  Today we’re talking with Nathan Amaral of Fearless-Millionaire.com. Nathan is a real estate investor, podcaster, educator, coach and more!

I met Nathan several years ago and we’ve stayed connected over the years. What I find really intriguing about Nathan is that he primarily invests in countries outside the United States, namely Portugal and Uganda.

We wanted to get Nathan on the show to learn about what other opportunities there are outside the U.S. to learn how deals are found, how financing works and how things work outside of this comfortable bubble we have in the USA.

Portugal and Uganda are very different from each other, and both countries are very different from the United States, so I’m sure we’ll discover at least a few new things here.

Links and Resources

Fearless-Millionaire.com (Nathan’s website)

048: Investing in Belize Real Estate w/ Will Mitchell

Brian Tracy

Robert Kiyosaki

Tony Robbins

Jim Rohn

Compassion International (Sponsor a Child!)

The Beginner’s Deal Finding Guide

Share Your Thoughts

Leave a note in the comments section below!

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 joining me this week. Until next time!

Right-click here and “Save As” to download this episode to your computer.

Full Transcription

Seth: Hey there, tipsters. This is Seth and Jaren with the REtipster podcast and today we’re talking with Nathan Amaral. Nathan is a real estate investor, podcaster, educator, coach, and a lot more. I met Nathan several years ago now and we’ve stayed connected over the years. What I find really intriguing about Nathan is that he primarily invests in countries outside of the United States, namely Portugal, in Uganda of all places.

So, we wanted to get Nathan on the show to learn about what the real estate opportunities are there outside of the U.S. How are deals found, and how does financing work? And if we were to get out of this comfortable bubble we have in the U.S., what does that look like? Just personally, I know very little about how the outside world works once you leave this country. And I don’t know anybody who has done anything in Africa, outside of maybe South Africa. So, I’m sure we’re going to discover a lot of new interesting things here. With that, Nathan, how are you doing?

Nathan Amaral: I’m good man. Thanks, guys, for having me here. I do have a small cough. I was recovering from a cold, but everybody thinks, “Oh, do you have coronavirus?” But I’m doing well. I’m doing well. We are in this lockdown period here. We’re only supposed to leave our homes for that supermarket and stuff, but I have three kids. So, working from home is a little stressful. They are running around all the time. I’m actually here at one of my short-term rentals, which is empty. Right? That’s where are my offices during this time.

Seth: You are in Portugal right now, right?

Nathan Amaral: Yeah, I’m in Portugal. It’s actually just off the coast of Portugal. It’s these nine islands of the Azores. It’s the Hawaii of Europe. The Hawaii volcanic islands.

Jaren: And just some trivia information for our listeners there. My mom was adopted by a woman from the Azores, so I grew up calling my grandmother “Vovó”. That is so crazy. Small world.

Seth: So, do you speak Portuguese, Jaren?

Jaren:No, I know like one word, “Vovó”. That’s about it.

Seth: Well, I’m assuming, do you speak Portuguese, Nathan?

Nathan Amaral: I do. Yeah. I speak Portuguese. I understand it. I’m a citizen. I’m a Portuguese citizen.

Seth: Yeah. Okay, awesome. That’s actually one of the interesting things I want to dive into as we get further along is how important is it to actually speak the language in the place where you’re buying and selling real estate?

Nathan Amaral: Yeah, that’s a great question.

Seth: Anyway, we’ll get to that in a second. That kind of ties into much of the stuff we’re going to do. But anyway, just to kick this off, why Portugal and Uganda of all places in the world? Maybe you can explain your backstory and help us understand how you landed in those two countries.

Nathan Amaral: Okay. Well, I’ll kick it off in Portugal because one, yeah, it is my heritage. My parents immigrated to the United States. Most of my family immigrated to the United States in Massachusetts. But every year we would come to the Island of San Miguel in the Azores. Sometimes even twice a year. So, at a very young age, I was emotionally deeply rooted here, going into the fields with the cows and stopping on Sundays for picnics in the farmlands and stuff like that. And it’s beautiful scenery here. It’s just absolutely gorgeous. So that over the years, just stay with me. And then when I left the United States in 2013 and I moved to Uganda and as I was raising a family there, it was kind of like, “Okay, where’s the middle ground for me to reconnect with my family?” Because my family did go to Uganda for my wedding, but we needed a middle meeting ground. And so, it just works out. That right here is in the middle of the world. So, we meet here on the Island in Portugal.

Seth: Yeah. And you’ve got an interesting story about how you got connected with Uganda, right?

Jaren: I was about to say, man,

Seth: We can’t brush over that story out.

Jaren: Give us that story out. Come on.

Nathan Amaral: All right. I’ll give you the quick version because we’re talking like 18 years in the making. But about 18 years ago, my dad, God bless him, he’s a big believer “When you give, you shall receive”. He is a believer in the law of reciprocity. At 14 years old, I was a paperboy at the time. Have you guys ever been a paperboy? Paper counter?

Seth: Three and a half years right here.

Jaren: I’ve never done it.

Nathan Amaral: Never done it?

Jaren: I was a bum man growing up. I didn’t do anything. I didn’t get a real job until I was married. Legitimately, the only job I worked, after getting married I was short term part-time at Wendy’s and I lasted a month. I was a complete bum until I actually had to pay bills. I was a late bloomer.

Nathan Amaral: Well, one of the things that my dad taught me at a very young age was “Give and you shall receive”. We went to this local church and there was this group, this choir that came to the church. They would call the African Children’s Choir. They’re still in existence. They’ve been on Oprah. Will Smith supports them and all this stuff. Well, after they’re done singing their songs at the back table, there was a home study courses there to buy. At the back table, they had a whole table full of children’s pictures and you could sponsor a child. So, my dad said, “Well listen, this is what you’re going to do. You’re going to pay me $40 and I’m going to use my credit card and you’re going to pay me $40 every month on my card”. And I was like, what? Like I wasn’t too happy about this.

But anyway, he said, pick a child. So, I’m literally looking there at all these kids. And honestly you guys, I looked probably for the cutest girl on the table. That’s what I did. I’m just like a 14-year-old boy, right? So, I picked a child and we became pen pals. We wrote letters back and forth for a number of years. Just small talk, house school, and stuff like that. Well, when my pen pal, the girl I chose on the table that day, she turned 18, years go by. She turns 18, three letters come back in the mail to me from the organization. And I called them up. I’m like, hey, I got some letters back. And they’re like, “Oh yeah, your sponsor child has graduated. They’re done”. And I’m like, “Well, can I have her phone number? Her address?” They are like, “Oh no, for privacy reasons, we’re not allowed to do that”. So, we literally got disconnected for a number of years. This was before social media guys. So, years go by and Facebook comes out and she was actually searching for me on Facebook. She actually had this burning desire to thank me after all these years of helping cover school fees and stuff like that. So, she was looking me up on Nathan Amaral. There’s a bunch of Nathan Amaral’s in Brazil. Like a huge population.

So, she kept asking all these other Nathan’s. Finally, one day she gets me. And the interesting thing guys, listen to this, her name that I knew her by for privacy reasons was different than the one she was using. Basically, they call it a Christian name, it was the one I was associated with. And then her on her Facebook was her real name, her Uganda name. So, when this name comes up and she’s like, “Did you sponsor a girl?” I get a message, “Did you sponsor a girl in Uganda?” And I’m like, “Yes. Where is she? How do you know?” She’s like, “Nathan, it’s me”.

Seth: That is crazy man.

Nathan Amaral: Yeah, yeah, it was crazy. That was 2012. We had our first phone conversation, first video chat, all in a matter of a few months. And then in 2013, I decided to fly out there. I took a six-month sabbatical. I went there. But you guys are both married, right? So, when I hugged my sponsored child friend at the airport, I instantly knew that like “This is your wife”. I just had this instant, “This is it”. And I was like, “Whoa, wait a second”. I didn’t say that right away guys. The week goes by, I’m meeting her family, her friends, and all this stuff. And I just fell in love with the culture and the people and her family and her. And on the day before I left, I snuck away from her because we were together the whole time, I couldn’t get away from this girl. We were just together. She was my tour guide and my friend. On the day before I left, she went to go and get her hair done and all this stuff and I snuck away and I went to go buy her a ring. I met her in the Sheraton. There was a Sheraton Hotel gardens. And while I was there, I was basically telling her, I said, listen, if I leave this country and I go back to the U.S. we’re probably not going to see each other either ever again or many years from now when we have kids and families. And I said I know how I am. If I don’t commit to something right away, I am just going to move on. And I said I don’t want to do that without making a commitment today. So right there I got on one knee, pulled out a ring, asked her to marry me, and luckily, she said yes.

Jaren: Wow, that’s awesome.

Seth: How many times that has happened in the history of sponsored children? Where like a sponsor ends up marrying the child?

Nathan Amaral: It’s like, does that happen often? Right?

Seth: Yeah. I mean it almost seems like something they could make a movie out of it. It’s one of those stories.

Jaren: When I shared it with my wife, that’s exactly what she said. She legit started tearing up and she was like “That’s like a movie”.

Nathan Amaral: Yeah, I hear that all the time. I’m actually in talks right now with a famous actress that I pinned on Instagram. I don’t know how to make a movie like that, but I’m trying to do it because so many people have told me this should be a book or a movie. And I’m like, well, this is my personal private life. And then I thought about it, I said, you know what? If I bring awareness to what I did 18 years ago, it could be motivating for other people to give in return to help other kids that need sponsorships for school.

Seth: Yeah, that is actually pretty mind-blowing. There was a child in Guatemala that I sponsored through Compassion International back in 2003 I think is when I started. He got all the way through the system and he graduated and he found me on Facebook. It was crazy. I didn’t end up marrying him. It was pretty crazy just to realizing, this kid that I used to write letters for so long and we still don’t speak the same language. It’s like we rely a hundred percent on Facebook’s horrible translation service that they have. But it’s sort of this moment when you realize like, “Wow, this is a real person. This is an actual life”. You sort of realize that all along, but when you see them outside of the context of writing letters through the organization, it’s like, whoa, that’s really cool.

Nathan Amaral: That’s so cool Seth. I didn’t know that. That’s awesome. That’s awesome for you. Cool.

Seth: So, that is how you landed in Uganda, right?

Nathan Amaral: That’s how I got to Uganda. Yeah. And I was there for a year. I went back to the U.S. After those two weeks we went back home. I literally sold everything I had. I was living in Charlotte, North Carolina at the time. I moved to Uganda. And then 30 days after that, we were married. A few months after that we were pregnant. And now three kids later here I am.

Seth: Would Uganda in terms of investing in real estate there, would that even enter your radar if you didn’t have that connection there?

Nathan Amaral: No, it would never like honestly, even my friends were shocked with Africa. Like I was probably the guy who would never go to Africa. And the funny thing is, even though a lot of my previous ex-girlfriends were African American, I never would have thought I’m going to Africa. So, when I got there I was just like, wow. And then guys I did that, was that…?

Seth: Test ancestry?

Nathan Amaral: Test ancestry.

Jaren: 23 minutes.

Seth: Yeah, 23 minutes.

Nathan Amaral: It comes to find out there was a little bit of Congolese in my DNA and I was like, “Oh, that’s why”. Yeah, crazy. I was like, what?

Seth: Yeah, I can kind of see it when you say that.

Nathan Amaral: That’s funny. But Uganda was never on my radar for real estate. It never was. I was actually really surprised at how much growth there was when I got there. And when I started looking around, I was… I’m still impressed today how much growth there is in that country and so much land, so much undeveloped land. It’s funny.

Seth: Is that one of those African countries that’s like really good for farming actually? I’ve heard Ethiopia is like that. It’s like prime farmland.

Nathan Amaral: Yeah, because it’s on the equator the temperature it doesn’t get colder than 65. Okay, 60 maybe that’s a really cold, rainy day, but it’s usually 65 and it doesn’t get hotter than 85. So, it always has this warm climate. It’s really nice.

Seth: We kind of get the context of the countries then. So, in terms of real estate, just as a real estate investor, what was your foray into that? How did you decide? At what point in your life? “Hey, real estate. That’s going to be the thing”

Nathan Amaral: Yeah. Just rewind like maybe 13-15 years ago I started my hunt for real estate investing. The knowledge hunt and learning. A bunch of seminars. Two years of learning and doing nothing until I hired a coach kicked me in the butt. But it was the best thing I ever needed. And yeah, it cost me a lot of money, but that money turned into a lifestyle. The reality is, I started off wholesaling single-family houses, right in my few states that I was in Massachusetts, Rhode Island, and that area. I did that for two years. My coach told me to do this strategy for two years and don’t do anything else because there’s a lot of other strategies out there. So, I did that for two years. I did really well. I was doing four to five deals a month, a lot of motivated sellers at the time during that market. And after that, I got into apartment investing. I got hired by David Lindell. Some people know him in the apartment space. Do you know him?

Seth: Yeah.

Nathan Amaral: So, he’s actually having kids himself now. He’s raising a family so he’s not on the road so much. He actually hired me and I worked in his office for three years. Half the time I was working in his office, like building out a sales team and whatnot. And the other half of the time I traveled around the country with him as he would be speaking, I was his assistant. I just learned so much while I was there. I learned about apartments. A lot of the stuff I had learned previously was all single-family strategies. That going into the apartments I started investing at apartments and start expanding that portfolio and syndicating deals.

And then from there, the first time I actually started getting into let’s say a virtual investing was when I moved from Massachusetts to North Carolina. A buddy of mine over there was doing a whole bunch of business and he was already doing it. And so, I kind of adapted to that because it was very new to me. I started buying real estate remotely. Maybe the first one was like an hour and a half away, then it was three hours and then with the next state, that kind of thing. So, I started flipping houses and then buying houses, owner financed, creating older finance opportunities for other people. I buy all-cash, turn those into owner finance opportunities. But I’ll tell you what, Seth, when I started doing that virtual real estate investing, that’s when I knew I could live the lifestyle. I could be anywhere. Just a phone and a laptop and you’re good to go.

So that’s what really got me into that thing. That’s why it was a little easier for me to transition. After five, six years of doing virtual real estate, it was easy for me to transition to whether I was living in Uganda or Portugal. It was like, “Oh, I’m already doing this. It’s no problem”.

Jaren: So how did you go from investing in the States virtually to Portugal? What are you doing now? I’m assuming that when you were flipping houses, you’re not probably flipping houses now, right?

Nathan Amaral: No, not too often. Right now, flipping houses it’s a very saturated, very competitive market. Lower margins. I haven’t flipped a house in probably a year and a half. And that’s just because of the different strategies I’ve been doing. I have been doing a lot more owner finance properties by flipping some land, but mostly owner financing properties has been a primary for a number of years.

Jaren: But what about your short-term rentals? Because right now, I’m assuming you do Airbnb quite a bit in Portugal, right?

Nathan Amaral: Yeah. The short-term rentals started out again by building a base here in the Azores in Portugal. And that was like, okay, well, how can I have investment property even though I’m not here primarily but yet still generate some income? The whole short-term rental market was there because this is a tourism area. Portugal and these islands, 80% of their income comes from tourism. That’s really important here. So that started picking up. It was very easy to do that. But a lot of people ask me, “Well Nathan, how do you do short term rentals in Portugal and in Uganda?” By the way, I’ll tell you that in a second. And I do short term rentals in Uganda. How do you do that by traveling everywhere? Who is checking your people in? What’s happening, who’s managing your properties? And that’s very simple. A property management company I found through connections and networking. I found a good property management company here. They manage about 45 properties all over the Island. That wasn’t the first choice by the way. The first time it was this woman who was a cleaner and she was checking people in and out and that was okay.

But we eventually transitioned into a company, who had much more experience. So that’s where it’s been since now.

Jaren: So, dive into how it works. We want to get dive into both markets because they’re both kind of different, but they’re both outside of the United States. But in Portugal, let’s go granular a little bit and dive into how do you find deals? How do you get financing for deals? What is the attitude towards short term rentals? Because out here, depending on where you’re at, you might have to fight a little bit with the lenders or the local municipalities to be able to do short term rentals. What is the lay of the land look like in Portugal?

Nathan Amaral: Sure. And that was the transition by the way. Every country is going to be a little different when it comes to investing there. So, starting with Portugal, you have to get experienced with first the laws, what’s available. For example, here, there’s regulation in Europe. You have to have a fire extinguisher. You have to have placards that show where the exit is. You have to have, what do they call those? That’s fire mat that goes over the stove. You have to have certain railings. So, you have certain things. Also, you have to have a little plaque outside on the street or outside of the residence that says “local apartment” or “apartment local”. You have to go pay a tax for that. You have to go pay a fee, have it registered. So that’s a little different compared to the United States Airbnb system. And or especially even Uganda, it’s a little different as well. But here that’s a little different.

When it comes to finding properties, it is kind of similar. For example, not many people know this, but RE/MAX is here. Century 21 is here. They have a presence here. You can easily access the MLS per se, and data very easily through the government website and through their brokers.

Seth: One of the sorts of related questions to that. Given that there is an MLS system or something like that in Portugal, that makes me wonder just about access to owner information and that kind of thing. Is direct mail something you can do in Portugal? Can you get property ownership data and send out mailers or does it not work like that in Portugal?

Nathan Amaral: I would say this, Seth. What matters most about investing in different countries, most importantly is culture. It’s not about, I guess like there is direct mail here, but if someone got a letter in the mail about it, it’s probably not going to be so accepted. Just like for example in Uganda. Where there’s like literally no direct mail at all. So how would you run a direct mail campaign? It’s really about culture. You have to know what the culture is used to, what they’re comfortable with and what they accept. Here primarily the best way to get deals is through bankruptcies. Like foreclosures, REO’s

I’ll tell you some interesting parts about investing here in Portugal. There’s a lot of incentives. There are a lot of incentives and banks are very flexible with lending. As long as you have a job very similar to the United States. You have a job, you have a decent income, you can actually go to the bank, you can get a foreclosed property, you can get it with no money down. They will actually give you any money for rehab. Like if you need it to fix it up, they’ll give you the cash for that. And they’ll put it on a 40-year note.

Seth: Is that if you’re a Portuguese citizen or could somebody like a foreigner like myself do that?

Nathan Amaral: There is a little difference. If that’s for Portuguese citizen, by the way, also I want to mention the rates, Seth. The rates are typically under 2% normally. Like my buddy has a mortgage. Most of my friends who are here and family members, they have rates of 1.5%.

Seth: Gosh, that’s crazy. It’s like basically free, right?

Nathan Amaral: Yeah. And now listen, here’s the advantage with foreigners. By the way, I’m speaking from my own experience, but also Berkshire Hathaway talks a lot about Portugal as being a destination but also advantages for investors. Number one is the Golden Visa. Have you guys ever heard of the Golden Visa? The Golden Visa is an investment scheme that Portugal came up with where it gets investors to invest in Portugal and they can get a Visa which will last like five years and then they can go for their citizenship almost like instantly. Other countries, like for example, the United States, it takes like 10 years. There’s a lot of different barriers for different countries.

Well, Portugal has a very unique system with this Golden Visa, which it would take 350,000 euros in some deals. They have different levels, but the lowest one is 350,000 euros. You can buy a property as long as it’s older than 30 years and that needs rehab and it needs to be revitalized. All you need is to invest at a minimum of 350,000. There are other ones in between. The highest and easiest one is if you take a million euros, wire it to any Portuguese bank and leave it there for no set amount of time, you automatically get the Golden Visa. There are different advantages to that kind of program, and the different ones that fall under.

But there’s also some huge tax benefits to Portugal. One, there’s the non-habitual tax regime. There is also no inheritance tax. You guys are familiar with it. Then also there’s no, what they call that in the U.S.? They call it the wealth tax. When someone dies of a certain amount of net worth, there’s no tax on that. If one of your family members dies inheritance, you don’t get taxed on that. None of that. It’s not capital gains.

Actually, here’s the difference. There’s no capital gains tax here. Get this. When you buy a property, the person who’s buying has to pay the tax upfront.

Seth: Like sales tax almost?

Nathan Amaral: There’s a sales tax and there’s this. You have to pay all of the property tax upfront.

Seth: Is there no recurring annual property tax? There is just one?

Nathan Amaral: There is, but it’s an additional lump tag. There are different words for it, but it’s an additional lump sum of money. It’s a percentage, usually 0.08% of the purchase price that you have to pay at closing. You actually have to go pay the tax before you go to the bank. The taxes must be paid before you close.

Seth: Is that like a transfer tax sort of?

Nathan Amaral: It’s not a transfer tax. Portugal has quite a few unique taxes. It is a socialistic government. So, for example, health care, schools, all that is free. There are a lot of advantages if you lose your job. So, again, lower rates on mortgages and whatnot. The downside of that guys, guys like us, the entrepreneurial drive is not there so much. It’s kind of like, first of all, if you start a business, you have to have money. You have to have some good money, or you have to know someone who has money as a partner. No ones like rushing to go start a business like in the U.S. or in Uganda. Like people love starting businesses in Uganda. Those are some of the pros and cons there.

Seth: With those financing stuff you mentioned earlier, like the 2%- and 40-year term and all that stuff. Can a foreigner like me get that? Or I cannot get that? What’s to keep me from just saying, “Hey, I’ll go put a million dollars into Portugal, but I’m going to borrow all of it from Portugal at a low-interest rate”. Is that not something I can do?

Nathan Amaral: You can. The only thing is whenever you invest outside of the United States or in a different country, you have to do it in an entity. If you are not a citizen of that country, you have to do it in an accompany. Okay, so preliminary, you have to set up a company entity, typically what they call an LDA or limited company. You have to set those up first and then you can go and then you can get those rates in property and investments.

I’m just skimming the surface guys, but there’s actually incentives, let’s call it a stimulus. If an investor does that and set up a stock company, the government will actually fund your projects sometimes up to as high as 70%. Like literally they’ll help you. If you present the plan and the proposal, and I want to be clear, this is specifically for tourism. So, if you say, “Hey, I want to invest in Portugal, I want to open up a hotel, I want to open up some bungalows, short term rentals”. Whatever. Whether you want to buy the property, whether you want to build it. I’ll give you an example. A buddy of mine, he’s investing here. He’s buying a land, building a building and it’s going to be a bungalow. So, it’s 12 bungalows. The government’s going to pay for 60% of the project just because that’s what they offer.

Jaren: Well, Seth, it sounds like we need to quit what we’re doing and get some stuff going on in Portugal. Let’s go.

Seth: Sign me up.

Jaren: Let’s go.

Seth: What are the prices look like for properties in Portugal? I mean, maybe it’s probably different in Azures versus mainland Portugal.

Nathan Amaral: Right, exactly. Yeah. So, a lot of people know Lisbon as the main land and the main city. Of course, things in any capital’s is going to be more expensive. Properties here are still relatively affordable or cheaper, not to the locals anymore because this market is slowly taking up. Right now, for example, downtown, you can get a three bedroom for about 300,000 euros. That’s an apartment, guys. That’s an apartment condo. That’s a little expensive because you take the average property here, you can buy a single-family house, three-bedroom, two baths, just outside of the city. I would say if you’re looking at square footage, maybe like 1800 to let’s just say 2000 square feet, you’re probably looking at maybe 200,000 euros, 8180 that’s more retail.

The best thing to do is to buy that property through a bank foreclosure or something like that and you can get the property a lot cheaper under 150,000 euros. I’ll give you another example. A buddy of mine bought a property to live in. He bought it for 60,000 euros. He put in 100,000 euros and it’s worth, I want to say 290,000. Close to 300,000 euros. And it’s in the city.

Seth: Yeah. The exchange rate from the U.S. dollar to Euro as of today, assumption this is going to change a lot. What is the Euro? What does it? Do you know off the top of your head? I’m just trying to get a context for when you say like 200,000 euros, what does that actually mean in U.S. dollars? Is that like $400,000?

Nathan Amaral: No, no, no. So, it’s a little less than that. So, the Euro is stronger than the U.S. dollar. So, whenever I exchange money from the United States to Portugal, I lose money. And it’s typically right now like 92 cents. If you wanted one euro for me, I’m going to give you 92 cents. Does that make sense?

Seth: Yeah. I’m looking at it right now. It’s $1 U.S. dollars 92 Euro cents, whatever you call that.

Nathan Amaral: And that goes up and down. That goes up and down on a daily basis.

Seth: Now, I’m actually curious about this whole thing you were talking about earlier about how Portugal is a socialistic government and how people aren’t just rushing to start businesses. I’m wondering why if interest rates are cheap and if you can get such great terms if there’s money to be made, what is the reason for that? Or is everything just taken care of so people don’t have a need for that or what’s going on there?

Nathan Amaral: Well, not to get political, but we have Bernie Sanders, right? Which is “College is free and healthcare is free”. And that is very similar to here. Portugal is a socialistic country and is very similar to a “Bernie Sanders” type of way of place. When everything’s taken care of for you and I know there’s like different ways of thought about this when, unfortunately, some people do have to go on food stamps or welfare. If you’re not a hustler and you’re able to get that kind of treatment all the time, well, you can just settle, right? You can just kind of mellow out and be like, “Oh yeah, my food’s taken care of. I’m all set”. So, if you have that attitude and that environment, then that’s where it comes from.

Seth: Yeah. Do you think a socialistic atmosphere creates that kind of mindset where otherwise wouldn’t be? Because people that are like, “Well, if I have this option here and it’s nice, I might as well just go for that”. Or people who are naturally hustlers, they’re going to hustle no matter what, regardless of the environment they’re in. Maybe it depends on the person.

Nathan Amaral: That’s a great question. You’re absolutely right. Listen, the government is the overall authority. Are there hustlers in every country, in every regime? Absolutely. So, I have friends here. My good friend owns a 55 room or as they say in hotels, keys. A 55-key hotel. Okay. He’s a hustler. Him, his dad, his family. They just want another building. They’re going to expand it to 85. My business partner who I bought 26 apartments here and included in that is a commercial mixed-use space and the whole thing’s going to be in assisted living building. My tenant is my business partner and he’s a hustler. This guy is very well known on the Island, but he’s a hustler. So, in that unique situation with these 26 apartments that I’ve bought plus this commercial space, my tenant, he’s a motivator.

Listen to this. He was born in one of the other islands, came to this island for greener pastures per se, and it’s very green here by the way. It’s so green. This is his company. He owns the property management company. He calls it Green Vacation. My business partner is the one who runs the property management company and manages short-term rentals. It was almost like an easy fit when he said, “Hey, I have this idea, I’m interested in doing an assisted living project”. And at the time Seth, I was like “Assisted living?” I was in the hotels, I was already looking at hotels. I had offers on hotels and stuff like that. But after a while, these two hotel deals that I got, let’s just use the word snaked from to keep it light, eventually, my business partner ended up saying, “Hey, there’s a building over here. This would be good”.

So, we went to go look at it and yet ended up, we just purchased that last year. But the assisted living building opens up hopefully in June, hopefully. Now we got Covid. So, the set date was June. But anyway, so to answer that question, yes, I do believe there are hustlers in every country. The government does set the tone of that. Whether you’re a capitalistic country or a socialist and all that kind of stuff. But I still believe that if you hustle and you build relationships and you work hard, you can still make it.

Seth: Gotcha. And I know we sort of touched on this earlier, but in terms of the language barrier thing, so if I don’t speak a word of Portuguese, can I do this? Is there a way to make this work or do I really need to get some Rosetta Stone and learn myself?

Nathan Amaral: Right. You can do it. Actually, I know a lot of people who are investing here. There’s a lot of people from Germany and Switzerland a lot. There’s a lot of Swiss money coming in right now into Portugal. And they don’t speak a hoot of Portuguese. The good thing is the Portuguese people are very welcoming people. They’re very friendly to tourists and there’s a lot of people on the island who also provide services, who will either do translation or if they’re working in real estate for example, they more than likely speak English as a second language. My lawyer for example, speaks English as a second language. My property manager speaks English as a second language.

Seth: I gotcha. So, there is a way then.

Nathan Amaral: There is a way. If there is no way, use Google translate.

Jaren: It’s really intriguing. Once I get a little bit more establishment, I have to venture out into investing in places like the Azores because the fact that it’s sunny and ocean and an island vibe and both places I’ve walked away, I feel like until this Will Mitchell’s interview and we can link to that in the show notes. What’s that episode?

Seth: Episode 48 I believe.

Jaren: Yeah, it’ll be linked in the show notes below guys. But both this conversation and that conversation has left me like, “Huh, I really think that this is what I’m supposed to get into”. I love the idea of a short-term rentals. I love the idea of hotels and just investing in land and real estate that has intrinsic value. No matter what the government’s doing in Portugal, the Azores is always going to be an amazing place. Same thing with Belize. Same thing with the reason why I flip land in Florida. No matter what the heck is happening in the government, Florida is always going to be valuable. I don’t know, man. I just am sitting over here on the edge of my seat, extremely inspired to go take over the world.

Nathan Amaral: Jaren, let me tell you something. We’re looking at now a very unique situation in the world where people are being pushed into work from home situations, right? But before the COVID, look at what you guys were doing, look at what Seth was doing. Virtual was already in place, so if you start now, there are already people doing this. They’re not on stages, they’re not gurus. They’re quiet people. You don’t even know their names. There are already people investing here remotely. But the thing is we are like, I want to say we’re pioneers. If you start talking about it and you start doing it, then you end up becoming a pioneer to many other people. But I think in the near future, that more and more people are going to start investing globally. It’s becoming easier because the technology and blockchain in the near future, it’s going to become so much easier to do this than ever before.

I feel like I’m going in there earlier, but I have to get through all this hardship and there’s a lot of like paperwork and stuff like that, that somethings I don’t know, laws that you have to learn along the way. The way to navigate all that is find the best people in that area. I’m talking like my attorney is the best attorney on the island. Like no joke. Easy. He’s probably one of the best attorneys even in the continent of Portugal. Is he a little bit more expensive? Yes, but guess what? I don’t have to worry so much. I know we speak the same language. He also connects me to great people. Anyway, my point is that you can start now and I think there could be a lot more opportunities of investing outside of the United States as these avenues open up to people.

Jaren: I love it, man. Let’s transition a bit to Uganda because I’m sure the climate in Uganda is totally different than the climate in Portugal. And at least that’s my assumption.

Nathan Amaral: Yeah.

Jaren: So, lay the foundation for us in Uganda. What are you doing primarily as your investment strategy? What does financing look like? Where do you find deals? Is there something like the MLS there, all that stuff?

Nathan Amaral: Let’s do one of those at a time.

Jaren: One of those at the time.

Nathan Amaral: First of all, guys, let me tell you, I love living in booming areas. Okay? I love action. I don’t like slow markets. Actually, where I grew up, where I was born is a very slow-moving market. It’s so boring. Nothing’s going on there. When I got to Charlotte, I was like, “Whoa, this is the best city in the country”. Because it was just explosive growth. They were buying land, building apartments, buying land, building apartments. I’m like, wow, I’ve never seen so much growth. I never lived in an area with so much growth. Then when I got to Uganda I was like, “Holy smokes”. I thought Charlotte was booming. Just in my neighborhood in Uganda, there are over 20 apartment buildings being built. It’s insane. Just in my neighborhood. Then you go down into the city, they’re constructing brand new skyscrapers. It’s on another level. I mean it’s just fantastic.

Seth: Where’s all the economic growth coming from? Is there some huge industry booming in Uganda right now?

Nathan Amaral: There is a lot of industry. Uganda, Africa itself, the African Union is about to complete its union shift. There are the African Union and last year in 2019, they just finished signing I think 54 out of 56 signatures to become unified. So, in the near future, we might see the African Union with 55-56 states. Okay. So that’s in the works. China is heavily invested in. I’m just going to speak for Uganda. But China is heavily invested in Uganda. They’re building roads. They’re building trains. It’s on another level. A lot of that comes from manufacturing. I would say the tech industry it’s not like there’s a bunch of companies rushing there to build, tech companies moving there. However, one thing, Uganda is like more like China in regards to technology. Compared to the U.S. I feel like in the U.S. it’s about 10 years behind compared to China. For example, in China, there’s no cash. Like literally I think 2% of the population has cash. Everybody else uses WeChat on their profile and it’s all a cashless society. Very similar to Uganda. Everything is through what’s called mobile money. Mark Zuckerberg went to Kenya to learn how to do Facebook payments, which is coming out that new coin, I forgot the name of it, sorry guys. He went to Kenya to learn how they do it because Kenya was the founding country in all of Africa to do mobile money. So, this whole idea of sending money, buying things right from your phone. And I’m not talking through an app or website guys, I’m talking literally like a wallet on your phone. Apple just came out with that just a few years ago. This has already been existence in Uganda for many, many years. So, there’s a lot of things like that that are really impressive.

The taxes are really cheap. When you buy a property, you only pay the taxes one time at purchase. And it’s 1.5% of the value of that property. That’s it. You’re done. You don’t pay taxes ever again.

Seth: You’re talking about property taxes. So, what we normally pay every year here in the U.S. they pay a one-time there?

Nathan Amaral: One time. That’s it.

Seth: Wow.

Nathan Amaral: That’s an awesome thing.

Jaren: I see Seth taking notes there.

Seth: So, I guess governments just don’t draw any money from property taxes, right? They must have an income tax or sales tax or something else.

Nathan Amaral: Yeah. The sales tax, if I recall is 18% which is actually matching into Portugal. Portugal has an 18% tax on a sales tax.

Seth: That’s where money comes from.

Nathan Amaral: Yeah. There are other avenues like the government for example, remember how this Trump administration started creating tariffs for China about bringing stuff in, right?

Seth: Yeah.

Nathan Amaral: Well, that tax is already there in Uganda. To buy an iPhone in the U.S. it’s like whatever, $1,000, right? Let’s just say like an average. In Uganda, it’s like $3,000 because you got to pay all the tax. I’m inflating numbers here, but the tax is very high. So, to get good quality electronics in Uganda is very expensive. And it’s supposed to be because of tax.

Seth: Yeah. That’s actually, I think it was Barbados or some place. I remember going there and don’t quote me on that. It was some remote island, but the taxes to own a car is 150%. Like it’s insane. And as a result, nobody has cars or there’s like at the most one car per household because it’s just crazy expensive.

Nathan Amaral: Yeah, exactly. It’s like that. The biggest disparity in Uganda is the separation of barrier to income. You got big social gaps of economics. So, I lived in the city of Kampala, the capital. I lived just outside of the city. And the city is booming. I mean beautiful apartments, all this stuff and very quality buildings in material. I mean the buildings are amazing. The funny thing is 20 minutes’ drive outside of the city, you’re in a third world country. So, you can feel like you’re in a second, first world country. That’s a second world country living in the city. But as soon as you go outside of the city, you’re in a third world country where we’re talking mud houses or brick red houses, small huts and your water, your kitchen, all of that, your bathroom is all outside. So, it’s a little bit different of a type of environment in that regard.

When it goes to, banking in that country, for example, you want to go get a loan, your interest rate is like 18% on a minimum. However, the savings rate in Uganda is 13% – 14%. So, if you put your money in a savings account, you’re earning like 13% interest.

Seth: Wow.

Jaren: That’s awesome.

Seth: Why not just throw your money in there instead of the stock market?

Jaren: That’s even like real estate investors that are like trying… What?! That’s awesome.

Seth: What’s the catch?

Nathan Amaral: What’s the catch? Right. One of the things is you cannot. They do not allow foreigners to wire money and let the money sit there just to earn interest. So, there is some regulation to that.

Jaren: Oh, man.

Seth: Ugandans have everything, man.

Jaren: Well, what about finding deals though, man? How do you find? Do they have an MLS?

Nathan Amaral: Oh, my gosh, no. This stuff is really crazy. So, there is no MLS. They have what’s called GG which is Craigslist. It’s like a Craigslist, they call it GG, which is an online platform for classified ads. That is very popular and everything else guys is a sign or word of mouth. That’s it. Word of mouth. There is no MLS. Now there is a way to go into the search. They’re getting better at this because, for a long period of time, Uganda is broken down into a few kingdoms. It’s not like you go get a title and it’s owned by the government. That kind of thing. It’s actually a kingdom. So, they’re actually now breaking up the kingdoms and dispersing titles and creating new titles, let’s put it that way. So, in the mix of that, there’s been a lot of “Who bought this land? Oh, I bought this land. No, you didn’t. I’m on title, what title do you have?” A lot of confusion. So that’s not everywhere, but it’s in some districts of where it is. But while I’ve been there, I’ve been buying up some way up myself.

Seth: Yeah. That’s actually one of the ongoing concerns I’ve heard about. I don’t know about Uganda specifically, but in a lot of third world countries buying up real estate at all, it’s a big deal if the government respects property rights. Does it actually mean something if your name is written on the title or could it just get wiped out tomorrow when the government’s overthrown and you lose everything? Is it a pretty solid title system in Uganda?

Nathan Amaral: Yeah, I think what’s important is to always look at the stability of the government and military security. Uganda is a safe haven for many refugees. That is first a good sign of this stability. Very strong military. There are people from Somalia, South Sudan, Tanzania that have come in for refugee purposes, especially Somalia because they’re having civil war. So, they’re very secure in that aspect. Now when it comes to property rights and all that stuff, yes, they do care about that and it’s very protected. I would be careful with countries that are going through war. Whether it was, let’s say Afghanistan or Somalia. You do have to be careful with those kinds of countries. And again, would you be wanting to invest there? Is it a short-term thing, a long-term thing and why are you investing there? That’s really the things you have to consider.

Seth: Yeah. So, if your goal is to find deals below market value in Uganda, what is an effective strategy for doing that? Because like you said, direct mail doesn’t exist there and there is no MLS system. So, how would you go about finding somebody who is a motivated seller?

Nathan Amaral: Well, that’s a great question. And in Uganda, I find there’s a lot of motivated sellers. There’s a lot of boatloads because of economics, right? So, I’ll give you an example. Sometimes people will sell acres and acres of land just to pay for their kids’ school fees. Uganda has a very different unique education system. There is free education, but it is very bad. So, in order for your kids to get a good education, you’re going to pay for a boarding school or you are going to pay for private school. There are more private schools than there are 7-Eleven. Let’s put it out like you know there’s like convenience stores everywhere in the United States. I mean there is private schools everywhere and Uganda. There are a lot of hardship. When someone goes through hardship and they need money to keep their kids in school because they know education is so important that they’ll sell their land, they’ll sell their house to keep their kids in school. So, you have a lot of that. Then you have your health issues and all that kind of stuff. Like people selling, they went to the hospital, whatever.

Divorce is not a big thing. So, going to a lawyer and trying to get divorced leads and stuff like that it’s not common. Probate, not too common. Honestly, I said the most motivated sellers you’re going to get is some economical or financial stress. That’s probably the biggest motivated seller you’re going to get. And that’s actually how we get most of our deals. We get most of our deals that way there.

Seth: What is your primary strategy in Uganda specifically?

Nathan Amaral: Yes, we’ve been doing two strategies. We’ve been doing land and we’ve been doing short term rentals. Uganda has a very busy short-term rental market. And here’s the powerful thing and it’s just phenomenal. You can literally do a sublease in Uganda. You could do a sublease and you can literally three times your money for that rental.

Seth: That’s when you do a normal lease from just the owner and then you sublease the property to somebody else, but you do it at much higher rates so that you can… Did you say triple your money?

Nathan Amaral: You can literally triple your money. Yeah, you can triple your money. I know people who are literally renting houses for $800 a month and they are making $3,000 in more a month. It’s unique. There’s a lot of people from Australia, the UK, Europe, China who are coming to Uganda for an investment opportunity, and when they stayed there, there is a big mindset. Okay, here’s Nathan. How are these people paying this amount of money for these rentals? There’s a big fear in Uganda from foreigners that when they come to Uganda that they’re unsafe. Like I want to be in a safe, secure area. Well, guess what? The locals play on that. They play on that fear. They increase their prices. The reality is they’re living in the same neighborhoods that are fine. They’re normal neighborhoods, but they hike up the prices because a lot of foreigners think, “Oh no, I’m in Uganda, I’m in a foreign country. Something’s going to happen to me”. So, they pay more for a more secure place. But the reality is it’s not.

I don’t live in those areas. I don’t live in those tourist areas. All my neighbors are Ugandan and the rent we pay literally is a $270 a month. All included $300 a month. And I’m talking, I got a nice place, man. This is like, it’s got grass. It’s a huge yard, great place for my kids to play. Super safe. We have a security guard all the time. It’s a little different too. I say security guard, but he’s also a gatekeeper. So, for example, you know-how in the United States or wherever you have an automated garage door opener? They don’t have that. They have basically people will open up the door. It’s a person. That’s all they do. Yeah. So, talk about job growth.

Seth: Seriously? Can’t they just install a garage door opener or wouldn’t it be cheaper?

Nathan Amaral: Yeah, well, I mean they could but then Uganda for example, I’ll give you an example. They just started installing toll boosts and they had a big decision to make. Should we make it technology? They had like a bunch of new toll boosts coming in because they got all these roads coming in. So, should we do it with computers or should we do it with people? They actually chose people.

Seth: Whoa, seriously?

Nathan Amaral: Yes.

Seth: Interesting.

Nathan Amaral: That was a big decision. There were people fighting like “No, let’s do digital tags”. And they have the technology for it. They said no because they know they’re going to an employee like thousands of more people. And what they need most now is jobs. The interesting thing is the middle class is on the rise in Uganda. It’s on the rise. More and more people are buying cars. More people are buying homes. It’s on the rise. They’re now doing 30-year mortgages. That’s never been done before. They do want 100% financing. That’s never been done before.

Seth: That’s interesting that there’s such economic growth there. Yet there’s still such a huge need for such low paying jobs. It’s almost there’s maybe like two separate categories of workers there. Maybe there’s like the high-end middle-upper class and then there are the ultra-low class ones. I don’t know.

Nathan Amaral: Yeah, there are definitely three levels. There are three levels. We got high-, middle- and low-income earners. The reality is though, when we talk about poverty in the United States, you could think of a homeless person or someone living in the projects or low-income housing. However, when we talk low income in Uganda it’s below low-income housing.

Seth: It’s a different level of poverty.

Nathan Amaral: Yeah. It’s dirt floors. No electric, no light bulbs in their house. It’s just on a whole another level. And by the way, guys, if you ever want to come here or you ever want to go to Uganda, just let me know. Some of our buddies in the business have flown out there and we’d spend time together. So, if you ever want to go, just let me know. I’ll hook you up.

Jaren: Let’s talk about currency for a minute. What does it look like in Uganda? Because in Portugal it’s euros. I know my wife is from Kazakhstan and if anything is done, that is a big purchase, whether it’s a car or house or something like that, it’s done in U.S. dollars. Is that similar in Uganda? What’s it like there?

Nathan Amaral: Yeah, so right now the exchange rate I believe is $1 U.S. and you get 3700 Ugandan shillings. So, what does that mean? Okay, so let’s take this. You tell me guys, it’s been a while. How much would this bottle of water cost? This is 1.5 liters. So how much do you think it would cost in the U.S. right?

Jaren: $2 to $3.

Nathan Amaral: That’s right. $2 to $3. Here in Portugal, these costs probably like 80 cents. In Uganda, this costs 25 cents.

Seth: Like 25 cents in U.S. dollars. Not in the local currency.

Nathan Amaral: Yeah. In Ugandan shilling that would be 1,000 shillings.

Seth: So, your money can actually go pretty far in Uganda if you wanted to retire there.

Nathan Amaral: Right. It does go very far. My long-term plan is we’re creating opportunities for our family and giving them the opportunity to have options in the future. I’d love my children to go to some school in Europe and get very well educated in the future. But retirement, it could either be here or Uganda. You could go a long way. Your money goes a long way in Uganda.

Seth: Now when it comes to finding tenants and screening tenants, I guess you don’t even really mess with that, right? Because you’re doing short term rentals. Is it all through Airbnb and handle on that platform?

Nathan Amaral: Yeah, it’s two platforms. In Portugal, I do have my property manager. So, in Uganda, I use two platforms. I use Airbnb and I use booking.com. Those are the two primary ones. And it’s kind of interesting. Booking.com does better in Portugal than Airbnb. That’s because the demographic that uses booking.com and then Airbnb does way better in Uganda than it does booking.com. I do have a property manager in Uganda and he actually manages everything. He even gets me, clients, outside of Airbnb and booking.com. So, he does the check-in, he manages everything from checking, checkout, cleaning, any issues that come up. I have a property manager. And that’s how you have to be when you go remote and you go virtual, you have to have the teams, you have to hire people.

Seth: Are you subleasing all these properties or do you like literally own these properties that you use in as short-term rentals?

Nathan Amaral: So, in Uganda, not Portugal, Portugal I own. But in Uganda, the land we’ve been buying is owned. Okay. Now the short-term rentals, I wanted to try the whole subleasing method that I heard some time ago and all these guys online doing it. So, I was like, let’s do it. So actually, all of them have been subleased. All those short-term rentals.

Seth: And that’s all going okay? Is there anything about that’s unexpectedly challenging?

Jaren: Especially in the time of COVID and all of that.

Nathan Amaral: Oh, so they’re all empty right now. Yeah, all of them are empty. But this is what we’ve done. We have shifted all our short-term rentals and shifted them into long-term rentals. So, we have to reduce our prices. They are fully furnished apartments. So, we do have the furniture, we provide the furniture. So, we’ve increased the price a little bit and everything’s long-term. I don’t have a problem right now signing six months or even one-year leases right now because I don’t expect this to come back anytime soon.

Jaren: So how do you find tenants then? How do you screen tenants in Uganda?

Nathan Amaral: Yeah, good question. There’s no like online search you can do a credit check and all that stuff. There’s none of that. So, you basically would ask them, “What do they do? How long they’ve been working there?” And you kind of want to find some simple things like “Do they have a car?” Primarily the properties that I pick up are for middle-class individuals. They’re middle-class people. I identify some key factors. I like to find people who have a car. If they have a car, I know they have a steady job. If they don’t have a car and they are using public transportation, they probably could lose their job pretty quickly.

Seth: And when it comes to finding a good property manager or contractor or anybody like that, I mean super important path like you alluded to earlier. So, you just take references or something? Or is it a similar process to how you do it here in the U.S.? You just find reputable sources and say, “Yeah, this is a good gem, work with him.” Or how do you do that?

Nathan Amaral: That’s a great question, Seth. Seth, my philosophy to this hasn’t changed even before I was investing before the internet what it is today. My philosophy and my method haven’t changed since I started and that’s getting good referrals. So, I’m not the one to go onto like HomeAdvisor and I’m nothing against HomeAdvisor by the way or Craigslist and all that stuff. I’m not into that. I’m more into contacting great people in great areas and asking them for referrals. Great people. I have to really find out who’s doing well in that area. When I found my property manager here as I said, he was a referral from my friend who owns a hotel and I trust him. And guess what? It’s been a great relationship ever since. Now we’re doing the assisted living project. In Uganda, it was getting a referral from someone I trusted. He gave me the referral. I monitored. I gave him a few tasks. He was very well done, so I like to test people also after I get a referral. Give him a little bit, see how they do, and then if they perform well, then you keep going. Just like you would if you’re hiring, let’s say a VA. Test them out first. See how they do. Hire experience, don’t hire potential.

Jaren: I like that.

Nathan Amaral: Hire experience, do not hire potential. Seth, I just want to add this because I know your audience, everybody’s doing stuff virtually, right? A lot of people, when they think about hiring a virtual assistant or someone in a different country to do work for them, I think one of the most important things to realize or to find is someone who’s already doing this every day, doing that task over and over again for somebody else. They’re already doing it every day. It’s already natural to them. A lot of people get stuck and they think, “Oh, I have to train my VA. So, I need to learn this first”. – No. Watch you learn stuff from your own VA. Get someone who’s more knowledge, who knows specific things a little better than you do maybe. There have been times one of my VA’s is George. I mean he’s really smart. I’m like, “Wow, George, good job man. That’s awesome”. I mean that’s what you want to get to.

Seth: Yeah, I gotcha. Now I know this is totally coming from a place of ignorance. I don’t know the situation, but when I think of Uganda, I wonder is there a lot of corruption in that kind of country? Is there a lot of fly by night people? Like when I think of working in Mexico for example, I would probably think of a very similar thing. Whether or not that’s true, I don’t even know. I just, that’s what I think. Is that accurate or is that totally off base? And if it is accurate, how big of a problem is that?

Nathan Amaral: That’s a great question. And I truly believe corruption is everywhere because we’re all humans. Do you know what’s interesting? I was actually doing trainings in Uganda for major companies. I’d only do real estate but I’ve been a trainer for many years and coaching and all that stuff. So, I’ve actually partnered with a company there in Uganda and I started training. I trained Coca-Cola, Uganda. I’ve trained the biggest insurance companies in Uganda. And one of the trainings that I did in Uganda, I trained some of the top companies about bribery and corruption. Now let me tell you something interesting about this because it wasn’t on my radar years ago. Bribery and corruption can be easily defined as even networking. Go look it up. Networking can even be defined. It’s actually defined under corruption and bribery. Because you’re trying to build yourself up. I’m like, “How does that even include it?”

But anyway, my point is in different countries, corruption is defined in different ways. I truly believe in the United States, for example, corruption is legalized through lobbying. There are different countries that are going to do different things. I’ve even been told like for example, this is something I do and maybe you’ve done this before. When my title company or my attorney, we close a deal quickly, I send them an Amazon gift card. That’s considered corruption. And I’m like, “What?” If you dive deep and even in some countries, they’re like, “You do that, they’re going to favor you next time”. And I’m like, “Well, yeah, that’s the idea”. So, it’s a gratitude and favoritism, right? When you’re trying to close deals, great. But again, this is a great area to answer your question, Seth, the reality is you don’t want to get corruption to a point where people are totally breaking the law and there are things being done that are not legal, ethical, moral to a point where it’s just the Wild West. So, I get that.

Now, is that more prevalent in some countries than others? Yes. I found in Uganda, I would say that there’s a lot of the mindset, I think of Robert Kiyosaki whenever I hear this. But there’s a lot of the mindset of, because there’s a lot of more people there that they always feel that the wealthy are rich and they’ll always be rich. Does that make sense? So, they start talking about corruption much more often. Like, “Oh, they’re only wealthy because their family’s wealthy or they cheated people”. There’s a lot of talk like that.

However, as I told you earlier in Uganda, they’re a capitalistic society. They’re a democracy. Everybody wants to start a business. It’s impressive. It’s shocking actually. I’ve been so impressed with how many Ugandans want to make it on their own and start their business. They’re full of ideas. Corruption is something that’s a very difficult topic, but I don’t find it as prevalent as I guess the media puts it out to be.

Seth: Gotcha. It really is kind of relative too, how you define corruption and who you point fingers at. And I agree it’s much easier to call a person corrupt when you’re not the person who’s in the place of privilege.

Nathan Amaral: Right, right.

Seth: So, one last question on Uganda. Similar question to Portugal. The language barrier thing. How hard is that if you don’t speak… What language is it in Uganda?

Nathan Amaral: There are actually 54 languages in Uganda.

Seth: That’s awful.

Nathan Amaral: Yeah. A lot of them are tribal-based. The primary language in Uganda is called Luganda with an “L”. It’s the primary language. Yes, I do speak Luganda. I started learning it, hired a trainer, and took classes and all that kind of stuff. So, I do speak Luganda. However, Uganda was colonized by the British. So, the second language is English. So, you literally can go anywhere and talk English and most people know it.

Seth: Sweet. Well Nathan, I really appreciate everything you’ve been sharing. It’s been awesome to talk with you here.

Jaren: It’s been very, very intriguing.

Seth: Yeah, I’ve been loving it. As we kind of near the end of this, we have three exit interview questions that we ask of all our guests. Just kind of unrelated to all the stuff we’ve been talking about. Just to figure out more about, how you work, how your brain works, how you think through things. Our first question is what is your biggest fear?

Nathan Amaral: Oh, my gosh. What is my biggest fear?

Seth: No big deal. Don’t sweat it.

Nathan Amaral: No big deal because I only have a brand that’s based around fear. I would say, I’ll tell you this, it’s a great question. My fears are not business-related, by the way. First of all, I’m a big believer that everything I manage is God-given. Like that’s one of the things I believe. So, if I’m partly in a position and I’m doing something operating, it’s because it’s been given to me to manage, to grow, to operate in.

When it comes to business, I really don’t fear. And if I’m in a fear position in business, it’s because I’m not adding enough value. I would say the biggest fear I have right now is my son falling off the table. Like it’s been on my mind. He’s now climbing, he’s 11 months and he’s climbing up on the table. I just fear him like falling off the table and knocking himself out.

Seth: I totally get that. My son is now three, so he’s sorts of out of that. But man, there were months there and he did like bashes tooth then at one point and it’s horrible. So, I wish you all the best.

Jaren: I literally bought a playpen this morning because my one-year-old, he just turned one year old last month. He’s very much crawling and he’s like in that spot right when he’s about to start walking. So, like he’ll take a few steps and then like just hit the deck man. So, my anxiety is very high too, bro. I feel you.

Nathan Amaral: So, my son started walking at 10 months. He’s now climbing a table. That’s the size of my knee. I got videos. I’ll send it to you guys. He’s climbing up and he’s touching the TV and I’m thinking, “My God, this kid’s going to knock the TV over and it’s going to be crazy”. So in regards to that guys, I can’t say I have any other fears that are there. I love horror movies. I love horror movies because I’m into film. I love a good horror movie, but anyway, I’m not scared of it.

Seth: What’s your favorite one?

Nathan Amaral: Oh, my gosh. My favorite series is Paranormal Activity because they take everyday life and it’s like, “Oh, that could have happened”. Where the other ones are kind of like, I don’t know a little bit made up. But Paranormal Activity is very well done.

Seth: Yeah man. I remember seeing the first one in the theater by myself, which is a very foolish decision. But there is something about that particular topic. Maybe if you’re one who believes in spiritual warfare, maybe it seems more relevant, which I am one who happens to believe in that. But like a lot of horror movies, as you say, it’s like, “Whatever, just stay away. This has never actually happened”. But there’s something about that really kind of hits close to home.

Nathan Amaral: Except I have a similar belief and I’ll tell you what though. I have a stronger belief about this and myself is this – If you believe in ghosts, you’re going to see ghosts. That’s what I believe. And I don’t believe in ghosts. I don’t believe I’m going to see a spirit or something like that. So, guess what? I live my life like, “No, that’s not even going to happen to me”. It’s not even a thought because I don’t believe it. What you believe is what you’re going to end up perceiving. But I truly love it when it comes to filmmaking and all that. I love pushing fear because I grew up a very shy guy and I grew up with pushing that button. My coaches have always had to push me over that barrier, especially getting into real estate to push me to get over my fears.

I love today grabbing fear and say, “You don’t have a hold of me. You have no control.”? I love dancing with fear. I love to be in that. And I’m not saying I walk down dark alleys. That doesn’t freak me out or anything. But my point is when I watch a movie, it takes me there mentally and it’s like, “Oh yeah, alright”. But I enjoyed the cinematic of it.

Jaren: Yeah. Both me and Seth are videographers in our hearts. So, what’s something that you’re most proud of?

Nathan Amaral: Most proud of?

Jaren: And we’ll give you a pass. You don’t have to say being on the REtipster podcast. We already know.

Nathan Amaral: Oh yeah. Well, it does have to do with being on the podcast though. I would say the most thing I’m personally proud of outside of my family, having a family and kids and all that, and that’s an amazing experience. The most thing I’m proud of personally is my business of helping people overcome, stepping from fear to faith, and helping people discover and have these mental barriers and break through them. That’s probably been the biggest thing. The most thing I’m proud of is when I have someone that says, “Nathan, you helped me overcome this. And now I’ve done deals, I’ve made money, I’ve increased my lifestyle”. That to me is the most thing I’m proud of. My client’s success is what I’m most proud of.

Seth: Yeah, that is a pretty cool thing. Especially when you’ve been on the other end of that and you know what it’s like to have those “a-ha” moments or realize you’re capable of more than you thought you were. You kind of realize the magic of that. But then when you can flip it around and realize like, “Hey, I was able to do that for somebody else”. That’s really an amazing thing to be able to work at in your life.

Nathan Amaral: It is. Absolutely.

Seth: So, what is the most important lesson you have ever learned?

Nathan Amaral: Oh, my gosh. Really? Life lessons. Oh, my goodness. Okay. The one that comes to mind right now because of your previous question, is my buddy Dave Seymour, he’s a real estate guy. He’s been on the TV show “Flipping Boston”. I remember this is when he was smoking. He doesn’t smoke anymore. But when he was smoking, we were outside on the deck and he was smoking and we were talking about this product that I was coming out with and I was selling it for really cheap, like $149 and I’ll never forget this. I was going to go speak at the New York Rhea group in Brooklyn. This was two weeks before that. And I said, “I’m a little nervous. I don’t know if people are going to buy my product and is this $149 too expensive?” And he turned around and he looked at me and he poked me right in the chest and he’s from England by the way. So, he’s poking me in the chest and speaking with me in that British accent. “If you don’t raise your bleeping price, I am never going to talk to you again”. And I was like, why? He’s like, “Because you are worth it. What you’ve put into that training is so valuable and you’re worth more than that”. Okay, one last thing that he told me. I went to Jim Rowan’s funeral. You guys familiar with Jim Rowan?

Seth: Really? No kidding?

Nathan Amaral: Yeah. He used to be my mentor.

Seth: Are you serious?

Nathan Amaral: I used most of his coaching programs. Yeah. Yeah.

Seth: That’s crazy, man.

Nathan Amaral: Yeah. I went to his funeral. My buddy Dave went with me again. We were traveling. We went to the funeral. Guys, I was so excited to meet Brian Tracy. I’m sorry. I was just like a fanboy. I was like, “Brian Tracy is going to be there. Brian Tracy is going to be there”. So, I was looking for him everywhere and my buddy Dave could see that I was like really a fanboy about this. All of a sudden, I see him with his assistant going up the escalator and I’m like, “Dave, I’ll be back”. So, I started running. He stops me. He grabs me by the collar and pulls me and he says, “Look at me. Look at me. Everyone in this world, their pants go to their ankles”. And I’m like, “What?” This is how he is. He’s like, “Everyone’s pants go to their ankles. You don’t need to fanboy that guy because you are better than him”. He said, “You know the only differences between you and him?” I was like, “Gosh, 21 published books? All this experience?” And he’s like, “No, no, no. You haven’t started yet. You haven’t started. The problem is he’s already been doing this for 30 years. You need to get started”. And I was like, “Wow”. He’s like, everything that you have within you just needs to come out and you just haven’t let it out yet. So, guys, I know that’s a long answer, but there are two valuable points there. Number one, the most valuable lesson I learned was that “I am worth more than what I think I am”. As long as I’m adding value to people’s lives. And number two is that once you change your mind and start believing that you’re providing value and that you are worth more than you can command more, you can now say, “You know what? My prices are this much, this property is this much”. And you can start commanding more for your life. And when you do that, your wealth increases. So those were probably the most valuable lessons I’ve ever learned.

Seth: Yeah, those are pretty profound. I am curious though, just to be the devil’s advocate. What if you had increased your price to some just crazy number and then nobody bought it? And the feedback you got was “It’s too expensive. I don’t think it’s worth it”? Would you have assumed, “Okay, I guess I’m wrong, I guess I’m not worth that much”? Or how would you mentally process that if that was the response from the market?

Nathan Amaral: Well, I’ll tell you what, I did exactly that. Let me tell you because I grew up in the seminar industry, I saw prices of products that were like over $100,000 for seminars and all this stuff. So, one day, I’m not kidding you. I raised my price on one of my programs to $97,000. I’m not kidding you, Seth. I raised it. And you know what? A few people call me. One guy was in Massachusetts, actually, I was with my buddy Dave. He drove from New York City with his business partner to Massachusetts to meet me, just to interview me to understand why I was charging $97,000. And I had another buddy of mine with me there at the time and we just did the whole interview in someone’s yard. We were at a rehab project and I explained to him. What I learned at that moment, he didn’t buy, he wasn’t my customer. Did you know what happened though? I held my price and guess what? The right customers did show up. Seth, listen, another thing I’m proud of is I’ve had clients pay me over a $100,000. Not in one shot, maybe it was in six months or a six-month contract or a one-year contract, but I have clients paid me because I know the value that I brought and the amount of money that I’ve made my clients. Does that make sense?

Seth: Yeah, for sure.

Nathan Amaral: I know that if you have a price that’s higher, it’s okay. I’ll give you one last example. The example I always give to people is this. You know like fitness coaches are really prevalent in the world, right? If you’re a fitness coach and you charge $25 an hour, right? Some people are going to think that’s too cheap. Some people are going to be like “Wow, $25?”. So, if you’re marketing to celebrities and they looking for a personal trainer and a coach, if they look at $25, they’re going to be like, “That’s too cheap. I’m looking at $300 or $500 an hour. That’s how much I pay my personal coach”. So, to some people, your price is too cheap and its low quality. And to other people it’s too high, right? So, you have to know your audience. You have to know who your target market is. One thing I learned from my buddy Dave, is that premium pricing. And I actually learned this from Dan Kennedy as well. I learned from Dan Kennedy premium pricing and marketing to the affluent and how to do that. So again, that was another thing I learned over the years. And I hope that answers your question because it really comes down to mindset and scaling up.

Seth: It is interesting that no matter what price you choose, like anything, somebody out there is going to judge you for that. Either you’re too cheap or you’re too expensive. So, it’s like, “Well, just stick your flag somewhere”.

Jaren: And something that I’ve noticed kind of being around, I don’t think that we’ve had a price change since I’ve been here in the land course. But I knew you when you have upped your prices on the land master class. It’s funny man. It’s weird. I know from your feedback and from other people that I’ve talked to, it’s this weird thing. When your product is price relatively low, the people that it attracts complain and want refunds and there are headaches. But it’s almost like the more you charge, the barrier to entry is like a filter against bad customers or something. Because the people that we work with now, and correct me if I’m wrong Seth, but it’s very rare for us to get somebody asking for their money back or having a negative experience with the land master class.

Seth: I won’t say never, but like almost never. That is the thing. I remember when we started out super cheap. Like my goal was to be so that literally anybody could afford it and I felt really good about that. The thing was though like I had this light bulb moment one day when somebody emailed me and say, “Hey, I see this other land course that’s priced like 10 times higher than yours, so I’m assuming yours is not nearly as good. Can you explain how it’s worse?” And I was like, are you kidding me?”

Nathan Amaral: The reality of that, Seth, I’m going to interrupt you. The reality is for all your audience – You provide more value than any other land trainer out there. Hands down.

Seth: Thanks, man. I appreciate that.

Nathan Amaral: I’ve been in this industry for 15 years. I used to work for Rich Dad Education, Trump University. I know the industry and you are the only land guy. This is why I admire what you do and what you deliver to your community. You’re the only land person in the industry that delivers the most value, hands down.

Seth: Wow, I appreciate that, man.

Nathan Amaral: No problem. The fact that you changed your prices and you’re right, sometimes it’s like if you give it for free, it’s like people will think, “Oh, it must be cheap. It must be not worth it. It must be not good”. There’s a lot of people who can feel that way.

Seth: Yeah, for sure.

Nathan Amaral: But when you increase your price, you have to price your product to the right clientele that’s willing to pay for that value.

Seth: Yeah, it’s an interesting thing too. It’s like some people will snare it one price or another, but really you got to factor in how much experience, how many years did it take the educator to even know what they’re talking about, to be in a position to talk about that thing. You’re not going to compensate them for all the time they spent just so that you could have a much easier ride to get there.

Nathan Amaral: And shorten the learning curve and speed up your process, right? That’s the idea.

Seth: Yeah, for sure. Well, Nathan, if people want to learn more about you, all the things you got going on, is there a website they should check out or should they find you on social media somewhere or what’s the best way to learn more about what you got going on?

Nathan Amaral: The easiest thing over the years I have a few companies. I think I have like six or seven companies these days. Real estate companies, consulting companies. The company that I feel good about, the one that I give back to other people. You can go to Google. The easiest way to do this. Go to Google, type in Fearless Millionaire. Thank you, Ryan Dice, for helping me come up with that name. Yes, you can just easily type in Fearless Millionaire. My website will pop up. It’s the only brand with that name. You can easily go there. Connect with me online. That’s probably the best way. When it comes to real estate stuff, most of my stuff is private. When I’m raising money for my deals, it’s private networking and stuff like that, but anybody can hit me up online and if they’re interested in partnering with me or investing in one of my projects, it’s not a problem. They can connect with me right on the website.

Seth: Man, is there any huge influencer you don’t know? I feel like you’ve dropped so many names here that’s like “Seriously?”

Jaren: He also knows Brandon Bouchard, which is the gateway to me getting into entrepreneurship. That thing changed my life, man. That thing set me on the course to where I’m at today.

Nathan Amaral: That’s awesome. It is a great read. Fortunately, the good thing is, I was gullible to all the books I read and all those books are some of the classics that we know “Think and Grow Rich”, “Rich Dad Poor Dad”, “A Personal Power” by Tony Robbins. Tony Robbins changed my life, but I was so gullible to all those books and trainings, the classics that I believe everything I read, and I applied everything I read. So, I believed and I applied. And guess what? That stuff works. That’s the thing. It works. So, that is how I got around guys like Brendon Burchard, Tony Robbins because I was in groups. I was in mastermind groups, marketing mastermind groups, speaker mastermind groups with those guys. I used to be a student. I used to be the guy in the seats. This goes back to that story I shared about Dave. See, I’ve been in the seminar industry for so long. I used to be the guy in the seats looking up at these guys, taking notes while they’re on stage. So, when I was transitioning that as I said, my boy, Dave Seymour told me – “You are just as good as they are. You just haven’t started. You haven’t put in the time yet”. And he was absolutely right. He was absolutely right.

Seth: Cool. We will include a link to Fearless Millionaire in the show notes for this episode. By the way, this is episode 66. You can find everything we talked about here retipster.com/66.

So, Nathan, thank you again so much for coming on the show. It’s been awesome to talk to you.

Nathan Amaral: Thanks, Seth. Thanks, Jaren.

Seth: So, there you have it, folks. That was our conversation with Nathan. I hope you enjoyed it. Jaren, were there any big takeaways you got from that that is going to stick with you?

Jaren: A lot. I think the biggest one that comes to mind is about pricing and how he was talking about he charges $97,000 for one product. There would have been a time when I would have heard that and my mouth would have dropped to the floor and I would have been secretly judging the crap out of Nathan and be like, “How could you ever do that to people?” But I guess just time in being around have found primarily in like commercial real estate, commercial multifamily, high priced education packages are actually justified. Because like let’s say you spent $30,000 on a mentorship program, but you were able to if you took action, get your first deal in three months. Well, in that first deal, just in the acquisition feel alone, you’re going to be making, if you’re on the general partnership, you’re going to make it back plus some. So, it hopefully makes sense. I think that really the major issue is about the value that is being given and the ROI. If I spend $97,000 obviously if I have it, but if I spend $97,000 on a program, am I going to make $200,000 the next month? And if anybody would take that. So, you have to weigh the ROI of the education and the program compared to the year investment.

Seth: It is an interesting kind of a mind game because I know what you mean. I have similar things in life too where I just kind of have the snap judgment where I just hear a number and immediately start thinking bad things about that person. But at the same time, it’s actually very similar thing to when we make a really low offer to somebody just on the other opposite end of the spectrum. Why would somebody judge me because I’m sending them a really low offer? This really has nothing to do with the personal offense. It’s just a number. If it doesn’t work for you, then don’t do it. And the story, there’s no reason you need to like to hate me for it. On one hand, I get it. But on the other hand, just think about this logically. This doesn’t have to mean anything. If it doesn’t work, then just walk away. No big deal. No harm, no offense. But a lot of people get really opened arms about it. I know on the BiggerPockets forums for years it’s been a really hot topic that people talk about. Just really hating on anybody who charges anything for real estate information.

Jaren: And that’s not to call BiggerPockets out because everybody knows if you know me, I very, very, very deeply respect BiggerPockets.

Seth: Yeah, for sure. I do too.

Jaren: But it is very interesting. It was very smarter on their end from a brand play and I don’t know if this was intentional, I really don’t think it was intentional. But with them creating a division down Real Estate Investor Education programs as like the Gurus and then BiggerPockets. Like are you in the BiggerPockets camp or are you in the Guru camp? And that division was a really smart play on their part because pretty much anybody that is not BiggerPockets is untrustworthy immediately. I don’t think that it’s really that black and white, guys. I think that they are probably some really good educators out there that have a really good program. But the key is you have to as the buyer really do your due diligence and make sure that if you buy into something that expensive that you’re going to get an ROI on it. Look at it like a deal.

Seth: I think where it gets tricky is because I’ve bought into super expensive coaching programs before and there’s no question, I learned tons from it. It’s stuff that I still apply today, but at the same time it’s a part of why I remember buying into one of those coaching programs is because I was told you’re going to make $10,000 a month, no problem, in the next few months. Like that is totally something you can do. I don’t think the person was lying to me at all. I think they were being totally truthful. But the way that my life in business ended up going, it did not end up going down the track that I was sold on and I did not end up making that kind of money. I don’t know, there’s a lot of different facets to it. There’s understanding the reliability of the coach and there’s also understanding your own personal goals of where you’re going to go with that. It’s not a black and white thing. And just because you don’t end up adhering to your goal, it doesn’t mean it was a failure. You can still learn amazing things from that and get all the value in the world. So, I don’t know. I think it’s the whole jump to judgment and hating on people who charge anything for information. It’s an easy thing to do because it doesn’t require much thought. Whereas a lot of times there’s more you have to take into consideration to really know what you’re talking about when you start saying “This person is bad or good” for one reason or another.

Jaren: Yeah man, 100%. So, I think I’m maturing in that area where I don’t throw the baby out with the bathwater. I will say I had had bad experiences with close friends of mine buying into programs where we didn’t get the value out of those programs early in my real estate career. And so, I think that’s what put a bad taste in my mouth. I’m sure like in the particular, I’m not going to name drop anybody, but the particular program that we bought into, I think the strategies that they talked about and they taught would work in places like the Midwest or maybe the South. But in San Francisco, California, they definitely did not work. Can I throw everything and say, “No, it didn’t work for me so it’s completely useless and they’re just scam artists ripping people off”? I don’t think I can really say that because I’m not looking at it objectively and I’m not looking at the whole picture.

Seth: Yeah, totally. Cool. So, conversation starter time, let’s find an interesting question for both Jaren and I to answer. Okay. So, the question is, “What are your views on fame and celebrity culture?”

Jaren: I think that when it comes to fame and celebrity culture, what’s happening is kind of an evolutionary thing. Back in the way day, eons and eons ago, I always had a tribe leader. I think that the tribe leaders, we didn’t have such a huge nation. We were always a small tribe, small groups of people. And I think that our tribe leaders were people that we really exemplified and almost in some cultures and a lot of cultures undefiled. We had looked at them as Gods. And I think that somehow in our development and our psyche, we’ve still held onto some aspect of that. It manifests in this worship of celebrities and famous people. I think that it’s a dangerous thing and it’s a primitive thing. Even how Nathan mentioned in today’s podcast when he saw Brian Tracy.

Seth: Yeah, he was sure talking about that whole time.

Jaren: Like you have to realize if you’re going to evolve as a human being or I don’t know what language you want to use like just become a more developed person. You have to get to this point where you realize that the person at the front of the stage and the mic or the person making your favorite music or your favorite author, they’re just human beings just like you. And when you see something in them that helps you or is really valuable, appreciate the value, but also let it be an inspiration that says, “Man, if they can do that, I wonder what I can do”. And that’s the mindset that a successful person has to have. There’s no difference between Tony Robbins and me. The only difference is that he has more experience. That’s it.

Seth: Yeah. I think my flaw in my thinking for much of my life, I feel like I’m getting better at this now, but for much of my younger life, I literally looked at those people and thought to myself, “They are better than me. I am not as good of a person as they are.” Which is absurd. There are all kinds of personal failures and all kinds of problems. It almost kind of reminds me of Instagram and social media culture where people will post the highlights of their life and you’ll never see the crap beneath the surface. The stuff that would just make them look like terrible people. Celebrity is, I don’t know, sometimes the media likes to broadcast their failures so it’s not exactly like that. But still if I see Tom Cruise in a movie, I mean the guy looks perfect. Everything about him, it’s like “Man, that’s the guy I want to be.” Everything about him is cool, he’s successful, he’s got it all. But he doesn’t even speak his own words in movies. He’s reading stuff that somebody else wrote. It’s not reality. And for some reason, we’ve got this twisted thought process where we look at that as though it is real and as though it is something to aspire to be when it’s impossible. I don’t have somebody to writing my lines for me every day. I think it’s unhealthy in a lot of ways. At the same time, I cannot understand why this obsession with celebrities exists.

Jaren: We’re wired to need to put our hope and faith into something bigger than ourselves. Whether you’re a faith-based person or a religious person or not, you can be a complete atheist and acknowledge that that’s true. We are people, we are a species of idealism and to some degree when we’re a fan of a band or we’re a fan of some celebrity, it’s like, “Oh man”. It just gives you this sense of hope and it gives you the sense of inspiration that I think we’re hardwired for. I don’t think that that’s the best fit for it. Obviously, I have a bias towards Christianity and things like that in my own life. But even if that wasn’t your thing, joining the Peace Corps, finding some kind of purpose to give yourself to I think would be much better suited to fit that hardwire need for something bigger than ourselves. I think that’s really why people admire celebrities so much and they geek out. It’s the same thing why people get so obsessed about football. It’s the same thing. It’s just instead of football, it’s celebrities.

Seth: I remember back when I was in college, I saw U2 in concert. I had followed U2 for years. And I remember seeing Bono on stage. I’m kind of ashamed to say this now, but like I literally felt like I was in the presence of a God. Like it was just this crazy thing to see somebody who I had watched on music videos and listened to music for years and years and there he was in the flesh – 50 feet away from me. It was crazy. I even realized at the time like, “Why am I freaking out as much?” But as I’ve gotten older and I know just this past year, we went to different conferences for different YouTubers and big influencers in the personal finance industry. And it’s actually really interesting, especially, I’ve gotten to do video interviews with some of these big-name people and I get to see like in person, see them screw up what they’re trying to say in front of the video – “I got to start stuff over”. It’s oddly comforting to be like, “Man, this huge person screws up just like I do. This is just as hard for them as it is for me”. I don’t see that when I watched the video on YouTube, I just see all the takes that went well. But I think as I’ve gotten older and I’ve seen more of the world, it’s become more evident to me that nobody needs to be put on a pedestal for any reason. If everybody had all their junk spread out and if we saw everybody’s imperfections, I think everybody would realize that really quickly. But of course, that’s not the way the world works.

Jaren: And if you really want to know what somebody is like, ask their spouse.

Seth: Yeah. We’re talking about that. You look at different highly successful people in the world, they may be a famous author or recording artist or actor, something like that. And the reason they’ve succeeded is that they’ve put so much of their time and life and energy into that one thing, making that their “thing” that they’re amazing at. But in the process, they let a lot of other stuff fall by the wayside. Like their family life is in shambles. Maybe they’ve been divorced 10 times. Maybe their kids hate them. Of course, they’re not going to tell you about that. You don’t hear that part of it. You just see the part that they’re so successful at and they get worshiped for that reason. Well, it’s a good reminder that everything has a cost to it. If you’re going to excel in one thing, you better believe you’re saying “no” to a heck of a lot of other stuff. So, nobody has it all figured out.

Jaren: Yeah, man.

Seth: Well, again, if you want to check out all the stuff from this episode, you can find it at retipster.com/66. If you want to stay up to date on all the stuff we’re doing, you can take out your phone and text the word “FREE”. F-R-E-E to the number 33777.

Thanks again everybody for sticking with us. I hope you have enjoyed this episode and we will talk to you next time.

The post 066: Real Estate Investing in Portugal and Uganda – Nathan Amaral Explains How it Works appeared first on REtipster.

from Real Estate Tips https://retipster.com/066-nathan-amaral/

[glammerstudioco]

The Ugly Truth: All About My Life

The Ugly Truth: All About My Life

 Kristina Adleina Fowler

Hey Dolls, my name is Kristina Adleina and I want to welcome you to my Blog, this is my first unofficial post for my Blog and today I am going to get into my personal backstory and why I decided to start a blog in the first place.

I am hoping that by sharing my life story that it can help anyone, in any way of their lives. Also, I want to be as authentic and transparent with my readers. So, let’s get into this “All About Me” article.

All About Me

Now it’s time for me to share my story and get real with you for a minute, so, let’s state the obvious here my names Kristina Adleina Fowler and I’m 29, living in Sudbury, Ontario Canada. Sudbury is a decent place to live and grow up, it’s like a bunch of little towns all connected together, it’s beautiful with that small town to feel but it’s really nothing for me to write home about. I’ve always wanted to leave here for some time now, I feel like I’ve just outgrown it all and all the people that are in it.

One day I will leave to travel the world to do makeup and to share my talents with everyone. But for now, I will keep doing Makeup, grow my Business and make Blogging my thang. So, enough about that and let’s get into who I am. Well, I am quite a unique character, I am that type A person who always needs things a certain way and meticulous about everything thing I do, very much a perfectionist. I am that take charge GirlBoss, where everything needs to be in my control but I when it is, it always turns out the bomb.

But, I am also very funny and humorous and always making everyone laugh no matter what I look like. I am also a huge geeky-silly type of chick with a hot exterior. But, I am very genuine, empathetic, generous, kind-hearted and authentic. But I will not take any crap from anyone. I love to help others and I love, love, love to make people look beautiful with my magical makeup skills. Makeup & Makeup Artistry is my number one passion and I love to sprinkle my makeup fairy dust and make everyone look beautiful and feel confident about themselves. I am very much all about empowering women and standing together as a united front because there is power in numbers and each woman is out there doing her thang and they deserve to be empowered just as much as the next lady.

Me & My Family

Now let’s get into my family, I have a son named Ryder who is now 7 and a half, he’s getting so big very quickly. Ryder is my everything and my life if I didn’t have his big ocean blue eyes, his sandy blonde curly hair and his big funny smile looking at me every morning I don’t think I would get out of bed, what would be the point? He’s changed my life so much and has made me a better person, I am very thankful for him and I love him more and more every day. Ryder’s like most 7-year-olds, full of energy, always on the go, dislikes school, all he wants to do is play hockey and hang out with mom and dad.

Ryder’s dad, Troy is amazing with him and they love each other so much it’s crazy, almost makes me a bit jealous. I was with Troy for over 10 years and we have not been together for a while now, but we are still very close to Ryder and he will always be a part of my family. My mom, Debbie and my dad, Dave were together for about 10 years as well and they got married and had me than my little sister, Kori-Lynn who is 26 now.

My mom and I are a lot alike and we look like twins, we are so much alike that we often butt heads on things in life like parenting, but if I didn’t have my mother I don’t know where I would be. She’s always been that tough love type but always there whenever we needed her no matter what, she’s a lot like my papa (her dad) who is now passed but he was my best friend in life and still is in spirit. My sister Kori has 2 kids of her own my niece and nephew Kiara and Daylan.

My mom then remarried to my stepdad Andy and had my little brother who is 12 years younger than me, Seth who is 18 now. My dad also remarried to my stepmom Angela who already had a son, Brandon and then they had my little sister, Kansas. Which Kansas, Kiara, Ryder, and Daylan are all a year and a half apart which is funny cause Kansas is their Aunt, but they don’t see it that way. My family is huge, this is just my immediate family which doesn’t include all aunts, uncles, and cousins but I am super close with my mom’s side and they have always been there for me through everything.

Who is Kristina?

Kristina is an empowered female who has been through and seen a lot in only 30 years. But those occurrences in my life have made me full of strength, knowledge, and power. I will never let anything hold me back again because there have been so many things that have held me back and I will no longer allow anything to hold me back again.

I am humbled by my life experiences and I am extremely eager to right my wrongs. I want to give anyone that has or is now on the same road, that I was once on, someone to relate to, someone to get advice from and a platform as a resource for anything they may need in life and business. I am also a very passionate and caring woman, there are so many things that I want to do with my life that I know can and will benefit others in many ways and I know that I will always strive to accomplish as much as I possibly can.

Throughout everything within my long journey, it has brought me to realize that life is to short and it can literally be over in an instant. I want to do nothing more than to live for today and to make every moment count.

Fighting Mental Health & Addiction Issues

Now, before I get into the nitty-gritty details, I want to mention that I do suffer from Mental Health and Addiction issues. I am not ashamed to speak about it or any part of my life, I want to be open and honest with everything because I know that it can help someone from hearing my story and maybe inspire them to do something great with their lives.

That alone is something that brings me much happiness, I want to be able to help as many people as possible with these issues and having this blog will allow me to do just that. And this is all I truly want to do.

My Diagnosis

Of course, the obvious question is what exactly do you suffer from? Personally, I suffer from “Generalized Anxiety Disorder” also known as GAD, which is characterized by persistent and excessive worry about a number of different things and affects 6.8 million adults in the U.S alone. (Anxiety and Depression Association of America)

Also, “Obsessive Compulsive Disorder” aka OCD, it is made up of two parts obsessions and compulsions, you might have one or both of these symptoms that cause a lot of distress. Obsessions are unwanted and repetitive thoughts, urges and images that don’t go away and cause a lot of anxiety. Compulsions are actions meant to reduce anxiety caused by obsessions and would experience distress if they can not complete the compulsions. (Canadian Mental Health Association)

Substance Abuse Disorder aka (SAD) Addiction is a complex disease of the brain and body that involves the compulsive use of one or more substances despite serious health and social consequences. Addiction disrupts regions of the brain that are responsible for reward, motivation, learning, judgment, and memory. It damages various body systems as well as families, relationships, schools, workplaces, and neighborhoods. (National Centre of Addiction and Substance Abuse)

I have officially diagnosed about 4 years ago now from my Psychiatrist at CMHA and I was prescribed a bunch of medication to relieve me from my symptoms, along with a bunch of work to do on myself, various programs and counseling. It was only then that I realized how serious the issue was and figuring out what I was going to do to fix it.

My Personal Experiences

Now it’s time for me to share my personal experience with Mental Health and Addiction. This path in life that was given to me might have been a shitty hand but I can say I had a great childhood and I was an amazing kid growing up, but there were early signs of the OCD and the anxiety. They weren’t extreme symptoms, basically I needed to have to have everything a certain way, in a particular way and order, I had to have my hair pulled back ever so tightly so there were no “bumps in my hair” most adults would have cried from the hair pulling but I sat there every day and needed it or else I was fit to be tied.

I remember and still to this day I never did like longer socks anything that past my ankles I felt restricted and I just wasn’t having it, my clothing had to be a smooth cotton material and I never wore jeans always matching tracksuits and everything from my hair ties, to socks and shoes were always matching and I had a different suit for every day of the week and always wore each suit on that exact day of the week. I had my “babies” that were cotton fabric bears and there were three of them and to fall asleep I would have them on my face and twist my finger around the ear and tickle my face with it. Now, I had to be about 3 years old here and I remember this stuff as clear as day because it was these things that carried through to my teenage and adult years but things got different of course.

Like needing to shower twice a day and having to be so clean each time that there was literally never any hot water left for no one else and then there 4 other people who are showering on that same tank. But it wasn’t until I was 18 that I began to use hard drugs, OxyContin and fentanyl were my drugs of choice and of course, I partied before with booze and weed and experimented with other drugs. But it was when I began to use prescription pain medication that my entire life had changed with just a few pills. Things began to fall quickly out of my control and before too long drugs were my end all and be all, it was my breakfast, lunch, and supper and it was the only thing that ever understood me.

The power of these drugs grab a hold of you and completely change your identity, so much so that you can’t even look in the mirror at your reflection. They take hold of your body, mind, and soul, you become so physically dependant on using them that when you don’t have the drugs you are sick like the worst flu known to mankind times 100. They slowly begin to deteriorate your mind and your body and everyone you care about in your life want nothing to do with the person you have become, with the lying, stealing and doing anything to chase your next high.

After dealing with this type of behavior for on and off over a period of 10 years, knowing that your still lucky enough to be here on this earth. You might get clean and continue to relapse continuously because there’s no book on the right way of doing things. But it’s a hard fight and I had always wanted it no matter how many times I continued to fall back, I never wanted to go back to that life. But something was pulling me there and I know the devil was one of those things, but being through this experience and learning everything I know now had kept me there to learn so I can assist other people on the same path as myself.

Overcoming It All

So what can you do to overcome Dual Diagnosis such as these? There are many things I have tried to do and achieve over these 10 years of pain, horror, and anguish like this. I had quit on my own many times, cold turkey and I would self-medicate with weed and Ativan to subdue the pain and anxiety I would be feeling.

I had gone on methadone for a short period, went to church, went into counseling, and many other programs just like it and I had gone on suboxone for about 4 years without the consult of a doctor. After almost 10 years of not ever quite figuring it out yet I had gone in to see a Psychiatrists at our local CAMH after going through months and weeks of painstaking devastation, continuous crying and feeling like I am losing my mind and my ex-fiancé bringing me to the hospital the crisis intervention centre because he was truly scared and wasn’t sure what was going on with me.

After seen my Doctor I had started my first round of antidepressants “Cipralex” and at first they don’t kick in right away, but after a while, some of the symptoms began to clear up and for a while, I was doing good and not using. But unfortunately that all didn’t last, once everything fell apart I had decided to go on Methadone and to take it very seriously and to switch medications. The Doctor ended up weaning me off Cipralex and onto Trintellix, which is more for anxiety and OCD symptoms but still an antidepressant.

Then I started out on Methadone and the day I started on the program was the last day that I had used drugs. Now, it took time to get used to the program and needed to be there every morning and adjusting doses so that you feel normal. After 2 months of being on the program, I was eligible to start getting my carries, which is your drinks you get to bring home for the week.

After 2 months I had my full carries, so I had my life back and everything was going great with my new medication and there were no issues at all. Since then it has been well over 3 years and that first summer I had started college, I was speaking at mental health and addiction engagements telling my story, I started back up doing Makeup Artistry and I started my own little business doing makeup and much more. There have been many things I have been able to do in these 3 plus years and I am making up for lost time.

With so much time on my hands and doing makeup I felt like I finally had a purpose on this earth and starting my business gave me that purpose.

My Love for Beauty

My ultimate passion in life is to make others feel beautiful with the power of my talent as an artist, to give the gift of self-confidence and to use the knowledge of my words to help heal their soul. I have always been in love with all things beauty and makeup for literally as long as I can remember. It has always given me that extra boost of confidence when I wasn’t feeling the most secure with myself and it has always allowed me to express myself, however, I wanted to.

I was 17 when I started working in a legit beauty salon, I learned all the tricks of the trade and its essentially were I truly did fall in love with all things beauty.

History as an Artist

But I must let you in on a secret, from the time I was 12 I wanted to be a hairdresser and makeup artist. I always loved everything about beauty, the way it made me feel about myself and the connection between you and your client for lack of a better word. My Aunt was a hairdresser, I was always fascinated by everything that she did and it was always a dream to open my own salon one day.

I can remember when I was 13, heading into high school I started dying and cutting my own hair, there was a heck of a lot of trial and error, but after a few years of tragic hair misfortunes, I basically nailed it every time. As the years went on I would go into the local hairdressing school about 5 times within a short period of time and by the time I was done working at the beauty salon I knew that being a hairdresser was off the table for me. I focused in on what came more natural to me and that was Makeup Artistry & Esthetics, they had taught me everything I needed to know while working and doing my high school co-op program and I ran with it from there.

I was doing it from my home and traveling and I had all these plans for this luxurious beauty salon, my mind and heart were set for many years to come. Going through everything with my addiction and mental health issues wasn’t something that was always easy to focus on when it came with the future but, this was still my dream throughout it all. When I did get clean over 3 years ago within the first year I decided to go to College and change my profession into something that I can get a degree in that I can help others with mental health and addiction issues, so I enrolled in the Child and Youth Care Practitioner Program.

Honestly, I did so amazing in the program I was on the Dean’s Honour Roll and I was throwing out 90-100% all the time and it was all based around mental health and how to assist children and families struggling with various issues. But after my 4th semester I just felt like this wasn’t going to fill my cup every day working for children’s aid society and after my ex-fiancé went to jail while we were together I was just done with everything so, I left. But it was back to Makeup that finally pulled me out of that dark phase and it really helped me to put my focus into starting my own Makeup Artist Business.

Everything about all those situations seemed to be all for a reason now that I think back on it all and its lead me to here today and I don’t regret any of it.

Starting A Business

As I just mentioned, starting a Business sort of just happened and it wasn’t something that I really planned on doing so soon. When I began doing makeup again I just figured I’d freelance for now and continue with my business when everything’s planned out as it should be. My girlfriend Angel and I ended up hooking up since high school, she had mentioned to me that if I needed anyone to do hair while I do makeup that she would be my girl.

So, not that long after I had one of my biggest gigs since I decided to do makeup again, we would be traveling a few hours to do makeup and hair on set for a magazine photoshoot and everything seemed to just fall into place from there. We started doing both makeup and hair services for weddings, events, graduations, photo shoots and all kinds of special occasions.

I was working with some direct sales companies as well and during a party we held we ending up meeting Alanah who wanted to sell beauty products and wanted to learn how to do makeup and hairstyling, it seemed like a fit so we went ahead with teaching her the ins and outs of the trade. As we had more hands on deck we decided to expand by doing our own photoshoots with models and photographers to hopefully create great content for magazines and hold our own events.

That summer we tested it out and held maybe 5 of our own events and it was really fun, something I could see myself doing but it was a lot of work to do everything plus what I was already doing and it just didn’t seem like anyone else was truly invested in any of it.

Also doing the whole direct sale cosmetics gig was not a fit what so ever, they wanted me to be the owner/operator of my territory with no previous experience, no one under me I was to start from square one and they basically helped with nothing so I had to make a choice. Anyways, with all these new changes I had to make many of my own changes as well, so I basically decided to distance myself from everything and everyone, then to continue to do what I was doing when I first started out, so I would do makeup, hairstyling, esthetics and do makeup lessons as well.

Then I wanted to get in with technology and the way of the internet so I decided to start my own blog but I was going to do absolutely everything myself. I learned everything from start to finish and as I went along, designed my entire site and took as many courses as I could. Now here I am writing my first post, with so much to say and still so much more to learn.

My Future Business Endeavors

As you might expect, as a blogger there are many options and many roads you can take on the internet. But I do have a game plan and I know things can change, but I want to continue blogging of course, then I will be creating course content for my own online makeup academy.

I will also produce content for a YouTube channel, I would love to write a book about makeup artistry and even about my personal story, I’d love to create my own cosmetics brand and create a great influencer roll for my readers. For my service based business at home, I plan on building a beauty bus, a huge studio with my cosmetics store inside and with makeup, esthetics, hairstyling and lash/brow bar. I will also have my own makeup academy attached to it all.

Right now I have my studio and office in my basement and I have all my travel equipment to go on set and to work at weddings and such, but I obviously want more. This summer I am starting a business mentoring program so that I can do my business plan and apply for grants and business loans so I can begin to expand my business goals.

But for right now I want to focus on blogging and all of my online business endeavors and I hope to grow this team to bring all of you and my future readers amazing content to learn and to be more knowledgeable on many topics.

But I must let you in on a secret, this is all just small paragraphs on each topic within my life so that each of you could get to know me a bit better. This is all clearly not my entire life story and history behind everything but it gives you a general outline about the topics that I am passionate about and the things that have shaped me into who I am today as a woman.

But I will definitely elaborate on each of the topics and subtopics I mentioned here today so that you all will get to know who I truly am inside and out. I will get to share my story on a national level to bring awareness and knowledge. Also, my true love and passion is makeup and being a makeup artist so I want to be able to help and teach all of the beauty and makeup lovers out there and anyone who is or wants to become a makeup artist or start a business especially within the beauty industry. I am truly blessed to be doing this and there will be much more to come in the future.

Thank you all for listening and please share to spread the word about my new and glamorous blog.

Love, Kristina xoxo 

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