They Volunteered and Raised Their Own Rent

© Can Stock Photo

     My wife and I started investing in buy-and-hold rental real estate a few years ago. We are looking to sustain a very comfortable retirement, as well as build a good additional piece to our legacy. Having abundance to us, means we have more to share or give away. We've been able to build a small nest egg, through some traditional employment we've had. And, we were able to leverage some of that to get us started. We're also helping other people create additional income from home. But, for now, I want to relate a story that just happened to us today, about our real estate.

     We've owned this one building for around 2 1/2 years now. We are not slum landlords by any means. Rather than take all possible income out of a building, instead, we treat it as the valuable long-term asset it is. When there are repairs, or upgrades that need to be made, we invest in them. We still take a profit, so we still have to weigh whether an investment is prudent now, or can wait a little bit of time. But, we keep it on the plan, and do what is needed.

     We have also developed a rapport with our tenants. From the moment they apply, we try to connect with who they are, and what they need, for a home. In fact, some form of the word "home" can be found in the name of each building's LLC. We've also shown some pay it forward kind of acts. We have gifted baked pies to all of our tenants on Thanksgiving. It was inspiring to us, when we were buying the pies, and whipped cream to go with them, in the store, a woman asked if we were having a party. Why were we buying so many pies. When we told her that we were buying them for our tenants, she told us to wait. She ran off into the store, and came back with a bottle of sparkling apple cider, for each of the pies, paid for them, and gave them to us to include.

     As great as that is, there's more. Today, as my wife was collecting rent from one of our tenants. The tenant told her that this was the last time she would receive that amount from them for the rent. Curious, my wife asked the tenant what they meant. She was then informed, that starting next month, the tenants were going to pay us an additional $50 a month. They went on to state, that they appreciated the way we treated them, and, the building they consider their home.

     Draw your own conclusions, or, be inspired, and change just one thing you do. Or not. I am again amazed at the blessings received when giving has been for the big picture and providing value for others without expectation of receiving anything in return. I am reminded, again, that giving is far better than receiving. And, it's contagious. Together, let's start our own viral explosion of paying it forward, and paying it back. Any challenge will be overcome, and awesome achievements will be accomplished when more of us share our abundance, lend a hand up, and give in a true positive spirit of love.

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with gratitude and in service,



Tony Koker
A Mentor with a Servant's Heart

Time Always Wins

Ruled by the Clock

      Time always wins. Tick, tock, tick, tock time marches forward. Sooner or later, we will stop, but it will not, just like taxes.

      Awareness. Are you awake enough to know what you're doing? Often I find myself in auto-pilot. I find myself focused only upon what I have to be doing. The alarm goes off. Maybe I can snooze it, once or twice, but mostly I have to resign myself to getting up and getting ready. Have I mastered that task list that determines my fate, or am I following someone else's lead? Have I convinced myself that satisfying their demands also serve me and my family and friends? These are questions I find time to ponder and attempt to use a slight edge to implement.

      Always busy, doing something. Even sleep is something. If I don't get enough sleep, I cannot think clearly enough to be sure I've taken a vivid review of the task list.

      Wasting time, productive use?

      Productive is also subjective. Productive for whom? Them or you and yours?

      The order is important, too. Priority and time both need to be considered. Some things have windows of time where they need to be accomplished. Some things are preparatory - they need to be done in advance of some point in time, like a scheduled meeting. Others have to be done now, like right after a meeting, to capture what steps will need to be accomplished before the next meeting or event occurance. Of course priority should never be ignored.

      You and Yours, then short-term emergency, or, at lease, short-term priority escalation or life-long priority? Emergency or short-term priority escalation, in relative terms, that I use, relates to this whole concept of being able to really only perform ONE task at a time. And, manage but a handful of tasks. This handful should be the most important. Survival, comfort, luxury, perhaps that is the order you choose? Or, do you consider it more noble to forego some level of comfort for the survival benefit of others?

      Even survival is subjective. Water, food, clothing and shelter likely lead the list, but the whole requires much, much more. There's the physical, which was just (mostly) addressed, but there is also the emotional and the spiritual. How often do we neglect or even fail to recognize these? True work and life balance really requires that we find opportunity to satisfy the needs of the whole.

      So. Are you really multi-tasking? Are you really busy doing what's important to you? Or, are you just busy, doing just enough, and passing time to a future event (looking forward to something)?

with gratitude and in service,

Tony Koker

Photo credit: CanStockPhoto.com

Resolve a Habit of Persistence

Persistence

      My life is perfect. Everything is like it should be. A picturesque summertime float on a calm, crystal clear lake. The sun out with but wisps of clouds in the royal blue sky. Not too hot, not too cold. I want for nothing. Friends and family surround. Laughter and reverie abound all around.

      Then, there's that sound again. It sounds like a knock on a door. Is it another distraction, or, another opportunity?

      I wake. Dream over for now.

      I have to return to the task at hand. Do I continue working, or, do I pause and consider making a decision?

      Now is not the time to rethink. I am in work mode, now, today. Back to the formula. Just execute. Saying my self talk I am able to regain focus.

      Clickety clack, clickety clack, like a train going down a track. The knocks on the door fade away. I'm returning to my zone.

     

     

      I recently became reacquainted with a verse in scripture. It has resonated so well with my self talk, that I have printed it out, hung it on the wall, and have added it to my daily self talk routine:

           "... I am doing a great work, so that I cannot come down ..." Nehemiah 6:3

     

     

      Persistence and focus seem to intertwine themselves with each other. These are crucial as I succeed with any resolution.

     

with gratitude and in service,

Tony Koker

Image credit: CanStockPhoto.com

How to Outwit the Six Ghosts of Fear

HOW TO OUTWIT THE SIX GHOSTS OF FEAR

      Indecision, doubt and fear are the three enemies Napoleon Hill uses to describe the primary obstacles to our achieving what we desire.
      These are powerful adversaries. In the competitive world of commerce we find an acronym, FUD, or, Fear, Uncertainty and Doubt. Major technological companies have even embraced these to wield, like swords against their competition. If enough FUD is put out there, it makes it all the more difficult to chop through the weeds and find the real, substantiated facts. The less black and white the information, the more FUD there is.
      For me, my biggest challenges, have not been the jump from the airplane, my survival is at risk kind of fears. But, the insidious uncertainty that mentally seems to be around the next corner that causes me to not make a decision, and fail to act.
      Instead of boldly moving forward, I find I succumb to the temptation of choosing to just do something else. Often this is something well traveled, in the past, and is well known and understood. I rationalize that these other things, although not really important right now, still need to get done. And, I will feel some sense of accomplishment, having marked these off my list.
      I return, however, to the important task at hand, and again feel the impact of these enemies as they chip away at my self-esteem. I find myself asking how did this not get done, again? I begin to question my motivation. If this was so important to me, why didn't it get done?
      ... to read the rest of this post, please visit our public forum, where you will also find our mastermind lessons on this subject.
with gratitude and in service,
Tony Koker
Image credit: CanStockPhoto.com

You Never Know What You're Going To Get

      Like that now famous line from the movie Forest Gump, the title of this piece talks about the randomness in life and a box of chocolates, and, yet, how there are universal waves, rhythms and harmonies that get amplified and strengthened by those who recognize the positive and useful nature of these and pick them up and use them. The key belongs to those who are open to sensing them. Two seemingly disconnected activities which I am about to present, illustrate this principle. How you connect the dots is up to you.

      The book "Think and Grow Rich" by Napoleon Hill, was written after interviewing 500 highly successful people and compiling the results over 20 years. A lifetime mission, funded by a close friend and personal mentor to Napoleon, Andrew Carnegie. The book documents a singular secret masked among 13 principles of success. On a journey through various stories illustrating each of the 13 principles, Hill holds out the hope that the readers will discover the secret, and put it to use and be rich. Written at a similar time as we are in now, it was inescapable to separate money from being rich, but Hill illustrates being rich in the fullest and most positive ways. Once discovered, the secret is simply understood and known to be known.

      I cannot profess to know a lot about the following, but, for the time being have to rely upon a special feature I experienced on a public television broadcast recently, where Tai Chi was discussed. The concepts I find in my notes include Effortless Effort, Balance, Being Powerful versus be Forceful, and an emphasis on Conservation of Energy versus the Consumption of Energy. The following was presented as a brief summation:

• Be In The Moment
• Freedom
• Power
• Flow

      And, finally, (paraphrased) "Be content with what you have, lacking nothing. The world belongs to you."

      Having just recently been exposed to the description of Tai Chi, but having spent a lot of time working with coaching and mentoring people using Hill's book, I had another epiphany that the centuries old practice also was an expression of clues to the very same secret of Hill's work.

with gratitude and in service,

Tony Koker

P.S. Find Your Heartfelt Mental Music Again. Resolve to Quiet the Worldly Chatter. Mastermind with Us: 30 day Cleanse

Image credit: CanStockPhoto.com

Self Talk

"Auto-Suggestion

The Medium for Influencing the Subconscious Mind

The Third Step Toward Riches"

      After reading this chapter of "Think and Grow Rich" and Napoleon Hill's words on auto-suggestion when he states that we should carry out this instruction as if we are still a child, it reminds me of a saying my wife has used since we first started dating: "We're just ba'y kids in a grown up ba'y world". This has been one of our themes during our relationship where we try to approach many challenges from a child-like perspective.

      Having a singular focus a child will persist in their efforts until the objective is accomplished. If told that someone in a large crowd in a stadium has a special present for the child, they will go from person to person, not skipping a single soul, even to the final person in the crowd, if necessary, until they find that present. Without hesitation they ask "Do you have it?". From person to person they go, no fear, no obstacles, just an obsessive action.

      As adults, we work to stay focused like that again. We deal with the complexities we've allowed to invade our mind. We deal with the people and situations that confront us in our routines and the demands that are put upon us. We overcome the negative emotions that spontaneously erupt and threaten to dampen our desire.

      By focusing on a written statement, which we recite out loud, we actively focus on the positive emotions we associate with our burning desires. We concentrate, like the child, on holding that present in our hands. We know what it will feel like in our hands. The weight of it, the sight of it, the total thrill of owning it is already coursing through our body even as we travel forward in the aisles between the seats.

      We have instilled the emotion, focused burning desire and faith all with this simple act of writing down instructions for our subconscious, reading them aloud, and repeating them often, keeping that child, that we are, moving from person to person, through aisle after aisle to get OUR present.

 

with gratitude and in service,

Tony, Lisa, Michael and Amanda

Image credit: CanStockPhoto.com

Economic Recovery - Act NOW

Everyone, the world over, has been effected by the current economic conditions. Most people have scrambled for a good position. It's just like a unpredicted storm has hit. And, although we all have that in common, that's where it ends. Even the position we've established, or are attempting to establish is different. First we do a quick damage assessment. We all wonder why none (or few) of our boarded-up windows survived; even when we thought the storm was over, another wave of fury attacked - and no one is really sure it's over, even now.
Once we finished (maybe just our first of many) damage assessments, we then chose our next stance - do we hunker down for the next wave? Or, what? Are we so battle-weary? Not only are we attacked by news we intentionally hear, watch, or read, the attacks are also insidious - they sneak through commercials wrapped around everything from our coffee cups to our recreation; an unrelenting bombardment of snippets of sound, pictures, words and ideas. They are all trying to rent space in our head - slowly eroding any sense of control, we thought we had.
But, we don't have to abrogate our authority to them. We don't have to willingly submit to the beating; to give up the power, they're actually afraid of. We are not as weak as they'd like us to think we are. We're not perfect, by any means, but we're okay, just the way we are. We have to gain strength, not acquiesce and give it away. We have to build ourselves up, individually, and, as a team.
We have to build our own master-mind alliance; a team of like-minded thinkers and doers. Knowledge of this is just the first step. Knowledge is NOT power, but the action, put into play, through the use of that knowledge - THAT is where the power is!
We cannot hunker down, any longer. We have to stand up. We have to stand together, shoulder to shoulder, hands joined together. We need to silence the lies. We need to turn down the noise level. We have to take action: 30-day Mental-Cleanse link sent upon request.

Desiderata

- written by Max Ehrmann in the 1920s --
Not "Found in Old St. Paul's Church"!

Go placidly amid the noise and the haste,
and remember what peace there may be in silence.

As far as possible, without surrender,
be on good terms with all persons.
Speak your truth quietly and clearly;
and listen to others,
even to the dull and the ignorant;
they too have their story.
Avoid loud and aggressive persons;
they are vexatious to the spirit.

If you compare yourself with others,
you may become vain or bitter,
for always there will be greater and lesser persons than yourself.
Enjoy your achievements as well as your plans.
Keep interested in your own career, however humble;
it is a real possession in the changing fortunes of time.

Exercise caution in your business affairs,
for the world is full of trickery.
But let this not blind you to what virtue there is;
many persons strive for high ideals,
and everywhere life is full of heroism.
Be yourself. Especially do not feign affection.
Neither be cynical about love,
for in the face of all aridity and disenchantment,
it is as perennial as the grass.

Take kindly the counsel of the years,
gracefully surrendering the things of youth.
Nurture strength of spirit to shield you in sudden misfortune.
But do not distress yourself with dark imaginings.
Many fears are born of fatigue and loneliness.

Beyond a wholesome discipline,
be gentle with yourself.
You are a child of the universe
no less than the trees and the stars;
you have a right to be here.
And whether or not it is clear to you,
no doubt the universe is unfolding as it should.

Therefore be at peace with God,
whatever you conceive Him to be.
And whatever your labors and aspirations,
in the noisy confusion of life,
keep peace in your soul.

With all its sham, drudgery, and broken dreams,
it is still a beautiful world.
Be cheerful. Strive to be happy.

ref: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Desiderata