Way back in May of 2021, I sent an email to my list indicating that it was better to buy a home than it was to rent a home. This is true even when it's cheaper to rent than it is to own. Why do I believe this so strongly? Because when you own your home, you have control over your home. Whoever owns the asset controls the asset.

Nobody can tell you to move. Nobody can send you a letter increasing your rent. Nobody can dictate any rule about what you can or can't do in YOUR home.

Want to knock a non-load bearing wall down? Knock it down. Want to install a pool, install a pool. You don’t need to ask your landlord for permission! (Unfortunately, you will probably do need a permit of some kind.)

Soon after sending that particular email, I happened to read a news story about a 271-unit building in Miami that recently sold. The new owners just terminated every single lease and every tenant is now forced to move. 

Whoever owns the asset controls the asset.

If someone else owns your home, they have control over your home.

You're not in the glorious position of F-You if someone else has control over any aspect of your life. The more control you have, the more strength you have. The more control you have, the more choices you have.

The opposite is also true.

The less control you have over important aspects of your life, the fewer choices you have in life.

The key to the glorious position of F-You is CONTROL.

This would suggest that the fastest way to move into the F-You Position is to increase the control you have over important aspects of your life.

How much of your work do you control?

Do you control when you work? What you work on? Where you work? How long you work? Do you control the revenue generated from your work? Do you have control over your salary... what you get paid for the work you do?

These are extremely important questions to think about because...

Whoever controls your income ultimately controls the majority of your time - HOURS OF YOUR LIFE! 

And... whoever controls your income ultimately controls also has control over your entire financial situation.

Taking control over every aspect of your work is the fastest way to move into the F-You Position. 

I understand this isn't easy to do if you're currently employed full-time. I also understand it may seem very risky to let go of a nice paycheck.

The two best ways to increase the control you have over your work are:

1. Systematically increase your ownership of income-producing assets. 

IF (yes, that's a big if) you continue stacking income-producing assets every month, you'll be increasing your control over your income with each passing month.

Several years ago, I began purchasing one manufactured home investment property every month. 

Since I own these assets, I have control over them.

2. Start a positive cashflow business.

As you build this business, make sure you maintain complete control over the key systems of your business. 

When I first started my real estate brokerage years ago, it controlled me. 

In fact, it controlled many aspects of my life. It controlled when I worked. It controlled how long I worked, and it also controlled what I did when I worked. 

To gain control over my business, I implemented automatic lead-generation and lead-conversion systems. I also created systems for hiring, training and managing new team members.

Do you control your employees, or do they control you? Do you need your employees or do your employees need you? If you have systems in place to hire, train and manage your employees, you have control over your employees. 

If you don’t have these systems in place, your employees have control over you.

Do you have control your clients, or do they control you? 

Do you need your clients, or do your clients need you? 

If you have systems in place to generate and convert new clients at will, you have control over your clients. You also have control over what you charge for your services. If you don’t have these systems, your clients control you. 

They also control the fees you charge for your services.

Many real sales professionals are controlled by their clients. Their clients literally dictate when they work and how long they work. 

The post Do You Control Your Assets? appeared first on CASHFLOWNAIRE.

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Hopefully you’ve heard of Thomas Stanley and his various “Millionaire” books. One of my favorites is The Millionaire Mind.

What’s most interesting about his work is that it’s based on thousands of surveys of affluent people. These surveys highlight how affluent people think about dollars, college, work, marriage, relationships, business, real estate and lifestyle.

I read this book every year because it details commonalities of affluent people. As you might imagine, affluent people (people with a millionaire’s mind) think differently than non-affluent people.

If you want what someone else has, you must learn to think how they think and do what they do.

Affluent people tend to focus on accumulating assets. Their focus is on their balance sheet, not their income statement.

Per The Millionaire Mind:

“Often they have little or not outstanding credit balances… Neither their lifestyle nor their affluence was generated from being highly leveraged. They are not credit junkies.”

Affluent people don’t borrow their way to affluence.

“Some were credit-dependent earlier in their careers, but they eventually saw the light. They went cold turkey, breaking the cycle of borrowing to consume, earning to consume, and borrowing more and more. Others never became addicted to credit or the need to display their success.”

It’s almost as if Stanley was writing about me!

Prior to the 2008 crash, a great deal of my revenue was fueled by debt:

– My rental properties were ALL financed
– My home was financed (1st mortgage + equity loan)
– My oceanfront condo was financed
– My cars were financed

The crazy part is that I thought I owned all of these things.

The reality was that my lenders owned these assets, and I was simply managing them for f-r-e-e! I handled all of the taxes, all of the repairs, all of the city inspections, and I even paid all of the utilities. I finally realized that I didn’t actually own many of these assets when my lenders ended up with the keys!

Here’s one of the most important takeaways from Stanley’s work:

If you’re operating with a lot of debt,
understand that your actions are NOT congruent
with the wealthiest people in the world.

This is extremely helpful to understand because it will force you to think about hitting your goals without borrowing a bunch of dollas.

Prior to the crash, I never really thought about generating cashflow without debt because I was a credit junkie. Most people are.

Truth be told, this is why I started my Cashflownaire Membership. I wanted to help people sidestep the costly mistakes I’ve made in my journey. If you’d like to take the road less traveled, by creating cashflow without debt, apply to become a Cashflownaire here: https://dividendrealestate.com/apply

The post Read this every year to be a Millionaire appeared first on CASHFLOWNAIRE.

The time value of money suggests that a dollar today is worth more than a dollar in the future.

The future dollar’s value falls more (and more) the further you go into the future. A dollar today is worth far more than a dollar thirty years from now.

Since this is true, wouldn’t the following also be true…

An hour today is more valuable
than an hour 30 years from now.

Time Today > Time Tomorrow

My oldest daughter will be graduating from college in a few months and will be heading off to London for grad school. My youngest daughter will be graduating from high school in a few months and it looks like she’ll be attending college out of state.

An hour today – with them – is far more valuable an hour one year from now – without them.

This means it would be crazy for me to trade away an hour today in order to have more hours in the future. I’d be trading away a more valuable resource (time now) for a less valuable resource (time in the future).

Now… think about the retirement plan we’ve all been taught to follow and consider if it honors the value of your time today.

It doesn’t.

The retirement plan most people follow places a higher value on future hours and less value on today’s hours.

Time Today < Time Tomorrow

It’s been a year or two since I took Algeee-bra, however, it seems as if we have these formulas messed up!

Especially if you have children at home and older parents.

Your time today is far more valuable than your time in the future.

You become a TIMENAIRE when you understand the true value of your time…. when you stop valuing future time more than you value current time… when you stop trading away current time hoping for more future time.

The post Timenaire – The Value of Time appeared first on CASHFLOWNAIRE.

IF someone followed our System, they would completely transform their bodies.

It was amazing to watch this happen because they became different people in the process. You could actually see their self confidence improve from week to week as they made progress towards their goals. These transformations occurred because each member placed several new forced demands on their bodies. When you force any demand upon your body, it always adapts to that specific demand!

Fast for 48 hours, and your body responds. Reduce your carb intake, and your body will respond. Do a bunch of push-ups every day (our November Badass Challenge) and you force a change in your body. I’ve been doing 140 push-ups a day and I can certainly feel several changes happening on a daily basis.

The crazy part is that one new forced demand usually leads to several changes. Let’s say you start exercising every day…this new forced demand usually requires you to make several other changes in your life.

1. You’ll need to make time for your daily exercise. In most cases, this will require you to trade a lower value activities (watching TV) in order to make time for the higher value activity (exercise).
   
2. Your daily exercise will, more than likely, force you to change how and when you eat. It’s hard to have a great workout if you have a big meal before you exercise.
   
3. Another forced change is that you’ll need more sleep. 

ONE New Forced Demand = THREE Improvements

The problem, at least for most people, is that they aren’t placing any consistent specific demands upon their bodies. And because they’re not placing any specific demands, they aren’t forcing positive changes in their lives.

You either forced consistent positive demands upon your body or your body will end up forcing its own demands upon you. These demands that your body forces upon you will (sooner or later) negatively impact the quality of your life. 

This same rule of forced demands applies to all areas of our lives… 

Your financial situation ALWAYS 
responds to the demands you place upon it. 

If you start buying new income-producing assets every day, you’re forcing an improvement in your financial situation because you instantly have less money to spend. 

This forced financial demand usually requires three important changes: 

1. You’ll have to start searching for new income-producing assets you can acquire every day. This search requires an investment of your time. 
   
2. It will require you to reallocate how you spend money. More than likely, you’ll have to eliminate needless spending in order to have more money available to buy new assets. 
   
3. Last but certainly not least, it will require you to get off of your derriere and make more money.  

These three changes were forced upon me when I set a goal to increase my cashflow every day. Think about the average person who doesn’t place any specific demands upon their finances. 

No forced demand means no forced financial improvement. 

The reason why credit cards are so popular is because they eliminate forced short-term demands upon your finances. You don’t need to have money to buy what you want and because there’s no forced demand, there’s no forced improvement.

If you can buy whatever you want with a swipe of a magical credit card, you don’t have to reduce your spending today. You also don’t have to get off your duff to go make more money. 

The problem, as we all know, is that a credit card will ultimately force several future negative demands upon your finances. These future demands will be placed upon you and you’ll have zero control them. In fact, credit cards simply move today’s forced demands into the future. 

You either force consistent positive demands upon your finances or your finances will end up forcing demands upon you. These demands forced upon you will negatively impact the quality of your life

If all of this isn’t enough, we can also apply this to how we think: Your mind ALWAYS responds to the demands you place upon it.

And once again, most people aren’t forcing any demands upon their thinking. In fact, they’re usually living completely distracted lives because they’re on social media for several hours a day. 

You can force changes to how you think by reading, learning and by questioning everything in your life. I read every day and this usually forces me to think about what I’m reading. I question it. I challenge it. I experiment with it. I use it to my advantage.

Let’s put all of this together…

You either place specific demands on your body, finances and thoughts, or negative demands will eventually be placed upon your body, your finances and your thoughts. 

Take a second and think about your goals for 2021…

Do you want to get in the best shape of your life? 
Do you want to create more monthly cashflow?
Do you want to pay down debt? 

What specific demands can you consistently place upon yourself that will force progress towards each of your goals? 

Seriously, think about different forced demands you can use for every goal.

If you want to get in the best shape of your life, start exercising every day. If you want more cashflow, buy new income-producing assets every day.

If you want to be debt free, make a small extra payment on one loan every day.

Now hold yourself accountable to these daily demands and you’ll completely transform your life. 

Do not let a day pass without doing what you said you were going to do. 

“It’s better to do less than you hoped than nothing at all. NO ZERO DAYS.” – James Clear

Do something every damn day. 

No, it won’t be easy because you’re forcing yourself to improve.

Small progress is significantly better than no progress. Small progress compounds, zero progress doesn’t. 

The post Daily Improvement in Your Health, Finances & Mindset appeared first on CASHFLOWNAIRE.

Moneyball is about how the Oakland A’s consistently engineered a playoff baseball team with one of the lowest payrolls in professional baseball.

The reason why I recommend reading Moneyball is because we can use many of the same strategies used by the Oakland A’s in our businesses and with our investments.

Plus, it’s a fantastic book. Lewis is an amazing author.

Before we dig into some of the strategies from Moneyball, I wanted to touch on something extremely important:

One of the best ways you can increase your cashflow
is by taking ideas from one area and moving them into a new area.

Way back in the early 2000s, I took the “membership” idea and used it with my real estate brokerage. This idea opened the doors for a new income stream and a massive amount of new home sales.

I just took an idea from the information marketing world and used it in my brick & mortar real estate business.

I didn’t get this idea from reading books on how to sell real estate!

Let’s start with something from Moneyball:

“A decade before, the highest payroll team, the New York Mets, had spent about 44 million on baseball players and the lowest payroll team, the Cleveland Indians, a bit more than 8 million. The raw disparities meant that only the rich teams could afford the best players. A poor team could afford only the maimed and the inept, and was almost certain to fail.

Or so argued the people who ran baseball.

And I was included to concede the point. The people with the most money often win. But when you looked at what actually happened over the past few years, you had to wonder. The bottom of each division was littered with teams – the Rangers, the Orioles, the Dodgers, the Mets – that had spent huge sums and failed spectacularly.

On the other end of the spectrum was Oakland. For the past several years, working with either the lowest or next to lowest payroll in the game, the Oakland A’s had won more regular-season games than any other team, except the Atlanta Braves. They’d been to the playoffs three years in a row and in the previous two taken the richest team in baseball, the Yankees, to within a few outs of elimination. How on earth had the done that?”

They engineered this success by thinking differently than all other baseball teams, which is obviously an illustration of everything we do in the Cashflownaire Membership.

This process started when the Oakland A’s began thinking through how teams actually won baseball games. To figure this out, they studied every possible metric, looking for those that were critical for success.

This process forced them to think accurately. They couldn’t just do what they always did. They couldn’t continue taking old school opinions on how to win as if they were accurate. They ended up focusing on a few key statistics that most teams ignored. They built their team around these key statistics and began to win.

This exact same situation presents itself with regard to how average people invest. Average people blindly follow everyone else without putting much thought into what they’re doing. They don’t think accurately and end up trading away decades of their lives working needlessly.

Average people focus on the market value of their investments. Their goal is to build a large net worth so that they can finally retire in their 60s.

Well, what metrics are actually important when it comes to financial success?

Um… how about positive cashflow?

Please note that I didn’t use the word “income.” Income usually flows from your labor while cashflow flows from your assets.

Prior to the Oakland A’s, all Major League Baseball teams focused on meaningless metrics, which is why the highest paid teams rarely achieved consistent success. And because these teams focused on meaningless metrics they consistently overpaid for their assets. They overpaid players who didn’t significantly improve their chances of success.

Guess what?

The basic financial plan everyone follows forces them to do the exact same thing… consistently overpay for assets.

Back when I was a CPA slugging it away in the corporate world, I had set up automatic contributions to my 401k (retirement account). These contributions where then invested into individual stocks by the various fund managers. The stocks selected by the various fund managers tended to be “safe” investments and didn’t offer very much cashflow.

On a high-level, this meant that I was investing into overpriced investments, and because these funds didnt pay out a lot of income, I was stuck working 60 to 70 hours a week.

Because I blindly did what everyone else was doing, I created a long-term trap for myself. I couldn’t escape this trap because I needed my paycheck.

Robert Kiyosaki taught us something critically important: If an asset doesn’t pay you for owning it, it’s NOT an asset.

Every dollar I was investing into non-income producing assets was an overpayment.

Seriously think about this for a minute… Most baseball teams overpaid for their assets and didn’t succeed. Average people overpay for their assets and end up struggling financially.

Everything changes when we stop following meaningless metrics (net worth), which you have zero control over. When you focus on cashflow (important metric), you instantly stop overpaying for assets.

One important new metric the Oakland A’s started paying attention to back then was their cost per win. By minimizing their cost per win, the team became more profitable. They didn’t need massive salaries to make it to playoffs.

We can do the same thing by analyzing our cost per income-producing asset. By minimizing your cost per income-producing asset, you can create more cashflow with less money.

We all know that what we focus on expands, right?

Wouldn’t it make a lot of sense to focus on positive cashflow?

You can use positive cashflow to pay this month’s bills. You can use positive cashflow to go on an amazing vacation. And you can even use positive cashflow to buy new cashflowing assets!

Why not make creating more cashflow your focus for the new year? I can promise you one thing… positive cashflow makes life a lot better without having to wait until you can finally retire in your 60s or 70s!

If you’d like to have instant access to my strategies for accelerated cashflow, test-drive my Cashflownaire Membership with this FREE 7-DAY Trial Membership available here.

P.S. Billy Beane was the general manager of the Oakland A’s during their domination of Major League Baseball. Beane aggressively pursued players other teams ignored.

In fact, many of the Oakland A’s players were overweight and didn’t even appear to be professional athletes. These players had excelled in specific metrics that Beane realized were crucial to success in baseball. Metrics all other teams ignored.

Everyone in baseball laughed at Beane for the players he acquired for the team. They thought he was nuts wasting first-round draft picks on unattractive players. He stuck with his plan by holding his focus on the “right” metrics and led the Oakland A’s to the playoffs year after year.

The majority of my monthly cashflow flows from assets that most people ignore. In fact, when most people hear about this unusual investment, they laugh at me. I’ve stuck with this particular investment and it continues to pump out massive amounts of cashflow.

You’ll receive my System for investing in these unusual investments when you take the 7-day test drive of my Cashflownaire Membership!

The post How Moneyball Accumulated Undervalued Assets appeared first on CASHFLOWNAIRE.

These stress tests are designed to uncover vulnerabilities within the banking industry. These vulnerabilities put the bank (and all of the bank’s customers) at risk.

Quentin suggests using this strategy with our investments. In other words, do a stress test on your investments to try and find your vulnerabilities.

To apply a stress test to your investments, you can think through what might happen under the following scenarios:

1. An increase in interest rates.
2. An increase in vacancy rates.
3. A decrease in rental rates.
4. A decrease in market prices.
5. An increase in market times (filling vacancies/selling assets)
6. Unexpected large expenses.

The idea is to find scenarios where you might find potential problems in your investments. Once you identify a possible problem, you can take action to reduce your vulnerability for that particular scenario.

Oddly enough, the pandemic has created multiple stress tests for us. Unfortunately, these stress tests aren’t hypothetical. They’re real life stress tests with serious consequences.

If you own a business, you can also run stress tests on different scenarios to see where your business is vulnerable.

Here are a few scenarios to consider:

1. What would happen if you lost your top three customers?
2. What would happen if interest rates increase?
3. What would happen if you lost your biggest source of new leads?
4. What would happen if you lost your best employee(s)?
5. What would happen if your business was forced to close temporarily?
6. What would happen if you couldn’t work in your business?

Yes, these scenarios aren’t fun to think about. However, it’s an important strategy you should use to your advantage.

Wouldn’t it make more sense to identify a problem before it arrives? To be proactive instead of reactive?

Our mission as Cashflownaires is to move into the glorious Position of F-You. This is a position of strength where you have control over your life.

You can’t be in a position of strength if you’re vulnerable to unexpected problems.

P.S. This stress test idea can also be applied to other areas:

1. What would happen to your family if you were to lose your job?

2. What would happen if you were forced to evacuate your home?

3. What would happen if your home/business were to burn down?

4. What would happen to your family if you were diagnosed with a serious illness?

The post How to Stress Test Your Cashflow appeared first on CASHFLOWNAIRE.

“Rob – Why do you always make negative comments about average people? There’s nothing wrong with being average.”

When you’re on your death bed, will you be happy having lived an average life? Or will you look back with regret knowing you could have lived a good life? 

The main reason I am against being average is because average people don’t think for themselves. They go through their entire lives blindly following others and end up living lives they don’t truly enjoy.

My search for how to live a good life started when I began reading books on Stoicism. Stoicism teaches us something extremely important… 

Stop worrying about things you can’t control and 
invest your time and energy improving the 
things that you can control.

This is actually good news because the list of things we can’t control is incredibly long. It includes the weather, the economy, the stock market, the real estate market, interest rates, traffic, all material items, deadly viruses, our health, and ALL other people. 

We may be able to partially influence some of these things; however, we have no real control over any of them. I can try to influence my daughters, but I have zero control over what they do or don’t do. I can eat healthy and exercise, but I have no real control over my health. 

On the flipside, the list of things you CAN control is rather short: 

1. Your attention 
2. Your energy levels 
3. Your perspective 
4. The food you eat – or don’t eat. 
5. How you choose to use your time 
6. Your thoughts 
7. Your emotions 
8. Your actions 
9. Your financial situation

The crazy part is that all of these things are interconnected. Each individual thing in your can control impacts all other things in your control. This means… 

If you don’t exert much control over any one of these things, it will negatively impact all things in your control. 

You may notice that I listed “your attention” as the first thing we have control over. I did this because… 

Your attention is incredibly valuable. 

Businesses spend billions trying to get (and keep) your attention. 

Why is this the case? 

Because where your attention goes, you go. Whatever controls your attention ends up controlling yo

Attention —> Thoughts 
Thoughts —> Actions

This means that if you don’t control where your attention goes, someone else will control it for you, and that someone may not have your best interests in mind. They will want to manipulate your attention to serve their purposes.

Really, think about this…

If big businesses will spend billions to get your attention, wouldn’t it make a little sense for you to put some thought into where you allow your attention to go?

If your attention is worth billions, wouldn’t it make sense for you to protect it? To shelter it? To care for it? To use it to your advantage? 

Your attention may actually be your most important asset because it impacts everything else in your control.

Now, let’s consider all of this as it relates to average people. Average people do not exert much control over their attention… their most valuable asset. Their attention is usually controlled (manipulated) by their work, their email, their text messages, the news, social media, TV, celebrities, and other people in their lives.

Average people are NOT strategic with where they direct their attention. They allow their attention to wander from unimportant thing to unimportant thing. Their attention is controlled by everyone and everything.

This means they are controlled by everyone and everything. They are literally sheep grazing on their cell phones in the barn yard.

Now, picture a person who is doing very well financially, a billionaire, and consider if this person allows their attention to be controlled by others? Does Warren Buffett control where his attention goes, or does he it allow it to wander freely? How about Bezos, Gates, and Zuckerberg? Do you think they allow their attention to be hijacked and exploited?

Wealthy people are very strategic with their own attention. Wealthy people are also very strategic with YOUR attention (your asset).

Wealthy people control their own attention and they also work hard to control the attention of average people.

In fact, wealthy people invest billions of dollars in order to control the attention of average people.

One of Buffett’s businesses paid for the GEICO advertisement you watched yesterday. This means that Buffett indirectly paid for some of your attention, your most valuable asset.

Wealthy people are actually in “the attention business” because it’s the most valuable asset in the world. Money always follows attention.

This means YOUR money follows where YOUR attention goes. Control where your attention goes and you’ll ultimately control where your money goes.

There are two ways you can use all of this to your advantage: 

1. You MUST be very strategic with where you direct your attention.

Stop allowing unimportant things to control your attention. Redirect the attention you’ve reclaimed into IMportant things. 
Read strategically. Watch TV strategically. Listen to podcasts strategically. Use social media strategically. 
Ask yourself does this book, video, podcast connect to what I’m trying to create in my life? If it doesn’t, you have to learn ignore it, eliminate it, or block it from your life.

2. Get into the “attention” business. 

If money follows attention and you want more money, then you should think about getting into the “attention” business. 

Truth be told, I made the most money during the years when I had attracted the most attention. I engineered this attention strategically through marketing, endorsements, testimonials, case studies, publicity and through my connection to other high-profile people. Get attention for yourself (turn yourself into a brand). Get attention for your businesses. Or do both, which is what the wealthy do. 

The good news is that it’s fairly easy to capture attention these days because average people are very easy to distract. They aren’t strategic with their attention, which makes it very easy for you to capture.

The post Attention is a BILLION DOLLAR Asset appeared first on CASHFLOWNAIRE.

At some point, I started journaling lessons I was learning from the market crash.

My hope was to learn from everything so I wouldn’t make the same business and investing mistakes again.

In other words, I didn’t want to waste my failure.

Well, I recently dug out these journals and thought I’d share some of the lessons extracted back then. The reason I’m doing this right now is because there’s never been a better time to start a new business.

The most important lesson I learned was to set the “right” goals. Your goals dictate your actions.

The right goals lead to the right actions.
The wrong goals (obviously) lead to the wrong actions.

To illustrate this, I’ve included my business goals from 2005 – before the crash:

These goals were on the first page of my day planner. Yes, I used to carry around one of those oversized day planners!

This was the first thing I saw every time I opened it.

Oddly enough, when I sold my brokerage in 2007, these were our numbers. We were averaging 30 home sales each month.

Turns out that we actually do get what we focus on the most!

My focus (goal) was to increase our home sales. Every business decision I made supported this focus (goal).

This goal led me to invest tens of thousands of dollars into lead-generation advertisements. To support this large lead flow, I had to hire more full-time staff. A larger staff led to a larger office. A larger office led to 40 cubicles, expensive phone systems, copiers, and more.

Without realizing it, my focus on sales volume led to too much risk.

I had bet the farm on an appreciating real estate market and ended up losing this massive gamble. It’s hard for me to admit, but I never prepared for the possibility of a real estate market crash.

Real estate always goes up, right?

The crash taught me to focus exclusively on cashflow. This focus changes how you think and forces you to make better business and investment decisions.

Had my main business goal before the crash been to create $20,000 of monthly cashflow, would I have had to run so many lead-generation advertisements? No.

Would I have to hire so many full-time employees? No.

Would I have had to have a large office space? No.

Would I have to have 40 cubicles? No.

I could have easily achieved my cashflow goal with a lot less risk!

On one of my journal pages, I happened to find an outline of what I referred to as a “positive cashflow” business.

Here’s what I listed…

1. No long-term contracts.
2. Complete flexibility.
3. Limited or no overhead.
4. No debt.
5. No salaried employees.
6. Location independence.
7. Simplicity rules over complexity.
8. Large cash reserves.
9. Offset every business expense with recurring cashflow.
10. The business should be engineered around lifestyle, not sales growth.

These are rules that I still follow today, 12 years later.

Unfortunately, these rules are NOT easy to follow because they force you to pass on the majority of business opportunities.

You can’t start a bar. You can’t start a restaurant. You can’t start a retail store. You can’t start a traditional real estate brokerage. You can’t open up an office. You can’t…(the list is long).

We follow these rules because they help us make better decisions. We follow these rules because they protect us from challenging economic times. We follow these rules because they’re engineered around your time and how you want to live your life.

Most small business owners are trapped in their businesses. They’re trapped in their businesses because they’ve unknowingly violated one (or more) of these positive cashflow business rules.

Maybe they have a business with set hours, and they must be available during those set hours. Or they have employees and end up dealing with the constant pressure of making payroll.

I can tell you from first-hand experience that small business owners who violate these 10 rules don’t sleep very well. The only successful way to escape one of these small businesses is to sell the business, which becomes impossible during challenging economic times – like the one we’re facing right now.

Yes, this is an extremely conservative approach. Yes, you’re forced to pass on many great opportunities. However, you’ll be very thankful when the shit hits the fan.

If you own a business and you’ve violated any of these rules, you MUST build larger cash reserves. Bill Gates always maintained enough cash at Microsoft to cover all of the business’s expenses for an entire year without generating a penny in revenue.

At the end of 2019, Microsoft had over 130 billion in cash. Bill Gates is best friends with Warren Buffett. Guess how much cash Berkshire Hathaway had at the end of 2019? 125 billion.

Most small businesses can only cover around six weeks of expenses because they have limited cash reserves.

This pandemic will end up bankrupting many of these small businesses.

Please understand that I was in this situation myself back in 2008. The overhead on one commercial property where my office was located was around 8,000 a month. The rental income from this property had dwindled down to just 2,000 a month, leaving a 6,000 monthly negative cashflow.

I decided to just pay the price I needed to pay to get out of the self-imposed prison I had created. I defaulted on longterm contracts and negotiated short sales. I set all of my full time employees up in their own businesses and eliminated payroll. I closed several businesses, upsetting many people. I terminated partnerships and dealt with every situation the best I possibly could.

It wasn’t easy.

When it was all over, I was free.

The market crash gave me the opportunity to start over with a lot more experience, knowledge and wisdom.

All of which I’ve been sharing in my Cashflownaire Membership!

I also found the following in those older journals:

1. Only start businesses that you can run from home. This will eliminate 90% of all business overhead. You can probably even run this business with a free Google Voice phone number, which is what I do.

2. Only purchase business equipment that will pay for itself within 3 months or less. This may mean renting equipment on a case by case basis, or buying used equipment at lower price points. Over the years, I’ve purchased used computers, phones, and more. Today you can start to build an amazing business with a laptop computer.

3. Go through your bank statements and study every expense your business incurs. For every expense, create recurring income to offset the expense. In other words, strategically offset each and very expense your business incurs.

You can obviously ignore what I’ve shared with you in this email thinking I have no idea what I’m talking about. That’s your call.

Just remember Mike Tyson’s words of wisdom: “Everyone has a plan until they get punched in the mouth.”

Not very many people plan for the punch and the pain that follows.

What I’ve shared with you in this email may help you prepare for an unexpected punch!

The post The BIGGEST Lesson I Learned from the 2008 Market Crash appeared first on CASHFLOWNAIRE.

“Shouldn’t you be teaching people how to increase their i-n-c-o-m-e instead of writing about cashflow all of the time?”

Well, I don’t write about increasing your i-n-c-o-m-e because I’m not a time trader. I’m not interested in trading time for dolla billz.

I-n-c-o-m-e usually flows from your labor.
Cashflow flows from your assets.

It’s extremely important to be clear with your goals or you run the risk of making costly mistakes. I learned this lesson the hard way.

I write about cashflow because I’m trying to help you avoid the same mistakes I’ve made.

Once you start focusing on cashflow, you’ll start seeing things more clearly. This clarity will make your life a lot easier because there’s only 3 ways to increase your cashflow:

1. Create cashflow from your existing assets.

This is obviously the best place to start because you already own the asset(s)! Your ROI so high that you can’t even calculate it! You’ll get an error on your calculator and this is because you have to enter 0 for the purchase price.

Now, most people gloss over this first strategy thinking that they don’t own many assets. The reality is that you own many assets.

You’re just not seeing them.

To help you learn to “see” your assets, do what I share here and you’ll identify 250 ways you can increase your cashflow. Your returns on every strategy you identify are astronomical because you already own the assets!

2. Buy cashflowing assets.

This second strategy requires you to focus on assets that pay you for owning them.

This instantly elimates the majority of available investments. If an asset doesn’t provide consistent cashflow, you don’t have to waste any time on it. This rule also makes evaluating different investment opportunities a lot easier because you evaluate new assets by the amount of cashflow you’ll be collecting.

The best part about this strategy is that you can actually buy new cashflowing assets every day. This obviously means you can increase your cashflow every single day, too.

Oddly enough, you don’t need a lot of money to use this strategy. You can buy attractive cashflowing assets for under 10 bucks. These assets will continue paying you and your family for the rest of your lives.

If you’d like to learn how to systematically increase your ownership of cashflowing assets on a daily basis, become a Cashflownaire Member today and I’ll send you my new Daily Cashflow System.

I’m including this new System as a new member bonus.

3. Creating cashflowing assets.

When the average person goes to work, they’re trading their time for i-n-c-o-m-e. When a Cashflownaire goes to work, they use their time to create cashflowing assets.

This means you MUST BE VERY STRATEGIC with what you allow yourself to work on. When you work, your work should be engineered to pay you multiple times.

You should get paid this month, next month and every month thereafter.

The cashflow from the assets you create should then be used to buy new cashflowing assets (Step 2).

One of the best ways to create cashflow is by building a membership business. Every asset you create for your membership is an asset that can be leveraged to create more (and more) cashflow.

If you’d like to learn how to start a membership business, you can take my 5-day online course with the legendary Dan Kennedy here.

This course is so powerful that it should be priced $980 higher than it is right now.

I have this course discounted massively because I’m hoping you use what you learn to start creating cashflowing assets for your family.

Some of you may be thinking…

“Rob, thanks for the email but you’re just trying to sell me all your stuff.”

Actually, I’m trying to sell you something far more important… increasing your ownership of cashflowing assets.

If you don’t start increasing your ownership of cashflowing assets, you’ll NEVER be able to stop trading time for dolla billz.

Most people don’t understand this.

What REALLY matters is that YOU accumulate more cashflowing assets for your family.

If you do this without buying my “stuff” than this email was a success.

So… before you delete this email and move on with your day, ask yourself:

1. How much cashflow did I create for my family last week?
2. How much cashflow did I create for my family last month?
3. How much cashflow did I create for my family this year?

If your honest answers to these questions are “not much,” you need to make a few changes ASAP.

The post Time Trader appeared first on CASHFLOWNAIRE.