Wealth Wisdom System

One of the biggest problems that entrepreneurs face, especially new entrepreneurs, is that they feel like they’re going at it alone.

If you’ve recently made the shift from an employee mentality to an entrepreneur mentality, you may find yourself treading in unfamiliar waters. You have a million questions. What’s the right business model for you? Should you incorporate now, or wait? Should you take on partners? How do you get funding for your business? Should you patent your ideas? Where can you get the best price on business cards? What’s the most cost-effective way to advertise? How do you get your first customer? Your first client? Is it normal to feel like your world is spinning out of control?

What I’m going to suggest may sound like networking. Some people feel weird about networking, and other people love networking. Yes, I do want you to find like-minded people. I want you to spend time with them and get to know them. I want you to give and ask for advice. But I don’t want to call it networking. I want to call it building your community.

I began building my community through a Cashflow meetup group.

Cashflow — Robert Kiyosaki’s “Monopoly on steroids” board game. I play once a week.

Meetup group — a group of like-minded people who find each other on meetup.com and then go meet in real life

I just happened to find this meet up group called Women, Wealth & Wisdom that meets in Atlanta, GA.

Prosper Me! Consulting is a Financial and Personal Development Firm. Our focus is WOMEN, WEALTH, & WISDOM we teach our members how to build generational wealth. Our company was established to give women in business a support system. Prosper Me! Consulting wants to give all women an equal opportunity to have access to resources, support, mentoring and most of all Financial Education. Attend or host a Prosperity Party, join a movement of women on the move to MILLIONS.

Building Wealth takes efficient, responsive professional services; here’s what we can do for you:

*Create An Additional Income Stream

*Grow your business through our Network and Signature Events

*Help you maximize your true potential in life

*Promote your company through our various Media Resources

*Position your company to expand Nationwide

*Provide Business Development resources

*Host Group seminars and workshops that you can attend on a regular basis

Here’s a group that teaches small business owners in Los Angeles how to do their own internet marketing.

And here’s a group near Boston for small business owners who need the expertise of other business professionals.

I encourage you to check out meetup.com. Most groups are free to join, though some ask for a nominal fee to cover expenses. Type in your area of interest (try typing “small business” to get started) and your zip code, and see what you find! I’d love to hear about what groups you join and the difference it makes in your business.

I play Rich Dad Poor Dad Robert Kiyosaki’s Cash Flow game every Wednesday with my Mom. If you’ve ever played this game, you know that once in a while, a card comes up that lets you buy rental property for $0 down!

The other day, I saw a listing in the paper for a no money down deal. It was for a laundromat. I called the number and found out that someone had filled a laundromat with $250,000 of new equipment, and then skipped out on both the loan and the lease. The property manager said all the place needed were the coin boxes, and that they were able to short sale the loan to $147,000. They desperately wanted someone to come in and take over the loan and the lease.

I asked her, “WHY would someone do that?”

She seemed to wave off my question. She just said, “Oh, he had a lot of other businesses.”

It was a fishy answer, and the laundromat wasn’t in a great area, but I was intrigued. I made an appointment to go see it, and then I called all the utilities so that I could start figuring out what the expenses would be if I decided to take it over. The electric company wouldn’t tell me how much the previous owner was paying in electricity every month. They said that was private information.

And the gas company told me that there hadn’t been service to that address since 2006.

My mom was interested in all this, so she came with me. The place was between a small insurance office and a small auto repair shop. The road sign was cracked, and the storefront sign was missing. When I met with the owner of the building, I asked him, “What’s the story? Why would someone put in new equipment and then bail out?”

He told me, “He went bankrupt before he could finish.”

This made much more sense than the property manager’s answer, but I was a little put off by receiving two different answers.

Strike 1

He told me that the place had been a laundromat for a long time, and then this guy came in, took out all the old equipment, and put in the new stuff. He also spent something like $200,000 to “get the sewers ready.”

I wondered, Ready for what? Didn’t this guy just tell me that the place has been a laundromat for a long time?

Next I asked the building owner, “How long has it been since this place was open as a laundromat?

He replied, “Ehhhhhhhh eight months.”

But there hasn’t been gas service to the location in three years? Excuse me?

Strike 2

We went inside. There was a thick layer of dust on everything. I counted up the machines and made note of the different types. All of them still had their paper work inside of them. There were a few cutouts in the wall for change machines, and an empty doorway that needed a door to keep people away from the maintenance area.

There was water damage on the ceiling tiles. My mom asked the owner, “Does the roof need to be replaced?”

“Yes, we’re going to get a new roof.”

“When?”

“Oh, don’t worry. We will get a new roof.”

Strike 3

Next my Mom and I went and visited four other laundromats within a one-mile radius. I wanted to see what other laundromats were charging for the types of washers and dryers I had just tallied so that I could figure out the property’s potential income.

On the drive home, my Mom asked me what I thought.

“Well,” I said, “he lied to me. If he’s going to lie to me about how long ago the place was operational, what else is he going to lie to me about? What did you think about it?”

“There wasn’t enough parking. And the auto repair shop was using your parking lot to store their junk cars. Who would want to do laundry there?”

Lessons I Learned

1. Always take someone with you. There’s nothing like a second set of eyes and ears.
2. Ask the same question of different people. If the story doesn’t line up, RUN!

[continued]

Putting yourself on the right side of global economic change does not necessarily mean throwing your current career and lifestyle overboard. It does mean managing your career in a flexible, diversified, and entrepreneurial fashion. The days of working one job for one paycheck are dying. An entrepreneurial career means diversifying your activities and developing several streams of income. For some, that may mean a job or practice with a network marketing business on the side. Others may pursue their business full-time and invest some of their profits in other business, stocks, or properties. But for all it can mean retaking control of your financial and personal life — successfully navigating a stormy ocean of change.

Investment guru and author Robert Kiyosaki sums it up this way: “It’s time for people to begin minding their own business. A job means you’re being paid to mind somebody else’s business. In this new economy, you’re paid to mind you’re own business.

“The idea that you can go to school, get good grades, find a safe, secure job, and have the company and the government take care of you is fundamentally of the Industrial Age. It was a good program — as long as you were born prior to 1930.”
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