Want to know how to get brokers to bring you deals first?

Want to build a machine that can buy real estate while you play golf?

Have a very professional and organized METHOD for closing on a property.

It's a system. And here's how we do it.

A thread 👇👇👇

I’ve gotten a lot of bad advice in my career and I see even more of it here on Twitter.

Time for a stiff drink and some truth you probably dont want to hear.

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College isn’t worthless for everyone.

All of the successful folks who tell you college is worthless went to college.

What does that tell you?

It’s not about the learning, though.

It’s about growing and learning how to sell yourself and your ideas.

Miami isn’t the next tech hub.

It’s surrounded by a swamp.

Construction costs are insane because of hurricane codes. Vacant land doesn’t exist.

Property insurance has risen on average 20% per year for 5 years.

Plus it’s hot AF. Ever been there in July?

Starting a business isn’t right for everyone.

95% of folks are better off getting a job.

It’s hard AF. Decisions are critical and plentiful. Risk is for real. Stress can be crippling. Delegation can be impossible for poor communicators.

Most folks don’t have what it takes.

Technology isn’t as far along as the media makes you think it is.

We’re 5+ years away from autonomous vehicles.

Alexa still can’t play the song I want 25% of the time let alone make decisions and “learn”.

Robots fall on their faces when they aren’t on perfectly flat ground.

On Sep 3rd 2020 we closed on a 120k sf glove factory built in 1890 in a small NY town.

Has 45k sf of self storage inside and had $14k a month of net operating income at closing.

Let's breakdown this deal.

A THREAD on creating $2 million out of thin air in 18 months...

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First saw the property on Loopnet in mid 2018. I ignored it. Who wants to try to operate a business in an old factory in a dying NY town.

A few months later I reached out. Broker sent me financials. They were good. $24k a month in revenue and $10k in expenses.

So I visited the property. It was old. Needed a new roof. Full time manager. Only accessible to customers 9am-5pm M-S. No autopay. A lot of folks paying 1/2 market rent.

I loved everything about it.

But I knew they were going to have trouble selling this thing no matter the profitability, so on July 1 2018 I made a low offer. $750k + seller pays for new $250k roof + $20k in environmental work.

Countered at asking price + $100k credit towards roof.

I ignored the response.

Broker called me back mid September of 2018. Make another offer, he urged.

I knew it was a good biz so I got more aggressive - $1MM + seller pays for roof / environmental.

Declined. Countered with $1.2MM but they'd give me a new roof and do the environmental.

A thread on how to turn $100 into a lot more:

People are spending a lot of money on their homes right now. Its time to go get some of that money and help out some of these people.

Sound silly? Good.

It really is this simple sometimes.

Lets go 👇

Get on your computer and buy a web domain.

Get a freelancer (upwork or fiverr) to make you a logo/flyer and get $45 worth of flyers printed at your local print shop.

Buy a box of sidewalk chalk if you really want to grind and get gritty.

Go downtown with the sidewalk chalk and write “pressure washing and home cleaning 888-555-1234” as many times as you can in high traffic areas.

Go to a middle class or high end neighborhood and hand out flyers on porches and wherever else.

Get creative. You might get ran off but its low risk. Target those with dirty payment.

Your cell phone will start ringing. Book all of the jobs for Saturday.

Rent a power washer Saturday morning with the other $50 and go make $300 in one day.

Do the same thing the next weekend and then buy a power washer. Then put $200 into a website and nurture a Google My Business location.

Get reviews, upload photos, make it look nice. 50% of your biz will come through here.

Think slow, work fast.

A thread on entrepreneurship and what folks don't understand about opportunity.

It comes in waves.

Long periods of time are spent blocking and tackling and going through the motions.

Short periods of time can change your life.

Don't get me wrong, successful folks are consistent. They show up. They stay focused for years.

But...

Ask them to point to a time period where they made most of their money and they'll direct you to a time span between 6 months and 2 years.

When the opportunity arose and they seized it.

They built something that continues to create value. They built an asset that continues to create cash.

They seized an opportunity and did work over a short period of time and they harvest the fruit for years or generations.

How you know you've made it:

You get to stop doing business with assholes.

No asshole clients.

No asshole partners.

No asshole investors.

In the early days, when you're hungry, you have to do what you have to do.

Bend over backwards for customers.

Deal with disrespectful partners.

Take investments from folks who don't have the same vision as you do and bend the terms to their liking.

As you build enough experience and wealth this slowly shifts.

And you can start firing the bad customers.

Breaking up with the bad partners.

And buying out the bad investors.

This is different than F U money.

F U money is the next phase...

It happens a few million later when you become one of the assholes.

Tip:

Get F U money but don't become an asshole.

This transformation happens through leverage.

When we start, we have none. Others have it all.

You have no negotiation power because they have everything YOU need and YOU are a commodity.

2018 was almost the year we won the #RightToRepair.

Instead, 2018 turned out to be the year we lost #R2R: 20 bills defeated in 20 state houses, and it was mostly @apple's fault.

1/

Apple has a problem. As CEO Tim Cook warned his investors at the conclusion of his company's repair-killing lobbying spree, Apple's profits depend on people throwing away their devices, not fixing them.

By monopolizing repairs, Apple doesn't just get to gouge you on parts and service - the real action is in pronouncing your device DOA, beyond repair. Then you have to buy another one.

3/

Other companies lobbied hard against R2R: John Deere, GM, and other monopolists backed Apple's play. But Apple wrote the playbook, coming up with risible bullshit like claims that blocking independent repair is essential to protecting

Apple's anti-repair FUD got picked up and amplified by Big Car in 2020, when they spent millions fighting an automotive R2R ballot initiative in Massachusetts, claiming that letting independent mechanics at your car would lead to your actual MURDER.

WTO e-commerce #digitaltrade consolidated draft leaked by @bilaterals_org Some interesting things (1/n)

(2/n) Intermediary liability is included without brackets, normally meaning there is some agreement. The text is based on US proposals but has more extensive caveats and exceptions than existing US trade deals

(3/n) No agreement on cross-border data flows at WTO #digitaltrade consolidated text

(4/n) FWIW The UK's (and US) position on WTO #digitaltrade exceptions to the liberalisation of cross-border data flows vs the EU's. Guess which one is which

(5/n) Financial data may be included in the ban on forced localisation of computing facilities, but with many caveats. US regulators had pushed against this in the past but they seem to be losing the battle. Several alt texts. UK to bring more proposals.

The question of how TV news amplifies disinformation is often discussed but we have little concrete research on this subject. So we partnered w/ @r_macdonald & @kalevleetaru to understand how cable TV amplified Trump’s tweets. The results are interesting.

Between Jan 1 2020 and Jan 8 2021, CNN, Fox News and MSNBC spent 32 hours showing Trump’s tweets on screen, eg. blowing them up full size. This doesn’t include when anchors and correspondents mentioned things Trump had tweeted.

We then focused on the ways in which the three networks broadcast Trump’s tweets that falsely claimed the election would be fraudulent (before Nov 3) and was actually stolen (after the election).

In the weeks after the election, the cable news networks broadcast nearly three times as many Trump tweets about election fraud than they had in the nine months leading up to it. They even broadcast Trump’s old tweets after he was removed from Twitter in January.

4 points: 1) there was a drumbeat of tweets undermining the election throughout the summer. Many were broadcast & there were no labels from Twitter until middle of Sept. We need more research to understand how a foundation supporting the false narrative was laid by platforms & TV

Bill Gates got lucky.

With an IBM deal he signs in 1980.

Here's the hidden truth about the rise of Microsoft:

So we all know the Bill Gates story.

A brilliant kid who loves computers.

Drops out of Harvard in 1975 to start Microsoft with his childhood friend, Paul Allen.

Gates and Allen originally sell code interpreters to companies like MITS (Micro Instrumentation and Telemetry System).

In 1976, their revenue is $16,000.

By 1978, Microsoft hits $1 million in revenue.

But they were far from taking over the world.

Until...

In 1980, IBM asks Gates to build them an operating system for their new personal computers.

He had never done this.

So Gates directs them to his friend Gary Kildall from Digital Research.

The IBM-Digital Research meeting goes poorly.

The two parties argue over non-disclosure agreements and other legal issues.

Eventually, IBM offers Digital Research $250,000 to build the operating system.

They refuse.

"We will only do royalties."