One of My Billboards, Circa 2005

I was left HOLDING THE BAG with:

• $250,000 in Credit Card Debt Alone!

• I will not even get into the fact that I had MILLIONS of dollars in property that was all in various stages of being bought, sold, remodeled, rehabbed and was now basically Unsellable.

• In December of 2008 I was diagnosed with Cancer.

• Merry Christmas to ME! I spent the next Six Months in several Surgeries and Chemotherapy. All the while My Finances suffering due to the combination of not working and not having the capital inflow from the banks that I normally had.

• And then I got a Divorce.

• After nearly 25 years of marriage. I moved into one of my rental properties: Less than 1/2 the square footage, on a small city lot, near a busy state highway and in a less than desirable side of town.

I tell you all this NOT TO GET YOUR SYMPATHY, but to illustrate a simple truth. See, I could have just laid over, accepted defeat, threw up my hands and quit. I could have claimed bankruptcy. I could have let the multiple houses go back to the failing banks as foreclosures. I could have stopped trying. But I didn’t. Here is the thing folks:

When you are faced with your deepest fears, when your livelihood, and really when your LIFE IS ON THE LINE, in that moment, you find out EXACTLY WHO YOU ARE.

One of the businesses within Real Estate that I engage in is Property Management. At that time, I had a pretty large portfolio of properties. Still do. The tenants had always rented my homes through Lease Option, Rent to Own, or Owner Financing models rather than simply month to month, or yearly leases like most landlords. I learned a long time ago that somebody with a vested interest in a property (or a person for that matter), was more likely to see their agreements through the bad times.

The thing was, most of them never were able to pull the trigger and buy the homes. It wasn’t that they were Bad People; they just did not know squat about how to set up a Budget, live within their Means, Establish and Maintain Good Credit, Fix that Credit when it became tarnished and honestly, they just lacked a basic knowledge regarding The Truth about Money in general.

For Years I have had a standing agreement with all my tenants. It goes like this:

And so, I began teaching those that wanted it, about How Money REALLY works, How to set up a budget and how to develop the discipline to follow through with the budget and of course:

​How to Establish, Repair, and Maintain One’s Credit.

And That Is EXACTLY what I did.

• I Adjusted My Budget

• I sold what homes could be sold. I minimized my life. I turned the properties that I could not sell Into rentals. I reminded myself that money is a currency; meaning it is merely energy and that energy is useless unless it is put to some useful task. Most of all, I PAID ME FIRST.

• I Balanced My Life

• There were a LOT of reasons I got Cancer and a Divorce. I changed habits that no longer worked in my life and acquired some new ones that DID. I did this in My Physical Life, My Emotional Life, My Spiritual Life and My Financial Life.

• I Fixed my Credit

• All that stuff I had been teaching my tenants? Well that knowledge and experience came in handy as I Fixed errors and omissions through the dispute process, Challenged issues as they came up, Negotiated more comfortable terms for the various accounts that I was dealing with and Ultimately INCREASED MY CREDIT SCORE while the bulk of the Nation was floundering in the Crash of 2008 and the All that stuff I had been teaching my tenants? Well that knowledge and experience came in handy as I Fixed errors and omissions through the dispute process, Challenged issues as they came up, Negotiated more comfortable terms for the various accounts that I was dealing with and Ultimately INCREASED MY CREDIT SCORE while the bulk of the Nation was floundering in the Crash of 2008 and the Worldwide Financial Crisis that followed. that followed.

And Guess What?

In fact, it worked SO WELL, that my Credit Score was back up to what it was “Pre-Crash” in less than two years, and only about 9-10 months after I was able to return to full speed work “post chemo”, which was really about how long I worked on it with the skills I would like to now teach YOU…

So, Since I have been so ABUNDANTLY BLESSED, I decided that I needed to make this available to ANYBODY who is struggling now, has struggled in the past or who wants to avoid struggling in the future. And not just my tenants. Everybody.

Here is something I deeply believe:

While it is true that at the end of the day, everybody needs to make a living; it is equally important that at the end of the day, everybody needs to produce something of value for the planet.