By Will Crozier

How to Get Lucky in 2019

Enhance Your Odds of Biz Success Using Strategies That Amateurs Do Not

A professional poker player isn’t successful because they have better cards. They don’t win tournaments because they start with a bigger stack of chips either. Hell, they typically don’t even win a higher percentage of hands! They are consistently successful because they know the game’s odds better than the other players at the table. Professionals know the odds inside-out and they bet accordingly. This expertise of the odds turns them into a “shark”, playing against the amateurish “fish” who play on impulses, bad habits, or chemicals.

There are also many well known odds-enhancing strategies that people use to increase successes in their personal life. Everybody knows that if you want to get a hot date, it’s best to dress nicely, hit the gym, maintain excellent hygiene, and develop at least a semi charismatic personality. Everybody also knows that loosing weight is a function of feeding your fat-ass less nachos and actually walking around Walmart rather than taking the electric scooter rascal thingy.

What is far less obvious for most people are the odds behind financial and business success. Here’s the cool news: If you start to employee some of these odds-enhancing strategies in your financial and biz life you will quickly see things change for the better. Even more fun is the fact that most people don’t understand these ideas, so using them can send you to the top 10% in a hurry.

People & Relationships:

• It’s extremely difficult to make money where there is no money moving around. I’m writing this from Manila Philippines, a poverty stricken city within a third world country. There is nothing happening for 90% of the population. Move to a location with a vibrant economy and grow up with it. Better to have the wind at your back.
• Don’t do anything alone. You’ll get slaughtered. Get team members ASAP. This means attorneys, accountants, bankers, co-conspirators and mentors. Get a business partner ASAP. Hell, get 10 partners.
• Speaking of partners, find people who are very different from you. Plug gaps in your skill set and knowledge base with partners. I have no skill set or knowledge base so this is why I need so many partners. In an early stage business it is important for each of the key players to bring big value form their respective backgrounds. Very often you will see a visionary/strategy/sales kind of person joining forces with a technical/details/organization type person as they need each other. This is a great example of where 1+1 ≠ 2. If you find the right partner then 1+1=10.

Finance:

• If you’re not using investor capital to grow your business, you either don’t believe in your business or you enjoy slow growth. Raise $10MM from investors so you can borrow $40MM from banks. Take 20% of all investor gains as your own personal profit. Repeat a few times then add a zero to the deal size. If there’s a secret formula to wealth out there, this is it.
• In startup mode don’t be afraid to be creative. Use those 0% for 12 months credit card offers that come along. I was in $200k of personal credit card debt early in my RE career. It sounds crazier than it actually was because I had used the debt to create around $1mm in equity in my RE deals. Remembering this fact was the only way I stayed sane.
• Refinance your P.O.S. car to strip another few grand of equity out to invest in marketing or rehab dollars. I always admired my passive investors who would do this or get a HELOC on their house to pile more money into our projects.
• Don’t pay off your house. Mortgages are cheap money with tax advantages. Instead invest excess money into your business. It’s better to pay 5% interest on your mortgage and invest your extra cash in deals that will yield 100% returns. Better yet, don’t own a house at all and just rent. It’s never as sexy to say “I rent this house”, but neither is waking up at 5am to commute to your cubical.

Communication:

• Learn at least the basics of spreadsheets. If you can’t speak spreadsheet you’ll have more difficulty communicating with biz people than if you don’t speak English. Many folks won’t even deal with you if you cannot communicate your ideas this way. (but on the flip-side, don’t make spreadsheets overly complicated as it will just seems like you’re hiding something …)
• Get one great deal under your belt. Once you do, build a high quality PowerPoint or video highlighting it. Break down the numbers, and use it as a marketing piece for yourself. It might only be one deal but it will create 719.2% more credibility for yourself. (sorry, I rounded to the nearest 10th) People will start to send you checks or wire you investment funds without your permission. Not exaggerating. At one investor meetup I had a guy trick me into following him to his car to show off his new Benz Coupe, turns out he took me to his trunk and tried to hand me an envelope with a $500k check in it. I’m surprised the DEA wasn’t there for the bust.
• Brand yourself. Market yourself. Become a mini-expert and create content around your “expertise”. That could be a seminar, podcast, blog, meetup, YouTube channel, etc. People will chase you down to add value to your life and projects. BTW, I think it takes like 2 years of heavy research to be a mini-expert in any given field. You can tell I’m being super scientific with all of this.

Strategy:

• Invest in local private deals. It’s nuts that people send most of their money to Wall Street where they have no control and an expected return of merely 7%. Instead invest in your neighbor’s used car lot or online LED lighting store. Use competent attorneys to review all contracts, get the advice of people who understand the business. Maintain voting rights in the business. Make 70% per year instead of 7%.
• If you want to be a Billionaire the most direct route is to have an IPO by taking a company public. Best bet is to move to Silicone Valley and start a business or get involved in a startup there. It’s not very practical to do it thru real estate, M&A, starting a coffee shop or by getting a degree in IT. I gave this moving idea some serious thought last year but decided my life wouldn’t be much better off going from millionaire to billionaire and would be worse off for several different reasons. (I already left CA once!)
• Forget net worth, millions, billions, big paychecks, and crushing/dominating things. Instead simplify your life and expenses and make $5k a month doing something you love from your laptop. If there’s a secret formula for freedom out there, this is it. My upcoming blog post on this subject is halfway done and coming soon. 🙂

What odds-enhancing strategies have you used to increase your biz & financial successes? I’d like to pick up dozens of them from comments on this post.

By angelcap2018

I Don’t Want To Afford It

A Conversation About Value

A mental shift. I was raised poor. My dad was a school teacher in rural Kansas, and my mom stayed home with us 6 kids. At one point I found myself living in an ancient Jayco popup camper that was inside of a big metal barn. We didn’t have a sewer or lagoon on this raw land, so we dug a pit with shovels and built an outhouse out of 2×4’s and old galvanized metal sheets. Dad got mad because we used the wrong nails. It got cold in the winter so we’d sleep with a space heater in the freezer room in the barn where they had previously hung the slaughtered cattle. The heater glowed red all night long as the rattly fan droned on. No, this isn’t the beginning of some sadistic horror movie. I didn’t even really mind all of this too much. What I hated the most was my 7th grade friends mocking me because I cut down an old cedar tree, trimmed the branches off of it and mounted an old basketball hoop to it. I raised it over an old, broken up concrete pad. I couldn’t afford a real metal pole or newer, adjustable basketball goal like my friends had. It was pretty bad when your local Kansas hick friends mocked you due to your apparent “poverty”. I’ll get way more into this another time, but wanted to flash a little background on some of my “why” and mindset.

I had become a multi millionaire before I finally moved out of my 1 bedroom apartment. It had cost me $997 a month. The electric bill, for some reason, only cost me about $17 a month. It was clean and in a nicer part of DFW called Euless near the airport. Two of many major motives behind me wanting to make money in life was having a big house and nice cars. I’m an absolute car nut. When I was in my 20’s I used to force myself away from working on cars, shopping for cars, dreaming of cars by telling myself: go build a business now, drive crap now, then someday you can have anything you want! When I moved from California to Texas I was BLOWN AWAY at the beauty of the huge homes. They are way nicer to look at than anything we had in LA and for a fraction of the price. A million bucks in Texas gets you something that costs way more than $10MM in LA. It was another one of these situations where I told myself, get into real estate, and you’ll have one of these beauties someday!

So my movers packed up our terribly ugly stuff in our 1 bedroom apartment and we drove to the new house in Keller. The movers’ first words were “HOLY SHIT, Did you enter the drug trade?!”. I guess it was a legit question. I’m thinking they don’t have a lot of people going from 900 sq/ft to 6,500 sq/ft in one of the nicest parts of town. Nearly all of our old junk went into the “bonus room” upstairs. We filled one room with furniture, now we needed stuff for the other 6k sq/ft. The same week I went down to Lamborghini Dallas and bought one of my first ever brand new cars: a Lamborghini Huracan, the exact color I wanted. I paid cash for the House and (easily could have for) the Lambo, and I had several million still invested in heavy value add apartment projects and in the stock market. The house cost $1.2MM and the car cost $230k. It was a very strange feeling to have the car and house of my dreams all happen within 2 days of each other. I wanted to finance the house, but got turned down flat. I couldn’t qualify for a mortgage as I had no job. What a weird world.

The house and car, believe it or not, do not offend my sense of value, at least on the surface. I’d come from California, so the house seemed like a steal. The car, while obviously not cheap, didn’t cost $350k-$400k like some of its nearest competitors. Besides my car was cooler then the others. This is where things started falling apart: We went down to Ethan Allen in Southlake and bought furniture for the house. The couches, chairs, and table, while expensive, didn’t shock me. What shocked me were the cost of throw pillows at like $500 a piece, end table lamps at $900, and the rugs…. oh the rugs…. I think the cheapest one was $4,500, the most expensive like $7,000. They’ll tell you the whole story about the 3 Indian or Afghani families who hand weave these things for several months and point out the beauty of the patterns. Yup. I decided to just go for it, the designers said they would look awesome in my space. I felt pained, but I didn’t want to seem too low class and not appreciate these fine pieces. I also told myself: “I can afford it”. And I could!

A few more of these moments? Ok.

That beautiful Matte Black paint job on my Lambo? Maintenance nightmare. You can’t repair it if you get any tiny scratches. No buffing. Nothing. So to protect it I decided to put the protective plastic film over the whole car. It only cost me $5k to do this. My buddy Ron spent $5k on his car too. By that I mean he bought an entire BMW X5 with 140k miles on it for what I spend on some plastic for my Lamborghini. But hell… I can afford it!

(insert story here about portable $99 JBL speaker vs $1000 outdoor speakers. They sound the same.) (*update: I actually like that title and it speaks for itself…. lol)

On a kitchen remodel, we bought a built in Miele Coffee Maker. It was around $2,500. Yeah, like 25x the cost of a Keurig. (I had to Google both of those names to know how to spell them. Are they German or??) But man, is that Miele badass! It does a little light show, steams the milk in front of you, if you use a tiny espresso cup it adjusts the nozzles to pour just above the tiny cup. Really awesome. Problem is this thing is a maintenance nightmare… again! Descaling tablets cost $40 from amazon and you need to do this every 40 cups. Milk “piping” always needs to be cleaned. If the coffee bean container gets even halfway empty it yells at you. Every three cups of coffee and you need to empty a huge drip tray. If the coffee grounds container is even 10% full it yells at you to empty it. But man is a freshly ground coffee latte delicious, and I can afford it and the headache it brings to my life!

I bet these examples come across as a little anecdotal and humorous. Let’s get out of these one-off examples and get into some of the more hard core depressing facts that accompany living like a “rich guy”:

I own my house free and clear. So no house payments right? Maybe. But it still costs me about $7,000 a month. Property taxes are $2,500 a month. HOA $125, Insurance $550, Water $400, Electric $300, repairs average $1,000, lawn, tree, landscaping care on 1 acre $1,000, plus lots of smaller bills. But I can afford it, so that’s cool.

Let’s not go too far into the cars, but at a glance, car washes are $100 a piece, tires are usually $2k for four, new battery $1,200, oil change $1,600. No sweat! I can afford it. The sales tax, or loss on trade-in on these cars is typically in the $20k-$30k range, both on the purchase and then on the sale. You can still buy a Honda for that, right?

Maybe it’s my $997 a month apartment rent, or the $17 electric bill. Or maybe it’s my 1991 Miata, the funnest car I’ve ever owned, that cost me $2,700. Maybe it’s the surgeries that our team performs in the Philippines that changes a kid’s entire life for like $200. I’m not exactly sure what is calling me, but something deep in my heart is crying out for VALUE. I can afford all of this crap, but I just don’t WANT to afford it anymore.

I hope nobody makes the mistake of assuming that I’m talking about experiences vs material things here. Experiences always win, but I’ve been lucky enough to not have had to make that choice. There’s been budget for us to have all this junk and still travel the world all we want, spend as much time as we care to with family and friends, and give time and money freely to humanitarian programs.

I’m still making a decision on the path forward, but I’m likely to make some substantial changes going forward. At the moment, I think I’d rather get back to value more than luxury material goods. I think I’d rather divert more funds to angel investing, charitable causes, and helping to educate those who seek it.

If I could go back and change something, would I? I don’t think so. I don’t think I’d change a thing. I think I needed to see/touch/feel/experience all of this to actually make it real. I’m simple minded that way. Maybe some of you can be wiser than I and avoid some of the expense and chaos of this path.

I also don’t want to paint myself into a corner. I think if I spelled millionaire with a ‘b’, not much would change, but I also might have another phase in life where this is appealing again. However, for the time being, I think I’ll start streamlining a lot of what is around me and cluttering up my life, making my expenses soar, and then start using my resources for other more appealing purposes.

By angelcap2018

Why you should flip apartments instead of houses

Good money can be made flipping houses. I did it for years. Even better than the money was the fundamental skill set acquired while flipping houses: Real Estate, Money Management, Partnerships, and Networking.   Read more

By angelcap2018

3 year plan to $1,000,000 Net Worth

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By angelcap2018

We’re selling our house and cars..

We’re selling our house and cars. We’re renting a 2 bed apartment in Plano and a house in the Philippines. Time to refocus and simplify with new missions: Humanitarian and starting a new domestic and international Angel Investment/ Venture Capital / Private Equity firm. Let’s do some good and do some business together.

By angelcap2018

Exponential Property Materials, SOLD!

I’m proud to announce the sale of my import company, Exponential Property Materials, LLC.

Our doors opened 6 years ago and I grew it into a multi million dollar company that has done business with many groups across the nation, including so many great friends here on FB. I sold the business to partner and friend, Kim Radaker Bays and her husband Matthew Bays.

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By angelcap2018

USA vs Freedom

While I maintain that the USA is the best country on Earth, I hope that we can always strive to be the land of the free. On this trip I observed many freedoms that we (mostly) do not have in the USA, all without a breakdown in peace, safety, and in many cases improving both:
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By angelcap2018

Travel Points 101

Emerson is typically credited with saying: “Life is a journey, not a destination.” So how about our journeys? Should we not enjoy every minute along the way? There was a time for me when the hours in transit at an airport or on a plane ranked right along with dentist visits and paying taxes. Miserable. It honestly made me just want to stay home. Luckily I wised up and now spend about half of my total year out and about the world, sometimes enjoying the time on the airplanes and airport as much as the destination.
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By angelcap2018

Don’t Just Hustle

Don’t just hustle. Instead, produce results.
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By angelcap2018

13 simple concepts to get rich for a money Newbie

Every week I get asked “How can I make money” from my non-entrepreneurial friends, so I thought I’d put together a simple, yet powerful list to help spark interest or give a little direction to anybody who wants to build financial wealth in their lifetime. I’ve picked up a lot of these concepts from super smart people, from life experience, and from my own victories and losses. Now go stack some of your own cash. @thewillcrozier
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