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The Connection Between Wealth and Giving

December 17, 2023 by  
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There are various reasons and motivators that push people to go after great wealth. But the real bottom line motivator to make even a little money is simply survival because we all need money for food, clothing, and shelter.

Thankfully, most of us have the basics to survive, especially here in the good ole USA. A large part of the reason for this is because of the great freedom and the wonderful free enterprise system that allows even a person born into poverty a good chance to rise above it all and make lots of money and even a fortune starting from scratch, as long as they are willing to put in the effort and the work.

One of the more unique motivators for achieving wealth can be that someone wants to make a lot so that they can give a lot. Now, some people would question that saying, “Why would that push or motivate people to achieve great financial success?”

My answer to that would be, “Because it can make the giver feel on top of the world with wonderful inner feelings that last and last. Plus, it’s a great legacy that can and will linger on long after the giver has passed on.”

I’ve been saying this for years, and I’ll say it for years to come. That feeling of giving back is so very good for the body, mind, and soul. That wonderful feeling can be had from giving both money and non-money stuff. Think of how you feel when you give someone a gift, or do a big favor for someone, or give a great compliment and you receive sincere, enthusiastic, and emotional thanks. There are not many feelings that are a greater reward than what you get when you are a giver.

So, if you and I really take the time to think it through, we may well see what a great motivator it can be for us to push ourselves to make more money so we can give more to others.

Also, never forget all those other things we can give–everything from sincere compliments and praise, our time, our service, and our sincere love and attention to others. The return on these kinds of investments are many times more satisfying than the return we get on our money investments.

My motto is becoming, more and more, “Give more to live more.” Or better yet, “Give more so others can live more!”

Cautionary Words in Uncertain Times

February 5, 2023 by  
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So what would you do if you had a pretty good nest egg saved up but your bank was paying you a lousy 1/2% a year and a good friend just told you about how he is getting an 18% annual return with monthly dividends through investments with a good friend? Your first reaction might be, “Wow! That’s a great return.” But then you might ask, “Tell me more about this friend and the investment, because it sounds too good to be true.”

This friend might say, “I’ve known this guy for several years and he’s a good guy that I have great confidence in. I invested some of my cash with him a year ago and he hasn’t ever missed a monthly interest payment. I just recently put all the rest of my savings into his deal and even had my mother put most of her savings with him.”

So, what you would be hearing from this friend is that he’s put virtually all his cash and savings into this “safe investment” and the return is guaranteed. But for all you know, he may even have put a second mortgage on his house at a low interest rate so he could make the difference in the spread. I don’t know what you’d do, but I know I would hold on to my wallet and run like hell.

Sadly, this kind of scenario happens almost every day. It can be particularly bad during a slow economic recovery. After the hard years of the pandemic, people are ready to find something good that can help them recover and build their savings against the next difficult time. I personally have known a number of people that have lost almost every penny to their name because they bought into situations very similar to the one described above. These were not ignorant people. They were really quite smart and educated so you wouldn’t think they would be susceptible, but such good sounding deals can be very tempting.

There is an old saying that goes back to the 16th century: “Tis the part of wise men to keep himself today for tomorrow and not venture all his eggs in one basket.” The other saying that we’ve all heard that we need to drum into our heads is, “If it seems too good to be true, it probably is.”

One of the policies that has driven my investment life is, “If I do choose to put all or most of my eggs in one basket, I must have total control over that basket and I must watch that basket very, very closely.”

I have talked about this before, but with the way things are now, I thought it was time to put out another reminder. Even if you are introduced to someone that a family member or friend says they have total confidence and trust in, just remember where the term “con man” comes from—it comes from the description of people who build up your confidence and trust in them before they strike.

This is not to say that there are not very good investments out there, but just be careful and always check them out very thoroughly. Be sure your investment is backed by solid, verifiable assets and don’t put all your financial eggs in one basket. Not unless you are the one in control of those eggs and can watch that basket very closely!

Words For Financial Success & Beyond

January 29, 2023 by  
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We just arrived in Kauai, and I realize it was time to write my next blog post. So I found an old blog I wrote years ago that includes a few friends who contributed to a little book I wrote called, A Beginner’s Guide to Investing in Real Estate. Those good friends and fellow writers are Clair Crookston, Bryan Kroff, David Shamy, and Kelvin Miller. In the book, we all talked about making good investments in life, real estate, and other types of investments. So, in this week’s post, I wanted to quote from one of those friends and share with you the ideas and directions a person should follow to come up with, not just great financial returns, but great returns on life.

The purpose of one of the chapters that Brian Kroff contributed to was to develop a game plan that will work for you for any goal — financial, personal, or physical. Brian wrote that “your personal real estate game plan, strategies, and flexibility are just as critical,” as any other goals you might have.

He wrote a lot of great stuff, including this from his own great book: “The knowledge you have and will gain about real estate is what allows you to make wise decisions. When it comes to money, knowledge separates the investor from the speculators. Knowledge is the power to control, at least to a significant degree, what happens to us. Knowledge reduces risk.”

Additionally, he says, “Try to establish, as far as possible, a regular ‘information acquisition’ program. Some people try to read a few minutes each morning or evening. Some use their lunch or coffee break to feed the mind as well as the body. Carefully analyze your personal daily schedule, then set aside a certain time period each day to educate yourself as best you can about real estate.”

He doesn’t stop there. He goes on to say, “Fundamental to beginning in real estate is the establishment of your goals. Determine, as far as possible, how you can achieve them. Everyone is unique and different, so set your own goals. Don’t be afraid if your goals are a little bit different, higher, or even lower than someone else’s. Be specific about your goals and write them down.”

And it’s true. Writing goals down can make a huge difference in your level of success and reaching those goals! So, set your goals, write them down, do your research, and go after what you want.

Keys to Wealth Building

May 30, 2021 by  
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Most of us want to build our wealth and I have been very fortunate and quite successful in that regard. Friends as well as strangers have asked me many times about the secrets to my success. I wouldn’t call all my methods secrets but I guess if you don’t know them, then they are secrets to you.

So, here’s a few of those so-called secrets that have helped me a ton:

1. Read good books about finance, then think about what you’ve learned, and find someone who has been successfully building wealth to discuss your ideas with.

2. Record your thoughts in a journal as you read. This will help you retain knowledge.

3. Write down your goals along with the time frames for reaching them. As you probably know, writing goals with time frames drives your brain and body to follow through and do it.

I love this quote: “Always have two books—one to read from and one to write in.”

Let me explain a bit more about the first point—the part about finding people that are good at what you want to learn. All my life I’ve looked for mentors—those people that are good at what I wanted to learn and do.

The famous billionaire Warren Buffett said, “I was lucky to have the right heroes. Tell me who your heroes are and I’ll tell you how you’ll turn out to be. The qualities of the one you admire are the traits that you, with a little practice, can make your own, and that, if practiced, will become habit forming.”

I was very fortunate to meet Larry Rosenberg, a very, very rich man, and he was kind enough to mentor me. He not only referred me to the best books to read to lead a person to huge wealth, he also spent lots of time with me over lunches. He gave me great advice, hints, and direction concerning where to look for the best properties and what to do to fix them up to greatly increase value and then sell them. Wow. His advice sure worked wonders for me.

If you want great wealth, or more wealth, start digging. Read the right books and research who you should get to know. Find the right super successful, wealthy people and asked them to mentor you! Yep, if you want it, go do it.

The Rewards of Development

March 14, 2021 by  
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In last week’s post, I shared parts of a bio of mine written years ago. Part of what that bio recounted was how I got into real estate. I started with small properties at first, but later on I gravitated into a much more profitable part of real estate known as development. Looking back, some projects I did really surprise me. I find myself thinking, “Wow, little ole me did all that!”

My work in the development side of real estate has been some of the most profitable of my entire career in investing. I’ll never forget getting a call from a guy in Pennsylvania telling me about a 77-unit apartment building that was for sale at a great low price. Shortly after that I heard, for the first time, about people converting apartment units into condos. After a lot of red tape with the local authorities of Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, I got the go-ahead to convert all 77 units into condos and, wow, what a quick 2.7-million-dollar profit I made. It was so easy because most of the renters bought their own unit.

I followed that up with a 44-unit condo development in Mississippi and walked with 1.3-million-dollars in profit from that. After those great successes, I developed a 13.3-acre commercial development right here in Salt Lake City and made 1.1-million-dollars in profit there.

I was on a real roll when my Kauai attorney called me and told me of a great plot of land on which I could develop a bunch of condos. I was skeptical at first, but after I drove by the golf course that was next door to it, I forged ahead and laid out plans to build 68 condo’s right near beautiful Princeville, Hawaii. Wow, was I super surprised when I sold all 68 condo lots before we even broke ground.

Timing is so very important with development. You sure don’t want to get into a big development when the real estate market is at the top and there are reasons to believe that the market is turning and heading down. You also don’t want to get into a market that is oversupplied in the type of real estate that you want to buy into. That’s when you need to be patient or need to look at another city or state where the market is already down but looks like it’s picking up.

I continue, to this day, looking for the right and best real estate, whether it’s dirt to be developed or apartments and commercial developments. In August 2003, I hired an office manager (Kimberly Wangsgard), because, wow, did I need help with all my properties. Ms. Wangsgard had, in her former job, played a critical role in development for S-DEVCORP, a company that had developments ranging from 1.5 million dollars to 30 million dollars.

She helped me so much that I eventually had her change her last name to HAROLDSEN. Yes, I married that very beautiful, brilliant, and kind woman and it’s been an absolutely wonderful and happy marriage. An excellent development indeed!

A Glimpse Into My Past

March 7, 2021 by  
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I was going through some old papers and came across a biography I wrote about my life. I thought, since a lot of people ask me about my background, I would share some of that with you here:

Mark O. Haroldsen was born in Portland, Oregon, way back in 1944. He attended high school for two plus years in the Middle East before moving back to the USA where he graduated in 1962 from Ames High School in Iowa. Mark attended Utah State University on a basketball and track scholarship. His time on the bench, however, helped him decide to drop the basketball dream and pursue a Bachelor’s Degree in Business which he received in 1969. He followed this with some post-graduate work at De Paul University in Chicago.

His career began as a stockbroker with Goodbody & Co. in 1969. Later he worked for Paine, Webber, Jackson & Curtis, then went on to work as a manager for Bosworth Sullivan in Salt Lake City, Utah from 1972 to 1974. After a short political career, he lost his bid for the Utah State Treasurer and started buying real estate. This change was inspired by a Denver client that was making millions in real estate.

After gaining tremendous success in real estate, Mark started a real estate seminar company which he ran from 1978 to 1986. The multi-million dollar company set the standard for real estate conventions, retreats, and information, presenting up to 50 seminars a week using a huge staff and brilliant speakers.

Not only is Mark an extremely successful real estate investor, he is also the author of many books including his first and most successful book, How To Wake Up the Financial Genius Inside You. The book sold over 2 million copies and landed him on several national talk shows.

After the enormous success of that book, he began publishing the Financial Freedom Report, a real estate magazine that ran for over 20 years. And yet, that was just the beginning. He then got into a much more profitable part of real estate, known as development. 

I’ll stop sharing my bio there as I would like to go more into how that development thing worked out in next week’s blog, including how I made millions of dollars in profit through real estate development.

Duplicating Success

August 30, 2020 by  
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As I mentioned last week, I love a good success story and have often tried to get to know these big successful people. In a few cases, they even offered to be my mentor. I really believe that the mentoring was one of the most important contributors to my financial success.

I’m also a huge believer in seeing what other super successful people do and then going out and doing the same thing. I did it with my first book after seeing what Joe Karbo, author of The Lazy Man’s Way to Riches, did to sell his books. I got to know him and then did the same things he did, selling 2 million copies of my first book.

And a long time ago, I read of a guy that converted his apartment units into condos, selling them to existing tenants or new buyers. I took that idea and converted 70 plus apartment units I had in Pennsylvania to condos, quickly selling out to most of the renters who were already in them and, wow, did I make a quick profit of over $7 million! Did that surprise me and please me? Oh yeah… big time!

I also looked to other people when I started fixing up houses. Realizing that the decorating part wasn’t really my thing, I picked other people’s brains to get the ideas I needed. Picking people’s brains is pretty easy since people like to talk about themselves and what they do for a living. I would simply take designers, architects and other professionals to lunch and get ideas for the cost of a meal. I would also look at other nicely fixed up houses. I have gone so far as to exactly copy the look of a neighboring house I was fixing up because I wasn’t sure what to do with it. That little bit of copying got that house sold super-fast!

It’s amazing when I travel to new and different countries too. I see a lot of ways people in other countries are being successful and not just when it comes to making money. For instance, in Europe, people eat much smaller portions, have tiny refrigerators because they buy food fresh so often, and they take time to relax when they eat. We could learn a lot from the way they eat over there that would be healthier for us all.

All of these things are something that anyone can copy and, yes, that means you! Keep your eyes and mind open and you might just see things you can duplicate to make a better life for yourself and maybe even make a fortune.

Inspired by Success

August 23, 2020 by  
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I absolutely love reading about super successful people and many times I go out of my way to actually meet them and get to know them. Just paying attention to other success stories can teach you a lot and help you find your own big successes. Here is an old story of success but one we can learn from all these years later.

Wallace A. Wright Jr. is an excellent example of what leverage can do to help a person have super financial success. He had a dream of converting an old, beat-up bus barn in Salt Lake City into a collection of quaint shops and galleries based on San Francisco’s famous Ghirardelli Square.

It all started back in 1973 when Wallace, an Air national Guard pilot, was in a jet fighter streaking across the West. He’d led a formation of three F86 jets on a training flight to San Francisco. There, he saw, for the first time, the celebrated Ghirardelli Square–a chocolate factory turned into a potpourri of quaint shops and galleries. That’s when he thought, “Wow. Now that’s what I’d like to see in Salt Lake City someday.”

Mr. Wright had the ambition and the dream, but he needed the big, long lever known as “other people’s money”. It took some time, and he had his difficulties, but he eventually found that lever and less than a decade later, a 10-acre plot, once the home of slumbering streetcars, became Trolley Square. Back in its day, his development, Trolley Square was Salt Lake City’s biggest man-made attraction.

Trolley Square is now a vibrant, shopping-entertainment complex. Some of the 30 retail shops are anchored, at seemingly improbable angles, beneath the steel girders and glass skylight of the old car barn roofs. Wrought ironwork abounds. So do ornate staircases, woodwork, and stained glass, much of it salvaged from doomed mansions before they crumbled under the wrecker’s bulldozer. I’ve been there many times and it truly is impressive. I even had the privilege of meeting and getting to know Wallace.

I think this story is incredible and shows all of us how powerful the brain, and a determined spirit, can be. We should all note that he made his fortune by just being very observant of other people’s success and pushing himself to actually go out and do it. We all should be looking out for things that show great success and put our minds and bodies to work to do something similar.

Great Opportunities in Uncertain Times

June 7, 2020 by  
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Okay, we are still in a pandemic and, I must say, with all this spare time to think and visualize the future, it may be an ideal time to look for those motivated real estate sellers. A purchase now could greatly improve your financial situation while, at the same time, you could be helping the seller who might be struggling to bring in money since they may not be receiving a regular paycheck.

In most American markets, real estate values and prices have been pretty tight and it has made it tough to find real bargains that will produce a cash flow. However, things have started to change and it may well be the ideal time to make a lot of low priced offers in order to find super motivated sellers. As some of you that know me well probably remember, when I was on my way up to the millionaire status and had tons of energy and drive, it was common for me to make many, many offers each week – like dozens.

I would just go through the listings and send the listing brokers offers that were 20% lower than the asking price and sit back and wait for their responses. I called it my “shotgun method”. I did this before I even drove past the property. I didn’t want to spend my time checking out and walking through the property until I had an acceptance or counter proposal. Of course, I made all offers with a “subject to my approval” clause. And, of course, most of my offers came back with an absolute rejection, but some would come back with a counter offer and a few even with a total acceptance of my low, low offer. Then, and only then, would I take my time to go check out the property and accept or reject their offer or even make a counter offer to their counter offer.

So now, with this terrible virus thing, we’re seeing more motivated sellers that really need the money and are much more willing to accept a lower price than just a few months ago. This could very well be a great financial opportunity for you and, for many sellers, it could be a great financial relief. Think about it and then add some ACTION!

So, hey, maybe this pandemic may have a few good things for us. Tracking down opportunities is certainly a much better thing to do with you extra time verses attending a protest with the potential of doing great harm to yourself and others. Don’t get me wrong – I don’t blame most of the demonstrators and, personally, I feel for people of color and I totally believe all humans are equal and should be treated the same. But I think you might agree that looking for investments is a better use of your time.

One last thought. When I told my wife about this week’s subject she said, “What you say is all true, but it does take one thing more and that’s COURAGE.” Wow, she’s so right and having written a book titled The Courage to be RICH, I certainly should have thought of that. So, add courage to making all these offers so you can be more aggressive and really take advantage of these opportunities.

Be One of the Smart Ones

November 10, 2019 by  
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So, in last week’s post I told you a bit about the lady in Paris that suddenly found out one of the paintings in her house, one that she thought was just an average painting (the one you see above), was extremely valuable and it went on to sell for $26 million dollars!  Wow, what a shock that must have been for her! But have you read that many people who all of a sudden win the lottery or suddenly come into a huge fortune blow the money in short order or are scammed out of it? The problem is that most of the time, people who haven’t earned the money over time are clueless and just don’t know how to handle it. Most of these people start spending it like crazy and or they are taken to the cleaners by scam artist.

Compare that overnight super-rich person to a person who has worked for years and saved every extra dollar they could. The smart ones don’t go out and buy a brand-new car that will immediately drop in value. The smart ones buy a used car and put whatever extra money they have into savings. Then they slowly build up enough money to buy an asset that goes up in value and, if they’re really smart, when they sell that asset at a profit, they reinvest that profit in another appreciating asset. Over the years, those small savings and investments can grow into a fortune.  And if you have made your money that way, then you most likely won’t be like those who suddenly came into big money and spent it all or got scammed out of it.

It will be very interesting to try to follow the Paris lady and see if she goes crazy with her money, following the typical lottery winners. Please, Paris lady, be cautious and wise with that $26 million. Don’t put your money with someone else who makes promises of huge returns.

Years ago, I met a guy who told me that he could give me a 10% return, per month, on my money, guaranteed! Remember the old saying, “If it sounds too good to be true, it probably is.” I had a friend who had invested about $300,000 dollars with this guy who said it was going to get a great return and guaranteed it. I was pretty darn sure it would not be even close to that. And yes, my friend lost his entire investment, and the bad guy in now serving time in prison. Not that him being in prison gives my friend any of his money back.

So, I sure hope you see the huge benefit of saving all the dollars you can and investing them wisely. Do the research carefully. It’s my advice and experience that you should invest your savings in income producing real estate. It almost always goes up in value and even if the appreciation is very slow, if you have purchased wisely, you will have tenants paying off the mortgage. That’s what the smart ones do!

 

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