Paul J Da Costa and Associates INC

Paul J Da Costa and Associates INC Newsletter

June 2011 

Greetings!

 

Hello Members! Hard to believe summer is here, after the long drawn out winter that many parts of the country have faced. If you live in sunny Florida tho, it's been hot for a couple of months already. Please keep an eye out for the kids. School will be out soon and they will be outside playing (if they every stop playing video games!). Paul

In This Issue
Real Estate
Does it really have to be this complicated
Dori's Corner

Real Estate

   

Here's the follow up to last month's newsletter topic about safety for you and your clients when touring a home. A total of 43 people responded with their stories when going to a home. Here are the results:

43 total respondents

5 said they have been help up at gun point (and not one of them was from Detroit!)

3 people at knife point

4 had the client expose themselves

15 said they were approached in a sexually explicit manner that made them very uncomfortable

16 said they were just made to feel very uncomfortable ranging from the client yelling at them or getting a little too close to the client just starting to act 'weird'.

As you can see you need to make sure you put yourself in the safest possible position you can. And we have an obligation to protect our clients as well. Here are some precautions that I use when I go to see a house.

1.     I drive the neighborhood first to get a feeling as to what is going on. This also gives me a chance to see the back of the subject property in most cases.

 

2.     I never park in the drive way or in front of the house. I park across  the street with my car positioned so the driver side door is easiest for me to get to. And in a position that it cannot be boxed in.

 

 

             3.I also notify 2 people as to where I am going, how long I think I will be and the name of the people I am meeting. I text them a couple of times. And if I forget they text me. We work as a team and when they are out looking at a property they notify me where they will be

 

4.     I carry a safety tool box in the car. I have an air horn, mace, door stops, and bungee cord as well as other tools I may need.

 

5.     I always prop open the front door and a back door just in case I need to get out in a hurry, and especially if the house is vacant. I always announce that I am coming into the house. When I'm with people I always try to stay behind them, not them behind me. I want to see what they are doing at all times.

6.     I carry mace in my pocket and a knife just in case I might need them. And in the rare occasion I feel I need it, I take the 9mm out for a ride. Yes if you're in this business you should have a concealed carry permit.

Remember you're on your own and need to consider and prepare for things that could go wrong.

 Paul

 

Real Estate for the Next Decade

July 9th is the next date for our Real Estate Training Class

 "Real Estate Investing For The Next Decade "

Seating Is Limited to 40 people so Register Now

 

REGISTER HERE!!! 

On a personal note, last month had a few 'does it really have to be this complicated??' moments.

 

 

It all started when Morgan called to tell me the movers that we scheduled 3 months in advance to bring her stuff back to Florida were going to be 3 days late, as the truck wasn't even in Georgia. Said it was due to the tornados in Arkansas the week before. Whatever. Now this was 2 PM on Wednesday and she had to be out of her apartment on Thursday... So we scramble to get a storage bin, a UHaul, and where are all these guys she supposedly has classes with who could help with the moving? Well, once again dad saves the day (with the help of lots of Motrin).

 

But it gets better. Four days later, they finally picked up the furniture, but left the bed frame. The people who manage the storage facility called, and we made arrangements for that. Then the load was 'lost' for 3 days. It was 'found' in Tampa, where the driver was waiting to see if he could get another load, and make the trip to North Port worth it for him. After all the stuff was delivered, I can only say, you get what you pay for.

 

The second thing that happened came from the city of North Port. They sent me a nasty gram informing me that they have discovered we have a pool. (We do: when we built the house 16 years ago we built a pool as well. It's got a huge pool cage over it, and you can't exactly hide it.) Now, in 2011, the city says that I must install a backflow prevention system in the next 30 days, or I will be fined $100.00/ day. They wait 16 years to tell me, and now it's my emergency? Anyway, this device is apparently crucial to the environment, because if I happen to have a hose in the pool to add water, and at the very same instant there happens to be a city water supply shutdown or line breakage, I would personally be responsible for the contamination of the entire water supply.  Oh, but not to worry, they also gave me the name of a plumber who would do the work within the 30 day time limit. So it's done and the powers that be at the city can sleep well knowing my pool won't contaminate the city water supply.

 

And the final 'what now??' moment came just a couple of days ago when this supply truck driver decided that he really did see the light turn green (it didn't) and revved up, right into the back of my car.  So as I write this my car is in auto intensive care with 5K worth of damage. God I miss my XM Satellite.  Here's to a better time next month!  Paul

 

 

DORI'S CORNER

 

Hello members, it's been a good month again. We have gotten lots of calls from our direct mail pieces. We picked up a 2/2/ in mint condition, all owner financing and a subject to as well. People are selling; you just have to get in front of them. We just did an absentee-owner post card mailing with great results. And our Web Guy, Steve Tickner, is amazing at getting all the info to the web site so our clients can see what we have to offer and get our special reports as well. Here is Steve's e-mail so you can contact him. Just tell him you want the Dori Special; he'll know what you mean.

See you next month (now, go buy something!)

 Dori

The Renegade Millionaire Way

by Dan S. Kennedy

Lookin' for Luck in all the wrong places.

 

The Irish are a very superstitious lot. They believe a black cat voluntarily following you home brings good luck, but bringing a black cat home, or even moving one with you from old house to new, curses you with bad luck forevermore. There are so many Irish superstitions about good and bad luck and blessings and curses, they fill a book. I'm Irish. I don't make a big thing out of it. Sometimes, on St. Patrick's Day, I even forget to wear green. But my racing silks (I drive professionally in 200+ harness races a year) have a big green shamrock on them, and I have been known, after winning a couple races, to get attached to a lucky whip - until I again lose a race.

 

I have my little superstitions and lucky objects and rituals; indulgences; for racing, selling and speaking. But I know (and constantly remind myself) that luck has very little to do with outcomes, and that we pretty much manufacture our own luck - bad or good. Usually by behavior, occasionally merely by attitude or thought. People prefer looking at bad luck as purely circumstantial, yet if probed deeply and objectively enough, there's choice involved. For example,  when our very spoiled pet, who we affectionately call The Million Dollar Dog came up lame in her good rear leg and hip, and needed emergency surgery - delaying my wife's travel plans, was this a week of bad luck?  The Million Dollar Dog already had this same surgery in the other leg, three years ago. This breed of dog is well-known for such problems, and she did pick the dog. That's not to say I think a different choice should have been made; I do not; I wouldn't trade this dog for any other on earth. It is to say, though, that the week's trouble has little or nothing to do with bad luck, but with dog genetics, and human choice.

Belief in luck and all the superstitions that go with it, and variations of it to which we assign different names and terminology, clouds the core reality of success and failure: that it is up to the individual. The Renegade Millionaire Way is acceptance of responsibility; more responsibility for more things more often and more readily than the 95% crowd wants anything to do with - not because we are masochists, but because we know a secret: responsibility equals control, control is product of responsibility, and we definitely do want control.

 

When it comes to the category of 'information', whether acquired by attending a college, buying books, attending seminars, engaging a consultant or coach, etc., most people are eager to place the responsibility for outcomes on the information itself or the provider of the information. The kid with the Master's Degree in 16th Century Literature asking you if you want fries with your Hero-burger blames the University of Finkelstein or his high school guidance counselor for his fate. But truth is, all information is neutral but for personal, targeted application, and all providers of information are, at best, informed, interesting provocateurs. Me included. If you want control over the outcomes in your life to be achieved via productive use of information, you can only get it to the same extent you are willing to embrace responsibility for those outcomes.

 

Then there is the eagerness and ease with which businesspeople have, in recent few years, been transferring responsibility to the recession and its assorted evils. For some, a 'bad' economy is actually obvious "good luck" and presents opportunity. Most view it as "bad luck". But it is neither, in and of itself. It is for each person what he permits it to be and makes of it.

 

Most look for luck in all the wrong places. If you are familiar with Russell Conwell's famous speech, oft-published as a book, titled Acres of Diamonds, you'll know where to look. Clue: that source is very close at hand.

 

DAN S. KENNEDY is a serial, multi-millionaire entrepreneur; highly paid and sought after marketing and business strategist; advisor to countless first-generation, from-scratch multi-millionaire and 7-figure income entrepreneurs and professionals; and, in his personal practice, one of the very highest paid direct-response copywriters in America. As a speaker, he has delivered over 2,000 compensated presentations, appearing repeatedly on programs with the likes of Donald Trump, Gene Simmons (KISS), Debbi Fields (Mrs. Fields Cookies), and many other celebrity-entrepreneurs, for former U.S. Presidents and other world leaders, and other leading business speakers like Zig Ziglar, Brian Tracy and Tom Hopkins, often addressing audiences of 1,000 to 10,000 and up.  His popular books have been favorably recognized by Forbes, Business Week, Inc. and Entrepreneur Magazine. His NO B.S. MARKETING LETTER, one of the business newsletters published for Members of Glazer-Kennedy Insider's Circle, is the largest paid subscription newsletter in its genre

 

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Have a great month and talk to you soon.... Paul

 

Sincerely,

 


Paul J. DaCosta
Paul J Da Costa and Associates INC
BOOKS I'M READING NOW 
 

NOB.S.

Price Strategy

Kennedy/Marrs

 

7 Steps To Freedom II

Benjamin Suarez

 

The 48 Laws Of Power

Robert Greene

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Quotes of the Month

And what is a man without energy! Nothing...nothing at all.

Mark Twain

The revenue of the country, levied almost insensibly to the taxpayer, goes on from year to year, increasing beyond either the interest or the prospective wants of the government

Franklin Pierce

14th President 1853-1857

I have been told I was on the road to hell. But I had no idea it was just a mile down the road with a dome on it.

Abraham Lincoln