Been A Long Time Since I ....

"Been a long time since I rock and rolled.Been a long time since I did that stroll."  So go the lyrics from the song Rock and Roll by Heart.

Sorry for my absence on this blog.  It's been a long time since I wrote this blog.

In truth, I move most of my blogging to two other sites - my political blog "Defending Our Rights" and "The Home Finders" blog where I focus on helping people to afford quality homes by teaching them how to manage their career or build their own small business, how to invest, and how to buy their own home.

Since the last posting on this site, back in 2002, I went on to become Chief of Staff for JT Foxx and then, shortly thereafter to part company with JT and to publish the book "Millionaire Liar: What The Gurus Won't Tell You About Making Your First Million in Real Estate (but Tom will)".

In fact, I have been investing a lot of time in the past couple of years writing.  Much of what I have written and published are concepts and approaches that I have been using in my own real estate investing business as well as things I have done to manage my own career before I went into business on my own.

Here is a list of my recent real estate related publications, with links to each...

• Millionaire Liar; available in paperback too - as mentioned above, I wrote this one to reveal the truth behind some of the most commonly used sales pitches in the real estate guru world.
• 5 Ways to Buy a House Without a Bank Loan;  - I wrote this to help people to get started using creative financing approaches to get around the horrendously tight lending situation we are currently facing.
• Buy a House at 70 Cents on the Dollar; - I wrote this to help people understand ways to buy homes at below market prices ... and to promote my business where I buy them this way and then sell them at a modest markup.
• How to Price Your House to Sell; - I wrote this because many people overprice their home when they want to sell it, and most real estate agents don't (won't or can't) deter them from this and it hurts their ability to get a quick sale of their home.  Many times that delay triggers financial catastrophe for a home seller. 
• 5 Things Every Home Buyer Should Know Before Signing a Contract; - A huge number of contracts to buy a house never get all the way to closing.  When that happens there is a lot of frustration and sometimes shattered dreams.  This book was written to help people dramatically increase their odds that when they make an offer to buy a home and sign the purchase contract, they will get to buy and move into the home they want.
• Market Your Home Better Than An Agent; - Unfortunately, most real estate agents no very little about selling homes.  They are trained how to do contracts, but get little training in how to market a home.  No home seller should rely solely on a real estate agent, no matter how good they are, when selling their home.  This short guide gives you what you need to know to sell your own home, or your investment properties.
• Seller Finance For Buyers; - This gives several different ways you can make offers to buy a home without getting a new bank loan, by getting the seller to finance the deal instead.
• Seller Finance For Sellers; - This gives several different ways you can sell a home, even if buyers cannot get bank loans - like they are having trouble doing right now.
• What About Land Trusts in North Carolina - I wrote this one as a result of having lawyers run screaming from the room when I wanted to buy a house into a land trust.  They told me that land trusts were not protected in the laws of North Carolina.  I did some research on my own, instead of paying one of them $100 per hour to go look it up, and I found they are wrong.  Not only is there law in NC handling land trusts (although not enshrined in specific statutes like in Illinois or Florida) but the State of North Carolina is one of the biggest holders of land trusts in the state.  If the courts ruled against land trusts, they would cost taxpayers millions as the state government would have to totally pay up and change its handling of land trusts. I don't think that is likely to happen.  

And of course

• Strategic Planning for Very Small Businesses: Using Big Business Tools to Get Big Results for Small Business, Real Estate Entrepreneurs' Edition - I managed the strategic planning process each year for a division of a Fortune 500 Company.  I then used those same processes for my small business and figured out how anybody can do the same.

In addition to these books and articles on Real Estate, I have published several on Career Management and Life Coaching and I even published a science fiction trilogy.

Here are my Career Management and Life Management titles to date...
Fire Yourself: Get the Job You Want available in paperback too
Career Insurance: Keep the Job You Want
Come Out On Top: Goals to Live By
A Guide to Self-Directed Learning
Your Career ~ Your Business: Using Small Business Tactics to Manage Your Career

AND... the writing I did just for the fun of it... my Sci Fi trilogy "The Masterless Sword"  (available in paperback and ebook form)
Origins

Rise of the Master Mage

Queen of the Wildwood

I hope you enjoy my return to this blog and I hope you will check out my other blogs and publications.  Know that there is more to come.

And, I want to publicly state here my gratitude to one of my mentors, Raymond Aaron.  As he explained to me the ease with which I could publish my works, I got inspired to do just that.

If you have a book inside of you, but just can't seem to get it out, let me know.  I can help.  I have created a process I call Book Whispering.  Even if you aren't good at sitting down and writing things out, especially if you aren't good at sitting down and writing things out, my process will help.

If you would like to know more, send an email to WhisperMyBook@gmail.com with the subject line "I Want to Whisper My Book".  My initial consultation is free.  If you decide to enroll in my program, you can expect to see your book in print and available online in as little as three months.

Tom Sheppard is the author of "Fire Yourself: Get the Job You Want" available from XLibris Press and through Amazon.com. Tom has been successfully investing in real estate since 2001 while working part time. In 2008 he left a six-figure job as an enterprise project manager with a major national bank to manage his real estate business full-time. His goal is to help 100,000 people find peace of mind by finding quality, affordable homes. He is currently looking to expand his network of funding partners who are helping him achieve this goal. If you would like to know more about how you can Do Well By Doing Good (TM), go to www.CharlotteWealthPartners.com

Why Pursue Your Passion

Why Pursue Your Passion

Do you know what your passion really is?  Do you know how to figure out what your passion really is?  Do you have any idea why pursuing your passion is so important?

Let me start with the last question.

When you are pursuing your passion, your physical, mental, spiritual and emotional health is optimal.  When you are pursuing your passion, all those elements are aligned and focused.  The alignment is the part that affects your health.

Ill health, be it physical, mental, spiritual or emotional is often the consequence of negative stresses in our lives.  Medical studies have cited over and over the adverse health consequences of negative stress in our lives.  It leads from lowered immune systems and higher blood pressure all the way to heart disease and may even be linked to cancer.

Carl Jung and Sigmund Freud may have had their disagreements, but both agreed that the human psyche is made up of three parts.  Freud called them the Id, Ego, and SuperEgo while Jung referred to them as the Ego, Animus, and Self.  Even modern medical science recognizes three elements, although they have trouble tacitly acknowledging the third element.  Physicians recognize that every person has a mind, a body, and some third power that keeps both of those other two running.  When it leaves, it doesn't matter how healthy the mind and body are, the whole system collapses and death occurs.

Because I believe in God and the everlasting nature of people, I am going to refer to this third element as our Spirit.  If you want to argue with me about the names or nature of these three parts, don't.  Take it up with Freud and Jung first.  If you get them to concede, we can talk.

Your body is the sum of your physical assets.  Your muscles, organs, tissues, etc.  When your body is working smoothly, you can accomplish your physical tasks with grace, skill and power.

You mind is your intellectual assets.  The knowledge, wisdom and experiences you have gathered up along your journey through life.  When your mid is working smoothly, your thoughts are clear and focused and your knowledge and memories come to the surface even more quickly than you realize you need them as you accomplish your tasks with insight, focus, and innovation.

Your spirit is your will.  It is what is absolutely most important to you.  It is what you truly want.  When your spirit is working well, there is nothing that can stop you.  When your spirit is not working well, there is almost nothing you can accomplish.

Let me give a couple of examples to illustrate what happens when these three are misaligned.

The professional basketball player has a body and mind that are wholly aligned with and prepared for the rigors of the game of basketball.  But, if the Pro Player decides (exercises his will) that he is bored with the game and wants a new challenge - we say his heart isn't in it anymore.  So, even though his mind and body are the same and still fully capable of playing the game in a peak performance, because his spirit isn't aligned with what the body and mind are doing, his performance will degrade.

In a similar manner that pro basketball player may truly love the game.  But his knees are badly damaged because of so much high impact from jumping and landing hard or, more commonly, his shoulder is damaged beyond repair.  He is still often capable of delivering some excellent moments, as his spirit and mind drive his body beyond its limits.  But, his performance will degrade.

Finally, even if that pro basketball player has a superbly conditioned body and the will to play, but his mind is clouded by a blow to the head or through illness, disease, or drugs, then his body and spirit will not be able to make up the difference and his performance will degrade.

What is true for the pro basketball player is equally true for the executive or the laborer.  The demands on mind, body and spirit may be different in each role, but without all three functioning properly and is some degree of alignment, our performance will degrade.

When you are doing things that are bad for your body, causing it distress, it is because your mind or spirit has ordered it.  As the body is distressed, it automatically produces chemicals into your blood stream which directly affect the mind and indirectly affect your spirit.

Or, to look at it another way, when your mind, body, and spirit are misaligned, the three spheres or disks are banging around against each other creating dings, dents, and friction whenever they collide with each other.

In contrast, when body, mind and spirit are all aligned and truly have the same purpose, they resemble a bulls eye target.

Aligned, they are able to work together without friction and allow all the energy and resources of your body, mind and spirit to work together in harmony.  When this happens, you are "in the zone."

Do you recall what it feels like to be in the zone?  You are firing on all cylinders.  Whatever you are focused on has your full attention and the effort is moving at a smooth and rapid pace, progressing and overcoming obstacles almost without effort.  Time becomes irrelevant and you are almost unaware of its passing.  Even the need for food and drink seems to fade away.

Suddenly, you stop and realize that what seemed like mere moments to you has actually been the passing of hours.  Yet, you feel almost more energized when you are done than when you started.  You are excited about what you have just accomplished and would love nothing better than to share what you have done with someone else who can appreciate the beauty and difficulty of what you have just brought to pass.

If you have ever found yourself "in the zone" like this, take the time to consider deeply what you were doing.  For me, it happens most frequently when I am writing or teaching.  I noticed over the years that often when I taught a class or delivered a speech I felt more energized afterward than I had any right to be, given the hour and amount of energy I had just expended.  And, there didn't seem to be a particular topic that excited me more than another.

If I was teaching computer programming and able to illustrate the concepts in ways that my students understood, or teaching Sunday School and people were grasping how these truths could be applied to make their lives happier, either way I would come away energized and eager to invest more time in teaching them.

Likewise when writing.  Whether I am writing an instructional manual, a business article, or a fantasy novel, I often find myself focused on my writing to exclusion of everything around me.

Finding Your Passion
Using Zone Analysis(TM).   Being in the zone is a symptom of your passion.  Look over your life and identify when and where you have been in the zone.  Find the common thread(s) in all those most recent experiences.  Was it what you were doing?  Was it the kind of people you were with?  Was it where you were?  Who, what and where are good places to start to understand your passion.

For me, the common thread was communicating ideas in simple ways that allowed people to understand and use them to better themselves.  It didn't matter if I was doing it face-to-face or through the written word.  Of course, when I do it face-to-face and see the light go on in somebody's eyes it is a really big reward for me.

If you have never found yourself in the zone, then you have a more difficult challenge.  The best way I know to start to figure out your passion when you have never really been in the zone is to play The Funeral Game (TM).  Yeah, I know it sounds bad, but keep reading.

Imagine you are getting to listen in at your own funeral.  What is it that you want to hear said about you from your family, your boss, your coworkers, your friends, leaders in your community?  Write all this down as imaginary eulogies.  Then pick it apart for the common threads to figure out what is really important to you.  Figuring out what is important to you is going to get you very close, if not right on top of, your passion.

By the way, before I ever did the Zone Analysis(TM) I did The Funeral Game (TM).  The latter helped me understand that I really have a passion for helping people to succeed.  The former helped me to confirm what I had learned in The Funeral Game (TM).

Your Passion Changes
Oh, and just because you get in the zone doing something, doesn't mean that will always be your passion.  Like the superstar who consistently beats all comers and is the undisputed champion, sometimes suddenly retires and pursues something else entirely because they have lost their passion for that particular challenge.  We were never meant to be one-trick-ponies.  When we have truly become the master of one area of passion and are world-class in our performance, it is natural and right that we then move on to face another challenge and learn to master it too.

When you know what is your passion and you can invest your time in it, life becomes much easier.  Our health is better and life is more fulfilling in every way.

That brings me to the next challenge for many of us, finding a way to make a living doing what we love.

Hey, you didn't think I would be able to answer all your questions in one short blog, did you?

Thanks for Being a Good Friend to me.  Let me Give something back to you!

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Tom Sheppard has been successfully investing in real estate since 2001 while working part time. In 2008 he left a six-figure job as an enterprise project manager with a major national bank to manage his real estate business full-time. His goal is to help 100,000 people find peace of mind by finding quality, affordable homes. Why pay retail when you can buy a home at below market prices? www.buybelowmarket.com. He is currently looking to expand his network of funding partners who are helping him achieve this goal. If you would like to know more about how you can do well by doing good, contact Tom at TSheppard@CharlotteWealthPartners.com

The Funeral Game and Zone Analysis are trademarks of A+ Results, LLC and may not be used without permission and acknowledgement.

Surviving and Thriving in Good Times and Bad

Why is it some businesses thrive in good times and bad while others can't seem to catch a break?  One good reason is something called strategic planning.  Many people don't know what it is, many others don't know what it can do for them.  I know both.
What's In It For You?

• Would you like to figure out what your customers are going to do before they do it?
• Would you like to see how you stack up to your competitors?
• Would you like to understand how you can adapt to changes in the marketplace and legal environment?

Strategic Planning can help you with these problems and more.  At the heart of strategic planning are two things, learing what is happening or about to happen that affects your business (or job) and learning how you can use your strengths to take advantage of opportunities and protect yourself from threats and your weaknesses.

If you can understand what is going on with your customers, competitors, market, business, and the legal environment, you can have a pretty good handle on what is affecting your success or failure in business.  Add to that, an in depth understanding of the strengths and weaknesses of your own business, you can then clearly see the opportunities and threats that will make or break your business.
By doing this periodically, you can make sure your business is prepared for what is coming and what is happening, assuring that you can survive and thrive in good times and bad.

For several years I provided strategic planning services for a division of a Fortune 500 company. During that time I adapted those tools to use on my own small business. In my book, I give you the tools I use.

I have taught other entrepreneurs all over the country how to successfully use these same tools in their own business and in their careers.

I recently published my first Kindle book, Strategic Planning for Very Small Businesses, on Amazon.com.  In my book, I give you the opportunity to invest less than $10 in your business that could pay you thousands or tens of thousands of dollars in return.

Although Strategic Planning for Very Small Businesses is written from the perspective of my business of investing in real estate, it is applicable to any small or one-person business.
By the way, part of my strategic planning revealed and opportunity to capitalize on some of my specialized knowledge by publishing it.  I could have opted to create a $500 training course or hold seminars for $199 a head.  Unfortunately for a one-person business $500 is a lot of money.  And paying $199 isn't so bad, but you have to spend a whole day away from the business.  So instead, I opted to put this information into a book and sell it at a price anyone can afford.

UPDATE:  I have made this book on Simplified Strategic Planning for Very Small Businesses available on both Amazon.com as  a Kindle book and ebay as a downloadable pdf.  Here are the direct links:

Amazon.com: http://tinyurl.com/simplifiedstrategicplanAmazon


E-Bay: http://tinyurl.com/simplifiedstrategicplan

I learned that e-bay doesn't accommodate selling ebooks.  Fortunately, I have been able to get my book loaded to to an ecommerce site with A+ Results.  You can buy my book as a pdf at http://tinyurl.com/simplifiedstrategicplanning

PS: tinyurl provides a great service that allows anyone to convert a long and awkward url into a much shorter, usable url to help people find what they want.


The Kindle and the pdf are each priced at $9.97.

You Can Benefit If

• You own your own small or one-person business
• You are self-employed
• You work for a small business

You can even use these same principles to help you manage your career, but if you can't quite make that mental leap to understand the relationship between your career and a small business, never fear.  Soon, I will be publishing another book, "Your Career ~ Your Business."

It too will be modestly priced and available via Amazon.com

Tom Sheppard has been successfully investing in real estate since 2001 while working part time. In 2008 he left a six-figure job as an enterprise project manager with a major national bank to manage his real estate business full-time. His goal is to help 100,000 people find peace of mind by finding quality, affordable homes. Why pay retail when you can buy a home at below market prices? www.buybelowmarket.com. He is currently looking to expand his network of funding partners who are helping him achieve this goal. If you would like to know more about how you can do well by doing good, contact Tom at Tom@CharlotteWealthPartners.com.