From Zero To One Million Dollars A Year In Sales

Well this friday I made an offer on a three unit, apartment building in N Portland.  They were asking $295,000, I made the offer of $295,000 and the seller pays $5,000 in closing cost. (Which would net the seller $290,000).  And earnest money of $2,500.

I thought my offer was strong, however, it was not strong enough, they took another offer over mine! They took another offer over mine! INCREDIBLE, now I can look for a better deal.  But instead of just denying my offer, they decided that if the other offer diddn’t go through they would use my as the second offer, and then counter my offer for $305,000 and seller pays $5,000 closing cost.  (Netting seller $300,000), they also wanted to limit my inspection period to 7 days, which is alot different than the 15 I originally asked for.  Regardless, thats like a shaft deal for me, so I said, GOODBYE, and GREAT, I’m going to find a better deal.

As always, for some reason, I logged onto aim today at 1am, (I work till 4am, and then goto school in morning too) and then because of networking 4-5 different buisness partners contacted me and we talked till 4:30am, wow, although I did not get any work on my website done.  It opened my eyes!

My friend, Steve, in N Portland is purchasing 3 HOUSES. WOW, and here I’am just trying to get a small three plex, he has 3 houses accepted offer, total networth around 600,000k, he did his figures, 5% down, and will cashflow.  That is amazing, anyways it got me inspired!  I started looking around on loopnet, and found a 9plex for sale in N Portland, for half a million (lol that sounds big,) but its $505,000, and of course (guys!! I don’t have that cash, the bank does, they loan it to me, and renters pay for the property(simplified verison)).  So, I’m going to make an offer on that one I think, it brings in $53,000 gross a year.  combined with current website that’d be $60,000 gross a year, on reach to my goal to acheiving gross $100,000 a year by January 1st, 2009.

So you may say, well wow Wes, I can’t do what you do.  Well, I’ve been working, not partying for 4 years now, trying to start buisnesses, and this is acculmated over time.  Its called the slight edge, and hopefully your on the slight edge to success.

Success is a few small disciplines repeated every single day, over, and over again.  Stuipid little things, maybe I’m a square not going out and getting wasted (no offense, I use to party, a very little), but I’ve been working dilligently on my buisnesses, buidling assets.  And I knew it would happen, and most people don’t know whats happening, all my party friends are getting further behind, and will be working for the rest of their lives, while we, the successful people who sacrifice FUN, for work NOW, will be enjoying expoentially more freedom, fun, friends, and lifestyle which others think someday they will have.

Don’t be apart of the somedays.  Someday someday someday, and someday never happens.   This is what I hope you are going after, “I WILL DO TODAY, WHAT OTHERS DO NOT, SO TOMMOROW, I WILL HAVE WHAT OTHERS DO NOT.”  You can do whatever you want, separate yourself, thats what I’ve choosen to do, and if you want financial freedom, well, most people aren’t, so don’t go where most people going.

IF YOU HAVE NOT SEEN THE SECRET, you must see this video: http://www.thesecret.tv

You are a success, and I will see you in the winners’ circle.  Don’t accept advice from anyone more screwed up than you.

Do you know the story of the Scorpion and the Frog?

• One day, a scorpion looked around at the mountain where he lived and decided that he wanted a change. So he set out on a journey through the forests and hills. He climbed over rocks and under vines and kept going until he reached a river.
• The river was wide and swift, and the scorpion stopped to reconsider the situation. He couldn’t see any way across. So he ran upriver and then checked downriver, all the while thinking that he might have to turn back.
• Suddenly, he saw a frog sitting in the rushes by the bank of the stream on the other side of the river. He decided to ask the frog for help getting across the stream.
• “Hellooo Mr. Frog!” called the scorpion across the water, “Would you be so kind as to give me a ride on your back across the river?”
• “Well now, Mr. Scorpion! How do I know that if I try to help you, you wont try to kill me?” asked the frog hesitantly.
• “Because,” the scorpion replied, “If I try to kill you, then I would die too, for you see I cannot swim!”
• Now this seemed to make sense to the frog. But he asked. “What about when I get close to the bank? You could still try to kill me and get back to the shore!”
• “This is true,” agreed the scorpion, “But then I wouldn’t be able to get to the other side of the river!”
• “Alright then…how do I know you wont just wait till we get to the other side and THEN kill me?” said the frog.
• “Ahh…,” crooned the scorpion, “Because you see, once you’ve taken me to the other side of this river, I will be so grateful for your help, that it would hardly be fair to reward you with death, now would it?!”
• So the frog agreed to take the scorpion across the river. He swam over to the bank and settled himself near the mud to pick up his passenger. The scorpion crawled onto the frog’s back, his sharp claws prickling into the frog’s soft hide, and the frog slid into the river. The muddy water swirled around them, but the frog stayed near the surface so the scorpion would not drown. He kicked strongly through the first half of the stream, his flippers paddling wildly against the current.
• Halfway across the river, the frog suddenly felt a sharp sting in his back and, out of the corner of his eye, saw the scorpion remove his stinger from the frog’s back. A deadening numbness began to creep into his limbs.
• “You fool!” croaked the frog, “Now we shall both die! Why on earth did you do that?”
• The scorpion shrugged, and did a little jig on the drownings frog’s back.
• “Because I’am a scorpion”
• Then they both sank into the muddy waters of the swiftly flowing river.

Why do I tell this story, well because simply, there are Scorpions in our lives, and they do evil, just because they can, it’s there nature. At 3am I was awoken by my car alarm, in the morning it turns out that someone slashed my rear left tire on my Integra, and threw a large rock at my driver’s side window in attempt to break it. Although I do think I know who did it, I won’t publicly say so on here. But I believe it to be the same person who also keyed my car, and keyed another one of my cars, and also totaled another one.

After I realized it today, I thought of the story of the Scorpion and the Frog. Sometimes, things just don’t make sense. There are people like the Scorpions in our lives, who do bad, just to do bad, and it is just their nature. Everyone should know the story of the scorpion and the frog.

It is about 5:45AM right now, I woke up at 5:30PM today. Although there have not been to many interesting ideas to post as of today, which I can share at the moment I should add. The website has been making steady progress and several times today I saw a great need for my service which will be great.

I like what Zig Ziglar has to say about building a character foundation, he quotes some of the tallest buildings in the world, have the largest foundations in the world. The larger the foundation, the better it is, more stable, higher integrity the higher you can grow. This is applied to people in how we need to build a character foundation, so we can be able to go way way up.

For my website, it has taken sometime, but instead of doing a whack job programming it, I’ve learned the backbone of the php and mysql, but most importantly have now understood the security side to it. I’m making the site very secure, and understand it better now, and deleted all my exisiting code and just rewrote the whole thing to make it more efficient.

One things I just did was removing the variables from the URL:

• Instead of: http://www.wesmahler.com?userid=wesleymahler
• It turns into http://www.wesmahler.com/wesleymahler

If you are not familiar with Search Engine Optimization, the 2nd example, the after-product, is ideal for search engines to pickup the keywords in the url. I currently now have the user registration ready, editing user, and then the fun stuff beings today.

I’ve also shared some MP3s now with a fellow entrepreneur in Texas I believe, he was interested in learning stuff about creating income online. I met him through facebook, and the cds I sent to my friend in Ohio should be arriving soon. He he is getting close to finishing Rich Dad, Poor Dad, and already his mindset is set, his navigational thinking, set on building a buisness for himself. And he understands the taxes, and has said thanks to me. So I appreciate that.

And still working on the book, 1 page a day! I’m now in editing mode! I’m thinking about creating an online library like Ben Casnocha so I can see all the books I read and look at my progress. Taking a picture of my library every month.

Oh, and for some reason my RSS FEED broke, so if your using a reader it won’t update. Incredible!

It is 6am right now, yesterday I was so tired after applying my no prcastination technique that I found myself keep doing chores throughout the day without hestitating to do them. Needless to say I was able to accomplish quite a bit of chores that I needed to do anyways. Having a Bank of America personal account, Wells Fargo buisness account, and Wells Fargo personal account does not make life easy when you want to purchase checks, sign up for overdraft, sign up for new credit cards and lines of credit for each individual account. You would think it’d just be 2 calling locations, but no, it is three because Wells Fargo personal is a different department than the buisness.

Anyways, I just do no understand why Wells Fargo has so many fees, I applied for overdraft poretction. I thought that with overdraft protection they would not charge you, at least Bank of America Doesn’t, when you overdraft your account. Although Wells Fargo decides to charge even when you have an overdraft with overdraft protection, wow. Does not sound like much of overdraft protection to me when I still get a fee for overdrafting. Anyways, I was also to get my 93 RX-7 close to being able to sell with removing, and replacing the stereo back to OEM, I’m going to be installing it today and putting my Integra back together this week. I can not wait to sell the car and get my thousands back to place it into my bank accounts and stop preventing all the Wells Fargo Fees.

Because I have several accounts with Wells Fargo, and they are not at the minimum balance to receive no fees, I have to pay $20/month because I do not have over 4.5k spread out throughout my accounts, that $20/month is $240/yr just paying away to fees.

But regardless I’m headin in a new direction, I do not have to go back to the same situtation I was before with overdrafts weekly. But today I’m excited because I’m able to work on my new web 2.0 communit all day today and believe I will get a majority of the work done today for it. The last couple of days I have been doing research on how to make the site secure, I never knew how easy it was to hack into peoples’ accounts on the internet on some of theses less secure sites. I’m also doing about an hour of personal development a day, and increased it from 30 minutes a day, as Jim Rohn says, one hour a day will help you to become rich, although 30 minutes a day, half rich isn’t bad either.

My friend in Ohio, Adriel, the high school student I’m helping out has just started reading Rich Dad Poor Dad, by Robert Kiyosaki and to say the very least he has enjoyed the reading so far. He has read about 70 pages in 3 days, a great momentum to work on himself, I had him teach me what he learned because I know that if he teaches others, he will retain the information the best over all other methods. He also read my book, and recommended that I finish it, so I have been working daily on that, I have now sent him down several CDs of personal development to listen to. I will be so interesting to see where this friendship lands up.

It is one thing to read a book, but it is another thing to get the most out of it. This graph shows you why I don’t just congradulate him on reading the book but have him teach me the principals he has learned. So I can hear them again, and so he can too.

We Learn / Remember:

• 10% of what we READ
• 20% of what we HEAR
• 30% of what we SEE
• 70% of what we DISCUSS with others
• 80% of what we EXPERIENCE personally
• 90% of what we TEACH someone else

Now the above table is different on most different sources, but they all agree that we begin to retain more information when we are actively engaging ourselves. Where as reading is usually on the bottom of the list, it is not that active, while teaching is on the top. Consider why teaching is on the top? Now you know the how, but if you know why, you’ll make it better.

After moving all of my furniture to a new apartment In corvallis, and celebrating my mother’s birthday today I’m now going to focus 95% of my energy on creating the web 2.0 community.  There is aproximately one month, and when the time is invested properly what a fortune it can create.  With the technique described below I’ve been eliminating procastination and just doing it.  After speaking with my great friend, and buisness associate Nick Boushay we both agreeed that alot of success has to do is not necessarily intelligence, but just taking action and doing what your passionate about.

Today was a good day, I studied for my math, and geology final for tommorow. I should be doing above average on both of those tests and did it fairly quick. I do not understand how some people spend several days studying for exams, but I’m sure they do not understand the entrepreneur risk taker either. Regardless, after that I spoke with my realtor, got a new good faith estimate so we are going to be look at some properties together soon.

He recommended me not to rush into an investment property which I whole heartly agree with him. Although most people wouldn’t appreciate my new facebook image I created, the personal developed would. Funny enough, I spent to long making the visualization but everytime I log into facebook it is there, showing me some of the experiences I will have. I found out the maximum picture for a facebook profile image is 200×600, so I decided to create the largest one. Profile images are also a good way to advertise your buisness or whatever because how large they can be, and at how many people see them. I’ll create a blog later on the power of networking, but unlike most books, networking in the web 2.0 community through forums, emails, instant messaging, blogs, etc.

I got back to programming my website and all is good, it has taken me a couple hours to figure out how to let someone log into my site, and start to edit their information. Although it is a great experience, and after this break there will be nothing stopping me from releasing my new web 2.0 product that will attract some heavy traffic.

It is 2:27am right now, I have a test at 9:30am. Today is the last day of finals, then I have the full month’s break to be productive and finding a new roommate because Steve is graduating today. Although I think I found a roommate, or two off my website CorvallisClassifieds.net, there is also a corvallis apartment database I created for anyone searching for apartments in corvallis. If you are reading this, and going to be in Portland, OR area and interested in creating some residual income please contact me through email. I’am not going to pitch you on anything, but would welcome you if you want to join a team of individuals who are going to be creating websites on the internet for a large sum of income + residuals.

Well I’m finishing this blog at about 6am, it is not uncommon for me to go to bed very late because I’m normally up working on my laptop. With the 24/7 activity on the world wide web, it really doesn’t matter whether or not I’m working at 9-5pm, so as an entrepreneur, we are able to set out own hours and work whenever we want. It is a great experience.

Today, my friend Charmon helped me study for a Sociology Test, which I took today. I m unsure what grade I’ll get in the class, and then I studied for my math final on Wednesday. After that it was about 9pm, however, it was the start of my business productive day. After getting home I talked with Marc Rogers, an individual in Portland, OR who is helping me find an investment property to purchase in North Portland. Then, I went ahead and talked to the mortgage broker to give me some more good faith estimates to see compare the numbers on different loans. My real estate transaction is going along well. I saw several multi family units in N Portland, however nothing to exciting. They all bring around 22-25k gross per year, they are all around 300k for a three units. The pictures were some of the properties that I have been looking at as possible investments. And for those people who don’t understand leverage, no, I do not have 300k liquid cash sitting in my bank account. Not yet anyways, but no, I’m borrowing the money from the bank. To many people say I do not have money, if I did I would invest. Well don’t kill yourself mentally, OPM, other people’s money, use the bank’s money not your own.

Then I logged into Facebook, and there were several messages from other entrepreneurs who I have began to network with. One individual is starting a next work marketing company selling personal defense weapons, and devices; although I respectfully declined it was quite interesting to see what he was doing. Another individual was creating an online community for aspiring entrepreneurs; his site blulite thought was very hard to navigate. Another guy Adrian is a ETF trader and creating a good sum of cash working part time, but producing full time income.

I also got in contact with Ben Casnocha, as listed below, I emailed him and he replied back giving thanks. I’ve just been recently at aw on the great people I’m able to talk to. With almost everyone I know going places, I’m going with them, and my other friend Chris, had his lyrics featured in Source magazine. That is incredible, working with Snoop Dogg, and he has Nas who is interested in his beats. Wow, everyone is doing great, and I’m just living it with them. Anyways, afterwards I had fun working on writing my book on the law of association for about an hour and a half. Read some other entrepreneur blogs, some interesting news on Donald Trump, and then started to work on programming my new web 2.0 community which is starting to look good. I also made an offer on a domain name I’m interested in purchasing, however I still can’t tell everyone what the web 2.0 community I’m creating untill it is already launched.

So this is a random rant on what s go on in my world, and a pretty typical day of networking, and working on sites. I’ll finish it off by reading 10 pages of a good book, Six Great Ideas, by J. Mortimer Adler.

Several months ago I decided to write a book on the law of association, “How you become the combined average of the five people you associate the most with.” For several months my books was moving steadily along, it had accumlated over 50 pages of brain storming material, a table of contents, layout, outline, and was getting closer to being ready. Then for some reason my negative thoughts were clouding my mind and I lost interest in writing the book. So for about the last two months I have stopped writing my book, and it has been sitting as a useful resource loaded with typos that I ended up letting my friend up in Ohio read.

As I mentioned in my previous blog I’m helping out a fellow aspiring entrepreneur start his first internet venture, we are talking online and I hope to help him achieve his future goals. We talk alot about buisness, reading books, and general fun stuff, its great to know that he relates so well to me. I’m encourgaging him to work on himself, so I’m sending him some CDs in the mail tommorow and went ahead and sent him my unfinished book. Why Not?

Well after he read the book he mentioned he enjoyed reading it, thought it was good and suggested I complete the book. I agreed with him and want to finish the book, and after studying how the mind works I’m able to write the book with more enthusasim. See what was happening is my daily page a day started to get on my nerves, I’d wait till way late at night to do it, and hammer out one page a day.

With one page a day, after a year that is 365 pages of a good book written. That was my goal, but I was loosing my daily discipline. So after learning the Silivia Mind Control method, it mentioned the following. “If you want to regain enthusiam about something you are doing, review the benefits.” Know why you are doing it. We do not wash our dishes, to wash our dishes, we wash our dishes so we have a clean kitchen with dishes ready to be used. I was looking at the negative aspect of writing everyday, while instead, I should have, and now I do, look at the positive side, the end result of being able to write a book.

So heres my why, the why makes it all worthwhile. I’am writing a book so I can give back to the community which has helped me out throughout my life. It is a chance for me to share some quality information that has positively affected me, and I’m able to share it with others. It gives me a credible source to referr to when selling myself when people want to invest in me and my buisnesses. Although I do not necessarily like titles, it would be nice to know that at age 19 I have successfully writen a book and call myself an author. I’m able to inspire, instruct, and help others succeed with the knowledge in the book. And maybe, it will provide me with some residuals from the book selling (even though I might just make it for free), and bring more attention to my works.

See how much more compelling the why is, other than, I want to just write a book. This is why, I’ve regained focus and will continue to publish the book and will probably just place it on my site for free so someone can read it. Then possibly make the next book a best seller, maybe, if I really want it.

What is so funny about the whole situtation is my writing is very basic, in high school I read about 2-3 books, and did not enjoy writing. Now all of the sudden I’m writing a book and barely pass my writing classes, but the grades won’t stop me, its just ironic. I would have never thought I’d do this. You will be reading it if you stay in touch with me.

Although studying for finals is extremely important in getting good grades in school, I tend to focus my time on creating a business that will provide residual income. It’s interesting to point out my mentor’s philopsophy, Jim Rohn, “If You Could Do Better, Should You.” I agree with his statement to a point, that we should do better, but only to a point. It seems that you can only do so much better to a degree where you have to lessen the degree of other influences. For example, I can focus on school and buisness, but lean more on the other.

Despite this, as an entrepreneur I still do all of my homework and get fairly decent grades. My average GPA is around a 3.2 which is majority B’s and Lower A’s. Although I could get all A’s if I really wanted to, and some say I should, in my mind the grades will not determine my net worth. I appreciate school, dropped out, and have returned but think they are overrated. In conclusion I tend to work on my buisnesses for most of dead week while everyone is studying, and thats what I just been doing.

I hate to sound almost negative towards grades, I do think they are actually quite important.  The further I look back upon my grades has made a huge impact in my life.  With out a strong grade ethics in middle school, and an average gpa around 2.3 during middle school lacking focus, during my high school years I also had a low gpa.  This low gpa has influenced where I have gone to school, and grades have opened and closed doors.

When I relate it today, if I had better grades during middle school, my grades probably would have been higher during high school which would of helped getting into a higher class university.  Oregon State University is great, although there is much more action and opportunity in living in the Silicon Valley which is where I plan on moving potentially.  At my current point in life, as a college student, I’m still lost in respects to where exactly I’d like to go.  At this moment I’m at OSU studying buisness, and working on a project that I believe will expand throughout the world even if I’m in corvallis.  And when the Real Estate Club gets going, I might not want to leave it, but continue to build it.  What I’m saying in my current stage is that if I’m going to stay at OSU it really makes no difference if I’m getting all A’s, or all B’s, I don’t get C’s and don’t get D’s.  So this is the end of my studying, school, and buisness conflicting rant.

Here are my goals for the next three years, which I will accomplish. It’s so powerful to have your goals infront of you everyday, it keeps people focused, and leads individual’s towards their destinys. But instead of just saying my goals, I say, “Im So Happy and Grateful Now That,” because in my mind I’m visualizing it in the present tense and it’s so much more powerful.

• I’m earning $100,000 a year on January 1st, 2009 from several websites that generate money from advertising. I’m also earning passive income from my four plexs, that I own under my corporation with tax write offs.
• RotaryEngineIllustrated.com is making $100 a day on January 1st, 2008, from Google Adsense. The drop shipping business is completely setup earning a passive residual income stream. There are 3 people working full time on the site receiving checks by my corporation.
• I’m mentoring three students and helping them achieve their goals. I also have a mentor for real estate investing, entrepreneurship, and a general mentor.
• I attend every personal development seminar that I’m able to attend to. I’m reading everyday, studying wealth, relationships, health, real estate, entrepreneurship, and the lives of successful people.
• I’m living in the Silicon Valley in 2008-2009, and enrolled in a University studying entrepreneurship.
• I’m the owner of a four-plex investment property, which produces a positive cash flow and great appreciation in 2008.
• I’m traveling throughout China, visiting the Great Wall, my Chinese grandparent’s birth place, then traveling to Japan, Korea, Mongolia, and learning from other cultures.
• The Real Estate Club has 50 dedicated people that attend weekly during the winter 2007 school term.