So off I went on a Friday Morning (Public Holiday :P) to have a look.
Having attended previous NACs, I have more or less know what to expect =)
Being lazy me, I'll just attend the seminars that I would be interested in, namely:
- Chris Gardner (Personal Motivation/Improvement)
- Sean Seah (Stocks investing, not too interested in options though)
- Pip Stehlik (Real Estate Investing)
- James Macneil (Publishing books as a source of income)
- Koji Ikematsu (Personal Motivation/Improvement)
My ticket was Bronze, so I'll get a seat at the back and a workbook.
Boy, does the workbook look much nicer than the ones I have been to. There's some nice content inside too!
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Nice articles inside there. Random flipping showed quite interesting contents (Pip Stehlik, James Macneil and Koji Ikematsu had those workbook components to better jolt down stuff) =)
Was really pumped about it! XD
So here we go.
The speaker list wasn't out so I wasn't sure which speaker would be on which day unlike previous NACs, so I stuck for the first one. The speaker list was more or less finalised by lunch, which Pip Stehlik and Sean Seah followed by Joel Comm or Ted Thomas (Tax Lien but that's only for US).
The first speaker was Peng Joon but I have tried internet/affiliate marketing before from a few "masters" and I couldn't grasp it. I'm guessing it is a problem with me, so I'll skip those seminars and just focus on selling real products online. (Do note that, internet/affiliate marketing probably earns more than my passive investing and maybe even trading on a small base, if you readers can do it, you'll make your millions much faster than I could have done)
So after lunch came, Pip Stehlik, where the presentation was plagued with IT issues (which meant not being able to see the slides much), super annoying. To make things worse, there was loads of storytelling about his life and how he got here (probably due to waiting for the IT stuff to get working) and the AV team wasn't listening much whenever he wanted to switch from camera to slides =(
It didn't really work out in the end, he got his successful students up to chat a little (which to me wasted more time), they have some information hidden in their words about what is needed and their concerns, but the content would be better covered up right. Then following that, selling the seminar (as usual, don't blame them).
My take home ideas from Pip Stehlik is summarised as follows:
- What is your Drive/Why to achieve financial freedom
- Why do you need a system
- Property should be the base in which all your other investments/assets are built upon
- Two Golden Rules for Property Investments
- Make Money in the "Buy" (I'm guessing rental)
- Add Value (via Financing/with Tenants/Refurbishing)
- Why Property is such a great investment for you?
- Multiple Streams of Income
- Recession Proof
- In a recession, property prices drop but rentals increase
- In whatever economic climate, people will always need a roof above their heads to stay and rest
- 7 Step System
- Real Estate is a team sport
- When you need help, help is present
- You need contractors, property managers, lenders, appraisers, inspectors, lawyers, etc to fix stuff or get things done for your property as well as during transactions.
- Dealing with many people allows money to circulate to them as well, allowing a win-win situation and to some extent, Connected Capitalism.
- Leverage
- Banks will lend you up to 80% to buy property
- Creative Financing
- Take out all money from the deal and use Other's People Money (OPM)
- Seller Financing/Lender's Takeback (seller acts as a bank)
- Using a 2nd mortgage on the property to have no money down
- Using amortisation in mortgage, change the percentage by varying the loan duration
- Earn money in a stronger currency and spend it in a weaker currency
- Before investing in a property overseas
- Does the Law/Currency make sense to invest in property there
- Is the local demand in our favor (unemployment rates, etc)
- Looking to make at least SGD$400/mth for any property
- Ideas
- Get comfortable with debt
- He had a suggestion to get more credit cards to increase limits to fund for "education", then use it for a downpayment (maybe via convenience cheques? But sounds extremely dangerous due to very high compounding interest rates. Wouldn't using a Personal Loan from the bank be safer if you really have to?)
- It is often thought of real estate are for people who can at least afford one piece of property. The five basic necessities to any human being are food, water, oxygen, clothing, and shelter. So at the end of the day, we all have someplace to rest and we call it usually a home – and home is real estate whether owned, rented, or leased. So no matter how much or so little you know about real estate – you are already involved as a real estate investor in a way.
- Don't buy purely for speculation to flip properties
- An example showed:
- Cashflow from Day 1 (find a person to rent to before buying?)
- Add value (the building was split into 4 units and refurbished)
- Find solutions and the money will come.
- People who are involved in real estate are judged to be unscrupulous individuals who are out to get money out of other people.
- But if you work your way in real estate with integrity and all legal means, you can actually help other people in their real estate problems in the long run. You will be the solutions provider and you will creatively find a solution to their real estate dilemmas so you can have a win-win situation for everybody involved. Your actual goal is to make everyone happy in the end. And always ask "how" instead of "I can't" is where it all boils down into.
- Some stuff that Pip deals in
- Buy, Rent, Hold
- Renovation (Forced Appreciation)
- Lease Options
- Wholesaling
- Wholesaling is basically assigning a contract to buy a certain property onto someone else, where you make your profit by selling the contract (or the “rights” to BUY the property). (Have to confirm this with a bit of research)
- Property Management
- Commercial Deals
- Financing Strategies
- VItals Signs(?) To Succeed in Property
After that came Sean Seah, which I am more familiar with as it is focused on equities as well as I am familiar with him because of AK's Chitchat sessions and having some materials (including some videos and his book "Gone Fishing With Buffett").
My take home ideas from Sean Seah is summarised as follows:
- Looking at your degree from an investment POV (Which I have always advocated. I'll use myself as an example here)
- My degree course costs about 38k SGD
- My average monthly pay in a year with bonus (AWS+Bonus) is about 3.7k a month
- So 3.7k x 12 is about 44.4k, which means you breakeven in a year. (I use a conservative estimate where I calculate based on the savings I have every month, which takes about 28 months of pay)
- This excludes interest generated on student loans. Which will increase breakeven duration.
- ABC system to create a Shopping List
- Assess
- Boring is good in investing
- Avoid stocks that move like "soccer"
- Strong Track Record (Predictable Profits)
- Businesses must make money
- Buy Price
- Look for target ROI, that would be maximum Buying Price (general rule of thumb is about 15%, so buy at or below ~15% ROI price)
- Valuation
- Position Sizing (He did not cover this)
- Buy in Crisis
- Cash Flow
- R-growth Strategy
- Dividend Strategy
- Arbitrage Strategy
- VIOS
- Portfolio
- Diversify to reduce risk
- Reinvest returns to compound
The subsequent speakers didn't seem interesting to me so I left, wasn't sure of the speakers on Saturday.
But in view of the speakers today, I'll probably skip Saturday as there are more introductions, course sales and success stories of students than content (lucky I got the tickets free) and listen to Koji and Chris on Sunday (hopefully James would speak on that day as well).
But that's it for now. Until Sunday! (but if it goes the same, I'll probably skip future NACs =__=")
Update 23/7/15: Day Three is here.
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