While many of today’s real estate investors are suffering from this massive, global economic meltdown that’s causing unemployment to rise to at least 10% by this fall, bank foreclosures to skyrocket and prices in most real estate markets to fall more than half from their peak, my students are making 6- and 7-figures with real estate investing syndication.

For example:

o My client, Jay Redding syndicated his first commercial real estate property in Indiana earning his investment business an immediate $250,000.00 in cash and equitable profits.

o My client, Certified Financial Planner, Michelle Agar syndicated her first group of 5 investment properties in Edmonton, Alberta, earning her $269,000.00 in profits.

Want to know how they’re making extraordinary profits in today’s real estate “Perfect Storm” of opportunity, and how you could do the same?

6 Elements A Real Estate Investing Business Needs to Make Extraordinary Profit Gains with Less Than a Part-Time Effort

Profit-making element #1: Vision and Planning

You need to understand that your investing business should be treated like you would for your own baby in the beginning and it should be nurtured as such. I don’t believe that any parent in their right mind with a newborn child says, “I’m going to walk away from this baby and leave it to fend for itself without any help and check up on it every few weeks or months. Then I’ll see if it has fed itself, changed its diapers, growing strong and operating with positive values and ideals.”

If they did this, their baby would die. Yet, I see one investor after another doing the same thing with their businesses and then they wonder: “what in the world went wrong.” They failed to plan. They failed to create a vision. They failed to implement proven business systems. Anf finally, they failed to focus their efforts on launching and nurturing their business so their investing business will be ready for more independence in the future.

Profit-making element #2: Specialized Knowledge

As an investor you need to know how to find, finance, hold and flip deals. You need to know negotiation strategies, NLP mind tricks, what’s-working-now techniques, real estate contracts, and how to adapt to opportunities in more than one marketplace, using more than one investing strategy. And, if you don’t have these specialized skills and knowledge then you need to find one or more partners that have the resources, skills and knowledge to help you close more deals. That’s what real estate investing syndication is all about. It’s the ultimate Joint Venture investment business.

Profit-making element #3: Applied Strategies

There are very specific strategies that you need to know in order to:

o Set up an organization that generates huge profits on its very first transaction

o Position yourself as a syndication expert so more people want to work with you

o Create and generate profits 8 to 12 different ways on every deal

o Deal with the legal ins and outs

o Finding the perfect syndication partners

o Leverage your knowledge into massive wealth

Profit-making element #4: Mentorship and Advisors

My real estate investing syndication business generated over 3.2 million dollars in equity and cash profits within its first 93 days. In 26 months we had transacted over 14 million dollars worth of real estate across 5 markets in North America.

I credit much of my success to Research in Motion’s CEOs Mike Lazaridis and Jim Balsillie. Working under two of the world’s most prominent self-made technology billionaire face-to-face for four years certainly helped me hone my business and relationship skills fast. Remember, behind every successful entrepreneur is a mentor that has helped guide he or she in the direction they want to go.

Profit-making element #5: Strategic Partners

When you become a real estate syndicator and partner with other investors who have money to invest in the market you:

o Build a formidable reputation

o Do more deals by leveraging this concept

o Create a fortune for yourself without using your own money

o Become a major player in the market without risking any of your own capital

In other words, when you transform your real estate investing business into a syndicator, you create a win/win/win for everyone involved.

Profit-making element #6: Systems and Processes

Once you have launched your real estate investing syndication business and put the right systems and processes in place, you can work part-time from your laptop and Blackberry. Re-inventing himself as a real estate syndicator, with just 10 hours of effort, Robert Beagle closed his first real estate deal and made over $61,000 in profits on a property he had never seen!

As you complete more transactions and learn to master systems and processes you’ll be able to put your business on autopilot and complete even more deals in less time.

Enterprise Investment Schemes

An EIS is an investment vehicle that provides funds and capital to small businesses that, due to the tightening of the credit market, cannot otherwise get financing from traditional sources. An EIS is an unquoted company that is not on a stock exchange and is most likely managed by a venture capital firm. These firms manage the investment objectives to protect investors and maximize investment returns. A good firm will have been involved in venture capital investing for a number of years and be able to provide a solid track record of protecting principle and securing returns. Firms operate their EISes differently, some offering investments into single companies while others operate EIS funds in which you could invest into a fund of multiple companies, therefore diversifying your risk.

The benefit of tax protection that EISes offer has resulted in an increased demand among wealthier investors, with EIS being utilized as a strategic tool within their portfolios. The UK government increased tax relief from 20% to 30% and the annual investment amount has been increased from £500,000 to £1,000,000. With the added benefit that the investment is exempt from capital gains tax and inheritance tax, EIS is increasingly the perfect vehicle for certain investors. More and more EISes have become essential within many investment portfolios as an integral tax relief tactic.

Seed Enterprise Investment Schemes

Not quite as large as the EIS, the SEIS provides a similar benefit and experience. The main difference being the investment amount allowed annually which currently stands at a maximum of £100,000, but offers an unprecedented 50% tax relief on the investment’s gains and value. However this 50% is only applicable if the SEIS continues to comply with the SEIS rules and providing the investment is left for a minimum of three years. After three years the investor can sell their stake, incurring no capital gains tax against profit realized. Furthermore, loss relief applies to any losses incurred.

As of 2014, the upfront tax relief for the highest tax bracket investors equates to a 64% tax break and, when combined with a loss relief tax break of a further potential of 22.5%, equates to a total of 86.5% tax relief. The downside tax protection of almost 90% is unprecedented amongst all other investment vehicles and provides significant tactical value to certain investors.

Careful Consideration

As with any investment decision, you need to be careful in your consideration when choosing to use EIS or SEIS for your portfolio. You should be considering these tax relief options in your portfolio after you have exhausted other forms of tax mitigation. The first two that should be utilized are your pension and annual Individual Savings Account (ISA) allowance. These primary tax savings vehicles provide secure investment vehicles; ISAs offer amazing investment flexibility not available through EIS or SEIS. Another option includes VCTs – Venture Capital Trusts – which have similar strategic benefits to EIS or SEIS but are limited to £200,000 per year.

In deciding on further tax mitigation, you need to consider the portion of your portfolio that these tactical investments would make up. Conventional wisdom dictates that you should not put more than 20% of your holdings into risky opportunities, but that 20% could realistically be surpassed with correct use of the right investment vehicles. If you are hedging your portfolio against a known event that will increase your capital gains taxes or inheritance taxes, EIS and SEIS would be a viable way to mitigate those taxes in a given year. In this way you could max out your contributions to these two tactical strategies in order to mitigate the known tax implications from another portion of your investment portfolio. It is these considerations that you should be aware of before deciding on a specific EIS or SEIS company.

Another concern that you should be aware of is the fact that EISes and SEISes are essentially “locked-in” products. You need to be able to leave the investments locked in for a period of at least three years (and in some cases longer) in order to access the tax relief benefits – managers will generally look for an exit in or around year 4, but an exit could realistically take longer and is subject to market conditions. In this way, many EIS and SEIS companies are illiquid and the secondary market for selling EIS/SEIS shares is therefore small. Taking the long view on these investments should be a natural consideration.

Choosing the Right EIS/SEIS

When deciding on the right company to invest for the purpose of tax mitigation, not all EIS/SEIS companies are the same. Choosing a company should not be done on impulse and requires effective due diligence to ensure that their investment philosophy is in line with your own. At the time of consideration, ask all the same questions of the company as you would when investing in any stock. By ensuring the company has a solid and proven track record of investments, open reporting functions that promote transparency and an investment philosophy you agree with, you can feel comfortable with your investment.

By considering an EIS/SEIS investment you are considering an investment option that has a real potential for investment loss. It can be the right option for those looking for a high risk option with an effective tax mitigation strategy as a small portion of their overall portfolio. EIS and SEIS investments can also be an excellent way for investors to dabble in venture capital investing without having to put up too much capital.

One of the keys to succeeding in information product creation is to break the process up into discrete steps. This frequently isn’t an instinctive reaction for the typical information marketer. Especially on the internet where small sized learning products are the norm.

However, it is extremely important to your ultimate success. In fact, I would go so far as to say that if you don’t do this you probably won’t succeed… even when you are starting out let alone as you move forward.

Your product creation system should do this for you if only to help you to understand the overall task.

But why?

In this article, I’m going to ignore chunking and focus on the practical aspects. That’s not to say that chunking isn’t important. It is. It’s important to understanding and to learning the process. But while you can use the same chunks as you move forward, long term your focus needs to be on the operation of the system not the understanding of it. Unless of course you are constantly training new people!

So why is chunking important to long term use of the product creation process? (Yes, I know systems design uses a different term for this process but I’m not teaching you systems design. So I’m going to use the word learning content designers use.)

The first reason that having individual discrete tasks is important is one of schedule estimation. Frequently it is very difficult to estimate how long the total task of creating a product will take. After all, the size and type of the products matters as does the number of products in your product funnel. And those are just the most obvious elements. However, estimating a discrete task is often much easier. The total can then be estimated as the total of the discrete tasks.

Secondly, scheduling a large task can be problematic. However, by segmenting the task into a number of discrete tasks, you gain a much greater flexibility in scheduling. Not only that but as your business begins to add people you are able to schedule multiple people to the product creation.

Finally, segmenting a large task into smaller discrete tasks allows you to have much better control over the product creation. This affects two different areas — status and quality.

By segmenting your process into discrete tasks you are able to schedule and record the progress at much more detailed level. As a result you are more in control of the status of the product creation. You know what everyone is doing. When they should complete it. And how much it should cost. You also know exactly what has been done.

You also improve your overall quality. Instead of waiting until everything is done you can check quality as you go. This allows you to immediate react to low quality products without absorbing their costs. This means that you have less rework and your rework costs less. And if the product is not going to meet its quality requirement you will know about it in time to stop the development, change the requirement or fix the product.