Wondering why I’m suddenly bringing this strategy up out of the blue? Think you know the answer. Yep, you’ve guessed it. These 2 machines that we are buying for the cash only ice cream shops that I mentioned in my earlier post….well we are buying them with the help of a private money lender.

So I just wanted to let you know that before you think you can’t get into the ATM business because you have no money…..well just remember, you probably know people who have money or at least have money in an IRA or 401K. And you can help them roll it over into a self-directed IRA so they can fund your next ATM deal. Cool eh?

P.S. If you’re wondering why we wouldn’t use our own self-directed IRA to fund our ATM deals it’s because we want the passive income that our ATM’s are providing and if we loan our ATM business money from our IRA’s than 100% of the profits have to go back into our IRA’s. And that isn’t helping our passive income needs. BUT someone else can use their IRA’s to lend us the money and we just pay their IRA back as a loan.

Never heard from him again. Btw, he has his house listed now too. Well he called me back again this morning and said he had an offer on his house and it fell through. He said the realtor doesn’t even have a sign on his house anymore lol Go figure.

He asked if I was still interested. We went back and forth for a while. He wants over $100k and I offered $65k to $68k (fixed up probably worth hmmmmm $200k to 250k. Big difference I know but I guess it depends what you are going to do with the place. It’s huge. Or someone could make it a duplex if they wanted to.) Anyway, he kept asking if I could do more….I told him there is no way in the world that I could be where he is. I did say, however, that IF and only IF I agreed to a higher price, slightly higher price that I would just put an option on the property and I’d take 30 days to find a buyer and if I couldn’t find a buyer in 30 days then we’d either a) agree to a price drop or b) he’d be on his own and I was out of the deal.

He seemed to understand but he wanted to think about it. He’s trying to walk away with 30k so he can move but it ain’t gonna happen. Plus, he’s super upset that just 1 or 2 yrs. ago when he bought the house he got it for over $100k. I think I’m a pretty good people person when talking about this kind of crap…..but we’ll see what he decides. Oh did I mention he’s in foreclosure?

So hopefully something sank in with him today. I’ll call him on my way to work tomorrow morning.

Tomorrow on my lunch break I’m meeting with an atm provider. I want to make sure that if we buy machines from them in the future that they give us the service that we like, etc. etc. Plus, I’m going to talk to him about working together on my upcoming ATM ebook.

I’m definitely learning how to incorporate activities into my days while working and it’s tough…..but hey……what’s that quote again guys?

Ok I’m going to check out a bunch of blogs from my buds since I’ve been out of the loop lately and then I’m off to bed. I’m going to try to get up early so I can work out…that working out thang didn’t go over so well this morning.

Blade ended up spending 6 nights and 7 days in the ER Vet. He was getting IV fluids and IV nutrients, along with antibiotics, pain meds, pepcid, etc. etc. He’s been home since Monday afternoon and he’s doing wonderful. (Below is Blade chilling in a baby crib lol pre-ER visit.)

He’s drinking water like a champ, he’s eating wayyyyyyyyyyy better now (for the most part he eats the “required amount” a day, even tho he still won’t eat his wet food yet. Grrrrr! But hey, I’ll take what I can get, ya know?) And he’s already “chasing” birds through the deck window lol

At this moment he’s laying next to me purring up a storm. (that’s definite music to my ears.) I try to sleep at least 2 days a week with him (we have 4 cats and he has to be separated from the others cuz Mr. Bladeypants is actually a bully lol) So 2 nights I sleep with him and let the other kittys chill.

So now that Blade is home safe and sound and he’s working towards 100% and I’m not working all day or all night and then traveling back and forth to the ER vet to visit my baby (and yes, I went to see him every day or night after work to spend time with him and to check on him. Sometimes I had to try to see if he’d eat for me cuz he wouldn’t eat for the vet and other times it was well that’s what we parents do….whether you got real kids or furry kids, you know!) And on Saturday and Sunday I’d go twice to see him! Needless to say the week he was in the hospital I was worthless as I was B-E-A-T.

Now it’s back into high gear. I’m getting use to the work schedule again and we’re gonna make it happen….soon. I feel it.

Oh and on an atm note….we just got a cash only ice cream place tell us they want a machine in both of their locations (one of the locations is near that slamming cash only restaurant we have in a college town. Actually, the owner of that store referred this ice cream store guy…they are good friends.) So Kathy and I are putting our heads together to try to figure out how in the hell we are gonna pay for not just one but two Atm’s!!!

Uhhh remember I was saying I’m gonna have to wholesale a house to pay Blade’s vet bill? Well maybe I’ll have to wholesale 2 houses so I can pay Blade’s bill and buy 2 atm’s! lol

Besides that I made 2 promises. 1 to Blade when I was driving him to the vet the Tuesday night I took him to the ER and I told him that I’d get on the ball so I can be home most of the time and therefore I would have been able to know sooner that there was something wrong with him (as I didn’t get home until 10pm that evening) and then of course also, so I could spend all day hanging and playing with him and the other kitty’s.

And then I made a promise to Joe. He was upset one morning because I had to take him to the neighbors house so she could watch him and he wanted to know why he had to go. Unfortunately, I had to tell the kid that I had to go to work to take care of some things right now but that his mom and I are working on building passive income so neither one of us has to work and he can always stay here instead of going to a babysitters. He was thrilled…so he made me promise that we’d work real hard at buying apartment buildings so he wouldn’t have to go to the neighbors so much. (And Joe is actively looking for a location to put an atm that HE wants to partner with his mom and I on.)

So….if I was serious before, well I’m more serious now…I made a big promise to one of my cats (well all of them in a sense) and to a 10 yr. old. That’s serious stuff folks…can’t let them down!

This week I’m gonna start analyzing some deals that have been in my inbox for a few weeks now. And making some more calls to brokers and management companies. Plus, I’m going to try to get in touch with a friend from high schools father, who has $$$$ and try to set up an appointment with him next month. Things are looking up and I’m feeling good about my situation.

I love that saying that Dave Lindahl says that I’m sure he got from someone else but it goes like this:

I think I’m gonna print that out and hang it on my bathroom mirror (I’m sure Kathy will be thrilled to read that every morning hehehehe)

Btw, thanks again for all of the support with Blade. I, well we, really appreciated it. When one of my kids is sick the world pretty much stops for me. I’m a big worry wart and I’m not right until they are home and doing well. Blade is doing wonderfully. He’s on 3 meds right now; an antibiotic, pepcid and another antibiotic but 2 of his meds are almost done……and trust me, we BOTH can’t wait for that day. Medicine time is the worst part of the day for both Blade and I lol If you have pets, especially cats, and have had to give them a couple of medicines well then I’m sure you can relate lol

Lastly, I got the book “The Power of Focus” by Jack Canfield (affiliate link) as recommended by Shae from Good faith investing in her article “Living Life on My Terms.” I’m super excited to get cracking on that book…so thanks Shae for the good recommendation.

Well folks I’m off to bed as I want to get up bright and early so I can work out, fill an atm and get some reading in and make a couple of calls.

Btw, I’ll be blogging again sooner rather than later………peace out g money’s!

Plus, as we were driving, Joe, Kathy’s 10 yr. old, informed us that he’d like to partner with us on our next atm. At least one of her damn kids listens to our advice! Brandon, the 18 yr. old, well he’s just going down hill financially and will continue to do so I predict for the rest of his life unfortunately (the kid spent $500 to $800 last month on FAST FOOD AND JUNK!)

Anyway, the week started off good but then it went down hill quickly. Tuesday when I got home from work there was throw-up all over my house, upstairs in the hall, in Joe’s bedroom, in the guest bedroom, on the stairs, then downstairs in the living room, etc. Blade, one of my cats, got sick. Now, cats throwing up isn’t too unusual but that excessive amount of throw up I knew something had to be up.

I found him hiding behind my desk and I’m fairly certain he was there all day as Brandon told me he couldn’t find him all day. He would not move. When I first came up to him he slowly turned himself around to face me but that was it. He literally could not move. I ended up taking him to an emergency vet at about midnight. (Here is a pic of my baby boy in a box when he’s his normal feeling good self.)

The vet informed me that he had a fever of 103.5 (cats normal temp is around 102.5) and that he was dehydrated and that he seemed to be uncomfortable near his abdomen. They xrayed him and saw something was up with his abdomen but wasn’t sure what. They started to give him iv fluids, pain meds and antibiotics.

The next morning they call me and tell me his fever is now at 105 and ask if I would ok an abdomen ultrasound. I said yes.

They call me back later and tell me that he’s got pancreatitis (basically his pancreas is inflammed and it’s uncomfortable and that’s why he’s not eating or doesn’t want to eat.) The sucky thing is that they say they really can’t pinpoint why he or other cats get it. Could be a number of things like eating something bad, etc. but they can’t say for certain.

This morning the vet called me and said his temperature is finally normal but he still won’t eat. She said we can’t have him going on much longer with out getting the nutrition he needs. It will effect his liver and worse things will happen to him. She suggested either giving him food through an iv or giving him an appetite stimulant and hoping that makes him eat. Of course, the stimulant would have been cheaper but I didn’t want to take anymore chances with him and I told her to just give him the iv.

Btw, in case you were wondering Blade is only 7 (well he’ll be 7 next month.)

I don’t know how many of you have ever had your pets at an Emergency Vet/Specialist but all I can say is that I literally need to go wholesale a house to cover his vet bill. Right now my credit card is paying his bill, but I’m seriously putting bandit signs out today and going to try to get a wholesale deal on the side so I can put it towards that.

Unfortunately, the vet said there is no magic pill that they can give a cat to get rid of pancreatitis…she said it’s really frustrating because you basically just have to wait it out for the inflammation to go down. Soooo that’s where we are at now.

I’m hoping since his temperature is normal now and he’ll be getting the nutrition that he needs today from his iv food that he’ll start to bounce back around and want to start eating on his own tomorrow. Then he’ll be able to come home!

For those of you that don’t know me….my cats are my kids! What YOU would do for your kids, I would do for my cats. It’s just that simple. You wouldn’t give a second thought about helping your kids (and yes, you’d even go wholesale an extra house to help them) well it’s the same with me….I wouldn’t give a second thought about helping my cats.

I mean especially when they are still young, healthy kittys……….I, honestly, think Blade got into something in the house that he shouldn’t have and that’s what started the internal irritation. Because let me tell you Blade is an eater! He will eat anything that is not nailed down. As a matter of fact we had to get babylocks for our cabinets because he’s always trying to eat shit.

Grant it, if he wanted to eat the couch he could lol but you get my drift. So to see him not wanting to eat at all; well you know something is definitely wrong with him big time. I told him last night when I saw him that I’d even take the babylocks off the cabinet if he’d just eat some food!

Needless to say my mind hasn’t been on anything but Blade since Tuesday. I’m upset, stressed and everything else you can imagine.

But we’re still doing lil to do things for our apartment business this week…..like trying to call potential private money folks that we know to set up appointments and things like that.

I will admit I’m not focused mentally on this right now, but I will be once my boy is back home. I’m hopefully it will be tomorrow. Actually, I’ll even feel better once he starts eating again. I’ll be visiting him this afternoon or evening too, of course.

If any of you have had pancreatitis in a cat, please let me know if there was anything special that you or your vet did for your cat that seemed to work. Thanks!

P.S. We’re going to the bank to see if they will give our ATM business a line of credit because we have a bunch of new possibilities for machines (1 and maybe more are courtesy of another guy I play poker with. Ya’ll should look into playing poker lol I meet folks for real estate and my atm business by doing it!)

If you’ve read my other ATM posts before you’ll know that I tell you that you are NOT going to get rich off of owning just 1 ATM. It’s just not going to happen (in your lifetime anyway lol.) So when looking to get into the ATM business make sure you give yourself a plan. I.E. How much money do you want your ATM’s to throw off for you each month? When you have that figure than go out and buy the number of machines necessary to hit that figure! Of course, if you’re like me where your figure will require you to buy anywhere from 30 to 50 machines and you, personally, don’t have much money, then you’re of course gonna have to buy those machines over time.

I’m in the process of working on an ATM business ebook and course with videos, audio, etc. that will pretty much help you start your own ATM business from scratch. I’ll walk you through the entire process. That’s soon to come (big shout out to Steph from FlipThisWholesaler.net for giving me that lil push to get started on creating the ebook.)

My goal is $5k a month from the ATM’s. That way I get $2500 and Kathy gets $2500 (well less because we’ll have to deduct some expenses) but you get the idea.

Btw, our new cash only restaurant that we put in the end of May had 278 hits in the month of June! We friggin’ love them! That means that just from that machine alone we brought in $556 into our business for the month of June. Cash only businesses folks…..seek them out and place your ATM’s there. You will be very happy you did.

Once I have the appropriate positive and passive cash flow that I need to live off of from my ATM’s and multi-family deals I will begin to buy ATM’s in my self-directed IRA. Gotta love that technique!

Good thing I’m back on track with my thinking. Working a 40 hour work week for someone else for 2 weeks now sure has a way of bringing out your thinking cap!

Guys and gals I have to tell you that I am more psyched than ever before now. I think I got this “work” pattern down at BMW, my body is now accustomed to getting up early even on my days off and I totally feel better “emotionally” knowing that the bills will get paid. Add to all of that that I do not like working a “normal” job and I’ve got huge motivation written all over me.

I haven’t been this excited since I wrote my freedom post. It’s on like donkey kong now!

Who’s got anymore ideas that I’ve been missing? The last post I made a few days ago Esi and Al made some great comments…..does anyone else have any more thoughts on finding motivated apartment building owners?

THIS BLOG WAS ON THERE!!! Yep, GoinFlippinCrazy.com got an Honorable Mention on BiggerPockets.com list of Top 20 Real Estate Investing blogs and I gotta tell you that a) I wasn’t expecting that at all and b) I was super excited to see I was there.

I just wanted to thank Joshua for including this blog as an Honorable Mention on his list of top 20 real estate investing blogs. You’ve just motivated me to kick it up a few notches so I can make the REAL DEAL list next time Thanks!

Why try to reinvent the wheel right? I mean seriously all of the commercial folks are saying that a wave of commercial foreclosures are going to be coming………..how about getting to them before they reach foreclosure?

I think the 2 ways I mentioned above are good as well as probate deals, but the big time consuming problem that I’m thinking will arise is the fact that I’ll probably have to sift through 99.9% of single family deals to find the apartment building owner deals. Wouldn’t you agree?

I wonder if there is a way to get by that? Are there any other techniques that you commercial guys and gals use to find motivated apartment building owners?

I’ve been doing direct mail, but I’m really just sending out a mass mailing to apartment owners…I’m sure my results would sky rocket if I was sending out a mass mailing to MOTIVATED APARTMENT BUILDING OWNERS!

Soooooo fess up (please) how are YOU finding motivated apartment building owners? (Btw, going to check out some reo’s this weekend that I found on the MLS…there’s another technique. An oldie, but always a goodie!)

Hmmmm let’s see….what have I been doing all week? Basically driving BMW’s. lol And no I’m not kidding.

My favorite so far was this one:

That one above is a convertible 328i. It was pretty hot!

And than drum roll please……I learned to drive a manual on this puppy on Friday:

That one is a 335i. Nothing like learning to drive stick on SOMEBODY ELSE’S BMW, eh? (and in case you’re wondering……I did a pretty good job driving after my learning session (the other guy that got hired with me taught me how to drive stick when we were out for one of our joy rides.)

Now as far as real estate goes…that’s what you really wanna know right? Well I have to tell you that since not working a “normal” job in soooooooooo long (over 4 years) that this week was extremely exhausting. Not only did I start this job this week, but Kathy was away for work in Houston, Tx and we (aka I) had Joe for the week. Luckily our next door neighbor friggin rocks so she helped me out a great deal last week.

The bottom line is that the job is bearable right now BUT overall it’s definitely giving me the motivation that I need to do what I need to do. This week is the start of my new schedule…basically work 2 nights and 3 days (and switch every other Friday and Saturday. So if I work Friday, I have off Saturday and vice versa.) I think I’ll need this week and perhaps next week (hopefully not) to get situated with my schedule and to hopefully not be exhausted when I get home and then I can concentrate on working my real estate in.

I did start re-reading this Dave Lindahl book: Multi-Family Millions: How Anyone Can Reposition Apartments for Big Profits(affiliate link.)

But if any of you folks have ideas on how to find motivated apartment owners, please let me know. I’m going to try to sift through the foreclosure notices and try to get my hands on those that are filing evictions or that get judgments on their behalf but I’m foreseeing some issues already with that…..but I’ll see what I can do. Any other ideas?

You may remember when I went to the Greater Philadelphia Apartment Associations Trade Show a few months back. While there I met a super nice lady who actually hires folks for property management companies. I advised her that I’m looking for a property management company to work with and that I’m actually not a property manager looking for more employees.

Now on to why you should network with property managers:

1) They know the areas. They know and understand which areas most folks are buying in, which area most folks are avoiding and which areas are up and coming. (Think this type of information is valuable?)

2) They know rental values in the area. They know which areas the rents are raising, which area the rents are being lowered, which areas rents are stabilized, etc. (Do you think you’d like to know this type of data when getting into multi-units and perhaps when getting into a new market?)

3) They have good contacts. They know great brokers to work with, they know great attorneys to work with, they know great contractors, and the list goes on and on. They KNOW people that can be important to your business!

4) They know costs. They know how much typical expenses will run for particular types of properties. (More information that would be helpful?)

5) They may send you deals. This is the reason I decided to write this post. I spoke to Mary in great length after receiving her email and we spoke a few times. After building some rapport with Mary I asked her to please let me know if any of her clients are looking to sell or if she hears of anyone that’s looking to sell. She said no problem. Then lo and behold just last week Mary send me an email telling me that this particular property is for sale and that she thought she’d send it to me to take a look at it! How about that folks? Now grant it, that property may not be a great deal, but that’s not the point. The point is Mary thought of me and sent me the information about an apartment building for sale. So if she did it once, don’t you think she’ll do it again the next time she hears of a place for sale? I certainly do. That is huge! I immediately emailed Mary and thanked her. Perhaps I should send her a lil thank you as well……what you think? I think that would be a good idea.

Can you see why one of the key people that you should definitely be networking with are property managers? They could be one of the most useful contacts you make in a day.