Originally published March 1982
The basics, the basics, the basics. You know I can't express enough the important of the basics. There have been many, many times in the past when I’ve dealt with people and they’ve asked me all these fantastically complex questions on the subject of real estate and creative financing. I found myself sitting there trying to explain complex methods and formulas of how to do certain types of real estate financing and creative techniques and how to get in with 100% financing, no money down, how to do "All Inclusive Trust Deeds," etc. But I found that the majority of these people couldn't take the data and do anything with it. They just were really lacking what everyone should have in first and that's the basics.
I can tell you a story about way back when I first got started in real estate. Oh, I thought I really knew what I was doing. I'd heard other people talk about it and so forth. But I really didn't have the education or some of the basics in to really play the game I wanted. SO I went out and tied up my property that I had bought, my first residential property, and actually received a contract on it to sell the property. After I did that I decided that I would go and do a basic seminar to find out just what I could learn about this particular area. My goodness, when I got the basic data it wasn't even within the first two hours of this seminar that I realized that if I had known the basic data on how to sell a property and how to get the best deal for myself I could have made $30,000 more profits on that deal. So I was really, really excited. But it was too late because I had already signed the contract, there was no way out, I had missed out on it. But I’ll tell you, I really kept that in mind and realized I wasn't going to pass up those basics again. At that point I really started to make some progress.
Later, when I started to give my own seminars and educate people on finances, I found that I would give them a high level of data but they could only expand so far with that high level data. But when I cut it down to a little bit lower and closer to the basics I found that their ability would be considerably higher to produce because they could actually take the data and really create with it. The lower down I went and the closer to basics the more able the person seemed to be. He could make the data his own now and he could do the creating rather than sit back and listen to someone such as myself do the creating.
Well I remember several years going by and me having a certain level of basics down, but you have a tendency of forgetting these basics. You know, you have the tendency of getting off on Cloud 9 or Cloud 42 or whatever realm of "pie in the sky" we get into and at that point you kind of forget about the basics. You think, well I don't have to look at the basics, I pretty much know what I’m doing now, I’m doing much better than most, and the basics are just something I’ve gone beyond now. Well at this point in time I was having a problem on a particular deal, and I didn't know how I was going to get myself out of it. But I realized that I had a successful action in the past of just getting the basic data. So I looked in my local telephone directory to see if I could find the person that was delivering the seminar that I went to three years prior. Unfortunately, I couldn't find it, so I called the home office of the company and found that there was actually the same guy delivering the seminar in a different city. So I flew in and listened to the same guy give the same seminar all over again. And ill be, it was an incredible experience! Within 15 minutes of that seminar I realized that the basics had fallen out again and it was time for me to get the basics in. I got so hyped up and just flying in my mind that the toughest thing for me to do that day was to stay for the rest of the seminar and listen to the rest of the data, which was quite creative. I had the basics back in now. And I went out and made myself $300,000 in profits with those basics.
Well, this story goes on and on. Actually it’s been 4 times now that I’ve been to the same seminar and all four different times it reiterated the basics in my universe. And all 4 times I’ve walked away and I’ve made fantastic profits as a result of it.
The individual that I was able to meet back in those early days when I first got started in real estate was Mark O. Haroldsen. I learned a lot in those days from studying what Mark had to say and I’m very happy to announce to you that Mark will be speaking at our upcoming Millionaires Course Graduates Reunion on March 13 and at the public banquet that night. You are all invited to the banquet. I find it amazing that after the second time through Marks course I went off and bought and sold a commercial building and made $300,000 within a six month period. It was a basic deal sitting in front of so many real estate experts that laughed at me when I bought it. They were looking and thinking about it at too high a level. When I saw the deal it hit me like a bomb as to how I could structure the deal and make it work. It was all about the basics. After that success I wrote Mark and he called me after he received my letter. What a surprise, he put my name and picture of me in his second book. The story of a guy named Richard Stewart in El Paso Texas that knew nothing about real-estate and took his courses and made $300,000.00.
Now Mark is speaking at my graduate courses and I am truly grateful that he recognized me in his book because I received calls from all around the country from people asking me how I did it. I have to say, thank you Mark for helping me and for now coming to my events and helping my students.
Now, just a word to tell you what the Millionaires Course Reunion is all about. When I started delivering seminars and teaching people how to get control over their financial area, I realized that they needed to have a continuous connection with the basic data and with people who were successfully applying it. This was because there were so many people out there who were counter-intending them making profits. These guys would leave my basic courses and they would go out into life and livingness, and someone would pound them in the head and say, "Ah, it can't be done." Well let me tell you, there are a lot of people making profits right now. And if you sit back and listen to rumors then you're going to be the effect of all those other people and their reasons why they can't go out and do it. So after I started the Millionaires Course and had several people who were graduates I needed to keep them connected up so that they could come back on a quarterly basis. We would debug them and help them handle any ruins and stops that they had as to why they couldn't make it from the last reunion. Plus we'd update them on changes in the investment environment. This was a sort of method of keeping everyone at cause over their own particular area of finance. It's been an amazing thing. We educate them just as if it was another day on the Millionaires Course, or two days, because the reunion now has gone to a two day weekend. And now we're even having special guest speakers, like Mark O. Haroldsen, come in on each reunion and educate the Millionaire Course graduates to an even higher degree.
So all of you out there are very welcome to come to the Millionaires Course Banquet in the evening where we will give awards and Mark will talk and we will have a very fine dinner. I'd love to see you all there.
Richard G. Stewart
R.G. Stewart
