A Quick Note

Lawrence's practice has been launched. He is in the middle of helping his son put together wedding plans for next month. To say he's busy is an understatement (laugh).

Peter's had to deal with a plumbing issue the flooded his basement. What a mess. Just life stuff.

I suspect we won't be working too much on CREI stuff until August. As for me, well - I've spent the last month digging deeper into Internet marketing. I have a variety of test projects I want to finish up such as "Exposing the Retirement Flaw". I've reviewed the IQ Money Team plan and every time I go to my bank to make a deposit I have to laugh at the Bank CD rates 1.5% APR, and I know that over 5000 people in my area have over $500,000 each sitting around in bank CD's. It's sad in my view with what I know. But it is what it is.

One of my long term clients contacted me regarding of all things an Internet Marketing Company he is forming with a team of other people. He had already set aside some founders stock for me. I signed some agreements yesterday - it is an ambitious project but the team has an interesting mix of talents and abilities. One of the things I will be bringing to this new business is my concepts for CREI for the purposes of corporate asset management, as well as the tax strategies I have developed and blogged about here and there.

I have to rewrite and finalize some fee, non-disclosure and circumvention agreements. I have a rough draft I put together a few weeks ago it just needs some clean up and I probably should run it by a lawyer or two. I've written so many legal agreements myself over the last 7 years I sort of have a good feel for it. Its not that I miss anything, I tend to go for redundancy. I have my own technique which is to use the legalese, the restate the point in plan language, and then outline the context/ purpose of the point/clause. I don't write legal stuff to argue about later, I write stuff to ensure there is no argument later.

Lawyers don't like me because of that approach to agreements/contracts. Years ago doing pre-foreclosures (before it was popular), I had people trying to sell houses they didn't own, and little old ladies who were losing their home of whom we were trying to help - turn on us and lie about how we "got their signature" on forms and or rushed them into signing things. The problem is I designed a business process that required multi-step process - a strategy session - followed up by a proposal - followed by an acceptance of the proposal - all requiring very complete disclosures from start to finish including notarized signatures on key agreements even though they were not "required."

The little old lady sticks out in my mind. She got a boyfriend who wanted to take over our deal after we had invested about 6 months of paperwork and strategy. She hired an attorney to sue us (me mainly). She lied to her attorney which was interesting, slandered me and my team at the time. It was interesting. I called the attorney and asked what his basis was given the paperwork. Well, his client didn't disclose to him all the paperwork. So I faxed him "all" the paperwork and this nice sweet, little old lady said we forged her signature on the documents!

The problem was - we had her signature notarized, and we didn't force her to sign documents at 8pm on a Wed night in her Church parking lot as she claimed. In fact, the paperwork revealed a three week process - no rush (laugh), but I learned something powerful.

As the attorney mentioned to me "Nobody does contracts like that", I laughed, "no, but I do, and now I am reminded as to why." Lawyers and law firms write contracts that they can argue about later. I'm not into that game. I don't want to argue. I want to be fair and upfront in the beginning so there is no argument later.

It was funny, when Lawrence and I were looking over LOI's used in CREI, including the ones provided by the MyICREI - we couldn't use them because they were just not to our standards. It is a lot of work writing and correcting legal forms. Lawyers have errors and omissions insurance and that is really what you pay for when you use an attorney. That insurance is actually very important in some situations.

My method is to have an attorney review/work with me on a document revision so that I've made sure the document is written to my standards - and redundancy of key points with stated contexts as well as the legalese. They always tell me its "overkill", but in all the years of "overkill" and I haven't dealt with too many "little old predatory ladies" - that overkill basically killed anything to argue about. I haven't dealt with much in terms of legal issues during my life because I've always had this approach and I've seen first hand that people will lie and perjure themselves over little things.

Legal stuff is important when it comes to real estate. Sellers will lie about their financial records, they will "cook the books", they will cover up and lie about pre-existing building issues, etc, etc. Bribes will be given to inspectors, blah, blah, blah. Just another day in the real world we all face.

I know that I come across as an idealist - and I am. An optimist even! But I am very much grounded in reality - part of how I create the world I want to live in is to make sure that when I enter into a contract or do any kind of deal that what is important is protected properly in writing so there is no argument's later.

Anyway - things are looking up. The IQMoneyTeam feels like it is paused pending lots of little life things to sort out by the founders but that is all part of the adventure. I still have not seen any approach to putting money to work that is better than our approach. I keep reworking and refining things, but the essence is the same - simple common sense really that does not seem very common.

Namaste' and Blessings to Everyone. I hope your summer is going well!

- David