As one of the founders one of our core principles is transparency. Obama our new President really impressed me when he realized this context and has made it a core foundation for his leadership. He communicates and doesn't hide. He is also quick to take responsibility and isn't into creating masks and illusions.
One thing I have learned over the past 6 months is that taking ideas and concepts and then converting and creating them into "reality" is a lot of work that requires a team of different professionals. If some elements are things that have never been done before there is resistance (especially with legal professionals.) I now have an intimate understanding as to how "we the people" and our Culture get locked in, boxed in to patterns that simply don't work.
Today I am wrapping up a PowerPoint presentation and getting ready for a trial run of it with Lawrence. I received Peter's insights yesterday. It is such a blessing to work with three different talented people and their points of view. It is one of the strengths of working with a team instead of being a lone ranger.
We have a new friend Tom Childers out of Seattle who specializes in Cost Segregation as part of a cash flow enhancing strategy for Commercial Real Estate (he's been doing this kind of thing since the 70's). He reviewed my 1st draft of our website and was impressed with our core values. It was excellent timing because - well when you create something new - sometimes you don't know what you don't know. To get some validation from an industry insider was very inspirational.
Tom does Webinars and most of his clients are qualified investors. He invited us to put together a Webinar. That has been my focus of the last couple of weeks is to translate what I've been talking about and refining during the last 6+ months and merging principles I've been learning over the last 10+ years into a simple, easy to understand presentation that will inspire a financial partner team to form.
He was able to introduce us to an attorney who was able to understand our structuring concepts. Most attorney's are so focused on why something won't work they become barriers to creating anything new. Our new attorney's context is "Ok, how can we make that work?" - a man after my own heart. I love it. We're moving full steam ahead!
In "Creating the World we want to live in", we the founders have been wrestling with how good to make our program. Sounds odd doesn't. We didn't work backwards from the numbers. We literally spent hours asking "What's wrong today?" (business, culture, government, law, investing, banking, etc.) we established goals, contexts and standards to build on.
From this emerged a lot of "Ok, how do we...." questions, like "What is the safest place to put money, and why is it safe?" and then build on the principles to address the current and ever present needs to fix the problems we see. Like "How do we prevent litigation risk?", "How do we protect people and ourselves from fraud - by design?"
We are really into "by design", if there is a way of structuring and/or creating a procedure that prevents or eliminates issues faced - we adapt it as a business process. What I have learned is there is so much fraud going on behind the scenes - business and government is literally living in two worlds. One that is an illusion that is presented to the public/their customers and one that is really going on behind the scenes.
The bottom line - you can make a lot of money with other peoples money. If you keep them afraid, you don't have to pay them very much while you make out like a bandit. (Banks have been doing this for a long time.) Add basic greed to that formula then suddenly banks are gambling with money in the derivatives markets (i.e. FOREX - my favorite casino of choice - some day I'll master it - laugh - but I always know it is a Casino so I'm not in a Casino to "invest", it's a battle of sorts, I've always enjoyed a good game of Craps, Casino's are a great place to learn self discipline and money management - laugh, the keys to breaking even and even winning every once in awhile.)
That was a big question "How do you invest without Gambling?", almost all investments you look at Gamble on something, even a bank CD it is a gamble that the FDIC will stay solvent, and if you have more than the insurance states, it is a gamble in the fine print of the "insurance policy" and those policy elements can change at the whim of the rule makers without you're control - and yet - your money is at risk - it is a huge gamble.
Some of us learned about some clauses, rules and laws when WAMU, a publicly traded company was sold in the middle of the night to another company, wiping out the stock holder's interests and pocketing billions of dollars. They did this "legally" through some rules never used before (or so I have been told) that were setup after the great depression. Didn't see that one coming. I thought stock holders owned the assets of a business and there was a Board of Directors that represented them.
All this happened a week before a bail out package...we don't know what we don't know. It turns out this little fireside sale was secretly (no transparency) in the works for about a year prior. So, the average investor in WAMU gets screwed, and already wealthy banking people make a killing.
I got fed up with that world. I literally bought some options the day before the "middle of the night" deal because I believed the bail out was coming and WAMU was an old and established bank. It's like the Casino itself cheated on that one. (laugh), we put up with this because we've gotten use to "Gotcha" economics, and "Gotcha capitalism". I don't know about you but I'm tired and fed up with that.
So - I - with the help of others have blazed a new path for business and investing taking what is good and what works into a new approach to proven ways of working with commercial real estate. I just modified how things are done in a way that protects everyone instead of ways that put people at risk. Simple stuff really.
I'm just willing to challenge the "Well, this is how it's done." baloney. I've been doing that all my life - challenging the "norm", when there are other and better ways of doing things.
It is my understanding there will be up to 200 people on our Webinar. We only need 20 people to work with that have $5 million to put to work - safe and securely. Our plan is scalable, we could take on the entire group of 200 people. My guess is we'll have to cap things at 50 people because at least for me - it is hard to personally get to know more than 50 people.
Our plan is all about building a team. What we are doing is just the beginning. You put 50 people together and you have a brain and talent trust that can do anything. Yea, we need to create our "financial partner" because our plan is beyond the capacity of any one individual, which is kewl - it means we can do things and compete in ways others can't. This reduces risk, and expands opportunity at the same time. It is pretty kewl.
The road block is "trust" - a real team has to trust its members. We've created a core foundation with a team pledge and agreement (a business and investing prenup is what I call it), a big consideration in any team/partnership is litigation, and how do we solve problems together, etc.
Well, that is what a prenup is all about. We've got a plan in place as part of this for what happens if the U.S. Currency and Financial system collapse?
Many people are worried about that. Really it is not a new worry. History teaches us many things, especially about Fiat currency. It always fails eventually.
You'll want to be part of a team - that owns commercial real estate. What governments demand of "gold and silver" is interesting. Don't think it can happen, I think Gold restrictions on U.S. Citizens after the "Great Depression" was lifted in the early 1970's. (1974?) not that long ago. We don' know what we don't know.
This I do know - commercial property is the only thing that survives anything other than a nuclear event. Nothing is totally risk free, but some risks we don't a lot of choice to face.
I am going to begin making notes here. Right now its all about sharing our ideals and getting commitments from people to form our IQ Money & Lending Team.
I'm wrapping up a very interesting spreadsheet that does some basic proforma calculations for our IQ Money Team Members including what I call the IQ Equity Effect (R), which compounds cash flows, equity and tax benefits without risk to pincipal funds. (It's actually totally separate), there is so much that can be done as a team and it is so profitable we can do some amazing things.
Why? Our plan and team is based on prosperity, not fear or greed. We asked "Ok, knowing what we know - if we were an IQ Money Team member, what would we want? What world would we want to create and live in?"
We answered that question so powerfully (and a lot of debate because we know people are happily settling for a whole lot less...we had to battle our own sense of "business as usual".
It is no longer "business as usual", it is now the IQ Way, and those on our team are going to experience something amazing, and we are going to have a lot of fun doing it together.
It is going to be a busy week.
What motivates me? I've always wanted to change the world (who hasn't) - laugh - for me this is about contribution, taking care of my family and creating a legacy. It is more than about the money. If it was about the money we wouldn't of created the IQ Equity Effect. We would of kept that all to ourselves. It is just not the world we want to live in.
I believe we need new ideas and leadership in business. I have a lot to contribute. It takes financial resources and influence to get things done. One way of doing that is to make a powerful contribution to the lives of others, solve problems that are hurting people. Our IQ Plan does just that and the core foundations are things I've been working on all of my life. It is almost as if my life up to this point has been a powerful on the job training for this business.
So many little things have come together, resources, training, timing - it is as if the Divine is conspiring to empower us to do this.
"We the People" have huge talent and resources - we just have to be inspired to put them to work that not only serve our own interests (which is fine and fair - out of abundance comes charity and change) - but we can do that without taking advantage of others. That model is not going to work for long and it always ends badly when people take advantage of others and each other.
Predatory practices are not the way to go in my opinion. It is time for a new model and I am working very hard to ensure we get to demonstrate something powerful that will change lives.
Namaste'
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