Nothing Down for Women: The Smart Woman's Quick-Start Guide to Real Estate Investing - Softcover

Allen, Robert G.; Nelson Bell, Karen

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0743297857 ISBN 13: 9780743297851

Publisher: Free Press, 2011

Synopsis

Have you ever dreamed about changing your life and working for yourself - finding financial freedom and loving what you do? Real estate investing is a great way for women to work for themselves and achieve life-transforming financial success. But how can you get into it with your busy life? If you worry that you wouldn't possibly have the time to learn the ins and outs - maybe you're working crazy hours, or a working mother juggling kids and a career - then Nothing Down for Women is for you. This remarkably fast and easy read is written especially for busy women on the go. Broken down into short chapters, each of which can be fully digested in just five minutes, Nothing Down for Women gives you incredibly simple steps that will get you started in real estate investing - whether full-time or on the side - and on the road to remarkable financial success in just days. All-time bestselling real estate author Robert G. Allen, who wrote Nothing Down - the most successful book ever written on real estate investing - teams up with Karen Nelson Bell, one of Allen's most successful proteges, to show you the way. When Nelson Bell started using Allen's methods, she made her first million in less than six months. Now she teaches seminars herself. Combining her insider's secrets about how women can play to their strengths in the real estate market with Allen's proven strategies for success, they tell you everything you need to know about how to: Buy a house without putting any of your own money down Buy a house without getting a loan Boost your credit savviness for better borrowing Identify a great property that will make you a big return Negotiate with real estate agents, buyers, and sellers Spot a motivated seller and close a deal fast Avoid common pitfalls Manage your properties without fear

About this title

About the Author

Robert Allen is one of the most influential investment advisors of all time and has authored several bestselling personal finance books including Multiple Streams of Income, Nothing Down, Cracking the Millionaire Code, The One-Minute Millionaire: The Enlightened Way to Wealth (coauthored with Mark Victor Hansen), and Cash in a Flash: Fast Money in Slow Times (also coauthored with Mark Victor Hansen). Robert conducts a series of investment and personal development seminars through his company, Enlightened Wealth Institute. A popular talk-show guest, Robert Allen has appeared on hundreds of programs, including Good Morning America, Your World with Neil Cavuto, and Larry King Live. He has also been featured in The Wall Street Journal, Newsweek, Barron’s Money Magazine, and Reader’s Digest.

Karen Nelson Bell teaches real estate classes for women as The 5-Minute Mentor . She created The 5-Minute Mentor Method for overworked women to give them all the information they need in as fast and easy a style as possible. She lives in Las Vegas.

 Mark Victor Hansen is a co-founder of Chicken Soup for the Soul.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

How Losing My Job Turned Me into a Millionaire

from Karen Nelson Bell

You're probably anxious to get right into the how-to section of this book, but if you'll allow me a few short minutes, I'd like to tell you some of the humbling (and possibly inspiring) experiences I've had along the road to real-estate riches. If you'll hang in there with me for the next few pages, I promise you nitty-gritty investing action coming right up.

In this intro, you'll see how things in life can go so right and then so wrong, and then so right again. The rebound factor has been extremely important in my own life, and maybe if you are having a tough time right now, you'll find a story familiar to your own that will help in the big picture. If you're having financial challenges, I've been there. If you're having relationship challenges, I've been there too. If you're having other personal difficulties, you'll see you're not alone. I've had plenty.

In just a few pages, you'll be diving into details of real-estate investing, but right now I'd like to show you why I believe I've earned the right to be your mentor.

This story has two parts: (1) how I lost my job and got inspired to try real-estate investing, and (2) exactly how I made that first million. (Nobody ever asks me how I made the second.)

Have we met? My full name is Karen Nelson Bell, and you might have seen me somewhere on the Las Vegas Strip performing as a pianist-singer-dancer since 1967. Because I had been raised on classical music, my parents were shocked when I went to Vegas on vacation and immediately got a job opening for comedian Don Rickles in the famous old Casbar Lounge at the Sahara Hotel. Later I enjoyed playing piano and touring with singer Paul Anka for two years, and then performed under the stage name "Kelly Stevens" for a decade in a successful lounge group (our first album resurfaced recently and sold out on the internet). After touring all over the world, I started working as a musical director in the eighties. Then in the nineties, I was hired to create the first country show in Las Vegas at the Aladdin Hotel, "Country Tonite."

If you ever got by to see the show, you know we had a lot of fun! I loved my job, and I thought it would last forever, since I was the creator and ultimately became the producer/director as well. However, I was still an employee working at a J.O.B. (Just Over Broke), working for the people who actually owned the show. When you work for someone else, you end up using your talents and energies to make someone else rich. In fact, the show I had created out of thin air made millions and millions of dollars for other people!

How Losing My Job Made Me a Millionaire!

I thought my job was secure because I had such a high-up "important" position. What I never considered was that the owners might sell the company and that the new buyers had their own producer/director. I did resign, but only moments ahead of a pink slip! I have the privilege to say I resigned or retired, but the truth is that out of work is still out of work, no matter which way you got there.

My late husband, Duncan Guertin, had been working for the show too, doing multimedia productions. So not only was my job gone, Duncan's job was gone too. In short order, we had shifted from having two nice paychecks and the illusion of affluence to being out of work. We had been living a "rented lifestyle."

Multiple Streams of Income

That August, we went to San Diego for a week, and our idea of a nice trip was always to take a few books and go reading somewhere in nature. We each took three books to the beach, and mine were Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone, Who Moved My Cheese?, and Multiple Streams of Income. Well, books can change lives, and Robert G. Allen's hit Multiple Streams of Income changed mine. When I read it, I thought he had written it straight from him to me. I called his office and alternately begged and demanded that Mr. Allen take me on as a protègè. Something deep in my soul knew this was going to be a great adventure.

I joined his Protègè Program on November 1, and I threw myself into the studies. Everything my teachers suggested, I did without question. I learned the formulas and systems cold. Duncan and I slammed ourselves full bore ahead into putting those formulas into practice, and after resigning from our jobs on January 1, 2001, by March 9 -- only 129 days after we became protègès -- we became millionaires, acquiring over $1 million in equity (the difference between the value of what you own and the cost of what you owe on it).

Identity Theft

Since then, I've worried that my story doesn't have enough "downside" to it. It seems like I don't really have a true before story; I only have the after story. After all, when I started, I was doing very well. I had a job I loved and was in fact passionate about. I made what I thought at that time was pretty darn good money. I didn't realize that it was an illusion. I actually had very, very little to show for those years of doing well.

What I did have was a wonderful sense of my own importance. Little did I know that it really was a false security.

When I lost the title of director . . . when I lost the title of producer . . . and when I stopped being a musician on a daily basis . . . it was as if someone had come along and erased me. I have experienced identity theft in the normal sense, when my credit was used by someone else pretending to be me. I can tell you firsthand that the experience of losing my work identity was a thousandfold more debilitating.

We are all so wrapped up in what we do, that what we do becomes who we are and defines us. My identity was "the producer," "the one you go to when you need help," "the one who had jobs for everybody." My identity was "the one who won awards for creating standing ovations and created happiness for audiences of all ages."

Now that I had lost my job, I was . . . how can I say this? I was just Karen. I was Duncan's wife, and yet Duncan had lost his job too, so that identity faltered as well.

I would find myself sobbing for no reason at all. Well, actually, in my own heart, I had a reason. I was unbearably sad. It went on for months. I felt as if I were grieving over a lost loved one. Now, looking back, it was a lost loved one. I loved that identity of the "important person."

It's embarrassing to think I was so wrapped up in the impression I was trying to make. Most people hope that they can be valuable by being decent and kind. Now I had to see if I had that value in me. I understood what the millions of people who've lost their jobs through downsizing or through the change in an industry feel. When we discover that what we are, what we have, and what we do is no longer valued, it's devastating,

That is identity theft of the highest magnitude.

Exactly How I Did It (Millionaire-hood)

We did have a tiny savings set aside. We also had good credit. We had spent the last four years digging ourselves out of the hole. We were so proud to say that we had no consumer debt.

So when Duncan told me that we were going to use other people's money to buy properties, that we were going to go into debt again, I said, "Oh no we're not." It wasn't until gurus Tom Painter, John Childers, and Robert Allen ganged up on me to explain the power of leverage that I got it. Duncan tried to explain it to me, but that was like having your spouse try teaching you to drive a car. I had to hear it from Bob, Tom, and John in order to have the courage to use the equity in our house to acquire more properties.

We learned how to invest with no money and with no credit, but our little savings and our fairly good credit made it possible for us to move quickly.

When we first started, Duncan and I owned three properties. It happened almost by accident. One was the house that I had bought when I was a young woman. We lived in it together when we first got married. Then when my father became ill, he asked us to take over his house. He came to live with us, and we rented out his property. That was a Nothing Down deal. He just gave it to us. Now as I look back on it, I see it was an example of how illness can create a motivated seller.

There came a time when Duncan and I wanted to move into a home that we would create together and call all our own. When we moved into our new house, we didn't even have to get a loan, because the seller offered us her own private financing. It was that very house that gave us our nest egg with which to start investing. We got an equity line before we lost our jobs, thinking that we would never again be able to get a loan. Of course, now we know that you can get a loan whether you have a job or not. (You'll be learning how later.)

That equity line was worth just over $100,000, and we learned that you could turn $100,000 into several million dollars' worth of real estate very nicely.

During the first month, we bought a batch of business cards. They weren't especially good cards. We hadn't learned at that time how to create great ones. They were just ordinary business cards, but Duncan began giving them out as if he were on fire. He gave out more than a thousand business cards in November alone. He gave a card to a person at the doctor's office; that person gave it to a friend of hers at church. The friend from church called us up and said, "We're in trouble, we're in foreclosure, can you help us?" That was the beginning of our first-ever deal since becoming students with Robert Allen in his Protègè Program.

Let me tell you about the deal. The house was huge -- seven bedrooms, five bathrooms, three fireplaces, pool, and Jacuzzi . . . three-car garage, 5,000 square feet, a little over three years old. The seller was in foreclosure with his se...

Edition details

• Publisher: Free Press
• Publication date: 2011
• ISBN 10: 0743297857
• ISBN 13: 9780743297851
• Binding: Paperback
• Language: English
• Number of pages: 480