Marketing tips

Have you ever thought about what you are going to leave your children when you pass from this earth? Wouldn’t it be a great feeling to be able to give them a really good head start in life – without actually spoiling them?

It really doesn’t matter how old you are, it’s something that you need to be thinking about and planning for now. In the process of planning your inheritance and blessing your children, you are really making YOUR life better and more financially secure because you’ll enjoy these benefits before you pass them on. You could really enjoy your retirement instead of having to scrimp and save every dollar.

This planning is even more important if you happen to be a farming family – especially if you have sons or daughters that want to take over the farm when you retire. What are you going to do for income when you hand over all the assets and farm to your children? You’d be in a unique position if you had enough money in the bank to take out enough to live comfortably for the rest of your life.

Another consideration is how are you going to make it fair for your other children if 1 gets the farm and all the assets etc? One possible solution is to make the farming child pay out the other children so all amounts are equal. This, however, could result in undue financial pressure on the farmer. So what is another possible solution?

I strongly believe that a great solution to creating financial security in both retirement, with the added bonus of providing a fantastic inheritance for your children, is to invest in positive cash flow real estate.

Some of the main benefits include:

1. Purchasing real estate with a positive cash flow, resulting in more income to live off NOW

2. There is an excellent prospect of capital growth in real estate (so your assets increase in value, approximately double every 7-10 years)

3. Your repayments to the financial institution will stay the same, but your income goes up with the CPI or whatever rate you decide in the lease. Hence, your income will increase over time without you doing anything, as well as having someone else paying off your loan!

4. If you use a systematic formula to create your wealth, resulting in passive income, then you’ll have a comfortable amount to retire on (assuming you continue to invest and reinvest)

5. If you use a systematic formula, you could end up with multiple properties, all returning a positive cash flow. These can be used to fund your retirement as well as give you something of REAL VALUE to pass on to your children.

It really is a win / win situation.

Many people are sceptical about investing in real estate because they have heard so many failure stories. It’s not that hard to get it right. You just need to be shown HOW to find those cash flow positive properties and have the courage and determination to go for it! After all, you could be creating a better lifestyle for yourself now as well as for your children. What a great gift to give them – a second stream of income, that they don’t have to work for.

They’ll certainly remember you fondly!

In conclusion, I hope I have been able to plant the seed of enquiry so that you at least go and learn more about investing in real estate. It might be the most profitable homework you’ve ever done.

A final comment: many think that investing in real estate is for the rich, well that is NOT the case. Anyone can invest in property, high and low income earners. Do yourself a favour and check it out today.

A successful project needs good communication between the principal stakeholders. Usually these are the customer, the project team and the suppliers. They can be pictured as being linked by a web, with the Project Manager (PM) at the center. Information flows through and around the web, enabling each participant to fulfill his or her role. It’s not essential that all the information pass through the PM, in fact to avoid delays it’s probably best that it doesn’t, but to stay in control he or she must be able to tap in to these flows.

The type of information flowing through the web will vary depending on the phase of the project. Before the formal launch the PM should discuss the project goals with all the stakeholders, then break this down to more detailed tasks for the team members. Similarly, the suppliers need to know what will be expected of them.

Communication is a two way street, and the PM needs to ensure that traffic flows freely in both directions. Listening and observing non-verbal cues is at least as important as talking, and this highlights the need to actually see team members. Particularly at launch, it’s a good idea to get everyone together. Personal contact helps build relationships that lubricate the flow of information.

As the project progresses, the PM should monitor the status of each activity, especially those on the critical path. It’s essential that he get early notice of any possible problems so that he has the opportunity to take corrective action before the situation deteriorates any further. The best way to learn about problems is through informal face-to-face conversation, which is easily achieved while “Managing By Walking About” (MBWA). Seriously, the PM should make a point of walking through the team office on a daily basis and chatting with everyone to ask how things are going.

If the team is not co-located (which is increasingly common) video conferencing is good, followed by phone calls. After that, Instant Messaging (IM) has its place, and then comes email. Email is asynchronous, meaning that it works in one direction at a time, and while it has its place, especially when working across time zones, it should not be the primary communication method.

Particular attention should be paid to communicating with the customer. It’s a good idea at the outset to agree both a format and frequency. Precise details will depend on the nature of the project, but a starting point might be to schedule a weekly phone call, supplemented by a monthly written report and a quarterly presentation delivered in-person. Note that the customer is primarily interested in exceptions, (that is, deviations from the plan,) and what you as PM intend to do about them. The golden rule in communicating with the customer is that there should be no surprises.

The suppliers should not be left out of the loop. In particular, they need to know about any deviations from the plan as early as possible so that they can adjust what they need to do to suit.

Lastly, when the project runs in to trouble, as they all do, good communication with everyone can help rescue it. If people know what’s going wrong they are in a better position to respond to pleas for unpaid overtime, expedited delivery, and so on. In fact they can often conjure up creative solutions that you as PM may never have considered.