Another New Year!

Another year bites the dust - and what a year it was!

John and I spent a lot of time travelling last year and a lot of time researching global properties. It was such FUN!

This year we expect to settle on at least one major purhase - and travel more.

I'm also involved now in 'Property Women' as a business, not just as a presenter, so that's going to give me more fun and challenges in 2008! Of course this means that I have had to let go of a couple of other business interests so that I can focus more effectively on helping all you women out there gain some education, inspiration and most importantly, some confidence in investing in Real Estate. Whether you're looking to improve your singular future, or seeking to look after the family's future - now is the time to take action!

The same applies to you Guys out there - don't procrastinate any more - make your new year's resolution/s and then stick to them.
Check out this 10min video blog on YouTube - it might help you :) http://www.youtube.com/user/rachelbarnes8213

Welcome 2007

The New Year allows us all to look back to the achievements we had in 2006 and make plans to improve and achieve even more in 2007.

It doesn’t matter if 2006 was a bad year – everyone has the power to make it a great 2007. We each have to commit to make it better though – really commit and empower yourself!

We all need to take responsibility for the outcome.
Easy to say I know, but we all realise that it’s not so easy to change how you think and how you behave, which is what you need to do, to change the outcomes in your life.

Change can be scary and your subconscious mind is going to try and justify why you can’t change your life – because its so much easier to just leave things as they are, and decide that there’s nothing you can do to change things, because its all too hard.

Well, a great motivational speaker, Jim Rohn once said: "Don't wish it were easier, wish you were better." … What a great philosophy!
Remember that quote when you decide that changing is all too hard and take action to improve your life.

FEAR – get over it!

Public speaking is apparently one of the most feared things – next to death that is.

I can remember when I was at school being told to speak in front of the class – and I can still remember how scared I was, and whenever possible, I’d avoid it.

In the first 10 years of my working life, I’d get embarrassed to speak even in the lunchroom, if more than one or two people where looking at me.

In fact, when I applied for a Supervisory position at the Credit Union where I had worked for the previous 3 years, the CEO was astounded that I’d even considered applying.

There was another strong candidate for the same position, but the CEO decided to let me have a go – but just for 3 months. If I didn’t pass the necessary courses or meet the challenge of supervising staff, then at best I would be found another lesser position, and at worst I’d be out of work.

So what made me want to change? What made me push myself to overcome my fears? It certainly wasn’t the difference in pay.

I think, looking back, that it was during a time when my marriage was stressful and perhaps focusing on overcoming work related fears, allowed me to ignore the issues at home.

Of course my marriage didn’t last – which is no surprise. Once my husband left, I had even more reason to concentrate on my career, and avoid focussing on the legal and emotional issues outside of my working area.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not complaining one bit!
Its arguably been one of the best lessons I've had in life.

Now, several years on, I’ve achieved my employment goals, I have a wonderful relationship, we’ve achieved a number of our investing goals, and yet having ‘retired’ from employment over 2 years ago I still find that I’m pushing myself to still keep achieving more.

A good part of the challenge is sharing my investing experience with participants at the Real Women Real Estate, Next Level property investing courses that I’m running with my business partner, Debbie Williams.

Some participants who attended had already been investing but wanted to do more, some hadn’t started but wanted to, and others were considering whether property investing was the best option for them. Quite a diverse audience really!

But there is one thing that they do have in common - they are doing something to improve themselves. They are taking some action towards their goals. They are taking themselves outside of their comfort zone and using their valuable time to improve their knowledge and make changes to their current lives.

Perhaps we realise that although we may fear change, fear the unknown, fear making mistakes, we realise that if we don’t do anything differently, then nothing different will happen. Our fear should be that our life doesn’t change, doesn’t improve – we get in a rut and life passes us by. What are we trying to do – get safely to our death?

It shouldn’t take a major health issue before we look back at how far we’ve come and realise that it's just not far enough, considering all the things we yet want to do.

It shouldn’t take the loss of loved ones to make us realise that yes, we are all mortal and we should make the most of life.

It shouldn’t have taken an unhappy marriage and messy divorce for me to come out of my shell and start making the most of my life – and expecting more of myself.

However it seems that often it takes such major issues before we make any changes. And even then, it can be very easy to consider ourselves ‘victims’ of circumstance. It’s always easy to blame others and not accept any responsibility ourselves.

Now, when I feel I’m procrastinating about something, I have to ask myself, is it fear of change, of doing something different, or fear of failing.

Then I have to consider …what is the worst thing that can happen if I stop procrastinating and just do it? Will it kill me?!

So now, public speaking, which I’ve decided won’t kill me, is not one of my fears – in fact I’m really quite enjoying it.

Have you heard of Lou Brown?

Well I hadn't until last week when I was actually on a conference call with him and Linda Forsythe from Mentors Magazine!

I hadn't known that he'd been in Real Estate in the US since he was 19 (and judging by his photo that was at least 30 years ago!). I was assuming he was involved in marketing or something like that, but when Linda mentioned Real Estate my attention was focussed.

So, I told him one of the strategies I'd heard about in the US that John and I would like to get involved in, and perhaps share with others here, and told him the general information I had learnt so far about it. But he put me straight about what I'd heard immediately, and told me why that wouldn't work, but how it could and would work, in just a few minutes of the phone call.

Of course he hasn't given me all the details - and I'm sure there's lots of it, especially for Non-Residents of the US. As an experienced Investor, I do understand that if you want good information, you usually have to pay for it one way or another, either through experience or training or often BOTH!

He often does 4 day presentations in the US, but I'm planning to get him over to Australia for a seminar early next year. So keep tuned and I'll let you know when :)

Meanwhile if you want to see a little more about what he offers - check out this link while its still there: http://www.mentorsmagazine.com/loubrown

NLP - 30 FREE Tickets !

John and I attended a very interesting NLP (Neuro-Linguistic Programming) Weekend Seminar in Melbourne at the end of April, run by Chris Howard. There were about 3,000 people there and I think I only got to hug about 2% of them during the weekend!

I know, you wouldn't really expect to hug lots of people at a seminar, but this wasn't a normal seminar. NLP is all about getting your mind to work with you, not against you and Chris Howard promotes lots of interaction by particpants to reinforce the information he provides.

What I found interesting was that so many people seemed to share the same limiting beliefs as me, and have similar issues relating to money. No wonder so many people don't achieve their dreams in life - we're often so scared of rejection and failure, that we fail to even try to achieve what we really want out of life. Worse still we make excuses to ourselves for failing to try!!

Well, if you want to attend, the 'Breakthrough to Success' weekend usually costs $895 per person, but we've been fortunate, and have 30 free tickets to give away to members of my mailing list. So if you'd like one or two tickets for events in either Melbourne, Sydney, Brisbane or Perth, all you have to do is join my mailing list http://rachelbarnes.com.au/mailman/listinfo/rachelbarnes_rachelbarnes.com.au and then send me an email with your details so that I can send you the tickets. Easy Huh!! What have you got to lose apart from perhaps a weekend away where you can slip in a bit of shopping too ? :)

Wow - Be Careful What You Wish For :)

I went to a Michael Rowland Seminar in Adelaide back in January - not sure if you've heard of him. He runs a weekend course on self-development. He covers a number of areas which in some ways has similarities with NLP but lots more interesting stuff too - including Voice Dialogue. Well, he gave us all some techniques to help focus our minds to achieve what it is we really want (short term goals initially). But he told us to be careful what we wished for ... and now I understand what he meant!

I hadn't actually started focussing with one of the 'techniques', but had been running over in my mind the right way to word what I wanted. Basically I wanted to travel more and have more cash. Well, since then I've been to NSW for a week to do another Seminar, then I've been to Townsville N.Qld to help Michael to run a seminar there for a couple of weeks, and at the end of the month I'm off to Melbourne for another Seminar.

Then, at the World Internet Summit (NSW trip) I met Linda Forsythe. Lynda is a fantastic person who is bringing her USA Mentors Magazine to the Australian public. We were doing some business at the Summit and following that, she asked me if I'd help her set up Mentors Magazine 4 Australia! Well I was honoured to accept and I'm so excited about the whole thing.

However, I'd already made plans with another business partner, Debbie Williams to start running a series of Property Investing workshops in Adelaide through our Real Women Real Estate company - so now the pressure's on to get them both up and going. Thank goodness I thrive on challenges!

Oh, and then Michael Rowland asked if I was free to help out with some Overseas seminars! Well, I wished....and I received....so I'm not complaining - just bragging!

So where do you go to find hundreds of real estate investors together at one venue in Australia?
At a Real estate Investor convention you might think - but you're wrong. Real Estate conventions attract hundreds of people who want to, but haven't yet invested.

No, you have to go to a World Internet Summit to meet hundreds of real estate investors budding to make more cash-flow on Internet.

John Fowler and I went along and were blown away by the excellent speakers and the fantastic opportunity to network with other people interested and invested in property.

So next time you want to meet like-minded real estate investors, go to the Word Internet Summit :)

The WIS was also an excellent place to meet people who were eager to form joint ventures for all sorts of business opportunities. We'd really recommend it to anybody who's looking for great information and some wonderful inspiration. You've probably got to wait 12 months for the next one in Oz but you could take a quick flight to UK to attend their summit in June!

No, I'm not getting paid to write this down....I obviously didn't heed their teachings at WIS to make sure I made money from anything I write and publish :)