Look morons… my decision to not vote does not mean I don’t love my country.  It does not mean that I do not cherish the freedom that all of us enjoy on a daily basis.  It does not mean I am not patriotic.  I volunteered to serve in our country’s armed forces and did my time proudly, willing to sacrifice my life if need be in service of our great country.  How many of you that chose to verbally chastise my decision can say that? Not many…  so, take your passive, easy way to make yourself feel like you contributed, along with with your happy, shiny “I Voted” sticker and shove them both up your ass.

I am so tired of people and the bleating sheep, herd mentality that is so pervasive in this country.  Yes, many more people came out to vote for this election - that would be great if if any of them were actually informed about the issues or bothered to educate themselves on the candidates.  Ask around to people who voted for Obama - pretty much the most in depth and educated reason you will hear is “it’s tme for a change!”  Wow.  Way to put some thought in to it!  Pry a little further in to their reasoning and over 90% of the time that will be the extent of it.

Also, don’t kid yourself - Bush is not solely responsible for the crashing economy.  It’s great to have a scapegoat and have somebody convenient to pin it on but the fact of the matter is that there are many different factors that have contributed to the current state of the global economy.  The housing market??  I get a laugh out of people blaming the banks for giving bad loans to people.  Wake up retards - it is up to the individual adult to sign their name to a loan and completely up to the person signing their name to understand the terms of what they are getting into.  If you are one of those people, may I suggest that you do your due diligence prior to signing the paperwork next time?  People simply don’t want to accept responsibility for their actions.   Everybody needs to stop the incessant whining and finger pointing and redirect that effort to better their own situation.  Stop looking to the government bail you out and instead start looking for way to bail yourself out.  The American spirit does not involve sitting on your ass and hoping somebody else does something.

I refused to vote simply because I thought both candidates were dangerous to have as leaders for our country.  It’s as simple as that - I thought both of them potentially dangerous to our great nation.  I can’t believe that those are the two best that the parties could come up with.  Obama’s track record in the Senate is so extreme left it’s borderline ridiculous.  Going strictly by his record so far, I would hesitate to label him a Democrat - I think Socialist would be much more accurate.

McCain is a dinosaur and appears pathetically out of touch with what is actually going on in this country.  He is erratic, hot headed and has voted consistantly in ways that benefit the very wealthy and not the middle class.   And Palin as a running mate??  I really don’t think that he could have found anyone anywhere who is more woefully unprepared to lead our country.  With the smart money betting he will die sometime in the next four years, the reality of Palin becoming our Commander-in-Chief is a scary thought indeed, which brings up the question- did he choose her as the best possible choice for our country, or as gimmick to try and win some votes?

Both of the choices that were available to us have their faults.  Personally, I don’t care how anyone voted.  I question their reasons for voting the way they did.  Just because McCain was in a POW camp does not mean he would be right to lead the country.  Just because Obama is black and that would be a milestone for the civil rights movement does not mean he would be a good leader.  Voting for someone just because they are black is just as racist and idiotic as NOT voting for someone just because they are black.

Obama won the election purely on the power of his charisma and his incredibly polished public speaking skills.  The man is elequent, poised and genuinely likeable.  He overcame incredible obstacles and ran an almost flawless campaign.  Being under such intense national and international scrutiny for the past 24 months has to have been a learning experience of the highest order.  I truly hope that the education he has received has enlightened him to the fact that being to far to the left or right is not good for the whole of the nation.

He is our president - voted in by the people (no matter what their thought process) and I have very high hopes for him.  He is a brilliant and driven individual and can accomplish good things for our nation if he uses a little common sense.  The distribution of wealth and other ideas that he has championed are completely ridiculous, unless of course you are a pathetic loser looking to freeload on the hard work of others.  Turning the United States of America in to the Land of Handouts will only weaken us as a nation at a time when we need to be strong and competitive in a cut-throat global economy.

This could be a time of great triumph or it could be one of our worst disasters as a nation.  Only time will tell.

What is financial slavery?   The opposite of slavery is freedom, so ask yourself, am I really free?  For most the immediate answer is “Yes, of course I’m free!”  But are you?  Are you really free to do what you want when you want to do it?  If you asked those same people whether they could jump on a plane this afternoon and spend a couple of weeks skiing in the Alps, more often than not you would hear “No, I have to go to work tomorrow.”  So if you have to go to work and you do not have the option of NOT going, your freedom is  limited.  As a matter of fact, you don’t really have any freedom unless your boss or your company decides to ALLOW you time off, and then you have to be back when and where they tell you.

The other aspect of financial slavery is being limited on what you do because you can’t afford it.  Maybe you’ve always wanted to explore the jungles of Costa Rica or even just learn to surf in Hawaii.  For many people, even if their slavemaster decides to grant them the free time they can’t afford to go anyway.  Lack of money is as effective a restraint as any shackles ever invented.

It is the same for people who own small businesses.  Many open their own business with the idea that it will give them more freedom when in fact they end up working twice as long and twice as hard as they would have in a normal job.  In a normal job you only have to work just hard enough to not get fired.  Since your boss pays just enough for you not to quit, it works out for everybody.  If you own your own small business, you actually have to work and work hard. But you aren’t free.  If you think you are in control, believe me that is an illusion and you need to seriously reevaluate how you look at things.

That very illusion is being shattered for many as we speak.  Over 600,000 Americans have lost their jobs so far this year and countless businesses have gone out of business.  The security that many of those 600,000 thought they had is gone.  The control that those business owners thought they had is gone.  The illusion has been exposed for many as of late - especially for those in the financial and real estate sectors.  The illusion is gone for entire countries who thought they had achieved economic independence from the United States.

So what constitutes control?  What constitutes freedom?  What constitutes financial independence?   Everybody has their own definition, but to me it is simple.  I touched n this briefly in the very first posts in this blog…  The minute that your passive or residual income meets or exceeds the amount you need to live and pay your bills, you have achieved financial independence.  The moment that you do not have to go to work to provide the necessities of life, you are free.

If you divide your monthly passive/residual income by the amount of your monthly bills you will come up with a number that can tell you exactly how close you are to being free.  We’ll call that number your Freedom Indicator Number. You want that number to be equal or greater than 1.  For example, say your monthly bills come to $3000.  If you have no passive income, your Freedom Indicator Number is 0.  If you purchase a rental property that has a positive monthly cash flow of $300,  $300 divided by $3000 = a Freedom Indicator of .1

To stay with this example, let’s say you added 4 more properties that all had positive cash flows of $300/month.  Now your passive income is $1500 per month.  $1500 divided by $3000 gives you a FIN of .5 and that’s much better.  Now, let’s say you also started in a network marketing company and worked at it diligently for a time and that started earning you $1500/month residual income as well.  That business plus your real estate investments would give you a monthly cash flow of $3000 and a FIN of 1.  Freedom.

The higher the number, the better off you are.  Believe me, if you had an FIN of 10 you would have some financial security - in the example above, that would make your passive income $30,000 per month, provided you kept your monthly expenses at $3000.  Which would be unlikely, but focus on getting the number above 1 and keep pushing to make it higher.  If you are going to have to work anyway, you may as well work at something that is going to keep paying you on a residual basis!

When you make the decision to become financially free, you will start to search for ways to create the passive and residual income.  That is the key to building wealth. I recently have had the good fortune to meet and become friends with a very wealthy individual.  I’ve learned a lot from him in the past two months and one thing that he told me stood out - he said “Steve, until you have residual based income in your life you will never become wealthy and you’ll always be working for money.”  It’s nothing that I didn’t already know - that premise was the basis for the start of The Flip Flop Lifestyle blog, but to hear it from an individual that has achieved it and has been living that life for many years really drove it home  for me.

The comments themselves don’t affect me and normally I wouldn’t validate them with any sort of response but as I thought about it, I realized there is a lesson here that may benefit many people who may find themselves in a similar situation. The unfortunate fact of the matter is that as you progress and grow in your professional life, your spiritual life and in your personal life there are going to be people in this world that start to dislike you for what you have accomplished or what you are trying to accomplish.

It’s sad indeed that there are people who will take pleasure in seeing you stumble or worse, actively try and do you some sort of harm. At first you may not imagine that this would be the case, but the minute you make the decision to excel or achieve at a level beyond the status quo, you become a target for small minded and ineffective individuals that hate to see anyone try and better themselves.

This can come in many forms - perhaps it is the person at your job who is in line for the same managerial position as you and may try to sabotage your advancement instead of just doing the best they can. Maybe it is one of your friends or family who simply tells you over and over that you can’t start your own business and succeed. Maybe it’s people in chat rooms and on forums who bad mouth you merely because you are starting to make a name for yourself.

Whatever the case may be, the more you succeed and the more you put yourself out there, there more some individuals will hate you for what you earn, for what you have and even for who you are with. If you are happy and successful, there will be people who are jealous of you and what you have been able to achieve. The trick is to not pay them any attention. Realize the situation for what it is - they lash out at you simply because they can not have what you have or do what you are trying to do, and in an effort to sooth their own self-loathing and make themselves feel better about their own pathetic existence, they derive some sort of perverted satisfaction in attempting to make you look bad.

It’s sad, really. The only thing that you can do is ignore it and focus on your own life. Paying attention to what a few unfortunate individuals think or say about you only gives them energy. If you divert your attention and focus on their negativity, they have accomplished what they set out to do. It can be difficult at first, especially if you are unaccustomed to this sort of mentality, but believe me it can only distract you from hitting your goals.

It is a sad insight on the more negative side of human psychology. I actually get a chuckle out of everything now, though. The mere thought of those poor lost souls sitting alone in their homes Googling my name repeatedly, hoping to find something they can cling to that will support their delusional desires for my downfall makes me laugh out loud whenever I think about it. It is truly sorry that anyone would have an existence so barren and so pathetic that a portion of their happiness in life revolves around the hope that I may someday fail. Living well and being happy is truly the best revenge.

Life is good. Real estate is starting to pick up again and my new website ventures are beginning to pay off. I wake each morning with more money than I had the day before and a better knowledge of how to build bigger and more profitable businesses. My wife and I have never been happier and each day is a blessing.

I want to take this time to publicly thank all of my family and long term friends who have always been supportive through the years. Thanks also to new friends and business associates that I have met recently who have been amazingly inspirational and helpful. To all of the haters and other people who wish me ill fortune - I want to thank you as well. Please, keep Googling my name and building my reputation with the search engines; please keep visiting my sites as often as you do - add to my traffic and keep building my value.

Finally I want to thank my incredibly beautiful wife, Briana. She has been with me through good times and bad, unwavering in her support and devotion. I love you and appreciate every single day with you. You are my soul mate, my friend and my partner. Every man should be as lucky as I.

And to anyone who may encounter personal negativity in their own journey, remember that these people are annoying at best. They have absolutely no bearing on your eventual success and are inconsequential bumps in the spiritual universe. They may scheme and gossip like bitter old women but pay them no mind - focus on the task at hand and you will ultimately succeed.

The first of these is this blog, The Flip Flop Lifestyle Blog or as I’ve come to call it, The Freedom Blog. As I’ve mentioned before, this blog is not directly for the purpose of making money. It may pay dividends in the future, given a large enough reader base. So the question is: Why am I spending time writing here when I could be spending time on something that pays off quicker and bigger?

It boils down to this - writing down your goals and your progress is a great way to hold yourself accountable and keep yourself on track… especially when you’re putting yourself out there for the world to see. Plus, as time goes by I will have a step by step account of the path I’ve traveled and one can always learn from one’s experiences. Besides, I like writing - it clears my head and helps give me focus and clarity.

The other blogs that I am currently writing both deal with educating real estate agents and helping others achieve more listings and sales. One of them is a part of my first website venture that deals with real estate marketing. The reason for that blog, other than to provide tips and techniques for real estate agents, is two-fold. First, it provides fresh, relevant and original content for the website which helps with Search Engine Optimization.

Second, writing for a blog can provide the raw material for other projects. In the future, if I want to write an e-book or training manual on a particular real estate subject, I will quite possibly have the majority of it written. It would simply be a matter of assembling the very best material written for the blog and reworking it in to another format. It is an investment of time that can pay off in multiple ways.

The other blog that I just started today is a blog hosted on a different platform at Real Estate Webmasters. It serves much the same purpose as the one at Agent Success Institute except for a couple distinct differences. It does nothing for building website content, but because of the massive membership of the REW Forum and REW’s prominence in the search engine rankings, it reaches a larger potential audience than I have for my very new website. Because of this huge audience and international exposure, the chances of one of my posts being being picked up in syndication increase exponentially - but only if I write very high quality stuff.

So even though my REW Blog does not help build my sites content, it gets Agent Success Institute a large amount of exposure to thousands of real estate agents. Since my site markets educational materials to real estate agents, that equates to very highly targeted traffic and hopefully that results in sales. It is still building my own portfolio of written material and getting my name out there as an expert in the field.

My advice for anyone thinking about starting a blog is to ask yourself why are you going to blog? Define exactly what you hope to achieve by blogging and get started. Believe me, there is no better way to learn than by just jumping in and doing it. It doesn’t matter if you make some mistakes along the way - it’s part of learning.

Danny and me

Tait, Danny, me and Monty

Danny, Cat (who dominated her fight and won a belt as well - you go girl!), me and Tait

See you back at the gym shortly!

I have a couple of projects that I am working on these days. I think that I have mentioned the website that I own with my partner Darren that markets training materials for real estate agents. We got most of the bugs worked out of that now and it should be a matter of marketing it from here on out. It does take time though since it has a blog, and writing enough content so it doesn’t look empty is proving to be a challenge. Getting that site off the ground (nearly 6 months after we anticipated) served to teach me a certain level of patience when learning a completely new skill set, but I feel it is going to be a strong and steady source of automated income for years to come.

I also have a partnership interest in another e-commerce website that should prove to be very profitable. Most of the set up is complete and we are moving in to the marketing phase of that as well. That is a different animal entirely as it markets actual physical products. All of the products are walking related - various shoes, arch supports, etc. The learning experiences there have been invaluable as well - setting up the relationships with the suppliers, negotiating drop ship and payment arrangements, and setting up strategic alliances with companies for cross promotion and exposure for the site. When that site gets rockin, it is shaping up to be one of my primary sources of passive income. I’ll definitely go in to more detail on that project as we go along.

So keeping those moving forward have been (and will continue to be) my primary focus outside of real estate. It has meant giving up a lot of free time and I’m sure my wife isn’t too thrilled with that, but she understands where we are going and what it’s going to take over the next couple of months to get things off the ground.

I still try and post in this blog when I get a couple of spare minutes. It’s sometimes hard to justify as I do not see this blog truly as a money making activity. It may bring in some income in the future, but that wasn’t really the point of starting this in the first place.

Back to the e-book project I am starting this week. The decision to start this went something like this… most every single passive income or web marketing “guru” recommends information as one of the best products to sell on the internet. So, I analyzed my strengths, looked at my experience and my areas of expertise, and identified a problem that people have that I would be qualified to solve.

1. I enjoy writing - I am in no way an expert, but I am functional. I could buy resale rights or have the material ghost written, but I am trying to get these projects making money with as little investment as possible.
2. One of my main areas of expertise is in real estate - having been very successful in the field for the last six years gives me a base to draw from.
3. Buying a home for the first time (or the second, for that matter) can be a daunting experience. After reading through several forums on the subject, I find most home buyers are confused about many of the aspects of buying a home, from the contracts to choosing the right agent.

That is a brief rundown of the process I went through to come up with the idea for my first e-book. It isn’t a new idea, and there is plenty of info out there on the subject. The fact that there was so much information out there merely proves to me that there is a need that I can help people with. It also tells me that there are a myriad of opportunities to joint venture with other people as well as multiple affiliate possibilities when I get a decent list of opt-in subscribers built up.

With a little research and a couple weeks of writing time, I should have a viable product to assist home buyers in making their purchase a more stress free and successful venture. In the past six years that has been one constant - I love the feeling when clients sign the papers and get the keys to their new home. It’s an incredible experience to be a part of that and it would be hugely satisfying to know that I was able to help many more people experience the same thing.

I should be able to start writing this week. I am shooting for the first week of February to launch. I am going with a very simple website and rely on PPC advertising and affiliate programs to market the book. I’m excited to get going on this and I will post updates on each phase of the project as well as the results in the coming months…

Once the blog was up it was simply a matter of writing posts. I really never have a shortage of things to say, so that’s the easy part.

After a couple of weeks I turned my attention to seeing how to get traffic to my blog - what’s the use of posting unless somebody actually reads it, right? Well… it turns out that getting traffic to your blog is a science unto itself.

Having your blog set up correctly is one of the first steps you need to take before driving traffic to it. One critical component to this is to have an RSS feed on your blog so that you do get traffic, the visitors have the opportunity to sign up via feed or e-mail notifications so they will know when you post something new. This will help you build a solid base of readers for your new blog. I have had great luck with the Feedburner Feedsmith plugin - easy to use with a self hosted Wordpress blog and compatible with just about all types of feed readers.

The next thing I did was to start registering with social networking and bookmarking sites. Some of the major ones I would recommend are Technorati, StumbleUpon, del.icio.us, and Digg. Get familiar with social bookmarking sites because they are critical in helping you gain popularity for your blog.

What I am in the process of doing is starting to generate traffic by posting comments in other people’s blogs. The benefit to this techniques is two-fold. Actually three-fold if you want to get technical. First, by reading other blogs on this subject in particular, you can pick up a lot of information about writing and publishing a successful blog. There are a ton of great bloggers out there. Bryan over at One Man’s Goal has a ton of awesome info on the topic of blogging as does Darren at Pro Blogger.

When you read a post that you like or find helpful (on any kind of blog, not just blogging blogs…), leave a comment. The trick with leaving comments on blogs is this - make the comment meaningful. Contribute something other than “Great post!” Remember that people will be reading your post and judging you by what you write and their decision on whether or not to visit your blog can be based entirely on the content of your comment. If you are commenting on a blog that is a similar subject to your blog, keep in mind that the traffic you can get is VERY highly targeted traffic and can be very beneficial to your blog.

The third benefit of leaving comments is in the area of SEO or Search Engine Optimization. The search engines love it when you have a ton of incoming links to your site and having those links are one of the key components to ranking high in the SERPs.

A word of caution… too many people take this technique and go crazy with it, trying to get as many incoming links as possible by posting the same useless crap in a bunch of different blogs, forums, or other sites (known as spamming). This will not only get you banned and your links removed from said blogs and forums, but you will also get a reputation for being a spammer and isn’t building a good reputation one of the reasons for starting a blog in the first place?

Commenting on other people’s blogs can generate some great traffic and the best part about it is… it’s free! It’s a very solid way to build traffic with a little sweat equity.

Anything besides checking out another website or downloading another e-book with the latest internet income secret. Chances are very good that you are like me and have read a ton of books, visited hundreds of websites and blogs, and bought several (if not more…) courses on how to build passive income and make money while you sleep.

You know what? Most of them are pretty good. Some of them are great. Want to know what the weak link is? YOU. Get off your ass and do something! Do something to move yourself toward your goal. Pick one or two mentors or systems and follow them. If you want to do information products, then start writing. Stop reading info on how to do it and start doing it! Do not confuse research or surfing the web with action.

Identify your goal - write down a plan to reach that goal with all the steps that need to be taken from now until you hit that goal. Every day identify down two or three things that that you can do immediately to accomplish that goal and do them. Start on them NOW. Work at them single-mindedly until they are done. Then identify the next thing in your plan and do it.

It’s that simple. Do not get caught up in information overload or “analysis paralysis”. In the Information Age, that is one of the biggest killers of productivity. I found a great blog post on how to start limiting the amount of information you take in on a daily basis and maximize production. It’s all about using technology to avoid information overload.

It is easy to get stuck in a pattern of learning. Instead, get caught in a pattern of DOING. If you make a mistake, who cares? Learn from it and keep going! You will find that most of your imagined mistakes and disasters are just that - imagined.

I know because I have been caught in that trap. I know because it is something that I have to remind myself of daily. I know because I have seen action make all the difference and I fight each day to take action in spite of all the outside interference that life throws my way.

Everybody has the same problems and the same daily challenges. What you do today will dictate where you are tomorrow. Who do you want to be? What do you want to have? What price are you willing to pay?

Nelson Mandela