I arrived into Colorado Springs earlier today for my 2nd visit this year.

Having had to deal with various business issues in Columbus GA since early January, I delayed my return to Colorado Springs a couple of months. Many of the plans I outlined for myself for Colorado Springs last year have been canceled or significantly scaled back. Essentially, my business obligations and responsibilities in Columbus GA does not easily let me relocate or expand into Colorado Springs at this time.

However, having established some relationships and a semblance of a home away from home, I will still come back for at least quarterly visits to work on my publishing projects and brainstorm. That is one reason I have come back. To preserve the relationship and small sense of community I have created thus far.

Because I arrived today, I am feeling pretty tired. Tomorrow, after I get some good rest, I will have a better feel of what I will accomplish during this trip.

I was crazy enough to travel on Christmas Day back to Colorado Springs so that I can end 2007 with some peace and reflection but also bring in with clarity and focus the new and exciting year of 2008.

I have rarely been away from home during the turn of a New Year so I thought this was a perfect time to do so.  In any case, it is difficult to get things done at home with so many companies operating with a skeleton staff.  So, why not spend more time with my newly adopted city of Colorado Springs?

During the next 2 weeks, I will be focusing on new titles for Ascend Beyond Publishing.  I will keep what I am working on under wraps for now.  I want the projects to solidify a bit more before announcing them.

In my two recent trips in Colorado Springs, I can say it has not been dull. I have come into contact and interacted with a variety of people. Most of the interactions have been by choice, not a requirement.

Unlike my interactions in Columbus, GA where I am known within some circles, I start with a clean slate in Colorado Springs. I am a complete unknown and basically just an out-of-town guy trying to establish some kind of new home and community for himself.

Like anyone else, I would like to be liked and respected. But if that does not happen, then so be it. My world does not necessarily go into a tizzy if I am not absolutely liked or respected. I have matured to the point that my self-worth is not necessarily measured by my ability to win a popularity contest.

What has been interesting to observe is the to-and-fro of the relationships encountered thus far. I have been drawn to some people and some people have been drawn to me. I have repelled some people and some people have repelled me. However it happens, I tend to think it happens for the best. Everyone sorts themselves out on who they want to associate with and spend time with by how they prioritize their time.

I am not into forcing people together. I have the good fortune of mostly not having to deal or interact with people I do not want to or prefer to.

I think many people take it personally when relationships and friendships do not work out. I think that if it doesn’t work out, it is ok. For a relationship or friendship to work, both parties have to want it and show it.

Today, I had lunch with a student who was older than me by 10 years. He invited me to lunch earlier this week. I was flattered and happy for the opportunity to interact with a local. We talked about real estate investing and he asked for my views and insights. I happily gave them. In that interaction, I got a much better sense of him as a person and he did of me.

Although we were different in many ways, I saw that we had many similar values despite our exterior appearances. Despite him being 10 years my senior, he was very respectful which only made me respect him more. He wanted to know more my views but in the process I also learned more about him.

The lunch lasted two hours. It was a long lunch. The lesson I took out of it what made it work is that I was willing to let my guard down and open up and reveal some personal information. So was he. In the opening, some degree of trust was created.

This also happened with the couple I am renting my cabin from. Although there are certainly differences, we also share some core values. I have grown to like my “landlords” a great deal. They are great people. It is funny that they are creating this relationship with me as a “tenant”. But it required a mutual sense of trust to open up and share some personal information.

In this creation of trust, we may end up investing together. It is too early too tell if it will actually happen but at least the sentiment is there. I am not overly concerned with the outcome. I am simply happy we can kick back, connect, and create a mutually beneficial friendship.

A couple of other relationships have not progressed quite as well. I am a little disappointed. Despite my efforts to open up first, I certainly do not feel the reverse. I do not think they are bad people but clearly their guard was up or what they were willing to share was filtered. Everything feels a bit “polite”.

What I want to leave you with is, why do you like some people more than others? Why are you attracted to them? More importantly, what kinds of people are attracted to you? Why are they attracted to you? I think you will find a pattern in there that will be eye-opening.

I look at my team in Columbus and the people who I have great, professional relationships with. I can articulate exactly why I like each member of my team and I have a good idea why they like me on their team. At some level, I have a friendship with each of these individuals. It starts as a professional relationship but we are drawn together because we like and trust each other. We share goals, values, and interests together.

And so I say, Like Attracts Like, Unlike Repels Unlike.

On Wed, Dec 5, I completed what I considered to be the inaugural meeting of “The Investors Roundtable” of Colorado Springs. It was an all-new endeavor working with new acquaintances. But everyone was willing to “give it a shot” and I certainly did my best to “deliver the goods”.

The main purpose was to kick off The Investors Roundtable group with an enticing but relevant seminar which was entitled “Building a Real Estate Investment Portfolio in a Down Market” that was focused on Colorado Springs.

The “promise”that was going to be delivered was the following:

• The Art & Science of Portfolio-Building
• 5 Strategies for building a real estate portfolio if you have limited time, expertise, cash, or credit
• Why the best time to build a real estate portfolio is in a slower market and economic cycle
• What happens to assets, wealth, and equity created and lost during up-markets and up-cycles
• The types of people who should absolutely avoid and should never invest in real estate
• The types of people who can never stop doing real estate deals and the types of people who can stop within 5 years.
• The single crucial x-factor every investor must decide BEFORE they buy their first investment
• The 5 Deadly Sins of Real Estate Investing that destroy portfolios and investment careers
• The 3 Investment Criteria professional investors use that amateurs do not
• The “true returns on investment” professional investors rarely reveal to the general public
• The 4 Rules on the Mindset of Money amateur investors never learn until it’s too late
• The 3 Unavoidable Events that will occur in the real estate market between now and 2010
• The 6 opportunities and differences between 1st-tier and 2nd-tier cities
• The Current Market Velocity of Colorado Springs
• 5 Reasons Why Colorado Springs is a better market to invest in than Denver
• The 4 Factors “outside investors” see in Colorado Springs that “native investors” routinely ignore
• The pros and cons of investing with Investment Teams vs. investing alone

As you can see, it was quite ambitious for a 3-hour evening seminar on a cold December night. Not only that, it was only $25 per ticket. What a steal.

Typically, my small seminars are fairly organic. In other words, I have a loose outline of what I will cover, but I rely on flip-charts and have the students take notes. After all, what could one expect for $25?

However, I changed my mind and prepared a PowerPoint presentation instead. The room I was presenting in had a ceiling projector to a projection screen. I figured I would simply take advantage of it by connecting my PC Notebook to the system and present off of a pre-prepared PowerPoint Presentation.

What I thought would be an easy task turned out to be incredibly time-consuming one. It has been a few years since I have prepared a PowerPoint presentation. And it was my first time to create one that would require 3+ hours to cover.

Constructing, writing, and organizing that PowerPoint presentation was a multi-day project with several hours per day. Holy smokes, I thought it would not come to an end with the endless ideas, revisions, and reorganizations. It felt as challenging as writing a booklet.

In any case, I did finish writing the presentation and I did present it in my typically unconventional and hard-hitting style. Being in a new environment, I did exercise a bit more restraint than I normally do in Columbus. However, I did not want to “sanitize” it to the point I felt robotic or that my audience did not know where I stood on issues.

I am setting all of you up because what came out AFTER the seminar was very enlightening to me as a speaker and presenter. Bottom line, my “core audience” liked the presentation and there were other parts that left a less than desirable impression.

I will be writing a few “insight articles” to clarify my positions on certain subjects. It might make for some juicy reading. Stay tuned.

Yesterday, I arrived into the cabin I am renting in Colorado Springs. This is my 2nd visit to Colorado Springs this year. I flew into Denver, rented a car, and drove in. It was a pleasant drive but I paid the most expensive set of tolls I have seen ($6.00 for a 20 mile stretch from Denver Aiport to I-25).

It is a new trip and it feels great having a safe “established home” away from Columbus. It still boggles my mind that a little that less than 24 hours ago, I was living in a totally different environment than now. The contrast is quite significant.

Traveling is exhausting for me especially when I have to get up very early to catch a flight. Catching naps on a plane isn’t always sufficient. Anyhow, it would be nearly two hours later before I realized I lost one of my bags. I was distracted by an unexpected phone call from a business acquaintance who was asking for suggestions on how to sell her house more quickly because her husband had to leave in Jan. 2008.

In the conversation, I asked where they were going to relocate to. And guess where they are relocating to? Yup! Colorado Springs! And so, I told her that I would likely be here when they relocated. We both agreed it would be nice to have a familiar face.

After that phone call with my zombie-like presence, I totally forgot about my 2nd baggage and just registered for my rental car and drove off.

I am mostly settled in right now but need to set up my office/work area. As I write this, I just got my missing baggage which had several business books I brought, not to mention my sweatshirt and sweatpants I need to survive the freezing temperatures up in elevated altitude of my cabin. Plenty of snow and ice starting to accumulate outside the yard and driveway!

I will be presenting an all-new, hard-hitting evening seminar entitled, “Building a Real Estate Investment Portfolio in a Down Market” on December 5, 2007 in Colorado Springs.  I will be inviting my book and audio program customers in the Colorado area to attend this seminar.

This seminar will be used to kick-off the newly forming Investors Roundtable of Colorado Springs.  The word-of-mouth interest and enthusiasm is already high with the various people that were involved in helping me with the logistics in putting this seminar together.  They are interested in the subject matter as well as my perspective on the current market situation.  Half-dozen people are already committed to this evening seminar.  Ha! I guess I will be giving this seminar even if not a single ticket is sold!

The official marketing begins this week with local newspaper advertising in the Colorado Springs area.  The evening seminar is very inexpensive at $25.00 per ticket.  I am hoping for a solid local investor community turnout.

I am excited about this seminar as there are new distinctions and material I am incorporating that I have not written or spoken about.  I will try to make a video recording of this event.  It may become available on DVD if the video turns out ok.

A preliminary website for “The Investors Roundtable of Colorado Springs” has been launched.  Essentially, the website has the same web address as “The Investors Roundtable of Columbus GA” and will be re-christened into “The Investors Roundtable of Colorado Springs”.  There will soon be an updated/refreshed look to this website.

The direction of the re-christening will depend heavily on the results of the planned December 5 evening seminar.

Wow, what a whirlwind two-week stay in Colorado Springs.  In some ways, it went by so quickly.  In other ways, it seemed longer where I felt I “lived a lot of life” during those two weeks.

I had time to re-evaluate things, get a different perspective, and stretch myself personally by spending an extended time with all-new people who have only recently come into my life. 

What I had intended for that trip was a “magical and life-changing” experience.  It has been only a couple of days since I have gotten back.  And so the full effects and impact of what happened during those two weeks have not fully settled yet.

Staying solo in a cabin up in the hills was really a great experience.  In fact, I want to do it again.  Getting away from what you normally do truly gives a person a different outlook in life and a shift of priorities.

Some distinctions I made are:  there is a difference between being motivated vs. being inspired.  Some “resolved” issues are not resolved as I thought.  Things I were certain about are now not so certain.

As an entrepreneur who have created a lot of personal freedom for myself, I realized how many people remained confined or trapped where they are at.  I must admit I have a greater appreciation of my position.  However, I also realized how easily I could become a slug and lose momentum in life.

And so, I am both happy and relieved to be back in Columbus to reflect.  Ultimately, I will fly back out to Colorado Springs to continue the journey I began a few weeks ago to build an all-new community for myself.  For me to make a stand and take a stronger position in Colorado Springs, it will involve me being open to the huge opportunities of meeting new people that will appear when I get there.

I am looking forward to visiting Colorado Springs again next month at the end of November.