People have been making money by building lasting wealth through real estate for hundreds of years. Other people have also had their butts kicked with real estate. This book, along with some personal insights, will help you get around those obstacles. I’ve been lucky enough to make a couple of bucks in real estate and have had my share of chafing along the way. I will share each one with you today.

Why is this important to me?

When creating these video highlights, I always try to think from your point of view and the last thing I want to do is waste your time. This book is important if you want to escape the rat race and build a solid financial foundation for yourself and your family.

One aspect of the book talks about building the right team. This is very critical. The easiest way to accumulate wealth is through your associations and team members. The mindset here is to be the minnow in the ocean. If you can tap into billionaires and billionaires and get lessons then that’s a good thing.

It also makes sense to study investment. As billionaire Charlie Munger says, invest, invest, invest. For those of you who don’t know, he’s a partner at Warren Buffet. The wrong association can end everything much faster than the correct association.

Fortunately or unfortunately, I have some experience here. I partnered with a very talented builder. It seemed like a good fit. I had the financial need to put some money into real estate and he had the sweat talent to build. The goal was to flip and roll into larger projects. If the change didn’t happen, rent for positive cash flow. This is a pretty basic understanding. Timing is everything. Tomorrow he promises to meet one. This colleague of mine was very talented but he had a problem. He could do 90 percent of the work in a very short time, and the last 10 percent took years. In real estate, this is a big deal because you can’t spit out money until you have a C of O (Certificate of Occupancy). This was so bad that we went through a real estate boom and bust with unfinished houses. The money and time wasted was as pleasurable as erectile dysfunction with a playboy model. Needless to say it was bad.

This book is a great “how to” for residential real estate. Dolf also touches on other types of real estate, but the main focus is residential. There is a ton of information here and I will focus on a few key points.

1. Leverage: Leverage is a double-edged sword that must be respected. The great thing about real estate is that you can take advantage of OPMs, PEOs, OPTs, and OPWs: other people’s money, experience, time, and labor. You want to be careful about leveraging too much debt. Dolf and Diane have excellent analysis tools in the book for analyzing properties. You want to be safe when investing and you need to plan for vacancy if you are a cash flow investor. Use leverage wisely. Very smart people like Dave Ramsey were millionaires on paper and lost everything due to too much debt. Be careful.

2. Residential vs. Commercial: This is not a big part of this book, but I want to touch on it. If you are a business owner, then one thing you absolutely can do is turn your income into property. Banks like to deal with user-occupied commercial real estate. I was lucky because our business needed more space. We were able to buy a commercial building where the space was 4 times the size and the mortgage was less than the rent. We didn’t need 4 times the size for tenants to pay for the building. This transaction is the equivalent of 20 rental houses. Better yet, we are not dealing with people who pay rent, but with contracts with larger companies. The good thing about this strategy is that we are simply a monthly rent check each month with these companies that pay us rent. As you can probably tell, I’m much more into commercial real estate than residential. This does not mean that it is better. What this means is that I am a horrible landlord. This is my weakness that needs to be remedied.

3. The Deal of the Decade happens once a week 100-30-1: Dolf has a great system that will allow him to get very good at residential real estate. It is the 100-30-1 method. It basically means looking at 100 properties, bidding on 30 properties and buying 1. This sounds like a lot of work and it is, remember a real estate business can easily replace your annual income. This book was written during the real estate boom. Therefore, he had to scour the planet for good deals. Today there are tons of great deals and if he uses this method diligently, he will be successful.

Dolf and Diane do a great job of outlining how to be successful in real estate. Diane also provides ways to save money on taxes and structured settlements to protect her assets. These two have worked with some very wealthy and successful real estate investors and their knowledge is on display in this book. The book dives into much more detail, so if you really want to be successful in real estate, I suggest you pick up this book.

I hope you have found this brief summary useful. The key to any new idea is to work it into your daily routine until it becomes a habit. Habits are formed in as little as 21 days. One thing you can take away from this book is leverage. When you take advantage of other people’s time, expertise, money, and work, you will magnify your success. An easy way to do this is to schedule 15 minutes of your time per day and learn from the best. This can be watching YouTube videos or some other learning method. The key is to start learning and schedule it on your calendar.