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BOOKS |
FROM
TWENTY FIVE MILLION TO ZERO
HOW IT ALL BEGAN A single property purchased in 1972 became the
foundation of a 650-unit real estate empire by 1990. I cut my teeth on financing,
management and maintenance with that first building. Unable to find
consistently good cleaning people at vacancy times, I began a company that
grew into a commercial and residential janitorial service with 24 full time
employees. We needed reliable maintenance people, handymen and building
remodelers, so I became a general contractor and
ended up with 52 full time sub contractors repairing the derelict properties
we’d acquired. At any given moment, there were forty different rehab
projects going on. These changed monthly as I added two homes to our
inventory every week. CREATIVE FINANCING I was an expert in financing, using creative
methods to obtain and manage $2.5 million in short term lines of credit and
several mortgage lenders for long term financing. In the interim, I’d
created housing for abused women escaping dreadful situations; furnished 250
rooms for lost souls going through treatment and recovering from drug and
alcohol abuse. I specialized in the inner city and made cleaning up
drug houses my specialty. THE SHOOTOUT I was preparing to create huge new business
opportunities, jobs and beautification of the run down areas. Then it all
changed. One fed up, gun toting Special Forces military man began a shoot out
with the druggies in the neighborhood and 45 of my tenants fled in one
week. This cost me about $30,000 a month and two million dollars in
values. ONE INVESTOR SPOILS IT
ALL If that wasn’t bad enough, a lone investor in After 265 lender rejections, I found it.
A lender committed to loan me 5 million dollars. It was all going to be
fine. The entire struggle had been worth it and I could retire. As my first
package of loans was waiting for funding the lender was forced into
bankruptcy by the FDIC, the government-banking insurer. Thirty days
later, my first ever loan payment was late. The bloodletting began. SUICIDE AS AN OPTION In the ensuing destruction, I looked to
suicide as a viable option. I could no longer keep my word… it seemed
to me I had no identity, no self worth. I no longer knew who I was. I’d
been a problem solver, but I couldn’t solve anything anymore. I was honorable
and trustworthy, but I couldn’t meet my obligations. What could I do?
Somehow, for diversion, I began reading a book about Edgar Cayce called
“There is a River” by Thomas Sugrue. The philosophy
section at the end of that book changed my life. I connected deeply
with its revolutionary thinking saying to myself “If there’s one book like
this, there’s more. I felt encouraged, excited. In the middle of
a 450 book reading frenzy, I found a marvelous teacher to discuss my newfound
philosophy and began studying. I stopped asking why it had happened
‘to’ me. I began asking why and how I had created the nightmare. I CREATED IT ALL This was an important shift, a leap in
conscious awareness. I learned I create my reality and more importantly, how.
Now, I know this idea is not appealing to many… especially when you have had
horrors and nightmares to deal with. Yet, once accepted, it is vastly
empowering. When one learns how we have created our experiences and how
to create the ones we want, life feels very different. In the course of
studying with this great teacher, I developed many natural intuitive
abilities that I’d been using throughout my real estate experience. Today I
use them to counsel others. THE BASIS FOR THE BOOK I took notes from my first day of studying
with these gifted teachers. Through the years following, I collected stories
of relevant experiences, others and mine. Together with the extraordinary
teachings and their application, these became the basis for my book “Choosing
Joy in the Midst of Crisis”, taking seven years to write. RESCUING OTHERS AND THE
FEAR GAME As you’ll note in my story, it became all
about rescuing people, property and neighborhood. All my learning now
shows me when we deal in rescuing, we create victims and one’s foundation
becomes Fear, not Love. This is the dichotomy. It appears to be
action proceeding from loving one’s ‘brothers’. However it was many
layers of fear that spurred me on. Fear of lack of money. You
see, each house purchase produced a $10,000 profit on closing. (Yes, I
know those real estate secrets and taught many others.) Those funds kept us
afloat when the gunfight happened. I was fearful of not providing work
for my now dependent sub contractors. I was fearful of feeling like a
fool if it all failed. I was fearful in many ways. In the
beginning it was all fun, loving and fearless. Always it had been a game for
me. It became too much, too many hours, no vacations for nine years, working
18-hour days and I wanted out. So I created ‘out’. HITTING A WALL WAS JUST
THE BEGINNING I learned what is important in life and am
grateful for the wake up call. Having been there, it is easier to
counsel others through their personal crises. Money, power, fear,
health, relationships and most of all, self love, all come under scrutiny
when we hit a wall in life. I learned that life doesn’t happen to
us, that we create it and I am stronger in a different way. I am
happier in a new way. I am more at peace and I love my life. I am
again beginning to invest in real estate, not out of fear, but out of
joy. There were so many amazing stories throughout the bloodletting of
my bankruptcy that proved to me how holding a loving attitude, instead of a
fear based one, made miracles happen. Life and how I approach it are
very different. It may not always seem perfect, but it’s my approach to
each event that makes it so. Our only real choice in life is how we react
to circumstances. Joy is always
one of those choices! |
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Dolly Mae | Choosing Joy book
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