Creating Your Own Economy

IN THIS ISSUE

What is a Twenty Dollar Bill?
What you can learn from an old real estate investor.
Apply old concepts to today’s time and technology for profit.
The problem with being your only asset.

The old man stood before a modest crowd and held a Twenty Dollar Bill up in the air and asked if anyone knew what he was holding.

Some in the crowd were probably starting to see fewer of whatever he was holding.

It was 2008.

He was Lonnie Scruggs.

People in the crowd looked at each other; too bashful to throw out the obvious answer.

Then finally someone summoned the courage to say, “it’s a Twenty Dollar Bill!”

Lonnie’s Leverage

They were right, of course, but Lonnie was looking for another answer.

Lonnie wanted everyone to consider that that Twenty Dollar Bill could be seen as twenty employees that could work on your behalf forever.

Rather than spend that money at Starbucks, what if you put those employees to work in some kind of investment that would continue to pay you long into the future?

Later during that same talk, he urged people to create themselves “mailbox money”; obligating someone else to pay them.

Lonnie was a real estate investor who bought mobile homes, fixed them up, and then resold them on financing. It was just him and his wife and they had an extravagant life.

A life made rich due to leverage and compounding.

Your Economy

If you read last week’s newsletter, this probably sounds a lot like the same song, second verse.

If you think that, you’re not wrong.

Whether it’s time or money, the point is we can choose how we use our resources. Some of us create leverage, while others of us create no leverage at all.

If you think about it, you create your economy.

Lonnie created his economy in the times before the Internet and Smart Phones. You and I have access to technology and knowledge far beyond what he had. The world is probably our oyster, don’t you think?

The point to many of my newsletters so far is that there’s a way in this digital world for any of us to create what Lonnie used to call, “Mailbox Money.”

It’s just now maybe we’re talking about Wi-Fi Money?

Lonnie’s Advice

Once I started to reacquaint myself with Lonnie, I couldn’t stop watching him deal out his advice.

I know this is my jam, but what I want you all to open your eyes to is that there is transferrable advice out there to be found. I’m not even going back very far to find this “old” advice and I’ve gone back so much farther.

If you are the curious kind, you can find people talking about interesting concepts that you can transfer into the present day. Have an open mind, look for it, and transfer it.

Here’s what else Lonnie had to say that day:

Change your life by changing your thinking.
Stop thinking like a wage earner and start thinking like an entrepreneur and a deal-maker.
Stop working for money and make money work for you.
Stop letting someone else decide what you’re worth and how much you will be paid.
Start learning how to recognize and ACT on opportunities.

As I read these, I see themes from my other newsletters. I’ve talked about asymmetric risk investing and I’ve talked about the opportunity goggles.

Instead of buying mobile homes and reselling them, I’m suggesting you work each day to build or produce something that will make you residual income.

Those digital assets are your employees.

Obligate them to pay you some Wi-Fi Money.

Ignoring Lonnie’s Advice

If you ignore Lonnie’s advice and the advice I’m giving to you, what’s going to happen to you?

My mentor in the digital world, Travis Sago, recently put it this way:

If you don’t have assets working for you, you are the asset.

There will come a time when your energy is going to wane or your health is going to diminish.

Or on the brighter side, there’ll be that perfect day that you want to enjoy without someone obligating you to attend endless Zoom calls or commute to an office.

If you plan a retirement way off into the future on a fixed income, make sure you’re the one that’s doing the fixing.

Unfortunately, if you leave it up to the stock market or the government, you cannot be sure you’ll be successful.

Pyramiding Assets

One last riff on old advice.

There was this old book written by William Nickerson titled, “How I Turned $1,000 into Five Million in Real Estate in My Spare Time” which introduced this idea of pyramiding assets.

Pyramiding has a different meaning nowadays in the financial world, but it more or less means multiplying your assets by using one asset to bootstrap into multiple assets.

I used to think you would start with real estate; turning one house into two houses into four houses and so on. That still works, but there are a lot of moving parts and expertise required to do that.

What I think now is you start with digital assets and let those pyramid you into other assets, preferably real estate assets. A diversified portfolio of both digital and physical assets is a powerful hedge, in my humble opinion.

So get out there and start creating your own economy.

Do what Lonnie did.

RIP Lonnie Scruggs.

— Bill

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