Creating An Independent Income In Real Estate! by Mack Travis

Author:Mack Travis [Travis, Mack]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781462045983
Publisher: iUniverse
Published: 2011-11-09T00:00:00+00:00

chapter 10

Only when we realize that our mistakes are of our own making will such disagreeable experiences free us of error. I CHING

An Increment of a Lifetime Income: Each Deal Adds to It

By the end of the 1970s, I had mustered enough courage and had enough stable income from my properties to leave the security of the college and start my own film business. I made industrial and sales films for local and regional clients. Between filmmaking and my apartments, I figured I would be able to eke out a living. Filmmaking was an arduous process. With each film I made, I had to find a client who needed a sales tool to promote a product. I had to sell them on my ability to produce a film for them. I would then meet with their marketing people and write the script. I would travel to various locations around the country to shoot the film. I would edit it back in my modest studio in Ithaca. I would take it to the client’s office for review. I would make changes and finally deliver a finished 16mm film. The entire process for a ten- to fifteen-minute sales piece would take four to six months. I would then have to find another client and repeat the process. It was satisfying. It made enough money for me to live on, and I did it for three years—sell, write, shoot, edit, correct, deliver, and repeat the process.

As much as I enjoyed my independence and the variety of the film business, I came to the realization that if I were to put the same energy and time it took making a film into real estate, with each deal I made I would be creating an increment of a lifetime income. With my job making sales films, I would be schlepping six hundred pounds of film gear around the country shooting salt mines, medical sterilizers, and gravel pits for the rest of my life (this was pre-video technology). I owned 16mm equipment with crates of lights, tape recorders and sound equipment, tripods, and still cameras. It took huge physical effort to move from location to location, and although I occasionally hired an assistant to help me schlep, I was a one-man shop.

In real estate, with my first house, I had made $100 a month free and clear. As I added houses, they produced additional monthly income, and once I had given up my $8,000 a year salary at the college, I had figured if I could ever purchase ten houses and have each one produce just $100 a month, I would be able to retire.

I had done much better than I had originally projected. I enjoyed making money from the properties. Making a film was a creative process. Renovating a house was a creative process, certainly in a different way, but finding a property, making the deal with the seller and the banks, figuring out what was needed to improve the property, doing the work, and

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.