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Why We Do What We Do (November 2019).
A little over 6 months ago, Katrina said to me “I know what I’m going to do next”. It took her three days to tell me, as she wanted it to be the right time.
She finally sat down with me and said “I’m going to organise a property seminar for later on this year.” I said “really, why do you want to do that?”
She said it was something she wanted to do and was very talented in event management. I knew that from having her organise our entire wedding from being engaged one day to being married 6 weeks later. We had 80 guests from all over NZ and the day ran as smooth and perfect as it could possibly go.
So, I never doubted that she could do it, but I said to her ‘well, don’t ask me to speak at it because I’m not going to!’ Having prepared herself for 3 days before telling me, she was ready for my answer.
She said “that’s ok, I’m getting Jolene to speak on manifestation and the law of attraction” I replied “whaaat, not me?” I then said “well you won’t get many people there, how are you going to get anybody to go to this seminar?”
She said “I’m going to put it your Facebook investor group to over 20,000 people! I’ve already mentioned it on my Women’s Property Investing Chat group which has over 1,000 people in it. There are already a lot of women just there that are keen to do it. Jolene messaged me and is going to be one of the speakers for it”.
I said “ok, well I hope it goes well then (not really being serious)”. Then she said “and I’m going to get Phil Thompson to do a talk on negotiations!” I said “whaaaaaat, not me!?” She said, “no, he’s better than you anyway” 
I thought about it for 2 seconds and then asked her “well if I did agree to speak at it then, what would you want me to talk about?” Katrina replied “I thought you didn’t want to talk at it?” I said “well if Phil and Jolene and going to be speaking at it, then it will probably be quite good. If I did agree to speak there, what would you want me to do a talk on?” She said “I don’t know, you’ll think of something.”
That’s how the weekend conference we held over the weekend was created. We named it “Summit by the Sea” and had the most prefect weekend for it. It was held at the War Memorial Centre in Napier with amazing views out of the room overlooking the ocean. It was a stunning location and conference that Katrina put on.
The feedback from people has been mind-blowing to say the least. On the Sunday morning after the Q & A session and panel discussion, Katrina had three people come up to her in tears with just being blown away by the whole weekend, and how much it had changed their mindset and how appreciative they were.
I had people come up and talk to me during the weekend when there was a short break, lunch and also at the evening formal dinner, all saying how appreciative they were to be there.
Many of them that came up to me said how much my first book changed their ways on what they were doing, or got them started in property. Also how the second book (20 Rental Properties in One Year) was a book that they’d read several times and was like nothing they’d ever read on Property Investing before.
Others who I’d either replied to an email they’d sent me 10 or 15 years ago and how my reply to them set them off in a new direction and what they’d been able to achieve just from that.
One guy came up to me on Sunday after the event and said he’d phoned me from Napier in 2004 while visiting there and said he’d just read my book and wanted to have a quick chat. I happened to be in the office at Mr Rental doing very little so I said “sure, come over and see me now” I have no recollection of it now, but he said he had this idea or belief that money was bad or evil and that even though he’d read my book (NZ Real Estate Investors’ Secrets), he could see how he wanted to think differently, but was still unable to.
Apparently we chatted for about half an hour and what he told me on the Sunday morning was humbling to hear from him. He said “you changed my whole world in that one conversation I had with you. I have never thought about money in a negative way since then and I’ve done really well for myself since that day.” He said “I was overseas and heard you were going to be speaking at this seminar, so I knew I just had to be there and I really wanted to say thank you in person.”
It left me kind of speechless as I don’t remember meeting him, or for that matter most of the thousands of people that I’ve e-mailed back over the years, that have sent me e-mails.
There was another instance in the weekend when a young Chinese lady came up to me at lunch after my talk on Saturday and said “I was one of the people that had my hand up when you asked the money association question. The first words I wrote down when you said the word were negatively associated with money. It’s the way I was bought up by my parents. I was always told rich people are bad or corrupt and you should never be like that.” Then she went on to say, “I also have the belief that investors are taking homes away from other people, like first home buyers wanting to buy their own home.”
I said “well in reality, it’s pretty much the opposite of that! As far as investors go buying properties, they will usually not pay as much as a first home buyer will. If I was in a multi-offer situation with a first home buyer, they would 9 times out of 10 be willing to pay a lot more than I would, so would be able to buy the home. The issue many young people have is they don’t have the discipline or the know how to save up for a deposit. Everything is so easy to buy these days on no deposit, or credit, pay it off over 5 years. Many of them don’t even understand the concept of saving. They live week to week and so are not able to ever save for a deposit, and as shown on one of the slides in my talk, it was exactly the same in 1996 in that article I showed everyone. People back then said the same thing ‘young people cannot save enough money for a deposit to buy their first home. That was 23 years ago and nothing has changed!
I then went on to say “many landlords are getting rid of their rentals because of all the new regulations coming in from the Government, they don’t know what’s going to happen next and are afraid. The amount of people being housed by the Government is still growing every week. There are so many motels just in Hawkes Bay that are now being used to accommodate all these people that can’t find a home to rent. The Government is paying all these motel owners, motel rates of $1,000 - $1,500 a week for each family! If they had a property they could rent off a landlord, it would only be about $400 - $450 a week. There are at least 12,000 people like this and the list of people that can’t get a property to rent keeps getting bigger. Rather than doing everything they can to make things more difficult for landlords, they should be encouraging them to buy rental properties so they don’t have to put them into emergency housing.”
Regarding this subject, on the Sunday morning with all the speakers at the front of the room to answer the 200+ participants questions, we also had a few questions for the other speakers. One question I had for Jolene which we never had time to ask was this one that I was going to ask her: - “with all the probable changes coming to tenancy laws even more biased in favour of the tenants, what are your views on lobbying against these types of things. The PIA is always trying to fight these types of changes or get petitions started. I have my views on it all, but would like to hear your thoughts about this, as we are both aligned to how law of attraction works”.
Jolene was never asked the question, so I don’t know her response but I think it would be similar to mine. My thoughts on it are yes, I agree that it’s unfair of the government to do this and it could potentially make the situation far worse than it already has. But it’s not my job to push against something I don’t want.
When people understand how the law of attraction works, they realise that the more you shout ‘no’ at something, it doesn’t make it go away. In fact, the bigger it will get and more of it you will attract.
It’s like the war on drugs, the war on violence, the war on cancer and the war against poverty. They keep getting bigger and bigger by the very focus on what they do not want!
Only by acceptance and peace in your own mind, can you deal with it and make sensible choices in the ‘now’. Mother Theresa said “I was once asked why I don't participate in anti-war demonstrations. I said that I will never do that, but as soon as you have a pro-peace rally, I'll be there.”
It’s similar to a yacht making its way through the ocean on a windy day. The person sailing the yacht knows that rather than fighting against the wind, which would have the opposite affect and get him nowhere, to simply adjust the sails.
So, getting back to the woman I was speaking with at lunch, we also chatted about her money beliefs.
By the time we finished talking, our half hour lunch was almost over.
That Money beliefs section was only 2 slides out of my presentation which had 268 power point slides in it. There was a lot of info in that one hour 40 minutes talk and many of them could have been expanded and discussed in a lot of depth.
It got me thinking after that, it may be an idea at some stage to do the same power point presentation, but to do it over 4 hours. Maybe over a morning or afternoon and during the talk, have a lot of discussion and interaction with the audience about all the topics so people really get an understanding of it for themselves.
So, today only a day after the weekend conference, we have received so many messages and emails of appreciation and gratitude from the attendees. I asked one of the people that messaged both Katrina and myself if it was ok to share his email with others as a testimonial if we ever wanted to use it. He said yes, you can use it whenever you like, so here is his e-mail: -
“I just wanted to further extend and personally thank yourself and all presenters for such an amazing, insightful and inspirational weekend. I did not know what to entirely expect but without a doubt knew I would be in for a treat. Little did I know that it completely blew expectations out of the water and coming up for the weekend may have been one of the best decisions I could’ve made, worth infinitely more than any dollar amount. I’m gutted I wasn’t able to attend the dinner and Q&A session the following day but can only imagine the amount of knowledge that was further passed around and can see from all of the successful feedback and posts.
I was 110% engaged with every speaker, even on the topics I thought I had no initial interest in. Yourself and all of the community are also so very down to earth, it’s such a pleasure and privilege to be around. You were right about being mind-blown, I spent my entire 4 hour drive back to Wellington after the conference absolutely stunned with so much information to process.
Coming from a Structural Engineering background that I’ve since left, I’m still very early in my investment career. I developed and traded my first property in 2015 with 2 rentals now and 2 new builds in for subdivision consent on one of the existing rentals (all in Wellington). From this weekend, I am applying immediately, everything I learnt and restructuring all of my mindset and goals, which is now so much more clear.
I was going to head out this week to purchase Graeme’s ’20 rentals in one year’ book then saw you had posted on the Summit page that they would be up for purchase after the conference. I really don’t want to bother you further and can imagine how exhausted you must all be after the weekend, your post just had me hooked after you noted that Graeme would sign the book.
Is there any chance I could purchase a signed copy from yourself and Graeme? I would be more than happy to pay retail price + shipping costs. Graeme and yourself are an absolute inspiration and leading role model to me.
Thank you so, so much once again. I do hope our paths will cross more in the future.
Could you please also extend my personal thanks to Graeme. Other than publicly posting (which may have been a little long), I wasn’t sure how to get in touch with him and I have PM’d his facebook account just to say thanks.
All the best,
Mike
That’s just one of the many e-mails, Facebook messages, texts etc we’ve received and it just shows how things like this can really change people’s lives.
The feeling I got many times over the weekend was very much like when I attended the ‘Money & You’ Seminar and ‘Creating Wealth’ by Robert Kiyosaki in the early 1990’s. This was well before he wrote Rich Dad Poor Dad which he did in 1997.
The transformation for myself with those two seminars almost 30 years ago now was most likely how many of the 200 participants over the weekend felt.
It was an incredible event for me, all the helpers and the other speakers to be part of.
I’m thankful mostly to Katrina however, who kind of tricked me into speaking at it
But for the people attending as participants, it was most likely the same kind of transformational weekend for them, as it was for me attending those life altering courses all those years ago.
Safe and happy investing
Graeme Fowler
A little over 6 months ago, Katrina said to me “I know what I’m going to do next”. It took her three days to tell me, as she wanted it to be the right time.
She finally sat down with me and said “I’m going to organise a property seminar for later on this year.” I said “really, why do you want to do that?”
She said it was something she wanted to do and was very talented in event management. I knew that from having her organise our entire wedding from being engaged one day to being married 6 weeks later. We had 80 guests from all over NZ and the day ran as smooth and perfect as it could possibly go.
So, I never doubted that she could do it, but I said to her ‘well, don’t ask me to speak at it because I’m not going to!’ Having prepared herself for 3 days before telling me, she was ready for my answer.
She said “that’s ok, I’m getting Jolene to speak on manifestation and the law of attraction” I replied “whaaat, not me?” I then said “well you won’t get many people there, how are you going to get anybody to go to this seminar?”
She said “I’m going to put it your Facebook investor group to over 20,000 people! I’ve already mentioned it on my Women’s Property Investing Chat group which has over 1,000 people in it. There are already a lot of women just there that are keen to do it. Jolene messaged me and is going to be one of the speakers for it”.
I said “ok, well I hope it goes well then (not really being serious)”. Then she said “and I’m going to get Phil Thompson to do a talk on negotiations!” I said “whaaaaaat, not me!?” She said, “no, he’s better than you anyway”
I thought about it for 2 seconds and then asked her “well if I did agree to speak at it then, what would you want me to talk about?” Katrina replied “I thought you didn’t want to talk at it?” I said “well if Phil and Jolene and going to be speaking at it, then it will probably be quite good. If I did agree to speak there, what would you want me to do a talk on?” She said “I don’t know, you’ll think of something.”
That’s how the weekend conference we held over the weekend was created. We named it “Summit by the Sea” and had the most prefect weekend for it. It was held at the War Memorial Centre in Napier with amazing views out of the room overlooking the ocean. It was a stunning location and conference that Katrina put on.
The feedback from people has been mind-blowing to say the least. On the Sunday morning after the Q & A session and panel discussion, Katrina had three people come up to her in tears with just being blown away by the whole weekend, and how much it had changed their mindset and how appreciative they were.
I had people come up and talk to me during the weekend when there was a short break, lunch and also at the evening formal dinner, all saying how appreciative they were to be there.
Many of them that came up to me said how much my first book changed their ways on what they were doing, or got them started in property. Also how the second book (20 Rental Properties in One Year) was a book that they’d read several times and was like nothing they’d ever read on Property Investing before.
Others who I’d either replied to an email they’d sent me 10 or 15 years ago and how my reply to them set them off in a new direction and what they’d been able to achieve just from that.
One guy came up to me on Sunday after the event and said he’d phoned me from Napier in 2004 while visiting there and said he’d just read my book and wanted to have a quick chat. I happened to be in the office at Mr Rental doing very little so I said “sure, come over and see me now” I have no recollection of it now, but he said he had this idea or belief that money was bad or evil and that even though he’d read my book (NZ Real Estate Investors’ Secrets), he could see how he wanted to think differently, but was still unable to.
Apparently we chatted for about half an hour and what he told me on the Sunday morning was humbling to hear from him. He said “you changed my whole world in that one conversation I had with you. I have never thought about money in a negative way since then and I’ve done really well for myself since that day.” He said “I was overseas and heard you were going to be speaking at this seminar, so I knew I just had to be there and I really wanted to say thank you in person.”
It left me kind of speechless as I don’t remember meeting him, or for that matter most of the thousands of people that I’ve e-mailed back over the years, that have sent me e-mails.
There was another instance in the weekend when a young Chinese lady came up to me at lunch after my talk on Saturday and said “I was one of the people that had my hand up when you asked the money association question. The first words I wrote down when you said the word were negatively associated with money. It’s the way I was bought up by my parents. I was always told rich people are bad or corrupt and you should never be like that.” Then she went on to say, “I also have the belief that investors are taking homes away from other people, like first home buyers wanting to buy their own home.”
I said “well in reality, it’s pretty much the opposite of that! As far as investors go buying properties, they will usually not pay as much as a first home buyer will. If I was in a multi-offer situation with a first home buyer, they would 9 times out of 10 be willing to pay a lot more than I would, so would be able to buy the home. The issue many young people have is they don’t have the discipline or the know how to save up for a deposit. Everything is so easy to buy these days on no deposit, or credit, pay it off over 5 years. Many of them don’t even understand the concept of saving. They live week to week and so are not able to ever save for a deposit, and as shown on one of the slides in my talk, it was exactly the same in 1996 in that article I showed everyone. People back then said the same thing ‘young people cannot save enough money for a deposit to buy their first home. That was 23 years ago and nothing has changed!
I then went on to say “many landlords are getting rid of their rentals because of all the new regulations coming in from the Government, they don’t know what’s going to happen next and are afraid. The amount of people being housed by the Government is still growing every week. There are so many motels just in Hawkes Bay that are now being used to accommodate all these people that can’t find a home to rent. The Government is paying all these motel owners, motel rates of $1,000 - $1,500 a week for each family! If they had a property they could rent off a landlord, it would only be about $400 - $450 a week. There are at least 12,000 people like this and the list of people that can’t get a property to rent keeps getting bigger. Rather than doing everything they can to make things more difficult for landlords, they should be encouraging them to buy rental properties so they don’t have to put them into emergency housing.”
Regarding this subject, on the Sunday morning with all the speakers at the front of the room to answer the 200+ participants questions, we also had a few questions for the other speakers. One question I had for Jolene which we never had time to ask was this one that I was going to ask her: - “with all the probable changes coming to tenancy laws even more biased in favour of the tenants, what are your views on lobbying against these types of things. The PIA is always trying to fight these types of changes or get petitions started. I have my views on it all, but would like to hear your thoughts about this, as we are both aligned to how law of attraction works”.
Jolene was never asked the question, so I don’t know her response but I think it would be similar to mine. My thoughts on it are yes, I agree that it’s unfair of the government to do this and it could potentially make the situation far worse than it already has. But it’s not my job to push against something I don’t want.
When people understand how the law of attraction works, they realise that the more you shout ‘no’ at something, it doesn’t make it go away. In fact, the bigger it will get and more of it you will attract.
It’s like the war on drugs, the war on violence, the war on cancer and the war against poverty. They keep getting bigger and bigger by the very focus on what they do not want!
Only by acceptance and peace in your own mind, can you deal with it and make sensible choices in the ‘now’. Mother Theresa said “I was once asked why I don't participate in anti-war demonstrations. I said that I will never do that, but as soon as you have a pro-peace rally, I'll be there.”
It’s similar to a yacht making its way through the ocean on a windy day. The person sailing the yacht knows that rather than fighting against the wind, which would have the opposite affect and get him nowhere, to simply adjust the sails.
So, getting back to the woman I was speaking with at lunch, we also chatted about her money beliefs.
By the time we finished talking, our half hour lunch was almost over.
That Money beliefs section was only 2 slides out of my presentation which had 268 power point slides in it. There was a lot of info in that one hour 40 minutes talk and many of them could have been expanded and discussed in a lot of depth.
It got me thinking after that, it may be an idea at some stage to do the same power point presentation, but to do it over 4 hours. Maybe over a morning or afternoon and during the talk, have a lot of discussion and interaction with the audience about all the topics so people really get an understanding of it for themselves.
So, today only a day after the weekend conference, we have received so many messages and emails of appreciation and gratitude from the attendees. I asked one of the people that messaged both Katrina and myself if it was ok to share his email with others as a testimonial if we ever wanted to use it. He said yes, you can use it whenever you like, so here is his e-mail: -
“I just wanted to further extend and personally thank yourself and all presenters for such an amazing, insightful and inspirational weekend. I did not know what to entirely expect but without a doubt knew I would be in for a treat. Little did I know that it completely blew expectations out of the water and coming up for the weekend may have been one of the best decisions I could’ve made, worth infinitely more than any dollar amount. I’m gutted I wasn’t able to attend the dinner and Q&A session the following day but can only imagine the amount of knowledge that was further passed around and can see from all of the successful feedback and posts.
I was 110% engaged with every speaker, even on the topics I thought I had no initial interest in. Yourself and all of the community are also so very down to earth, it’s such a pleasure and privilege to be around. You were right about being mind-blown, I spent my entire 4 hour drive back to Wellington after the conference absolutely stunned with so much information to process.
Coming from a Structural Engineering background that I’ve since left, I’m still very early in my investment career. I developed and traded my first property in 2015 with 2 rentals now and 2 new builds in for subdivision consent on one of the existing rentals (all in Wellington). From this weekend, I am applying immediately, everything I learnt and restructuring all of my mindset and goals, which is now so much more clear.
I was going to head out this week to purchase Graeme’s ’20 rentals in one year’ book then saw you had posted on the Summit page that they would be up for purchase after the conference. I really don’t want to bother you further and can imagine how exhausted you must all be after the weekend, your post just had me hooked after you noted that Graeme would sign the book.
Is there any chance I could purchase a signed copy from yourself and Graeme? I would be more than happy to pay retail price + shipping costs. Graeme and yourself are an absolute inspiration and leading role model to me.
Thank you so, so much once again. I do hope our paths will cross more in the future.
Could you please also extend my personal thanks to Graeme. Other than publicly posting (which may have been a little long), I wasn’t sure how to get in touch with him and I have PM’d his facebook account just to say thanks.
All the best,
Mike
That’s just one of the many e-mails, Facebook messages, texts etc we’ve received and it just shows how things like this can really change people’s lives.
The feeling I got many times over the weekend was very much like when I attended the ‘Money & You’ Seminar and ‘Creating Wealth’ by Robert Kiyosaki in the early 1990’s. This was well before he wrote Rich Dad Poor Dad which he did in 1997.
The transformation for myself with those two seminars almost 30 years ago now was most likely how many of the 200 participants over the weekend felt.
It was an incredible event for me, all the helpers and the other speakers to be part of.
I’m thankful mostly to Katrina however, who kind of tricked me into speaking at it
But for the people attending as participants, it was most likely the same kind of transformational weekend for them, as it was for me attending those life altering courses all those years ago.
Safe and happy investing
Graeme Fowler
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