Posted by Jeanne on March 29, 2006 at 12:16:22:
It’s only 36 days until we start our 9th annual
CRE Online Convention, and we hope you can join us!
Go to our Convention page now and you can listen to
audio recordings from 7 of our speakers (including Ed
Garcia and watch video clips from previous convention
participants here:
http://www.creonline.com/convention
Jeanne
CREONLINE CONVENTION 2nd to none?. - Posted by Ed Garcia
Posted by Ed Garcia on March 29, 2006 at 09:03:53:
My take on the CONVENTION?.
Hi folks I?m Ed Garcia, host of the Real Estate Financing section of this forum, Real Estate Investor, Mortgage Broker, President of American Heritage Financial Corp. and a speaker of the up coming CREonline Convention.
I thought I?d give you a bird?s eye view of the CONVENTION from someone who?s attended everyone and has been a speaker at all but the first one that I attended as a guest of Terry and J.P Vaughan?s.
First of all let me tell you I?m not a Convention kind of guy. I learned what I know from the streets. ?Trial and error? those were my teachers. The experienced investors who knew REI wouldn?t help you in a million years in fear of creating a competitor. Although ?trial and error? can be a good teacher to find out what you?re made of, it?s an EXPENSIVE teacher. When you error, it cost you a lot more then any course you could buy.
I thought going to Conventions, Seminars and taking courses was a waste of money. Boy was I wrong. After attending the first one, I knew I could have saved a lot of time learning and saved a lot of money had I been introduced to this before.
I only attended the first CREonline Convention after a reasonable amount of BEGGING and PLEADING from Terry Vaughan to go to their first convention.
Now if Terry reads this, he will probable deny begging and pleading and use words like INVITED and SUGGESTED.
As a matter of fact the real word to be used is, BRIBED. That?s right; Terry Vaughan bribed me to come to the first CREonline Convention.
Of course he?ll deny that too. He?ll say that he just so happened to have some free rooms given to him by the Hotel and because I was too cheap to pay my own way, he laid them on me.
Ok, Ok, enough about how I attended the first CREonline CONVENTION, let?s talk about what happens there.
Now before I tell you what happens there, I?d like to reiterate, I am not a CONVENTION type of guy. Yes I?ve been to a few of them other then CREonlines and find them COLD and with more HYPE then digestible information.
Thy?re designed around sales of courses and have little if any content that you walk away with, other then the feeling you?ve been in a revolving door way.
The two I personally attend are of course CREonline and ICSC Convention ( International Council of Shopping Centers) which are as different as day as night.
The ICSC Convention is great for those who are going into Commercial Realestate and want to learn the criteria of the various Credit tenants as well as networking. The deals are cut at the hotel not the convention, so the majority of you would just be impressed with meeting Who?s, Who, in Commercial Real Estate.
There?s one other convention that has an enormous amount of HYPE and notoriety with the key note speakers being Donald Trump and Robert Kiyosaki, called the Learning Annex Real Estate Wealth Expo. Talk about hype and no content, this is it. Although we appreciate the Donald, he fly?s in and makes his million dollars for showing up and is gone.
He really offers no nuts and bolts and as much as you love him, again you walk away with an empty feeling that they were just trying to sell you something.
Now let?s talk about the Convention for you,?. the CREonline Convention.
I consider it a FAMILY GET TOGETHER, rather then a Convention.
One of the things that make this Convention stand out from the rest is that you already know many of the people you?re going to meet. You have the opportunity to put faces with the names. Most people are already comfortable being there because they have CREonline as a common dominator.
It gives you the opportunity to meet the folks on this forum who have been answering your questions and you?ve been chatting with all year.
The Speakers are put on notice by J.P. Vaughan herself that they can sell with discretion, however let there be no mistake they are there to TEACH. To further her demands she has a roundtable night with the experts so that you have an opportunity to do a little one on one with the invited expert/speakers. There is no other Convention on the Planet that allows you to do that and get intimate with the guest speakers as this one.
Networking, I?ll never forget the first Convention when I met who is now an old friend of mine name Jim Piper. Jimmy and I went at it from day one. To this day if you go back in the old archives you?ll find the longest post ever posted on the site, a combination of over 200 posts on two different boards on Lease/Options vs Buying and Financing. For years Piper was the man on CREonline with his unlimited knowledge of Real Estate Investing, complimented by his talented ability to articulate his knowledge to others.
Year after year, guys like Jim Piper, John Behle, David Segars, Ray Alcorn, Lonnie Scruggs, Karl Hartley known as Karp, Bill Bronchick, Joe Kaiser, Phil Fernandez, and the list goes on. These guys are some of the most knowledgeable investors you could ever want to meet and were here daily and weekly posting and sharing their knowledge of REI. At Convention time, we?d all go and meet at the bar. Oh yes the bar, we?ll I guess I?d better tell you about the bar.
The last one on the list that I just gave, that I met at the bar in Atlanta, was Phil Hernandez. Now visualize this. Here you have 2 men with Latin Sir names like Hernandez and Garcia, and we can?t speak one word of Spanish between us.
This Latin gentleman comes up to us at the bar and starts rattling off some Spanish. Phil and I looked at each other, then looked at the gentleman and smiled, and continue on with our conversation. ?Only in America?.
But the bar is where things happen.
This is the place where DEAL MAKING and NETWORKING take place.
John T. Reed once described the bar scene as something out of the movie, Star Wars. It was suggested in a slanderous manner but has more truth to it then not.
If you recollect in the movie Star Wars, there were creatures from all over the Galaxy who congregated at the bar. In doing so the bar scene radiated with ACTION, and sure as shooting you?ll find all the ACTION you can handle at the CREonline Convention.
People from all over the country come here to congregate at one location to share their knowledge and have fun in doing so. When the bar closes at 1 p.m. it makes no difference, because we then congregate in the Main Lobby. The bar has their schedule and we have ours.
In the Lobby discussions have been known to go on until SUNRISE. I must admit I?m usually kidnapped and forced to stay there. Mysteriously, a couple of my old students named Brannon Fain and Bill Cook from the Atlanta area, show up with an army of people and chests full of beer. J.P?s still trying to figure out who summoned them there, but no one seems to know the answer.
There is no question that we all have our stories about the CREonline Convention and you?ll have yours.
Seriously folks, this CONVENTION is a ONE OF A KIND and has something for everyone.
The bottom line is you need to come; you owe it to yourself to be there.
See you in Atlanta,
Ed Garcia
LOL - Posted by phil fernandez
Posted by phil fernandez on March 30, 2006 at 15:30:07:
Hi Ed,
I do remember that. The parents never taught us Spanish growing up.
Everything Ed says really sums up this Convention. I’ve been to 7 of them. The CREOnline Convention is something else.
Just to add a footnote to Ed’s post, I’ve brought down to the Convention 3 fairly new investors over the years. You ought to see them now.
One does Lonnie deals left and right. He now has a portfolio of over 20 of these notes at approx $300 a pop. His monthly income is over $6,000 and his yearly income is over $72,000. And that’s just going to his PO Box to collect the checks. John didn’t learn that from me, he learned it from listening to Lonnie at the CREOnline Convention.
Another guy I brought to the Convention now buys apartment properties. His last two he bought he negotiated owner financing on one deal at 3% interest, no balloon for 20 years. The second deal he got 4% interest for 20 years with no payment to the seller for the first 5 years. Who says you can’t get large positive cashflows in todays hot market. Jeff learned techniques for doing this from the likes of Ed, Terry Vaughan, Mike Morrongiello and Ray Alcorn at the Convention.
Last year we brought a kid down totally new to investing. He then goes home and buys a duplex that he converts into a cash hog 4 unit and has since bought a couple of other properties. He’s a school teacher and does this parttime.
The CREOnline Conventions have not only helped these three guys, but many many other as well.