Property that has more than one family unit for residents is considered multifamily. A duplex or two family unit is the smallest type while the largest complex might have hundreds of apartment units.

When searching for multifamily investment properties, think like a realtor. Realtors often send out postcards to certain areas in hopes of someone wanting to sell their home. The investor can take the same approach. Send out a mailing of postcards with a rented mailing list.

Another option is to place inexpensive ads in the newspaper. Instead of a simple ad saying you buy houses, think like the homeowner wanting to sell. Do they need money? Probably. Place your ad in the money to lend category.

Buying foreclosures, divorce properties or probate properties is another option for investors. These properties are public knowledge. Send them postcards offering to buy. Contact them in person or the phone. A phone call is more personal than a letter. The owner may hang up on you or abuse you verbally. This is normal. They are going through a hard time. If you do get the homeowner on the phone, set up an appointment to talk to them face to face. Let them know you are an investor and are prepared to help them quickly.

Consider the realty market when you try to buy multifamily investment properties . What is the market doing? How is the property market in the area you are buying? The market helps determine your return on the investment. A lower market will offer less return while a higher market you will get back more return on the money invested. This is an important fact to consider when choosing the right property for your budget.

The investor should consider the property value of the investment properties they are considering and the neighborhood they are located. A multifamily apartment unit located in the up and coming new neighborhood will give a better chance of getting a higher return on the investment. An apartment dwelling located in a declining neighborhood, on the other hand, has a slim chance of increasing anytime soon. The investor is more likely to get lower rents, more vacancies and less return on their investment.

It is rewarding to buy multifamily investment properties and see your returns increase while you are helping people in need.

Nigel Walter is a Assest Investment expert who generously shares his expertise with budding UK investors. For more information Contact Nigel Walter at Connaught Asset Management.

Today I passed a business with a sign prominently displaying the message: “under
new management.” Whenever I see such a sign, I begin to wonder about its intended
outcome. It seems to be reaching out to all who pass by to say, “we’ve changed…
come in and try us again, see how we have improved, we are really worth another
look…”

What a great idea for team leaders too: “under new management.” As managers,
supervisors and team leaders, we can provide NEW management techniques and
approaches to those we serve by making subtle changes (or not so subtle) to our
management style. You may be one who boldly tries new approaches with your team regularly, or perhaps you are like most team leaders who a bit more cautious of
changing their style and approach. Change is uncomfortable for anyone, but under
the watchful eye of our team members we can let our imaginations can get the best
of us… “What will they think of me? Will it come off as planned? What if it doesn’t
work?”

Well, think of “under new management” as an opportunity to try out changes while
allowing you to be open and upfront about what you are doing. A perfect time to
put up the under new management banner is right after you have attended some
training, or read a new book. Use these situations as an ‘excuse’ to try new things.
Get your team to support you. Openly announce that this is not comfortable or easy,
but you believe it will make you more effective. Involve the team in a debriefing and
get even greater level of support from them. By showing your interest in their input
and by allowing your direct reports to “coach” you, support and acceptance will
come easier than expected.

Consider the benefits of taking the risk to try new behaviors and approaches and to
involve your team in the process:

1. You are role modeling the importance of trying new behaviors for your team.

2. You are suggesting that improvement is always possible and that we can all
   work to be more effective.

3. You are involving your team and developing their observation skills and their
   ability to give feedback.

4. You are creating a learning culture.

5. And finally, your are growing and becoming more effective with each new skill
   you turn into a habit.

Are you the same team leader today that you were the day you that you were given
the title of manager or supervisor? Or, is your team regularly under new
management?

Susan Stamm, is a Partner in Lancaster PA based team development firm called The TEAM Approach the publishisher
of the FREE Team Tool Box, FREE Team Check Up and FREE Team Leader Check Up.

Sometimes skimping on things can save you good money. But skimping is not always the wisest business strategy. For example, I could’ve written this article in the windows program notepad as opposed to Microsoft Word, and saved a good $500 and never had to buy the latest version of Microsoft Office… However, wouldn’t it be worth the $500 if the improved impression of professionalism put forth in all of my writings some how garnered ten times that in profit? Would you have read this far if I had unknowingly published this article with a horribly obvious typo in the title? That’s right - an insignificant error caused by “saving money” can actually COST you money in the long run.

Impression Is Everything!
If you have spent months developing a beautiful ecommerce website to give people the impression that you are the safest choice for whatever product or service you’re trying to sell them, then it’d be pretty stupid to have all of that professionalism dismissed by a simple mistake: assuming you’re going to SAVE money by not getting a toll free number!

The fact is, the sight of a toll free number is something that subconsciously stirs an idea of professionalism - something we’re accustomed to from corporate America. Area codes are for calling your relatives and friends, after all. The phone prefix “800″ or “877″ or “888″ for some reason, as if by magic, stirs in us the image of a phone operator in a tall skyscraper that deals with hundreds of clients a day - someone that doesn’t make their living off of ripping people off. The appearance of professionalism is the embodiment of confidence within the business world.

Okay, so you’re convinced… now what?
Not having a toll free number for your ecommerce business (no matter how small) will cost you more in the long run than the short term savings will save you. The best part is though that toll free numbers are not NEARLY as expensive as one might be inclined to think! In fact, at the moment the prices for toll free numbers are as low as 2.7c/min from places like www.patricklongdistance.com .

What other services can I benefit from?
It just so happens that toll free numbers are not the only affordable telecommunications service that might be useful to the owner of an ecommerce web site. Conference calling (for those teleseminars), low long distance rates, broadband or t1 internet access, and more are all examples of things that can be gotten more cost effectively off the internet via web pages such as the one I provided in the last paragraph.

Jacob Richards hosts a website about ecommerce web site construction.

Recently, a teacher whose class regularly scores top marks shared her secret for team building success with me. “It’s easy,” she told me. “Each week, we set a goal as a class. If we’ve reached the goal at the end of the week, I treat the class to pizza and a game and then we sit down and plan next week’s goal.”

There in a nutshell is a tried and true strategy for building and maintaining successful teamwork that any corporate event planner should take to heart. My teacher friend’s Friday afternoon ‘pizza party’ serves a triple function - it recognizes the work achieved, rewards the team for their work, and serves as a springboard for the next goal. To be successful, a corporate event should do three things - recognize, reward and motivate.

Granted, when you’re dealing with high-powered executives, programmers or salespeople, a Friday afternoon pizza party may not be quite the ticket. Higher goals merit higher rewards - but the principle remains the same. If you’re planning a corporate event weekend, then your plans should include all three arms of the success formula.

This isn’t as difficult to do as it may seem. Any corporate event that’s meant to recognize and reward contributions to the team can serve as a springboard for planning further successful activities and include team building activities to cement the bonds of the work group. An event that’s planned as a team building weekend could easily include a recognition dinner to reward those members of the team who’ve made outstanding contributions.

The key to making sure that your corporate event accomplishes all of your goals is careful planning right from the start. Before you decide on the activities for your corporate event, take the time to work out your goals. Is it your aim to reward your employees? Recognize achievement? Motivate your teams? Hammer a group into a team? Once you know what it is that you want to accomplish, it’s time to call in the professionals.

A corporate event planner with expertise and experience in team building activities, corporate event planning, outdoor team building and corporate hospitality events can show you a wide range of fun corporate events and activities that will serve any corporate event strategy you have in mind. Even more importantly, they’ll bring their own experience to the planning table - and the execution of the event. Using a professional corporate event service means you needn’t worry that someone will forget to meet the keynote speaker’s plane, and your own key people aren’t tying up their time running around to find matching napkins for the company reward dinner.

In the end, choosing to use a corporate event planning service is no different than any other business decision. You hand the work to those that have the best resources to accomplish the task. When it comes to fitting a corporate event to its purpose, a professional event planner can turn your company recognition dinner into a motivating, rewarding and inspiring team building event that will kick your next quarter into high gear.

Brett Danielson works for http://www.chillisauce.co.uk, a tour operator
specialising in creating unique team building and other corporate events. For more information on corporate team building activities visit the Chillisauce web site.

Smart leaders understand that they don’t “make” a change happen.
They recognize that the people in their organization do the
work, change behaviors, and, ultimately, make the change happen.
They understand that their role is to make the change meaningful
and easier to accept. Smart leaders facilitate change.

Let’s look at five things smart leaders do to lower the barriers
to change.

1. They sell more than they tell

Smart leaders are comfortable selling their ideas. They
understand that “telling” someone what’s going to happen is very
different from “selling” them on the idea. I do not suggest that
smart leaders use so called “high-pressure” sales tactics. By
selling, I mean that they look for ways to get people
emotionally committed to the change.

They paint, and re-paint, the vision for people. They focus on
the benefits, not the costs. They understand that people need
time to adjust, time to accept the change. They work to inspire
buy-in rather than compliance.

2. They help people tune-in to WII-FM

Sales and marketing professionals talk about the radio station
that most people tune-in to on a daily basis. They know about
WII-FM (What’s in it for me?).

If it’s true about people in the marketplace, then it’s true
about people in the workplace. Smart leaders know how to answer
the question on every employee’s mind: “What’s in it for me?”

Dr. Aubrey Daniels, noted behavioral analyst and author of
Bringing Out the Best in People, makes two great comments
regarding change acceptance:

* “People don’t resist change, they resist being changed,” and *
“People don’t resist change if the change provides immediate
positive consequences to them.”

Smart leaders know that people are generally more willing to do
things that bring personal benefit than they are to do things
that benefit the organization. They take a pragmatic, not a
cynical or negative, view of human nature. They see people for
who they are and work to adjust their strategy to go with — not
against — the natural drives of people in their organization.

3. They work through the “head grapes”

Every organization has a grapevine — an unofficial
communication channel that often moves faster than official
ones. You might call the people who other people listen to, and
therefore influence the grapevine, the “head grapes.”

Smart leaders are not too impressed with themselves. They
recognize that the head grapes have more personal influence
within certain employee groups than they do. They understand
leadership is about trust and relationship; it is not about
position. Recognizing this truth, they seek out influencers in
the organization. They strive to get the influencers onboard
with the change. They understand the power of relationships, and
they put that power to work. They work with the head grapes to
affect change so that they don’t have to push against the head
grapes’ resistance.

4. They break the change into “bite-sized” pieces

Smart leaders understand that people need both information and
time to accept a change. They also realize that they can’t wait
forever to get everyone onboard. So, they break big changes into
small pieces that people are willing to accept more quickly.

By moving in stages, smart leaders move their organizations with
steady forward progress instead of periodic quantum leaps.

5. They build positive momentum

By breaking big changes into bite-sized pieces, smart leaders
set themselves up to build positive momentum. Smart leaders know
that an early failure or setback can create more resistance
later — even if they overcome the initial setback.

Building a record of quick, early wins helps people accept the
upsets that will happen on the way to success. Smart leaders
understand the power of momentum — either positive or negative.
They break changes into small pieces then pick their first move
because it has a high-probability of success.

Copyright 2005, Guy Harris

You may use this article for electronic distribution if you will
include all contact information with live links back to the
author. Notification of use is not required, but I would
appreciate it. Please contact the author prior to use in printed
media.

Social networking is not a new phenomenon - people have been meeting together for centuries as a way of expanding their friendships, increasing their sense of community, and establishing new business relationships. And even in the last half century neighborhood or city-based networking organizations have arisen such as the Lions, Kiwanis, and Elks clubs along with those dedicated to pure networking like Business Networking International and LeTip. But it wasn’t until a website called sixdegrees was created a few years ago that online networking started to take off - sure chat rooms and listservs had existed in the pre-1995 days but there were never resources online dedicated exclusively to networking. And while sixdegrees sold off their company’s assets to other online upstarts, the networking craze had begun. Depending on where you look, there are potentially hundreds of websites where one can network, separated out by interest, industry, and geography and whether the networking interest is for business or personal reasons.

For more business networking, there are 4 primary sites individuals use to expand their network and ultimately their income. The granddaddy of them all is craigslist - a San Francisco-based warehouse of local community news, classifieds, dating options, and job listings started by Craig Newmark that has content specific to the top metropolitan regions in the US. It’s a popular site and useful for many things - as ebay found out when they recently purchased a 25% share. ecademy is a UK-based site created by the uber-networker Thomas Power. ecademy requires membership and is set up for pure networking, particularly on a worldwide basis. The site also enables blogging, industry-specific content and chats, and is enabled for heavy-duty networking with known and unknown associates. Ryze is a site focused on business to consumer networking and provides a venue to create a community around your business and personal interests - unfortunately, Ryze use is not regulated too well so the connections and content often related to business opportunities, MLM deals, and value-less connections. LinkedIn is the current disputed leader in the US and worldwide due to its ease of use, practical benefit, and value added features including providing a testimonial for someone you know, passing along requests for connections, job listings, and easy networking with those with similar interests.

Regardless of which site you decide to use, pick one initially and commit to a week or month of consistent participation in the community and decide how you might benefit the work or personal lives of others. As with everything else in life, you get out of it what you put into it - so think both of how you can benefit yourself and others as you participate.

Dave Lloyd can be reached at publisheremail@gmail.com and has written an online guide to social and business networking at www.socialnetworkingguide.com

Avoiding inert measures that anaesthetise your performance management.

INTRODUCTION

You sit before the monthly report, which might be an inch or so thick, and you contemplate whether it’s the best use of your time to paw through the pages to check if there’s anything useful in there for you. Past experience tells you that the report is full of many measures graphed in all their splendor, but virtually none of them pique your interest, help you make the decisions you barely have time to give enough thought to as it is…

TYPICALLY, PERFORMANCE MEASURES ARE NOT EMOTIVE ENOUGH

Do you have measures with names like these?

Employee Productivity.

Cost Efficiency.

Product Quality.

Community Engagement.

Customer Relationship.

Financial Sustainability.

Stakeholder Buy-in.

If you do, then there’s a good chance that those measures are either not brought to life, or what is brought to life is a poor indicator of the result you are trying to measure. Why? Because when people look at measures that are named like those listed above, they often have no idea what they exactly mean, or have very divergent ideas of what they think they mean, or have no feeling of connection to them. They just look like a list of buzz words or phrases that every one else seems to be tossing around.

If people don’t share a single, sharply focused, easily imaginable vision of a result they want to create, any effort to measure that result will waste time. And if you do successfully get some measures established, it’s likely they just won’t stimulate the excitement and motivation needed to make the result happen.

BECAUSE BUSINESS LANGUAGE IS INERT

If something is inert it means it’s incapable of action, it is lifeless. Like the reaction you get when you put a concrete brick in a bucket of water, pretty much nothing comes of it. You just have a concrete brick sitting in a bucket of water. When we talk about business language being inert, it’s when the reaction you get to a business goal written down in a plan document is little or no noticeable change to the business. Here are some real examples that have personally left me baffled at what could possibly be meant:

“The outcomes will include valuable input into environmentally sustainable solutions to underpin the many proposed developments on the airport, as well as independent research to assist in making effective management decisions for this growing site.” - What does ‘valuable input’ mean? How would you recognise an ‘environmentally sustainable solution’ from any other solution? What does a management decision that is effective look like?

“Support and focus [our] educational mission to undergraduates in a manner that is increasingly known for its holistic and integrated academic programs, its striving for excellence in all endeavors, and its engagement with the wider community through service and learning.” - Increasingly known by whom? How do you imagine what a ‘holistic and integrated academic program’ looks like? Is it really all endeavors? Does everyone have the same idea about what ‘engagement with the wider community” means?

“[Our Council] will increase its responsiveness, efficiency and effectiveness in delivering high quality services. Emphasis will continue on streamlining core business and customer processes. Services will be provided in the most efficient manner possible at a reasonable cost while meeting environmental needs” - Responsiveness to what specifically? Efficiency of what, and what would people notice if it were happening? Isn’t effectiveness so broad that it could mean 23 different things to 7 different people? If something is streamlined, how is it different? Reasonable cost from whose perspective?

“Lead initiatives that foster diversity of staff and create culturally-competent care strategies supporting the local and international patients we serve.” - When you are fostering, what are you actually doing? What kinds of diversity are good, and what kinds of diversity should not be fostered? How would you distinguish a ‘culturally-competent care strategy’ from any other kind of competent care strategy (is it obvious to those that contribute to achieving this goal what a care strategy is exactly?).

Each of these goals share the prolific use of inert words like valuable, input, sustainable, underpin, effective, support, focus, holistic, integrated, excellence, engagement, service, enhance, responsiveness, efficiency, effectiveness (these last two I think must be the most used of all the inert words as building blocks to writing business goals), streamlining, reasonable, foster, diversity, competent and strategy. You can read more fine examples of inert language used in our society in Don Watson’s book, Death Sentence: The Decay Of Public Language. You know there are many more inert words that bulk-up our business language - perhaps when you have your next cup of your beverage of choice, you might sit down with your business’s plan and look for the inert words in the goal statements. How well do you really understand what those goals mean?

And that’s largely the effect of inert words in our business language - it’s often hard to really understand what they mean. For example, it’s far easier for you to imagine in your mind what it would be like to feel energetic all day and be able to site and move comfortably and pain-free and think clearly and enjoy eating fresh foods like apples and carrots and sleep soundly at night, than it is to imagine having “health improvements”. When our language helps us vividly and in detail imagine the result it describes, it moves us, motivates us and almost programs us to make that result a reality. Sometimes it can even move us to realise that it’s not the result we really want, and we can avoid wasting effort traveling in that direction.

Particularly in business, ‘language that moves us’ is critical if you are going to design the right kind of measures to give you feedback about your progress toward your goals.

MEANINGFUL MEASURES COME FROM ‘LANGUAGE THAT MOVES’

You simply can’t measure a result that is described by inert language. Measures are data that we have analysed to give us some evidence of the degree to which a particular result is occurring. Like the measure of employee absenteeism is data about individual employees’ attendance at work that has been analysed to give us some evidence of the degree to which employees are available for work. Evidence is something that is based in the physical world, the world of our 5 senses: sight, sound, touch, taste and smell. So if a goal or result is to be measurable, then it must be able to be described in terms of what someone would see, hear, feel or do, taste or smell if that result were occurring.

Some fairly reasonable examples of organisational goals that get beyond the typical inert language are:

From the Workers Compensation Board of British Columbia, “Improve decision making throughout the WCB, ensuring consistency with the legislation (proportion of issues leading to overturned decisions at the review or appeal level dues to WCB error in law or policy).” - This goal has made an attempt to explain what improved decision making means quite specifically, and therefore quite measurably.

From Oxfam’s Strategic Plan, “Fewer people will die, fall sick, and suffer deprivation as a result of armed conflict or natural disasters.” - This goal makes it very explicit what result they want to achieve, and people dying or falling sick is a very tangible result. Perhaps ‘deprivation’ could be more concretely explained, though.

From the United Nations, their first goal is to eradicate extreme poverty and hunger, part of which is to “Reduce by half the proportion of people living on less than a dollar a day.” - Very specific. Goals like this, that are incredibly sharply focused on a single result, are very powerful motivators. The UN use three indicators to measure this goal (find out more at http://millenniumindicators.un.org/unsd/mi/mi_goals.asp).

In each of these cases, you can more easily visualize what achieving the result would be like, than for those examples on the previous page. This ‘language that moves us’ is often comprised of sensory based language, because it describes the experiences we have through our physical senses: what we would see, hear, feel or do, taste or smell if that result were occurring. The Workers Compensation Board of British Columbia would hear fewer of their decisions being overturned at the review or appeal level on account of their own error. Oxfam would see that armed conflict would be causing less people dying or falling sick. The United Nations would see that more people are living on more than $1 a day. And all these things are countable, and therefore measurable.

So the effect of sensory based language? You can more easily imagine in your mind what it would be like if the goal or result was happening, and then you can more easily pin-point the kind of evidence or data you could collect that will help you keep tabs on how much it is happening as time goes by. From this evidence or data, you construct your meaningful measures.

SEE IT, HEAR IT, FEEL IT… THEN YOU CAN MEASURE IT

There is still a long way to go for business, in improving its ability to communicate in general, but particularly to communicate its goals to its employees (to give them direction), and to its other stakeholders (to clarify its promises). It’s really not too hard to start with our existing goals, however inert, and make the space for some rich dialogue about what those goals really mean, painting a sensory rich picture of what we would see, hear, feel or do, taste or smell if those goals were achieved. This will make the measurement of those goals unbelievably easier. And who knows, you might even get truly closer to that elusive thing we call a shared vision.

REFERENCES

Don Watson, “Death Sentence: The Decay of Public Language”, Random House Australia, 2003

Workers Compensation Board of British Columbia Strategic Goals, http://www.worksafebc.com/facts_and_figures/wcb_strategic_goals/default.asp

UN Millennium Development Goals, http://www.un.org/millenniumgoals/

Oxfam 2004 Strategic Plan, http://www.oxfam.org.uk/about_us/downloads/2004_Strategic_Plan.pdf

Stacey Barr is a specialist in organisational performance measurement, helping people get the kind of information that tells them how well their business is doing and how to make it do better. Sign up for Stacey’s free newsletter at http://www.staceybarr.com

The theory of human rights is an old one. It dates from the ancient Greeks to today’s civil rights movement. The argument is that humans have certain things that they must have based solely on their status as humans. This belief is the basis of our American Constitution and the Bill of Rights. In fact this theory is so strongly held in this country that it is no longer believed to be a theory but an ironclad truth.

Serous thinking on this subject leads to the question of what is a right. It seems to be that a right is something that cannot be taken away because it is inherent to a person’s status as a human. It is impossible to take from a person the status of being a person; therefore it should be impossible to take away a right. If this is so, then do we as humans have rights? The foremost right is the right to life. This right is taken from people every day. It is physically easy to take someone’s life. New devices to make this easier are constantly being devised. What then of the right to freedom of speech? Can someone make you unable to express your thoughts? Yes, they can simply by removing your right to life. Property rights? Stop paying your taxes and see if you keep grandpa’s farm. One of the most talked about right in today’s society is the right to keep and bear arms. This right is constantly being degraded. It is beginning to be seen as antiquated, unnecessary, and dangerous. This particular right is being fazed out of existence. People everyday say that this right is inherent in the American way of life and can never be taken away. Ask the Australians, the Canadians, or the British if the right to own firearms for protection can be taken away.

Does a person have any rights? If a right is something you cannot have stolen from you, then yes each person has spiritual rights. No one can take from you your dignity. Truly they can make it hard for you to keep it, but it cannot be taken. You must give it up. No person can dictate to you what to believe. If you believe in God, no one can force you to stop believing in Him. They may be able to keep you from physically expressing those beliefs, but they cannot take God from you. You have the right to stand up for your rights. If you believe you have the right to something, you can always fight for the right to use those rights.

This might be overly simplifying the idea, however it is important to know that when the founders of this country created our system, one of them was heard to remark, “We have given you a Republic. Lets see if you can keep it.” It is up to each person to define their own rights and to refuse to give them up without cause. Each time someone lobbies for some group to lose some right distasteful to them, they make it easier for their own rights to be taken away. Simply stated if they take the Second, the First will quickly follow.

David is a former U.S. Marine Corps noncommissioned officer, correctional supervisor and firearms instructor for the TN Dept. of Correction. He is presently commissioned as an operations officer for the Tennessee Emergency Management Agency. He is also a certified NRA instructor, and holds instructor ratings with both the TN Dept of Safety, and the TN Dept of Commerce and Insurance.

http://www.shepherdschool.com