Season 2 of Bravo’s hit series “Flipping Out” returned last night with everyone’s favorite obsessive-compulsive house-flipper, Jeff Lewis. He’s a character for sure, but you’ve got to respect his abilities!

As some of you know, I’ve been flipping houses (foreclosures, estate sales, short sales, etc) for the last 2-3 years. The real estate market took a REAL ugly turn earlier this year, and I got stuck with 2 properties still on the books. It’s not a big deal right now, I’m just renting them out until the market recovers.

But Jeff’s got millions of dollars tied up in his properties, so I was anxious to see how he handled the real estate downturn. He’s taken a similar approach to me - Working on other things to bring in money while weathering the real estate shit-storm.

In his case, that means working for someone else - Which should make for some great TV, as he’s a total control freak! Be sure to check it out, every Tuesday night at 10pm on Bravo!

Wishing all the fathers out there a Happy Fathers Day!

An enterprising company has taken the fractional jet ownership concept, and modified it for exotic cars! Extreme Car Share is an exotic car club exclusively providing fractional ownership of exotic and luxury cars to their members. Your membership represents a time share in a collection of exotic cars, gaining access to a rich variety of today’s top exotic and luxury vehicles that alternate on a monthly basis.

As one of their “lucky” members, you will have exclusive access to a different exotic car for five days every month on a rotating basis. Your dream car will arrive at your doorstep ready to go, freshly detailed and with a full tank of gas. After your drive date, to include Friday, Saturday and Sunday, they pick the car up and prep it for the next member.

Their collection of cars is rather limited right now, but as the company grows, I’m sure they’ll add more cars to the stable. They currently offer a Ferrari F430, a Rolls Royce Phantom, a Lamborghini Gallardo, and a Bentley Continental GT Convertible!

When I first heard about this concept, I was pretty psyched. I don’t put a lot of miles on my cars (a benefit of working from home), and exotics depreciate QUICKLY. A few years ago, I bought a Porsche 996TT for around $150K.. Over the next three years, I barely put on 15K miles. When it was time to sell the car, I was lucky walked away with $80K! That car cost me $23,333/yr to drive. That breaks down to almost $64/day. (And that’s not including insurance and maintenance!)

So begs the question - How much does the Extreme Car Share cost? They’ve got a number of different options. An annual membership costs $7950 + $1695/month. So you’re paying a grand total of $28,290. If you don’t need the full 7500 miles annually, you can step down to the 5000 mile plan, which saves you $6000, bringing the total down to $22,290.

The Full Term Membership program includes five full days of drive time, including a Friday, Saturday, & Sunday every month for a full year. This comes out to 60 drive days annually.

For those on a budget, they also offer a One Weekend Every Month Membership, which gives you the car for one weekend a month for 9 months. This plan only costs you a grand total of $16,005.

An interesting concept for sure, but it’s just not for me. I’m sure it’ll do well (especially in the land of idiots, Los Angeles), but after crunching the numbers, it just doesn’t make sense to me.

Fleming’s Prime Steakhouse & Wine Bar is a fantastic steakhouse that I discovered last year.. It’s on par with Ruth Chris, Mortons, and other top-tier steakhouses. In addition, they have a wine bar that is second to none!

Fleming’s is doing a Memorable Meals special right now where you get a Filet Mignon & Lobster Tail dinner for two for $99! This beats the heck out of the $99 Steak & Shrimp deal at Morton’s that we were planning on doing..

Your meal includes:
(2) 6oz. Filets
(2) Australian Lobster Tails
(2) Chopped Wedge Salads
(1) Fleming’s Potatoe
(1) Sugar Snap Peas
(2) Chocolate Mousse

The filet was perfectly cooked, and it had great flavor. The Austrailian lobster tails were absolutely insane, the biggest tails I’ve ever eaten! The chopped wedge salad was pretty decent. I wasn’t a big fan of the Fleming’s potatoes (it’s like scalloped potatoes with cheese) - I would have much preferred a loaded baked potato. I’m not into vegetables, so I can’t speak about the snap peas.. As for dessert, it was the BEST chocolate mousse I’ve ever had. And that’s saying a lot!

This really is a fantastic deal.. It runs until July 31st at select locations, so be sure to check it out!

Tyler Cruz made an interesting post about his work sessions, and how he only works 4 hours per day, 1-hour at a time. It was a well thought out post, but what really surprised me were the comments he received. Most people were more excited with his computer desk setup, rather than the advice given!

Here’s my work area. It’s not the neatest place in the world, but it’s got the essentials. Rocking the dual-screens, cordless phone, laser printer, digital camera, web cam, sound system, etc.

If you want to be serious about this business, you’ve got to treat it like a JOB. Get your lazy ass out of bed, get dressed, and head over to your “office”. It’s a mind-set thing. You need to setup a dedicated work space, and act as you would in a regular work environment.

Use the proper equipment. A laptop isn’t the right tool for the job. Sure, I’ve got one, but it’s only used when I’m traveling. Otherwise, I have a beast of a desktop that handles my day-to-day activities. Also, a dual-screen setup is a MUST! You really have no idea what you’re missing out on. People will argue that you can be just as productive on a large widescreen monitor, but try a dual-setup for a week, and you’ll see.

Once you’ve got the right work environment, it’s all about working smarter. Tyler’s got the right idea with his schedule. Everyone’s different, so experiment and see what works for you. Studies have proven that we’re most productive in the morning. I choose to work uninterupted from 9am-1pm. After that, I take a MANDATORY lunch break!

You need a break. Sometimes I’ll go out and get some lunch.. Other times, I’ll run some errands. Or I might just heat up some leftovers and watch some TV. (Yesterday I ended up watching Redline on Starz, and took an “extended lunch”).. The perks of working from home!

I work hard during those 4 hours.. I could probably end my day right there, and all would be good. But I’d probably get bored. So in the afternoon, I’ll work on little odds and ends, and catch up on my e-mail. Then when the wife gets home from work, I end my workday. I’ll check my e-mail a few times during the night, but nothing more than that..

You don’t need to work 16-hour days in order to make money in this business. You just need to re-evaluate how you’re doing things right now. You’ll probably find that you’re wasting a LOT of time, and making your day a lot longer than it needs to be!

Last November, I made a post about how The Money’s In The List. I should start listening to my own advice! Truth be told, I’m just lazy when it comes to the e-mail aspect of the business, and it costs me a TON of money in lost revenue.

One of the merchants I work with sent me an e-mail last week. They wanted me to promote the upcoming Jimmy Buffett concert, specifically his stop in Philadelphia. (Since they’re based in the Philadelphia area)

I logged into my Constant Contact account (which I hadn’t logged into since late December!), and headed over to the Contact List page. I exported all of my contacts into a CSV file, which I then sorted that list by state in MS Excel. I saved all of the contacts that were in New Jersey, Pennsylvania, and Delaware into a new CSV file, and imported that file into Constant Contact under a new group called Philadelphia.

I quickly threw together an e-mail to this group, letting them know that the merchant still had tickets available for this performance, and stuck in my affiliate link. The e-mail went out to the 122 contacts from the Philadelphia group. The click-through rate on the e-mail wasn’t anything to write home about, but one person did make a fairly big purchase. My commission on that sale - $110!

It’s not huge, but I spent less than 10 minutes putting together the list, filing in the blanks on a Constant Contact template, and blasting out that e-mail. Do that 6 times in an hour with similiar results, and you’re making $660/hr! Sure beats McDonalds.

So the inevitable question - How do you build an e-mail list? Russell Brunson from Affiliate Evolution calls it the “Commission Bump”, but I call it common sense. I capture my visitors information before passing them along to the merchant. I now have a list of people who I know are interested in a particular niche. And they’ve given me permission to market to them in the form of a newsletter or something. As they say, the money’s in the list!