I’ve heard Peter Spann speak once before. It was mostly the same. He talks about the importance of land banking, buying right, creating the profit with paperwork (DA) and selling. Cash is king.
Another way of summarising: buy as much of the "brown and green stuff" (that's land apparently) as you can afford, maximise the cashflow from the buildings that sit on it to subsidise holding (whilst remembering the buildings only have value for generating cashflow; they're depreciating assets), hold until you can add value by getting the land re-zoned/adapted for higher use. ie Change from industrial to residential, from low density residential to medium or high density residential etc.
He also stressed the importance of knowing how you're going to take profits (exit plan).
He suggested we ask ourselves two important questions;
What do the major players do to make their millions?
Can I emulate it?
Yes, that's what I heard, too. I must say that I didn't agree with him that if the answer is "no" to the second question, then you should get out of that industry.
He gave the example that he was earning about $5M per year doing copywriting for Yellow Pages ads for pharmacists around the country, and it was easy money. He said that he asked himself how the big players make money in that industry (pharmaceuticals), and the answer was manufacturing drugs, and he couldn't afford (and didn't want to) get into the drug manufacturing business, so he decided to get out of the industry.
Now, I would agree with Peter that it's important to know where the big money in your industry is, but I don't agree that you need to emulate the major players or get out of it. If you can make $5M in a niche without working very hard, why on EARTH would you not continue to do that rather than attempt to take on the big guys with much deeper pockets than you? Why not start copywriting for the drug manufacturers as well? If you had no scope for increasing your profits and $5M per year wasn't enough for you, then fair enough, but there was no indication in his story that this business couldn't have continued to thrive, with little involvement from him. And he could still have gone on to do other things, if he wanted more profits.
I'm sure that there were perfectly good reasons for Peter to get out of copywriting, but I don't think this particular example demonstrated his point at all. There may be very good examples of his principle, but this story wasn't one of them, IMO.
And he engaged in a tactic (often used by a certain type of public speaker) which bugs me... he asks the audience "which is right, A or B?" Of course, initially nobody answers. Then he says "oh you have to make a choice, which is it A or B?" then asks for shows of hands. So we all play the stupid game and put up our hands to one of the options so that we can keep this thing moving, then he says "you're all wrong the answer is C"
It's just silly.
