[revised 1/6/2008]
Happy New Year!
First, let me confess that I expected to have this post written by year-end 2007, but that didn’t happen. I had trouble summarizing what has happened for us in 2007 – there was so much we wanted to share it became overwhelming just to think about it. Anyway, below is my attempt to summarize the events and lessons learned in an interesting year.
April 2007
We spent 3 days at a weekend workshop by Maui Millionaires in San Diego, where we met some great people including Brion and Jean from San Jose, CA (our “home town”) who became our good friends this year. We also visited family and friends in southern CA, and toured some coastal real estate in North San Diego County.
May 2007
We got to see our investing hero Warren Buffett and Bill Gates up close at the Berkshire Hathaway annual shareholders’ meeting in Omaha, NE.
In late May, we became independent distributors of MonaVie. We were introduced to both the wellness product and the business opportunity in late April. Since it was a network marketing company, we were pretty skeptical at first. Looking back, it’s funny how we spent a month investigating this $39 opportunity. Upon a closer look, we found that this was an exceptional product backed by lots of credible research and people with good reputation to lose.
We also became convinced that the network marketing distribution method is here to stay and thrive, helped by the growing trend of social networking and declining effectiveness of mass advertising.
June 2007
We took a trip to the west coast: visiting friends in the Bay Area, touring coastal real estate in northern WA near the Canadian border, and boating around the San Juan Islands in the Pacific Northwest with David’s parents and brother. We also spent a week in Vancouver, B.C. (one of our favorite cities) by ourselves and celebrated our 6th wedding anniversary there.
We closed 3 real estate transactions while traveling – it wasn’t fun but we got it done. It happened to be at the beginning of the credit crunch due to subprime mortgages.
September 2007
Amber spent 3 days at a beach condo in the Monterey area (northern CA) with 4 other women investors and business owners. David joined Amber afterwards for a weekend in the Bay Area, visiting lots of friends.
We then headed down to spend 1 week in southern CA with our friend & mentor Jean, visiting David’s parents in Long Beach and watching Jean in action growing her MonaVie business teams.
We spent 4 days in Atlanta, GA to attend a Financial Fluency workshop with some friends.
David took a one-day trip to Phoenix, AZ to investigate a startup business opportunity, which we subsequently invested in.
Oct – Nov 2007
David spent 4 days in Philadelphia in early October, attending an investing workshop with a friend.
In early November David took a one day trip to Denver, CO for a design meeting for one of our development projects.
We attended Loral Langemeier’s Millionaire Maker game launch over 2 weekends in November at a Barnes & Nobles bookstore in Dallas. It was a competition with about 30-40 players at each of the 2 events. We finished first and second and won good prizes (books & audio programs) at the local event.
Dec 2007
We spent 6 days in Flathead County, MT, and then 4 days in Teton Valley, ID and Jackson Hole, WY areas.
We participated in design meetings for 2 full days and met with our local development team for the project we invested in Montana. We also found time to ski/snowboard one day and tried dog sledding for the first time (12 miles, 40 paws, great fun and highly recommended). Unfortunately, most of Glacier National Park was closed, but we did manage to get in for some photo ops (with lots of deer sighting).
While in ID/WY, we met the manager of our investment fund and toured many development projects our fund invested in. We got to stay at a model home so it was pretty nice and comfortable. Even though it was cold (12-30 degrees) we really liked the “winter wonderland” feel and the natural beauty of the mountains and rivers. We are already planning to go back next summer.
We got back home just in time to prepare for the holiday activities, including 2 dinner events with David’s relatives in the area, and hosting a dinner at home for some friends and Amber’s family.
By year-end 2007, we became licensed to bring fractional life settlements to accredited investors, after discovering that we could invest in this asset class normally reserved for institutional investors.
Other Events & Activities in 2007
As you can see, there has been a lot going on for us in 2007, including increased travels.In our effort to make new friends in our local area we have gone to events on meetup.com and hosted Cashflow games at our house. We also enjoy spending time with friends from our church.
God has blessed us in 2007 with new friendships as well as renewal of old ones, better health (especially for Amber), time to travel together and opportunities to help people with their financial education, which is becoming a passion for us. We feel compelled to share these blessings with others and help them live an abundant lifestyle.
Lifestyle Goals
Early in the year, I told David that 2007 was going to be the “year of the network,” because it was kind of embarrassing how long it took us to realize we couldn’t do everything by ourselves and still achieve time freedom or have time to spend with people – we definitely were stuck in the “DIY” mindset.
As the year progressed, it became clear to us what lifestyle goals we were striving for:
- Time freedom – flexibility of schedule
- Location independence – live and work wherever we choose
- World-wide network of friends with whom we could share our success as well as lessons learned
In 2008, we will continue striving for these lifestyle goals – and remember you are all part of goal #3!
We hope you and your family had a wonderful year 2007, and we wish you all good health and prosperity in 2008, as well as success in everything you set your mind to. Please keep in touch and we look forward to hearing from you!
