25 Things About Me – “you always wanted to know but were afraid to ask…”

I got tagged to do this by the Alex Jeffreys coaching students community, specifically by Julie Newman one of the most creative bloggers I know. So here goes…

5 Things Personal

I was born and raised in Germany (which makes English not my native language)

I grew up near Cologne, Germany

I met my wife, Nancy, who is from La Jolla, CA, in Salzburg, Austria at a “Sound of Music” dinner show that was put on for American and Japanese tourists (she was a singer, I played the piano)

We migrated to Los Angeles in 1996

We have 7 children, 4 girls and 3 boys (current ages 13 to almost 1)

5 Things Interests and Likes

I like to travel to Umbria, Tuscany and Greece (but haven’t for the past 15 years…)

I love music, especially Beethoven’s 8th Symphony, and Brahm’s Double Concerto for Violin, Cello and Orchestra, and Glen Gould’s way of playing Bach

[Afterthought: Come to think of it, pretty much ALL 8th Symphonies are quite extraordinary and most enjoyable (Bruckner, Mahler, Shostakovitch... ]

I like to try something new (every day)

I like to lead and teach, especially groups of young musicians

I like good conversations and visits with friends

5 Things Professional/Career

I have a fairly large list of film and TV credits as music editor, orchestrator and score conductor

I am a “church musician”, and have played the organ almost every Sunday for the past 27 years with very few interruptions

I have been on the Internet since 1994. My first “commercial” domain was audiohost.com which I envisioned to be a hosting service to make it easy for people to add audio to their web sites (talk about cutting edge back then…)

I have been a real estate investor since 2002 – ups and downs included (CaWholesaleDeals.com)

I have been an information marketer since 2007

5 Things Ambivalent and Dislikes

I don’t like negative people who are always looking for reasons why something won’t work

I really don’t like the ups and downs of testing, rejection and mediocrity in marketing. I’ve coined the phrase “Success looks different from the inside than from the outside.”

I like technology, but dislike having to learn something new all the time just for staying on top of things.

I don’t like to do things on my own – but it’s hard for me to consistently step out of my personality to seek help, collaboration and partnerships.

I find most “25 Things About Me” from other people a lot more interesting than my own

5 Random Things

I used to run a couple of my own radio shows in a local radio station in Bavaria (”Radio Untersberg”), and did some cutting edge stuff there, like interview abused teenagers and run their voice through a special effect device for identity protection, having indy bands play live in the tiny studio, or airing a fairly long interview in English (with German translation of course) with Jim Dine about his “Untersberg” paintings when they were exhibited in Salzburg…

I like my son’s (Lukas) videos on youtube -

I really enjoy that I can be around my kids and family most of the time, and work out of my home office. It’s fantastic and a true blessing to see them grow and develop.

I can be persistent and stubborn (2 sides of the same coin to me), but at times persistence competes with eagerness to explore new things.

I enjoy being Catholic (although I didn’t grow up that way), and recently started to go to daily Mass (but I need a nap on Saturday afternoon to make up for that…

This blog post was inspired by a blog post of my co-student Nathaniel Monk in Alex Jeffreys mentorship program.

Nathaniel talked about how we often don’t give ourselves credit for accomplishments and for what’s actually working.

So, here goes my account of changes/improvements I’ve made since the beginning of the program with Alex:

1. On my Blog right here:

• Discovered and added some “tools of engagement”. These tools encourage visitors to leave comments and share the blog posts with their followers on Twitter, and Social Media. TweetMeMe, ViralTweets and CommentLuv are my favorites.
• Created welcome video for Twitter followers.
• Installed Twitter Counter.
• Started “Blog Traffic Getting With Thomas“, a series of videos about traffic getting methods, specifically for blogs. I implemented this series on USTREAM for two reasons. One, I hadn’t done anything on USTREAM yet and wanted to learn something new, and two, I wanted to test USTREAM’s effect on Google ranking (which is huge, I would say bigger than Youtube.)
• Engaged in commenting on other students’ blogs as well as comments on “launch blogs”. What I call “launch blogs” are the blogs that are active during the pre-launch in product launches. They typically get tons of traffic and posting engaging comments there can be smashing!
• Installed FreeListBuildingFormula.com as profit pulling platform.
• Installed Ultimate Footer Ads.
• As a result the blog is getting about 25 to 30 visits per day, which is up from right around nothing

2. On my Blog at CaWholesaleDeals.com

• Participated in promotions of two smaller and one major product launches (Flip for Profits with Jamel Gibbs, Hooked on Overages with Rick Dawson, and SIMS with Jeff Walker and Greg Clement). For Flip for Profits and SIMS this meant writing new articles for ezinearticles.com, creating a bunch of new videos (I think at least 15) and implementing campaigns with SENuke which I’ve come to appreciate a lot!
• Installed “tools of enagement” and encouraged commenting which I had never done before on that site.
• Got Ultimate Footer Ads installed.
• Adding about 25 subscribers per day to my real estate lists that way.
• 3 Webinars (one live content-only [15 attendees], one live content with promotion [45 attendees], one canned with promotion[20 attendees])
• Thinking about own product (looking to JV with expert…)

3. Emailing My List &  Promotions

• I’ve been hammering my lists with at least one email per day. They must be quite numb by now
• One additional promotion to a JV partner’s webinar

4. Outsourcing

• Interviewed article writing, SEO and content creation team.

Remember, I’m not writing this to impress anyone but myself. Let this serve you as a reminder to give yourself credit for what you’ve actually done and accomplished.

Please leave a comment, retweet and create your own account, linking back to this post to share!

If I feel depressed I will sing.
If I feel sad I will laugh.
If I feel ill I will double my labor.
If I feel fear I will plunge ahead.
If I feel inferior I will wear new garments.
If I feel uncertain I will raise my voice.
If I feel poverty I will think of wealth to come.
If I feel incompetent I will think of past success.
If I feel insignificant I will remember my goals.

Today I will be the master of my emotions.

- Og Mandino

Have you heard about “The Family Adventure Project“?

Thomas here…

I want to share this real estate business related email with my internet marketing friends. The gist of the email can be applied to the internet marketing business as well. If you care, please comment on the email – and remember, your comment will produce an instant backlink to YOUR latest blog post!

Hey,

====================
Please read this entire email
all the way through the last
link in the P.S.! I’m about
to open your eyes.
====================

The real estate market has been
in a tailspin in most areas of the
country for the better part of the
past 40 months.

Every other week I see numbers
published that suggest that we’ve
reached a bottom, and that now
is the best time to buy.

The nationwide recession is
cautiously expected to bottom
out sometime this summer.

Extreme states like California
are expected (cautiously) to
continue the decline until at
least next spring.

More default mortgages are
expected to hit the foreclosure
stage.

These are primarily loans on higher
value homes.

They are not “sub-prime” but
adjustable rate and “neg-am”
loans that were made to folks
who had excellent credit and
income (at least at the time…)

You may know most of this already,
but it bears repeating.

Unemployment is at a generational
high right now, and there is no
real sign of improvement on the
horizon yet.

Let me ask you a question:

Where are YOU going to be 12
months from today?

I get often asked “what is the
best automated real estate system
to get started and make money
quickly?”

The answer is, it depends on YOU!

Maybe you’ve been sold too many
dreams, bought into too many
programs already, and still haven’t
found what you’re looking for.

Trust me – you are not alone!

To be successful in real estate
it takes disciplined, purposeful,
targeted action like you would
expect from any business.

There is no “push button” for
this market, no matter what the
gurus are telling you.

If you don’t FOLLOW the steps
to create your business, you
will not get one.

Yes, it is extremely important
to build a business using “systems”
so you don’t end up trying to
do everything yourself.

But there is no such thing as
getting a replicated web site
set up, sitting by the pool,
and start doing deals in a few
days.

Gee, I’m sorry if I put a wet
blanket on your “enthusiasm”.

You know what I’m enthusiastic
about? About success!

Check out the numbers on this
real-live short sale deal that
we just got approved yesterday:

Approved Short Sale <== LINK!

- $165,000 in discounted debt
on an accepted purchase price
of $115,900.

- the lowest comparable listing
is a short sale (not approved)
at $180,000

But let me tell you – this did
NOT happen overnight!

Talk soon,
Thomas Bartke

P.S.: 3 major breakthrough tips:

1. If you need funds for
back-to-back closings, you can
get them now at:

Short Sale Transaction Funding <== LINK!
(no “pay to play”, instant
approval letter, I personally
stand for the performance of
this lender!)

2. The best business-in-a-box
system for “hands-off” short
sales is:

Short Sale System <== LINK!

But you have to commit to following
the steps and build YOUR business!

3. If you want to start with a low-
commitment package, get “Flip for
Profits” now for free (less than $10
shipping & handling)

Flip For Profits <== LINK!

.
.
.

You may have heard that it’s really important to have a plan before you set out to do ANYTHING.

A great quote that really hits this home with me is something I got from Alex Jeffreys in the first module of his mentoring program: “An idiot with a plan beats a genius without one any day.”

There are two things to planning that I want to point out and share with you here.

Number one, it’s important to keep in mind that planning has a lot to do with scalability.

Scalability simply means that you can grow a process or implementation to a much bigger scale once you see that the process is working. For example, if you are writing articles or producing videos to generate free traffic, step one of your planning is to map out the process itself with the steps taht are neccessary if you are doing the entire process yourself. Step two of your planning is to think about ways that you can automate or outsource certain parts of the process map to make it scalable for you.

The second point that I want to point out about planning is that planning is a very powerful process to eliminate impatience and lack of persistence.

Most of the time we want results now, we are not patient enough to go trough any process that takes any amount of time if we cannot see immediate results.

That must be one of the biggest reasons most people fail in internet marketing and in many other businesses. Because many processes in internet marketing take some time to see the benefits and results. And they often require that you take not just sporadic, but MASSIVE action over a period of time so you can get the results of your efforts.

Keep that in min when you’re planning, and plan for scalability, too!

Are you alive? Leave a comment and let me know what you think!