MediaWatch report on Today Tonight and the MAP

Maybe the lesson is stay out of the media [biggrin]

Steve, Im wondering why you seem incensed at “biased” reporting when you seem to want to create your own meanings for well established words…

In any dictionary in the world, a millionaire has assets with a net value of over one million dollars.

But in your dictionary, someone with 50 thousand dollars is a millionaire?

Im intrigued as to how you can find this congruous with the perception of yourself as a facilitator of wealth, when you appear to make up your own definitions to suit the outcome.

Jay

Edited after seeing reply from Zeffix above:

My point exactly! Your uncle is 50k+ in debt, but according Steves definition, he is a property millionaire. Can anyone reconcile this, not only with common perceptions of wealth, but also with common sense?

How can one be 50k in debt (assets minus debt
= -50k) and yet a millionaire?

“It often appears that rather than applauding those who are changing things for the better in others lives, they are being mocked for something others don’t understand.”

Yeah, I agree with this.

With the few crumbs of inside info into the MAP program we’ve had here, it seems it’s alive and well! some have already made it, some still will (they have four months left) and some dropped by the wayside.

There will be a book which Steve is writing, coming out about the whole thing, which he obviously won’t be able to finish until the full year has come to an end, which will give more info than even a one-hour special could. I CAN’T WAIT!!!!

I was one of the 20,000 who applied for the today tonight challenge. In a way I’m glad I didn’t get it, because I know it would have taken over my whole year, and I had other committments which are more important to me than property and possibly always will be. Much as I love property as a hobby, a sideline, and a way to store and grow my wealth, I don’t want to do it full-time.

But then again, that is just me making excuses as to why I didn’t get to a million dollars worth of property in the last year? Yes!!

Do I think I could have done it with Steve’s mentoring and motivation, homework,. challenges, deadlines, and the fear of public humiliation if I failed?

Yes!!!

But am I OK with knowing that realistically, I wasn’t prepared to make the sacrifices required??

Yes!

The fact that I have been able to – thereabouts- double my wealth in a year at the same time as getting income equivalent to the price of living for free in Paddington, Sydney just on three measly properties 90 percent of people told me I was crazy to buy makes me think how much I could have increased that further if I’d put the time and energy into growing it faster. Like the mappers did. If i’d for example actively looked for deals where the vendor was prepared to take a second mortgage of 20 percent, allowing me to purchase properties with no money down. If I’d done 5 renovations that year instead of the two I did. If I’d renovated expensive properties that I could only afford to hold as long as I renovated, and then flicked them for profit. If I’d bothered to set up structures. If I’d bothered to team up with people to do deals i couldn’t do on my own. if I’d bothered to look into deals I may have felt scared of, but knew you could do well out of, such as buying a block, strata titling it, and selling of the apartments individually.

it was my choice to go as fast or slow as I wanted. I wasn’t on the MAP, I had nothing to prove to anyone, and I cruised along pretty much as I wanted. but is that how an olympic athlete wins? No, of course not.

what am I trying to say? hmmm…. ok….try this….That ‘ordinary australians’ win the olympic games. but are they ordinary? They might be ordinary as far as their backgound, schooling, hobbies, etc go, but they make an extraordinary effort and sacrifice to get where they are. Some of them make all that effort and don’t ‘win’. but even coming last in an olympic heat means you can probably outswim 99 percent of the population!

i see parallels with this in the MAP. Yes, ‘you’ –yes you reading this – can do it. And ordinary Australians are doing it. but that doesn’t mean ‘ordinary’ as get up, have weetbix, a pie for lunch, watch the news, homework with your kids, sex and the city.

it means all of the above, plus I rang 10 agents in my lunchtime, analysed 10 deals after my kids went to bed, put 10 offers in writing to fax off tomorrow from work in my lunchtime. Stayed up until 3am looking at deals on the net and making notes of who to call tomorrow. Repeat formula! weekends let’s drive 300K and look at 16 properties then drive 300K back so we can make our son’s footie game tomorrow. That kind of thing.

Re the MAP, man, I am glad I was ‘let off the hook’ so to speak. Can’t imagine being one of the people who slogged their guts out doing as many deals as they could, as above, getting ever closer to their goal, only to have the Kay Henry’s of this world tell them it doesn’t count because it’s not being a millionaire, that’s not good enough. Imagining I’m on the MAP and going for it hard, but the world is potentially watching me, I’m accountable to the TT audience – who are (let’s face it) waiting for me to fail, waiting to evaluate me as one of the ones who didn’t make it, when others did. waiting to validate their own failed couch potato lives….

“I feel better that they didn’t make it. I would have been jealous if they’d made it, because i didn’t. Why should they get all the money? I work as hard as anyone! I spend all the money on my kids! I deserve a million more than they do!! If they HAD made it, that would have hurt – because I didn’t! Anyway, if they’d made it, they probably just ripped someone off!! Anyway money isn’t the be all and end all’….. and all the other justifications the ones that might like to but didn’t use.!!!

Imagining how I would feel if I gave my every spare hour to investing, trying to achieve the challenge, getting halfway but not all the way, to realise that people were saying ‘she didn’t get to a million, she only grew her 80K starting capital into 500K in a year, FAILURE!! And hauling me up on TT as proof that Steve was a ‘scammer’. I mean, sheesh!! I couldn’t imagine anything worse. And so I totally and utterly respect those that took up the challenge and all that went with it, to be in the public eye (possibly) whether they succeeded or failed.

But also having met a couple recently, nothing to do with the MAP, though they did credit seminars and ongoing weekly mentoring as their starting education foundation and motivation, who went from owning their own house and having some equity 3.5 years ago, to controlling 8 million of it today, with about 4.5 million of that debt, today.

I know how they did it, and I know how hard they worked. And how much time was of the essence, how much scrambling around they did to close some deals, knowing that a few weeks delay could cost them tens of thousands in capital gain. Yes, it was at the last 3.5 years of the boom, and everyone made money pretty much, but how many made 4 million of equity? And yes, they did work on it very very hard on it. Meaning, full time.

And yes, they did only ever purchase properties with 7.5 percent returns which meant (at that time, and for them) they were always CF+ve.

Anyway, Kay, and the others, we all could have done it. Really and truly.
But some of us didn’t. I can live with that. I’ll still get to owning multi million dollars worth of property one day, but it all depends on how much effort I put into it. And that in turn depends on how much i want it. The word passion comes to mind, and I remember Steve writing about that in the newsletter.

The last thing I want to say is that the other day I remembered some of Steve’s words at the first seminar I ever went to, which was ‘if it’s meant to be it’s up to me!’ i won’t bore you any more with the details of what this meant to me, but suffice it to say it was the key sentence which helped me decide what to do next with this project. The next day I really felt that the whole world had changed and me with it.

All well said Mini. I was disappointed with the Medai Watch story because I’ve met Steve at one of his seminars and more importantly I’ve met some of the MAP people. All the ones I spoke to said Steve gives them goals to do and achieve by the end of the month etc..and it isn’t necesarily easy but if they are going to get somewhere hard work is required. I think the people portrayed on Media Watch were some of the ones who wouldn’t do the work. To lump Steve in with another story on Henry Kaye was very unfair of Media Watch, and I look forward to some sort of retraction when the successful MAPs are revealed.

Anyone who believed that the original claim meant that these property novices could have a net worth of over $1m after 12 months is themself a novice. It is very obvious to anyone with a bit of property knowledge and a small amount of common sense that the claim was to put these people in control of $1m of property. The problem here is that everyone is looking for a freebie and not many are prepared to work hard to make it. It is ridiculous to expect that anyone with a net worth of $30K can turn that into $1m in 12 months. If you are honest with yourselves and you were prepared to take a few seconds to think about the claims you would have understood the intent from the start. Steve is a good bloke who is trying to help people and people are starting to attack him. Have you (who are attaching him including Media Watch) got nothing better to do than be stupid? Get a life!

“I agree with Kaye Henry – a property millionaire is EQUITY based and can be no other – 1 mill property and 1 mill debt = 0”

agree or disagree with KH all you like, (“lets see whos opinions win”) -knock yourselves out!

I’ll even join in and mess up your argument completely though before we throw it out of court, which is given that you are right and that’s the definition, then it’s ridiculous, because under that definition, if one of the mappers did nothing for 11 months and then suddenly their grandmother died and left them her vaucluse house worth 1.1 mill, they succeed according to your definition, but what would TT and the viewers make of that?

You’d realise it’s not the definition that counts, it’s the ‘from here to there in a year’ factor, the INTENT.

it was TT who used the term ‘create property millionaires’ (whether Steve said that or not) because they KNEW that the general public would ‘agree’ that’s what it means.

But I just don’t think the general public, bless their hearts, thinks about things as much as i do and my friends here at the forum. They are way too busy working in their rat race and spending all they earn and 5 percent more per annum.

They watch a telly program that appeals to their dream of ‘sudden wealth’ without effort AKA the lotto factor, imagining (from their lounges) it would be easy as long as you were among the privileged few getting whispered tips from their mentor, with whom they dine, last supper-style.
swanning about doing deals and having cognac and cigars to celebrate.

Whether or not ‘create property millionaires’ was what Steve said or meant. TT made up their headlines and that was that.
In fact i’m sure i remember Steve defining what that meant on TV.

I know to someone who has a house they bought in Sydney in 1991 which is now worth 850K and they only owe 600K, controlling a mill worth of property doesn’t sound like a big deal.

but that took a few years. And these guys only had one.

And when the story get shown, or the book is out, i think the interesting stories will be the ones that got furthest compared to where they started from.

sorry, mistyped. I meant the other way around. 600 equity.

Also you misquoted me!!! Grrrr…. I wrote, “I know TO someone who has a house they bought in Sydney in 1991 which is now worth 850K a…..controlling a mill worth of property doesn’t sound like a big deal”, not ‘I know someone who has a blah blah’. Leaving out that little two letter word ‘TO’ word made it a lie when you quoted me.

Hey…just had an insight into the media!!!

As for the rest of your post, you misunderstood it, I was trying to say ‘it’s a waste of time to argue what you and i think it should mean, even if we could agree on a definition which we can;t, because all of them are flawed.’

the only person who can define it is Steve because it was his MAP and his offer. But if TT decide to invent their own headlines which mislead the public, that’s tough on Steve and the public really. But we can’t solve it by arguing what we think it should mean and someone winning and being ‘right’ Do you see what I mean now?

It is not about “winning”. It is about having a discussion. We discuss media reports from the REI’s, Residex, all over the place- I thought everything was discussible.

It’s all about due diligence. If we get involved in something and things go wrong, we are told (on this forum) that it’s our fault, we were greedy, we didn’t check enough, had no idea what we were doing, don’t come sobbing to me, that we are stupid etc. with noone to blame but ourselves. These are words from our fellow forum members. We didn’t do our due diligence, so no support from us!

On the other hand, if we ask questions, raise concerns about things, we might then be told to shut up, piss off, we’re just bringing down a tall poppy, we’re jealous, we’re bitter, we’re negative, naysayers and tyrekickers etc etc… these are also thoughts from our gentle forum members :o)

So we’re damned if we do question and damned if we don’t!

Mini, I’ll just refer to you personally, as you have referred to me. When you felt a need to question a member of this forum some time ago, you were able to do so. Other members of the forum could understand your concerns. You were able to express them. Why do you think the “kay henry’s of the world” are so problematic? We all ask questions, we all have doubts- you have had them about some things in life, and I have them too at times.

If I am one member and there are 4000 other members who disagree with me, then it’s all fine. There’s no need for people to be so angry. Steve is a multimillionaire who has done very well in life, has a loving family, and is by all accounts, a very personable man. I am just a little kay henry

It’s not a competition, of course- I never said it was- that’s another’s words. It’s just a discussion.

kay henry

Hi,

Just because I own this site doesn’t mean I should be immune from questioning and review.

To that extent, questioning intent is fine, but the inference that some sort of scam is/has taken place is my point of objection.

Defamatory comments, against me or anyone else, have no place on this forum.

Cheers,

Steve McKnight

**********
Remember that success comes from doing things differently.
**********

Hmmm, imagining to myself: Guy thirty five years old, works at Woollies, wife, two kids, earns 30K per year. Wife does ironing to help with school fees. Sees Today Tonight and envies the opportunity that the MAPpers have been given. For this guy to ever dream of controlling one mill of property is a big dream. For many like him/us Steve’s offer to demonstrate that people can control a mill of property in one year is big thing.
Some of you have disparaged the concept with statements like ” yeah if you buy one house in Sydney you could own one mill with 30K equity” (can’t find the post where this was said, but something similar). My guy doesn’t even net that much salary!
So instead of disparaging the concept of controlling a mill of property, let’s look at it from the small guy’s perspective. control 1mill of property earning 35K. Wow, you have really taken a big journey to get there. control 1mill earning 300K, so what, by comparison.
The journey and the possibilities – doors opened for the MAPpers – is what I think this is really all about, and I reckon Steve is a great guy for taking on the project and offering to make changes for the better in others lives. Well done Steve.
CD

CastleDreamer