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Recovery or No Recovery? That is the Question.
James Dicks examines the discrepancies of what economists are telling us about a possible technical economic recovery and what the American public is actually experiencing.

Investing vs. Mortgage Debt Reduction – Pros and Cons

There is a debate that rages on in the world of Canadian finance regarding what the best path is for the public to achieve their highest individual net worth possible. With assets the way they are, this seems to come down to whether to pay off mortgages, or to invest in their RRSP funds and other mortgage investment corporation outlets. The traditional mode of thinking that many people follow states the following: it's better to get out of debt and pay off what is already owed, including the mortgage, before investing in other endeavors.

The Challenge of Investing
James Dicks examines the challenges of investing in 2010.

New Year, New Plan
James Dicks examnes the importance of developing a strategy that can help your investments in 2010.

The Self Storage Investor’s Dilemma: TO BUY OR TO BUILD?
When deciding to enter into the self storage market, you have to decide if you want to buy an existing property or to build your own. This article discusses the pros and cons of each decision.

Trading Toward the American Dream
James Dicks examines the differing aspects of achieving the American Dream in the 21st Century.

Applying the Lessons Learned
James Dicks explains how he turns the mistakes he makes into future positive actions.

Are you a saver If not you will be
James Dicks examines the need to change our financial lifestyles from a credit oriented society to more of a cash structured populaiton.

Buy and Hold No More
James Dicks looks at the Buy and Hold strategy when investing and why it may not be such a good idea anymore.

Can't See the Forest for the Trees
James Dicks discusses the current state of business in light of the global economic slowdown

Chicken or the Egg Is it SAVE jobs or CREATE jobs
James Dicks examines the "supposed" effects of the Obama Administration's stimulus package

Communicate with the people you owe; it’s a win-win for everyone
James Dicks explains the benefits of being honest with your creditors, even when the answer is not what they want to hear.

Compartmentalize-How do you do it?
James Dicks explains how he handles all of his problems through compartmentalizing

Create a Personal Financial Survival Plan
James Dicks examines the need to prepare for financial hardships ahead of time.

Diversification is the Key
James Dicks explains the benefits of diversifying your personal financial investment portfolio.

Engaging your Employees
the importance of an involved employee base

Exceeding the Standards
James Dicks examines what it takes for business and individuals to make it in today's tough eocnomy

Facing Foreclosure? Listen Up!
James Dicks offers an eye opening account behind the reality of today's housing market as it pertains to foreclosures and banking.

Finances and the Year Ahead
James Dicks examines the methods of improving your personal financial situaiton in 2010.

Finding a Fresh Path for the New Year
James Dicks reexamines what is important in light of the holidays and this past year's recession.

From the Desk of James Dicks
James Dicks, President/CEO of PremiereTrade LLC, explains how goal setting can enhance your investing in 2009.

I Made More Money with Bad Credit Paying 18 Percent and 5 Points
James Dicks shares his strategies and methods of making money in Real Estate.

Know Your Credit
James Dicks examines the importance of checking your credit report

Leadership Traits of the USMC
James Dicks examines the importance of leadership development in today's business environment.

Lessons of Leadership
James Dicks discusses the importance of leadership traits in the business enviroment

Making the Tough Decisions during Troubling Economic Times
James Dicks discusses the challenges facing today's business and employees during these tough economic times

Making Your Business Fiscally Fit in Tough Times
James Dicks examines the challenges businesses face in today's global recession

Next Year I Will Save
James Dicks looks at how the American family is changing their habits to save money in their personal budgets.

It Does not Matter When You Invest
When you invest is not important. The fact that you do invest is important.

How to Ensure you Reach Your Finanical Goals
Our financial plans can get off track if we do not watch where they are going. Learn how to make sure you are still on track for financial success.

Buying an existing self-storage facility
Learn the basics of to understanding the step-by-step process for making informed decisions when looking into purchasing an existing self-storage facility.

The Future of Self Storage
As we look to the future of self storage, it’s very clear that the future looks bright. There are a few trends afoot backed by solid industry data that justify positive outlook on this high growth industry.

Self Serve Kiosks

To compete in today’s economic environment, many self-storage operators are turning to technology to lure customers to their facilities and provide superior service once they sign on the dotted line. Industry studies show the increasing usage of technology in facilities of all ages. Self-storage operators are employing the Internet for marketing, rental payments and online reservations. Facilities are benefiting from computer-management software, surveillance cameras accessible over the Internet, and digital video recorders.

Recession Proof Real Estate

They’re often called recession-proof – steady investments that are inexpensive and easy to maintain with consistent profit margins. Not to mention, they’re one area of real estate that seems mostly unaffected, if not helped, by current rough market conditions. They’re storage units and people always need them. And all across the country, with a growing population that provides a constant supply of people in transit and in need of storage, they’re shooting up everywhere. Storage facilities require relatively low building and management costs.

Opportunities in Records Storage
Records storage and management is becoming a very popular ancillary service in the Self Storage Business. Many operators are discovering the benefit to their existing business of adding Records Management. Although not a new concept, it is growing in popularity as our industry looks to draw a broader customer base and generate additional revenue streams, thereby, lowering overall risk.

Myths and Investment Opportunities in Self Storage

Like all other real estate investments, self storage shares the same attractive qualities as residential rentals, apartments, retail strip centers, office buildings, and industrial properties. Those include leverage (borrowed money), tax advantages, passive income, personal control (being your own boss), and appreciation. However, self storage offers a number of benefits that make it such an attractive investment

My Five Principles to Success in Self Storage (or any business!)

The central focus of my company is to arm the self-storage investor with the specific tools necessary to identify potential acquisition candidates, to acquire and manage those facilities once they have identified them, to implement sound techniques for creating value, and finally, to capture all of that value through various exit strategies. The process by which all of this can be accomplished rests on five keys that I feel are crucial to success. These keys do not deal with the mechanical processes involved in buying and selling self storage facilities, but are grounded in principles that are fundamental to life itself. These laws deal with the human psyche and govern our thoughts, which in turn, direct our actions. The failure to understand these keys, which have proven to provide the foundation for success, continually result in ma

Investment Opportunities in Self Storage

Introduction to Self Storage Development

Self storage has seen some dramatic changes over the last few decades it has been in existence, especially in the last 15 years. In 1993, there were approximately 21,300 self storage facilities in the United States. Today, that number has more than doubled, with industry experts reporting roughly 60,000 facilities. Those facilities comprise more than 1.7 billion rentable square feet of storage space.

Introduction to Self Storage

Self Storage Association Definition: Self Storage facilities are real property designed and used for the purpose of renting or leasing individual storage spaces to tenants who are to have access to such space for the purpose of storing and removing personal property. They offer rental on a month-to-month basis of individual spaces where customers provide their own lock and have sole access to their space. Today’s typical storage facility may comprise several one or two-story buildings on two to 6 acres of land, or a multiple-story building, containing a carefully designed unit mix of spaces. The units typically range in size from 5X5 to 10X30 feet with 30,000 to 120,000 total rentable square feet of space.

How to Reduce Your Self Storage Customer Acquisition Costs
Think about the cost of acquiring this customer. What if it could cost less? What if it could lower your cost of acquisition by 20%? Think about how much money you spend on advertising. Yellow pages, magazines, newspapers, web, etc. Do you know the bottom line that each one of your mediums is bringing you? Do you know which is performing the best?

How to Create a Self Storage Business Plan

Now for many people, the thought of creating a business plan is akin to the fear of public speaking. However, it does not have to be such an unpleasant task, especially since we already have the information. Our personal financial statement, the project due diligence and the market analysis comprise just about all of the information needed. All we need to do is to organize this information into a coherent document. Our business plan is an opportunity to present ourselves and the deal in the best possible light. It is designed to give the lender an in-depth look at yourself as a borrower including your past successes, the reasons why this project is so strong, and the reasons it will succeed in this market. This will all be supported by facts from your research and due diligence.

Financing Your Self Storage Facility

Most types of investments won’t allow the use of high leverage using the securities themselves as collateral. This makes real estate investing somewhat unique in its use of financing. The use of leverage in real estate investments is a proven method to accelerate returns and create wealth. But one must be careful not to over-leverage. As we examine a few of the various types and sources of financing available for self storage facilities, I will also point out the dangers that can result from over-leverage and pitfalls of various financing structures.

FACTS For Finding the Right Investment Professional
Does your current advisor treat you like a number? Do you feel like you can’t trust your financial advisor to work with your best interests in mind? Here’s a foolproof system to help you find the right investment professional for you. It’s all about getting the FACTS.

A few Green truths

Those of you investing in green businesses are in good company. Even as skittish investors yanked an estimated $225 billion from stock funds last year, roughly $1.5 billion flowed into green funds during that same time, according to a Smart Money article by Elizabeth O’Brien entitled; “10 Things Green Companies Won’t Tell You.” Still, popular as it is, investing in green may not be everything you imagine. Not every company who claims the green categorization is 100% green. Along with the green you may have to put up with some black and blue. O’Brien’s article offers the following examples:

Building a Self Storage Facility

All Across the United States, entrepreneurs are talking about the self storage business. The word is out that investing in the mini storage business can be very profitable. And it’s not just the experienced investors that have their eye on the Self Storage Business prize. With lower building and management costs than virtually all other real estate investments and a failure rate of around 7 percent, the self storage industry is drawing first-time business owners and investors alike.

Self Storage Feasibility Studies

So you’ve decided to get into the self-storage business by developing your own Self Storage Facility. Well the first step should be to locate a viable parcel of ground to develop. However, many investors find that determining an adequate site is a little more difficult than they imagined, and perhaps, should be done with the aid of an independent third party. Why? Because a feasibility study, conducted by a professional, will provide an in-depth analysis of the location to determine if it is viable for Self-Storage.

The Forbes Factor

This past week, I had several speaking engagements and a broadcast event on the East Coast. My travels ended up in New York City, and as I always do when I have extra time in The Big Apple, I called to see if my friend and colleague Steve Forbes had a few minutes to spare. Mr. Forbes' staff graciously adjusted his schedule so we could spend some time together. After discussions of our individual books and businesses, the talk, as it often does, turned to the economy. Steve Forbes is a great person to talk to if you want to rise above the minute-by-minute gloom and doom predictions from the media and get an overall perspective on the economy and the opportunities that lie before us.

The Magic of Entrepreneurship
James Dicks examines the benefits of creating your own small business.

A Tale of Two Guys
The economy is looking better and better every day. Which means it's the right time to revisit your portfolio and restructure it to outperform inflation and provide a stream of income. When was the last time you looked at your portfolio?

Decisions, Decisions, Decisions
James Dicks examines the need to make some critical decisions that will affect your future financial life.

Build a Financial Plan “as you see it”
My goal is to help you achieve that kind of discipline, so that you can move from where you are to where you want to be. That means slightly different things for different people-there's no "one size fits all"-but that is the fun and beauty of financial independence.

Using your dreams and goals to create wealth Part 1
I thought, you can go where you want to go and do what you want to do, when you want to do it. What I had to discover-and in fact didn't discover for many years-was that having the money wasn't as important as knowing what to do with the money once I got it. In reality, as it turned out, money was only a tool.

First Step-Using your dreams and goals to create wealth Part 2

To take your first step and set your mind on the course to financial success, you must begin to dream. You must begin to envision the kind of life you desire. For some of you, this will be easy, because you have dreamed all your life. For others, it will be more difficult. Why? Some people simply don't know how to dream-they've never tapped into their imagination deeply enough to let their thoughts run free.

Are Entrepreneurs Trading When They Should Be Investing In PR?
Pulling the Plug After Only 30 Days! How About 24 Hours?

Principles of Wealth Creation

To accomplish your goal of becoming financially free, you will need to master specific principles of wealth creation. No, these aren’t some magical set of principles we found scratched in papyrus scrolls in the ruins of an ancient temple. They’re contemporary, commonsense principles. At the same time, though, they are magical, because they create the basis for a sound foundation of wealth creation.

A millionaires dreams

Financial freedom is your dream. As long as you can dream, you can continue to succeed. Show me a person who has no dream, and I will show you someone who is poor. A millionaire dreams, and then sets out to make those dreams real. Once you stop dreaming, you stop the magic. That’s because you have created the world you wanted. You stop moving forward, because your dreams have ended. Either you are content to live with what you have or you are constantly frustrated because you don’t have enough-or you learn to dream again.

Dreaming is fun, isn’t it? Part 3

Someone once said that what the mind can see, the body can achieve. I believe it. I go a step further. I believe that the mind must see it before the body is able to work for it. Look at another realm of human endeavor: sports. When Roger Bannister broke the four-minute mile, he saw it long before he did it. Over and over in his mind, he later recalled, he visualized doing what had been deemed to be impossible. Interestingly enough, once Bannister did what no one else had ever done before, others quickly succeeded in doing it.

Focus Your Dreams to Make Them Come Alive
What will you be interested in after you buy all of those lavish things you always thought you wanted? What’s beyond the bigger car, the faster boat, and the fancier house? Whatever they are, those are the really important things.

Is It Alright to Invest Money in Financial Markets Any Time?
A number of people like looking for a way they can earn more money. While there is the preferred solution of keeping your money in the bank, there are also some who invest in financial markets. Whichever method you choose, you have to accept that they are all susceptible to some risk.

Diminished Value and Gap Insurance “Know your Rights”
Did you know that if you are in an accident that you can get a second check from the insurance company for diminished value on your automobile? There are numerous financial strategies that can and will assist you and your family achieves financial success.

Washing machine rental - Is your idea this good?

In September of last year I made a small loan to a lady in Columbia. Although I don’t know Yaneris Canate Rios personally, she made an application for $1,125 through Kiva.org. In Yaneris’ tiny community of El Milagro the ladies still all washed their clothes by hand. She wanted to purchase 5 washing machines to rent to her neighbors. I provided the last $50 to complete her loan. Each month I would see tiny payments come on – averaging about $3.84 as a repayment on that loan.

7 keys to taking control of your finances for the first time
Are you a passenger when it comes to the family finances? With busy lives, household chores are often divided up to help families muddle through the chaos of daily life. That is why it is not uncommon for one partner in a relationship to manage the day to day household spending, savings and other financial affairs.

Self Storage Investing Webinars Can Hold Valuable Tips

Self storage investing can be a difficult industry to get into. As with any real estate investing, it can be overwhelming at first to even begin to learn about all the rules, laws, and regulations that come with owning a self storage property. However, there are several great resources online that can help individuals learn about buying their first self storage property. Besides e-books and white papers about self storage investing, there are also webinars that can be great resources.

The Benefits of Fusion Marketing Your Self Storage Facility with Other Local Businesses
Fusion marketing is the act of cross promoting other local businesses who will in turn promote your own. This type of marketing can have real success for businesses, especially when their products or services overlap or they are in the same immediate area.

Do Millionaires Shop at Thrift Stores? The Answer May Surprise You
When most people think of millionaires, they envision someone who lives in a fancy house and drives fancy cars. However as you will see, that is not usually the case. A great many millionaires live very conservative lifestyles and spend money very carefully. So the answer to the question of, “Do millionaires shop at Thrift Stores?” is very possibly yes.

INVESTING IN TIMES OF UNCERTAINTY AND VOLATILITY - Part 3 INVESTING WHEN THE MARKET IS BAD
This article, part three of a four part series on investing in times of uincertainty and volatility, answers the question of whether you are wasting your money by investing when "the market is bad."

What Financial Advisors Can Learn from Eli Manning

Following a series of confidential interviews with a broad sample of advisors in the firm, it became clear to me that many suffered from anxiety, because of the harsh market conditions and because of the president’s high performance expectations, but also because they harbored their own internal insecurities. I designed a series of training programs to teach the advisors how to recognize and overcome their fears, maintain an optimistic and proactive approach with their clients, use active listening skills, overcome stress and anxiety related to their job and ultimately lead to their clients directing new referrals to them. But the most important issue I helped these advisors overcome? You guessed it: impostor fear.

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