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While the research for this book began in the spring of 2004, the idea was born nearly two years earlier when we interviewed Cristina Martinez for our first book, *The Millionaire Real Estate Agent*. Cristina had built an amazing real estate sales business that generated over $4 million in gross income each year by catering to residential real estate investors. The sto-ries she told inspired us and pointed us down the winding path that ends with these pages. Thanks, Cristina. I’d be remiss not to mention Michael Allen, who was my original wealth-building mentor.
Many of the ideas in this book about money and wealth building came to me long ago during our breakfast discussions. Although Michael is no longer with us, he has been ever-present in my thoughts, especially during the writing of this book. He has my deepest gratitude. We began the search for investor interviewees by focusing on the wonderfully talented and successful real estate agents and investors we’ve known for years and kept asking for referrals until we expanded our list past those initial contacts. While everyone who agreed to be interviewed was helpful and insightful, several people really stand out because they went above and beyond to introduce us to more investors or supply more information. The first name that springs to mind is Dyches Boddiford, who, even though he didn’t really know us, extended himself again and again by putting us in touch with numerous investors, sending us his material on entity planning, and participating in teleconferences to dis- cuss the early systems and models we had developed.
Don Zeleznak George Castleberry, Tamara Fuller, Renata Circeo, Don Beck, and Elmer Diaz also participated in those teleconferences and wowed each of us with their incredible knowledge about the finer details of market analysis, property acquisition, and property management. Not only are they all incredible investors, they are all teachers at heart. Jimmy and Linda McKissack shared their insights into how they parlayed their real estate sales business into a phenomenal investing business. Jimmy’s knowledge of the Texas foreclosure process lit our way through that thicket of infor- mation. Early on, Chris Hake took it upon himself to devise a spreadsheet that laid out how many properties one would have to own and how much cash flow those properties would have to generate to net a million dollars in annual income.
George Meidhof and Michael Huang guided us through the early stages of how to set up legal entities for investments and how to structure every kind of partnership. George also visited us in Austin and walked us through the aisles of a home improvement store to show us how he shops for bargains when fixing up properties. Both Rick Villani and Rob Harrington, Jr., spent many hours with us, on the phone and in person, detailing how they built their uniquely different but highly successful investment businesses. Rick has made fixing and flipping houses into a science, and Rob’s the same with evaluating and acquiring commercial properties.
They were huge allies in the writing of this book, and their wisdom and insights touch more sections than we can name here. We’d also like to extend a special thank you to bestselling investment authors Robert T. Kiyosaki and Robert Shemin, who gener- ously took time off to talk with us at length about their investment philosophies.