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Posted on November 18, 2020 by mrlifeadvise.com — Leave a comment

Benefits from never gambling again, using NEGA our program. Eric´s story.

So this story we are telling you about today, is about one of our long-term clients from our business consulting division, and we have his permission to tell the story publicly in this article.

Eric is an old client of ours, and he is 43 years old and he runs a smaller construction and roofing business with 20+ employees.

His company does 3 million dollar a year in turnover and he is the sole owner, and the company has zero debt.

He started the company 21 years ago at the age of 22 so he is a self made guy.

So these are the positive thing about Erics financial situation.

He has a salary of 500.0000 dollars a year and he pays 40% in tax and he lives with his two dogs in a 3 bedroom town house.

Eric has a net income of 300.000 dollars and he has fixed costs of 80.000 dollars a year and then comes the cash purchases of food and other things.

So now you would think if you do the math that maybe he has invested and saved almost 200.000 dollars a year for many years so this guy is doing really well!.

Here comes the bad news with Eric, he is a gambler and he plays both online casinos and he bets heavily on sports, where NBA,NFL,NHL and European soccer is his favorite’s to bet on.

This heavy gambling takes place in Erics life when he comes home from work, and before he goes to bed he bets on many objects that takes place over night.

We have had several conversations with Eric over the past 9 years that he has been a client of ours, that maybe it would be a good idea to stop gambling and just invest his money on the stock market and into real estate instead.

Eric has not been willing to do that, and he has told as that he wants to continue betting on sports because he likes it to much.

So what has now changed?, in April Eric lost his best friend to Covid-19 and he was devastated and he wanted to pay of his late friends mortgage to help the two children and the widow out.

Here comes the wake up call, Eric figures out that he was no savings , no stocks or bonds that he can sell to cover the mortgage and no 401K to take money out of.

Eric now contacts us and demands a meeting the same day, and his request is that we take over his finances for 3 year period, true a wide Power of attorney.

So he requests that we take care of his personal finances and in his business finances.

He also ask us to put him on NEGA, our gambling treatment program that we have developed over the past 20 years time.

So in May this year Mrlifeadvise consulting takes over his finances together with a CPA to make sure that we handle everything correctly.

So after having lost around 3.7 million dollars over a 20+ year period Eric is now for the first time in his adult life free from the gambling demon, and he has opened up a trading account to buy stocks from each monthly paycheck as a type of 401K savings account.

He has had many emotionally bad days and some days where he has been upset with himself for wasting all this money over all this time.

And if he had invested these money into global index funds his portfolio would have been worth anywhere from 6-9 million dollars in 2020.

Instead of like now having almost nothing in his savings account.

So Eric is still one of the lucky ones, he has a company that are still doing 85% of the business he had before COVID-19 , and he still has time at the age of 43 to change his life around.

He is one of these cases that we do not here about, since he has not hit rock bottom , because he has been able to always pay his bills and take care of his business true all these years.

But if something would to happen to his business and it would go under then ,Eric would have nothing saved up for a rainy day.

So even if you are not a gambler who have accumulated debts, you should ask yourself do i have any saving or do i spend all my loose money gambling?.

Erics father was a lawyer with a very serious gambling problem when it came to OTB/Horse betting and he developed also a heavy drinking problem and he died pennyless at the age of 72 years in a studio apartment and he did not have more than 4 dollars in assets, so Eric paid for the funeral.

So our read on why Eric had his wake up call, is because when he had to attend his best friends funeral and when he could not just pay away his best friends mortgage in a day, he saw his own future life flash before his eyes, that maybe he would end up in a studio apartment penny less 30 years from now if he does not stop gambling today!.

So stopping before hitting rock bottom with any addiction, is always the best thing you can do and always ask for help, you will not be able to white knuckle it on your own!.

Today Eric called us, and said that he feels better than ever, he sleeps 8 h a night he does not wake up thinking to himself how are the games going that he has a lot of money riding on them.

And he spends more time outdoors hiking with his two dogs, and takes his deceased friends kids out on activities every weekend(he is the god father).

Eric also told us that he is so stress free on a personal level, the business side he can always deal with, but the personal level is something that he feels now looking back at his life that the mornings waking up when he had lost 12.000 dollars on bad sports bets and going to work and faking a smile to keep the spirits up towards his workers was difficult.

So waking up stress free is something he really enjoys, and he is now paying off his best friends mortgage on their house on a monthly basis.

So if you want to help somebody, try and clean them up and get them treament, you can do so much by just being there and helping out, going to AA,AN,GA and other meetings is so important and many times people need a push to take that step, they are not always able to make that decision on their own!.

It takes a lot of gut from a 43 years old successful business owner to go and ask for help with his finances and this is not a sign of weakness but actually a sing of strength that you reach out for help!.

So if you know anybody who has a gambling addiction, then you should really check out our program NEGA(NEVER EVER GAMBLE AGAIN) here attached and in our store.

So take care everybody.

Mrlifeadvise.

Life and Business coaching — Life and business coaching at its best!

NEGA/NEVER EVER GAMBLE AGAIN

Posted on November 14, 2020 by mrlifeadvise.com — Leave a comment

What are the similarities between a successful tv-show and a successful company?.

So this example is something we often use at Mrlifeadvise when we meet corporate clients that are in the age range of 35-45 years, when we are pitching ourselves for management consulting gigs in person.

So the similarities are quite easy to see for a trained eye, between a successful company and a successful tv-show.

And that is the cast and the employees, both will make or break the tv-show or the company.

So let us give you an example of a very successful tv-show that many might remember and that is Dawsons creek, that was filmed in Wilmington North Carolina.

So a show without the beautiful back drops of LA or NYC, that many shows has often taken advantage of.

But they built the cast 100% right from day one, and that is what made this tv-show so successful that we see people talking about it even 20 years later.

So if we look at some of the cast members that we could call management in a company, we have James Van der Beek as Dawson, we have Joshua Jackson as Pacey, we have Michelle Willams as Jen and of course Katie Holmes as Joey.

So this is your CEO, COO,CFO and head of HR in these 4 people.

Then you have the support cast that would be mid level management in a company. And here you find actors like Mary Beth Peil as Evelyn Grams Ryan, we have Kerr Smith as Jack , we have Mary Margret Humes as Gail Leery and of course Busy Philipps as Audrey Liddell.

Not to forget the underrated Meredith Monroe as Andy McPhee, who was by far the oldest of the so called high scholars on the show, she was almost 30(29) when she starred on her first episode in Dawsons creek.

Then comes what we would call the workers of the company, and we can see the same in the cast of Dawsons creek like Dylan Neal as Doug Witter, we have Nina Repeta as Bessie Potter, these actors played the older brother and sister to Pacey and Joey.

And then you have the guest stars that came in for awhile to improve the show like Sasha Alexander as Gretchen Witter, these will be your employees that you are not goanna be able to hold onto for many years, but they will work for a year or two and improve your business and then move on to bigger and better things.

But then you see on the reunions that it is the lead cast together with mid level management that counts, the rest is just supporting actors.

And that is the same in many companies that it is the management and mid level management that you see and here from.

But this is what makes 1 out for 50 tv-shows on the same topic to become a world wide megahit!.

While out of the other 49 tv-shows many only have one or two season before being cut for week viewer ratings, and very few people remember them 20 years later.

And the same thing goes for start up companies that if they have the right cast (the right people) all in the same place at the same time, then it becomes that big success.

And this is how you need to look at building teams and the workforce of a company.

Figure out who your lead cast will be, figure out who your midlevel management will be, and then let them then hire the support cast (the workers).

So this is easy to say and understand, but it is really difficult to do in real life, when you are putting together either a tv-show or building a company.

You need a lot of luck to go with your hard work to get that hit!

And only time will tell if you where able to get it right or not.

Dawsons creek was lucky enough that they where able to keep the lead cast together for all 6 season.

Because keeping the lead cast together that works well with each other is the key to keep the ratings up as a tv show, and the same goes for a company, that losing key people early on or in the middle of growing your business is really hard to deal with.

And usually you can not replace these actors or people very easily.

Without going into to many other tv-shows, we can clearly see one other mega hit show that came out in 2003 called The O.C that had Ben McKenzie as Ryan Atwood and Mischa Barton as Marissa Cooper in the lead roles as a modern Romeo and Julia story.

So this show was a mega hit for 3 seasons, but then Mischa Barton left the show in the last episode of season 3 and the season 4 was cut to only 16 episodes, before being axed.

So with tv-shows and with companies the best plan of action is to keep the team together for as long as possible, and you need to understand that high personal turnover is almost always bad for any tv-show or company.

So this is a way to easily identify the similarities between a hit show and a very successful company.

Take care.

Mrlifeadvise.

Posted on November 13, 2020 by mrlifeadvise.com — Leave a comment

The next mandatory US lockdown will take 5 million jobs of the market, period!.

So as business consultant mainly firm towards smaller and medium sized companies, the quotes from Doctor Osterholm of a 4-6 weeks mandatory lockdown has not gone over well within our client community.

The brutal reality is that 1/5 small and medium business wont make it past this year, they will stop operating because they got no working capital left.

What happen back in March was that many small and medium sized business owners tried to hunker down for a what everybody hoped was 1-3 months of lock downs.

Now we are 8 months in already and we see conversations about another lock down looming when the advisers of the presumed president elect Biden comes out and says these things.

One of our New york clients emailed us this yesterday, Dear,Mrlifeadvise i am so confused on what i shall do in this situation going forward.

My small dry-cleaning and repair store, has a 18.000 dollar monthly lease and i have a lease for this year and true all of 2021.

My business have gone down 70%, and i have been forced to let all my staff go, so it is only me and my brother working their at the moment.

We have been able to pay all of our bills monthly including out rent on the store.

But we have not taken a paycheck since March, so we have been living on our savings and now we are running out in the end of this month.

Our father lives in Texas and he has promised to lend us money to open up a store there, if we leave NYC like so many others before us this year.

But we have been living in NYC for over 10 years time, and our friends and our lives are here.

One option for us would be to cash in our 401K and take the penalty cost which is high, what shall we do?, if there is another mandatory close down coming soon.

Since March/April 2020, there is no penalty to take out money in advance from your 401K account if you have a legit reason to do so, like lay offs and closing down businesses etc.

So the advise we have given other clients that are located in NYC or in California is to run for your life, there is just more taxes and other problems and burdens being put on you as a small business owner during 2021 and 2022.

One of our other clients brother got fined by an idiot city employee in NYC for having his bakery door open in July to let some fresh air in!.

So forget about NYC and California if you are small business, rather go to Texas or Florida and start over if you can.

We also understand that it is emotionally difficulty to close down a business that you have put your heart and your soul into, not to mention your blood sweat and tears.

But dipping into your 401K even without penalty costs is crazy, since non of us knows if this COVID-19 pandemic will lingerie for another year into late 2021.

So the only time you should dip into your 401K account is if you know for a fact that saving your home or business is goanna be a better financial decision that losing them to foreclosure or bankruptcy, but do not gamble on the stock market with your pension savings at this ATH stock market.

So we talked from Mrlifeadvise with a CPA in Colorado yesterday who did an estimate that 5 million jobs will be lost if we close down for a 4-6 weeks period again this year.

And those jobs once lost, will not come back for at least 12-18 months

Because the companies that are scarping by(barley right now) will not survive anymore hits like a mandatory lock downs for another 4-6 weeks, that hit would be to severe to their small or medium size businesses.

So let us hope that cooler heads will prevail and we keep high risk people safe and the rest of us goes to work like normally with our masks and some social distancing when possible.

But quite frankly the people that have been working for 15 years now have had first the deep financial crash of 2007-2011 to deal with, and now on top of that a COVID-19 pandemic 10 years after the last serious financial crisis.

And many countries and companies where barley back in 2019 to the numbers prior to 2008 levels, from the last crisis with very small savings to take on another hit like this.

So take care everybody.

Mrlifeadvise.

Posted on November 8, 2020 by mrlifeadvise.com — Leave a comment

How to manage Hollywood actors money properly!.

So here comes a very intersting article on how to manage Hollywood actors money ,and other peoples money who are expected to have a short career properly!.

Alan a long time consultant of us, from Los Angeles have managed the money and investments for hundreds of clients in the business we call Hollywood or showbiz.

Alan ran for over 30 years a full service accounting and money management firm in Hollywood and he used some really smart strategies to help his clients out along the way towards their financial independence.

So Alan new from experience that most Hollywood careers will last around 5 years, and that means that you will make the bulk of your money with that one hit or a few hits that you usually get in a normal acting career.

So Alan new that a lot of young actors and musicians are goanna be hot for that 5 year period and then usually it gets trickier since Hollywood is based on new talent coming in all the time

And very few people make it to the A-list or even the B-list categories over time.

What we mean by A and B list careers is that you act every year on a regular basis and you have real income coming in on a yearly basis from acting.

So what a typical Hollywood career looks like is that at 22 years old you get cast in that tv-show that becomes a real hit and you act 5-6 years in that show.

But then usually the second project after the hit show ends is more difficulty to pinpoint.

And maybe you can act for another 5 years after the show has ended, but if you have been type casted for one roll type it will be much more difficult to re-invent yourself in Hollywood.

So Alan had a few ground rules that the clients needed to accept upfront and those where that he did not take on any clients who had not signed at least a 500.000 dollar a year contract before taxes.

So he wanted to have clients that had something he could work with.

The second thing he demanded was a 3 year Power of attorney to handle the finances for the client, and many potential clients did not like that term and that was a deal breaker for many clients, but the once that stayed where all satisfied in the end.

Alan had checks and balances in order in the sense, that he had an outside CPA checking the accounts once month so there was no misuse of funds from Alans companies side, and the client got that report once a year.

Which is something that we also highly recommend that there is checks and balances, that if you give an adviser full access or a power of attorney, find a CPA who will cover your back by looking at your financial statements and investments from your financial adviser, so you have your back covered.

Because it happens all the time that financial advisers take advantages of clients funds, and there are even some real scammers out there.

Most of the financial adviser are serious about their profession, but you need to do your due diligence properly before you choose a financial adviser.

Alan was often brought in by various agents who represented younger clients who had signed nice looking contracts.

Alan charged 5% of the income of the actor or client, and on top of that he took 10% of the investment returns.

And this is how he handled his clients money and how the explained the situation to the young red hot clients, who wanted the world today here and now!.

Alan sat down with the clients in front of a big tv and he played clips from different tv-shows and movies, and said look at this actor or this actress.

And here is where they are today financially, and he used the examples of people who made millions and lost it all!.

This can be you in 10 years, do you want that or do you want me to help you secure your financial future going forward?.

And this kind of visual schooling did really take and the client understood that this is a real thing in Hollywood when the lights go out on your careers ends, and you have nothing to show for more than just memories.

So the way Alan invested was that he first set a monthly budget for the client to live on , which was usually around 8.000 dollars a month.

So the rent for an apartment was set at 30% of the net spent income so 2400 dollars + utilities.

Then he set 900 dollars for a car, a good nice new car who the client could use for 10 years going forward, usually he opted for an Audi A6 or Range rover, a car that would take take the client to where he or she needed to go, but also had many good qualities as looks and safety features.

Then insurances and health care plans was important to make sure that the client was well protected in all aspects.

Usually the client had then 3500-4000 dollars left that was goanna cover Everything Else that month.

And what Alan did was that he made sure that the client had 500 dollars in tip money cash, everything else had to be put on a credit card with cashback rebate, he did not like the point rewards since they get inflated by purpose by the companies offering the points.

This Way Alan could see the monthly spending of the client, and if we saw red flags he could act on in for each individual month, and then sort out with the client why certain areas took up so much of the monthly budget.

So how did Alan and his colleges invest the clients money?.

So we as an example we use here a client that was making 300.000 dollars after taxes and agent, financial adviser costs.

What was always looked at was from which town or city was the client originally from?, and Alan always suggested that it was a good time to leave Hollywood and Los Angeles when your career was no longer booming.

So if the client was from a nice smaller town where houses where trading at 5-15% of the Los Angeles prices then Alan took a mortgage on a house in their hometown, of course with consulting the client, and making sure that there was a good family/relatives still living in that area

And the goal was to pay of this house inside 5 years time, so the client had a financial asset in his or her name.

The second investment that was made was to build up a stock portfolio with 30-40 companies and use the 60+20+20% method for the clients.

If you do not know what the 60+20+20% method is, it is a investment method used to buy 60% blue chip stocks in 30 different companies so 2% per company, then 20% is for bigger tech companies like Facebook, Google, Amazon and similar companies.

The last 20% was to try and find those high risk ,high reward stocks in new start ups for both tech and biotech each year, and hope to find that one rocket every other year.

So usually 100.000 dollars was invested each year this way into the stock portfolio.

Then the reaming money which was anywhere from 50.000-75.000 Alan suggested that 20% of that was given to animal shelters and the rest was used to invest in the clients own LLC/business.

So the idea was to figure out what the client was interested in and then open up an LLC and then help the client source products or whatever to slowly build up a solid business.

A few really good examples are Jessica Alba and Jessica Simpson who both made a lot of money starting up their own business along side their acting and music careers.

The business goal was that inside 5 years time the company should have at least 1 million dollars in annual revenue and earn 25% in net profit.

So this would give the client a way to have a life outside of the Hollywood show business.

And this idea of a small own LLC is in our minds a genius idea to build up a money generating side hustle, that other people can manage for the actor/actress, but is there when the Hollywood career comes to an end.

But where the client can use social media for marketing the business, when they are still active and hot in the business.

This was not possible 15 years ago, with the lack of social media back then, but in todays world it is very easy for the client to actively market their own business.

So this is how you invest money for a client that you know will have a short career according to all available statistics over the past 60 years time.

The same goes for athletes, that also have an average of a 5 years professional career according to all available statistics.

So when you have a client that you believe will have a short career, you do not want them to handle their own finances, but you want a professional person to handle these investments but also take care of all taxes and other serious matters so they dont end up owing back taxes.

What people also forget is that, this way the client can say to friends and family and hang rounds that my financial manger is in control of my finances, so i can not lend you 100.000 for that fantastic business adventure that most people come out of the woods to present to you once you make a little bit more money than the average person does.

So you take way that decision making and it helps the client out with not having to say NO to friends and family and getting shamed for not being able to give everybody a big chunk of change.

Take care.

Mrlifeadvise.

Posted on November 3, 2020 by mrlifeadvise.com — Leave a comment

How to invest your money on the stock market?.

So this is a question that a lot of clients ask us on a yearly basis.

How do i invest on the stock market for my savings and for my retirement?.

So this is what we tell all of our clients, we can look back 100 years on the financial markets and also go over the history of the stock market since it started.

So having your money liquid/cash/savings account has been a really bad idea for the past 100 years time.

Inflation has then eaten up your savings over time.

So investing into to the stock market is the best way to let you nest egg grow, even if it only grows with 8% on an average.

So the way you build a stable but also interesting stock portfolio is to follow the 60+20+20 principle.

The principle works like this, and we learned this principle from a very good investor who helps us out with the stock market support to our clients, this Swedish guy worked at the factory floor for over 45 years time and he invested 20% of his monthly net income for 45 years and he retired with over 5 million dollars in his stock portfolio, having had a 50.000 USD salary before tax for most of his life.

So the way he could invest 20% of his monthly net income was that he picked up extra shifts in the factory he worked in as overtime when there was big holidays and when he got double pay for his hours.

This extra work made sure that he did not have to go without normal stuff, just because he wanted to invest 20% of his monthly net income into the stock market.

One tip he gave to save money was that he read all newspapers once a week in the library instead of having any subscriptions.

Another tip was that he never overspent on clothes or drinking alcohol, more than a few times a year.

So how did his investment system look like when we talk about the 60+20+20 principle?.

What he did was that he bought 60% , Blue chip stocks, blue chip companies, and if you do not know what blue chip stocks are, they are companies like Pepsi, Coca-cola and similar stable oldtimers.

And the way you divide these 60% into blue chip companies is that you pick 30 different companies and you invest 2% of your monthly savings into these 30 companies.

The second part 20% is meant to be invested into big tech companies, he started with IBM and Microsoft , Cannon at the time.

And over time for him it became Facebook, Youtube, Twitter and Google/Alphabet and similar companies.

The last 20% is what he called gambling stocks, where he tried to find 4 companies each year in the start up sector for bio medics and high tech companies.

The way he saw this was that he wanted to find one stock that could reach the stars over the next 20 years time, and then one that would be decent.

And then he was willing to let the other two stocks be complete busts.

This way he was able to find a few 100 times the money stocks over time!.

So when our clients asks us how to invest over time, this is a method that we like to use and to promote.

So take care out there.

Mrlifeadvise.

Posted on October 27, 2020 by mrlifeadvise.com — Leave a comment

Most of our COVID-19 lock down predictions, have (unfortunately) come true for business owners!

Dear, Reader and dear clients of Mrlifeadvise, we are so sad to say that, most of our predictions made back in March 2020 have come true now in the end of October 2020 for the small and medium sized business owners.

We hoped that we where wrong when we told our readers and clients what the outcome of the lock downs would be on many small and medium sized business all over the world back in March 2020.

So this is not a i told you so article, this is just our way of laying down the facts for our readers and clients.

And also trying to give some really sound advice, yes we are not advising we are giving advice in this article.

For you who understand the difference between advice and advise, is that as advisers we give you are opinion and we ask you to make the decision, now we are actually advising you (urging) you to look at these matters very close for your own business future.

So we told you that small and medium sized business will not survive more than a maximum of 90 days close down of their normal business practices.

Because many small and medium sized companies are living month to month, with almost no savings.

And what ever credit limit they had with banks or lenders, they have maxed out that inside a 90 day period.

Many companies/clients)asked us back in March and April what they where suppose to do with their empty restaurant or coffee shop, hair shops, and similar establishments that is built on physical walk in customers.

Our advice at that time was that be clear on that we are goanna see some support offers from governments, but many companies will not qualify for them, or even if they qualify for them they will not get the funds quickly.

So we told all of our clients that buckle down for at least 6-12 months of being shut down , or being able to operate at less than 50% of your capacity.

And we also told our clients that do not sign any personal liabilities for loans or credits and under no circumstance put your house/home up for collateral for the loans/credits.

Some people took our advice and let their business close in May/July and many of them will have the possibility to open up again a new business in the future.

But more than half of our clients, did decide to co-sign loans with private liabilities in April-July and they are now on the hook for several hundreds of thousands of dollars.

We are living in a world where air traffic is down over 95% since January, we have 95% empty hotel resorts and restaurants and coffee shops are closed for good.

The problem we have is that many tourist resorts are in big trouble as we speak.

So we know that we have a financial nuclear winter coming our way in 2021, so how do we know that?, it is actually quite simple over half of our small and medium sized business clients will not survive with their businesses.

So it means that half of Mrlifeadvises global customers will not survive passed December 2020.

There is an illusion by mainly politicians around the world that has never ran a business in their life that you can shut down the society and hide in the basement and then you can re-open your business again, and maybe shut down again and re-open again.

Every sane business owner knows that this model does not work at all!.

More than half of all New York’s restaurant’s, coffee shops and brick and mortar shops will not re-open again in 2021, what does that tell you?.

So we are now facing as a collective world a tsunami of debt that has already started to snowball down a very steep hill.

So now we have talked about the issues, what are the solutions for business owners about to lose their shirts?.

So here is a few things that you can do as a small business owner when you are about to lose it all!

If you know that you will lose your home to foreclosure within the next 3-6 months time, you need to to figure out where your family is goanna live for the next few years while you regroup and put your finances back together.

Nr1: Family?, can you as a 5 member family move into your grandparents or siblings.

Some might be able to do so if their family has a bigger house that can accommodate a 5 person family and maybe even 2-3 pets.

If you have a family that can help, but you are not on speaking terms, this is the time to visit them and mend fences and also swallow your pride, for the sake of your family.

Nr2: Camper?, so this option might be the best option for a 5 member family with two or three pets.

A camper will allow your family to have a roof over your head, access to a shower and a toilet, and most of all you can move around and work in different places, where there is work even if it is seasonal.

The few rules here to follow is that make sure that it is on finances or that a family member owns the camper, so nobody can repo it from you.

Also make sure that your pets have a www.tractive.com or similar GPS collar for your dog and for your cat, this way when they get lost you will be able to track them down in most cases, and find them again.

The cost is 50 dollars per collar and 80 dollars a year per GPS coverage per collar, and this is well worth the money to keep your family members(pets) safe, when you are living in a camper and moving around.

Second rule for living in a camper with a family of 5 is that you need to clean it every day for 30min, to make sure that you are living in a clean environment.

Third rule of living in a camper is that everybody works, including the children it can be a paper route it could be what ever minimum wage job they can find, before and after school, because everybody pitches in!.

We do recommend that if you stay put for a longer time in one area that the kids enroll into school , and if you will keep moving around that you home school the children in the camper.

Rule four is very important and that is that you stay together and you fight together as a family, true these tough times.

There is a few rules in life that you should take to hearth and that is that families stay together and business comes and goes, it is just the nature of the business of being a business owner.

So just because you lose your business and your home , you do not need to also lose your family.

Always remember when in self doubt, your children and your pets love you no matter what accommodation you live in at the moment as long as you stay together.

This is a sad article that we have to write today, but the cold heart truth is that we are goanna live true a tsunami of bankruptcies and foreclosures in the upcoming 18 months time, world wide.

So you will need all the friends and family you have access to and stay strong and never give up on your family or your pets, just because you go true financial hell!.

Take care out there.

Mrlifeadvise.

Posted on October 18, 2020 by mrlifeadvise.com — Leave a comment

Unemployment!.

So a lot of people have become unemployed world wide during the past 7 months time starting in March 2020.

We feel the pain everyday as a business consulting firm who works with small to medium size cooperation’s and who also does management consulting.

woman with hands on her face in front of a laptop — Unemployed

We can see that a large numbers of office workers have been laid off and this also includes a lot of mid level managers.

For many companies the fall has been the big laying off season, many companies kept the staff on during the spring and over the summer, because any half decent manager knows that people is your biggest asset in whatever business you are involved in.

So letting people go is always dangerous because it will always require in the future to hire new staff that is not familiar with your business and that is always a big cost to train people.

But these lock downs have created such a snowball affect that we have never even seen before.

The bad news is that 2021 will be one of the toughest financial years in many peoples life’s.

And we will not start to see the light at the end of the tunnel until maybe early 2022 or even later than that.

Some businesses will handle this crisis that we are living in better than others, but we are living true harsh times right now.

We know that a lot of our clients will lose their homes and cars, there is no doubt about that, these are the times we are living in right now.

The problem is that many companies are not hiring right now if we look away from Amazon and Walmart type of businesses.

Because most companies are trying to wait this crisis out.

So for many former employed people , now is the time to start your own business if you can not find employment inside 3 months from being let go.

Now here comes the kicker in this article!, you do not own your former employer any loyalty what so ever.

You sold your time for money to your employer, (this is what employment is).

And bigger cooperation’s does not care about you as an employee at all.

Your are always expandable to them.

So let us give you an example here so you understand what we are talking about, when we talk about starting your own business and not feeling any loyalty to your former employer.

You where employed in an office selling something as inside sales.

You know the margins the company had on these products.

If you can find a similar product and source it yourself and sell to companies for a lower price, then here you have a vital business to support yourself and your family.

But BE VERY CLEAR ON THIS!, you will have to work very hard maybe even 90h a week to launch this new business, so do not do it unless you feel 100% sure that you are ready willing and able to do it!.

Depression usually starts to set in with many people that are unemployed longer than 3 monnths at a time.

You are looking for jobs, but no luck!, and then the self doubt comes into play.

One way to fight off depression is to keep your body moving on a daily basis.

Get a paper route, or whatever even if it only pays 10 dollars an hour, just so you do something while you are either getting your own company off the ground, or you get re-hired by your former employer or you simply find a new job.

Because sitting in front of your computer or watching tv all days is not goanna help you out with feeling depressed.

One mistake many families often do, is to try and hold on to property and cars for too long.

You are deeply into debt and you are unemployed borrowing money to stay a float for another 6months can come back and bite you hard!.

Usually giving up possessions is usually a good way to downsize in your life at the earlier stage.

We have a major problemen in our way of living today, and that is access to easy credit and we are spending to much money and not saving enough from our paychecks.

In the past you saved up for a year to buy something in cash, now you are buying on credit and sometimes paying 23% a year in interest on that purchase.

Pride is a very big word, and it is something that you should always have, but sometimes you need to swallow your pride and even if you where an engineer in your past job, you might have to take on another type of job for a a few years or so.

The thing you never give up on is your family and your pets.

Even if you have to live in a camper with 2 dogs , 2 cats, and 3 kids , you make it work, you stick together and everybody pitches in.

Children and pets are more resilient then you might think, so stay together fight together as a family, one unit.

So take care of each other out there, and hopefully we get past this next 14-18 months together as a united world.

We are so integrated as a world business wise, that we really need to get the wheels rolling again everywhere and rather sooner than later.

Mrlifeadvise.

Posted on October 9, 2020 by mrlifeadvise.com — Leave a comment

Our society shames addiction, and this is why we are no closer to solving that issue!.

So we are living in a society that shames addiction and addicts.

And this approach is the one we have tried to implement for the past 50 years time and it has gotten our society absolutely nowhere.

Yes there has been tries to not punish addicts, but they have been wrong in their own way.

A good example of this is the huge homeless population in America that is addicted to either alcohol or drugs, and sometimes even both, they dont in many states get punished anymore, but they get to help either to get clean.

Not to mention that many homeless people suffer from mental illness also, and the same thing here almost no help is available due to the costs.

We should judge our society based on how we treat our week sisters and brothers and how we treat animals.

A mentally strong person tries to help a week person, and does not look down on that person, when they are on their knees!.

We are building new prisons where we house addicts and the core problem never gets solved.

Addicts need treatment and not incarceration, and any half smart doctor can tell you that.

So we have lost countless lives to the Opiod crisis in the US for the past 20 years time, and maybe, just maybe there is some light at the end of the tunnel with this crisis.

But it will be another 10 years until we know for sure.

So there is a Swedish study of petty crime and low end crimes in our society and it goes like this.

After studying 5000 criminals committing burglary, steeling from cars and other not so monetary wise big crimes and without any violence linked to them.

Here is what the study says, over 98,8% of the people studied between 1995-2000, where addicted to drugs.

The study was made at Lunds university in Sweden by a professor called Gyllengren, we can not find the study right now to post here, but we remember it well.

So basically we could stop these small types of crimes by treating these addict and stop 98,8% of those crimes in the future.

These where generally good people , but they committed crimes to support their never ending addiction.

So what do we do today?, so basically most of the times we lock the person up, and they serve 3-18 months and they come out and they start to use again and they commit the same type of crimes all over again, and the viscous cycle never gets broken until they are dead in most of the cases.

We know that a criminal that is a drug addict will cost the society over 4 million dollars in their life time, while a citizen not hooked on drugs will bring in money to our society as a productive member of said society.

So when we talk about treatment being more expensive than prison , this is only true when you look at the short term costs.

We have to look at the long term costs for our society and for the individual!.

And we have to take the shame factor out of it.

Everybody can become and addict, and it can be drugs, alcohol or gambling you name it!.

We treat only gambling addicts at Mrlifeadvise but we are tight with other experts that are treating alcoholic’s and drug addicts on a daily basis, so we have some insight into this also.

So when we just focus on building treatment programs , massive state run facilities for many people that is the key to fixing many of these issues in our society.

Some people get scared when they hear state run treatment program’s, but we have so many addicts in our society that we need to build up a bigger program than normal privatized treatment centers can handle.

So as long as we can not accept that people who are addicts need our help and not look down on them we are getting nowhere.

California and Oregon has stopped punishing drugs users and people using, but that does not solve anything if they do not also get the help they need , true treatment programs.

So the step is a good one, that we dont keep locking up the same person over and over again for their own drug use.

But then we also need to be bold enough to build up a large scale treatment program than can handle a 1 million people a year true the doors.

So of course bad people should go to prison, we are 100% for that, to keep our society safe, but when we send massive amounts of non violent offenders to prison on a regular basis for drug possession, that is where are acting 100% wrong, since we are not fixing the core problem in our society with our addicts!.

Take care out there.

Mrlifeadvise.

Posted on October 6, 2020October 6, 2020 by mrlifeadvise.com — Leave a comment

Slowing down our brain just for 48h a week, what a difference that makes to our overall health!.

So we introduced 3 months ago a recommendation to our clients to slow down your brain for 48h , and WOW what a difference that has made for so many people.

So this all started with Rick one of our top consultants at Mrlifeadvise and his meeting with a brain surgeon at a coffee shop in the hospital 4 months ago.

Rick has always been very Intune with his mind spirit and body, and the rest of us have always looked up to him in these special segments.

But we have sometimes also told him that you might take things to far.

So Rick has had this idea for the longest time that we are overworking(overloading our brains) by being online every single day of the year, or watching tv.

And the way Rick has been doing this slowing down your brain is that from 22.00 pm on Friday night to 22.00 pm on Sunday night, he does not go online and he does not watch tv for even a single minute, like just checking his emails.

He keeps his phone on and he talks on the phone if it is very important or non job related, but otherwise he tries to also stay off the phone.

The rest of us have been online all weekends and so has all of our clients also, for at least the past 10 years time, for some maybe even 20 years time.

Broadband was the game changer for being online all the time.

We who are over 40 years of age, we remember a time where you where not online more than maybe a few hours each week.

This is of course almost 20 years ago but still.

Now we and our younger members of society is online 24/7 even when we sleep our mail and social media accounts are open, and when we wake up in the morning this is the first thing we check, our online presence.

With the COVID-19 pandemic and a presidential election around the corner our brains are working overtime.

Most of us are worried about our future, regardless if is job, family or health related issues that we are worried about!.

So what Rick has done is that he has had a Saturday morning hike with his dog Rock every weekend and they have used the forest to recharge their batteries.

What you might not know is that if you walk inside the forest you pick up a lot of really good oxygen for your brain and lungs.

Because the trees in the woods sends out oxygen in a way that you can not get by walking in an urban area.

So going back to Ricks meeting with the brain surgeon, he really explained to Rick for over 2h time, how the brain truly works and why we have forgotten how to really wind down on the weekends that we did in the past.

Simply put it, we have forgotten how to relax and how to unwind from horribly busy work weeks, where we have emails coming all hours long, when we are online.

So we sent out a bulk email around 3 months ago to all of our clients and asked them to join us in our slow down your brain weekends and it was really a big hit with our clients.

The most impressing thing with slowing down your brain over the weekend was that we did not feel tired in a bad way waking up on Monday morning.

We spent time with our kids and our grandkids, we spent time with our pets outside and we really just relaxed, without the need to be online or watch tv over the weekend.

So now you might ask what did we do with our down time when we spent time inside during the weekend.

We played board games like STAR OF AFRICA or MONOPOLY and many other fun board games.

Then we read some books, that we did not had the time to do in the past.

So the feedback from all of our clients have been overwhelmingly positive.

So we can really recommend this tactic to slow down your brain over the weekend, and just do not be Online, just for 48h a week.

As always this is our advice as advisors, you might have a situation that does not apply to this, and then you do you.

But our brain is so important AS A TOOLS FOR ALL OF US!, and we need to rest it more than we do these days.

Or until ELON MUSK comes up with something really clever for our brains.

Take care out there.

Mrlifeadvise.

Posted on September 26, 2020 by mrlifeadvise.com — Leave a comment

Your under water with your commercial lease due to the Covid-19 pandemic, what can you do?.

So you are under water with your commercial lease in a big city, what to do?.

We had a very intersting conversation with a NYC friend and business owner this morning and what happened to her at her store last week!.

She has an exotic candy store and she also sells some other product there also.

She has a very small store, but in a very good foot traffic location (normally) now with the Covid-19 pandemic her foot traffic customer base is off by 90%.

She is sitting with a 2 year lease with 8 months left on the lease for 14.500 USD each month.

Her landlords is a Co-op with 10 apartments valued between 3.5-6.5 million dollars each.

Her business has been able to pay roughly half the rent for April-Sep 2020, and she is behind with almost 40.000 dollars.

Now the director of the Co-op board came into her store mid day last week, when she had some customers there and started yelling at her for being a scam artist and a con-lady, now she is 5.4 and weighs 110 lbs, and the guy that came in and started yelling at her to show her books was 6.3 and according to her weighed 240 lbs.

She panicked after he left and emailed us at Mrlifeadvise and this is what we told her to do.

Call your real estate lawyer and call your CPA.

So after calling her CPA he told her not to hand over the books.

And her real estate lawyer who helped her with the lease told her not to worry , she can not get evicted at the moment without the case going to court two to three years from now.

The New york commercial and privat leases are more than 70% under water right now meaning (people and companies are not paying anything on them at all or very little)

So her making at least half the payment is a good show of intent to pay for her stores lease.

Now the Covid-19 pandemic is a force majeure not like nothing seen before in the NYC and other bigger cities real estate market.

So her lease is signed for heavy foot traffic, and now she only has 5% left of that foot traffic.

So our advise to her was this, she will end up in court on this lease, 3 years from now anyway.

So we told her what we would do in her shoes and that would be to stop paying here lease all together and keep her store open for as long as she has the lease.

And then look for a better priced location.

And we have also told her to give out her real estate lawyers card the next time somebody from the Co-op board shows up in the store, and also call the police if she feels threaten in any way shape or form.

So the reason she should stop paying her lease is that she does not get anything close to market value for her lease, and by no fault of her own.

This is commercial real estate for you and for.

And this reason we tell most of our clients that do not get into commercial real estate unless you have a boat load of money and you are very experienced in commercial real estate or you have start out very small.

You can make a lot of money in the commercial real estate sector but you can also lose a lot of money if something big happens in the market.

So as long as you do not pay full rent cost on your commercial lease, you will most likely end up in civil count anyway, so in most of these cases it is better under these current circumstances if you can not re-negotiate your lease NOW TODAY then maybe you are better off not paying it at all!.

DISCLAIMER:

Every situation is different so you have to make this decision for your self, we can only advise on what we would do in your shoes, but you are the business owner and we are a small business consulting company, so we can only advise form our end what we would do in your shoes.

But you are in charge of your own life and the future of your own business.

Take care.