Despite the economy, I keep hearing many triumphant success stories from our students and I am happy to share some of these winning stories with you. I hope you enjoy our Keys to the Vault Success Series and look forward to sharing more with you in the future. Please call us at 512-231-9944 if you have a story that has resulted from your work with me.

Best,
Keith Cunningham

Donovan "Repo" Pieterse, Real Estate Business Owner, Military Officer

Donavan "Repo" Pieterse has owned his real estate business for six years. When Repo first started working with me in 2003, he had about 25 houses in his personal investment portfolio and his goal was to elevate his investments into a real business.

He had successfully gotten to the point that being a "one man show" with no systems or people or long-term strategy was crippling. Repo had reached his ceiling of complexity and all future growth was dependent on learning new skills and tools.

Repo has been a military officer and fighter jet pilot his entire adult life and his degree did not include any business courses. An MBA would have given him a few of the skills required but not the emotional and psychological changes required to transition from government employee to entrepreneur. Repo had already learned the technical aspects of real estate investing, but he needed to learn business. Instead of investing $150,000+ and two years of his life in a university classroom, He enrolled in my Business Mentoring - Business Mastery course and like so many people who choose to study with me, the rest is history.

Through my course he learned how to evaluate risk as well as see and seize opportunities. He learned how to leverage off other people's time and structure his staff so that he could do what he, and only he, must do to grow his business. He learned how to raise money as well as incredible marketing and deal structure skills and tools that have allowed him to turn his investment in houses into a dynamic, thriving and ongoing business.

To say that Repo learned what he needed to learn and put it to good use would be an understatement. He currently has a portfolio of over 170 properties in the Syracuse, NY area where he provides alternative financing for residential buyers. As successful as he is, Repo's biggest change has been the ability for him to see his personal strengths and weaknesses. He learned how to leverage off his strengths and hire around his weaknesses. He learned how to identify the needs of the marketplace and target his audience. He learned how to differentiate his business from his competition and to sell that difference to his customer base. Business Mentoring - Business Mastery added new tools to refine his niche and allow him to manage more productively.

Business Mentoring - Business Mastery combined with my Financial Literacy and How to Buy a Business training gives a balance of personal growth and technical business skills necessary for success. Since he had no formal business training and his military experience left certain barriers to entrepreneurship, he needed to get out of his own way. Repo said "Military pilots are rarely given the room for failure and I needed a chance to learn, test, evaluate, modify and try again". He never let perfection stand in his way again. "The incredible thing about Keith and his courses is that it really doesn't seem to matter what your problem is, he can find solutions that get you unstuck and on the path to the success you desire," Repo said. "I've seen him literally transform people in four days that I thought were hopeless - and he does it every time!"

Like most of our clients, Repo began a long term relationship with us because he found that the reward for a job well done is a bigger job, and bigger jobs present new opportunities and challenges which require more knowledge and sharper tools.
>From taking follow up courses Repo received a much more in depth knowledge of financial statements, critical drivers and which levers to pull to ensure great outcomes from his decisions. He said, "Each one of Keith's courses seemed to be one step ahead of my required need for expansion, proving once again that you 'Don't know what you don't know' and what you don't know is what costs you money. Without Keith Cunningham's mentoring and business courses, I wouldn't have even understood the need for these concepts and I would still be floundering in minutia and problems."

Interestingly, the nationwide real estate downturn and strict mortgage criteria are feeding even more clients to Repo's business. He told me he is in a major growth mode and because of the way he is structured, the current economic situation is allowing him to expand much more rapidly than he originally anticipated. With his current mass, he is attracting better financing relationships and increasing his investor base. With an experienced property management company established, he will also begin managing properties outside his personal portfolio. On top of all that, he has begun the search for foreign investors who can benefit from the weak dollar and his area's cash flowing market.

Repo said that "All my business sense and strategies were implanted by Keith Cunningham and his Business Mastery courses. If you think my success is an accident or due to luck, think again. I would be one of the thousands of dead bodies on the side of the highway were it not for my learning from Keith. To know about Keith and not take advantage of his insights, skills and tools is crazy!"

Repo is a superstar and deserves the success he has achieved. He has studied hard, practiced what he learned and is reaping the rewards. Congratulations!

Keith + Sandi