My Interview with Makiho Momita

Makiho: Our guest today, Doug Doebler, is a wildly successful real estate multi-millionaire, but he sure didn’t start out that way. Doug started out as a real estate agent, worked up to developing land and simply never stopped looking ahead and moving up. Not many real estate people can say that they have had a hundred million dollars in sales in one year. Doug has done that. Doug is a tremendous person to look up to and learn from you if are planning to start your own business and work your way to success. He has had good times and bad times and has always stayed positive. He has never let himself be side-tracked or stopped. Doug has achieved a lifestyle that is just what he planned. He lives in a gorgeous lake-front house on a beautiful Canandaigua Lake in New York State. He travels all over the world and he gives generously to charity. I’m so thrilled to have a chance to interview Doug today and I think my listeners and readers are going to be thrilled, too. Welcome Doug. Hello.

Doug: Hello, Makiho. Thank you for that wonderful introduction. I am very happy to speak to you today also. I’m here in New York, looking out over the beautiful lake - its 80 degrees and a beautiful day here. We are just coming out of a long cold winter, so…

Makiho: Wow.

Doug: It’s a nice day.

Makiho: Wow! You sound really wonderful.

Doug: I am wonderful.

Makiho: That’s great.

Doug: What I thought I would do is to take maybe five minutes and tell you about myself and how I started, where I came from - that may interest your listeners - and then that I know you have some questions that you can ask, so… Does that sound okay?

Makiho: That’s wonderful. Please. Please tell your stories.

Doug: Okay. Well, I grew up in a small town called Newark, New York, in the U.S.A, and that’s in upstate New York, not near New York City, but kind of up in the country. It was a town of about 10,000 people, so it was a small place. I went to college in Michigan, and I thought I wanted to be a car dealer, so I actually have a degree to be a car dealer. So, I was always interested in sales and marketing.

My family was in the real estate business, my father and my brother, so I kind of followed that route instead of the car business. I’m 46 years old and so I have been in the real estate business for, oh gosh, maybe 28, 30 years, so pretty much my whole working career. I worked pretty closely with a big builder for twenty years and I sold new houses. I liked to sell the new houses because they cost more than the used houses, so my commissions were higher, so that was a smart thing to do. And I started to develop land. I would buy a farm, and here where I live, you could buy say a two hundred acre farm for maybe two hundred thousand dollars. And then I would develop it and sell building sites and build new houses for people. So I kind of went through the whole cycle of the real estate business, selling regular houses, and then selling new houses and then developing land. And about, probably about four and a half years ago, that all changed. I decided I needed to do something new after doing that for twenty years. I worked for this builder and I used to sit in a model home in a subdivision where there were many homes, like a community, and I would sit in the model and I would wait for buyers or prospects to come and look. It kind of got boring because there were days where I would sit there and nobody would show up. And, you know, on a cold winter snowy day, nobody would show up, and on a hot summer day, nobody would show up. But there was one day I remember, and that’s the day things changed. That was January 10th of 2004. It was minus 13 degrees.

Makiho: Wow.

Doug: So that would be minus 13 degrees Fahrenheit, which is really cold, and I drove to my open house. I was driving my vehicle, which was a jeep back then, and I looked at the thermometer in the jeep. And it said minus 13 and I thought to myself, “This is crazy. Nobody is going to come to my open house today. It’s minus 13 degrees and you go outside and you breathe and the air almost freezes on your face. So, I decided right at that point on January 10, 2004, I needed to do something different. So, I came across a book, it was called, ‘Make it Big – The 49 Secrets for Building a Life of Extreme Success’, and the author was a man named Frank McKinney. And I read the book, and I found it very interesting. It was all about thinking big and having big ideas, and kind of, people say “Get out of the box”, or “Get our of your cycle”, and that’s what I wanted to do.

So, I actually figured out that this man, Frank McKinney, was on the Board of Directors for the college that I went to, so I sent him an email and that was kind of a good lead-in for me because I knew that he would maybe find my story interesting and maybe get back to me, and he did. He e-mailed me back, so I actually made contact. So, you know, a good lesson is - if you read something or you come across someone that is of great interest to you, don’t be afraid to send them an e-mail or try to make a contact or send a letter. Sometimes they might just write you back, you might hear from them and you can make personal contact with them.

So, then in May of 2004, it wasn’t as cold anymore in New York. I knew I had a strong desire to do something different because I was kind of getting bored with the new house business and sitting in the model home. So, I went to Florida in the U.S.A. for a real estate seminar on property real estate, because I knew I wanted to stay in real estate in the countries of Nicaragua, Panama and Honduras. I didn’t speak Spanish, so I knew I would have a hard time, but I thought maybe that would be interesting. But after attending that seminar, I kind of felt overwhelmed. Like, those places were really a long way away. And, you know, who did I think I was that I would be able to sell real estate in Nicaragua, Panama and Honduras? Those were countries that were becoming more popular for United States people to go on vacation and visit. So, I ran into a buddy in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, and he took me down to Miami to South Beach, which is a very popular beach area in Florida, and he introduced me to a developer there that was selling pre-construction condos. And what pre-construction condos are - is when a developer has a project and they want to pre-sell the condominiums before they build them, and they need to do that so that their bank will loan them the money to build the condominiums.

So, I learned all about the pre-construction condo business and later on I decided maybe that was something I wanted to get involved in. So, I did do a - like a weekend mentoring program with Frank McKinney, the man who wrote the book about thinking big, because I thought, “Boy if I’m this small country boy in upstate New York selling hundred thousand dollar houses, how do I think I am going to go to Miami and sell million dollar condominiums”. That was a really, really a big stretch but I thought, “Hey, I read the book, it sounded interesting. I’ll meet the man that builds these big estates on the beach, in Palm Beach, Florida, Frank McKinney, and see what I can learn from him”. So, I went and spent a weekend with him and I paid a good price to do that. The money that I spent with him went to his foundation that builds houses in Haiti and we’ll talk a little about that later. And so, I pretty much learned from Frank how to, kind of, think outside the box or think big.

When I came back home, I kind of started to try to determine how I could sell real estate in Florida that was really expensive. And I would make more money, and it would be fun to be traveling back and forth to Florida where it was not minus 13 degrees anymore. It would be nice and warm even in the wintertime. (Makiho laughs.) So, you know, they say you have to work with something you are passionate about. I was passionate about getting out of this minus 13 degree freezing cold snowy area. You know, I believe in - and again, we’ll talk about this later, too - I believe in working with coaches and mentors and I searched out a local real estate coach and he helped me kind of formulate how I could do this, how I could move from selling real estate, little houses in New York to selling expensive condos in Miami. And then I found another business coach. His name is Mike Litman. And he wrote a famous book here in the U.S. called ‘Conversations with Millionaires’, and I contacted him just like I said before, I made contact with him and he had a business coaching program that I signed up for. It was, kind of, expensive, but he taught me direct response marketing, so that was using the Internet to try to find leads because remember I am up in New York State and I am trying to sell real estate half the country away down in Florida. So, I couldn’t do it in person. I needed to do it over the Internet, with e-mail, over the fax and over the telephone, and Mike had a program that taught me how to do that.

So, after putting all that into place, I had been doing probably about 4 million dollars in sales in New York, which is pretty good. You know, I sold that much property per year. I was driving a nice car. I had a bought a farm that was 250 acres, so that was a big piece of land and then I built a house on it, so I was doing pretty well. But I wanted to get out of the cold. So, I put that website into place and then I started running ads on Google. I learned how to do the ad program that Google has, and all of a sudden people started putting their name on my webpage and making contact with me. And so I did the same thing on Yahoo, and this was called ‘Pay per Click’. And I probably only started with a 10 to 20 dollar-a-day budget. So, I didn’t start very big. I started out really small. But again all of a sudden, people started coming to my website and I had gotten a testimonial from this man, Frank McKinney, who builds the worlds most expensive homes on the beach, in Palm Beach, on speculation and I did that because I had read his book, and then I went and met him, and then I donated some money to his charity and we kind of became friends. So he was happy to write me a testimonial. So, we got that business going.

Over the course of like, probably 2004, we built - I built my e-mail list to about five thousand people, and we would put together advertising for the condominium projects in Florida. I had to go to Florida to get my real estate license so that I could legally sell real estate in Florida. And so we built this database, and we would send out probably an e-mail every couple weeks maybe, to this database, and all of a sudden I was selling real estate in Florida. It just kind of started happening. And in 2005 I sold close to 90 million dollars of condominiums in Florida.

Makiho: Wow.

Doug: And remember I said in 2004, I had just sold 4 million. So, I actually went from 4 million in sales to 90 million in sales. So, that was a pretty big difference.

Makiho: Yes.

Doug: And I ended up with one client who had a big, big, big database of close to a half a million people. And he and I worked together, and together we sold quite a few condominiums in 2005 and 2006. We started working on projects like the Ritz Carlton in Baltimore. We worked on the Ritz Carlton in Chicago, the Mandarin Oriental in Chicago, the Ritz Carlton in Miami, so we worked on some pretty high-end properties.

And what Mr. McKinney had taught me was to design, kind of, your dream job and design your dream lifestyle, and then create a job or create a business around it, and that’s what I had done. I was traveling to Miami, getting out of the cold in New York and staying at the fancy Mandarin Oriental Hotel, and I was going to Washington D.C. and staying at the Four Seasons Hotel. I was going to Chicago and staying at the Ritz Carlton Hotel. I had never done that. I was just a country boy from upstate New York. So it was pretty fun and pretty exciting and I was making good money, you know, it went real well. And then one of my clients was based out of Tampa, and, I know you know Matt Furey. He had bought some condos from me, so I joined his Internet group and learned a lot from him. That was the first year and then the second year, I joined his International Mastermind group and I can say it was very expensive, it cost a hundred and twenty thousand dollars, and I say that not so much to brag but just to point out that sometimes you have to pay big money to, kind of, play or be with the big players, the big people in business. And my family thought I was crazy just to do that, spending that much money. And sometimes I thought I was crazy, but if you consider lots of people join fancy golf courses, or country clubs or business associations, and it’s the same thing. They join the fancy country clubs to hang out or be with doctors and lawyers and big business people that they associate with and network with and do business with.

So, for me it was the same thing that the group I was in, we traveled to Japan, and that’s where you and I met. And we traveled to China and I didn’t go but the rest of the group traveled to Finland. So, we had some great, great international tours and great business networking. So, again, it’s really important to find mentors and business people that you can associate with. So then a couple of the other quick things that happened - I was interviewed, as you’re interviewing me, I was interviewed for another book about some of the world’s most successful real state investors, and that helped launch my career a little bit. People read that and came to my website. And actually back in December, we’d just got back from China, which was a great experience. I visited the Great Wall of China and some beach towns and some really interesting places.

I am getting ready now to go next month to Haiti, which is the poorest location in the western hemisphere, and it’s just a couple hours from Florida. And my friend or my new friend, Frank McKinney, builds self-sustaining villages for the homeless or the poor people in Haiti. Well we can talk more about that in a little bit.

And I also just joined up with a group of Internet business people, it’s called Maverick Business Adventures. And this is a group that’s going to go on … kind of adventure tours like mountain climbing, and rock climbing and skiing, jumping out of a helicopter in Canada, British Columbia…

Makiho: Wow!

Doug: … and skiing down big mountain cliffs, kind of exciting things along with meeting together, and network to do business and then spend a day doing something for the community, meeting with some students, or maybe working on a Habitat for Humanity house or something like that. So, now you can see from my discussion here that I like to join groups and be with people who are doing things bigger and better than me so that I can bring myself up to what they are doing.

So, basically that’s my four-year journey of change from four million dollars in sales to a hundred million dollars in sales. One of my goals was that I wanted to make a million dollars in U.S. dollars in commissions in one year and I was able to do that in 2005. I’d never done anything close to that before, and I wanted to do it. Another goal was to do a hundred million dollars in sales, U.S. dollars in sales, and I did that 2006.

It’s one thing to do the sales and make the commissions on paper. It is another to collect them because they still have to build these condominiums and they still have to get paid so there’s still a lot to work do and another goal was to collect a million dollars in commissions which I was able to do in 2006.

And what kind of happened in 2007 is the real estate market here in the United States and especially in Florida, changed dramatically. It was the values of property were going up 10, 20, 30, 40 % per year for maybe 2003 through to 2006 and all of a sudden that just stopped. And the real estate values have actually decreased a little bit, so the real estate market is really, really tough. But I got - you’re sort of going through tough times now if you are in the real estate business - but I got a heck of an education and I learned a lot and so I’m going to use that education that I got and the contacts that I made to move forward and do some other things.

So, that’s pretty much the 4 year journey. I’ll stop talking for a minute and let you ask some questions.

Makiho: Wow. That’s … your story of 4 years sounds like more than somebody’s life.

Doug: It has been a very fast and furious 4 years. That is correct.

Makiho: Yes. And also you found that book when it was a really, really cold day, and you found that Frank McKinney book. That was the start of, like, your journey.

Doug: That was the start of my journey and that’s -- you know, that’s a good lesson, is that if you see something that interests you - I just read another book called ‘The Four Hour Work Week’, and that’s - Timothy Ferriss does that, and that’s a great, exciting book. So, if you read a book like that, and it really interests you then maybe make a contact with the author. Nowadays, so many authors have coaching programs or mentoring programs and do seminars so you can kind of latch on to someone that you really like, and follow them and listen to them and learn more from them and typically, what happens is when you do that, you also meet people of the same caliber. That’s exactly what happened to me. You know, in the Matt Furey group I’ve met other people that I kept in contact with, and Frank McKinney had some meetings and the business adventure group that I’m in now, the gentleman that runs that is an associate of Frank McKinney. So everything you do leads to something else.

Makiho: Wow. I am so thrilled, so… I am going to ask you a lot of questions now.

Doug: OK.

Makiho: First, I would like to ask what is the most interesting part of your business?

Doug: I think the most interesting part of my business is the interesting people that I’ve met. When I was selling the regular houses in my home town, it was all just kind of the local people that I met. But selling these condominiums in Florida, and Chicago, and Baltimore, Maryland, I’ve met business people from Puerto Rico. I sold a condominium to a lady who had been Miss Romania, from Romania, and she lives on a cottage on a lake in Transylvania. So, that’s a pretty interesting person for someone like me, to meet, so, I think probably the interesting people that I have met and the interesting places that I have visited.

Makiho: I see. Was there some turning point where you moved onto the Internet?

Doug: Yeah, I told you about that in my story. The day, it was 13 degrees or minus 13 degrees Fahrenheit was the turning point. I'd have to say that that was it, for sure. And I enjoyed South Beach. South Beach, Florida is a beautiful place, so I used to go down there and stay for three weeks at a time or two weeks at a time. And I would stay at a hotel and work on my computer. And I ended up being probably one of the top sales agents in the Miami Real Estate market for a couple of years, and nobody there even knew who I was or where I came from because I had done everything using the Internet. That was the key.

Makiho: I see. Is the real estate business? Do you have ups and downs?

Doug: Yeah, the real estate business is really cyclical. You know, 2003, 2004 and 2005 were really, really up. And 2006 and 2007, and so far 2008 are really, really down. So, you try not to get too up tight about that, and you work really hard and accomplish a lot during the up years. And then in the down years you still work hard, but those are times that you maybe spend more time educating yourself, learning more, and you have to, you know, financially you have to know how to pace yourself so that in the good years you save some money so that can carry you through some of the slower years. And so many of my Florida real estate friends in real estate business did not do that. They made a lot of money a couple of years ago, and they went out and bought Ferraris and BMWs and Jaguars and fancy houses and traveled a lot and spent all their money, and now they are struggling because it's a tougher year now. So, I guess I was a little smarter because I'd been in the real estate business for almost thirty years, so I have been through the ups and the downs many, many, many times, those cyclical cycles and I've been able to survive that okay. So it's okay.

Makiho: I see. It’s very interesting. Doug, many of your customers are very rich people and successful business people. You already told a little bit about the people who you associated with, but have you learned much from your customers?

Doug: Yes, I’ve learned a lot from my customers because in my business they're all from different markets, different places, California, New York, London... So I tried to learn a little bit from all of them. The area that I come from is fairly rural middle class area, so for me to all of a sudden be working with multi-millionaires, you know, people that would write - where I came from a nice house costs maybe around $100,000. And in Miami when I was selling the condos people would write deposit checks, buyers would write deposit checks for $200,000, $250,000 just for the deposit. So, that was a big change for me. I learned quite a bit from my customers for sure.

Makiho: I see. Doug, what are the advantages for the buyers of buying pre-construction real estate through you?

Doug: Yeah, I think that’s a good question. I think one of the things that made me different is that I really tried hard to make direct contact with the developers. Like the developer we work with in Miami, the developer we work with in Baltimore, the developer we work with in Chicago, the two in Chicago - I personally met them. I went and had dinner with most of them. I had a direct contact with them so I had a better feeling for the property and I got a better feel for the ability of the developer to complete the project. So, I think that was probably the most advantageous thing with me rather than a regular real estate person who is promoting a project through the Internet or from a brochure. I actually had direct contact with the developers and I worked hard to do that. And part of that was having the mindset and thinking big that I could do that, that I wasn't just a country boy but I knew the business and I looked to try to do that.

Makiho: I see. But you're not a country boy any more.

Doug: No, I guess not.

Makiho: It sounds like you don’t just have a mentor or two. You almost shopped for mentors who had what you wanted and needed at different time in your life. So, you have an Internet mentor and several real estate mentors. How crucial is it having the right mentor at the right time?

Doug: Yeah, I think it’s very crucial. You have to have mentors in all different areas. When I was younger, I listened to and read Tony Robbins, the personal development trainer in the United States and enjoyed his work. And then, you know, as I said, when I decided to want to do this new or different real estate business I went to a local person who had ties to real estate people around the country and he helped me kind of develop the basic ideas of what I wanted to do. But he didn’t have like a worldly approach to it. So then I worked with Michael Litman who taught me the direct response marketing business, and then I worked with Frank McKinney who helped me. Now this - Frank McKinney is a man who builds hundred-million-dollar homes on the beach in Palm Beach, and I had never been associated with anyone like that. And he really is a nice guy. He's just a regular guy, so getting to know him, I thought, gee, if Frank can do that, I can do some big things. And then, oh, let's see, then Matt Furey, joining his group and his mentoring program. He teaches a lot about the psychology of business and the psychology of wealth, and I learned a lot, a tremendous amount from him. And the new path that I'm following with this business adventure group, I have a feeling there I’ll learn that life isn't all about work and money. Life is about adventure, you know, having adventure, doing things that excite you and kind of juice you up, but also giving back to the community. I learned a lot about that from Frank McKinney with his project. So, yeah, I think it is really important to - not that you want to do all those things at once, but that’s a process that you work with … but you find a different mentor for the different targets, things that you want to work with a mentor or a coach … and you know, some mentors can be someone in your community. t doesn’t have to be someone that you hire or you pay but sometimes you have to do that.

Makiho: Okay. How do you keep your customers happy?

Doug: Oh, yeah, I try real hard to do that. I would say the thing that I do, one of the best things that I do is continuous follow up with the customers.

Makiho: “Continue?”

Doug: Yes, “continuous” - very, very much - a lot of follow up, a lot of contact with the customers, even if I didn’t have anything that relates to the real estate, even if I didn’t have anything positive or anything new to tell them, I would continue to make contact with them just so that they knew that I cared about them. And many of them I developed friendships or associations with, so I continue to keep up with them. So, I would say the continuous contact with the customers is, you know, not just sell something and then walk away and disappear. You don’t want to do that. You need to keep continuous contact.

Makiho: So, communication is very important?

Doug: Continuous. Continuous communication is very important. Yes.

Makiho: Oh, I see. Have your ideas about money and finances changed as you became successful?

Doug: Yeah, I think, for sure. When I was selling four million dollars of property, often my thoughts about money were “I need to sell a house so I can get a commission so I can pay my mortgage payment”. And it was kind of one month to the next, every business decision was based on, you know, can I make enough money to pay my insurance or pay for my car, or pay for my mortgage payment. Where once you reach a higher level of success, and you have a higher income, then you can start to do things or think things like what can I do with my time to help others? Or how can I financially support other charities or operations. That’s the thing that I think that has been the most important or the most exciting to me was, you know, in the old days, like my Rotary Club, they would have a fund-raising thing and I could give them, you know, $10 or $20 or $50. But now my Rotary Club has an international fundraising thing. They just did a project where they're putting some wells in Honduras in an area where the water is very, very bad and it makes people sick. And I was able make like a $3,000 donation instead of a $50 donation. And so I think with expanded success, it brings the ability to do more, you know, do more for others. And that makes me feel really good. That's really important.

Makiho: Right. That’s right. What is it about real estate that attracted you and keeps you working in it?

Doug: Well, my family was in the real estate business for forty years, so I probably have the real estate business in my blood. And I always enjoyed watching my father help people get their first houses and they were always excited to do that. And that was something that excited me. I once worked, years ago I developed a piece of land and I received some grants from the Federal Government that helped first-time buyers. They were lower income buyers who didn't have a lot of money, but it helped them buy their first home. And these were all young families who were renting, and probably would not have had an opportunity to buy a new home or buy any home because they were spending all their money on their rent. But we obtained these grants and that took a lot of work, working with the United States government to get these grants. And we built new houses and it was really great to hand the keys to those young families that probably would not have had a new house if we hadn’t worked so hard to get those grants for them. So that was probably one of the most rewarding parts of my real estate career was working with those young families. I remember one of the families had a handicapped child in a wheelchair. And they had so many medical expenses that there was no way they were ever going to get a house. So we got them in a house and we built it with a ramp and, you know, they just think, you know, I saw them for years and years and years. They sent me Christmas cards with pictures of their family and their house and that was really, really - that was rewarding. So that’s kind of what kept me going.

Makiho: I see. You have said that networking is the key. Is networking mostly for acquiring customers or are there other benefits? And, how do you become good at networking and do you have any tips on that?

Doug: Wow, that’s a lot of questions. (Laughs.)

Makiho: You can make it simple. I'm sorry.

Doug: Networking is, of course, very important. I think networking is, yes, for acquiring customers, but also for learning and educating yourself. If you're networking or spending time with people that do things bigger and grander than you, you always want to set yourself to be with or hang out with people who are doing things better. Better and bigger than you, so that you can learn from them. And that’s really what I‘ve gotten out of that. How have I become a good networker? I think you have to be of value to those that you want to network with. People that I have met that I was impressed by, that I wanted to continue to keep contact with, I would make it a point to … if I saw an article that I knew would interest them and something they were interested in, I would cut it out and mail to them or email it to them. And I did that a quite a bit. I think that was good. I have a friend, Mark Evans, who wrote a book and he is an author and he's a real estate guy that travels around the world. And he, I remember when I first met him - he is a great networker because he would call like every two weeks just to say hi and check in. And we became close friends and that was his thing - the key was continuous, continuous contact. So, I think networking is really important. And sometimes it’s a matter of having to pay to join a group like a country club or a business group or a mastermind group. I think mastermind groups are really, really important because of the high level of people that you meet. Some of the people I’ve met in the mastermind groups, you know, I've kept contact with for years, I consider really, really close friends.

Makiho: Wow. It’s very good you have done training in those things. Yes. In your interview in Mark Evans’ book, you say that you would give your website a grade of C+. You make tons of money at this and why did you settle for a C+ website?

Doug: (Laughs.)That’s a really funny question.

Makiho: Yes. It is funny.

Doug: The Internet coach that I was working with, Mike Litman, was trying to get me to get a website up, you know, so we could advertise and tickle it a little and see how it would do. And one of his sayings is, “You don’t have to get it right, you just have to get it going." Let me say that again, “You don’t have to get it right, you just have to get it going." And I kept working on this website and working on this website and I didn’t want to put it up online until it was perfect. And I just kept messing with it and messing with it and messing with it, and finally one day he said to me, “Doug, you have to have that website up by Wednesday, or I’m going fire you as a client and I don't ever want to talk to you again." He kind of shocked me into doing it. He said, “Don’t worry - it doesn’t have to be an A plus - if it’s a C plus that's okay". So I hustled and hurried and I got the website up, and it was our direct response marketing website and that’s the one that we did the Google ads and the Yahoo ads with, and it worked. And, you know, people started subscribing to our emails and I really didn’t change it for three years.

Makiho: Huh.

Doug: So, that C + website did create close to $200 million in real estate sales. So there's a perfect example of "You don’t have to get it right, you just have to get it going".

Makiho: Wow. That’s very, very crucial. That's very good words. I already heard many good stories, but since you’ve become successful how has your life changed from a country boy?

Doug: Yeah, I think the life changes are mostly about freedom. I’m able to spend my day as I wish, you know. I don’t have to go to a job and sit at a desk, and talk on the phone all day. I kind of do what I want when I want. I can travel to where I want when I want. You know, sometimes I go through phases where I work really, really hard night and day, work, work, work, work, work. And sometimes I go through phases where I'm lazy and I sit around in the sun and play around with my garden and flowers. It’s really about - to me all it's all about freedom.

Makiho: The key is the freedom?

Doug: Yes, I like the freedom.

Makiho: Well, everybody likes their freedom. How often do you contact the people on your list? And what do you do for them to keep them reading your emails, listening to you and staying in the relationship with you?

Doug: Yeah, when we were promoting a lot of real estate projects - we haven’t done as many now because the real estate market has slowed down, but when we were promoting a lot of the real estate projects, I would say we were probably sending out emails once a week. I know there are a lot of Internet guys who send out emails once a day and I think that’s a great idea. I just didn’t have enough to say once a day, so we did ours once a week and kept pretty good contact with the people. And if I would see an article that I thought would interest my readers, I would send that to them also. And basically trying to keep that friendly relationship with them to keep them interested, and keep them looking at our website and looking at our emails. So I would say we emailed, you know, once a week.

Makiho: I see. I would like to ask about your great charity story. You gave a lot of money to a big charity project in Haiti and on your website, there are photos of the orphans, the dumps where people used to live and a new village built by the charity. Let me give the address so people can take a look. It’s www.dougdoebler.com/x/haiti. So could you tell us more details about the project?

Doug: Yes, that’s a great question. Thank you. And also if they didn’t - if your listeners didn’t get the website down they can actually also go to my blog which is simply my name, just dougdoebler.com As you spell that and then there's a section on there that they can find the Haiti pictures if they didn't catch all your slashes and everything. Yeah, and well my friend, Frank McKinney, who makes a lot of money and builds these big, big, big houses in Palm Beach, also supports the building of houses for homeless people in Haiti. Haiti is on the island of Hispaniola. Hispaniola is south of Florida, kind of near Cuba and it’s in the Caribbean, and half of the island is the Dominican Republic, which has a lot of resorts and beautiful beaches and is nice. And the other half of the island is Haiti, which is very, very, very poor. And I had been there 20 years ago, and we went in May, let's see, in February of 2007 and visited as you'll see in the pictures, some of the dumps and saw some of the children out in the country. And it was really, really sad. It’s so sad that one of the poorest locations in the western hemisphere is only 2 hours away from Miami. And that’s not that far away although it is in such dire condition.

So, my friend has - my friend Frank McKinney has figured out how to build these self-sustainable villages, where they build houses and they usually build a church and they usually build like a food center, activity center and a school and a little hospital. And the idea is that the village is self-sustaining, the whole village supports itself. It doesn't need any outside input of funds or help. They also build usually a little farm there to grow food, and they have a chicken coop with chickens and they raise cows, and they have a tilapia (that’s a fish) they have a fish farm so that they can raise their own food. So again everything is self-sustaining.

So, I had donated to that and we went there to visit it and it was a pretty dramatic experience to see that. And let's see, I think it was in November of 2007, we did a big fund raising event in Palm Beach with Frank McKinney, and Rich DeVos was there. He’s the man that started Amway, a big company in the United States. And also he is the owner of the Orlando Magic, the basketball team. And then Don Shula, who was coach of the Miami Dolphins for a long time - they were at this event. I was actually chosen as one of the speakers for the event, so it was pretty exciting. We raised $750,000, and so that $750,000 is currently building two villages in Haiti. So they've built like four or five villages there. And we are going back in June of 2008, and we are going to visit and do the dedication of two more villages. So, it’s pretty exciting to see what you can do when you join all these people together and can raise funds. And that’s become a much bigger part of my life, which is pretty exciting to see. I’m very proud and happy of the ability to do that.

Makiho: Wow. I remember on your laptop computer, how do you say, the first … the screensaver you keep it … the crowd picture with very nice cute boys with shining eyes in the pictures.

Doug: Yes, I have one great picture that you'll see on my website of a little boy. He was looking up at me. I’m six foot four so I’m pretty tall. He was just a little - I think he was 3 years old. And I later found out, I showed the picture of him to somebody after I had been there and they said that both of his parents had died of AIDS. The AIDS epidemic is really, really bad in Haiti and there's lots - there's just thousands and thousands of orphan children. So he lost his mother and his father and he and his brother came to live in this new village. This little boy had such a smile on his face. He had lived in dumps in the swamp and now he lived in a village where people cared for him. He had food, he went to school, he had somewhere safe to sleep. It was, you know, it was a big deal to see that.

Makiho: Oh, that is a big difference and it’s very, very healthy now. You already said two more villages that you were planning for future, but do you have any ideas for any other charity projects that you want to support in your future?

Doug: Well, I‘ve just started to support a project that my Rotary Club is working on, which I mentioned earlier with the water projects in Honduras. They go down to the river or the swamps and get water and that's the water that they use to bathe in and drink and do their wash, and it’s, you know, really sick, bad water with bacteria, really, really bad. It's very, very unhealthy. And for a simple, it's a water filtration system that they can install - they can pour this bad water into this system of sand and rocks and it spits out cleaner water at the bottom which makes it more healthy for them. So, we’ve been kind of working on that so I hope to see more and more of that done. And we'll, you know, when I go back to Haiti next month I'm sure we'll get some new ideas and see some new things. So, yeah, that’s become a very important part of my life, and it kind of helps me continue to move forward with a goal of being successful and being able to give back.

Makiho: Yes, it is really beautiful. Your charity is actually saving and changing the world.

Doug: Well, that’s Mr. McKinney’s goal is to change Haiti one village at a time and by changing each village and making them self-sufficient they can, maybe they can make a difference some day.

Makiho: Wow. And of course it is getting difference and each big step because of you. What makes you more successful than the average person?

Doug: Well, I think I am just an average person. I am just a regular guy. I just learned from others how to think big and move forward and that was the key. It’s reading books and being with people who are doing big things and finding a way to find the passion within your self to do that yourself.

Makiho: Wow, I got power from you now. I don’t know. It just hit me. Do you feel like you will stick exclusively with the real estate or do you see your business interests widening in the future?

Doug: Yeah, I think I will always be involved somehow in real estate because, you know, I've got 30 years of that behind me, so I would say so. You know, I’m working on a new venture where I hope to, or I will be investigating the world’s best beach towns and then putting a website together to show people, you know what I think are the world’s best beach towns. And then, you know, have some advertising with that and hopefully be able to do some real estate business in those towns or in those areas. So that’s kind of widening my business from in the United States to the whole world which will give me a reason to travel the whole world and to meet more interesting people which I find interesting.

Makiho: Wow, so do you think that you will have a chance to come to Japan on your business?

Doug: I would love to come back to Japan for my business, and I would love to come back to China and many, many other places in Asia. Yes. Yes.

Makiho: Oh, that’s lovely to hear! We hear everywhere, that recession is coming and nobody is buying real estate right now. So can you make money in a bad time in real estate?

Doug: Well, we talked earlier about, you know, everything being cyclical, and in cycles and this is just another one of those cycles. Everybody's all uptight, but it is just another cycle. And yeah, I think, some of my really smart real estate investor friends are buying real estate now because there's bargains available because of so many people running away or bailing out of their real estate, so you can get good prices. The Europeans, the strength of the Euro versus the dollar now is pretty extreme so for the Europeans, buying real estate in the United States is a great buy right now. I think most of the business that's going on in Florida or much of the business that’s going on is coming from buyers from London and Paris and Ireland, and you know, other parts of Europe. So, yeah, I still think that there are great opportunities out there. My friend Frank McKinney is building a - I think this is a $30 million house on speculation. So he’s still building a $30 million house with no buyer and he will be done with it probably in a year. And he hopes that he'll have buyers lined up to buy that house. So, he’s, you know, there are still people doing big business.

Makiho: So, but the time is a good time for somebody.

Doug: Yes, for some people it’s a good time, that’s right.

Makiho: Yes. What is your advice if people want to buy a nice property but can’t afford the down payment right now? What advice do you give people about how to prepare to make the decision to buy or not to buy?

Doug: Yeah, now's a - I think probably the thing to do is to save up and research the market or study the market. Now, if they don’t have enough money to buy now, they can certainly learn. They can go look at properties, they can find out what properties would interest them, and then save, you know, save their money up. We've talked about how you build your risk muscle or your risk tolerance muscle as it relates to investing, so you need to start small. Maybe buy a small, and I did this. I bought - my first house was small one family house, a single family house. And then I bought the bigger two family house, and then I bought a four family house. Then I bought a small piece of land and divided it. Then I bought a big farm and divided it. And then I bought some expensive, very expensive condominiums in Florida. So, you don’t start out, you know, buying a multi-multi-million property. You start out, you know, with something simple and then building your risk tolerance or your risk tolerance muscle to move on to other property. So that would be my advice.

Makiho: That’s a very good advice and I like that. Do you have any habits that you find consistently help you achieve your goals?

Doug: I think I’m a pretty calm and cool kind of guy, so I think keeping your cool, keeping a calm demeanor, probably listening more than talking, listening to others or listening to people. And, you know, most important, be of some value to your friends and business associates and the customers that you hope to gain.

Makiho: Yes, you are very calm person and yes, you are. We visited your gorgeous house on Canandaigua Lake. We loved the dolphin motifs everywhere. It was very, very nice, especially your big wooden dolphin statue outside. It just seemed like an incredible place to work and live. What is the secret of living an enjoyable life?

Doug: Yeah, I'm surprised you could pronounce Canandaigua. It took me 20 years to learn how to spell Canandaigua.

Makiho: Canandaigua? It's hard to say.

Doug: Canandaigua. It’s an Indian name because there used to be Indians there a long time ago. I think, oh, I think once you find success and you have maybe a dream of a place that you want to live and you can live there, which is my case on this lake … to live on this lake property. Once you get there that helps you again be calm and cool and feel good about yourself, just like someone buying a fancy car and driving it around and feeling good because they're driving their fancy car around. So, I think that the secret to the enjoyable life is working smart and working hard and making time for your family and friends. And the newest thing that I am learning or putting into my life is seeking some adventure, again like coming to Japan as I did, that was very adventurous. I’d never been to Asia before and then going to China in December and walking on the Great Wall of China and going to the beach on the South China Sea. That was quite adventurous. I’m looking forward to doing more adventure, which will keep me charged up and excited about moving forward.

Makiho: Wow. You live in a house with a huge picture window on the gorgeous lake and you sell condos near the lake in Chicago and near the ocean in Florida. Is there a reason you have included so much water in your life?

Doug: Well, I’d never thought about that, but I guess I'm drawn to the water. Maybe it's a feng shui thing or something, I’m not sure. Maybe my inner desire is to be a calm, cool and collected guy and maybe the water, being around the water does that to me because I do enjoy being around the water and I’ve enjoyed selling estate in Miami Beach on the Atlantic Ocean, and up in Baltimore on the harbor that runs off of the Chesapeake Bay, that’s a big sailing area. And then in Chicago on Lake Michigan, so I guess you are right. And now I’m working on this new project with the beach towns, so, I guess I am attracted to the water like a magnet, so I guess that's true!

Makiho: Wow. In Japan, we believe with water, money is coming.

Doug: OK. Well, I like that then.

Makiho: Well, your life is really wonderful. After you work in the afternoon, you go fishing from your property, in the lake and then you enjoy fishing. It’s a wonderful life you do now.

Doug: Yes, I love to be there. I really love to watch the sunset and so the sun setting over the lake is a great experience for me. And I can stand on my front patio and then fish, for just little fish, but I very often hope I do not catch anything because I don’t want to get my hands stinky and smelly from having to take the fish off the hook. So I don't really fish to catch fish, I just fish to watch the sunset and to watch the nature. So I'm probably the only fisherman who hopes he doesn’t catch anything. (Makiho laughs.) But no, I do enjoy that.

Makiho: It’s wonderful. You are very kind to fish too.

Doug: Yes, because I hope I don’t catch them and then I throw them back if I do.

Makiho: Right. You won’t hurt any fish. Could you tell us you the address of your website so the people who are interested in learning more, could take a look?

Doug: Sure. My main website, which is my blog, is really easier. It’s dougdoebler.com. So it's dougdoebler.com. That’s my blog. It has a lot of things on it. And the new website that we're working on is called www.worldsbestbeachtowns.com. And I’m really looking forward to that. That’s an exciting project that I hope will allow me to travel around the world - give me a good excuse to travel around the world more and meet many, many more interesting people and learn about many new places. I wrote down four things that I learned from a mentor of mine that I wanted to tell you before we wrap up here. Can I do that?

Makiho: Yeah, sure, please.

Doug: Okay. So these notes that I wrote down that I learned were that you really needed to kind of live towards your highest calling and there should be a vision and a purpose in your life. And I try to - when I think about the things I’m going to do for business I try to see if they meet these criteria. You've got to do something for your heart, do something that you find emotionally fulfilling, which is for your heart. Then for your head, you want to do something that you have the potential for. You have to do something that your intellect allows you to do. And then you need to do something that you want to do for a long time. There's no sense trying a new project or starting a new project that is just short-lived. It's hard to put all your passion into that unless you want to do it for a long time. And you need to do something that you utilize all of your talents. And most importantly, do something that makes a difference in your life and the life of others. So that kind of meets the highest calling.

And then another thing I wrote down was, to live an extraordinary life, you must resist an ordinary approach. I really love that. I must say that again. To live an extraordinary life, you must resist an ordinary approach. So many extraordinary people break away from the ordinary and they make sure that their lives really matter. You want to model yourself on extraordinary people, so seek out extraordinary people and follow what they do and try to do some of the same things. You always want to be the opposite of ordinary. Another thing I wrote down was that you want to have a passion for what you do, both at work and at home. You've got to have passion, and you have to always renew and reignite your own passion, especially when you are an entrepreneur. When you are an entrepreneur, you are working for yourself, there is nobody patting you on the back, nobody giving you a bonus or whatever. You need to always renew and reignite your own passion and find ways to do that.

And for me, one of the keys to success is being organized. You need to be efficient and organize yourself down to the smallest details so that you don’t get wound up all day in all the details. You want to have everything moving very easily and smoothly and calmly as I said earlier.

I want to leave you a famous quote from a Canadian hockey player, Wayne Gretzky. He is a famous Canadian hockey player. He says, "You miss 100 percent of the shots you never take" so that is "You miss 100 percent of the shots you never take". Well, the bottom line is you've got to get out there and do things and, you know, live your passion.

Makiho: Wow, that’s great words. Wow. I’m very interested in your new project. It helps all these listeners with their business and also their life too. Could you tell when your new project is coming soon?

Doug: Yup. I’m just putting it together now. I’m going to call myself Professor Beach Town, or Professor Beach, (laughs) and I’m going to wear shorts and flip-flops and sunglasses. That will be fun. You know, I hope to travel around. When was in China I visited a place called Sanya, China. I know you've been there, and it’s a beautiful, beautiful beach town on the South China Sea. So to me that was kind of an exotic place to be in China. So I have photographs and some writing about that. I’ve been all over the Caribbean and, you know, I’m going to Haiti. There are some nice places in the Dominican Republic in that area. So I hope to visit many places around the world and write about them and have photographs and maybe interview on video some of the mayors or maybe Chamber of Commerce Presidents or, I'm in the Rotary Club, so Rotary Club Presidents, to learn about their town. And my whole thought is lots of people talk about the beaches, the best beaches in the world, but a lot of people don’t talk about beach towns. And my opinion is in order for a beach to be a great beach, you need to have a kind of a beach town up the street, you know, have somewhere fun to eat and drink and have fun and sleep and have other activities than just the beach. So that’s why I want to focus on the beach towns not just the beach. I hope to find maybe some journalists or correspondents. There's lots of travel writers that write about travel, so I hope to associate with them and obtain maybe some photographs and video and create a whole library of a huge, huge database online of information on each town around the world that people maybe want to go on their honeymoon and find an exciting place to go, or people that are adventurous that want to find somewhere to go, or retired people that want to find somewhere to go. And then write about the places and then part of it would be to learn about the real estate there and at some point promote real estate and sell some of the real estate. Got to make some money on it somehow, not just do the traveling so we will have to tie the real estate ventures into it somehow.

Makiho: Wow, I’m very looking forward to having your project soon, and then Doug, today your interview was wonderful and it was really, really great, and I really, really enjoyed it. I am sure it helps so many people and I got really great energy from you today. Thank you so much, Doug.

Doug: Thank you Makiho. Again, your listeners can visit my blog at www.dougdoebler.com, and I had a great time talking with you, Makiho. Have a great day!

Makiho: Thank you very much, Doug. Thank you very much. Have a good day, too.

Doug: Thank you.