The Donald Trump University Experience

As a part of my quest to build wealth as a black business in Atlanta, I decided to plunge head first and experience wealth creation from a world leader in this field. I reached out to Trump University and decided to sign up, register, and go to the next level. I wanted to link and learn from America’s finest leader and was frustrated with some of my real estate investments in Atlanta that weren’t cash flowing positively and making me money the way I wanted.

I had a big dream that was for sure. My dream is still the same: I want to buy one apartment building this year with a minimum of 44 units with each unit making profits of a minimum of $250 per unit. If purchased right, I should make at least $11,000 per month in profit and then go do another building. My main goal is to create $100,000 per month in profits from apartment buildings and real estate.

Trump University

I would tell people this in Atlanta and their eyes would just glaze over and look at me like I was crazy and silly. I knew that I couldn’t keep these same people around me and tell them this type of goal. I needed people around me who thought and had way more than me and who wouldn’t be afraid of me saying something like this. I needed to build a team of people who would hear that, not flinch, and know what to do to help me achieve this dream realistically and create a strategic plan to do so. I had always known of Donald Trump and even read most of his books. I wanted more. I wanted to get help.

The first thing I did was register at Trump University. Within 2 hours of registering, I received a call from a representative who wanted me to go through an assessment test to determine if I was someone that Mr. Trump would work with. I was excited at the fact that they actually cared. They didn’t think about me being a black american and didn’t think anything else. They simply wanted to find out if I had the right mentality to do the work necessary to succeed.

After taking the assessment test, they assigned me a personal wealth coach designed to help me along the way. He asked me about my goals. He wanted me to tell him exactly what I mentioned above with my cash flow goals and wanted me to explain how I planned to get there. He wanted to know if I had cash flow forecasts and plans in writing which I did have.

I decided to continue to take courses through Trump University and become a master student and accept this personal coaching that they had offered me. Trump University wanted to know how serious I was to commit to the program and learn to make money. What? I was so humbled to be around him and happy to be a student. I just wanted to see myself as an African American succeed with his program so that I could teach others.

Gerard Spinks is the CEO of Spinks Industries, a web content developer and marketing company based in Atlanta, GA.

The little known Black American Success Secret

Most black Americans and African-Americans have never heard of The Jack and Jill organization that has been around for 100 years. I went to a Jack and Jill event in the highly exclusive Blackhawk country club in the San Francisco Bay area several years ago and was blown away. I was invited by a friend of mine who owned a carpet cleaning business in Concord, CA and was the head of The Black Families organization that I was a member of. He said “G, you’ve got to come to this event. You belong at it.” I said sure. I had been looking at houses in Blackhawk and dreamed of possibly living in the exclusive gated community in Danville, CA one day next to E-40, Gary Payton, and several other prominent Bay Area African-Americans.

BlackHawk Country Club Bay Area, CA

We went to the black tie affair excited and ready to meet some really good and interesting folks and have a great time. I walk into the Country Club and everyone was hopping out of Limousines, high end Mercedes Benz’s, BMW’s, Bentley’s, Rolls Royce’s, etc. I knew I would fit right in! As I’m walking in, I see some friends of mine in the doorway who were the talent for the night. For this party, they had my friend Dwayne Wiggins of Toni, Tone, Tony and some ballet dancer friends of my ex-wife. We stopped, had a drink with them and kept it moving to enjoy the party.

This was awesome to see and a sight truly to bear witness to. It was a group of executive black business men and women. Hire powered business people who ran businesses in both Northern California, Southern California, and nationwide. I met executives from Black Enterprise Magazine, American Express, and other top level CEO’s.

A couple of gentlemen asked me what I was drinking while I was in this little lounge area of the country club. I said “Henny with a splash of coke”. These dudes were the truth. We sat and talked about the Jack and Jill Organization and how they belonged to a “secret society” of African Americans who are highly successful and who believe in building that success in their kids.

They believe in ensuring their children have a high level of education and mingling with other children who also belong to the Jack and Jill Foundation. They believed that I was the caliber of individual who belonged in their inner circle.

Talk about a compliment. I’ve never had a more potent compliment in my life to this day. The Jack and Jill Foundation is a great organization and has roots in Strivers Row in the Washington DC area. Everything about Jack and Jill is good. They are committed to the improvement of black america life and they are committed to building success within the young black youth. I will definitely have my daughter be in this highly esteemed African American organization.

Google Adword Keywords to make your website profitable

Google has tools to help you on your quest for total world domination with your blog. Making your website monetized and making money has several steps attached to it. Providing updated and new content, keyword research, and website analytics.

I do this process everyday: write new content, publish new content based upon google adwords keywords for my target niche, and analyze my website traffic numbers. It is very important that you take a numbers and analytical approach to this hustle. You need to know what people are clicking on and what they could care less about on your website in order to know how to make money.

Google Adwords Keyword hustlin

Minority owned business especially needs to understand these tactics that the big boys have already mastered. Go to Google and setup an Adwords account. While you’re up there, set up a free Adsense account as well which will allow you to put up pay per click banners on your website. When people click on the Adsense ads, you and Google share revenue. For the Google Adwords keywords exercise, write down at least 20-35 keywords that describe your website and look at it from an angle of what a user would search on if they were using Google to find something. Think outside of the box. Don’t just think of your name. Egotistically, I think everyone wants to know Gerard Spinks. Not true. People in Wisconsin, Iowa, Detroit, China, and Japan don’t care or know who I am and will never search on my name.

Someone wishing to enroll in Clark Atlanta University though will search on terms such as HBCU, black colleges, or Clark Atlanta University. Someone interested in finding a Body Shoppe store in Atlanta will search on “body shoppe atlanta, ga”. You get my drift. Once you have selected keywords, plug them into the keyword tool in your Google Adwords Keyword account. Click on estimate search traffic and it will give you an idea of how many clicks it estimates and the estimated cost per click of those keywords. Steer away from massive keywords like “real estate”, “make money online”, “cash flow”, “harry potter”. You will never ever get those keywords unless you have huge budgets to reach the market.

Google Adwords Keyword Free tool

Once you establish the keywords to use that don’t estimate being over $1.00, these should be included in your marketing strategy. If you see words that are estimated to cost over $1.00 and that have a ton of estimated traffic, this is NOT good for you. It does not mean that you will get all that traffic unless you’re willing to pay daily to get that traffic. Aim for smaller niche keywords that people would search on and use these. When you get this going, it is time to start creating one of two things: ad campaigns or creating content that incorporates your Google Adwords Keywords into your daily hustle.

Is your bank account a measure of your success?

In a very interesting conversation with a colleague, he made a statement saying that because he was unemployed and his bank account was low, he felt that he didn’t have the same expertise or voice of authority that he used to have in business 2 months ago.

I was shocked at this and couldn’t really understand the thought process. This made me think are we our bank accounts? Have we gotten so caught up in finances that our self-worth is directly tied to our Chase bank account?

The Ballers Guide to MAJOR Figure$

It immediately made me think of why my mother focused us so heavily on faith and belief. The guy I was talking to lives in Oakland, is a young dude, and said that money rules his world. Interesting attitude but we’ll run with his attitude for a minute. Because money is his God, he is setting himself up for failure. Just because he doesn’t have a job, does not make him less of an authority on his chosen field. I listen to him and had he not told me about his bank account, I would never have known. His advice was still very valid for an investment banker and I appreciated everything he said.

He hooked his whole self-esteem and confidence to his job and that’s simply not true. Because he is momentarily out of work, does not make him a bad person, or someone who doesn’t want to pay his bills, or less of an authority. His advice was/is welcomed and he knows a great deal about strategic investments, portfolio management, and institutional investing. Ok, his industry is mired in some mess right now but so is mine. It doesn’t make me less of a business mind or millionaire mindset because my industry is upside down. The industry is not what makes you. You make the industry.

Be sure not to make this mistake of attaching your emotion and your self-worth to Bank of America and the ATM receipt. Yes, it sucks to go to the ATM and see that damn little piece of paper say $48 remaining in your account and you’ve got to float until the end of the month. Yes, it’s crazy. Yes it’s difficult. No, it doesn’t make you better or worse. If it said $48,000 it would make you and I both feel better but it doesn’t make you a better you. It’s a blessing but it doesn’t improve your self-worth. It improves confidence indeed but it cannot improve self-worth. If you see yourself as a millionaire, claim it, be it, go after it. Don’t stop. Don’t listen when people say that’s not you. It is you. It’s what you think about. You need a millionaire mindset in order to make it today. Don’t forget it and leave it in the dust. To succeed as a black business, you need this times 2.

How to make your blog successful

I know I’m supposed to be like other blogosphere guru’s and tell you what you want to hear.

“I turned on my blog and started making hand over fist cash because I’m the greatest thing since sliced bread and the whole world loves me!” Yeah right. And, I come from a family with a worldwide sports name and people still need to know who you are and what value you provide to them.

How to be successful with your blog

Who gives a crap who Gerard Spinks is? What can I provide to you of value?

Here’s the winning secret that I’ve learned on blogging vs having your own website. WordPress or Blogger rank WAY higher on a website called Alexa than having your own website. This means that putting content up on WordPress or Blogger get indexed faster and quicker and have greater visibility on the Internet than your own website. I know it sounds crazy but it’s true. I’ve put this in practice myself and my Spinks Industries website has been in operation for 4 or 5 years. When I post on WordPress, it gets seen a little better than posting on my own site. I suggest using both your website and WordPress and integrate both of them together via RSS feeds.

If you have a budget of say $20 per day, you would really help yourself by placing Google adwords ads about your business to also funnel web users into your website via Google Adword keywords. I notice that using a combination of both of these techniques proves to send a decent amount of traffic to my web properties. And, if you can be controversial, which I am, you are then only limited by your daily pay per click budget. When I run ads that are controversial in nature, I can get 100 clicks to my website in 15-30 minutes. Obviously, you can run through your daily budget real fast based upon how much it costs to pay for keywords and get top Google sponsored link positions 1-3.

I focus on keywords that are not super popular and that cost me anywhere from $.30 – $.55 per click per keyword. This means that for 100 clicks, I pay anywhere from $30-$55 per day and keeps my budget under control. For pay per click, if you write the proper ad campaign copy text, you can easily get the right traffic clicking on your ads and send 200 people per day to your website and put them on a landing page that offers them your product or service. I recommend using search engine techniques via keywords and Google Adwords keywords to be successful with your blog.

Real Opportunity Takes Extreme Focus

In this market, business opportunities are not going to come to you. You’re going to have to create your own opportunities and create your own way. Waiting on a job and hoping unemployment doesn’t run out is no longer a viable and sustainable solution in this job market. Being on Twitter all day is also not a sustainable and workable solution either nor is chatting on Facebook.

Spinks helps you think opportunity and grow new business

Business opportunity takes extreme focus and it even sometimes means that you must do some things for free for people that you want to network with and do business with. If you have a job and sustainable income, this market has also proven that it’s not guaranteed that it will stay around. As we speak, large corporate executives have as an initiative to lower costs of doing business in America.

How do you lower business costs in an ailing economy? Eliminate locations, eliminate jobs, and eliminate the contracts. The State of California Courts just announced yesterday that they are closing one day per month entirely and not doing business and not paying court employees for that day of work. This will save California around $94 Million annually. What does this mean for the average person who has held their State job for 12 years and have been very loyal and a hard worker?

New opportunity must be created for you in a low cost manner. I do not mean browsing careerbuilder all day looking for an all elusive job as an opportunity. I mean creating a business that fills a niche market so that you can start to generate additional income when the income from your regular job goes away or is reduced. Research will have to be done but there are established businesses looking for people through networks like the Google Affiliate Network where you become an affiliate marketer and sell an already established product.

Even this needs extreme focus, planning, and a strategic direction. Ludacris even offers his energy drink in an affiliate manner. Focus and a strategic marketing and sales plan is the key to this as well as patience. Because people are so desparate for money (and I don’t blame anyone), typically we need to see immediate results and need to pay a bill by 4 weeks ago. You’re going to have to separate the bill collector from the strategic plan. The creditor needs their money today but you need to focus on generating sustainable income and passive income for the next year.

Try not to get sidetracked by the daily phone calls of the collectors or banks needing their money. Try to pick a niche that you really know about and that you are very passionate about and then start thinking long term. Start thinking “I want to set this business up and market the hell out of it with what I have today such that in a year from now, I’m driving 1,000 people per day to my site and they are buying at least 10 products per day.” You must think long term for any type of success and opportunity to happen.

Gerard Spinks is the CEO of Spinks Industries, a web content developer, marketing firm, and black enterprise based in Atlanta, GA.

Bernard Bernanke is deaf, dumb, and blind

Federal Reserve Chairman Bernard Bernanke has declared the recession over.

Wow. I declare I now magically have $2 Million transferred into my Fidelity Brokerage account right this second. This is the most ignorant statement that I have ever heard. Who pays these ignorant dudes like Bernanke and Joe Wilson to run this country?

I feel sorry for President Obama to have this kind of ignorance around him.

The United States recession is in Deep Water

The recession is over huh? What is this statement based upon? What fact? This dude, Bernanke, reminds me of the great President George W. Bush, who was forever in denial about the economy and kept being so hopeful that nothing was happening to our economy and that everyone was fine and dandy. Oh that’s right, he and his boy Dick Cheney profited heavily in the oil industry with Halliburton, Enron, and other corporations where they made billions. I said BILLIONS.

So, I’m going to run out and start spending the mess out of all of my profits because the recession is over. I’m headed straight to Neiman Marcus to celebrate. Matter of fact, let me go on a huge shopping spree at Lenox Square Mall and Phipps Plaza and focus on the high end retailers because Bernanke has instilled such confidence and assurance in me that I can spend all of my available cash. Why? Why not? He said so. He said it’s over and I’m supposed to be a puppet along with the rest of us hard working but out of work Americans.

Here are the true unemployment statistics published by the Department of Labor for the entire United States broken down by area. While Bernanke believes that the recession is over, government agencies are literally broke. The city of Vallejo, California in the San Francisco Bay Area is bankrupt and has an unemployment rate of around 11.5%. They should call Bernanke and ask why they are in trouble. Be careful driving out there too because other cities are just as broke and have been ordered to pull people over and increase cash flow for the cities and counties by pulling you over and writing tickets. They need your money more than you do.

Buckle up, muscle up, and knuckle up people. This recession is far from over. There was a job fair in San Francisco yesterday and it had the largest number of attendants in their history of job fairs. In Atlanta, GA, Fulton County hosted a job fair at the Georgia World Congress Center to a capacity crowd. And not only that, people with MBA’s and Phd’s are competing against people with and without Bachelor Degrees. It’s so bad that the Wall Street Journal has a specific place on it’s website for laid off financial experts looking for jobs.

Don’t believe Bernanke’s hype. I know he’s not talking to any hardworking, small minority owned black business. The great depression is real and is here and is not over. He’s trying to be hopeful and convince us that it’s not spiraling out of control. He’s paid to say that so that stocks jump up and international investors feel more solid about America so that the price of the dollar goes up in international trading. As an economist, he must get the value of the United States dollar up.

Gerard Spinks is the CEO of Spinks Industries, an Atlanta, GA based black business enterprise that specializes in content development, Internet marketing, business development, and mobile phone content delivery for major United States brands.