Category: Manny Kagan

Hello Friends!

I recently received the email down below from my good friend and Yoga instructor, Susannah Bruder. She would really appreciate any help that you may be able to lend:

Hi dear Yogis:

Thanks for all the ideas and energy and referrals you have sent in such a short time.

Hope I can lift the by clarifying what I need is just 9, 90 minute  classes, sub leased by other teachers of Yoga, martial arts, healing arts,at Yogasita besides my own.  So that could be 9 individual teachers, or one, two or three.

I have many friends who teach Yoga & healing and movement arts, all around the entire Bay, and am asking all.

Because, inevitably a teacher is  moving or looking for a new space –  my thought is to get the ripple out that the lovely serene Yogasita has space.

Upset at my landlord or any worry not good use of energy, just saying.

So who do you know who takes any of these types of classes, or is perhaps a neighbor to, or married to, or knows a teacher of one of these disciplines?

Or  send to your Chiropractor, massage therapist, acupuncturist, health care provider – they may know a teacher looking for space. Someone has put it up on Facebook, great idea

Please send your own note about the studio being available, with the CL link and  not my email to you.

If 50% of you who read this email, sends one to someone you know, the 9 slots will be filled quickly. If you all send to one other person, that would be something

Love and Thanks,

Susannah

To contact Susannah, please email her at [email protected]

Address:
1501 Mariposa at Arkansas No. 308
San Francisco, CA 94107
415.864.7482 (SITA)

Website:
Yogasita SF 

 

 

Tonight at sundown is the beginning of Yom Kippur, The Day of Atonement. Jews who follow the tradition will spend the whole day tomorrow in the Synagogues around the world praying and asking God for forgiveness while fasting for 25 hours. Webster Dictionary’s definition of Atonement is:Satisfaction given for wrong doing, injury.

On Yom Kippur during the prayer in the synagogues, believers hit their chest repeating the phrase–“I have sinned before you living and existing God.”

Apparently sin (according to the same dictionary) is: an offense against God, religion, or good morals. And what if the person claims that he/she does not believe in God, or does not belong to any organized religion?

Or what good morals are for one (suicide bombers, for instance) are not so good for others?

And is the Atonement day only for Jews, who live among so many other people, who have their own beliefs, and who do not necessarily follow the 10 commandments?

And then there is a question—Am I really a sinner? 

During prayer on Yom Kippur, one asks for forgiveness for both the known and unknown sins one committed. There is a joke about the Jewish husband who did nothing wrong. Is he still guilty? And what happens after the Yom Kippur is over? Can we continue to live our habitual (sinful?) lives again until the next Yom Kippur? How do I feel about it?

As you can see, I ask a lot of questions to which I have no answers.

According to Jewish tradition, Man, at his core, is not a sinner. Sin actually means missing the mark, which can be corrected, or amended.

The images you see in this email are a few from hundreds that I took of the race. It is simultaneously a boring and exciting. Most of the time nothing was happening and then in a few minutes, two beautiful $10 million dollar 72 foot catamarans—creations of human ingenuity passed in front of us. Hitting speeds in excess of 20 knots (mi/hr), they glided without touching the water. Sometimes, it looked like they were going to collide into each other. At the end, the New Zealand team won both races. The first time, they beat an American Oracle team by 36 seconds, and the second round by 52-seconds. (Each team will have more races.)

The Jewish New Year, Rosh Hashanah literally translates to the “Head of the Year”. This day also signifies the birth date of Adam—the first person God created (according to the Torah). Thus, if Adam would listen to his father—God, and not to his wife Eve, and not eat the fruit from the “Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil”, he would have lived forever and celebrated his 5,774th birthday by staying in the Garden of Eden, living the quiet life of a gardener without any excitement or turbulence. As a result, you and I would probably not exist and you would not be reading this story.

We do not know what kind of fruit was on the tree which for Eve “was good for eating and was a delight to the eyes” (Genesis 3/16). Nevertheless, according to the Kabbalah (Jewish Esoteric knowledge), the Garden of Eden is called “The Holy Apple Orchard: In addition, King Solomon wrote ‘Beneath the apple I aroused you[r] love” (Song of Songs 8:5). There are other stories connecting apples to Rosh Hashanah. 

Apples have another remarkable quality. From the ancient times, they were known to have healing properties. Apparently, when King Herod (73-4 B.C.E) felt faint, he would eat an apple. There is a reason for saying “an apple a day, keeps the doctor away”.

To attest to this, there is an article in the recent “The Intelligent Optimist”magazine. Researchers at California State University and other scientists, the article reported, discovered that there are many relationships between apples and our well-being (including helping us lose weight).

For the Rosh Hashanah celebration, the Challah—which is a braided bread traditionally eaten on the Sabbath, is baked round on Rosh Hashanah, and the first piece of it is dipped into honey followed by eating a slice of apple, and reciting the blessing “Shana tova ve matoka” (Bless us with a good and sweet year).

In 1882, the idea for a Labor Day holiday was first introduced to the United States, and it became a Federal holiday in 1887. In those years, hands in the fields or the factories did the majority of labor in the country. According to Webster’s Dictionary, “labor” is defined as:

Physical or mental exertion; work, toil, or the process of childbirth.

What is interesting is that both labor related activities were first mentioned in the Torah.

“To the women He said, ‘I will greatly increase your suffering and your child bearing; in pain shall you bear children.’”—Genesis 3/16

“To Adam He said, ‘By the sweat of your brow, shall you eat bread.”—Genesis 4/2

According to Wikipedia, the highest number of employed people in our country are in the retail sales (24%). Since Labor Day is the second busiest event (after Black Friday, the day after Thanksgiving), these hard working women and men work long and exhausting hours for the rest of us to enjoy our days off. 

When I started working at the age of 15, I was a laborer—first a toolmaker, then an auto mechanic. (And later, I became an engineer.) You can read more about my humble start in the workforce in my first book, “The Mortgage Game: The 5 C’s and How to Connect Them”.

After we moved to Israel, on my first day of work, I held a welding torch in my hands, and I managed the construction of large steel industrial projects later on. In the United States, my first job was working as a handyman for a general contractor.

On our recent trip to The Sea Ranch, I was reading, “Tao of Photography: Seeing Beyond Seeing” by Philippe L. Gross and S.I. Shapiro. It was a gift from my daughter Tamar, and was perfect for the tranquil environment of the location.  The Taoist philosophy of Chuang-Tzu is a Chinese concept signifying the way, path, route, or doctrine. It can help one look deeper into one’s own heart—

“Leap into the boundless and make it your home!
Great understanding is broad and unburied; little understanding is cramped and busy.”—Chuang-Tzu

The book is a description of the photographic experience from the Taoist point of view and contains quotes from many famous photographers. 

“I never look for a photograph. The photograph finds me and says, “I’m here!” and I say, “Yes. I see you. I hear you.”—Ruth Bernard

In my classes about the mortgage business, I usually start with a Russian proverb, which loosely translates to:

“The prey runs to the hunter.”

One needs to become a hunter first in their heart and in all their being, before one can to be called a hunter.

 

I do not know about you, but when I am on vacation and have an opportunity to relax, I start seeing the world with open eyes and notice only the beauty. It is Sunday morning in The Sea Ranch, where I have been staying for 5 days in a beautiful house on the bluff with my wife and beautiful daughter, Alona.

Outside the window, I see a foggy sky and grey ocean with grey rocks. I just came back from photographing amazingly beautiful grey images. Flocks of beautiful grey pelicans are flying in front of our window.

Last night, a group of seven beautiful deer came to eat by our house and then joined us (outside) to watch a beautiful movie on the TV. Yesterday, we spent many hours strolling in a beautiful forest. Days before, we walked on a trail along the beautiful ocean, surrounded by the beautiful nature.

Here, we met our neighbors—a beautiful couple who divide their time between beautiful Paris and The Sea Ranch.

We had our anniversary dinner in the beautiful St. Orres Restaurant. It is located outside beautiful Gualala, a small town next to The Sea Ranch.

While here, I finished reading a beautiful book by Anita Moorjani—“Dying to Be Me: My Journey from Cancer, to Near Death, to True Healing”. It is a life story about a young beautiful woman, who had “died” from cancer and came back. Her near death experience helped her to get rid of cancer and also changed her outlook on life. This book inspired me to write this letter. The book was given to me by my beautiful friend and Doctor of Oriental Medicine—Dr. Angela Wu, who helps beautiful women to conceive and bring to this beautiful world, beautiful children. She is the author of the book, “Fertility Wisdom: How Traditional Chinese Medicine Can Help Overcome Fertility”.

In the courtyard of the Legion of Honor Museum, there is a large sculpture of August Rodin’s The Thinker. On our last visit to the museum, we saw the “Impressionists on the Water” exhibit—a very compact show that features beautiful art by the artists who lived close to the waterways in France at the end of the 19th to the early 20th century, and who became known as impressionists because of the specific way they created their art. It was interesting to see how the curator put together a collection where most of the images had an unusual composition (at least from my photographic eye).

On the way out, I photographed a group of visitors who posed in the front of the sculpture, pretending to show how they think. A friend of mine, Greg Durrett, told me that when he lived close to the museum, he would go there regularly to photograph the “pretending” thinkers.

Earl Nightingale once remarked, “We become what we think about most of the time”.

What we think about is often affected by the world we live in and of course our own personal disposition. We were recently at a friend’s house where a group of men and women discussed the “hot topics” of the day–the Asiana Flight 214 crash in San Francisco and the George Zimmerman trial. Everyone had their own opinion about those stories, but the reference was primarily based on what people read in the newspapers or saw on TV. At the same time, someone commented that one cannot believe everything they read in the newspapers.

 

P.S.

We are closing more sales transactions. Every case has its own set of complications. In one of them, I was very pleased when the clients listened to my advice and offered a higher price. Luckily, their offer was accepted. They kept their monthly payments “affordable” by choosing a loan with a fixed rate for 7 years (not 30), and interest rate 3.75%.

P.P.S.

I also live by the water and thought that we do not have the same quality of light. As it is in the South of France, I humbly present you some of my images related to the subject.

Do not keep me as a secret.

How do you think a client would react when he received a call from me that his loan request for $2,200,000 was approved? It would replace his existing mortgage of $1,200,000 at 5.50%. The new interest rate will be 10.50% and will cost 4 points or $88,000, plus closing costs of about $5,000 to get it. You probably would think that the client, who was very happy for that wonderful news, had lost his marbles.

What I did not tell you is that the client is a contractor. He owns an old house in a prime location. He is planning to rebuild it by adding 4,000 sq. ft. After he finishes construction, the new house could be sold for over $4 million. Now you can do your own math. The interest cost is going to be $231,000 plus the closing cost of $93,000, subtract those numbers plus the loan amount from the sales price. The balance is the profit (minus taxes and real estate commission) and suddenly a 10.50% interest rate is no longer such a big deal—especially since the client is not qualified to get a construction loan from a commercial bank.

The title of this story came from my assistant Samantha, after I shared with her a conversation I had with a friend. He came to me for marketing advice. While listening to him, I was squeezing a yellow rubber ball to increase blood circulation in my fingers to relieve some discomfort in my pinky. I picked up this ball as a freebee at a conference. On one side of the ball, there is a smiling face and on the other is a marketing message. I showed him both sides, pointing out that in a given moment we are both looking at the same ball from opposite sides and getting a different message. But in the end—neither of those messages are important. Since the purpose of squeezing the ball is to relieve stress or to increase blood circulation.

The same goes with getting a mortgage. Borrowers are often fixated on securing a fixed rate and not on improving their cash flow. The result can be like a recent conversation I had with a client. Their current mortgage of $635,000 (They can pay it down to $625,500 to get a better rate), has an interest rate of 5.25% and monthly payments of $4,000 plus $300 for the mortgage insurance. We started talking about refinancing a while back when the fixed rates were at 3.50%, but she never sent me the paperwork. I called her recently suggesting that they send documents to be ready when rates will come down again to which she responded that she was only interested if the rate was 3.50%.