A Blackmailer’s Guide to Debt

There is an entire industry built around taking pictures of famous people and then selling them to various magazines for big cash.

It is a weird business because there are literally thousands and thousands of pictures of famous people. A celebrity’s entire business revolves around people having access to them.

Some pictures are more valuable than others, however. So much so that shady characters try to take advantage of compromising images to blackmail actors or actresses.

There are plenty of salacious examples out there but I like to keep these emails family-friendly, so I will tell you the story of the action star Steven Seagal.

Now the current version of Seagal has gone completely insane. He makes crazy movies in Russia now and routinely has dinner with Vladimir Putin. I am not making that up.

But, back in the day he was a legitimate movie star in the United States. His movies made on average 80 million dollars which was a lot of money back then. When that kind of cash starts flying around it can attract the wrong kind of attention.

Even from those close to you.

Enter Julius Nasso. The man was an ex-producer of Seagal’s and for 5 years he tried to blackmail Seagal. He claimed to have pictures and evidence linking the actor to the downfall of a powerful mob family.

This obviously would not be good if true and it got out.

Seagal went to the authorities and Nasso eventually pled to extortion charges.

Not all pictures and evidence are the same even though sometimes we think they are. A lot of things are like that.

Take your debt for example. Most financial gurus will teach you that all debt is bad. They want you to focus on paying off what you owe as quickly as possible. But is this always true?

In my book, I talk about how early in my career I had a client who had two rental properties that were under water.

He owed more on them than what they were worth at that point in time.

He asked me if he should sell and cut his losses.

He looked at the rentals as bad debt.

But were they?

Just like not all pictures are the same, not all debt was the same. You see, his properties had positive cash flow. The debt provided him leverage which allowed him to look at the houses as an asset even though any non-savvy investor would consider them liabilities!

Part of getting paid as a blackmailer is knowing what pictures are valuable and which are not. There is a valuable lesson there for us normal law-abiding folks.

Good debt can be valuable.

Bad debt can drag you down.

The skill is in knowing which one is which. It is something I teach my students every day.

Now, I do not want you to go out and be a blackmailer. But, I DO want you to learn the skills to become financially savvy.

I want you to experience what I get to experience every day. A life free from financial worry and stress. I get to focus on building and not stress about scraping by.

Do you want to learn the lessons required to have the life you want?


Your Investor Friend in Florida,


Coach Roel