Damn, I love a Coogi Sweater. The colors, the textures, the uniqueness; when you’re wearing a Coogi, everyone knows it.

Exclusivity is the hallmark of a Coogi sweater. Let’s face it, they cost alot. Period. But that’s the beauty of it; aint every crack head on the street gone be wearing your sweater. An authentic Coogi (they come in sweaters or hoodies) can range in price from $200 - $350. That’s the way I like it.

Take a look at the texture of the sweater pictured above. Notice those rings? I’ve never seen anything like that with any other designer. That’s definitely exclusive.

I often wear a nice Coogi when I’m going to a bar. I usually buy my sweaters from here (Coogi Sweaters ) because it’s the only place where I know I’m getting the real thing. And that’s important.

I’ve given you the game, now it’s up to you to step your game up.

Dress | No Comments »

Bad Credit can really suck. With bad credit you can’t get any furniture for your apartment without being raped by Rent-A-Center, you can’t get a cell phone without putting down a whole paycheck for a security deposit, and you can’t even get a loan to buy that Caddy everyone should be driving. Bad credit costs money; everything is more expensive when your credit sucks. If you CAN get a car, it’s at 6 or 7 years old and you’re still paying a huge monthly note. Even jobs have the nerve to be running credit checks now a days. In this day and age, you must have good credit. Period.

So, how do you fix your credit if you know that it’s bad? How do you even know if your credit is bad or not? What exactly is considered bad? In this article, you will learn:

• What a credit report is and who the 3 credit reporting agencies are
• How to get a free copy of your credit report(s)
• What a credit score is and why it matters
• What a dispute is
• How to remove items from your credit report with disputes

What is a credit report?

Everyone, from the time that they’re born has what is known as a credit report. We all start out with the same amount of information in our report; nothing. Everything we do that involves credit is stored in this file. Everytime we run a credit check, everytime we don’t pay a bill, everytime we get a credit card or a car or even a house or condo, it goes into this file. This file, this report basically just lists our entire credit history.

What is a credit reporting agency?

There are 3 companies that maintain your credit report. These companies, called Credit Reporting Agencies (or CRA’s) are Experian, Transunion, and Equifax. Each company keeps it’s own seperate copy of your credit report, and each copy has nothing to do with the other. So in effect, you actually have 3 different credit reports, not just one. Each report could have different things on them.

Whenever you get credit, it’s up to whoever gives you that credit to report it to the CRA’s. So, for example, if you’re late on your Tmobile bill, and Tmobile only reports it to only Transunion, then it won’t be on your Experian or Equifax report. So if you go to another phone place (say sprint) and they only check your Experian report, then they won’t even know that you never paid your Tmobile phone bill. Of course they will know if they check your Transunion phone bill.

How can I get a copy of my credit report?

There are a few ways to get a copy of your credit report. To get your report free, you can either visit annualcreditreport.com, or ask the CRA to give you a copy if you’ve been denied credit.

The Fair Credit Reporting Act (FCRA) requires each of the CRA’s to give you a copy of your credit report for free once per year. You can call them, mail them a letter, or (the easiest way) get your report online at annualcreditreport.com.

If you’ve been denied credit, you should receive a letter from whoever it is that turned you down with instructions on how to receive a free copy of your report. You usually have 30 days to ask for this copy.

What is a credit score, and why do I care?

In addition to your credit report, you also have what is called a credit score. This score is used to decide quickly how likely it is that you’ll pay a loan back. Although many places online will claim to give you your credit score, there’s only one real score, and that’s the FICO score. This is the score they use when you go to the dealer to buy a car, or when you try to get a cell phone and they need to find out whether or not you have to pay a deposit. Your FICO score is determined by what’s on your credit report. Once again, since you have 3 credit reports, you actually have 3 different FICO scores.

Every good thing on your credit report brings your score up. Credit cards paid on time, car loans paid ontime, etc; they all bring your score up. Bad things lower your score. If you don’t pay a bill and it shows up on your credit report, your score goes down. If you’re evicted, it’ll show up on your credit report, and lower your score. In some cities, if you don’t pay your tickets, they’ll show up on your credit report and lower your score.

Low scores can cost you alot of money. With low scores you have to pay more money for the loans you get and are forced to put down security deposits.

Remove bad items from your credit report with disputes

So, bad things on your credit report = low credit score. But can you remove these bad items from off your credit report? Yes, you can! Most bad things are put on your credit report by a collection agency. We all know that these are. They’re the idiots who call your phone constantly demanding their money. But collection agencies have laws they have to follow also.

Think about it like this, a stranger comes and knocks on your door, banging hard. When you answer, he says his name is ‘Pookey’ with Payup you dirty bastard, inc. He says you owe money on an old cellphone bill from Tmobile that you’ve never paid and he wants you to put the money that you owe in his hands or you’re going to have serious problems. What would you do?

Of course you’d have a few questions for him. Who are you? Can you show me some kind of proof that you were sent by Tmobile? Can you show me proof that the bill belongs to me? At that point, he’d either have to show you the proof you asked for, or leave you alone, right?

Well, it’s the same with collection agencies. They are infact strangers calling from strange companies asking you for money on bills they claim you owe, right? You are fully within your rights to ask for proof! The great thing about it is that if they cannot provide these proofs, they cannot try to collect any money from you. And here’s the important part; putting a bad item on your credit report is an attempt to collect money from you. So if they cannot prove certain things to you, they have to remove the item from your credit report.

So how do you ask for proof? There are a couple of ways. The simplest way is to dispute through the CRA. The CRA by law cannot report anything that is not true. So you have a right to request that the CRA investigate the truthfulness of anything on your credit report. When you do that, the CRA has 30 days to find out if it’s true or not. If it’s not, then they are required by law to remove it from your credit report. Simple as that.

You can also dispute an item on your report directly with the collection agency. You can send them a letter asking them to prove that the item belongs to you. You can request things like a signed contract that proves the account is actually yours. Of course most of the time the agency won’t have these things. Alot of the time, they’ll back off and remove the item from your credit report.

Removing items from your credit report can be very complicated and should be taken very seriously. But if you do your homework, you’ll find that you can probably remove every bad item from your report for just the cost of printing and mailing a few letters. You should definately do your homework though.

If you want to fix your credit quickly, and perhaps get that Caddy finally (I KNOW Cadillac is your favorite car, right?), then perhaps you should check out the Credit Secretes Bible. I love this system because it dumbs down credit repair so that anyone can do it. Using this system, I was able to go from a credit score of 460 to 640 in just 2 months! After that, I was able to buy my 1st real ride.

I’ve given you the game, now it’s up to you to Step Your Game Up.

Motivation | 3 Comments »

We all have dreams, we all have goals. The only difference between the successful and the unsuccessful in life is that the successful people constantly set, and reach their desired goals, while the unsuccessful people in life just ‘wish’ they could do something.It doesn’t matter if you work a 9-5, or work a trap, you still have to have goals, or you will be stuck exactly where you are forever.

The problem is, that while you probably have things that you wish you could do, or that you desire to do, or even that you wish you could have, alot of times you dont think you’ll ever accomplish or attain these things; or they seem too far off. Well, if you ever want to have anything in life, the first thing you must do is know that you can have what ever it is you put your mind to. Napoleon Hill (White cat, but a genius when it comes to fulfilling your potential) once said in his book “Think and Grow Rich” that ‘…whatever the mind can perceive, it can achieve.’ This is the basic most simple thing that you will have to learn and accept as truth if you’re ever going to get anywhere in life.

Whatever the mind can perceive, it can achieve. That means if you can see it, you can have it. If you can see yourself riding in that ‘lac, you can ride in that ‘lac. If you can see yourself getting that promotion to boss dog, then you can get that promotion. Even my people in the trap; if you can see yourself moving from dimes and nicks to pushing real weight, you can acheive that too. The only thing that you must do is see it, and know that its going to happen.

So, you have a goal in mind. You know exactly what you want. Thats good. A lot of us get to this point. Problem is with most of us, we lose sight of our goals. For whatever reason, we lose focus, we lose drive, and eventually, we just let the goal go entirely. You cannot let that happen.

There are 6 tricks to making sure that you wake up everyday focused and driven toward getting what you want:

1. Go to sleep with your goal on your mind
2. Wake up with your goal on your mind
3. Kill your inner hater
4. Hype yourself up
5. Get your pre-signed Kanye on
6. Don’t fucking stop!

Go to sleep with your goal on your mind

“I goto sleep with a picture of a Porsche on the wall; man, I’m tryin to come up on ya’ll” - Memphis Bleek

You got to eat, sleep, and breath whatever it is that you want to do. So start with sleep. Before you goto sleep, get a clear picture in your head of exactly what it is that you want. I mean clear. If you want to ride in a Cadillac truck, you should be able to feel the softness of the leather underneath your fingertips, see your reflection in the fine wood grain, feel the base from the Bose system pounding in your stomach, and see the admiring eyes of everyone looking up to you as you drive past. The clearer your vision is, the more focused you will be on making it happen. Remember, the little details count here.

If what you want is a tangible item, like a Cadillac truck or something, then put a picture of it on your wall, or on your ceiling. Just hang it up so that as you drift off to sleep, you’ll see whatever it is that you want right in front of you. If what you want is not a tangible item, then put a picture of someone who has acheived it on your wall. If you want to be a basketball player, then put a picture of Lebron James or Michael Jordan on your wall. If you’re trying to get that degree, then get a picture of a fake degree, and write your name in there, and look at that every night. Whatever it is, between seeing it with your eyes, and imagining it with in your mind every night, you’ll find it hard to forget about what it is that you want.

Wake up with your goal on your mind

The 1st 10 min are the absolute most important part of your day. What you watch, say, or think when you first wake up can absolutely determine how your day will go. This is why it is very important that you think about your goals as soon as you wake up. Take a look at that picture that you hung up on the wall. Re-imagine what it feels like to ride in that Cadillac. Talk to yourself about it. Hype yourself up. This is an absolute must. You must re-enforce your goal 1st thing. This way you stay focused on it the entire day.

Kill your inner hater

We all talk to ourselves inside of our heads. We all think about things, and play things out in our heads, and talk to ourselves. And we all have, an ‘inner hater’. Your inner hater comes out whenever you doubt yourself. It’s that voice that says you can’t make it, or you’ll never achieve your goal, or it’s too hard, or too much or too corny or something like that. Your inner hater tells you, instead of working toward your goal, why not just go play 360, or smoke. Your inner hater is probably the single biggest reason why losers stay losers and winners win even more. You must kill your inner hater!

So how do you kill this confidence sucking, dream stealing, hater inside of you? Take away his voice. Whenever you find yourself saying anything that goes against your goals, or anything negative about yourself, stop it. Immediately. And counter it by hyping yourself up. Everytime. For every negative thing you catch yourself saying to yourself, say 5 positive things. You’ve got to kill this hater. Eventually you’ll find that the only thing you say to yourself is positive things, and then you will have all the confidence you need to get what you want.

Hype yourself up

Remember what Jarmel told us “stay focused Tip” (I remember nigga) - T.I /T.I.P.

This is the absolute most important key to staying focused on your goal; Hyping yourself up. You have got to be your own hype man, your own cheer leader, your own kiss ass sidekick. You have to constantly in your head repeat your goals, talk to your self about how great it’s going to be when (not if) you reach your goals, and for good measure, remind yourself about how you are the shit.

Whenever you find that you’re being brought down, whether it’s from outside forces, or your own inner hater, you got to cut that noise off, and immediately counter it by hyping yourself up. This is how you stay at peak performance. This is how you stay focused on your goals. Constantly talk to yourself about them. Constantly talk about your success. constantly talk to yourself about how sweet things are gonna be when you make it. You have to believe in yourself even if no one else in the world does. And you have to let yourself know how you feel at all times.

Get your pre-signed Kanye on

Before Kanye got signed, he spent months locked up in his tiny apartment working on his beats. He didn’t go out, he didn’t mess with females, he didn’t party, he didn’t do anything except work on his beats, with the goal in mind of getting signed. If you want to accomplish something, you have to be willing to put almost everything else to the side, and work only on what it is that you’re trying to accomplish.

Don’t sit around watching TV when you could be getting closer to your goal. Don’t play that 360. Don’t sit around smoking (unless of course you’re a rapper). Get to work. Nothing worth getting can be gotten on your couch. Put aside all distractions and focus on what you gotta do.

Don’t fucking stop!

I will not lose - Jay Z

10,000 times. That’s how many times Edison tried and failed to invent the light bulb. 10,000 times he tried to reach his goal, and 10,000 times he failed. At the time, every one around him told him that he was crazy. That we’d never be able to use electricity to light anything. They all told him that he should stop wasting his time and his money. But none of that mattered. He thought his haters where just silly because they couldn’t see his goal. More importantly though, he was once asked how it is that he tried and failed 10,000 times to invent an electric lamp and won’t stop. His reply was, ‘…I haven’t failed at anything. I’ve successfully identified 10,000 ways NOT to invent an electric lamp, and that puts me 10,000 ways closer’.

Every failure is not a failure at all. It’s a learning lesson. It’s a test. It’s a filter to filter out the people that don’t really want it. It’s only a failure if you give up. You got to keep pushing for whatever it is that you want, no matter what tries to hold you back.

We all have dreams, we all have goals. But few of us actually do what it takes to acheive these goals that we have. This doesn’t have to be you. Go to sleep focused. Wake up focused. Kill that inner hater and hype yourself up. Get your Kanye on, and most importantly Don’t fucking give up!

I’ve given you the game, now it’s up to you to step your game up.

Motivation | 4 Comments »