Allen, Robert G. 1948-

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ALLEN, Robert G. 1948-

PERSONAL:

Born May 20, 1948, in Raymond, Alberta, Canada; son of John Leonard and May Leone (Judd) Allen; immigrated to United States c. 1970; naturalized U.S. citizen, 1974; married Daryl Elyse Lieurance, February 14, 1977; children: Aimee Elyse, Aaron, Hunter. Education: Attended Ricks College, Rexburg, ID, 1966-67; Brigham Young University, B.A. (magna cum laude), 1972, M.B.A., 197. Religion: Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints (Mormon).

ADDRESSES:

Home—1696 Blackhawk Circle, Pleasant Grove, UT 84062.

CAREER:

Writer. J.B. Realty, Provo, UT, employee, 1974-75; Lincoln Realty, Provo, realtor, 1975-77; Robert G. Allen Associates, Provo, president, 1977—.

WRITINGS:

Nothing Down: How to Buy Real Estate with Little or No Money Down, Simon & Schuster (New York, NY), 1980, revised as Nothing down for the '90s: How to Buy Real Estate with Little or No Money Down, Simon & Schuster (New York, NY), 1990.

Creating Wealth, Simon & Schuster (New York, NY), 1986.

The Challenge, Simon & Schuster (New York, NY), 1987.

Achieving Financial Liberty, Ranger Associates (Altamonte Springs, FL), 1995.

Multiple Streams of Income, Wiley (New York, NY), 2001.

Multiple Streams of Internet Income, Wiley (New York, NY), 2001.

(With Mark Victor Hansen) The One-Minute Millionaire: The Enlightened Way to Wealth, Harmony Books (New York, NY), 2002.

SIDELIGHTS:

Robert G. Allen is the author of numerous books about making money. Allen was born in Canada, the younger of two children of an accountant father and a mother who died at his birth. He was raised as a Mormon, and spent two years as a missionary in Tahiti.

Allen studied in the United States, earned a bachelor's degree and an M.B.A. from Brigham Young University, and became a naturalized U.S. citizen in 1974. He worked in real estate, choosing that field because it was "one of the quickest ways to become rich," according to Edwin McDowell in the New York Times Book Review. However, he failed to become rich, and after a few years in real estate, he spent $6,000 to attend real-estate seminars throughout the United States, looking for answers. After attending, he decided that he didn't have to have cash or a good credit rating in order to make money, and he formed his own real estate company and began buying real estate. He then began writing his first book, Nothing Down: How to Buy Real Estate with Little or No Money Down, which shares some of the principles he has learned.

Allen told McDowell that he wrote an outline and several chapters of the book during a vacation in Hawaii, and then spent $1,000 to have the book edited before he submitted it to a commercial publisher. In 1978 he took the partly finished book to the American Booksellers Convention, where he went to a booth run by publisher Simon & Schuster. He had heard that this publisher had produced other finance-related books, and asked someone to point out the president of the company to him. It took Allen two days to work up the courage to speak to the company's president, who liked the book and said he would show it to his editors back in New York. A month later Allen received a contract.

In the book, Allen advises readers to use several unorthodox techniques; for example, he tells them to acquire as many credit cards as possible in order to get signature loans on a moment's notice. He also counsels about the use of "OPM" (Other People's Money), giving lenders fifty percent interest or less and keeping the balance, and advises buyers to look for people down on their luck, such as those who have recently experienced divorce, judgments, bankruptcies, foreclosures, deaths in the family, and probates, in order to find sellers who are desperate to unload their property.

In 1986 Allen published Creating Wealth, which lists seven steps to becoming rich, and also explores the value of a positive attitude. Many people, he notes, are "programmed" not to take risks, to remain poor, and to save rather than invest, all failings that will prevent them from becoming multimillionaires. A change in attitude can allow people to take risks and reach their true financial potential.

For The Challenge, Allen chose three unemployed people and taught them his techniques for buying property at below-market price from a seller who is highly motivated to get rid of the property. The challenge was for them to buy a residential rental property within 90 days and put $5,000 in the bank. The book describes the experiences of these protégés, all of whom bought property; only one succeeded in reaching the financial goal Allen set during the time allotted for the experiment.

Multiple Streams of Income provides ten methods for making over $100,000 a year by working from home, part-time, and with little or no investment. Allen also provides strategies for investment and tax shelters. In a similar volume, Multiple Streams of Internet Income, Allen advises readers on ways to make money through the Internet, including the use of niche marketing, auto responders, selling links, placing ads on a web page, net auctions, and selling client information.

In The One-Minute Millionaire: The Enlightened Way to Wealth Allen and coauthor Mark Victor Hansen provide what a Publishers Weekly reviewer called "a longwinded pep talk on how just about anybody can make big money." They offer affirmations, such as "You are your wealth," "I think like a millionaire," and "Clarity is power," as well as some broad suggestions for money making: write a book, buy and sell real estate, or start a company.

In addition to writing books on finance, Allen serves as a lay counselor for his Mormon parish, tithes ten percent of his income to the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, and plans to leave the majority of his estate to the Mormons when he dies. According to Sally Jenkins in People, "He expects his children to create their own wealth, using his book as a guide." He has used the money he earned from his books and real estate ventures to buy a large estate in Provo, Utah, where he lives with his wife and three children. "The last thing that people want to hear is the plain simple fact that the rich think differently from the poor," Allen told Jenkins. "They have what I would call a wealthy mind-set."

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

PERIODICALS

Booklist, April 15, 1980, p. 1163; March 15, 1983, p. 929; March 15, 1987, p. 1076; November 1, 1990, p. 485; August, 2002, p. 1882.

Kirkus Reviews, December 1, 1979, p. 1404; February 15, 1983, p. 215.

Library Journal, February 15, 1980, p. 503; April 15, 1983, p. 820; July 1, 1986, p. 79; May 1, 1987, p. 65; May 1, 1990, p. 104; March 15, 2001, p. 44; April 15, 2001, p. 110; May 1, 2002, p. 150.

New York Times Book Review, May 25, 1980, p. 22.

People, August 22, 1983, p. 37.

Publishers Weekly, December 24, 1979, p. 47; March 13, 1987, p. 76; March 27, 2000, p. 69; May 7, 2001, p. 16; August 19, 2002, p. 76.

West Coast Review of Books, May, 1983, p. 43.