Weekend Digest

I got a call from the investor I'm working with over the weekend. He had some questions about the leads I sent him. I think it was too late for some of the ones that I had gathered a few weeks before sending out. I told him the ones for this week were all relatively new and should not have gone to court yet. So, hopefully he'll have better luck with this attempt.

His call restored some of my confidence in him. Although, him actually being able to lock in a deal would really make me confident. I'm still pretty early on in this business at this point so I'm not trying to get my expectations up. I would like to expand some and start checking some other nearby county courthouses for leads. I'd also like to purchase a laptop to use for recording the leads and managing business documents. The biggest problem is that the courthouses are all open from 8:30-4:30pm, so I can't really get to them during the work week unless I get up early and get into work late.

I feel like the 12-15 leads I average per week is good enough for one investor. I would like to expand to more than one investor and get another lead source going in order to pick up the pace. I was thinking about recruiting my brother but, I reconsidered due to results of past business ventures I've attempted with him. Some of the advice I've read also says it may not be a good idea to work with family members, and in this case I think they are right. It's harder to establish a chain of command with family, esp if they are older than you.

If I get a laptop, I also might be able to start doing some work from home. I don't really need to laptop in order to do it, but I feel like it would help me keep everything separate. If I work from home the commute time I would normally spend going to work can be exchanged to a trip to the courthouse and then I can still work the same amount of time. So I'll be mulling over ways to work that out.

I was doing some reading last week of this book that discusses how to write winning business plans. The key focus they discussed in the section I read was defining your "Mission Statement". My first instinct, to make money, they didn't seem to like. Apparently you need a stronger reason than making money in order for a business to survive. How about, to not have to work for someone else? How about, to retire young? How about, because I hate my current job? I'm not sure if any of them work either.

I think the biggest problem I'm running into is the same problem I've had all along. I can not seem to convert my business pursuits into something that pulls in money. Each one I've tried has yet to actually generate any money. The closest I came to was the Quixtar business, but all I got was this $10 check that I ended up not even putting into my account. I felt like it would be stupid to, since I ended up being given the money under shady circumstances (part of the reason I bailed on the Quixtar business). I need to find a way to take my talents and efforts and convert them into a measurable and sustainable source of income. I was hoping this blog would start generating something, but so far my total from Google Adsense is 8 cents. I don't think they send you the money until it gets above the cost of a stamp at least. Again, it's still early though.

Well, this is a short week at least because I'm planning on heading out to IL for the weekend. So at this point I'm close to 25% of the way through to the weekend.