Back in Action

So, I've been out at a training class for a week so I haven't been updating at all. A lot has happened since my last post on many fronts.

First off, I managed to do my weekly trip to the courthouse last Friday. Picked up a pretty substantial amount of leads since it had been two weeks since my last visit. This was great since I took the big plunge earlier in the week. I got over my qualms and made some calls to my potential investors. Some of them were duds, more real estate agents that weren't actually investors, but I found one who acts as a wholesaler. He is willing to split any sales profits with me 50/50, which was an unexpected but positive happenstance. So after I gathered my leads on Friday I emailed my collection to him. I didn't do the extra research this time since I'm not sure what information he wants. It seems the approach he takes is to send out letters to people and then work with whomever contacts him. I'm not sure if anything will come of this yet, but it's a nice feeling to think that there is a potential out there for my efforts to come to a profitable conclusion.

I ran into an older guy named Jim at the courthouse while I was there on Friday. He was looking at the foreclosures as well and does his own wholesaling thing. Apparently he normally goes to the courthouse near where he lives in Annapolis and every so often will make the trip out to Howard county. He gave me some advice about joining an REI and to hang in there and stick with it. I should have asked him more questions, but running into him caught me off guard. Maybe I'll run into him again, so we'll see.

I had not given any thought to going to other courthouses. The investor I talked to said that he use to go to the one in Baltimore and would get hundreds of hits each time. I'm not sure the frequency he went, but the idea sounds pretty good.

My current plan is to procure a laptop, which will greatly increase the speed I can copy down lead information, and then maybe try to find ways to hit up the other courthouses. It's hard to fit in time to do it around work, since they are open during normal business hours only, which is the same time I'm required to be at work.

I'd like to start working at home more, since that would eliminate commute time and give me some more flexibility. There seems to be some snags and grumbling about my training from last week and what budget to charge it to, so I'm currently keeping a low profile until whatever details are causing problems get ironed out. I'm hoping after a few solid work days back at the office things will be closer to back to normal. I guess I'll just wait and see.

At this point I'm happy with my current progress. I'd like to contact some more investors, solidify the information for my leads and then start adding other lead sources for the future goals. I'd also like to expand my operation to more than just me. I realize having investors that provide the capital and finish the purchase process counts as more than just me, but since I don't have an opportunity to do much during normal business hours, I need to find someone who can.

I'm also done with the GMAT. My scores weren't as high as I wanted but I am proud of my writing score of 5.5/6. I need to being the process of putting together all the information I need to actually apply to the schools. Plus there is still the matter of how to pay for it. Now that I'm back at the grind I guess I have more time to look into that.

School Year

So, again I fall short on my goals from last week. I did get the number of leads I was aiming for (and more), but I did not get the surrounding information and put them in my Master Lead Log. Also, I failed to contact potential investors to establish a path for my leads to go so that they can actually do me some good.

I need to get back on track. Or rather, on track in the first place. Recently I've been getting tied up in other stuff instead of focusing on what I should be doing. I've played through Final Fantasy Mystic Quest and half of Ogre Battle, and yet I'm still at the very early stages of getting this business going. I guess the 'procrastination bug' has really got me.

Well the goal for this week is to actually contact some investors. I should contact all the ones I've found, as well as continue to check the newspaper for new ones until I have a large pool. Also, I'm going to duck over to the courthouse before work again on Friday and try to pull in some more leads. In the mean time I should read the REJ course information again and get prepared. This should help me branch out from just foreclosure leads. The hope then will be to learn of potential areas to look for leads in drive bys that I can start doing on the weekend.

There has been some good news recently. On Saturday I did my first full run through of the GMAT exam in preparation for taking the test on September 8th. I did ok, ending up with 9 wrong on the verbal and 9 wrong on the math. Almost all of my verbal errors were in sentence completion questions and almost all my math errors were in data sufficiency questions. This gives me an idea of how better to focus in the future to improve my score. I did some reading during lunch today of strategies for these sections that were helpful. This weekend I will see if I can find more practice books at the library when I go to take another practice test.

Things are slowly improving at work as well. I'll eventually be signed up for these training classes that will teach me how to be a Remedy Admin. Once I've gone through them, I can start traveling to different government facilities and doing installs. I'm looking forward to some travel since I've only actually been to handful or so places around the country, let alone very limited foreign travel.

I'm curious if anyone actually reads any of this stuff that I write. If I do have any readers I'd love some feedback or potential suggestions/viewpoints. Let me know.

Lead

So today I went for a driver around some of the local neighborhoods. I only came across one real lead so it was a little disappointing. I did manage to get a better feel for the lay of the land in those areas which is nice for the future.

I think I'll be better off going to the courthouse and exploring other potential lead sources there instead of driving around aimlessly hoping to stumble upon something. The courthouse is organized and has a pretty good flow of things coming in each day. I just need to find a time during the week to go and sift through some sources.

I also found another add in the classifieds, but I'm a little disappointed because it was only one. The guy who wrote the instructions for starting up said he found like 20 in one paper. Maybe it's because the market is taking a beating right now, maybe I'm just checking in the wrong papers, but it doesn't seem to be the case here.

In order to start preparing for the GMATs, which I'm taking in exactly 3 weeks, I stopped by the library and picked up some books. I started going through the first book and did the first sample parts to see where I will need to focus. My biggest trouble was the sentence completion but overall I did very good. Somewhat disappointing was the fact that the answer book had 2 mistakes. For some reason it thought that .03 was greater than .09. The other one said that the correct answer was that statement A only was sufficient when in the explanation is clearly said that both A and B were sufficient on their own. Oh well, at least it'll help get my mind thinking about the right types of questions and give me some practice to get in game shape by the time the real test comes along.

At this point I'm a little doubtful that I'll reach my goals for the week since I'm at 5 investor ads and 1 lead. That's alright though since now I have a better idea of the landscape of what I'm getting into. The big goal is to keep making steps towards shifting my routine to include taking actions towards my business each week and hopefully each day.

MBA on the way

I managed to squeeze in some time yesterday. I looked through the classifieds when I got home and found 3 more investor ads. So now I'm 4 out of 10. Unfortunately the Post's classifieds didn't yield the same kind of results today so I'm going to have to be creative today and tomorrow to get up to my goal of 10. The instructions I'm following said that usually there are a lot in the less frequent papers, so I'll have to find a news stand or something that has cheaper local papers. Tonight and tomorrow begins my hunt for leads anyway so I imagine I'll be able to find something on my drive.

I reread some of the section volume of the instructions but not any of the third volume yet. That's most likely what I'll do today. The third volume is an account of the steps to follow when starting out. Not exactly a listing, more a journal of a fictional person who is a mixture of the writer's experience as well as the experiences of people who have built this business and sent him some commentary. I figure following in the steps isn't perfect but at least it'll keep me on track.

My new goal of getting my MBA is helping to keep pushing me towards building this business. I'd really like to get it to the point in 4 months or so where it is generating more than enough to cover my monthly expenses. Then I can have the choice of going to school full time and quitting my job or just going part time and having a really large cashflow. At the very least it could really help in covering tuition costs without setting me back from my other goals.

I signed up for the GMATs (the standardized test used to determine if you have the skills for business school) this morning after having to wait a day for the pre-qualifying step. I'll be taking them on September 8th, so it's only about 3 weeks from now. I'm going to have to hit up the library and get cracking on some practice tests so I'm back in game shape when it's time for the test.

I've been dragging my feet about this MBA idea because I really didn't want to go back to school. Now that I feel like I'll be learning about what I want to do anyway it doesn't seem so bad. I mean it's been 5 years or so since I was actually taking classes in something I was really passionate about. It turns out that dragging my feet wasn't so bad though since some programs require two years of full time work experience before they let you in anyway. January will be just about exactly right for that, so it works out well. As long as I do well on the GMATs I shouldn't have any problems meeting the other requirements since my undergrad GPA was over at 3.0. I can get some recommendations from former employers as well as former teachers as well.

What's interesting is that the guy who made the instructions for how to setup a jobber business talked about the psychological effects of having goals and starting to change your life. I didn't really believe him when I read it, but now I'm starting to really see what he means. I imagine things will only keep getting better as I really start building something and reaching larger and larger goals.