Welcome to Chez Cliff!

I had an interesting conversation with my mentor.

We were discussing various topics (like women, wine, traveling) when he posed me a very interesting question.  He asked me what I wanted in life.  Knowing my mentor, he wasn’t looking for a simple answer.  No, he’s looking for some deep rooted meaningful answer.

To be honest, I didn’t have a response.  I can’t tell him that though because he’s not going to let me off that easy.

Mentor:  "So tell me, what do you want?"
Clifford:  "Well, I don’t know what I don’t want."
Mentor:  "That’s interesting.  What is that?"
Clifford:  "I don’t want to be stuck in a cubicle for the rest of my life."
Mentor:  "Really?"
Clifford:  "Oh yeah, that’s my biggest fear.  Where I work, I see these people who are 10 years older than I and they are terrified about losing their jobs.  I’m scared to death that something like that is going to happen to me."
Mentor:  "You need to stop thinking like that."
Clifford:  "Thinking like what?"
Mentor:  "You need to stop thinking about what you don’t want.  You know why?"
Clifford:  "Because I’ll end up in a cubicle for the rest of my life."
Mentor:  "You got it."

I never thought about it in terms of that.  I had spent nearly every day, thinking about what a terrifying aspect it would be if I spent the rest of my life in a cubicle.  And while I spent my time obsessing about that, I wasn’t focusing on what I really wanted to do.

But there is a certain twisted logic to that.  You’ll wind up where you spend the most time thinking about.  If you’re constantly worried about being a failure then you’ll wind up failing.

In any event, I promised my mentor that I would definitely put some thought into that.  But I’m unsure if I’ll ever have an answer.  Right now, I want to focus on creating assets which produce passive income.  Let’s scratch that.  I am creating assets which product passive income.

Maybe as I go along, I’ll get better at defining goals.  For the moment it’s about getting one piece of investment property.

I talked to my mentor.  The software company is something we’re going to pass on.  I had bad feelings but my mentor did as well.  He has done this more than once and if he believed that this was working for him, he would have moved on it.

I’m going to table the business search for now.  Things are heating up in the investment property realm and I’m going to want to donate all my time to that.

But be rest assured, I will revisit this once again.  I’m thinking June or July of 2006 if things go right.

I’m thinking that maybe I need to change my reference for now on what business to buy.  I’m looking for businesses that are selling a product or are employee intensive.  Maybe I need to rethink that approach and come up with something better.  Something not so reliant upon specialized employees.

The beauty of efax is that you can receive faxes in your email.  And since I’m yahoo, then I can get faxes anywhere.

The broker faxed me several pages today.  These are non-disclosure agreements that myself and the mentor are to sign.  We’re essentially promising not to reveal anything we learn about the software company to the world.  I’m not worried because this is typically done before the period of "Due Diligence".

Due Diligence is a period of time whereas the potential buyer of a business pours over the books of the business.  Accountants dig through the accounting stuff, we pour over the customer information, employee information, we interview employees . . . it’s a six week process.  After that six weeks, one typically either extends and offer declines the business.

However, I doubt highly if we’re going to move on this business.  Things don’t feel right.

This deal between the Loan Officer and the Real Estate Agent is quite cool.

I found out that these two have been partners for 12 some years now.  Between their years of experience, and their ownership of investment property, I’ve really lucked out as far as people to work with.  Considering the amateurish antics of Carolina, this has been very productive.

Every fiber of my being is filled with excitement.  And it’s growing.

I spent the afternoon with my friend, looking at the investment properties that the Real Estate Agent had given me.  There were three in total.  I didn’t like the first two.  One was too far away from the ocean and the neighborhood looked really bad.  The second one, a four-plex, was in really bad shape and really expensive.  It is alright and I noted as much in my Palm Pilot.  The third one . . . we’ll let’s just say that we didn’t even stop to look at it.

YIKES!!

There are some scary places out there!!

I called the Real Estate Agent, who always seems to be working, and let him know about the properties.  Now he has an idea of what I’m willing to live with.  He’s also talked with the Loan Officer and he knows what kind of numbers I can support.  This will help him narrow down the search considerably.

Now, all I have to do is wait.  That’s the hardest part for me.

In my mind, I know that it may take 60 to 90 days to find a property that’s worth buying.  So worse case scenario is I find a house in 90 days, takes 30 days for escrow so . . . maybe 4 months from now?

I’m not sure I can wait that long!