Welcome to Chez Cliff!

Yes ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls, and the rest of you it’s the time once again for another yearly round-up of my activities, accomplishments, and failures (2006 and 2007).

Real Estate

A revolving theme in my life at the beginning of this year:  It isn’t a failure if you haven’t learned anything from it.

And trust me: I have.

As long time readers will know, this year was a flat year for real estate investing.  I’m pinned as far as being able to borrow anymore money.  No more money means my investing stops.  Truth be told: I honestly thought about seeking out a hard money lender for purchasing some foreclosures.  But if it took a few months to fill the property with tenants, I’d have to make the mortgage payments which would be impossible to do.

But it wasn’t enough to bring my entire dream of ending the day job to a halt.  Remember: the objective has been and always will be to increase my passive income.  Passive income is derived in a numbers of ways: real estate being one of them.  That’s when I decided to go after my business idea.

Online Business

Being introduced to Tim’s Four Hour Work Week helped convince me that launching an online business was not only doable but realistic.  Anyone who has read his book, utilized his ideas can’t say they don’t work.  We see example everywhere, including Kenric’s multiple projects.

The business is doing well.  After being involved with several other failed businesses, it’s great to be starting one that is working.  By no means are we resting on our laurels.  2009 promises to be on exciting year.

So the lesson learned from real estate can be woven right in with the lesson learned from my business.  Never, ever have any kind of investment that doesn’t put money into your pocket.  Break-even is not good enough.

Stocks

Stocks is a subject I rarely talk about on this blog.  Never do I want anyone who reads these pages to take my advice when it comes to stocks.  The stock market is one tricky animal.  But I’m learning.

I already discussed QCOR and as of this writing, it is sitting at 8.22 (up 26%).  All that mess with “The Big 3″ produced a great opportunity to scoop in and buy stock cheap.  Ford.  They seemed to be the most stable.  When the bailout was for certain to come, the stock price went up.  I bought in at $1.50 and within two weeks it jumped to $3.10.  I bailed.

Why am I telling you this?  Even though the market (both stock and real estate) are not performing well, there are all kinds of great finds in the rough.  A while the Media is beating the drum, calling this the next “Great Depression”, my heart fills with more and more optimism.  After the last “Great Depression”, our economy experienced a growth spurt which has been unparalleled in history.  Imagine where the smart people of today will be tomorrow.

Personal Efficiency

Multiple experiments fell face down in trying to improve my personal life.  I profiled this website called PageOnce as a great tool to summarize all the sites I visit during the month.  I think I’ve accessed it maybe twice.  There’s no way to pay bills.  Why use it?

What did make a huge impact was automating the bill paying process.  Cool.  That alone has reduced my worry-load.  Electric, water and gas, cable, cell phone, Grass Guy, all that got taken off my plate.  This has the added bonus of being easier to track when it comes time to see Tax Man in the spring.

One area that does need improvement: I move too slow in my business.  I understand things take time but I have to get better at recognizing when it’s time to call in the experts.  I tend to shoulder too much work and thus things slow down.  Only a few hours a day are free for me to work and I have to effectively utilize those hours.  In other words, I’m my biggest road block.

Summary

For the year, I’m quite pleased.  Especially with the business.  I can see this easily springing into multiple projects, offered on multiple platforms.  With each one, the business grows and grows.  To be perfectly honest, it’s a lot less of a hassle having an online business versus dealing with pains of REI.  But I recognize REI is just one path.  It’s better to have multiple paths, leading to the same objective.

Sir Richard Branson came out with another book.  Too cheap to buy it, I stood in the store and perused it.  In a section regarding Virgin Airlines, I read a note “We needed to boil down Virgin Airlines and get back to our core.”

Boiling down a business.  Finding our core.  The next step.

If you had a small grocery store and the only thing you sold was Twinkies, would you constantly try and push bananas?  You push, advertise, offer samples and no one buys.  Inventory spoils and is replaced again and again.  The bananas aren’t selling.  Twinkies are flying off the shelf.  At what point do you decide that Twinkies is what you should focus on and stop with the bananas?

I think after three months, conclusions are necessary.

Fact:  The eBook isn’t selling.

Fact:  The software is selling.  Quite well.

I could continue, trying to sell the eBook.  Or it can be used as a tool.  Interest in the book is there.  That’s for sure.  But I think in an eBook format, it’s being associated with other REI ebooks and all of those are free.  If there was a hard-copy available, I think it would sell.

With that, the blog was designed to work with the book.  Producing one really good article per week is tough!  Now I know why some of those bigger sites have 20 authors.  But for search engines, the updating of a sight is important.  Lord Google likes to see his minions updating their websites and giving them preferential treatment.

So we’re going to tweak the business model.  Our core focus:  software.

This blog sucks.

I was 80% of the way to just deleting the whole thing.  But calm reason, and a good bottle of red, calmed me down.  Long into glass number three, I turned my head and looked out the window.  Mr Nichols finished taking a large poop right in front of my patio furniture and then took off running.  I realized something.  

I can’t stop.

I decided perusing my blog entries from a year ago, a year and a half ago would help me.  Golly darn it:  I miss that guy.  I think maybe I had some fanciful notion in my head this blog might be a money machine and decided to gear it towards a “how to” rather than a “Hey, it’s me”.  This is my story and since I’m a story teller, why not tell it?

While I’m getting back to basics, I have to let something slip.  As you know, I’m growing my business which is steadily consuming more and more of my time.  So please don’t panic if you notice from time to time that I miss a post.

That is all.

It’s not that I hate Walmarts per se, it’s that I hate the fact people leave their brains in the car before entering.  These people cannot possibly handle their cars like they handle their carts.  There would be accidents everywhere.

After nearly an hour of pounding my way through zombies and people the size of garbage dumpsters, I was at the end of my patience.  Like Wyatt Earp said holding that six shooter to some cowboys head, “I’m gonna turn your head into a canoe.”

Too bad I left my six shooter at home.

Nearing the final leg of our grueling route through Walmart-land, I spotted this lovely article and suddenly the pain went away.  There’s some small measure of justice here and for those that have read along for many moons will understand.

Merry Christmas to all of you!

Uwe wrote about his favorites from childhood.  I wanted to do the same, but with a twist.

My favorite things about Christmas:

(1)  Little Drummer Boy - my absolute favorite Christmas Carol ever.  I cannot help but to get goose-bumps.  Even standing in WholeFoods the other day, getting trampled on by “civilized” people the song floated over the speakers and immediately flooded my soul with positive energy.

(2)  My moms Christmas cookies.

(3)  Christmas Eve.  Something super special about the night before Christmas.

(4)  A Christmas Carol - my favorite Christmas story.  Christmas is not Christmas without this story from Charles Dickens.

(5)  Family and Friends.  

Merry Christmas to you and yours!