Life Updates of a Larger Magnitude

I have a head cold, so that's probably not helping, but my brain feels like it's going to blow up from all the stuff running through it.  I think I need a nap.

Starting my day with re-reading my life/year goals is a really nice thing.  It helps me focus, and usually makes me look back at the previous day and realize that I failed (again) at implementing them.  That's ok.  They're LIFE goals.  I hope I've got a long time to work on them. One of the things on the paper, though, is a few sentences after the words "My Life's Purpose:"  Reading them this morning I felt like that was way too deep a thing to be reflecting on with only half a cup of coffee and a few minutes away from sleep.  What is our life's purpose?  Is it what we want people to think about at our funeral?  Is it what we want our grandchildren to talk about long after we're gone?  Is it a company or a theorem or book that has our name on it?  I'm sure it's different for everyone during their life.  I wonder if, right before we die, everyone comes to the same conclusion about life's purpose though.  If there is some clari...

First - I made it a goal to read more educational businessy books this year, but what I've found is that I read about 40-60% of each one, and then I move on to the next one.  It's hard to keep my attention, especially when I have a huge stack staring at me.  The only one that kept my attention for the whole time was Blink by Malcolm Gladwell.  I'm currently working through "Traction", which is good because it gets me to stop and do mental exercises.  And I think I've given up on reading MREI, but mainly because it was causing me to push my mental boundaries to uncomfortable places and I'm just not there yet. Second - IT'S SUMMER!  After being a work ninja for so many months, I am definitely scaling back a bit so that I can spend time hanging out with the kiddos by the pool.  B and E are doing swim team, which makes me all excited (Even though I kind of hated the sport by the end of college.  Summer swim team was always my favorite.)  I'm goin...

The hubster and I went through finances last night and it was not really an enjoyable experience.  Being on this self-employed journey is a wild ride.  My real estate business is actually doing pretty well, but in order to grow it I keep reinvesting the money.  To protect my lenders, I keep 20% of the funds in each deal from my own cash.  That way if any money is lost, it's my money and I'm still able to pay them back.  So as I ramp up the number of houses, the amount of my personal cash reserve has to grow as well.  I'm currently taking a salary of $50,000, but that's about half of what our expenses are, which means I have to supplement by either taking a chunk out at each house sale or using my real estate commissions.  Luckily, they've been about enough to cover the difference, but it's still a very uncertain thing.  The flip side is to cut down our expenses, which we're also doing, but health insurance, mortgage payments, utilities and daycare...

I posted this on Facebook right after my 7FF business trip - a link to my blog about the event. Well let me just tell you, 5 days later and I'm still drowning, trying to recover from (a) going off-grid for a few days and (b) all the amazing action items that I took away from that trip.  This has been a major week - put 2 rehabs under contract and I'm buying 2 more today.  One in progress.  And my poor bank-abused buyers finally got their home yesterday.  I have done zero work toward ramping up marketing or putting more properties under contract.  Ok, I did about 5% work toward putting more properties under contract, but the surprise second closing today kicked me over to Find Money mode. :)

I just came back from a business conference and I'm so excited about building my business.  I had lost the fire for a bit.  I'm glad it's rekindled.

I'm sitting in a hotel room in Utah with my main man, about to start Day 1 of a mastermind group where I get to open up my real estate business to a bunch of other investors, and get their feedback on how to do it better.  The level of investors has a broad range from relatively new to kicking ass.  We went out to dinner last night and I'm excited to hear more.  Probably the most exciting thing about this group is that they show me what is possible, and they give me permission to achieve it.  Giving myself permission is a much harder step.  I want to go out for a run in the gorgeous Utah desert area :)