Apr 1, 2010

Time Allocation of a Capitalist

Fundamental to financial success is allocating a portion of one's time towards investigating investment or business opportunities, building a brand or marketing, and negotiating and closing the deal.

Following is a recap of how a portion of my time is allocated Monday through Friday in a typical week.

Mondays: Brand Development
- Twitter, FacebookYouTube
- Broadcasting media
- Blogging
- Posting to relevant message boards
- Listening and getting involved in the ongoing conversations
- Interview and meet with prospective employees, contractors, or teams

Tuesdays: Businesses for Sale
- Search for industries I'm interested in expanding into
- Talk or meetup with business brokers representing listings I'm interested in
- Call owners of privately owned businesses and ask them if they'd consider selling
- Meet with potential sellers and inspect the business
- Submit NDA's (Non Disclosure Agreement), LOI's (Letter of Intent), or a formal offer
- Review a company's financials (if an LOI has been submitted, with my CPA or attorney)
- Call on relatives, friends, accredited investors, bankers to discuss purchase if additional capital is needed
- Negotiate terms, get commitments

Wednesday: Shop Stocks
- Shop for paper assets: stocks
- Use stock screeners (like google or finviz) to weed out the gold from the garbage
- Read a company's financial statements, and industry & annual reports
- Decide go/no go on a particular company - strive for 30-50% off intrinsic value for buy-in price
- Go? Do technical analysis to get right timing and buy in

Thursday: Build Business
- Expand existing company through new promotion, product, or different marketing medium
- Work on having something good to say, saying it well, and often
- Improve the company in a meaningful way
- Not sure how or what to improve in existing biz?  Build a business plan for another business venture
- Post business plan to gobignetwork.com and other sites to attract investors
- Raise capital for new ventures through friends/family/angels

Friday: Shop Real Estate
- Search the MLS & Craigslist & equity swap sites for real estate for sale or lease
- Post any assets for sale that I'm willing to part with
- Call on sellers, landlords, etc.
- Inspect properties
- Submit multiple offers
- Negotiate, Due diligence
- Close escrow


Recreation: low or preferably no-cost activities like visiting the library or Barnes and Noble, watching a netflix movie, writing, playing disc golf, hitting the punching bags, playing guitar, or playing with my wife or daughter Braelynn.

Mar 30, 2010

Money: It's Just a Game, Stupid.

Suze Orman was quoted as stating the following:  "Money is one of the most important sources of happiness."

If you buy into that philosophy, you've got a shallow view on life.

Money is just the score of the game.

The money you have says nothing of whether you're enjoying the game, or playing your best, or playing fairly, or building relationships with those you're playing with.

The idea is to have fun, play your best, practice like crazy, and the score (i.e. money) will take care of itself.

The best college basketball coach in history, John Wooden, never wanted his players to focus on the score of the game.  His team won the most games because his players focussed on "the inner score card".


Says Mr. John Wooden: "Be more concerned with your character than your reputation, because your character is what you really are, while your reputation is merely what others think you are."