Entrepreneurship – Page 2 – Real Life Investor

Sharing my Love for LED Light Bulbs

It didn’t take me long after settlement on the Lebanon Paper Box warehouse to develop a passion for converting old ballast powered light strips to work with LED bulbs. Although there is a significant cost savings to switching over to LED, the primary motivation for me was to be able to see the building that I just purchased!

Over the years of prior ownership, all of the windows have been bricked over on the first floor and a majority of them have been bricked over on remaining floors. This was done to improve security since the building had previously been a target of vandalism in years past. The building is now locked up tight, but it is also awfully dark inside. I’m not quite ready to reopen the windows, so I needed to find another solution.

workshop light strip — Fluorescent Light Fixture

The lights that are in the building are of various ages. I’m not a lighting professional, but some are probably from the early iterations of fluorescent lights. The fixtures that are really old are salvageable, but I prefer to retire them when possible. Besides the fixtures being old and ballasts failing, fluorescent lights tend to mind the cold. The Lebanon Paper Box building does not have an HVAC system and it is often much colder inside the building than it is outside. The fluorescent lights take a while to start up in the bone chilling months of winter, and sometimes they just won’t turn on at all.

So between the failing ballasts and cold temperatures, converting the fixtures from fluorescent to LED was the most logical and economic option to solve my lighting issue. An expensive ballast replacement is not necessary when converting to LED and bypassing the need for a ballast. It took me a while to research how to retrofit a fluorescent light ballast to LED and I wasn’t sure which LED light bulbs to purchase. Most of the YouTube videos that I watched made the rewiring look easy since the fixture was laying on a table. It is actually pretty easy, but I was retrofitting the fixture while it was still hanging over my head. If possible, I highly recommend taking down the fixtures. It ends up being about 2000% easier. Also, if you’re not 100% sure what you are doing, speak with a certified electrician before attempting to do this yourself.

After a ton of research and trying multiple brands and styles of LED bulbs, for the 4′ fixture retrofits, I very highly recommend the Diva Light Plug and Play & Bypass Tube Lamp. I don’t get royalties for you clicking that link and purchasing the bulbs. I just love them that much! They are also very inexpensive compared to some of the other LED bulbs out there. I have spent as much as $30 for an LED bulb that performs no differently than this Diva bulb. I have also done a few 8′ fixture retrofits and have been very happy with this 8ft 40W LED (bypass) by GreenLightDepot.

One of the options that you will notice when choosing a light is the color. They typically range between 3000K – 6000K. The 3000K side of the spectrum is your typical office lighting scenario which is very similar to the traditional Soft White incandescent bulb. It is explained as a warm light that tends to have a bit of a yellow coloration. The 6000K end of the spectrum is a very bright, almost blueish, light. This level of light is supposed to be more along the lines of daylight. I have tried the different colors of light and prefer 5000K for my application.

The afterthought of all of this for me is the cost savings. I have been able to cut the cost of energy for each light fixture by over 50%. In some cases, even more because one bulb is a sufficient light source in certain parts of the warehouse. Going from two fluorescent bulbs to one LED is over a 75% energy savings!

Making Morning Me Time

In a prior blog post, Routines: The Struggle is Real, I briefly discussed the difficulty of establishing a routine. Although establishing a routine can be difficult, the feedback that I received from that post indicates that it is certainly worth the effort.

I was having dinner with a friend last night and I brought up the fact that my Fiancee has started waking up at 5:30AM to make sure that she has enough time for breakfast, meditation and exercise before getting ready for work. This is a new habit that she has been working on since the start of the year and she has been very dedicated. I, on the other-hand, remain in bed sleeping until the last possible minute before having to get moving for the day. This usually involves hitting the snooze button on my phone several times.

“Why don’t you just wake up when she does?”, my friend asked. He went on to say that my sleep is being disrupted anyway and the extra rest that I think that I’m getting may just be an illusion. The same goes for the false sense of rest that hitting snooze provides. Instead of hitting that snooze button repeatedly, just get up. You’re really not getting more rested. You’re just shoveling on the anxiety feeling like you’re not getting enough sleep and condensing the amount of time between getting out of bed and when you need to hit the ground running for the day.

I went on to explain to my friend that I feel like I am running full throttle all day and by waking up early I will simply be extending my work day. Extending my day even further could push me into over exhaustion long-term, and I cannot afford a shutdown due to being overwhelmed. It’s important to maintain a balance of emotional, physical, and mental health. I have already been struggling with finding me time to give my mind a rest. My friend had some really good recommendations on this as well. Things that I already knew, but sometimes it helps to hear it from someone else.

The first step to getting out of bed early in the morning is to get to sleep at the right time the night before. Everyone has a slightly different sleep pattern and the amount of sleep that is right for you could be different. My friend said that he needs only 5 hours of sleep, but I need a solid 8 hours or my day will result in a zombie-like version of me just going through the motions. With that said, I would need to be in bed and ready to be asleep by 9:30PM in order to wake up, rested, at 5:30AM.

Below are some tips to help get to sleep at your ideal time:

Try to avoid caffeine after 2:00PM. If you are someone that is heavily impacted by caffeine, you may want to avoid it even earlier in the day or avoid it completely.
Plan your evening around your predetermined bedtime and commit to it. Everything that you do should help drive you towards climbing in bed on the time that you committed to. This is not necessarily easy and will likely take practice. Try not to get frustrated if you don’t master this right away.
Disengage from electronic devices at least one hour before going to sleep (ie. phones, tablets, laptops, television, etc…) I’ve read that the light from the screen could inhibit the creation of melatonin; which is a bodily chemical that helps to promote sleep.
Use a pen and paper to write down anything that is one your mind that you want to accomplish tomorrow or things that you don’t want to forget. It’s not necessarily a journal. It’s just a scratch pad to dump your thoughts onto so that your mind can let them go.
Listen to sleep mediation. This can be really helpful if you have a lot on your mind. The meditation helps you to focus on your breathing and clear your thoughts and anxiety.
Relax and let it happen.

So now that you’ve got a restful night of sleep, now what? My first meetings of the day usually begin promptly at 8:00AM. Waking up at 5:30AM gives me an additional one and a half hours to fill in the morning. The goal is not to start working an hour and a half sooner. This additional time in the morning is meant to be personal time and therapeutic. If used properly, it should be a time of day that you look forward to.

My fear is that by waking up early, I am just extending my work day. My friend gave me some ideas to fill the time productively and ways to ensure that I don’t do myself a disservice by getting straight to work.

Below are some tips to get your day start off on the right foot:

Don’t open your email right away. Wait as long as you reasonably can. In my case, I will not log into email until 8:00AM. It’s probably best to find a way to completely leave your cell phone behind until you’re ready to officially start your day.
Prepare yourself coffee and breakfast.
Write down 10 things about the day using a pen and paper. This could be things that you wish to accomplish or simply things that you’re grateful for. This will help to get you in the mindset to navigate your day and everything that you do consciously and subconsciously will comeback to this list that you created in the morning.
Get some form of exercise to get your heart pumping and juices flowing. It’s wonderful how much a little bit of cardio exercise can improve your mood and clear your head (I guess that I should mention that you should reach out to your doctor before starting a workout routine or making a significant change in your physical activity).
Read something for 15 minutes that gets you motivated or educates you on a specific initiative that you’re looking to achieve.

The next step is to put this practice in place! The morning me time could be what I have been missing to help maintain better work / life balance. What are some other suggestions on what do with available personal time in the mornings? What are the things that you do which work for you?

Lebanon Paper Box: Day 40

As I arrived in Lebanon City this morning, it dawned on me that today marks the 40th day since taking ownership of the Lebanon Paper Box Co building. Time certainly flies, and although I have been busy working tirelessly on nights and weekends at the warehouse, it wouldn’t appear to be any different to someone walking by on the outside of the building.

The only changes that a local resident may notice is that there are a few more lights on and some security cameras are spontaneously popping up on the corners of the building. The iconic Lebanon Paper Box building is situated between Cumberland, Jones, and Willow streets on the edge of the Western gateway into Lebanon City, Pennsylvania. This magnificent building has valiantly stood the test of time. Sure, there have been a few leaks, vandalism, and the appearance of being an abandoned warehouse, but I can assure you that there is life beyond those exterior walls.

Believe it or not, this building has been the home of BOXIE for over 40 years! BOXIE is primarily in the business of storing patterns, which is why there appears to be limited activity in and around the building. BOXIE is actually a part of a very important foundry industry that is thriving in the Lebanon area.

On a quick side note: Lebanon, Pennsylvania is the home of Lebanon Bologna. I know! It was so obvious, that I was shocked too! Seriously though. If you like Lebanon Bologna (even if you don’t) then this is a city that you must visit. Many restaurants, brewery’s, and the vendors in the farmers market have a ton of bologna related foods and beverages to try. Check it out!

Now back to BOXIE and the Lebanon Paper Box building. Admittedly, I didn’t know a single thing about this industry before I got involved with this real estate deal. So I can’t blame anyone else for not knowing what a foundry is or a pattern for that matter. Let’s just say that the Lebanon area is supposedly a hot spot and this is the area where the patterns come to stay. More information about foundry’s can be found here on Wikipedia.

While the building has been storing patterns for many years, I believe that there is an opportunity to bring something new to the community. There is currently perfectly located space in the portion of the building that faces Cumberland Street. This is a major road straight through the heart of Lebanon City and is easily accessible to the surrounding suburbs. With over 16,000 vehicles passing this building everyday, it could be a great opportunity for some small businesses, artisans, and at least one restaurant. Personally, I would love to see some life in and around this 217,000+ square foot building and a renewed spirit.

What do you say Lebanon City? What would you like to see this space turned into to bring something special into the city limits?

I will be continuously following up on this project and will post the feedback that I receive for further discussion.

I’m an entrepreneur looking to help others achieve their dreams. What are your ideas? How can I help? Please feel free to comment or send me a message about this post at info@lebanonpaperbox.com

Routines: The Struggle is Real

Throughout my life, I’ve been told about the power of having a routine. This is a skill that I have taken for granted and haven’t given much thought to for so much of my life. Although I have been successful, it turns out that I’m not really great with maintaining a routine and I need quite a bit of improvement in this area. I have always had a predetermined structure and really never gave defining a routine much thought.

My early introduction to routines in my life were based around school. Every day started and ended at the same time. I did not control the day or have any say in when I got started. There was no room for error or I would be waiting outside for a bus that I had already missed.

In today’s work environment with varying work locations and telecommuting, maintaining a consistent routine feels like it can be quite a challenge. How are you helping your associates create routines and personal accountability? How are you keeping yourself accountable to your routine? If you don’t currently have a routine, where do you start?

The book The Compound Effect, written by Darren Hardy, may help provide motivation to make the changes necessary to live the life that you desire. Getting into a routine, like honing any kind of habit, takes baby steps. It’s the little everyday decisions that will give you the life that you desire or lead you to disaster. If you’re feeling that your life is spiraling into chaos and you’re overwhelmed by the thought of how to move forward, I highly recommend picking up a copy of The Compound Effect. I have read it several times and also have the audio book to listen to whenever I need a boost in personal motivation. I’ve even purchased copies of this book to give to friends.

I am curious about whether or not you have a routine. If you have a routine, what do you do and what part of your routine seems to work the best? Do you wake up at the same time every day? Do you do anything differently on weekends or days off? How has your routine evolved throughout your life?

Could you keep up a routine like Elon Musk? Here’s Elon Musk’s morning routine—and his top productivity tip

If you haven’t developed some kind of daily routine, give it a try. You may be surprised by how much your life can change. Don’t miss the bus.

Finding a Little Inspiration

Depending on my current space emotionally or related to a business deal, I seek inspiration…

Currently, my inspirational need is a trip to New York City. There is simply no matching the energy that pulses through the city streets. I can’t quite put my finger on what it is about the city that really gets me excited. I’m not sure if it’s the lights, food, people, architecture, arts, or advertising. I’m absolutely certain that it’s a special combination of things.

I’m about to close on a big real estate deal next week that, I feel, will be a catalyst to my future real estate endeavors (hence the need for big city inspiration). Even though the property is not located in a large city, it’s certainly unique and offers some interesting learning and development opportunities. I like to get out and see what other real estate developers have done with similar spaces to make buildings come to life.

As I type this entry, in the rear of an Uber, I take in the views of the city skyline… and traffic. It’s all part of the experience…

How are you currently feeling and where would you go for some needed inspiration?

Campus Skooters: The Seed That Started The Company

It was another football weekend for the Penn State Nittany Lions and I was in State College looking forward to the fun and debauchery leading up to the next morning’s tailgate prior to the game. Basically, it amounted to a bar crawl from one place to another hanging out with friends and enjoying the entertainment. While making our way downtown to the hotel, we noticed the bus stops packed with students. One of my friends suggested that there has to be a better way to get around and that there’s so much time wasted just standing and waiting on the bus. Not to mention, it doesn’t always get you to exactly where you want to go. From this conversation was born the idea that scooters could provide a transportation alternative.

At this point, I had been trying to come up with an idea for a business for a long time, and this seemed like viable opportunity to me. On the drive home from State College, I began drawing up my business plan. There would be quite a bit of overhead for rent, insurance, vehicles, maintenance, and employees but I was able to make it financially viable through a tiered pricing rental model. My target market would be the college students at Penn State University that are seeking flexibility in transportation around town and did not have the financial means to own a car (the worst part about owning a car in State College is finding a place to park it).

The concept around the tiered pricing model is that the longer that someone rented a scooter, the less expensive it was on a per day average. This would help to ensure that the scooters remained rented an providing income. It also reduced the amount of time that it would take to check in and check out a scooter rental. Of course there were countless other details that needed to be explored, but I was excited and hit the ground running!

This was the initial concept which lead to launching Campus Skooters into the business that it is today. Follow my blog for more stories on the opening and growth of Campus Skooters as well as the other business ventures that I am exploring on my path of entrepreneurship.

Entrepreneurship in a Corporation

Deciding what I wanted to be when I grew up was probably one of the most difficult decisions that I had to make in my young adult life. I knew that obtaining a college degree would provide me with the most opportunities in the future. The tough part is knowing that once you start going down a particular path, you’re pretty much locked in. Your choice in professions determines which college you should attend and classes that you need to take in order to satisfy the requirements for your degree. It’s scary to think that this decision could end up locking you into a particular path for the rest of your life.

I suppose that I had a entrepreneur mindset early one. I struggled with this decision and wrestled with what career would provide me with the most satisfaction throughout my life. I decided that I wouldn’t do something just for the money. I didn’t want to spend the working days of my life waking up and going to a job that I hated. I had a passion for helping people, and my personal evaluation led me into pursuing the field of special education. My college career began at the Harrisburg Area Community College where I took the general education classes that I would need before transferring to a four year school to finish my degree. That was the plan, but of course plans change…

When I was attending West Perry High School, I had the opportunity to take courses to become a Cisco Certified Network Administrator (CCNA). Computers had always interested me and I appreciated the opportunity to understand the interconnectivity and communication from one device to another. It was also an opportunity to gain some experience to fall back on if I suddenly decided to move out to Silicone Valley. While I enjoyed the CCNA program, and ultimately became certified, I really enjoyed my Turbo Pascal class much more! It was incredibly gratifying to write code and watch the computer execute my commands.

As most college students do, I was working part-time. It was more like full-time with four different part-time jobs. One of my part-time jobs was with a regional grocery store chain. I worked in the 90,000 sqft store in several different capacities. This not only gave me the opportunity to be scheduled for more hours, but it was an opportunity to learn a little bit of everything that was happening around the store. I would build promotional displays, breakdown the nightly delivery truck to prepare it for stocking, jump on a register as a cashier, work in the dairy department stocking and rotating product, and work on special assignments from management. I was told at one point by one of the managers that I was welcome to come in anytime to work because I was always productive and found something that needed to be done.

I would regularly browse the job postings that were in the break room to see what kind of positions were available at the corporate headquarters. I had come across a listing for an internship in the Information Systems arena. I had the CCNA certification from the program in high school and I was taking college courses, so I figured that I had a pretty good shot. I figured right. This was only a six month internship, but my plan was to do my best to remain at the office and not go back to working in the stores. When I asked my manager if I should turn in my uniform shirts, he said “keep them, you’ll be back.” That was fuel for my fire to ensure that I succeeded. I wouldn’t be back…

The internship experience was much like my store experience in that I was able float around and experience the different IT departments in the office. I was like a sponge soaking up as much information as I could. I took full advantage of the opportunity and always worked the optional 40 hours a week. It was definitely an awesome experience to see how the support office interfaced with the stores and how new technology was implemented and trained. There are also polarized perspectives. The stores feel like the support office is out of touch with their needs and that they sit in the “silver palace” without a clue. The office associates feel like the stores are slow at adopting new processes and make their lives complicated by resisting change. All that I knew is that at the conclusion of the six month internship, I wanted to be on the office side of the organization.

Desperate to find a full-time position, I was willing to take any opportunity to simply get my foot in the door. There was an opening in the mailroom and I applied for the position. When I was contacted by the HR manager explaining that I did not get the role because I was overqualified, I was extremely disappointed. However, she quickly followed up with telling me that I would have been bored and that she had a different position in mind for me. Needless to say I was thrilled and surprised. The surprising part is that someone took notice of my ambition and they took the time to help me find the appropriate direction that would set me up for success. I am grateful in so many ways for the opportunity that I received and individualized attention that I received from that HR manager.

The role that she had in mind wasn’t higher on the pay scale than the position in the mailroom, but it gave me the chance to continue to hone my skills and build rapport in the organization. I was hired as the administrative assistant for the retail strategies and pricing director. One of my primary roles was a taking the competitive price checks and chart them across our different market areas and departments to benchmark our indices against our primary and secondary competitors. This information was then passed along to the merchandising teams and the executives. As I performed this duty, I discovered that it was an extremely manual and arduous process. It was also a fairly short sighted look into the data. Everything was being aggregated by department and market area, but we were receiving the information at a store level by SKU on a hardcopy report.

This became my first real project where I could make an impact and improve our insights and analysis. I only had a small introduction into programming in high school and no relational database experience, but I knew that I could doing something if I could receive the data contained in these reports electronically. At the time, the company was what I would call a mid sized retailer. We had just under 200 stores. My idea was to create a data repository with a user interface so that the merchandising teams could slice the data by any competitor or group of stores. They would also be able to drill into the department to see the category, sub category, and segment level indices based on their selections.

I didn’t really know where to start. I just knew of Microsoft Access which had the database and UI functionality all contained within a single instance. No one else in the company had spent much time with using Microsoft Access, so I purchased a book and began teaching myself during the downtime that I had throughout the day. There were definitely moments of extreme frustration and doubt that I would be able to figure out what I had set out to accomplish. After all, I didn’t have anyone else that I could talk to. All that I had way my book and a few sparse forums on the Internet.

The good news is that I was able to do what I set out to do and the competitive pricing application was well received. I began seeking other opportunities to convert manual paper processes to a digital format. The conversions improved productivity through input validations, integration of known information, and the electronic transmission of data. An example of one of the solutions was a report that we used to email to all of our stores on a weekly basis. The report was a large file and the stores had to filter through the document to find the information that was pertinent to their particular store. I developed a program that would parse the data, create a store specific file, and automatically email the stores their individualized report. I can still feel the excitement upon successfully executing this program.

Merchandising Systems was born. I had gone from a store associate to an intern to an administrative assistant to a merchandising systems analyst. The merchandising systems analyst was a brand new role created specifically for the work that I was doing within the organization. This is an example of entrepreneurship within a multi-billion dollar company. Identifying a need and working to fill it. I have been fortunate throughout my corporate career to rarely hold a “job” where I would repetitively do something day in and day out.

Needless to say, my aspirations for continuing my higher education in elementary special education dwindled. I had a taste of the business world and I was hooked. While it is significantly different, I was helping people and improving their day to day work-life. I could positively impact people and the bottom line through software at a magnitude that I could have never imagined. I was fortunate to be in the right place at the right time with the right background to grow within a company during this evolution into a digital world. Gone were the days of mainframe reports piled on desks and filling up filing cabinets. All of the information that associates needed was available on their desktops in a clean user friendly interface with dynamic views of the data. I eventually grew the merchandising systems department of one to a team of 22. We moved from Microsoft Access to more powerful database servers and .NET for application development.

We were highly innovative and focused on the user experience and productivity. The amount of time and money that the merchandising systems department saved in man hours by automation was equivalent to hundreds of workers and hundreds of millions of dollars that would have been required to complete the work in the past. Not to mention the increased opportunities that and business growth that resulted from our solutions. I like to believe that I would be a millionaire from the solutions that I helped to implement and think about what I could have done differently. Unfortunately, if I were a third-party consultant, I wouldn’t have had the insight to the opportunities that helped me to grow the team that I grew within the company.

I am an entrepreneur and I always have been. I have now had the opportunity to work within a fortune 500 company and leave a legacy that will continue on long after I have moved on to my next venture. I am now working in the capacity of a Business Consultant within the organization. It’s a gratifying experience to be able to walk the floor of the office and see the tools that I built being used to drive the company forward and helping to make people’s jobs more enjoyable, productive, and rewarding.

Commercial Due Diligence Period

I am currently in the midst of a deal that I am very excited about! Upon settlement, I will have control of a building that is in excess of 217,000 sqft with strong positive cashflow at approximately 80% occupancy. The building is used as a dry storage facility. It does not have any climate control, so the merchandise contained within the building cannot be prone to freezing.

The ultimate plan is to redevelop the property as mixed use residential, office, retail, etc… The building is three stories high and zoned as CBD (Commercial Business District). This is the ideal zoning which will allow the first floor to be comprised of office space and retail allowing the second and third floors to be residential. There is going to be quite a bit of work ahead once we reach closing. My plan is to take ownership and then take a few months to stabilize and get my bearings around the existing revenue generating businesses.

The structure itself is red brick, steel, and concrete with old pine wood flooring. It was used as a manufacturing facility for many years before being converted into the current use. The building materials lend themselves as the perfect canvas for some very unique and elegant feeling apartments. I can easily envision spaces with large industrial style windows, fourteen foot ceilings, exposed brick walls, wood floors, and industrial style HVAC systems. The layout allows for an abundance of light. I feel that the floor plan design could be a little tricky, but I have confidence that a good architect and designer could determine the be utilization of space without sacrificing the historical charm of the building. Of course, I do have a contingency plan of continuing / growing existing storage functions in the event that the redevelopment plans become too cumbersome of a hurdle.

IMG_5360.HEIC (1) — Photo of the inside of the building

Before any of the design plans can get underway, I need to get to closing and ensure that I am making a solid business investment. below are some of the things that I am gathering throughout the course of due diligence.

Contracts:

– Elevator maintenance

– Snow removal

– Security deposits

– Roof maintenance

– Trash removal

– Test control

– Hazardous waste removal service

– LP (liquid propane) service

It is extremely important to review any contracts that are currently in place because they will most likely come with the sale of the building; unless there is language stating that they are non-transferrable or contain some sort of cancellation clause. You do not want to get stuck with a bad contract or one that you can’t live with. It is important to review these contracts before the expiration of your due diligence period so that you can negotiate any disagreeable terms with the seller.

IMG_5350.HEIC (1) — Exposed brick walls and natural light

Building / business documents to ask for:

– Leases / operating agreements

– Roof warranty

– Mechanical issues

– Elevator permits

– Environmental consulting (environmental discovery)

– Building and fire code violations (get from municipality)

– Building permits

– Financial records (ie. aging reports)

– Insurance and declarations page

It is always a good idea to ask for more than what you think that you will need. Carefully review all of the leases for any kind of cancellation clauses, tax agreements, or rent restrictions that may impact your plans following the acquisition. One of the documents listed includes the roof warranty. Was the roof recently installed? If so, it is most likely under some kind of warranty. Make sure that you are persistent with getting this information because roof issues can lead to some extremely crippling expenses.

Aging reports are helpful to gain insight on whether the rents are being paid and which tenants may be trouble for you in the future. Unfortunately, you can’t always trust the seller of a property to provide you with accurate information. Additionally, if you are financing the purchase of the building, then your lender may require you to provide rent payment history reporting. Speaking of financing, ensure that you have a complete list of everything that the lender will need in order to close on the building. You will not want to wait until the days leading up to closing to realize that you’re missing a vital document. This will delay closing and add unnecessary stress to the transaction.

The insurance and declaration page is something new that I have added to the list. The building involved in this particular deal has a very high insurable value. It has made obtaining a policy a little more complicated than usual. I am looking to obtain the contact information and insurance terms under the seller’s current policy. Perhaps the property is currently under insured, which will impact the overall P&L and the CAP. In any case you will always want to make sure that any property that you own is insured properly. Understating the value could have major implications in the event that you ever need to file a claim. You could end up getting nothing from a policy that you had been paying into for years if you’re not honest.

There is a lot involved with the due diligence period. The broker that you are working with should be knowledgeable in the areas of real estate that you are investing in. You may also wish to hire a real estate attorney to help review the leases, contracts, and overall deal. Regardless of who is on your team, I would recommend becoming educated yourself. This will help you to ask the right questions of your team and to ensure that they are qualified. I recommend reading the following book: The Due Diligence Handbook For Commercial Real Estate: A Proven System To Save Time, Money, Headaches And Create Value When Buying Commercial Real Estate. It is available on paper as well as audio and it is a very quick read. Investing an hour of your time could save you thousands of dollars on your investment.

I would love to hear from you about your real estate endeavors. What other information do you ask for during a due diligence period? What went right? What are some opportunities and areas that you will improve before making your next deal?

My First Day As An Entrepreneur

Anxiety runs high on the first day of doing something new. Think back to the first day of school every year, moments before a competition, or your first day on a new job. You probably don’t sleep well as you lie awake in bed with countless, and often meaningless, scenarios of how the day will go running through your head. Let’s face it, starting something new is downright terrifying!

These feelings were not a part of my first day of entrepreneurship, however. It’s safe to say that I really didn’t know what I was starting. It just seemed to be a natural and happened organically. I didn’t ever consider putting the title of business or entrepreneurship on it until now. As I reflect back on how I was first introduced to a world of entrepreneurship, this moment is it.

The setting is sometime in the early to mid 90’s. I was a tall and fairly uncoordinated middle school aged kid. As you may recall in a previous post, I grew up in a rural area and attended Catholic School. This is important to note for a couple of reasons. One there wasn’t a lot to do when I was a kid. I didn’t grow up in a city or neighborhood where you could simply walk to a friend’s house or even ride your bike. My friends were generally a 15 minute drive, or more, away. This meant that my brother and sister would often be the only kids around to play with.

My brother is a little over 5 year older than I am. So by this time he was in high school and we didn’t really have a lot to relate to other than the Boy Scouts and the fact that we shared a bedroom growing up. I was always just a bit too far behind in age to be cool enough to be included with him and his friends. As I started high school, he was making his way off to college. Always just a step behind.

My sister is 2 years younger than I am. We had the complete opposite relationship than what I had with my brother, because my sister actually thought that I was cool. Rather than try to compete for my brother’s attention and try to keep up, I simply hung out with my sister more often. With that came, what I will call sacrifices, where I would be obligated to play doll house and My Little Pony. Embarrassingly, I had the only male My Little Pony, Texas Pete, so that I didn’t have to play a girl pony. This may seem like irrelevant information, but it will soon make sense, I promise.

Spending time with my younger sister introduced me to things that I would not have otherwise been interested in doing. My mom encouraged us to be creative and crafty. We had what we called an “arts and crafts cabinet” in the basement which was always fully stocked with construction paper, glue, popsicle sticks, wiggly eyeballs, etc… it had everything that you needed to come up with some pretty spectacular creations.

At one point we really got hooked on creating jewelry using those little plastic beads. We would test out the different threads that would be easy to thread through the beads yet durable enough so that they didn’t easily snap, which would leave beads scattered all over the floor. There would be shopping trips to the bead aisle at our local Ben Franklin Arts store, where we would look for the shiniest and most colorful beads. We even had containers with partitions that wouldn’t let your beads mix, unless you accidentally turned the container upside down which resulted in hours of sorting. This happened quite frequently.

I would be threading beads almost every chance that I had. The bus ride from our rural home to school ranged from 2 1/2 hours when I was in kindergarten to a little over an hour at this point in my life. The difference in ride time is that my mother complained to the school district enough to get dedicated bussing for the private schools “over the mountain.” Mom would always go to bat for us, and she still would. When I was in kindergarten, I would catch the bus at 5:15 in the morning and be driven all over the county. First one on and the last one off. I’m sure that there are those of you reading this that can relate!

These bus rides were the perfect time to sit and make jewelry. This was before cell phones and the plethora of mobile entertainment devices. Granted there were Gameboys and Sega Game Gears, but those were the kind of luxuries that my parents didn’t want to spend their hard earned money on. The only portable device I had was a Walkman which was eventually upgraded to a Discman. A Discman was a portable CD player for those that don’t know what I am talking about. “What’s a CD,” you ask? Yikes. It is hard to believe that technology has evolved so quickly.

One day while making beaded jewelry on the bus, a girl asked me if I could make her a bracelet. I said yes, but she went on to say “I can pay you for it.” Suddenly, the inner monologue began playing out. I would have just given her a bracelet, but she is willing to pay me for it? If I can get a couple of dollars, I would be able to buy more beads and make even better jewelry, which I could turn around and sell for more money. This was all very exciting to me! Also, we weren’t really friends or anything so I said sure and we negotiated a price of a couple of dollars.

This continued for a while. I was making “custom” beaded jewelry on the bus and selling it to the other students. Eventually, I had saturated the limited market, so I began making keychains and other crafts.

From crafts, I moved on to candy. My parents had a membership to one of those club stores where you can buy a huge bulk container full of candy for much less than you can buy pieces candy individually. I would have my parents pick up Airheads and Now and Laters in bulk. I had a silver metal tin container that I would fill with candy and take on the bus with me. I would sell the candy for ten cents each or three for a quarter. I would sell a few dollars worth everyday and the good news was that the demand was always there for more candy. I was the candyman through the remaining years of grade school and gave it up when I started riding the bus to high school.

Even though these are examples at the tiniest level and no one would be able to support themselves with these activities, they got me excited for business and gave me a little bit of walking around money at a young age. It was in those very moments that I began to understand the very basic mechanics of business. I just didn’t know it at the time.

I feel like I was fortunate to have accidentally fallen into this learning opportunity. I often wonder how we can teach children these lessons at a young age to plant the seeds of entrepreneurship. Give them the power to be creative and find opportunities to not only make money but be innovative in identifying needs.

Can you remember your first lesson in business? Was it organic or did you have a mentor? How are you using what you had learned through that experience in your life today?