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7 Skills to Acquire, 2008:

By Filed Under: Achieving Goals

(Not the same thing as new year’s resolutions–those are big–these are small)

  1. Basic image editing proficiency:  I have "miserable" proficiency once–i could at one time create banners and stuff, but I’m well behind right now  I need to learn (a) design and (b) how to do it
  2. Learn about how the body works, and more about nutrition; learn the "Why" behind carbs/no carbs, and be qualified to have an opinion.
  3. Learn SEO/Adsense/and how analytics/monetization works***
  4. Learn to be proficient using PHP/MySQL to the point where I can make basic databases and queries.  I have a sense of what the technology does.
  5. Get used to a CRM (Probably Sugar), useit to manage GTD, etc.  I’ve got misgivings about sugar, so we’ll see.
  6. Create a 4hww style muse                                                                                                  
  7. Learn how to up the ante with GTD.

Windows Live Writer is pretty cool, for all that wonder  

More on the plans to earn money, etc, shory

Broker Outpost…a nice place to visit, but…

By Filed Under: miscellany

I kept up with it for a while. But I give.

http://forum.brokeroutpost.com/

Those idiots.

They still are trolling like it’s business as usual. They still think “638 STATED/STATED 95% LTV NOO” and “GREAT BORROWER” can be in the same sentence.

Man, Oh, Man. I kept that feed for a week. Record for on and off. About 10,000 insipid posts.

Anyway…I’m looking forward to 2008, both in and out of the mortgage business.

If your realtor is an Asshole, I’ll charge you $500.00

By Filed Under: Achieving Goals

I was figuring out pricing for my business–I didn’t want to be opportunistic with my clients, and I wanted to charge fair fees/prices.  I’m predicting that pricing will get worse for us Brokers soon, but I think it’ll settle in at 1.25-1.75 compensation to broker, because customer acquisition is still something lenders are after.   Anyhow–my notes on uniform pricing and a draft of my office ops manual policy.

This is something that I’m sure the novel folks at Offer Angel would approve of.

Uniform Pricing:

Why?

1. We are not opportunistic. We can maximize via float/lock, but we don’t want to do it.  People’s built in BS detectors will

2. We are not going to fall in love with one deal and make one deal super important to our survival, our month.

3. We want to be price competitive every time and offer a good value to our customers.

4. Realtors will figure it out.

Loan Pricing…

Minimum fee of $2,000 to us. Target average of 2950.  Looking to do 11/month.

Max fee does not exist. Must be approved if we go below

We will then charge 1.65% including processing. This is front /back yield.

So on a $150,000 deal, we would earn as a base: $2475 total to us. This assumes a purchase, and includes processing.

We will charge $475 processing going forward, but it counts towards total fee.

Modifiers:

If the customer gets docs to us at initial meeting–or the next day after a telephone consult–we shave off $200.00.

If it was referred by a referring Realtor, friend or family member, we’ll cut $200 from pricing.

If the deal is a refinance, we add .20 to our pricing setup (more labor)

If the deal is an FHA, we add 1.25 to our pricing. (bigger spreads)

If the deal is US Bank/chase, we add .5 to our pricing (more labor)

If the deal is EAI-II-III, we add .375 to our own yield.

NOO/Investors, we add 1% to our pricing, or we turn the deal down (this is the only MANDATORY add—we will price ourselves out of the investor market or make money on it—Full Doc only for investor residential.)

If the customer, or their realtor, is a jerk, add $500 in fee/pricing.  This is defined by not getting docs back or being an obstacle to the process.

We can float to within .25 either way, but we want to stick to our pricing scheme 80% of the time so we have a predictable business.

It may be hard to enforce the “Realtor Obstructionist” rule, but there are people that I don’t care to do business with, that make the entire transaction an unpleasant, stupid, white knuckled experience.  These jerks get what they get.

Personal Weight Loss Plan: Notes: Start Date 12/26/07.

By Filed Under: miscellany

I intend to lose a massive amount (65) pounds of fat in 100 days or fewer.   And to you idiots that want to lecture me?  Go find someone else.   You don’t kick ass with small goals.  You kick ass with impossible goals.  So piss off, and piss on someone else’s flowers.

By optimizing diet, exercise and supplements, I’ll do it.  At the end of the campaign, I’ll be at the high end of healthy weight.   I happen to agree with the BMI folks that consider healthy weight shockingly lower than we do.   I’ll get it done not long after.  My overall goal is to be among the people that has lost +100#s,  if only for a short time.   I don’t know if my weight should be at 160 or 180, but that’s the range, and why not get to the low side?

I’ve failed at this quest before–a few times, actually.  I set too long and too low of a goal, and I didn’t commit to sustainable, radical change.   I don’t believe that you lose weight by only having one cookie instead of three, or having one slice of pizza instead of four.  It’s too easy to have that plan erode into no commitments, it’s too nebulous.  I’m planning the next 100 days-starting on 12/26/07.

One of the reasons I failed–and many dieters failed–was because I wasn’t fully prepared to do it right.  An example:  I know that–being a being of flesh–I will have to eat at regular intervals.  Most people do, right?  OK, fine.  I wouldn’t have healthy food with me–so I’d go to McD’s–or wherever.   Easy to make an excuse to go, easy to rationalize (breakfast is only 390 calories).   Hard to lose weight–ever–if you put white flour and sludge right into your gullet a couple times a week.

I had some type of epiphany.  I realized that I can fix the problem easily:  1.) Always have healthy food with me in meal sized…storable portions.   This also prevents me from imposing my diet rules on my friends or family, and I can go out to lunch and have iced tea or whatever.   My plan was to prepare food a week in advance, so if I put with me 5-8 different "meals" that followed my food plan without requiring anything, that would be a start.

The other part is to preplan my exercise so it’s varied and interesting.  I won’t stick to something boring, and in 100 days, I figure I’ll have 12-14 days off.  So that’s 86-88 workouts to plan that I can do; if I plan some swimming days, some days outside, and everything.

Next Actions:

  1. Plan workout schedule with increasing intensity for 100 days.  It can be ratcheted up or back after 6 weeks/42 days. 
  2. Plan food plan.
  3. Plan rules.
  4. Post all on here.
  5. Execute

That’s it.

Just a little something…

By Filed Under: miscellany
logo2.gif

logo2 Playing with the Gimp (I’m not shelling for Pshop, and I try to avoid stealing software) and I came up with this puppy. Not thrilled, but it chunks out the problem at least until I’m ready to shed weight and put my face all over the grid.

I’ll be thinking about what coherent eating plan I’ll have; I think 4 small meals/day at morning, mid morning, late afternoon + evening are the answer…and nothing else. By morning: i mean 6-7am. We’ll see.

Super Basic Expense List

By Filed Under: Achieving Goals

money_tree5.jpgThis isn’t meant to be a normative budget–this is just the way things are, more or less, right now. Some stuff can and oughta be deferred. Other stuff makes me money. Budget doesn’t include debt service–just the cash need that I have each month. as of 12/22/2007for now I’ll put it online. These are hard costs. This isn’t a “budget” this is a list of expenses that I have as things are without radical change.

Mandatory Recurring Bills

  1. Housing: $1300
  2. Internet: $26.00
  3. Cell Phones (H + Me) $105
  4. Vonage: $30
  5. Car insurance: $71.
  6. Health insurance: $336 (comes out of my checks, but that’s the cash net)
  7. Electric: $125
  8. Gas: $45 (not on budget–this seems to be about as high as it gets)
  9. Trash: $24
  10. Water: $25
  11. Car Payment: $230 (included here because it would be gone if not paid)
  12. gym membership/Heather: 68

$2335 Cash/month: $27k/ year to have basic living done

Other Household Expenses:

  1. Food: $550/month
  2. Co-Pays: $55
  3. Gasoline: $250/month
  4. Clothing: $250/month (must be doubled–can be deferred

Total: $1175/month: 14100/year

Debt Service:

  1. Student loans (me) $21,500/140 month
  2. IRS: $23,000: $600/month + Refund. each year.
  3. 401k loan: $310/month
  4. Misc “weighty” debt acquired: 7k. Not being served until other stuff is gone, daddy, gone.

    5. $740 * 12 = $8880

Business Expenses:

  1. 900/month: staff stipend.
  2. Lunches/70/month

Total: 970 * 12 = 11640

Totals: 27,000 + 14100 + 8880 + 11640 = $61260 cash. Expenses are $5135/month. This requires a pretax income of 85k-90k+/- to make it. That is an exhausting lifestyle–having that as a base and having to go up from there. Blah. Earning 85k (7k month) +/-) requires the overhead. The Staff Stipend and the Health insurance come out pre tax, and can–to a point–be floated. The student loans can be ditched without much of a penalty, but that’s not the behavior I want to model.

Serious change needs to happen.

Having that kind of overhead to live is not fun–it creates a grind because even if we had $75000 in the bank, we’re only looking at 13 months +/- to be able to survive. The answer is not–as Tim Ferris says to give up the glass of red wine and defer your lifestyle. The answer is to think different:

  1. What can we do to cut expenses in a radical way?
  2. Can we get someone else to pay for us to live?
  3. Can we leverage our intellect to change the game?
  4. Can we cut big expenses? Saving on food doesn’t matter much, but changing our spending does?
  5. Can we sell something on an iterated basis to make us money?

This isn’t a solution that we can “Simple Dollar” our way to the end–while I really like many things about being a mortgage broker, there is nothing unique or novel about that job. I like the freedom, and it’s something that can easily be outsourced. I can build a system in 6-12 months that teaches this, and focus on another source of income….without being tethered to the job.

Chris Johnson is a thinker, taker of risks, and writer. His blog: GenuineChris.Com talks about creating insane personal success through radical transparency.

Here’s Where I Tell You What I will Do and How I Will Do It.

By Filed Under: Achieving Goals

It’s early. I’m beating you ALL to the punch on my new year’s resolutions. Ok, most of you. (This is the first post on Windows Live Writer. Windows Live Writer is kicking ass).

But this is what I intend for 2007. 2008. What I will do, and I’ll find the next 13 days figuring out game plans for each of these tasks–and I’ll post as much as makes sense here.

  1. BHAG: Weigh in at UNDER 165#. By June 30, 08.
  2. New Market Survival Guide will gross $750,000. This is the one and only time I’ll put public figure goal on that one. I will use ZOHO and other Open Source software to get this accomplished. I want to create it 100% with open source software, but I have a feeling that I’ll be using Photoshop, since I have CS 2.3. 95% created with open source is still impressive
  3. I’ll do 20m or more in volume–without expensive ads, PPC, mailer,s This is manageable, and possible; this requires that I do roughly 120 loans at my average volume. My team won’t exceed me + 2.
  4. Page Rank 4. For this site, PR3 for TDT + PR4 for NMSG .
  5. Columbus Marathon. 3:35 or better. Training begins in March.
  6. All debt–including IRS Debt, family debt & Nuisance debt paid (Oh, I had have some acute and massive IRS Debt). I gotta make some tickers to deal with this.
  7. God, Part I: Read the bible 250 days this year, and God, Part II: Get 2 xenos classes under my belt.
  8. God Part II: Define what living like a Christian is, measure it and do it.
  9. Another source of income worked out. for me, so I’m not all in bed with the Real Estate/Mortgage Implosion.
  10. Average 3 hours a day playing with H and Jack.
  11. Track goals and metrics on a DAILY basis and post them in this blog.
  12. Form an accountability/mastermind group with 3-5 regular attendees.

That’s it for now. More will come as is the case; each of the next 12 days will have lots of info.

New Theme

By Filed Under: Uncategorized

1/2 way done–more will be done tomorrow.

4:30 comes early.  So sleep.

Okay, we’re all talking…

By Filed Under: miscellany

Okay, we’re all talking about Barry Bonds and Roger Clemens right now because all of this tip came out and you got to know this. In a professional baseball player your bodies or your currency and you’re shortening your life your taking risks to improve your body there’s not a thing wrong with except for the fact that it’s illegal. If we allow professional athlete to start doping, it’s cool because we’re gonna learn about treatments that are gonna help the rest of us and I think that we should continue now… listen

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Stay Tuned. More is coming, as is always the case.

By Filed Under: miscellany

Seth’s Blog was particularly genius today.

Don’t slow stuff down.  Craig’s list can do it cheaper.

Big damn hairy post coming in a few minutes.

GTD and Projects.

By Filed Under: miscellany

Before GTD came into my life, there were some seriously daunting projects that I was so fearful of that I couldn’t start. It was a “where do you start, oh, you’ll never get it done…oh, it’s too much….” feeling.

Most of the time, GTD talks about next actions–what is the next thing that you’re doing, not EVERYTHING.

Below is an example of 10-14 hours of work, put down into simple chunks.
The Goal: To have a streamlined, uniform, scripted process for taking 1003 information from customers, and making it the best possible application; we want it to take 15-20 minutes at the most, collect all of the info we need…and set expectations for the customer.

Tasks:

  1. Get an exhaustive list of stuff we want to collect.
    1. Borrower Info (kids, where they live. contact info)
    2. Res. History
    3. Work History
    4. Assets
    5. Income; get specific.
    6. Dealbreaker Questions (have you been self employed, how long have you been on title, how much do you weigh)
    7. FORD questions (family occupation rec. dreams
    8. Other Mackay 88 questions as they come up.
  2. Get a “minimum” /starter list of stuff we want to collect for prequals.
  3. Dealing with online aps: upgrading them to meet our standards.
  4. Organize it in the order we want to collect it (prequal/then full ap)
  5. Script it in the way we want to say it, in the order we want to say it.

Book Review: Six Thinking Hats

By Filed Under: Uncategorized

thinking-hats.jpgThis year, I’ve read more good books containing radically new ideas than in any time of my life.  The genre of How To has been different.    Seven Habits: Cool, but stale.  GTD: Cool.

I have been aware of Six Thinking Hats for a long time.  Been on my someday/maybe list.  I read it last week.  It’s impressive, novel, and intuitively correct.

The gist:  The are paradigms of thinking that we should exercise:  Western Civ teaches black hat thinking–which is “trying to be cautious.  By adding “optimisitc” thinking, “creative” thinking, “emotional” thinking, and “facts/figures” thinking we can have a geometric impact on our effectiveness.

Six Thinking Hats is novel because it creates a dead simple framework for getting the best out of each other in meetings, in planning and in everything else.  I highly recommend reading it.  It’s probably going to make my “annual reread” list.

Six Thinking Hats.  Edward DeBono.  196 Pages.

Authenticity, Radically Different…

By Filed Under: Achieving Goals, Start Here

Tim Ferris.

Bill Phillips.

Mike Ferry.

Scott Adams

Warren Buffett.

Mark Cuban.

Seth Godin

Phil Jackson

And Yes, Tiger Woods.

I have a long list of heroes. Of course, not everyone up there has totally defensible positions on everything, or perfect moral clarity. But, all of them–to a man–are radically different than the people around them. Tim Ferris works for 4 hours. Mike Ferry wants his people to work an honest schedule. Scott Adams writes goals 10x daily. Warren Buffet shops at JC Penny. Mark Cuban sells companies. The dissonance in that list is astonishing.

The Same Behaviors Yield the Same Results.

I’ve got some things I want to accomplish in a relatively short period of time. And right now? I’m doing the same shit ad infinitum. The pull of this society to become mediocre and to conform is the biggest obstacle to progress–which is made by the efforts of individuals. Your peers are probably listless losers. Why emulate them?

I’m not saying to be cruel, but why have more involvement than is necessary with people that are stuck in this world? If you want to make incremental change, people will push you into the hole that they see you in with sarcasm, rejection of the goal (why would anyone want to do that), and all sorts of ad hominem attacks on you (you’ve never done this, why is this time different). People are risk adverse mealy mouthed pack animals, and to be like them is to short change the life you can create.

Don’t Let Anyone Vomit On Your Soul.

Being alone isn’t necessary the lot, but it’s gotta be an acceptable outcome. Needing people to praise you is an insidious control that allows us all to self censor our best contributions. Ryan Holiday recently mused that if his parents were an obstacle to his progress, then even they won’t be permitted to screw with your head. I agree. Bo Jackson said you can’t be a man if you allow other men to tell you how to think.

I had my Damascus experience. I am marginally different than everyone around me. I stand at my desk at work (because I get more done). I blog. But those things? They don’t get me closer to my big damn goals. I’ve got a lifestyle that consumes income, I’m working in an industry that’s imploding.

To be radically different and to seperate yourself from the pack, you gotta commit to radical change. And to hell with anyone that doesn’t agree. My guess is that you’ll attract people that are in sync, and that are making their own pack.

More tomorrow. My mind is full….and I need to see if I can sleep for a few hours.

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