Jan

A Day In The Life of A Small Business Owner

By Emily

Ok, I think I’m back – again.

Ben and I both got a viral pink-eye infection that seemed to be accompanied by a pretty severe cold. Blake was spared. It makes us very grateful for the invention of Kleenex, Tylenol and indoor heating. Every time I get sick, I wonder what it must have been like for the pioneers and other people who didn’t know what they would have, if it would kill them, how it spread or how to get better.

So, in 2009 I am very thankful for HEALTH!

Today is “peek over my shoulder” day. Here’s a list of some of the things on my To-Do List:

Write a series of 5 posts (2 already completed) on investing in real estate with your self-directed IRA. This will be posted on our commercial real estate investing blog.
Interview Real Estate Brokers – still have 2 on my list to meet for the first time and 2 to follow up with.
Do real estate coaching for some single-family home investors.
Put up some affiliate marketing ads on some of my other web sites. Have been doing this to generate some extra cash flow. I wrote 10 articles recently, one featuring a little pitch for a dog training manual and have garnered 1 sale so far – $68.
Review test results from Google Analytics… I am comparing two sales letters for my how to knit dog sweaters ebook. If one is clearly more successful than the other, I can improve my conversion rate. I already get plenty of traffic.
Meet with bookkeeper and property manager to write quarterly investor updates for some of our commercial properties.
Read The Long Tail by Chris Anderson. I recently got a copy of this after learning more about long tail and small business.
Deposit rent checks and pursue collections from my tenants.

It’s not exciting – but it’s real, it’s honest, it’s transparent. There will probably also be a nap and lunch thrown in there somewhere.

I’ll try to make it more sexy next time. Maybe I’ll sip margaritas, have a party by the pool, or go sky diving, but the truth is moving forward is about small steps every day. It’s also about FOCUS – something I need to work on a little more. But that’s for another post.