From A Seed To A Forest

April 18, 2016

First off, I am loving this wonderfully warm weather that we are having. It feels like the tail end of June, definitely not feeling like it’s still April. If this is a taste of our summer to come, I can’t wait to hit the lake. Baby is coming along, I was suppose to do my glucose test this morning, and I completely forgot I wasn’t suppose to eat so I had to reschedule. Really not looking forward to it as they will be pricking my finger for blood afterwards. I detest needles. My severe distaste for them is 80% of the reason I birth my babies with no pain medication whatsoever. 

I’m still overwhelmed with the amount of things I have going on; my house, my garden, our family and business. With all that going on, we just stepped up on the diving board and are ready to jump right into the world of real estate, but from a completely different angle. The angle that we are planning on using is a new concept to us and until I fully understand how it works, I can’t talk about it. But to most, it would be considered unconventional. Risky. Dangerous. But in order to be successful on the level that we want, we must step way outside of our comfort zone.  This wont be easy, and involves a ton of work and as long as we avoid a few things along the way, I see no limit to the empire we want to build and leave for our girls. 

Things to avoid along the way:

1. Nay sayers. These are the people that think that what we are doing is just a “venture”. The ones that would never understand what we are doing and how we are going about it. These are also the people that would call the conventions that we are going to a “scam”. Well, when you go with a closed mind, you don’t stand to gain anything from it so in a way they’re right. With an open mind and the time and ability to learn new things, things that are very real and very possible, it’s far from a scam, and I would even go as far as to call it the best “college education anyone could ever receive”.

2. Negative people. Simply the ones that never have anything good to say about anything or anyone, let alone what we are trying to do. 

3. People that tell us to just “get a job”. JOB = “just over broke”. As long as your answering to others, you will never reach your goal of complete financial freedom and success. 

We went to a quick convention this past weekend, and although it was nothing compared to the 3 day convention in Las Vegas, it was very motivational for us and right up our ally. We have a 3 day convention coming up in June and that can’t come fast enough. It’s been interesting to see our current business evolve and grow successfully, and how these new ideas are tying into the business. It’s all about learning to run a business of systems, and not break our backs doing the work ourselves.  Some would consider us “self employed”. Self employment allows you no days off, no getting sick, no vacation time etc; If your self employed, and get sick - you lose money. Nobody is doing anything for you because your whole business depends on YOU. 

Hiring our first employee, and setting up meetings with sub contractors is quickly getting us out of the “self employed” category. We are running an LLC business, we want to pay others to make money for us. We want to be able to go to Thailand for 3 weeks, while our business(s) are still running at full capacity and with money still coming in. Can’t do that if your self employed can you? No, you can’t. 

On top of all this, it’s important to teach our kids everything that we are learning. Not only do we (and we definitely will) want to leave our kids an empire, we want nothing more than for them to have the financial literacy and education to be able to build their own empire. They sure as shit aren’t going to learn this in traditional school. It’s all up to us. 

I wrote today’s blog with the noise of my girls playing in the sprinkler, giggling, laughing, teaching each other how to write in cursive, and taking a phone call about getting two home inspectors for a client. I call today a success. Now, if only dinner would make itself, that would be blissfully perfect. 

Yikes!

First off, my house right now is a disaster. There’s kids toys everywhere, baby stuff everywhere, random pieces of bedroom furniture everywhere, and my dining room and laundry room are the worst parts. I feel like I’m making progress, and have even thrown some color samples up the girls’ wall. I have to remind myself that once I’m done with Mia’s room, I have to do it all over again with Isabel’s, although that will be a bit easier as I already did a pre-purge of her stuff. It should go much smoother.

On the other hand, business is good. I’m getting the hang of all the paperwork and understand certain systems a bit more each day. Having the freedom to work from home and still be completely available for my girls is priceless. I have nothing stopping me and the possibilities are endless. My challenge has been marketing. It’s always marketing for me, so NOT my thing. But, if I’m going to learn to run a business of systems I guess it’s time for me to learn. We are looking forward to our real estate convention this weekend, if anything we can at least network with other like minded people.

   

We drove down to Portland this past weekend to drop off our old truck. It was a bitter sweet moment, my husband has had that truck for 16 years. The first conversation I had with him was in the parking lot of the casino after work while he was in his truck. For a little truck, this beast packed a punch and never let us down. I always felt comfortable that if I had to I could easily run someone or something over and come out on top. Beast! It was fun to drive, hard to clean, and only left us somewhere when the battery died. It went to a good home and know it will continue to serve well, it’s a Toyota, if you take care of it, it will take care of you. 

Today I wrote to the background noise of some ghost show, and listened to my oven click as it slowly roasted my garlic herb chicken. 

Business & Personal As Usual

April 6, 2016

It’s been a while since I’ve been able to sit and write, at least for myself. Everything seems to be moving along nicely. As for personal, I got the girls’ new beds delivered but haven’t put them together yet. I’m now in the process of going through portions of their bedrooms and we are making piles. Keep pile, good for baby pile (but there are serious requirements here), and donate pile. Naturally I’m inclined to sell some of the donate pile. Yesterday alone, we went through all of their books. So many books! I was pretty proud of the piles they made with my instruction and I made very few changes and we even had a toss pile. I’m not normally one to toss a book in the garbage, but Miss Bell went through a terrible drawing and tearing faze when she was a toddler. It was time to retire some things. 

Anyways the girls have been home all week for Spring break, and it’s really slowed down any potential for good progress. Work has been hard to get done, phone calls have been hard to make because it almost never fails - as soon as mom is on the phone for business reasons, someone gets hungry, hurt, cries, argues with the other sister or has some sort of melt down. I find it very frustrating, and I love my kids more than anything, but I cannot wait for school to start Monday!  

Business is good, and I’m in the process of making job hazard analysis sheets, accident prevention sheets, and emergency plans so that I can be compliant with what L&I wants.  I have to make these for every kind of job we do. So one for roofing, one for remodeling, landscaping, demolition, etc;  Since I went to their workshop last week, I’ve decided that I want L&I to be my new best friend. I’m not going to become a total kiss ass, but they can destroy your entire business in 5 minutes if they want, and over my dead body I’m going to let that happen to our business. So if they say “make these types of files”, I’m going to do it. 

Did you know that if your company takes down a tree, which is obviously considered “logging”, you pay L&I $20.01 per hour for each hour your employee(s) worked taking that tree down? So your paying an employee $15/hour, your really paying $35.01 just to have your employee help you, even if he’s on the ground the entire time. Not to mention all the other employee expenses on top of that. I also find it a bit irritating that you can’t categorize an employee into 2 different categories in one shift. 

Example: your employee spend 4 hours laying a floor, but then 3 hours cleaning the gutters and roof. You have to categorize into 1 single category, and guess what, it’s in a business owners best interest to use the more expensive category. So instead of the $1.47/hour for simple remodel work, you pay nearly $5/hour because of the roof cleaning. By not following that, if my employee gets hurt on the roof, but I classified that he was laying floors all day, my business is in deep shit and will face tens of thousands in fines and we could even lose our license. 

In our specific industry, I have to be on my toes with compliance 24/7. We take comfort that we are set up with a legal firm that we have on speed dial and can call 24 hours a day for anything. Knowing that I can call them and have my lawyer on the other line within’ minutes, is amazing, comforting, and empowering.  As we start making contracts for various things, I can fax them anything and have it reviewed and analyzed almost immediately to ensure that we are protected.  

On a side note, I got us into a real estate convention in Seattle in a couple weeks and I’m thrilled to be able to go.  I expect good things from this and plan to continue seeking out any kind of business convention, especially pertaining to real estate and entrepreneurship. It’s the only way to go!  My long term goal is to start buying houses at auction prices and make them assets. I’m already set up to get all the notifications about local real estate auctions, and have seen 3,000 SF houses start at $40K. That’s a piece of pie that I want. I’m trying to coordinate with their schedules so I can start going to these onsite auctions just to observe the cutthroat behavior exhibited at these things, something I’m confident I can navigate efficiently once I understand it. 

I had a difficult time with music this morning, and have changed the Pandora channel about 15 times and somehow ended up listening to DJ Quik. Brought me back to my teenage years. I had 2 cookies with my breakfast and have no guilt. Have a wonderful day!

A Couple Days Late, But Here It Is

March 18, 2016

Let’s just dive right in here, Mark and I have owned our maintenance business for almost a year now. There’s been a lot of paperwork along the way, and it’s been expensive to insure, bond and be properly licensed to do the scope of work that we do. But this past week has really put me through the ringer as far as paperwork and how much this paperwork will be costing us. In all honesty, if I wasn’t pregnant, I would have done some drinking once the girls were tucked in bed for the night. Now that we are employers, it really puts us in a whole other bracket. 

There are four different agencies that I’ve had to deal with this past week, and they’re all government run. IRS, Labor and Industries, Employment Security and the most perplexing one, DSHS (dept of social and health services). What I find strange about that is that by law, each employer is suppose to report to DSHS each employee that they hire.  I asked why I had to report to them, and was told it was a way to cross reference for people who are running from things such as child supports payments and alimony etc; I find it odd that that becomes my responsibility. Anyways, complex, annoying, extremely time consuming, and expensive can sum up this whole week. To top that all off, I’m almost positive I have 2 more government agencies to connect with before I’m fully up and running. 

On the flip side, this really is a good thing. The fact that we are to the point of needing hired hands, is almost an accomplishment within itself.  It’s definitely a feeling I’ve never felt before, being 100% responsible for another adult in a sense that we are putting food on their table. Honestly it kind of scares the shit out of me. For some financial perspective, if I hire someone at $14/hour, I’m really paying $20/hour after all the fee’s I have to pay as an employer. 

Major lessons learned this week:

1. Don’t put employees on the roof of a house, at least not any time soon.

2. Don’t forget to file your quarterly reports to L&I…you’ll get a bill for $9,300 like I did. 

Aside from the business duties, I have given myself a “day off”…whatever the hell that means. I have a house full of giggly girls as my eldest is having her first sleep over and I’m excited to surprise them later when I make a massive batch of rice crispy treats. They’ve requested tacos for dinner and I already wish it was dinner time so I could have my gigantic taco salad that I always make for myself.  In less than a week, we will know if we are having a boy or girl and as soon as I know that, I’m going to be springing to get both bedrooms ready.  I had a small latte today and it was WONDERFUL! 

I’m ending this note with some chill “Sights” by London Grammar. 

New Beginnings 2016

If the last few years have taught me anything, it would be that things don’t always go as planned.  This isn't a bad thing either, in fact amazing things happened.  We rode some serious waves, and it got real tough real fast. Fear, loss, pain and reflection, deep personal realizations, personal resolutions, frustration, and maybe a lot of anger.  From that came gigantic leaps of faith, love, laughter, understandings, healthy compromises, and freedom. 

In time, and at the right moment I will talk about all of these things, and so much more. But for right now, I guess I should talk about where we, my husband and I, are today.   Today we no longer answer to others.  We have no bosses, except for each other and our cat, Chachi. He needs not say much, but he definitely calls some serious shots around here…meow!  Today we are entrepreneurs, hunters, and gatherers.   All while navigating a household with 2 children, and awaiting the July 2016 arrival of child #3.  I think we might be adding chickens soon, and must learn how to manage that as well…and we’ve been in the market for over 2 years now for the right puppy to come along. Luckily the 5 frogs are low maintenance.  The girls want fish and birds…live bait for boss Chachi. 

We have an 8 year old, who is generally quite, a bit shy at times, and yet so full of life and love.  As time goes by, I can’t help but think that she is exactly like me and it’s pointed out a few things to me that I need to work on. When she opens up she’s just an amazing little adult with endless potential.  She has a ton to give, but isn’t always sure how to dish it out.  We as parents, are doing our best to give her the confidence she needs to excel without limits. She has amazing artistic talents, she comes up with some pretty amazing pictures done with various mediums.  She brings me things that sometimes blow me away!  She’s also my reader, and I hope one day she will know how to write, at least for herself. 

Then we have the 5 year old. This one is a ball of love and tenderness but carries the wrath of fire.  This fire appears in a fraction of a second when triggered and wow it is powerful!  Today she had me write out a promissory note that stated in her own words that I would give her a turquoise necklace that my father brought me from Cairo. She liked this piece so much that she hid it deep in a little box in my room. I have been looking for this necklace for at least a year. Just found it the other day as I was purging my room. So when I “get bored of it, mommy will give her the pretty blue necklace”. A prime example of one of the many levels of her fire. Smart, deadly, and smiles so nicely. 

I have a yard that I have ongoing battles with. In short, we went from the craziest overgrown yard to a kind of sorta easy yard to maintain.  My battle these days is it’s really a lot of yard. There are gardens of various sorts all around with lots of room to run around. Even toned down by like 90%, it’s still a lot to maintain, and garden time hasn’t been on my side.  I have decided that I can no longer keep up with the tender clean freak I once was.  With kids, I would spend all my days keeping house.  Yes, they do a lot themselves, but I don’t expect them to do the parts that I do. So my house these days, is just really well lived in. When it gets bad I do serious cleaning and then let it relax a bit. I’m trying to get out of this at least a little.  It’s hard to do when you’ve taken like a 3 year break from doing it everyday. 

I have gone through intense therapy at the Skagit County Domestic Violence and Sexual Assault Services, and I owe a ton to these other women for the help they provided me in my acceptance, understanding, healing, and moving on from the violence I once barely lived to tell.  The things you learn about others and yourself when going through this kind of therapy is overwhelming, and in good ways!  Looking back, it’s unbelievable how tightly I managed to bottle everything up and hide it from others without ever talking to anyone about it.  It would have slowly consumed me. I feel I am now free of it, and have managed to let it go. 

I have let go of a lot of things, and a lot of people that were holding me back from growing into who I am suppose to be.  Some of  these people I have let go, no longer have whatever hold they had on me.  I am free of them, and they can continue to make their own environments toxic for themselves.  I will be absent from it.  The other people I have chosen to distance myself with, all have good intentions, but I see some serious emotional and mental issues that I don’t want to pass onto my daughters. The cycle of denial, sickness, and innocent ignorance stops with me. I will not allow it to be passed on any longer. This too, has only allowed for growth in me as a wife and mother. 

I will end this note with “Money For Nothing” by Dire straights. Goodnight!

Just Around The Corner..

Call me superstitious, but I heavily dislike the idea of thinking that summer is here, Washington and I have trust issues. That said, I can almost hear her coming around the corner. Lilies bloomed well this year, but they didn't get very tall so I couldn't cut any of the flowers. We have potatoes sprouting well, corn is right on schedule and my sunflowers get stronger each day. My zucchini is just exploding with blooms and I can't wait to get my hands on it this summer, I have plans to really see what I can do with shredded zucchini now that I'm seeing food from a whole different perspective. It's no longer just for bread. 

I have recently learned that I was never really shown how to trim lettuce from the garden. Luckily I only killed one red leaf lettuce, the other i growing back at supersonic speed. My husband schooled me, I say lucky for me.

This is what many dinners look like for us. One big baker, topped with fresh grated cheese, herbs spices, butter, a fried egg and one slice of bacon. In exploring our options and suggested meals, my husband has perfected the ultimate baked potato! Who knew being gluten free, and eating only local produce meats could be so darn fun? 

Purging is going really good - and keeping me so busy. I cannot get over what we have accumulated in just the last three years. So ready to see it all gone! Just around the corner..

Slugs And Butterballs

Slugs. Their numbers deplete a bit each year, but they are still ever present. I would like to give a shot out to Espresso Connection and the amazing baristas there that happily fill my small bucket of coffee grounds for me. I think a morning has started out good when I get free coffee, and free coffee grounds. 

As long as I stay on top of the grounds, but be careful with the placement of, I won't change the ph of the dirt, and slugs and snails alike will stay away. I found this comic I thought was funny, so I thought I would share. 

Mark planted a good row of these potatoes, German Butterballs. I hope they're as good as they look in this picture! Lots of shoveling going on this week, at least the sun is shining!