First Things First

I have to make up my mind. AM i really gonna do this or not? I have to be committed before I tell anyone. I don’t want to seem like I’m doubleminded.

What is he offering here? A chance to watch him as he operates his non profit at the same time give me insight on how to get mine going? This is like a dream internship. A young Black entrepreneur has offered to teach me some things. That’s my dream come true. I may be a little off focus sometimes, but that’s because my mind is overloaded with ideas and dreams and goals and fantasies all spinning around at the same time and it seems my brain catches glimpses of each of them at a time so my mind is constantly jumping from scene to scene, questions that need to be answered, stories that need to be told.

Hmm… Where did that come from?

Ever since I called him for the first time he has been holding daily (almost daily) phone meetings with me either at the beginning or the end of his day. I have my pen and paper ready to jot down any million dollar ideas because he spits them out so easily.

One night he called me excitedly, “Hey….I remember when I was in school and this boy had this internet business. What he did was Blah blah blah blah blah blah.. Blah Blah blah blah blah blah…. ANd thats how he made his money. You could do that. But on a much more profrssional, larger scale, that could be the way you generate steady income while you work your non profit.

I almost cry… Damn. Is he serious? Could I do this?

I can.

“Sure you can,” he tells me.. “All you gotta do is get a partner. Blah blah blah blah blah blah…. Then they do all the work and you receive your share of the profit while you work your non profit.”

Damn… I can. I can do this.

“Find somebody to partner with. Get a website first.”

The next day I couldn’t believe it. In less than a week I went from working in a magazine in Atlanta, to unemployed and revising my plans for my future.

I spent the entire evening writing the business plans for both my non profit and my internet based business.
I wanted to show the young CEO that I was serious. He told me that he didn’t have time to sit with me and develop the idea when I got to Houston. “All that needs to be done before you come here. You need to have everything you want to do all planned out. We don’t have time to waste. I’ll be out of the country for 2 weeks, we need to get as much done as we can before then.”

SO I’ve been on the grind. I have found a partner for my internet business and a manager to help run it. I have drafted contracts for each of them detailing their role in this project, my expectations and how they will be compensated. I sat there and made it all up. I used legal terms I had read in all of those FUCK ASS Court papers child support was always sending me. Man… it made me feel like God was breathing into me the breath of life. It felt so plain, so clear. Like I was on a windy mountaintop on a clear blue day and you turn to your left and the person you love most is smiling up at you.

There’s something about putting together what I call a “business model”. It was my plan of everyone’s role and how each role would function together. Then I break it down even further to do a step by step guide to how the service would be provided and who was involved in each step.

I texted young CEO to tell him to ck his email cuz I sent him a file of my business model and I wanted his feedback. He never does. Most times he’ll text me back and say, “That was excellent. It seemed so real.” Then I’ll text him back, “It is real. I’m doing this now.”

He is a very funny guy. You won’t believe this he’s 24. He’s a CEO of a non profit and he runs a multimillon dollar corporation. He’s going to teach me how. Are you kidding me? AND beside all that, he’s a really nice guy. I can tell by some of the stories about business decisions that he has shared with me that he is a man of integrity. He has a giving heart.

Too bad he’s married or he would have been the perfect catch though every man that gets close to me gets the TOW TRUCK CLAW courtesy of Dell. I don’t see they asses no more. They disgust me. But the great thing about him is he loves his family so much.. His wife he calls Duchess and he has a little girl and a little boy. The little boy’s brand new. His family lives in Sugarland and he says he loves it there.

I’m moving to Houston to start my non profit.

But I still have to make some money right now. What will I do?

My rent is covered. OK. Thank God I just moved into a shared condo with this chick and it’s only $500 everything included. ANd she’s not so bad of a roommate. She’s fun when I’m relaxing and she comes in and we watch TV together. I’m gonna kinda miss her. She wasn’t so bad. And she was white. But she was cool. I really wasn’t expecting that.

So all I have left is my car insurance, cell phone, car note and gas. I don’t need too much gas because I don’t have to drive much so thats that. I have just enough to cover everything. The only way I will be able to move is if I find a place to live NOW, then work something and make enough to drive from Houston to Atlanta and still move in a new place when I get there and get my first paycheck from the part time job he is offering me.

Ok, I’ll have to stratetegize. I need more money now. I had already begin the writing for my side job but I had only allotted 5 hours a week for that due to the demands of my other job. IF I could pitch him and convince him to allow me to work more hours then I could really twirk something.

But I wanted to present it professionally, so I called on young CEO. I texted him and told him that he needed to review a document I was sending to his email and offer feedback. He looked at the contract and even went rhough line by line and offered his comments. Strangely enough, his comments made absolutely no sense to me so I texted him to tell him that he had to call me at his earlierst convenience to explain what all of this meant.

I took notes as he explained it to me but his additions didn’t say what he should have said. So I took his method of communication and added my usual step by step way of mapping things out and I drafted a proposal for a contract to do PR not just as an individual project, young CEO told me that I need to turn this project into one that has residual income. “When you’re doing your proposal add on 3 months of consulting for a low fee. That way, even after the project is done, he’ll have aready hired you to make any revisions, additions or do any last minute changes. AND that’s $650 a month that you KNOW you got coming in. Plus money from the website, plus you working your non profit and living your dream.”

I’m blowed every time I speak to him. He almost matches my drive. Believe it or not, I don’t know if he wants more than what he has. I mean.. that’s okay. It really is…I jus appreciate that he’s happy and not being selfish with his knowledge. Finally I’m not working for some woman who belittles me, tries to make me feel bad about myself or fires me to secure her spot in the harem.

Finally I’m not working for anybody.

Finally I’m working for me.

And things are going well. Everytime I take a leap of faith I win. I stood up, marched proudly over to the web design guy who also owns a successful printing business here in Atlanta, and I told him my idea. I had nothing to back me up but the plans I had written. And he claimed that he didnt get a chance to look at them before I showed up. That forced me to explain my idea to him and answer any questions he had.

He was a bit stoic, I mean…he expressed emotion like, TWICE, but in the end he said he was seriously interested and to draw up a contract for our partnership. He didn’t hesitate to offer me a job at his company and ask for my freelance writing help for the clients he gets who don’t have content developed for heir websites. He said he will send them to me. And I told him I’d use HIM for all of my clients printing and graphic design needs.

I went over what I expected from him as I wrote out the contract. How he would be compensated. I gave the partnership a time limit of six months before being put up for review. I sent it to Raycita in California who’s coming up on her last semester in law School out there. She sent me her disclosure: I AM NOT A LEGAL ATTORNEY. THIS IS NOT LEGAL ADVICE.

SHe’s so silly.

She suggested that I delve further into the what if’s of our relationship. SO I did. I thought of scenarios that could happen and I came up with a fair way to resolve them. I also created job descriptions and contracts for the other team members who are joining slowly but surely.

This will work if we get a good system going. And I get to grinding. Thank goodness this e-business and my non profit go hand in hand.

That’s very nice.