Introductions???

Hello to our new business forum. This is a wonderful addition to homesteadingtoday.com.

My real name is Alice. I'm 54 years old, married, two adult married sons, two grandchildren.

I taught in a small public school for fifteen years. During that time, I bought small distressed homes and a friend and I remodeled/refurbished them to become rent houses. I now own five rent houses in a small town in south Texas, one in Austin, and one in southern Missouri. I do as much of the upkeep/repairs myself as possible.

I also am bookkeeper and Secretary/Treasurer of the Board of Directors of my husband's Sub-Chapter S corporation. He is a registered petroleum engineer, and he works in the oilfield as a consultant on drilling and workover rigs.

Besides that, after my mom died recently, I became the Trustee of a family trust started by my grandfather many years ago. I manage the investments and the real estate. It includes both commercial and residential real estate in Austin, Texas.

I do NOT do the tax prep for the various entities that I manage. The tax code is much too complicated, and that's what professionals are for! I use Quickbooks for the financial data on the corporation and the Trust, and I use Microsoft Money for my rental houses and our personal accounts.

For fun, I have three milking dairy goats and their offspring, three horses, one miniature horse, and two dogs.

As you can see, my experience is *quite* varied. I will be delighted to share info with other business people in this forum!

I was a public school teacher for 18 years, but have had my own business on the side since I was in college (t-shirt business). Over the past 20 years I have started several succesfull businesses, several I still own and operate. Currently, I have a Property Management & Maintenance company which oversees 5 apartment complexes in different capacities. Some I actually deal with all aspects of management, some we only take care of general maintenance, landscaping, lawn care, and snow removal. I also have many residential and commercial mowing contracts and do small scale landscaping projects. General carpentry jobs are also taking off as an offshoot of our other business, and I am considering hiring a full time carpenter. Another area I am currently involved in is owning a fitness center, (hired a manager for daily operations) and I do sports enhancement training. The final main business is providing labor for agricultural companies doing corn detasseling, harvest work, transporting migrant workers for these companies, and any other ag related type labor. Kind of like an "Agriculture Manpower". I actually employ all workers, except for migrants, and I set up contracts with these companies to provide the labor. Through the summer monthes I will have 300+ employees on the payroll. As for migrants, I own 4 buses and I contract the transportation to and from fields or plants, oversee daily labor, but they are employees of the company they are working for. I think next year I am actually for the first time going hire workers here on work visas and see how that goes. Sorry this is so long but I wanted to cover main businesses. I have a few smaller start ups going right now as well. My goal is to eventually have my 3 sons running all of these operations, and I run our farm. Oh, and by the way, I am also the head football coach for our local highschool, and also coach basketball and track.