Obviously Arkansas Business thinks we should go bigger.

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A SMALL apartment project in Jacksonville drew an $849,000 transaction. Martino & Carrasquillo Investments LLC, led by Ronald Martino, acquired Loop Road Apartments at 306 Loop Road from Carl and Claudia Clem. The deal is backed with a 30-year loan of $678,960 from Imperial Capital Bank of Glendale, Calif.

PS… don’t call me Ronald.

      

Roxane Martino made me a new design… what do you think? She even stuck our logo at the top… talk about cheap advertising.

      

Maybe I’m jaded. Maybe I’m confused. Maybe it’s inexperience. Maybe it’s poor management. Maybe it’s poor people.

But in my short experience it seems that when I’m pushing someone to get involved in a project, I’m doing most of the work. I can motivate someone to get involved with a project that they’re not initially excited about but after a few weeks, that fizzle goes away. Once the fizzle goes away, I’m the one that’s baby sitting, making sure work is getting done and making sure that the fizzle, that was once there, doesn’t go away. Many times the fizzle is long gone and they’re just doing the work so they don’t disappoint themselves or me.

Well, I think from now on, I’m going to look for people to bring ideas to me. I think I’ll wait to find the people that are willing to stick it out through the inevitable highs and lows. I’ll wait to see what ideas I want to get involved with rather than bringing ideas to people. I won’t try to change people’s minds or ideas until I’m completely sold on the people.

As I’ve said before, people are more important than ideas. Once I know I have solid people then I’ll share ideas. But I still won’t push ideas onto people. I’ll do my best to explain a vision and hope they catch fire… I’m not interested in the fizzle, I need to see the fire.

      

In July I rented my house to a family and since then, I’ve been living in Bryant about 30 miles from the Little Rock. The drive takes about 30 minutes and its been killing me.

I’ve purchased a few

I finally found a house here in Little Rock… Its off of Hillsborough and its in the process of being remodeled… a process that I swore I would never do again… but this time it’s different… this time people are getting paid to do the work… it goes a lot faster, its better quality, and it keeps the stress off of me. I don’t think I’ll be there for a long time but it is a step in the right direction… I’m excited to see the property after the work is done.

      

I’ve always wondered why people act like they need a daily cup of coffee to wake up. I’ve always been a little wired and never needed anything to “wake me up.”

Recently I’ve been waking up early and have really been struggling (I’ve always been a hard sleeper).

I’ve decided to move my workout to the mornings and because of that, I’ve started using N.O.-Xplode as a supplement. Every morning, I drink a cup of this stuff… it’s great. Its just like someone else drinking coffee… I need it to get going and as soon as I take it, I’m up and ready to go. I think the stuff is meth… My heart pumps a little faster and my brain works a little faster.

I’m not recommending the product or anything like that, I’m just happy that I found my morning coffee.

      

Everyone knows New Year’s Day is my favorite holiday. On this day, we’re able to wipe away all the mistakes we made and start fresh. We get to evaluate our prior year, during the evaluation we’re not critical on our selves, we’re just evaluating to make ourselves better next year.

I made a lot of mistakes last year. I’m hoping to make a lot more this year I’ve learned a lot more than I ever expected and achieved more than some thought was possible.

I look forward to 2008, I will own the year and this time next year, I’ll be standing with my 3 page list of goals and red pen… I’ll have a bunch of the goals achieved and a lot more goals that I didn’t even come close… but at least I’m trying.