I love swimming holes.  SwimmingHoles.org is a very cool site because it is really the only site providing information on outdoor natural swimming and it does so with an amazing breadth.

When I found out that the entire site is run by a couple of guys who do it for free, I wanted to know more.  So here is an interview with Tom Hillegrass, owner of SwimmingHoles.org and USCampgrounds.info.

Do you run SwimmingHoles.org and USCampgrounds.info both as nonprofits?  If so, why do you run them for free?

That red dot is me at my favorite swimming hole of all time. Click to get a better view.

A.  The SwimmingHoles.org web site was started by me and is operated purely as a hobby.  It produces no revenue and there is no plan that it ever will.   Any promotions that appear on the site are for causes that we believe in.

I now have the help of another devoted swimming hole fan and computer professional – David Hajdasz of Meriden, CT.  David has helped me with lots of information and photos over recent years and is now the webmaster for all the New England states.

The USCampgrounds.info web site is run by me only.

Neither web site produces income.

Here is why we do it:

Everyone has hobbies and for us this one fits exactly with the lifestyle we want to live.  We love to travel, camp, hike and explore.  We keep up with technology: the web, photography, GPS, mapping, communications, etc..  Tom is also a freelance writer and get lots of ideas and material from these travels.

Psychologists will tell you that the urge to collect things is a compulsion that eases some inner anxiety.  People collect Beanie Babies and bottle caps – we feel good that our compulsion results in lots of fun information that other people can use!

Also, we just like sharing information we have with other people so they can enjoy also.   I guess we just like people.

Do you have any for profit web projects?

A.  There is an iPhone/iPad app that uses the USCampgrounds.info database from which we make money.  It’s called “campwhere” and is available on iTunes.

Do you have a favorite swimming hole in North Carolina?  (my state)  How about in the entire US?

A.  In NC, I really like Davidson River Campground [for all these links, go to the page and then use your browser to search for the name of the swimming hole] and Carolina Hemlock.  In the whole US, I really like Treman State Park in NY and Cougar Hot Springs in OR.

Have you ever known anyone to be attacked by a snapping turtle at a swimming hole?

A.  No, I have never heard of this happening.  But I think snapping turtles are a problem in some Florida ponds.  We don’t have any FL ponds on the site.

Do you have any plans for new websites beyond Swimmingholes.org and USCampgrounds.info?

A.  No, they keep me pretty busy.

Have you discovered any interesting new websites or businesses lately?

Here is a great GPS/Mapping web site I use all the time:  Adam Schneider’s mapping utilities.

I just posted a new white paper for mental health professionals over at my Lifestyle Practices Facebook page.  The topic is Marketing Strategies for MHP’s:  The View From 10,000 Feet and it will help you wrap your head around some of the more practical and ethical questions that face therapists.

How Can a MHP Market Ethically?

After you read it, please leave me a comment to let me know what you thought!

P.S.  I have more for you coming soon.

I’ve been on the subject of probate recently.  I contacted Ron Mead in the course of doing research on buying businesses out of probate.  He was very knowledgeable and helpful, so I thought that I’d interview him to try to resolve some of my nagging questions about probate real estate investing.  For those interested in real estate investing, I don’t think there’s a better strategy than probate investing.

When you mail probates, do you mail all heirs of the estate, or do you check the will and only mail those heirs who have inherited the property?

This is the kind of house you want to buy.

A.  Sometimes not all the heirs are listed but it helps if you can mail them all. Here’s my reasoning; generally the Personal Representative is the most responsible of the heirs. However, the financial situation of each of the heirs is different. Consequently if one of the heirs knows of your interest in purchasing the property, they may become your ally with the PR. So that’s why I always send as copy of my letter to all the heirs as well as the PR if I can get their names and addresses.

As an investor, I have bought a lot of probates, so I know that probate leads are very valuable to investors. In your experience, are they as valuable to Realtors? Do most Realtors just list probates or do they have a hybrid strategy where they list some and buy some?

A.  I personally know of Realtors who successfully use my strategy as a prospecting tool. It’s a gold mine. My suggestion is that RE agents make up a second set of business cards with the title “Probate Specialist” on them. If after viewing a property as a potential buyer, the PR rejects their offer, a question like “Do you plan on using a RE agent to sell this property?” leads right into you giving them the Probate Specialist card.

Does your marketing strategy consist of a single mailing or a mailing funnel? Do you market to the executor differently than the other heirs? Do you ever call or door knock?

A.  I use the strategy of one letter AND a follow up call. I fully understand the sales tenant that it takes 7 contacts to make a sale but I don’t regard myself as selling anything but rather offering a service. I mail my letter and about 2 weeks later follow up with a call asking the PR if they received my letter. “Hi Mr. Simpson, Ron Mead here and I just wanted to make sure you received my letter?” Invariably the answer is “What was the letter about?” Oh it’s about he house over on 1234 Main St.” and off the conversation goes. I always mail to the PR (Executor) directly and cc the heirs. I never have knocked on one door in 16 years of working Probate.

We all know that probates are more likely to come with title issues. How much do you usually pay for an action to quiet title? (or your state’s equivalent)

A.  My experience does not parallel your statement that probates come with title issues. I have never had one instance of paying for action to quiet title. Most titles are clears with no liens. I have encountered some with mortgages but rarely much else. By the way, as I am sure you know, liens do not pass with title so for potential buyers they need not worry about assuming any liens on the property.

Thinking back on this question, I realized that often my problems weren’t title-related per se, they had more to do with trying to get 14 different heirs to all sign off on the sale of the property.  I did have one house that had an official title problem.  It was a crazy situation where the owner of record was elderly, incompetent, and in a home.  One of her grandsons was trying to sell me the house.  Another of the grandsons lived in the house without electricity or water.  I think he was a hoarder.  I know that he was a crack addict.  Anyways, I digress…

If you had to give one piece of advice to a probate investor who wanted to run their business to the highest ethical standards, what would that advice be?

A.  Interesting question that I had never considered. I have had 4 instances of loss of parents with my wife and myself so I am very empathetic to the PR’s situation. As trite as this must sound, we are honest folks and operate our business appropriately. We never take advantage of people who are not familiar with property values but we are a business and as such we need to make a reasonable profit. I once heard a “Probate Guru” brag about making $146,000 on a $275,000 deal with a single Mom who had no clue about real estate so he just offered her a small amount of cash on the spot…take it or leave it. She was totally broke so the idea of getting $120,000 immediately seemed OK to her. She had no idea of property values in Scottsdale since she was from the backwoods of Arkansas. The person telling the story found it laughable that he was able to take advantage of her naïveté….he’s was very proud of his “great deal”. That is not the way I do business and I would hope others when faced with this situation would not either. I believe each of us has a “moral compass” within us and we can always do what is right. I’ve made a very, very good living by using my moral compass.

What is your opinion of national probate lead services?

A.  Over the last 5 years, I have had several guys contact me who said they could provide Probate info for all counties in the US. Naturally they want me to endorse their service. Each time I have given them a couple of obscure counties to test them, they have failed. Last year I had a guy in Texas pester me until I finally tested him and he passed. So I had a teleseminar for all my subscribers and told everyone about his service….big mistake. Turned out he couldn’t deliver as he said he could and even worse, he kept the money for some who paid but never got any leads. So I kept getting the “you said this guy could….” emails and I ended up looking bad. Luckily it turns out this guy had not wanted to pay me anything for my promoting him but I decided to do it anyway as a service for my customers so I had no financial connection.

I also wanted to thank Ron for being so helpful by giving him some exposure for his probate investing course.   The link is an affiliate link, since Ron insisted.  I have not seen the course, so I can’t comment on it.  In our discussions, though, Ron has been spot on in all things probate so I wouldn’t expect anything less from the course.

Is it possible to buy businesses that are in probate?  What follows is a summary of my research.  This may be the only post you’ll find on the topic.

As many of you know, I owned a real estate investment company for more than 5 years and I still dabble with it.  The key to real estate investment is to make offers on properties that nobody else know are for sale.

In my experience, the best source of leads that meet that criteria are houses that are in probate.  They are often unwanted and have deferred maintenance.  The heirs want cash rather than the house.  Often the heirs are paralyzed with indecision due to the emotional nature of the situation.  Everyone is avoiding bold, proactive action because they don’t want to upset the other heirs.

Probate real estate must be found by time-consuming courthouse research that eliminates 95% of your would-be competition.

So I wondered whether you could apply the same principles of probate real estate investing to business investing.  My conclusion is that you cannot.  Here are the reasons why:

1. Most businesses are passed on long before the decedent passes.  The owners of valuable businesses think about this kind of thing and prepare succession plans.
2. Many people own property, but nowhere near as many own businesses.  If you segment the businesses, you will find that many of the businesses lose almost all their value when the owner dies.  Think sole proprietorships or barely profitable businesses where the owner works 60 hours per week.  When you do the math and figure out how many average monthly probates there are in your county vs. the proportion of those probates that contain viable business entities, you may realize that there will be few or no businesses for you to bid on.
3. If a business is incorporated, which most successful businesses are, it will not appear in the assets.  The shares might, but it will probably take a good deal of research on every single probate that lists shares in order to find shares that signify an available business in probate.  This is the “needle in the haystack” problem.

So, at the end of the day, finding and offering on businesses in probate is probably not a viable strategy for most business investors.

If anyone has a different opinion or experience that contradicts my conclusion, I’d love to hear it.

I’ve been working on a new project that I’m very excited about.  Private practice psychologists and therapists are underserved when it comes to practice development.  That’s a shame because there are a lot of them and they serve an important function in the community.

I began to address this problem when I wrote Internet Marketing for Psychologists.  That book was great, but internet marketing is a narrow subject and many mental health professionals don’t have time to implement the information in the book.

That’s why I have created Lifestyle Practices.  It is a marketing system for psychologists and therapists. The philosophy behind Lifestyle Practices is to build your practice by educating potential clients and the community at large.  Did I mention that this is a complete done-for-you system?  That’s right, I’m not offering to teach you how to do it, I’m offering to do it for you.

I hope to have something to show you by mid-February so stay tuned!

There is one single skill that is and will be the most important for the 21st century. That is the ability to wade through information and filter out the irrelevant.

It is now common knowledge that the amount of info out there is growing at some ungodly rate. Most of it is trash. The vast majority of what is not trash is wholly irrelevant to anything you will ever do.

So I propose a simple test that you can conduct before you make a request for information. That is, before you type in a web address, click a bookmark, or fill out a search box, ask yourself the following questions:

How will this information help me? Why do I want this information?

Will it help you complete the project you are working on? Will it help you make an important decision? Will it provide context? Will it entertain you?

I think you will find that most often, the answer is “none of the above.” The information you are seeking will distract you, discourage you, and stress you out. You will find that what you are presumably doing for entertainment you are actually doing out of impulse. And rather than provide stress relief, it’s making you more stressed out by distracting you from your real work.

If you are interested in reading more about the intersection of information, work, and health, you may enjoy Seth Godin’s Linchpin. I particularly enjoyed the chapter The Resistance.

Y Combinator funded InDinero.com launched less than a month ago, but it’s already gaining traction.  Billed as a “Mint for Small Businesses,” it’s business model is fascinating because of it’s simplicity and the very real problem that it solves.

Founder Jessica Mah took time out of her busy schedule to answer a few questions about her business, entrepreneurship, and life.

How is your work at InDinero.com going?

Fantastic!  Only launched about three weeks ago, but we have a few thousand businesses using us.

What makes InDinero.com different and/or better than Quickbooks and all the rest of the online accounting sites?

It all comes down to the problem we’re attacking.  We found that Quickbooks is a great accounting solution.  The problem is that most business owners aren’t looking for accounting software; they’re looking to have better insights into their business.

What can we expect from InDinero.com in the next 6-12 months?

More than even I can imagine.  We usually work in 4 week cycles – where we’ll push a lot of new functionality and fixes out in a four week period, learn more about what our users want, and then have a better idea on what the next cycle will be like.  To more directly answer your question, we’ll be launching our integration with Freshbooks.com and forecasting functionality in the next two weeks.

What’s one book that every entrepreneur should read?

How to Win Friends and Influence People by Dale Carnegie.  Someone told me that it’d change the way I not only run my business, but the way I interact with all people.  He was completely right.

What’s the one startup that you’re not involved with that you’re most excited about?

I’m pumped about DropBox.com – they’re a fellow YCombinator company with an incredible product.  We take inspiration from them everyday.

Most entrepreneurs have way more ideas than they have time to do them.  What’s a great business idea you’ve had that you’re not going to do anything with, but you think it would be cool if someone else did.

Pandora for Videos.  I love Pandora.com for music, but how great would it be if someone made a machine-learning startup disguised as a consumer video site?

Many thanks to Jessica.  If you’ll excuse me, I’m going to get started on my Pandora for videos!

My new author page is up at Amazon.com.  Check out Nick Holliday’s author page.

When you’re reading a book of quotes, you pause after each quote.  Some are insightful, some motivating, and some almost transcendental.

But sometimes you get to a quote that contradicts one of the other quotes.  Both quotes are compelling and seem correct.  I mean one is by Aristotle and one is by the Buddha.  But they can’t both be correct.

Rework is kind of like a book of quotes in that respect.  The book is written into short blog-sized chapters.  I have no problem with that since most business books are more than half worthless fluff.  I thought it had some great takeaways and also found it to be motivational.  But I did see some contradictions.  Even though I have a full time job, I am told that no time is no excuse, but I am also told to go to bed and get some sleep.  If you have a full time job, a family, and are also starting a business, there is no time for a good night’s sleep.  There are surely some folks who have done that, but that’s usually caused by a stroke of luck or a stroke of genius.

On the bright side, like a book of quotes, the ideas in Rework seem to stick with me.  Being presented in short form seems to have made them easier to remember.  It is a book that I very well might come back to.  Its the kind of book that I want to bounce my ideas off of.  When I’m planning a project, creating a new product, or starting a new business, I might flip through this book and see if it gives me any insights that I can apply to my work.