Ed Icionsub

We knew pretty quickly that the economy was in serious trouble and the financial indicators were everywhere if you knew where to look for them. One tactic that some of our brokers tried to use involved expanding the properties they were willing to list to include businesses, not just land and its improvements.

I was very much against the brokers getting into selling businesses. There is a unique segment of our industry that specializes in business brokerage and there are very good reasons why it is considered a specialty. For one thing, there is an incredible amount of time spent by the broker on valuing the business and preparing an extensive marketing package. To prepare the marketing package requires a lot of paperwork gathering and analysis, and a lot of research.

The amount of data that is collected for any type of business sale is staggering and it is confidential data that must be safeguarded while parts are being made available to potential buyers. A good solution for storing and managing this data is using an online resource, such as the professional VDR solution for IPO process.

Because financing has been so difficult to obtain from American banks and investment companies, some of our buyers are turning to foreign banks and investors. The problem with dealing with banks in China or the Mid-East is that many of the legal documents must be translated for the foreign banks to review, analyze and present to their loan committees. For those kinds of deals, we can use the Merrill Brink translation services and have a high level of confidence that the data maintains its integrity.

I’ve worked with a technical translation services provider before and it can be very difficult or it can be very easy. I think the first time you try to do an international deal it will be difficult. But once you learn the process and get a deal done, the next ones are much easier.

Tags: banks, broker, data, financing

Have a good friend who is an actor and he lives in Philadelphia, which is why I titled this post “Always Sunny. . .” like the hilarious TV show. Keith loves that show and has actually hung out with the cast and is in a couple of scenes as an extra.

I would not think there is that much work for actors in Philadelphia. But actually, it is not far from NYC and is a lot cheaper to live in Philly than to live in New Jersey or New York. So when he gets work in NYC he gets a short term apartment in New Jersey. New Jersey is actually nice once you get away from NYC and the banks of the Hudson River. In fact, most of New Jersey has nothing to do with New York City.

My favorite spot in New Jersey is Atlantic City. Most people probably think of Atlantic City as a min-Las Vegas, but i think of it as the beach and the boardwalk. I spent many summer weekends on the beaches of the Jersey Shore, swimming is the surf and walking for miles up and down the boardwalk and the beach looking for seashells. And I promise you, my summers at the beach were nothing at all like the TV series, Jersey Shore.

Keith’s parents live in rural New Jersey, about an hour east of Philadelphia and that is too far for him to commute to NYC for acting jobs. They have a small dairy farm and we were out there visiting his family over the holidays. I flew into Philadelphia and Keith picked me up at the airport. Then we drove out to his family’s farm in Jersey. That was a nice drive – nothing but open fields and a lot of cows. It was nothing like the opening scenes in “The Sopranos” when Tony is driving from his home in New Jersey across the river into the city.

I’ve know Keith and his family since college and they are like a second family to me. I’ve been to their farm several times and they always make me feel like I am one of the family and very welcome. On this visit, we hung out with Keith’s dad a lot, while his mom was busy shopping and baking – getting ready for Christmas.

Keith’s dad was telling us about Arosa Energy, a company that helps homeowners, farmers and businesses with New Jersey solar power. He says that there are a lot of ways to be able to afford switching to solar power or adding solar power to your property. Now there are federal tax credits and rebates from the state, which really help with the initial cost of installation.

His dad is planning to work with Arosa Energy to add solar panels to the dairy barn and the farmhouse. He was told that there will be so much energy generated from that many solar panels that he can actually sell the excess energy to the electrical utility provider company. I think that New Jersey solar energy is going to prove to be a great investment for his dad and the farm. We might end up back at the farm in April to help with the solar panel installation. I wouldn’t mind going back to help – I think I would learn so much from working on it – and it would be great to spend time with Keith and his folks, too.

Tags: airport, Atlantic City, beach, energy, farm, installation, Jersey Shore, property, solar, utility

Watching the BBC America cable channel gives me some great shows that aren’t seen in America, plus the commercials are different and interesting. For example, today I saw a commercial for Dyson. I’m sure you know about their invention for vacuum cleaners – it has a different way to create suction, plus the machine has a ball on the back for better maneuverability. Their commercial was geared toward the British audience, and even used a phrase that we never hear in the States, “a tiddly bit.”

So, I was inspired to learn a little more about Dyson, as I never thought much about them being a British company, but here they were advertising on the BBC channel. Turns out that the company does a lot more than just vacuum cleaners. I found out that Dyson hand dryers are made for public restrooms and restrooms in large manufacturing companies or office buildings, as an air dryer is more sanitary than cloth or paper towels. Personally, I believe that air hand dryers are better for the environment, too.

Dyson invented these cool airblade hand dryers that move air differently and more efficiently than the old fashioned hand dryers. They also make a special kind of cooling fan. All based on their unique way of looking at moving air – whether for suction or for ventillation and cooling.

Tonight we have the chance to see an asteroid pass by very close to Earth. The Asteroid 2005 YU55, won’t be visible to just our naked eye, so you will need a telescope to see this phenomenon. The telescope should have at least a six-inch mirror.

The asteroid will be moving fast, but you should be able to see it from an East Coast viewing spot around 6:28 pm. It is expected to pass Earth, at only 201,700 miles from us. According to NASA, that is the closest any asteroid has passed Earth since 1976.

Normally a web site is put up and not much thought is given to the web site hosting unless you have a lot of problems. The whole industry of web site hosting and servers is relatively new and what they can do changes all the time. There are new equipment and new software and new problems that come up and have to be handled – and handled correctly.

My server has had a couple of glitches. The web site would not load for a few minutes here and there because they were doing maintenance or upgrades. That was no big deal. My my friend Wendy has been having horrible problems with her server company. Her web site has been totally down for 9 days. The hosting company was sold to a different company and they moved all the data from one location to a different one. But the data migration had a lot of problems and her web site suffered the brunt of the problems.

That kind of problem should be rare, but when it happens to you it is very upsetting. I know that she looked at other server companies to see if it made sense to move. She was comparing prices between the top 10 best hosting services. She read the hosting reviews and tried to consider more than just the monthly cost. She was just about ready to pull the plug and then her site came back up yesterday.

I hope that the site stays up now and that the migration problems are all solved. I feel badly for Wendy, but I trust that she will give them one last chance and if necessary she can change web site hosting companies at any time.