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If that’s true, I think I’m well on my way. Anyone who’s ever started a business will empathize. Entrepreneurs, after all, have to keep their eyes on a goal that’s far out on the horizon. They have to hold a strategic vision for where their company will end up. My goal is to be able to create a real-estate operation for distressed properties and ultimately be able to franchise it. This requires establishing easily replicable systems and processes.

I’m finding that Fitzgerald’s opposing idea is a bit more prosaic. That’s a requirement of being an entrepreneur that doesn’t get shared as often - the need to maintain a highly tactical view at the same time they hold the strategic view. This involves a lot of administrative work, discipline, and patience. It’s not glamorous.

For instance, now that the for-sale signs for our real-estate project have been posted, the phones are ringing with inquiries. That’s a good problem to have, motivating us to hire an administrative assistant (my daughter Amy, as it happens). But she needed a space in the office, and a desk, and working electrical outlets. We didn’t want to spend money on a second Internet connection, so now we have cords and cables running across the office.

Some of the calls are coming from service people we’ve hired on the ground in various cities, relating to cutting grass and looking for used plywood to board up windows because new plywood is too expensive. Talk about prosaic.

Having Amy here is great, but her job also requires some knowledge of real estate issues. Anyone who’s been in this position knows the conflict that comes from knowing that you could probably do something faster yourself, while also understanding that if you’re going to build your business, you have to train and trust other people.

To help myself with this, I’m reading John C. Maxwell’s The 21 Irrefutable Laws of Leadership: Follow Them and People Will Follow You. Maxwell cites Ray Kroc’s “law of the lid.” Kroc, who took a couple of McDonald’s hamburger stands and built an empire, said that your business will never get bigger than you can conceive of it. I’m finding it’s hard to hold that big vision in my head when I’m tripping over the cords and arguing about plywood prices.

But I’m working on it.

After work being so slow for so long, it is both gratifying and exhausting to have so much going on with DBNR. There have been updates and hiring and even some detective work going on.

Every week I compile and send an update to our investors. The first set of financials on our project to buy and re-sell distressed properties is due this week, and it looks like we’re already keeping our costs lower than expected.

We were involved in detective work on multiple fronts. The company through which we’ll be ordering credit reports vetted us to make sure we were a real and viable operation.

At the same time, we found out that our representative in Kansas City, Mo., had put up a for-sale sign on someone else’s lot. It took a little while to track the error all the way back through the company we’re working with, but we finally determined that the error originated with one of the original lenders sending a bad address.  That lot materialized into another home - Wonderful!. We delivered profuse apologies and the problem was rectified.

Being accurate is important because we’re taking dozens of phone calls on the properties we’ve listed, so much so that we’ve begun a spate of hiring (good news here in the valley). We’ve brought in an administrative assistant to offload some of those duties, and we’re developing a sales structure and a compensation plan in anticipation of bringing on another salesperson next month.

We hired a remote agent in St. Louis, Mo., who is not only showing properties, but who is also an all-around handyman, gardener, and even inspector when necessary. We have 28 potential buyers for this particular property and we are weeding them down to the most-qualified five. And we’ve contracted with a wholesale buyer who will list all our properties on her website and add her fee to what we give her as our price.

In addition to all the other reasons I am enjoying this project, I am delighted to be interacting with people from all over the country, all of whom are working toward a better life and economic situation for their clients.

One of the most amazing facets of 20^th century America was the transition of dispossessed immigrants into an economically viable middle class. It was that transition that perpetuated America’s reputation as the land of opportunity.

In recent years, though, it has been more difficult to overcome those economic gaps. The underprivileged underclass has been frustrated in its attempts to make the leap from one world to the next.

What I’m finding with the DBNR investment group, however, is that the current housing crisis may provide the opportunity for people who want and desire a better life to bridge that chasm.

Certainly, I’m learning that these people truly live in a different world from the Silicon Valley lifestyle to which I’m accustomed. We’ve been taking phone calls about our distressed properties from people who are truly enthusiastic about the opportunity to own their own home. But many of them don’t have e-mail or even computers. When they need to fax something, they go to a copy shop.

That’s just the tip of the iceberg. Their world may not include bank accounts or even W-2s. They pay in cash themselves or use prepaid debit cards. Some live from benefit check to benefit check. Others I’ve spoken to make a good living, but they’ve always been paid in cash and so have no record of their income.

The world that I’m used to lives on documentation, records, and histories of financial dealings. But when faced with such a challenge, the only alternative is to become more creative. I’ve set up relationships with title companies and credit reporting services, so that prospective buyers can drop off information. Those companies can do scanning, faxing, and e-mailing, and generally make it easier to accommodate our prospective customers.

Some of these people understand that their world is different, and I can hear the enthusiasm in their voices at the possibility of getting a home. They are not afraid of the condition of the houses. They are not afraid to submit to a credit check (there are others who are not as passionate or courageous, and I suspect they will remain where they are).

As for me, I am excited about helping those who truly want to do so make that leap.

For those of you who have been enjoying the updates of our new real estate venture, we’ll return to that topic next week.

The mortgage industry’s loan modification efforts are going from bad to worse, evolving from a fiasco into a disaster. It’s a case of a vicious circle becoming a vicious vortex. As in many situations like this, there’s plenty of blame to go around.

In the first place, there are remarkably few loan modifications being done. You’d think mortgage lenders would be bending over backwards to keep from having more foreclosures on their hands.

Instead, they’re overwhelmed by the wave of borrowers that need loan modification. Staff trained to handle 1,000 borrowers are now handling 100,000, but - according to reports I’ve read - instead of devising a rational system to handle the deluge, customer service agents are being rude and even outright lying to get people off of the phone.

Understandably, two things have happened. First, professionals in the business community - people with experience such as mortgage brokers, real estate brokers, and real estate attorneys - have realized that they can reap some revenue by acting as intermediaries with the lenders. You’ve seen the ads. But at least they’ve been getting some results, because they understand how the system works.

But of course, at the same time, con artists have also smelled the blood in the water and started charging people thousands of dollars … and have given them nothing in return. Unfortunately, these thieves prey on the very people who can least afford to absorb these losses.

Here’s where the vortex starts spinning faster. To control the con artists, California State Senator Ron Calderon, the Chair of the Senate Banking Committee, has introduced SB 94, which forbids anyone from charging for acting as an intermediary for people needing loan modifications. If you look up “throwing out the baby with the bath water,” this bill will be listed there.

Senator Calderon somehow thinks that leaving borrowers at the mercy of the lenders and their backlogged systems is somehow better. Instead, those borrowers needing loan modifications will be stuck in the queue and lose more time, which will eventually cause more foreclosures.

This bill has already passed in the State Assembly. Contact your state senators http://www.senate.ca.gov/~newsen/senators/senators.htp and urge them to vote against SB 94. If this bill passes, the foreclosure situation will get worse, not better.