I don’t want to say it but I am bearish right now on the markets and economy. Right now there seems to be too many problems and unknowns.

I don’t think anyone likes the R word Recession, but we may already be in one. The most recent U.S. recession was from March 2001 – November 2001 defined by The National Bureau of Economic Research, or NBER. I don’t really have any memories of the effects of that recession, but if we do go into a recession I will be paying attention. As a business owner I am very interested on how it may affect me and my company. As an investor I don’t want to lose money in the stock market.

Reasons why I’m bearish:

• The housing market still hasn’t bottomed
  • I think foreclosures will still be on the rise because people bought houses that they just can’t afford even as rates get lowered.
  • Home values decline will equal less spending using home equity
• Credit problems still exist
  • It will still be hard to get credit
• In the 4th Quarter, the economy grew at a measly 0.6%

I’m bearish but I think we will be in a stagnant economy and stock market more than anything. The fed is actively cutting rates with the global growth story, and an U.S. government stimulus plan will counter act the slowing economy. That’s why I’m leaning towards bear or sideways market and economy. Until some of those problems above become more clear I will be bearish.

If we are in a bear market right now, it sucks, I had a decent return in 2007 and I’ve lost in all in a mere 3 weeks to start this year. Patiently and optimistically I plan to capitalize off the stocks that have been oversold in the next few months. I hope to do the same with real estate market as I keep watching it fall and it may just be perfect timing for me at this point in my life.

Hopes to stimulate the economy the government will be giving a tax rebate, which I don’t think does anything because it will only look good for a quarter. Anyways I’m looking forward to the getting my tax rebate, but I really don’t know what I’m going to spend it on. I may spend some and use some for my bills.

What are you going to do with your tax rebate check?

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I was listening to the radio and found out there is radiothon to raise money for the local Ronald McDonald House. The Ronald McDonald House is a great organization that offers housing for families of seriously ill children, a home away from home.

The short time I was in the car going to the gym, I was lucky enough to hear a caller call in with a great story. It was about a little girl who had a birthday party but instead of asking for presents, all guest were to make donations to the Ronald McDonald House.

This is true selfless act in my opinion. This little girl is forfeiting birthday presents to help a charitable organization, a genuine act of charity. My perception on parts of society are skewed towards the thought that kids are influenced to be materialistic from what I see around me and on TV, especially MTV with “My Super Sweet 16″. It makes me feel good to hear a story like this. I’m working hard to grow my business and support myself, so I can give more back to the community and to charities. I’m going to make a donation right after this post to the radiothon for the Ronald McDonald House ( I made a $15 donation). I just thought this was a awesome story and just wanted to share it with everybody.

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As far as I can remember there has always been an entrepreneurial side to me. Let me share with you my entrepreneurial evolution.

I can remember back in middle school when I was be selling lollipops that I got from trick or treating. I saw that there was a demand for something that I could capitalize off of for a small profit. In high school I was at a track meet down in New York City and found a high demand for candy bars, and I decided to try it out at track meet myself selling water and candy I bought at BJ’s Wholesale club. I broke even that day but learned a valuable lesson when most my candy melted on a fairly warm spring day. My freshmen year in college I try to run a college basketball pool where I lost some money when rules were not specific enough on choosing a winner and there was a tie. Those were some of the petty things I did when I was younger.

I did go to college and graduated from SUNY Albany in 2004 with a Bachelors of Science in Business Administration, Concentration in Finance. Still in college on the way home from a weekend full of sports, I still have a vivid memory talking with my current business partner Adam McFarland about doing more than just getting a job after I finish school. We both ended up starting our own businesses and became co-founders of Pure Adapt.

Before I started my first business and right before I was about to graduate from college, I had written up a business plan for a coffee shop kind of place. I did some research, wrote a business plan and asked my Dad to finance it, but he didn’t think I had the necessary experience. At the time I thought it was worth a shot because I was about to graduate college, but that idea never came to fruition.

During my final semester of college, I had already been working full time as a manager of Verizon Wireless retailer, which would lead me to my first real business. Just a note, it definitely wasn’t fun working full time and going to school full time, but it’s all good I learned a lot as a manager there. Around fall 2004 I really started to lose interest in my job. Then I started to read books on starting my own business and reading up on sites like Entrepreneur.com, which finally lead me to quit my job and start WirelessMogul.com.

WirelessMogul.com was a mobile phone accessory e-commerce store that I started. WirelessMogul.com was something that I could finance myself and use the knowledge I already had from working with mobile phones. Since it was an e-commerce store I needed to learn about selling on the internet and some programming. In my mind I can’t say that WirelessMogul.com was successful but was the beginning of many valuable learning experiences. I ended up changing strategies many times because I started to lose too much money. Things like pay per click, my monthly merchant cost and transactions cost were adding up. I ended up cutting cost to the point where I only paid for the domain name and hosting. It ended up becoming just a site full of affiliates, I still have bunch of left over inventory and then it was shut down.

My next venture was to create a Chinese restaurant directory and do web design for Chinese restaurants. This meant that I would have to increase my web design and programming skills. I read programming and web design books to get myself up par to design my new site. I launched ChineseFoodAmerica.com in May 2006. I was able to create the online Chinese restaurant directory with an interactive map using Yahoo Maps API. One key thing I took from WirelessMogul.com is to keep cost low. I was able to keep cost low, but I ran into some major obstacles selling web design to Chinese restaurants. Some major obstacles included the culture and language barriers. My dad works for a Chinese restaurant and he wasn’t sold on getting web site from me, the culture is just very old school. Anyways this new business wasn’t burning through money. The development of ChineseFoodAmerica.com was a major stepping stone to where I am now as a programmer and web designer.

Next I would be a co-founder of Pure Adapt, doing programming and web design. Stayed tuned for Part 2, where I get more into me and Pure Adapt.

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Progressively designing my life is the constant effort of bettering myself. Everyday I hope to make progress in something, whether it be completing my work task, going to the gym, cleaning my room, learning one new thing, the list is infinite. I want to make progress everyday and every step is part of designing my life.

There’s always something that I can do to improve myself. Follow my quest to progressively design my life.

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