In many communities across the country there are local branches of the Service Corps of Retired Executives (SCORE). This organization is a completely free mentoring program that is made up of retired executives who succeeded in their careers and who are now willing to share their knowledge and expertise, absolutely free of charge, with those who are attempting to follow in their footsteps. Each SCORE office is as different as the individuals who make it up. You may find the exact person who can answer your questions, give you direction and save you from making costly mistakes. Utilize their generosity. To locate your nearest SCORE facility, go into a search engine such as Google, and type SCORE. This will bring up a number of links to guide you to your local office.

Here, you will find a cornucopia of places where products in the category you are searching are being sold. The same stores that you have just visited will likely have links on the Internet. So, why bother to go out to the stores in the first place? Because you want to actually see the similar products that are on store shelves. And, you want to gather the information that you can get from the product labels. If you should find a product that is offered for the same purpose as your idea, you can inspect it closely to see if your idea is an improvement on that product. Also, retailers do not usually have every product that is in their stores on their websites, so it is important to make sure that you do not overlook something by failing to make that trip to the store.

Individuals often make and sell products on the Internet that are offered nowhere else. If you neglect to do a good Internet search, you will miss this prior art. What is prior art?

If an active patent covers a product, you cannot legally make and sell it.

If that patent has expired, that product is said to be in the public domain and is now available to anyone to make and sell.

A product that has never been patented but has been offered for sale to the public is also said to be in the public domain and can never be patented.

All of the above examples are prior art; products that have already been presented to the public and cannot now be patent protected. One of the first things the examiners at the patent office will do when they begin with your application is to initiate a thorough search for prior art. If you failed to find these products but they were found in subsequent searches related to your patenting efforts, your patent would be rejected and you would have spent your money and your time in vain. It pays to be meticulous in your Internet  searching.

A way to estimate the actual value of a property is to use what is known as the “reproduction cost method.” That is, what would it cost to build that same building today? Here you pretend to buy a lot at today’s value and then build a “used” building that matches the existing building. For this reason alone, this is not an easy method. It requires a good knowledge of the market for raw land as well as an understanding of the costs of construction and depreciation.

Consequently, this method is often used solely by professional real estate appraisers. If you want to attempt it, the first thing to consider is the cost of the lot. Contact brokers and builders in your area. Find out what similar lots cost. In our example, the lots are about 5,200 square feet. After some diligent research on your part, let’s say that in your area,  and that size is worth $135,000.

Step two is to figure out what it would cost to build your building. Analyze the square footage and construction method of the property you want to buy. Let’s say that the cost to build a standard wood- frame and stucco building like the  one you want to buy is $85 per square foot, and the cost to build the garages is $30 per square foot.

Investors need to know their limits. In some ways, investing is like driving. Risks must be balanced with rewards. All drivers know that the faster you go, the sooner you get there, unless you run off the road or get ticketed or die in a car wreck. Speed must be balanced with safety. After years of driving, several tickets, and a few wrecks and near misses, most drivers know their limits. Some drivers are comfortable in the fast lane, yet slow down to the posted speed limit on exit ramps. Other drivers like the slow lane, but leave the motor running when filling up the tank. The raging driver is only happy on the road honking and flipping people off while the ultracautious never drive at night or on freeways. Ultimately, arriving faster is a secondary goal for most drivers.

Investments are touted for their high returns. Investors must balance return with anxiety and other emotions. High return often entails high anxiety, and low return usually means low anxiety. However, investing is complex. Some investments have high returns with complexity and low anxiety. Investors who can handle complexity will be happy. Other investors will be miserable. Some investments offer high returns with extensive effort. Some low-return investments entail an emotional roller coaster. Extreme speculation sometimes leads to gambling addiction. Some investors can handle a multitude of investments, and other investors are only comfortable with one asset class.

While in general we have a lot of control over our assets, we have relatively little control over our liabilities. In many parts of the world, it is impossible to fix the interest rate on your mortgage for more than a handful of years. Where you can, make sure you fix the interest rate!

One of the huge advantages of the real estate market in the United States relative to many other countries is that it is possible to obtain mortgages—even 30-year mortgages—where the interest rate is fixed. I am astounded at the number of investors who choose not to fix the rate. For the sake of perhaps a 0.5 percent lower initial interest rate, they are willing to risk interest rates going through the roof in the future. It is a folly not only committed by legions of otherwise sane investors, but also aided and abetted by armies of mortgage brokers who no doubt get a better commission on loans that turn out to be more lucrative for the banks.

Furthermore, you should avoid any requirement for a personal guarantee on any real estate loans. The reasons are twofold.

First, a real estate investment should stand up on its own two feet. The risk of having a personal guarantee is that it may be called up, and you would be forced to pay off principal on a loan taken out by an entity with limited liability. Signing a personal guarantee, of course, breaks this liability fire wall.

The second reason why you should avoid any personal guarantees is that when you apply for future loans, banks will often ask for a list of your contingent liabilities—these are liabilities that may end up on your shoulders. The more items in this list, the more reluctant a bank will be to lend you any money.

Based on this simplistic analysis, the country should not be doing very well at all economically, and yet the gross domestic product (GDP) is robust and strong. The reason, of course, is the so-called invisible income that Great Britain derives from more than a century of having made judicious and fortuitous investments abroad. Take the insurance industry, for instance. Great Britain controls more than 70 percent of the reinsurance industry, largely through the operations of Lloyd’s of London (with Switzerland mopping up most of the remaining 30 percent). Britain similarly has substantial investments abroad in banking, pharmaceuticals, and transportation, to name a few. No doubt the Brits making these investments 100 years ago were also branded as being unpatriotic, as they were taking pounds sterling out of their country back then, but the entire nation is now benefiting from the ongoing repatriation to Great Britain of dividends, profits, rents, and realized capital gains.

Just how do these repatriated profits benefit the entire nation rather than just the companies and individuals controlling the investments? First, on entering the country, these funds push up the value of the British pound. And once the profits are in the coffers of a recipient company, that company will tend to spend the money in a number of different ways. They will invest some into research and development, employing scientists, engineers, physicists, chemists, and a slew of technical support staff. They will conduct marketing surveys and advertising campaigns, employing PR firms, communications experts, marketing staff, and legal spin doctors.

They may expand their premises, employing architects, engineers, construction workers, electricians, plumbers, painters, and the like. I think you get the picture. Money coming into a country tends to end up benefiting everyone. Money leaving a country tends to disadvantage everyone. That is why a balance of trade surplus is so healthy for a country, and a deficit is so debilitating.

• Are there internal issues—such as civil unrest, a repressive government, a history of military intervention in political matters, an upsurge in religious fundamentalism, racial hostilities, pervasive distrust of foreigners—that may make the country unstable in your lifetime or in the lifetime of those whom you may hope to someday benefit from your investments?
• Are there corruption issues—national or regional government corruption or failure to prosecute those engaged in nefarious business dealings? Did you consult Transparency International’s corruption perception index (www.transparency.org) to get up-to-date information?
• Are there external issues—such as border problems with neighboring countries, influxes of immigrants or refugees, overt or covert threats of terrorism—that may make the country unstable?
• Are there foreseeable ecological concerns—pollution, deforestation, overfarming, water and/or food shortages, not to mention the increasing anxiety about the possible effects of global warming, particularly on coastal areas—that may make the country’s economic future less desirable?
• Are there societal and cultural changes—religious or tribal strife, large immigrant populations, increasing disparity between rich and poor, underfunded or collapsing educational systems—that may make the stability of the country’s overall future less predictable?