Beginning of my Professional Genealogy Journey- Overdrive

Many of you know I have been involved in genealogy for over thirty years. Started out at a very early age researching my own family. The bug had bitten. What started out with a interest in identifying my Civil War ancestors has turned into a lifetime passion. As of last week I took a giant leap of faith and started to do genealogy on a full time basis. This is a recap of the first week of work.

The first Monday for me was spent creating a LLC with a lawyer. I am not normally a nervous person, but for some reason this made me nervous. Things went smoothly the lawyer had done an excellent job of preparing the papers prior to my arrival. I was glad I did this, because it opened my eyes to issues that will be important as I move forward with my business. So many details and each one so important. It also helped that she was interested in genealogy.

For me a integral part of running my business is marketing through Social Media. A great deal of my morning is spent with my blog and tweeting stories about genealogy. Linkedin, Facebook, Google+, Twitter and Scoopit are daily stops with my work. Sometimes though I question their worth, but this week I made some great contacts.

Tuesday started out with me doing my court retrieval job. I enjoy it because it involves retrieving records from a courthouse. Duh I am a genealogist. It does not make a lot of money, but I am convinced my pie is going to have lot's of small pieces.

Later that day I was contacted by a gentleman about putting tours together to Europe. He had several clients that are into genealogy and would like one to travel with them. This was something I had toyed around with for the past few months, but is was on a smaller scale doing trips to Ft. Wayne (Allen County Public Library). This moving forward will be a very pleasant part of my business. Found it interesting though that it happened during my first week of doing business full time.

Then later that evening I was contacted by a group out of Utah that needs a genealogist in the Upper Midwest. Since I agreed to do it I have three prospective clients. This was a wonderful surprise to me that I hope as time goes by will grow. One of which has agreed to move forward.

Wednesday was spent doing the Social Media thing. Along with this I wrote some entries for my blogs. Later that day I gave a talk up in Michigan on "Elusive Maiden Names". I enjoy the talking and teaching aspect of genealogy, but have never pushed my genealogy research part of my business. This would be the first talk where I spoke about it. Needless to say I was able to add five prospects for business on my list and made a contact with a women that is very active in Michigan genealogy. She agreed to help me find clients. Her interest is speaking and not on doing research for others. Yeah!!!

Thursday for me was a recovery day. After spending five hours in the car and speaking for an hour the five hours sleep from the day before was just not cutting it. Needless to say it was catch up time. Did confirm an appointment with the travel agent for next week to detail the tours and our relationship proceeding forward.

Friday, I woke up to a email from another group in Michigan. They were a neighboring county to the one I had spoke to on Wednesday night. The lady had seen all the kind words on Facebook about my talk and wanted me to speak to their group in July. Needless to say we are booked once we worked out the details.

During the day I also received my fall schedule for teaching. The faculty has agreed to add a third class on using the computer to do your genealogy. Very exciting. I feed off the passion of others with their own family histories.

Finally when I thought my week was done I was contacted about writing a series of Quick help guides on various subjects that genealogist have to deal with. Needless to say the week ended on a high note. First week done can't wait for week two. Been a while since I have looked forward to the next work week.