Holy smokes. My little business is growing to such proportions that I can hardly keep track. Thankfully, I've always had a good email filing system. I have a folder for each customer and sub-folders for each project for that customer.

I now have five solid clients. In addition to the endless (in a good way) projects with client number one, the contract with mega-company (client number 3) and the bank (client number 2), I have client number 4- a new partner (a huge information security company), and I've just landed another MEGA company (client number 5)

You'll see the names of the mega companies if you're logged in and have been given permission to view my private posts.

I think out of all of these clients- the new partnership I'm forming is the most exciting to me. He has the business model that I wanted to originally do for my business; create off the shelf compliance and information security training and license it to small banks. How we came across each other is SO happenstance it's mind-blowing. He posted a question on a message board that I rarely read, asking if there was someone in that forum that knew anything about consumer compliance training. It wasn't on a compliance forum. It was on an infosec forum, so he was pretty much barking up the wrong tree.

I emailed him on a whim, thinking that I really didn't have time for another client. Boy am I glad that I did. We had a brief exchange of email, I sent him my resume and gave him the link to my business site. He emailed me and asked me to call him right away if I could. I did and the rest is history.

He owns a huge security company that caters to small banks (my clientele if I actually got to my business plan.) They've been asking him for information security training and compliance training, so he was looking for someone to do that.

::ahem:: that's what I specialize in.

We're in the early stages of partnering on this. I'll create the training (which I already have the content), and he'll license it to small banks. He currently has 3,000 banks under his belt and has people marketing to the rest. We'll share the profit and I get to keep the intellectual property rights to my training; meaning I can use this same training to sell to anybody that I want as long as it doesn't compete with his current clients.

He's so excited about what he saw in my portfolio and what I can offer, that he's thinking of splintering off this portion to start another company.

Peeps, this is H.U.G.E.

Thank goodness I now have a business attorney. I have a feeling I'm going to keep him busy.

As you can guess, I haven't figured out a way to clone myself. Thank goodness I have the next best thing, genetically speaking. I'm giving Cameron and Casey (my sons) training to help me with this. They have the background that I need, because they both worked at WaMu's call center. They know all the weird terminology and they're both very computer literate. So, kind of like clones- only they're boys. Eventually I might have enough business to bring on more people.

I know that Cameron and Casey will be able to hit the ground running, which is what I need right now.

Holy cow. This thing is like a snowball rolling downhill. I'm going to let it keep rolling until the end of the year and make some big decisions in January, like where do I really want to go with my business? I know this- I really don't want it to grow so big that all I do is administrative work. I want to always my hands in the creative part.

Four months, and all of this. Every bit of it has been either happenstance or just a mention from someone I've worked with in the past. I'd like to think that this is my reward for being willing to dig in the trenches and always be the best employee possible.

September 25th will be the anniversary of the failure of Washington Mutual Bank (WaMu). I remember hardly being able to catch my breath after we got the news and how we (my co-workers and I) were working in a stressful environment every single day until we knew what was going to happen to us.

Gosh, if only I had a crystal ball then.