In the fall of 2003, six months before founding Cedarcrest, I was on a mission to start my company. I just had not decided what kind of company.

On a Saturday in September I bought every entrepreneurial business magazine I could find. Fortunately the streets of Manhattan are blessed with overflowing newsstands. I remember buying a wide range: Inc., Entrepreneur, Fast Company, Fortune Small Business (FSB).

I learned how to launch my own power-cleaning franchise using a Can’t Miss Proven Method with only a $20,000 investment. I read breathlessly about the inventor of those little rubber sticks for $3.99 that some women use to arrange an up-do with their hair. She sold millions. I admired the tale of a clever inventor of the mosquito-repelling silent-to-humans noisemaker that leaves your yard bug-free. Could I join the ranks of the proverbial inventor-entrepreneur, and someday find my product available in every SkyMall Magazine in an airplane seat-pocket in front of you?

Well, no. I have trouble changing batteries in my cordless phone, never-mind tinkering to invent something in my (non-existent) garage. My twenty month-old daughter already has more design-build sense with her LEGOS than I do.

Undaunted, I was intrigued by the September issue of FSB Magazine, which ranked the 100 fastest growing small businesses in 2003, as defined by revenue growth, profit-growth, and stock-price growth. The list was chock-full of real estate companies, health-care firms, and a smattering of bio-tech and restaurant businesses. The #2 on the entire list, Asta Financial (Nasdaq: ASFI), was a finance company previously unknown to me. Their main service was purchasing assets which banks needed to sell, whether for financial, risk-management, outsourcing, or regulatory reasons. ASFI had been around for a few decades but only adopted their current business model five years earlier. At the time I was working for a Wall Street firm and knew enough about related businesses that the company’s success made sense to me.

With that germ of an idea I set about researching the market and Asta’s competitors. I logged in many more Saturdays at New York’s Science Business and Industry Library. I spoke to an elderly gentleman from SCORE (Service Corps of Retired Executives) who had no idea what I was talking about but who was very friendly and polite for 30 minutes as I rambled about my business idea.

Shortly before quitting my Wall Street job I attended a conference in Las Vegas, NV of people related to the industry to get a sense for what I was about to get into. Although my chosen entrepreneurial field was still ‘finance,’ it sure seemed far away from my Wall Street job. Against the better judgment of most of my family and the sober advice of friends, I leapt.