Hey Ellen,

nice to know the think cap is on.  I would like to address a couple of the thoughts in the posting.

1)"What is to stop NALTEA from becoming a title insurer?"  What about the loss of all our clients and income we currently have?  How would we as abstractors survive until this comes about?  Who would write the business plan?  There is only a handful of volunteers now trying to complete the work Naltea already has on the plate.  

2) "Secondly, marketing, marketing, marketing." Yes marketing is an important part of the business, again that takes a sizable amount of money to market national, which Naltea does not have at this time.  If abstractors are only willing to join when they think it will only benefit them and not do any of the work, why are they in the business anyway.  We all as abstractors work hard for what we earn and expect no hand outs from are clients and anyone else.  Why should we expect a handout from Naltea and benefit from the hard work of the volunteers that abstractors won't support until the work is done.  Be a part of the work not the "I want this" and "I expect that" and "I'll join after all the work is done" group.

     Wouldn't everyone rather be part of the "I helped build Naltea to what it is today" than the "I just belong to Naltea" group?  I know I do.

3) "NALTEA would have to hire people to manage and market...it could still be a not-for-profit operation." "We could set up Management Teams for each State and have the Management Team responsible for qualifying and screening potential "members" so that it is a viable, responsible entity for underwriters to vie for."  You would want to turn Naltea into a VM company?  The biggest thing everyone is moaning and groaning about.?  Again this undertaking would require a large amount of capital that Naltea just doesn't have.  How would Naltea advance its cause with the other VMs, title companies and the industry at large when Naltea is a VM title company and not an association of abstractors.

4) "NALTEA would have an attraction to quality people..."  I hope I am just reading too much into this statement and your intent was not to consider all the hard working people who set up Naltea and that are currently volunteering their time and effort not to be quality people?  Tell you what, tell you what, I'll take it as you meant to say that it would just attract additional quality people, more than we have now, ok?

If the attitude of "I'll wait until the work is done" or "I'll wait until it will benefits me" and the continual attitude of apathy that continues throughout the abstractor community, then none of the things that we all want, i.e. reduce E and O, health insurance or a reasonable price for our searches will come about by a small group of volunteers.  If the small group of abstractors that started Naltea had that mind set when time was taken out of schedules, away from family, moneys paid for out pockets for teleconference calls and the entire cost of the first conference, then Naltea would have never come into existence.

You will get out of your business what you put into it.  That is how we each run our companies, whether it is a one-person shop or numerous employee shop.  Would expect anything less from Naltea?

If you would like Naltea to work on something for the abstractor community, then please join and help make those changes.  The small group of volunteers we have now can not do it all.

Keep the thinking hat on Ellen!!!

Jay