Since you started this thing, I thought I would go ahead and tell my current story on my particular journey of finding a way to “get out.”

 

I have been in business for myself for most of my career, although I am working for someone else currently.  Anyone who has owned their own business and goes to work for someone else will tell you that it is very difficult to work for someone else when you have owned your own business (especially for as long as I have).   I have come to the conclusion that the majority of the SOB’s who own their own businesses have no clue whatsoever as to what they are doing, and they have managed to stay in business as long as they have by sheer dumb luck.  Of course those of you who know my whole story might well say “what the hell makes him think he knows what he is talking about”.  Who am I to argue with that?

 

I have owned 2 retail stores (in a partnership and later on my own).  The rest of my business involvements were partnerships with my brother and occasionally others including part ownership of an technology company which also did computer repairs and rent to own, and part ownership of a software development and consulting company.  At one time I was part owner of all of the above at the same time.  To say it kept me busy is an understatement.  Oh…..I almost forgot.  One of our ventures was a coffee shop.  Imagine Espresso sold in a very rural area that most customers have never heard of the types of coffee we were selling.  At least we had good coffee for ourselves though.  Those were the days.

 

I will devote future posts to my past ventures and both my successes and failures, as well as what I have learned in each and every venture, including “sometimes making the least amount of money is the most rewarding and fun”.  I would never give up the days of sitting in the office all day on a Saturday playing computer on-line video games against each other with 1 or no customers stopping in.

 

As I stated earlier, I have tried a lot of different things in the past, all in an effort to make a lot of money at a young age and ultimately have the money and the time to do “what I want to do, when I want to do it.”  I think that is probably the ultimate goal that most of us have.

 

I know a lot of people who are very successful financially who have no time at all to enjoy the money that they are making (you know who you are), and I know a lot of people who have lots of time on their hands, but live paycheck to paycheck, with nothing left over to enjoy life.  The ultimate in my opinion is to either find some in between ground where you can make a lot of money without spending a lot of time doing it, or to get lucky and stumble across some great business that will make you a lot of money in a short period of time or a very saleable company where you can get out with enough profit to enjoy life.

 

So, what are my latest schemes on my getting out strategy?  I have 3 areas that I am currently focusing on, with a fourth idea that I have had for a long time, but have never been able to get off the ground (at least not yet):

 

1.      Residual income

2.      Insurance Sales

3.      Automated Internet sales

4.      Real Estate

 

Residual Income

I have always been a fan of residual income (part of the reason that we started the technology company).  The key in my mind is to find something that will continue to bring in profit month after month, without spending a lot of time supporting it (this was part of the problem with the tech. company, it took a lot of support).  I have found a product that seems to do all of the above, and am working to slowly build a business using this product.  Most of the time and focus on this product has been by me (although there are other people working for this company focused on other things). 

 

In 6 months time, we are generating $15000.00+ a month in revenue and it does not take a full 40 hours a week to manage this service.  In fact, I think we could easily double the revenue and the business could still be run by one person easily, with time left over.

 

The business is a call related program that the users can use to train their CSR’s (Customer Service Reps) to do a better job in closing calls.  It does a whole lot more than just that, but the point is that it generates recurring revenue. 

 

The users of our system love it, and we have had a very low churn rate, with most of the calls that come in being “I want to buy more”.  The few actual support calls that we have had, have usually been issues with the customers’ side of things, and not issues with our service.  To top it all off, we are just a reseller of this service, with little overhead expense to keep it going.  Not a bad business to be in, and it is a program that I truly believe is helping our customers, which makes it that much easier to sell.

 

I could be part owner of this business if I pushed the issue, and that was my initial plan.  Great business you say with lots of future potential!  So what’s the problem?

 

The reason I am not part owner of this business, is that the owner of the company has some financial issues with his other business ventures (which brings in a lot more than this company in revenue and profit), and I am somewhat nervous about getting involved in a business relationship with someone who has a tendency to spend cash faster than he can make it.  The other issue is that he can not stay focused.  He is constantly moving forward with his next “get rich quick scheme” before we have even come close to tapping the potential of the existing business we are working on.  I think the company has a great potential and a great future, but I don’t think that he is not the one to be running it, which again is part of the problem of working for someone else.

 

Insurance Sales:

I recently got my license to be an insurance agent.  My motive behind this was varied, including that I am not certain how long my existing gig with residual income will continue, and I hear that there is a lot of money to be made in insurance.  Not get rich quick type of money, but a real decent living, and probably more than I am making now.  I don’t know about the rest of you, but I know a few insurance agents, and they seem to always have a pretty good amount of time on their hands.  A lot of them play golf, which I have always been of the opinion “is a game for people with too much time on their hands”.  Also, in being an insurance agent, you are running your own business.  So, everything I am looking for is in this career, money, more time, and back to owning my own business.  I don’t know if my expectations are being set to high, but I hope to find out soon, and will keep you posted.  I plan on doing this part time, until my other gig runs out, or I start making enough money that I can focus on the insurance comfortably 100% of the time.  I used to always tell people that “I am not a salesman”, but have recently come to the conclusion that I have been selling all of my life, and just never admitted it until now.  If you believe in your product, and are helping people with the product or products you sell, selling is easy.

 

Automated Internet Sales:

I have heard a lot of people say that automated internet sales is a great way to make money and have a lot of time on your hands (check out The 4-Hour Workweek by Timothy Ferriss).  I agree that this would be a great way to go, but I think you have to find the right product, and have to do a great job with promoting your product and optimizing your web site, which is in most cases much more difficult than it sounds.  I have a couple of projects going in that direction that I am trying including http://www.outdoorsplus.net and http://www.everythingbeerstore.com .  My original idea was to partner up with a friend who has a deer hunter club and magazine website http://www.modeerhunter.com who gets quite a few hits and unique visitors every year.  This is a very new venture for me, so I will let you know how it goes.

 

Real Estate:

I have always been of the opinion that the real money to be made out there was in real estate.  I have never given up this belief.  I was in the process of trying to get a real estate business started when I owned the grocery stores, and have tried again since, but for various reasons, have never been able to get this off the ground.

 

I like the real estate business for a variety of reasons including the relatively quick large lump sum cash potential of flipping properties, and the rental aspect of tenants building equity for me.  I also like the fact that the equity allows you the potential to borrow cash as needed to help cash flow in other business opportunities that you might have.  Cash flow and daily management reports is a key component of any business that you will ever get involved in, and I strongly encourage anyone thinking of starting their own business to stay on top of the cash flow if they don’t do anything else.  In any case, I still have hopes of getting into the real estate game at some point in the hopefully near future, when I hopefully have the funds to do so.

 

I will keep you posted as I progress in my latest ventures, and at some point will try to address my previous ventures and the successes and failures of each.  I learned a few things along the way, and maybe you will too.