This is our first interview and I’m honored that it is with my dad. I’ve been wanting to add interviews to this podcast to get insight into others who work for themselves. My dad is an work from home accountant. He spent 27 years in other fields before he decided to work for himself. Having a dad who worked for himself made me realize that I to could work for myself. So if you don’t have a parent who did that accept my dad as proof that you can work for yourself.
We explore what he does for companies, what it takes to work for yourself as well as what he sees in successful businesses along with a bit of history of his journey.
If you have thought about wanting to be a self employed person check it out. If you are an accountant or know one who might enjoy working for themselves share this interview.
My dad continues to get new clients without a website!
This episode covers the importance of small business customer service. I believe it has been a key to retaining customers. Do you provide your customers a way to contact you or someone else in case of an emergency? I was up at 3:30 the other morning when a client called because their website was down. I like to sleep but I also like my clients to be sleep so I’m willing to help them.
Are you giving your clients your contact information in every email you send? How about on every invoice you send?
Should you use a call center to ensure a person will always answer the phone and route the emergency calls to your or a team member?
Today I talk about the experience I gained by working for small companies. I think working for small companies really helped me gain the know how and experience to start and run a small business.
Seeing what the business owners were doing and not doing gave me the confidence to try it myself. Working for many small companies will give you more flexibility to start you own business on the side.
I bought my first rental condo around 2002 and since then have added another. Along the way I started a real estate company with my best friend in Texas where we have flipped and house, bought quite a few pieces of real estate and added more rentals.
I’ve always liked the thought of owning a lot of land and still check what is for sale most days. Zillow.com is one of my favorite resources.
I share what has worked and what has not worked for us. As always you will learn if you take action. We sure have and have survived to buy another day.
Topics covered:
Flipping a home and getting rich quick
Rentals – condo’s vs. homes and can you get 1% or 2%+ for rent? All about cash flow
Buying tax foreclosures or any real estate in this market – it is all about your purchase price (we like 50% of tax value)
Paying year 2000 or previous prices in today’s market
HOAs – the draw backs (the positive they cover things like insurance and maintenance on the structure)
Leverage – getting a loan to cover most of the purchase amount
Selling your home every couple of years if it appreciates because you can keep $250,000 (single person)or $500,000 (married) TAX free.
Using Zillow.com to track pricing
Diversifying by adding real estate to your holdings
At this point we are focused on property we can rent vs. property we can flip – very much like “Rich Dad, Poor Dad” recommends.
Repeat after me “Rental income is Residual income”, “Rental income is Residual income”….
I co-founded and have run a web hosting company (RiptideHosting.com) for more than 10 years. Today I cover some of the topics of how to compare web hosting. I do not cover shared hosting but rather how to ensure you are getting the redundancy necessary to ensure your site/application is up and running all the time.
Today I review how you compare complex web hosting options such as:
Data center comparison (redundancy N+1) Power,Internet Connectivity, Cooling
Monitoring – are you monitoring to make sure your website is online and available?
Backup – do you have your files backed up, what if the data center or web hosting company disappeared?
And much more
I forgot to talk about support – depending on your level of expertise you may need technical help but at a minimum I suggest you look for the following
24/7 onsite support – is someone there at all times to physically look at your server in case there is an issue with the hardware and something needs to be replaced or maybe your server needs to be turned back on.
Does someone answer the phone when you call? With smaller companies like ours the customers get to talk with the same people for sales and for support.
Once you find a data center / web hosting company that can keep your server online it is up to you to secure it so as a hacker does not take your server off line.
This is a short video showing you how to setup a FaceBook.com page or website. So if you want to have FaceBook.com/YourFreedomPodcast this video will show you how to set it up.
This is a short and sweet video to show you how to upload a video to YouTube.com. You might very well want to do this for your business or personal cause. You can set the viewing to private or public and even monetize it if you agree to their terms and conditions.
Check out a previous post if you need to know how to setup a YouTube.com video.
Coincidences and benefits of recognizing patterns in your business.
Attentiveness to customers’ needs can earn you repeat business like it has for us. I was driving in on Easter to give a repeat customer a tour of the data center.
If you are in business by yourself realize what all you are going to be responsible for. You should discuss this with your partners if you have them and be aware of what you will need to provide if you are in business by yourself.
Residual vs. Passive income: I think the best income is residual income since it means more free time for you. Passive income and any income that you earn on your own is all good.
If you are earning residual income each time you add income your are getting a raise. I like to think of it as freeing up more of my time each week, month and year. For example if I earn $300 a day and I increase my residual income $300 a month then that is one less day I have to work each month.
Do you know how much you earn each hour, day, week and month? Do you know what your rent or mortgage costs each day? I think about residual income and compare it to my expenses as well as how much time it frees up for me.
Maybe rental properties are you way to residual income, maybe something else. For me it is web hosting with RiptideHosting.com.
