My Rat Race

I started a business as a small business. And even up to today, I still consider my business a small business, although it has grown already since the day I started to enter the business world. But I still do not find it quite enough to make me decide to stop working. And as clients increase, as most people usually get happier, for some reason I feel burdened a little bit dealing with so many projects and I know a good project management software is needed to plan everything well with my client, my partners, my employees, my outsource people. And yet, most project management and collaboration softwares do cost some amount of money. The better it is, the higher the price gets. But finally a very good quality project management system that would perfectly for the small business and freelancer has came out. Modeled after the popular Basecamp by 37Signals is activeCollab. So far I have tried it adding in a few projects and it has been working fine. Yourself and people within your team are all in the same company and clients get an overview if added in the clients area. You have unlimited settings for projects and task. A message area for collaboration talks and make targeted milestones for every project. Definitely something you want to check out.

I made this website, this blog as a part of my plight into the Fast Track, getting out of the Rat Race. My first post was March 5, 2006. After reading several books written by Robert Kiyosaki and the whole Rich Dad Corp. published books. I have attended two of his large workshops. And with the education coming in, the next steps are really action. It does not take money to make money, although a lot of money helps make more money. And I am in the stage of generating more money from no money to make more money. And so far it still works with a job, but at the same time, I am growing a small business as well.

1997 - Employee with a small business. Working barely gave me anything and my small business gave me only $10 a month despite the office, employees and amount of customers. It was always break even  closed down in 1998.

1999 - Concentrated on a smaller niche and did business full time. Made a lot of money to say I was buying anything I wanted. But competition got stiffer in 2002, eventually closed the company in 2003.

2003 - Got tired of business and worked as an employee, teaching the skills I know in an educational institution.

2004 - Started doing business once again, and also decided to give being in another country a shot. And went to the United States. And based in San Diego, CA. started working as an employee earning at $12/hour. My small business then had 25 loyal clients paying a monthly retained service.
2005 - Promoted to get $28,000/year in January and while working still selling for my business where I was able to increase my clients to 150 by the end of 2005. Middle of 2005, my salary also increased to $35,000/year after the company increased when they learned I was moving to a new company with that salary offer.

2006 - Middle of  2006, I moved on to a new company to work for at $45,000/year, and by the end of the year, I decided to do a career shift, same industry, just different area of specialization, but earning the same salary. Business in 2006 increased my clients to 380.

2007 - Still in the first quarter, I have been having new job offers for $61,000/year which I am considering. And business has increased to near 500 clients. Although the clients are increasing, I am starting to feel the pain of a growing business where I need better operation systems. So for the rest of 2007 will be mainly fixing the systems. And still looking for better higher paying jobs.

2006 compared to 2007: So far, still in the same situation. Just getting closed to the end of the rat race.

I have been making websites since 1997 and has ran a web business since 1999.  In the process I had my ups and downs. There were times I had an office with a rented space in a building, a few partners and employees, and also days of working on my own, by myself, no employees, no partners and working from my bedroom. Sales go up and down, sometimes I’m some big-time guy, sometimes I’m super broke.

Sales started picking up again 2004 and so far I see no downtrend yet, but right now, even if I am not selling myself, my customers are selling for me. Most of my business sales for 2006 was all from customer referrals and I am already at a point that I believe handling all the clients is starting to be a problem.

Although many people say this problem is a good problem. And even by the start of January this year, I already told myself I will not focus on sales, and I will focus on systems,  my operations mainly and I want to focus on 2 things:

1. My Billing System
2. My Project Management System

Now how I am going to do that and what softwares will I use, I really do not know yet. But These will be my focus for 2007.

A growing company you started all by yourself and grows into having more and more employees sometimes becomes more of a problem than a solution to operation processes. If you have everything unorganized and just add people and still have it unorganized, then everything is still a problem, just with more people involved.

Careful scheduling, logistics, inventories, budgets and a lot more need a close eye on. And with more and more people in the organization, the purpose of hiring them to is distribute work but just meeting with every leader of the group is like a full-time job already, if you have a high amount of people working for you. And your responsibilities can extend even out of the company, to clients and suppliers.

This is where I find the need for scheduling software specifically made to organize meetings you need to attend. Although there are several out there, I prefer to choose from the sites with good demos and also a free trial to test them out if their product handles your busy life pretty well.

There are many Internet Marketers today. Some good in email marketing with opt-in list databases. Others good in online media and some are good in search marketing that branches into paid search and organic search. These marketing methods are very much diverse and differs in techniques. And nearly no single Internet Marketer has mastered them all and an Internet Marketing company usually has a specialist for each one.

If ever your company is using a consultant who is a single person, that would still possibly be fine. Since these consultants usually have a good network of friends that really help out in the implementation of their work.

But my tip is, since you may be looking for an Internet Marketer to help you sell your product or service online. Take a look at how he markets himself. Although I know many Internet marketers that do a good job for their clients and their own websites are most of the time unfinished, so in cases like this, ask if you can take a look at some of their current clients.

I decided not to approve this comment since I will just specially feature it on this post.

Dear Cashmaker,

Hi, this is Ana from UK, I am a fan of Robert Kiyosaki and I have read many of his books just like you. I am currently starting to get into real estate and was looking for resources online about secure loans here in the UK to learn more. I happened to come across your website while looking for and has read the About section and it is nice to know someone that is also on his was out of the rat race. I also did notice most of the things you feature are in the US and you do not have much information on what is happening in the UK and I come from the UK. You have post of real estate expos and seminars in the US. Maybe I can be your UK counterpart since I want to have a website like yours, although I do not know where to start and I am not that computer literate. Kudos for your informative website and I will keep coming back to see the status of your plight into the fast track.

Warm regards,

Ana from UK

Hi Ana,

Nice to know I have some readership in other countries aside from the US. Yes, I am still in the rat race looking for opportunities to get out as quickly as I can and get into the fast track. It’s nice to have comments like these than the everyday comment spam I get. For my rat race, currently, I am still in the process of eliminating debt, increasing good debt and decreasing bad debt. And I am using Internet Marketing as a vehicle to earn more to fix my debts and other loans that exist, as well as to be able to generate enough initial capital to get started into real estate.

Nice to know you found my website by looking for researching about personal loans in UK. And maybe this website about loans in UK can help you out if ever you have not found any good resource yet.

Keep me updated also on you journey to the fast track. If you come up with a website like mine, we can exchange links and cross promote each other. Thanks for visiting.

Regards,

The Cashmaker

I am not heavily in debt. Although I do have debt almost like everyone else. There is good debt and bad debt and basically in bad debt, you lose money and in good debt, it is debt that makes you more money.

My wife has bought the book, The ABC’s of Getting Out of Debt and it is a very good book. This book is by Garrett Sutton whom I have already read his other book, Own Your Own Coporation which is equally good. The ABCs of Getting Out of Debt was a book made for people heavily in bad debt and is having problems paying for this debts. But I still find the book very informative even for the people without much debt and learn how to manage debt even better. It teaches you many ways to lower debt, teaches you to plan for a payment plan and ever possible teach you how to choose the right credit cards, mortgage and car loans. This book is a must read for anyone with any kind of debt, big or small but wants to save a lot and maximize what can be done with debt.

If you are currently paying bills for your car and you have other expenses, the monthly rate may make it difficult for you to pay for everything else you may be paying on a monthly basis, to the point that you do not live comfortably. Sometimes, we may make wrong decisions when we first applied for a car loan. And you are thinking if I pay a higher rate and get it done right away, you save more money in interest fees. But this is not always the case.

Sometimes choosing longer terms at lower rates can help you pay lower, even if it takes longer and has a higher interest rate. But the lower monthly payments get you to actually save more money on a monthly basis that you can use for other purposes and even possible use it to make more money.

But if you already have a car loan and that has already started at a high monthly rate, you can still have the option to do a car refinancing plan. In refinancing, another company pays for the rest of your current balance and sets you up at a new loan with a lower monthly rate.

Having you auto loan refinanced does not really cost much. Auto Refinance services can probably only cost $5 to $65, saves you more money. My only word of caution is, getting an auto refinance for the purposes of having more money to waste, may not be a good idea. But getting an auto refinance for the purposes of having more cash flow to produce more money, sounds like a better idea.

One reason why many people, even if skilled and knowledgeable in many subjects, still do not seem to make it big in the industry, is not really because they still lack the proficiency in what they do, but sometimes, they just lack the financial knowledge to back up their skills and talent to make it make more money.

As Robert Kiyosaki always recommends, invest in financial knowledge. As easy as it may sound, it is really not that easy. Accounting alone can be a pain understanding is you were not trained to be an accountant. And hiring an accountant for a business that is just starting, might just used up all your money and you are not even making any money yet. And in the beginning, sometimes more economical tools may be the best way to go.

If you are a non-accountant and needs some basic accounting to get your business running. I suggest you look into Quickbooks Pro 2007. This was designed not only for the advanced accountant, but for the non-accountants as well.