Enemy Number One

Let’s recap:

I had no Dylan.

I had no house.

I had over $250,000 in the bank. Most would consider that wonderful, but it scared the hell out of me. It wasn’t until that money landed in my account that I understood what Vinny meant when he said ‘sitting cash is just a recipe for trouble.’ Dylan had told me early on, ‘Money is potential. It wants to be used. If it’s just sitting there, it burns a hole in your pocket.’ This money was my nest egg, and if I didn’t treat it with care, all I’d have left were pieces of broken eggshell.

I had to invest that cash somehow, but I had no idea where. And I didn’t have Dylan’s luxury of being accredited. So all the big boys in finance wouldn’t even talk to me. I had to figure this one out on my own.

Real estate was bound to go down. The same was true of the stock market. As Vinny said, they rose together and would probably fall together. And there’s no way I’d dump all my precious money into an oil well like Vinny. The risk of hitting a dry well was just too high, and oil felt like such icky business. I couldn’t turn to Dylan. Besides the fact that he’d chosen some South American backwater over me, he was just as frozen as I was. So where did that leave me?

I already felt the draw of all that money when I went looking for a new apartment. My brain kept telling me I could afford more than my teacher’s income justified. It nudged me about the pile of cash just sitting there, saying, ‘what’s the harm in using a little bit to subsidize your lifestyle? You work hard. You deserve it.’

“What a load of crap!” I yelled back, weirding out the landlord of an unnecessarily extravagant place downtown. I wasn’t about to wind up like my parents, who at age 60 still didn’t have sufficient savings to retire. I was determined to grow my $250,000, not shrink it.

I wanted to put the money back into real estate once the market bottomed out. Unfortunately, the market Vinny and Phil predicted would go down refused to cooperate. The number of properties changing hands continued to drop, but the prices kept rising.

That sucked for me. Three months after selling, my house was worth ten thousand dollars more than I’d sold it for. I’d left all that money sitting on the table. At least it had turned out well for my parents. They got their house on the market in time to catch the wave. Considering how much their area had appreciated and the fact they’d owned their home for over thirty years, they had no problem pulling out over $500,000 tax-free.

They got themselves a sweet two-bedroom downtown, close to my father’s office and the theater district. They ditched one of their cars, which further reduced their expenses, and my father walked to work on good-weather days, which was great for his health. Their second bedroom doubled as a guest room and home office. They’d considered buying, but I talked them into renting while the market was still so high. While they knew it made sense to downsize and were enjoying city life, my mother was nonetheless heartbroken about never being able to host the holidays again.

As for me, I wound up renting a beautiful one-bedroom for $200 a month above my budget. Of course, the $250,000 had whispered in my ear, telling me I could afford it. The smarter move would have been to get a larger apartment with roommates, but I couldn’t bear to go back with living with others at this point. The next time I lived with anyone, I wanted it to be my husband.

“Dylan, why’d you have to go and leave again?” I yelled into my beautiful, empty apartment.

As the end of the school year approached, I realized I couldn’t have the $250,000 sitting in my account any longer. My car lease was coming due in another six months, and I found myself craning my head whenever I passed a dealership. It would be so easy to drop $30,000 into a gorgeous new car (that the money kept whispering I deserved), and my nest egg would continue shrinking.

Up to now, I’d only invested my money in real estate and the stock market, both of which I feared would soon drop. Fortunately, Big Brother knew what I needed before I did. My social media feeds were suddenly filled with get rich quick schemes and seminars. One that caught my eye was “How to Buy Businesses: The Best Investment You’ll Ever Make.” It was a two-day seminar set for the coming weekend and cost $250. The business world was something I knew nothing about. If I could learn about a great new way to invest, wasn’t that worth 0.1% of my nest egg? OK, I knew that was a dumb way to think about my money, but that’s what having so much cash in the bank does—it justified everything. This time, the justification worked (as Big Brother knew it would), and I decided to take a flyer on the seminar.

I arrived early and, like the nerdy schoolgirl I’ve always been, sat in the front row. There were only 30 of us in attendance, and Shakti Patel came on stage without any of the preamble I’d seen at larger seminars. She straightened her razor-sharp suit and cut right to the chase. “Small businesses typically sell for between 2.5 and 3 times their annual profits. If that’s the case, what is the annual ROI, your Return on Investment, when purchasing a business?”

That was a simple math problem. I just had to divide the purchase price by the multiplier. I raised my hand, and Shakti pointed to me. “33% to 40%,” I said, then thought better of it. “Wait, that can’t be right.”

Shakti’s eyes gleamed, and I could see she was pleased by my discomfort. “The math is spot on. Do you mind coming up here?”

I stepped forward sheepishly.

Shakti asked, “What’s your name?”

“Amber.”

“So Amber, tell everyone what’s bothering you.”

“Well, I keep hearing that on the stock market, a business with a price to earnings ratio of 15 to 1 is considered a good value. But you’re saying it should be around 3 to 1.”

“Very good, Amber.” She shifted her posture to face the whole group. “That’s a key difference between small, private businesses and large, publicly-traded ones. If the returns were the same, then why would anyone buy a small business? It’s so much easier to log into your brokerage account and buy stocks. The fact is, as businesses grow, their valuations increase exponentially.” Shakti wrote down these different categories on a huge whiteboard. “A mid-sized business, with revenues of $15,000,000, might be worth 5 to 10 times its annual profits, and a large business could easily be worth 15 times profits. Which should already give you a big hint for one way to make money with small businesses. Have you figured that out, Amber?”

I studied the categories and numbers on the whiteboard. “You could buy multiple small businesses and aggregate them?”

“Excellent. Say you buy dental practices. One practice will go for about 2.5 times its annual profits. A conglomerate of fifty practices might go for 10 times their annual profits. So if all you do is buy 50 practices and put them together into some giant company called Dental Deals, you’ll quadruple the value of your investment. But let’s assume you don’t have the resources to buy 50 businesses, you’re looking to buy just one. What return can you hope to get on your out of pocket costs?”

“33% to 40%,” I repeated.

Shakti shook her head vigorously. “Not even close.”

“But you told me my math was spot on.”

“Your math is spot on, but your assumptions are way off.” Shakti faced the crowd. “Can anyone see the flaw in Amber’s assumptions?”

A guy in the back raised his hand. “She’s assuming she’s buying the entire business in cash.”

“Exactly.” Shakti offered him a thumbs up, then turned back to me. “You conflated two numbers, Amber. Your ROI is your return on the entire purchase price. But unless you buy the business in cash, and almost no one does, your cash-on-cash return will be much higher.” She erased the board and held her marker at the ready. “Let’s take a look at some numbers to make it more real. Our fictional business, Cheap Chinese Crap Incorporated, CCCI for short, does $2,000,000 a year in revenue, with profit margins of 25%. Amber, you’ve done well with the math so far. What would our annual profits be?”

I blushed at the attention. “$500,000.”

“And let’s say that CCCI is selling for 2.8 times its annual profits. What would the cost of the business be?”

I bit my tongue as I did the calculation. “1.4 million.”

“So if you had $1,400,000 sitting around, you could buy the business with a check, but you’ll get better returns if you don’t. How much do you think you’ll need out of pocket to buy this business?”

Someone in the back called out, “$1.”

Many in the room laughed, but not Shakti. “$1 is the most common amount businesses are sold for. Of course, you’re usually only able to buy a business for $1 when it’s distressed. In tomorrow’s class, we’ll talk a bit about how to identify and buy distressed businesses, but for today, let’s assume CCCI is a good, healthy business.

“If you’re selling a business, the more interested buyers you have, the more money you’ll normally get. Since few buyers want to pay cash, sellers, on average, will carry 50% to 70% of the purchase price. In other words, they’ll be willing to loan you the majority of the money you need to buy the business. So let’s say the board at CCCI agrees to offer 60% seller financing, payable over eight years at 8% annual interest.”

She passed the whiteboard marker to me. “Amber, you’re our math wiz, will you do the honors of tracking our numbers?”

I wasn’t such a math wiz, but I was a school teacher, so I felt right at home. I walked up to the whiteboard and wrote:

Shakti looked over what I wrote. “That all looks good so far. At this point, you’d only need a little more than one year’s worth of profits in pocket to buy the entire business. But you might not have $560,000 lying around. Fortunately, the business probably has some assets. A bank might not be willing to finance the entire purchase price, but they’ll lend you money against those hard assets. So let’s call that another 20%.”

I added that to my list.

“Our picture is looking better, but I’m sure some of you are about to say ‘But Shakti, I don’t have $280,000.’ That’s OK. Let me ask you, is there anyone here with cash they’d like to invest who’d be happy to get a 20% annual return on their money?”

I raised my hand as did five others. “Look around the room,” Shakti said, “those are all possible investors. You can afford to give out fantastic margins because our business makes $500,000 in annual profits. So you can borrow the majority of that 280 grand from private investors. They won’t own any shares of the company, but they won’t need it. It’s a safe investment for them because they’re putting their money into an already profitable business, and they’ll get a fabulous return until they’re paid off. You’ll rarely get all the money you need from private investors, because everyone feels safer if you have skin in the game. So let’s say private investors put in 15% of the purchase price. Amber, what does that leave us with?”

I wrote it all in.

“In our example, we only need 5% of the purchase price to buy this business. True, the business still has tons of debt, but it’s very manageable debt because its profits are so high.”

A college kid in a T-shirt and jeans said, “How is the debt so manageable? It’s over a million dollars?”

“It’s worse than that.” Shakti’s face brightened at the challenge. “It’s 1.33 million, and some of that is at an extremely high-interest rate of 20%. I’m sure those numbers sound intimidating to those not used to leveraging debt. But bear in mind the annual profits are half a million dollars. If it was me, I’d pay off the entirety of those private investor loans in the first year to get that 20% interest off my books. Believe it or not, you can pay off those high-interest loans, plus make minimum payments on the rest of your loans, plus pay yourself over a hundred thousand dollars all in the first year. After that, you can give yourself a nice fat raise and still pay off all the debt within five years.”

Murmurs filled the crowd.

“So, back to you, Amber. What would your cash-on-cash returns be on your $70,000 investment?”

My eyes widened. “Are you saying my first-year salary would be more than my total investment?”

Shakti nodded. “Those who don’t mind carrying debt a little longer can make double or even triple their investment money in first-year salary alone. And when the debt is fully paid off, you’ll own a 1.4 million dollar company outright plus have a salary of $500,000 a year.

“Of course, that’s assuming you keep the profits the same. If you’re skilled in business and can grow the profits, then both your annual salary and the business valuation will scale accordingly.

Shakti’s eyes scanned the room. “Bear in mind the opposite is also true. If you don’t know what you’re doing in business and are hoping for a passive income source, you may be in for a nasty surprise. Because if you can’t maintain profits, all this falls apart.

“Now, with that warning, let’s dig into the details of how to find a business and negotiate the purchase.”

I learned an absolute ton from Shakti’s seminar, but the one thing that burned brightest in my brain was her warning. This was not some turnkey, passive money scheme. Buying a business offered a fabulous opportunity for someone who knew what they were doing, but for me, I’d be way over my head. And even though I raised my hand when Shakti asked who had money to invest and wanted a 20% return, did I know enough to tell a good deal from a bad one?

The more I thought about it, the more I realized what I had to do. “Desperate times call for desperate measures,” I muttered to myself as I got in my car and drove to the bank.

Is there a more fearful investment in the world than the Certificate of Deposit? Well, gold, I suppose. Dylan once told me he hates gold, because “unlike businesses or real estate which create value, gold just sits there looking shiny. If Chicken Little ever decided to invest, he’d probably buy gold because gold is hoarded by all those who think the sky is falling. When the world’s governments and banks collapse and the streets are ruled by gangs of post-apocalyptic marauders, your gold will still be sitting there, shiny as ever.”

Still, gold does have intrinsic value, which means whenever public trust in our financial system tanks, gold prices rise, and over the long haul, gold’s value normally keeps pace with inflation. Which brings us back to the even more pathetic Certificate of Deposit. CD return rates were often lower than inflation, especially when you factored in taxes owed on the gains. That meant the longer you left money in a CD, the more its buying power eroded. In exchange for receiving these paltry returns, you had to commit to keep your money in the CD for a set period of time or face financial penalties.

Vinny told me the first rule of investing was ‘don’t lose money.’ I had expected this business buying seminar to expose me to a new way to make money. What it did was open my eyes to how much I didn’t know, and how many ways there were to lose my precious little nest egg. Buying a business seemed like a great idea. In the future. For Amber 2.0. After she got herself a business education. For now, it was way too risky an investment. In the meantime, easy access to my cash was nothing short of dangerous.

Unsure what else to do, I asked at the bank about getting a CD. Interest rates were going up, so I hoped I’d get something decent. But returns were still pretty pathetic. Vinny or someone like him could have suggested a more lucrative plan, but I wasn’t focused on making money as much as keeping it far from its biggest enemy: me.

So I took my nest egg and tied that beast down for a full year. I didn’t only strap down its arms and legs. I invested the whole lot.

Well, just about. First, I made my ROTH IRA contribution, which I’d never gotten around to doing. I got in just under the wire for the previous year’s $6000 and added this year’s contribution as well. I’d take care of next year’s after the CD matured. Unfortunately, I couldn’t do the same with my car money. By the time I could access my cash, my leased car would be well out of my hands and back at the dealership. I’d learned my lesson: this time, I was buying used all the way, but I was no longer so dirt poor that I needed to go dumpster diving. I decided that given my improved circumstances, $5000 was a reasonable budget for a used car.

Still, I wouldn’t need that car money for another five months, and my greedy little fingers would be itching to spend that too. Fortunately, my bank let me have dozens of connected accounts for no extra charge, so I created a new one called Car Money, Don’t Touch. Then I created another account called Emergency Fund, Use Only in Case of Unemployment or Wedding, and I dumped a full three months’ worth of living expenses in there.

I left my primary checking account with less than $2000 in it, just enough to keep up with my rent and credit card bills. The rest of my funds, which came to just under $235,000, I locked safely behind the fortress of a one year CD. I knew it was a crappy investment, but at least it was safe, and I’d be charged a painful, slap-on-the-wrist fee if my grubby hands tried to touch it.

You think it’s hard waiting for a pot to boil? Try waiting for the real estate market to crash. The bastard just kept going up. I suppose it didn’t matter all that much—I had a one year lease on my apartment and so much money tucked into my CD I couldn’t buy anything even if a deal came available.

But I was still antsy to get my finances under control. Even with the overpriced apartment, I was doing well. My credit card debt days were over, and an end to car payments was on the horizon. I was also eating out less. Mind you, that wasn’t exactly a money-saving strategy. It was because I hated going out alone, and since I was no longer dating anyone and most of my girlfriends had gotten married, I lacked opportunities to blow money at restaurants.

So how could I take my financial circumstances to the next level? Passive income was a dead-end for now. All my investment money was locked away in my CD, awaiting some future opportunity. Cutting expenses didn’t interest me—I’d made as many improvements there as I wanted to. That left one big untapped area: active income.

With all the financial changes I’d made, one thing had remained a constant: my job. Was it time to switch? I loved teaching. I’d never planned on staying a teacher forever, but I had expected to teach until I had kids of my own. One thing was certain: I was not about to go back to school to retrain for anything new. I’d spent enough time and money in degree programs.

I thought of my friend Stacey. She taught with me for my first two years and left for some tutoring gig. Last I heard she was making more money than even the senior teachers in my school. She was still teaching, but had moved to the business side of education, and ever since Shakti’s seminar, I’d been itching to start learning how businesses worked.

“So, you finally decided to leave the grind?” Stacey said when I called her up.

“I haven’t decided anything yet. I’m just exploring options, including picking up a couple of tutoring hours after school.”

“Well, let me tell you, going out on my own is the best thing I’ve ever done.”

“How so?”

“I love teaching but hate classroom control. It’s amazing how one kid who doesn’t want to listen can suck so much of your energy that the rest of the class gets cheated.”

“Tell me about it!” My shoulders tensed just at the thought of Brodie, who terrorized every girl in my class. “How do you deal with those kids now?”

“First of all, I rarely get those challenges. Since my energy is focused on one kid at a time, they don’t need to act out for my attention. But periodically, I still get one who won’t listen.”

“What do you do then?”

“I drop ‘em. Let someone else discipline them. I have enough business that I only work with kids I like.”

“But if a kid is struggling to learn…”

“Look, Amber, I’m not saying no one should work with them. But as a school teacher, I taught whoever they gave me. I had no choice. Now the work I do is private. I get so drained dealing with one tough kid that one hour feels like three. So I don’t do it. There are people out there who do wonderful work with difficult kids. They say there’s nothing like getting through to a kid who no one else can reach. Me, I hate it. That’s the thing about being in the private sector: we make our own rules.”

“What are you teaching? Whatever the kids need?”

“That’s what I did at first. I taught math, English, whatever. Then I got trained in cognitive skills development. That’s all I do now. It pays better, and there’s more work than I can handle.”

“I bet that took some serious training.”

“Not really. I started looking into it when all my coworkers were telling me that I needed to get my master’s degree. The masters was two years and $30,000. To get certified to teach cognitive skills took less than a month and cost a fraction as much.” Stacey exhaled. “Let me tell you, the work pays so much better. And when I’ve taught a kid how to think, their performance improves in all their subjects. It’s a no brainer.”

I got that same reluctant feeling as when a salesman tried making his product sound too perfect. “How could you learn all that so quickly?”

“I also used to think a month seemed fast, but truthfully, I could train you to do it in a week.”

“Really?” Despite my hesitation, what did I have to lose? “Would you?”

“Well, that depends. Your timing couldn’t be better, but there’s no point in talking about practicalities until you know what you’re dealing with. Why don’t you come observe my client sessions tomorrow afternoon?”

Stacey had been teaching third grade before she left Jenkins Elementary, so I was expecting to see her working with little children. But as she went through her sessions, I saw kids as young as five and as old as sixteen. They all wanted to learn how to think better, concentrate longer, and have an easier time in school as a whole. Stacey’s techniques mostly involved playing games with her clients, but in-between sessions, she explained how each game targeted a different aspect of brain development. That was almost as impressive as the checks she received from parents for $100 an hour, five times what I made at Jenkins.

“You learned all this in a month?” I asked as we sat snacking on roasted nuts between sessions.

“It’s a completely different paradigm, Amber. In a master’s degree, they teach you mountains of theory so you can design your own curriculum. This company I trained with spent years developing and testing their curriculum. They’ve already honed their methodology, and their tools have been proven to work.” She leafed through her binder and showed me exercises and notes. Every page bore the company logo.

My chin fell into my hand. “Sounds like McDonald’s for education.”

“You’re not far off. It’s a franchise model, so they need to give you a system that’s easy to learn and replicate. That’s the magic of McDonald’s too. They didn’t become the world’s most popular restaurant by making the best burgers.”

“So how did they do it?”

“McDonald’s built a phenomenal system.”

“Being in the McDonald’s of education hardly sounds inspiring. It seems formulaic.” I grabbed a cashew. “Does this stuff work?”

“That’s the best part. The results are incredible!” Stacey pulled a chart on one of her students from her binder. I could see how far this girl’s test scores progressed from session to session. “The fact they’ve created a system doesn’t take away from the quality of the education. It’s the opposite. Think about it for a moment. How do teachers at Jenkins get paid?”

“Mostly by their years of experience and the highest-level degree they’ve received.”

“Exactly. I’ll never forget the summer before my second year teaching. The other third-grade teacher was Mrs. McGillicutty, whose teaching style was as antiquated as her hairdo. Meanwhile, word got out about me, and tons of parents called the principal’s office asking to switch their kids from her class to mine. So which of us do you think was paid more?”

“McGillicutty, obviously. She had her Ph.D. before you were born, so I expect she made twice what you did.”

“The free market isn’t that way. No unions decide what we get paid. You earn more by producing more. If this company couldn’t demonstrate spectacular results, their franchise never would have taken off. But they’re thriving all across the country, and referrals are my number one source of new students. Parents are so happy with the changes they see in their kids, they can’t help but brag to their friends. Trust me, these techniques are far better than anything I was teaching when I was trying to figure out my curriculum from scratch.”

I fanned out a deck of cards with strange symbols Stacey used with a student struggling with concentration. “So how does this work? You pay the company to train you in their methods?”

“They offer certifications to both individuals and franchises. Either way, each time you work with a client, they get a small cut.”

“Which are you? An individual or a franchise?”

“Funny, you should ask. That’s why I said your timing couldn’t be better. I was an individual for three years, but lately, I’ve been so overwhelmed with demand, I decided to buy the franchise, giving me exclusive rights to teach this material in our county.”

“So I can’t do this even if I wanted to?”

“Of course you can, you’d just do it through me. The franchise allows me to hire and train my own staff.”

“Oh, I see. What would the salary and benefits look like?”

Stacey had a nice laugh as she headed over to the office kitchenette. “Salary and benefits? Oh no, Amber, you’re still in the teachers’ union mindset. With me, you wouldn’t even be an employee, you’d be an independent contractor. If I provide you with a client, you’ll get 50% of what I make. If you get the client directly, that jumps to 75%.”

“But what if I don’t fill up?”

Stacey came back with a glass of lemonade for each of us. “Then, you make less. But being an independent contractor also gives you flexibility.”

“How?”

“Say you don’t have enough work from me, and someone comes to you for tutoring in English. I have no problem if you take them on.” She took a sip of her drink. ”It’s just not summer without ice-cold lemonade, eh? I spiked it with a shot of something special. Couldn’t do that in the classroom, could I?”

I had to admit the sprig of mint and extra kick were just perfect on a hot afternoon. “So if I tutor some kids in English, what cut would you take?”

“Nothing. They’d be your client, and my business doesn’t offer English tutoring. Now, if you wanted to use my office space to teach them, you’re welcome to rent it at the rate of $10/hour.”

“Do I pay rent if it’s one of your clients?”

“No, the office expenses come out of my cut.”

This would be a good addition to my current income. Of course, the money would be even better if I quit teaching and did this full time, but then there’d be a catch. “You offer no benefits?”

“None. But bear in mind, the money covering your current benefits doesn’t just drop out of the sky. That’s value you create, yet it skips your pocketbook to fund benefit packages for your coworkers. Rather than you paying for someone else’s maternity leave, all that money goes straight into your purse.”

“But if I ever need maternity leave…”

“You’ll use that extra money you saved up to cover yourself. It’s not like you have to quit teaching to try this. You’re still getting your benefits from Jenkins. Summer’s coming up, so it’s a perfect time to explore your options while still having a safety net.”

Using the summer as a trial wasn’t a bad idea. “Is there enough work for two?”

“Truthfully, I’m not bringing in enough for both of us at the moment. But I’m not trying so hard. Once I filled up from referrals, I stopped putting out the word. I have enough work now for about 20% of your schedule, and between my advertising and your own referrals, I expect we’ll soon cover the rest.”

I drained the last of my lemonade. “This can really make me more than teaching?”

“In my first year, I made double my teaching salary.”

I decided to dip my toe in the water. The last weeks of school, I trained with Stacey whenever we could. By the time Jenkins rang their last bell, I was ready to take on my first student.

The first thing I noticed was how good it felt to not be a disciplinarian. I also wasn’t working well into the evening developing curriculum.

What surprised me most was the interaction with the kids. I thought I’d miss out on connecting with my students, but the one-on-one time was so much nicer than the thirty-on-one interactions I’d grown used to. The job felt so much less stressful, and money flowed in.

Stacey billed our time out at $100/hour. $10 came immediately off the top to the parent company. Of the remaining $90, I got half because all my initial clients came from Stacey. Still, $45 for an hour of teaching was double what I made at Jenkins. And if I could somehow bring in my own clients, I’d get $67.50 per hour. If I ever got myself up to full-time hours at that rate, I’d crush my teacher’s salary, even taking benefits into account.

By my second week tutoring, I was convinced enough to give notice at Jenkins. Wouldn’t you know it, not two days after quitting my job, who should call?

Dylan.

Of course.

He’d taken Vinny’s advice to heart and was investing out of the United States. He decided to spend the summer biking through Europe, and he wanted me to come along. We would mostly be touring, he said, but he’d also schedule meetings with Private Equity firms to learn about new investment opportunities. Having already started working with five different students, I had to turn him down. But my stomach flopped with insecurity. Would my answer have been the same had I still been teaching at Jenkins and had the summer off?

Stacey gave me about a third of my clients that summer. The rest came from tapping into my network at Jenkins and circulating word amongst friends from my master’s program. What used to be my two quietest months of the year filled up fast.

I still got to be creative in my handful of tutoring gigs in math and English, but Stacey’s clients bored me after a while. Still, that wee bit of boredom was outweighed by the reduction in my prep work and the gain in my take-home salary. I charged my private clients $80/hour and decided to give Stacey her $10 to use the same space throughout the day.

I also began my own advertising after doing a little back of the envelope calculation. On Stacey’s program, it took ten meetings for a student to complete the curriculum. If she found the client, I’d get $45/hour, or $450 for the entire time we worked together. If I found the client, I received $67.50 per hour or $675 total. That meant if I could bring in a new client for less than $225, it made sense to do my own advertising. Of course, learning advertising also took time, but I enjoyed both the challenge and the opportunity to learn a practical business skill in a low-risk environment.

By the time September rolled around, I was delighted I wasn’t returning to the grind with my colleagues.