Through no direct action on my part I was approached with a nice business opportunity. Another career consulting company specializing in helping legal professionals is looking to outsource some of their excess clients in the coming months as its their busy season. The company’s owner explained that since the legal job market is declining rapidly in this economy it has driven demand beyond what they could handle.

The business owner has attempted to work with other consulting companies in the past but because of bad results the owner has emailed my company along with a few others. He heard about my company through a referral from one of my past clients. But when he emailed me today I responded to his inquiry within minutes and we had a few back and forth emails since.

Is it pure luck or coincidence that I have been “handed” such a great opportunity?

I see it this way, that because I provide a quality service and have done so for more than three years its only natural that I will be awarded with a nice opportunity every once in a while. The right circumstances were there to begin with: country I was born, schools I attended, declining economy, etc.). I can’t deny that. But I believe this is true for any person who has achieved some success. If I were born in a developing country I might find business opportunities I never could growing up in the U.S.

Due to a combination of circumstances and my own initiative and persistence I will confidently say that I had a more direct impact on receiving this opportunity.  For example, he sent the same email to other companies but I responded before any other one. That last detail is not a coincidence in that I happened to be online and have free time. But it’s because I work so many hours that the likelihood is that I am online and ready to answer any emails at a moments notice. This partnership is only in the beginning stages and nothing is guaranteed. But it’s not the first time I have had such opportunities.

Last year I was contacted by another startup job search engine company who wanted to refer potential clients for a commission. The company has grown considerably with an U.S. Alexa rank under 8,000 which means a considerable amount of traffic.  We discussed the partnership for months and eventually I started receiving over 60 daily leads of people who had signed up to receive information about the resume writing service. But in the end it could not work as the potential workload would be too much for my one man company. Again you might call that luck but I would argue that since I have completed nearly 1,000 resumes and CVs in the past three years it’s only a matter of time that I did one for the right person that could help me.

I can refer to other examples where I was 100% directly responsible for receiving some cool opportunities such as proposing some article pitch’s to different newspapers and finally finding one that bit and wrote a story on my business. That story was read by another journalist who then approached me to write another article  about my life and business in another more prominent publication.

But I am pretty certain both types of examples are a result of initiative. The people who achieve their goals are typically those who performed tangible actions rather than planning. Even if its likely to take ages before you reach your goal if you don’t start working towards it now you just might never. Even more important than that is that taking the initiative will lead you in new directions you may have never thought of.

Before I found out that I love to travel I already knew that the process of creating a business excited me. So I started some businesses, continuing with the ones that were successful and giving up on the ones that were not. As a result I have run one business since age 16 and another since age 19. If I wasn’t making much money at the time I continued with it regardless because I enjoyed the process of learning internet marketing, responding to customers, finding new products, and everything else that goes along with it. Even if I never made money I considered that it might help me develop new skills to start another one that could.  It was always satisfying to know that whatever business I was working on at the time might lead to some new path I had never considered. After 5 – 7 years old various businesses one huge benefit I never considered at the time was that creating a business might someday lead to me be able to travel consistently, which later became a huge interest of mine.

Whatever it is you find exciting I urge you to go do it.  If you stop doing it after a few months you probably were never all that passionate about it anyways. It was just a fleeting interest. That’s because you were expecting to receive something rather than just enjoying the process. If you really enjoy what you are doing you will continue to do it because its your passion. I don’t think a passion has to be fun at all but it should bring you long term satisfaction. If you work hard and continue working hard on your project indefinitely, I think the opportunity you were never looking for will appear. And that opportunity will be so worth it.

Related posts:

1. The Ideal Travel Business
2. Business and Travel Combined
3. Online Entrepreneur Timeline

As I began browsing solutions to manage my interactions with clients all I found were complicated and expensive CRM related solutions. I needed a way to automate my communication with clients. When I first began my career consulting business a few years ago I averaged no more than 20 new clients per month. Responding to each client in complete and detailed sentences was painless. For instance, I needed to confirm that I received the necessary information and payment with an email to each client. As the career consulting process began I needed to let them know that attached in an email was the first draft of their resume or CV. Or that I received their response to my comments and that I would have a next draft ready in a few days.

But as the average amount of clients per month grew from 20 to 50-70 new clients it started getting out of hand. My default response became “see attached” and of course my customer service declined. There was no other way to maintain the detailed and professional communications as just one person.

Enough became enough and tonight as I was browsing my options I found the most simple solution, Gmail Canned Responses.

“If you’re sick of typing out the same reply every time someone emails you with a common question, now you can compose your reply once and save the message text with the “Canned responses” button. Later, you can open that same message and send it again and again.” -Google

Problem solved! In an instant I have reduced the time and effort needed to maintain professional communication with all of my clients. I can also combine this feature with Google’s email filter to automatically match received emails with my list of canned responses. Google will then automatically send my response. I have since written five different canned responses to manage each phase of my career consulting process. Not only are my responses far more professional but they will help me earn more revenue, easily. Through these canned emails I can now more easily up-sell add-on services and encourage satisfied customers to refer their friends and family in just a simple click.

By this point you must be thinking of how this can benefit your own business, job, or personal life. At least I hope so. Are you in a management role at your job? Create some canned responses to send to your employees each time you need them to complete a common task. Do you want to let someone know you received their email and will respond to them soon? Use a canned response.

It’s so simple and has probably been around forever on the internet but I still feel like I just discovered the wheel.

Related posts:

1. Myth or Reality: “Business Luck”?
2. The American Dream
3. Online Entrepreneur Timeline

I know that most people think they want to run a business. The biggest obstacle is always the question, “how do I get started?” What is the first step? In this article I provide a time line briefly explaining each of my business ventures in chronological order starting at around age 10 up to the present, at age 22. This information can be viewed as a complement to the recent article summarizing my business strategy at TravelBlogs.com

• Age 9-13: Paid staff at an overnight camp to buy me 24 packs of soda cans which I resold to fellow campers at 3/4 cost as camp vending machines. I built a makeshift cooler to keep them cold at all times and earned around $50 profit each summer.

• Age 14: Borrowed $50 from my dad to sign up for the Microsoft Xbox Live Beta program and recieved the service and memorabilia. I sold the memorabilia earning $50 after paying back my Dad.

• Age 15: Sold a brand new TV on Ebay through a free drop shipping program for my first sale of an actual product, earning a little of $30 profit with no start up cost of course.

• Age 15: Sold bootleg software on Ebay earning $50-$200 in profit per sale. The software was also drop shipped.

• Age 16-Present: Began selling personal items (old clothing, electronics, etc.) on a large internet forum earning extra cash here and there

• Age 16-17: Sold throwback sports jerseys on Ebay earning $10-100 in profit per sale. Found an individual sellers in New York and Florida who drop shipped the jerseys to my customer. I registered www.ThrowbackJerseys.com and set up an E-Commerce website selling the throwback jerseys without much success. My suppliers became unreliable and throwback jerseys lost their popularity so I stopped a year later.

• Age 16-Present: Sold screenprinted t-shirts via the large internet forum earning $6-$12 profit per sale. Identified interesting designs posted throughout the forum and contacted the designer offering commission for each t-shirt sold ($.50 usually). I took preorders (color/size/payment) from customers on the internet forum and then gave my order to an inexpensive screenprinter in California to print the t-shirts and mail them to me. After receiving a box with the shirts I packaged each individual order and sent them out from the post office.

• Age 17-19: Sold strange products bought overseas to customers on the internet forum and Ebay. Traveled on a group program to Bolivia for six weeks and bought a few llama fetuses, pipes, decorated knives, and even custom printed t-shirts. It was tough to unload some of this but when I finally did I earned big profits (i.e. paid $1 for the llama fetus and sold it for $50). A few years later I tried this in Ecuador and ended up selling fake shrunken heads, vintage books from WWII, etc. on the small scale.

• Age 17-19: Sold various products including airsoft guns, lighters, neon signs, etc. through the internet forum earning anywhere from $1-$100 profit per sale. All products were drop shipped from new suppliers.

• Age 17-22: Registered wholesale accounts with popular clothing brands (American Apparel, Alternative Apparel, etc.) to resell clothing through the internet forums earning $10-200 profit per sale. I received orders and had the companies drop ship to my customers even though they did not advertise this.  A few years later I even made one sale for $3,500+ to an individual purchasing uniforms for a company, earning $700+ in profit which prompted me to quit an internship and travel to the Galapagos Islands and then Colombia. I was eventually forced to order in larger quantities which meant shipping the clothing to customers myself. I continued this and other ventures while traveling overseas 4 months per year by hiring a different person each summer to ship the goods. During the school year I packaged and shipped the goods to my customers.

• Age 17-present: Created www.BuySomethingAwesome.com to sell my collection of drop shipped items, t-shirt lines, strange items personally imported from overseas. I found a volunteer to build the e-commerce website for free and advertised the website through the internet forums.

• Age 17-21: Used my resources to take advantage of opportunities to earn money. For instance I acted as a screen printer when I found someone wanting to order a bunch of custom sweatshirts to celebrate Christmas with his friends. This is one of many examples.

• Age 19-20: Offered a resume/CV writing service for $20 per customer through an internet forum after seeing someone else do the same. The business developed as I received positive testimonials directly from clients in the forum. I gradually increased prices.

• Age 19-present: Started my first travel blog, JasonsinSouthAmerica, which has now turned into www.locationlessliving.com. I don’t earn any money from this but will keep my options open if I see an opportunity.

• Age 20-present: Started an official Career Consulting Service presently earning $90-$170 per sale with a website, advertising, etc. also offering cover letters, mock interviews, etc. I also recieved other writing opportunities such as a freelance copywriting job for a big company.

• Age 20: Nearly started an exotic jerkey business importing kangaroo and crocodile jerkey from Australia but decided against it.

• Age 20-Present: Wrote a rough business plan for a future hostel I would consider starting overseas at some point. I continue to add to this.

• Today: Currently run the career consulting business as my primary income, BuySomethingAwesome as a smaller side-income, and recently stopped selling the American Apparel clothing a few months ago. Both business are now much more complicated revenue, advertising methods, website design, etc.

Now as you see with the right set of circumstances and talents its very possible to start a business with little funds. Because these last 5 – 7 years of full-time work I am living the locationless lifestyle: working anywhere at anytime. Five years is a long time to get there. It’s not easy. But I am positive that its worth the effort.

No related posts.

The American Dream

1. Graduate high school
2. Go to college
3. Start your career
4. Get married
5. Buy a house
6. Have children
7. Watch them grow up
8. Send them off to college, then to start their careers
9. Become a grandparent
10. Retire, travel, and enjoy life

My American Dream

1. Graduate high school/Start your career
2. Graduate university as soon as possible/travel a third of each year/continue developing your career
3. Travel full-time/Enjoy Life/Make tons of Money

The rest is subject to change:

4. Retire/Get married/Have children
5. Travel with wife and children
6. Send them off to college, then to start their careers
7. Become a grandparent

Related posts:

1. Maximizing My Time In South America
2. American Travelers
3. Business and Travel Combined

I wrote my first guest for TravelBlogs.com which you can find at TravelBlogs.com . For anyone interested in starting their own mobile business I suggest you check it out.

Related posts:

1. Myth or Reality: “Business Luck”?
2. Business and Travel Combined
3. The Ideal Travel Business