Be Your Own Boss: An introduction to A.B. Dada
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I often get questioned on web forums about my business history (sometimes it gets to the point that I am called a liar or a troll). I'll always be the first person to share my secrets, and I will be open about my failures. Never hesitate to ask for proof when you attempt something new with your life!
I was born in 1974 in a middle class town to parents who were fairly new to the country. My mother didn't speak English until I was 4 (and even now still has a thick accent). I was likely living in the poorest household in this town. The combination of foreign parents and low income brought a lot of verbal abuse, which I believe was the key factor to me finding the business sense that I have -- I realized there are bullies, there are weaklings, and then there are those who take advantage of the situation! The bullying stopped by the 4th grade, when I just ignored it. That is lesson number one: never ignore anything new, but don't pay too much attention either. Figure out if these bumps and dips actually hurt you, and if they don't, ignore them. Business is all about ups and downs: some are in your control, some are just part of daily life. Learn which bumps are bad, which are good, and which are unimportant. This will take a lifetime, but you'll get better at it as you go along.
At the age of 6, I received my first "computer" -- I quickly learned to type and write ahead of my class, but my dexterity with the pen wasn't very good. By the age of 11, I had acquired a 300 baud modem and started to find BBSes around my area (all of 3, in 1985, that I could connect to). I upgraded to a 1200 baud modem and started dialing all over the country. 12 years old with a $300 phone bill in a poor house is NOT the way to make your parents happy. I had discovered information, instant information, and the road to feeding the addiction was opened to me.
The parents turned off my phone line for everything but local calls. I went to a friend's house, installed another 1200 baud modem, and proceeded to download my own BBS software. My friend (Scott Teipe, haven't spoken to him in years) and I started our BBS that year -- The Melting Point BBS, 1 line, 1200 baud, mostly text files and bulletin boards. The year was 1987, and I was 13. Over the next few years, the BBS grew quickly, at one point I had about 15 phone lines coming into my bedroom. The phone company was threatening to pull them (I called it a "hobby" so I didn't pay the business rates), my parents were yelling at me to pay the electricity bill on time, and my friends were taking advantage of me because I had extra money to spend from the income generated.
It was then that I realized that I didn't have a hobby -- I had a business. I was 15, I was generating income, paying bills, and reaping a profit. I took much of that profit and invested it in a candy business that I ran for 2 years in my high school. Nickel gobstoppers selling for 25 cents in the classroom was a great introduction to high margin profitability, but I was nearly expelled on a few occasions for being an entrepreneur. I had seen weeks of $400 profits between the two businesses, and I realized that hard work was not the only way to make money -- diversify!
At 15, I took a big step with my BBS and I started to promote myself on it. I quickly met a lot of people through the self promotion -- big radio station engineers that wanted to run their own BBSes, CEOs at large companies who wanted BBSes for their businesses, even retail stores who were interested. I quickly started a tiny PC business, shrugged off my school responsibilities as much as possible, and went to work. I billed at a cheap rate (all the while paying my taxes), and built up a client base working on LANtastic and Novell networks, hooking up plotters and installing CAD systems, and even running a few corporate BBSes. I was quickly making money, but I was spending it as fast as I could on friends, family and myself. Easy come, easy go: another lesson learned.
By 17, I was overworked and getting berated by my friends. My high school became one of the 25 best high schools in Illinois, and I refused to think about grades (I was a D student, at best). I aced the ACT, but I didn't care about college. No one believed in me -- they said I would have to get a job after high school if I didn't study harder. I feared being wrong, so I took a job with a local PC hardware maintenance company. I was now earning 15% of my old payrate, but it gave me time to try some new things: I tried radio DJing (two high schools had stations), I tried graphics desigh (business cards and letterheads), and I tried marketing (helping car stereo stores reach out to my age group, and helping record stores get flyers for albums out). I hated them all! My "job" life was to come to a close soon as I found my old customers calling for me, as their new IT companies weren't performing as well as I did.
By 19, I was back in business. I took a stint as an employee at a megacorporate computer store, mostly to get a discount on hardware and to find new customers. I was canned after 6 months (I was one of the top sales people, though) after I was caught moonlighting. Another lesson learned: don't cheat others!
At 21, I found a group of 4 video design geeks, and started a video production studio and a 3D rendering company with them. Over 3 years we made money, spent money, and became very infamous in the Chicago graphics scene. None of us worked well with one another, but we had a ball and met a good number of famous people. My IT business was growing leaps and bounds at this point, as I had found a market that I was compatible with: engineering and CAD design. I was never an engineer or a CAD operator, but I was able to comprehend the business' needs and what they needed me for. I found my next lesson here: you are the most valuable to a customer when they make money on the work you do. If I billed them $100, they had to see a savings of at LEAST $101 to make my work worthwhile.
By 24, I had sold my share of the video production house (which later was bought out by a much bigger company for a big chunk of cash), and met a younger kid from my BBS days who was in college. We decided to bring him on to manage my IT company, which had way outgrown the ability for one irresponsible kid to run (that's me). We grew just fast enough to build a nice income base, but I refused 3 customers for every 1 we took: I forsaw a big technology explosion, and in my experience you don't want to take advantage of any inflation in a market -- it could be doom if you can't complete the work you're hired to do. The problem with big booms in any industry is there are usually busts: leaving you with too many employees, too big a rent for your office, and a ton of debt. I hated debt for business, it had ruined some of my friends.
Many of my peers were going dotcom, but I refused. We had developed a great mail server application that we freely gave our customers in exchange for more labor, and we were very happy with our income. Our employees were happy, our customers were happy, why should we go dotcom for millions if we had no viable business worth the money? I passed -- with many of my college educated friends berating me again for not listening to the masses.
As the dotcoms boomed, we continued to grow slowly, refusing more customers than taking on. A mini-lesson should be had here, too: don't accept customers just for money, accept them if you feel they'll be a good balance between the time you spend on them and the money you take in. Some customers can have a real negative push on your business if they are too needy or too picky. I've had to walk away from some customers after projects because the money didn't overcome the hassle of dealing with them.
By 27, I was in a relationship, and I started a venture into the retail store business: skateboards, paintball, clothing. We started small (500 square feet) in a tiny town with no mall: 4000 residents. We quickly grew to one of the top stores in the midwest and added additional stores.
At 29 I started to see a labor inflation in both my markets, and knew that we (as a country) were getting overpaid. I started to look at outsourcing some work, but India was getting too expensive, too! I found a few countries in Europe with exceptional intelligence and a lower cost of living.
Now I'm 31. We're closing down our retail stores, and I'm putting some of my profits from my always-successful IT business into a business that manufacturers tanning salon shields in Western Europe. I'm driving to outsource engineering labor while bringing MORE business into the US by becoming more efficient and picking the right employees. I'm thinking of providing some consulting work in Dubai, one of the most prosperous cities in the world with an affinity for Americans. I'm constantly on the run publishing my gold currency blog, my political blog and my variety of posts on various web forums.
How do I handle all the time needed to run my life? Here's the big lesson: if you find the right people and pay them well, you won't be as busy as you'd guess. I have the Internet everywhere I go (letting me post to blogs and forums in between meetings and actual work). Sometimes I post to my blogs from a restaurant at lunchtime, or reply to forum messages when I'm waiting in an airport. All business life that looks like "always on the go" is really many busy periods with even more slow periods in between. I might have 3 hours of hellacious work followed by 6 hours of waiting for another trade to finish their work: giving me 6 hours to screw around.
That's the great part of being your own boss: work hard, make your customer money (or save them time), and you'll have more time available to you than you ever did. I'm not here to tell you how to become a millionaire overnight: that requires too much energy for me. But you can do better financially than you're doing now, with more time for yourself and your family and friends.
I was born in 1974 in a middle class town to parents who were fairly new to the country. My mother didn't speak English until I was 4 (and even now still has a thick accent). I was likely living in the poorest household in this town. The combination of foreign parents and low income brought a lot of verbal abuse, which I believe was the key factor to me finding the business sense that I have -- I realized there are bullies, there are weaklings, and then there are those who take advantage of the situation! The bullying stopped by the 4th grade, when I just ignored it. That is lesson number one: never ignore anything new, but don't pay too much attention either. Figure out if these bumps and dips actually hurt you, and if they don't, ignore them. Business is all about ups and downs: some are in your control, some are just part of daily life. Learn which bumps are bad, which are good, and which are unimportant. This will take a lifetime, but you'll get better at it as you go along.
At the age of 6, I received my first "computer" -- I quickly learned to type and write ahead of my class, but my dexterity with the pen wasn't very good. By the age of 11, I had acquired a 300 baud modem and started to find BBSes around my area (all of 3, in 1985, that I could connect to). I upgraded to a 1200 baud modem and started dialing all over the country. 12 years old with a $300 phone bill in a poor house is NOT the way to make your parents happy. I had discovered information, instant information, and the road to feeding the addiction was opened to me.
The parents turned off my phone line for everything but local calls. I went to a friend's house, installed another 1200 baud modem, and proceeded to download my own BBS software. My friend (Scott Teipe, haven't spoken to him in years) and I started our BBS that year -- The Melting Point BBS, 1 line, 1200 baud, mostly text files and bulletin boards. The year was 1987, and I was 13. Over the next few years, the BBS grew quickly, at one point I had about 15 phone lines coming into my bedroom. The phone company was threatening to pull them (I called it a "hobby" so I didn't pay the business rates), my parents were yelling at me to pay the electricity bill on time, and my friends were taking advantage of me because I had extra money to spend from the income generated.
It was then that I realized that I didn't have a hobby -- I had a business. I was 15, I was generating income, paying bills, and reaping a profit. I took much of that profit and invested it in a candy business that I ran for 2 years in my high school. Nickel gobstoppers selling for 25 cents in the classroom was a great introduction to high margin profitability, but I was nearly expelled on a few occasions for being an entrepreneur. I had seen weeks of $400 profits between the two businesses, and I realized that hard work was not the only way to make money -- diversify!
At 15, I took a big step with my BBS and I started to promote myself on it. I quickly met a lot of people through the self promotion -- big radio station engineers that wanted to run their own BBSes, CEOs at large companies who wanted BBSes for their businesses, even retail stores who were interested. I quickly started a tiny PC business, shrugged off my school responsibilities as much as possible, and went to work. I billed at a cheap rate (all the while paying my taxes), and built up a client base working on LANtastic and Novell networks, hooking up plotters and installing CAD systems, and even running a few corporate BBSes. I was quickly making money, but I was spending it as fast as I could on friends, family and myself. Easy come, easy go: another lesson learned.
By 17, I was overworked and getting berated by my friends. My high school became one of the 25 best high schools in Illinois, and I refused to think about grades (I was a D student, at best). I aced the ACT, but I didn't care about college. No one believed in me -- they said I would have to get a job after high school if I didn't study harder. I feared being wrong, so I took a job with a local PC hardware maintenance company. I was now earning 15% of my old payrate, but it gave me time to try some new things: I tried radio DJing (two high schools had stations), I tried graphics desigh (business cards and letterheads), and I tried marketing (helping car stereo stores reach out to my age group, and helping record stores get flyers for albums out). I hated them all! My "job" life was to come to a close soon as I found my old customers calling for me, as their new IT companies weren't performing as well as I did.
By 19, I was back in business. I took a stint as an employee at a megacorporate computer store, mostly to get a discount on hardware and to find new customers. I was canned after 6 months (I was one of the top sales people, though) after I was caught moonlighting. Another lesson learned: don't cheat others!
At 21, I found a group of 4 video design geeks, and started a video production studio and a 3D rendering company with them. Over 3 years we made money, spent money, and became very infamous in the Chicago graphics scene. None of us worked well with one another, but we had a ball and met a good number of famous people. My IT business was growing leaps and bounds at this point, as I had found a market that I was compatible with: engineering and CAD design. I was never an engineer or a CAD operator, but I was able to comprehend the business' needs and what they needed me for. I found my next lesson here: you are the most valuable to a customer when they make money on the work you do. If I billed them $100, they had to see a savings of at LEAST $101 to make my work worthwhile.
By 24, I had sold my share of the video production house (which later was bought out by a much bigger company for a big chunk of cash), and met a younger kid from my BBS days who was in college. We decided to bring him on to manage my IT company, which had way outgrown the ability for one irresponsible kid to run (that's me). We grew just fast enough to build a nice income base, but I refused 3 customers for every 1 we took: I forsaw a big technology explosion, and in my experience you don't want to take advantage of any inflation in a market -- it could be doom if you can't complete the work you're hired to do. The problem with big booms in any industry is there are usually busts: leaving you with too many employees, too big a rent for your office, and a ton of debt. I hated debt for business, it had ruined some of my friends.
Many of my peers were going dotcom, but I refused. We had developed a great mail server application that we freely gave our customers in exchange for more labor, and we were very happy with our income. Our employees were happy, our customers were happy, why should we go dotcom for millions if we had no viable business worth the money? I passed -- with many of my college educated friends berating me again for not listening to the masses.
As the dotcoms boomed, we continued to grow slowly, refusing more customers than taking on. A mini-lesson should be had here, too: don't accept customers just for money, accept them if you feel they'll be a good balance between the time you spend on them and the money you take in. Some customers can have a real negative push on your business if they are too needy or too picky. I've had to walk away from some customers after projects because the money didn't overcome the hassle of dealing with them.
By 27, I was in a relationship, and I started a venture into the retail store business: skateboards, paintball, clothing. We started small (500 square feet) in a tiny town with no mall: 4000 residents. We quickly grew to one of the top stores in the midwest and added additional stores.
At 29 I started to see a labor inflation in both my markets, and knew that we (as a country) were getting overpaid. I started to look at outsourcing some work, but India was getting too expensive, too! I found a few countries in Europe with exceptional intelligence and a lower cost of living.
Now I'm 31. We're closing down our retail stores, and I'm putting some of my profits from my always-successful IT business into a business that manufacturers tanning salon shields in Western Europe. I'm driving to outsource engineering labor while bringing MORE business into the US by becoming more efficient and picking the right employees. I'm thinking of providing some consulting work in Dubai, one of the most prosperous cities in the world with an affinity for Americans. I'm constantly on the run publishing my gold currency blog, my political blog and my variety of posts on various web forums.
How do I handle all the time needed to run my life? Here's the big lesson: if you find the right people and pay them well, you won't be as busy as you'd guess. I have the Internet everywhere I go (letting me post to blogs and forums in between meetings and actual work). Sometimes I post to my blogs from a restaurant at lunchtime, or reply to forum messages when I'm waiting in an airport. All business life that looks like "always on the go" is really many busy periods with even more slow periods in between. I might have 3 hours of hellacious work followed by 6 hours of waiting for another trade to finish their work: giving me 6 hours to screw around.
That's the great part of being your own boss: work hard, make your customer money (or save them time), and you'll have more time available to you than you ever did. I'm not here to tell you how to become a millionaire overnight: that requires too much energy for me. But you can do better financially than you're doing now, with more time for yourself and your family and friends.
posted by A. B. Dada at 9:19 AM
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