Over the last 6 years (to the day) I've been on a journey. A journey from Engineering to Entrepreneurship. I've constantly followed my passions and it's been the most rewarding experience of my life. I wanted to share some of this journey with you.
It's a long one today, ~12min read, but there's gems hidden inside. Let's see if you make it to the bottom. Find the secret word to get a 5% upvote.
Here's how I did it. Let me take you back in time.
2000: I graduated from High School and was accepted to University for Computer Engineering. I was going to be an engineer! This was one of the highest paying and most respect professions that I knew of. My friends whose parents were Engineers had the biggest houses and drove BMW's (my favorite car).
2000-2004: So I'm in University and working my ass off to get 2 BS Engineering degrees (Computer and Electrical). I was determined to graduate because it was my way out of the poor Southern United States. If only I had these degrees, I would be so employable and would never have to worry about money.
I've never wasted so much time in my life. The Internet was blossoming and I was stuck in dumb classes, study halls and labs. My professors never mentioned the Internet or what marvels were possible because of it. Losers.
2004 - 2012: Working as an Engineer and making enough money that I could go out to eat whenever I wanted. I thought, for a while, that this was the good life. Wake up at 7:30am, drive 30min in to work by 9am and leave around 6pm each day to drive another 30min and make it home a bit before 7pm. Head to bed by midnight and do it all over again. I was 100% a "weekend warrior" and lived for Friday night. After 8 years working as an Engineer, I had saved about $30k USD (but still had $10k in student loans).
During this time I had started to listen to Ron Paul and began to understand personal freedom. My hobbies turned from going out to staying in and listening to podcasts on liberty and eventually learning Austrian Economics. It became my passion. I listened to Peter Schiff, Lew Rockwell, Bob Murphy, Tom Woods, Jeffery Tucker and so many more from the Ludwig von Mises Institute. I subscribed to the Youtube channel (https://www.youtube.com/user/misesmedia) and read books from FA Hayek, Murray Rothbard and Mises himself.
Economics became my passion. I was following the stock market every day and started noticing trends in the flow of capital into and out of equities, bonds, currencies and commodities (this was before crypto existed). I understood "free market money" or "hard money" of Gold and Silver and started preserving my wealth in each. I listened to Peter Schiff's radio show every single day for 2 hours/day for 4+ years which was essential for my economics understanding of Austrian Econ. I was a bit obsessed, but was so excited to wake up each day...knowing that I was going to learn something new.
2011: One day on the Peter Schiff Show (https://www.schiffradio.com/), he said that since the US government was making it so compliance heavy to do business, he was building an offshore bank and brokerage company (Euro Pacific Bank - https://europacbank.com/) and was looking for ppl to be commission-only brokers (sales ppl). I thought...what the heck, I'm not getting rich working as an Engineer.....so I took a chance on myself. I sold all my stuff, quit my Engineering job, said goodbye to everyone and moved to the Caribbean to work at Euro Pacific Bank.
(If you wanna learn more about this journey, listen to this presentation 
).
Long story short (and maybe i'll get in to more detail in a future post) but I worked my ass off! For most of my time at Euro Pacific Bank, I remained commission-only and built waaaaay more than such a position should. While I wasn't making much money, I saw value from other places. THE EXPERIENCE THAT I WAS RECEIVING FROM HAVING THE OPPORTUNITY TO BUILD A BUSINESS FROM THE GROUND UP HELPED ME UNDERSTAND HOW TO BUILD BUSINESS IN GENERAL. (Sorry for the all caps, but it's so important ).
I knew that I was building the skills that would transfer to other businesses that I'd build in the future.
I knew that learning how to become a salesman, building a Customer Support department, helping define and build out the Compliance department, learning how to offer a brokerage platform, learning what it takes to open and run an offshore bank account and networking with strategic financial partners and incorporaters around the world would not only build my skills and experience but also expand my network globally.
I knew that I'd leave the bank for several years before I actually did, but I'd stay for as long as I felt like the value I got out was more than the time and energy that I put in.
2015: Seeing that my time at the bank was drawing to a close, I created the Liberty Entrepreneurs Podcast. I never had plans to "cash flow" it, but again knew that building a platform would help grow my network, expand my reach, offer new experiences and give myself a sense of authority in the libertarian, entrepreneurial and digital nomad scene. I would leverage this podcast platform and the connections I made because of it for so many encounters and businesses in the future. Again, I never worried about making money from the podcast, the value I received from it was in other forms. It was my platform, my way to communicate to you, dear listener/reader, and offer a channel for MY MESSAGE to get out where I didn't need someone else's approval.
Dec 2016: After mentioning on Liberty Entrepreneurs Podcast a few times that I had recently hired a Virtual Assistant to help with my podcast editing, graphics, website and social media...I started receiving emails and phone calls from people who were interested in hiring their first Virtual Assistant. This got me thinking...is there a market opportunity here? Could I actually help people hire Virtual Assistants?
So I spoke w/ my VA, Dexter, about the idea of starting a VA business and he thought it was a good idea. I hired his cousin who was also a VA, Cherry Lou, to help me build the business model and we instantly had several clients lined up to serve.
March 2017: I saw the potential for LVAs and decided to resign from Euro Pacific Bank as their Head of Business Development to pursue my Virtual Assistant business full time. Huge risk and I was giving up a prestigious position in the Offshore Financial world, but I knew it was time. My passion had now turned towards building my own company and thus my own financial freedom. Remember, you aren't going to become financially independent when building someone else's company. There's no incentive because they don't want you to leave their team! If you become wealthy, and venture out on your own, then they lose a great employee in you!
Back to LVAs, it seemed that we always had new clients to help. Word-of-mouth referrals were constant and our staff grew to help accommodate. I hired another VA to help with the interviews and another to help run our back-end systems (CRM, email, website, etc). We named ourselves Liberty Virtual Assistants! Seemed like I was now building a brand...the Liberty brand (remember my podcast Liberty Entrepreneurs?). We quickly found success.
Without the experience, skills and network that I had built over the previous 5 years I would not have been able to so quickly build Liberty Virtual Assistants (LVAs). I called upon previous experiences to guide me through difficult scenarios in my new business, but had built the basic fundamental building blocks to put all the pieces together. I made slow and steady progress, over-coming plenty of setbacks and speed bumps along the way, but now there was one big difference. I was building for ME!
It's now March 2018 and LVAs has been in business for over 14 months. We're squarely profitable and currently have ~40 active Virtual Assistants hired. We offer better jobs with better pay than our VAs can find nearly anywhere in the Philippines. Also, all of our jobs are work from home! This means that people can feel comfortable in their own homes and spend time with their children. Who doesn't like the freedom of a remote job?!?
Here's a few of the LVAs!
On our weekly call!
Engineer vs Entrepreneur
Coming from an Engineering background, I had problem solving skills which became both a benefit and a hurdle. Here's why...
Entrepreneurs solve problems. Engineers solve problems. There's one huge difference.
As an Engineer, I would solve problems because I thought that I could solve them. I would build things to see if they could be built.
As an Entrepreneur, I solve problems because there's a market need. I build because I've identified a pain or problem in society that I believe I can solve and that people will pay me for.
Side note: A good example of building as an Engineer is my site CryptoGear.io (https://cryptogear.io/). Don't buy anything from there. The shipping is all screwed up and you'll find much better deals at our own @slickwilly 's site BitcoinShirtz (https://teespring.com/stores/bitcoinshirtz). I wanted to build a drop-shipping website, but didn't look at how much demand there was for it. We do approx 0 sales/month lol. The reason is because I didn't understand the market demand for crypto-related apparel and it was much less than I had hoped. Lesson learned, do your market research before you biuld. Oh yeah, the s e c r e t p h r a s e is "buildfreedom". Leave it in the comments :)
So now it's March 2018 and the VA business is humming along nicely and we've niched down to only helping crypto/blockchain companies build out their customer service teams. Remember, the riches are in the niches. Don't try to please or serve everyone. When you do, you constantly get headaches and can't keep your quality high. Under-estimating customer service issues is one of the major pitfalls of small businesses.
As many of you know, I've now started @SteemSmarter, a Steem blockchain analytics reporting business. We've very young as a company and still figuring out exactly what we can offer you. We know that we want to help you more quickly find your tribe, gain followers and make money for the content you create and post on Steem!
One of the best things I've learned as an Entrepreneur is to constantly ask for feedback on your projects. Remember, Entrepreneurs build for YOU the clients.
That said, what questions do you constantly find that you ask yourself before, during or after posting on Steem? Maybe things like...
- What should I post about?
- What time should I post?
- How do I get more followers?
- How do I get more up-votes?
- What tags should I use?
- How can I get a whale up-vote?
- ...maybe something else?
What would help you make more sense of Steem? I'm here for you and so is the rest of the @SteemSmarter team of @crypthoe and @thescubageek (follow all of us)!
This is my current project and it definitely won't be my last. Once you know how to build, you catch the "build bug". You start to see opportunities in the marketplace everywhere. Maybe that carwash down the street is screwing up because they don't accept cryptocurrencies and you could build a new car wash that does. Or maybe the bar next door doesn't serve Don Julio tequila and you know that people are craving it. What about crypto t-shirt designs that suck and you just know that you can do a better job?
Another piece of advice I have is this. Build a business where you are one of the first customers. Sure, make sure other people also find value and a need for your product/service, but when you are your own client, it gives you first hand experience of how useful and easy-to-use the thing that you are building actually is.
Ok, long one today and if you made it this far, thank you. I know it was a bit rambly and thanks for tuning in <3
Til next time....KEEP BUILDING FREEDOM!
In Liberty,
Ashe
