I've always loved wealthy people. Ever since I went from a dirty and ghetto middle school to the top private school in Hawaii, I've always noticed how differently wealthy people live compared to poorer folks.

I met a new client today. She lives in a wealthy area called "Hawaii Kai." I thought that she was regular rich, but I was wrong -- she is REALLY rich. Let me clarify:

regular rich = doctor, lawyer, cpa, owner of a moderately successful business
REALLY rich = ceos, company presidents, celebrities, and developers of revolutionary businesses

I thought "REALLY rich" meant having multiple-stories and a pool in a gated community, but this client raised the bar: 3-4 big rooms on a property, pool, walkway between rooms, and the Pacific Ocean touching your backyard.

It turns out that my client had amassed a huge fortune from starting a telecommunications company in a country that previously had only 1 telecommunications company that was charging people several US dollars a minute for long-distance calls (pretty much your standard, inefficient, overpriced monopoly business model). She was making over 2 million in profit a month before the government had to shut her company down to preserve the local company, which could not go out of business because it was in charge of essential communication lines for the country.

Here was somebody living a completely different life than the one I'm living, but I understood her business model completely. I could tell that she loved talking about her business, and I loved hearing about it. You know what an equivalent type of story is for poor people? "Eh brah, let me tell you about that time I won $800 at the craps table at The Golden Nugget." That kind of story, I could give 2 fucks about.

The final reason I love wealthy people is this: they make better clients. They have a lot of money, so they aren't as shy to spend it. Poor people will spend lots of money too, but it will be for shit like trips to Las Vegas, buying a new stereo, or putting payments toward a car they cannot reasonably afford. Poor people will rarely spend money on things that aren't "fun." This explains why I recently had a prospective client with a horrible site back out of a $250 redesign and I had another financially-strapped client try to offer $10/hr for my website services. You know what my really rich client did when we first met? She bought me lunch. Enough said.

About a month ago, I decided to catch up on a useful trade I abandoned long ago: web design.

Everything was so hopeful for me when I first started fishing for clients, but now, it's a lot of frustration.

I'm frustrated because my clients are so hard to work with. Unresponsive fuckers. I have not heard from my important restaurant client in a week.

I'm also frustrated because I've been trying to find a client for free website (to add to my portfolio/credentials), but so many people don't want a free website. FREE website. Their website looks like shit, or they have none, but they don't want a FREEEEE WEBSITE. FREEEEEEEeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee.


I think my work is nice. I want to get to a point where my compensation will match my results. I got subcontracted to do a landing page for an escort agency. Spent a day on it. Tried to work within this contractor's somewhat-shabby ideas. What do you think?






I would say I've learned 3 great lessons though:

1. Marketing > Skill
Even if your skill is mediocre, if you can get enough clients or traffic, that'll lead to business. Although there's a lot of people that will reject your services, there are plenty of people with low standards and deep pockets that don't know any better.

If you're skilled, but don't market well, you simply have to wait until word-of-mouth advertises for you, which can take a loooong time. Reminds me of the new documentary of the sushi chef in the subway in Japan. He's in his 90s, doesn't advertise, yet reservations are made months in advance. In a damn subway, yo. But, I guarantee that he started off begging for business. Being so old is too long to wait for such success.

Jiro Dreams of Sushi


2. Good at it + Easy to learn = motivation
I've done a lot of jobs in my life, and I'll tell you this: spending 10 hours working on a website is easier than spending 3 hours teaching little kids, making coleslaw and mashed potatoes, or explaining to customers how to use a fucking cell phone.

The fact that I enjoy what I do and the fact that it's easy for me to pick up new ideas in this industry is necessary for any future success. If I had to go into a craft business instead and couldn't get a glue gun to work, I'd probably just say "fuck it"
and trash everything.


3. The wealthiest people delegate
I came across this freelancing website called www.odesk.com . It's where clients and contractors can hook up. Now, what makes it interesting (and a bad place for me to find work) is that it's a global arena and is swarming with brown people -- Indians, Sir Lankans, etc. Because of exchange rates, these contractors bring market rates down to single digits! If you see a brown person charging $12, he's balling!! That's a shit load of rupees yo!!

Now, think about this:

If I'm a big web design company, I can get big clients. I'll charge them $15k. I'll then go find well-reviewed brownies on www.odesk.com, pay them $3k to do everything the client asked of me, and then just pocket $12k with doing minimal work.






This is some interesting shit.