In the r/Entrepreneur subreddit over on Reddit, u/scubyduby asked:
“People who are making 500k+/year working for themselves, what do you do?”
And when I say I took some notes, I mean I took some NOTES. Some of these look like incredibly interesting career moves (shh, don’t tell my boss!) and with the pay bump? I mean, what’s the downside?!
Which one would you consider?
1. Public servant
My Mum’s cousin is the highest-paid public servant in the UK. He planned the 2012 Olympic games. He earns around £550,000 per year.
2. Plumbing
I own a plumbing business, a mitigation firm and a construction company.
I pump a lot of money into advertising for the plumbing firm. They find water damage and refer it to my mitigation company. The mitigation company refers the build back (think post-work renovation) to my construction firm.
I have a partner with the trade expertise at each company. I invested the starting money and run the marketing arms.
We started with mitigation and added plumbing and construction this last year. I own 75 of plumbing and mitigation and 100 percent of the construction business.
I take home around 100k a month but that is ramping up.
I actually started with a gym and still have it as it’s a great referral source for my other companies.
I work 4 days a week for a few hours but am texting clients and managers throughout the day. I think I could work more but I went into business for myself so I could prioritize my wife and son.
The key to my success was having the gym, finding the right people to be the trade expertise at each company and not paying myself more than 2k for the first couple years!
3. Surgeon
Most of the surgeons I know make more than 500k/year.
Graduate high school, 4 years of undergrad, +/- graduate degree, take the MCAT, apply at and interview at med schools, 4 years of med school, 4-7 years of residency, +/- 2-3 years of fellowship, and usually hundreds of thousands of dollars in debt.
4. Ornamental construction
Not me but most likely my father. He started an ornamental construction company, and over the past 15 years, we have watched it grow and flourish. Many sacrifices were made with time away from family, sleepless nights and working on vacation but he has become very successful. I work for him now and plan to take over after his retirement.
He immigrated to the US at a very young age, and my grandparents brought nothing with them. My grandfather was a successful architect and engineer in Cuba but had it all taken from him with the rise of Fidel. Spent some years in a prison camp and was finally able to come to the US with my father. Struggled their whole lives in the US but worked hard and earned everything.
What I have taken from this and learned over time is to earn this. Earn every dollar you make, every vacation you take, and every relationship you have. nothing in life is handed out for free and if am offered something for nothing then it’s either a trick or not even worth my time.
5. Big savings and hard work
My uncle is the CFO for the distributor of chocolate in the province. When he was in high school he would buy snacks wholesale and sell them to the kids at school for 50% markup (can’t make it that pricey, students are broke!). He saved the $5,000 for tuition and got his business degree. While at that school he was the student council treasurer and used the position to market himself as everybody’s numbers man. Pay him for your taxes, or to help calculate loan repayments, weekly budgets, anything. He did all that to ensure he had money after graduating and that he did. Working 80 hours a week as an actuary for about a decade before being picked up by Cadbury as a junior manager. He was critical in the Schweppes merger of the ’80s, and his most recent accomplishment was reaching a 10 billion dollar deal with Kraft.
The man is pushing 70 and still working 80 hours a week, but he goes to European vacations twice a year. He and my aunt have only one house but boy is it ever a clean and organized house. They are also hobbyist dancers and extremely good at it.
Oh, and the aunt is no slouch either, senior manager of proctor and gamble for 16 years. Let’s just say that my grandfather hasn’t spent a dime of his pension for 30 years, or for his 17,000 square-foot beachfront home.
tl;dr my uncle is CFO of Cadbury Canada, the aunt was high up Proctor & Gamble, 40 years between them of 60-80 hour work weeks.
6. A few ideas
The highest-paid workers are doctors, lawyers, managers, bankers, and such. You’ve probably heard this before. However, most only make 100K-500K.
To makeover 500K what you need is a large stake of equity in a company.
The easy way to do this is to already be rich. You can buy a large amount of whatever stock and it will generally go up.
The harder way, which is available to us average Joe’s, is to start your own business.
One thing you can do is managing your personal finances (only buy necessities. Have a 3-6 month emergency fund. And then invest whatever you have left in low-fee index funds.
Index funds follow the market and generally go up. It’s kind of like having your own company.
7. Top Spots
Management/doctors/CEOs/ and lawyers made the largest chunks but off to the right, there’s really a total hodgepodge of stuff.
8. Head of the chain
I’ve got an uncle who makes over $10 million a year. He’s the CFO of a popular supermarket chain in the Southeast US. To top it off, he owns a bunch of stock much of which just keeps going up.
9. Sales
Made $700K last year and will make more like $850K this year. I sell a SaaS product. Two-thirds of my revenue comes from the Shopify App Store, the other third comes from regular website customers. Month after month the money just rolls in, higher than the month before. I reinvest it all into dividend funds and my $900K house is paid off.
Some comments here like “if you made $500K you don’t have time to post on Reddit!”, or “I’d rather be happy and have free time!” are nonsense.
The key to wealth is you must create something which separates time from income. Even most high-income professions (such as doctors) don’t become truly wealthy because they can’t do this.
Normal people: spend time = get paid. (Jobs, services, etc.)
Wealthy people: spend time = build something which creates income without time. (Products, investments, loans, etc).
10. Digital Agencies
I run a digital marketing agency – we focus on four core services from web design, local SEO, PPC management and social media management. We are hovering around 900k per year right now. We as an agency normally take on a client if we take over all of their marketing. We don’t simply come on just to build a website or to run their SEO. We take over everything because that’s the only way I know we can truly help. If a client wants to do just a website build or socials we normally turn them away or recommend them to another agency.
I can’t really go deep into specifics but I know the clients below we do the following for web design, socials, PPC, SEO. We also run anything they need as far as graphic design goes or anything out of scope we figure out. We also answer our phones Monday through Sunday for our clients only. Real personal touch.
The best thing I can say is why we are this far is because we show results, we pay attention to detail, and when they need us we are right there ASAP. The client list below contains pool companies, telehealth, doctors, lawyers, tire shops, iv therapy, and dentist. We work great with service-based businesses.
Client 1: 264k annually
Client 2: 180k annually
Client 3: 132k annually
Client 4: 130k annually
Client 5: 60k annually
Client 6: 60k annually
Client 6: 43.2k annually
Client 7: 36k annuallyHow did I accomplish this? I’ll go ahead and break down as much as I can and the steps I took.
Step 1: Learn learn learn. You can’t sell these services if you have no idea what you are doing. You can’t try and get clients yet until you know what you are doing.
Step 2: Website + some marketing + do free work – I would do free audits for local businesses around my area and tell them exactly what they needed to do. I would take jobs ranging from $500-$1000 just to get some $$ into the door
Step 3: How to find clients? Everyone always asks this: Here is a secret for you. Indeed.com – Lookup web design / SEO analyst and its normal businesses looking to hire. I’ve found multiple clients doing this and letting them know they can hire me for 60k a year without paying into unemployment, insurance, or anything a w2 cost and it’ll be cheaper and we will provide better results
11. Invest
I bootstrapped a few consumer brands then became an independent sponsor focused on turnarounds. Short version: Buy struggling companies inexpensively and shift them back into growth mode – then sell them.
12. IT Consult
IT Consultant. Custom software development. Just me.
13. Start your own business
I started a wood sunglasses company[…] 90% of my income comes from Amazon FBA
I’ve never felt freer. I’ve outsourced all of the inventory and customer service so I travel a lot, paint, I’m learning Italian, and how to play the trumpet
What helped me get here? I tried to never do the same work twice. I either automate it, outsource it, or eliminate it.
I read a 4-hour workweek 10 years ago and it shaped a lot of my philosophy around ‘work’. A lot of people call me ‘lazy’ these days because it takes me 3-4 days to respond to an email. But I don’t care.
Amazon FBA is still the easiest and best way to create a recurring income that allows for remote living
14. Online Businesses
Buying, growing, and selling online businesses, as well as owning an enterprise SEO agency.
15. Amazon biz
My net last year was 2.1M. I own an Amazon business… I’m in year 12 with 18 employees, 15m revenue. I live off 60k a year. 275k house, 5k Ford fusion paid off. I dumped 150k in RE syndicates and 900k in the stock market. I also purchased a warehouse for ab 2m (SBA with 10% down). My business requires inventory so I invest most back in the business. I plan to continue diversifying and stepping back from the day-to-day next year.