A lesson for the future: Whenever you need something done requiring specialized knowledge or skill, go to a college campus. There are literally thousands of students, TA’s and professors who have the knowledge you seek (such as programming, web design or anything else) who will do the work for cheap.
I have told people before, “I will pay you $50.00 on the spot if you do (insert specialized task here) for me” and you will always find a taker.
School Woes
One thing that helps me out yet gets in the way is college. Right now I have plans to carry out, businesses to start, websites to design, stocks to buy and research to do….and a full time course load.
I have always placed business priorities above school work, but that needs to change for the end of this semester. I am a borderline student because my heart has never been into school, and that border is dangerously close right now. I need to get my educational act together and start concentrating on school. I have enough hours in the day, but I need to study more efficiently.
Reminer to Self: Semester is almost over and you are borderline, rise above that line with some hard work…PLEASE!
Peter Lynch Was Right
The white-haired giant has proved himself right (again and again) in my trading strategies. Dynegy (DYN), a stock I bought for long term holding has exceeded all my expecations. It feels extremely good to sit back and let my extremely small investment of around $1,500 gain 5%, 10%, 15%, 20% and as of now 25%. I am riding on $400 profit as I type.
I figured I would take a big loss at first and let it even out in the long run, but this stock has been charging ahead based on financials and not emotion, a situation I love.
Properly Positioned To Be "Lucky"
In my community there is a very successful man by the name of Mr. Bhandara. I have had the good fortune of working closely with Mr. Bhandara and his son who is also on a sure path to great success. I have learned an incredible amount by working with them and learning new business tactics.
What I found a little unnerving was the way people summed up his greatest business deals to Luck. Mr. Bhandara has built up his business not through what some perceive as luck, but by doing his research and purchasing properties when no one else wants them. He happens to get lucky when his real estate value skyrockets because the area becomes better. This was done by taking risks and having the courage to buy when no one else would. He took all the risk, all the expense and all the time, and therefore is entitled to all the rewards.
I truly admire his ability to spot a diamond in the rough through constant observing, and going through with his plans despite criticism. I hope to learn even more than I already have from Mr. Bhandara and his son. I feel extremely lucky they have both allowed me to tag along and learn.
Clearing Up Consfusion
It seems a lot of people expect me to get a job right after I graduate college. Why must that be the norm? Does a company care about your family and income when you loose your job? NO. So why should you slave away your life working for somebody else? Why work for a company when you can own it?
I think if you are up to the challenge and willing to take the risk of not having a steady income, you can become a very successful person if you work hard and if you work right.
I plan on becoming an Investment Creator, or one who creates investment vehicles for himself. These include businesses, stock investments and real estate. These things can all be done while holding a job or working full time towards them. The trick is to treat it like a job, in other words if you treat investing like a part time thing then you will not get full results.
After college I plan to either jump right in, or work for people who know the knowledge I seek then apply it to my own investments.
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Am I Where I Want To Be?
Analyzing myself, am I where I want to be right now? And am I on the track to being where I want to be in five years? NO. I have accomplished a lot more things in my life than the average college student my age, but it is not even close to enough. I have high expectations for myself, and whenever I meet them…I raise them.
I’ve had in my mind a few things to start which I haven’t. I keep blaming school for interfering with my side projects, but that is no excuse.
I need to accomplish these few things within the next few months, definitely before I leave college:
–Videotape traffic patterns, contact traffic engineer researcher on campus and implement my traffic strategy on I-35 with a crew.
–Do research on starting my advertising company idea.
–Start Resumite Personal Sites and make it the largest of its kind on the internet. Fast turnaround, lots of services, upfront/cheap pricing.
–Trademark the name Resumite (even if it gets rejected, at least you now know how).
These few things are accomplishments I would like to have at least tried before I leave college. Even if they all fail they will bring in an untold amount of knowledge and experience. I also want to have the stigma of being a go-getter and someone who GETS THINGS DONE. Laziness and lack of ambition sicken me.
Financial Update
Current Assests as of 11-23-2004:
General Account: $1,390
Business Balance: $676
Spending Account: $310
Investment Account: $1,093
Permanent Savings: $2,764
Backup CD Savings: $5, 036
Stock Portfolio Value: $5, 034
Credit Card Balance: $0
My Businesses
HouseOfRave.com:
Rave, Club, Party and Light Up Supplies.
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BodyMonkey.com:
Entertainment and Gift Supply
The start of BodyMonkey
(Shut down to go full time with HouseOfRave.com)
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Palm R e p o r t . com:
Online Palm Reading website that I made around 2006/2007:
Someone once told me I had a small “Money Line” on my hand. I was trying to play a joke back on them and prove them wrong, and was surprised to see a lack of places to get your palm read online.
Seeing an opportunity, I had my favorite Romanian developing team create a custom system that could accept image uploads and Palm R e p o r t was born. Of course finding a palm reader that wasn’t totally full of BS was a whole other adventure!
Recently sold it. (links removed after sold)
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Enwon Inc:
The parent company for an of my ventures.
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FacebookProfile.com: (Sold)
Facebook ASCII Art, Tips, Tricks, Hacks & Apps Reviews.
Started it for $220 in May 2006.
Sold it in August 2007 for $5,500.
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Resumite.com: (sold)
Custom Resume Webpages
To earn some extra cash in college I started Resumite which developed resume websites for individuals. It worked decently well, mainly I got all my business around the UT campus from flyers I posted.
I stopped doing this and site laid dormant for a long time, I later put it up for sale and got around $200 for it.
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NevBlog.com:
Personal blog of Neville Medhora.
Starting at the age of 22 I started documenting my financial situation for all to see. This made me get serious about my own finances and get serious about improving the situation. Since the start this blog has been featured in many large publications like the New York Times and Wall Street Journal. I used to track all the income I made, but I recently removed it. I don’t consider this blog to be a business, but I have experimented with putting up advertising several times (1, 2, 3) to see if I could make money.
I enjoy maintaining this blog because it helps me keep track of what I’ve been doing and it helps me meet all sorts of interesting people I otherwise would not have met.
I think by far the thing most people enjoy is the Bottled Water Selling Experiment and the Scratch Lottery Experiment. The story that’s helped the most people (I get emails about this every single day) is the House Of Rave story which explains how I setup a drop shipping business from my high school computer.
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Other Projects:
I’ve always loved starting websites, and I won’t go into great detail here about all the small projects I’ve started then stopped over the years. Every one of them COULD have been a success had I devoted all my effort. However some of them were either just not worth the effort, or more importantly, just not interesting to me.
At one point I remember having a wall covered with 10 different to-do lists from 10 different sites I created. From there I realized one of the most cliched pieces of advice is actually true: You’ve got to love what you do.
Oddly enough the most successful things I’ve done were things I really enjoyed doing. My earliest example was “Neville’s Cool Car Archive” from when I was 16. I was obsessed with cars, so I would take pictures from internet, Photoshop the backgrounds black and post them online as computer desktop wallpapers. I did this from the only domain I owned: Neville1.com. Back then the site was getting so much traffic it kept overloading my hosting account, and since I never thought of trying to make money from it, I eventually turned it into a personal website.
To Accomplish My Goals:
A million in liquid assets is an extremely lofty goal. Is it even possible? Of course. To make $1,000,000 in five years I will need to:
Save $200,000 per year
Save $16,666 per month
Save $3,846 per week
Save $549 per day
Keep in mind this is saving $X.XX per year and does not include expenses.
I mandatorily put away $400 per month for investing and permanent savings, and after I get paid (from any source) I put away 60% if not more. Since I started working, I have been putting away roughly $685 per month. My current savings per month needs to increase by 2,400% immediately to meet my goal by 27.