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darkjediii

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I stumbled upon this site searching for small biz/entrepreneur message boards. I love the boards so far and am surprised to see so many people here who share the same entrepreneurial mentality.

I am a 28 year old living with my wife and 2yr old daughter in VA. My story starts in the Philippines. I was born and grew up there until I moved to the US when I was 12. It was a fun time for me growing up, but there were also some hard times for my family. Sometimes, we had to raise chickens in the backyard so we had something to eat.

I was always a “lazy” kid who never excelled at anything except what I was really interested in. I was really interested in computers, so I decided to make a career out of it. I eventually ended up being really good at what I do and working (and still work for) one of the biggest IT companies in the world.

I was content and ready to be an employee all my life, but things changed when my I met my wife. She had dreams of starting a tanning salon and eventually, she had sparked something within me. In the past several years, we had went to trade shows, looked at literally 100s of businesses, started and failed a couple of businesses, spent countless hours writing business plans, did presentations for many banks in hopes of getting loans without collateral and just kept the wheels churning.

So far, along the way, I have been able to start an IT consulting company and a fast food retail in a busy area of Washington, DC, while keeping my full-time job (thanks to my wife running the show while I am at work). We are also opening a 2nd shop that is currently under construction and will be open by the end of July. My dreams are to open over 100 stores eventually and grow my IT consulting company to be the largest in the east coast. I have a lot of work ahead of me and I feel like compared to a lot of you here I am rather old starting with this stuff. Thanks for reading my story!
 
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Great intro and great work ethic. Speed+++
 
NIce work. Do you need partner in webshosting sector?
 
Great intro, question .... do you struggle managing both business ventures? They both are very dissimilar. Do you have a favoritism toward one?
 
NIce work. Do you need partner in webshosting sector?

I haven't had a need for web hosting services yet, but then again I still consider my IT Business a baby, my clients already had websites up and running when I signed them on. But it's definitely something to keep in mind in the future. thanks for the reply!
 
Great intro, question .... do you struggle managing both business ventures? They both are very dissimilar. Do you have a favoritism toward one?

I find myself very interested in the operations aspect of running the retail business, learning the marketing/customer service aspects and the little details that keep it going.

But, yes I do struggle managing both. I am at the point where I am trying to get everything stable, so that my wife can manage the frozen yogurt shop full time, and I can concentrate on my passion, which is my IT Business. At times I feel I could be doing more for the IT Business, but my plan is to get the yogurt shop up and running producing good, positive cash flow, and then I will operate the IT business at a loss for the next year so that I can invest in it and expand while minimizing my tax liabilities (which we learned a hard lesson this year not planning for it.)

But thankfully, my wife and I think on the same wave length and share the same passion for business. She runs the show while I am at work.
 

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