Questuosus

6 Key Traits of the Financially Independent

#2: Risk Taker
When I started my real estate investment career I had a full-time job. It helped. It gave me good credit to help me qualify for loans. It also gave me a peanut gallery full of mocking co-workers who made fun of my ambitions. It also gave me a boss who doubted that I was fully committed to my job. He was right and eventually I quit the job to pursue my investment career full-time.

One of my co-workers resisted my enticements to participate in real estate investments. A great boom in the local real estate market was in progress and I achieved early success. Then, one day, he announced that he had decided to leap into real estate investment too. But he didn’t want to do it in partnership with anybody else. He was an eagle, he wanted to fly alone looking for opportunity and seizing it wherever he could. He took the risk alone and became even more successful than I did.

My own investments multiplied and fed off each other. I bought and sold, bought and sold, day after day. Sometimes I never even saw properties that made me thousands of dollars for a couple of phone calls. I grew bold and ambitious. Knowing the principles of leverage and using the power of OPM (Other People’s Money) I knew that I could use the risk/reward ratio to reap even bigger profits.

Risk can be a drug. There is an enormous thrill about taking a big risk, knowing the potential reward is equally big. Gamblers feel the same high in the casino. I had “gambler’s high”. The big deals started appearing on my radar screen. Big deals carry big risks. I recall pitching one big deal to an angel investor who wanted me to risk all my assets – including my home and retirement savings – as collateral. I was ready for it but the deal fell through.

I flew out to western Canada and with nothing but testosterone backing me I wrote an offer on a 200 suite apartment building worth six million dollars. My offer was unsuccessful, fortunately. The local real estate market collapsed a week after another of my offers was accepted on a $1.3 million dollar property across town. That was when I had to learn to be a “magic carpet jockey” to find a way to make it safely down to the ground after proverbially leaping out of an airplane without a parachute.

The moral of this post is that you have to be a risk-taker to succeed. But always remember that taking risks has a downside too, so be ready with the magic carpet. And that’s a key trait of the financially independent that we’ll deal with in another post.

Administrator General Topics, Uncategorized 6 Key Traits of the Financially Independent, Risk Taker

Wage Slave!

Perhaps the single biggest motivator for people seeking financial independence is the fear of losing their job. Once we become accustomed to being “wage-slaves” we build our personal economies on an income stream that we take for granted. Our outgoings (perhaps including savings contributions) expand to absorb the entire amount of our income. Take away that income and our personal economies collapse very quickly.

I was once a wage-slave. I recall, very vividly, the sudden end of the income stream that I took for granted. There were signs of course. Secretive meetings between human resources staff and my manager, re-organization plans, rumours. My employer’s business was performing poorly and all the staff were alert to signals that the Sword of Damocles might be hanging over their own head.

The Beginning of the End

One day I was called into my manager’s office where a human resources staffer was sitting alongside him. The pronouncement of my “termination” was clinical, emotionless and short. In the space of a five minute encounter my career was over. More importantly, my income was gone. The mental torture was almost intolerable. It is very easy to make plans for your future when that future is secure. It is very difficult to calmly gather your thoughts and make plans when your future has been unexpectedly and painfully snatched away.

The End of the Beginning

After a couple of layoffs during a downturn in the industry in which I worked I knew I had to have a plan. I re-organized my finances, paid down my debt and developed a strategy to insulate myself from the usually devastating effects of job loss. The last time an employer laid me off was a very different situation. My boss was a nervous basket-case as he handed the sentence of termination to me. I consoled him with re-assuring words and whistled as I left with my final severance cheque.

Administrator General Topics, Uncategorized 10 Key Motivators for Financial Independence, Fear of Losing a Job, Wage slave

Ghost Writing

Why start a business blog? How to start a business blog? Benefits of a business blog. Secrets of the ghost writer.

Book-keeping

Mortgage Brokers

Realtors

Insurance

Administrator Uncategorized

Gene Autry sang the song “Ghost Riders in the Sky” in the 1949 Hollywood movie “Riders in the Sky”. The song is a favourite of mine so I couldn’t resist corrupting it for the title of this page.

What is a Blog?

The word “blog” is a shortened version of “web log” meaning an online journal or diary. A blog is a type of website that contains sequential “posts” (short articles) that are usually referenced by the date they were published.

Blogs are also characterized by offering the ability for readers to enter comments. The comments in a busy blog can sometimes resemble a discussion board or forum.

Why Have a Blog?

If you are in business a blog is a useful tool for showcasing your expertise. Clients like to do business with people who are recognized experts. Readers can be casual visitors to your site or they may become subscribers. A subscriber is somebody who has all your posts sent to him automatically.

A blog also helps you build a prospect list. People who read your posts regularly are more likely to convert into clients.

Previously, you would have published a book to achieve the same goal. Interestingly, once you have published a large number of posts you might be able to convert your blog’s content into a book.

How to Start a Business Blog

Blogs fall into two categories; hosted blogs and self-hosted blogs. A hosted blog is one located on a common server along with many other blogs. A popular service is Google’s “Blogger”. Most hosted blogs are free.

A self-hosted blog is one located on a server for which you pay a fee. Questuosus (this blog) is a self-hosted blog. Self-hosted blogs provide more flexibility and are usually owned by serious business bloggers.

You can set up a free hosted blog in about 5 minutes. If you choose to use Google’s Blogger, simply go to www.blogger.com, register as a user and start blogging.

Most serious bloggers register their own domain and operate a self-hosted blog because it is simply more professional and more likely to influence potential clients.

Ghost Writing Services

Blogging can become very time-consuming. Readers expect to see new posts with great regularity. You will quickly lose your loyal readers if you post irregularly or take long breaks. If you want the benefits of owning a blog without the obligation of regular posting you need a ghost writer.

A ghost writer will generate posts for you and publish them in your name. A good ghost writer will even suggest new topics and new angles on old topics. Think about your particular area of expertise. Can you come up with over a thousand different articles on your subject? That could be what you need to keep a blog alive for just 3 years. A ghost writer can help you achieve that.

How Else Can You Benefit From a Ghost Writing Service?

Are you a good writer?  Can you captivate a reader? A good blog ghost writer has more to offer than good grammar and spelling. Writing for the web is a specialized art. There are millions of blogs and hundreds or thousands dealing with your subject. A good blog ghost writer has to attract readers before he can captivate them with compelling content.

Search Engine Optimization

Fortunately there are specialized techniques to attract visitors to one particular blog when there are a large number of similar blogs available. These techniques are called “Search Engine Optimization (SEO)”.

Benefit Summary

A good blog ghost writer can:

• Help you develop a business plan for your business blog
• Help you minimize the costs and maximize the Return On Investment
• Help you design and set up a business blog
• Help you come up with hundreds, or maybe thousands, of topics to write about
• Help attract visitors to your blog through Search Engine Optimization
• Perform the day-to-day task of writing and publishing blog posts for you

Ask yourself these questions:

• Do any of your competitors have a business blog? If the answer is “yes” they are ahead of you already. If the answer is “no” you have a chance to leap ahead of them.
• Do you have natural writing ability? Does writing come easily to you? Do words simply flow as soon as you sit down at a keyboard? If the answer is “yes” then nothing is stopping you – start blogging today. If the answer is “no” you may need a ghost writer.
• Do you have the time to be a blogger? For most business people the answer is “no”. Their time is better spent pursuing sales prospects and managing business.
• Do you have an advertising budget? I can show you how to reduce the amount of money wasted on non-productive print advertising and divert it to a productive blog.

Hiring a ghost writer is not expensive and does not involve any long term commitment. In fact, if you are already spending money on marketing your business, you may not have to incur any additional cost at all.

How to Find More Information

Now is the time to find out more. Use our contact form to make an initial, no obligation inquiry.  Just let us know how to contact you and we’ll help you decide if business blogging is right for you.

Administrator Uncategorized

Read what Questuosus is all about:
About Questuosus

Read about the owner of this blog:
About Me

Contact the blog owner

Administrator Uncategorized

Benefit: Highly Targeted Ads

Questuosus is funded by sponsorship from advertisers. Your ads on this site will be seen by readers who have a specific interest in your area of expertise. How do we know? Because “keywords” in posts and editorial pages have been selected from the most common terms used in Google searches.

How Much Does It Cost?

If you place an ad in a newspaper your money pays the costs of operating the newspaper. If you receive a poor response to your ad your money is wasted.

Imagine offering to pay for that newspaper ad on the basis of a small fixed amount for each person responding to your ad. The newspaper wouldn’t accept it because they know their ads have an extremely low ROI (Return On Investment). But that is exactly the principle on which Internet advertising is based.

Set Your Own Price

If you advertise online you are almost guaranteed a high ROI. Advertisers submit a “bid” for how much they would like to pay for their ads. Yes that’s right, there are no fixed rates. If a website (or blog) is new its owner will usually accept low bids.

As the site gains popularity, advertisers who bid higher will get more prominent ad placements than the low bidders.

How Does It Work?

You can bid in 3 ways:

1. CPC (Cost Per Click) – you pay a fixed amount for each valid click through to your site. If nobody clicks your ad, your cost is zero.
2. CPM (Cost per thousand impressions) – you pay a fixed amount for each thousand times your ad is displayed irrespective of whether anybody responds to your ad.
3. CPA (Cost Per Acquisition) – you pay a fixed amount for each qualified lead or sale resulting from a click through from Questuosus.com.

How Much Should You Bid?

• CPC bids should range from 5 cents to a dollar or more per click
• CPM bids should range from 50 cents to a dollar per thousand impressions
• CPA bids should be based on a percentage of the value of your sale

Act Now While Bids Are Low!

Please use the following form to submit your bid or request further information.

Thank you for interest in Questuosus. Your submission will be sent by email. A reply will be sent to the email address you enter in the form.

Administrator Uncategorized

The Inspiration for Questuosus
Hello, my name is John Corby. I was born in London, England in the middle of the 20th Century. When I was 29 years old I emigrated to Canada. You might say: “so what?” Well, it was that move that changed my life and inspired “Questuosus”.

A Well Educated Pauper
When I applied to the Canadian consulate in the UK for immigration papers I was asked how much money I would be taking to Canada. It was an embarassing question since I was a well-educated pauper with a good job offer in Canada.

My Story
The immigration officer shook his head and told me I would have to save for a long time if I wanted to buy a home in Canada. It was a setback but I was determined that I would make the move anyway. I would like to meet that officer again and tell him my story.

I bought my own home just six months after landing in Canada. Within my first five years in Canada I bought and sold at least a hundred other homes. I started a retail business within three years. In my third year in Canada my wife and I flipped a million and a half dollars in government bonds.

After 16 years I was self-employed, jetting around North America on my own nickel, renting luxury limousines and staying in expensive hotels. Then I got greedy. Never get greedy.

After a short stay in the “Employment Penitentiary” I was back to self-employment building financial independence through real estate and retail businesses. My story is one of ups and downs, of exhilaration and despair. Let me share it with you through this blog.

Administrator Uncategorized

Questuosus is pig-Latin for “fond of gain” or “fond of profit”. I choose to interpret it to mean “fond of wealth creation”. There is one reason, and one one reason only, in my mind why anybody should be fond of wealth. It is not about greed. It is entirely about attaining financial independence.

We can probably never be entirely financially independent. There will always be a taxman, a spouse, or a securities watchdog one step behind us. Cross the line into the “black hat” world and somebody will be waiting to give you a nice orange jumpsuit and several years of government paid food and lodging.

My favourite cartoon is a drawing of two men inside a jail cell. One says to the other: “what are you in for?”. The other prisoner replies: “creative financing … well actually, armed creative financing”.

Financial independence is not having to rely on somebody else to provide you with a paycheck. You can be financially independent without being rich. This blog is not about getting rich. You may become rich along the way but that is not the prime directive.

Finally, financial independence is a road, not a destination. Our progress along that road will be always be interrupted by a plethora of obstacles. Sometimes we need to change direction or take an alternate route. But always with eyes firmly fixed on the direction we are headed.

Administrator Uncategorized

Participate
The value of Questuosus will be greatly enhanced with your participation. There are a number of ways in which you can do this:

1. Add your comments to the blog posts
2. Join the Qcommunity mailing list
3. Submit material for an editorial page on Questuosus.com
4. Participate in Qsurveys
5. Advertise on Questuosus.com

Qcommunity Mailing List
Qcommunity is a distribution mailing list for news items relevant to the topic of seeking financial independence. It is NOT an advertising list and you will not receive investment solicitations nor business proposals. YOU WILL NOT BE SPAMMED. Your name and email address will not be sold, rented or divulged to any other party for any purpose whatsoever. The reputation of Questuosus is far more valuable than any small commercial advantage that might be gained from abusing the confidentiality of our mailing list.

You are encouraged to submit material by email to caput at questuosus dot com suitable for sending out to the Qcommunity list. Submissions should be editorial in nature and, although you may include contact links, no advertising is allowed.

Content for the Qcommunity list should be brief and must not contain images or attachments. If you have a lot of material you would like to share, then consider making a submission for a free editorial page instead.

Editorial Pages
Free space is available on Questuosus.com for editorial material relevant to the the topic of seeking financial independence. You are encouraged to submit material by email to caput at questuosus dot com. Submissions should be editorial in nature and, although you may include contact links, no advertising is allowed.

Advertise on Questuosus.com
Questuosus is operated on a volunteer basis without any underlying commercial interest (unless specifically declared in the content). The cost of operating Questuosus is supported, in part, by advertising revenues. Limited low-cost advertising space is available on this site to bona-fide individuals and organizations. If you would like to advertise on Questuosus.com please submit a bid by email to caput at questuosus dot com.

Administrator Uncategorized