Some people may know, some may not but before the end of this month I’m going to live in South Africa. ViperChill is a registered LLC in the UK which I will be terminating upon arrival in SA, where I’m going to be working for a large Digital Marketing company known as BlueSouth.

Some of the selling points are that I will be working with some amazing Fortune Companies, just check this page and look at the header for some examples. A few huge companies aren’t included that I would like to share but certain terms restrict me from doing so (shame).

What I will be Doing and How I got the Job

Firstly I just want to say that I was in no means looking for a job. I do / did Internet Marketing for others in all the spare time I had from going out and being in College (I’ve just had to quit college to take this job). I will be heading up the Social Media operations for the company, quite a big step for someone who is only 18 years of age but I’m ready for the challenge and the experience.

I got offered the job around 6 weeks ago, through a contact of mine who is their head of SEO (he is an amazing SEO). There’s no doubt theres some great staff there and the opportunity to pretty much change my life didn’t take much consideration, I had decided to quit college and go and live in South Africa in less than 24 hours, yes…my family were quite surprised.

What about ViperChill?

ViperChill is a company I started at the age of 17 (registered when I was 18, working at 17 as a sole-trader) and I’ve been doing quite well, some achievements can be found here. As stated, the company will no longer be a registered company as of next month and with that in mind and due to the fact I’ll no longer be in England I cancelled contracts with all my current clients, something that wasn’t easy but some were very understanding.

My goal in life is still to run my own company (with others) so ViperChill certainly won’t be disappearing. I wish I had a CEO so I could do all the social media work as it’s pretty hard wearing all the hats and trying to convince others you know what you are doing and don’t need a team behind you.

Final Words

I will be in South Africa until the end of December, working for Bluesouth. I will then decide if i want to stay on and go back to SA or re-register my company here in the UK, take out a loan and make a real go of things now that education isn’t an issue.

Another option (possible) would be to work for another company either here in the UK or in the States. There’s a few jobs available in the UK which would be quite a safety net but I plan on staying in South Africa for quite a while, not only for the experience, people and the weather, but for the opportunity.

I will still be blogging constantly this month but after that I will have no idea how often I can update. I want to thank everyone I’ve spoke too and has given me support on this journey, all help was appreciated and I hope to meet you all at SMX or another industry conference one day.

Special Thanks

Mark McNeece for letting me bug him when I first started SEO
Dean Martin for helping me with ViperChill clients and coding our Client area free of charge (I did get him some great rankings in return though )
Tamar Weinberg for Producing some great Digg Content and our Chat on Facebook
Darren Rowse for checking out my content and giving it some love
Lyndon Antcliff for making me think I might be making a mistake (just kidding)
Wendy Piersall for being the coolest mom online and giving me a chance to write for her readers
Chris & Danielle Winfield for our conversations on MSN and their support
Barry Schwartz for being crazy enough to write about me on his blog and producing the Pulse which I listen to
Shana Albert who has been a great listener, not sure where she would like the link though
Danny Sullivan for being one of the few brits people respect (j/k) and for starting Sphinn
PlanetC1 for his support and his great energy around the web
SiteVisibility for being one of the only transparent IM companies in the UK
SEOmoz for leading the way in bringing transparency to the industry
…and finally the BlueSouth Team for giving me something to do over the next few months

This is just the beginning…

Do you ever wonder how these people we have heard of who have become such a success in their respective industries actually started out? Well I do…so I went on a simple mission to ask them; and Im honoured that I received some great responses. This post may turn into a 2 parter if I get more responses but we’ll see:

Basically I asked people:

How did You get started operating as a business / sole trader and get started in doing what you do?

Wendy Piersall:

There’s really only a few ways to get it done:

Use your savings

Borrow money

Start tiny, reinvest every cent, and do everything yourself (that’s what I’m doing and it’s very inefficient – I won’t make the same mistake again)

We also burned through our savings in the process, and some people would think it is too much of a risk. Personally, I think it’s much more risky to work in a ungratifying job while never living up to your true potential… but that’s just me!!

Barry Schwartz:

My story goes back to high school. My twin brother, Ronnie, started messing around making web sites. Back then, web sites were really bare. So he made a site for a local chinese store. Then other companies started to ask him to make sites for them. After high school, we formalized the business and register the name RustyBrick. The name was thought up in class, by my brother, based on his initials - RBS (RustyBrickSoftware). We dropped the software and went with RustyBrick. Throughout college, we took on some larger contracts - mostly through connections. We converted a garage into an office, hired our first employee. We took on more contracts, more work and grew out of the garage, taking on office space to where we are now. We have eleven full time employees and one part timer.

One thing remains the same. We always focus on the core development. I am the only “sales person” in the office, and I hate selling. In fact, we only get business through word of mouth and even much of that we turn down. We are in a great position as a company right now. And it all happened organically - purely out of demand.

Jeremy Schoemaker:

Basically my accounting started out just me doing it. I used quickbooks to keep track of all stuff and kept all the receipts in a box. I also took pictures of all expenses to the home that could be questionable to a auditor. The first year ShoeMoney Media Group was in business we had them done by H&R block. The books the first year were pretty easy because there were no employees other then myself and I never took a salary… so no taxes had to be paid and since we were a s-class corporation we got back a bunch of taxes from our day jobs (I was actually on unemployment the first 3 months I started ShoeMoney Media Group).

Jan 1 of the next year I started taking a salary and we got an accountant to pay the quarterly taxes. He was a personal accountant just a mom and pop shop. He gave us some decent advice but he was really lazy and even made us file for a extension cause he was so unprepared. that really sucked. I mistakenly thought the extension meant that we did not have to pay taxes a few extra months so I invested the money in a 3 month cd that was supposed to be paid in taxes…. mistake. I had to borrow like 90k from a friend to pay taxes for a few months until we could cash in the CD (and for that I bought them a new computer/laptop and other stuff with amazon gift certificates i saved up.

I fired that jackass and that was when I made susan a full time employee. Also by this time we had like 3 corporations and there were a lot of expenses. We went with a large accounting firm out of omaha (I think the biggest in nebraska) and they charged us like a shitload… I mean it was like 25k that year just to do our taxes. Also this company did not at anytime point out any ways to save money. I just never got the feeling they were working for us.

So after that year I fired them and finally found the greatest accounting firm ever for a internet biz in lutz & company. They also own a web hosting company so they have a clue about what I am doing. We were super impressed with them in the first month they found a Nebraska State tax credit for some stuff where we got almost 10,000$ PER COMPANY back and this was a credit not a deduction so it really rocked. They also saved us even more money with various credits and deductions and also advised us with outgoing cash-flow. I think they SAVED us about 50k total and only charged us around 12k to do our taxes. I know not every year will be like that but man… Its true what they say good accountants are worth there cost. It just takes a while to find them. They also own a web hosting company so they have a clue about what I am doing. We were super impressed with them in the first month they found a Nebraska State tax credit for some stuff where we got almost 10,000$ PER COMPANY back and this was a credit not a deduction so it really rocked. They also saved us even more money with various credits and deductions and also advised us with outgoing cash-flow. I think they SAVED us about 50k total and only charged us around 12k to do our taxes. I know not every year will be like that but man… Its true what they say good accountants are worth there cost. It just takes a while to find them.

I kept this natural so you could get a real interesting response like I had hoped after posing the questions. Great appreciation goes out to Wendy, Barry and Jeremy for giving a response and It was an interesting read for me personally so hopefully it helps give advice to others out there who need inspiration like we all do sometimes.

P.S 3 more days and I’m off to Vietnam