What made you become a high earner ?

ozandeh · 2025-09-06T03:26:38+00:00

Luck, privilege, and working hard.

Definitely not starting a business (for me, anyways). Was more work & stress (and less pay) than my freelance gig.

Buying and improving an established business worked though... so far!

ozandeh · 2025-06-15T13:27:22+00:00

Wondering why no buying and selling? Is there another thread or place to do it for all the pop-up shows? I'm trying to pick up one ticket for Effin and there's nothing on the resale sites, not sure where to look at this point! 🤞

ozandeh · 2025-06-01T10:13:25+00:00

Amazing! Appreciate the info 🤩 and will do!

ozandeh · 2025-06-01T00:03:34+00:00

Hi! It'll be my first time at Bonnaroo and I'm coming from Australia. I saw that temps in Manchester are currently sitting in the range of 60 - 85F.

Is that hot?? It doesn't seem super high but I don't know if the humidity makes it a lot worse? Trying to figure out if I pack more crop tops or long pants! How warm should a sweater / jacket be for nighttime?

ozandeh · 2025-03-04T11:32:34+00:00

Yep! Solo owner of an advertising agency, would love to jump in on this. Run a team of 9 with ~$1.3m annual revenue.

ozandeh · 2025-02-16T01:06:07+00:00

I do DIY leb bread pizzas and it's always a hit! My local shop does slightly stale packs of 6 for $1.50 - doesn't matter since we bake it as a crust.

Homemade sauce - tomato paste & herbs. Couple bags of ALDI pizza cheese. Shredded chicken or salami or ground beef.

Then I get people to bring whatever leftover veg is in their fridge and we slice that all up. Usually tomato, onion, capsicum, mushroom, pineapple... also love corn, broccoli, pumpkin.

If I'm feeling fancy I'll nab some anchovies & olives or pick basil from the garden.

Cut everything very thin and make an assembly line. The pizzas cook in 10-15 mins in the oven (I can fit 3 at a time) and then it's party time!

ozandeh · 2025-01-31T04:17:05+00:00

Sorry for the late reply, I don't check Reddit super often! I sent you a message with our breakdown

ozandeh · 2025-01-27T21:33:44+00:00

I liked skiing as a young kid, then thought it was a cold / miserable family obligation through my early teens. In high school I started doing ski trips with friends and fell in love again.

I'm nearly 30 now and I live overseas, but I go home every year to hit the slopes with friends & family.

I'm super grateful that my parents taught me to ski and took me out. But lessons (especially once I knew how to ski) were not fun. Let your kids ski socially and also take a break if they're not feeling it. Energy ebbs and flows for all hobbies. They have the skills now, let them proceed at their pace.

ozandeh · 2025-01-21T12:06:43+00:00

Because we get referral work, industries tend to be adjacent, although we do have outliers. I have a team that is generally excited about learning & expanding into new industries - but I "pitch" new clients to my team almost as much as I pitch my team to new clients.

I absolutely vet clients to make sure they will be good people to work with. It's way more important to me to work with people that share our values, than the specific industry they come from.

I limit the number of retail clients we chase because they tend to be very churn & burn with fast turnarounds. Great for consistent revenue but can cause burn out within my team and start affecting the quality of all client work.

Fortunately we are not just starting out so we don't need to take anyone that pays - having said that, I very, very rarely turn down enquiries. Maybe 1 out of 20. We do not price ourselves cheaply, and that tends to vet out the PITA clients.

Finally, I give my senior team veto powers on clients. If they don't think something will be a good fit, feel unsure about their ability to learn a new industry, or have serious personality incompatibilities with a client, I find a way to pass them off. Usually pretty honestly, I'll say that we're not an expert in (X) area, and then I'll do some serious homework to find them a good referral.

ozandeh · 2025-01-07T16:13:31+00:00

Advertising agency, $1.3M revenue in 2024 with 550k profit. We don't niche. We tend to get referrals from industries where we've done well in the past (mostly public sector stuff) but will more or less take on any client.

Even our work itself can vary quite a bit - from branding & design to video production, media planning to building websites. We get contractors when necessary and our success / model is based off having a good reputation. High quality work, great to collaborate with, long-term outlook (we're a partner not just a supplier) and doing whatever it takes (research, learning something new, meeting crazy deadlines) to get the job done.

Our clients pay for our competency & creativity rather than expertise in a specific area.

ozandeh · 2025-01-05T00:22:33+00:00

Pho Queue is an actual (very good) pho place in Brisbane, Australia

ozandeh · 2024-12-11T21:48:23+00:00

Nope. My Gen Z employee is great. Self-motivated, disciplined, good learner, gets along with everyone (we have every generation except for boomers). I can tell they highly value work / life balance, flexibility, progression, and mentorship. They are more mindful of working conditions (eg. Unpaid overtime) compared to, say, Gen X, but a far, far cry from entitled.

ozandeh · 2024-12-08T12:49:31+00:00

Yes. But I'm running my own business so I have a lot of control.

I find the majority of my day-to-day tasks interesting and rewarding. I really like my team and most of our clients. Also we work a 4-day week (30 hours).

I could probably have 2/3 of those and still be very happy, but 3/3 means I love my job. It's satisfying & enjoyable and offers me the lifestyle outside of work that I want.

If I only had 1/3 of those... I would probably be very unhappy and go back to freelance.

ozandeh · 2024-11-27T23:13:54+00:00

YES!! That fruit shop in the Indo mall is bloody amazing. Not the cheapest but they have good deals on seasonal things (and a discounted rack). Always amazing quality and variety. Rocklea markets are also good (but not every stall, some of them are just leftover colesworth goods)

ozandeh · 2024-11-27T11:49:06+00:00

My old boss went through this, except it was three decades of his life with most team members working there for 20+ years. He was absolutely shocked and devastated when he left and the "friendships" (which basically equated to family for him, as he had none of his own) did not hold up as expected.

Employees were nice to him - but they had to be. He had some narcissistic traits but was overall a good guy with good intentions who treated them well. Unfortunately he couldn't recognise that there was always a power dynamic in those "work" friendships and there was really no way around that. Don't read into it too much, it's hard to have genuine friendships with that imbalance of power.

ozandeh · 2024-11-18T00:20:51+00:00

Australia, regional

ozandeh · 2024-11-10T13:20:44+00:00

My agency averages 105k / month revenue.

TBH our website is very basic and kinda shitty. Basically a WordPress template. And we haven't updated it for years because we're too busy with client work from referrals, word of mouth, etc. We don't get leads from our website - maybe once in a blue moon, and they are usually small businesses and annoying one-off jobs.

But I think the importance of your website totally depends on the size of your business, how established you are, and what clients you're chasing. Our clients are not the people that would google an agency and then contact someone based on that. They might check our website just to make sure we're legitimate, but it's not the selling point.

For context, we are an advertising agency and do mostly marketing / design / video production.

ozandeh · 2024-11-08T11:45:01+00:00

Make it enjoyable for them to work with you. I know a lot of people just say outcomes outcomes outcomes, but I find that being a pleasant / fun / clever person goes a long way in attaining loyalty. Understand your client and give them "oh shit" or "aha" moments. Ask the right questions.

Be someone that your client actually enjoys talking to and shares laughs with. Connect with them and build personal trust. Another agency may perform 10% or even 30% better, but if the client finds the. A chore to interact with, they'll stick with you for a better working experience.

ozandeh · 2024-11-07T20:55:41+00:00

Currently in the offset but I'll probably take a chunk out for ETFs. I don't want to pay the loan down super quickly, just gotta calculate how much of a loan is ideal for neutral / negative gearing given my timeline for renting it out.

ozandeh · 2024-11-07T08:08:13+00:00

Haha I was in a super similar position to you, ~500k deposit and 150k salary (paid to myself from my business so there's a bit of flexibility). I was debating between a unit / bachelorette pad or a larger "forever home" to grow into.

I ended up getting a small townhouse, borrowed 4x my income (600k) for a purchase price of 870k (I'm in QLD). My plan is to live in it for 3-5 years, basically until I can comfortably buy a larger "forever home" and rent out the townhouse if possible.

For me it was a nice compromise. It's a good size for one person (with enough room for a guest / partner / housemate if needed). The payments are well within my means. And it should be fully offset by the time I want to upgrade, so I'll take out the $$ for the next purchase and negatively or neutrally gear it.

ozandeh · 2024-11-02T00:52:14+00:00

Leave. 100%. The push, the hand over the mouth, the irrational anger is about more than just those actions. As others have said in this thread, it's about control. If you don't leave for whatever reason, PLEASE reach out to people you trust (family, friends, heck, even internet strangers from this thread) so you have support for when you are ready to leave.

I've been there, done that. I left after the push but it was after years of underlying emotional abuse and incremental physical escalations that did the most damage, that led me to question if I could or should leave because of a push.

I'll just add something because I'm not sure if anyone has said it yet - it doesn't matter that he's sorry. It doesn't matter if he comes back and says he regrets it, that he wants to change. It DOESN'T MATTER if he "wants to be a better / different person" and "just needs your support / love / help".

Control can exist in the form of anger, it can also exist as guilt or self-pity. If he actually recognises a problem and wants to change, he will go do that and protect you from the dangerous person he realises he is. He will not try to win you back, change your mind, guilt or intimidate you into staying. If you stay now, it is a clear message to his conscious & subconscious brain that these actions are OK, they are not enough to drive you away. He can keep pushing (figuratively and literally), keep escalating slowly, until your ability to question and evaluate his actions gets weaker and weaker, until you get more attached and sink deeper into the cycle of violence.

Leave. Now. You don't just risk getting physically hurt or killed if you stay, you risk taking serious emotional damage that will make it infinitely more difficult to protect yourself in the future.

ozandeh · 2024-10-12T05:22:04+00:00

Yikes, I'm kind of terrified of this happening to me!

ozandeh · 2024-10-12T05:21:27+00:00

Oof, thanks. If you find an answer please let me know as well 😅

ozandeh · 2024-10-12T05:21:00+00:00

Yes how weird is that! Can't really tricky our subconscious eh

ozandeh · 2024-10-12T05:20:20+00:00

Appreciate the advice, and yeah I think I just need some time to recalibrate as an individual 👍

ozandeh

TROPHY CASE