CubeSlacker: What are you favorite things about being self-employed?
Trey: #1: Lack of shaving! #2: My dress code. #3 My boss.
Those are the obvious. However, I guess it feels good to control your destiny so to speak. If I don’t reply to my customers and my associates customers… I lose them as a future customer. If I don’t do the work, I don’t get paid. I like the fact that everything is up to me. There is nothing that controls my success and me, but myself.
CubeSlacker: What are some of the challenges with owning your own company?
Trey: Well, there are many. I would start with the actual startup. Getting off the ground is obviously step 1 and this is no easy task. It is simple to say… “I am good at this and I am going to start a company doing so”, but actually getting your list of clients and making your mortgage payment is something much harder.
It is really easy to actually start a corporation; just $150 at
www.legalzoom.com will get it done. Having more work than you can handle takes time, effort, and a lot of work.
CubeSlacker: Give us some background about your job history.
Trey: Well I am a geek at heart. Don’t let the DJ side fool you. I really started loving computers and manipulating them at an early age. My first jobs were not… but since I was 20 I have had all but one technical job. I cannot help it. The more technical and skilled I was the less that I was messed with. Now, I am my own boss and nothing is better than that.
My first “W-2” job was at Burger King. I walked there and worked until I had enough money to buy a car. I was 15.
I knew that I would work with computers in some way when I was suspended from school in 8
th grade. I was suspended because I would hack the Apple 2e computer programs in class and make the screens say these really nasty things. They knew it was me and I could only smile when they asked me about it.
My job list varies as much as anyone else… but the pattern keeps pointing to geeky stuff in general. Now for the last 7 years it is all boring techy stuff.
CubeSlacker: Tell us about some of your successes.
Trey: I actually started a company with some friends of mine when I was 21. We knew some people and landed a contract to build PC’s for Lockheed Martin. We actually twisted that into Internet marketing and CGI programming. We were in business for about a year and sold off some pretty cool programs. It was pretty awesome.
CubeSlacker: You’ve had a lot of jobs. Tell us about the worst ones.
Trey: Ahh… the fun stuff for this interview…
I have had a ton of jobs, all mostly technical. However, I have had my share of doozies…
My first job was at a local video store. I was 13 years old. The place was run by two of the nicest lesbians I have ever met. For some reason they loved me. Whenever I would come in to rent ‘Spaceballs’ for my Beta machine they would always talk to me. I ended up making $3 an hour to pass out flyers and stamp their member mailings. It was actually great. From there I had my ups and downs.
I think my worst job was working for a cosmetic surgery company. It actually started off as exclusively a hair transplant company. It then grew into all kinds of cosmetic surgery. I worked in the call center that tried to hook patients into coming in for a consult after they watched the lame infomercial. It was AWFUL! I was 18 and could not relate or care about any of that shit. I mean try to make a 18 year old care about the bald guy who called at 1am and to try to talk him into spending $3k that he did not have on his bald head. It was worse than that though. I mean the people that I worked for were really annoying. I am not sure what they expected from me, but I really did not want to talk to the heavy breathing lady about lipo… it was just not in my blood.
I also sold computer at retail locations, fixed laser printers, served tables, the dreaded telemarketing… ohh… which brings up a great story. I was on a predictive dialer, the name comes up on the screen “Okurioditoududu”… I just started laughing at the guy in the phone and walked out. Five days was enough of that… but was worth the memory of that I guess.
Some other ones… well… data entry, computer repair, network admin, etc.
