Interview with Josh Buckley – Financial Freedom at 15

By: Michael Dunlop     Topics: Entrepreneur Interviews

Josh Buckley achieved Financial Freedom at the young age of 15! This year he has earned $xxx,xxx and can now afford to take his family on a two week cruise around the Mediterranean, any gadgets he would ever want and could still afford a small house. Joshua even won the Best Idea Award here on Retire at 21, voted as the best idea for a website out of several 100 contestants.

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Who is Josh Buckley?

I’m a 15-year-old kid from England, still in school. Just over a month a go, I sold my largest project to date for a high five-figure sum to a company that I have always had a lot of respect for. In the past four years I have been interested in making websites. At 14, I was already earning on average $x,xxx each month.

It wasn’t until the middle of 2006 until I really started making money from the Internet. I sold my first ever .com website for $200 on sitepoint. In November of that year, I went on to sell my next website for $1,000. In 2007, I decided to take my time and focus on a bigger project. Boy did that pay off. This is what resulted in the sale of Menewsha.

What inspired you to create Menewsha.com

Menewsha was a brainchild of mine when working on another site. I have always been interested in virtual communities, some of them being the first website’s I’ve visited. When I gathered the funds, I decided to turn my dream into a reality. I did all the programming and design work myself at the beginning to keep the overheads low.

Another reason for coding this myself was to further advance my knowledge. At the time of coding Menewsha, I had little coding experience other than a couple of php freelancing jobs. After my first website sale in mid 06, the company that acquired this website contracted me to code a website for them. From this, I received $x,xxx which was obviously big money for me at the time as a 14 year old kid.

What were the main challenges you faced?

Definitely the sudden urge of growth. Managing staff on a site this big was a full time job. That was something I definitely underestimated. As I am currently in full time education, this was especially stressful. To take the site further and let it thrive, it needed a person who could work full time on it. It now has full time programmers, artists and many more employees, which will take this business to a new level.

What single factor would you say helped you the most in getting to where you are today?

Perseverance, I’m not willing to stop working until I know I’ve done as much as it is humanly possible for me to do. I guess you could call it over-motivated. But, I’m willing to sacrifice whatever is needed for the success of a project. Although, this is no struggle, nor should it be. I enjoy working throughout the weekend, spending all day bossing people about! Otherwise, why would I be in this business?

What did it feel like when you were contacted to sell ?  How did you react?

It really brightened up my day. I had offers before, but they were all at the wrong time, and the wrong price. This offer was definitely at the right time. I would not be legally able to have full time employees under my name for a couple of months yet. The site was consuming so much more of my time and resources that I had to take some action.

For example, the server that the site was on was $300/month. It was definitely overdue for a server upgrade.

Tell us about the sale of your website and what you did after?

The sale of the website was relatively simple. Just a few overseas phone calls from the CEO of the company, which must have been expensive for them! The deal took roughly 24 hours, I did allow for 48. Everything went smoothly, let’s hope all future deals will go this way!

Things after the sale have been going great. I’ve been spending a lot, buying a new computer, monitor, taking my friends out for lunch and so much more.

In the picture below, you can see my $3,200 set up, including a 30” dell monitor and quad core processor.

 

Did you ever think you would be so successful?

Truthfully? Yes. I never knew it would happen this fast. However, I have always felt that I will be successful. I know where I want to go, and I know what I need to do to get there.

If you could go back in a time machine to the time when you were just getting started. What business related advice would you give yourself?

Don’t rely on fully on yourself, Profit on other people’s time. After all, time is money.

You won the best idea award on WebMakeMoney.com, how did this affect you/your website?

Thanks for that, the competition earlier in the year definitely boosted my confidence, and the size of my wallet. The money you guys sent me helped me pay staff to improve my website. It definitely helped, and the Internet marketing DVD’s you guys sent were great to watch.

Do you think that entrepreneurialism is something that is in your blood? Or is it something that can be learned?

I would like to say it can be learned, but I don’t believe it can. There are definitely certain traits that you need to have to be successful as an entrepreneur. These are things such as confidence, patience, realism, creativity and the ability to work hard. If you think you have all of these, you’re definitely on the right track.

Is there anyone that you look up to and model yourself on?

I believe that it’s really important to look up to others. I don’t necessarily “model” myself on these people, but I definitely aspire to have the success of them. I can’t ever really pick out one person that I’m aspiring to, as it’s constantly changing. However, think about somebody who makes good money from the Internet in a fair way, that would be a person who I aspire to.

What is the best thing about being a successful young entrepreneur?

Dude, that’s a tough question! I love everything about it. The financial freedom is definitely something that I love. Unlike the majority of my friends, I don’t need to worry about money anymore.

What are your plans for the future?

I’m pretty ambitious. So, I obviously have pretty big plans for the future. Sure, I’d love to make a billion and move to California. However, that’s probably never going to happen. One thing that I would like to do is make at least $1 million before I am 21, let’s check back at this interview in a couple of years time to see what happens.

I have a couple of my people working on some new projects. They should be interesting, and a lot easier now that I have the knowledge, and funds to run this business.

Other than that, I wish to build a portfolio of assets earning me a lot of passive income whilst I sleep. That is something that will take a lot of risk and practice, but I’ve got many years to do it in.

Check out Josh Buckley’s Blog