My background is in technology - specifically Business Intelligence and Data Engineering but throughout my personal and professional work experience, I've created and automated some pretty powerful and robust workbooks and dashboards (Metrics/KPI reporting) using Excel.

They take jobs in the field of their choice (technology, real estate, retail, etc), learn the business from the inside out, save some startup capital and THEN venture out on their own.The other benefit of this methodology is that if you fail, you're not going to have to flip burgers to pay your rent...you'll still have skills to go back and either try again or rebuild your war-chest for the next venture.

Real estate prices in cities are generally multiples higher than in remote areas. EG Boston, New York, San Francisco, Chicago, DC, Seattle, Austin, etc etc prices are higher than small towns far from major metropolit...

I am wondering whether it would be advantageous to be listed in the yellow pages (advertising apartments for rent) -- I am i suburban central Maine, which is about 5 years behind, for example, Massachussets as far as technology use.

We also use a ton of technology to monitor and track jobs as well as speed up processes that can get slowed down by having so many deals going at one time.

wow... technology...

Austin is a gov-mint and technology-based economy.

What happens more often than not is the other way around.I am not sayin this applies to you Rich, as clearly it doesn't, but I know MANY people who are successful, particularly in the technology industry, who started but did not finish school and really wish they did.

It's way more open, but I'm also a computer programmer and have a passion for technology.

I too am in Information Technology - I work as a Sys Admin for a Financial services firm here in NYC.