8 ways to make a million bucks - 2

To get up and running quickly, he partnered with an established call center in Houston. At the same time, Mark and his wife, Shelly, worked on a business plan and recruited two former D&B colleagues, a technology expert and a training expert, to help launch the business.

Then Wilson knocked on doors to get help with funding. "Everybody was conservative about investing in a company with little or no revenue yet," he says. But he did attract the attention of a community-development venture-capital fund, which invested $700,000.

Ryla Teleservices opened in June 2002 and rapidly accumulated big-money contracts. Revenues topped $3 million in the first full year of business, more than doubled the next and were up to $17 million in 2007. After another round of financing, the company is going through another growth spurt and projects more than $30 million in revenue this year.

Why is Ryla so successful? As a domestic call center based in Ken­nesaw, Ga., the company attracts clients that have had bad experiences with call centers offshore. And some government clients, such as the Veterans Affairs and State departments, can't send their call centers out of the U.S. Plus, being an early adopter of voice-over-Internet-protocol, or VoIP, technology has helped Ryla lower costs.

But the biggest edge, says Wilson, comes from the company's workers. "We want this to be the best job they've ever had," he says.
Mark Wilson © Lara Rossignol

Mark Wilson

Turnover in the call-center industry generally runs from 60% to 70% per year. But Ryla's turnover is just 30%, and many of the company's original employees remain.

Ryla pays at least 60% of the cost of health insurance for the company's 400 regular employees, and it sponsors budgeting and personal-development seminars. Wilson keeps morale high with his regular "huddles," where he stands in the middle of a circle of workers and gives them an update on the state of the company.

"The key asset of any business is its people, and we've never lost sight of that," he says.
Millionaire Lesson No. 3
Identify trends and be patient, even if it means waiting a decade to make an investment.

Make a million in real estate?

Today? You must be kidding. But where others see a housing bust, Robert Norton sees opportunity. He sold his home for a profit of nearly $2 million last year, and he sees many similarities between today's Los Angeles housing market, where prices have dropped by about 20% over the past year, and the market when he bought that house in 1997.
Norton, 52, spent 25 years as an entertainment lawyer, working first for Jim Henson's company (of "Muppet" fame) and then Mattel. But real estate was his passion.

He'd been buying and selling inexpensive properties since the early 1980s, and watching the housing market carefully for a big investment. He pounced when he saw the price for a six-bedroom house in fashionable Bel Air drop from $1.1 million to well under $1 million. So he offered even less ($750,000), closed the deal in three days and moved in.

Then he waited, knowing that real-estate cycles in the area tend to last seven to 10 years. When he sensed a downturn coming in 2007, he sold the house for more than $2.8 million. Says Norton, "It's a matter of sitting and waiting and having the flexibility to be patient."
Norton quit his job and now focuses full time on real estate. He didn't invest all his profits right away, he says, "because prices can still come down." Now he owns a smaller home for himself in Long Beach, Calif., a vacation home in Palm Springs and three houses that he rents out while he prowls the market for attractive properties at good prices.
Robert Norton

Robert Norton

Aware that today's downturn may last a long time, Norton is careful to run the numbers before buying a rental property. "I won't buy a rental property that does not have a positive cash flow, and that includes accounting for taxes, insurance and maintenance as well as the mortgage," he says. "It has to generate as good a return on my money as other types of investments. Then any future appreciation is gravy."

Norton generally puts down 20% to avoid private mortgage insurance and to qualify for the best loan rate. But he doesn't put down any more. That way, he leverages his money. Norton is also careful to diversify his investments. For instance, the retirement accounts he built up while he was a lawyer remain untouched.

Norton's advice to real-estate investors: "The house should appeal to a broad spectrum of future buyers, and not just be something you like because it's uniquely your taste. And in a down market, the old adage 'Location, location, location' is more important than ever."
Millionaire Lesson No. 4
Success on the Internet isn't serendipitous. Don't court investors until you have adequate traffic and initial revenue.

Laurel Touby's $23 million Internet bonanza started with a time-honored tradition of social networking: the cocktail party. Touby was a freelance writer working out of her New York City apartment in 1994, and she was eager to connect with other creative professionals who spent their days trapped in cubicles, studios and home offices.
Laurel Touby © Stacy Kranitz

Laurel Touby

So she began sponsoring midweek cocktail parties at a bar in the East Village, where guests bought their own drinks and swapped business cards (and where Touby donned her trademark feather boa as a way of identifying herself to new arrivals).

The media mixers were an instant hit, and by 1996 she had built a database that included thousands of names. Touby took the growing community online the following year and dubbed it Mediabistro.com. Soon, people from all over the country were posting job listings and clamoring for local parties, and she was happy to oblige.

Continued: Growing revenues