8 ways to make a million bucks - 3

At that point, Mediabistro was still a hobby, and Touby was supporting herself by freelance writing. In mid-1999, she began asking people who posted job ads on her site to send $100 per listing to a post office box. She received $2,200 the first month -- not bad, she told herself.

Two months later, she collected more than $3,800. By the end of 1999 she had taken in more than $65,000 -- nearly twice her earnings as a writer. "That's when I realized that I'd better invest in this baby," says Touby, 45.

So she tapped contacts to help her write a business plan and find in­vestors. By 2000, she had lined up $1 million commitments from two investors in exchange for an ownership share. Mediabistro managed to weather the bursting of the dot-com bubble, the stock market's nose dive and the 9/11 terrorist attacks. Frugal with her investors' money, Touby created a new revenue source by offering online classes and seminars for a fee.

Last year, Jupitermedia bought Mediabistro -- and its robust online traffic of 7 million page views a month -- for $23 million. Touby's personal share is $12 million before taxes -- and more if future financial goals are met.

She and her husband, journalist Jon Fine, continue to live in their Brooklyn apartment while searching for a loft in Manhattan. "After getting this huge amount of money," she says, "we want to be careful not to lose it."
Millionaire Lesson No. 5
Plan for the very long term. Gary Gardelli waited two years to get the job he wanted and more than 30 years for the payoff.

Gary Gardelli chose his career path at age 4.

"I had a little red fire engine with push pedals and a bell," says Gardelli, now 55, "and that's pretty much when I decided what I wanted to do."

In junior high school, he realized an added benefit to being a firefighter: the pension. And then there's the job security. Economies boom and wane, but protection from fires is a basic, universal need.
Gary and Cindy Gardelli © Scogin Mayo

Gary and Cindy Gardelli

At age 20, Gardelli studied fire departments in the Denver area, including their benefits and retirement plans. He picked suburban Bancroft, Colo., as a place to live and work and attended college for two years while waiting to be accepted for training.

Then he stayed put for 31 years and seven months. "It was better than I ever thought it could be," says Gardelli, who turned down mana­gerial promotions so he could keep fighting fires. "I liked being one of the guys in the trenches. I made lieutenant, and that's where I stayed."

For most of his working years, Gardelli knew exactly when he would retire --November 2006 -- because that's when a lump-sum pension payout would amount to $1 million. He decided to take the lump sum because the lifetime-payment option offered skimpy survivor benefits to his wife, Cindy, in the event that he died first. "This way," he says, "it's all hers."

Managing $1 million is a big responsibility, especially when you retire at age 54 and want the money to last for perhaps 40 years. Gardelli already had experience investing Cindy's retirement-plan rollover when she left firefighting eight years ago. Plus, he amassed about $100,000 in his employer-matched 401(a) plan, a tax-deferred plan for public-sector employees.
Gardelli worked with a financial planner to invest the money, gradually putting it in a diversified portfolio, composed mostly of stock funds, and keeping some in a guaranteed account that earns about 5%. "I'm taking it slow and easy," he says.

Even as millionaires, he and Cindy still look for ways to save money.

"We play lots of golf, ride the motorcycle, goof off," says Gary, who saves about $5,000 in annual golf-course fees by working six hours a week as a golf-course marshal.

Cindy works two days a week in a veterinary clinic, which provides them with free care for their three fox terriers and Chihuahua.

Says Gary, "We're having so much fun."
Millionaire Lesson No. 6
Combining an old way of doing things with a popular new trend will resonate with customers and clients.

Cyd Szymanski knows how to hurl an egg, a skill she perfected as a farm kid in southwestern Missouri. (Aim for the barn post, she says, the better to splatter the guts, and hope they hit your brother.) She also knows how to score a breakthrough in the tradition-bound egg industry.
Cyd Szymanski © Ellen Jaskol

Cyd Szymanski

Szymanski turned a foundering startup called Nest Fresh into a company with sales of more than $5 million. In the process, she showed her competitors -- and members of her own family -- that cage-free chicken eggs could be profitable.

"I wasn't the first, but I was darned close," Szymanski says. "Soon, all the big guys jumped on the bandwagon."

When Szymanski, 51, was growing up, most egg farmers considered caged chickens to be "the modern way, the good and positive way," she says. That included her grandfather and uncle, who then owned one of the biggest egg producers in the U.S.

By 1991, however, her father and brother had hatched a plan to produce cage-free eggs in Colorado. Szymanski left her job as a hospital marketing director and moved to Denver to join them. Their distributor reneged, leaving the business $60,000 in debt. Her father and brother walked away from the enterprise.
Continued: Packed the eggs herself