Things I've learned from others in business and some about myself and business

At the beginning of the year I wrote down the goal that I wanted to make 50k.  Currently I'm at around 42k-45k depending on whether you include health savings account money and 401k stuff that I'm foregoing.  What I decided to do at the first of the year was get a second job to bridge the gap and hopefully meet my goal.  The second job jerked me around a little bit and so I ended up quiting after just a couple months.  Part of the reason I quit was because I wanted to dedicate some time to learning new skills, specifically coding for computers and building apps.  I figured that if I could increase my skills, thank you Jim Roan, I could command a higher paying position within my company or perhaps elsewhere.

 

After some introspection and advice I came to realize that if I were to work to get a higher paying job that I'd still be at another job and not earning the type of money I want to earn and know I can earn.  With that in mind I was left with starting a business.  One thing I did to bridge the gap on linkedin.com was to increase my skills/marketability by building a course on udemy.com.  See/sign up for it here if you'd like.  https://www.udemy.com/easy-self-reliance-and-barter-skills/ 

 

After I came to that realization my brother chipped in and gave me a bunch of course material to earn1k.  See/sign up here if you're interested.  http://earn1k.com/  As seen in the Wall Street Journal...

 

One concept that I picked up from this guy and one other, Tim Ferris, is that one ought to validate their ideas before the jump into any business venture.  I hadn't done that with the course I built and...it is just sitting there, which I'm actually ok with cause it was something I was working on to increase my marketability for getting another position here or elsewhere, but hadn't actually tried to validate and upon further research doesn't appear the format that I went about doing it was ideal.  Lesson learned.

 

One thing I did/do like about informational products is that they're quite a bit of work to get started/built initially, again AFTER it is validated, but once done they hopefully sell themselves and can convert into a constant cashflow stream for my family. 

 

I started doing some thinking about all the ideas I had.  For starters they were in a million places.  

 

 On my flash drive.  On my laptop.  On my ipod note thing.  I've since consolidated all my ideas and need to set aside a time to go through them all.  One thing I want to do is go through the earn 1k material and come up with more ideas.

 

At this time my wife likes doing crafts.  She has submitted a couple ideas to a site that does flash sales where they sell items at a discount to their email list.  Her first two ideas didn't get accepted.  The third one did however about a month or so ago.  They ran her product, see here https://www.etsy.com/listing/165274395/the-world-is-your-playground-24-x-36?ref=af_shop_order, and she almost sold out of everything.  97 of 100 items sold.  She also ended up selling one more on the previous link and she sold another one to a friend of ours last night for 99 out of 100. 

 

One thing I love about her product/business is that it also jives with one of Tim Ferris' main rules, a simple FAQ.  He advises against any business that can't easily answer any customer issues with a simple one page FAQ.  Reason being is that anything more complex than that will need a bajillion customer service reps (more overhead) to answer the endless list of questions.  More questions = more problems, complaints, returns, and less repeat business.

 

I also love that she again did the work once, the product sells itself, and she is rolling in dough.  I think I may advise her to try and figure out how to automate the process for the next round.  That way it is all money coming in, but she doesn't have to do any of the legwork for getting the product out the door once it is sold.  Maybe we could hire out her sisters or something to do it.

 

With her experience I realize that really I don't want to be involved in service based businesses myself.  Now it isn't the worst thing ever and maybe I'd be more willing to do it once the product based business was covering my expenses and I'd finished traveling/seeing/doing everything I want to do and am back at home.  Larry Ellison is a billionaire who mascarades his business around as a product when in fact it is both a product and a service.  Once product is bought he has his team go in and install this and do that and and and...a service side to his product business.

 

One thing I learned or realized or finally had sink in is that if I, or my employees aren't working on the service we provide, then we aren't getting paid, whereas a product just ships out and I'd get paid.  With that in mind I've already started nixing business ideas that aren't product based or that can be automated/outsourced easily and cheaply.

 

Another concept I've come across is vanity metrics.  It was actually recommended to me to read the book, but after hearing the brief synopsis I'm not sure I need to read it.  Basically it is just calling out "busy work" and measuring things that have nothing to do with earning more money or improving anything.  I think this concept could be applied to not just businesses already up and running, but those that are building a product.  One may say, "hey in your barter course you need to cover this and that."  "Ok!  Cool!  I will do that."  Problem is these things may not have been validated in the first place to be valid and one would feel like they're accomplishing things when in fact they're just doing busy work and feeling good about themselves and something that is no good in the first place. 

 

Remit talks about this in his earn 1k course.  He says to NOT throw a bunch of things against the wall and see what sticks.  Building up a bunch of twitter followers for the local garbage business doesn't really matter.  Why?  Cause we already know what they're doing.  Really I think people just want to know how much it is going to cost to pick up their garbage and the times they're coming and then that it gets done.  I would say maybe people would be interested to see what crazy things the garbage man finds in the trash, but is that going to help them get more customers.  Not so sure. 

 

One idea I had was to help list businesses on the local classified site, everyday, three times a day to avoid it falling to the back of the search results.  I did vanity calling right at the very beginning.  I was calling, to look busy and feel good about myself, when I hadn't even done scripting of general questions/responses, and I quickly realized I wasn't helping myself.  Once corrected I was able to validate things much quicker and move on from the idea.

 

My mom is turning into a mogul herself in her spare time.  She's joined a company that is earning her 2-300 a month on the side each month.  She reported to me that she just had her best month last month.  That is pretty dang cool.  Here is my mom, the lady who changed my diaper who knows how many times, and the diapers of my 5 other siblings, who didn't quite have the opportunity to finish schooling till after the kids were out of the house and is now working on a side business and doing well.  I advised that she figure out which of all the avenues would work best for building her business instead of keeping her busy doing things that don't add to the bottom line.  Her business is one of awareness, education, and networking with others.  I hope she's able to avoid busy vanity work and find the things that work best for her.  We'll see what happens.  Fortunately for her my dad has uber business experience and will be able to share with her what would work best and what wouldn't so she ought to be ok and do well after a while.  I'm excited to see how it goes.

Speed Reading link in case you're interested

http://www.fourhourworkweek.com/blog/2009/07/30/speed-reading-and-accelerated-learning/

This is the exact link I followed to increase my speed.  Last night I did some recordings and may make a speed reading course as an app...

Dude what's the deal with gold and silver?

I very easily think gold (silver) could go much much lower in dollar terms.  I'm pretty sure the gold/silver book talks about ratio investing.  That form of analysis makes a lot of sense to me in gauging real values of things.  While gold may go to $700, what is it terms of ratio investing when comparing it to oil or the nasdaw, etc. 

 

I listened to an interview a while ago with the hedge fund manager of the year from like 1999.  The guy predicts gold going to at least $1,100 an ounce so about another 200 from where we're at and way below what the price of gold was then (I can't remember when I listened to the interview).  I think it is wise to listen to people like that.  Top of their class, whether a bear or a bull.  It helps put things into perspective and gives you both sides of the coin to consider. 

 

What is interesting is doing that AND reading up on the past brethren, i'm talking like brigham young brethren and what not.  I've read stuff from the brethren that state that men will be speculators in the last days.  I think a big part of that is because of interest rates being at zero and people getting clobbered with their purchasing power and so they're chasing any gain they can get.  It used to be that simply saving, a carpenter, with a wife and 8 kids at home, could work, pay for college for all the kids, and retire no problem.  Try that today.  Not gonna happen.  Hence speculation and chasing yield in crazy ways that may or may not pan out.

 

just today I listened to an interview of two gold/silver bugs and they stated that the elite are pumping things that aren't real, i.e. stock market and much of real estate, and squashing real things to "shake out weak hands".  Once done to their wishes they'll take advantage, rothschild style, by buying up cheap "english bonds" or gold/silver.

 

Just today my bro who is also heavily invested in precious metals talked about diversifying.  Sure.  I get it.  No yield.  Not getting ahead with these non-cash flowing assets.  For reals it bugs/makes no sense.  What I think though in my head, "don't speculate and beat the rush, panic now".  One day you won't be able to get gold/silver.  I think before that day comes though that Brigham young's prophecy will be fulfilled first that says a wheelbarrow of gold won't buy you wheat.  Again food/water storage...NOT exciting, not sexy, not giving you a yield. 

 

Yesterday we talked about what we were thankful for in elder's quorum.  I said, among other things, I was thankful for the prophets in that they basically have prescribed for us a safe investing strategy.  Food storage, and get out of debt, and then invest in yourself via education/skills training to be able to provide more. 

 

6 weeks ago I went to lunch with a friend who is a lawyer, has a few businesses/makes bank.  He wishes the church would teach about good debt/bad debt.  Honestly I think the spirit will do that for people if they're humble/will listen/see.  "Ears to hear and eyes to see"  One of my brothers read that "none dare call it conspiracy" book a long time ago, but thought, "If it is a worldwide conspiracy, how come nobody comes out and says so, i.e. snitches?"  He now says "It could be, just that on certain levels the henchmen don't know every part of the conspiracy, but just theirs and even then they may not link it together as a huge conspiracy anyways."

 

So...yes silver/gold could get squashed quite a bit more, i.e. a huge deflationary period before the collapse, which i'm loving right now by the way in the form of cheaper gas.  I think mike predicts that in his book too.  I KNOW he has in additional video's on his website.  Pretty crazy stuff. 

London and acid reflux

My daughter London...weighs 9lbs 8 oz and is 23" long. he said again, she is going to be TALL! lol

he felt around and did a couple things to see what he thought and right away she spit up, even tho it had been like an hour and a half since she had eaten so right away he knew thats what was going on. he gave me a perscription for a drop to give her twice a day and said that should help. ill google it before we use it but it was onyl 3 bucks so i just had it filled. 

My wife is a budding mogul!

Ashlee is selling this poster https://www.etsy.com/listing/165274395/the-world-is-your-playground-24-x-36?ref=af_shop_order

 

She's sold two on etsy and 83 on this daily deals flash site.  She's probably netted about $600 since she's had it up.  Pretty cool stuff.  My wife is a mogul!

http://brickyardbuffalo.com/world-map-poster.html#.UpOU08RzE3k

Speed Reading

I'm going to try and increase my reading speed.  I tested myself twice last night and came up with reading about 297 words per minute.  That is on the higher end of average, average being 2-300 words per minute.  Then I did an exercise to increase my reading speed.  After the exercise I tested myself again...407 words per minute.  That puts me in the top 1% of the entire population for reading speed.  I picked a goal of reading at 1,000 words per minute.  Get this.  To get to that rate you have to practice reading at...3,000 words per minute.  At 1,000 words per minute I could read a 200 page book in 25 minutes.  Whereas right now it will take me 4 hours and 21 minutes to read.  I'm going to try and improve and see if I can't increase my speed.  Who wouldn't love increasing their speed, while maintaining comprehension/enjoyment?  You'd be able to experience many more stories and insights that way so i'll keep you posted.

My worst nightmare

Four hour work week questions

I’d quit working at England logistics and suddenly my car would be in an accident and would be totaled.  We only have liability and so the car would be a total loss.  We’d have to suddenly get another one with a car loan or pay cash, which both would drastically lower our monthly income and we may not be able to afford even just food for groceries and may drawn down our savings significantly. Permanent impact on a scale from 1-10, 2 as we’d just buy a beater or a cheaper ngv that cost significantly less in gas costs.  Not likely to happen as we’re both pretty cautious drivers.

We’d have to start eating our food storage since my/our business wasn’t making enough money to buy groceries and then the economy would implode and we’d have no food to eat when we really needed it and we would’ve been pissed/scared we didn’t just play it safe and stay at the job. Permanent impact on a scale from 1-10, 3 as we may not eat all our food storage and we could use the bishop’s storehouse to offset some of the costs of food if needed and we could build up our store again with a few months of dedicated savings.  Not likely as we could cut back our costs and could find part time work.

We’d have some major medical issues with London or ourselves and couldn’t afford to pay for anything since the hospital bills were so high since we didn’t have health insurance.  Permanent impact on a scale from 1-10, 4 as we’d have to declare bankruptcy and that’d damage my credit history.  Once done though we could rebuild it and be back to good credit standing in 3-5 years.  Possible to happen, but not likely as we all seem to have a pretty good clear bill of health.

Any business wouldn’t bring in enough income to pay our rent and we’d either be late on it or we’d have to dip into savings again to pay for everything.  Eventually when all these things hit at once we wouldn’t have any money to pay for anything and we’d have to move back home, with mom and dad of course paying for the cost of the move out of their own pocket.  Permanent impact on a scale from 1-10, 3 as we could quickly realize we’re not making enough and are uncomfortable with the drawdown of our savings and so I’d go back to work and so would Ashlee.  May happen and is the most likely thing to happen out of all the things mentioned.

  Outcome/benefits of more probable scenarios of leaving England would be that I could wake up when I wanted with my wife and kids.  I’d be able to always get adequate rest.  I’d be working on things that I wanted to be working on and dealing with people I’d have a lot more control over with who I’d be dealing with.  Ashlee may be able to help me work on the business. I’d be able to build synergy with people/businesses that I’d like to build synergy with.  I’d be more fulfilled since I’d be doing what I wanted and not what my boss or his boss wanted.  I’d be able to work from a logical point of view instead of ignoring reality on many things.  I could institute failure in my business and for my employees.  I’d quickly learn what works in business and what doesn’t, whereas now I only know a bunch of theory.  I’d be able to hire other people and help them get ahead in business.  It is possible that one or more of the businesses I work on would include working with my family and friends, which would be awesome to do.  I’d have more confidence.  I’d be able to prove the haters wrong.

      If I got fired today I’d immediately go through all my business ideas myself and with family and pick which ones would be best.  Then I’d validate them.  I may even ask family to invest a small amount of money into the most promising ideas if they wanted in.  If I had to get back to work as a credit analyst I could do so as I’ve already been offered jobs for just such a situation and I’d probably get hired back on at a company that had much better health insurance anyways and so I’d probably come out ahead anyways.

    

    I don’t have my fyf.  I don’t know if any of the ideas I have will actually make money as they’re untested or I’m in the wrong season of the year to start them, those that are seasonal being businesses that require manual labor and that I be there.

“What we fear to do the most is the thing we most need to do.”

     

      Financially I’m not going anywhere fast at England.  They’ve already told me that I’m not getting any more raises beyond that big one I got a year or so ago aside from the yearly increase one I’d be getting going forward.  I didn’t get hired on for the position of credit manager that I’d be perfect for.  They’re not looking to increase my position at that company.  Emotionally I feel like I’m not meeting my potential at that job.  I feel intimidated by people who are no further ahead in what I feel would be progress business wise from coworkers to friends or family.  Emotionally I’m also missing out on spending time with all my family that I’d really like to be spending with them.  We’ll see what happes physically, but I know I could be working out a bit more like I’d like to get into the shape I’d like to and at my current job I don’t have the time I’d like to dedicate to doing just that due to traffic jams, money, and time and location constaints.

Notes on the Book Winning Through Intimidation

Have a “right” to earn money

Self proclaim you’re on top, but if you’re not ready you’ll get knocked down.

Problem preventing reaching objectives is we get intimidated

Theory of intimidation – the results a person obtains are inversely proportionate to the degree to which he is intimidated.

3 tools for him – licensed, signed paperwork (commissions), and certified mail

Don’t Co-broker!

Offer into on who you are and then reach out again…later.

Take “sell” out of what you can do for the client

They’re called understanding and not contracts

Shame feeds on silence, secrecy, and judgement. Empathy squashes shame.

This is what happens when you write goals down...

It may not look like much, but the chart that follows is a big deal.



What you're looking at is the culmination of my lifting goals being reached for the year.  When I started out I had goals to squat 250lbs, which I accomplished on 10/28/13.  Today during lunch I accomplished my other goal of bench pressing 225lbs.  I lifted 190lbs 7 times for a one rep equivalent of 228lbs.  Interestingly enough today, 190lbs, was the first day to go up in weight and I subsequently also lifted 185lbs 7 times and 180lbs 7 times and so at my next session I'll be going up in weight yet again.

I wonder how much of the ease with which I was lifting had to do with how excited I was to be trying for my goal or technique or both.  Who knows.

Pretty cool stuff.  Now to think of what next years goals will be.  My brother and I have discussed systematizing goals and so really that'd be the best way to go about it.  One thing that I think would just be cool is to do 225lbs, which is two 45lb plates on each side of the bar while benching.  It'd be cool to do that just once, but hopefully several times.

I don't think I've ever been this strong in my life, which is also pretty cool.  28 and as strong as I've ever been.

They're opening up a franchise planet fitness in my town and so I may sign up there. I've also thought about looking into barstarz to see if that is something I ought to do.  We'll see and I'll let you know.

I have app ideas, but it stresses me OUT!

I’ve got a fair amount of app ideas and if I let my mind wander I’m sure I could come up with more of them.  Apps are mini businesses.  Businesses ought to be validated before one dives into them so as to avoid investing tons of time, energy, and money into them only to see them fail.  I think if people validated their business ideas before they did them the number that you hear of, “9 out of 10 businesses fail in the first 5 years” would be a lot less.  If that was the case and the number was a lot less then I’d certainly be a lot more motivated to start a business.

So yesterday I decided to do some app validating.  At first I thought I needed to call book publishers for an idea my brother and I have and thought better of it and thought I’d just go straight to the end user to validate the idea.  Funny thing happened.  I more than validated the idea.  First app I pulled up…1-5 MILLION installs.  What is funny is…this totally stressed the hell out of me and even put a damper on the rest of my night.  Why?  Cause I thought, “How am I supposed to compete with 1 million plus download app?  I can’t ever get that many downloads and there is too much competition.”

What is crazy about that is I already KNOW that I need to validate and competition is validation.  I already know many people/businesses have become successful by taking an existing product and making it better and yet as I contemplated the competition all those thoughts went out the window.  CRAZINESS.

It wasn’t until this morning that I realized that I was being a friggin’ idiot and that I’d validated our idea and that if my desire to do the app was there I’d have some people who were willing to give it a try.  Weird how our brains selectively forget things when doing so destroys any excitement lol.

So if any of you have any business ideas and validate like crazy, on your first investigation/try no less like I did, please don’t get depressed. 

Sincerely,

Brock

I'm very excited. Cold Call Success!

So I read recently a rich dad poor dad book called, "Rich dad's prophecy", which covers the coming collapse of the stock market and subsequent destruction of 401k values.  In it he discusses that real wealth comes from businesses and investments and not self employment (i.e. small business owner where if the owner isn't there working then no money is coming in) and not employee (i.e. going to a 9-5 job with "great" "secure" benefits, which in my opinion serve more to tie an employee to fear and scarcity mentality and don't offer the truth...freedom)  One thing he mentions is that of course you have to start somewhere.  He says that while one is a 9-5er or a self employed person, that they ought to wok on, not in, a business 5-10 hours a week on the side.  I said to myself that I could do that.  My first week after finishing the book I did maybe two hours.  Then the second week I got sidetracked with video games and errands, i.e. doodads but that dont cost money, but my time.  Yesterday though, after heading to bed nice and early from being tired sunday from feeding sunday morning, I had a good amount of energy. 

 

My buddy at dinner saturday night said that I ought not to ask, "Is this something that would interest you?" when making my pitch.  Come to find out that was exactly what my pitch had in it.  So I called him up and asked his input to help me change it, which he and I did.  Then it was onto calling.  I called five people.  First one was a guy saying he worked for a management company and didn't need any help building his pipeline of customers.  BTW my business idea is to list a business online to get more exposure, but several times a day so that they don't fall to the back of the search results.  The next 3 i believe were voicemail customers.  Those were interesting cause these people don't know me from Adam.  So I decided to be fun, bold, and "don't really care if you call me back, i.e. not desperate" with those messages.  That was something I picked up on in the book I also finished reading called "winning through intimidation".  Rich people have natural staying power cause they give a rip if a deal goes through or not cause they're already rich and so if someone doesn't bow to their wishes, they just walk, which is a natural intimidation technique that is logical.  Typically people are desperate and so this scares them and they don't want to lose the deal (scarcity mentality) and will jump on the offer or become the intimidatee.

 

The fifth call was fun.  I recorded it on my camera actually and I'll be posting it to youtube I think.  Maybe doing a channel for my business experiences.  I've got half a page of things I've learned or experienced that I'll either be writing about or doing a video of.  What was interesting about the experience and recording it is that the guy said the business owner wasn't available.  I just did my little hook pitch anyways and he said that it was interesting...so I was talking to the business owner anyways.  I did the pitch, he asked some questions, and then I threw out the price, of course after highlighting all the benefits of my service, and he said, "Huh, that's not too bad."  Mentally I was shocked/psyched out of my mind, but on camera I was just thinking of what to say next.  It was an awesome win for me.  He threw up one objection and I countered it with basically just reiterating my pitch and then transitioned to emailing him the questionaire I need to write up the ad for him.  I hung up and you could just see my face light up and I was so excited.  It was hilarious and I think I'm hooked to just working on my own ish from here on out. 

 

Ashlee was excited for me too.  She watched the video and said she felt like there was a lot of lying on my part, which I had to explain further.  What is interesting about the "lying" is that the business owner "lied" to me from the start, but...was it really lying?  I think the winning through intimidation book had it right when it said honesty is a relative thing.  Pretty cool stuff.