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.
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