In the mindset for business

Well it would seem that inspiration has followed me today and I'm feeling that business opportunities are abounding in my mind. I'm sitting here thinking, "I'm an inteligent and logical man, what the f*ck am I doing WORKING for someone?!?!?!"

With such FRUSTRATION I sit and think about my situation. Here it is:

I work 40 hours a week (ok, I'm AT work for 40 hours a week hehe), plus it takes approx. 40 mins to get in and get home from work. That's a total of 46 hours, 40 mins every week whereby I commit my TIME to my current employer (who by the way, totally doesn't deserve it! I'm looking at you Marlene!)

What if, and it's a big if, I could reduce the amount of time that I had to devote to work each week (I don't want to NOT work, far out, my wife would kill me if I didn't!), but SIGNIFICANTLY increase the amount of money I earned from that work?

Ok bullshit is the first thing that came to my mind, but why is that? Why did I think that it was bullshit? What is it in me that thinks, working LESS equals LESS money?

Probably because in the past I've experienced what happens when I worked less, it literally resulted in less money (der!). But I would like to hold back that der for a moment whilst I consider the following:

"I can invest money on the stock market, and in any given day, potentially make a HUGE return".

Ok, let's break that down for a moment and realise exactly what I'm saying here.

1) "I can invest money"

Yeah no shit, but does it look like I've got a spare $5k lying around? Hell no! But does that preclude me from actually getting $5k? I'll go into that in a moment.

2) "on the stock market"

Ok kewl, people make money every day (and BIG TIME lose it as well). Let's just accept that the "stock market" could be interchanged with any vehicle that allows you to leverage your time and money without a lot of effort (ie. reduced amount of time working on it).

3) "in any given day"

Ok we need to accept that unfortunately, I'm going to have to work, each and every day like normal. Yeah I can take weekends off and public holidays but I'm still going to have to work each and every day. Bummer, but this doesn't exclude the fact that my physical location could literally be just about anywhere. With telecommunications and wireless internet access, whatever I could do from an office or home could VERY easily be done from a chair on the beach in Florida!

4) "potentially make a HUGE return"

Well the posibility for this happening is ALWAYS a possibility heheheeh :)

Let's examine this closer.

"Potential" and "HUGE return" are the key points I'd like to focus upon.

What is the definition of potential? Well I get a lot of results from that one, but the one I think best describes it is, "capable of being or becoming". Awesome, so what?

Well think about it this way, a "potential huge return" is CAPABLE of being or becoming. What's the likely hood of it, well that's determined upon how well I market myself, manage my self and deliver what I say I'm going to. We all f*ck up let's face it, so my reputation will be forged by the amount of times that things go wrong. People rarely remember when you do well, but one stuff up and shit, you're in the history books!

Now for "HUGE return". This simply is an arbitrary amount of either physical money or something else that has value (ie. experience, mentoring, access to resources not available previously, anything!)

Ok I think I'm getting a bit lost in the definitions here, let's take a step back and actually see what I'm talking about.

My original question was, "What if I could reduce the amount of time that I had to devote to work each week but SIGNIFICANTLY increase the amount of money I earned from that work?"

Given that you probably work for someone, we all understand that simply by working less results in less money. That's the "rules" or "laws" that are applied to "working for someone".

So if these results bases upon these rules are not to your liking, what are you to do?

Well like me, I figured that I could start my own business and by my own boss. What a crock of shit! Seriously, what the hell do I know about running a business, tax, super, licensing, man there is stuff that I can't name simply because I don't know anything about it!

Starting your own business is VERY risky, and unfortunately a lot of people who do go bust within the first year (I think the stats show a HUGE amount, something like 80% or more, not sure, you can google it!).

So starting a business is out of the question until I get myself trained properly. So what's left?

Investing is always an option but you literally play with money and fire at the same time. What's earned today could be burned tomorrow, and yeah I know that there are successful methods you can employ to work the markets but in reality, people who are the BEST at their game with investing NEVER treat money with the disrespect of thinking it will take care of itself. It's like a parent leaving their child near a pool, you're just asking for trouble, and this trouble isn't the type you can go, "oh well, better luck next time", there is a potential of literally killing your family (not dead but financially dead!).

Playing the markets is good when you have the time and the money. If you can't afford to risk the money then you shouldn't! Simple as that!

So what the hell am I to do? Is there another option?

My personal axiom is, "Anything is Possible" and I believe that with all my heart. For someone to tell you that they believe something with all their heart means they stand by it to the death and that's how I feel about it.

But getting "Anything" to be "Possible" is never as easy as it sound. So many people tell me that within just one day you can start making money, blah blah bullshit. These people are skilled at what they do and I guarantee that they didn't start making money on their first or second days either!

So what's the alternative?

I need an edge. Something that will allow me to get people to hand over their money whilst automating the process as much as possible and ultimately leaving me to monitor and manage the system a few hours a day.

WHOA WTF?

Again, the bells of bullshit start ringing in my head, but WHY THE F*CK are they chiming like it's armagedon? Can't something to this statement by possible? Well, anything is possible, and fortunately I'm happy to say, it is possible!

Ok, the 64 million dollar question, "How?"

Good question :)

How can you reduce effort and make more? Well look at the scenario you're probably in right now. How do you earn money? What is it that you do that makes someone pay you each payday?

TIME equals MONEY

Nothing else!

The age old tenet that time is money is the absolute truth that every single employee is bound to, and we're bound to this thinking from a VERY early age. I'm unfortunately guilty of teaching my kids that you have to work for what you want. Yep, it's an admirable quality but I'm literally leading my children into a good 40 years of servitude for employers who would treat them the same way that I'm being treated here at my current employment.

What would I want to do this to my kids? Because it's the way of society. It's what they see on TV. What they hear their peers talking about. It's the socialogical method for earning money. The problem is, we never teach our kids any other ways to make money!

So, if TIME = MONEY then reduced TIME = reduced MONEY. Simple as that. Within your current paradigm this formula is exactly how to calculate how much money you can earn, and guess what, there is a MAXIMUM to this equation, a ceiling that can not be gone above, and that is, you can only work a maximum of 168 hours each week. That's the total amount of hours in a week and therefore you can not work more than that!

That means no sleeping, no eating, just working, every hour of every day of every week. Not gonna happen! You could max out at about 80 hours but you'll burn out, your morale will die and you won't know what you're putting all that effort in for.

Realistically 40-60 hours is a normal week for the majority of people, blue collar, white collar whatever. 40-60 hours at let's just say $100 per hour. That's a MAXIMUM of $4k - $6k a week. Now I'm pretty sure you're not on $100 per hour (not trying to offend you, just being realistic). So you're limited by the amount of hours you can/should work each week and the rate at which you're being paid for those hours.

So what we need to do is this:

1) 40-60 hours reduced to 10-20 hours (at $25/hour = $250/$500 per week)
2) Increase the hourly rate to $500-$1000 per hour (equals $5k/$10k per week)

*BULLSHIT*

Ok so it's not very likely you're going to get a raise to $1000 per hour. So how can you make a $1000 per hour, not just this hour but for 10-20 hours each week? We need a system.

So what's a system?

My definition of a system is, "A vehicle that allows you to make money by automating processes and reducing the overall human intervention required."

Let's examine what I've just defined in more detail:

1) "A vehicle"

Yep, like the stock market or working for an employer, a system is a vehicle that allows you to make money. How does it do it? Well each system depends upon an idea that is unique enough that people can run it without having a saturated market so that it doesn't make money, and targets something that people want/need and are willing to pay for.

Ok, so how do I make one? Well making a system is hard. In fact, most systems that are made generally fail (usually due to bad development, thought and research) but basically they fail on their asses!

So your choices are, make one yourself or invest in one that's already operational and has a track record of success.

Let's get something straight, if you're looking for a system, you're not going to be it's employee, you're going to be it's boss, it's maintainer, the one who's financially going to benefit from it when it works and by responsible for it if it fails. You are venturing close to the world of self-employment!

2) "allows you to make money"

The biggest problem with systems is that you either adopt a system that doesn't have a huge cash flow, or requires that you re-invest that money to further propogate your vehicle.

The system you adopt needs to clearly state, how much money needs to be re-invested (because let's face it, if you don't feed it with money, how the hell is it going to survive?) and how much money is coming to support you (because let's face it, running a system that doesn't provide, and I mean REALLY provide well for you is not worth doing in the first place!).

3) "automating processes"

Simply put, if your system has 20 steps from start to finish, you're going to have to devote time to all 20 steps. What if 18 of those steps could be automated via some mechanism which allowed you to step out of the process physically without compromising the system?

This means that to achieve your goal you could physically work less because the automated processes will do the work for you, freeing up your time to do, well, whatever!

Automating processes on the internet has become a PRIMARY method of choice for system developers over the last ten years, but with the acceptance of the general public with the internet, it's becoming easier and faster to create these systems.

Just because it's easy doesn't mean it's a rip off, it just means that the system has been optimised and now works better than before!

4) "reducing the overall human intervention required."

This is the key part, the original goal was, work less, earn more. The system becomes your method of working less by reducing the overall time you need to spend maintaining and managing the system which leaves that time for you to do whatever you wish.

With the internet becoming more and more ubiquitous (woohoo big word!) and with the ability to get online from your local beach, tavern, spa retreat, wherever, something that is available to almost everyone, maintaining and managing your systems is easier (it's not dead easy, but it's a shit load easier than what you're doing at work now!)

So I guess my point is this. In order to work less and earn more you're going to need a system. One which is unique enough that everyone is not doing it, but strong enough to have a niche market just waiting to be tapped.

So what do you do now? What is it that I'm going to do now to get myself out of this f*cked up situation of working?

Firstly I'm going to think about what is it that I know people want. It has to meet the following criteria:

1) People must need to use and re-use on a regular/constant basis
2) People should either buy it in quantities larger than one if possible
3) People need to see it as something they need rather than want
4) The target audience must be online at some point to assist in the automated processes

So, something that people use regularly, buy a lot of it, see it as a necessity and can purchase it online. That's the 64 million dollar question for me now isn't it!

System's aren't evil, but sometimes you'll get a bastard running one and you'll have a bad experience. I'm hoping that I'm going to look past my previous bad experiences and see the system for what it's worth, rather than the pricks running it.

Hopefully I'll get something soon and you could be my next customer!