Your passion is extraordinary.
How you spend your time should be, too!

Do you want more time, or do you want more money? You see, the problem with time and money is that if you want more of one, you must give up more of the other. This is why the best balance between the two is simply having a job. Unfortunately, when you have a job, your compensation is never based on excellence (unless it is heavily incentivized, i.e. sales, trading, etc.). Yes, you read that correctly. Miffed yet? If so, you better stop reading, because you are going to get upset if you go on.

When you have a job, your position has a set value for the company for whom you work. It is based on their operations plan. I won’t put you to sleep with how this actually works, but suffice it to say that this plan is where your salary was pegged. It has a value range. And that is all it is, a range. If you can do your job better than anyone else in yours or any other company, it does not matter. The production only has so much value to the company, for which they compensate or trade their money for your time. And that is the point of the third sentence of the first paragraph of this article and why you are now more curious than miffed.

That change in your perspective is what those smart people at Oxford call the “aha” moment. Let me say this plainly, if you have a job, where you are trading time for money, the position you are holding and attempting to perform at with a level of excellence, will pay you the same if you just do the work good enough. And that is why Bob, the person who is your colleague and who does good enough work is still there. Get the picture?

Change the Input to Get a Different Result

If you want to stop trading time for money, then you must do something different. No, that does not mean quit your job. It means that if you want more money, you are going to have to change the equation. This means that in addition to your job, you will have to find something to do on the side that will produce an income for you. Yes, you will trade a certain amount of time to produce it. But this time will be spent or invested, once. It will take an inordinate amount of time at first and you will have to sacrifice certain things like, well…your social life. But if I told you that if you were willing to sacrifice two to five years of your life building something so you could live the rest of it the way you wanted to, would you do it? See, this is completely different from what you were told before. You know…”go to school, get an education and get a good job”. How did that one work for you? Ready to try something different?

Make your passion your business

Okay, what do you know about, or what can you do very well? What are you passionate about? Are there other people passionate about that, too? Of course there are. So how do you turn that into a business? In a ridiculously over-simplified word, like this:

  1. Determine your passion of area of expertise
  2. Survey the internet to see what is available about this concept for a business.
  3. List the sites that impress you and those that you find utterly stupid.
    1. List the things that are impressive
    2. List the things that are stupid
    3. Incorporate impressive into your plan, avoid stupid.
  4. Determine your model. This refers to how you are going to make money from your stie. If you want a long explanation of what this means go here.
  5. Stop going to the bar (pub), coffee shop, or other places you waste time.
  6. Turn off your TV.
  7. Tell your wife or husband (if applicable) that you are working on a project called “changing our lives for economic security”. They will get it, if you approach this correctly.
  8. Learn everything you can about how to promote a website (Link Wheels, Link Backs, Social Media, etc.) You will be surprised at how much you can learn when you do step 5, 6 and 7.
  9. Begin building a simple, very clean site that allows you to execute your model (see item 4).
  10. Find someone who is getting the results you want and ask them to mentor you. You will be surprised at how easy this is. And how willing this person will be to take you under their wing (as long as your business does not compete with theirs).
  11. Begin promoting your business (see item 8 again).
  12. Begin making enough money to replace your income.
  13. Quit your job.
  14. Begin making more money than the combined incomes of you and your spouse.
  15. Retire your spouse from their job.
  16. Hire someone to maintain your business.
  17. Spend more time playing than working because your income is now passive.

Now, see how ridiculously over-simplified that was? And notice how you are being paid by your employer to start your business? You’re just living the dream, baby. That is not to say that you will not be challenged, because believe me you will.

You will have many challenges. Most of all, as you get serious about your business, you will find that friends and family members tell you that “it will never work”, that you are “wasting your time”, and that you are “going to be disappointed”, blah, blah, blah. Your mission is to not listen to this. You will fall down. You will become frustrated and want to pull your hair out. But remember, there is no such thing as failure. There is only feedback. If you are flexible enough to continue to adapt, change and refine your approach, you will eventually get the feedback you desire.

One last thing. You can never completely take your finger off of the pulse of your business. And if you want to protect your business completely, make the person in step 14 a sweat equity partner. Give them 10% of the profits with an earn out for 25% in the future. This is called “golden handcuffs” and they will never want to do what you did – LEAVE! And that is the way you keep a great employee with your for life!

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