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Building the business of your dreams takes a certain amount of moxie, tempered with an outsized amount of patience, slathered in perseverance.
It also requires a clear vision, something often not obtained until you begin moving forward without it.
That last bit has been where I quagmire out the most. Due to my makeup, trainings, and all else, I easily get confused as to which way is the best way forward from all there is about me to pick from.
But the vision has been getting clearer every year, with some dramatic gains in clarity taking place just in the past few months.
It’s funny. I actually started getting down about things back in the Fall.
Yet “getting down” just isn’t something I am normally concerned about.
Regardless of results, I am consistently too focused on remaining proactive and trying to find the positive that has to be buried in the shit covered negative of whatever’s ailing me most at any one time.
But I got down a bit, nonetheless.
Things weren’t working out as planned. And the plan itself was not speaking to my heart as it once was.
I realized I was in the beginnings of a Big Rework
Well, nothing’s actually changed all that much. It’s been more of a refinement of ongoing processes, coupled with a fresh dedication to using a system I invested heavily in almost a year ago, yet never used.
I even–accidentally–found a partner to help me implement and expand upon the use of that system, the purpose of which, I’ll reveal in the coming months.
I got out of that funk.
And as I began pondering what to speak on next, the Jason Leister article below jumped out at me from the list.
Very apropos for what I was recently experiencing.
You’ll experience it all too. So read what the man had to say on it all. You’ll thank me one day for leading you to him.
Sponsor:
- Family Network Chiropractic in Kingston, NY: The only providers of NSA Chiropractic in the Mid-Hudson Valley
Key Points:
- Outsiders Journey and its associated podcasts and pieces are NOT the business of my dreams, although I love that my work helps the people who find it useful
- I’m JUST smart enough to run the entire behind the scenes machinery of getting my words to you
- I enjoy speaking and writing and intend to continue doing both for a long time to come, so don’t fret if you’re following along at home
- I burnt out–big time–back in the Fall
- I had to focus on directly earning money to live, rather than wait patiently for my online work to start paying my bills
- My offline job choices, necessary though they were, began crippling me and devouring the time I needed to keep building out this site (Catch-22)
- Trying to get paid to help people make a living online has been tough because I haven’t yet pulled it off in any large way myself
- A new venture, based on a system I invested in, has recently turned into an opportunity
- My overenthusiasm has destroyed me in the past and I have to be careful of what I develop or say “yes” to
- My desire to build out my dreams led to the fireworks tent success/fiasco I endured over the summer
- The thing I just agreed to build with my new partner looks an awful lot like it IS the business of my dreams
- I finally was able to return to the gym, which is essential to my mental and physical wellness
- Craigslist has been my savior. I have now broken all contact with Craigslist. Committed to my future online and with my new partner.
- My latest Big Fight was whether to focus on marketing or self help as a business focus
- I’m going to do both!
- I forgot to mention in the podcast: I was an extra in a white supremacist flavored TV pilot, filmed right here in Kingston, NY! (My Jamaican-heritaged wife got a huge kick out of that!)
- In my twenties, I used to believe that “the big house on the hill with the driveway full of cars” was never going to be a thing I’d achieve. This was due to my inability to conceive of myself as a monetary success. (I am now the polar opposite of that.)
- I was raised blue collar, thinking people who focused on just making money and not putting in a manly day’s work, ruined my chances of succeeding well into my adult life
- About 3 years ago, the awareness that, no matter what, I’m gonna make it became a permanent solid reality in my mind
- Multi Level Marketing: Don’t Do It!!!
Links
- Human Design Series here inside Outsiders Journey: (It helped me see why I do things in waves, can’t stick to schedules and do my best work when it’s directly asked of me to do so, NOT when I try to offer it first to someone.)
- OJ POD: EPI-42: The Slipper Is Dead. Long Live The Slipper!: The podcast episode my young friend said he’d most recently enjoyed.
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“Alter Boy”: I am a (so far) uncredited extra in the pilot episode of this series that just shot this Fall. I played “Big Sucka” and had to forcefully drag, throw, and pin the hero in a chair…15 times(!)…before they got the footage they needed!
I learned of the gig through a friend who had a small role. I thought it sounded like a fun way to spend a weekend and that I could do racist and ugly, if I had to. She made a call and I was in! It was a lot of fun!
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Rich Dad’s CASHFLOW Quadrant: Rich Dad’s Guide to Financial Freedom : This book changed my life. No measurable results were obtained right after reading it…or within a bunch of the years that followed.But my mindset, my belief in my ability to be something more than just an employee–forever at the mercy of the whims of chance and the desires of those in power over me–changed instantaneously and permanently the day I read this book
If you want a business of your dreams and the lifestyle that comes with it, yet haven’t begun considering what it means to achieve either, then start with this book!
- Photographer of top image: Remy Baudouin
[The following article is reprinted with permission from Jason Leister at www.IncomparableExpert.com]
Building the Business of Your Dreams
By Jason Leister
I still remember the book that “ruined” me from ever again being able to live as an employee. It was Cashflow Quadrant by Robert Kiyosaki. Sitting there in the bookstore in Knoxville Tennessee that day, getting extremely excited reading all about a way of life completely foreign to my own is something I will never forget.
My IQ would say that I’m smart, but it didn’t occur to me back then that you could actually pursue a path in life that would allow you to take responsibility and control over your future.
But reading that book changed everything in a blink. All those years ago, that was one of the biggest ideas I’d ever encountered. I could take charge of my own success instead of waiting on someone else to grant it to me.
Overcoming the Two Biggest Hurdles to Business Building
I had two big obstacles standing in my way when I got started in business.
First, I had absolutely zero belief in my own value. Second, I had absolutely zero understanding about how to sell anything. As you might imagine, I did not experience instant meteoric success.
But I kept going. I kept learning. I kept screwing up. Most of my early screw-ups happened in conjunction with my brief (and miserable) career in multi-level marketing. To say I was terrible would have been putting it kindly.
I still remember the sheer terror I would feel as I’d prepare to pick-up the phone and start dialing numbers of strangers who’d (supposedly) requested information about building a business. I could only afford (thanks to the credit card) to buy about 6 of these names per month. Six!
It’s been too long to remember clearly, but I doubt if there were two months in a row where I actually spoke to all six people. Either the leads were bad or I just chickened out and kept putting off my calls until “tomorrow.”
It should be obvious enough that I never managed to get anywhere in that business.
Living as a Self-Confident Lemming
Eventually, I started to get the hang of things. And I discovered that I had a natural gift for persuading people by writing letters. And then the internet publishing business thing came along and well, the rest is history. I’ve been doing that ever since.
As I got more experienced in business, however, I started hearing things that led me to believe that my business wasn’t… real. My business didn’t have an exit strategy. My business didn’t really run if I left it for a month or three. I didn’t have any employees.
All of a sudden I felt like there was a problem. Like there was something I needed to fix if I wanted to be on the winning side of having a “real” business.
So I started listening to people with “real businesses.” And I tried to figure out how I could build one. I even hired an “employee” once, for about 7 days!
I got swept up in a dream that was not my own, and I wasted a lot of time on it. I was a business lemming and I had no idea.
But then I wised up. And I stopped running towards building a “real” business and just decided to be OK with building a business I actually wanted: one that could actually support the LIFE I wanted.
You might refer to it as “the business of my dreams.”
Building the Business of Your Dreams
The business of my dreams includes only me.
The business of my dreams has zero employees.
The business of my dreams can’t be “sold” and actually needs me to run.
The business of my dreams has little overhead and almost ridiculous profit margins.
The business of my dreams provides income in exchange for big ideas that serve others.
The business of my dreams makes me excited to get up in the morning and do something valuable for others.
The business of my dreams pays me very well to actually spend my days doing something I love to do.
Many might say that the “business of my dreams” can hardly be thought of as a “real” business. I used to listen carefully to those individuals. I listened to them until the day I realized their counsel was leading me to a place I had no interest in going. I thought they had something I didn’t. But that wasn’t the case.
They had something they wanted. They didn’t have something I wanted.
Only you can chart the course that is right for you in business and in life. And in order to figure out what that course is, you can’t spend all of your time listening to other people. The answer has to come from you. That’s the only way it can be right.
You can certainly learn from others, but that help can never replace you as the navigator of the ship called life.
It’s pretty exciting when you finally start building the business of your dreams. But there’s only one person who can define what that is for you. And that’s the person looking back at you in the mirror.
[Ed. Note. Jason Leister is a direct response copywriter, internet entrepreneur and editor of the daily e-letter, The Incomparable Expert Daily Journal, where he empowers independent professionals who work with clients. He has seven kids and lives and works in the mountains of Arizona.]
