What did surprise me was that except for a small percentage of respondents, people would choose “money” and “a fancy job title” over things like “happiness,” “health,” or “friends.” Of course, money can help us attain a degree of happiness, but it seems a strange end goal to me. Encouragingly, “family” was ranked among the top choices for what is “important to your dream.” You can see the complete survey results here or even take the survey yourself, if you’d like.

Interestingly, one word I didn’t see mentioned at all throughout the survey was “freedom.” To me, this is what the American Dream is all about, and is in large part what the country’s first immigrants found so appealing — well, that and lots of cheap land. Prior to the 19th century, most countries were still run like caste systems, giving little chance for success, wealth, or ease to any except those born into a family who already had it. The American opportunity to pursue dreams, avoid religious oppression, and obtain wealth regardless of social class was a beacon to many.

However, a lot of things have changed since those early days. Most countries now respect women’s right to vote. Segregation by race has largely disappeared, and discrimination against different sexual orientations and religions is even beginning to lessen (well, in some places). Most modern countries allow any citizen to own land, create a business, run for political office, and believe whatever they want without fear of losing their rights. True, there is no utopian society on earth, but we are progressing overall, and the opportunity for success — not just in the United States, but globally — is at an all-time high.

Perhaps the survey didn’t mention freedom because we’re so used to it now that we forget we even have it. It seems that somewhere along the way, the Dream has shifted from the freedom to obtain wealth, success, and ease, to actually having those things. Historically speaking, the average person is wealthier than ever, and it’s become increasingly easy to live our dreams, whatever they may be.

But many people are still stuck in caste age thinking, limited only by their beliefs. Some fear that our society is on the brink of disaster. Fiat currency is being devalued in every corner of the globe, and further inflation is inevitable. Employees are losing jobs and many businesses are failing. Our planet is being polluted and its natural resources used up. Health care in the United States is so expensive that insurance is required to get even the most basic care. Some of our freedoms are even being eroded, from unwarranted property seizures, to the illegality of selling raw milk, to the inconvenient and useless “security” procedures at airports.

It seems we have no control over these events and circumstances. Are we doomed, as the pauper of old, to play out our lives with the cards we’ve been dealt and never aspire to do or become more? I say No! With each challenge comes an opportunity to rise above it. Further, I believe that the “New World” that was once America, now encompasses the entire globe. The Land of Opportunity is all around us. With the advent of the Internet, it also sits right in our lap.

People will always be willing to give you something in exchange for something else of equal or greater value. I’ve created an online business that provides value to music teachers, and they gladly pay me each month for the service I provide. Most of these teachers live in the United States, but many of them live in other countries including Australia, Singapore, Canada, the United Kingdom, South Africa, Ireland, Panama, Brazil, France, Germany, Switzerland, Japan, and dozens more.

This business has allowed me to live my American Dream, which at some point may include a big house and fancy car, but for right now, it’s international travel, time to pursue my passions, improve myself, spend time with my family, and help others achieve their dreams. I’m hoping that the book I’m currently writing about how to create an online business will help accomplish that last one.

People everywhere are looking for valuable solutions to their problems. Do you have a solution that could help someone — anyone — somewhere in the world? If so, then you may have an opportunity to start living your American Dream. There is no need to limit yourself to your country of birth, nor to the social class in which you were raised. Borders between countries are imaginary lines, not much different from the lines that stand in between our dreams and our living reality. You can cross those lines and start living your dreams today. No passport required.

———

Note: I wrote this article to be published at the same time as several other bloggers who all decided to write about the topic of the “American Dream.” Please see the other posts on this topic below.

• Nancy from Family on Bikes – What is the American Dream?
• Lisa from Around the World in Easy Ways – An American Dream Fairy Tale
• A King’s Life (hers) – Redefining an American Dream
• A King’s Life (his) — Livin’ the not-so-American Dream
• Talon from 1 Dad, 1 Kid, 1 Crazy Adventure – The American Dream
• Lisa Wood from New Life on the Road – Living the Australian Dream
• Lainie from Raising Miro – Erosion of the American Dream
• Bohemian Mom — The Illusion of the American Dream
• Kimberly from Fulltime Families — Trapped in the American Dream
• Family Travel Bucket List — Bye Bye Miss American Dream
• The Great Family Escape — The Real American Dream
• Melissa from Break Out of Bushwick — Good Morning, America, Let’s Occupy Wall Street!
• Livin On The Road – To dream a little dream of … travel

Share and Enjoy

Share and Enjoy

Not too long ago, I received an e-mail from someone looking to grow their business, and he wanted to know what kind of marketing I’ve done, and what I’ve found effective in getting new customers. So I thought I would write a post about how I’ve in marketed my web-based businesses.

Most of these tips will also apply to any type of business, although some may only be effective in certain industries. If you do all of them, you’re sure to have success somewhere along the way. I have done each of these below, to some degree.

Pay-per-click Advertising

This is a great starting point for many businesses as a quick way to drive instant traffic to your website. How it works is that your ad will be shown to visitors who search for, or visit pages relating to, the keywords you’re targeting. If they click your ad, you pay a small amount, usually somewhere between $0.05 and $5.00 per click. What’s nice about this is that you only pay for people who come to your site. So you’re just paying for results. And it’s relatively cheap.

You have to be cautious with cost, though. If you’re targeting a very popular keyword that could bring thousands of people to your site in a matter of a few hours, you could have a big bill to pay at the end of the month! Determine how much you’re willing to pay and set your budget within the program so it will stop displaying ads when you hit that limit.

Some of the more popular pay-per-click options are Google Adwords, Yahoo Overture, and Microsoft AdCenter. You can also setup Pay-per-click campaigns on Facebook and many other popular websites on the Internet.

There is a lot to learn about how to effectively run an pay-per-click campaign. It’s also important to write effective ads that won’t waste your money. Check out any of the numerous free on-line tutorials, or take a look at Perry Marshall‘s site, who is one of the leading experts on the subject.

Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

If you have a website for your business, search engine optimization is a must. This is a huge topic, but not as complicated as most people make it seem. Here’s how I’d simplify it.

First, determine which keywords you want people to find your site under. For my business, I chose “music teacher software” as one of my main keywords. You’ll notice that if you search for “music teacher software” in Google, Music Teacher’s Helper is the first site listed. There are dozens of other keywords I’ve targeted since then, but it’s good to start with just one or two. Try to choose keywords that have a lot of traffic, but not a lot of competition with other sites who are doing good SEO. Google Trends and Google Keyword Tool are couple good resources to help you decide on some keywords.

Once you’ve picked your keywords, use them! Use them on your website frequently – at least once per page, for the pages you want to be found under that keyword. But don’t use it too frequently, or you’ll get docked – certainly less than every other sentence.

Finally, get other websites to link back to you using those keywords. For example, if someone writes a review about Music Teacher’s Helper, and links back with “click here”, that does me little good. Instead, I want them to link back with “music teacher software” being the link text (or whatever keyword I want to rank higher on). This will let search engines know that the keyword relates to my site.

Like I said, there’s a lot more that goes into SEO. But that should get you started. For more help with SEO, check out SEOMoz.org and SEObook.com.

Blog

Along the lines of SEO, having a blog is important to keep your search rankings up. If you can continue to provide quality, interesting, and relevant content, search engines will be more likely to bump you up on their lists. And people will be more likely to find you. If your site hasn’t changed at all in months or years, you’re going to start to fall behind.

Article Marketing

Article marketing refers to writing articles that you submit to article websites such as ezinearticles.com in an effort to increase the number of external websites that are linking to you using your target keywords. Other options are writing and submitting press releases on-line, and requesting to write guest articles on other related blogs. Just make sure you link back to your site using your keywords somewhere in your article or in the footer. Commenting on other people’s blogs is another good way to get backlinks.

Word of Mouth

This has by far been the most effective method for bringing in new customers to Music Teacher’s Helper. People who love the program simply tell their friends, because it’s helped them so much. Their friends try it out, love it, and they continue spreading the word. And so it grows. In order for this method to be effective, you need a great product, and people who are excited about it. You need to really impress them. I’ve also found it helpful to remind others to spread the word. But when the product, the support, and the whole experience of what you’re offering is excellent, and exceeds expectations, people naturally want to share their experience. It’s powerful. And it’s free.

Social Media

Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, and more. People everywhere are using these tools to share what they’re doing and what’s interesting to them. Get a Facebook page, and a Twitter account and post to them regularly so people can follow what you’re up to. For example, every time we post something on our blog, it appears on our Twitter account as well. When we make improvements to our software, we’ll announce it on Twitter, too.

Make videos about your product and submit them to YouTube and other video sites. Try Squidoo. Yahoo Answers. Del.icio.us. The social area of web marketing is relatively young and there are dozens of ways to market your business in this sphere, and more appearing all the time. Do your research, and have fun.

Affiliate Program

Music Teacher’s Helper has an affiliate program, where we pay people a commission for each customer they refer to us. Getting other people to help promote and sell your product is an excellent way to help it grow. And if you’re willing to pay a nice incentive, you’re likely to get a lot more help with it.

Paying a generous commission, either a flat payout per referral, or a recurring percentage of each payment (which is what I do), will encourage people to tell others about your program, place your banner ads on their website, or promote you through other methods. And if you can get someone with a lot of influence in your market, or a website with a lot of traffic, to spread the word for you, it can do wonders for your numbers.

Conferences

In addition to on-line marketing, I’ve also taken the time to go to a several state and national music teacher conferences. I’ve setup a booth, talked to teachers who walk by, showed them the software, and tried to give them some incentive to sign up right there, such as free giveaways or discounts. While conferences can be an expensive way to spread the word about your product, especially when you factor in airfare and hotel costs, it can be effective if you do it well. Also, the contacts you make at such conferences with other vendors can be invaluable, as friendships and partnerships can develop, and you can learn from each other.

Brochures

I paid a good designer to create a nice 3-fold brochure for me, which I’ve set out at local music stores, taken to conferences, mailed to people in bulk when they’ve requested it, and handed them out whenever I got the chance. It can be expensive to have a high quality brochure designed and printed, but if you plan to do any in-person marketing, it’s helpful to have something tangible from which people can read about your product or service.

Email Marketing

This has also been a very effective method for us, probably even more so because my business is all on-line. We send out a monthly newsletter, highlighting articles from our blog. I have also paid to have e-mail blasts sent to music teacher related e-mail lists, although these have been slightly less effective.

The most helpful use of e-mail marketing for us has been the automated responses that go out to teachers who sign up for a free trial of our software. Once they sign up, every few days for about a month, they get an e-mail from us asking about their experience, sharing some useful tips, or explaining more about the software. It’s helped immensely in keeping our program at the front of their minds and conversions increased significantly once we started doing this.

There are other small marketing methods we’ve used, but I’ve listed the main ones that have had the biggest effect for me. Again, if you try everything listed above, you are sure to find something that works well for you.

What hasn’t worked?

While all of the above methods have worked for me, and to some degree or another have brought in new customers, there are some methods that have had so few results, they have just not been worth it to me. Here are the marketing methods I don’t recommend for on-line businesses.

Magazines

These have been an almost total waste of money for me. I’ve done it probably six times – it took me that long to learn my lesson. So what if the readership is 15,000? They can’t buy my product through the magazine. They still have to get on-line and do it. And most people seem to skim over the ads in magazines anyway, unless you do something really unique and big (read: full-page ad), which is also expensive. If your product costs a lot, magazine marketing could be valuable. But for me to recoup the costs associated with a magazine ad would be very difficult. The response rate is usually way below 1%. A much better method is to get a magazine editor to write a review of your program.

Fliers

I think this was the very first method I used when I launched my business, and I never got much response from them. Well, I guess I can’t say I really tried it fully either. I made a handful of cheap fliers myself and put them up in a few music stores. It probably would have been more helpful if I’d gone to colleges, had people put them up in different states, all over, all at the same time, and offered some kind of incentive on the flier for them to check out the site. Maybe little pull-tabs to take home with them. Something else to try, I guess.

Paper Mailings

Okay, this is something I haven’t actually tried. It could probably work if you have a big enough list, but keep in mind that direct mail, such as postcards or letters, generally has a response rate of less than 1% as well. With the price of postage today, you have to weigh the size of your list with the price of your product, to determine if it’s something that could bring in enough business to cover the costs. Personally, I think there are more effective ways to market an on-line product.

I hope you’ve found this article helpful. But it won’t do you any good unless you actually do something with it. So, pick one of the methods above and try it out on your business. Test the results and see what happens. I don’t always get the response I want, but more often than not, I do, and the money I spent marketing more than pays for itself. What’s important is that you’re doing something.

Share and Enjoy

Share and Enjoy

One important aspect of starting a successful business is picking a product or service that fills a need. Yes, it is possible to create something for which there is little or no interest, then try to convince people they have a problem, and proceed to sell them your solution. But it’s so much easier if you are creating a solution to a problem that already exists, and that people are already aware of, since they will be looking for a solution anyway.

That said, there are billions of people in this world. And chances are if you create something that fills even a small need, in your own eyes, someone else out there will probably find it useful as well. You may just have to be more creative in how you get the word out to them.

Narrow Your Niche

Keep in mind that while creating a product that “everyone” needs is a grand goal, if you try to sell to everyone, you’re more likely to end up selling to no one, and wasting a lot of money in the process. You need to identify who really wants your product or service, why, and how you can reach them.

Tim Ferris suggests in his book The Four Hour Work Week, that you pick a niche that’s small, but that has enough people to bring in the income you’re looking for. Here’s what he said:

“If you start off aiming to sell a product to dog- or car-lovers, stop. It’s expensive to advertise to such a broad market, and you are competing with too many products and too much free information. If you focus on how to train German shepherds or a restoration product for antique Fords, on the other hand, the market and competition shrink, making it less expensive to reach your customers and easier to charge premium pricing.”

Don’t try to compete with the big boys. With small business, it’s better to be a sand castle in a child’s sandbox, than a grain of sand in the Sahara. Remember, you don’t need to make millions of dollars per year to live like a millionaire. There are enough people in almost any market to support whatever kind of lifestyle you want to live. Finding a niche business that targets a specific group of people (in my case, private music teachers) is a more efficient and direct way to get customers than marketing a product to “anyone who wants it.”

Stick With What You Know

So, how do you pick a good niche for your business? I recommend that you start with something you’re already interested in, and experienced with. For example, I know very little about rock climbing. I only know a few rock climbers, and don’t have a strong interest in doing it myself (although I’m impressed with those who can do it well). For me to start some kind of business around rock climbing right now, would be pretty foolish. Rather, as a private music teacher, creating a product for music teachers was a much better choice for me.

There are a few reasons I recommend starting with something you already know a lot about.

1. You save a lot of time in the research process
2. You have a head start in knowing your customers and their needs (since you’re included)
3. You already speak the lingo, and can do a better job marketing
4. It will be easier to maintain interest and a desire to keep going (easier to feed your “Driving Force“)

What hobbies do you have? What are you passionate about? Think about things that frustrate you in life, and think if there may be other people who are as frustrated about it as you. Can you figure out a way to solve the problem for you, that could also solve the problem for someone else? Brainstorming these ideas can be a great place to start.

Figure Out Your Number of Potential Customers

Once you have an idea of what you’d like to do, I recommend doing some good research before you get too far into choosing your product or service, to make sure that there is enough interest to make it worth your while to continue pursuing. This is where a lot of businesses go wrong. They think up an idea that sounds great to them, and then they go for it, without doing much planning or research first. They end up wasting a lot of money and eventually failing, because they never took the time to find out if it could be successful in the first place.

You’ll hear a lot of gurus tell you to use some of the free on-line tools that are available to help gauge how much interest there is in a product or service. Google Adwords usually ranks among the top, which lets you put ads on the side and top of Google searches (and on web pages all over the Internet), and you pay a few cents each time someone clicks your ad. You can use this to test your marketing message and see how many people might be interested, even before you start to sell. Google Trends is also a decent place to test out certain keywords, and see how much traffic they might generate (and it’s free). There are several other great sites like this with excellent data.

I think these tools are wonderful! But in honesty, I didn’t really know much about them when I started, and therefore, I didn’t use them much at first. Yes, I was inexperienced, kind of stupid, and pretty lucky. But you don’t have to learn the hard way.

Your Ideal Lifestyle Costs How Much??

This kind of delves into another topic, but it would be a good idea to decide how much money you would need to make each month to live your ideal lifestyle. Then determine how many customers you’d need at what price to reach that mark.

To make it even more effective, don’t just guess, but actually take some time and write down what you want to do with your life. How much would that new house cost you each month, that $100,000 in savings, or that 6-month international vacation every year?  Write down specific items and their cost, and see what monthly amount you come up with, on top of your current expenses. Let’s say you figure that $20,000/month is enough to live your dream lifestyle. Your actual number may be much lower or much higher, but let’s use it as an example.

To make $20,000/month, you would need to have 1,000 customers paying $20/month. Or 400 customers at $50/month. Or 100 customers at $200/month. How hard is it to get 400 people to pay you $50/month for something? It’s really not that hard if you’re truly providing value that’s worth it to them, and if you know how to reach them. And it’s especially nice if there are already marketing channels in place to help reach your audience (for me, that includes national and state music teacher organizations, magazines, websites, and more). If I had used all my resources better from the beginning, I probably would have reached the point I’m at now, years ago.

Yes, there are expenses you have to factor in as well. For an on-line business, though, these aren’t very high. Doing these little calculations like the one above can help make your goal a lot less intimidating, and seem more reachable.

Sell Before You Create

But unless you’re a programmer, like me, and can do all the work yourself, don’t go ahead and start throwing lots of money and time at creating your product until you’ve already proven that it will be successful. Yes, do run a simple Adwords campaign, and see what happens. Go ahead and create a simple landing page that tells about your [future] product and gives a short signup form where people can put their first name and e-mail address to get on your mailing list. (You could probably find someone in the Philippines to do this for you for less than $50 on www.odesk.com). If there’s enough interest from you [my readers], I may even write some detailed instructions on how to do this yourself. It’s pretty easy.

Once you’ve seen that people are actually interested in what you’re offering, you’ll be able to better gauge how long it might take you to reach your goals. If you’re getting a good number of interested prospects in a timely manner from Adwords alone, that’s a good sign. There are lots of other marketing methods you can use to increase your prospects once you’re ready to go full force. So based on how quickly your mailing list is growing, and the excitement level of those who have signed up, if it looks like you’ll be able to achieve your goal in a reasonable timeframe, then go ahead and create the product!  The people who signed up on your mailing list will be thrilled when your product is available, and most will be anxious to try it out.

I don’t consider myself an expert on landing pages or product launches. My experience is more in growing more slowly and steadily, just taking it a little at a time, but having little or no upfront costs. But I believe using these other methods can bring results much more quickly, and it’s how I’d go about if I were to create another product.

Share and Enjoy

Share and Enjoy

One of the first and most important points I want to make for anyone endeavoring to start a business, is that you must have what I call a “Driving Force” to keep you motivated to finish what you started, even through tough times. Understand that creating this business will probably consume the majority of your time and energies over the next long while (years, possibly). You may find yourself thinking about it constantly, night and day, always dreaming about how to improve it. If you are not totally excited, emotionally stirred up, and mentally thrilled at the idea, then frankly, you’re probably not going to have the commitment you need to succeed. This is not a short nor an easy path to follow, but it can be very rewarding one.

Committment and Persistentence Are Required

I have seen this over and over again with friends, colleagues, and clients. They are really excited about getting a business going at first. But as soon as the work starts, or shortly after, they quit. Why? I think there are a lot of reasons. Some just burn out because it’s a lot of work. Others make a mistake and think they’ve failed, so don’t see the point of continuing. Some don’t see the results they want right away, so they give up, losing site of the great rewards at the end. Many go broke trying to it get off the ground in the first place. And finally, some get distracted by other things and don’t devote the time or energy necessary to make any of them successful. Let me tell you, it is worth it to keep going! I believe that failure to persist is one of the main reasons why the majority of businesses fail. Most people don’t stick to the projects they start.

If you’re not committed to being successful; if you don’t believe that you will succeed; if you’re not sure you have a winning idea – then don’t start a business! Unless you just want a hobby, that is. Yes, it’s true that a lot of successful businesses do start as hobbies, which is fine. But once you decide to make it a main source of income, you have to have more commitment than just “I want to do it because it sounds fun,” because that “fun” will ebb and flow. You need a stronger vision. A driving force.

If you don’t feel like you have that “Driving Force” yet, but you still like the idea of having a business that runs on its own and pays for your lifestyle, how do you get that Driving Force that will compel you to get started?  There are lots of ways to find it, from thorough research before you begin, to simply dreaming of the possibilities and rewards the end result could bring. Let me share with you how my driving force came about for me.

How I Discovered My Driving Force

I think I can trace the start of my passion for owning my own business back to the time shortly after I got married. My father-in-law had just lost his job at Novell, and had even been in a high management position. He had done nothing wrong; the company was simply downsizing. Being in my last year or two of college, finishing up my Bachelor’s in Computer Science, I started to realize that in this economy, and especially in this technical field, there is no such thing as “job security” when you work for someone else. You have virtually no control over the success or failure of the company, or decisions of those higher up than you.

I didn’t want to work hard for a company, be completely dependent upon them for my livelihood, only to end up being cut off at their whim, left with nothing, and be forced to look for a new job elsewhere. I realized that if I wanted to be financially secure, and always able to provide for my family, I would need to have my own source of income that would continue to provide, no matter what happened – even if I was no longer able to work. At that time, I didn’t really know if such a situation was possible, but I was determined to find out.

At this time, in addition to going to school, I was also teaching private piano lessons out of our apartment, working as a full-time programmer, taking care of a wife and baby, and doing some freelance web projects on the side for clients. This left me with very little free time. I started looking for ways to save time, and one of them was in how I managed my piano studio. I realized that I didn’t have a very good system for organizing when my piano students’ lessons were, when they paid, and how much they owed me. I was tracking it all in my old Palm Pilot (remember those?), but whenever students asked me how much they owed, it took me several minutes to calculate the amount for them.

Fortunately, I was also a computer programmer, and for a school project, I wrote a small program that ran on the web to help me organize my studio finances and schedule better. It calculated how much each student owed, and even let students login from home so they could know how much to pay me before they came to their lesson. This program saved me a lot of time and headache in my piano studio.

Music Teacher’s Helper was Born

I think I owe a lot here to my good friend and classmate Dustin Davis, who saw the potential of this program I’d created, and put the idea into my head that I could actually sell it to other teachers. I wasn’t very business-minded at the time, so who knows how long it would have taken me to think of that on my own.

I decided to give it a try, and started making it possible for other teachers to use. I called it “Music Teacher’s Helper“, set up some simple pricing plans, and let teachers try it out free for 30 days. I told all the teachers I knew about it, and setup a Google Adwords account to spread the word. (I’ll talk more about Google Adwords in future posts.)

A few teachers here and there trickled in and tried it out. Many of them really liked it, and gave me great feedback for ways they wanted to see it improve. I listened and continued to improve the program based on their suggestions. Some teachers even started to pay for the service!

Once I actually started getting money from it, I began to see the potential of this program. I realized that not only could I make a few extra bucks doing this, but that if I did it well enough, I could actually make a living with it! Besides the money, it was also thrilling to see how excited and grateful most teachers were when they started using this product that I had created. They loved how much time it saved them. Many said this was the kind of program they were looking for in all their years of teaching, but could never find. With this kind of feedback constantly coming in, I knew I was onto something good.  Although, looking back, I really had no idea what I was getting myself into.

Now, before I get off-topic here, let me get back to the idea of a “driving force”. After reading the above story, what do you think my driving force was at this point – the force that kept me motivated to work hard and build this business? There were a few actually, but one stands out much more than the others.

As much as I wanted to help music teachers save time and manage their studios more effectively, and as much as I liked hearing positive feedback about my work (a good ego boost), neither of these were my main driving force. Call me selfish, but my strongest motivation was not to help teachers. It was to be able to support my family independently – not relying on an employer for a paycheck. I wanted financial security! And the little flame that started to flicker when my father-in-law lost his job started to burn more strongly within me when I realized that this little music teacher website could end up providing that security. That became my driving force.

Identifying Your Driving Force

Your driving force may be completely different than mine. Maybe you dream of an early retirement, more time with your family, world travel, or the opportunity to volunteer or commit more time or money to a church or non-profit organization. (All of these have become more interesting to me lately). Or maybe you just want a little bigger house and a little nicer car. It’s possible that your product itself may provide enough passion to keep you motivated, especially if you believe it could change the world for the better.

For me, helping music teachers was a passion of sorts, but probably not a strong enough one to keep me as persistent as I needed to be in order to make it into a business that could completely support my family. I wanted financial independence, and I now knew that I could get it. That’s what was exciting to me.

Make it Strong

Whatever your driving force is, make sure that it is strong! It will have to be a strong enough desire, and provide enough motivation and excitement to keep you going when you don’t want to keep going. When you get bored, tired, unsure of what to do next, or start doubting your potential, look back on this driving force and get the boost you need to take you through the next step. I had to do this over and over again throughout the years of building my business, and I still do it regularly, although my driving force has evolved slightly along with my business and the goals I’ve already achieved.

So far, I’ve written only about the principle of having a driving force. But before I end, I also wanted to share with you one practical exercise you can do to help you identify your driving force. Finding your driving force may be as easy as thinking about why you’ve read all the way to the bottom of this post. Or if you’ve thought about starting a business, ask yourself why, and what you hope to gain from it. Be specific and write down your thoughts.

If you’re still having trouble identifying a strong motivation, you may want to take the next 15-20 minutes and do the following exercise.

• Step 1: Imagine that you have billions of dollars at your disposal, and no responsibilities. In other words, you have total freedom of time and resources. What would you do with your time? What would you spend your money on? What responsibilities would you take on? Write down a list of all the things that come to mind. (10-20 items is probably enough.)
• Step 2: Look over these items and next to each one, write a number between 1 and 10, where 1 means you have minimal interest in it, and 10 means you’re dying to do it/get it. Or just identify those that stand out to you the most.
• Step 3: Look at the top ranking 3-5 items. Your driving force may well be among these. It’s possible that any of them would be a good driving force for you, or maybe you’ll want to use them all as a combined driving force.
• Step 4: Pick which one(s) of those 3-5 items you feel is the strongest, and write down in greater detail what it will be like to have achieved it. Be specific and detailed. Feel the emotion behind it, and try to taste what it would be like. Review this description often, especially when things get hard.

If you’re still having trouble identifying a driving force, don’t fret over it.  Your motivation may be stronger than you think, and will probably increase in strength when you have good evidence of potential results, like mine did when music teachers actually started paying for my website.

Sometimes you need to just take that first step to see if it ignites a spark for you. Don’t let fear hold you back. Few mistakes are truly permanent. It’s better to get started doing something, even if you’re not sure what you’re doing, then to not do anything at all. The learning process is part of the fun.

Good luck finding your driving force!

Share and Enjoy

Share and Enjoy

There are many reasons people dream of owning their own business, from having more free time to pursue their dreams, to having money for the things they want. And I will tell you that these are both real and possible rewards, if you do it right. But we also hear stories of those who try to start their own business, and fail, ending up in debt and worse off than when they started. Or those who build businesses and are so busy taking care of customers and administrating the business that they are more trapped by it than if they worked for an employer. No wonder so many people who think of owning a business are intimidated by the idea, and don’t even try. I want to help dispel some of these fears and give some practical guides for getting started.

I certainly don’t claim to know all the answers here. Over the past several decades, there have been countless books written on the subject of business building by people who have much more experience than I do. My experience may not be as well researched, or as broad, so I’m not going to try and offer a comprehensive guide. But in the past few years, I have built a business that now fully supports my family and takes me less than 5 hours per week to maintain (see my About page for more info). Therefore, I do feel like what little I have learned in this process is worth sharing.

Of course, there’s no way I can share everything you need to know about business building in a single blog post, even if I did know it. So I’ll be writing these tips out over a series of blog posts, each focusing on a certain principle. I also want to clarify that the type of business I know how to start and run effectively is “subscription based web applications for niche markets”, or software that runs on the Internet, and that people pay monthly to use, that targets a specific group of people. I also have experience creating a small (by choice) but successful freelance web development firm. While the principles I’m going to share may also work for an on-line shopping cart, an affiliate or information product business, or even a brick & mortar store, the practical tips I’m going to share will be most applicable to those interested in starting a web application business, or service businesses.

Why am I sharing this information… and for free?

I’m sure there are lots of marketing gurus out there who would scoff at me for sharing this information for free. They would probably encourage me to create an elaborate video training program and charge hundreds or thousands of dollars for it, or at least write an e-book I could sell for $97 or something. So why don’t I do this? There are a few reasons:

1. I’ve never told anyone this information before, and I’ve never tested it outside of my own experience. So while I know it works for me, and am confident I could create another successful business using the same principles,  I can’t really guarantee that it will work for you, since I’m not you. There’s a lot more that goes into creating a successful business than tips and tricks, and I’ll try to go into this. But this is my first attempt at helping people in this area. Maybe once I’ve had more experiences helping others through this process, I might create some kind of product. But who knows?
2. I want to focus more on being “happy” than on being “rich”, and I believe that I will get much more satisfaction from knowing I have helped someone else become successful just because I’m a nice guy, than from trying to convince people to do what I do just so I can make money. Plus, I think it’s mostly my family and friends who are reading this blog right now, and I don’t want to charge them.
3. I don’t really need the money. Okay, sure, more money is always nice. But I really am happy where I’m at financially and can provide sufficiently for my family. No, I’m not even close to being a “millionaire”, and while I may be one someday, it’s not a goal I care that much about achieving. For me, it’s not so much about the money, as it is about the lifestyle I’m living and freedom I have. I’ve already learned how to make money. For me, time and happiness are much more important – and elusive.

I’d like to post something on this subject once a week (or maybe once every couple weeks depending on how quickly I can organize my thoughts). And I’ll keep writing about it as long as I have something to share.  If you have specific questions about building a business you’d like me to address, feel free to post them below and I’ll try to include my thoughts about it here or in future posts (or contact me directly if you want). If I can share something that will help someone else out, it will all be worth it to me.

Share and Enjoy

Share and Enjoy

I looked at my reports today, and realized that for the past few weeks, I have been living the four hour week (less actually)! I spent a total of 4 hours and 3 minutes on the computer last week, and 45 minutes of that was writing these blog posts. The week before (when we had Internet in our room), I spent 12 hours 13 minutes on the computer, 7 hours and 42 minutes of which were working on my blog. The rest, (a little more than four hours), was spent “working” on my businesses and projects.

Not that this is some great accomplishment, but it’s a milestone some people set because of Tim Ferris’ influential book, The 4-Hour Work Week. If nothing else, it’s nice to know that the money continues to come in, and things continue to run fairly smoothly with four hours of work per week. That said, it’s a bit more stressful when I sit down to work these days, because of the stacks of e-mail I have to answer, and issues that I don’t have much time to resolve. So I do wonder how long I could keep it up, mentally. While here, I’ve had desires to spend more time working – it’s fun for me to build projects and create automation, and a couple hours a week just doesn’t seem like enough. But I am on vacation, so I’m going to relax. :)

Looking back, to make things run even more smoothly, I would have built up my programming team a little larger and trained them a bit better before I left. That’s where my biggest hang-up is right now, because there is a lot of development that needs to be done, and my programmers are stuck on a side project I’m having them work on. Usually, I’d do a bit of programming throughout the week on my main sites, but because I haven’t been programming, development has been stagnant for several weeks, and customers are starting to notice the the lack of new features. So I’m trying to migrate some programmers off the side project to start working on more pressing matters.

But things are running smooth enough, and there haven’t been any major hiccups with the business. I’m very grateful for that, and to have such great teams that keep everything going. The business couldn’t run without them.

The longest I’ve done without checking e-mail, however, is three days. It’s rare to have a problem that can’t wait three days to be solved, but I wonder if things would really be that different if I waited a week, or two or more. I’d probably need to let my teams know that I wouldn’t be checking mail for a while, but I think everything would still be okay. I don’t know if I’ll try that while here, though. I didn’t prepare for that before I came, so have some deadlines in the next couple weeks that I need to be on top of.

But I’m so happy to be here, and to be spending time with my family, and enjoying the warm weather, good food, and green trees, and friendly people. Today is our last day in El Valle de Anton, and tomorrow we leave for Boquete.

Share and Enjoy

Share and Enjoy