Have you seen the “sixth sense” device in this TED talk by Pattie Maes’ from her MIT lab?

http://www.ted.com/talks/lang/eng/pattie_maes_demos_the_sixth_sense.html

So cool.

I totally agree with these ideas. Most of the businesses I’ve started so far have aimed at #1 – building something practical and achievable to generate income. BuyersVote.com was my first real attempt to move higher up that scale, whether it will be successful hard to say. But I feel like once you have a baseline income that covers anything you need to buy you can really start thinking about those big goals. It’s a great place to be. Something on the order of Magnitutde like “cure malaria” which Bill Gates is working on, and things like that.

Anyway, always up for a pint next time you’re down here. I can tell we are thinking alike. Thanks for the comment and keep in touch!
Brian

Myself and my partner have moved down to Argentina in the last 3 months having ‘freed up our time’ by working on our online businesses. Its funny that you should mention ‘bigger picture’ ideas as that is exactly what we’ve been confronted with. We’ve got a modest but sufficient cash-flow from our radio voiceover directory, based in Ireland, and we’re having a fine old time in Mendoza. The question then becomes – what next?

The way I look at it, there are different ‘levels’ of ideas. Some are aimed at freeing up your time and avoiding a day job while others are about world domination and something bigger. I went to a Tony Robbins seminar a few years ago they explained it this way.

There are three ‘levels’ of being ‘rich’ (sorry for all the quotation marks!).

1 – you have more money coming in every month than is going out without selling time. That might not be a huge amount of money but as long as it is more than is going out, you are ‘free’. This is pretty much where we are now. I think that ideas that get you to this level are normally pretty grounded. Your businesses seem typical. It doesn’t need to be world changing, all it needs to do is to free up your time so you can start to think about the next level.

2 – Next up is having enough money to live your ‘dream life’. That means you have enough money to do whatever it is you want without having to worry about it. For example, we would like to fly up to the states for a seminar this November but we’ll have to put some extra work in to make it affordable. If we were at this level we could just reach into the bank account and go. On this level you can own all the ‘toys’ your little heart can desire without selling time. I’m guessing that you can still achieve this level of financial freedom which pretty standard ideas. I’m not sure you need to worry about the next big thing. There are still plenty of established ideas which can be moved to a new industry or outright competed with that will help to generate the cash. In fact, it might be a handicap to come up with something too wild and woolly since new ideas are inherently more risky. In fact, maybe it is all about just creating enough multiple streams of income, made up of ‘small’ or ‘established’ ways of creating cashflows.

3 – World domination. This level is really some people that already have all the money they can handle. It now becomes about making a lasting impact or legacy on the world. This is where you need to think of something ‘big’. These ideas are the type of ideas that the Silicon Valley investors look for. They are a lot more risky but I’m guessing that if you managed to get past level 2 it’ll help you a lot more than going straight for gold all at once.

Of course just dreaming about big new ideas is fun. Its motivating and its good to let the creative juices flow once in a while.

I’m delighted to have found your blog. Keep up the great work and maybe we can go for a pint next time I’m in BsAs.

James

Private is the way to go, in my opinion, but there has to be integrity on both sides, which is sometimes hard to come by in this day & age.