Breaking Free
How to Quit Your Job and Start Your Own Business
Derek Sivers discusses the exact point I made a few weeks ago (with a much better example than mine)
If you sell pens for a living and someone orders a million pens, no problem! You just place an order with your manufacturer for a million pens, get them to the customer, and celebrate.
But if you do hands-on massage for a living and a recent spot on Oprah gets you a waiting list of 10,000 people, “you’ll wish you were in the pen business.”
This is Why MLM and Network Marketing Don’t Work – ask yourself these before getting too far into a new business idea
Why are we doing this?
What problem are we solving?
Is this actually useful?
Are we adding value?
Don’t Listen To Negative People
I’m sure that the moment man discovered fire, there was some guy nearby saying, “Too smoky. Can burn you. Lame.”
Scott Adams at the Dilbert Blog Forgets the Best Option: Self Employment and Passive Income Streams
Sleep: 8 hours
Exercise: 1 hour
Work: 8 hours
Eating: 2 hours (leisurely)
Hygiene: 1 hour
Travel: 1 (Commute, errands)That leaves you three hours for family time, sex, shopping, food preparation, chores, household repair, volunteering in the school, and so on. If you have a dentist appointment, or your talkative relative calls, or American Idol has a two-hour special, you’re tapped out.
37 Signals Celebrates People Who Quit Their Jobs
Five little companies were featured to showcase the owner’s decision to leave their daily rat dace of a life behind and dive into the uncertainty of following their dreams. Here’s the kicker: These 5 companies are some of the most mundane, normal, average little companies out there.
These companies aren’t going to beat Google, they aren’t building a better iPod or bread slicer. There’s no “the next Facebook” and not a mention of angel funding. These entrepreneurs are doing simple things they love and making a pretty decent living from it.
Oprah discusses: What should I do with my life?
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zKZFeMLWeqE[/youtube]
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About this blog
Breaking Free is a blog for people who'd like to quit their 9-to-5, start their own business, and achieve financial freedom. It's written by web-entrepreneur Brian Armstrong. You can read more here »
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Adam Holland
May 4th, 2008 at 12:02 am
Network Marketing doesn’t work? Are you kidding me?
MLM has been around for decades, and has created millionaires and BILLIONAIRES..
I’ve been subscribed to your RSS for a while now, and you’ve always provided great info and resources for entrepreneurs. Don’t tell me you did “research” before this post…
(oh, and btw while I was writing this I noticed a banner below promoting an mlm business… I mean, seriously?? c’mon here…)
Brian Armstrong
May 5th, 2008 at 2:57 pm
Hi Adam,
Thanks for writing, you’re right there may be some good ones out there and I haven’t researched it extensively. I guess what bothers me about the ones I’ve seen is that they all seem to have the message that if you do these few simple steps it will pay you a million dollars automatically as it grows. To me this always seems dishonest because you aren’t really providing a million dollars worth of value to anyone, its sort of like trying to get something for nothing.
I like that question of “Am I contributing value and really helping people?” because it weeds out a lots of so called “money making opportunities”. Day trading for example, is another good example. It’s hard to think of anyone who is really benefiting or getting value from what you’re doing, so I don’t think its a good way to make money.
I really believe in that idea that to make a lot of money you have to help a lot of people.
Anyway, thats just one way of looking at it, and you’re right that pretty hypocritical that my advertising doesn’t match up! ;) Thanks for pointing that out. I’ll have to see if adsense gives me any more control over that. Thanks!
Brian
Adam Holland
May 6th, 2008 at 2:32 pm
I have to agree with you there. Every other program to make money online seems to be a ‘get-rich-quick’ deal. And although many of those programs may actually work, promising millions without delivering the support and coaching to even make $1,000 a month falls WAY short of their ads.
(I like your day trading example by the way…)
And I agree with your quote that, “I really believe in that idea that to make a lot of money you have to help a lot of people.”
And that’s one of the reasons why I’ve been passionate about network marketing. When I was in sales I didn’t really provide all that much value to my buyers. In NM I can coach a single mom with 3 kids to the point where she has a descent parttime income coming in and she can actually provide for her kids. Or I can mentor someone fresh out of college who’s starting to feel the pressure of the college loans they’re paying on.
I just feel that (like you say) by HELPING people create that income, I’m becoming of value to them.
And it’s alot more fulfilling to me than sales. That’s my 2 cents.
Brian Armstrong
May 6th, 2008 at 7:02 pm
Hi Adam, sounds like you are in a good business. Thanks for letting us know there are honest opportunities out there.
Brian