Breaking Free Case Study: Ronald Jenkees
In Breaking Free I outline a number of ways that people can generate passive income to forever leave their jobs. And as you know I always like to see new examples of that…
Well I recently stumbled across this YouTube video of a guy named Ronald Jenkees and it struck me how the internet has really made breaking free that much easier.
Ronald is just an “average” guy in small town America who happened to really enjoy playing music. A while back he started posting videos of some of the beats he was coming up with. He also came up with a blog to share some of the challenges he was facing composing music. Eventually he put together a CD of some of his work.
Apparently people liked his videos on Youtube and felt a genuine connection with him, because at last count he has over 33,000 subscribers to his videos and his work has been viewed by over 2 million people. I don’t have exact figures, but apparently his CD is selling quite well.
All this with little more than his personal time invested and probably a few hundred bucks in equipment.
By the way, music sales are a perfect example of passive income because it doesn’t require your personal time for each person to benefit from it.
The internet is the great equalizer. People with talent or something interesting to say now get free distribution to the world. You no longer have to “get discovered” by some music exec in LA or New York. A kid in a tiny town in Kentucky can reach the whole world.
Even if you aren’t a musician, you can apply the same principle. Find something you enjoy or are passionate about. Share your experience or journey to learn it. Offer some value to other people. Build a list of people who are interested in what you have to say.
This will NOT happen overnight. If Ronald had started his blog to “get rich quick” it most certainly would not have worked, and I’d be willing to bet that for the first few years (perhaps longer) he saw little or no results from it. He kept doing it because it was something he enjoyed whether other people noticed or not. This is key. As they say, it takes 7 years to become an “overnight success”, so pick something you enjoy doing.
Here is a sample of one of his videos. I happen to really like his music…make sure to check out his CD.
Have you seen any other good examples lately of people breaking free by doing what they love? Leave me a comment below…
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It Takes Six Years to Become An Overnight Success | GET LUCKY said,
Wrote on June 30, 2008 @ 1:14 pm
[…] posting this, i read Brian Armstrong’s most recent post on Startbreakingfree where he talked about Ronald Jenkees, “an “average” guy in small town America who […]
Lucky said,
Wrote on June 30, 2008 @ 1:19 pm
It’s funny. Seth Godin posted that it takes 6 years to be an overnight success and I posted my thoughts on that just a few hours before reading this.
You nailed it when you advise to pick something you enjoy doing because very few people can put up with 6-7 years of hard work for something that they don’t enjoy.
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Suze said,
Wrote on July 1, 2008 @ 4:09 pm
I broke free from the dead end jobs I was trapped in by starting a cleaning business. This eventually allowed to make way more money and freed up allot of time, which I put into other interests that now make me a living instead of cleaning. Point being that it can be helpful to see these progressions in tangible steps. When I coach people now, I find most of them are thinking they are going to excel and prosper within a year or less. Tony Robbins teaches that people way over estimate what they can achieve in one year and grossly under estimate what they can achieve in 5 to 10.
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Freddie said,
Wrote on July 22, 2008 @ 7:05 pm
That music is pretty awesome. It is obvious why he is having some success. Good for you, dude!
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Jhonn said,
Wrote on July 24, 2008 @ 5:20 am
Jhonn…
your ideas make me want to start rigth now…
Manuel Zeh said,
Wrote on August 11, 2008 @ 1:34 pm
Hahaha. He’s AWESOME!
Now THIS is a business idea that makes me go…
why didn’t I think of this??
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