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…
A few days ago I made this little 2 minute video demonstrating my new site:
Then I targeted my most competitive keyword (”austin tutors”) by putting this in the title and tags of the video.
Then I went to put it online. Normally I just upload my videos to YouTube since this is the most popular site. But taking Jeff’s advice, I uploaded it to Tube Mogul instead, which automatically uploads it to about 10 different video sharing sites (including YouTube).
This in and of itself is pretty valuable because it takes the exact same amount of time to upload it to TubeMogul as it does to YouTube, except uploading it to TubeMogul gets you maybe 5x the distribution for the same amount of effort. It would take me about 30 minutes per site to do it individually.
Within 24 hours I was seeing some of these video pages show up in Google search results for “austin tutors” (most on the 2nd and 3rd pages). Obviously Google likes these video sharing sites because normally my webpages would take 2 weeks to get updated by Google, but these were getting picked up within 24 hours.
One of them (the AOL video) got on the first page for a bit for my main keyword, then went back to page 2.
The most compelling statistic of all? Half of all new college graduates now believe that self-employment is more secure than a full-time job. Today, 80% of the colleges and universities in the U.S. now offer courses on entrepreneurship; 60% of Gen Y business owners consider themselves to be serial entrepreneurs, according to Inc. magazine. Tellingly, 18 to 24-year-olds are starting companies at a faster rate than 35 to 44-year-olds. And 70% of today’s high schoolers intend to start their own companies, according to a Gallup poll.
An upcoming wave of new workers in our society will never work for an established company if they can help it. To them, having a traditional job is one of the biggest career failures they can imagine.
I like goals, and especially new years resolutions.
I went back and reviewed some of my 2007 new years resolutions. Some I had accomplished (buying my first investment property and making it cash flow) and some are still in progress (sale of a business). But in all honesty, the majority of them I had not accomplished, primarily because they are no longer goals. I guess my goals change often.
Nevertheless, I think its awfully worthwhile to write your goals down (and far more often than once a year!). Here are a few tips on your 2008 resolutions:
Write them down
Goals in your head are no more than ideas. Writing them forces you to get all the details. (Yes, typing counts)
Make them measurable
Saying “I want to earn more” isn’t measurable. You can never know if you actually achieved it or not. Saying “I want to earn $76,500 in the year 2008″ is measurable.
Don’t forget the how
Careful what you wish for. Saying “I want to weight 146 lbs” doesn’t specify how. There are some unhealthy ways to accomplish that, and you want to be specific.
Keep it positive
Focus on what you want, not what you don’t want. Instead of saying “I stop hating my boss”, try “I get a raise and promotion”.
Use the present tense
Saying “I’m going to…” or “I will try…” is weak. Write the goal as if it has already taken place. “I date Heidi Klum.”
Make them ambitious yet possible
Force yourself to reach, but if you make them too ambitious you’ll be disappointed. There should probably about a 50/50 chance of accomplishing it in your own mind.
Make them public
I don’t always recommend telling your goals to people who won’t be supportive, but making them public in a supportive place will help you stay on track. We’re more likely to follow through with peer pressure, which is why…
You have the opportunity to write your #1 goal to accomplish in 2008 below. Please leave a comment (sticking as best you can to the guidelines above, doesn’t have to be perfect). If you leave your email, I promise I’ll check up on you before the end of 2008 to see how things are going!
Every once in a while I like to sit down and make a list of cool things I’d like to do. You know, the sort of things that you typically have in the back of your mind that would be fun, but for whatever reason (sometimes laziness, sometimes because they are scary) you never get around to doing. The sort of things that most people only TALK about doing, and never do because they’re stuck in corporate America.
I like to call these “peak life experiences”. The type of experience where you can go home that day and feel happy knowing you did something unique. These make great stories to tell your friends and family.
Here are a few that I’ve gotten around to in the past year. Some started out as new years resolutions, others just came up through brain storming sessions like this one:
Bought my first piece of investment real estate, and made it cash flow
Put up my business (University Tutor) for sale with a business broker
Took some acting classes
Hired a personal trainer
Took first place at a local speaking competition
Dated a girl I actually liked
Made a bunch of new female friends
Attended four conferences on various subjects (ongoing education)
Built a blog for my book, achieved a #1 page ranking on Google
Tried rock climbing, yoga, and joined a volleyball team
Tried stand up comedy at open mic night
Here are some more I’d like to accomplish in the next year:
Sell University Tutor for a nice profit
Purchase 10 pieces of rental real estate (at least $3000/month in passive income)
Buy a BMW M3
Get my concealed handgun license
Get a personal (virtual) assistant
Get booked/paid to travel to another city for modeling/acting
Get six pack abs
Make at least one quality post per week to this blog
Travel to Australia to surf
Take a helicopter tour of New Zealand
Visit at least four friends in different cities
Launch a new business (can’t disclose details right now, but we’ll call it codename BR for the moment)
To me this is the most exciting part about being self employed: you have the freedom and time to do all of these things. What “peak life experiences” have you been putting off?
If you’ve ever been to Texas, you may have noticed a peculiar beverage for sale called St. Arnold’s Beer.
It comes in a distinct bottle, with a picture of St. Arnold himself (the patron saint of brewing) right on the label, and it happens to be the most successful micro brewery company in Houston.
But St. Arnold’s was not always the profitable small business startup that it is today. In fact, their 13 year history is full of false starts, missed opportunities, and near failures.
I recently had the opportunity to meet Brock Wagner, the founder of St. Arnold’s, and his story had a profound effect on me. It all started back in 1994, when Brock had an important realization: time was running out.
At the time, Brock was working in the financial services industry making a good salary, but he realized one day that time was running out. He didn’t want to spend the rest of his life at a job he didn’t love.
He sat down one day and made a list of what he loved. Near the top were two items: drinking beer, and making beer.
To the average person, these may have seemed like poor opportunities for a career change. After all, his entire background was in financial services. What was he going to do, go drive a delivery truck for Budweiser? Read the rest of this entry »
But St. Arnold’s was not always the profitable small business startup that it is today. In fact, their 13 year history is full of false starts, missed opportunities, and near failures.
