Art Of Money

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Current Challenges - A Ramble about My Business

Who’s Hurting Who?

What it mostly comes down to is getting myself out of my own way. I’m the least ‘new age’ guy you’ll ever meet but I can see the truth of this concept in my case. It is clear to me that through grace or my own efforts a process has been set in motion inside me that is creating a business. It seems that the sky’s the limit and although I have set fairly modest financial goals [a net worth of $4,000,000 by May 2010] the goal is clearly well beyond what I can achieve by doing things in the way that I have
always done them.

OPM & OPT

Getting myself out of the way is constantly being vigilant to the fact that what at first seems to me like the best why of doing things may not be. I’m finding that mostly it falls into two areas, which are both in rich dad’s list of the elements of success: Other People’s Time [OPT] and Other People’s Money [OPM]. Especially other people’s time. It’s 100% clear to me that it is vital to get the tasks that I really dislike off of my plate. They create an energy block and that begins to infect all the other
areas of my business.

Accounting is a prime example for me. I think I have a reluctance to be seen financially and this has kept me doing my own taxes my whole life. Now I’m seven months behind on my business books and it is impossible to get a good sense of the financial picture.

Go for a Walk

Also projects are beginning to pile up because I haven’t let go enough to offload larger sections of the work. I used to say that my ultimate work goal was to be able to run my entire operation by going for a one hour walk each day. Meaning that when I went for a walk I did my best thinking and was the most creative. Then, I would have my company so well set up that I could come home, send a couple emails, make phone call or two and know everything was taken care of.

But if that’s the goal, then the main process to achieve it will have to be moving up the ladder of work flow. Simply put it will be necessary to hire people to do all the other tasks and trust them to do well.

Somehow the fact that I’m making a 90% profit is a comfort to me, but of course it is very limiting. I can make that return only because I am not expensing my own time and because the amount of total revenue is so small. What would you rather have 90% of $100,000 or 50% of 1,000,000? Me too. But getting there requires having many sectors of company go beyond my comfort zone.

Get Beyond the Zone

I intentionally set my goals very high to force me beyond my comfort zone, so that I would learn new ways of creating money. I figured that it must be possible to join the ranks of the rich, others have done it right? Now that I have very few other distractions, it is vital to keep this expanded goal in mind. It is important not to shrink from the desire to let go of the controls and trust the process of building a real company.

I’ve had a stunning realization the last few days. I have 4 months [my leave of absence] to make a huge difference in the rest of my life! In the few days since I’ve been work free, due to a shuffle of the search engines, my revenues have dropped to about 1/2 of what I need to cover expenses. My first reaction was of course OMG! But being the clever risk manager that I am, of course I have enough in reserve in the business to cover me for the next 4 months.

What to do? What would you do? My wife says it is perfect. It allows me to have a completely clean slate. And of course she’s right. Time to reassess. Depending on them mood of search engine algorithm is a bad way to reach your goals. Bad! When I take that into consideration and look at the big picture here’s what I see as my next action steps:

The 3 Step Plan

I know I’ve joked about Crack-Sense on this site before, but now I’ve realized that it is true. It is a serious addiction for my to continue to build Adsense niche sites. True, they make money, but they aren’t a real business; at least not the way I do them. Yes, they could be turned into a real business, but when I imagine that, I get bored and queasy. I don’t like the feeling of it…it’s like an arms race with the search engines. Not for me.

Step 1 - No Niche Sites for the rest of June

Sounds simple but it’s not. I have a ton of sites lined up and a million ideas as to how to get an edge in the search results…just let it go Jon…step away from that keyword research tool

Step 2 - Go Deep With an Affiliate Site or 3

I’ve purchased James Martell’s Affiliate Guide and I have decided, as a method of detox, and because it is quite similar to the sites that I have been building, to create anywhere from 1 to 3 affiliate sites. The purpose is two-fold. The first is to adopt a depth to my work. My niche sites are really disposable web sites. I work on them and then move to the next. In a little over a year, my partner
and I have created about 250 of these sites. It’s a bit like moving from a one night stand mentality to a long term relationship mentality; and if it works as well for websites as it does in relationships then I’ll certainly be rich [I've been happily married for 7 years].

The second is to make sure that on October 1, that I have a diversified and very stable income which is more than enough to cover my expenses, even on a bad day. Right now if I had to make the decision of whether or not to go back to work it would be tough not to go back but I see no reason that my affiliate sites can’t be doing $3000 a month profit by then, which combined with my current revenue, should make the decision not to go back to work a very easy one.

Step 3 - Go for the Moon

With passive income well above expenses, it will be time to pull out my folders of ideas [y'all write down every business idea you ever have like I do, right?] and evaluate which one can take me to true wealth.

Having taken the time to get clear about how to get to the next level in my business this is all sitting really well. Taking the time to step back and evaluate can be a difficult thing to do for me, but it almost always yields some excellent clarity and a new sense of direction. I’m feeling focused and relaxed now and very clear about what I have to do and in what order. I’ve printed out my three steps and taped them to my monitor just to remind myself of them every day.

Anyone who has read this far thanks a lot…I think this has been an example of blogging as personal therapy!