Kick The Job

So, you want to learn Internet Marketing and in particular you want Free Internet Marketing Training? You want to quit your job, make some more income to supplement you current job, build a great life that you really want? Perhaps you want to live the lifestyle discussed in “The Four Hour Work Week“, a brilliant book?

If any of this sounds good or something you want to do, then you need to sign up for the Thirty Day Challenge. Now, last year was the first time I discovered this training. In fact, it has been going since 2005 and is completely free! The main guy that runs this training, Ed Dale, is just brilliant. His training style is relaxed, sometimes funny and most importantly genuine. He is of course an Aussie!:).

Do yourself a favor, go and learn the latest internet marketing tools and techniques and learn the basics which are behind any more advanced strategies:

• Market Research
• Traffic
• Conversion
• Product

If you do one thing this year to make a change in your life and start moving towards what you want in life, you won’t do better than to take advantage of this Free Internet Marketing Training at the Thirty Day Challenge.

I am noticing that the entrepreneurial life is as much about mindset and confidence as it is about anything else. In fact, I believe mindset and confidence probably account for a good 80+% of results.  Firstly, you are not going to have any success if you don’t _do_ something.  Doing something often means taking some type of risk, be it large or small. Risk of failure or embarrassment at something not working or perhaps monetary risk. Monetary risk can come into play when setting up a business or venture or making an investment. In most of these scenarios, money will be ‘in play’. While it may not always be your money, there is still pressure to succeed.

The factors of pressure and risk are very rarely in such full view and close contact in the ‘normal’ context of a day job. As such, they can be quite foreign to the budding entrepreneur and can build up as mental barriers to success. Causing you to do such things as consume too much information/education about a particular topic without actually doing anything. Here’s 2 keys:

• Be Confident!! Look back through your life and remember all the successes you have had. Realize that business and success is not rocket science. It really is not as complicated as your brain likes to make it out to be. Earn more money than you spend!:)
• Be Mindful. You need to be aware of what your mind is saying to you and if that is impeding your success. Join a mastermind group with a focus on action and accountability and concentrate on building a mindset of success.

I hope this helps you build confidence and grow a positive, success based mindset.

So, firstly it has been too long between postings. I need to get into the habit of posting at least twice weekly, if not daily.  There’s many posts that should have been before this, but I wanted to put this up before I forgot it. I listened to a podcast episode this week which I hope will really propel me forward. In the past couple of months, I have been through the Thirty Day Challenge and read A LOT of books, blogs, ebooks etc. All with the aim of building my education and getting ‘ready’ to launch 1 or more businesses on the net. The issue I have been having and I believe a lot of people have is that there is so much information out there that you will forever be ‘getting ready’.

What to do about it? Go to Internet Business Mastery, subscribe to the podcast and listen to the latest (number 40) episode. This will teach you that in addition to doing the often mind numbing research into the viability of a market, also consider your interests, passions and life purposes. This will help you reach that trigger point of action vs inaction (or analysis paralysis). Sure, you need to do some due diligence to ensure the niche you are entering is viable and indeed there are people or businesses buying something. However, you can spend forever trying to find that perfect niche with the perfect numbers. My combining your life purpose/passions into this process, you will push past that point of ‘research’ and move into action as you become excited about making your business work within your chosen niche.

Move forward.

So, here’s the next major part of my success journey.

This will help you finding a mentor.

The final 2 parts are currently ‘work in progress’ so this will be the last post on this topic for a while.

After finally deciding to do something about my career and take my destiny into my own hands, I stumbled into contact with a guy how runs a mentoring program. His business is mentoring and he provides guidance and mentoring on the principles of success, goals, business and real estate investing. Without much thought, I signed up and began a mentoring program realizing that finding and using a mentor is a key factor in success.

I have nearly spent a year in the mentoring program and have done and learned many things. In short, I started off doing some real estate investing while learning about the basics of business, success mindset and lifestyle design. Instead of running through everything I did during this period, here is a summary of the primary things I have learned. I think this is more useful than simply a post of things I did.

• Find, interview and hire/use a reputable mentor - this is key in getting to where you want in a timely manner - don’t reinvent the wheel!
• Success/Business/Mindset are gray areas - No one will be able to give you exact step by step instructions for how to get where you want to be. It is unique to each individual.
• Sit down early on and take some time to plan:
  • What does your ultimate life look like - financial and non financial?
  • What timeline do you want/need to get there?
  • What intermediate steps do you need to take?
  • What do you like/dislike about certain factors of business - do you want to be a real estate investor or would you rather start a business?
  • Get Organized - There will be many options coming your way in the coming months. Focus on what you need to do and keep going back to that. Try to avoid information overload. Read ‘Getting Things Done’ and do the free course at http://www.simpleology.com.
• Pace Yourself - You are in this for the long haul. Realize it takes a while and be patient. Don’t burn out! Learn to relax!!
• Be confident - Know your abilities and what you’ve done in life so far and have been successful at and take this into your new business(es).
• It’s all about the mindset!! - Read the top few ’success’ books and realize that people that are successful are that way because they know they can do it, not because they are any smarter/stronger/richer etc.

That’s it for now. I hope this has helped you with finding a mentor. I’ll add more later as needed. Stay tuned for parts 3 and 4 as I get there!:)

Do you want to become an entrepreneur? I’ve been wanting to post my journey so far and here it finally is. In fact, this will be a 5 part series, with posts 4 and 5 being delayed until later this year when I reach those points:).

Back in late high school, whilst doing a couple of electronics classes, I decided to do engineering. So, after high school, I entered into a Bachelor of Electronic Engineering which soon turned into a Masters of Engineering in IT&T. The course actually had a 25% business component but I pretty much ignored those as they weren’t in my mind part of Engineering. I soon got a job at a large defence company in Australia and then moved into a job with a large US based tech company. Many of my friends had gone straight to this company after graduation.

I then pretty much tried to and succeeded in many respects climbing the corporate ladder. I worked at times very long hours and at other times, things were slow based on the state of the company I was working for. So far I have been working for around 13 years (I think!) which seems a very long time. It’s really been in the last 3 years or so that I have really felt I need to do something else. Despite moving around every few years within the company to different roles, I still found myself dissatisfied, bored, stressed and generally unmotivated. It was then I realized that no matter where I move within the company, I would not be happy and would not live the lifestyle I wanted.

What I learned during my career so far:

• The early part of a corporate career, say the first 5 years can really be a good grounding and learning ground for anyone. I would I think be challenging going directly from school into your own business and the lessons learned, skills learned and relationships formed during the early part of a corporate career should come in handy later on.
• Within large companies, it does not take much to ’stand out’ from the crowd and be considered an above average, even excellent performer. As such, you do have the opportunity to say what you want to do. So, build yourself up as a great performer and you will have the opportunity to take the better roles within your group and the company.
• It’s Who You Know! Any company, big or small is still a set of relationships. I often found that as long as I had a good boss, got along with them very well and built relationships with other key (and senior) managers within the group, I was able to again get in favorable positions that involved things like travel that I wanted.
• There are a couple of Glass Ceilings along the way. You have to decide if you are willing to do what it takes to break through that ceiling or if the corporate career is not really for you. For example, right now I am at such a ceiling. To break through to the next level, I would really need to up my effort to average 60 hrs/wk (I have done it before), build up strong business and political relationships with certain senior managers and colleagues and basically tow the company line. Five years ago, I might have done this. Not now though. So, again, you’ll find these points in your career and you’ll have to figure out what you want to do.
• Lastly, it’s interesting but I have found now that there are a lot of executive managers who have a lot of experience (over 20 years) who for some reason don’t seem to have much more knowledge/skills than some of the better performers at my level do. After a while, these people just gravitate into high positions because they have been there for ages, not because they are particularly suited for the position. Then you realise that at these levels, much of the game is politics rather than building/growing the company.

If you want to become an entrepreneur, depending on what you’ve done in your life so far, there may be some mindsets, habits and preconceptions to overcome. Realize and understand that and simply be aware of it. That will help you consciously change on your path to entrepreneurship and success.

I’ll write soon with Part 2.

Back again, and here’s the final part of my review of the Four Hour Work Week. The next major points I took in from reading the rest of the book:

1. The need to find/build an automated business where you can achieve your income goals in an automated fashion with minimal time input. The most important thing is to not swap time for money as most people do in their jobs. The book goes into some detail regarding options such as reselling, licensing and creating products including how to test markets. Some of the niche market idea generation are similar to what is taught in the Thirty Day Challenge which I will talk abou in a later post. Tim is a big fan of information products which is where my business is going.
2. How to convince your boss (if you have one) your ability to ‘work from home’ by showing increased productivity when you are not in the office. This has the advantage of enabling you to work on building a business while you still have a job.
3. The New Rich lifestyle and how to create a lifestyle that is more rewarding and fulfilling than the current traditional “Work for 45 years, then retire and play golf” mindset. There are some great tips and insights here. It really comes down to asking yourself why should you have to wait till retirement until you enjoy life again. What can you do in the meantime so that you live a content life? Which again comes down to lifestyle design.

That’s it for my review or really major points summary of The Four Hour Work Week. I generally found the first half of the book more inspiring overall, but in reality it is a fantastic book. An absolute must read and probably now my favorite non-fiction book.

OK, so there’s lots to do. Not least of which to post a bit of my history and ‘about me’ on this blog and try to find a cooler theme! However, in the meantime I wanted to post something that people could use straight away. So, here’s the top 5 points I got from reading the first half of Four Hour Work Week, by Tim Ferriss.

1. Design Your Life!! Don’t accept what you’re doing and have if you don’t like it! Make the most of the time here and design your lifestyle the way you want it.
2. Conquer your fears. A lot of people don’t like their jobs. So, what would really happen if you left it? What are the worst case scenarios and how can you address and overcome those?
3. It’s all about relative cash flow. It doesn’t matter if you’re making $200kUS per year. If you’re working 70 hour weeks to get that, what is your real hourly rate and quality of life? Would earning $100KUS in a year, but only working on average 20 hours per week be better?
4. Ruthlessly cut out non value add activities and stress inducing parts of your life. Eliminate useless information consumption. Increase your efficiency when earning $$ in order to free up time to spend on other activities you want in conjunction with your lifestyle design.
5. Outsource! In the global economy, there is a lot of daily and weekly menial tasks that can be outsourced to save you time and headaches. What is your time worth and what can you have done by someone else for less than that amount?

That’s it for now. Stay tuned for more soon!

It’s great to have you at my brand new blog, Kick The Job!

This blog will cover several important topics and likely morph into others going along. It will show my journey from “Working for the Man”, corporate worker earning six figures to entrepreneur, business owner and designer of my life. Along the way, we will discuss opportunities, successes and any setbacks we encounter. The inspiration for this blog and the changes I am making to my life is in large part due to the fantastic book, “The 4-Hour Workweek”.

Stay tuned to learn the key items I have discovered as I start this journey.