Pursuit of Freedom

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Pursuit of Freedom

Helping you create freedom in your life

1

Prologue
As I sit contemplating what I really want to do with my life, I cannot come up with a good answer.
I enjoy doing a lot of things. I want to travel. I want to be involved in my church. I want to go on missions trips.
I want to coach my kids’ sports team. I want to play sports. I want be an inventor. I want to run my own
business. I want to spend a lot of time with my family. I want to travel.
I want to do a lot of things.
My problem is that in order to do some of these things, I cannot do the other things as much as I want to – at
least during the time I am focusing on one.
For example, I have met many business owners that do not have the time to coach their kids’ sports team or
even spend much time with their kids. I do not want to be that guy.
You have probably met that guy. He’s the one that runs a successful company (or has a high paying j ob). He
might even be on his third marriage. His kids love him, but they never really spend much time with him.
Professionally, he is very successful, but most of the other areas of his life are lacking.
On the other hand, there are people that have a great family life. They get to spend a lot of time with their
family, but they just have an average job
I am definitely not saying there is anything wrong with that.
I am also not saying that there is nobody out there that has a successful company/job and a great family life.
There are plenty of people out there that do. However, I truly believe that they are in the minority.
Of course, everybody defines success differently. A job that one person thinks is average, another person may
think is amazing. And, what one person thinks is a great relationship with his kids, another cannot figure out
why his kids do not want to spend more time with him. I personally know people that have sold their very
successful business, moved to sunny Florida, and have all the time (and a lot of money) to do what they want.
However, now they are constantly giving their (grown) children money to make up for lost time spent with
them. The kids may be happy with the money, but they would probably have preferred to have their parents
around more when they were growing up.
It is a balancing act in which many people fail, including me.
I cannot count the number of business ideas that I have had. I honestly believe that most of them could make
somebody very wealthy.
Of those that I have actually tried, I have stopped for one reason or another. I have sold some, I have closed
some, I still run some, and some are currently set aside. I will also most likely purchase my dad’s painting
business when he is ready to retire.

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Most of the ones I have just stopped working on have been because of lack of time. My most recent business
venture has been put on hold for that reason. I would go to work all day and come home and work a few
hours in the evening. I was working so much that I did not feel like I had sufficient time with my family.
Sure, some people would tell me that I should have worked really hard for a few year (and possibly more), get
the business to a point where other people could run it, and then sit back and enjoy life while I make a lot of
money.
Who is to say that it would actually work out that way? And who is to say that I wouldn’t get so involved in the
company that my family life started to suffer significantly?
Nobody can answer those questions. Personally, I would rather live in a shack with my family than a mansion
without them.
I may pick that business up again in the future, but no matter what happens with that business, I can
guarantee that I will pursue other business ventures.
When I graduated college, I really disliked reading. I read so much in college that I couldn’t stand to re ad
anything for a while.
I finally got turned on to some motivational books, and I haven’t stopped reading since. Now I spend a lot of
time reading all sorts of subjects. I read books, blogs, websites, etc. I love to read…and listen to audio books.
I would read about people that started a business from scratch and sold it for a few million dollars. I thought
that was what I wanted to do.
Then I would read about somebody that sold everything they owned and traveled the world. I thought that
would be cool. Maybe I could try that…or at least a variation of that with my family.
Then I would read about someone that has devoted their life to coaching and/or teaching kids. That sounds
like it could be pretty cool. At least I would feel like my life had purpose.
After a lot of reading, business ideas and really deep thinking, I realized that what I really wanted in life was to
be free to do whatever I want.
I want to be able to coach my kids’ sports teams, I want to travel, I want to volunteer at my church, and I want
to run my current businesses and start new ones. I want to do it all.
When I read about someone doing something cool, I want to try it. My bucket list could be an entire book.
Some of the things are really cool and some are boring but would make me feel really good.
When I was reading all the books, I noticed that a lot of them say the same things. They may say it differently,
but the result is the same.
Somebody else has already written everything that I put in this book. There are entire books based on one
chapter in my book. There are even books based on just a couple paragraphs in my book.
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But after all of my reading, I have not found it all in one place. That is why I decided to write (or compile) this
book.
I will cite more in this book than you are used to reading in other books.
Why?
Because why should I attempt to rewrite something that someone else has said so well. As I said before, I see
the same things written differently in multiple books. It seems as though authors are rewriting good material
and calling it their own. They just put their own spin on it.
I would rather give credit where credit is due. As you will see, I personally wrote a fair amount of this book. I
just do not see the point in rewriting good material, so I can call it mine. Plus, I do not feel as though I am a
very good writer.
I would rather compile good information and fill in the gaps. I want you to get as much out of this book as
possible.
I did not, however, purchase material and then put it in this book. Everything that I cite can be found for free.
Enjoy!
Introduction
It’s a Tuesday evening around 6 o’clock, and I am still at the office. Jessica, the office manager, walks by and
notices that I am still working. She asks me why I haven’t left yet, and I tell her that I still have a couple hours
of work to do. She reminds me that I have a two year old daughter and a two week old son at home. I tell her
that I understand, but the work needs to get done.
I have always been a hard worker. I worked for my dad growing up, and he taught me how to work hard. It has
always bothered me when I see lazy people.
Fast forward a few years…
I am back working for my dad. He runs a very successful painting business, and I am his right hand man. I am
the only person working for him (at this time), so I guess I have to be his right hand man.
It’s the middle of February. We are usually slow at this time, but I am working 50-60 hours every week. Since
we are usually slow at this time of the year, we have already let our summer help go. Now we do not have
enough work for three people, but my dad and I can get it all done if we work long hours. Besides, it is much
easier to work longer hours than train someone to paint the way we want them to paint.
You might be wondering why we don’t just hire one of the guys we let go that helped us over the summer. We
don’t do it for a few reasons. One of the guys that helps us teaches during the school year, some of them take
other jobs, some of them work odd jobs on their own, and we just don’t want to hire some of them back.
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My dad actually goes to Florida a few times each winter. He usually starts around January and finishes up
around spring break. Every time he goes, I get a little more anxious to go myself. I would much ra ther be
hanging out on the beach than working 50 hours a week. I realize that there has to be something more than
this.
I do not mind the hard work, but working so hard all the time means that I get little time to do what I really
want to do.
As I already mentioned, I want to do a lot of things. Sometimes I want to go on a vacation. Sometimes I just
want to go play with my kids in the back yard.

5

Chapter One
What Does Freedom Mean to You?
What comes to mind when you think about freedom?
You may be thinking about people that are not free, such as slaves.
You may be thinking about being rich.
You may be thinking about being able to do whatever you want.
Personally, I want to be able to do whatever I want.
Being wealthy does not necessarily mean that you are free. I have met a lot of people that make a lot of
money, but they are nowhere near to being free. They work 60 hours a week, and when they are home, they
are usually thinking about work that still needs to be done.
On the other side of that though, I have seen people that have no job and very little money, but they are not
free. They are so broke that while they do not have to work 40 hours a week, they do not have any money to
do what they want.
I do not want to be in either one of these situations. I believe there is a balance. The exact balance of money
and time is different for everybody.
For example, I follow a blog at http://www.discovershareinspire.com/. I love what this family is doing. They do
not have a lot of money, but they do have a lot of free time. They have cut out all the unnecessary expenses,
and they focus on what they want.
They describe their life as this…
“We are normal people who were living a normal life– until we decided the world was too big to stay in one
place, so we began living deliberately and designing our life the way we really wanted it to be.
Now we’re homeless (on purpose) and extremely nomadic. We love to wander, explore and DISCOVER new
things.
Our aim is to live simply, maximize our freedom, and escape the mundane.
People sometimes think we’re strange (or worse), and they usually agree we’re pretty unconventional. But we
believe that life is meant to be extraordinary.
We dream with eyes wide open. And we dream big.”
I read almost every post of theirs. They do not live exactly the way that I want to, but they have inspired me to
live a little bit more, well…deliberately. I have laid out my goals, and I am currently working towards them.
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The main point that I take from the Denning’ss’ blog is to DO WHAT YOU WANT. Whether you want to work
every day of the week and be rich or you want to live modestly and do whatever you want every day.
Define your goal and then make it happen
Why I wrote this book
I listen to podcasts and audio books most of the time while I am working.
After listening to what seemed like my 100 th book, I decided to make a change.
I thought of all my past experiences. I thought that everything would be ok if I could just make more money.
Besides, I have spent a lot more time than the average person studying what to do with my money once I have
it. I feel like I have a pretty good idea of how to invest my money if I were rich. But, who knows what would
really happen if I did have a lot of money.
But, I realized that I had been thinking about things wrong the whole time. I thought that I wanted to make a
lot of money. I don’t necessarily feel like I need to be rich. I just wanted a plenty.
I sat down one day and started thinking about what I really wanted in life. I’ve read a lot of books and blogs
about how people are living the life they really want. I realized that not all of them are rich. Almost every
single one of them has something else though.
They have FREEDOM.
They may not have made a lot of money, but they were doing what they wanted to do. Some of them live on
pennies a day. They don’t spend a whole lot, but they would not trade their life for anything.
That is what I want. I want to have the freedom to do whatever I want.
And that is why I am writing this book.
Because I couldn’t find all (or even most) of the information in one place, I decided to put it in a book. These
are the topics that I believe will help create freedom in your life.

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Chapter Two
Get Out of Debt
For most people, being free involves being out of debt. I have realized that it is pretty hard to be free when
you have to work every day just to make enough money to pay your bills.
I am a huge fan of Dave Ramsey. I have to say that I do not agree with everything Dave says, but I do agree
with most of it.
If you owe money to someone else, you work for them. You go to work to make money just so you can make
your payments. Then, you get a raise. You start making more money, so now you can pay a little extra money
towards those loans.
Unfortunately, most people do not do this. They get a raise, so they buy a bigger house, a nicer car, or a boat.
It’s a vicious cycle that puts people in more and more debt. Then they lose their job or have unexpected bills,
and they cannot make their payments.
I cannot count the number of people I have seen in this situation. As long as their income continues, they will
seem ok. However, if it even drops a little, they will lose their house. I have seen it at all income levels too.
I do not want to put myself in this situation. Sometimes I take a lot of crap for it, but I drive a 2000 Saturn (in
2014) with over 200,000 miles on it. I have been tempted at times to buy a nicer car, but I have decided to
keep my old car. When we moved to our farm house, we decided that we will need a truck. Instead of rushing
out to buy something right away, we waited to find a good deal. My dad’s neighbor told him that he was
moving out of the county in a couple months and needed to sell his old truck within about a week of moving.
He had a 1994 Chevy with about 175,000 miles on it. He was asking only $800, and I agreed to purchase it at
that price. I take care of my vehicles. They both run well, and I do not have to put much money into repairs. So
I now have two “beater” vehicles that I paid for with cash. I love it. We did, however, buy a little nicer for my
wife, but we still paid cash for it.
My dad has told me a story a few times now about a guy that he thought was pretty wealthy. As I mentioned
before, my dad owns his own painting business, and this guy hired my dad to paint his brand new house. This
is a house that was worth a few hundred thousand dollars back in the 80’s. The job went smoothly, and my
dad got paid. The guy called my dad back a few months later to repaint a room because he wanted the color
changed. My dad walked into his living room, and he only had a couple lawn chairs sitting there. My dad asked
him if he was going to be moving in soon, and the guy told him that he was living there already. He had just
spent all of his money on his house, so he didn’t have money for furniture.
I think about that story all the time and how I do not want to be that guy. I guess that’s why I live in a small
two bedroom house with my wife and three kids. I have to admit that we used to have a little bigger
house…not much bigger though. We purchased this house because it has a lot of land with it. But, instead of
building a bigger house on the property right away, we decided to live in our “tiny house” and save money.

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I cannot say that I am perfect. I spend money all the time that I regret later. I make mistakes just like most
people. I am working on it though.
Below are the baby steps created by Dave Ramsey. Follow these as closely as you can, and you will be on your
way to being out of debt.
1. Save $1,000 to start an emergency fund.
Before you pay any debt down, save $1,000 for emergencies. This can be from selling things you do not
need or just not spending that money when you receive it.
2. Pay off debt using the debt snowball
This is my favorite step. Basically, it is saying that you should pay off your smallest debt first. Once you
pay that one off, you take the money you would be paying on that payment and pay it on the next
smallest debt. So now you are making the normal payment plus the extra payment that you would be
making on the debt you just paid off. Continue to do this until everything is paid off but your house.
3. Save 3-6 months of expenses
This step goes along with step 1 (saving $1,000) but it provides a little more buffer. Once you have this
step completed, you are able to withstand any short-term drops in your income.
4. Invest 15% of household income into Roth IRAs and pre-tax retirement
Investing 15% of your household income should be fairly easy at this point given that you shouldn’t
have any debt other than your house. This is actually one area where I do not agree with Dave 100%. I
do believe in investing, and I do believe in investing at least 15%. However, I believe that there are
other ways to invest that 15%. For example, I like real estate and precious metals as investments. I
think that you should invest in Roth IRAs and pre-tax accounts too. I would rather be more diversified
into other things than just the stock market.
5. College funding for children
One thing to think about here is how much your child (or children) will need to go to school. It may be
overwhelming trying to save 100% of the money all of your children will need for college. So, focus on
saving what you can afford.
6. Pay off home early
The hard part here is to figure out how much money you are putting towards step 5 and how much you
are putting towards your home. There isn’t really a definitive answer. I think it all depends on the age
of your children, how much money you think they will need for college and how much you have left on
your mortgage. This answer is going to be different for everybody; therefore, your percentages will
different.
7. Build wealth and give
I am a huge proponent of giving – whether its money or time. Giving money to someone or an
organization feels good but not nearly as good as volunteering your time for a good cause. There have
been times that I haven’t donated much. I never seemed to have enough money to donate. My wife
and I finally decided that we were going to give no matter what. Things have just seemed easier since
then. There are still times when things get tight, but we always have enough now.
If you want to read more about Dave’s “baby steps”, check out his book The Total Money Makeover.
I came across these quotes online. There are a lot of quotes on debt, but I think that going through every one
of them may help get the point across.
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While going through the list, pick out a couple quotes that help keep you stay motivated to get out of debt.
Write them down, and put them somewhere you will see them every day.
“Some debts are fun when you are acquiring them, but none are fun when you set about retiring them.”
-Ogden Nash
“Good times are when people make debts to pay in bad times.”
-Robert Quinlin
“What can be added to the happiness of a man who is in health, out of debt, and has a clear conscience?”
-Adam Smith
“It is the debtor that is ruined by hard times.”
-Rutherford B. Hayes
“We all think we’re going to get out of debt.”
-Louie Anderson
“The man who never has money enough to pay his debts has too much of something else.”
-James Lendall Basford
“I’m in debt. I am a true American.”
-Balki Bartokomous
Proverbs, Sayings, and Unknown
“He who promises runs in debt.”
-The Talmud
“It is poor judgment to countersign another’s note, to become responsible for his debts.”
-Bible
“Debts are like children: the smaller they are the more noise they make.”
-Spanish Proverb
“Interest on debts grow without rain.”
-Yiddish Proverb
“There are four things every person has more of than they know; sins, debt, years, and foes.”
-Persian Proverb
“The only man who sticks closer to you in adversity than a friend is a creditor.”
-Unknown
“Before borrowing money from a friend, decide which you need most.”
-American Proverb
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“In God we trust; all others must pay cash.”
-American Proverb
“Promises make debt, and debt makes promises.”
-Dutch Proverb
“Christmas is the season when you buy this year’s gifts with next year’s money.”
-Unknown
“A hundred wagon loads of thoughts will not pay a single ounce of debt.”
-Italian Proverb
“Running into debt isn’t so bad. It’s running into creditors that hurts.”
-Unknown
“A church debt is the devil’s salary.”
-Henry Ward Beecher
“The borrower is servant to the lender.”
-The Bible
Benjamin Franklin (and other dudes like him)
“Rather go to bed supperless, than rise in debt.”
-Benjamin Franklin
“When you get in debt you become a slave.”
-Andrew Jackson
“Tis against some mens principle to pay interest, and seems against others interest to pay the principle.”
-Benjamin Franklin
“The second vice is lying, the first is running in debt.”
-Benjamin Franklin
“Never spend your money before you have it.”
-Thomas Jefferson
“Lying rides upon debt’s back.”
-Benjamin Franklin
“I say to you never involve yourself in debt, and become no man’s surety.”
-Andrew Jackson
“Creditors have better memories than debtors.”
-Benjamin Franklin
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“Buy what thou hast no Need of and ere long thou shalt sell thy Necessaries.”
-Benjamin Franklin
“Live within your means, never be in debt, and by husbanding your money you can always lay it out well.”
-Andrew Jackson
“Those have a short Lent, who owe money to be paid at Easter.”
-Benjamin Franklin
Funny… well, some of them at least…
“If I owe you a pound, I have a problem; but if I owe you a million, the problem is yours.”
-John Maynard Keynes
“If you think nobody cares if you’re alive, try missing a couple of car payments.”
-Earl Wilson
“This would be a much better world if more married couples were as deeply in love as they are in debt.”
-Earl Wilson
“When a man is in love or in debt, someone else has the advantage.”
-Bill Balance
“Debt, n. An ingenious substitute for the chain and whip of the slavedriver.”
-Ambrose Bierce
“No man’s credit is as good as his money.”
-E.W. Howe
“Today, there are three kinds of people: the have’s, the have-not’s, and the have-not-paid-for-what-theyhave’s.”
-Earl Wilson
“Forgetfulness. A gift of God bestowed upon debtors in compensation for their destitution of conscience.”
-Ambrose Bierce
“Some people use one half their ingenuity to get into debt, and the other half to avoid paying it.”
-George Prentice
“A man who pays his bills on time is soon forgotten.”
-Oscar Wilde
“I like my players to be married and in debt. That’s the way you motivate them.”
-Ernie Banks

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“Ten million dollars after I’d become a star I was deeply in debt.”
-Sammy Davis, Jr.
Writer’s writers
“A man in debt is so far a slave.”
-Ralph Waldo Emerson
“He that dies pays all debts.”
-William Shakespeare
“Debts are nowadays like children begot with pleasure, but brought forth in pain.”
-Moliere
“Wouldst thou shut up the avenues of ill, Pay every debt as if God wrote the bill.”
-Ralph Waldo Emerson
“Neither a borrower nor a lender be; for loan doth oft lose both itself and friend.”
-William Shakespeare
“Debts and lies are generally mixed together.”
-Francois Rabelais
“There are but two ways of paying debt: Increase of industry in raising income, increase of thrift in laying out.”
-Thomas Carlyle
“Poets, like friends to whom you are in debt, you hate.”
-William Wycherley
“He looks the whole world in the face for he owes not any man.”
-Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
“Who goeth a borrowing. Goeth a sorrowing.”
-Thomas Tusser
“Debt is the worst poverty.”
-Thomas Fuller
“Speak not of my debts unless you mean to pay them.”
-George Herbert
“Youth is in danger until it learns to look upon debts as furies.”
-Edward G. Bulwer-Lytton

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“Small debts are like small shot; they are rattling on every side, and can scarcely be escaped without a
wound.”
-Samuel Johnson
“Do not accustom yourself to consider debt only as an inconvenience; you will find it a calamity.”
-Samuel Johnson
Government, Politics, and other boring topics
“Blessed are the young, for they shall inherit the national debt.”
-Herbert Hoover
“I found this national debt, doubled, wrapped in a big bow waiting for me as I stepped into the Oval Office.”
-Barack Obama
“A liberal is someone who feels a great debt to his fellow man; a debt he prop oses to pay off with your
money.”
-Gordon Liddy
“I go on the principle that a public debt is a public curse.”
-James Madison
“A billion here, a billion there, sooner or later it adds up to real money.”
-Everett Dirksen
“You cannot spend your way out of recession or borrow your way out of debt.”
-Daniel Hannan
“Debt is a prolific mother of folly and of crime.”
-Benjamin Disraeli
“Simply put, unsustainable debt is helping to keep too many poor countries and poor people in poverty.”
-Bill Clinton
Modern ‘Gurus’
“Debt is dumb. Cash is king.”
-Dave Ramsey
“Debt can turn a free, happy person into a bitter human being.”
-Michael Mihalik
“Chains of habit are too light to be felt until they are too heavy to be broken.”
-Warren Buffett

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“If you’re thinking of debt, that’s what you’re going to attract.”
-Bob Proctor
“Debt is normal. Be weird.”
-Dave Ramsey
“If you have debt I’m willing to bet that general clutter is a problem for you too.”
-Suze Orman
Kickin’ it Old School
“Debt is the slavery of the free.”
-Publilius Syrus
“A small debt produces a debtor; a large one, an enemy.”
-Publilius Syrus
“Crito, I owe a cock to Asclepius; will you remember to pay the debt?”
-Socrates
“It shows nobility to be willing to increase your debt to a man to whom you already owe much.”
-Cicero
“It is thrifty to prepare today for the wants of tomorrow.”
-Aesop
Hard to categorize quotes…
“It takes as much imagination to create debt as to create income.”
-Leonard Orr
“A habit of debt is very injurious to the memory.”
-Austin O’Malley
“In the long run we shall have to pay our debts at a time that may be very inconvenient for our survival.”
-Norbert Wiener
“The impulse dances inside the debt.”
-Jareb Teague
“A mortgage casts a shadow on the sunniest field.”
-Robert Green Ingersoll
“One of the greatest disservices you can do a man is to lend him money that he can’t pay back.”
-Jesse Jones
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“Debt is like any other trap, easy enough to get into, but hard enough to get out of.”
-Henry Wheeler Shaw
“Many delight more in giving of presents than in paying their debts.”
-Sir Philip Sidney
“Wars in old times were made to get slaves. The modern implement of imposing slavery is debt.”
-Ezra Pound
“Home life ceases to be free and beautiful as soon as it is founded on borrowing and debt.”
-Henrik Ibsen
“Debt is the secret foe of thrift, as vice and idleness are its open enemies.”
-James H. Aughey
“Worrying is like paying on a debt that may never come due.”
-Will Rogers
“One can pay back the loan of gold, but one lies forever in debt to those who are kind.”
-Malcolm Forbes
Grand Finale!
“Don’t let your mouth write no check that your tail can’t cash.”
-Bo Diddley
- http://manvsdebt.com/debt-quotes/
Resources:
The Millionaire Next Door
Christian Debt Elimination Program

16

Chapter 3
Get Rid of “Things”
As I mentioned in the last chapter, I enjoy reading http://manvsdebt.com/. This is the website that Adam
Baker started to show how he sold his crap, paid off his debt, and does what he loves.
While I respect what Adam did, (just like with the Denningss) I do not want to do the exact same thing. I know
that no matter where I go or what I do, I will always settle down at my home. So, I do not want to sell all my
“crap” just to have to buy some of it back when I come back home.
I have two college friends that were in similar situations. One traveled and the other just had more freedom to
do what he wanted. Because I do not want to give their names, I will call them friend one and friend two.
I was having a conversation with friend one about purchasing renters insurance from me when I was working
at State Farm. He said he did not have anything in his apartment that had any real value. In fact, his most
expensive item was his backpack. At the time, I kind of thought he was a little weird. Now, I wish I had been a
little more like him. He was making decent money at the time, he just hadn’t fallen into the trap of buying cool
things to show off his money.
Friend two was different because he used his saved money to travel. I do not know if he had anything of real
value, but I know he lived on a very strict budget. He had a full-time job that I would guess made him a decent
amount of money, but he hardly spent any while he was home. Whenever I would see him though, he told me
stories about traveling all over the world.
A lot of people (including me), want to actually start buying nicer things once they get their first full -time job
out of college. I bought a new (to me) car pretty quickly. It wasn’t that expensive, but I had to make a
payment. Then I started buying other “cool” things. I never got myself into too much trouble, but I lost a little
freedom every time I bought something.
In our society, it seems as though your happiness is measured in the amount of things you have. If you have a
good job, you want to have a nice car. Then you want to get a nice house. Then, depending on your situa tion,
you may want to get a boat or another toy. In between your larger purchases, you buy a nice tv, computer,
and the latest iPad. You want to be able to show people that you have money.
Now I am not saying that the only reason you do this is to impress other people. There are certainly benefits
to all of these items. However, a portion of the reason you purchase some items is because your friends have
them.
Check out this great article from zenpsychiatry.com.
Get Rid of Your Stuff: Why Fewer Possessions = More Freedom, and 10 Tips for How to Get There
“Is it possible that the traditional American value of consuming, amassing possessions, and constantly trying to
one-up yourself with bigger and better things might not be making you as happy as you think?
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There are many ways that having too much is hazardous to a healthy way of life. The more you own, the more
time and mental energy you spend keeping track of it, and the more you worry about breaking or losing what
you worked so hard to get. A cluttered environment causes stress, conscious or not, every time you come
home and look at it. And the more stuff you need to maintain your lifestyle, the harder and longer you need to
work to pay for it. The cycle is endless. You think once you have something, “then I’ll be happy” - but once you
have it you just want something else. It’s best not to get caught up in the whole thing.
Stuff has a way of tying us down instead of freeing us. How many of your possessions bring you happiness and
joy, and how many, at best, needlessly clutter your environment, and at worst, create worry, fear and anxiety?
The more expensive or complicated your stuff is, the more you fret about all the things that could go wrong
with it, or how you’re not using it enough, or how difficult it will be to maintain. The more you ne ed to keep
track of, the more headaches you have.
Accumulating possessions we don’t need or can’t afford, though, is what our culture trains us to do. It controls
how we work and collect debt- forcing us to work long beyond what we find enjoyable and productive. You
work hard in college so you can get a good job with a good salary and work harder. You use your spare income
to get a car, but instead of buying something you can afford, you lease something flashier than you need. Now
you’re stuck working so you can keep making those payments. In the meantime, you use your credit card to
buy more stuff you don’t have the cash for (note: I’m not talking about responsible credit card use here,
where you pay off the balance every month, which is necessary to built credit)- maybe a new TV, or fancy
furniture, or expensive clothes so you can impress the people around you, etc, and now you’ve got more
monthly payments you need to make. A few years later you get a big promotion, and instead of paying off
your debt, you use the extra money to put a down payment on a house. And now you’re really screwed, since
you’ll be working the rest of your life to pay off that house (and we all now know housing prices don’t always
go up). If you’re lucky, when you’re 65 you’ll get to retire and actually start enjoying your life.
No thanks.
What if, instead, you could learn to be happy with less? The world opens up to you. You don’t need to work so
long and hard to pay for a bunch of stuff you don’t need. You can spend your time with the people you love
and pursuing hobbies that make you happy. You reduce the clutter and distraction in your environment so
your mind is free to spend dreaming about bigger and better things. You can make radical changes in lifestyle.
It’s those people who over consume who wistfully think, if only I could quit my job, if only I could take off for
South America, if only I could spend my days playing cello/learning to cook/doing Japanese woodworking like
I’ve always wanted to. Don’t be one of those people. It’s attachment to material things that keeps you locked
down, that forces you to work when you don’t want to, and that stifles your creativity and spirit.
If the status quo seems like a scam to you too, then here are some tips you can use to shift to a healthier
relationship with material possessions:
1. Declutter. Go through your house/apartment/work areas and look at your counters, tabletops, desk and
dresser surfaces. One space at a time, clear everything off and put it into a pile. Take each object, and consider
how useful or necessary it is. Can you trash it? Give it away? If you’re asking yourself, “Can I really get rid of
this?” the answer is yes. Consider getting rid of purposeless/decorative knick knaks. If there are things you
want to keep, put them away instead of leaving them littering your countertops. Reducing visible clutter is an
18

important step in reducing the distraction and stress too much stuff can create, and introducing you to the
idea of getting rid of things.
2. Dig a little deeper. Go through your closets, drawers, cabinets and other non-visible spaces, and get rid of
the stuff you don’t need, don’t enjoy, or don’t use regularly. One space at a time, empty everything out and
put each item in one of three piles: trash, donate and keep. Be ruthless. Don’t skip stuff- make a decision and
put it into a pile. If you think you may need it someday, and are worried to get rid of it, put it in a box and tape
it up. If after six months you haven’t thought about the box, you know what to do. If you haven’t used
something in a long time, ask yourself, why am I holding on to it? What does it symbolize for me? Remember
that people and memories are not synonymous with possessions. Just because you want to donate the
sweater your aunt gave you doesn’t mean you don’t love your aunt. If there’s something you don’t use but
that holds sentimental value, why not take a digital photo and then give it away, guilt-free? You’ll be amazed
at how much freer and lighter you feel after doing this, and how much of your stuff you won’t mind being
gone. Just the simple act of clearing your environment can clear your thoughts and make you feel less stressed
and burdened.
3. Consider the big stuff. Really look at the big purchases you’ve made. Which do you need, which make you
happy, and which create headaches and stress? Where is your debt? A mortgage, car payments, credit card
bills? Are there areas you could downsize? Maybe a simpler car, a smaller house, less furniture? What would
downsizing in these areas get you? Less clutter, more simplicity, more freedom? Would it give you the chance
to reduce your work hours and follow a passion you’ve been wanting to for a long time? Consider areas would
you could edit large, expensive and potentially burdensome things out of your li fe, and take action when
you’re ready and when it’s feasible.
4. Try a radical 30-day experiment of minimalist consumerism. Now that you’ve rid yourself of unnecessary
or excessive possessions, it’s time to start buying less in the first place. For the next month buy ONLY what you
NEED. I’m talking about the absolute essentials of daily living- food, toilet paper, gas, etc. It’s extreme, but it
will show you how much money you waste on meaningless stuff you don’t need and that doesn’t bring you
happiness- at least not in the long run. After the month, you can start buying things again, but do so more
mindfully and thoughtfully.
5. Consider alternatives to buying. When you need or want something, is there a way you can get it other
than buying new? Can you borrow it? Buy it used from a thrift shore or garage sale? Find it on craigslist? Get a
hand-me-down from a friend or family member? Make it? Can you postpone getting it until you find it one of
these other ways?
6. Practice delayed gratification. When you see something you want, instead of buying it right away, write it
down and think about it. Thirty days later, look at your list. If you still want the item, then you can get it.
Practice interrupting the process of “want” turning directly and immediately into “buy.” I do this, and it saves
me from buying big ticket items mindlessly or impulsively. Try it and you might be surprised how often your
desire for something wanes over just a few weeks. We’re bombarded by signals of “Buy! Buy!” all the time - in
billboards, store windowsills, TV commercials, that coworker who always looks so stylish- your job is to ignore
these signals. Simply deferring the period of time between “wanting” and “buying” for at least thirty days will
likely drastically cut the amount of stuff you collect. As a bonus, you’re more likely to enjoy your purchases if
you have to wait a little to get them.
19

7. Spend money where it counts. I read an article in the New York Times that explains this concept a lot better
than me, but to summarize, money spent on hobbies and experiences is a lot more likely to bring happiness
than money spent on stuff. Instead of buying a fancy car, get a more modest one and take a trip to Euro pe.
Instead of a 60 inch plasma TV, get some golf clubs so you can play with your friends. But don’t let this be an
excuse to go out and buy the most high tech equipment- you can still get those golf clubs used. Wait until your
skill level exceeds the quality of your gear before you decide to upgrade.
8. Open your mind to new possibilities. This is the end goal, in my mind, of why its worthwhile to radically
change your relationship with material possessions. I think a lot of people may think they’re happy, but it’s
because they don’t take the time to consider anything better, or they assume its not possible, or they’re afraid
to make a change. ANYTHING is possible. It’s not just luck, or natural talent, or advantage that leads people to
achieve prolific and authentic lives- it’s a decision they make to pursue something with reckless abandon.
9. Consider a radical change in lifestyle. Have you always wanted to quit your job and open a restaurant?
Move to the French Riviera? Start a business? What would you want if every option in the world were open to
you? All these things are possible. When you have less, and need less, the energy of activation to make a
change is much lower. There’s no debt hanging over your head, fewer things you need to lug on your jaunt
around the world, no ridiculous lifestyle that needs to be maintained. You’re free.
10. That’s pretty much all I have. I just wanted to round it out to 10 tips.”
http://zenpsychiatry.com/get-rid-of-your-stuff/
Resources:
http://www.theminimalists.com/
http://www.becomingminimalist.com/

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Chapter 4
Get Rid of Stress
You may be asking yourself, “What does this have to do with freedom”?
Stress comes in all forms. It can come from your job, your family, or a thousand other places.
As I write this, I am taking a break from something that is causing me a ridiculous amount of stress.
I am in the middle of building a mini barn. I have never done this before, so I am learning as I go. There are a
few sections that I built, realized I built it wrong, took it apart, and built it again.
I was asked by a friend today if I enjoyed building the barn. My answer was “no”. I will enjoy the end res ult
and be proud of my work, but I am frustrated with the entire process. I just want the barn to be done.
What does this have to do with freedom?
Freedom is not just about time or money. You may be wealthy enough to do whatever you want every day.
However, if you are stressed out, you are not truly free.
You are not free because you are constantly thinking about whatever is causing the stress or drama.
No matter what you do, there will always be something that will cause you stress. It may be a certain person
or it may be watching your favorite sports team. Try to figure out what causes you stress and limit the
existence in your life.
I’m not saying if your kids cause you stress that you give them up for adoption, but you can reduce the amount
of stressful interactions with your kids.
You will have to come up with solutions in your own life. Even if your situations are the same, we may have
two completely different ways of eliminating the stress.
One big way to reduce stress is to meditate. The following is an article I had planned for my blog before I
decided not to blog and just write this book.
How Meditation Can Create Freedom In Your Life
You are most likely physically free. You are not chained to a pole or locked up in a dungeon. However, you
may struggle to feel that freedom in your mind. The knowledge that you are physically free, does not
automatically remove all the mental barriers to freedom. Stress, tension, concern and anxiety can make you
feel more trapped than any physical barriers, and can be harder to deal with. So how do you address these
unseen forces?

21

One of the simplest and most effective methods to getting in touch with your mind is meditation. It has been
used for thousands of years around the world to focus and relax the mind, and restore calm. Regular
meditation can give you emotional freedom to focus on the thoughts and activities that make you happy.
Understanding Meditation
Meditation is often misunderstood. When you think of meditation, you may have an image of a monk in an
orange robe in the lotus position. This is the stereotype of course. Meditation isn't just for Buddhists. Simply
put, meditation is the practice of paying attention and focusing awareness, being fully conscious in the here
and the now. It can be practiced by anyone in any stage of their life.
Benefits of Meditation
Meditation, when practiced regularly, can give you a sense of calm, and clear away an overload of
information. It can help you to focus on the present and reduce the stress that may be cycling around your
mind. It reduces negative emotions and increases self-awareness, allowing you to identify and address the
causes of any emotional issues.
Meditation can also help you sleep better, be more productive at work and have better relationships with
others.
Practicing Meditation
With the advent of the internet, meditation is now more accessible than ever before. There is a wealth of free
meditation guides online that will walk you through your first attempt. For first timers it can be difficult to
stay focused for a lengthy period of time, so there are sites like Headspace
(http://www.getsomeheadspace.com/) and Art of Living (http://www.artofliving.org) that break it down into
manageable pieces.
There is no right or wrong way to meditate, and there are many different methods out there. Experiment with
the different options and find out what works for you. However it is important to practice regularly (daily if
possible), as you will only start to feel the deeper benefits after about 10 days of meditation.
Meditation is a simple and effective way of finding emotional freedom in your life. The positives of regular
practice far outweigh any negatives. Once you start, you may find yourself wondering how you ever lived
without it!
Resources:
Natural Stress Relief Meditation
De-stress Your Life

22

Chapter 5
Emotional Freedom
I probably could have combined this chapter and the last chapter, but I wanted to keep them separate.
Removing stress and controlling your other emotions are very similar. I wanted to keep them separate
because stress plays a larger role than other emotions. Removing stress can, however, lead to emotional
freedom.
I have been contemplating for some time now how to write this section. I decided to put it off for a while until
an idea about how to write it popped into my head. I actually went a few weeks without writing this section.
Then, my pastor gave a sermon that explained exactly how emotional freedom works. He put it i n a little
different context than I will, but the idea is the same.
Most people base how their day was by what happened to them that day – or their emotions towards that
day. If good things happened to them, then they had a good day. Likewise, if bad things happened, they had a
bad day.
I believe that emotional freedom allows you to have a good day des pite your circumstances.
What do I mean by this?
The following chart gives an example of typical emotional reactions.

6

5

4

3

Circumstances
Emotions

2

1

0
Day 1

Day 2

Day 3

Day 4

Day 5

Day 6

23

Day 7

As you can see in this example, the emotions are directly related to the circumstances.
It is not easy, but you can separate your emotions from your circumstances. Have you ever seen someone that
is in a horrible situation but is always happy?
I do not watch much tv, but I remember flipping through the channels once and I saw Extreme Makeover – the
show where they build a house for someone in need. I remember seeing this guy that had lost everything. He
couldn’t even repair his house because he didn’t have any money. That was a guy that you might think would
be depressed. But he wasn’t. He was happy. He knew there are people worse off than him, and he was
grateful for what he had.
His circumstances definitely did not control his emotions. Life gave him rotten lemons, and he made the best
lemonade ever.
If he can do it, why can’t you?
Maybe he was surrounded by good friends and/or family. Maybe he knew he could always rely on God. I don’t
know. But, I do know that I can be more like him.
Whenever bad things happen to me, I try to “roll with the punches” – absorb the hit and keep on keepin’ on.
This is especially helpful with children. I have found that if something unplanned comes up, then I try to turn it
into an adventure for my kids.
Here is an example. A few months ago the top button on my iphone quit working. I know, first world problems
right? Obviously this wasn’t something terrible, but it did mean that I had to drive an hour, wait in line at the
Apple store, get it replaced, drive back to the place I bought it, get a new screen cover, and then drive home.
Along with a couple other stops I made it took me over four hours.
I could have been mad the entire time. I was working over 50 hours a week on average, and this was my one
day off…during the week.
Instead, I let my daughter pick out her wardrobe (she chose a very interesting outfit), and we had daddydaughter day. She was so excited. I was just doing the stuff I had to do anyway, but it made it fun for both of
us.
Going back to the example from the chart, I want to show you what my view of emotional freedom looks like.

24

6

5

4

3

Circumstances
Emotions

2

1

0
Day 1

Day 2

Day 3

Day 4

Day 5

Day 6

Day 7

In the chart, you can see that the emotions are high even when the circumstances are low.
As I mentioned before, my pastor did not explain it like this. Without giving the entire sermon, he explained it
more as trusting in God. If you trust in God, then even when something bad happens in your life, you do not
have to have a negative reaction to it.
I talk about religion a little more in the next chapter.
Resources:
Emotional Freedom Technique Ebook.
Get Rid of Anger

25

Chapter 6
Religion
I believe that my faith in God plays a large role in my freedom.
No matter what I am dealing with in my life, I can relieve my burden by trusting in God to take care of me.
I am a Christian. While I would love this book to bring more people to know the Lord, that is not the purpose
of this book.
The following is a great passage that I found at www.gotquestions.org.
“Everyone seeks freedom. Especially in the West, freedom is the highest virtue, and it is sought after by all
who are, or consider themselves to be, oppressed. But freedom in Christ is not the same as political or
economic freedom. In fact, some of the most harshly oppressed people in history have had complete freedom
in Christ. The Bible tells us that, spiritually speaking, no one is free. In Romans 6, Paul explains that we are all
slaves. We are either slaves to sin or slaves to righteousness. Those who are slaves to sin cannot free
themselves from it, but once we are freed from the penalty and power of sin through the cross, we become a
different kind of slave, and in that slavery we find complete peace and true freedom.
Although it seems like a contradiction, the only true freedom in Christ comes to those who are His slaves.
Slavery has come to mean degradation, hardship and inequality. But the biblical paradigm is the true freedom
of the slave of Christ who experiences joy and peace, the products of the only true freedom we will ever know
in this life. There are 124 occurrences in the New Testament of the word doulos which means someone who
belongs to another or a bond slave with no ownership rights of his own. Unfortunately, most modern Bible
versions, as well as the King James Version, most often translate doulosas “servant” or “bond-servant.” But a
servant is one who works for wages and who, by virtue of his work, is owed something from his master. The
Christian, on the other hand, has nothing to offer the Lord in payment of his sin, and he is totally owned by the
Master who bought him with His shed blood on the cross. Christians are purchased by that blood and are the
possession of their Lord and Savior. We are not hired by Him; we belong to Him (Romans 8:9;1 Corinthians
7:4). So “slave” is really the only proper translation of the word doulos.
Far from being an oppressive slavery, the slave of Christ is truly free. We have been set free from sin by the
Son of God who said, “if the Son sets you free, you will be free indeed” (John 8:36). Now the Christian can truly
say, along with Paul, “...through Christ Jesus the law of the Spirit of life set me free from the law of sin and
death” (Romans 8:2). We now know the truth and that truth has set us free (Romans 8:32). Paradoxically,
through our bondage to Christ, we have also become sons and heirs of the Most High God ( Galatians 4:1-7). As
heirs, we are partakers of that inheritance—eternal life—which God confers on all His children. This is a
privilege beyond any earthly treasure we could ever inherit, while those in bondage to sin inherit only spiritual
death and an eternity in hell.
Why, then, do so many Christians live as though they are still in bondage? For one thing, we often rebel
against our Master, refusing to obey Him and clinging to our old lives. We hold on to the sins that once bound
us to Satan as our master. Because our new nature still lives in the old fleshly nature, we are still drawn to sin.
26

Paul tells the Ephesians to “put off” the old self with its deceit and corruption and “put on” the new self with
its righteousness. Put off lying and put on truthfulness. Put off stealing and put on usefulness and work. Put off
bitterness, rage and anger and put on kindness, compassion and forgiveness (Ephesians 4:22-32). We have
been set free from the bondage of sin, but we often put the chains back on because part of us loves the old
life.
Furthermore, often we don’t realize that we have been crucified with Christ (Galatians 2:20) and that we have
been reborn as completely new creatures (2 Corinthians 5:17). The Christian life is one of death to self and
rising to “walk in the newness of life” (Romans 6:4), and that new life is characterized by thoughts about Him
who saved us, not thoughts about the dead flesh that has been crucified with Christ. When we are continually
thinking about ourselves and indulging the flesh in sins we have been freed from, we are essentially carrying
around a corpse, full of rottenness and death. The only way to bury it fully is by the power of the Spirit within
us who is the only source of strength. We strengthen the new nature by continually feeding on the Word of
God, and through prayer we obtain the power we need to escape the desire to return to the old life of sin.
Then we will realize that our new status as slaves to Christ is the only true freedom and we will call upon His
power to “not let sin reign in your mortal body so that you obey its evil desires” (Romans 6:12).”
http://www.gotquestions.org/freedom-in-Christ.html
No matter what your religion is, you have to agree that believing in a higher power allows you the peace of
mind knowing that you can trust in that “power” to do what is best for you.

27

Chapter 7
What is Passive Income?
Honestly, there are a lot of people that can write about passive income much better than I can. I’m not going
to sit here and rewrite someone else’s information when I could just show you exactly how they wrote it.
The following article is from entrepreneurs.com.
“Do you want to continue working 50, 70, 100 hours a week the rest of your life?
Good! Neither do I.
Do you want to be able to take time off whenever you want to, without worrying about what's going to
happen to your business?
So do I.
There's a saying in the corporate world: "Don't make yourself irreplaceable. If you can't be replaced, you can't
be promoted." As an entrepreneur, this is still true in its own way. Let's think of "being promoted" as earning
more and working less. You can raise your prices, but until you can remo ve yourself from being directly
involved in doing the work that generates the income, there's always going to be a limit to how much you can
earn, and it can only increase very slowly.
Passive income, on the other hand, is income that does not require your direct involvement. Some kinds of
passive income you may be familiar with include owning rental property, royalties on an invention or creative
work, and network marketing. If you want to earn more, work less, and have a decent retirement, you're going
to have to start creating income streams that do not require your direct involvement. Whether you're just
starting your business, or you've been running it a while, the sooner you start thinking about how you are
going to shift your business model to create more passive income, the sooner you can achieve personal and
financial freedom.
Let's look at two basic types of passive income, and a third type of income that, while technically not passive,
is a key strategy for earning more and working less.
Residual Income
Residual income is revenue that occurs over time from work done one time. Some examples include:





An insurance agent who gets commission every year when a customer renews his policy
A network marketing or direct sales rep's income from her direct customers when they reorder product
every month
An aerobics instructor who produces a video and sells it at the gyms where she teaches
A marketing consultant who creates a workbook and sells it in e-book format on the Internet

28




A photographer who makes his photos available through a stock photography clearinghouse and gets paid a
royalty whenever someone buys one of his images
A restaurant or retail owner who has grown to the point of hiring a trustworthy manager
As you can see, there are many different ways to generate residual income across a wide variety of businesses.
It may be recurring income from the same customers, or the sales of a product to new customers. It may
require no personal involvement whatsoever, such as an e-book sold on a web site, or it may require some
personal interaction, such as the insurance agent calling the customer to remind them about their renewal
and ask them if they want to change any of their coverage. Often, it's something that you can delegate to an
assistant.
Note that this is different from merely recurring income. Recurring income may still require your involvement
to earn the income, e.g., a coach or consultant on a monthly retainer, or a caterer who delivers lunch every
Monday to the local school board. While this "active recurring income" offers welcome stability, it also tends
to tie you down, and you still have limits on your earning capacity based on your own personal production
capacity.
Leveraged Income
Leveraged income leverages the work of other people to create income for you. Some examples of leveraged
income include:






An e-book author selling her e-book through affiliates who promote the product
A network marketer who builds a downline and receives commissions on the sales made by people in his
downline
A general contractor who makes a profit margin on the work done by sub-contractors
Franchising your business model to other entrepreneurs (the ultimate leveraged income)
Again, there are many different models in many different businesses. The key is that you are maki ng money
off of other people's labor, rather than primarily your own. Note that leveraged income may or may not also
be residual income. When you combine them, that's even better.
Active Leveraged Income
This is a term I use to describe income that requires your direct participation, but that you can make more
money by having more people involved. This generally involves a one-time event, such as:






A seminar or class
A conference or convention
Concerts and dance recitals
Raves and other parties
Although these require your direct participation, your earning potential is much higher than if someone were
just paying you a direct hourly rate. Fill a room with 1,000 people paying $50 each and you can cover your
facility cost, promotional cost, and staffing fees and still have a nice chunk of change left over.
29

Applying It
Now is the time to think about how to apply this in your business. Can you create a product that people will
buy over and over again? Can you engage others to sell your product? How could you make money off the
work of others?
The sooner you answer these questions, the sooner you'll have financial and personal freedom.”
http://entrepreneurs.about.com/od/gettingstarted/a/passiveincome.htm

30

Chapter 8
Types of Online Passive and Residual Income

The following is part of an article that was taken from isitebuildit.com. They explain everything much better
than I can.

“Types of passive income streams to build online:
1. Affiliate Programs - passive income is derived from setting up a web site that presells a companies’
products. The parent company provides the products, tracks the sales and gives you a commission for each
sale. Find companies that offer large commissions, and will track clients for multiple sales over a long period of
time (ie lifetime) so you can get recurring commissions. Make sure they offer multiple tiers (at least 2) for
sales. ie you still get paid if one of your affiliates makes a sale.
One of the best examples is the 5 Pillar Affiliate Program from Ken Envoy.
He offers a number of great products with high commis sions with excellent sales materials and content to help
you presell his products.
Read the free ebook: Affiliate Masters Course to become a high-earning affiliate champion.
2. Information Products - the web is great place to create an ebook that explains 'How to" information ie How
to start an online business, How to buy a car without getting ripped off...anything that makes life easier for
people. People are hungry for information, therefore if there is a need, you can create an ebook and sell it on
the Net.
What are the benefits of creating an ebook?


Easy to create - you just need the ebook creation software. Takes a short amount of time - you can create an
info report in a few hours or days. A large ebook may take several weeks or months.



Low cost - costs will include ebook creation software, web site design, web hosting and marketing. Once you
this set up, with good promotion in the search engines, you can make sales from your ebook 24 hours a day
for years to come.



Add an affiliate program - increase the number of ebook sales sales by getting other people to sell it for a
commission. This enables you greatly increase your passive income.



Allow reprint rights - charge a fee for people that will have the complete reprint rights. They are able to place
their own affiliate links in the ebook and sell it for the same price to others.
31

3. Creating software products - if you have a good idea for a software product that will help people do
something faster, easier or teach them something, then you may have a winner.
A friend of mine created a course that educates autistic kids step by step. He then sells the course on a CD to
educational institutions and individuals all over the world. He makes a nice passive income each month from
his initial investment of time, effort and money. The best example is Bill Gates who created the Microsoft
Corporation selling the Windows Operating System. You could do the same on a smaller scale.
4. Advertising commissions - if you have a web site that attracts 1000s of visitors a day from the search
engines, you can offer to place a banner or link on your site for a fee that you collect each month. You set it up
once, then collect the passive residual income.


Newsletters or ezines - offer advertising space in your ezine. The greater number of subscribers you have the
more you can charge every time you publish.



eBooks - offer advertising space in your ebook. Give the ebook away for free or even place links in it from
affiliate programs you recommend. Would you rather purchase the rights to this ebook instead of writing your
own? Click here to find out how.



Google AdSense - place Google Ads on your web site. When someone clicks on the ad, you get a commission
for every click. If you have 100s or 1000s of pages on your site, you can earn a substantial monthly income.
Read: How to monetize your web site with Google AdSense
5. Pay Per Click Campaigns - you can make money instantly by setting up a Google AdWords campaign for
your product or affiliate program. If there are not too many competitors promoting the same product and it is
in high demand, you can earn a good passive income. Creating several successful campaigns will multiply the
amount you can make.
Read: How to Set Up a Successful Google AdWords Campaign
6. Referrals - create a network of people that offer services or products related to your business. Ask for a
commission every time you refer someone. For example as a web designer, I sometimes refer clients to
graphic designers, search engine optimization experts, copywriters and database designers especially when I
don't have the time to do the work myself or it is outside my area of expertise.
7. Create a membership site - if you are an expert in your field and can provide the resources, knowledge and
support, you can charge a monthly fee to gain access to your membership site. The more members you gain,
the more money you make. Because you are an expert in your field, you can also recommend other products
and services to your members, from which you earn commissions.
8. Become a Reseller - by reselling other people's services you can earn ongoing residual income.
One such example is web hosting or domain name registration. You pay a monthly fee to the reseller and you
can charge whatever you like to your customers for your service. Of course you must be thoroughly familiar
32

with the service to provide the necessary support to your clients.
Conclusion: Building multiple passive income streams is a great way to secure yourself for the future. You
never know if you will be laid off from your regular job, get too ill to work, experience a disaster or want to
start saving for your retirement.
Choose one of the above types of passive income streams and take action now, to secure your financial
future.”
-http://www.isitebuild.com/passive-income.htm
Resources:
How to Write Your Own Ebook in 7 Days
Secrets to Making Money with a Free Blog
The Laptop Millionaire
http://www.smartpassiveincome.com/

33

Chapter 9
Types of Offline Passive and Residual Income
I have done a lot of research on creating offline passive income. The truth is that there are thousands of ways.
Below is a list of a few of the more common types of offline passive income. This is NOT all types of offline
passive income.
Real Estate
It is amazing how you can use real estate to build wealth. I started out by reading Rich Dad Poor Dad by Robert
Kiyosaki. I absolutely loved it.
After I read this book, I continued to read most of his other books.
While he is a great motivator, he does not give you much specific information. For this, I suggest taking a look
at http://www.biggerpockets.com/.
The following is from biggerpockets.com.
“There are many great benefits from investing in real estate. Not the least of which is the opportunity to
develop a number of streams of income from your real estate business. Having money coming to you from
many different sources will not only give stability to your real estate business but is also a great way to
generate cash flow which is the life blood of your business.
Other than the normal income from sales of homes and monthly rental income, there are many other streams
of income that can be generated by owning and managing properties. Here is a list of just a few possibilities
for income from real estate.
Money from:
• Notes
• Options
• Late Fees
• Rent Increases
• Additional Rent
• Loans Against Equity
• Deposits and Maintenance Fees
• Mineral Rights Sales and Leases
• Finder's Fees
• Consignment Fees
• Consultation Fees
• Coaching Fees
• Tax Rebates and Certificates
34

Let's take a closer look at some of these. Notes are a great way to set up additional income streams. When
you sell a property you can usually get a much higher price if you are willing to finance part of the sale. By
simply taking a note secured by the property you have your first small stream. While it may seem more like a
drop but for now we can call it a stream. Adding interest to the note will increase the income and give you a
fair return on the money you are owed. Each note you add is another small income source.
Another great way to increase your income is by selling options to purchase your properties that include lease
or rental payments. Option money is usually non-refundable and if you do lots of options you have another
stream of money coming in.
It is unfortunate but when you manage renters-they are often late with their rent payments. Some landlords
just let late fees slide and do not attempt to collect them. This is a big mistake. By being strong and charging
what the contract spells out you win in many ways. The renter will either start paying on time or have to pay
the late fees. Of course they just may decide to leave altogether and you also win because then you can get a
better tenant. In any event if you stick to your guns and charge late fees like a real business you will find that
you have created yet another stream of income.
At the end of every lease period you have the opportunity to generate more income by simply making small
increases in the amount of rent due each month. This may seem trivial but if you have just ten single -family
homes and increase the rent on each of them by just fifteen dollars per month you have an additional
$1,800.00 a year coming in each and every year. If you continue to do this for five years that $1,800.00 will
have grown to a whopping $9,000.00 and that is a nice stream.
If you have a big lot or even two lots, many times there are opportunities to rent out some of that space to be
used for other things. An example might be parking or a storage building. Use your imagination and create
another stream of income.
One of my favorite income streams comes from borrowing money from the equity from my existing
properties. This income is tax free and can be a life saver at tax time or when your spouse wants that trip to
Europe for your anniversary.
Deposits on rented property belong to the renter but when a renter leaves a property in poor condition the
money to bring the property back up to good condition must come from somewhere. I prefer to use the
renter's money to do this fix up so I collect a substantial security deposit. Often renters will just leave the
property without notice or without completing their lease agreement. When this happens, if your agreement
is written well, you get to keep the deposit. It is not unusual for this scenario to take place several times a year
and yet another stream is introduced.
With the price of petroleum products at an all time high-the mineral rights you have in you property might be
worth a great deal. These rights are very marketable and petroleum companies are becoming very aggressive.
These companies have a lot of money and might be willing to pay you some of it to lease or purchase your
mineral rights. Leasing your mineral rights can create a healthy stream of income for you especially if oil or gas
is discovered on your property.
The real estate investing business offers quite a few possibilities for income streams by charging fees. These
35

fees could be for consignment of a contract or for consultation on a real estate project. You could charge fees
for coaching new investors in how to get started or even for helping them find their first deal.
Finally there are a great number of tax advantages for the real estate investor and if you play your cards right
you could be able to have the government provide you with an additional stream or two of income. By
purchasing tax certificates you should be able to realize some exceptional returns from your investments and
if you are lucky you could end up owning one or more additional properties.”
- http://www.biggerpockets.com/articles/85-real-estate-investing-multiple-streams-of-real-estate-income
How to Create a Multi-Million Dollar Real Estate Portfolio
Stocks
To be completely honest, I do not have much experience in the stock market. I have owned some stocks in the
past, but I am not qualified enough to be giving advice.
The following is some information that I found at investment.com.
“Investing today is not for the faint of heart.
Finding the right stock has never been harder, much less getting truly helpful stock market investment advice.
Yet investors keep plunking money down like there's no tomorrow. Why?
For one thing, the ease of trading is like a siren's call. No longer is investing a mysterious financial play made
by only those in the know. Today, the image of the investor is that of the day trader, an average Joe
attempting to amass a fortune from the comfort of his own computer. But ease of investing is only a part of
the story…
The real reason we keep pouring money into the markets is that we've seen lightning strike before. We were
either in on it, and loved the thrill; missed out on it entirely and can't let that happen again; or even wors e,
latched onto a tech rocket, rode it to the top, then held on until it crashed back down in a blaze of worthless
paper.
Lightning Can Strike Twice… And We Want In
Like you, we know there are winners out there still-but they're increasingly hard to find. So when we do find a
profit rocket, we want to be able to grab on to it with both hands and ride it to the stars. Then, just as
importantly, we want to know when to get out-so our profits don't burn up on re-entry.
That's why we created 'Stock Market Investment Advice: The Two Most Profitable Secrets of the World's
Greatest Investors.'
In this special report, you will learn two of the investing secrets shared by more than 99% of the world's most
successful investors — the key to letting you squeeze every cent of profit from your winners and to getting out
with your profits intact.
And you'll learn about a technique used by the world's greatest investors to take your winning investment and
ratchet up the profits.
Sound Stock Market Investment Advice from the Good Doctor
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Dr. Van K. Tharp is "coach" to the world's greatest investors and traders. These superstars come to Dr. Tharp
(he has a three-month waiting list according to USA Today) for stock market investment advice that will lift
their profits to even higher levels. He was profiled in Jack Schwager's best-selling book, Market Wizards:
Interviews with Top Traders -in fact, Dr. Tharp was the only trading coach included!
For over 20 years, Dr. Tharp accumulated psychological profiles on over 4,000 investors from all around the
globe. To maintain current profile data, he conducted many follow-up interviews with them. In addition, he
has conducted extensive, in-person interviews with many of the world's best investors and traders.
The goal of all this work was to find the elements of investing success these superstars had in common. What
were the things they all did that helped them pull in far more money than ordinary investors?
If he could isolate those techniques that were shared by the world's greatest investors, Dr. Tharp believed he
could unlock the very essence of investment success.
Remarkably, Dr. Tharp discovered that these great money makers had hardly anything in common. They
invested in different kinds of stocks, some liked commodities, others favored precious metals, many dabbled
in currencies-and almost all had their unique systems for investing.
And of course this made the two things they did have in common all the more precious…
Dr. Tharp found that out of all the techniques, strategies, and systems these great investors used, only two
had strong appeal across the board-but these two were used by a full 99% of these investors. In other words,
they disagreed on almost everything else.
Secret #1: Never, Ever Lose Big Money in the Stock Market
Buying stocks is easy. Anybody can do that. The hard part is knowing when to sell. And very few people know
how to do that. We've all made expensive mistakes-either missing the full upside by selling too soon, or taking
a huge loss by holding a falling stock too long.
Let's face it. Most people don't know when to sell a falling stock. So they're frozen into inactivity, saying,
"Should I just keep holding and hoping, or should I cut my losses now?" And there's no reliable crystal ball to
tell anyone when a rising stock has peaked. The problem that causes both these mistakes to happen is simple:
Ordinary investors are ruled by emotions.
And the only way you're ever going to join the highest echelon of the world's best investors is to strip all
emotions out of your decisions.
Greed… fear… worry… nervousness — all these feelings have to go.
Here's our advice on how to do it…
While you'll never be able to sell at the peak each and every time you invest, or ensure that you never buy a
stock that subsequently falls dramatically, there is a secret weapon that is proven to get you the lion's share of
any move.
When you buy a stock, you buy it with the intention to sell it for a profit some time in the future.
In order to do so successfully, you should put as much thought into planning your exit strategy as you put into
the research that motivates you to buy the investment in the first place.
We call this our "Trailing Stop Strategy."
All great traders and investors consistently cut losses short and let their profits run, and Dr. Tharp found that
trailing stops are one of the easiest and most effective ways of doing that.
You, the Successful Investor
37

In business and in the stock market, you've got to have a plan, and you've got to have an exit strategy. Our
strategy allows us to ride our winners all the way up, while minimizing the damage our losers can do. Before I
get into our specific strategy, consider this business example.
Let's say you're in the T-shirt business. You've made a ton of money on your T-shirt business in the states, and
you're now in The Bahamas looking for new opportunities.
You size up the market, and you figure you can make money in two places: in golf shirts, geared at the
businessman, and in "muscle-tees," geared toward the vacationing beach-goers.
These are two products clearly aimed at two different markets.
You invest $100,000 in each of these businesses. At the end of the first year, your golf shirts are already
showing a profit of $20,000. But the muscle-tees haven't caught on yet, and you've got a loss of $20,000.
There are numerous reasons why this is possible, so you make some changes in your designs and marketing
and continue for another year.
But in the second year the same thing happens-you make another $20,000 on your golf shirts, and you lose
another $20,000 on your muscle-tees.
Now let's say you're ready to invest another $100,000 in one of these businesses. Which one business do you
put your money into?
The answer is obvious. You, as a business owner, put more money toward your successful businesses. But as
you'll see, this is the opposite of what 99% of individual investors in America do.
You, the Successful Stock Market Picker
What does "owning shares of stock" actually mean? This isn't a trick question. As you know, it means you're a
partial owner of the company, just like you're the owner of the t-shirt company in the example. Owning your
own business isn't any different than owning a share of a business through stock.
Let's say the shares of your two shirt companies trade on the stock exchange. They both start trading at $10 a
share.
At the end of the first year, the profitable golf-shirt company is trading for $12 a share, and the unprofitable
muscle-shirt company is trading for $8 a share.
At the end of the second year, the golf shirt company is trading at $14 while the muscle-shirt company is
trading at $6 a share.
Which shares would you rather own?
Even though you know you should buy the winning concept in this business example, most investors don't do
so in their stock investments.
They keep throwing good money after bad hoping for a turnaround. They buy the "cheap" stock. The loser.
The Best Investment Advice You Never Hear about: The Trailing Stop Strategy
In the stock market, you must have a strategy that makes you methodically cut your losses and let your
winners ride. If you follow this rule, you have the best chance of outperforming the markets. If you don't, your
retirement is in trouble.
Our advice is to follow this simple plan: We ride our stocks as high as we can, but if they head for a crash, we
have our exit strategy in place to protect us from damage.
Though we have many levels of defense and many reasons we could sell a stock, if our reasons don't appear
before the crash, the Trailing Stop Strategy is our last-ditch measure to save our hard-earned dollars. And, as
you'll see, it works well.
38

The main element to the trailing stop strategy is a 25% rule. We will sell positions at 25% off their highs. For
example, if we buy a stock at $50, and it rises to $100, when do we sell it? When it falls back to $75, or 25% off
our high.
So with our Trailing Stop Strategy, when would we have gotten out of the muscle-shirt business? You already
know the answer. Remember the shares started at $10 and fell immediately.
Instead of waiting around until they fell to $6 as the business faltered, using your 25% trailing stop, you would
have sold out at $7.50. And think of it this way: if the shares fall to $8, you're only asking for a 25% gain to get
back to where they started.
But if the shares fell to $5, you're asking for a dog of a stock to rise 100%. This only happens once in a blue
moon. Not good odds!
Advice on When to Buy Stock
Have you ever seen Coke or Microsoft selling at a single-digit P/E ratio? Me neither. And these aren't isolated
cases. The fact is, by hoping to buy super-cheap, you would have missed out on many of the greatest
investment opportunities of our time. To make the big bucks in the best investments you'll have to forget "buy
low, sell high."
The new rule is "buy momentum, sell higher." We like to buy companies on the way up. It usually means the
company is doing something right.
It's equivalent to your golf-shirt business in The Bahamas. Let me explain.
Let's say that you and I believe in the idea of a three-wheeled car, and the price of the stock in the company
that manufacturers them is at $30… but falling. When do we invest? At $30? $20? $10? $5? We don't know
how far this thing will fall. We want to buy when there's some inkling of a market confirmatio n of our idea.
There is no price that's the right price. Take $10 for example. I'd be a buyer at $10 if our three -wheeled car
had fallen to $5 first, and then the stock started to take off because Ford was going to take it over. But I'm not
a buyer at $10 if it's one stop on the way down-the last stop on that elevator could be the basement. The
bottom line is this: I don't want to buy dreams alone. I want to buy dreams that are turning the corner to
reality.
We've got a complete buy and sell strategy for every single one of our stock positions.
Here's How Our Trailing Stop Strategy Works
If you do hold onto a falling stock too long, the loss will often be far more than just 25%. And all it takes is one
big loss to set an investor back for years.
Let's say you start off with $10,000. A year later you've made 25% ($12,500). Same for next year ($15,625),
and the next ($19,530). But then after three years of 25% annual gains, the fourth year, you take a loss of 50%.
It puts you back below where you started, at $9,766.
Now, let's say you had a 25% trailing stop during the year you lost 50%. You would have been stopped out at
$14,648. Then during the following three years (when you again profited by 25% each year), your holdings
would be $28,600 at the end of that entire seven-year stretch.
However, if you didn't have a 25% trailing stop in place, after the same seven-year period, you would only
have $19,073, still below where you were prior to the 50% drop!
Over the seven years of this example, you'd be up 186%. That's an average return of over 26% per year, much
better than you'd think. But pick your own example, and do the math. Look back at your own portfolio. You'll
see that cutting your losses is the key to both getting good overall returns and avoiding lost years.
39

Examples from Our Files
Let's begin with a look at Adobe, the innovative software company on the Nasdaq that we
once enthusiastically recommended. It zoomed up, with no sizable price correction, for 10 straight months.
The stock kept achieving new all-time highs. Along the way we kept adjusting upward our 25% trailing stop.
Given that we bought in at $31, we kept locking in higher and higher profits.
When the technology and communications sectors finally began to correct, Adobe corrected along with them.
But thanks to our 25% trailing stop, the worst-case result turned out to be a profit of over 81%.
Contrast this approach to the "buy and hold" strategy. The Nasdaq high techs had an amazing run. But when
they began to unravel, things got ugly in a hurry. Compare our profit of over 81% to the devastation that
occurred among other high-tech stocks during the same 10-month span. Amazon was down
60%, Qualcomm down 63%, Intuit down 66%.
Several companies witnessed declines of as much as 90%, and the "buy and hold" crowd held all the way
down. That's what can happen when you hold a stock investment with no exit strategy. That kind of loss is
hard to recover from. Just look at the chart above, and you'll get a good feel for the kind of long -term damage
just one bad stock can do to your portfolio.
Hang on too long… and it could take years to recover your loss.
In reality, most investors who say they're buying and holding will in fact panic in a bear market, especially a
long grinding one. We saw it graphically in the recent "Great Recession." Don't let this happen to you: Use a
smart exit strategy that lets you capture the majority of any profits -even a doomed one.
The System Is Not Fool-Proof
As good as the trailing stop concept is, it's not perfect. For one thing, in particularly volatile stocks, you can get
stopped out at a price much worse than you had hoped for.
Take Microsoft as an example. As stories circulated that the Justice Department was proposing a courtordered divestiture of the company, its shares experienced serious volatility. Before the ruling the stock was
trading at $79. The next trading day, Monday, the stock opened at $67.
Even if you had a $75 trailing stop in place you would have had to sell at $67 because that was the next
available market price to execute the trade.
Once a stop price is triggered, it becomes a "market price" sale, that is a sale at whatever the market will bear.
Normally that won't be a big problem, but sometimes volatility can make your target price impossible to fill,
as in the Microsoft example.
Domestic U.S. stock markets do not accept trailing stop orders. And for thinly traded stocks, they don't even
accept "hard" stops. Exchanges outside the U.S. seldom accept any stop orders at all. (Trailing stops move
constantly based on the stock price. Normal "hard" stops are put on at a particular price and remain regardless
of what the stock does.)
Trailing stops are changed according to what the stock does -the higher it climbs, the higher the trailing stop is
moved.
If exchanges won't accept these orders, there are two alternatives. Both are mental stops, either put on by
you or by your broker. Either one of you-or both-must be on top of the situation-always.
Value Trading-When the Trailing Stop Might Work Against You in the Market
40

By its very nature, value trading can work against the trailing stop. Value trading -the system of buying strong
companies at or near historical lows-implies that you may temporarily follow a stock down past a trailing stop
before it begins to rebound. With a trailing stop in place, you may never see the rebound.
And this happened to us recently. We recommended Debt Strategies Fund as a good way to play the beatendown, high- yielding corporate bond sector. At the time, it was priced around $7. But, more importantly, it
was yielding over 16% annually.
However, about nine months later, we came full circle with breaking stock market investment advice. We
advised members to disregard our trailing stop for this investment. Why? Because at that time,
Investment Director Alexander Green valued the income-producing yield more than the price-per-share dip.
And he thought the chance for the fund to dive significantly below our trailing stop was remote. So, when the
price dipped below our $5.80 trailing stop, we held on.
With no trailing stop strategy, there was no guarantee that we would stop losing money on this investment if
the stock continued to slide.
We might have lost 60%, 70% or even more.
Fortunately, the fund behaved like Alex thought it would. The price per share quickly rebounded to over $6 in
just a few days.
So we need to carefully consider value trades in light of the trailing stop.
JDS Uniphase: A Perfect Run-Up in the Stock Market
And now we've come to our quintessential example of the power of the trailing stop:
JDS Uniphase.
Even though the story is over a decade old, it defines the profit-making power of trailing stops like no other. In
March of 1999 we heartily recommended JDS Uniphase. We said then that "it would be the company that
would create the next great fortune," and it "is one stock investment that you don't want to miss."
We placed the normal 25% trailing stop on it.
It turns out this was sage advice, as the stock had a perfect, even breathtaking, run-up. It rose from our
recommended price of $10.95 (split adjusted) to $110.12-a whopping 905.66% in 14 months. But amazingly,
during that entire stretch, the stock never had a real pullback in the market.
Without the 25% trailing stop strategy, it would have been tempting to sell some or all of it at 100% or 200%.
Had we done that, we would have missed out.
When the stock reached $150 we were still in it, and subtracting 25%, the lowest price we would sell this stock
would be $112.50. As it turned out too, $150 was the high point for the stock. Of course we didn't know this at
the time, nor did anyone else. But that's the great thing about the trailing stop system — it takes the
"guesswork" out of trying to determine a stock's value. We let the market tell us when the run is over.
The trailing stop system always keeps us from losing our shirt and always locks in our profits when a stock has
had a significant gain. How many times have you heard of investors saying they made 100%, 200% or more only to give it all back when the stock corrected? That's not happening with our system-sure, we may give
back a little, but we're always locking in profits on our winners.
If JDS Uniphase had continued to rise above $150, we would have been along for the ride. But in this case,
$150 was the top, and it gives one a great feeling knowing that even if the worst were to happen-a stock
collapse-we would have a huge 905%+ profit. That's the beauty of the 25% trailing stop strategy.
The Rest of the Story: Don't Buy and Hold
41

JDS Uniphase also provides a dramatic example of the benefits of our system versus the perils of holding and
hoping. As we said above, we took more than 906% profits from this investment. JDS was a grand slam for us.
Unfortunately, for investors who don't use a trailing stop strategy, JDS is also the perfect example of the "big
fish that got away." From its high of more than $150 per share, the stock went on to plummet by about 97%.
That's the power of a trailing stop strategy — it can mean the difference between taking more than 900%
profits and losing 97% of your investment's value.
Use Daily Prices in Your Stock Market Investment Strategy
We use end-of-day prices for all our calculations, not inter-day prices. You should too. This makes things
easier. If a stock has gone to $100, put a mental stop at $75. If, subsequently, the stock closes at or below that
$75 level, sell your shares the next day.
Remember, the key is discipline. A trailing stop is a good technique. Stick to it. Choose a broker who
understands trailing stops and will do the work for you.
But common sense dictates two investment fundamentals:
1. Taking small losses is much better than taking big losses.
2. Letting your profits run is much better than cutting them off prematurely.
Using trailing stops is the best first step you can take to greatly improve your portfolio's return.
Follow this time-tested technique of the world's greatest investors and your investments will outperform
those of your friends, neighbors and even your fund managers.
This is the first step to having a coherent, reliable system that will let you sleep at night and give you the
satisfaction of knowing you're maximizing your profits.
Once you apply trailing stops, you'll be that much further ahead of the ordinary investor.
Secret #2: Go With "Low Risk"-And Then Let Your Winners Run
The other secret is to always invest in what they call "low-risk" opportunities. Now, as you'll see, that doesn't
mean their stocks or investments carry no risk or that they're not expecting very high gains from these
investments. Quite the contrary.
After all, we can't make 30%, 50%, or 70% each year if we have our money in savings accounts or money
market funds. Those are low-risk strategies for your money, but they're also extremely low profit.
For the world's most successful investors, low risk means entering only into positions where the probability for
high profits far exceeds the possibility of losses over the long run.
They invest their money in such a way as to position themselves for maximum profits while-at the very same
time-ensuring that their exposure to serious loss is absolutely non-existent.”
- http://www.investmentu.com/research/investmentadvice.html
This information really doesn’t even scratch the surface on how to invest in the stock market. There are
multiple ways to invest other than just buying stocks.
For more in-depth information on investing in the stock market, consider taking a look at this list of books.
42

Owning a Business
This is the most diverse out of all of the streams of income. There is no limit to what you can do when you own
your own business.
There are millions of businesses you can start. Here is a short list of business ideas.
1. Air Duct Cleaner
2. Antique Furniture Sales
3. App Developer
4. Appliance Repair Technician
5. Aquarium Maintenance
6. Basement Remodeler
7. Blog Consultant
8. Bookkeeper
9. Business Consultant
10. Candle Maker
11. Candy Maker
12. Carpenter
13. Catering Service
14. Childproofing Expert
15. Cloth Diaper Service
16. Composting
17. Computer Repair and Maintenance
18. Computer Trainer
19. Construction Cleanup
20. Customer Service Professional
21. Data Entry Service
22. Desktop Publishing
23. Direct Mail Marketing Service
24. Disaster Planning and Prevention Service
25. Dog Trainer
26. Dog Treat Baker
27. Dog Waste Remover (Pooper Scooper)
28. Doula
29. eBay Consultant
30. eBay Seller
31. Florist
32. Freelance Writer
33. Furniture Mover
34. Gardener
35. Genealogist
36. Grant Writer
37. Green Cleaner
38. Green Consultant
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39. Gutter Cleaner
40. Hair Salon Owner
41. Handmade Crafter
42. Handyman
43. Hauling Services
44. Holiday Decorator
45. Home-Based Child Care Provider
46. Home Stager
47. Home Theater Designer
48. Home Weatherization Professional
49. House Painter
50. Ice Cream Shop Business
51. Image Consultant
52. Ink and Toner Cartridge Refilling
53. Interior Designer
54. Internet Researcher
55. Jewelry Maker
56. Laundry Service/Laundromat
57. Life Coach
58. Locksmith
59. Marketing Copywriter
60. Massage Therapist
61. Medical Transcriptionist
62. Motivational Speaker
63. Nutritionist
64. Organic Hair Care Products Seller
65. Organic Lawn Care Provider
66. Party Planner
67. Personal Chef
68. Personal Concierge
69. Personal Trainer
70. Pest Control Professional
71. Pet Couture Designer/Seller
72. Pet Groomer
73. Pet Sitter
74. Photo Restoration Service
75. Photographer
76. Pizza Parlor
77. Pool Cleaning and Maintenance Provider
78. Private Tutor
79. Professional Organizer
80. Project Manager
81. Proofreader
82. Public Relations Agency
83. Resume Writer
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84. Sales Consultant
85. Scrapbooker for Hire
86. Senior Care Provider
87. SEO Consultant
88. Snow and Ice Removal Service
89. Soap Maker
90. Social Media Consultant
91. Speech Writer
92. Tax Accountant
93. Translation Service Provider
94. Tree Farmer
95. Video Producer
96. Virtual Assistant
97. Virtual Call Center
98. Voice-Over Professional
99. Web Designer
100. Wedding Planner
101. Yoga Instructor
- http://sbinformation.about.com/od/business-ideas/a/small-business-ideas.htm
Here are a few more ideas…
1. Acting
2. Bail Bonds
3. Bead Jewelry
4. Business Broker
5. Cake Decorator
6. Christmas Lights Installer
7. Cleaning
8. Coffee Shop
9. Dryer Vent Cleaning
10. Flea Market Booth
11. Handyman
12. Haul Junk
13. Hookah Bar
14. Hydroponics
15. Landscaper
16. Lawn mowing
17. Party Rentals
18. Pool Hall
19. Popcorn
20. Roofing
21. Salvage and Recycling
22. Scuba Diving
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23. Tattoos
24. Tax Appeal Service
25. Travel Agent
26. Vending Machines
27. Wedding Decorations
28. Windshield Repair
29. Woodworking
30. Writer – Sell your books on Amazon

Unfortunately, most people that own a business actually just own their job. The goal of starting a business
should be to either have other people run in while you are free to do what you want or to sell it for a profit.
This may take a lot of time, though.
Decide which path you want to take, write a good business plan, and achieve your goal.
I personally know a lot of business owners that work part-time and take vacations whenever they want. They
still make more than even thei r highest paid employee. As I mentioned earlier though, sometimes starting a
business requires you to work a lot hours while you are starting out. Some owners get to the point where they
can take multiple vacations a year while some have to work seven days a week years after they are
established.
Click here for a list of books on starting your own business. I cannot personally recommend any of these books
as I have not read any from this specific list.
My biggest suggestion when starting a business (and most things in life) is to get out there and start doing it.
Do not get caught up in analyzing every last detail.

Network Marketing
Every time I look at my Facebook timeline, I see someone promoting their Network Marketing company. They
are everywhere.
It also seems like network marketers are selling every kind of product. I’ve seen them selling everything from
groceries to life insurance.
As I did in the other sections, I have found a good article that des cribes network marketing. I got this one from
entrepreneur.com.
“To help you understand what network marketing is, I must first explain what it isn't. First, network marketing
isn't a pyramid scheme. Pyramids are programs similar to chain letters where people just invest money based
46

on the promise that other people will put in money that will filtrate back to them and somehow, they'll get
rich. A pyramid is strictly a money game and has no basis in real commerce. Normally, there's no product
involved at all, just money changing hands. Modern-day pyramids may have a product, but it's clearly there
just to disguise the money game.
Network marketing is a legitimate business. First, it's based on providing people with real, legitimate products
they need and want at a fair price. While some people do make a lot of money through network marketing,
their financial benefit is always the result of their own dedicated efforts in building an organization that sells
real products and services.
Pyramids are illegal and are based on taking advantage of people. For a person to actually make money in a
pyramid scheme, someone else has to lose money. But in network marketing, each person can multiply his or
her efforts, skills and talents by helping others be successful. Network marketing has proved itself as part of
the new economy and a preferred way to do business here and around the world.
Network marketing isn't about taking advantage of your friends and relatives. Only a few years ago, network
marketing meant retailing to, and sponsoring people from, your "warm list" of prospects. Although sharing the
products or services and the opportunity with people you know is still the basic foundation of the business,
today we see more people using sophisticated marketing techniques such as the Internet, conference calling
and other long-distance sponsoring techniques to extend their network across the country.
Network marketing isn't a get-rich-quick scheme. Of course some people do make large amounts of money
very quickly. Many would say those people are lucky. But success in networking isn't based on luck.
(Unfortunately, money won't sprout wings and fly into your bank account no matter what someone has
promised you.) Success in network marketing is based on following some very basic yet dynamic principles.
Now let's discuss what network marketing is. Network marketing is a serious business for serious people. It's a
proven system where the design, creation and expense the corporate team has gone through becomes a road
map for your own success. Just follow the simple, proven and duplicable system that the good companies
provide.
The real key is this: Network marketing is all about leverage. You can leverage your time and increase the
number of hours of work effort on which you can be paid by sponsoring other people and earning a small
income on their efforts. J. Paul Getty, who created one of the world's greatest fortunes, said "I would rather
make 1 percent on the efforts of 100 people than 100 percent on my own efforts." This very basic concept is
the cornerstone of network marketing.
For example, most successful people building a network marketing business do so in an organized method.
They work a few dedicated hours each week, with each hour of effort serving as a building block for their longterm business growth. Then they sponsor other people and teach those people how to sell the company
product and sponsor others who duplicate the process.
By helping the people you personally sponsor to sponsor others, you duplicate yourself. As this process
continues, you create compound growth that can lead to hundreds or even thousands of people coming into
your business. You leverage your time by helping others be successful and earn an income from all their
efforts.
With network marketing, there are no big capital requirements, no geographical limitations, no minimum
quotas required and no special education or skills needed. Network marketing is a low-overhead, homebased
47

business that can actually offer many of the tax advantages associated with owning your own business.
Network marketing is a people-to-people business that can significantly expand your circle of friends. It's a
business that enables you to travel and have fun as well as enjoy the lifestyle that extra income can provide.”
- http://www.entrepreneur.com/article/35744
Click here for a list of books to help you succeed in network marketing.

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Chapter 10
Getting Started
The first and most difficult step is to start doing something. Trying and failing is better than not trying at all.
The hardest part for most people is to take action. It is usually because you are unsure of what action to take. I
cannot tell you exactly what to do now as it is different for everybody.
Take a look at your goal again.
Is your goal to travel around the world? If so, you may need to start selling your stuff and paying off your debt.
Is your goal to spend every weekend on the lake? If so, you may need to create another income stream, so you
can buy a boat.
You are never too old or too young to start working on your dream.
Fraser Doherty started making jams at age 14. He quit school at the age of 16, so he could run his business fulltime. I am not saying kids should quit school. This is just an example.
Colonel Sanders started KFC when he was 65 years old.
If they can do it, you can too.
I do not have a whole lot to say on this chapter. The point of the chapter is to get out and do something.

49

Chapter 11
Inspiring stories
I wanted to end with some inspiring stories to keep you motivated. I hope you enjoy them and think about
them whenever you get discouraged.
“Our first 3.5 years of marriage, we made some very poor financial decisions. We chose to live as if we had all
the money (or credit) in the world! This was irregardless of our income, which wavered and changed quite a
bit. At one point we had no money and no credit left to overuse. Bad & scary moves!
In October 2008, a church we had been attending advertised Financial Peace University.
Step One was very slow for us as we had so many debt payments (with crazy interest rates) weighing us down.
But when we hit step two, it became fun to see our snowball pick up momentum! God blessed us so much in
this time; we were even able to continue our debt payoff during my husband's 2-year layoff!
In February of this year we finally became debt free after paying off over $64,000 in credit card debt (the
largest chunk of the debt), car debt & student loans.
We will be forever thankful to God, Dave, this fantastic program and the gracious hosts of the FPU group we
attended!”
- http://www.daveramsey.com/articles/article-list/category/lifeandmoney_wedidit_user_generated/
These people used the information that they found in The Total Money Makeover.
“Chris Zane is in the experience business. Whether it's selling bikes in his Connecticut store or filling orders for
corporate rewards programs, he knows a successful business is about more than just selling stuff. Zane, 46,
got his start at age 12 fixing bikes in his parents' East Haven, Connecticut, garage. At 16, he convinced his
parents to let him take over the lease of a bike shop going out of business, borrowing $23,000 from his
grandfather—at 15 percent interest. His mother tended the store while he was at school in the mornings. In
his first year, he racked up $56,000 in sales. This year, he expects to bring in $21 million.”
- http://www.inc.com/ss/10-inspiring-small-business-success-stories#0
“Homeless man becomes a millionaire online.
Mark Anastasi explains his online business success.
Mark Anastasi is the author of The Laptop Millionaire and is an online business expert. Learn how to make
money online with Mark.
Bryan: How has the internet changed your life?
Mark Anastasi: Back in 2004 I was an unemployed security guard, $12,000 in debt, with no job, no money and
nowhere to live.
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The Internet allowed me to connect with millions of people from around the world that were looking for
products to buy! By applying the marketing strategy suggested to me by my mentor – The Laptop Millionaire –
my business took off like a rocket.
Bryan: What techniques did you use back in 2004 to go from zero to $10,000 a month?
Mark Anastasi: I wrote a 70-page ebook on alternative therapies, uploaded it to Clickbank.com, and started
charging $67 per download. I was driving traffic to the website by spending $15 a day, approximately, on
Google Adwords, and getting 200 to 300 visitors a day.
Bryan: How sustainable was the income from your first project?
Mark Anastasi: That’s the most amazing thing. It peaked in 2007 with $462,000 in ebook sales that year –
from a business I spend less than 2 hours a year on, but I still make money every single day, from that ebook
and the other 26 ones that I uploaded on Clickbank.com.
Now, affiliates drive traffic to my websites, and they make 50% of each sale, but it’s completely on autopilot.
Twenty seven streams of passive income.
Bryan: Which of these 32 ways are the most profitable? Which ones work best for you?
Mark Anastasi: Here is the list of 32 strategies that have been proven to work for myself and my students:
1. Commenting on blogs, forums, Amazon, questions sites, Facebook Pages, YouTube videos
2. Twitter, the Twitter JV strategy, and the Twitter Direct Reply strategy
3. Selling tweets and retweets!
4. Pay-Per-Post (Blog hijacking strategy, or selling blog posts)
5. YouTube! (Uploading videos to YouTube, YouTube video hijacking, YouTube advertising)
6. Giving away viral ebooks that include affiliate links
7. Selling ebooks on Clickbank
8. Selling PLR products
9. Licensing products, bundling them, and selling them!
10. Listbuilding and email marketing!
11. Solo Ads, Adswaps, and Joint Ventures
12. Selling gigs on Fiverr.com, Buying gigs on Fiverr.com, and Fiverr Gig Arbitrage!
13. Buying & selling web businesses on Flippa.com
14. Webinars, webinar replays, and joint venture webinars
15. S.E.O (get your sites ranked on the search engines, and get free search traffic)
16. Review sites
17. Blogging
18. Selling online advertising
19. Selling Leads! Also: CPA marketing
20. Local Business Marketing
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21. Buying expired domains that still get traffic!
22. Outsourcing! hiring outsourcers in the Philippines
23. E-commerce sites (e.g. purepearls.com, bike gear on www.cyclestore.co.uk, etc.)
24. Membership sites
25. Facebook Pages (getting thousands of ‘likes’)
26. Article marketing (e.g. ezinearticles.com)
27. Selling product s on eBay
28. Selling deals on Groupon & upselling other services! (also: LivingSocial, etc.)
29. Selling on the Amazon Kindle platform!
30. Web TV shows & uploading content to iTunes!
31. Pay-per-click advertising (Facebook Ads, Google Ads)
32. Media buying
There are many, many more ways to make money online, but these are the ones that have been proven to
work for my students and myself.
The most profitable ones are probably WEBINARS, and MEDIA BUYING (this means buying a lot of cheap
advertising online, and directing the traffic to highly-converting affiliate offers) .
I know this will sound like hype, but laptop entrepreneurs are making millions of dollars a year just with a
laptop and an Internet connection, thanks to these two strategies. It is because these two strategies can afford
you the most amount of leverage.
A lot of people make very decent money as well from offering Local Business Marketing services. You can
make $30,000+ a month by setting up a company that manages the social media presence, SEO, and other
Internet marketing services for business owners.
The strategies that work best for me include listbuilding and email marketing, selling ebooks, and webinars.
But then again that is because I enjoy the process of researching and sharing new content.
Bryan: Have you tried all of these techniques?
Mark Anastasi: I’ve tried 21 of the 32 selected strategies myself, but over the years I’ve tried a hundred more
that didn’t work!”
http://onlinebusiness.about.com/od/successstories/a/Homeless-Man-Becomes-A-Millionaire-Online.htm

“In a climate of economic woe and disparaging business reports (at least according to the majority of news
reports), the success of any business seems to be an amazing feat. If you are someone who often
wonders how aspiring entrepreneurs can ever make it with today’s seemingly difficult economy, the following
stories of business women who have succeeded should give you hope for your own business ventures. In fact,
52

perhaps these success stories are more of a true reflection of the business world today than the negativity
that mainstream media enjoys portraying.
The following 5 women come from different backgrounds, different countries, different social norms, but all
have one common element – in their journey to success they have overcome seemingly impossible obstacles
in the business world. Be sure to check out their full stories as well as some of their company websites to see
more.
Bethlehem Tilahun Alemu
While many women love shoes and own a pair for each day of the week, business woman Bethlehem Tilahun
Alemu has taken a love of footwear and created a business that now employs approximately one hundred
people. Despite the fact that she grew up in a village in which most of the inhabitants were living in absolute
poverty because of the lack of jobs, Bethlehem didn’t let herself become another impoverished resident.
Instead, she noticed the skills of her fellow villagers and used these skills to build a business and provide
employment.
Her business Sole Rebels is based in Ethiopia and grossed one million dollars in sales in 2011. Ms. Tilahun
hopes her success as a business woman helps to give the rest of the world a new image of Africa, one that is
more than the sum of such massive problems like AIDS and childhood hunger that have gained International
attention. As expected, her shoes are made locally, by hand, using eco-friendly processes and materials.
Lovin Kobusingya
Ugandan business woman Lovin Kobusingya says that women are naturally suited to the world of business,
especially when it comes to the multitasking involved in juggling a job with family life. However, unlike many
Ugandan mothers of two, Ms Kobusingye created a highly successful business involving a new product – the
fish sausage. Now her business moves about eight tons of fish a week.
After graduating from school with a degree in administration, Lovin was finally hired by the local fish
cooperative society. Many young workers came to her looking for jobs; but the fish market was one that was
already struggling. She began brainstorming with her partner about ways to create more jobs, and improve
the fishing industry. This resulted in her stumbling upon the idea of creating a fish sausage. Armed only with
the Internet and plenty of determination, Lovin came up with a product that was an instant success. Now,
Lovin is struggling with lack of facilities and experience to expand the business outside of Uganda; however,
she is just as determined to seek ways to overcome these obstacles as she was when she first set out to make
a change.
Sundeep Bhandal
Despite the fact that Sundeep Bhandal didn’t meet her husband until their wedding day, her family
encouraged her in many ways that broke traditional female roles of their community. She was the only girl to
drive a car in her small town, and she graduated not only from college, but also from law school with her
family’s support. After her arranged marriage she moved to San Francisco to be with her husband, but
unfortunately, her in-laws had more strict, traditional, Indian values than her own family. It took 3 years of
convincing her husband before she finally was able to start her own IT staffing company, Anjaneyap.
53

Now, Sundeep has gained the respect of her husband and her family back home in India brags of her
entrepreneurship. Furthermore, a year after starting Anjaneyap, her clients started chasing her for staff,
instead of her chasing them to see if they needed more employees, a firm step in the right direction for her
business.
Cath Kidston
British business woman Cath Kidston struggled with dyslexia while in boarding school, but she launched a
business specializing in nostalgic houseware at the same time International business Ikea were telling folks to
chuck out their chintz. In the midst of a recession, Ms. Kidston’s charming rose oilcloth accessories, among
other items, skyrocketed her profits from £2.9 million to £4.6 million between 2008 and 2009 alone. Then in
early 2010, her business was heralded at a value of £75 million.
Cath opened her first “glorified junk shop”, as she called it, in 1993 in Notting Hill. Her loud floral patterns and
bright prints meant that the business was off to a slow start. However, Cath Kidston soon became a home
decor store known all over the UK for its vintage style with a hint of modern flair. Now she boasts shops in
several locations in the UK, as well as Taiwan, Thailand, Ireland, Japan, and Korea.
Rene Johnson
As a young mother and wife, Rene Johnson found herself in a violent and abusive relationship, and in 1994,
she moved to a town in which she had no support and no job. Despite her circumstances, Rene took the
necessary steps to become a powerful role model for any woman who has had to overcome difficult
circumstances. She graduated from the Institute for Professional Excellence in Coaching (IPEC) and wrote her
famous self-help book,Leaving Your Comfort Zone: How to Lead Your Life from the Power Zone. As the CEC of
the Power Zone Coach, Rene spends much of her time speaking at conferences in which she provides both
men and women with the necessary tools to take charge of their lives and find peace while doing so.”
-http://urbantimes.co/2013/02/5-business-women-who-overcame-seemingly-impossible-obstacles/
“Starting a business was not something Anita Crook set out to do at nearly 60 years of age. But when her
pocketbook organizer idea took off, this South Carolina grandmother found herself running a multimilliondollar business.
At age 59, starting a business was something Anita Crook had never considered. Yet, by age 60, she was a
budding entrepreneur, and by age 64, the owner of a multimillion-dollar business which produces a handbag
organizer called Pouchee®.
Anita's inspiration for starting the business was also part of the reason for success: She found a need, then
found a way to fill it.
"It was one of those things that just happens when you're not expecting it," Anita explains.

54

"My son bought me a really nice purse for Christmas one year. It was an expensive purse, but it didn't have
any pockets in it to organize things, and I didn't know how to tell him I'd never use it. So, I kept thinking that if
I had a way to organize this bag, I would use it."
Anita couldn't find anything on the market that would let her organize the purse in a useful way, so she
"played around with some ideas" and came up with a design she thought would work. She designed Pouchee
specifically to fit inside women’s handbags to make them more organized with a place for everything: Outside
pockets for pens, sunglasses, mobile phone, credit cards, keys etc. Inside pockets for lipsticks or small
flashlights, zippered pockets for change or personal items and inside dividers that keep it all organized and in
one compact place.
There was one little hitch, though. Anita's design was on paper. She didn't know how to sew. Through a friend,
she found a woman who could sew. That woman made Anita a prototype and put her in touch with another
person who introduced Anita to a broker who helps US companies find reliable manufacturers in China.
"The next thing I knew I had a few samples in hand and 2000 Pouchees coming in from China," says Anita.
At that point, Anita took up the one task she most dreaded: finding buyers for her new product. Her target
customers were the owners of gift shops and boutiques who wanted something different to sell to their
clientele –things that couldn't be found in department stores. And at first, s he approached them with
trepidation.
"Selling isn't my cup of tea," says Anita. "With fear and trembling I went door-to-door showing my little
Pouchees to the owners of small specialty boutiques and gift shops. I was scared that if they rejected them I 'd
run out of the store crying."
Despite her fear of selling, she approached one shop owner after another, in the Greenville, SC area. "Every
store I went to loved them and bought them, Anita recalls." In fact, Anita's Pouchees were such a hit with shop
owners that she sold out the entire first shipment of 2000 before it arrived from China.
Anita reordered, and soon shipments of 2000 turned into 5000, and then more.
For the first couple of years, Anita stored the inventory and operated the business from the three-car garage
attached to her home. And, in the beginning, like most startups, she did everything herself. She was not only
the designer and salesperson, but also the bookkeeper and the person who packed up orders, shipped them
out and kept track of inventory.
To expand the business she started exhibiting at the Atlanta Gift Show, and started using sales reps to widen
her reach. Now, some 2000 stores carry Pouchees in the US and abroad. As the business grew, Anita hired a
couple of employees and moved the business out of her home to a warehouse location.
"My biggest challenge has been in knowing how to regulate my inventory. Our business has grown 45% a year- even in the last year's economy. I don't know how you plan for that. I remember looking at my inventory one
August and my shelves were stocked to the ceiling. I thought, 'How will I ever sell all of these.' And September
came along and our sales were 107% over the previous year's sales. I had very few of the style of Pouchees
that everyone wanted on my shelves and we were heading into October, our biggest month of the year."
55

To keep overseas shipping costs down, Anita normally places orders about 90 days in advance and has them
shipped from China by boat. But to accommodate her customers for Christmas that year, she had some
Pouchees air freighted in.
One challenge other entrepreneurs often face that Anita has been able to avoid has been funding growth. She
started the business with about $10,000 of her own savings, and applied for a line of credit early on so she
wouldn't have to worry about running out of money. She still has the line of credit, but hasn't had to use it.
"An advantage of being older when you start a business is that you work a lot smarter," Anita says. "I knew I
didn't have time or money to waste, so I did a lot of the work myself for as long as I could. I didn't go out and
buy nice office furniture or get a swanky office. I worked out of my home in the beginning. Even now, the
office we have is functional, but not swanky."
Working smart and staying out of debt "as much as possible" were two strategies that helped Anita build her
business into a multi-million dollar operation. Another strategy has been to keep coming up with new designs
and new products.
"We are always coming up with innovative ideas. We want to stay fresh. We can't keep selling the same old
Pouchees to the stores. To keep them excited and keep them ordering more, you keep trying new things."
Those "new things" range from making Pouchees in different fabrics and designs to changing the placement of
pockets and the size of the organizer. Some of the ideas have evolved from the customers, themselves.
"We had a lot of ladies who told me they love to take their Pouchee out of their purse and carry it by itself. We
thought that if this is something people want to do, let's see if we can come up with a way to make it better.
So we made a slightly bigger Pouchee, put the credit card pocket on the inside, and put a pocket on the
outside to hold a Blackberry or cell phone."
Anita's advice for other budding entrepreneurs? Try to stay out of debt, and "Don't try to be the biggest guy
on the block at first," she says. "Test the market first. There's a learning curve in every business. I've hired PR
firms, been on TV, been on QVC… getting your name out there is important. But you don't want to do too
much too soon. In the beginning you're learning and you can pay a heavy price for that learning if the market
isn't there for the product."
http://www.businessknowhow.com/startup/grandmotherstartup.htm
Fastest Internet Millionaires

Alex Tew
Website: MillionDollarHomepage
Age at the time: 21 years
Time taken: 5 months
The innovative idea of creating The Million Dollar Homepage crossed Alex Tew’s mind while he was still a
student at the University of Nottingham; and needed money to fund his further education. Originally from
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Wiltshire, England, Alex was looking for something that could get him quick money and prevent him from
applying for an educational loan.
The Million Dollar Homepage is a web page which consists of a million pixels fixed in a 1000 × 1000 pixel gird.
Alex sold the image-based links for $1 per pixel in 10 × 10 blocks. He offered people a minimum of 100 pixel
block for $100; and these pixel blocks, while hovering the cursor, displayed tiny images that contained the
title/slogan as well as the URL of the respective websites.
Alex launched his website on 26th of August and tried selling the pixels through the word of mouth. Three
days later, one of the TV journalists of BBC noticed it and it instantly became an Internet Phenomenon. On 1
January 2006, Alex put up its final 1,000 pixels on eBay for auction; the bid closed on 11th of January paying
him $38,100 that brought his total income to a staggering $1,037,100 in gross income.
It took Alex less than 5 months to become a millionaire and according to The Wall Street Journal his
achievement initiated the new era of display advertising.
Reference: Wikipedia

Matt Mullenweg
Website: Automattic
Age at the time: 22 years
Time taken: 8 months
Mathew Mullenweg, an online social media entrepreneur, web developer was born in Houston, Texas on 11
January 1984; and is founder of Automattic which provides free WordPress blogs, and related web solutions.
He is widely known for developing WordPress, a CMS which is used by over 200 million websites today. He is
also the principal developer behind Akismet, the tool which is widely used to prevent SPAM. Moreover, he
writes for a popular tech blog ma.tt and is involved in developing various open source projects.
A former CNET employee, Matt launched Automattic in August 2005 and raised $1.25 in funding and
generated profit of $1.1 million in less than a year.
In March 2007, PC world named Matt #16 among the 50 Most Important People on the Web. He was the
youngest on the list. The same year, Matt bought Gravatar for $200 million which provides unique avatars.
The company, as of 2010 serves approx 20 billion images every day.
In 2008, he was featured on the Business Weeks’s top 25 most influential people of the web.
Reference: Wikipedia
Suleman Ali
Website: ESGUT (Bought by Social Gaming Network , SGN)
Age at the time: 26 years
Time taken: 9 months
57

Suleman wasn’t happy even after working for one of the world’s best software developing companies,
Microsoft. In 2007, he quit the company with no plan to join any other organization and started building an
application for facebook which he named Superlative. The idea which stemmed out of killing boredom became
an instant hit. Superlative, which lets visitors rate their friends, helped him develop some more applications
and together he named them ESGUT. Suleman sold them to Social Gaming Network, reportedly for several
million dollars.
Resource: CNET http://news.cnet.com/8301-13577_3-10119417-36.html
Rob Benwell
Age at the time: 22 years
Website: BloggingtotheBank.Com
Time taken: 12 months
Rob Benwell is a well-known online entrepreneur from the UK with specialization in search marketing, display
ads, search engine optimization, blogging and website monetization.
Rob quit his college studies to try his luck in World Wide Web and started his business reportedly with less
than a $100. He launched BloggingtotheBank.Com in early 2006 by educating people on how to earn money
through fulltime blogging. He penned “Blogging to the Bank” a self-help guide that taught people how to
monetize their websites and the essentials of search engine functionalities. The website helped him cross a
million dollar earning in less than a year. Later, he wrote two more successful books titled “Niche Annihilation
Method” and “Six Figures in Six Months”
At the age 23, his name was added to the list of Internet Millionaires. Even today, his website
BloggingtotheBank.Com draws about 25 thousand unique visitors everyday and makes millions a year.
Resource: http://www.bloggingtothebank.com/
Anshul Samar
Age at the time: 13
Website: Elementeo.Com
Time taken: Less than a year
Ever since in 4th grade, Anshul was deeply in love with playing games. However the idea of creating
Elementeo.Com came when he was in 6th grade following an arguments with his parents who believed playing
games had no learning curve involved. He wanted to create a game in which kids could learn a lot without
even realizing it.
He then applied for a grant of $500 from the California Association of the Gifted. The grant was immediately
awarded to him and he begin by creating the PowerPoint and experimenting with the prototypes. The next
three years he spent on working on the technical aspects of designing a game and took help of professional
58

software. Finally, in 9th grade, Anshul launched Elementeo.Com at the National Association of Gifted
Children’s Conference.
The Elementeo is a Board Based Card Game which lets the user explore the world of chemistry facts through
fun games. His company reportedly made over a million in its first year of operation and was featured on The
New York Times.
James Murray Wells
Age at the time: 22 years
Website: GlassesDirect.Co.Uk
Time taken: Less than a year
James Murray is an English entrepreneur who started Glass Direct whilst studying at university. Son of an
investment analyst, Murray Wells attended the prestigious Harrow School prior to attending the University of
the West of London. The idea of creating Glass Direct came to his mind while he was preparing of his final
year’s exams. It just happened a day when he came to know that the glass he bought for £150 originally cost
£7 to £1o to make. Back then, he did not find any online retailer for reading glasses and immediately he made
up his mind to start the venture. Glasses Direct sold over 22,000 pairs of glasses in its first year of ope ration
which enabled him to earn over a million dollar.
Today, Glasses Direct is multimillion dollar company registered as Prescription Eyewear Limited.
In 2010, Murray set another online store, HearingDirect.Com that provides hearing aids at cheaper rate than
the most of street retailers.
In 2009, Murray Wells was awarded the Queen’s Award for Enterprise Promotion and became the youngest
British citizen to receive the award.
Resource: Wikipedia
Anand Lal Shimpi
Age at the time: 17 years
Website: AnandTech.Com
Time taken: less than a year
Born on June 26 1982, to Indian and Iranian parents, Anand Lal Shimpi graduated from William G. Enloe High
School and completed his computer engineering from North Carolina State Uni versity. Anand created his tech
blog, AnandTech.Com in 1997 and ended up making $1.5 million through advertising revenue by the end of
the same year.
Today, AnandTech.Com is counted among world’s top tech blogs and receives about 50 million page views
every month. Anand continues to contribute as CEO and Editor-in-Chief of the organization.
59

Ephren W. Taylor II
Age at the time: 17 years
Website: Ephren.Com
Time taken: less than a year
Ever since his childhood, Ephren W. Taylor was highly fascinated by the video games and wanted to create a
library for his Super Nintendo. Taylor, back then he was just 12 years old, knew that creating a private video
library was next to impossible. So he decided to learn how to make video games. Everyday, while returning
from school, he trekked to the Overland Park and read How To Make A Video Game In 21 Days, by Andre
LaMothe. A few months of hard work and Taylor coded his first video game which he sold to his friends for
$10 a pop.
Four years later, Taylor started a job posting website with his friend Michael Stahl. GoFerretGo.com was to
help high school and college students to find jobs. The website was an instant hit and Taylor made his first
million dollars at the age 17.
Taylor calls himself a self-taught and delivers over 70 public speeches everyday. He also serves as chief
executive of City Capital and calls himself an expert web developer. In addition, Taylor runs a holding company
that invests money in socially responsible businesses.
Steve Chen and Chad Hurley
Age at the time: Chen (28), Hurley (30)
Website: YouTube.com
Time taken: One and a half years
Today, YouTube is as familiar a name as Google and receives millions of visitors from almost all countries in
the world.
The journey of YouTube began in the early months of the year 2005 when three former employees of PayPal,
Chad Hurley, Steve Chen, and Jawed Karim, discussed the idea of running a video sharing site preceded by
their desperate attempts to share the video clip, that they shot last night, with their friends through email.
The same year, they manage to raise $11.5 million from Sequoia Capital. The first video uploaded on YouTube
was on Saturday April 23rd, 2005 which was titled “Me at the Zoo”. By the end of July 2006 Y ouTube was
receiving more than 65,000 new videos uploads and a 100 million video views every day.
In October 2006, YouTube was taken over by Google Inc. for $1.65 billion, and is now operated as its
subsidiary.”
http://www.successstories.co.in/fastest-internet-millionaires/
Entrepreneurs Who Turned Hobbies into Million-Dollar Businesses
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“Kim Lavine started making microwavable pillows as gifts for her kids’ teachers in 2001, assembling them at
her kitchen table in Grand Haven, Mich., using a corn kernel filling. Around the same time, her husband lost his
job, prompting her to consider turning her pastime into a source of income.
She went from selling pillows out of her truck to setting up mall kiosks and incorporating her company, Green
Daisy, in 2002. Within two years, Lavine’s Wuvit pillow was in national chains, including Saks Fifth Avenue,
Macy’s and Bed Bath & Beyond, and by 2006, it generated more than $1 million in sales.
Lavine then branched out into a pajama line, and after moving to a licensing model, a home décor line as well.
In 2008, she put the retail business on hold and started a media company with plans to eventually relaunch
the Green Daisy brand again. Lavine wrote about her success in Mommy Millionaire: How I Turned My Kitchen
Table Idea into a Million Dollars and How You Can, Too! (St. Martins, 2007).
To determine whether your hobby can become a business, s he says, first ask: "Do you have a great product
and can you demonstrate and prove its marketability?" That may sound elemental, but Lavine says too many
entrepreneurs fail to consider that question.
Terry Finley
Hobby: Horse racing aficionado
Business: West Point Thoroughbreds
2011 Revenue: $6.5 million
When Terry Finley bought his first horse, Sunbelt, for $5,000 in 1991, he felt stuck in his job selling life
insurance. Finley had been betting on horses for years, but had never made an investment like this. After
Sunbelt won his first race that year, Finley started running small ads in racing papers and attracted an investor
who paid $5,000 for partial ownership of Sunbelt. Within two months, he bought his second horse, Cal’s Zen
Jr., and continued buying more horses on credit cards.
Soon after, he quit his job and founded West Point Thoroughbreds, a Saratoga Springs, N.Y.-based race horse
syndication management company. From the outset, Finley talked with clients who ran their own companies
and asked for suggestions about growing a business.
"We started trying to build a brand and a reputation," Finley says. Through this informal advice, he learned the
importance of tracking metrics. In 2004, he hired a web designer to revamp his website.
Today, West Point Thoroughbreds owns 55 syndicated horses and has 550 investors who profit when their
horses win a race, are bred or get sold. Revenue has grown from $2 million in 2005 to $6.5 million annually
over the past three years.

Craig Jenkins-Sutton
Hobby: Gardening
Business: Topiarius
2011 Revenue: $1.2 million

61

When Craig Jenkins-Sutton started designing gardens he had no formal landscaping training, just a lifelong
green thumb. Growing up on a farm in central Minnesota, he always had a love for gardening.
He ended up working for a landscape service but knew he didn’t want to work for someone else. In 2003, he
put a small ad in the Chicago Tribune, offering his garden design services. Within a week, he received 40 calls
but only one turned into a customer. It was enough to get the business going. That year he founded garden
design company, Topiarius, in Chicago.
Jenkins-Sutton learned how to market his business mainly by trial and error. "The tough part in landscaping is
that it’s something a lot of people think they can do themselves," he says. "What value do we bring? Being
able to demonstrate that is really important."
In 2010, he started putting door hanger ads at people’s homes and realized he was onto something. Ten
thousand door hangers produced five to 10 customer calls, much better results than any other promotion he’d
tried. As a result, his business doubled in 2010, and revenue rose last year by 80 percent to $1.2 million.
Megan Duckett
Hobby: Sewing
Businesses: Sew What? & Rent What?
2011 Revenue: $6.2 million
When Megan Duckett moved to Los Angeles from Australia 21 years ago, she was 19 years old and had big
dreams of working in the entertainment industry. She took a job with an event planner and in her free time
began sewing at her kitchen table, making bedding, drapes and costumes.
When the request to make the linings inside 10 decorative coffins for her employer's Halloween event came
up, Duckett took on the challenge. "That was one of the turning point moments when I began to realize I have
a skill set that other people didn’t have," she says. Duckett also knew that positioning herself as a specialist in
designing props and entertainment décor would set her apart. Her next big project, designing 25 silk
chandeliers for The Mirage in Las Vegas, came a year later.
By 1996, Duckett was earning more money sewing than the $45,000 salary from her full-time job at the eventplanning company. She quit and rented an 800-square-foot warehouse, hired three seamstresses and
generated $80,000 in revenue her first year.
In 2006, she began producing bags and other items bearing the company logo to make the Sew What? brand
more recognizable. "*I realized+ that people weren’t buying me; they wanted to buy a brand," she says. Four
years ago, Duckett branched out by offering the option to rent drapes and other props rather than purchase
them and by 2011 her Los Angeles-based company, produced sales of $5 million in addition to the $1.2 million
her second business Rent What? generated. Today she manages 44 employees across both businesses.”
http://www.entrepreneur.com/article/224357
“Nathan Ricks has earned over $40 million dollars in the network marketing industry over a period of 20 years.

62

Eric Worre, another superstar, interviewed Nathan at his home in Utah back in 2009. The interview lasted
about 40 minutes and I took copious notes. After all, why reinvent the wheel?

Perhaps the most important lesson Nathan Ricks shared about achieving success in network marketing is you
need to have belief, focus and consistency.
Belief is Critical to Network Marketing Success
If you do not honestly believe you can produce the income and lifestyle you want through this incredible
vehicle called MLM, you will never reach the pinnacle of success dreams are made of. You need to be 100%
settled in your mind, body and spirit that the products you promote, the company you represent and the
industry as a whole is not only right for you – it’s right for everyone who desires to step up and create a
dynasty. You also need to believe YOU can do it.
One way to know if you have the belief necessary to build a wildly successful business is to notice how you feel
about approaching the people in your warm market. Are you hesitant or afraid to approach your family,
friends, co-workers and people you know in the community? If so, that’s a MAJOR CLUE you… yourself… do
not truly believe what you have your hands on is real, honest, integral and the answer to taking ba ck control
of your time and finances.
If you find yourself insisting you are part of the NFL club (no friends left) and you tend to make excuses versus
having conversations in your warm market – do what you need to do to build up your belief. Study the
incomes being earned by the top producers in your company. Study the incomes of earners within the
industry. Read books, go to events, and make it a point to immerse yourself in the industry. And realize if
ANYONE can pull it off, if ANYONE has pulled it off… then you can pull it off as well if you simply have enough
belief, focus, and consistency.
Stay Focused, Stay Consistent
When Nathan seeks to sponsor a new team member in his business he asks them for a commitment to stay
100% on their new business for a period of at least one year. One year of not getting distracted. One year of
taking consistent action.
One year of staying focused on meeting the objectives of the compensation plan, and
One year of staying focused on the producers on your team.
63

Leaders always reveal themselves, and when Nathan sponsors someone he lets them know they could never
afford to hire him, but I’ll work for you for free as long as you do these things.


You’re focused, you’re committed, you call me and check in every day and we’re going to get you to
leadership as quickly as possible.



And what I want is for you to not even look sideways for a year. Not even one hint of it. You need to be
bringing people to him, doing lunch meetings, lunch meetings at your house, and be willing to travel to the
group where ever it is developing and chase the business. We are going to chase the business through the
lines of people and create dynasties.



If you call in three months whining about how hard it is… you will get a dial tone because he doesn’t have
time for it.

Sounds like a tough line to draw but the reality is, if you are serious about building your business, you need to
spend your time helping those who are helping themselves. You need to focus all of your time and effort
helping those who DESERVE IT versus wasting time with those that need it. Because your time is the most
precious, most valuable asset you have. Don’t waste it on tire kickers and those not truly, 100% committed to
making things happen
tells every new person he decides to work to call and check in every day. Attend all team conferences calls and
company event. And spend 90% of the time they have available to build the business sponsoring and
recruiting new team members. Because sponsoring and recruiting is where all the money is made. Nothing
else matters. So the primary skill to work on is learning how to make connections, have a conversation, and
introduce your opportunity if appropriate.
Faith, Focus, Consistency = MLM Success
You have to decide you have enough courage to be free. Don’t be afraid. Have faith.
You have to believe in yourself. You have to believe it will happen. And sometimes you are doing that against
all odds. Against spouses that don’t want it to happen, friends that don’t think it will work, people who have
never built a network marketing business but think they know better.
You have to believe in yourself enough and be consistent enough and if you do that, what happens is, what’s
really critical, is eventually you’ll start to understand how to make it work and you’ll figure it out. And as you
figure it out it will make
you free.

64

Don’t trade your life away. That’s the big risk. You trade your life for a pittance. You rent your body and your
brain to someone else…for nothing. For what? So you can start all over in January with nothing? And hope you
still have a place to show up to. What’s so great about that? Where’s the security in that? It’s an illusion.
The only security is in you. In your head and in your heart.”
http://blog.robfore.com/nathan-ricks-mlm/

65

Chapter 12
Must Read Books – In No Particular Order
The following is a list of books that I consider to be books that everybody must read. Each description is taken
from Amazon.
1. The Total Money Makeover


The success stories speak for themselves in this book from money maestro Dave Ramsey. Instead of
promising the normal dose of quick fixes, Ramsey offers a bold, no-nonsense approach to money matters,
providing not only the how-to but also a grounded and uplifting hope for getting out of debt and achieving
total financial health.



Ramsey debunks the many myths of money (exposing the dangers of cash advance, rent-to-own, debt
consolidation) and attacks the illusions and downright deceptions of the American dream, which
encourages nothing but overspending and massive amounts of debt. "Don't even consider keeping up with
the Joneses," Ramsey declares in his typically candid style. "They're broke!"



The Total Money Makeover isn't theory. It works every single time. It works because it is simple. It works
because it gets to the heart of the money problems: you.

2. The Millionaire Next Door
The bestselling The Millionaire Next Door identifies seven common traits that show up again and again among
those who have accumulated wealth. Most of the truly wealthy in this country don't live in Beverly Hills or on
Park Avenue-they live next door.
3. The Laptop Millionaire

Every day thousands of people are losing their jobs, their income, and their security—perhaps you are one of
them. However, with the right strategies, you can easily achieve financial independence. The Laptop
Millionaire provides easy to follow step-by-step strategies you can use to make real money online. Author
Mark Anastasi reveals the exact strategies he used to make millions and includes the success stories of other
millionaire Internet entrepreneurs. Whether you need an extra hundred dollars a day or want to start an
Internet Empire, this book gives you the tools and advice you need.
His no-fluff, no-filler strategies provide a blueprint to online success allowing you to discover the laptop
lifestyle for yourself.


How anyone can make $700-3,000 a week thanks to Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, and other Social Media
sites

66




The simple steps to creating an online business—featuring the 3 steps that led Mark to his first $10,000 a
month business!
How the 21 Millionaire Secrets can transform your life

If you read and apply what Anastasi has laid out in his book, you will be well on your way to becoming a
millionaire.

4. Rich Dad Poor Dad
Personal finance author and lecturer Robert T. Kiyosaki developed his unique economic perspective from
two very different influences - his two fathers. This text lays out Kiyosaki's philosophy and his relationship
with money.
5. The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People
In The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, author Stephen R. Covey presents a holistic, integrated,
principle-centered approach for solving personal and professional problems. With penetrating insights and
pointed anecdotes, Covey reveals a step-by-step pathway for living with fairness, integrity, service, and
human dignity--principles that give us the security to adapt to change and the wisdo m and power to take
advantage of the opportunities that change creates.
6. The 4 Hour Work Week
Forget the old concept of retirement and the rest of the deferred-life plan–there is no need to wait and every
reason not to, especially in unpredictable economic times . Whether your dream is escaping the rat race,
experiencing high-end world travel, earning a monthly five-figure income with zero management, or just living
more and working less, The 4-Hour Workweek is the blueprint.
This step-by-step guide to luxury lifestyle design teaches:
•How Tim went from $40,000 per year and 80 hours per week to $40,000 per month and 4 hours per week
•How to outsource your life to overseas virtual assistants for $5 per hour and do whatever you want
•How blue-chip escape artists travel the world without quitting their jobs
•How to eliminate 50% of your work in 48 hours using the principles of a forgotten Italian economist
•How to trade a long-haul career for short work bursts and frequent “mini-retirements”
The new expanded edition of Tim Ferriss’ The 4-Hour Workweek includes:
•More than 50 practical tips and case studies from readers (including families) who have doubled income,
overcome common sticking points, and reinvented themselves using the original book as a starting point
•Real-world templates you can copy for eliminating e-mail, negotiating with bosses and clients, or getting a
private chef for less than $8 a meal
•How Lifestyle Design principles can be suited to unpredictable economic times
•The latest tools and tricks, as well as high-tech shortcuts, for living like a diplomat or millionaire without
being either
67

7. Think and Grow Rich
A must for anyone wanting to improve their lives and their positive thinking. There have been more
millionaires and indeed, billionaires, who have made their fortunes as a result of reading this success classic
than any other book every printed. NAPOLEON HILLS's "Think and Grow Rich" is the authors most famous
work. This is the COMPLETE Reference Book. A true masterpiece with the fundamentals of the Success
philosophy. ***** ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Napoleon Hill was an American author who was one of the earliest
producers of the modern genre of personal-success literature. His most famous work, Think and Grow Rich, is
one of the best-selling books of all time. Hill's works examined the power of personal beliefs, and the role they
play in personal success. "What the mind of man can conceive and believe, it can ac hieve" is one of Hill's
hallmark expressions. How achievement actually occurs, and a formula for it that puts success in reach for the
average person, were the focal points of Hill's books. ****** Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, about "Think
and Grow Rich": Think and Grow Rich is a motivational personal development and self-help book written by
Napoleon Hill and inspired by a suggestion from Scottish-American businessman Andrew Carnegie. While the
title implies that this book deals only with how to get rich, the author explains that the philosophy taught in
the book can be used to help people succeed in all lines of work and to do or be almost anything they want.
For instance, Jim Murray (sportswriter) wrote that Think and Grow Rich was credited for Ken No rton's boxing
upset of Muhammad Ali in 1973. The Reverend Charles Stanley writes "I began to apply the principles of (Think
and Grow Rich) to my endeavors as a pastor, and I discovered they worked!" The book was first published
during the Great Depression. At the time of Hill's death in 1970, Think and Grow Rich had sold 20 million
copies. It remains the biggest seller of Napoleon Hill's books - a perennial best-seller after 70 years
(BusinessWeek Magazine's Best-Seller List ranked Think and Grow Rich as the sixth best-selling paperback
business book 70 years after it was first published). Think and Grow Rich is listed in John C. Maxwell's A
Lifetime "Must Read" Books List. The text of Think and Grow Rich is founded on Hill's earlier work The Law of
Success, the result of more than twenty years of research based on Hill's close association with a large number
of individuals who achieved great wealth during their lifetimes. At Andrew Carnegie's bidding, Hill studied the
characteristics of these achievers and developed 16 "laws" of success intended to be applied by anybody to
achieve success. Think and Grow Rich condenses these laws further and provides the reader with 13 principles
in the form of a philosophy of personal achievement. It is noted in the book, that an individual with desire,
faith, and persistence can reach great heights by eliminating all negative energy and thoughts and focusing at
the greater goals in hand.
8. Who Moved My Cheese

With Who Moved My Cheese? Dr. Spencer Johnson realizes the need for finding the language and tools to
deal with change--an issue that makes all of us nervous and uncomfortable.
Most people are fearful of change because they don't believe they have any control over how or when it
happens to them. Since change happens either to the individual or by the individual, Spencer Johnsonshows
us that what matters most is the attitude we have about change.

68

When the Y2K panic gripped the corporate realm before the new millenium, most work environments finally
recognized the urgent need to get their computers and other business systems up to speed and able to deal
with unprecedented change. And businesses realized that this was not enough: they needed to help people
get ready, too.
Spencer Johnson has created his new book to do just that. The coauthor of the multimillion bestsellerThe One
Minute Manager has written a deceptively simple story with a dramatically important message that can
radically alter the way we cope with change. Who Moved My Cheese? allows for common themes to become
topics for discussion and individual interpretation.
Who Moved My Cheese? takes the fear and anxiety out of managing the future and shows people a simple
way to successfully deal with the changing times, providing them with a method for moving ahead with their
work and lives safely and effectively.
9. Multiple Streams of Income
In Multiple Streams of Income, bestselling author Robert Allen presents ten revolutionary new methods for
generating over $100,000 a year—on a part-time basis, working from your home, using little or none of
your own money. For this book, Allen researched hundreds of income-producing opportunities and narrowed
them down to ten surefire moneymakers anyone can profit from. This revised edition includes a new chapter
on a cutting-edge investing technique.
10. Multiple Streams of Internet Income
Following the success of the bestselling Multiple Streams of Income, Multiple Streams of Internet Income took
the idea of making money on the Internet to the next level, by revealing how to deliver a marketing message
faster, cheaper, and to a larger number of potential customers. This new updated edition includes the same
wisdom that made Allen one of the most influential financial advisors in the world, but also features updated
information on everything readers need to know.
The book features the original seven powerful methods that average people can use to make money on the
Internet, and covers such topics as taking offline products online, niche marketing, successful Web-based
business models, information marketing, affiliate programs, and more.
There's plenty of new material in this Second Edition, including coverage of new federal and state laws
covering spam and how to work around much of the new anti-spam technology active on the Internet. All the
Web sites and online resources featured in the book have also been updated.
11. The $100 Startup: Reinvent the Way You Make a Living, Do What You Love, and Create a New Future
In The $100 Startup, Chris Guillebeau shows you how to lead of life of adventure, meaning and purpose –
and earn a good living.
Still in his early thirties, Chris is on the verge of completing a tour of every country on earth – he’s already
visited more than 175 nations – and yet he’s never held a “real job” or earned a regular paycheck. Rather, he
69

has a special genius for turning ideas into income, and he us es what he earns both to support his life of
adventure and to give back.
There are many others like Chris – those who’ve found ways to opt out of traditional employment and create
the time and income to pursue what they find meaningful. Sometimes, achieving that perfect blend of passion
and income doesn’t depend on shelving what you currently do. You can start small with your venture,
committing little time or money, and wait to take the real plunge when you're sure it's successful.
In preparing to write this book, Chris identified 1,500 individuals who have built businesses earning $50,000 or
more from a modest investment (in many cases, $100 or less), and from that group he’s chosen to focus on
the 50 most intriguing case studies. In nearly all cases, people with no special skills discovered aspects of their
personal passions that could be monetized, and were able to restructure their lives in ways that gave them
greater freedom and fulfillment.
Here, finally, distilled into one easy-to-use guide, are the most valuable lessons from those who’ve learned
how to turn what they do into a gateway to self-fulfillment. It’s all about finding the intersection between
your “expertise” – even if you don’t consider it such -- and what other people will pay for. You don’t need an
MBA, a business plan or even employees. All you need is a product or service that springs from what you love
to do anyway, people willing to pay, and a way to get paid.
Not content to talk in generalities, Chris tells you exactly how many dollars his group of unexpected
entrepreneurs required to get their projects up and running; what these individuals did in the first weeks and
months to generate significant cash; some of the key mistakes they made along the way, and the crucial
insights that made the business stick. Among Chris’s key principles: if you’re good at one thing, you’re
probably good at something else; never teach a man to fish – sell him the fish instead; and in the battle
between planning and action, action wins.
In ancient times, people who were dissatisfied with their lives dreamed of finding magic lamps, buried
treasure, or streets paved with gold. Today, we know that it’s up to us to change our lives. And the best part
is, if we change our own life, we can help others change theirs. This remarkable book will start you on your
way.

70

Epilogue
You may never achieve perfect “freedom” in your life. Things will always come up that demand your time,
money, thoughts, etc.
My goal (and possibly yours too) is to have enough money coming in to allow us to do the things that I really
want to do. That doesn’t mean that I have to have a lot of money. The exact amount of money varies
depending on what I want to do at that time.
However, even if I do create enough passive income to allow me to do the things I want, there are other areas
of my life that may prohibit me from being completely free.
It is a constant work in progress.
Some people may think that creating the life you really want is selfish. I disagree 100 percent with that. I
believe it is the exact opposite.
There are many people that would volunteer a lot of their time if they really did not have to depend on work
for their next paycheck. Not only would people volunteer their time, but if they had the money, they may
donate large portions to non-profit organizations.
As I learned in my research, money is not the only thing needed to create freedom in my life, but it is definitely
towards the top of the list. That is why the chapters dealing with creating income are more in-depth than the
other chapters.
A lot of people work jobs that they dislike just to keep the bills paid. I urge you to find work that you really
enjoy and/or start creating passive income. Once you do not have to think about your next paycheck,
everything else seems a little easier.
I hope that by reading this book it has made you aware of what you really want in life and motivated you to
start achieving the life YOU really want.
Now I need you to do me a favor. Think of five people that you think could benefit by reading this book. Open
up your email, attach this book, and send it to those 5 people. You can send it to anyone you know. All I ask is
that you do not change any of the content.
Feel free to send me feedback at [email protected].

71

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