Its easy to be broke and have no money. Just do nothing. You'll have no money by default.
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The three ways to make money are 1) Sell goods 2) Sell services or 3) Illegal activities. Thats pretty much it.
When you go to school and get a Masters in Business you are selling services, your services with your higher education When you open a store or build motorcycles you are selling goods. When you are a pro basketball or football player you are selling a services...your pro abilities to your team.
I remember standing in a store in the magazine section in the late 90s and Shaqille O'Neal was on the cover of Sports Illustrated smiling from ear to ear because he had just signed a 95 million dollar 5 year deal with the Lakers. I remember that I was pissed off because I thought to myself "What one man deserves this kind of money? Why should this guy be on easy street while the guy down the block from me has to break his ass and drive a truck 12 hours a day for almost nothing compared to what Shaq is making?"
Then during the next 5 years the Lakers went on to win the world championships several times. Turns out that 95 million they invested in Shaq paid off to somewhere in the order of 500 million dollars plus with merchandising, box seats, T.V. revenue, etc. What it comes down to is this...the reason that Shaq got paid that kind of money was due to the fact that he is one of the only people on earth that can play basketball at that level. Can the trucker down the block play ball like that? Nope. Lots of other people can drive a truck but hardly anyone can play basketball like that.
In the business world no person or company or organization will pay someone a salary without expecting to get 3-5 times or more money out of that person after they employ them. This goes for MBAs, Lawyers, Pro Sports players, Truck Drivers, Laborers, people working the counter at a ssandwichshop, etc.
This is how your worth, or your salary is figured and set. Shaq is involved in mass media as the Lakers are a basketball team set on the national stage and there is big money to be made at an organization of this caliber in the NBA and added to the fact that there are very few players that can play at Shaqs level set his salary in the multi million dollar range. The guy making sandwiches at Subway makes about 7-8 bucks per hour because he makes on average 5-6 sandwiches per hour earning the company about 35-45 dollars an hour in revenue at the register. The $120,000 MBA can bring in a company $500,000 in contracts or value in business dealings and operations.
Its pretty clear from reading the above the only real ways to increase your salary is specialization and/or education Specialize, Specialize, Specialize.
The more people that can do your job makes the job less valuable and thus lower paying. Anyone can make a sandwich or sweep a floor or clean out cages at the pet store. Thats why 17 year olds usually are in these positions as they are not yet done with school and have no experience in the job market yet.
Anyone with no education can go to truck driving school and start driving in 2-3 months. Its relatively easy. So there are a lot of truck drivers out there, and salaries aren't that high.
Its not easy to get a book in IT computers and learn about Cisco routers and pass the tests. Thus if you do drive a truck you can go to the bookstore and get on of these 700 page books, study it, pass the tests, and then your salary will significantly rise as not many people are able to study a book like that and pass the tests in order to get into the IT field. You can then while working at the IT job continue your education and continue to pass more and more certifications and continue to further SPECIALIZE and therefore increase your salary.
So if you feel you are stuck driving a truck, go to a bookstore and buy the entry level Cisco certification book and study it and pass it and take the first step at no longer driving a truck anymore for 12 hours a day. Instead you will now be working in an office for 8-9 hours a day sipping on coffee typing on a computer and working with people. And now for the specific rules.
- Pick a field and stick with it. Success take time. If you keep jumping from field to field, the clock keeps starting over.
- Get involved with something in Mass Media. Movies, Sports, Internet, TV, etc. Think Facebook, cast member of Friends, Quarterback on Pro team or something that gets you into the movies or the music industry. There is a backdoor shortcut that can get you into the movies or music business that I will expound upon below after this list.
- Specialize, Specialize, Specialize. In any field you can further train for more specific jobs that are harder to get (because of the training) and therefore pay more money.
- In today's day and age, anyone with a decent idea and a passion for it can start a business for almost nothing as long as they have a hard word ethic. The way to do this is using the internet and social media marketing. There is a book you can get called "Now is the Time to Crush it" By Gary Vanderchunk that I can't recommend highly enough. You will however, have to work like a maniac and spend time on it every day.
- Be Persistant. The Guy who wrote Chicken Soup for the Soul and the Lady that wrote the Harry Potter books both got turned down by almost every publishing house that they went to with their book. This is common with old school media gatekeeprs such as publishing houses. If you wrote 'War and Peace' they would turn it down. The answer is almost always no when you start out. Now because of persistence both of these authors are multi-millionares and their books consistently sell out.
Now for the Particulars from the above list.
1. Get into a field and stick with it. Yes success takes time. And the time you put into your field actually translates to specialization via EXPERIENCE. I had a friend that sold boats: When he first started out he was living in some crappy basement apartment in his early 20s working for a guy making 10 dollars per hour selling boats. As time went on he gained experience and contacts that made him more valuable so he was attractive to another company that hired him on. Now he was making a draw, salary plus commission. Then after a few years of gaining even more experience and contacts he moved to another company. Within 8 years his salary went from 10 dollars an hour in a tiny apartment to 100,000 a year in a nice place with a nice car. What would happen if he kept jumping ccareers He would not be gathering experience in his field or contacts, instead he would be constantly starting over.
2. Get everyone in America to pay you 50 cents...hey! Now you have 150 million dollars. This is the power of mass media and why rock stars and movie stars and Pro Athletes are so rich. This is why Mark Zuckerberg and Bill Gates are so rich. All these people are involved in Mass Media. Mass Media is a national outlet that is set up so that every person in America can engage and purchase their product or services. Brad Pitt or Angelina Jolie come out with a movie that is marketed and commercialized on TV and commercial media. You and 10 million other people each pay 10 dollars to see it in the theater so that the movie studio takes in 100 million dollars and in turn pay Brad Pitt 10 million dollars.
As you can see that being involved in Mass Media is nothing but leveraging huge numbers of people down to the few. Mark Zuckerberg and Bill Gates leveraged a single software program to millions and millions of people and reaped the benefits.
A kid from Utah was just in the news. He went to his local library and checked out a book on IPhone programming. He then wrote a program app that became the most downloaded app for the IPhone over even 'Angry Birds'. Both Vin Diesel and Owen and Luke Wilson got into acting by using a back door method. They financed their own short films by maxing out their credit cards and submitted the short movie starring themselves to Sundance. They were both noticed and hired to do additional acting work and then became major movie stars. Maybe you can go out to LA and find work in a movie studio and then start to do work as an extra. Or you can write an app for the Iphone thereby leveraging yourself to millions of Iphone users-each with the potential to pay you a dollar or two for your app program that they can download. Or do what I'm doing.....start a blog and advertise it, submit articles, slowly gain traffic and then use it as a launching pad for a speaking career and two books. It will take a lot of hard work, and this is the price for success. Unless of course, if you hit the lottery.
1. Get into a field and stick with it. Yes success takes time. And the time you put into your field actually translates to specialization via EXPERIENCE. I had a friend that sold boats: When he first started out he was living in some crappy basement apartment in his early 20s working for a guy making 10 dollars per hour selling boats. As time went on he gained experience and contacts that made him more valuable so he was attractive to another company that hired him on. Now he was making a draw, salary plus commission. Then after a few years of gaining even more experience and contacts he moved to another company. Within 8 years his salary went from 10 dollars an hour in a tiny apartment to 100,000 a year in a nice place with a nice car. What would happen if he kept jumping ccareers He would not be gathering experience in his field or contacts, instead he would be constantly starting over.
2. Get everyone in America to pay you 50 cents...hey! Now you have 150 million dollars. This is the power of mass media and why rock stars and movie stars and Pro Athletes are so rich. This is why Mark Zuckerberg and Bill Gates are so rich. All these people are involved in Mass Media. Mass Media is a national outlet that is set up so that every person in America can engage and purchase their product or services. Brad Pitt or Angelina Jolie come out with a movie that is marketed and commercialized on TV and commercial media. You and 10 million other people each pay 10 dollars to see it in the theater so that the movie studio takes in 100 million dollars and in turn pay Brad Pitt 10 million dollars.
As you can see that being involved in Mass Media is nothing but leveraging huge numbers of people down to the few. Mark Zuckerberg and Bill Gates leveraged a single software program to millions and millions of people and reaped the benefits.
A kid from Utah was just in the news. He went to his local library and checked out a book on IPhone programming. He then wrote a program app that became the most downloaded app for the IPhone over even 'Angry Birds'. Both Vin Diesel and Owen and Luke Wilson got into acting by using a back door method. They financed their own short films by maxing out their credit cards and submitted the short movie starring themselves to Sundance. They were both noticed and hired to do additional acting work and then became major movie stars. Maybe you can go out to LA and find work in a movie studio and then start to do work as an extra. Or you can write an app for the Iphone thereby leveraging yourself to millions of Iphone users-each with the potential to pay you a dollar or two for your app program that they can download. Or do what I'm doing.....start a blog and advertise it, submit articles, slowly gain traffic and then use it as a launching pad for a speaking career and two books. It will take a lot of hard work, and this is the price for success. Unless of course, if you hit the lottery.
3. Specialize, Specialize, Specialize Once again I'm gonna use the IT thing as an example. Cisco certifications aren't easy. So a lot of people won't do it. So you can go to the bookstore and buy the entry level Cisco network associate book thats 600 pages thick. You pass all the exams on it and then redo your resume and put it out there. But you will have to actively call companies and follow up and not just lamely answer want ads in the paper or reply to headhunter ads. Get active and start calling companies BEFORE they put a want ad out in the paper. Once you start working and get some experience, specialize further and increase your worth to employers by getting certified in the next level up of Cisco. Suddenly your earnings will jump another 30,000+ per year. By the time you take the third level Cisco test, you can make upwards of 100,000 plus per year. Each level up the specialization mountain, the air gets rarer and rarer and there are fewer and fewer people avaiable to do the increasingly difficult work. Thus the salaries jump up. Sweeping floors isn't specialization. Any ex con with a 6th grade education can do that. Brain surgeons are specialists as there is more schooling on top of a standard medical degree and they get paid. An anesthesiologist in my family makes 700,000 grand a year. Its a highly specialized job...too little and the person wakes up. Too much and you can cause brain damage and death. A lot riding on the training. Very specialized. I read about this one guy who in 2005 with the advent of wifi went from company to company and tested their wifi security while sitting in his tricked out Corvette on the street outside the companies. He created a specialized little niche and went around that area of the United States testing companies security.
4. Idea+No Money+Passion+Patience+Using Social Media+Hardwork= $Right now I am going to refer you to a certain book written by Gary Vanderchunk,
"Now is the time to Crush it" and you can pick it up at any Borders, Barnes and Noble or Amazon. It explains step by step how you can snowball a small idea to a big idea using social media like Digg, Facebook, Tumblr, and Twitter. Even something stupid like being a board game enthusiast can start to generate a sizable income if you follow these steps he outlines. The best book I found on this subject.
5. Be Persistent When you just start your blog and you start advertising on it and you are pushing it out there using the social media networking and still no one is going to your site THAT REALLY SUCKS. You feel that its never going to happen.
It takes time. What the test truly is is can you keep it up with no response at first until you hit the time where there is a response. Once your site gets noticed, suddenly there will be social network sharing and your traffic will begin the climb upward as well as your earnings. It will take time, but stay on it. Most blogs don't turn a profit for 2-3 years. Basically, for the first 3 years or so you will be doing your blog out of the joy of writing. If you get into doing a blog just for money, after 2-3 months of seeing 1-3 visitors a day showing up you are going to say screw it and stop. Ignore the stats at first. Also on Google look up how to increase traffic to my blog. Look that same thing up on YouTube. Take some notes, and bookmark some sites. Now get out there work hard and be successful. Yes, that means work hard. And have a forward view that is able to look past the immediate view. Is the thing you are working on and slowly blowing up actually beginning to have slow forward momentum? You are not going to build something big overnight, and it takes a while for your brand and your credibility to build up steam. People need to see that you have something special that stands out from the crowd...and this usually takes time.
4. Idea+No Money+Passion+Patience+Using Social Media+Hardwork= $Right now I am going to refer you to a certain book written by Gary Vanderchunk,
"Now is the time to Crush it" and you can pick it up at any Borders, Barnes and Noble or Amazon. It explains step by step how you can snowball a small idea to a big idea using social media like Digg, Facebook, Tumblr, and Twitter. Even something stupid like being a board game enthusiast can start to generate a sizable income if you follow these steps he outlines. The best book I found on this subject.
5. Be Persistent When you just start your blog and you start advertising on it and you are pushing it out there using the social media networking and still no one is going to your site THAT REALLY SUCKS. You feel that its never going to happen.
It takes time. What the test truly is is can you keep it up with no response at first until you hit the time where there is a response. Once your site gets noticed, suddenly there will be social network sharing and your traffic will begin the climb upward as well as your earnings. It will take time, but stay on it. Most blogs don't turn a profit for 2-3 years. Basically, for the first 3 years or so you will be doing your blog out of the joy of writing. If you get into doing a blog just for money, after 2-3 months of seeing 1-3 visitors a day showing up you are going to say screw it and stop. Ignore the stats at first. Also on Google look up how to increase traffic to my blog. Look that same thing up on YouTube. Take some notes, and bookmark some sites. Now get out there work hard and be successful. Yes, that means work hard. And have a forward view that is able to look past the immediate view. Is the thing you are working on and slowly blowing up actually beginning to have slow forward momentum? You are not going to build something big overnight, and it takes a while for your brand and your credibility to build up steam. People need to see that you have something special that stands out from the crowd...and this usually takes time.
More later,
Mark
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