By Mike-the-Pharmacist
Starting a new venture can be as dangerous and intimidating as sailing into the deep waters of the unknown.
If you attempted to navigate those side-income producing waters or life-changing waters or world-changing waters, you may know how overwhelming the journey can seem. Worse, many folks will make you feel like something is wrong if you are already getting sea sick from just thinking about stepping out.
You will hear bold promises of smooth sailing, effortless excursions, and clear blue skies no matter how inexperienced you are on the sea – as long as you follow their boat or pay for their map. The reality is starting out it is more like heading into the black abyss during a hurricane with a ship that is taking on water. And the crew that promised to sail with you have all abandoned you at port without an explanation.
Maybe you are brave enough and just stubborn enough to ride out the storm. Should you survive, you might just exit the boat the moment you are back on dry ground and surrender the dream of sailing ever again.
Some knew they couldn’t handle a solo mission, and instead learned from seeing others shipwrecked on the shore. Those folks were wise to be some of the ones to make sure they hired a Captain to sail their vessel instead of trying to do it all themselves.
This seems like a logical maneuver – hiring someone to do the sailing for you – however now begins the bigger challenge. Whether you found your Captain by answering an ad offering assistance on your journey, or the Captain called you magically out of the blue, this is when you are starting to navigate in a sea of confusion.
The pitfall here is many a Captain offers a dream destination, and promises to lead you to islands of success and prosperity. The reality is a lot of them have never even left land, instead writing bold adventures from the comfort of their own leather couches, typing boldy from laptops while munching on Cheetos and sipping on Mountain Dew straight from a can while they write about paddling left handed on a kayak across shark infested open waters, all while calmly sipping Pina Coladas with paper mache umbrellas opened up in tall frosted shimmery glassware held their right.
Someone once sent them a post card from the luxury of islands across the sea and they have convinced themselves over the years that they were on that trip. Their recollection is so vivid they can smell the shark’s breath and still taste the salty sea water spray that they washed down with a sip of their coconut drink.
I call some of these empty promises the Stuffing-Envelope-Shell-Game. “Do you want to make fast and easy money stuffing envelopes?” Ask me how, they will say, and the secret is yours for just $29.95. Operators are standing by. And in 4 business days, your package arrives and your new business begins. Soon you discover the business was you paying for pamphlets to send out to people advertising about how to make money stuffing envelopes.
If I can drive anything home today- it’s this. NOTHING that is sustainable, rewarding, or profitable is EASY or QUICK. And that can be in regards to business or in life.
But that is who is making the money in this flashy high speed internet day-and-age we live in – those promising easy quick results. Want to earn $30,000 instantly in 24 hours? Just go get ten people to enroll in a life changing $2995 Masterclass to learn how to earn $3,000 in 24 hours. Well, for them to earn $2,995 to be exact. After purchasing your own $2,995 Masterclass of course.
Normally $1895 but if you sign up in the next 24 hours, for just $495 you can join a group that teaches you how to do affiliate marketing – and at the end you are really referring people to their affiliate marketing program to purchase the course on how to do affiliate marketing which trains you to refer others to the course on affiliate marketing! It’s an endless shell game!
Just start a YouTube channel – it can’t be that hard. Coco-Berry is a silly little nursery rhyme video series and in 3 weeks it has a billion subscribers. A billion and two if you count my two nephews. But we can start a YouTube channel and you won’t even get your two nephews to watch because they would rather watch Coco-Berry.
Blogging seems very lucrative! You will see ads, “How I made $195,000 last month blogging!” And you find they offer a blogging course for $195 – and they have 1,000 new people each month enrolling in the course who want to learn how to make $195,000 a month blogging. You would think that would crash the market with 1,000 new successful blogs each month creating a traffic jam on the internet super highway – but do not worry! 99.8% of them quit the blogging business after they wrote 5 blog posts and 2 weeks go by and they are nowhere near the $195,000 goal for the month.
In the California Gold Rush times, very few found any gold – but a mint was being made – by the guys selling the shovels!!!!!
Instead of giving up, know that instead of gold, some with vision built vineyards, Disneyland, In-and-Out Burger, and the Golden Gate Bridge.
And some even had a more eternal vision. If you need some good incentive for some divine intervention, know this – South America was founded originally for GOLD. America was founded originally for GOD. And South America has had corruption, and poverty much more than America especially early on. There is something to be said about putting God first in your choices. When you pursue GOLD first, you will be forever wanting, and it seems like you are forever chasing a carrot that is dangled out in front of your nose. Though it’s more like 14 carats.
And the offer of get-rich opportunities can turn the most spiritual group of men instantly into a feeding frenzy of greedy heathens.
Don’t let the scammers cloud your vision. But don’t get a vision just for money or customers that can make you money. Find your passion and talent and focus on making an impact on this world whether you strike it rich or your passions don’t get discovered until your last month on earth.
My passions include writing, helping people with addictions, helping people save their homes and marriages and to save them from the mundane life corporate America wants to drain out of them, and especially to help people find God.
So after laying a foundation that this won’t be easy, here are some easy steps you can implement. I am half kidding, but seriously, there are steps you can take to avoid the shipwrecks and pitfalls that others have made.
Here are 3 quick tips to find success and to find your way to your destination.
1) First, practically know this — NOTHING is INSTANT. Even instant coffee takes a few minutes.
Know that the road is rocky and longer than you’d expect and most don’t survive the journey- just like those that sailed over in the Mayflower, the Nina, the Pinta, or the Titanic.
Even if you were to start a new diet, and exercise program, you may drop some instant water weight but from there it’s not going to be encouraging to just keep looking at the scale. Worse, if you go to the gym and lift weights you may actually gain muscle mass and gain a bit of weight.
Regularly looking at the scale may cause you to give up – you need to get addicted to the activity and not the results. Enough out of shape people who wish to get in shape join the gym in January to the extent that you have to wait in line for a treadmill. Come December, you can host a Christmas party in the weight room because it will be practically empty.
When it comes to anything business related – starting a blog, starting a commission-only sales position, marketing CBD oils for a side hustle, starting Facebook Lives to get people to reach out to you by making Curiosity Posts – whatever – you won’t see instant results. You won’t typically get a big paycheck for 90 days or longer. You may not even see a single paycheck during that time.
Should you quit? Most likely you will quit just before you would find out you are on the right path. Are you making an impact? Are you enjoying it? Are you getting better each and every day? Are you helping people? This is why you often want to have a regular income producing job that pays the bills and then you can find time in the nooks and crannies of your day to work on your dream. If it never takes off but it was your passion and is what you want to be known for, did it really matter if your bills got paid for by your job or by your dream? Yes, we would love to get rich and be paid the rest of our lives for one blog post, but is it more likely that years of posting will eventually get the right blog to the right person at the right time, or just keeping the ideas in your head and never getting them out there because you were worried people thought you write too much or have too much time on your hands or don’t know what you are talking about?
Some side hustles may have quick start bonuses to keep you interested – you can jump in to some of these mini-franchises and enroll a few customers and they give you $1500 a week after you do that. After that it may take you 6 months to earn $50/ month, and 6 years to get to $1500 a month if that. I know a few you can run from an App on your phone and if that is something you can see yourself doing, let me know and I can show you what might work for you.
During the time you are learning how to build a business, develop consistent, persistent activity that is realistic for your goals. If you want to lose 50 lbs and get in shape by Christmas, planning to hit the gym once a month isn’t going to do it. If you need 200 customers to make $2,000 a month on a regular basis and that would let you keep your part time job and full time ministry, and only talk to 20 people a month and get one customer from it, you need to increase your activity to have a shot. You need to maybe talk to 20 people a day to grow it to what you need. You can make 20 10 minute phone calls – or you can message 20 people in 10 minutes. But whatever you do, don’t just do it once and quit – do it day in and day out and on days you feel like it and days you don’t.
If you dream big, work bigger.
2) Second, DO what the Captain says. Follow the coordinates.
There are a lot of teachers and trainers out there – so it is hard to know who to trust.
My recommendation is this– get as much free as you can. Look up how to do things on Youtube or go to Facebook groups and join them and ASK FOR HELP. Just be careful who you give your money to.
If you follow someone and like what they said and got some value from them, then if you upgrade and buy their teachings or books or whatever, they will usually go even more in depth and you will get even more value. But don’t just bite for the promises of easy income and buy their $295 course or a $2000 Masterclass just because they claim to have the answers or they had a flashy ad and told you why everyone else is doing it wrong – everyone of course, but them.
Typically there is nothing new out there and yet these so-called experts all promise to have cracked the code – they found out how to navigate through the newest Facebook algorithm, they claim to have found the Fountain of Youth and you can buy it from them bottled by the case, or they found a way you can eat pizza 5 days a week and lose 75 lbs from your couch. Usually big promises just turn out to be just smoke and mirrors. The journey is hard, long, and there are a lot of rocks and storms and dark nights ahead. If they promise to remove all that from you for just an extra $45 upgrade on your order, don’t fall for it.
3) Third, you don’t necessarily have to burn your boats but you might want to master one type of vessel before jumping into all of them. You don’t need to learn to sail, fly, and mountain climb all at once. Master one trade, one trick, focus on one talent. If you love to write, start a blog and when you are comfortably doing a post daily without much stress, then add your Podcast sharing the content. And once the Podcast is something you can do on Autopilot or in your sleep, you can start the Youtube channel whether your nephews watch or not. Remember in Corporate America 20 people and 3 managers would have the job of just doing your one blog. Expect it to be overwhelming when you have to learn everything to launch a blog and if you need technical support you don’t have a whole department working for you – but likely you have Chat support regardless from who hosts your blog or the company you are working for or a leader above you. You don’t have to master all of it as if you think that you often get stuck on one part and want to quit. When you get stuck either hire it out or go on Youtube and find out how to do it or find chat support or join a Facebook group and ask away.
Soon you will see the storms weren’t permanent and you will start to see the dry land up ahead. Your destination.
Keep going UNTIL. And despite.
UNTIL you reach it. And despite all those obstacles and storms that made you want to give up at multiple times during your journey.
The ending is worth the storm. And sometimes, you get to even read the final chapter, before the book is out, and before it becomes a best seller.