Welcome to Things I Wish I Knew Earlier Sunday!
Here are three Big Ideas to contemplate this week.
This was true in the 90s when Mr. Rohn said it, and it’s doubly true now.
We are going through a revolutionary transformation of our economy.
The internet is killing bad jobs and turning normal people into entrepreneurs changing the world.
For self-improvers and self-educators, there has never been more opportunity.
Knowing this simple fact is a competitive advantage.
“The Internet has massively broadened the possible space of careers. Most people haven’t figured this out yet. There are 8 billion people you can now learn from, and 8 billion people you can teach. There are 8 billion potential customers, 8 billion potential bosses, and 8 billion potential investors. The Internet is not just for sharing jokes and making friends; you can turn it into a giant, global, flexible, and diversified business.” -Naval Ravikant
Solopreneurship is on the rise.
People across the globe are building lifestyle businesses around themselves.
They are making more than enough money, spending more time with their family, and checking off bucket list items.
Jay Z was ahead of his time when he said, “I’m not a businessman. I’m a business, man.”
The entire solopreneur journey begins with self-education.
Formal education did not prepare you. So you aren’t ready.
But you’ll never be more ready than you are right now.
And you don’t have to start by curing cancer or getting humanity to mars.
Just start by:
•watching an interesting YouTube video
•wandering the local bookstore until something catches your eye, then reading the book
•attending a meetup or mastermind
•listening to a podcast.
Formal education will make you a living. Self-education will make you a fortune.
If you are curious to learn more about solopreneurship AKA the one-person business model, this entire YouTube playlist is amazing.
Revenue is the life blood of every business.
And it’s called cash FLOW for a reason.
Money moves like water through businesses and into pockets.
Just like we need water to live, businesses need revenue to survive.
Every business is like a well.
The owners dug in a spot until they struck an existing underground river, then they built a team to extract as much water as possible.
People are buying things constantly. All day. They are buying services from freelancers, plumbers, and electricians. They are buying products that help them solve problems, products that make them feel empowered, and products that they love.
That existing stream of transactions is the underground river. That’s what you have to tap into.
Everyone involved in a business from the owners to the employees get to fill their buckets with water to take home to their family…as long as there is enough revenue to go around.
Each day you have to choose between two tools to get that water: a bucket and a pickaxe.
You can take your bucket to someone else’s well and trade some effort and time in service of the well in exchange for filling your bucket.
Or you can go out, find a good looking spot in the professional landscape, and move along to the hard work of digging.
More likely, you’ll need to take your bucket to a well during the day and do your digging on the nights and weekends.
Until you hit water.
The goal of entrepreneurship is to hit water, then build systems that keep that water coming in the future.
But notice the goal is to build an active revenue stream around you.
NOT a passive revenue stream.
Active revenue emerges as a direct result of work done TODAY.
Passive revenue emerges as a result of work you did yesterday, usually in the form of returns from investments.
But you can’t make investments if you aren’t earning more money than you need to live.
That’s where active revenue comes in.
The goal of entrepreneurship is to build an active revenue stream around you.
At the most basic level, a story is a cause-and-effect explanation for why something happened.
Businesses are stories that tell us why transactions happened and continue to happen in the future.
But that’s not the whole picture.
Entrepreneurs generate transactions by creating change in the lives of their customers.
Their business is the story about the transformation.
Amazon is a story about the convenience its customers experience:
•Next-day shipping
•One-click purchasing
•Low-friction shopping
Google is a story about accessing the internet to learn anything for free.
Apple is a story about high-quality, easy-to-use technology.
But this isn’t just true for giant corporations.
It’s true for even the smallest small business owners.
The businesses that are best at telling their story always win.
What story is your business telling?