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One Minute Odd Job Tip

So, there are many ways to acquire money. 1) You can trade your skills and time for $$$ while contributing to someone else's business. 2) You can trade your skills and time for $$$ in an enterprise that you own and control. 3) You can inherit or marry it 🙂 4) You can own a business. 5) You can steal it. 6) You can invest your $$$$ to make more$$$$. There are, of course others, but we will focus on 4 of these, for now. Some others I have no knowledge or experience in…

>>> NEXT WEEK: What is a Job, really….

Strictly Business:

When I started in “business” when I was 13 or 15 or 19 or … as a self employed person, I thought I had a business, but in actuality I just had a self-directed job. The difference, a business throws off money to you whether you’re doing anything in it or not. Here are the principles I finally learned, and I learned them by reading a book by Robert Kiyosaki called The Cash Flow Quadrant. He explains in that book about the 4 money-generating quadrants.

The first one being Employee — In this category, a person makes their money by trading hours for dollars working for another person or entity. Most people in society fall into this category.

The next quadrant is Self-Employment — In this quadrant, a person is essentially doing the same as in the first quadrant, but they have the worst boss in the world, themselves. I say the worst because they may be so driven that they may kill themselves to make a success of the business! Herein is one of the weaknesses of this quadrant — you only make money when you’re producing, and all of us only have so many hours in the day. To put this in perspective: Let’s say that you generate $100 an hour while you’re working. Not a bad wage! In 40 hours you’ll make $4000, in a year about $200,000. So does that mean that a person who makes $2M somehow works 400 hours a week? Impossible. And there is the limitation to this income-generating model. Of course, the dream is to turn the self- employment model into the 3rd quadrant, which is:

The Business Quadrant — This is where a person can actually make some headway in generating real wealth by not having the limiting factor of your own personal time and energy. In the business quadrant, a person gets a business functioning on its own without input from them, or at least not day-to-day input. Put it this way, if you have a true business, you can go to Tahiti for 2 weeks and money is still being made, AND when you come back your business is still intact and functioning normally.

Most self-employed people fail miserably when trying to make a transition like this. Why? Because a completely different skill set is required to operate a business than to install plumbing, for example. This problem is explained very well in the book The E-Myth Revisited by Michael Gerber. He explains in detail why a very successful plumber will probably be a complete flop as a business owner! Basically, it boils down to a completely different skill set. Of course, if a person does succeed in making this transition, they may be in a position to have their business move them into the 4th quadrant, which is:

Investor — How could a business move a person into the last quadrant of being an investor? Well, if they’ve built a salable business that throws off enough profit to make it a value and not just selling a job, they may have enough cash to invest and live off the proceeds. What might this look like? Let’s say a person built an HVAC business with full staff, a building, and most importantly, a system that allows it to function with limited oversight and involvement by the owner. This is a business that can be sold, usually in the realm of 3 to 4 times the annual profit of the business. In very simple terms, if a business generates half a million dollars a year, it’s probably worth about a million and a half to 2 million dollars. If a person threw that money into some conservative mutual funds, it could generate about $80,000 per year in income.

Of course, the diversity and opportunities in investing are huge, this is just one of the simplest examples.

There it is, the Cashflow Quadrants as interpreted by me. Of course, grab the book by Robert Kiyosaki and read about it in more detail. A note about Robert Kiyosaki, or anyone you may learn a new concept from: Use your own mental faculties, sort through and take ownership of what resonates with you. There are some things that Robert Kiyosaki talks about that I am totally on board with and there are some other things that I completely disagree with, and that’s ok.

Learn from many sources and develop your success method.

Some Odd Jobs You May Never Have Considered:

1. Start a YouTube channel (Quadrant S) 

   I know that many of you will say, “Well, that's not really for me, I don't want to be in front of a camera.” I can fully relate to that! But is there something that you want to share with the world? Do you have an expertise in a particular field? Do you simply have something you love? Or enjoy doing? Or hey, are you just an entertaining person? If that's you, you can start a YouTube channel about whatever. The topic really doesn't matter, because somebody is looking for any topic that you can imagine!

   There are people who are searching for information about every topic in the world. And trust me, there's somebody, somewhere, in some corner of YouTube, making money from YouTube, doing exactly what you could be doing right now. Just so you know -- YouTube is the second largest Search Engine in the world. And it's owned by the largest Search Engine in the world, Google. Right there is a ready made community amongst millions and millions of people who use YouTube and Google every single day. Your target audience is out there somewhere, waiting on you to make and upload your very first video. Don't worry about fancy equipment, use your own phone, look into some editing software or don't edit, just go ahead take a leap and hit the record button.

2. Teach, Consult, Coach (Quadrant S) 

   Not in a school or at a blackboard, oh no, this is the 21st century!

   You can monetize whatever skill or talent or gift you have. You can coach, you can teach, you can consult with other people. Offer what you do or what you know as a service and then, you can use a platform like Sellfy, Udemy, Teachable, Fiverr to actually market and sell and collect payments for what you do. You can sell coaching and mentoring in any area or teach your skills to other people.

   How can you identify your gift, talent and skill?

   Well, here are a few ideas to figure out what skills or talents you have that you can monetize. First poll, or ask the people who know you the best: How do you make them feel, when you're around them?

   For example, what's the first thing they think about when they think of you? Just ask the people who know you and let them tell you. Ask them to be as honest as possible with you. That may be a key to what gift you have that could be turned into a course or coaching or ???? What's naturally inside of you?

   Or what makes you angry? Maybe the thing that makes you angry is the thing that you're supposed to fix? For example, if you’ve worked preparing taxes, you might be able to educate people about how to read their paystubs. One person I know who prepared taxes for years was disturbed by how many of his clients did not know that their paychecks were not having enough federal income tax withheld. He decided to start a course educating people about how to understand their paychecks.

   Or what is the thing that you do better than most people, without a whole lot of effort? Think back in your life. What was your favorite job? And why was it your favorite job?

   What is your skill set, that you've acquired over the years? Oftentimes, we have a job. But throughout the course of working that job, we often fall into our natural talents and abilities and skills. Once you’ve identified your gift, your talent, your purpose, then practice it, perfect it, get better at it, and then ultimately monetize it.

   You can monetize it through some of the platforms that I mentioned earlier.

3. Sell Digital Products (Quadrant S)

   Digital products are intangible goods that exist in digital form. Here are some examples of what digital products are: Cheat sheets, recipes, top 10 List, instructions of any kind, guides or guide books, eBooks, apps, themes, plugins, graphic art, digital art, online courses, lifestyle tips, write digital planners, newsletters, wallpaper that you can sell for the screensaver on a phone, or screensavers on a laptop or computer posters, emojis, PowerPoint presentations, clip art, exercise routines, sound effects, beats, if you're a musical person, stock photos, and more. Anything that you can PDF or send electronically is a digital product.

   Where can you sell digital products? You can sell digital products on your own website, and also, places like Fiverr, or Teachable, WooCommerce etc. There are tons of places where you can actually market your digital products. You can create them anywhere. Canva is a great place to create digital products or Microsoft Publisher or audio stuff on Audacity or Adobe.

   The beauty about digital products as you create them one time, and after you create them, you can sell an unlimited amount of them because it doesn't take any more work to produce or ship them. For example, you have a PDF, you can sell 10,000 PDFs in the next hour for $5 a piece and you don't have to lift a finger, you don't have to ship anything out.

   Many years a go, we created a set of crochet patterns and made Youtube videos to go along with the patterns. Every month we sold quite a few of those patterns, all automated and completely passive.

4. Sell on Amazon or eBay or any other platform (Quadrant S)

   Buy low and sell high. Amazon and eBay are just two places that this can be done. They’ve both been around for awhile, and have a built-in customer base. You can sell on any platform like Shopify, Craigslist, Facebook Marketplace, it doesn't matter. You're just buying things low, selling things high.

   I mentioned eBay because we used eBay for many years to sell many different things. eBay is still second leading online marketplace here in the U.S., behind Amazon.

   If you plan to sell on Amazon or eBay or any other place, do your due diligence. Maybe start with just a few items that are lying around your house to get you going. This allows you to learn and understand the platform before increasing an inventory that you plan to sell. You can also look into drop shipping as well.

   We have used eBay to sell a lot of things. One particularly unique - and lucrative - set of items was a large collection of aviation-related items from the 1920s, 30s and 40s. There were old magazines, model plans, pictures — all kinds of stuff collected over decades. We were amazed by the prices some collectors paid for some of these items! I remember sitting in front of the computer near the close of some of the auctions watching the prices go up and up and up. If you think about it, an auction is a true test of the value of an item — the seller is not setting the price at what they think the value is , but the buyer is setting the price at what they are willing to pay.
   

This Week’s Quotes:

• “Always bear in mind that your own resolution to succeed is more important than any one thing.”

  —Abraham Lincoln

• “If A is success in life, then A equals x plus y plus z. Work is x; y is play; and z is keeping your mouth shut.”

  ― Albert Einstein

• “A great secret of success is to go through life as a man who never gets used up.”

   —Albert Schweitzer

• If your success is not on your own terms, if it looks good to the world but does not feel good in your heart, it is not success at all.

   —Anna Quindlen

A Book for Success — I have already mentioned The Cashflow Quadrant in this newsletter, but I would suggest that you first get another book by Robert Kiyosaki called Rich Dad, Poor Dad. This will set you up to understand The Cashflow Quadrant better. Rich Dad, Poor Dad is a quick, easy and fun read, and will open your mind to concepts that you may never have known existed. Then The Cashflow Quadrant will give you more of the details and mechanics.

Snarfy Jokes —

1. What’s the difference between a hippo and a zippo?

One is really heavy and the other’s a little lighter.

2. What does a nosey pepper do?

It gets jalapeño business.

3. Why should you never trust stairs?

They’re always up to something.

4. When does a joke become a ‘dad’ joke?

When it becomes apparent.

5. I entered ten puns in a contest to see which would win.

No pun in ten did.

Some Random Thoughts — This may be a slight departure from what you thought this newsletter was going to be about — i.e., Odd Jobs — but I wanted to lay the groundwork for exploring more than just trading hours-for-dollars and including some ideas — Odd Job TIPS — that would fit everyone’s circumstances and goals.

In my vision of this newsletter I see it categorizing different “Jobs” into the 4 quadrants. We’ll see how that goes. In the mean time, I hope you’ve gotten some ideas that you can ruminate on and build on for your future success.

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