🚀 Achieving Financial Freedom: 5 Life-Changing Insights for Starting a Business
Are you tired of working 40 hours a week at a job you don't like? Do you dream of achieving financial freedom and spending more time with your loved ones? Starting a business on the side may be the answer you're looking for. In this article, I'll share with you five life-changing insights that I would tell my younger self and anyone who wants to start a business, achieve financial freedom, and free up their time.
📝 Table of Contents
1. 99% of the Business and Entrepreneurship Advice Out There is Wrong
2. Start Before You Are Ready
3. Don't Build a Business Around What You Love
4. Everything is a Commodity
5. Starting a Business is Not Risky
1. 99% of the Business and Entrepreneurship Advice Out There is Wrong
Most entrepreneurship advice is given by single men who have no responsibilities outside of taking care of themselves. They have no family, no mouths to feed, and no expenses to worry about. But that's not representative of most people. There's a popular saying within the entrepreneurship community that entrepreneurs prefer to work 80 hours a week to avoid working 40 hours per week at a regular job. But if you follow the path of most entrepreneurs, working 80 hours a week and hustling non-stop, you will end up sacrificing your time and your freedom for the promise of riches. Work yourself to the bone and lose what precious time you had to spend with your loved ones.
The truth is that you can, in fact, be financially free without being a stranger to your kids. You can make good money and have the freedom to enjoy it, and you don't have to work 80 hours a week just to make it all work. There is, in fact, a sustainable way to achieve financial freedom without making huge sacrifices. You just have to follow a certain set of principles to stay on track.
2. Start Before You Are Ready
Most people wait too long before doing what they know they need to do in life. They hesitate to start a business because they doubt they have any marketable skills to offer or they think they need to conduct years of research to create a viable business plan. None of this is true. Launching a business is easy. The hard part is getting it to run on autopilot with minimal effort or interference needed from you.
You always have to start earlier than you think. After all, you can't really learn how to run a business until you've had experience running a business. So if you wait until you're ready, then you will never start at all. In other words, you will feel ready to start your business six months after you started. And even if your business fails, you learn something, and that's not failing, that's education.
3. Don't Build a Business Around What You Love
When it comes to business, most people want to sell something they love or provide a service that they are passionate about. But what most people don't understand is that whether you start a business around an area of passion or not, most of what you end up doing is not necessarily related to the thing that you sell.
Don't start a business because you're trying to monetize your passion. Why? Because you won't be very happy, and it probably won't work. In most businesses, what you end up doing, especially during the startup phase, is all the stuff required to run just about any business, and usually, this isn't what you're passionate about. You may, in fact, begin to associate these mundane activities with your passion itself and therefore grow to resent it.
Instead of passion, focus on the purpose of your business. For me, our business was always about whether we can make enough money to replace my wife's income so she could stay at home with the kids. That was the real goal, and every decision we made was oriented around that single objective. We passed up a lot of other opportunities that excited me more than handkerchiefs, but that wasn't the point of what we were doing. The point was which business would allow us to have the most freedom to do what we wanted. Everything had to pass through that filter. It didn't matter what we sold, so long as we fulfilled our primary goal. That was what we were passionate about, the purpose behind the business, not just the business itself.
4. Everything is a Commodity
When starting a business, most people struggle with what to sell, not because they can't find a profitable product, but because they want to sell something completely novel or unique. The truth of the matter is that very few products are unique, and almost every product is a commodity.
Instead of killing yourself trying to come up with the next big invention to present to the world, you should focus on what Drew Whitman calls the Life Force 8. The Life Force 8 are the core human desires that are responsible for almost all product sales. If you can appeal to a person's Life Force 8, you can sell anything.
The product is less important than the emotions you evoke in the customer. So focus on the feelings, and the sales will come.
5. Starting a Business is Not Risky
The biggest misconception about entrepreneurs is that they are all inveterate gamblers. In my experience, nothing could be further from the truth. Almost every entrepreneur I've interviewed or met in the past 10 years has taken a methodical and conservative approach to starting their businesses, and as a result, most of them have succeeded.
Starting a side hustle does not have to be risky. Entrepreneurship doesn't have to be all or nothing. It really can be a slow and steady process of taking risks, yes, but not ones that will financially devastate you if something goes sideways. If you decide to take the plunge into business ownership, make sure you have a backup plan. Stay at your day job until your side hustle can support you, then build upon your existing successes until you have a portfolio of income streams.
In conclusion, starting a business on the side and achieving financial freedom is not only doable, but it doesn't require a lot of money up front and very little risk. You just have to follow a certain set of principles to stay on track. Remember, everything is a commodity, and starting a business is not risky. So start before you're ready, focus on the purpose of your business, and appeal to a person's Life Force 8. With these insights, you can achieve financial freedom and free up your time to do what you want.
🎉 Highlights
- Starting a business on the side can help you achieve financial freedom and free up your time.
- Most entrepreneurship advice is given by single men who have no responsibilities outside of taking care of themselves.
- Launching a business is easy. The hard part is getting it to run on autopilot with minimal effort or interference needed from you.
- Don't start a business because you're trying to monetize your passion.
- The product is less important than the emotions you evoke in the customer.
- Starting a business is not risky. Entrepreneurship doesn't have to be all or nothing.
❓ FAQ
Q: Do I need a lot of money to start a business?
A: No, you don't need a lot of money to start a business. You can start small and build upon your successes.
Q: Do I need to be passionate about running a business?
A: No, you don't need to be passionate about running a business. Instead, focus on the purpose of your business.
Q: Is starting a business risky?
A: Starting a business can be risky, but it doesn't have to be. You can take a methodical and conservative approach to starting your business and build upon your successes.
📚 Resources
- [Bumblebee Linens](https://www.bumblebeelinens.com/)
- [Quit Your Job](https://www.quityourjob.com/)
- [The Family First Entrepreneur](https://www.thefamilyfirstentrepreneur.com/)
