The Ideal Job

How do you define the ideal job? My cousin is an anesthesiologist who earns hundreds of thousands of dollars per year. But he only earns money while he is working, and only for his billable services. He is therefore limited by the number of hours in a day.

So one of the definitions of an ideal job is one that can generate money for you even when you are not present.

Most people work for someone else. That means that they are not in charge of their own time, and that they must please their superiors while motivating those who work for them to produce more and more. Competitive companies take no prisoners, so their own company cannot afford to let things stay comfortable. Stockholders demand increased sales and profit. The pressure builds every year. There is no let up. That is the reality of most large companies.

I am an advocate of self-employment. Not everyone is cut out for it, but many more people would consider it if they had a better understanding of it. And I wish that there were more college classes in the basics of self-employment.

By definition, self-employment means that you are in charge. You might own a retail store or restaurant, be a contractor, or own an Internet business. But you do not work for someone else. You are responsible for producing. No one else is going to do it for you. There are no limits on your income, and there is no floor to catch you if you fail. Self-employment is a beautiful thing!

The era is gone when people work for the same company for 40 years. Many people change positions, move to other companies, or find their own company downsizing or moving.

I graduated from La Sierra University in 1973 with a teaching degree. I went to work for a private church-based high school in Southern California. I thought I was always going to be a teacher. I got a graduate degree from La Sierra in 1978 and moved to a University prep school in Michigan. I never questioned the existence or longevity of the school system. I figured I would always have a job.

Unfortunately, the school in Michigan dipped into a normal cycle of lower enrollment, and they needed to cut back the number of teachers. Fortunately, that was about the time I discovered that I had a knack for making things and selling them for a nice side income. So I took a "2-year leave of absence" to see what I could do if I put more time into my sales efforts. The results were pretty nice. I have not returned to teaching.

A few years after that, the school in Southern California where I first taught declined from a vibrant school with full enrollment to the point where it completely closed down.

My point is that no one should assume that working for someone else is secure. In fact, as I mention in my Marketplace Realities, I advocate that everyone view themselves as a "self-employed business" even when they work for someone else. This attitude will keep them motivated to always be valuable to the current marketplace.

If your job was making Polaroid cameras in the 1960's, you were on top of the world with the latest technology. But that was not to last. The digital age has completely revolutionized photography. Just as surely, something will replace digital technology some day...probably in your lifetime.

Similarly, the marketplace is ever-changing, and each of us MUST be responsible to keep up. That means that our education never ceases. Each of us is a mini-business that must continue to have something to offer the marketplace whether it is working for someone else, or for ourselves.

The following is my job description. I wasn't nearly smart enough to plan this from the beginning. I have been very lucky. But over the years, I have learned to make choices that support the lifestyle I want. Today's young men and women can create these kind of jobs much earlier than I did. And I encourage everyone to consider it.

• I am the president of my own small corporation.
• I decide how much I want to work, when I want to work, and when I want to take time off.
• I wake up whenever I wake up. I haven't used an alarm clock for 25 years, except when I have an early tee time or need to catch an early flight.
• I have only one part-time employee. I sub-contract all my manufacturing out to vendors and let them have the employee hassles.
• I do NOT have a retail store. That means I don't have to "be there" to conduct business. I can leave any time I choose. With today's communication technology, I can conduct business from anywhere.
• My office is in my home, and my shop is on the same property.
• My commute is "a walk down the stairs to the office". Consequently, I don't put very many miles on my cars.
• Large portions of my home and shop are tax-deductible.
• Significant "tools" that most families have to pay for are necessary for my businesses and are therefore tax-deductible. These include computers, high-speed connections, phones and plans, shop tools, vehicles, trips, etc.
• I don't have to wear a suit. Enough said!
• Because I work from home, I was able to spend lots of time with my children when they were young. I took them on business trips in our own private plane, picked them up from school, played catch, watched Jeopardy with them, sat in the hot tub and learned about their day, and was a full-time dad during those critical young years. It was great and our mutual memories are wonderful. They are now adults who are able to appreciate those years all the more.
• All my businesses have an Internet presence, and a global market. That means that people are accessing my website and placing orders (sending me money) when I am asleep or on vacation. My anesthesiologist cousin is very jealous of that. When we have been on family vacations around the world, I have earned money while he was counting how much he is losing by not working at the hospital.
• I don't have any institutional or large company stock-holder pressure on me to produce more and more. My own motivation is what pushes me.
• My biggest hassles are with my vendors. And if they don't produce, I replace them.
• I can play golf whenever I want to. So I don't play on weekends when it is crowded. I play during the week when other people are working for a big company! I even take golf vacations with my friends where I play 36 holes a day for a week.
• By the way, since I like golf so much, I started a golf company, so now all my golfing expenses are tax-deductible. I have to test my equipment you understand. But more than that, I earn money while I play because I can show people my unique clubs.
• My income is significant enough that I can afford the lifestyle that I want, including charitable giving and long term retirement investment and planning.
• However, I have to admit that my job is such that I can do it for many years. People send me money and I have someone send them product. It isn't too complex.

That is a pretty impressive job description...almost like I am semi-retired already! But don't get me wrong. It is not that I don't put in time and work hard. I do. I spend a LOT of time at my desk, answering emails and the telephone, putting together marketing campaigns, and closing sales. When people call and ask me if they can send me money, I am surely going to tell them my address. That takes time.

Seriously, my websites do most of that. Before the Internet, I could only communicate with one person or one group at a time...by phone, snail mail, and physical meetings. But the Internet has allowed the "virtual me" to be available to "talk" with many people at the same time from anywhere in the world. And the conversations can all be on different topics at the same time. Now THAT is an amazing thing. So I spend a lot of time tweaking my web sites. When a customer asks me a question that is not covered on a web site, if I think it might come up again, I will edit the site.

In a very real sense, another way to describe what I do is that I have become a "word-smith". Said another way, I string words together in such a way that it convinces people to send me money. I know that is crude, but it is the truth. Words are powerful. It is an amazing thing...that people can read something I wrote and then send me money.

As an aside, based on that view of my job, I am forever grateful that I learned to type, that I learned proper grammar, that I can spell correctly (for the most part!), and that I learned how to put words together (I think my teacher called that diagramming sentences). I did not appreciate it then. I sure do now.

While I have the great joy of being an inventor and marketing my own products, that is not at all necessary in order to have many of the above elements in your job description. As I discuss on my Inventing page, the majority of my time spent in sales effort. Inventing is a very minor part.

The above job description is all about sales, and there are many things to sell.

Other examples...

A retired hardware store owner started a Google Blog about how to fix things around the house. As people asked him questions, he added to his blog and got more and more hits. He then clicked a button that automatically let Google place word ads on his blog, and they pay him a few cents per click. He earns over $100,000 per year, types with two fingers, and knows nothing about websites. But he doesn't have to because Google makes it easy to do the same thing on any topic.

His lifestyle? After 45 years of having to be at his store all day every day and barely earning enough profit to exist, he and his wife have moved to the Big Island in Hawaii where he pecks at his keyboard a little each day.

This example has been duplicated thousands of times with blogs and word ads. Search Google for "How do I fix my leaky faucet?" and you will find hundreds of people making a small fortune answering that question. In fact, search for, "How do I...." and you fill in the blank with things that are interesting to you, and you will be amazed at what is out there and what is generating income for people...from the tips of their fingers on a keyboard.

Another person bought a parrot and struggled to teach it how to talk. So he hired a local bird expert to teach his parrot to talk. The expert was so effective that the man paid him to write a "how to" book. He then created a one-page website that offered the tutorial as a downloadable "e-book" that he sold for $39.95. He earns $4,000 per month on that e-book, and has added over 20 more instructional e-books on all kinds of topics that he markets the same way. Some of them only generate $1,000 per month while others are over $5,000. The total is extraordinary, and it is all automatic. Once he launches the e-book and the single web page to promote it and places the word ads, he has nothing else to do but check his bank account to see how much people are sending to him.

Go ahead, do it. You know you want to. Search for, "How do I teach my parrot to talk?" It is amazing.

You have to find your own niche. Find something you are interested in and good at. Learn all about it. Put it into an e-book format. Build a sales page. See if you can make some money.

Don't know how to find a niche? Search for "find a niche."

Don't know how to write an e-book? Search for "how to write an e-book."

Don't know how to write a sales page? Search for "how to write a sales page." You will find one of my favorite pages on that subject linked to www.clickhereyouidiot.com. It is hilarious, while actually very educational. And guess what? At the bottom of it, there are Google adwords, and if you click on those, the guy who wrote www.clickhereyouidiot.com gets paid a few cents per click. Genious.

Those examples are MUCH easier than my business because they don't require any inventory, any shipping or handling, and the "factory" is one's mind. I offer them here to illustrate that anyone who is motivated to do so, can run a small self-employed business that produces plenty of income. With today's technology, the Internet opens the door to the global market, but there are also many local self-employed businesses that can be done.

So, if you want to be self-employed, what should you sell?

Start with considering your hobbies or interests. What are you good at? Then Google every possible word or phrase about that topic and about related businesses to start your wheels turning.

There are many articles and publications about self-employment.

Read, read, read. Immerse yourself in self-employment and small business success stories. We have heard the warning from our parents, teachers, and preachers that, "We become like that which we are exposed to." I promise you that is true. And it works just as effectively on the positive side as on the negative. If you want to become successful, expose yourself to success stories. Learn from those who have done it. Learn what a good business opportunity looks like so that when you run see it, you will recognize it.

Good luck, and don't wait until next year.

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Marketplace Realities

Is college worth the cost?

Political Realities

Is God in Control? (and other religious questions)