We've all been there: touring that art gallery with the overly-critical companion who insists "Hmph!  This is art worth millions of dollars?  I could do that on a scratch pad in bed as I'm falling asleep!", or at the auto garage with the same companion (who has never changed a vehicle's oil in their life) who is complaining that you are paying way too much for your full service oil change, or out to lunch with that same buddy of yours complaining that you shouldn't pay that much for a sandwich because they could make you a better one for 75% less money with ingredients from the grocery store.  I know this because for many years of my life I lived like this as well.  It was all about Why should I pay THAT when I could do it myself for cheaper?!  Doesn't everyone feel this way?  How in the world can this business that is charging people for this good/service stay in operation?!?!!?!!  Now, none of this means I have never looked for and appreciated deals.  Of course I always have!  But the point is, I have grown out of this attitude and see the bigger picture now.  I have learned to question that "overly-critical companion" with these questions: That's all well and good, but WILL YOU do it?!  or  Could you do it that well time after time with consistent results?  99% of the time the answer to either or both of these questions is a resounding "No".

You see, just because someone CAN do or produce something themselves cheaper than an option that is commercially available doesn't mean that they WILL, or, perhaps even more importantly, that they will WANT TO!   Going on a picnic to the park?  You can make a bag of ice in your freezer at home and dump it in your cooler.  Afraid to drink your tap water?  You can boil and filter your tap water yourself.  Looking for some aloe vera to dab on that bruise of yours?  Grow your own plant - aloe vera is (almost) about as foolproof and hardy as they come even for someone without a green thumb!  But despite all this, the bagged ice, bottled water, and commercially packaged ready-to-use aloe vera products industries are all thriving on a global scale in this modern 21st Century world we live in.

Are you scared your business idea will fail just because other people are doing it?  My advice: don't be.  Don't try to talk yourself out of a business idea just because it isn't the latest and greatest thing that no one else has thought of yet and there is going to be a fireworks show at your launch.  Just because you feel that the market is flooded, everyone either has it, can do it themselves, or won't pay you do to it isn't reason enough to throw in the towel (although these are mighty good thoughts take note of and keep in mind).  Just because what you have to offer is something that anyone (seemingly) could do or make for themselves doesn't mean that it isn't a viable business idea.

There are plenty of businesses out there in this world that offer goods and services "normal" "everyday" people could do or make for themselves.  And don't fall into the trap of thinking that all businesses of this nature are automatically all small struggling businesses with their owners living campgrounds!  In fact, many large corporations do this - from large agri-businesses, to large pharma, to mega international retail chains that sell things you could  do or make at your work bench or in your kitchen for pennies.  But yet these businesses thrive!

The whole point is: half the battle of being a professional and running your own business or gig is actually taking the time to start from the beginning with the first step and do it.  Sure, maybe you do something that anyone could do, but are they doing it?  No!  At least not all of them - and probably not even most of them!  Let's use the Internet as another example.  If you are my age or older you have witnessed the birth of the mainstream Internet (for the masses) as we know it now.  It is easy for someone my age or older to look at the world of making money online today in the 21st Century with a large dose of (dare I say, fairly healthy) skepticism and say that the world of e-commerce is flooded.  I didn't get in on ground floor in the 90s so now I'm out of luck!  Just type in the phrase make money online into a 21st Century search engine and look at all that millions of hits you get.  Everyone is doing it!  But I say, look on the flip side as well.  Just because you got a million hits for make money online, there are billions of people in this world, and more and more of them are still becoming connected to the Internet everyday (yes, it's true, still today).  So, no, when viewed in the proper context, no, not everyone is doing it. 

I mention James Clear a lot in my posts because I respect him.  If you don't know who he is (or even if you do know who he is and you want to see what he's up to now) take a look at this website and blog here.  A frequent point that Clear makes regarding getting anything done in life to a "professional standard" is that simply showing up to work on time, every time, without fail is one of the biggest marks of "professionalism" (in any industry or for any project) there is.

The soon to be defunct (I no longer actively maintain the site and will just let all paid services [domain et. al.] lapse when they expire) 5cousins.com was where the dream first saw its first few infant sprout-heads germinate.  I had been chasing this dragon for years now, and had finally gotten close enough to it to grab its tail and have had it buck me around for the ride of my life!

​If you had to work for someone else (i.e. an employer), what job would you actually either enjoy doing or at least feel you would be good at doing and could do with ease, or, ideally, both (to some varying degree, at least)?  You see, too many people jump into the idea of wanting to “start their own business” with stars, rainbows, and dollar signs in their eyes and a nothing-else-matters attitude in their hearts.  While that kind of unbridled ambition in and of itself is a good thing (when you can eventually control it and focus it), far too often people in this boat have minimal to no actual image of what they actually want to do with or get out of these nebulous “businesses” they intend to start or the effort involved in starting, growing, and running them.
 
Let's roll with a hypothetical example here to illustrate what I am talking about: Person A, let's call her Bei Bei - so Bei Bei hears about the great money you can make as a neighborhood pet sitter.  She goes home that night and decides she wants to open a pet sitting business.  She thinks about it for the next week – even sits down and jots out a broad, bare-bones bullet point business plan of sorts regarding what the business will do and how it will operate, and then stops.  As Bei Bei makes notes, she quickly realizes that this is something that is: 1) going to take some time, logistics, and management to execute, and 2) isn’t going to make her rich overnight.  Hmph!  Pet sitting! she thinks to herself, What was I thinking?!  Disillusioned, she either gives up all hope of ever going into business for herself, or figures that pet sitting is just too hard to get into and quickly starts to see stars, rainbows, and dollar signs in her eyes over some other fresh idea, which runs the same cycle through her mind and life.  Bei Bei  lives out the rest of her working life feeling trapped as a disgruntled employee at her job and never actually pulls the trigger on any of her enterprising ideas.

Ultimately, Bei Bei isn’t seeing herself doing what she wants.  She isn’t visualizing any of her scenarios properly.  She knows (or at least believes on some level) that she wants to go into business for herself, but then when the rubber hits the road she fails to take action on any of her ideas.  Now, there could very well be multiple reasons, unknown to any of us, as to why Bei Bei doesn't act on her business ideas; however, one of the most major reasons we can infer from the information we are given in this scenario, and the one we are talking about today, is the fact that she doesn't have a true vision of or know exactly what she wants out of her business and why.

If you feel you want to go into business for yourself, but you are stuck on a business idea that feels like a good fit for you, try taking a look at the situation like this: if you had to work for someone else (i.e. be an employee), what job, or kinds of jobs, would you actually enjoy doing?  What job (or kinds of jobs) do you feel you would be good at doing and could do with (at least relative) ease?  Or, ideally, what job(s) would you both enjoy doing and you feel you could perform with relative ease because you have the skill set to perform it/them?  Doing something you already enjoy doing (or have always wanted passionately to start doing) or doing something you have a firmly developed skill set in (i.e. so you are efficient - or at least more efficient than a noob - and good at it) will help you immensely when it comes to staying motivated for your business.  Once you get started with your plans, there are going to be days - many, many, many days, and many, many, many different reasons, trust me - when you have no gumption, no ambition, no motivation to get out of bed and work for yourself.   It might be hard to see now, before you start laying the foundation for your new business; but, trust me, as soon as you start, so will the disillusionment.  If you are doing something you enjoy, are good at, or, ideally, a mixture of both, it is much more likely that you will find that motivation day after day, month after month, year after year, to get up every morning and work for yourself.  After all, there is more to working for yourself than just making tons of money (although that is obviously a big factor).  If you are going to be earning money doing something you don't enjoy doing, why did you go into business for yourself in the first place?  Why not just get a job (i.e. be an employee) doing something you don't like?  You will get paid and, depending on the job, probably receive some kinds of benefits with it as well without having to deal with the functioning of the whole operation from top to bottom.  

Let me end this post with a personal example.  Although I always knew I wanted to be financially independent and make money through multiple avenues ever since I was a little boy, I could never find something that truly sparked my interests passionately enough for me to grab the bull by the horns and start doing.  I finally got into investing on the stock market (only about a year and a half ago at the time of this writing), and that has treated me O.K. for the time being.  It captivated my interests enough, though, for me to stick with it, and I still do buy and sell stocks.  About half a year after getting into the stock market, I finally started getting serious about blogs and websites.  For me, building blogs and websites is something that has sparked my fascination since the dawn of the Internet (which was born when I was a child), but is something that I just hadn't been able to get myself going on.  Well, it finally started happening seriously about a year ago (at the time of this writing), but I was still stuck on what exactly I wanted to and what I could do that wouldn't just seem like drudgery.  I started off by opening a whole bunch of different random websites and blogs with no real central focus.  It took many months of spinning my wheels after I decided to get serious for me to finally figure out what would work for me.  I assessed myself and my skills: I am an educator by training and I really enjoy teaching.  Education is something I have both the skill set to do well (the act of "walking in cold" to a teaching situation doesn't intimidate me), and the internal enjoyment actually enjoying the act and process of teaching others.  Hence, for me I came to the conclusion that running blogs and websites that promote ideas would be a natural fit for me, as that is what I do in my career as an educator all day long - promote ideas to a wide variety of people.  So with that, Biz Opp Empire was born, and it is a venture I am motivated to stick with even on the "bad" days.

​The thought of earning a residual income without leaving the comfort of your own home is really appealing and interesting, right?  Com'on, you know it is - that's the reason you are here reading this article!  Businesses have been moving online for years now, and the rate at which they continue to move online is only increasing faster and faster as time continues to tick into the future.  In fact, many are starting to say we are nearing another "great revolution" of sorts in business and industry.  The Industrial Revolution of the 17 and 1800s  saw the creation of urban centers - people leaving their largely self-sufficient subsistence lives in the countryside and moving into cities to work in factories.  Now, many are starting to  say we are close at hand to another shift of sorts, where business will move almost entirely online (this has actually all but already happened).  A few decades ago you heard about the "Dot Com Rage" and how business and commerce were moving online.  Well, now that has happened and a new system and mindset of doing business that appears to be the new normal and is here to stay for the long haul has been rapidly establishing deep roots for itself globally.  Just like the early days of the Industrial Revolution, when people were still sorting out what life was like in their new landscape of factories and wage-slavery, nowadays, for as much as we profess to know about using the Internet these days, people are very much still in the early stages of the learning curve regarding how to navigate, tame, and understand the exploding and ever-changing "Wild West" of doing business online.  The whole point is, there are more and more people each day now who want to invest in an online work-at-home-business and that number only continues to grow - rapidly!  To complicate matters, while the number of people who prefer to work at home increases, work-at-home scam schemes, which have been around since long before the advent of the Internet, only continue to grow as well, and easily outnumber the good opportunities out there (just like they always have :) ). Before you decide to start a work-at-home business, there are a lot of factors to consider. Continue reading below to get an idea of what some of those factors might be.

First, really take the time to educated yourself about what starting a work-at-home business entails.  The idea might sound all rainbow-and-butterfly-esque to you at first thought, but take the time to look into the "nitty gritty" of what you really will be spending your time doing to get your business up and running and what you will be doing on a regular routine basis once it is up and running.  First and foremost, before you do anything else, check and see whether or not you are allowed to run a home business from your specific property.  For example, here in Pullman, Washington, USA, where I am located with Biz Opp Empire, the City of Pullman tries to encourage home business through their local business laws and ordinances; however, many private third parties have their own binding policies which discourage home-based businesses in many parts of town - such as prolific neighborhood covenants against home-based businesses in many housing developments around the city and restrictions from individual landlords and rental companies where rental properties are concerned (as Pullman is a college town, rental properties abound).  The neighboring city of Moscow, Idaho, however, is more relaxed about their home-based business policies, and, as the result, you tend to see more home-based businesses over there.

​Once you have checked to make sure you are even allowed to run a home-based business from your intended location, go ahead and start checking other business laws!  Will you be required to register your business and/or obtain any licenses or permits to run your business.  Depending on where in the world you are located and the nature of your business, you could be required to do none of those things or many of those things.  Where permits and licensing are concerned, running your home-based business could be as easy as making sure you track all your profits and expenses so you can fill them in correctly on the self-employment sections of your tax form, or it could be more complicated and expensive.  The point is, I am not a lawyer and I don't know all the answers, but you do not to skip this step.  The reason checking into all applicable laws regarding home-based businesses, registration, permits, and licensing, is so vital as a first step is because these things must be done correctly from the beginning for your business to be legal and above board.  If you run into issues with any of these first steps, you are not going to be able to get your home-based business up and running, so get these done first!

Education regarding work at home business start-up can be obtained in various ways. You can search for tips and information from e-courses, e-books, and even on free email courses. Videos and blogs could be other sources.  Basically, talk your walk and walk your talk.  Engross yourself in the world of your industry in ways that feel natural and comfortable (this is key!) to you and start learning about what you should be doing.  You can also check with your regional Small Business Development Center's point person.  For Pullman, Washington, you can find that information here.  The point is - and I have learned this through much personal trial and error - there is no "Business Station" (at least not here in the United States) you just walk into in your hometown, pay a fee, and walk out with a one-size-fits-all business license that allows you to then just do whatever you want commercially.  There are multiple entities you will need to communicate with, interact with, and, yes, pay fees to in order to run your business - this is never a "one stop shop" at one location.  If you live in Pullman, Washington (or surrounding area), here are some links you might find useful.  If you live somewhere else in the world, go ahead and take a look at these links, too!  While the laws are specific to Pullman and Washington, hopefully taking a look at these links will give you and idea of what kinds of things you should be searching for in your quest for your specific knowledge. 

Another way to get a good education about work at home business is to have a conversation with an expert on this field or with a person who's already running a work at home job. These persons can share lots of insiders secrets which can be of great help to you. 

After getting education on how to start a work at home business, the next thing that you can do is to familiarize yourself with the various work at home schemes and know what you can do if you become a victim of these scams. 

The classic and popular types of work at home schemes include medical billings, envelope stuffing, craft work or assembly and many other schemes. These scams may require you to work for many hours without compensation and they don't tell you the exact amount that you'll have to pay. Some work-at-home schemes may even ask you to spend your money on the things that seem to be useless. 

A legitimate work at home program informs you about the things involved in their money-making activity. So to help save yourself from scams, make sure to ask these questions to the promoter : 

1. What type of work will be expected from me? 

2. Will I be given a salary or will my compensation be based on a commission? 

3. Who will pay me and how frequently? 

4. Do you have a refund policy (for example, if I need to purchase supplies or some kind of "starter kit" from you first)?

5. How much money am I personally going to have to spend in all for set up and ongoing maintenance? (including registration fees, supplies, inventory, possible ongoing monthly fees, etc)

6. When will I receive my first paycheck?

7. How long has the company has been in the industry? (REMEMBER: it's frequently the non-legitimate "companies" [read: "scams"] that are always changing their names frequently.) 

The promoter's answers to that questions will surely help you discover if the work-at-home program is legitimate and if it is suited for your resources, skills and capabilities. 

Moreover, to be very sure if the company is legitimate, you can check it out with your local consumer protection agency, Better Business Bureau, and state Attorney General. These authorities can also inform you if the company you are interested in has a bad record. 

You should also be familiar of the authorities and commissions where you can air your complaint if ever you become a victim of work-at-home schemes. If you have already invest money and time in a particular work-at home program and after few months, you find yourself in doubt if it is legitimate or not, talk to the company representative and ask for a refund. Then, inform the highest position you can possibly reach in the company of your plan to notify the authorities about your bad experience with the company. If the company fails to solve the problem, then air your complaint to the following organizations: 

The Attorney General's office in your state 

The Federal Trade Commission (http://www.ftc.gov) 

The Better Business Bureau (http://www.bbb.org) 

Local Consumer Protection Services 

Local Postmaster

Good education can help you get into a work-at-home business the right way while being informed about scams and help save you from unnecessarily going bankrupted. So if you don't want to end up in a very deep hole, make sure that you are well-educated and have enough knowledge about your target venture before you "pull the trigger", so to speak, and throw yourself wholeheartedly into any work-at-home business venture.

To better life, better income, and better business!

May you live long and profit well in sustainable, ethical ways,

-Andreas

Owner and operator of Biz Opp Empire

Considering the statements I made in my last blog post, I figured I had better write  a separate post strictly on the topic of what I consider to be "financial independence" and how that is lived out in someone's life.  For starters, being financially independent in my book doesn't mean you have to own your own business.  In fact, for every person in this world who claims financial independence because they own their own business, I would venture to guess there are plenty of other people out there who claim financial independence through other means as well, chiefly: 1) inherited wealth (don't we all wish this was us), and 2) investments.  Inherited wealth makes up a very real, yet small, percentage of people in this world (when considering the population of the world in its entirety).   For our purposes today we will focus on people who have built wealth through investments.

While the words "investing" or "investment" might conjure up images of buying and selling stocks or bonds for many people when they hear those words, essentially you make an investment in something when you buy something with the hopes of selling that "something" later at a higher price to make money on it.  In fact, when you own your own business you are making an investment of time and money into your business entity, hoping that it will grow and generate more and more money over time.  Beyond that, you can invest in (essentially "buy into and hope the price goes up before you sell it") pretty much anything you want to: commodities, precious metals, real estate, postage stamps, wine, cigars, old coins, antique furniture, art, the list is pretty much endless.  Everyone will have different tastes and fancies for what they enjoy speculating on, and nothing, per say, is "right".  I know some people who swear by real estate, others who swear by stocks, others who swear by bonds, and still others who swear by precious metals - but one thing is for certain, they almost all disagree with each other, thinking the other person's investment is a waste of time, money, and energy.  Another funny thing is, they all seem to do independently well within their chosen investment niches, results that could not be matched if they switched to a niche they weren't as passionate about.

I wake up US$1,000 richer every morning!  Yeah, yeah, you've heard it all before: the Internet businessperson who wheals and deals, owns a bunch of websites, blogs, and social media accounts, markets his or her wares like they are going out of style, and rakes in millions of dollars.  They all make it look so easy - "with this turnkey website, you too could be wallowing in millions of dollars and joining me at my retirement home in the Bahamas at age 25."  The truth is, this all takes work - hard work - and many people reading those websites with stars in their eyes don't even realize the work involved (or refuse to believe it).  For most of my life so far I was one of those starry-eyed people as well)   You see, simply having a website, blog, social media account, or any other piece of "online real estate" with the intention of making money is not going to make you rich - in fact, it could very easily wind up costing you money in fees such as hosting, domain fees, and, even if it is a totally free platform to use, the cost of your uncompensated time just for keeping it up and running.  Remember, in this scenario we are assuming that your goal is ultimately to make money - there are plenty of different types of websites and web presences out there that never intend to make money, and that is all well and good, but they are not what we are talking about here.

Bottom line: in order to make money online, you need to work.  Yes, it is still work; so go ahead and get that idea of lounging around on the beach in your swim suit every day out of your head right now.  With that being said, can you lounge around on the beach in your swim suit (or do whatever recreational activity you fancy - for me it would actually be fishing in a mountain river) more frequently if you have your own online business?  If the business is successful and pulling in nice profits, yes; but, again, simply owning an online business in and of itself will not make you any money at all, and could wind up costing you money and time you could have otherwise better invested somewhere else.  You have to work your online business to make money.  Also, with that being said, I should make it clear that while we are talking about Internet businesses here, this same idea holds true for offline brick-and-mortar businesses as well.  If you own an offline brick-and-mortar business and that business is successful and making you nice profits, then you will have more time and money to yourself to engage in your personal interests.  If you are the owner of a successful business, probably the only big difference between how you spend your own personal time and money regarding whether or not your business is an online business or an offline business is who is running that business for you while you are at the beach (or fishing in the mountains, or doing whatever it is you dream of doing more of in your life).  If your business is a 100% online business that you can run from your laptop, then there can be steps you can take to automate your business - or at least certain parts of it - to get it to run while you are away.  And, if you are going to be "away" and still have an Internet connection (i.e. not following me to my deep woods mountain retreat), then you can still run your business yourself from where ever you are in the world.  If your business is a brick-and-mortar business, then you are going to have to hire someone to run your business while you are away, something owners of brick-and-mortar businesses do all the time all over the world.

So, I urge you to think deeply about your real goals and desires of running your own online business before you start that blog, buy that turnkey website, or set up your online store.  Just ​owning an online business in and of itself is not going to make you rich.  Just like an offline business, you have to work your online business for your business to generate profit!  Beyond when and how you do the work, an online business and an offline brick-and-mortar business are basically exactly the same in a business sense: they both require hard work and dedication to get off the ground and up and running, and then sustained work and maintenance to grow and maintain.  Unless you are one of those extremely lucky rare individuals in this world, neither one is going to get you rich overnight either.  Your riches will come when the solid foundation, which has taken time and effort to build, finally starts to grow a structure on top of it.