The first 5 months of 2020, have been clouded in plenty of negative events and as the world starts to crawl back out of lock down and quarantine, it looks like recession is going to be the next thing to hit us.
The great thing about change is the opportunity that comes with it. As a species we hate change and that’s ok, its our nature. What we can do is control our response to it and make sure we look for the opportunity in the changes that come our way.
Especially in difficult economic times there are opportunities, sometimes it may be a chance to invest at a great price when markets are at bottom, that will end up generating a great return when markets pick back up, although those opportunities sometime come through pain and turmoil like losing a job.
It may not seem like it at the time, but such a seismic change can set you free, to chase opportunities that you may not otherwise have taken.
Really?
I realize im coming at this from a glass half full perspective, but that’s kinda the way I am.
One of the great unanswered questions most people have in common, is what would I do for a living if I had a choice?
That may mean, getting back into employment but in the job you actually want, it may be the opportunity to go back to school to get the skills and qualifications you need to pursue your dream job.
It could be that you always wanted to work for yourself, more people than ever before are becoming business owners and its never been easier, cheaper or quicker to set up a business.
Necessity is also the mother of all invention as they say, you may not have through about it before but starting a business could be what you need to keep yourself afloat.
In doing so the opportunity to discover what you want from life may well manifest itself.
Im not suggesting that you will become a millionaire over night, if you do then fantastic.
My belief is that everyone has something that they are good at, something marketable that they can make money from, most of us just never have the opportunity to think of ourselves in those terms.
Final thoughts
What we are going through now may not be easy, especially if your facing the prospect of unemployment, but in life there are always opportunities and right now the gig economy is thriving.
Run through a checklist with yourself:
What skills do you have?
What can you do to help other people?
What do you have that people need?
Once you identify those, research, research and research some more:
What are people writing about your skills?
What the best marketplace for them?
Whats the going rate?
Getting started is easy, if you have a smartphone you have everything you need to begin with.
If you write then medium is a great place to start, if you have other creative skills Fiverr or upwork may be the answer.
Linkedin, instagram and facebook are also great places to start.
Life is an adventure especially when we least expect it to be, fortunately these days we have online learning, the gig economy and internet.
Opportunity is everywhere you just need to know where to start.
This is a huge issue Ive been grappling with over the last 6 weeks
Today is a bit of a sad day for me, and one I never thought would come, Ive just sold my last V8 engine’ d car and Im convinced that If I do buy another car it will be electric. Even saying those words sounds alien to me.
The answer I’ve found is that…
Im a huge petrol head, always have been, bikes, cars, trucks, anything and everything with an engine.
I like to have control over my own transportation, I like to have the freedom to go where I like, when I like, even if its just for fun.
But…
After some real hard soul searching during this quarantine period, I realize its the freedom and the choice to go as fast as I like, that I crave not the noise or any of the other “artificial” character of the car or the bike.
Ive been conditioned to think that its the gas engine, the noise, the smell of the emissions even that I crave, but its just not the case.
Those feelings are probably the same as the folks who struggled with the transition from Horses to the first cars or Horseless carriages as they were known.
Difference being that a horse is a living being and so does actually have real character as opposed to bits of metal and plastic.
I just like the freedom and the speed and neither of those are tied to Gas.
This current situation has made my mind up
The last 6 weeks in quarantine in a normally pretty polluted city, have convinced me of that. The air is fresh and clear we have no smog and nature is coming back to the roadsides, that’s for me an eye opener.
I don’t want to contribute to pollution in such a direct and negative way when the world turns back on.
What’s more im in the financial position where I don’t have to, I can afford an electric car if I choose and so I now feel that as some one who can, I have a real responsibility to make the transition.
Same with my motorcycle addiction, there are perfectly good electric bikes out there and im pretty sure I can still misbehave on those.
Im an engineer so I can and will look seriously into upcycling bikes and cars into electrics, my mind boggles at the possibilities even though the purists in the bike and car community will line up to kill me.
Do I even need transport?
The other and more disturbing thought for me is what do I even need transport for?
Im not allowed to drive where I live right now and so apart from jumping in a car while on vacation I don’t drive and I work around that, I walk, cycle, use public transport sparingly.
All of which suggest even an electric car I don’t need.
What next?
Im not sure at this point, Ive bought an electric stand up scooter as an experiment in low impact personal transport, I think I got 36 hours out of it, before we got shutdown so that’s an experiment to be continued.
I need to look at electric cars and bike for vacations or longer trips or business needs when I do settle down somewhere as a means of effective and efficient carbon neutral travel.
I still have concerns over the viability of things like cobalt mining but technology will evolve and become more environmentally friendly it always does regulation and permitting mean that to drive down costs you need to get better.
Likewise I do think there is a opportunity to upcycle older cars and bikes to be even more environmentally efficient and its something ill take a go at.
Im not a petrol head really ive realized just someone who likes the sensation of speed and so im sure as the technology becomes more accessible Ill be able to tune it for more performance if I wish.
4 months ago I was literally raging against the machine as it looks like governments were trying to impose their will on us with the push towards electrification of personal transport.
Today I think their are many challenges around infrastructure and price that need to be solved for us to meet those target dates but its doable.
And hydrocarbons in general?
Well we still need them, clothes we wear, the technology we use, and much more are possible because of hydrocarbons, we just need to be way smarter in the way we use hydrocarbons to minimize the environmental effect.
Todays pretty emotional for me, in many ways, I love gas cars and I do love the sound and excitement of a big V8, but I can’t continue to knowingly use a gas car when I’m fortunate to be able to use the alternatives.
A change to more environmentally friendly transport wont come over night, its not affordable for most of us for a start, but like very other revolution in humanity, it will come slowly at first then all at once.
I get it, your dream wedding has been pushed back because of quarantine, its difficult to deal with and really not something you were prepared for.
I get it because it just happened with my Partner and I.
Its painful, its surprising and its stressful, but there can be ways to work around the situation and it may even be possible to see some positives in the situation and take some of the stress away from the whole process at the end of the day as strange as that may sound.
Let me start by saying that if this is happening to you right now, you are not alone. The positive is that you can find folks out there in the same position who will be happy to share information and support.
So what can we do in this situation?
Probably the most stressful thing about getting married is the costs, between outfits, venue, service, reception, chances are you have multiple contracts with multiple vendors and lots of different deposits out there with them. Some of the things we can do to control the situation is:
Take a deep breath, make a list of everything that would need to be moved around to reschedule the wedding
Read your contracts, if you can cancel and get your money back, then that may be what you want to do, after all that money is better in your bank account than with someone else
If you cannot cancel without penalty, understand that those vendors will be hurting also, and likely to be grateful to hold onto your business. Starting with the venue suggest that rather than cancelling, they give you a date that works for them to reschedule. This way you do not lose any money and are not having the stress of starting from scratch, then work down the vendor list, all of them will appreciate your business and flexibility, you may even find yourself with a discount, its a great time to negotiate
Review your desires vs your needs, if you for example have a time constraint for immigration perhaps, you want to be married before you have a child, whatever those constraints maybe, it may be better for your circumstances to go for the most basic possible wedding ceremony now and then celebrate with friends and family later
Financially, you may find that by having to delay a few months, as painful as that is personally and emotionally that it may lift a lot of stress from you in terms of financial commitment, having that extra time to prepare may just give you some breathing space and also the opportunity to enjoy it when it does arrive that much more because you had more space to prepare financially.
That extra time can help you to plan the day and set your expectations without the last minute rush that most people experiance in the run up to the big day.
Emotionally I know this can be a big blow, these are some of tips and hints we have used ourselves to make the situation a little better and I hope they can help you as well.
If you ever wanted to try, there is no time like the present
Image by George Walker
If you have always wanted to write and didn’t know where to start, or if writing is a more recent dream, I have great news for you, its never been easier to get started, to learn from others on the same journey as you, and if you wish its never been easier to publish.
Writing can be a strange and frustrating pursuit if you let the process take control of you but it really doesn’t have to be that way.
There are so many ideas about what writing is and is not, and when you can really call yourself a writer.
None of them actually matter, the truth is writing is such a personal thing that, the only correct answer is the one that fulfills your passion and yuor expectations.
The important thing is to start at a pace that works for you, you may be shy, you may not know where to start and like most of us who want to write, you may be overthinking the whole thing.
The great thing to remember is that their really is no right or wrong, a word on the page or the screen, leads to a sentence, which leads to a paragraph which can lead to something magical.
It doesn’t matter if it takes five minutes, days, months or longer as long as its comfortable for you.
You could start journaling for yourself with pen and paper, a lot of people starting out enjoy the challenge, it lets us play around with words and structures and also has the really wonderful benefit of getting thoughts and feeling out of your mind onto a page, reducing stress and anxiety and also clearing your mind.
You could set up a blog, all you really need is a fantastic resource like medium or a website such as a free WordPress site and a smartphone and your all set to share your writing with the world.
You can draft and edit and play about with your writing as much as you like, and if you want to publish your writing and share it with others your one simple click of the mouse or touch of the screen away from becoming a published author.
As your confidence builds and if you want to pursue writing as something more than a hobby you could even apply to join the medium partner program and be paid for your work.
Again what you do with your writing, if and how you share it and if you want to make it more than a hobby are all up to you. No one is right and no one is wrong, what works for you is best.
One thing I can guarantee you though from someone who spent a long time, overthinking it and terrified to share anything in public, is that your far from alone, there is a whole community who stood in those same shoes and made the first step. In turn that means there is huge amount of help, resources and support out there to get you started and writing with confidence.
How to get the services you need as a small business and a start up
As a small business or a start up, to be successful there is a real need to bootstrap it for as long as humanly possible, that doesn’t mean you should forego growth if there is cost involved, but it does mean that every penny is a prisoner in terms of costs.
This issue is that there are things that the business needs, which are essential but bloody expensive at the same time, if you don’t have the skills or experiance in those areas yourself.
Specifically im thinking:
Marketing
Contract law
Incorporation
Book Keeping
Although there may be other areas which you need some help with. If you get creative you can use some other strategies to get what you need without the need to spend as much as you may think or in some cases any of your hard earned cash.
Really?
This is possible, we just need to be creative and for the most part think about what we can barter with our peer businesses and those service providers that we use.
In the case of services that are paid for like the lawyer for example. A good contract lawyer probably runs to $500 per hour or more, a cost which is going to hurt cash flow. If you have 3 questions, you send the email, get the reply, send clarifications and that’s $1000 or more spent.
A cheaper way to get the same result is to take that Lawyer to lunch, probably costs $150 to $250 and since your asking the question face to face, you get the context of their reply so no need to follow up and spend more cash.
It also provides an opportunity to build a business relationship at the same time, rather than being a faceless transaction.
Going back to bartering, there will be gaps in your business skillset that you need to fill and then gaps in others business skillset that you have the experiance to fill.
Typically the things that people struggle with are book keeping and marketing. You can work with other businesses in your area and pool your resources to fill out each others gaps you can barter with time, with product or services and your skillsets that you bring to some ones business.
Im not suggesting that you get into bed with a competitor, but generally speaking there should be enough diversity of small businesses in an area that clubbing together can make sense.
Logistics costs, inventory storage, even office or workshop space, if your ready to move to that next step, you can work together with other businesses and save the cost.
You could also make a business itself out of these services, where you charge, take product, take a share of profit for example, for book keeping, marketing, legal services, really anything that has a tangible benefit to a business that has a gap to fill.
The point is there are lots of ways to create value for your business and others without having to revert to spending cash, just get a bit creative, go back in the time machine to when cash wasnt king and get bartering.
No Language is perfect and neither are we, but the courses tell us otherwise
Languages are a great skill to master for everything from training and exercising your brain, to making travel and social interaction much more enjoyable.
The problem is that most of the time, we can find them so damn difficult to learn. Sure there are some extremely talented folks out there, that just need 10 minutes in a culture and they learn the lingo, but for a lot of us myself included that’s not the case.
Im a big believer in at least learning the basics, like yes, no, please, thank you, hello, goodbye, the essential 2 beers please and since im childish, the best swear words.
My work involves a lot of travel, meeting and working with different crews of people with different cultures and languages, many of them speak English as a second or third language, so having these basics in the bank works very well, and has helped improve my people skills.
Over the last 3 years, Ive been based in Central Asia which on the surface is for the most part easy in terms of language, just learn Russian, one language which is universally spoken as a first language across the region.
The difficulty is, well its Russian, for the most part a complex, intimidating and well just really difficult language to learn.
This is the first problem in the way that we are taught to tackle languages, we are taught that they are intimidating and difficult to master, as humans we tend to overthink and over analyze learning tasks and so this new language gets built up to be some kind of invincible monster.
The second problem I have found is that most language courses are looking for perfection and teach a classical clean version of the language. In reality that’s not the way it works each, language is modified by its users.
As an example im from the North East of Scotland so while I speak English, I really have to think about what I’m saying and the structure when I need to speak classical English the way its taught, the real world just isn’t like that, if your not a native English speaker and you spend enough time with me, you will speak English the same way I do. (If you ever bump into a Kazakh who speaks Doric the NE Scottish version of English I probably know them).
Trying to learn this classical version of the language your trying to master can be a nightmare, again it builds up the difficulty and intimidation factor and means it takes far longer to get confident in the language.
The third problem is there is a lot of focus on reading the language, which can be really challenging if the characters aren’t Latin. Again having to learn to read the language immediately builds up builds up the difficulty and intimidation factor and means it takes far longer to get confident in the language.
Especially when there are really good instant text translation apps which are free to use, this is just uneesecary for the learner today, although if I was being cynical I’d say its a great hook to keep us paying for tuition for longer.
OK so what’s the solution?
The good news is that there are other ways to do this, we can make it much easier for ourselves to learn any language. We just need to re-adjust to the viewpoint that just as no language is perfect, we ourselves do not need to be perfect fluent speakers in that language.
Intimidation factor — This is the one thing that makes learning a language so bloody difficult, the thought of the complexity of the task gets into your head, so start with the low hanging fruit.
5 minutes per day with the basics — To begin with just learn the very basics yourself online or on a free language podcast. 5 minutes learning, hello, goodbye, please, thank you etc. will give you confidence in yourself, keep going just with those until you have mastered them.
Write the words phonetically — On paper or a prompt card, write the word the way it sounds and include a description, again don’t spend hours doing this, just as you learn and get comfortable with the word, get it on a card in this way, not the way its written in the language your learning, but the way it sounds in your language eg, hello in Russian is Privet, but the sound is Pre, Vet when written in English. Being able to match the word to the sound it makes is much easier to digest than a bunch of letters that make no sense to you
Aim for the way word sounds, not perfect pronunciation — Almost no native speaker will speak with perfect pronunciation, local modification of the language sees to that. A part of the intimidation factor with a language is that we are taught that we need have perfect pronunciation before we can speak the language and that’s simply not true. All you need is that a native speaker can understand you
Don’t be afraid to talk like a cartoon caveman— What I mean by that is don’t be afraid to miss words out, simplify the language and your sentences as much as you to build confidence and add to your skills as you build confidence, eg, Can you tell me where the nearest restroom is?, this could be simplified to hello, where is nearest bathroom? No one will laugh at you, people will just be happy in general to help out or have a conversation with someone who took the time to try and learn their language. As you build confidence and your skill in the language build up your sentences.
Watch TV in that language — Pick your favorite shows or movies and stick the subtitles on for context. This immerses you in the language when you don’t have access to a native speaker, it helps build your recognition of the language and phrases, don’t underestimate the power of that.
Learn to count in that language — Start with 1 to 5 then 5 to 10 etc. go as slowly as you feel comfortable with but learn the numbers, once you have those down you can learn to do simple arithmetic in your chosen language, this helps you to think in that language and is a game changer quite honestly. I use this as an exercise 5 minutes before I start my learning for the day and it gets me in the zone.
Don’t worry about reading it — In the beginning you don’t need to be able to read the language, you have a translation app to help you available for free on your phone, use that instead, let you brain focus on one task, learning how to speak. Over time your brain will recognize words and start to put it all together for you reading wise, but don’t focus on it. Your brain is truly amazing, so relax, don’t overload it, and let this come naturally because it will.
If like me you struggle with languages but have a real need to learn or are just curious and want to make a start with a new skill, try some of these tips, its taken me long time to get to a point where im comfortable with Russian, almost 3 years actually, but since ive used these 7 tips day to day for the last 3 or 4 months, Ive developed more than I had the previous 2 years.
Languages don’t need to be intimidating or complex, we just need a strategy to kill the intimidation factor at the beginning and use simple tools and tricks to keep us going.
Its like anything else we want to learn or improve at, small steps taken daily build up like compound interest in the brain and lead to something great, the trick is to make it simple, fun and to keep going.
How to channel your subconscious to achieve your goals
This is something I’ve discovered since I started journaling as a serious daily habit, and for me at least I’ve found it really works.
I have been journaling on and off for about 2 years now, and finally committed to it as a serious daily commitment and part of my routine around the start of this year.
I’ve always had difficulty in accepting that I could be creative, so taking two years to accept that journaling was an exercise worth even just for myself, is a pretty good time line for me (It took me 10 years to start writing and publishing my work for example).
Since I committed to journaling daily I have seen a lot of the benefits that others have reported and that have been written widely about such as:
Writing down my internal dialogue helps me make sense of feelings
Writing down my thoughts and ideas lets me get them out of my head and onto paper where they can either be trashed or developed, I have an eidetic memory so being able to take those thoughts onto paper really helps me either stick in the archive folder in my head or prioritize them, for others like my partner who also developed the habit it helps her to get rid of thoughts and feelings she just doesn’t need to hang on.
Writing those thoughts down also allows me to de-stress and it quietens down my mind at the end of the day, I’d go as far as to say that journaling is now an essential part of my sleep routine.
It gives me a chance to think about and record what Im thankful for in my life, which I find de-stressing and also gives me more appreciation for the world around me and has given me an appreciation for practicing mindfulness that I didn’t have before.
It gives me a dedicated space to document my life and my progress towards my goals, that all mine. I just need to be honest with myself.
There are many other benefits that people have reported from journaling, but those are some of the headlines for how it works for me.
There are many ways to journal and I think its something that you do need to play around with yourself to find what works for you, however I do think that its a powerful tool for channeling your internal dialogue and therefore subconscious.
The biggest benefit I have had from journaling is an exercise I started 2 months ago, and is now THE essential part of my journaling routine.
The last thing I record in my journal before going to sleep is up to 8 questions for my subconscious to work on, these can be anything from self development, to what I need to improve in my writing, the development direction my business should be going, any issues Im having or problems Im difficulty in resolving.
In the morning, I get up grab a cup of tea and breakfast, open the journal, and pick up a pen, I start to answer the questions, just writing what comes from my subconscious, no filter, no thinking about just writing down the answers to the questions.
While I sleep my subconscious is working on the answers.
What this has done is give me clarity on the direction I should be going with my goals and the confidence to pursue them no matter what they are, if they are meant to give me enjoyment and fulfilment I’ll document that when I ask myself the question.
Likewise many things that were not giving me enjoyment, fulfilment or bringing me closer to my goals have been removed, giving me a simpler and less stressful life.
Ive also refocused on things I didn’t even know were that important to me, like family (that sounds bad and it is but at least I can be honest about it), the direction I want my life to in, the things I need to improve in myself, and also given the uncertainty in the world right now I have a clear direction to take in the event that I lose my job.
To say im less stressed, more rested, more in touch with my true self and sense of purpose and just generally happier and more grateful for the life I have is an understatment.
If you have been thinking about journaling or are journaling now and would like to 10x the benefits, then please give this small trick a go, its changing my life for the better, it coul give you a world of benefit as well…
We all have a common invisible enemy in the world we are fighting right now, its important that we keep in touch with our friends.
I came across this quote from perhaps the greatest philosopher of all time Aristotle while reading this morning.
Normally over the last few weeks on a Friday I’ve written about trying to do something different at the weekend and it got my back to thinking about the power of friendship, especially when right now there is not much if any opportunity for any face to face good old fashioned physical social interaction.
Last week I got together with a group of friends online, to check in with each other and have some fun, after a few of us had a bad week, it was a chance to catch up and also just try something different from the usual messaging.
At the end of the day it had several benefits for us all, in terms of improving mood, helping us to feel normal again and for those of us who had not enjoyed the last week, it provided us with a fresh audience to have a good moan at, and generally get a lot of frustrations vented.
Last week must have full of family fun for some of the guys, I can tell you…
Anyway, the power of friendships at this time, is more important than ever. In this regard technology can help us massively. We can still catch up via video group calls, it’s good fun, something different and gets us halfway there to the social interaction we all enjoy and need as human beings.
I was actually just talking about this with my partner, and we both agreed its that physical social interaction with people that we miss.
Anyway back to the idea to connect with each other last Friday, the challenge was to try and have a party, or a night at the bar online.
Catching up on video calls brings the challenge of who can bring the most interesting beer to the party for example. Especially for those of us who aren’t allowed to leave the house where we are right now.
As the week went on the challenge of connecting and making it fun and a trip down memory lane for us became a real challenge.
Some of the fun was searching around and dragging the stuff out the back of the cupboard that’s not seen the light if day in years or making our own. It gave us a creative challenge for the week and something to look forward to on Friday.
Music streaming is also our friend, we can create a playlist to suit us and share it, knowing people across the UK, Europe, Scandinavia and Central Asia were listening to the same music at the same time was honestly pretty cool.
A diverse mix of heavy metal and dance music is what most us listened to back in the day, getting creative with this challenge was and is great fun. It’s also surprising to discover some stuff you hadn’t listening to for years and equally to discover to your horror that some of the stuff you listened to endlessly back in the day is actually truly awful…
This reappraisal of our social lives and having to move online has also reconnected a bunch of us who have not been in touch for years having spread out to the 4 corners of the world many years ago.
I cant begin to tell you how much fun the week was, the challenge of the music to bring, the challenge of digging around for drinks in the cupboard. We also told each other exactly what was happening in our lives, stuff you probably wouldn’t on messaging, but would have face to face.
One of our friends was potentially facing redundancy from his job on the Monday, he might have told us that on text but not how he was feeling. He got the advantage of telling his best mates what was going down, and we all got to give him feedback and then check in on Monday and see how it went.
All was good in the end thankfully.
What that one experiment has done, is have us all in communication as a group this week, getting more social interaction and its been positive for us all. We don’t need to have a drink, we can have a coffee and a catch up, lunch, whatever your thing maybe, and we are sharing music and video back and forth in the group, its not normal, but its the new normal and its fun with friends and that’s ok.
This week the Friday night fun is a check in and a chance to discuss some ideas we have, some of us in writing, some art, some business, whatever we are into.
Next week is going to be a quiz based on our myspace pages from back in the day, which should be interesting….
Anyway the point is as Aristotle said, the antidote for 50 enemies is one friend.
Reconnect with some of yours through the power of technology if you can, embrace the new normal and with your friends get together to defeat the commons enemies of the virus and the monotony of quarantine, because together we are stronger and together we are the antidote.
Maybe I’ve been reading too many side hustle stories online, watching too much shark tank, doing far too much overcomplicated research for a book idea or a combination of all three.
What I have concluded though is that there are so many people over selling, complicating, over glamourizing what a “side hustle” actually is.
I’ve written before and shouted from the rooftops about how fake “hustle culture” is online. I’m not saying people aren’t getting themselves out of debt and onto the road towards a financially future, of course they are. At the same time the idea that we need to work 24/7 flat out and trade or sell on shopify or develop some fancy new online ecosphere or even write our way to fame, fortune and a six figure living that lets us travel the globe with glamorous models driving ferrari’s is not real.
Its just not realistic and for most of us, we are not going to be able to spend 24 hours a day working, its not realistic. At the same time we all need more than 1 income stream. The almost constant disruption in the economy in the 12 years since the 2008 financial crisis I think has showed most of us that this is the way forward.
If you can get to a place where your making enough money to quit your 9–5 and have a business that then scales up, then great I really applaud you.
Look at the market, particularly in the States (too much shark tank again probably) and some of the great products primarily that people have developed that have gone on to make them millionaires many times over, simple stuff ideas that just went on to scale and sell such as sponge daddy or illumibowl, one of those the last time I checked was at over $ 140mm in sales.
If you look at those companies that have become just phenomenal successes, they were not for the most part an instant over night success. They took years of hard work to develop. This is where the falseness of the side hustle culture falls apart.
Ok so then what?
Well the good news, is that when it comes to starting a business on the side to give you another source of income on top of your 9–5, there really are no limits to what you can or how you achieve that as long as they are morally sound and legal.
Most people who do take the plunge start small and build up from there, they may work at it on a routine and dedicated basis, they may pick it up and drop it again when they choose to or when they need to, and then another thing you will find is people building out that source of income to fill a need they have, and then once that need is fulfilled they drop it.
These businesses, projects, ideas, challenges whatever you want to call yours come in all sorts of sizes and scales, from some that generate $10’s, $100’s or $1000’s in additional income at a pace that suits the people involved with them.
Some of them need some financing from friends and family, some from outside investors and some need less than $100 to get going, again all shapes and sizes. No one size solution fits all, and thats important to remember.
How do I get started?
Every first step is exactly the same, research, research, research. You need to find out what interests you, what the market for that is, how much its going to cost you and how much profit it will earn you.
At this point you don’t need an MBA or a fancy business plan document, notes in a legal pad for example will work just as well for your first steps.
You may even stumble into your business by accident or by need, if so again develop the idea through research and jot down your ideas.
The key details you need are:
What is the business or project going to sell?
Where do I get the thing im going to sell?
Whats it going to cost me (Buying, packaging, shipping, online seller fee’s) etc?
What can I sell it for?
For me the one that got me started was motorcycles, my motorcycle which wasn’t essential transport to me, broke down and wasn’t worth repairing. I didn’t want to take a loan to buy myself another bike so I decided my option might be breaking it and selling all the working parts, to get raise enough cash to buy another bike.
After doing research that evening, I got ebay and PayPal accounts on my smartphone (I was some what behind the times), and that was me set up.
I was then able to strip the bike for parts, using the tools I already owned, so no additional set up there, took photos and set up listings using the smartphone I already owned. The only cost was Packaging which I decided was going to be supermarket value black bags and cling film and shipping costs.
Looking back at my notes I think I bought the bike for $900, parted it out for $1900, took back $400 to reinvest in this idea of buying and breaking motorcycles and bought a far nicer for myself in the process.
That stream of income grew for 2 or 3 years and I moved into doing 2 bikes a month. What I got good at was buying stuff that was too far gone like it needed a new engine for example to make sense to repair, but had a lot of value to me in its component parts.
This was a good starting point for me and its a good tip for you as well, if the business involves one of your hobbies or its in an area your knowledgeable about, then its a great starting point for you to give this a go.
Once you’ve used that first one as a spring board, there is no limit to where you can go from there and in the years since, ive done all sorts of stuff, like phone covers, watches, used fountain pens, bankrupt stock, clothes.
You get the idea, if you can make money from it, its viable.
These were all side businesses separate from my 9–5 or sometimes my 28 day rotation, depneidng on what I was doing at the time.
None of them required me to work endless hours to chase the money, they required some effort sure, normally a 2–3 hour per day commitment. None of them required me to invest anything in new equipment my smartphone and tablet were all I needed to post the product online.
I didn’t invent this way of making additional income and wouldn’t claim to, all I did was look at what others were doing, get a sense of the market and work it as best I could to make as much money as possible.
Has it made me a millionaire well no, but that’s down to my commitment levels to it more than anything else, the more time you put to a certain point the more success financially you will get from your efforts.
Nowadays im working abroad and due to language barriers its not a dream that I can follow now and honestly my work schedule wouldn’t allow it.
However when its time to go home I know ill jump straight back in and double up my efforts.
Its all achievable, for less effort and less cost than you might think. If you are curious do your research and go for it, follow a clear path and you won’t lose. Just don’t expect it to be champagne and caviar overnight.
Could the gift of financial literacy be the greatest gift you ever give yourself?
There is some evidence to suggest that yes, it really could be.
Very few of us are fortunate enough to have financial literacy taught to us at school. As I wrote earlier in the week its a problem and we need to do more to support children and young adults to develop financial literacy at a young age.
What about us, the adults that didn’t receive that education? Well the good news is that there are plenty of resources our there to educate ourselves with.
Even those of us who have a higher education and studied accounting, finance or economics at a college or university level may not have a good grounding in financial literacy.
As the financial world becomes more complicated with things like cryptocurrencies being traded, banking moved online, and credit becoming harder to find as the financial institutions have struggled to fully rebuild since the 2008 financial crash, whilst at the same time being regulated more stringently.
Ive written before elsewhere about the millennials becoming a lost generation or the so called generation rent. The first generation in living memory to have a forecast lower quality of life financially than their parents.
Its frightening to think that this is a reality in the 21st century and for sure there are lots of different components to that which play their part such as:
Record low interest rates which have continued to fall since 2008, meaning our savings don’t accumulate as much interest as they used and so are worth less over the longer term
Inflation is running 2 -3% above interest rates so year on year, currency in real terms is worth less
Salary increases are not keeping with inflation in a lot of cases, so while the cash value of our salary increases every year, the real time value of that money is less that it was the year before. (Example is inflation is 3% and your salary increase is 2%, your salary is worth 1% less than it was the year before).
Mortgages require a higher deposit typically 15 to 20% which is difficult for many to achieve as they are in the rental system which leaves them with less cash to spend.
All of these points and more are making it harder for people to either get out of the debt that they are in, or to get themselves onto the property ladder, and this is where learning to be financially literate comes into its own, as a great gift to yourself.
So what is financial literacy anyway?
At its most basic financial literacy is the ability to understand our own financial positions and to have the ability to create a budget and financial plan to meet our goals. It should also include a very basic understanding of how financial products like debt work and what is to be avoided and why.
Its these basics which we will talk about today in this article.
The more advanced topics like, investments, financial products, leveraging debt to invest in real estate or a business we will leave for another time.
Back to basics with a budget
o you know what you spend each month? Not what you think you spend, but what you ACTUALLY spend!
I’d bet that a lot of us don’t, and that if you really looked it, you would be shocked at what you spend and surprised at what you could save.
This can all be determined with a budget, which is basically a spreadsheet with what’s coming into your bank account i.e your income on one side, and what’s going out i.e your bills and other spending on the other side like the example below:
This is what most us who wonder where their hard earned cash goes every month would see if they did a budget I know I did. As you can see a simple spreadsheet really works well to highlight what your spending and where. I normally use a 3 month average of my spending habits when I review my budget, all this information is available through your bank statement or digital banking.
As you can see the problem really is that in this example im stuck in a loop, im not getting into more debt, but im not getting out of the debt that im in any quicker and I have zero left over for saving.
If I took action based on what I see in my budget for example and made my own coffee in the morning, took homemade lunch to work and cut my eating out and nightsout budget by 30% each, then all of a sudden my financial situation looks alot better:
Suddenly I have $750 of spare cash left over each month, that I can use to claim back my financial freedom.
At its most basic this is financial literacy, being able to break down your income and your spending to work out what your outgoings are and what your financial position is based on those.
If using a spreadsheet and spending time on a computer to do all this seems a bit too much, an old fashioned pen and paper also works. Your bank may also offer you an app style resource in your digital or mobile banking apps and of course in the android and IOS app stores there are multiple budgeting apps to choose from.
Ok so now what?
Ok so now what?
This is the not so glamorous part, once we have the budget figured out and a plan for how we create some breathing room for ourselves, by having a surplus of cash each month, we need to figure out what to do with that (Clue I’m not going to suggest spending it living the high life just yet).
Really there are 2 options here:
Pay down debt
Save
Actually in an ideal world we would look to do both but it depends on the circumstances.
The first step is to look at your debt and work out how much interest you pay on it, or in other words how you much you pay back on top of the money you borrowed.
The higher the cost of the debt, the more we want to direct our resources to it, for example credit card debt normally falls into the category.
In our budget examples we would look at paying down the car loan and the bank loan as quickly as possible, since those are easy wins.
Student debt at an average of 4.3% interest is typically lower interest than these other loans, so is the third priority for us today.
At the same time we still need to save, when im paying down debt aggressively I still always save a minimum of $100 per month. This way I still cultivate the good habit of saving and get a huge confidence boost when I see I’ve saved 4 figures over the course of 12 months.
If I follow my own advice I now have $650 to spend paying down my debt each month.
Once the car and bank loans have gone, my original $750 surplus is mine, to go into savings, starting a business, going on vacation, anything I set my mind to.
The money I’m now saving from not having to pay back car and bank loans, can for example be re-directed to paying down the student loan.
There are lots of variables to this, but this is at its most basic the key to financial freedom, through understanding financial literacy at it most basic level and being able to develop a budget and then an action plan to save and pay off debt with the surplus cash, you make room for in your life.
I see so many people like myself who get consumed with debt, it becomes a never ending cycle but with some simple easy to use tools and a little bit of time, we can create plans to get ourselves out of those situations.
What next?
Ok so once that’s done and those high cost debts are eliminated, its time to pivot our thinking and save as literally priority number 1, or what you will hear being called pay yourself first.
The basic idea is that before you do anything else with your income, that a percentage goes straight to savings, generally that would be a minimum of 10%, so if we have paid down the high cost debt, the pay yourself first budget would look like the below:
By paying ,myself first I’ve now saved $400 straight away, it comes automatically into my savings account the day my salary lands so I don’t notice it.
But because I’ve paid down my high cost debt and my expenses are less, I now have $700 in surplus cash each month to do what I want. Which could be anything from saving more, to getting rid of student debt, to investing, to well just buying something if I really want or need to without getting into debt.
Next time I will take a deeper dive into saving strategies and share some hints and tips on how to maximize the potential of your savings.
The top 3resources that have helped my enormously on my own journey so far are:
The Richest Man in Babylon by George S Clason
The Rich Dad, Poor Dad series by Robert T Kiyosaki
Think and Grow Rich by Napoleon Hill
*I am not now and have not been at any time compensated to endorse or advertise these books or the respective authors*
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