Is it really that easy?
By: Iain Robertson
Tags: Money Mindset, Success, Financial Freedom, Saving, Mindset

Become and overnight success…

The post says, follow these simple rules and…

Build your empire….

Save up to 12 month of living expenses

Develop 3 or more income streams

Start making passive income

Have a destination in mind

Become an overnight success…

Ah, ok! Got it.

You have seen this before or certainly something similar.

All very good and it makes everything look so simple. Glamourous. Exciting.

On all honesty it is not that bad an idea and the list is correct in a way, it just misses out on a lot of the detail and all importantly, it does not give much of a timeline.

It is so simplistic that you may very well quit the rat race and succeed in getting off the treadmill if you do follow it. But, and here is the rub, the chances are pretty high that you will be right back on that proverbial treadmill after a year, if not less than a year, if you do not build more of a robust plan.

If you are working in a job now, like me, then start with the obvious, start at stage one as above. Save up the 12 months of expenses but understand that this is a double sided sword that also needs the focus on your expenses… and also understand that it will be a slog unless you decide to make it otherwise.

Give it your own Vision and Purpose.

What is your WHY?

Only you can frame that vision correctly and give it the right narrative that delivers on your incentive.

Saving up the 12 months ‘income’ to cover living expenses is a whole lot easier if you also cut down on your actual living expenses. Start pulling in the waistband on your expenses now. You will be amazed when you run a budget and a spending tracker at just how much you can waste on the mundane and the unnecessary.

So here, I also said INCOME in brackets, because that is what you are doing. You are possibly not going to have an income for a year so what you save has to take care of what all of your income would have taken care of for that period… that can be a fair amount of money, especially if you also put aside some money for the things that might jump up and bite you in the ass — fender bender, burst water pipe or leaky roof. These kind of things need to be accounted for.

Saving your income and then pressing GO on your new big adventure is one thing, dipping into your savings/income to maintain or invest in your new big thing is another, this is a big trap that many fall into. If you do this, your income will dwindle and disappear fast.

You have to isolate your savings/income and see it for what it is and nothing more. It is your income. It is not your own personal venture capitalist investor that will support your new business venture in times of need.

It is the money that will keep you fed and watered and a roof over your head.

Don’t get caught out on this because it will put extra pressure on you. Find another way, there is money to be sourced if you need to get at it, do your own research and swallow some of your pride on this part.

The ‘passive income’ and ‘have sources of income from three other streams’ is also easier said than done. My thoughts on this are don’t wait, do that now. In fact do that at the same time as everything else…

Interlude: Everything is not in steps, there is no step 1, step 2, step 3…. or 5 steps to financial freedom and all that crap, there is just do it.

Do it all at the same time — you have the skills to already juggle many things you just don’t know that you already do it. You are just juggling the wrong things at the moment; iPhone surfing, texting, Netflix binging while on your computer shopping for that new thing and planing your next day at work. See, you have been in training for juggling so many things at the same time for so long, you just didn’t know it.

To build your empire you should be juggling your job, your 9–5 (again a fallacy, a 9–5 is actually an 8–7 for most people so keep that in perspective) …and while working that 9–5, you should be juggling your learning curve as you grab the new skills you might need for the next big thing, juggling the researching and looking at any possible competition, you should also actually be doing the next big thing and you should be refining this so you steadily improve and all along while doing this, you should be living your life and getting decent sleep and nutrition.

You exhausted yet?

You see this is where my point peaks, you will be exhausted and you do definitely need to have a destination. The vision and purpose part that will keep you motivated for most of the route. For me it is all about the pending Time Freedom that I can benefit from in the long term that will be gained from my current projects.

But it is a marathon. You have to keep this in perspective …

When you roll-up everything I have mentioned above and put it into the context of your life, you will not become what you want to become overnight. Not even in a year, you have to think longer term and put more effective and realistic timelines in place.

“Most people overestimate what they can do in one year and underestimate what they can do in ten years.” Bill Gates

Manage the ego that comes with the building a entrepreneurial business and put everything you are aiming to be, or striving to achieve, into this perspective and stay the course.

Keep what you are working on close to you and share with others as and when you need to, then, maybe…

…you just might become an overnight success.