The Success Ladder
June 22nd 2009 17:30
A career for most people involves working for a series of companies climbing a ladder of promotions. From intern to entry level, through management, to Director, VP or CEO. I personally chose not to climb that ladder, I built my own. It starts at the bottom rung but you've got to have the rails laid out to have a ladder that will eventually lead somewhere.
First off I need to explain a little something about myself. I have tons of ideas, always coming up with new ones, and they catch my full attention easily. My wife says I have the attention span of a bird, Ooh bright and shiny object! This is very true, and I am naturally not very organized, somewhat of a chaos in motion. BUT, I enforce structure on this chaos to keep a path clear through all the distractions and mess that would otherwise overwhelm me. What I have found is that by writing down ideas in a notebook as they occur, allows me to put them aside to look at when I have free time. I also now schedule my time very strictly. I even have things like practice the guitar on my schedule. Without this strict structure I would waste time watching TV or spend hours screwing around with ideas that are far from the most pressing concerns.
Why explain this about myself now? I want to let everyone know that it is not easy for me to be this linear in thought, but it is necessary. Most things about being a successful entrepreneur are not easy. The reward is worth the effort, but it is not for the meek.
My ladder to success is has many predefined rungs. Each one is slightly harder to achieve than the previous one. Often this ease of reach is defined by how much capital is needed as well as human effort. I don't allow myself to go for the next goal until the previous one is accomplished. I am in the process of writing a book on this subject. Start with easy and cheap and build up to hard and expensive. Easy and cheap can be affiliate sites, or a blog or a small niche website. Expensive and hard might be owning rental property. All of these goals need to be self sustaining low input, high output endeavors.
What do I mean by Low Input High output (LIHO)? The projects should need VERY little human input once they are established and give you a substantial residual income. The last thing you want is to need to work 40 hours a week on 10 different projects. My current 10 projects consume about 60 hours a week in total. And once the current goal is met this will drop to less than 20 hours a week total for all income streams. Eventually I want this to less than 10 hours, and it is within reach, but some tasks still need to be accomplished to reach that goal, and they take time
There are innumerable LIHO opportunities out there. Every day I hear of a new one and on occasion I come up with my own unique ones. My problem has never been a lack of potential it has always been on managing my time to reach that potential. You cannot tackle every problem at once so set out each problem as a task or series of tasks, and take them one step at a time. Before you know it you'll be moving up your own ladder of success!
First off I need to explain a little something about myself. I have tons of ideas, always coming up with new ones, and they catch my full attention easily. My wife says I have the attention span of a bird, Ooh bright and shiny object! This is very true, and I am naturally not very organized, somewhat of a chaos in motion. BUT, I enforce structure on this chaos to keep a path clear through all the distractions and mess that would otherwise overwhelm me. What I have found is that by writing down ideas in a notebook as they occur, allows me to put them aside to look at when I have free time. I also now schedule my time very strictly. I even have things like practice the guitar on my schedule. Without this strict structure I would waste time watching TV or spend hours screwing around with ideas that are far from the most pressing concerns.
Why explain this about myself now? I want to let everyone know that it is not easy for me to be this linear in thought, but it is necessary. Most things about being a successful entrepreneur are not easy. The reward is worth the effort, but it is not for the meek.
My ladder to success is has many predefined rungs. Each one is slightly harder to achieve than the previous one. Often this ease of reach is defined by how much capital is needed as well as human effort. I don't allow myself to go for the next goal until the previous one is accomplished. I am in the process of writing a book on this subject. Start with easy and cheap and build up to hard and expensive. Easy and cheap can be affiliate sites, or a blog or a small niche website. Expensive and hard might be owning rental property. All of these goals need to be self sustaining low input, high output endeavors.
What do I mean by Low Input High output (LIHO)? The projects should need VERY little human input once they are established and give you a substantial residual income. The last thing you want is to need to work 40 hours a week on 10 different projects. My current 10 projects consume about 60 hours a week in total. And once the current goal is met this will drop to less than 20 hours a week total for all income streams. Eventually I want this to less than 10 hours, and it is within reach, but some tasks still need to be accomplished to reach that goal, and they take time
There are innumerable LIHO opportunities out there. Every day I hear of a new one and on occasion I come up with my own unique ones. My problem has never been a lack of potential it has always been on managing my time to reach that potential. You cannot tackle every problem at once so set out each problem as a task or series of tasks, and take them one step at a time. Before you know it you'll be moving up your own ladder of success!
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