Last week I wrote about how I started working a day job separate from my businesses. The reason for doing this is so that I can meet my highest priority goal which is to pay off all of my debt. This new job only lasts for five months and I will be able to put all the income I make from it towards debt. I am really looking forward to the feeling of freedom I will have once I don’t owe anyone anything.

I do spend some time in an office working but I also spend a lot of time on the road traveling. I really enjoy that I get to travel all over the country and get to frequently escape the cubicle.

As of today I have now had this job for two weeks and have started to get used to having a lot on my plate. Even though I am used to it doesn’t mean that it is easy. I have a lot to accomplish and as a result feel increased pressure and stress in my life.

While running a business and having a day job can be very hard at times, I feel that it gives me an opportunity to learn how to manage my time efficiently and help others who are wanting to start their own business while working a job do the same. Time management will be key if I am to continue to meet my business goals and not delay them until after my day job has ended.

Planning.

To meet my business goals I must first write down everything I want to accomplish for the week. I usually plan several weeks in advance. This process will not take up very much time and many times I will only have 2 or 3 main things I am trying to accomplish for a given week.

Once I know my weekly goals, I will break down what daily tasks I need to complete for the week to meet those goals. I usually try to only schedule tasks on Monday through Friday unless I know I will need additional time to meet a goal. By relaxing on the weekends I stay less stressed and have a better quality of life. I don’t want to risk burning out.

During the week days when I know I have to come home and work on my businesses I have found that starting to work immediately after getting home seems to be the best strategy. It is very tempting to want to relax for a while first but I have found that if I relax I begin to put my work off later and later and sometimes decide I will just do it the next day.

When I begin working as soon as I get home I am still in work mode and not relax mode so I find myself getting things done a lot faster and have plenty of time afterwards to relax and be lazy.

Procrastination.

Sometimes it is hard to get to work immediately, maybe after a tiring day, and some days I can’t even motivate myself to work at all. I think this is okay every now and then but it is important not to make a habit of it. The more I procrastinate the more work I have to do on the weekends or the more I push back meeting my goals.

I have found it particularly hard to work when I am traveling. Sometimes all I want to do is go to my hotel room and lay on the bed and watch TV.

Working on the weekends is something I am used to doing, but I want to keep that work to a minimum if at all possible. If I put off tasks until the weekend and find myself working more than enjoying my relax and play time I will quickly begin to burnout. Once you feel burnt out it is hard to recover quickly so it is best to avoid it at all costs.

Having days of rest is extremely important so that you can enjoy life instead of adding unnecessary stress that will only make your life harder. Remember why you are starting your own business and make sure your reasons to do so aren’t forgotten during the process.

Creating a plan for you business and work schedule will help you reach your goals a lot faster while also keeping your stress level in check. Meeting your goals is very important but remember that maintaining your quality of life is the most important.

What strategies have you found helpful for getting things done while maintaining quality of life?

Photo credit: Cliph

I really enjoy working for myself because I get to make my own schedule and have the freedom to do almost anything I want to. However after almost a year of working completely for myself and with complete freedom, I decided to get a job.

As of last week I now have a full time job and I wanted you, my readers, to know why I made this decision even though I prefer working for myself.

You may also be wondering why I would even bring this up on a blog where I try to encourage others to start businesses if they are tired of working for someone else. The answer is simple, I believe in honesty and also want you to trust me. With out your trust nothing I encourage you to do on this blog will mean anything to you.

Goals

I have a very large list of goals that I want to accomplish at some point in my life. Some of my goals are very big and will take many years to meet and others I may be able to meet within the month.

A number of my goals are also dependent on another goal. This means that to meet a certain goal I may have to do something else first. Because of this I have to prioritize my goals and start pursuing the ones with the highest priority first. The priority of my goals may change from time to time depending on what I am wanting more at the time.

If one of my goals has a very high priority or may be the goal with the highest priority, I will do almost anything to meet that goal. To me my goals are not dreams they are things I really think I can accomplish and because of this taking action is the only way I am going to meet them.

Debt

As of right now the highest priority goal I have is to be out of debt. Not having any debt has been a goal of mine for a while now and I have managed to stop accumulating debt for the past several years. But with school loans and irresponsible credit card debt, just refraining from getting into more debt is not enough to get out of debt completely in a few years. It is also important to add that the school loans are from both me and my wife which increases the amount of money I need to pay off.

Making minimum payments on our debt is not a big deal. We have been doing this for years and financially this is very easy for us to do. For me continuing to live with debt is not acceptable. Having debt makes me feel trapped and feel someone else has control over me. I am tired of owing others money and long for the sense of freedom I know I will feel once we are completely out of debt.

Why get a job instead of working harder at my businesses?

Deciding to get a job was a very hard thing for me to do. After having almost a year of complete freedom, the idea of going back to the lifestyle of working for someone else did not sound enjoyable.

I considered the idea that if I work harder on my businesses I could bring in more money and put that towards paying off debt. The issue I found with this was that working harder does not always guarantee an increase in revenue and even if there were an increase it may not be consistent.

By getting a good paying job I would be guaranteed a certain amount of money every month. Since I will still be running my businesses and the money from those helps support my family, all the money I make from my job will go straight to our debt.

The job.

I was very lucky to get the job I did. It is a contract job that only lasts 6 months which is the perfect amount of time to get our debt payed off.

For the next 6 months I will be a technical consultant for a company located in Austin, TX that does business worldwide. I am not going to talk about the name of company and what they do on this blog but if you see me I will tell you all about it.

A very nice added bonus to the job is that I get to do a lot of traveling. This is exciting for me because it will allow me to be out of the office quite a bit and not stuck at a desk day after day.

Running a business with a day job.

Having a day job while also running several businesses was not well planned on my part. I believe this will give me valuable experience to pass on to others who may be wanting to start a business while working a day job.

I am sure that it is not going to be easy for me and have already started to feel the affects of having a lot on my plate. But I am confident that I can do it and know for sure that this was the right decision for me to make so I can meet my goal and get out of debt fast.

Photo credit: wageslaves

A few weeks ago I completed my first iPhone app. For a while now I have thought it would be great to have my own iPhone app I just never knew what to create one for.

In the last month or so I started looking into how to make an iPhone app. Most of my programming knowledge is in web development so when I started looking into Objective C, the language iPhone apps are written in, it was like learning a new language.

Luckily there are a lot of free resources on the web for learning the basics. I even found source files to apps that had already been created that I could look at and figure out how things worked.

There are a lot of apps that take a very high skill level and many hours to develop and I knew this was not the route I wanted to take. I wanted an easier route for my first app.

One of the easier types of apps to create is one that pulls in the data from an RSS feed and displays it within the app. An RSS feed is used to publish frequently updated types of media such as blogs and news headlines.

This type of app was the perfect idea to use for the local beer blog I run with my brother-in-law Chris Troutman, BeerTownAustin.com. Not only would it give an added resource to our readers but also gives me a reason to create an app. And so that is exactly what I did.

When you open the app the first screen you come to has a list of the latest article posts from the blog. This screen is an aggregation of all our posted content on the website.

The next tab has all of our videos listed that we have saved on YouTube. While these video posts are listed on the main screen, the video tab allows you to quickly find a video you may want to watch.

Other tabs within the app include a podcast tab with the audio from all our podcasts, BeerTownAustin’s latest Twitter posts, and the last tab includes all of BeerTownAustin’s photos that are saved on Flickr. Overall this app gives you a way to view all content from BeerTownAustin easily and on the go.

Once the app was created I had to submit it to Apple for review and hope they accepted it. It was accepted in exactly two weeks which seems like a pretty reasonable time considering what I have heard from other iPhone developers. This quick turnaround may have been because its function was fairly straight forward.

I have decided I am going to leave the more complicated app developments up to the professionals. I am just happy that I have created one myself. I think I could create another app similar to this one but don’t have anything to create it for so if you have any ideas let me know.

In the near future I hope to have some more complex iPhone apps made as an alternate source of revenue. I will keep you updated when I decide to pursue this.

If you have an iPhone please download the app and let me know what you think. It is free so at least check it out and if you have no need for it you can delete it.

Again let me know what you think in the comments. Also if you like the app leave a review for it in the App Store.

Photo credit: brandon shigeta

I spend more than a couple of nights a week laying in bed at 3am wishing I could just fall asleep. Sometimes I will lay in bed for 3 or 4 hours extremely sleepy but unable to turn my mind off. Usually what consumes my mind at night is not what I am going to do the next day but how this new business idea I had will work. I start working all the angles in my head by trying to answer who will buy it, how will I market it, and how soon can I start.

While I am thinking of all these “amazing” business ideas, in the back of my mind all I can think about is that I should be asleep by now and that I am going to be so tired the next day. When I finally do fall asleep and the next day arrives I revisit my ideas and find myself having trouble remembering all the thoughts I had the night before. Since I don’t remember enough to continue thinking about it I usually just go on with my day.

The reason I tell you this story is to emphasize the importance of making time during the day to think out your ideas. If you don’t set aside time during your day to intentionally brainstorm you run the risk of forgetting the ideas you are thinking about when driving in traffic, working at your job, or trying to fall asleep.

During this set aside time it is important to come up with a system you will follow when brainstorming business ideas and make sure to write everything down so you will remember it later.

For the One Hundred Dollar Business I have come up with a system that I am going to follow to try to increase the efficiency of my brainstorming time.

The Idea Factory

All of my ideas will go into one of two categories. These categories will help me to stay focused during my brainstorming time instead of day dreaming about things that will not make a profit.

Those categories are:

• find a need and create a solution
• build off something that has already been proven to work

For the first category, finding a need and create a solution, I am trying to think of things that could make someone’s life easier. This is a very fun category because it allows you to be extremely creative in your ideas. When brainstorming within this category it is important to keep an open mind. Don’t decide something won’t work yet. If you have an idea you are not sure about, write it down anyways. Being realistic can come later. It is important to just keep the ideas coming.

The second category, build off of something that has already been proven to work, involves taking existing business ideas and reworking them or replicating them. There is nothing wrong with starting a business that others are already doing. The benefit to looking at existing businesses is that you can analyze their successes and failures over the years and begin with a strategy that has already been proven to work. Obviously I don’t want to do this with just any business. I need to consider whether or not there will be room in the market for me. And even if there is, does the market have enough success for it to be worth while to get into.

Like I mentioned earlier, I want to let my creative ideas flow without limitation. While I will make sure to do this it is still important for me remember that there will be some realistic limitations. I won’t have the money or time necessary for just any business. Once you have allowed yourself to creatively think without any limitations you need to revisit your ideas and decide whether or not pursuing them makes sense for your situation.

Here are some things I will consider after looking over my ideas:

• physical merchandise may be too costly to pursue
• a time consuming service business may require more time than I have
• a brick and mortar business will most likely be out of the question

Having physical merchandise to sell can quickly become costly. While there is the option to dropship merchandise, buying in bulk and trying to sell will probably not be the route I will take.

When I say time consuming service I am referring to a business that requires you to be somewhere for a period of time before you get paid. An example of this may be cleaning houses or offices. I will only get paid if I am cleaning a house and if I only have 2 hours of free time a day to work on my business I will not make much money.

I think the reasons for not opening a brick and mortar business are pretty obvious. Too much money.

I am going to try to spend a lot of my time thinking of business ideas that will make money even when I am not working. This could also mean businesses that can make a large profit with very little time investment after the initial up front work load. Another name for this type of business is a passive income business. A business that makes money as you watch tv, go for a run, or even sleep.

It is important to have a plan on how you are going to spend your creative thinking time. Below are a few ways I am going to keep my creative ideas coming.

• spend at least 1 hour a day brainstorming and thinking of ideas
• pick up business magazines at the library to flip through for business ideas (You know these are FREE!)
• browse the web for ideas as well (During this time close your email and Facebook. These will distract you.)

There are a number of ways to get your brain thinking creatively. Change up how you spend your time brainstorming to always keep it fresh. This will help you to continue to have new ideas.

Let me know in the comments what strategies you have used to brainstorm ideas. Also soon I will start posting some of the ideas I am having for you to see and give me feedback on or use for yourself.

I have started several businesses in the past. Starting businesses is what I enjoy doing. When I first got the entrepreneurial bug I didn’t have much money so the businesses I would start had very low start-up costs. Even to this day most of the businesses I have started cost me less than $1000.

So why am I telling you this?

I have decided to start a $100 business to demonstrate how anyone can start a business if they take the right steps. I also want to help others find a strategy that works.

I have talked to many people that say they wish they could work for themselves but they just don’t have the money to start a business. They say that the risk is too high for them. Obviously some businesses are going to have a lot of up front costs involved and will most likely require a loan or investors. But there is a huge opportunity for low cost businesses. How do I know? Because I have taken advantage of that opportunity many times.

The idea of starting a business with very little money is know as bootstrapping. Bootstrapping is not a new idea. It is something people have been doing for a long time. With a little money, or sometimes no money, you could be on your way to working for yourself.

The reason I am starting a $100 business is to discover a rough formula that will work for others wanting to bootstrap a business. I plan to keep everyone following this project up to date on my progress via articles and video. I don’t pretend to know everything about business so you will see me learning as well.

The Plan.

Start with $100. I will start with only $100 and can spend no more than that. The only way I can spend more money is if I make a profit from my business. Then I can use the profit I make to put back into the business.

$1000 in 3 months. My goal is to make $1000 in 3 months time. Any amount of profit would be a success but I feel that this is a good number to shoot for.

3 Months. The total duration of the project will be 3 months unless I decide to start another business to continue the project. I will spend the first month brainstorming business ideas and coming up with strategies to make the business a success. The following 2 months I will spend marketing my business and hopefully making a profit.

I am literally starting this business from scratch. I currently do not have any ideas, lists, or strategies written down. It is also important to note that I will also still be running my other businesses. So time will also be an issue and could possibly simulate someone who has to keep a job while they are trying to start a business.

I welcome any suggestions as far as ideas or strategies. I know you are probably thinking, “Why would I give him my good idea?” Well you don’t have to. But if you do and it works then all the more reason for you to give it a try as well.

It is also important that I mention that the money I make from this business will not go into my pocket and pay my bills. I will donate any profit that is left over after the 3 months to a non-profit organization. Which one? Well I want you to help me decide. Leave a comment telling me who I should give the money to and why.

What else do I expect from you, my readers, however few there may be?

I will need as much feedback and as many suggestions as possible. Two minds are better than one. I hope that this project is a success and that it motivates others to bootstrap a business as well.

Leave a comment below and let me know your thoughts or if you have bootstrapped a business before tell me about it.

Run for the Water Race

I heard somewhere that most people never complete their new years resolutions. I think this is because most people focus on the result instead of focusing on the process. So for example instead of focusing on reaching a certain weight, focus on working out three times a week. If you can make consistency your goal, you may just create a new habit and your result will be fulfilled.

I usually don’t make new years resolutions. I try to set goals on a monthly basis so you could say I have January resolutions. However, I do have plans for 2010. But I won’t get into those here. I always like to look back on the previous year and see what I am happy with and what I could have done better.

Looking back on what I am happy with in 2009:

Created 2 successful businesses. At the beginning of 2009 I started Four Eyed Monkey.com, a web services company. In August I started a web development and branding company called Design Shaman. Both of these companies have continued to grow through strong pushes in social media marketing as well as good ol’ fashion networking. I am excited to see what happens in 2010.

Started working for myself full time. In August of 2009 I quit my job at Apple, Inc. to work full time for myself. This is something I had been looking forward to for a long time. It took me stepping out of my comfort zone and overcoming my fear. And look what happened… everything turned out great!

Custom built my fixed gear bike. At the beginning of 2009 I worked with my friend Kansas to completely rebuild my 1980’s Puch road bicycle into a fixed gear bike. Kansas only guided me in the process making me do all the work myself, including re-spoking my wheel. Re-spoking a wheel is a very tedious endeavor. I am now hooked on building bikes and fortunately I received lots of bike tools for Christmas.

Ran a series of races. At the end of 2008 to the beginning of 2009 I participated in the Austin Distance Challenge. The challenge included many races including two half marathons, a 20 mile race and the Austin Marathon. I completed every race except the marathon (made it to mile 18) due to a tendon injury I got from over training. Sometimes I think I am Superman, but am always reminded that I am not.

Started riding my bike most places. After finishing my fixed gear bike I started trying to ride everywhere I could. My wife and I scaled down to one car several years ago, so riding my bike everywhere makes sense. I hope to ride even more this year.

Started a personal blog. I have made an attempt to start a blog a few times over the past several years, and every time have failed. I write 2 or 3 posts and then get lazy. This time has been different. I have made it a point to write consistently and hopefully write good content. Remember what I said about focusing on the process not the result. I am trying to make writing a process to become a habit.

I believe it is always good to also look back and decide what could have been done better the previous year. Not to think of myself as a failure, but to intentionally improve on those areas the next year. So here are some things I wish I could have done better in 2009.

Traveled more, internationally. I did some traveling this year, but not much. And all of my traveling was done in the U. S. For 2010 I want to travel more and make sure to travel internationally. My wife and I already have some things in the works to make this happen, but more on that later.

Worked out more. I was working out almost everyday when I was training for running, but since the Austin Marathon in February I only work out sporadically. While I do ride my bike quite a bit, I have not run or lifted weights much.

Eat healthier. I started off eating very healthy in 2009, but the past 6 months or so I have started to eat more and more unhealthy food. It is very noticeable that I feel and act differently when I am not eating healthy. Time to eat more veggies!

Those are the big ones in each category. Here’s to another great year!

What were you happy with in 2009?

We all have dreams of the lives we would like to be living or the business we would like to start or the job we would like to have. People who fear failure are limiting themselves and will not achieve what they are capable of without overcoming this fear.

The fear of failure is very much rooted in the fear of what others think about us. It is a fear of rejection, or a fear of how people will view us. We are so worried that others will think less of us if we fail, so we just decide it is not worth it to try. The funny thing about it though, is that those same people we are worried about have the same fear of failure that we do, and for all we know they may admire us for even trying.

If you want to be successful you must overcome your fear of failure. I am talking about success in a very broad sense. The fear of failure is always going to hold you back from what you really want in life. You must start thinking of failure a different way. Think of failure as a positive outcome. When you fail you learn. No one gets it right the first time every time. From failure comes success. Successful people understand this and do not fear failure but embrace it.

The best thing you can do to begin overcoming your fear of failure is to take action. Action is the most important step any of us can take when going after our dreams, because if we don’t take action we will just talk ourselves out of doing anything at all. Action can be broken up into multiple actions. If you are wanting to move to a new place you may start by making a list of all the things you need to get done before you can get on the plane and go. Then set a date when you need to have everything done and be on you way to that new place. Now you can break all those things up and do a little at a time. Just take action as soon as possible or you probably won’t take it at all.

If you fail you must be persistent. You must not give up just because something did not work out the way you thought it was going to. If it is something you really want, keep going for it until you get it. Use your failure as a learning experience and use the knowledge you gain on your next try. Persistence is a very important part of overcoming the fear of failure.

Let’s go back to the idea that the fear of failure is also sometimes the fear of what others will think about us. It is very important to realize that others feelings towards us are usually a reflection of how those people think about themselves. If we fail others may like that because it reaffirms to them that their dreams are not reachable either. It makes them feel good to see someone else fail and know that it is not them failing. But we need to break free from caring about what those people think, because when we fail we should not take it personally. It does not mean that we are not capable of succeeding. It only means that we now have more information for the next time we try again. Just think how people will think of you when you are persistent and actually succeed at what you wanted.

So go and take action on the dreams you have for your life. And embrace the idea of failure, don’t fear it anymore. Remember to always be persistent. You may fail several times before you get it right but that is all part of the learning process.