Opportunities Are Everywhere
Well, maybe. Claims of opportunity are certainly everywhere. The number of programs I look at would probably choke a mule just in the width of their offerings. This is a good thing in life because it means there is something to match everyone’s mood, everyone’s temperament, and everyone’s means. Most are good businesses and will support the person who is right for that business. Now, I know many marketers will say nay, not so, good sir! MY business is right for anyone who will work it.
Well…yeah. So? Not everyone is going to work your business, are they?
Is it for you?
Now, the BEST opportunity in the world means exactly squat to the wrong person. For instance, you pass by a fellow who has clearly been outdoors for months and equally as far removed from the influence of a shower. You say to yourself, “I am going to help this man out.” You give him inside information as to what Goldman Sachs is going to do and say when they reveal their earnings report. You then look at this lucky fellow and say, “To the moon, Buddy!”
Yes, the knowledge is worth exactly nothing for many reasons. One, he is not in a position to take advantage of the knowledge. Also, even if he knew someone who could use the information to good advantage, his homeless state would tarnish the knowledge to the point of again being worthless.
Real Opportunity
Sometimes, though, you come across an opportunity that scratches you just right and makes you breath come just a bit shorter and more rapid. Your brain starts firing off so hard that the hair on the top feels a bit tingly because you can see all the pieces are in place to represent with pride a product you can be proud of and from which you can build a living, thriving long term business to carry you through your life and that you can leave as a legacy to your children.
First, many business opportunities, like Social Security, are nothing more than Ponzi schemes. They sell nothing. They sell nothing but the opportunity to have some hope for an oh, so short moment during which you think to yourself if I can make it, I can get out of my job and be free.
All to often that hope is shortlived and best case is you have some expensive (but still not bad) soap and such in the kitchen while at worst you have spent a month’s income so you would have stock for you business only to find that the exact same product is available at your local Chinese Economy outlet for pennies on the dollar.
Sometimes, though, you come up on something that seems exciting and full of promise. You start reading and you realize that the product is the real deal, that it is at an affordable price, and that the business model is one that can be understood by you, explained by you, and duplicated by those whose ears you have.
You start realizing that you can do this. You start realizing that maybe you can escape that cubicle after all. You start realizing that in the not too distant future you will not have to listen to your boss’s boss’s boss give another speech that makes it crystal clear he has no idea what you do or why you are here.
Agenda 21
antibiotics
bacteria
Bird Flu
colloidal water
earning money online
Earthtiger
freedom
home business
ideas for home business
More Choices with my TIME
Nano Particle Silver
New World Order
NO BOSS BUT ME
Nutronix
SilverSol
strengthen my immunity
sustainable development
swine flu
True Freedom
work at home
work from home
Work My Own Hours WP Cumulus Flash tag cloud by Roy Tanck and Luke Morton requires Flash Player 9 or better.
Why I Decided It Was For me
Because my background is in biochemistry, I have a leg up in understanding the science involved. When I watched the videos concerning the patents granted for this product and the double blind studies that had been performed my first two thoughts were
- I have to get my mother and dad on this product. I love my mom and dad, see, and want them around to see the children I have delayed for many years grow up.
- This is something people want and will not be hard to sell. This will make an immediate difference in a person’s quality of life and repeat sales is an easy thing.
Nutronix and SilverSolis today inflamed my imagination on all fronts. As I have said in other posts and in other places, Earthtiger Systems is dedicated to carrying only those products and services that rise to the level of Rearden Steel of Ayn Rand’s Atlas Shrugged.
To read more about SilverSol and why I am SO excited to be representing it, get yourself a drink, settle in, and go here. This video is interesting and will not be a struggle to watch.
To see the opportunity Nutronix has put together for us, go here.
Tim
Some years ago when I decided I wanted to start my own company again, I wanted to look for something original and unique under which to build my brand. A friend who has since gone her way as people often do helped me come up with the name ‘Earthtiger’ because it was a combination of two types of signs, an earth sign and a fire sign giving it balance in the eyes of the markets in which I am particularly interested, Asian markets.
Unbeknownst to me at the time, there actually is an animal called an earthtiger. It is a large hairy spider native to Asia and has been known to bring down birds. An interesting fellow, the Earth Tiger can grow to 6 to 9 inches in length and some males have been known to have 10″ leg spans. Calling upon my European heritage, I pulled two rampant tigers from heraldry and placed at their center the Holy Grail. I thought this fitting since I am in search of my own holy grail which is making my living working for myself by importing and exporting goods to and from Asia, selling things of real worth such as silver bullion and low glycemic index coconut sap sugar, and writing, writing about, and contributing to informational and training ebooks. The look of my icon as an eight legged chimaera was coincidental. Finding that there were indeed 8 legged Earthtigers out there was a happy event.
Working from home without being a business owner
Working from home does not have to involve being in business for yourself, though I think it is the best of all worlds. For some folks, though, some amount of handholding is necessary. This is not a criticism. For all of us who want to be our own boss, we will at some point need folks who want to be employees.
Being an independent contractor is a hybrid position in that you are responsible for your own taxes and more or less how you manage your time. You are in business for yourself, but you are contracted to a single entity or to a small group of related entities. This involves you providing your own transportation, insurance, and work space in
your home. I have had more than one engagement where I worked from home, reported in to my handler once a week, every two weeks, or even every day. Without exception, it is a most excellent arrangement.
For instance, some years ago, Intel had an ‘Intel Inside’ campaign going on. Our job was to visit the various retailers in the area who carried Intel based products. We detailed the displays, gave away tee shirts to employees and customers and built the brand using the tools provided. We were paid per store. Randomly we had folks come behind us and check our work.
In another, we did Value Added Reseller training on OS/2 Warp 3.0 and again, we were paid per store and expected to do so many stores a week. The beauty was if you worked your tail off, you could be through with the required workload and have done a good job by Wednesday evening or Thursday morning. Myself and my team always went ahead and did our reports for the week, then replicated our records up to the home office on Fridays. We used Lotus Notes and Domino server in this particular application.
As I say, it was a no pressure job for someone who likes to work and likes his or her work.
Taxes
Used to, some of the contracts would involve them taking out just social security, making us something called a contract employee which was neither an employee nor an independent contractor. You were responsible for your own income taxes, though. I am almost positive the current laws are different from that. Make sure to pay special attention to the taxes and who and how they are paid in your situation. Great money is always great; getting behind on your taxes is not so great. Just as you learned to balance your checkbook, you can learn to file your quarterly taxes on time with no sweat.
Caveats and Addendums
One drawback with these types of jobs is they are sadly all too often short term. The Intel Inside campaign was a limited six month contract. Happily, I recall it got extended. On another, IBM saw the writing on the wall with OS/2 losing out to Windows 95 in the marketplace. It was clear that no matter how well we did our job, IBM was going to pull the plug on the program. IBM does not run their business the same way as Microsoft. As I understand it, IBM runs their business from the standpoint that if it does not earn a certain rate of return on a product line, they pull the plug. I am not positive of that, but that is the way I interpreted the messages and communications there at the end when they offered to transfer me to Dallas. I was also shocked to learn that at that point in 95, IBM’s software sales dwarfed Microsoft’s. IBM is a different business entirely from Microsoft, or at least it was. OS/2 was their attempt to stay in the personal computer market and as you can tell, over time their interest has fallen way off.
Another thing to be acutely aware of is the number of work at home scams that are out there. They can range from telling you how to rip off legitimate programs by employing questionable marketing practices to outright money laundering schemes. Short comment? If it is too good to be true it probably is. If it clearly presents opportunities for abuse, then the abuse is probably being committed. If something looks good, simply search it online with the word ‘scam’ attached and you will get answers. What we are discussing here is your working for a company that requires your services for things you can do at home on your computer on your schedule, NOT how to rip off the search engines with false hits on pay per click programs.
Positive Facts
Companies like folks who are dependable enough that they can work without supervision. These types of employees and contracted resources are good for the bottom line. The employer or entity contracting with you saves money on benefits and you enjoy a higher than average income with minimum hassle from traffic and constant looking over your shoulder. You also have many tax benefits that others who work as a traditional employee do not have. Love taxes or hate them, it is employees who pay the most taxes and it is employees
who must pay the most taxes because the employee pool is the only one big enough to supply the Federal government with all the funds it thinks is its just due. Well, I did say this was a section on positive facts, did I not? Moving on.
Working from home, providing services to companies from home is a win win for everyone involved. If you are a parent, I can see no better way to work than to do it from home. You gain valuable, quantifiable tax benefits, you are able to be there for you kids if that is a core value with you as it is with me, and your stress levels are simply lower. The ability to avoid rush hours alone no doubt would make you a healthier, happier individual.
There are jobs out there for the right person. Many Fortune 500 companies use telecommuters for all types of services. Here is a resource that can help you get started in finding that stay at home job you have dreamed about. SCI can help you get started searching for THE company you can work for from home.
-Tim
MATERIAL CONNECTION DISCLOSURE: You should assume that the author of this post has an affiliate relationship and/or another material connection to the providers of goods and services mentioned in this message and may be compensated when you purchase from a provider. You should always perform due diligence before buying goods or services from anyone via the Internet or offline.
NOT QUITE READY TO BE YOUR OWN BOSS? Check this out. You can be employed with a Fortune 500 company and STILL be working from home. Could be this is the best of both worlds for you?
Trying to split out the various factors of a business is sometimes difficult to do. Luckily, as time goes on the universe helps you figure it out. Those of you who follow Bear’s Book Blog from time to time have noticed that I have struggled mightily with how to organize the current three prongs of my business. Selling commodities, selling information, and reviewing books I read for both pleasure and business.
In attempting to engage in Article Marketing, I have found limitations in the http://domain/subdirectory address scheme. No one wants such an address in their articles. I suppose it cuts down on the crap that is out there because it is more problematic and labor intensive to actually own and host a domain. Whether that is it or not, you have to comply because they most likely have good reasons for it.
If nothing else, the requirement helped me to go ahead and commit to WordPress as my platform for Earthtiger.info. In addition, looking around at my favorite websites I have noticed that while the lot of them are very different a large pecentage of maybe more than half are running on WordPress.
Who am I to argue? WordPress works.
In the beginning, my hobby: Electronic Prozac
Back in the 90′s…boy, does that sound old for someone born in the middle of the 20th century because when I was coming up, something in the 90′s meant 19th Century so, yes, I just had an ‘Oh, wow” moment…anyways back in the 90′s, the 1990s, that is, AOL, Prodigy, and my local BBS aka Bulletin Board System were my hobbies.Rushing home from work, I would fire up my lightspeed fast 2400 baud modem and I am cruising far away libraries, arguing with Windows fans over why IBM’s OS/2 Warp 3.0 was better than Windows and downloading electronic versions of research papers, and playing Tournament L.O.R.D.
It was a rush and it was intoxicating for many reasons not the least of which I was able for a while, to be someone else in a land or lands that was somewhere else. It was admittedly and consciously pain relieving escapism because I sorely hated my job and wanted out.Then opportunity walked in and slapped me down, hard. I was fired.
Bouncing back, I landed a job as an OS/2 trainer for IBM through one of their contracting companies. My job was to go out and train Value Added Resellers on the benefits of using and promoting OS/2 Warp. We did an excellent job, moving 5 times as many copies of Warp as IBM indicated would save, <ahem> EXTEND our job contracts. IBM’s version of saving my job included moving my family to Dallas, Texas. No, but thanks anyway. They probably feel they kept their end of the bargain; I do not agree.
Starting My Own Business: What Was I Thinking: First Steps
In my estimation, if you are going to start your own business, there are some groundwork got to haves that need to be lain in stone. First, have no partners. I will leave that for you to think about as I know thousands of business partnerships succeed everyday. Let me just say, like the fellow in the movie The Italian Job who did not like dogs but would not elaborate, I had a bad experience.
Second, you have to read some basic primers on starting your own business. The Small Business Administration has tons of free resources and yes, much of it is not applicable, but much is. Besides, wading through all those resources with eyes wide open will trigger a lot of thinking you may not have done yet and that is never a bad thing. Take a week, a month, or even heckfire until Christmas and browse the business sections of your local bookstores. Barnes and Noble and Books-A-Million are the ones local to me. Some of your more niche oriented bookstores may not be the way to go. Many are too narrowly focused on the personal interests of the proprietor which is perfectly fine, but you need material to stimulate your brain and these stores often are too narrow in their in house collections. Barnes and Nobel and Books-A-Million all carry vast selections based on repeat sales (assumably because the books are helpful and recommended by word of mouth.)
Third, write a business plan. Go ahead, write one out freehand, outlining all the things you want to do and how you think you will do them. Define what and how you will make money and how you will get paid. Then run it past your accountant. After he gets through shooting holes in your plan, THEN go and find some businessplan software, read books on the subject, and go back again for another evaluation to see what holes still need to be plugged. Don’t get aggravated at your accountant, either. He or she does not understand your dream and that is perfectly jake. Their business is not to understand your dream, it is to understand where your business is as a business so they can help you get on track. I say do it freehand first because that is the only way I know to make sure your dreams are the ones instilled in the plan and not just those you soaked up from reading business plan template language that will overwhelm you in your current naive state.
On the issue of accountants, that brings us to the whole issue of advisors. You need them. You will, in my opinion, need an accountant, a banker, an attorney, and once you get going, a financial planner, hopefully of the certified kind holding either a CLU or Ch.FC designation, my preference being the latter since they seem to be more service rather than product oriented, but again that is my opinion based on my time owning my own business running an Internet Service Provider as well as having worked in the financial planning side of the life insurance business for nearly a decade.
Fourth, make sure you really want to do your hobby as your job. I love computers, always have. My avocation became my vocation out of necessity. When I retire do you think I will be tinkering and fooling with PCs the way I am now? If your answer to your version of this question is not yes, you may need a new hobby, too.
But Why?
If I have to explain it, it is maybe not for you. Still, here are MY reasons for wanting to work for myself.
I like to work; I am at work these days sometimes more than an hour early. I hate traffic with a purple passion and go to great lengths to avoid it. No, there is nothing quite as special as hundreds of thousands of equally miserable and often desperately unhappy folks wrapped in 2100lbs. metal death machines hurtling through time and space up and down the freeways moving in the direction of where they do not want to go.
No one likes the schedule to which I seem to be born. 4AM until Noon I am on fire and full of energy. Working for myself lets me apply the fat part of the bell curve of my energy to my work. I ilke that.
It is the only way you can truly call yourself a free person. If you find yourself watching what you say at work because you are afraid it will affect your job, do you really think you are living the life of a self-actualized, FREE individual? I don’t. You may think you are as free as the next person, but you are not. Your lifestyle is controlled by the size of your paycheck and your paycheck is controlled by another human being. Your choices in how to live your life is the interaction of what you need, what you want, and what you get paid.
How do I do this?
- Decide if you are serious.
- Decide what it is you think you might want to do and leave yourself room to change your mind
- Explore your local bookstore business sections. You are not doing anything but letting your mind get used to the idea and letting books titles and covers inspire you.
- Write out a business plan including everything you like about the idea of being in business for yourself.
- Let an accountant look at it and have him tell you what you are missing from a business person’s point of view.
- Take advantage of the business plan software packages and books that are available.
- Re-write the business plan taking into account the books’. software, and accountant suggestions.
- Have it re-reviewed.
- Assemble your team of advisors: CPA, attorney, banker, and later on a financial consultant. Also, you will want a mentor who is successful as a business owner in some non-advisor related field.
- Kickoff.
Now, go make some money living your dream.
-Tim
Following are helpful links:
- Interested in opening a crafts business? Here is a business plan tailored for you.
- What about a more traditional business plan? Try this. It has lots of sample business plans.
- Are you an exercise freak? Or fitness buff if you prefer? Look at this Personal Fitness Trainer plan.
- If you are interested in a business that is going to require you to raise capital, this one may be what you are looking for.
Do what you love, the money will follow: Discovering your right livelihood. by Marsha Sinetar
NOT QUITE READY TO BE YOUR OWN BOSS? Check this out. You can be employed with a Fortune 500 company and STILL be working from home. Could be this is the best of both worlds for you?
Small Business Administration http://www.sba.gov
MATERIAL CONNECTION DISCLOSURE: You should assume that the author of this post has an affiliate relationship and/or another material connection to the providers of goods and services mentioned in this message and may be compensated when you purchase from a provider. You should always perform due diligence before buying goods or services from anyone via the Internet or offline.
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