How to succeed with IM, think of it as a business and an investment.

Just wrote a few posts (to help promote my new WSO!) which make me think of posting a general point on IM . . .

It can be really valuable to add perspectives from general business, and investment (etc.) to specific understandings of IM technology and implementation etc.

For example, while it might be easier to start making some cash from IM by selling your time for money (such as a Fiverr Gig, or freelancing as a writer etc.), your time is limited, and so is the amount you can charge for your time, as you are in competition with others doing the same. Contrast that with learning a system which can be fully outsourced and effectively upscaled, and you've got the difference between linear and exponential (if some of the profits are reinvested), and that's a HUGE difference.

Of course, in some cases it's possible to move from one to the other, such as by doing Fiverr Gigs, then outsourcing the task and just taking the profit each time, but it often helps to be clear on what you want, from the start.

Many people will need both, so might need 2 or more parallel strategies. For example, if you're broke now and don't have any other income it's no good starting with something that will be profitable in 6 months time, you need money NOW. But equally if you're broke but have the goal of earning a million a year, selling your time is unlikely to get you there, so you need short term income, AND a long-term strategy, although there might be some overlap.

This kind of perspective is, in business speak, things like the differences between cash-flow and profitability, short-term profits and long-term growth, employee and business owner.

Having written the last sentence, I'll also add that it's vital to be honest and clear about definitions. For example, the excellent series "Rich Dad, Poor Dad" teaches a lot of very fundamental and valuable points, such as the difference between an employee and a business owner.

The definition from that book is that a business is something that can be fully outsourced or sold.

But then you have certain MLM's advertised as "own your own business", when you most certainly can't either outsource or sell your involvement in that MLM. So if you read how a business is the best way to get rich, but didn't define your terms clearly, you could spend years working at what is really a "job", while thinking it is a "business" and wonder why you weren't getting rich.

Books I'd recommend include most of the books from that Rich Dad, Poor Dad", (read them in order), "Emyth revisited" which makes some vital points on the difference between a business and a job, "Ready, Fire, Aim", for which the title outlines a vital point, particularly applicable to IM, where it's often best to take action FIRST and refine and re-direct that action later, instead of trying to wait until you know the perfect answer to everything involved before starting. Plus the various books on "4 hour week" and other ideas about outsourcing yourself etc. can be relevant, and "Millionaire Maker" (the original and the business system one) makes some very good points.

Another perspective on IM systems, is that if obtaining a customer or outsource worker costs you money each time, then your rate of growth is limited, but if you can re-think the same basis system, so that it costs you nothing to grow, then once you've got the system working, you can grow it very rapidly and without decreasing your profits. It's all too easy to find a system where as long as you keep re-investing all your profit in making more profit, the system grows, but then if anything goes wrong just once, with that system, you can find yourself overall having spend more than you made, even though your system was growing and you made more money each week. In business the saying "cash flow is sanity, profit is vanity" applies to that, and taking a long-term, rational perspective, "being ON your business rather than IN your business" (as I've heard it put), is vital.

The perspective of seeing your IM system as an "investment" can also open up new opportinities, for example, an Amazon system I read for free on the War Room, makes me around 100% profit on any cash I put into outsourcing the work. For IM, that is a relatively "slow" system, but if you think of that as an "investment" it would be easy enough to find investors who'd be interested in putting in cash for a small fraction of that return, so you keep the difference, and can grow very much quicker than if you thought about it only as your personal IM system where you do the work and make some money.

So, overall, other relevant perspectives, can really help with IM


Chris