Chipmunks on the loose: What you REALLY need to know that will put your marketing business over...

It's this one.

That is a really insightful post Aaron. I am familiar with the situation - I was there myself. Had a great job. Made good money. Traveled a lot. I had pretty much everything I ever wanted.

For me - I HAD to do it. I have this crazy idea in my head that I can be more. I have this insane template of myself that I am sure I will never reach.

I have proven to myself time and time again that I am not as good as I hoped I would be. My ambition far exceeds my talent.

The thing is, when I was in my corporate life, my soul was crushed. I couldn't help feeling like I was cheating myself.

Sometimes now I wake up and say "What were you thinking? You had it made! Now you will probably die much younger." LOL

If you are content, I would recommend with every ounce of sincerity, that you keep doing what you are doing. Contentment is something that is hard to come by for many.

For many business owners, contentment is a fantasy. If you can find it as an employee, keep it!

Aaron Doud;
For those like me or who have been in my position what made you take (or not take) the leap?[

Aaron,

Real simple answer: income ceiling.

Every corporate sales job I had, had an income ceiling. When I hit it, someone up the chain would always change the commission plan, carve up my territory, shuffle my accounts and so on. Sometimes they did all three at once.

More than one company, in different industries, deliberately slowed the processing of my orders. I did some digging around to find out why. What I uncovered stunned me, but also revealed that I couldn't achieve my potential, working for someone else.

When you KNOW that you are capable of more, Aaron...you already have all the confidence you need to make the move. When you realize that.... well...it's time to take the next step, then the next and the next. Just as an infant dares to stand...and then take that step.

We are built to move forward. It's in our nature.

Golden Handcuffs, baby.

It's not just about the income.

It's freedom. The Struggle. The accomplishment.

Are you realizing your full capabilities where you are?

A man with ambition owes it to himself and those before him to work towards his full potential.

Nothing is more heartbreaking than seeing unbridled talent or ambition hamstrung by the conveniences of life.

I do know this -- there is life before death.

This is the thing, if you're happy, there's not a lot of reason to change. I mean that's what this is all about right? Finding a level of happiness and fullfillment in life.

I'll tell you this, though as some others have alluded to on here, you'll cap out personal income in the $150-250k range working for someone else. While there's literally no limit on what you can make when you work for yourself. I was quite comfortable in the $150k range. I mean at $150k if you're not being stupid, pretty much everything you need is taken care of. It's very difficult to make $500k+ working for someone else.

I'll tell you why to make more money though. Because the saying is true, it takes money to make money. And that is VERY true. As a qualified investor($1M Net Worth, $200k+Yearly), the types of deals you can be involved in are pretty insane. We're talking about 50-100% return on your investment in 12-24 months. And when you're talking about big money $500k-2M-5M or more, it really adds up. Not just high tech investments though. In just the nine months since I started this journey to sell my business, I've met better business contacts and have the potential to make a ton of money, when I thought I was going to "retire".

What I will tell you is that you can work as much as you want or as little as you want. I'm an idea guy, I like to create "ideas", but I'm not much into actually DOING anything. So, I hire very detail oriented project managers. And then I just manage the ones who are actually "doing" something. I like to meet people, and sell. So, that's what I set myself up to do.

I'll tell you this when I earned $150-200k a year. I worked 60 hours a week(a 9-5 and then real estate investing on nights and weekends). Now that I actually HAVE money, I work closer to 20-30 hours a week, doing ONLY what I like to do. Schmoozing. But I make a ton more money doing it than I did when I worked much harder, doing things I didn't really like doing, but knew that I had to do them to make money. I'd say my hourly rate back then was close to $40-50 a hour. Now, I expect every hour I work to produce in the neighborhood of $500/hr.

So from my experience you make more money for two reasons:
1. To only do what you like and are good at doing.
2. To make a heck of a lot more money doing those things that you like doing.

With that said, I think it's less about the material things, but more about getting paid what I'm worth. Where ten years ago I would be happy to work for $40 an hour freelance. Now I expect if I'm going to put my effort into something it has to have a minimum payoff of $100k or I'm not going to be bothered.

I don't really want to make this about me bragging what I do or don't make. But take a look at businesses for sale and what you can do when you have some cash.

Absentee frame mfg and distributor: Business For Sale in New York County, New York, United States on BizBuySell.com

For $1.250M you can get a business that produces $700k a year in income where the owner is not in anyway involved. Or if that is too much to swallow.

Awning Fabrication & Installation Company - ABSENTEE RUN: Business For Sale in Eastern Suffolk, Suffolk County, New York, United States on BizBuySell.com

$400k buys you $133k a year in cash flow absentee run.

Many manufacturing companies are pretty easy to run, don't take a lot of handholding. And they sell for 2-3x net income. So let's say you have around $500k in cash you've accumulated. You can buy a manufacturer for around $1.5M(owner finance $1M) that brings in $500k a year. Now if you do nothing else with that company, you make 100% return on investment. Even if worst case scenario, the owner previously managed it, you hire a General Manager for $80-100k. And you still have $400k a year in cash flow. And you're not doing squat.

There are tons of good businesses that sell, and many more of them as the baby owners approach retirement age. Many of them can be run fairly well as an absentee owner. And with all of the marketing stuff we learn here, there is great opportunity to improve these businesses drastically. You'd be surprised how many great companies that make $1-5M don't do any marketing or sales. You can double many companies revenue just by hiring a good salesperson and asking her every single morning, who did you see yesterday? What is in the pipeline? How can you see more people today? I know you know sales Aaron. You'd be surprised how many companies do not.

Marcos

P.S.- Perhaps you'll notice that at no point did I ever talk about material things. I drive a 2006 Toyota Prius. I live in a very modest 4 BR house, my kids are homeschooled. We do travel a ton. About every six weeks we go on a vacation. But our life is more about experiences and less about "things".

a job is never secure, you are always at others mercy, a couple of dumb decisions upstairs and your jobs gone through no fault of your own and there are loads of dumb decisions being made more frequently by board members etc who don't get this new world we are living in now.
What then for Aaron? or, without expecting an answer, is there enough to fall back on without damaging the comfort and enjoyment for enough years ?

Do you trust your bosses and decision makers more than you trust yourself? Or maybe I am way wide of the mark, just offering thoughts to you.