Always Have a Plan

If you're not working every minute to achieve your own goals in life, expect to end up being used as a tool by someone who is.

Rich Kids

I've been getting some pictures sent to me lately, from people I went to high school or college with, of their grown children at their engagement parties or their graduations. Now most of these people I haven't heard from in years and probably aren't really friends but are more like acquaintances, acquaintances that have always been very jealous and competitive with me through the years, for whatever reason. I'm sure it's a thinly veiled complement if they're bothering to tell me about their accomplishments at this late date in life.

The thing is when I graduated, a number of my classmates had a lot of family support and received a good bit of help starting out. I know of more than a few that received huge chunks of cash to help them get off to a good start. One received $50,000 and a little house to boot. This was a lot of money back in the mid 1980's. Well of course they're going to be successful at something with that kind of start. Most still needed a couple of decades before they had any degree of "success". My parents on the other hand fought me every inch of the way, for whatever reason, but they were quite happy when I was still fairly broke ten years after graduation.

The classmates that were successful right off and got into the right occupations for their particular skills, curiously they never bothered to send me pictures of their kids or mansions or pools or any of that. They were too busy making money.

Regardless, if you haven't heard from someone in several years and suddenly out of the blue you get a picture of them accomplishing something big, most likely they're still trying to impress you after all these years, which is a complement, even if it doesn't feel like it.

Love and Money

The love of something is often different than the business of something.

For example, if you love photography you might not be able to figure out a way to make a living from it, unfortunately.

I remember I went to school for chiropractic some time ago and was struck by how genuinely good many of my instructors were at finding the exact spot in my back that needed cracked or "adjusted". They then would proceed to do an expert job at "cracking" my trouble spot in my spine.

They were really good, but most weren't very financially successful.

Often the business of that thing that you love doing will be very different from actually doing it for fun.

Sincerely,

Me

The end.

Going there is different than getting there...

I remember after I graduated with a professional degree, I did not have any work lined up after a four year stint in college and my fiancee' at the time promptly broke up with me, and I don't blame her. I mean four years of post-grad and no job? It wasn't that kind of degree, like engineering, where there's a "job" waiting for you upon graduation, or with a little effort in searching. It was a degree where I really needed to have a cheap office space lined up and grow my business from there, but I didn't even have that. It was in the very early days of the internet and I just didn't know where to go, hadn't had a chance to do the research yet.

So anyways, I'm like, "where do I go?", etc. and I first decided to go to Las Vegas, because it was a fun desert town with the bright lights and casinos and beautiful women and I thought "the dream" could start there.

Actually it turned out to be a depressing six month experience in futility, because I couldn't even find a job to support starting my little office, and even if I could, they were all minimum wage and there was a line for each one. There were so many minimum wage workers in that town anyway, drawn by the hotels and resorts. So there I was, fiancee'-less, the Southwest sun beating down on my head, renting a room in this resort town in a neighborhood filled with hotel workers surviving on minimum wage and me without enough funds to even check out the 'Vegas nightlife. It was even more depressing to watch the young guys that were successful roll into town on the weekends with money to burn. This wasn't looking anything like the dream I had when I entered school. I was there, but I hadn't got there yet.

Another pretty place where I starved was Florida. I went down there to do temp. work in my field to save enough money to eventually open my own office. Problem is, the pay was relatively low, the profession was a racket more than a profession (chiropractic) the way it was set up in Florida and I hated the work, in the auto accident racket. The lawyers and owners made the real money while I did all the work in the office, seeing patients. The owners would basically hijack my license and bill out under it. A bunch of shysters who didn't even have to set foot in the office or talk to a patient were just counting the profits and I was doing the grunt work. Months turned into years and all the sudden five years had slipped away and I had spent time in two fabulously wealthy areas while at the same time barely scraping by.

Meanwhile my friends who had worked in normal cities where the jobs are, Chicago, Philadelphia, Atlanta, where it maybe wasn't such great place to vacation, ended up buying nice properties in Florida and vacationing in 'Vegas after they were successful. I was there, but they had actually got there.

If you're going to start a business, start by building a website, one for each of the areas you are interested in, as if the business is already there and have a toll-free number and an auto-responder form, so you can gauge local customer interest and build a client list before you actually open the business. This way you can decide which area or town is your best bet for success.

If you have to work for somebody else for a living (you're not self-employed or not working), it doesn't really matter where you live, because every day is going to be the same routine drudgery anyway. You can always just vacation in your favorite place, but if you're working, it doesn't matter if it's Hawaii or North Jersey, you will soon forget about the beautiful (or not) scenery because you'll be in a blank-eyed coma most of the time from the 9 to 5 grind.

Day One

Oops! Looks like I have nothing to write yet.