Serve No Master: How to Escape the 9-5, Start up an Online Business, Fire Your Boss and Become a Lifestyle Entrepreneur or Digital Nomad

by Jonathan Green

  The third piece of software that I use a lot is something you might be able to wait on. I record a LOT of training videos. You get to watch me doing something on my computer, and you can follow along. Or I use beautiful graphics and do a voiceover. To do all of this I use a piece of software called Screenflow 5. Each new iteration costs around a hundred dollars, depending on sales and promotions. I have been with them since version 3. This software is available only on Mac. The PC equivalent is called Camtasia. I think the PC software is superior for certain tasks, so don’t let this software determine what computer you buy next.

  The software simply records what I’m showing on the screen at the same time as it records my audio. If you want to do anything with video, then this tool might become quite important to you. I waited almost eighteen months before I upgraded from version 4. I’m paranoid about upgrades. I don’t want to be a tester for a piece of software that I use for work.

  I’ve probably sold hundreds of videos that I made using Screenflow. There are two reasons I finally upgraded, and both have to do with saving me time. With the newest version converting my finished product to a video is faster. The software is smarter and a task that took twenty minutes in version 4 now takes twelve minutes. That alone is reason enough to upgrade.

  The other great ability is batch exporting. I know that sounds boring and technical. Let me put it this way. Before, I had to record a video, edit it and then click the “Export” button. Then it would take the software twenty minutes or more to convert that into a video that I can upload to YouTube. I would make each video and then have this awkward downtime where I couldn’t do any work while it was “exporting” my video. With this new batch ability, I can record and edit my videos all day. Then at the end of the day, I tell it to convert a whole list of videos in one go. I go to lunch or dinner and come back, and they are all converted. Batch exporting increased my efficiency by another forty percent at least.

  It used to take two to three days to finish projects I can now complete in a single day.

  Whenever you are looking at a piece of software, pay attention to cost and how it will help you. I only switch to new versions of stuff with a real reason. I only upgraded my Screenflow when I read an article about that batch export feature. I knew that would improve my workflow, so I pulled the trigger.

  There are a lot of other tools that I use, and I talk about them more on my site, but these are the three tools that I use nearly every day in my business. They are my staples. I can’t imagine running my business without them, so I wanted to share them with you here.

  You should at least grab Xmind today because it is free. Every single person I convert to Scrivener tells me how it changed their life. It’s a massive boost to time and efficiency. You might not be able to afford Screenflow or Camtasia right now, but that’s ok. You can try out a program called CamStudio for free. I haven’t personally used it, but a lot of people I know say great things about it, so it’s a great place to start. It allows you to get a feel for the process and make some videos.

  X

  Why Do So Many People Fail Online?

  Only those who dare to fail greatly can ever achieve greatly.

  - Robert F. Kennedy

  69

  All businesses fail

  According to recent news reports, 8 out of 10 entrepreneurs who start businesses fail within the first 18 months. That’s a whopping 80% failure rate. If you’re looking to beat those odds, you’ve chosen the right person to pair up with – I’ve beaten those odds time and again. But what separates me from all the people who fail like that? What makes me so unique?

  There is a trend that you may have noticed in this book. When it comes to controlling costs, I’m as serious as a heart attack, and every software purchase, every training course, every person I hire, I treat as a serious financial decision.

  How do I do that? I always try and wait until I’m going to use something before I spend the money. Right now I’m thinking about a course that I want to buy that will teach me a new skill I need. I know 100% that I will use, implement and make money from this training. But I haven’t spent the money yet. I won’t be able to start that project for a few weeks, and I don’t believe in spending “someday money.”

  I watch a lot of those television shows about businesses that run into trouble and need outside investment. You almost always find that they spent some money poorly, and that has come back to haunt them. They hire too much staff, move into an expensive office or spend too much money on unproven inventory.

  I am very good at making money. At this point in my life, generating income is like breathing. Controlling the money going out, however, is something I had to learn. I have to be very active about controlling my spending. The first time I met my accountant, she nearly had a panic attack. She asked me how much money I make and at the time, I had no idea. She asked me what I did when I ran out of money, and I told her that I just make more.

  It turns out that that is a rather naive approach to finance. When you’re a rainmaker, it’s easy to fall into the path of spending whenever you feel like it. But that road eventually leads into trouble. I have a friend I spoke to just an hour ago. He’s much more financially successful than me. He runs a great business with one weakness - he’s always had only one source of customers. After five years of making millions, that source just dried up. He has to close up that entire business. Fortunately, he has two alternative revenue streams, and he’s about to make a new one grow. But all of the people working for him in the dying business are in trouble.

  His business had a single point of failure, and it eventually caught up with him. It stinks because he’s a great guy and mentored me, but I wasn’t entirely surprised. Rainy days are going to come; controlling costs and opening diverse revenue streams are how you prepare for them.

  I see some businesses that are making millions of dollars in sales and yet their profits are in the thousands. They are so inefficient that it’s shocking to me. When I bring in money in that volume, I want at least 40% of it to be profit. Depending on the nature of the project, the profit could be as high as 80%. That’s the way we want to approach money.

  I would never go into any business with substantial costs up front. That’s just not my approach to life. Some people do that and succeed. But the ones who try that method and fail end up with tens of thousands of dollars gone from their life.

  Don’t assume that you will make the same money next month that you did this month. I see that a lot. It’s what happens to most musicians and athletes. The average career in the NFL is three years. Yet the players all spend money like it’s going to last for forty years. They buy awesome cars and mansions and jewelry. At twenty-seven the run is over, and they collapse financially. I’m not hating on athletes; I feel really bad that they get such bad financial advice.

  If the average player took his three-year salary and figured out a way to live off it for forty years, then he would be living well for a long time. Players wouldn’t live like kings in their twenties, but they also wouldn’t end up living like paupers in their thirties.

  Musicians are even worse. They build up huge entourages. They blow big money on the album. They buy amazing houses. They make all these financial decisions because they believe the second album will do as good as the first. They think that because a few bands have been killing it for sixty years, they can do the same thing. How many bands can you name from even five years ago that are still making the same money today? Most second albums stink. And of the bands who pull that one off, most of them tank on the third album. It’s just the nature of the beast. I’m always diversifying and working on different types of projects to protect myself from a stinker.

  Control your costs now so that when the rainy day comes, you don’t drown.

  70

  Most people won't even finish this book

  The majority of the population are cows. I bet you thought I was going to say sheep, but that’s not quite accurate. If you take
a cow and feed it and give it a place to live, it doesn’t care if there are fences around it. Cows willingly walk into slaughterhouses because they have a complete slave mindset. I don’t mind cows. They’re animals, so I don’t begrudge them that behavior.

  But as people, we should do better.

  The ability to read and finish books has been steadily declining for decades. In 1978 there was a Gallup poll on how much people read. Only 42% of people had read 11 or more books in the past year. But by 2014, that number had dropped to 28%.

  According to one statistic I read, 57% of all books that people pick up are never finished. That means the majority of you won’t even finish this book! Those statistics are even worse for non-fiction books like this one.

  The fact that you’ve made it this far into the book is impressive, and you are already in the minority. I think that the inability to finish projects, such as reading a book, is quite common these days. Entrepreneurs surround me, and the ones who succeed are most often the ones who don’t give up. If you finish this book, you have an excellent chance of grabbing the freedom you crave. But if you don’t even finish reading the information you paid for, your odds plummet down to zero. How can you do something when you don’t read the manual?

  71

  Shiny Object Syndrome

  This inability to finish a task or training is often combined with this syndrome. My puppy has this problem. He will enjoy playing with one of his toys but if my daughter grabs one of the other ones and makes it squeak he will run after her for that toy. If that wasn’t funny enough, the same thing happens with her. Nothing makes her want a toy like someone else playing with it – even if it’s the dog!

  We always desire that which we do not have. The grass always seems to be just a little greener.

  These problems are all tied together. I love when someone goes on a show to ask for money to start a new, unproven direction for their company. They have been killing it online, and now they want to move into retail stores. They had a great food truck, and now they want to sell frozen food. They always have the same reason for the new venture - they WANT to. They are motived purely by desire. They never have hard numbers or any proof that it will work. Making money online is nothing like making money in retail. The numbers are different, and the process is so much more complicated.

  That is why I have told you over and over that I don’t sell physical products. I won’t touch anything that you put on a shelf. Not because it’s terrible, but because it’s outside my wheelhouse. I would have to start at step one if I wanted to learn that. Why would I want to rewind my life six years and have to start over again?

  Shiny Object Syndrome affects online entrepreneurs every single day. You can ask anyone trying to make it in online marketing how many ideas they have tried in the past year. Those who are struggling try something new every month or even every week. Do you think you can build a successful, self-sustaining business in thirty days? That’s pure insanity. You can make a quick buck sometimes, but something that lasts takes much longer.

  Chasing the next great book or the next great idea will keep you from success. If you know ten percent about making money fifty different ways, you will make nothing. That is what that knowledge is worth. I like new projects as much as you, but you must approach them linearly.

  Let me give you a final example.

  By the time you read this book, my podcast will be live. But today, while I’m writing this chapter, I haven’t even started on it. I’ve spent the past year only working on Amazon and Kindle projects. That has been my primary focus. Now that the business is rolling along, and I have that business mastered, I want to open up a new arena. I love the nature of podcasting, so I've wanted to start one for a while.

  If I had tried to learn both Amazon and podcasting at the same time at best, I could expect middling results, but most likely I would have two failures.

  Stick to one path until it works. Don’t step into this all-too-common trap. Distraction is the death of a small business.

  72

  Controlling Risks

  There is no such thing as a risk-free business. Every project can die. I write a lot of books and make lots of income from that. But if some new super disease came out and took away everyone’s ability to read, or if Amazon radically changed their rules, I would be toast. It’s not very likely to happen, but the risk exists. That is one of the reasons I’m making more and more video products, and I always put out an audiobook version. I am protecting myself from even the most unlikely risks.

  When you start a new business, you are filled with optimism. Every time someone points out a risk point, you tell them that it won’t happen to you. That somehow you are different, and that particular snare won’t catch you.

  When people don't believe in the risks, they are more likely to spend money now because they expect to make it back next week. This cycle can work for a while until something happens and a planned check doesn’t arrive.

  The biggest risks in business are that nobody will show up and that nobody will want to buy your stuff. I meet people all the time who think their ideas will sell like hotcakes. You see these people on television all the time pitching their ideas. They invested their life savings in buying ten thousand units of their idea, but they have only sold four of them to friends and family. That’s a terrible statistic. They are so blinded by how much they like their idea that they ignore the feedback and think their critics are just being mean.

  They let hope blind them to risk.

  I hope by now you are noticing how these mistakes are all interrelated. One often leads to another until the business collapses. The best way to control risks is to approach them analytically. “What will I do if this danger occurs?” This question is how you stay prepared. I see people all the time who make amazing stores. They invest in the retail game, but when no customers show up, they have no idea what to do.

  They think having great products at a fair price is enough.

  If they started out thinking that customers might not show up, they would have developed a backup plan in advance. I have released many successful books on Amazon, but history does not predict the future. That's why I launched my podcast at the same time. My podcast provides tons of amazing content for free and generates traffic in a different way. I'm also running a contest on my website giving away thousands of dollars in prizes. This amazing contest is a third way to bring in traffic. The more reasons you can create for people to come to your website or store, the better your chances of overcoming risk. That's why I'm giving away thousands of dollars in prizes this month on my website.

  I can’t help you eliminate every single risk from the universe, but I can help you to minimize most of them. When you control your costs and stay focused, the less it hurts if the whole thing comes crashing down.

  73

  Why I will never open a store

  A few years ago, one of my relatives told me her dream of opening a fashion boutique, and she came to me for advice. I was happy to help because I'm always fascinated by breaking into new markets. I spent a few late nights and developed a plan for her to become a social media trend spotter and blogger. My plan would have her at six-figures within eighteen months. Her response was, “Great, so then I can use that money to open my boutique?”

  Her response blew my mind, so I performed some research and found an article all about the cost of opening this type of brick and mortar business. This lady opened a consignment shop in Texas, and it took her thirty thousand dollars just to open the doors. Most people think that’s the total startup costs. Those are people who go out of business in less than two weeks. She will have to pay for electricity, salary for her staff, and that lease every single month. So we have upfront costs but also continuing costs that she has to pay even before the store makes any profit.

  My relative wanted to open up that boutique in New York City, not a consignment shop in the middle of nowhere Texas. So you can expect each of those costs to be at LEAST triple
. Don’t forget the clothes in a boutique cost a lot of money. You have to buy all of that stuff up front.

  So let’s say she pulled it off. She spends around $100k to get her dream shop off the ground. The shelves are stocked, and the clothes look awesome. She gets the amazing team that a store needs for success. Is all of that enough to win?

  First of all, you have a ton of complicated sales taxes. Every time she sells something part of that has to be tracked because that money belongs to the government. The cash in the register at the end of the day doesn’t all belong to the store. Second, she needs at least a few months of savings to keep the store running. How will she pay the rent on her apartment and her lease and the salaries for everyone? She has to pay those people whether the sales come in or not. It takes time for even a successful store to get off the ground.

  The other risk is the one that scares me the most. What if she stocks up on something that people don’t want? What if she buys the wrong size in something? Something that cost a few hundred bucks is now worth toilet water. Any business where you hold stock is full of massive risk. According to Fortune magazine, she should be looking for a 3.2% profit margin. That’s the best-case scenario, and that number alone is enough to send me running for the hills.

  The last and scariest thing is the idea of signing a commercial lease. People sign up for three or five-year contracts. If their business fails, they still have to pay that money. Now they’re in a legal nightmare and might have to declare bankruptcy. I don’t like a business that requires debt to get started and has the risk of litigation if it fails.