I asked this question on my Instagram story:
Knowing there are people who own and operate their own businesses, work on their own schedule, and make good money for fewer hours worked.
What is stopping you from doing that too?
Or at least trying?
Here is a snippet of the responses I got:
"For me, it's financials; it sucks the bills don’t wait while you manifest something."
"Unpredictable income; I need a certain weekly income guaranteed to pay bills."
"Lack of safety net in the event of failure."
"I do this, but I think startup costs and the risk of leaving a stable income stop most."
To me, these 4 replies are very similar. They're pretty much saying the same thing.
Unpredictability and risk.
Which is totally fair enough.
But on the flipside of that unpredictability is predictability.
With the knowledge of knowing what's stopping you, I can predict that things will not change for you.
That's the bittersweet predictability pill you have to swallow.
Which is fine if you like where you are at.
And it's similar for risk; on the other side of that risk is the reward.
But anyway, you already know all that, and so far that hasn’t been enough to make you take the plunge.
Which makes sense because just knowing that doesn't magically generate enough money for you to make your mortgage payment next week.
But how about this? Instead of doing what you're doing now and things being the same until you die, because they will be, because things won’t change unless you make changes, and you will grind away and the weeks will turn to months, and the months will turn to years, and the years will turn to decades... and nothing will have happened... unless...
You start something now, work on it for just half an hour a day, even 10 minutes a day.
Even if it takes 10 years to build it into something that can replace your income, at least you’ll be able to quit your job in 10 years. What's better: working a job you don’t love for 40 years or 10 years? I'd prefer neither, but if I had to choose one, I'd leave in 10 years instead of 40.
And in my opinion, that's the worst case. What if you can work on something for an hour a day, maybe even a couple of hours on weekends? Imagine after a couple of months you're making a bit of extra income. After a year, you're making enough to cut back hours at your job.
And don't say you can't find an extra hour in the day because if your boss told you you needed to work overtime, you would, and after the taxes, you’d barely get any more for it at the end of the week anyway.
If you genuinely truly cannot find the time in the week to start building something for yourself on the side, then your life will look like a stretched-out version of your current weekly schedule.
If you can find the time in the week to start building something for yourself, you're at least giving yourself the chance for something to change eventually.
Giving it a try is not going to take