Searching Financial Independence

Are you sick and tired of your JOB (Just Over Broke)? If you’re like me, you have a job not because you particularly love it but because you have to survive.

I’m one of those guys that thought that, “To do well in life, I have to find a job and work for somebody for a living. As long as I worked long and hard, my employers will take notice and reward me with higher pay. As long as I remained loyal, I will always have a job to earn my living.” I ingrained those words within myself with sincere conviction…when I was young and dumb. If I ever use those words now, it’s to be snide and sarcastic.

Now I’m not saying that working as an employee is pure stupidity. Most of us have to start off that way to learn a trade. If we’re very lucky, it’s a trade that we have an interest in and wouldn’t mind learning it well enough to take ourselves into more highly coveted positions. The purely stupid part is that it would take the majority of our working lives getting there.

How many of you, I wonder, actually respect your managers? What? You don’t like them telling you how to do your job? Honestly, I always felt like I was still in grade school, trying to dodge or tolerate the brutality of these bullies. Try not to be to hard on them, though. I mean, they’re being told what to do just like us.

If you have the courage to take matters into your own hands, YOU could start your own business.

I am now 36 years old and I only became aware a few years ago that the life of an employee wasn’t for me. The only reason I became aware of this was because it was forced upon me when I was laid-off. And I didn’t even see it coming at all. I was handed my hat just like that.

But to be honest, after the initial shock wore off, I felt a sigh of relief. Even though I had to find another job to cover the bills, I knew from that point on that I was going to take steps to be able to live on my own terms and secure my own future. I knew it wasn’t going to be easy but the thought that I could have control of my life was empowering.

Now because it took me almost five months to find another job with decent pay, my savings was totally exhausted to cover the bills while I was unemployed. Which meant that I would have to start from scratch. I thought that by the time I saved enough to start my own business, I would have aged another ten years. I was not willing to work another ten years of my life making my boss rich.

I got down to business (and spent what little free time I had left after work) researching every night until two or three in the morning the best ways to earn my own income. Whenever I could afford it, I bought books from stores and downloadable books off the Internet. I did waste a lot of money on bogus information but I didn’t know any better at the time. I didn’t have a business degree and I didn’t know anyone personally that ran their own business. I realized then that this was going to take some time to figure out.

After spending about two years reading anything I could get my hands on, I was able to collect a small amount of information that looked promising and wasn’t going to cost a fortune to get started. I found that I was going to have to start an online business. I’m not that technically savvy but guess what? From what I learned from these books, it’s not that hard to run an online business and you don’t need programming skills.

The inspiration of this site is to share many experiences with starting beginner-level businesses online.

Read my post, How to Make a Money Tree, about how I got started.

August 8th, 2006