Introduction

Well I just wrapped up my final days at work.  As I posted in detail before I gave my 2 weeks notice on January 23rd 2017.

My goal with this blog  is for others who want to follow can see the path from the start not just in a year or two when I’m already having great success and by then it does not seem easy to achieve from someone elses perspective.

But I wanted to take a quick detour this week from the linear progression of preparing to quit, actually quitting and then building success with an online business.

I will start again with my next post on next steps (like my first month with no job).

I wanted to post today on a question I’ve been getting a lot already since starting this blog. In a previous post I talked about the 2 common methods to quit your job and pursue and Internet Lifestyle.

The Burn the Ships Method – You just quit and go all out to make it work in your business with nothing to fall back on if it does not succeed.

The Safety Net Method – You save up a certain amount of money to cover living expenses before quitting your job and ease out of it.

I talked about how I chose the Safety Net Method and decided to save over a years worth of living expenses before quitting.

A frequent question I got from people after that post is:

How the heck did you save enough money to cover living expenses for a year?

That is the question I am going to answer in this post. I am going to lay out my step by step strategy for saving a years worth of living expenses before leaving your job.

Preparing For Take Off

One of the beautiful things about the Safety Net Method is it allows you to validate your business. You can start your business while you are still working your day job and see if it can eventually make enough to sustain you if you quit.

You should keep all the money you make from your business completely separate from your personal accounts. Use the business funds only to pay off business expense and reinvest in your business.

You should try to save all the profit you make from your business in its own account. For the last few months I was making between $125k – $150k (annual) at my day job + another $6-$8k (monthly) from Internet business so the temptation was to increase my cost of living and spend more with that additional income.

Instead I resisted and pretty much ignored any profit from my side business. I just left it in my business account and only touched it when I had an expense related to business.

So by doing that for awhile I now already have about 1/2 of my savings for the year in my business account. I will start to pay myself a salary from this account to replace the income from my day job.

This will put me in the Red each month as my ‘salary + business expense’ is higher that what the business makes right now.

I plan on getting the profit way up in the business that first part of the year now that I’ll be fully dedicated to it and hopefully can get it to cover all my business expense plus my personal income.

But besides this obvious method of starting a side business and waiting until you have a year living expense saved up from just that, I want to go a bit deeper with you on the issue of savings.

You see even if I did not have the money saved up from my business, I could still take a year off from my personal savings.

And that is because I have mastered my own personal finance method, that keeps me out of debt and pretty much worry free and also has money working for me earning interest each month.

My Background In Personal Finance

Before I ever heard of Internet Marketing or decided I wanted to be an entrepreneur I was determined to figure out my personal finances.

I did not grow up with much money and had no one to show me even the basics about it. Like many younger Americans the trap was first set when I turned 18 and started getting all these credit card offers in the mail.

Not quite understanding how that worked I got into credit card debt heavy and from there it was vicious, vicious cycle that lasted for many years.

Every time I paid off a credit card another emergency would come up and Id have to get right back into debt again. I could never save any money and was paying a huge penalty for the “privilege” of borrowing money on a credit card.

I thought the answer was to make more money but although my standard of living raised my debt and money issues just got bigger and bigger.

I started to devour personal finance books but I still couldn’t completely get out of debt and struggled with making and following a  budget.

Finally after many years I came up with my own system. Based off the Pareto Principle or the “80/20 Rule” I found a way to automate my wealth building plan stress free, with no budgeting or difficult self discipline to follow.

My 80/20 Rule to Personal Finance

This not directly related to Internet business and quitting your job but I believe this will help you tremendously in your financial life. And if you have your financial life in order its much easier to quit your job.

I believe so strongly in this plan that I will be writing a book on just this subject in the future but here I will give you the nutshell version.

After years of reading financial books and personal experimentation I came up with this system that has worked perfect for me and I truly believe can work for ANYONE struggling with credit card debt and savings, if they stick with it.

The end goal is:

• To be out of credit card debt.
• Have an emergency fund so you never need to use a credit card again.
• Have 3-6 Months Full living expenses saved just in case.
• Have interest bearing accounts you continue to build your wealth with for the rest of your life.

20% Wealth Building Accounts in Order

Make sure to fill these in order. Fill the Flex Fund fully then move onto the Emergency Fund etc….If you put 20% towards it every month these will fill quickly and you will eventually get to the fun part which is the investment accounts.

For some people it will take less than a year to get to step 3 and 4 for some much longer.

It does not matter how long it takes you.

Just keep putting away 20% and you will eventually get there!

Here is what my current Freedom Fund Ladder looks like:

1. Flex Fund $10,000 in a regular Savings Account. This is to ensure that I never go into credit card debt for any minor emergencies or vacations etc…
2. Emergency Fund $30,000 in Interest Savings Account. This is for longer emergencies lose your job etc. I have about 3 months full living costs here. I use a Capital ONE 360 Savings Account so I can get a bit of interest.
3. Freedom Fund $20,000 -? High as you can. This is for long term savings. It uses an Index fund so their is rapid growth. Should be used for non retirement long term investing. After you have filled the first 2 keep putting the 20% here every month. I have a Betterment account.
4. Just for Fun Fund $10,000 – $15,000 I put in a little bit of ‘play’ money for individual stocks. This should not be taken to serious as an investment. I use Charles Schwab.

Id also like to point out that there are other investments you can make that are potentially more lucrative and could give you faster and bigger returns. Like investing in your own business, another business or real estate.

Update: So its 2024 and I’ve used all the Internet skills learned in the past 7 years to become partner in a company.

A Hibachi chef started taking his talents to peoples home for a Benihana style experience. It did very well in Texas but he couldnt expand from there without marketing skills.

That’s were me and these marketing talents came in to help the company explode into 25+ cities!

We did so well that I am now part owner of the company. It’s hibachi at home and called Let’s Hibachi!

PSA: Be on the lookout for this scam hibachi company called RockStar Hibachi!

This post is for people who struggle with credit card debt and saving enough money to never use them again.

I hope you like the guide and hit me up if you have any questions on it!

Introduction:

In my last post I talked about how the day of reckoning was coming soon. I was finally going to quit my 9 to 5 (more like 6:00 to 5:30 with commute).

January 23rd 2017 was the chosen day of offering my 2 weeks notice to my job and there would be no turning back after that.

Well I am happy to report that despite being very extremely nervous I did in fact successfully give my notice!

There were all kinds of thoughts going through my head as the time for meeting with my boss and letting him know approached.

I was getting nostalgic already and thinking about how this was the best job I’ve ever had and maybe I could never get another one quite like it if the Internet Marketing does not workout.

Proud to say those negative voices were pushed out and I did what needed to be done. In today’s post I am going to talk about some tactics I came up with that helped me get over this nervousness and follow through.

I am also going to lay out the plans for what comes next for me as I start my new path as an Internet Business owner.

Preparing For Quitting

So as I have mentioned a hundred times already I was very nervous leading up to giving my 2 weeks notice. Not only did I not want to disappoint my bosses but the fear of leaving once and for all was creeping in and trying to paralyze me into inaction.

Here are some methods I used that helped me deal with the fear.

Public Accountability

The first thing I did was hold myself publicly accountable. I made a post on Facebook publicly declaring my plans so that I would be forced to explain if I didn’t follow through when the time came.

At first I was going to post this message on my Facebook profile so all my family and friends could see. But after thinking about it I realized that cant be done because I have some friends on Facebook that I currently work with at my company.

Instead I decided to post on an SEO/Marketing group that I am a part of on Facebook.

Here are screenshots of what I posted.

Now originally the post was just intended to hold myself accountable. But it also had another added benefit from the encouragement I got from other group members as you can see by the likes and comments below.

This was awesome! Sometimes when you tell family and friends your quitting such a great job they do not really understand. Normally they try to be supportive anyway but you can sense they think it might be a little crazy for you to just up and quit a job that pays well and is very secure.

But by letting people know your plans that think like you and know what is possible with an Internet business, they are almost always encouraging because they have went through the same thing or plan on it soon.

So your takeaways from this is.

Hold yourself accountable by posting your plans somewhere publicly.

Try to find a group of like minded people so that you can get some encouragement from people who understand.

Acting Like Its Already Happened

One of the first things I did was to send a meeting request to my boss for Monday morning. This meeting was to let him know that I was moving on and to give him the official 2 weeks notice.

Here is my resignation letter which I wrote the week before the notice date:

So now I had a meeting set with my Boss (which he probably assumes is just a touch base) and I have already written my resignation letter.

This helped me tremendously because the wheels were put in motion and now I just needed to follow through.

I also came in to work during the weekend and cleared out all the personal stuff from my desk. This helped give that feeling of finality and also when I came in Monday I already felt a little more detached with just the bare minimum at my desk.

How Quitting Went

So the resignation itself went pretty well. I met with my direct boss and just let him know right away and handed him the letter.

We spoke for about a 1/2 hour and I had to convince him that I was not leaving for another company but going out on my own for at least a year.

He is a pretty cool guy and was nice about everything. Also one of the reasons I did not leave in the beginning of January was because I was the architect for a very complex project and I did not want to leave them hanging. So he appreciated that I finished that project first before turning in my notice.

Kind of a funny/awkward thing did happen though. After telling my direct supervisor about my notice he told me that he was going to let the head of our IT Department know (the top guy who manages about 300+ high level engineers).

Now even though he is my bosses, bosses, boss and the head of the whole department we actually talk often because he really likes me a lot and loves to give me shit.

He is from New England so of course an obnoxious Patriots fan (is there any other kind). I on the other hand, was raised in beautiful Seattle, WA and I’m a die hard fan of the NFL greatest team the Seahawks (#gohawks).

So in the spirit of teasing me as he likes to do he sends the email below to our entire group.

Nice timed shot at my Seahawks right? So I go down to grab a doughnut and he of course comes over and jokes around with me. At this point I realize my Supervisor probably has not said anything to him yet.

Well not 15 minutes later at my desk he gives me a call and asks me to come down to speak to him. I go to his office and he lets me know that he heard I was leaving.

I proceed to tell him the story about why Im leaving and he says, “Thank God. I thought it was because you took my Patriots email to seriously!” LOL

So pretty weird timing. He finds out Im quitting 5 minutes after sending an email to everyone calling me out in a joke.

Anyway he is an amazing boss. He asked if there was anything he could do to make me stay, more money, different position, remote work etc… I politely declined but you can see why quitting this job has been such a struggle for me.

At my previous job the person in his same position never even said Hello to me once in 2 years! This guy who is responsible for so many people would always go out of his way to see how Im doing, joke around and be encouraging.

But all good things must come to an end to make room for even better things.

This was by far the best job I have ever had. But at the end of the day its a job.

And where I’m going we don’t need no stinking jobs.

Whats Next?

So now I am out in the Ocean with out a boat and its time to swim! I am going to work especially hard the first few months with a real tight focus on what is already making me money.

Now that I have so much more time the first thing I’m going to do is try to optimize even more what is already working so far in my Internet business. Once I have those things maxed out than I will move on to other ways to make money.

Since I have had such limited time with my job I’ve only been able to get a few clients. My best client makes me consistently between $6,000 – $8,000 a month. This is a percentage deal I have. The more money I make them, the more money I get.

So my first order of business is to get this client bringing me in at least $10k every month. This should definitely be doable as I am almost there with the very limited time I have had to dedicate to this. Not only that but there is clear massive opportunities I have already seen to scale this.

Now that the bandwidth is actually there to implement these things it should take off pretty quickly.

After reaching closer to full potential with my few existing clients I will then start to work on getting a few more and figuring out how to scale my services and business.

Well now there one important chapter in this book that is closed. From my very first post I said that I wanted to share with you from the very start, my entire personal process of quitting my job and going out on my own to build an Internet Lifestyle business.

There are tons of great blogs out there on this type of stuff but I always found it annoying that they started writing after they were already having a ton of success. I wanted to see the struggles on the way up the ladder as they were happening and how they dealt with them at that time.

That is why I will continue writing on this blog.

My mission is to help other people who want to quit their job and have the time to live the life of their dreams .

I think its best if you can see from the very start step by step and realize that everyone has struggles to reach their ultimate goal.

The key is to define what you want, figure out the process to get there and don’t quit trying until you do.

I have a confession to make… I REALLY suck at sales.

It has just never really been my thing. I remember one of the first (and still worst) jobs I ever had was as a telemarketer.

I was about 19 at the time and this big fat guy who had the build of someone who sat at a desk 10 hours day on the phone eating snacks, got up to address all us newbies.

He was the top salesperson on the team and they called him the “Hammer”.

Well the Hammer made this impassioned speech about how you have to go for “the kill” and you are only a few sales away from being a top dog like him. He then gave us some techniques to use to close our calls.

Like everyone else I was all pumped up from the Hammers speech. But then I got on the phone and proceeded to do almost the complete opposite of what he told us. I wasn’t passionate. I wasn’t persistent. I wasn’t confident in the product or what I was saying.

Needless to say I had absolutely ZERO sales that day and the Hammers position as the top dog Sales telemarketer was safe. I quit that telemarketing job the next day and have never really liked direct selling since.

Now of course that does mean I do not appreciate the importance of sales. I actually think a good sales process is one of the most important part of having a successful business.

Because remember; at the end of the day, if you don’t have paying clients you don’t have a real business. And you cannot get clients without some form of selling.

So I personally hate sales but Im telling you its important to the success of your online business. How do I get around this for my business? Well for one I know that Im going to have to get better at it at some point. Right now with me still being at a full time job, getting more clients is not yet my primary focus.

But until I get better at sales let me show you how I got around my weakness in this area to get the clients I have now.

By the end of this post you are going to know the answer to this question.

How do you get a client if you suck at sales?

Here are 3 methods I have been using so far to get my clients.

1.) Leverage Your Personal Network

When you are first starting out with online lead generation it can be tough. You may not have much proof yet that you can actually bring results for people.

One thing you could do is to rank your own websites so you have that much coveted proof of results. What you could also do is to offer your services first to family and friends.

Of all your family and friends there has to be someone who has their own business right? Approach that person(s) and tell them you want to help drive more leads to their business.

This is an all around win. You get to practice at developing your skills with a real business while at the same time helping someone close to you do better in their business.

After you start driving them real results you can record the progress and use it as proof to sell others. You could also ask your family/friend to recommend you to other business owners.

What If No Family/Friend Owns Their Own Business?

What if you cannot find someone you know personally that owns their own business? Man you gotta get out more! You don’t have one person close to you who has their own gig going?

Well no worries, I guess you will be the first of your family and friends to have a successful business.

But if you dont have close friends or family to offer your services to you will have to go one more degree of separation. Ask everyone in your close network if they know someone that has a business and wants more customers.

This is not as a good as a direct connection to you of course but still way better than a complete cold connection who you have never met and knows nothing about you.

Having someone vouch for you can go a long way towards your chances of successfully signing that client so don’t underestimate it.

This first method of leveraging a personal network has worked wonders for me. When I was just starting out and gaining my online skills I approached a very close family member who had their own business.

I asked them if I they wanted me to see if I could bring them more leads. They are in a high end service business so each new client is worth a lot of money for their business.

So even though its a family member why would they trust their marketing to you? Well the key is to make them an a no brainer offer which we get into more with step 2.

2.) Make Them An Offer They Cant Refuse

If you want to start a lead generation company and plan on getting really good at it you will have a very valuable skill.

Every company wants to make more money.

For more money you need more clients and to get more clients you need more good leads.

That is where you come in. You are going to use your very valuable knowledge and skill to get their business good leads.

But here is the problem. How do they know if you can do what you say can. Can they trust you? Are you just wasting their time? When your first starting out it can be tough to prove yourself.

So this is what you offer them.

Its very simple. If my work makes you money, you pay me. If not, you don’t pay me. You have absolutely nothing to lose.

Now some Internet marketers are going to say this is crazy.  Your services are very valuable and you should be paid for them from the jump. You need to sell the person.

And I totally agree. But if you are really bad at selling there is no way you are going to convince a business owner who does not know you and has been pitched by SEO people hundreds of times before to pay you without results.

Besides, you should not want someone to pay you if you cannot deliver. You will just end up having a short term client and a burn in churn system that will rely on what you hate. Having to constantly sell to more clients.

Instead aim to prove to this client your skill. If you are getting real results after a few months they are going to be willing to pay for that good ROI. That is how you get a long term, recurring client.

Even if you have to spend some of your own money during this time it will be worth it for you to work with a real business and have real results to show future potential clients.

It really makes me crazy when people tell me they don’t want to invest any time or money in their online career.

Think about it. People spend 4 years and almost 6 figures for a college education. The purpose of college is to learn a skill so you can get paid. But even after all that learning and money spent on college, most folks start at the bottom when they start their careers.

They still have years of working their way up and proving themselves to their company before they can expect any substantial pay.

So what is a few hundred dollars and (usually) less then one year investment into your Internet Marketing skills? Especially when you can start out as the boss (of your own company) instead of the bottom of some corporate ladder taking scraps while years and years pass by.

Just to illustrate this for you. I have worked in IT almost 15 years. I have now worked my way up to a level between $125,000 and $150,000 a year.

A lot of money for some people right? But my Internet Marketing business which I have been doing for only 2 years and work less then 5 hours a week on generates me between $8,000 to $10,000 a month.

So lets be conservative I average $8,000 a month over a year that’s already $96,000!

In fact if I averaged $2,500 per client. you know how many clients it would take for me to reach the max window of my IT career that I worked 15 years to build?

5.

Yes you read that right. Only 5 clients.

5 x $2,500 = $12,500 x 12 = $150,000

What makes more sense to you as an investment of time and money. 4 years of college and close to a hundred grand in debt. Then about 10 years of working your ass off to reach the upper pay in your field.

Or a couple of thousand dollars a year and 1 or 2 years of self training to start making that money in 3-5 years and be your own boss?

Now imagine I got just two more clients? That’s $210,000. It would take me at least another 5-8 years to make that in my IT career if it was even possible at all to get that high.

3.) Team up with a Good Sales Person

So if you don’t have any close friends or family with a business to help. And you are so  scared of sales you wont even do the offer they cant refuse. There is still another option.

That is you can team up with someone who excels in your weakness. Find someone who is a good salesperson and have them close your potential clients. You can either go into a partnership with them or even better just pay them per close.

I have an agreement like this with my friend Rey. He owns a very similar client lead generation site RapidCustomers.com But we dont see ourselves as competition, we help each other out.

Rey is an actor, so he has the looks and charm but he is also a damn good sales person. To subsidize his acting career he worked for a big Ads agency for a few years calling and closing every day from a list of warm leads.

He later struck out on his own with his client agency. The thing is as good at sales as he is, the technical part of SEO and paid advertising hes not a big fan of. That is where we help each other out. I will send him leads to close for me and give him a cut. He will send technical stuff my way to help him out when he needs it.

We both do what we are good at and its a win, win. Now if you find the right person you could form a partnership and they could handle the sales end while you do what you are good at. But for me I think its better to just cut each other in on individual deals and keep your own companies separate.

One of the great things about having an Online company is the low cost and uncomplicated startup. If you bring on a partner out of the gate you are going to make things more complicated. Its better to work with someone for awhile on individual deals and only after you know for sure your partnership works to consider sharing the same company.

So there you have it. Don’t let sucking at sales stop you from getting starting with your online business. For any business you own sales will be a key component to its success. You can use these strategies to get your sales jump started while you keep working on getting better at sales yourself.

I recently did an interview for a website called Online Fanatic. The owner of the website is a guy named Kenny, who is from Malaysia but came to the United States at 18.

I met him a few years ago at a Internet Conference put on by Mario Brown but we were both mostly there to see an SEO guru by the name of Alex Becker, who was a guest speaker.

Anyway Kenny and I hit if off and have remained friends ever since.

The thing about Kenny is that he is not only one of the people who is inspiring me to quit my job and pursue an Internet business full time, I think he could also inspire you if you are having similar thoughts.

I make a really good salary at my current job but Kenny was in a different position a few years back when he took the leap to a full time Online income.

He was working at Starbucks as a barista which is barely above minimum wage. He had also dropped out of college and felt directionless in his life. Living at home with out a good income and no obvious prospects things were looking bleak.

That is when he first started looking into making money online. He started learning about SEO and ranking web sites. Every day after his shift at Starbucks he would get on the Internet for hours to learn and experiment.

He slowly built his skills until he was able to consistently rank keywords that he could then monetize.

This lead to him making a bit of an income from his efforts. Once he got rolling this quickly grew to surpass his monthly earnings from Starbucks.

As soon as he had 3 consecutive months of more money made online then his full time day job as a barista he quit!

That was over 3 years ago and Kenny has never looked back. Yes he still works very hard but now its on his terms. No more servicing surly customers at Starbucks for low pay. Now he determines when he works, when he does not and he is his own boss.

Like I said earlier Im really inspired by Kenny. No he is not a millionaire but he has control of his time and works on his terms.

Its one thing to read peoples stories online but when you know someone personally who has made this work its pretty awesome! He is much braver then me as I have still not quit my job.

I now have almost a years worth of life expenses saved up and that is why I’ve finally worked up the courage to give this a go.

Anyway now that you know a little bit about Kenny you will understand why I was flattered that he asked me to answer a few questions for his audience.

Among other things we discussed:

The hardest thing about starting a side online business for people with a day job.

How hard is it to get started online?

3 actionable steps for making money with Google Adwords

The difficulties in scaling in an online business

Tip on time management with juggling a day job AND an online business

Some recommend books for people who want to quit their day for an online lifestyle.

I hope you like the interview. You can find it here.

I encourage you to go out and meet and network with people who either have the same goal as you or even better, are where you want to be in 2-3 years.

People who working regular 9-5 jobs will often try to discourage people like us from our online goals. But there is no sense in listening to people who have not achieved what you want. You want to listen to the people who have.

Also its great to have someone to hold you accountable. I have told Kenny (and publicly to everyone on this blog) that I am quitting my job in January of 2017. Excuse after excuse has kept me from making the leap but with the growing success of my online business and the amount of money I have saved there is no more excuses.

Kenny constantly reminds me of that and lets me know that I will be getting shamed if I come up with another excuse and don’t follow through on my January 2017 plan.

In the very near future I will be interviewing Kenny here on this blog as well. I went into it a little bit but he has a very interesting story that will help inspire anyone looking for the courage to quit their day job.

Until then, once again here is the link to his interview of me.

I know, I know. These type of headlines always sound like hype.

But its true so there it is.

Of course there are people making $70,000 or $700,000 online every month instead of my $7,000 so everything is relative.

But this article is for people in a position similar to mine. You are just learning how to make money online and still working a full time job that you hope to transition off of eventually.

For you guys how nice would it be to have an extra $7,000 a month?

Well in this article I am going to tell you how I reached this level, how I plan to scale higher and some tips on how you can do the same.

What I Made

I made over $7,000 dollars last month with just one client (my best client) with my side Internet business!

The past few months have been really good with this particular client and have steadily come in between $6,000 to close to $8,000.

That is up from my previous high average of $4,000 – $5,000. The crazy thing is that is without adding a new clients and I actually have worked a little less then normal during the past few months because of increasing demands from my day job and some family issues that came up.

Below is the invoice they paid me for September 2016 for work done in August 2016. Again this is for my one main client.

So not going to lie having an extra $7,000 to $8,000 hit my bank account each month feels pretty damn good!

Right now in preparation for quitting my full time job in 4-5 months I basically put it all in my business account and only pay for my business costs out of that account.

My plan is to save everything in my business so when I quit my full time job I can pay myself a salary with the side business and subsidize the gap in income I will have with what I have saved.

For awhile anyway I expect Ill be making much less at my side business then I do with my full time job.

So if I make lets say, $6,000 one month from my Internet business but I’m used to making $8,000 a month from my full time job Ill take the extra $2,000 out of the business savings.

Assuming I slowly start to make more in my Internet business when I start full time the savings I have now should last at least a year.

Ill have a full post on my plans for financial transition in the future.

Whats your Plan?

So enough about me! Lets talk about you!

How would you like an extra $7,000 a month from a side business that you work on for about 4-6 hours a week?

Well, I am going to show you how I did it. One really big thing I want to point out!!

I did not just start learning this stuff a few months ago and now I make $7,000.

I had been struggling to try to learn Online marketing on my own and eventually reached this point.

Once I quit my day job and can do this full time I expect to quickly double and triple this.

But if you don’t already have a lot of experience with Internet Marketing don’t let that discourage you.

I am hoping with this post you can cut out a lot of the mistakes I made and go straight away to what works.

So for you hopefully it won’t take years to start making good money but instead months.

Different Ways to Make Money Online

First, let’s take a quick look at some of the ways to make money online.

Nowadays there are hundreds of ways to generate income online but some of the most popular are Affiliate Marketing, Product Selling (Amazon or Shopify store), or taking on clients for lead generation.

Lead generation can be SEO, Local SEO or paid marketing like Adwords and Facebook.

Now anyone who has made money in any of these areas is going to swear by it (and rightly so, since it works for them) but we are going to talk in this article just about Clients Leads or Lead Generation.

That is what I’m most familiar with and that is what has been putting that extra loot in my account the past 2 years.

Why I do Client Leads

–Fast way to make money
There are many, many reasons I am a fan of Lead Generation for Clients.

One of the biggest reasons is the speed at which you can get in the game and start making money.

All you have to do to get started with lead generation is to convince just one business owner to let you send them leads and pay you for them.

(Don’t worry I will go into detail later in this post on how to make an irresistible offer for your potential clients).

–Viable skills to learn for now and future
Another reason why I like lead generation for Internet business is that its a solid and viable business to be in for now AND the future.

The Internet changes daily and the way to successfully market online does as well.

But once you have mastered the basic principals of online marketing you can adapt along with the changes.

At the end of the day, every business is looking for new clients.

If you have the skill to bring them, new clients, you and your services are going to be in high demand.

–You can make money while learning
With Lead generation, it’s possible to make money while you are still learning.

Now, how many business opportunities are going to pay you while you are still learning?

When you first start out I recommend you only charge your customers on a performance basis.

In other words, they are only paying you when you bring them results (ie they have nothing to lose).

Now some experienced marketers are going to say that is crazy. You should up your sales skills and demand payment for all of your work.

But in my opinion, unless you are some type of Internet marketing savant you are not going to get great results in your first few months of learning.

So why provide bad service and make a client unhappy?

So you could either take 3-6 months pour yourself into training and rank your own websites.

You would then have the skills and proof to get a client.

Or you could use this method of agreeing to only get paid for what you bring and rank a live client site while learning and getting paid when you perform.

Here is a picture of what my 2016 income earnings from my ONE main client look like.

You can see steady growth each month for 2016. There was only a big drop off in the month of May but that was due to my client not being able to close his leads for 1/2 that month because of personal issues.

This is the method I have been doing for almost 2 years. 2015 was much less money and let me tell you my very first month I studied and worked so hard and my grand total for all my work was only $87 dollars!

But you know what? I was not discouraged!

I figured if I could make $87 dollars after just one month of learning a new skill the upside could be huge.

NOTE: I wish I still had the picture of this first check to show you. (I took a picture of it at the time but lost it on my old phone)

When I saw that first small check I knew this was possible I just had to get better at it!

How well could I do when I was actually sending the client dozens of new leads a month, instead of just one that first month that they closed for one of their low-end services?

Now that same client I made my first $87 dollars with 2 years ago is the one I am citing here for the $7,128 made last month.

(I only have a few clients with this one making the majority of my income. That is why I am using them in my example).

I actually made more in total with my few other clients then I show here. I have not been able to maximize the others or get new clients because of the demands of my current full-time job and that is why the whole goal is to quit the full-time gig soon so I can grow my business.

The Trick to Getting Your First Client

The trick is…..Find Someone With a Business Who Needs Leads!

Ok so you have little to no experience getting leads online so how in the hell do you get your first client?
The first thing to know is that despite your lack of experience you are going to have a pretty attractive pitch.

What if you owned a business and someone told you they were going to send you new customers and you did not even have to pay unless the leads they send became paying customers?

Pretty much sounds like a no lose proposition right?

Well it is but you would be surprised how many people reject this offer because it sounds to good to be true.

How to find Clients (family,friends)

So what your going to do is start with your personal network. I don’t care who you are or what you do, you have to know someone who owns their own business. A friend, a cousin, an uncle, a neighbor, whoever.

Anyone who has a business wants more customers. And for that they need new leads.
If no one comes to mind right away ask family and friends if they know anyone, look on your social networks like LinkedIn and Facebook for friends who own businesses.

Now for your first client if you are still learning marketing you probably cant be to picky. But I highly recommend you try to find people who have high end services.

Think Doctors (plastic surgeons), Lawyers or emergency plumbers etc).

You want clients where just one new customer is worth thousands of dollars to them. That way at the start when your leads are just trickling in at a few per month, its still worth it to them and you.

For example if you get a plastic surgeon as a client just one extra patient a month for them is potentially worth $10,000 to $15,000 to even $30,000.

Now compare that to someone who sells T-shirts or something where a new customer is only worth between $10-$20 to the owner.

So of course the surgeon is going to be a more lucrative customer for you even if you only got them a few extra leads a month.

How to convince them (performance pay)

So you have little to no experience and no existing customers. How do you pitch this? Once you find that friend, family member or acquaintance that owns a high end service its time to do a bit of research.

Before approaching them you want to see where there site is currently at. Most people who own a local business have terrible SEO and Internet Marketing and just by doing some very simple steps you can improve their results drastically.

But if they are already spending money on professional Internet marketing and getting good results they probably are not going to want to switch over to you despite your relationship.

Also you wouldn’t want them to if you cannot deliver the same or better results as the professionals they currently use as it may ruin your relationship.

What you want to do is find people who anything you can is going to be a benefit to them because they dont have good results now.

You can follow some of the steps in this post to see if professional marketing has been done to your potentila new clients site already. http://neilpatel.com/2015/09/01/the-simple-but-effective-guide-to-keyword-competition-analysis/

If they do not seem to have a strong presence on the Web and you know they are missing even some of the basics then you are in business!

How to approach

This of course is all going to depend on the relationship yo already have with the person. In general you do not want to make a big deal out of it.

Approach them causally and let them know that you do Internet Marketing now and think you could help send them new leads.

Do not go into technical details just tell them you think you can send them new leads online and would they be interested if you could? If they say Yes, tell them it will take at least a month or two of work to start seeing results.

Ask them how much each new client is worth to them.

Then ask them if it would be fair to pay you x amount per lead (I usually do 10% for high end leads so a $10,000 client for them gets me a $1,000).

Now if they are willing to spend money on paid advertising that would be best because you can start getting them leads quickly.

If they don’t want to invest much money in paid adverstising then you will need to do SEO. I typically recommend creating your own site all together instead of using their site.

This is more work at the start but will potentially save many headaches in the future.
First off. You can make sure the site is 100% clean and done right. If they had any bad SEO done in the past you wont have to worry about it.
Second. You own the site.

If you spend months or even years building up someone else site they still own it. When your business relationship ends the income generating asset you worked so hard on ends as well.

On the other hand if your relationship ends (disagreement, they decided to retire etc) you wont be left holding nothing.

All you have to do is find another person in the same business, in the same area, make a similar deal and start sending the leads to them.

Expanding your Online Business

You Never Forget Your First
When you are first starting out your most important client is your first. I am still with my first client from 2 years ago and its the one I have been using as an example in this blog post.

From $87 dollars the first month to almost $8,000 now.

Do not worry about making a ton of money at the start. As you learn more about this world you will see people on the Internet making $10,000 a month, $50,000 a month and even over a $100,000 a month.

Trust me NO T ONE of them STARTED there.

Don’t worry about making a bunch of money with your first few clients.

Instead focus on getting really good at what you do and providing the best value possible.

When you make people good money they naturally become your best advocates.

I have been doing this for over 2 years and I am just now getting to the point where I am looking to quit my job.

I know guys that knew next to nothing about SEO or Online Marketing and were able to quit their jobs in less then 6 months.

So we all come from different places and will advance differently.

It took me awhile because my job and family takes so much time and I’m super financially conservative (I have saved almost $100 thousand dollars in anticipation of covering my income lost with the job) but the point is this is not going to happen overnight.

After you start having success with that first client go get another one. Now that you have proof of results it should be easier to get another client.

After you start making money, reinvest it into the business with software tools and virtual assistants to help with the workload.

Once you are making close to the income from your day job and focus full time on your business.

With that extra time you should be able to increase your clients and the positive results you bring them.

Then keep repeating these steps until you scale to the level you want to be at.

–Reinvest profits in your business
–Keep learning more
–Spend on getting new clients
–Hire help as you grow

I hope you enjoyed this article on how I made/make money on part time Internet business. Get started now. Commit to learning and never quit. You will get to where you want to be.

So you want to quit your job and pursue the Internet Lifestyle?

If you have decided that striking out on your own on the Internet is the way to go for you like I have, you will have some crucial decisions to make.

In my case I was (am) making really good money at my day job. This is great thing of course but it also can work against you.

It is much harder to quit your job and take a risk on your Internet business when you have all that steady and ‘safe’ money to lose.

That is why I am building my side business before quitting my day job (as of this writing Im still 3 months away from my quit date).

Basically you need to have the day job that pays the bills and work on your side business at the same time for awhile.

So this post is for all you out there who want to to make money online full time but arent ready to give up your steady paycheck yet.

I am going to show you how I am able to juggle both effectively.

In fact with these methods I have recently been given a promotion at work while at the same time growing my side Internet business to the best profits its had so far.

Before we get into those tactics lets look at the first two major options for starting your online business.

If you are going to quit your job and move into your own thing they are basically 2 main ways to go about it.

Method 1: The Burn the Ships Method

The Burn the Ships Method is the ALL IN route. You have decided what your Internet lifestyle business is going to be and you quit your day job to pursue it full time right away.

With this method there is no turning back, its live or die. Many people who have been successful at this swear by it because it really forces you to go all out in your business and do everything possible to succeed.

If you do not have a family to support or high living expenses this might be the best route to go.

Another reason you might want to do this method is if you REALLY despise your job and just cant wait to get out of there.

Even if you don’t have high living expenses, no family to support and cant wait to leave your job, Id still recommend at least having a few months of living needs saved up. I am a little more cautious financially. 

Method 2: The Safety Net Method

The Safety Net Method is less dramatic way of converting to this lifestyle. With this method you continue to work your day job while you build your Internet business and save money.

The benefits are obvious in that you can make income from two sources and build your business while still enjoying your usual lifestyle.

Now the drawbacks are you will have less time and more pressure to work on your side gig, so this means quitting your day job and reaching your ultimate goal lifestyle is likely going to be a longer process.

If you have a family to support or high living expense the Safety Net Method is probably the best choice for you. Also if you do not completely 100% hate your job/boss then this is choice works because you can stand to wait a little longer. 

For me I am more conservative financially, have a family to support and for the most part actually like my boss and job so the Safety Net Method is for me.

In this post I am going to describe exactly how I am using the Safety Net Method. These tactics allow you to ease out of your job and have the income to support your lifestyle and living expenses waiting for you in your new ventures.

What Kind of Internet Business Will You Have?

The first thing you have to decide is what type of business you are going to have. You need a business that is going to replace the income you make in your day job.

You will need it to generate this much income (or at least close) while you are working your full time day job. So how can you make money on your side gig while simultaneously being at your day job?

You need to either create and start a business and pay people you trust to run the day to day operations of the business or you need a business that’s income does not depend on your physical presence.    

A Good Side Business:

A really good side business for slowly transitioning out of your day job is an online business. How do I know that? Well I have one myself and hits so many items on the checklist.

Now of course its going to depend on what type of Internet business you have but most online projects are going to be more ideal for this than traditional location based business.

Lets looks at some of the advantages I have with my online business:

Ton of flexibility.

For the most part my work can be done anywhere/anytime there is an Internet connection.

Not to big of a burden.

If you want to build your side business to replace your day job you will need to work both at the same time for awhile. It would be tough to keep your day job income if your entire day was consumed with work on the side gig.

So you need something you can build slowly that won’t get you fired!

Has potential to make enough money:

Since this online business will be replacing your day jobs income eventually (and hopefully surpassing it), it has to have the potential to earn that much.

My primary online business is Internet marketing and sending solid leads from the Internet to my clients who own local service businesses.

Right now because of my limited time I only have two active clients. But with just two clients I already average a little more then ½ of what I make in my full time day job.

And my full time day job pays me over 6 figures a year.

So this online business is clearly a viable business. When I quit my full time day job that is going to free up about 55 hours a week for me (9 hour work days, plus 2 hours round trip commuting).  

To put that in perspective I only spend about 4-5 hours a week total on my side company right now.

Those hours involve almost zero time in trying to get new clients. (because I don’t feel I have the time to provide them a good service right now)

So if I had an extra 55 hours a week to work on my own business do you think I could get just 2 more clients and double my income?

Sales is not my strong point but Im pretty confident that it would not be to hard to get 2 more clients pretty quickly. In fact my goal as soon as (or right before) I quit my job is to have 5 clients total to more than match my day job income.

That is exactly what you need to do.

Figure out how much you need to make monthly to get the life you want or to match your current day jobs income.

How do you do that? Create your business and get your first client! You will need to simultaneously run your side business and day job for awhile.

After you have established you have a real business (no company is valid without at least one paying customer) then just do the math.

How much do you make per month on that one client? You should be able to do some quick calculations and figure out how many more clients you need to match your day job income.

The first rule is to keep that first client happy! You should bring a ton of value to them and make sure they are a recurring customer and not just a one off.

With just one customer it should not be too difficult to balance their needs with your day job responsibilities.

Then get another client and another, until you match or are close to matching what you make at work.

I will go into much more detail about exactly what type of side Internet business I have and steps on getting clients in a future post.

Getting Super Efficient in Your Day Job

So even just starting out with one client how do you manage to do your full time day job and still successfully run a side business?

You need to find time! I have a pretty busy job but work in an office in front of a computer so I have easy access to do tasks for my online business as well.

Now no matter how busy we are in our day job if we are being honest we still find time to get on Facebook or Youtube throughout the day.

The key to getting things done in your side business during the day is not to randomly jump on and work on it whenever you have 5-10 minutes to spare during your day job.

You wont get anything effective done in that short amount of time.

Instead dedicate a full 20-30 minutes uninterrupted to ONE important task in your business. During that 20-30 minutes, no phone calls, instant messaging or Facebook just focus on completing that task.

I try to do this 2-3 times a day. Instead of like my co-workers who are jumping on and off Facebook, CNN and all the other time wasting sites, I use these dead moments for my side business.

But I dedicate 20 straight minutes to it so I have time to get something effective done instead of just busy work.

So how do I manage to get 40-60 minutes free time for my side gig while at a busy job?

Time Management in Your Day Job

You have to be relentless in your pursuit of efficiency and time management. No one notices I’m working on my side business every day because I get stuff done at my job!

In fact I a probably get more done now and I’m a bigger value to my employer then I was before I started a side gig!

How can that be? Well I don’t fill my day up with ‘busy tasks’ any more.

I focus on getting the impactful things done first every day.

People usually avoid these types of tasks because they are normally also the most difficult thing to do as well.

So they spend all their time (I used to do it to) on unimportant ‘busy tasks’ that are easy but have no real impact on the bottom line important stuff management is interested in seeing get completed.

Controlling Your Own Time

As much as possible you have to get as much control over your own time as you can. One of the best strategies for me in gaining back more of my time when I started focusing on controlling meetings.

Meetings in the modern day work office are for the most part a complete waste of time!

Here is a humorous video from a Ted Talk on this https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F6Qo8IDsVNg

That video pretty much depicts my current job and the last 2 jobs I had before that perfectly on what a waste of time meetings can be.

People love to schedule meetings at my job!

I used to come into work some days and see 3-4 one hour meetings scheduled in a day. That is ½ of the 8 work day. How are you supposed to get any actual work done?

I will post in the future a full strategy on how to reduce the burden of meetings and the time suck they are. But for now here a few tips you can use.

• When someone sends you a meeting so you can answer a specific question, tell them you may be able to help them out right now and ask for a quick chat or email directly.

• Dont automatically accept meetings with no agenda. Email the person back and say “I want to be best prepared to help you, please let me know specifically what you need from me in this meeting agenda”. If your lucky they tell you and you give them the answer and boom your out of a meeting.

• People love to send 1 hour meeting requests, its kind of the default time window. Most meetings should NOT take an hour. If they are well run they can be over in a ½ hour or even 15 minutes. But here is the crazy thing! Many times all the agenda has been covered in a meeting but people will try to stretch out the hour by repeating themselves or filling up time with nonsense. So if someone sends you a one hour meeting request and it looks to you like you could help them quickly respond back and ask them to change it to a ½ hour meeting because “while you really want to help them you have a tight schedule that day”.

• If you absolutely cant get out of a meeting here is another trick you can use. Sometimes the meeting organizer has many teams they need to talk to. You get stuck on the line listening to all this stuff that is irrelevant to you. Contact the meeting organizer ahead of time and request to have your topic covered early. Use the excuse that you have another issue you are working on but you really want to attend and assist them.

Dedicating Hours

Maybe you dont have a job like mine where you work in an office on a computer all day and can just switch your time on YouTube watching cat videos to working on your side business.

If you have the type of job that requires your full attention during working hours dont give up on your Internet side business.

You can still be successful but it comes down to one word.

And that one word my friend, is:

SACRIFICE

Dave Ramsey has a great quote:

“If you will live now like no one else will, later you can live like no one else can.”

Now granted I think he means it in a financial planning sense and if you save money and sacrifice some things now you will be able to afford much more later in life.

But I apply this awesome quote in the sense that, you are going to have to give up some of your free time and work much harder for a year or two to build your business then if you just keep continuing to coast on your current routine of a day job.

BUT you will be rewarded greatly a few years from now when you can quit that day job and get your free time back.

All those guys who were not willing to make that 1-2 years sacrifice that you did will be stuck in the same job routine forever. 

You can also free up some time by taking advantage of all the software and online tools available to us today. I will write more in depth about this in the future.

One great platform I use to fullfil short term gigs I need done is Alex Beckers Konker.

Evenings and Weekend Work

People are selling the dream of making money on the Internet everywhere so why arent more people successful at it? Is it a scam? To good to be true?

No. The reason is because its not easy! What the gurus are leaving out is that it takes hard work and dedication to make it online today.

And that means when you get home from your long day job you get online and start working on your Internet business.

Not watching 4 hours of TV until bed time. Not playing video games all night. Not Netflix and chill.

When you get home jump online and work! That is what the average person is not willing to do and that is what makes you different.

You are willing to work all day and all week at your soul sucking job and then turn around and use your weekends and evening free time to strive for MORE and to build your future freedom.

Now I’m not saying you shouldn’t have some down time for fun activities just make sure enough of that free time is dedicated toward building your side business.

Because that extra time you put in now is going to give you back complete control over your time. That same precious time that your day job has complete control over now.

 So if you are like me and want to use The Safety Net method before quitting that cushy day job, follow these same techniques I have to set yourself all up.

Until next time!

Stefan

I sat there with kind of blank stare on my face. It was a tough question and honestly one I hadn’t really considered.

He asked me again, “So why exactly do you want to make one million dollars a year?” The person asking was a very successful ‘new lifestyle’ friend of mine named Dave who was mentoring me.

I dont know, I stammered, I guess if made a million a year I would have enough to cover the lifestyle I want and still not have to worry about money?

He shook his head slowly. So magically one million dollars is the exact number that gives you the lifestyle you want?

Look he explained, lets say you make roughly $1,000 to $2,500 per month per client right? On your side business you are currently making about $5,000 – $7,000 a month, which is $60,000 – $84,000 a year.

If you wanted to make a million a year income that would be about 35 clients x $2,500 (high end) which is just over 1 million a year.

I got where he was going with this. I was able to manage 2-3 clients at a time even with my full time job but not many more.

When I quit my job I would of course have more time to get more clients and make more money.

But the main reason I wanted to quit my job in the first place was to have more free time! If I were to go from 2-3 clients a month to 35 I would be swamped and it would totally go against the lifestyle I wanted!

Now of course I could hire people and scale up as I go but I’m not really interested in managing dozens of employees as that also goes against my ideal lifestyle.

This conversation is when I first realized you really need to get detailed and specific to the type of lifestyle you want so that you can be in total alignment with it in your work and goals.

I have since had this conversation with many people and have realized I wasn’t alone in my lack of planning in this area.

Some people I know are already doing really well financially but they really don’t know what their destination is. In other words they make more money just for the sake of making more money.

When they make more money they spend more money.

There really is no end to it.

On the other hand I’ve also talked to people who like me are exploring this Internet Lifestyle but they are not detailed on what they want and how much they need to make to get them there.

So what about you? Have you figured out your exact ideal lifestyle and what it is going to cost you to get there?

I promise you that once you know exactly what you want it will be easier to achieve it because all of your energy and goals can now be in alignment towards it.

Since being woken up on this Ive done a LOT of thinking about it.

Below are some techniques and exercises that I have used to give me more clarity on this.

I hope you can use some of these techniques in your own life. Id recommend it be something you do sooner rather than later or you may end up working really hard for years to get somewhere you didn’t want to end up being in the first place.

Imagine Your Ideal Day

One great way to truly know the lifestyle you want is to imagine your perfect day. If you had a really, really great day what would it look like?

And I don’t mean a day when your on vacation in Hawaii.

I mean what is your average day like? A typical Monday/Tuesday work day. Why not strive to make your typical, average day amazing?

So Im going to get a little new age with you but calm down this is totally worth it.

Close your eyes and imagine yourself waking up to your ideal reality.

What kind of bed are you in?

What does your bedroom look like?

What neighborhood do you live in?

Do you have a view from your house?

Who are you waking up next to?

Now think about the clothes you are picking out. What do they look like?

Now you are out in your garage. What kind of car is there?

Are you commuting to your office?

What type of office do you own? Or maybe you work from home?

How many hours do you work and what are you doing?

Do you work solo or have employees?

Now work is over and you are heading home for dinner. Imagine your perfect evening from dinner to bed time and everything in between.

So that exercise was the typical work day. Do the same thing for your perfect weekend.

My Ideal Day Example

Here is my perfect work day.

I wake up around 7AM and wash my face and brush my teeth. That is followed by 5-10 minutes of mindful thought and positive affirmations of how I want my day to go.

I then do 30 minutes of my daily P90X or some other similar exercise.

Next I shower and get dressed in my extremely nice outfit that I laid out the night before. I go out to my backyard in the Burbank Hills that has an amazing view of the city.

I relax on a chair and do a few minutes of reading or play with my son before he goes to school.

Now its time to go to work. I actually dont like working from home so I go out to my garage and climb into my BMW. Its a BMW X3. I know not the flashiest car in the world but I have a kid and wife so need to have some practicality with what I drive.

I take the short commute into Los Angeles and go to one of my favorite trendy coffee shops. After a few hours there I head up to the Penthouse of the office I share with my brother (luckily this penthouse office part already exists.)

It has a rooftop view of Los Angeles. I work from 9AM-12PM and then its time for lunch. I either go with people from the office out or eat the healthy lunch I brought from home.

I go back to work from 1:00PM to about 3:00PM. I then go out and hit a new, different spot in LA. One of my hobbies is to explore new places in the city so Im always looking for more time for this hobby.

Around 5PM I head home. After decompressing, I hang out with my son and wife and see how their days went.

After a clean, healthy dinner I spend an hour watching TV or doing some other activity with my wife and son. They go to bed about 8:30 and I jump back online and finish anything I missed during the day or plan out my one most important work task for the next day.

From 9:30 PM to 10:00 PM I read in my room or office. I then lay out my outfit for the next day and get ready for bed and off to sleep by 10:30 PM.

That to me is a perfect workday schedule and much different to what I have now.

Now I am forced to get up earlier than I want, rushed through the morning to die slowly in 45 minutes of LA traffic and sit at a desk for the next 9 hours.

Only to be followed by an over an hour commute in miserable LA traffic back to my house.

Do The Math On Your Ideal Lifestyle

OK now it’s time for you to do the Math on your Perfect Lifestyle. How much is your dream life going to cost you?

If there is a neighborhood you want to live in go online and look at houses that just sold recently. Pick out the absolute best house for you. How much did it sell for?

Now you know what you need to earn to achieve this major piece of your perfect day.

Do some research online for the cost of that car you pictured yourself driving? How much to buy it in cash?

What about your family vacations? Will you be taking 1-2, or maybe 3 a year? Estimate all that cost.

Now you figure out how many clients you need to pay for this lifestyle.

You will be able to achieve these things if you know what you want and how much it costs. Because once you know those two things you will know exactly what it takes to achieve it.

Just dont stop getting clients/selling products etc until you have that magic number you need to pay for your lifestyle.

My Lifestyle Math

So with a little bit of work and thought I already roughly know the cost of most of my ideal lifestyle. This is very important!

If you want to own a luxury car or a nice house dont just think to yourself “maybe someday”. Do some research, put pen to paper and figure out the cost of this life so you know exactly what you need to do to reach that ‘someday’.

The neighborhood I want to live in is called ‘The Burbank Hills’. I already live in Burbank so I know this is an expensive area.

So what you want to do is find a house you want to live in that’s for sale in the neighborhood you want to be.

Here is my example in Burbank

http://www.zillow.com/homes/for_sale/Burbank-CA/pmf,pf_pt/20060581_zpid/396054_rid/34.260337,-118.157788,34.103845,-118.492871_rect/11_zm/

Now my actual dream home would probably be with an Ocean view but I want to be realistic.

When I say realistic I dont mean what Im capable of affording I mean this isn’t just a fantasy for myself but a place I could realistically live with my family as well.

We already know we love Burbank, CA as a place to raise my kid so I wouldn’t force them to move to the Beach just because that is what I want (and could now afford)

So it looks like the kind of house I want in the neighborhood I want to live in is between 1.2 and 1.7 million. So lets call it 1.5 million. That is about 3xs the cost of my current place. My mortgage is roughly $3 grand a month so that x’s 3 = $9,000 a month!

Now of course Ill be paying a crap load of taxes with this being California and other costs so lets go up to $10,000 grand a month.

Not going to lie this sounds mind blowing to me to pay that much money every month. BUT my average client is $2,500 a month. So that means I only need 4 clients to pay for my dream house.

What if I wanted to buy the house outright? Id hate to be stuck with monthly payments that big.

Well at $2,500 a month and $30,000 a year per client that would be a whopping 50 clients I would need to pay it off in one year.

I already know that is more clients than I want so I would likely save for a year and put a huge down payment down first lowering the monthly payment.

(note: I believe in not overpaying for things even if you have the money so I might consider renting this place and investing the money instead but for the purpose of this exercise we will say I’m buying it)

Now with my car I already have a BMW X-1 so I’m familiar with this cost. A BMW X3 is only one model above what I drive now (again not a big car guy) and is roughly $40 grand.

So 5,000 x 8= $40,000 which means I could buy the car with 8 months of payment from 2 clients.

Or to buy it outright in 2 months I could do (8 clients x $2,500 for 2 months = $40,000.)

I would do this for everything in my ideal lifestyle.

For example my ideal lifestyle on vacations is 4 a year.

3 locally and 1 international.

The same process of breaking down roughly how much that costs for a 4 a year. Figuring out how many clients/products are needed to pay for it and work towards that.

RECAP

Can you see the power in this method? Most people just stagnate once they hit a certain level in their business.

Others do the opposite and keep working hard to grow and make more and more and more without ever thinking about what all the money should be going to!

It should be going to the ideal lifestyle you want. And I assume that includes lots of free time.

So if you do the math on your ideal lifestyle and it includes too much time investment in work you may need to re calibrate.

Either lower the expense of your life or find a way to expand your business and make more money without devoting all your free time to it.

If you are reading this article Id like to welcome you to my first post and hopefully the start of many more to come.

First let me tell you what this site is about. Its for people who are like me or are in a position I have been in. 

You know why? Because that is what I know about. I will never be giving advice on something I have not actually accomplished myself.

For example I have not personally made a million dollars so I wont be giving advice on that (until I do). I also don’t have a 6 pack like the guy in this picture so wont be giving advice on how to get shredded.

All of my articles will be from personal experience.

So is this blog for you?

Well do you have a decent career and make good money but you feel like you are missing out on something bigger or could be doing more in life?

Do you have a career that makes you enough money for a comfortable lifestyle but robs you of all your free time?

We live in exciting times where Technology, along with some research and hard work have created opportunities for people to quit their 9-5 day jobs and start a life where they are in more control of their time and the amount of income they can make.

This opportunity of escaping the 9-11 hour (with commute) daily grind of working for someone else is an intoxicating idea.

You have seen the Internet Marketing gurus living the good life like Tai Lopez or Pat Flynn from Smart Passive Income.

And you imagine what if you had more time to do things you want to do?

What if you could pursue the activities in life you actually enjoy?

What more could you do with your time if you didn’t have to work 5 days a week and only have 2 to yourself?

My Story

Here is my story. I actually have an amazing job. I’ve been working in IT for almost 15 years and have reached a very Senior level position. I make over 6 figures (not bragging, just giving context), work with great people and a fun company.

My employer is one of the largest and well know Film and Television studios in the world and I work every day right on a real live Hollywood studio lot right here in Los Angeles.

Really sometimes I am walking around the studio lot and have to ask myself ‘How the hell did I get here, this is awesome!”.

Sounds great right? But here is the problem.

Before I started working at this awesome company I already saw the Matrix. I don’t mean seeing the actual movie the Matrix but the modern American work lifestyle that I relate  the Matrix movie to.

If you dont remember the infamous blue pill vs red pill scene, here it is

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zE7PKRjrid4

Morpheus: It is the world that has been pulled over your eyes to blind you from the truth.

Neo: What truth?

Morpheus: That you are slave Neo. Like everyone else you were born into bondage. Born into a prison that you cannot smell or taste or touch. A prison for your mind.

Unfortunately no one can be told what the Matrix is. You have to see it for yourself.

Morpheus: This is your last chance….After this there is no turning back. You take the BLUE pill, the story ends and you wake up in your bed and believe whatever you want to believe.

You take the RED pill, you stay in Wonderland….and I show you how deep the rabbit hole goes…(NEO reaches for the red pill)

Morpheus: Remember..all I’m offering is the truth….

So here is how I match this analogy from this amazing scene for my purposes.

The Matrix is this default world of work and life that we are all trapped in that says, study hard then go to Corporate America and slowly climb the ladder for 30 years, until you either fall off or reach the top and then retire/die.

The Blue Pill is choosing to continue on the path of not exploring anything new or different but just going with the default options. When you see someone having success online or with a new age business you say “they got lucky”, or “they are just better at that”, or “that would never work for me”. So you go back to your daily grind/routine and only allow yourself to daydream of this lifestyle every once in awhile.

The Red Pill is choosing to open your eyes to new possibilities. Rejecting that the default plan to work for someone else the rest of your life is the only option for you. To look and listen to the people living this alternative lifestyle and saying, “If they can do it, well so can I!” “they are not necessarily smarter or luckier than me they just kept at it until they reached their goals”. Taking the Red Pill is making the decision to explore this possibility for yourself.

Morpheus is that person that has seen and is already living the possibilities you aspire to. Maybe you have a friend who works from coffee shops all day, travels when he wants to and never has to deal with commuting to an office everyday during soul crushing traffic jams. Or maybe you do not know that somebody personally but you follow someone online who is living that life you aspire to.

That is what happened to me. First I discovered the book the “4 Hour WorkWeek” by Tim Ferris. This is the first thing I remember coming across that opened my eyes to the possibility of not having to just do the default life and work path that society has laid out for everyone.

Next I found online these people who were living these incredible new age entrepreneur  lifestyles. And when I say “incredible lifestyles” I don’t mean driving nice cars and living in nice houses (although that can be awesome to lol).

What I mean is they seemed to have complete control of their time and how they choose to spend it. People like Pat Flynn, John Lee Dumas, Alex Becker and others had created their own online business in a (relatively) short amount of time.

They had control of their business, their income and most importantly their time!

You see no matter how high up you get on that Corporate ladder you are still leaning it up against someone else’s wall and they have control of you and how you spend your time.

Time is our most valuable commodity. We can make more money but we can’t make more time. And when your are working for a company 8 hours a day, 5 days a week for 30 years you are giving away life’s most valuable asset.

You are giving away your most valuable asset.

How did I get here

I think it was already politically incorrect by the time I graduated High School but if there was a “Most Likely NOT to Succeed” category I for sure would have been on the contenders list.

I grew up with very little parental guidance and as a consequence did not care much about school.

Luckily I had always been an avid and voracious reader so with that I was able to (barely) get through High School even though I gave very little effort.

After High School I took a few Community College courses (mostly to meet girls) and held just above minimum wage jobs with decisively little room for growth.

A few years into that I got extremely tired of having jobs that paid so little and were barely enough to get by. So I decided to start studying computer support on the side.

This was amazing timing right before the dot com boom where there was such a demand for IT knowledge that all you had to do was pass a few certifications to get hired somewhere.

I talked my way into my first Tech job with no experience and a couple of Microsoft certifications under my belt. Over the next 10 years I completely dedicated myself and made up for all those years of being a screw up.

On evenings and weekends after work I would study and work overtime which allowed me to quickly make my way up the IT ladder into more Senior level positions.

Fast forward to today and for the past 4 years I have worked at pretty much a dream IT job here on a Studio Lot in Los Angeles for one of the worlds most famous entertainment empires.

My boss is cool, the pay is incredible, the work is good and I even just recently got another promotion and another bump up in compensation.

So what’s the problem? Well the problem is I have already taken that Red Pill.

Like NEO I know there is more out there, that others have seen but I’ve only caught glimpses of. I WANT to go down that rabbit hole and see where it leads!

I have seen the dream of working for yourself and controlling your own time for myself and now there is no going back.

No matter how great my job is and how much it pays its just not worth the time cost to me to work for a company, not any company.

I commute an hour to work and an hour and a half back home. We have a 9 hour day with lunch so that’s over 11 hours a day, 5 days a week my time is controlled by someone else!

For that 11 hours a day I have about 5 hours of free time for myself and family (not counting sleeping).

For those 5 days a week of work I get just 2 on the weekend to have fun and take care of all my personal business (and sometimes I have to work for my company on the weekends).

For those 50 weeks of work a year I get 2 weeks off for vacation where I try to jam all my travel plans into.

Besides all that when you are in high level engineering you are expected to participate in an “on-call rotation”. Meaning they can call you anyplace, anytime and you have to drop everything you are doing and work.

My friend LJ Young who is also an engineer sums up what a pain in the ass this is in the video below:

And that is what my main reason for looking at other alternatives to income is. It comes down to getting my time back.

What is my escape plan?

For about the last 3 years I have been making money on the side with online projects and business. I am only able to dedicate about 4-5 hours a week on this since my day job and family keep me so busy.

Not going to lie. This has been difficult. Many, many of my attempts have failed and I have wasted countless hours going down rabbit holes that came back with no results.

But I did not give up! With a full time income at my job it wasn’t much for me to lose some money and time to try to achieve this on this side.

My first substantial success came with helping someone else business out, not my own.

I have a family member who owns a successful Law firm in LA along with his law partner. They were doing well but almost NONE of their leads came online or through their website!

They were getting all their clients just from word of mouth and offline networking efforts.

I made a deal with them that I would generate leads for them using Internet Marketing and they would pay me only per lead.

It was a great plan for me because I could put into place all I learned and it was great for them because they were only paying me per actual lead.

Want to guess how much my first paycheck with them was after the first month of hard work?

It was $88 dollars….needless to say it was less than I expected…BUT I was actually pretty encouraged. (I wish I still had the picture but dropped my Iphone with pic in the Ocean!)

If it was even possible to make $88 dollars I reasoned that could turn into more. It showed that what I was doing could produce income.  Now it was just a matter of figuring out how to scale it.

Progress was slow. The next month it jumped up to a few hundred dollars. 6-8 months later it was regularly in the thousands. Now as of this writing it averages about $5,000 a month with a few $7,000 and $8,000 dollars months here and there.

When it reached a few thousand a month is when I really realized the potential of this. After all this was really only one client (their firm).

If I can make $5,000 a month with just one client all I needed was 2 more for $15,000 a month! That would more than match my income from my job and I could quit!

But here is the issue I’m having. I barely have time to work on this Internet Marketing stuff between my full time job, my family and friends and living life.

Even with my one existing client that is generating the majority of my Internet Marketing income I only spend about 4-5 hours a week working on his stuff.

So the answer is obvious… I need to quit my full time career and focus my full time efforts on my own business.

And that takes us here and why I wrote this post….

The Goal of this Blog

My goals for this blog are mainly 2 fold.

The first is to publicly hold myself accountable to quit my current job/career in 6 months. (January of 2017) So I can pursue my dream of owning my business and having control of my time and lifestyle.

The second is to give an inside step by step look to others who are interested in pursuing this lifestyle and  hopefully inspire them to do the same.

There are tons of great blogs out there like Smart Passive Income and Charles Ngo that talk about how they quit their day jobs, started an online business and took back control of their own time.

But most of these guys have a similar story. They typically started in their early twenties and did not make much money in their day jobs or had not established themselves in another career yet. And you dont typically hear about them until after they have already had success online. 

My story is a bit different. I did not really “discover” this online lifestyle possibility until I was in my late thirties. I worked for years diligently in my career field to build myself up to that ‘6 figure income’ most middle class Americans aspire to.

There really is no financial desperation aspect to my situation. I could just continue on like this for the next 30 years and retire safe and sound in my sixties and wait to die like everyone else.

But.. for me it’s not that I am in desperate need for more money or hate my job. Its just that the Internet lifestyle has opened my eyes up to the fact that the default career path I am taking is robbing me of the best years of my life.

For example I spend 40 hours a month just commuting to and from work! Let alone the 45-50 hours a week spent at work.

I know they are others out there like me and that is who this blog is for.

You are in your thirties, forties or even fifties and you already have a good career but you want to try something else. Something that gives you the income you need but more importantly gives you your time back and affords you the opportunity to lead your ideal lifestyle.

I will also be documenting this transition to online success as it happens! I have not yet quit my day job and no where close yet to my online goals.

I want you to see the steps to the destination not just the final outcome like we see with so many well know people who have had great success online already.

What you will get out of this blog

This blog is a journey we are going to take together. I will be documenting how I am going to take my side business (with just one real client) and use it to replace my 6 figure income from my job. I will also be quitting that 6 figure job and career in the next 6 months. 

My goal is the end of January 2017. Its very scary but I hope writing this blog and sharing my story with you will help me with the courage I need to make this final step.

Along the way Ill share my wins,losses, philosophies and lessons. And I really hope to hear from you and others like you.

You have worked so hard for the success you have now but you are ready to go out there on your own and really take your work and life to the next level!