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Business or Job? Some people think that if they start their own business, they are no longer wage slaves. That isn't necessarily true. In fact, most business owners continue to work for their own business. They are simply wage slaves to their own business instead of someone else's business. In addition, their business often never actually matures into a real business because they don't allow it to become it's own entity. They want to feel "needed" so they never create the entire business system that allows the business to function as it's own entity completely separate from the owner. On the other extreme, there are people who believe that you must have a particular kind of business in order to eventually turn it into a "freedom business." That is rubbish too. All mature businesses are freedom businesses. Can you create a complete business system that works without you? Can you do it with any kind of business? Of course you can. Ray Kroc proved that with McDonalds. H&R Block with taxes. Morgan Stanley with stock brokerage. The only exception is when you actually design the business to be a cult of personality (such as having a blog on a domain with your own name). I read about Tony Robbins' attempts to franchise his seminars. No matter how hard he tried, his seminars just weren't very popular without him personally giving them. When I read about that, I took that as a challenge. My last Internet business was actually purposefully set up to be a cult of personality type business. I created it on a blog on this very domain. I built it completely based on my own personality. Eight months after starting that business, I was finished. I stopped writing blog posts. I stopped answering comments. I stopped creating products. I stopped generating traffic. I stopped optimizing sales pages. Everything was automated. Procedures and systems existed to ensure that all of the tasks required to run the business existed. I then watched it grow as I did nothing. The business had matured. I proved that it was possible to create a "cult of personality" based business that was complete and fully mature. I even sold it eventually. The asking price was $4 million, but the savvy buyer negotiated down to $3.5 million. They also negotiated a two year non-disclosure and non-compete agreement. That is important for selling a "cult of personality" type business. The buyer didn't want to continue to use my name. No problem. They created a pen name and used the blog to guide people to a new blog written under that pen name. Once all of the traffic was moved over and people were used to visiting the new blog, the buyer was now in full control of the business. I had built and sold a complete business system with an operating business that was based on my own personal name. Now I didn't do seminars like Tony Robbins. I'm still not sure how I could pull of his original goal. I'm still pondering that one. Maybe I'll take that challenge some day. But until then, don't kid yourself that your business model can't lend itself to freedom. 99.99% of all businesses can be matured to complete, documented, transferrable business systems that don't include the original creator or owner of that business. Pretending otherwise is just stroking your ego. |
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