The Displaced African

Rest of the series:

1) How to discover your mission in life (part one)

2) How to discover your mission in life (part two)

3) Bonus:How to Discover Your Mission in Life 

 

Many of us already know how to do this.Many of us have already heard the principles needed to achieve success in a capitalist world recited over and over again. We have heard story after story after story about people who used these principles to climb to the capitalist mountaintop. In fact if you fall into this category, feel free to scroll to the bottom of the article where I have linked to 12 resources that will hopefully inspire you to do things bigger than you dreamed of before. They key though is not knowing what to do. It is doing what we know.

However, there will probably be some of you who have never heard of the principles needed to make money and be financially free. In short, they are:

1) Begin with a vision in mind/ Know Your Intended Outcome

Something you want to achieve. Make it more specific than ‘Just make money’ because the ways to do that are too many and you risk getting confused.

a) Maybe you want to be the first person in the global marketplace to fulfill a certain need like me with this blog or Henry Ford with cheap automobiles.

b) Maybe you want a certain lifestyle like Timothy Ferriss where you work less and live life more.

c) Maybe you want to work in a particular area such as physics or philosophy or botany and want to guarantee your financial security while you work there.

d) Maybe you want passive income streams so that you can work on enriching the lives of the disadvantaged.

The clearer you are on what you want, the easier it becomes to chose a quick path to success that you can stick to.

2) Chose the Quickest, Easiest Path to Success

This is a recent distinction I came to. When I first started this blog a few months back, I was trying to do a lot of things at once.

I was trying to work on creating passive income for the family business – a nursing agency, if you must know. I was trying to sell information products online. I was working on creating my own information products to market online.

Eventually about two weeks ago, I got a helluva lot confused. I was waking up every morning with a very long to do list. It was then that I had to sit down and figure out:

“What matters most to me? What will have the greatest impact and help me achieve what I want to achieve?”

I figured that it was this blog. Now, there is a high chance that this blog will never ever make me a dime. After all, it is a site for Africans. As Africans we are not exactly renowned for our financial generosity. However when I started this blog,I started it as the blog I wish I had read when I first immigrated and it gets me to my ultimate destination- which is to matter to Africa by giving some unique contribution to African society –quicker than any other path I was on.

That’s why being specific about what your eventual goal in life is so important. Once you know exactly what you want and where you want to go, choosing the road to get there becomes easier. When you are lying on your death bed, what do you want to look around and see? Work backwards from that point.

3) Flexibility of Approach and Rigidity In Terms of the Goal

Once you have decided on what it is you want to achieve, think of that as locking in your answer on some game show. Your answer will never change from that point on. From the moment you have decided what your target is, that’s it. There is nothing else that exists but that target.

That having been said, be very flexible in the approach you are willing to use to get to your target. In a Western society if your goal is to make $100 in a day for example there are a helluva lot of ways you can do that:

a) Ask your friends and family

b) Borrow it from the bank

c) Borrow it from loan institutions

d) Go work on a construction site or do some landscaping work.

e) Go beg for it on the street.

f) Go online and sell ebooks from clickbank using an adwords campaign.

g) Organize a lemonade stand or sausage sizzle etc etc etc

If the path you chose as the fastest to success is clearly not working, be willing to change and select the second or the third quickest approach. As long as you get there. That’s all that matters.

4) Develop Sensory Acuity

I like that term , sensory acuity, it’s half way between being a complex and a simple term. Sensory acuity in plain English is developing and sharpening the awareness of whether or not what you are doing is achieving results. If you are really serious about achieving your goal, everyday sit down for maybe half an hour and ask yourself:

Today, overall did I get any closer to my goal? What did I do that took me closer to my goal? What did I do that took me away from my goal?

The goal over time is to get rid of everything that takes you away from your goal and consistently do the things that will take you closer to your goal in the quickest and fastest way. You’re success is determined as much by what your willing to include in your life as what you are willing to exclude.

5) Persistence and Consistence

This is what truly separates the wheat from the chaff. Are you willing to do what takes you closer to your goal, over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over……day after day after day after day after day after day. Even when it gets boring. Even when you see little to no results. Even when it’s more painful to do it than to not do it. Even when there are doubts in your mind and in the minds of those around you. Are you willing to commit to every day moving yourself closer and closer to your goal. For those of you who have studied this stuff with as much passion as I have, you know this tip alone is worth it’s weight in gold.

6) Prepare Yourself for Success

This is what seperates the overwhelming majority of lottery winners who lose their money in a few years from the people who actually continue to get richer over time. Make it a habit to study and understand the habits of the succesful. Study yesterday’s post for some thoughts on how to immitate success. Learn to think like the succesful think and act like they act. Read this story from Oprah.com. It’s pretty indicative of the fact that making and maintaining money are skills that are far from innate and that some people simply aren’t skilled enough to handle money or success.

You Have Heard the Six Principles Above Before………

…..and you will probably hear them over and over and over and over again. This is because they are like the fundamentals of a sport like football and basketball. They are the things you must do to achieve and maintain success. Don’t ignore the fundamentals in favour of more esoteric or complicated ideas. The above ideas are cliche because they have worked time and time again in a variety of circumstances. What I want to do to set this post apart is give you a bunch of quirky stories to inspire you and get you thinking about the host of possibilities that exist in terms of financial success.

1) Timothy Ferriss: 4 hour workweek

I have already discussed the Timothy Ferriss story . What I thought I would include was a link to how this guy got his book onto number one on the New York Times bestseller list. If any of you aspire to be authors, especially non-fiction ones. Enjoy.

If you want to listen to a free interview where he discusses his story and his philosophies,you can find it here or by doing a Google search for Timothy Ferriss interview.

2) Wine Library TV

Wine Library TV pretty much started as a little video blog where a man by the name of Gary Vaynerchuk tasted a few wines everyday on camera. Now this website is huge, $50 million dollars huge. You can find an interview he did with a guy by the name of Rich Schefren here

3) My mentor: Yaro Starak
This is the man who is responsible for your reading this post. This is the man who is basically teaching me the ins and outs of blogging as we speak. What I love about Yaro is that Yaro isn’t in maniacal pursuit of success. Rather, Yaro prefers a lifestyle of low pressure where you are earning as much money as you want to earn doing what you want, when you want and with whoever you want. If you want to read his business story and pick up an idea or two, check it out here at the Entrepreneur’s Journey website(It’s a four part series).

4) How Jay Abraham got started

An absolute genius in the world of marketing is Jay Abraham. He did not go past college but in the past thirty years has helped companies increase their revenues by $7 billion. His language may get a little complex (Africans should have no problem with that) and he may be a bit hard to understand at first, but once you understand Jay’s ideas, you realize: He is a genius. I thought I would share with you, a part of his story that he shared during Tony Robbin’s Powertalk series (Bloody fantastic audio series, pick it up when you can).Feel free to Google him or check out his book below on how you can squeeze more financial value out of everything you are currently doing at little to no cost.

 

5) The Diabetes website
To be honest I never would have thought of not only starting a diabetes blog but also using it to make money. A sweet tale (bad pun, I know)

Diabetes Blog Earns $40K per year

6) The Stephen Pierce story

An African American who went from being a gang member and homeless high school dropout to Internet millionaire. A story of persistence. You can find a video (audio with pictures really) interview he did where he talks about his story right here.

7) The story of Hitwise

When I was in business school, I had the pleasure of watching one of the founders of the Hitwise, Andrew Giles,speak to my class. I must admit, he was a very boring speaker. However, a boring speaker isn’t always a boring man. After all, he is worth hundreds of millions, after him and his business partner sold their company Hitwise a short while back. Here is a transcript of an Interview he did with smartcompany website. For more in depth information on the man, check out Wealth Creator Magazine and the Australian Business Review magazines or just Google him and his company Hitwise.

He filled the need for Internet statistics and in so doing filled up his pockets.

 

8 ) Sandstorm Events

Truly one of the more idiosyncratic ways to make money. Sandstorm events make their money by building sand castles on beaches all over the world and having workshops where they teach people the art of building sand castles. I also had the pleasure of seeing the founder speak while I was in business school ( you don’t realize how valuable your education is until you have hindsight, I had access to brilliant minds back then).

I have browsed around to find any places where I can find interviews with the director, Sharon Redmond, but alas I can’t find one. If anyone is interested in finding out more, contact me and I’ll see if I can set up an interview with her.

9) The story of Andrew and Daryl Grant

If there is one thing the final half of 2007 taught me, it’s the incredible power to create your ideal lifestyle using the Internet. Case in point is Andrew and Daryl Grant; a couple from Brisbane who made $250,000 either last year or the year before selling ebooks online. They find out what people are searching for on Google, pay someone peanuts to write a book on it and sell the books online. Learn more about their so-simple-why-more-people-don’t-do-it-i-don’t-know system in this two part interview conducted by Yaro Starak.

10) Moms Who Made Millions

Oprah recently did a show on mothers who made millions of dollars. All the stories were fantastic. The one that stuck out was the mother who made money by (IMO) making ugly shoes, prettier-but-still-ugly shoes. Check out the story from Oprah.com right here.

11) The story of Erwin Mcmanus

As you stay with this blog, you will hear A LOT about this man. He has literally changed my life. He is one of the best thinkers and speakers I have ever seen.

Now don’t the name fool you, Erwin Mcmanus is actually a hispanic man from El Salvador who is the founder and head of Mosaic based in Los Angeles. I remember the first time I saw him speak was quite a while ago, maybe one or two years ago. He was meant to speak during a church conference on Friday and Saturday then speak during the main service on Sunday. I watched all three of his talks and I actually seriously considered walking up to him after the service and telling him that I was going to follow him and be his personal assistant for the next couple of years (then I began to think about air fare, accomodation etc etc). I know I can’t do his life story justice and so I will search deeper for resources that tell this story of this amazing man. In the meantime, check out www.mosaic.org for more information on his organization and www.mosaic.org/podcast to hear him speak.

12) Resource for people who want to make money online: 28 Ways to Make Money With Your Wesbite

The blog daily blog tips did a great job of summarizing the ways that one can make money from blogging. You can find the blog post here. Yaro Starak did a great job of following that up with some additional input of his own.

I really hope this has been valuable to you. If you think there are any resources I missed, need help learning more about any of the people mentioned, want to say hi or think I am smoking helium and blowing it out (??), contact me or leave a comment below.

I finished a series! Yay! The first series ever completed in the history of the Displaced African. Mark this day my friends!

Be blessed y’all and go out and spread the blessings to others,

Mwangi

Tags: make money, make money online, purpose driven life

This entry was posted on Friday, February 22nd, 2008 at 1:10 am and is filed under How to Discover Your Mission in Life and Use It to Make. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.