Let’s face it creating dreams and plans are one thing. But to make anything happen in the real world, you almost always need another thing – MONEY. Granted, there are a good many dreams for which little or no initial cash outlay are actually required, and if your dream is one of those then by all means, put this article away and get your buns in gear! What are you waiting for – an engraved invitation? Shoo!
Okay, now that those lucky suckers are off and running, we can talk about how the rest of you are going to catch up!
The Old-Fashioned Way – The Establishment
The most obvious way to come up with the required cash outlay to put your dream in motion is to get another job. But what if you are already working a full shift (or more), or the local economy tanked when the widget factory got relocated to Tijuana? Or what if your job skills are, well…let’s be generous and say ‘vintage’?
Besides, finding and landing another job entails a lot of time and effort – updating your resume, searching for people and businesses that are hiring, applying, interviewing, getting turned down, starting the whole process over. You might even be faced with going back to school to acquire new skills in order to be competitive. But you barely have time for the work you do now, right, what with your busy schedule and all. Either that or, despite your best efforts, you’ve been unemployed for so long you’re seriously considering dropping that Buggy-Maker’s Apprentice paragraph off your resume and listing your current “slow” period as a personal sabbatical so that prospective employers will quit raising their eyebrows every time they get to your last date of employment.
No, I don’t expect you to go out and find another job, especially one of those that comes all wrapped up and ready to go in an already established business. You don’t need another job; you just need another revenue stream.
The New Way – Creating Revenue Streams
Job, revenue stream – what’s the difference? Simple. A job requires you to do all that prep work, go out and work hard to find someone else who has gone to all the work to create a position in their business and then, once you have the job, do all that work associated with that position. That’s a lot of work, and most of it is working for other people, by their rules.
Creating revenue is making cash for yourself, not working for someone else. Now, I’m not saying that you aren’t going to have to work. I’m just saying cut out the middleman and go to work for yourself, rather than using your precious time and effort making some middle manager’s life easier – and giving up a large chunk of the proceeds, to boot.
A “Brand Me” worker might seek a certain job for the sole purpose of gaining experience in a particular protocol or on a particular piece of equipment, and then move on to the next “step” in their personal business plan when that goal has been met to their satisfaction. Or a young businessman, who would ordinarily be working his way up the corporate ladder, might stay in a particular industry but request a series of lateral transfers across his field over the years in order to learn that trade inside and out – then leave, taking with him the experience and name recognition to launch his own business or become a freelance consultant.
But the biggest trends developing as a result of this new paradigmic mindshift are the movement of people who are leaving the employee status behind altogether and creating their own income, such as:
…people who decide to stay at home to pursue a dream or a lifestyle change and who create extra income contracting work such as medical transcription or web content writing
…the growing population of entrepreneurs and permanent or early retirees who either use their hobbies or dreams to create a business or hire out their knowledge and experience on a freelance basis; and people who dropped out of the rat race, or simply refused to join to begin with
…the voluntary simplicity and nomadic movements consisting of those who live on houseboats and in RVs, traveling the country at will and supporting themselves by engaging in any number of “pick-up” occupations that can be done wherever they are locally, or by business created to function online or over the phone.
Although the possibilities discussed in this article often involve somewhat less money than a full time job with benefits, they are often more than enough to generate the income you need to get your dreams off the ground. However, with enough creativity and determination many of them could be scaled up or combined to fashion a “string of revenue pearls” more than large enough to support a full time lifestyle, to contribute significantly to your bottom line or, if you so choose, to fuel an early or part time retirement.
Setting your own hours, doing your own thing by your own rules (within reason, of course) and working only as hard as you personally feel is necessary should be a right of all humans. After all, who’s a better judge of how much work needs to be done for you to get what you need? And, after you have what you need, why continue working at all?
(c) Soni Pitts
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Soni Pitts is the Chief Visionary Butt-Kicker of
. She specializes in helping others reclaim “soul proprietorship” in their lives and to begin living the life their Creator always intended for them.
She is the author of the free e-book “50 Ways To Reach Your Goals” and over 100 self-help and inspirational articles, as well as other products and resources designed to facilitate this process of personal growth and spiritual development.
