From Getting Real by 37signals:
…do what you can with the cash on hand. Think hard and determine what’s really essential and what you can do without. What can you do with three people instead of ten? What can you do with $20k instead of $100k? What can you do in three months instead of six? What can you do if you keep your day job and build your app on the side?
Now that my main project has become my side project, this is going to be more important than ever.
— Me since the age of 12.
I’ve been working on a project for the last eleven months. In reality this is only the most recent phase of a project I’ve been working on for ten years. The project is to figure out how I’m going to make an acceptable living. (I’m currently making a living, but it is not acceptable, for many reasons other than money.)
For the last eleven months I’ve been learning how to make a living online. I’ve spent hundreds of hours, and thousands of dollars, and you know what? So far I’m not making shit. I’ve made sixty five dollars, but it cost me a hundred dollars worth of free advertising. So if I’d had to pay for it… it would’ve been a loss.
Beyond all the failure (or rather, temporary lack of success) it turns out there is one great quality I’ve come to appreciate:
I haven’t quit.
I will go long periods without any productive activity, but I haven’t quit. I’ll piss away a mentorship that I paid a lot of money for, giving me direct access to an amazing source of experience, advice, and resources, but I haven’t quit. The one thing that gives me hope is it’s been eleven months, and I keep on starting, over and over again.
I can’t give up. This is too important. It’s the rest of my life. So as frustrating as it is to look back on my time log and realize I haven’t done any productive work since July 24th (two weeks ago), I will start again. I’ll probably start many, many more times before I find lasting success. I’m an expert at starting. And I have to believe if I start enough times, eventually I’ll figure out how to finish.
After a week of being re-tweeted by Ed Dale, and discovering that this web site is starting to rank number one for a Google search of my name, I discovered something even bigger. Yesterday, a little over four months from my entrance into the world of internet marketing, I made my first dollar online! …and not just one dollar… $65.79!
It’s really not important exactly how I made the money. (A little knowledge is a dangerous thing.) What is very important is how I got to this point.
It started with reading The 4-Hour Workweek by Timothy Ferris. This book not only inspired me to take action, it showed some amazing possibilities for how to do so. The book would seem like pure hype if he didn’t back it up with great content. Luckily he does. It’s just $12.96 on Amazon.
It wasn’t long after reading the book that I stumbled upon the Thirty Day Challenge. This is the program that will give you, in one month, a spectacular foundation in internet marketing. It’s no joke that you start a simple online business and a million-dollar startup the same way, and this program teaches you how. Those of you who don’t know me may write it off as hype. The rest of you know that I don’t get this excited about too many things, and when I do, there’s a reason.
If you’ve ever had any thoughts of starting a business on the side, I urge to take a look at this site, and take it seriously. If you don’t live the life of your dreams, it’s not because you never found out how, it’s because you didn’t stand up and take action. Click on the logo.
UPDATE: It is now called simply ‘The Challenge’, and the link has ben updated accordingly.
