Thursday, April 18, 2019

Sometimes you have to take some time to yourself and recharge and get away from your normal routine. Today I decided to get away from my regular 9 to 5 and attend a seminar. I figured that as long as I have my regular 9 to 5 job and have one or two streams of income coming in and also, as long as I am doing a good job there then I should go pursue other things in my life. When I first started my job I heard over and over several times from my coworkers and also my boss this mantra they used to say all the time. And finally it hit me after many years working:

“You work so you can live; You don’t live so you can work.”

And it’s a good motto. You don’t live just to go to work and ride back and forth and push paper and be a robot to someone else and have nothing going on in your life. I was doing things upside down for so long just being a robot. Basically a zombie and married to my work. Although I joke about it, it’s not really funny when it affects the quality of life and your relationships and your whole outlook on life. I remember also hanging out with people when I used to go on dates and several people and a lady reminded me to the effect of “who knows how long you will live and what will happen in your future?” You can keep planning and hoping that one day something will happen in the future or you can concrete steps to make the kind of life you want happen right now. This was a person that had said they would go to Europe or go on these big vacations once she found someone in their life etc. But we have to realize that we go through life hoping and thinking that someone or something is going to magically come into our lives and change our fortunes and that day never comes, sort of like that play Waiting for Godot by Samuel Beckett. You keep waiting and waiting, hoping that if we only won the lotto, or that the most favorable circumstances come and never take action. You might as well be waiting for the Great Pumpkin to come. And this may not apply to every situation like committing to a stock price action, but sometimes you may have to pull the trigger and get your skin in the game. There’s never a perfect time for everything always. And relying on the thought that it’s the best time or that there’s significance to one particular circumstance is only a setup for disappointment if it doesn’t happen. And unless you’re a NASA scientist launching a rocket-ship to the moon or waiting for a solar eclipse to happen, sometimes the best you get will be the best you get and you have to make do with what you have and continually adjust. This person finally took the vacation they always wanted. And they did it even if they had to do it alone and see the world that they wanted by their self.

So anyways, I saw in my inbox an invite to go to a Small Business Development conference meeting earlier in the week and decided to request some time off this week to leave early. I already had some time off for what they call a “mental health day”. What this entails is debatable as to whether it helped me relax but I left early and cleaned off my desk off in anticipation of Easter weekend. It’s typically a ritual for me to declutter and leave a nice clean fresh workspace to come back to and so no one can mess with my stuff on my desk. I left around when I would be taking lunch and drove about 40 minutes. I wanted to give myself time to get there and not have to worry about traffic. Had a small lunch of apple cider, crackers, fruit bars and water.

It was actually a nice day out in the mid-70’s and was right by a local library. I went in and saw they had a lot of great material in their packets. There was a writing pad, a simplified business plan outline, chart of entity comparison, business entity selection chart, articles of organization for a domestic LLC, notice of mandate for filing sales tax returns with links to the business website for the state, SS-4, application for vendor’s license to make taxable sales, 11 step startup launch marketing plan, reading material, survey, page of upcoming events, steps to starting a biz, legal aspects of starting a biz, independent contractor / employee questionnaire, steps to make the biz legit, basics of tax, biz insurance, quick start info, forms to file, more tax info, FAQ on biz startups, accounting and info on the small business center.

So I went there mainly hoping to get some answers on P.O. Box addressing and street addressing answers. I also asked some questions regarding LLC’s, liens and liability and found some people to network with up there. I believe that the class was good but kind of wish we had more affirmative answers but we got a lot of resources to look up in the future. I did an email followup and then drove home. It still took about 30 minutes to get home but I stopped by the store to pick up some house cleaning products, food and then later went out to have some food and go to pick up some hot sauce. One of my favorite sauces is the Pain is Good brand Garlic style hot sauce. I also got a chance to make some desserts.

Now granted it seems like I just went from work into some other business type work. But this to me was worth it because it was in the pursuit of what I wanted, a future where I could establish or start small and set up something toward what I wanted in my future and that includes passive income or at least a second stream of income. At the business meeting there was a banker that talked about what they look for when approving loans and the banker specifically made reference to “steady stream of income” which is what is key to getting yourself financially free.

A key thing the presenter mentioned also was that you have to be willing to take a risk and be willing to be subject to criticism, market whims and feedback and adapt as needed. It does no one any good if you have the best looking ship and don’t use it. The metaphor used was “It is better to have your ship wreck at sea than rot in the harbor.” All the knowledge you get from dating coaches or business training does no good if you don’t apply it or ask your crush out on a date. It never happens. You learn better that way and can pivot and adapt. The people that started businesses also were not necessarily college educated. People like Beyonce didn’t go to college and is massively successful. Generations before they didn’t have a lot of educational schooling and they started their own businesses also. Granted the times have changes and more regulations but even now many tech startups like Google didn’t anything more than a bit of vision and eager hunger and luck. A recent article in Yahoo Finance quotes Eric Schmidt who was the former CEO who said “You don’t have to have a computer science degree, but you have to have an analytical bent” to be a good leader especially in tech companies. Check out keywords “Eric Schmidt joins Influencers with Andy Serwer”.

In another article there’s going to be some discussion about passive and additional streams of income.