Financial Sorcery: Magical Strategies to Create Real and Lasting - Jason Miller 2012
Entrepreneurial Magic
Owning your own business is the American Dream for a reason. To have the amount of money you can make limited only by your own ingenuity and hard work is the defining promise of capitalism. To control your time, be your own boss, and master your own destiny is a very appealing life. It can also serve as a way to circumvent some obstacles that conventional jobs present.
Do you know what Steve Jobs, Richard Branson, Duncan Bannatyne, Giorgio Armani, David Thomas, Michael Dell, and David Karp all have in common? First, they are/were all multi-millionaire entrepreneurs. Second, none of them have/had a college degree. In fact, 132 of the Forbes 400 Richest Americans have no college degree. Again, I am not against college by any means; I am just pointing out that when you work for yourself, it doesn’t really matter whether you have a degree or not.
For that matter it also doesn’t matter if you have recently commited a felony or been fired for negligence from your last 10 jobs. If you have holes in your resume, have all your experience in a dying or dead industry, or are just too old/young/ugly to get hired, none of that matters when you are working for yourself. There is no one you need to convince with a resume and cover letter. You just need to be able to actually do the thing you are doing. Do it well and be smart about your business and you will make money.
Some people like to fantasize that all rich people inherit their wealth and that there is no room for the common man to move up, but the surprising truth is the 80 percent of American millionaires are first-generation affluent—they made their way themselves.1 If it is wealth you seek, owning your own business can be one of the keys to attaining it. T vhege he rewards will all be yours, but of course so will the risks.
Risky Business
Many people worry about the risk of failure and often cite a statistic done by Inc. magazine and the National Business Incubator Association (NBIA) claiming that 80 percent of small businesses fail within their first five years. This stat has never been shown to be true, however, and more recent and reliable studies based on “exit rates” rather than “failure rates” show that whereas 64 percent of businesses may change ownership within five years, only 5 percent file for bankruptcy within that time.2
It is also worth noting that although a job with a paycheck might seem like a safer option than running your own business, they each have their dangers: You can always get fired or laid off from a job—something that you are not likely to do to yourself.
Starting a Business as Secondary Income
You don’t need to quit your day job in order to start your own business. A good way to mitigate risk is by owning your own business and working a day job. Now that the Internet limits the need for brick-and-mortar offices and store fronts, more and more people are finding the time to keep their 40-hour-a-week job and run their own business on the side. Yes, you will have to give up some TV shows, and maybe you won’t be able to go out as often as you used to, but the rewards and fulfillment of owning your own business can more than make up for it.
I am a huge believer in having multiple sources of income. There is simply too much that can go wrong with any one source: You can get sacked, your investment portfolio can get wiped out in the recession, or a business you own can go belly up. If any of these things happen to you and you have multiple sources of income, you will probably be able to weather whatever the financial storm brings. The world economy is getting tougher, and that means we need to get cleverer in how we beat it.
The different possibilities and obstacles presented by different business types make it hard to put together a linear, step-by-step strategy, so instead I am going to talk about different concepts and principles and how to weave your magic into them for success. Let’s start with motivation.
Motivation
When people start their own business they are motivated by two things: passion and money. Although both of these are important, I think it is key to know which of these two is your primary motivator.
If money is your key motivator, that makes life simple: Find something profitable and do it. It could be as simple as building a Website for the local Kosher Candy shop with no Web presence and shipping their product in return for 10 to 30 percent of what they sell. It could be as complicated as an iPhone app or a new type of medical device that you invented. The point is that you don’t need to be in love with what you are doing. The passion is there, but it’s the passion for business itself and making money that drives you, not the passion for the product. It is pure business and there is nothing wrong with that. Given the good that money can do for yourself and others, I hope that you see how simply making money can be a great passion for people.
Although it is great, and perhaps even a better financial decision, to start a money-motivated business, experience has shown me that most of you will choose to start a business that is passion-motivated. This is where you are following a passion as a side business and making money doing something that you love. This is what I am doing even now as I write this. If you have a primary job that you d {ob nd making on’t necessarily love or even like, this is your chance to make money at a passion, and maybe even transition away from your day job eventually.
You may have already read books about starting your own business, whose primary feature is making money from your passion. Unfortunately such books rarely talk about the downside of anything. Make no mistake—there are some downsides to letting your passion drive you that I want you to take into account:
The biggest danger you face is taking something you love as a hobby and ruining it by turning it into a career. Remember, as a hobby you do it when you want and how you want. As a business, it will not always, or even often work out that way. Do not let your business destroy your passion by making it just another crappy job. I still love what I do, but trust me, there are days when I would rather watch a movie than do a protection spell for a client.
The next biggest danger, and the reason that many passion-based businesses fail, is letting passion blind you to the flaws of your business model. A lot of people write me looking for magical assistance with a new business. They have a great passion to do something that almost anyone would tell them is ill-advised, but no real thought as to how it will get done or how they will overcome obstacles. They read a few books telling them to follow their passion and never give up, and get a sort of “If you build it, they will come” mentality. When I ask people how they plan to overcome the obvious flaws or succeed in a business that is in decline, I cannot tell you how many people just shrug and say that they trust the gods to guide them. You may want to open an occult store with all your heart and soul, but unless you have one hell of an angle, it will fail. It’s almost a guarantee. We are magical thinkers, but if an idea is bad enough, all the passion and sorcery in the world will not force it to succeed.
The last really big danger is confusing love of product with love of the business of that product. In the last few years I have talked to a lot of people who have wanted to open occult stores. All but one of them had no knowledge or interest in sales and retail. Whether you are selling books, video games, or condition oils, no matter how much you love these things, in the end they are “units,” and if you hate the idea of selling units, you will hate selling what you love as well.
Whether you choose to turn a passion into a profit or go for the money for money’s sake does not matter. What matters is that you do something and make it happen.
The Idea and the Market
The biggest problem people have getting a business started is generating an idea in the first place. This is a huge advantage of being a sorcerer. When searching for an idea for a product, I first make sure that I am meditating regularly. Then I very simply perform an invocation to draw an idea to me. This can be aimed at your HGA or Agathodaemon, at a personal saint or supreme power, or at a Jupiterian or Mercurial power. In my case I most often use Manjushri, but I have used Jupiter and Tiriel as well.
Once you perform the invocation and send that call out to the universe for a good and profitable idea,3 make sure to pay special attention to omens and signs. I also make sure that, apart from meditation, I make time for my mind to roam freely. In meditation you are suppressing or releasing any thoughts that are not the object of the meditation; this includes inspirations and ideas that in another setting are worth exploring—thus the need for free thought tim {e tsiness
If you really have no idea of what you might like to do, take a look at your hobbies and interests and make a list of the skills that go with them. In the course of your magical studies alone you have probably developed some research skills, crafting skills, organizing skills, and some other useful talents. See where these can be applied and monetized. What else have you done?
Another tactic is to take two or more interests and combine them. This often makes for something unique, as well as something that is marketable to a very specific group rather than the whole world, giving you a manageable population to market to. For example, a person in one of my financial magic intensives wanted to make a living as a professional astrologer, but was getting nowhere. I asked her what other interests she had, and the first thing that came up was horticulture. It is hard to distinguish yourself as an astrologer; there are just too many of them marketing to the New Age crowd for someone to be noticed without an angle. But an ad by an astrologer in a horticulture magazine would garner more attention. Astrology can be applied to almost any pursuit, but specializing helps you stand out. Spells for Investors. Yoga for Surfers. Reiki for Runners. You get the idea.
Remember, your idea does not have to be perfect. It does not have to be sublime. It just has to be marketable and profitable. You need to know specifically who you will be marketing it to.4 This group should have four factors:
1. It should be narrowly focused so that you can market to them.
2. It should have the desire for the service or product you provide.
3. Its members should have an ability to pay.
4. Ideally, you should be a member of the target group yourself.
If any two of these four factors are missing, it’s probably not a good idea.
Avoid Pre-Made Systems
There are a lot of scams and dead ends out there. Watch out for expensive classes on how social media will make you a killing, how you will become rich by self-publishing your book, or how you will use System X to sell real estate or trade stocks.
Most especially watch out for multi-level marketing companies such as Quixtar, Amway, and Shaklee. It is true that these are no longer the outright scams they were 20 years ago. Some people even manage to make a couple hundred bucks or so extra a month, but have to work their asses off every minute of every day and exploit all their friends and family to make it happen. Unfortunately, most people lose money when they get hooked up to these companies by purchasing motivational and training materials that seldom lead to increased profits.
Apart from the money and time suck, have you ever had a friend try to sell you on one of these? It’s creepy. Their eyes glass over and they start repeating the script they were taught verbatim. They always refuse to mention the name of th {he >
If it sounds too good to be true and comes to you all wrapped up in a nice, neat package, my advice is to avoid it. Schemes like that are usually designed to make someone else money!
Testing Your Idea
One of the great things about living in today’s world is that unless you are opening a brick and mortar store or an Internet business that needs tens of thousands of dollars in equipment right off the bat, you can crash-test a new business for very little money. Open a Website, start a blog, pay for some Google ads, and try to actually sell your product. Asking people whether they would buy it is not enough—people will say they will buy lots of things. Ask people to actually buy it to see if it will sell. If it doesn’t sell, try something else.
When I get involved in a venture I look for three factors:
1. Can I test it cheaply?
2. Does it have low overhead?
3. Will it generate enough profit to be worth my time?
Testing: When I started the Strategic Sorcery Course, I let people know I was doing it and took payment from people for a month before I wrote the first word, with the understanding that if a certain amount of people did not sign up in 30 days, I would refund their money and scrap the idea.
Overhead: To create the course, I bought a new computer. That’s about it.
Profit vs. Time: The course took a lot of time to write, but once it was written, it was finished. Other than marketing, I spend hardly any time on it, yet I continue to make a profit.
Another example is from a friend of mine who invented a new type of shower curtain/product dispenser.
Testing: She made several for friends, then contacted Guthy-Renker to see if the company was interested. People there tested it and made her an offer.
Overhead: A hundred bucks or so for the materials for the first few that she made, most of which she got back by selling to friends.
Profit vs. Time: Not much per unit because now Guthy-Renker gets the largest cut, but with the amount of product the company moves, she makes a few hundred dollars a month for doing absolutely nothing.
In cases of large overhead, this ideal is not always possible. Take, for instance, the countless people I have met who want to open occult stores.
Testing: There’s not really any way to test this until you actually do it. You can open a kiosk or booth at a flea market, but that is not the same and usually ends up being its own dead end.
Overhead: Enormous! If you are in a good town with many hip and interesting shops, the rent is probably through the roof. If you are not in such a town you probably would not have the traffic to support your business.
Profit vs. Time: You have to be there for it to work. Ask a proprietor of a shop if he/she thinks it is a profitable venture. It is an enormous time commitment with not a lot of payback in profit. It must be a labor of love, which is fine, but you might find you need yet another source of income. The amount of {Theyba occult store owners I know who pay their bills either with a second job or from a spouse’s income would shock you.
I love occult stores. I do. More than that, I love the people who run them—especially those savvy enough to do it successfully. It can be done, but it requires a lot of things to line up right. If you think that owning an occult store is your ticket to easy street, I know a few shop owners who will tell you differently! I believe in supporting occult and New Age stores however I can, but there is a reason that most of them close up within a year or two of opening.
Brick and Mortar
So far I have been talking mostly in terms of starting an Internet-based home business. The reasons for this are obvious: With a physical location you have higher overhead, a need for staff and keeping regular hours, and up-front costs that are much greater than doing a ’net-based business. It is just easier to start—and, if necessary, close down—an Internet business.
But of course not all businesses can be conducted online. If you do decide to open a store or an office, I urge you to keep a few things in mind.
1. Location is worth paying for. Opening up a vintage clothing store in the hip part of town will be more expensive than opening it in the ’burbs, but it will be way more profitable if people can stumble across you during a night on the town than if people have to drive an hour to some random suburban location next to a 7-11 and a pizza place. If you are going to bite the bullet and have costs, then make sure you are getting your money’s worth.
2. Do not fear local competition. Many business owners get upset when another similar business opens in the same town or, worse, on the same street. True, some of your customers may go to the competition, but often, having more than one shop will draw more customers to both of you. When I was growing up, we used to drive an hour and a half to a little town on theDelaware River called New Hope. Back in the day the town had three different New Age/occult stores within a few blocks of one another, as well as several readers, and a bookstore with a healthy occult section. Rather than suffering by competing with one another, the presence of so many stores made New Hope a destination for shoppers from all over the tri-state area. You would not necessarily drive an hour just to go to one shop, but you certainly would to spend the day at three or four. This is also how cities typically work: Shops of similar type cluster together, forming districts. Most cities have a jewelry district, a fashion district, and a Chinatown. New York even has a chess district of shops that sell chess boards and pieces.
3. Bigger is not often better. The larger your store is, the more it will cost to fill it. People avoid like the plague places that look as though they are closing up. A small shop brimming with merchandise will seem to be doing much better than a store twice its size that has empty spots on shelves. Paying for fewer square feet is also a bonus. You may have dreams of having a comfortable stage for readings or lectures at your bookstore, but you are paying for that space even when it’s not in use. Better to move things around when needed.
4. Don’t think of yourself as an alternative to the Internet. Even if you set up shop in a physical store, you need Internet marketing and presence. Too many places are scared of the Internet and do anything they can to keep people from looking at the product they sell online. I would do the opposite. Don’t freak out when people start scanning the UPC label with their smart phones. Tell people to look at Amaz { lompeting on reviews for your product. Even if Amazon has it for a few bucks less, people will usually opt to buy what is right in front of them.
5. Try to own the building that houses your business, if you can swing it. Apart from the many long-term financial benefits of owning real estate, and the income from renting out any other offices or storefronts in the building, owning your building lets you control your rent and utilities expenses. Ivo Dominguez, author of Spirit Speak and Casting Sacred Space, is not only a cunning author and sorcerer, but businessman as well. He not only owns the Bell Book & Candle shop in downtown Dover, Delaware, but also the building it is in. Owning that building has proved to be integral to the store’s continued survival and profitability.
One nice thing about a brick and mortar location is that you have a lot of opportunity to work direct, long-term magic. Here are some classic examples of charged objects you can place in and around your store.
Lodestone in the cash drawer. Feed it every day with iron filings to magnetize the money that is placed underneath it, so that what goes out brings more in.
Money-drawing floor wash in the store and on the stoop. Sassafras for keeping money, cinnamon for drawing money, and licorice for sweetening relations.
Money-drawing lamp in the back room that gets refilled and re-lit every day.
Rose of Jericho in a bowl of water. This is a plant that is a big old dusty brown ball when it’s dry, but when you place it in water, it unfolds and turns green. It will draw negative energy into the water, which should be changed every Friday.
Sigils of Jupiter and Mercury behind art on the walls.
Charged statues and pictures. Indian restaurants usually have a Ganesha or Lakshmi picture, or a picture of a guru that blesses the establishment. There is no reason not to have a statue of Jupiter or a picture of your favorite saint.
Funding
If you have a physical location for a storefront or an office, you will probably need more money to start yourself off than you have floating around in your bank accounts. This is also true if you have an Internet business that is very hardware intensive, like a VOIP company or a social network. Even in a home business you may run into situations in which you need outside funding to expand your operation because of a sudden increase in volume.
Perhaps you have an affluent friend or relative who can bankroll your venture, but if not, or if you just don’t want to risk a good relationship by mixing it with business, you will need to know where to get money. These days, money for a small business is harder to come by than it was in the past, but it is not impossible.
First you will need to write up a solid business plan. This can be daunting, but by using resources from the Internet and some solid examples, you can put one together without too much trouble. Knowing nothing about how to put one together other than what I found on the ’net, I wrote up my first ever business plan, for a floundering hardware store to present to a large national company. That plan, along with a little magic from yours truly, managed to get a commitment of $900,000 from large corporation.
Once you have a business plan, you want to treat it more or less the way you did your resume and cover le { an managed tters—enchant a master copy with whatever methods you prefer and keep it on your financial altar. That master copy will affect all copies anywhere.
After the enchanting you can apply for a Small Business Association loan from a bank that participates in SBA programs. The rules and requirements for these change fairly often so you should go to www.sba.gov for the latest information.
In addition to traditional loans you might also look for angel investors. These are individual people who invest their own money into your start-up in exchange for convertible debt or ownership equity. A very small amount of research will turn up groups like Common Angels in Lexington, Massachusetts; New York Angels in NYC; and The Angels Forum in Palo Alto, California; but the best place to seek out angel investors is word of mouth. Again, interpersonal connections are very important in all business.
Yet another option is micro-lending, the extension of very small loans that add up to a larger sum but leave no one person on the hook for a large amount of money. Originally designed to help high-poverty areas of the developing world, microcredit is now being used by people in the first world to spur new businesses.
The 80/20 Rule
One of the qualities of the spirit of money is that money is linked to time. If you run your own business, especially one that’s in addition to a day job, you will learn how vital it is to be aware of this relationship between time and money. When you are the business, it can occupy your thoughts every second of every day. When your pay is based on your sales that week, you can become obsessed with thinking about business until it overruns all other aspects of your life. Every little thing becomes a crisis that you must see to yourself.
There are ways to help mitigate this. Getting possession of your thoughts through meditation will help a great deal, as will learning to say no, and learning that occasionally you cannot please everyone. The biggest thing, though, that has helped me with time and business is knowledge of the 80/20 rule.
This rule, also known as the Pareto Principal, named for the economist who coined the phrase, states that 80 percent of result usually comes from 20 percent of effort. In sales, for instance, 80 percent of profits usually come from 20 percent of the customers. Similarly, 80 percent of the problems are also generated by 20 percent of the customers. This rule has shown to be almost a magical law that is consistent among many fields. About 80 percent of conversations use 20 percent of a language’s vocabulary. About 80 percent of the plants in a garden result from 20 percent of the seeds.
This rule has proven to be one of the most important pieces of advice I have ever been given. The day I read about it, I realized that about 80 percent of my hassles as a sorcerer came from about 20 percent of my clients, and that this 20 percent almost always wanted to speak on the phone. That day I stopped taking phone calls and doing readings over the phone. I work via e-mail unless it is an emergency, in which case I charge a very high rate to meet in person. Most of my clients have had no problem with this. The few who do tend to have convoluted problems involving imaginary curses being slung at them from everyone they have ever met. They protest that it is too complicated to discuss over e-mail; I counter that if that is the case, it is also way too complicated to discuss over the phone.
As you run your business, you should always be looking for the 80/20 relationship so that you can focus your efforts on the 20 percent that gives the greatest reward and save time by dealing deftly with the 20 percent that causes the most hassle.
Gettin {str0
Starting your own business can be difficult. Books are not always a help because tax and incorporation rules change from state to state and year to year. If you are confused about whether to file as a Sole Proprietor, S-Corp, or an LLC,5 or even what those terms mean, you could probably use some help.
There are a lot of places to go for business advice, but one of the best is SCORE: the Service Corps of Retired Executives. SCORE is a nonprofit organization that was started in 1964 to help small businesses and start-ups. They provide workshops, resources, and one-on-one mentoring that is either completely free or very low-cost. If you are confused about tax requirements, incorporation rules, how to manage a business, how to rescue a troubled business, or just about anything else, SCORE can help.
Other places to seek help:
Re-Employment Bureau: If you are currently unemployed, your state may offer a program for people interested in starting a business through its re-employment bureau.
Small Business Association: Start at the SBA.gov Website, which has a great tutorial on start-up basics, marketing, financing, and a schedule of workshops.
Small foundations: These are often targeted at a certain sector based on race, gender, location, and so on. One example is the Circle of Habondia: named after the goddess of abundance, this is a microcredit lending and financial literacy circle for women based in Canada.
System D
System D is slang for what economists delicately refer to as the informal economy, what most people call the underground or black market. The term System D comes from French-speaking Africa and the Caribbean where particularly resourceful people are referred to as débrouillards. When people start businesses on their own, without registering with the government or paying taxes, they are part of l’economie de la débrouillardise, which often gets shortened to Systeme D.
When many people think of underground economy or the black market, they tend to think of highly illegal activities such as drug dealing, gun running, and fencing stolen merchandise. Those who engage in such activities are in fact part of System D, but not necessarily the bulk of it. According to the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development, half the world’s workers are employed by System D, and by 2020 that amount will rise to two-thirds. All over the world there are unlicensed bazaars and markets that peddle everything from meat to cell phones to electrical power and utilities. Many completely legitimate companies that are registered and pay taxes here in the United States or in Europe will operate as System D in other parts of the world. Whatever it takes to get the job done is the battle cry of System D.
System D is not limited to the developing world, though. It is alive and well in your local flea market, in farmers markets, on street corners, and of course on the Internet. In fact, many companies that are now large corporations in the main economy got their start in the black market. In his book Stealth of Nations, Robert Neuwirth points out that Dick Sears got his start peddling watches on trains while working as station agent. The money he made eventually was used to found Sears, Roebuck & Co. Van Heusen shirts, which now owns Bass, Tommy Hilfiger, Calvin Klein, IZOD, and Arrow, got its start with an unlicensed pushcart in Philadelphia.
It is better and safer to run a busin {o r of Systess above board and avoid any legal troubles, but I am not going to pretend that you all will do that. System D, if taken as its own economy, would be the second largest in the world, worth more than 10 trillion dollars. The reason I mention it in this book is that you will need an extra layer of magical protection if you are engaging in System D activities—one of the Lightning Glyphs is geared specifically toward this. Whatever you are doing, I don’t want to know. Just be smart and keep things aboveboard before you get large enough to be noticed.
Succeed With Sorcery
Suffice to say on the magical end there will be plenty of opportunity for both macro- and micro-enchantment. In my endeavors I have collected graveyard dirt from recently deceased town officials to use in spells that grease the wheels of local bureaucracy. I have used confusion spells on competition. I have used conversational sorcery for sales and promotions. I have planted sigils in plain sight to bring in business. I have summoned archangels and gods to save dying businesses, and on two occasions had to follow that up with magic to facilitate their sale and limit debt. The amount of issues that can arise is staggering; just apply what you have learned and meet the challenges with a combination of magical and mundane tactics.
One warning about using magic to support a side business: Keep your primary job in mind as well. If all you do is magic for the secondary job, you eventually reach a point at which you may summon a spirit to help you increase profits, and the easiest change for them to make is to give you more time to work on your side business by getting you sacked from your main job!
This is not an omen, nor is it a powerful being telling you what you should do; this is you being shortsighted. If the god or goddess has never heard a word about your primary job, but hears all about your side business making condition oils, they have no frame of reference for how important that primary income is. Remember, it’s not the job of a spirit, an angel, or a god to run your life. It is your job to run your life!
When to Quit the Day Job
Making the jump from having a nice secondary income stream you work on during nights and weekends is very different from making it your primary or even only source of income. You go from having the security and flush funds of multiple incomes to the sleepless nights that go along with worrying whether you will keep the house every time you have a slow week.
My suggestion is to follow the money and let the business itself guide you. Some people let their desire to escape a 9-to-5 job lead them to bank on their own business prematurely; don’t let this be you. Daymond John, the CEO of FUBU clothing, worked at Red Lobster for two years while turning FUBU into the powerhouse that it is today. In an interview on the Four Hour Work Week Blog, he stated that people decide to give up their day job when “either the business is making some form of ends meet, or you feel you need to dedicate yourself to it for a certain amount of time and give yourself the last hurrah.”
There are ways to mediate the impact of the jump from employee to self-employed. You can ask for part-time hours, or even find a part-time job elsewhere, basically flipping the dynamic that you had previously, when working full time for someone else and part time for yourself. You can also make sure that you have a few months of living expenses socked away in the bank in case things get rough. More than anything, though, do the math. Know what you are making and what your expenses will be. If you don’t have hard numbers to work with, you are not ready.
As a sorcerer you have the mantic arts to rely upon. I strongly suggest tha {y sumbet you consult multiple readers, and if you can, multiple types of divination. Remember, we are shooting for solid, actionable intelligence, not just a reading.
Know When to Pull the Plug
All your life you have been told to never quit, never give up, and never accept defeat. I am here to tell you that in business this can be deadly advice! As an entrepreneur you need to be able to recognize when the numbers are not adding up. It’s those two piles of money again: the one coming in has to be bigger than the one going out, or you will fail.
Most successful entrepreneurs have a story or two about a business that failed. The difference between people who bounced back successfully and those who lost everything is that the savvy business-person recognizes when something is not working and takes the steps necessary to fix it—including pulling the plug and cutting losses if that is all that can be done. We all know that the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again expecting a different result. Unfortunately, that is exactly what most floundering business-people do: They think that if they can just hang on a little while longer, the world will turn around. Because of their belief and dedication to their dream, they invest all they have, even risking their home, to keep things running for just a few months longer, yet they never develop a new plan to deal with the underlying problems. Having been involved in a failing family business once, I feel for people in this situation. It is hard to tell family and friends that you cannot afford to keep them on as employees. It is hard to consider working for someone else when you have had the taste of the freedom that comes from working for yourself. Believe me, I know. But you must be honest with yourself and recognize failure in time to cut your losses.
Sometimes the best thing to do is throw in the towel and stop throwing good money after bad. If you are in over your head and summon Jupiter to increase your wealth, do not be surprised if the best he can do is help you cut your losses. A bad idea is a bad idea, and no amount of magic will hold it together for long.
It can be tough to abandon a dream, but sometimes that is exactly what needs to happen in order to build a bigger and better dream.
References and Resources
The Four-Hour Work Week, by Tim Ferris (Crown Archetype, December 15, 2009). This is my bible. Unlike many books, Tim gives very precise advice and workable tips for everything from geo-arbitrage to getting to work from home to automating your life. If you only get one book listed in this entire book, this is the one.
The 80/20 Principle, by Richard Koch (Crown Business, October 19, 1999). All about the Pareto Principle and how to make it work for you.
The Lean Startup: How Today’s Entrepreneurs Use Continuous Innovation to Create Radically Successful Businesses, by Eric Ries (Crown Business, September 13, 2011). Brilliant rules for starting a business in the new economy.
The Stealth of Nations, by Robert Neuwirth (Pantheon, October 18, 2011). A recent and insightful study of System D and its implications for the new economy.
Small Business Association: www.sba.gov. The SBA Website is full of tutorials and resources for starting your own business and finding your market.
SCORE: Ошибка! Недопустимый объект гиперссылки.. The Service Corps of Retired Executives. Great place to go for help when you need it.
Your Office Anywhere: www.yourofficeanywhere.com. Cloud-based office solutions for small businesses.
Evernote: www.evernote.com. App for iPhone, Android, and computers for capturing and organizing absolutely everything.
Square: https://squareup.com. Tool and app that allows you to accept credit cards via your iPhone. There’s a 2.75 percent charge per swipe for all cards, and next-day payout to your bank account. As people carry cash less and less often, you will need these. They will become useful for the salesperson on the move as well as the tarot reader at the local coffee shop.