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5 Business Lessons I Learned in 2010

Zeke Camusio — Wed, 01 Sep 2010 12:00:39 +0000

Money Doesn’t Have to Come from the Same Sources You Lost It To
I learned this from Tim Ferris. A few years ago, I bought a car without a title. I paid $4,000 for it and when I when to sell it I couldn’t get more than $1,000 for it. The market price was $3,700, but nobody was willing to pay that much for a car without a title. I wasted three entire weeks trying to get the title for the car. I didn’t want to lose money by selling my car for $1,000. The problem with this line of thinking is that at that moment, I was making about $2,500 per week and because I couldn’t work during the three weeks I spent trying to get my title, I lost a lot more than $1,000.

We make this exact same mistake all the time. We can’t accept a loss. But, we should look at all your revenue streams as a unit and decide where your time is better invested. If you have to lose $1,000 on something to make $2,000 somewhere else, so be it. When I shared this concept with a client of mine last month, she realized that since she was making $50 per hour and hiring someone to clean her house would only cost her $15 per hour, she had to stop cleaning her house and hire someone else to do it.

Eating Left-Overs Is a Great Way to Get Started
I work with an HR consultant who has been in the corporate world for over 20 years and now decided to open her own firm. She ended her relationship with her previous company on excellent terms. The company she used to work for works with companies in the $5M-$20M range, so I told my client to ask this company to send the smaller clients her way. Smaller doesn’t mean worse. She did this and now gets a steady flow of clients without having to do much marketing work. Is there any way you can approach the big fish in your industry and take care of the clients they don’t want to serve?

If You Explain the Why and They Can Figure Out the How, You’re Working with the Right People
Smart people can figure things out if they understand they outcome you expect and why you need what you need. If you find yourself explaining your team how to do what they need to do, you might have the wrong people on the bus. Of course, there’s always the possibility that they’re awesome and you’re a control freak, so I’ll let you judge this one for yourself.

Using Off-the-Shelf Software Is A LOT Better than Building Your Own
There are a few things that can -and usually do- go wrong with custom-built software: it costs more than expected, takes longer than expected and it breaks a lot. The same goes for websites. There are awesome platforms for blogs (WordPress), forums (vBulleting), e-commerce (Volusion and Interspire), photo galleries (any of the LightBox galleries), etc. Try to use off-the-shelf solutions as much as you can. They’ll save you headaches and a lot of money.

Leave Empty Space in Your Schedule
Us, human beings, love the feeling of getting things done. If we were supposed to do 10 things today and we only did five, we won’t feel that great. That’s why we should always leave empty space in our schedules. Unexpected things come up: calls, meetings and problems we need to solve. By leaving some extra space for these unexpected tasks, you’ll be able to finish everything you need to do every day. And, if some days you finish everything by 2pm, either assign a few more things to yourself or reward your productivity by taking some time for yourself.

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How to Come Up with Great Business Ideas

Zeke Camusio — Wed, 25 Aug 2010 12:00:50 +0000

Who doesn’t have a business idea? Even if you’re happy working for somebody else, I bet you have a business idea that you haven’t ever told anyone about. And, chances are, in a few years (or months) someone will start the business you’ve been dreaming about and that’s when you’ll tell your friends, “I had that same idea two years ago. I knew it would work!” This happened to me so many times! Of course, I can’t start a new business every time I have a new idea because that would draft me away from my current businesses. Some people (like me) have at least one business idea each day. Other people struggle, spending days, weeks, months thinking about a great business idea. Why is this?

Don’t Look for the “Perfect” Idea
Look at Starbucks. They didn’t invent coffee; they created a great way to enhance the coffee drinking experience. Look at McDonalds. They didn’t invent burgers; they came up with a way to deliver food fast at a low cost. Look at Zappos. They weren’t the first online shoe store, but through amazing customer service (and free return shipping) they became the largest online shoe store.

These businesses didn’t re-invent the wheel. They found something that could be done better and did it.

Don’t look for the “perfect” idea. There are hundreds of ways you can create a better world and make a lot of money at it.

The “It’s Been Done Before” Myth
Every time someone comes to me and tells me they have an idea for a business that “has never been done before”, I start to worry. There’s a reason some things have never been done before. Let’s say you want to sell a square car. It has never been done before. That doesn’t mean there’s a market for it. Actually, the fact that it has never been done before leads me to think there’s no market for square cars.

But the real problem is when people give up on business ideas because they have been done already. Don’t do this. Going back to the previous examples, coffee existed before Starbucks, burgers existed before McDonalds and shoes existed before Zappos.

So, How Do You Come Up with Great Business Ideas?
The answer is this: “Keep your eyes open for things that you want and can’t get, or things you can’t get in a convenient way.” I’ll give you a few examples:

A friend of mine used to live in an isolated mountain town the US Postal Service, FedEx and UPS wouldn’t deliver to. They dropped all the packages at a central location in town and people had to drive 15 miles to pick up their mail. Everyone was annoyed with this fact and started saying that they’d be willing to pay a little extra to get the packages delivered to their homes. My friend listened to them and started charging each family $10 a month to pick up their packages and deliver them daily to their homes. He had 200 clients and paid for his college working two hours a day.
Sara, a woman I know, moved from Costa Rica to the US five years ago. She was craving Costa Rican food and she couldn’t get it anywhere. She then realized that the Latino population in the US is huge and those people missed the food they could get in their countries but wasn’t available in the US. Sara decided to import Latino foods into the US and sell them online. She does over $2M now.
Last week I got a grill that I had to assemble myself. It was a pain in the butt and made me waste four valuable hours that I could have spent helping my clients. I would have loved to pay someone $50 to put it together for me. That store also had beautiful furniture that I wanted to buy too, but there’s no way I’ll spend two entire days assembling all those tables, chairs, beds and closets. What if someone approached this store and offered them this service for their clients? The store would increase their sales, the clients would be happier and this person would have a business.

The bottom line is this: Every time you’re frustrated about something, think about how you can make it better. Once you automate this process, I guarantee that you’ll get at least one great business idea per day.

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How to Overcome the Fear of Selling

Zeke Camusio — Wed, 18 Aug 2010 12:00:55 +0000

Most people don’t like selling. I used to be one of them. However, as entrepreneurs, we need to sell stuff all the time. We just don’t have a choice. So the question is how can we overcome the fear of selling?

Sell a Great Product
This might sound like an obvious answer, but it’s not. Unless you have an amazing product that you really believe in, calling someone to sell it to will always be hard.

Understand What Rejection Really Is
Have you ever walked into a store, a salesperson asked you if they could help in any way and you said, “no, thank you. I’m just looking.”? This happens all the time. It doesn’t mean you don’t like the salesperson; it just means that at that given time you didn’t need or want that given product. That’s what rejection is. It’s not personal. Some people want your stuff and others don’t. You don’t buy everything that is offered to you, so don’t expect your prospect to do it.

Be an Adviser, not a Seller
A seller would try to sell you something whether or not your need it. An adviser, on the other hand, will answer your questions and make a recommendation based on what he thinks you need. If you think as a seller, you’ll be thinking about the outcome (the sale) and you’ll forget about your customer needs. If you think as an adviser, you’ll realize that your customers have questions and you’re there to help them. This takes a lot of pressure of the buyer’s shoulders because he doesn’t feel you’re trying to sell him anything (believe me, people can smell a seller a mile away).

The funny part is that the harder you try to sell, the fewer sales you’ll make. I know this because I’ve experienced it myself several times. When I started to think of myself as a helper instead of as a seller, my sales increased immediately.

Liberate Yourself from the Outcome
The wrong way to think about sales is this: “If I closed the deal, it was a great call. If I didn’t close it, it was a bad call.” This is not true. Sometimes very motivated buyers will buy from you even when you do a terrible job. Sometimes a client really wants your product but he needs his partner’s approval and that’s why you didn’t close today. Focus on delivering value and helping your clients; sales will follow.

Get Rid of Excuses
We all have the perfect excuses not to call people: “my phone’s reception isn’t good here”, “he’s probably at lunch now”, “it’s the end of the month so I’m sure she’s really busy today”, “I don’t know where I put her phone number”, etc.

What you need to do is identify the excuses you give yourself and do something to eliminate them. For example, if your phone’s reception is not good where you are, you know that you need to be somewhere else (a quiet place with good reception) to call people. You should go there after lunch so lunch excuses can’t stop you. You should get a good phone with unlimited minutes and store all your contacts there.

There you go. Now you have run out of valid excuses. So, start calling your prospects and remember that your mission is to help them. If they need your product, they’ll buy it. Otherwise, they won’t. Either way, calling people is what you think it is. If you think it’s the world’s most awful nightmare, then that’s what’s going to be. If you think talking to others is fun, that’s exactly how you’re going to feel. Now pick up the phone, help some people and have some fun.

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FREE Seminar: How to Grow Your Business Using Social Media Marketing

Zeke Camusio — Wed, 11 Aug 2010 20:32:46 +0000

Are you ready to grow your business faster than ever before? Do you want to know how you can successfully grow your business using Social Media Marketing?

In this seminar I will teach you the same step-by-step Social Media Marketing system that we’ve been using to grow over 50 companies in the last five years.

What You’ll Learn:

The ONE Social Media Marketing approach that works every time.
How to avoid the most common social media mistakes.
How to measure your campaign so you can see what works and what doesn’t (this is the key to get the best results in the shortest time possible).
How to create amazing content that your fans love and want to share with all their friends (Having your followers market your business for you is the most effective way to grow a business.)
How you can position yourself as the #1 authority in your field. Once you are seen as the “go to” person in your industry, attracting clients becomes much easier.
How to effectively promote your articles on LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook, forums and blogs.
How to promote your videos on YouTube so you get tens of thousands of views.
How to get thousands of visitors for your site.
How to set up a Brand Monitoring Dashboard (BMD) so you get email alerts every time someone mentions your company, your name or your main competitors.
How to get thousands of qualified followers on Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn.
10 very simple Social Media Marketing tactics that have made thousands of dollars for my clients, explained step-by-step.
I’ll reveal all the tools I use to do in two hours what takes most people more than eight.
I’ll tell you the MOST IMPORTANT lesson that I’ve learned in my seven years doing Social Media Marketing.

When?
Wednesday August 25th at 5.30-7.30pm PST.

Where?
Portland State University (PSU)
2828 SW Corbett Avenue, Suite 100
Portland, OR 97201
View Map

You can get driving directions here.

There’s free parking! Download your parking pass here.

More Information
This is a FREE seminar, but we only have 40 spots available, so please claim your spot now. If you have questions, please feel free to contact me directly. My email address is zeke@TheOutsourcingCompany.com and my phone number is 503-367-7561.

UPDATE: 27 out of the 40 spots are already taken. Only 13 spots left. Get yours now!

Sign Up Now!

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The Difficult Art of Approaching People

Zeke Camusio — Wed, 11 Aug 2010 12:00:21 +0000

Every day I get about 50 emails from people who try to get me to partner with them, use their services or hire them. I’ve been in business for 10 years and I’ve probably replied to maybe 1% of these emails. Last week, when one of my employees asked me how she could approach potential joint venture partners for a project she’s working on, I started thinking about the thousands of people who tried to approach me with offers and the 1% of them whom I actually took the time to reply to.

I realized that there were three things that the top 1% did that the other 99% didn’t.

Customize Your Message
Only 1% of the people who approach others with offers actually takes the time to know the people they’re writing to. They copy and paste the same email to hundreds of people. This is called spam and doesn’t work. Sure, if you send a million emails, someone will reply, but I can guarantee that the busiest folks won’t waste their time and those are the ones you want to work with.

In my case, if someone takes two minutes to read one of my blog posts and says something smart about it, he’ll be 90% in. Too bad most spammers prefer not to waste their valuable time on getting to know the rest of us a little better.

Give Something
The 99% group sent me emails asking me for something; the 1% group offered to give me something. Sure enough, after they offered to give me something, I ended up giving them a lot more in return. I just love working with people who think about how they could help me before thinking how I can help them.

Be Different
Five years ago I got a FedEx package with a letter that started like this: “I’m writing this letter to tell you why you DON’T want to work with me”. Wow, that really caught my attention. The reasons in the letter were along the lines of “I don’t follow some directions very well. If you ask me to stop working, I won’t be able to. It’s in me to keep working until my clients are happy. If this is a problem, PLEASE don’t hire me.” It was funny and different. It worked.

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Brand Monitoring: How to Use It to Grow Your Business

Zeke Camusio — Wed, 04 Aug 2010 12:00:06 +0000

Monitoring brands and key words is one of the most effective ways to market a business. In this article I’ll explain:

What is keyword monitoring.
What keywords you should track.
How to monitor keywords.
How to use the information you get to market your company.

What Is Keyword Monitoring?
Basically, you use software that will alert you when people mention a particular keyword on blogs, websites, Twitter, forums, videos, etc. Whether you like it or not, people are talking about you out there. They’re saying both good and bad things about your company. You can pretend that they don’t exist, but the fact is that they do, and a lot of people are listening to them, so it’s up to you whether to step in and be part of the conversation.

What Keywords Should You Track?

Your company name and all its variations.
Your URL (yoursite.com).
Your name and the name of the top executives of your company.
Some key phrases for your industry. For example, if you have a Star Wars t-shirt e-store, you might want to track “Star Wars”, “Luke Skywalker” and other related keywords.
Your competitors’ brands and URLs.

How to Monitor Keywords
In most cases, I use three different tools.

What To Do with the Information You Get
Here’s where the tools can’t help you. You’ll have to use your brain and social skills for this part of the process. I’ll give you some creative examples on how you can use the information you get.

When someone says something nice about your company, thank them and ask them if you can use their statement as a testimonial on your site.
When someone says something nasty about you, apologize publicly, fix the screw up and let them know it’s fixed. If they’re happy with how you handled the situation, ask them if they don’t mind sharing the good news on Twitter (or wherever they posted the nasty comment). Remember: it’s not just about that one customer; everybody else is watching you.
When they say they wish your product did this or had this other feature, write the comment down. If a lot of people agree that your product needs a new feature, develop it and let your followers know when it’s ready. Even better, thank them for giving you their idea and invite them to try your new feature for free.
If you sell Star Wars t-shirts and someone asks “do you know where can I get Star Wars t-shirts?”, suggest your site along with two other good ones. Remember it’s about providing value, not shameless self-promotion.
When people mention how much they like one of your competitors, make a note of that. Do the same thing when they say why they hate them. The more you understand what your audience likes and what it doesn’t, the better you can take care of your own customers.

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The Most Important Marketing Lesson that I Learned in My Whole Life

Zeke Camusio — Thu, 22 Jul 2010 12:00:25 +0000

After analyzing hundreds of businesses, I realized that there was one indicator that could help me predict which companies were going to succeed and which ones were going to fail better than any other indicator.

Case 1 (On Average, Each of Your Customers Tells Two Friends About You):

100 visitors multiplied by 200% = 200 new visitors.
The 200 visitors from Step 1 multiplied by 200% = 400 new visitors.
You can keep multiplying by 200% as many times as you want to see how fast your business will grow.

In this case, once you get the ball rolling, your customers and fans will do the rest of the work for you.

Case 2 (Out of Ten Customers, Nine Don’t Tell Anybody About Your Business and One Tells One Friend):
100 visitors multiplied by 10% = 10 new visitors.

10 visitors multiplied by 10% = 1 new visitor.

In this case, the trend decreases over time, meaning that the moment you stop inviting people to your site or store, your business will be on its way to death. The second thing to consider is this: Even if you have the money and time to market to new prospects all the time, at one point you’ll run out of prospects to market to.

So, What’s the Main Difference Between the First and the Second Example?
The first company GETS PEOPLE TALKING ABOUT THEM and the second company doesn’t. That’s it. That’s the most important marketing lesson I’ve ever learned. If you’re remarkable, all you need to do is tell a few people about your products and word-of-mouth will do the rest. You won’t be able to stop sales from constantly growing no matter how hard you try. On the other hand, if people don’t talk about your business, you can spend thousands and thousands of dollars in marketing and your business will never take off. You might get some customers, sure, but you have a car without an engine; the moment you stop pushing it, it stops moving forward.

Then, The Question Is, “How Can I Create a Remarkable Business?”
This is my favorite part: you need to be weird. Having a better product at a better price won’t do the trick. When I say weird, I mean different, unique. I’ll give you some examples of companies that did things differently and got the whole world talking about them:

When Yahoo! was the top search engine, their competitors tried to beat them by having more features and information. Google did something different: they offered LESS: Less clutter, fewer features and more accurate search results.
Twitter created a new concept in blogging: posts that can’t exceed 140 characters.
Zappos revolutionized the shoes industry by offering free rush delivery and free returns (they even pay for your postage costs if you need to return or exchange a pair of shoes.)
Whole Foods offered a central location for premium organic foods like no one else.

So, how will you make your company unique and weird? What will you do to get some raving fans to spread the word about your business? How can you make a difference in the world instead of being just another company in your industry? I promise you that if you take 10 minutes to think about these questions, they’ll be the best 10 minutes you’ll have ever invested.

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How to Get Yourself to Do What You Need to Do

Zeke Camusio — Thu, 15 Jul 2010 12:00:53 +0000

I believe that discipline is one of the most important skills an entrepreneur needs to have to succeed. After all, there’s no boss telling you to do your job, so without discipline you won’t get anything done.

However, I think that we are somewhat confused about what discipline is. We tend to think that we need to be strong enough to resist all temptations and do all the work we need to do. What I’ve discovered lately is that the best way to be disciplined is to help yourself by removing all possible temptations from the situations where you need to get your work done.

For example, I’m a rugby player and I need to train six times a week. Sometimes I train with my team but twice each week we’re supposed to train on our own. I had been skipping at least 50% of those training sessions. When I talked to my rugby friends about it, it turned out that this had been happening to them too. We made an agreement: instead of training on our own, we’d get together at the park to train. Whoever didn’t show up had to pay the other four of us $20 each. That’s $80 if you miss a practice! In two months, only one of us missed a session.

Here’s the funny part: because we all live in different parts of the city, we need to drive for 30 minutes to get to the park. It’d be much more convenient to train on our own. The problem is, it doesn’t work. We’ve already tried. Most of us are faced with situations like this one every day of our lives and we usually try to convince ourselves that driving 30 minutes to do something you can do in your own neighborhood is stupid and that we should be strong enough to not miss any training session without any extra incentives. You’re a human being; relax, take it easy. Don’t be so hard on yourself. Temptations exist. You can either make it really hard for yourself or manipulate the situations you’re in so things are easier for you.

This is how I manipulated some situations of my life to make things easier for myself:

I wanted to eat more fruits and less junk food. So, instead of buying both at the grocery store, I only got fruits and no junk food. Now, every time I want junk food I need to drive a whole mile to the closest gas station. I’ve probably reduced my intake of junk food by 90%.
I used to check my email several times a day and that was killing me. There’s no way to focus on something and be productive if you check your email every five minutes. I decided to tear up a $1 bill every time I checked my email during the day. Six months later, I’m out $3 and I’m 200% more productive. Not bad, huh?
When I get very stressed out, I start sniffing. This gives me headaches and stomach cramps. I used to think that it’s part of me and I couldn’t change it. Last month I did an experiment: every time I started sniffing, I’d take a 5-minute break from work. The first week of my experiment I was really pissed at myself. I’d work for two minutes, start sniffing, take five minutes off, then work for 30 seconds, start sniffing again, take another five minutes off and so on. I couldn’t get any work done. But little by little I started associating the sniffing with the punishment and I stopped doing it. Now it probably happens once or twice a day, but I don’t have the headaches or stomach cramps anymore.

This post is a little different from my usual Internet marketing posts, but being disciplined is extremely important, and I found a technique that worked for me and wanted to share it with you. I hope it was helpful. Talk to you soon.

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HELP! My Website Isn’t Making Any Money!

Zeke Camusio — Wed, 30 Jun 2010 12:00:44 +0000

I get a few dozen emails per week from frustrated business owners whose websites aren’t making them money. Their words are always the same: “My website isn’t working and I don’t know why.” Are you in the same situation? Are you frustrated because your site isn’t working and you don’t even know the reason? I think this article will help you.

These are some of the most common reasons some websites don’t work and what to do about them.

Your Product Is Not Good Enough or Useful
The problem: If you’ve been in business for several years and don’t get a big chunk of your business from referrals/word of mouth, you might be offering a low quality product. That’s probably why people don’t recommend it. Maybe your product is amazing but there’s no market for it. I know a company that used to sell a very bitter salad dressing. Nobody wanted it and although they did a great job marketing their product, they went out of business.

The solution: Survey your past customers and learn what you need to do to improve your product. Track your referral rate and make sure it grows. If nobody is buying your product, check how the competition is doing. If someone else is successfully selling the same thing you can’t sell, it’s time to do things a little differently.

You Don’t Know How to Market Your Product
The problem: Nobody on your team has strong marketing skills.

The solution: This might look like a very difficult problem to overcome, but it is not. All you need to do is ask questions. Ask your customers why they decided to buy your product. Ask them what they’ll use it for, who with and how often. Ask them why they decided to buy it from you. When someone calls you and you don’t close the sale, ask them why they won’t buy from you. Explain to them that you’re trying to understand how your customers think so you can offer them a better service. Most people will be happy to help. Once you know what your customer wants and what motivates them to buy, creating an effective marketing message will be a piece of cake.

Buying From You Is Too Risky
The problem: “Buy my product. If you like it, great! If you don’t, too bad. I’ll make money either way.” Does this sound familiar? This is how most companies operate.

The solution: Offer a “better than 100% money back guarantee”. Pay for the return shipping cost if people decide to return your product. Let them keep something just for trying it. Offer a free trial. Ship now and charge your customers in 60 days unless they return your product first. Show your customers testimonials from other satisfied customers. Show them a list of your clients, references, case studies and any kind of evidence you have that your product works.

Little or Unqualified Traffic
The problem: Your website gets very little traffic or gets traffic that doesn’t care about your offer.

The solution: if you’re getting very little traffic, work on getting more! There are basically two ways to get website traffic:

Help hungry prospects find you: this could happen online (on Google, for example) or offline (think about where your prospects would look for your services. For example, if you’re a locksmith, you can assume that people will use the Yellow Pages to look for someone to fix their locks.)
Find your prospects before they need you: this also happens online (if you sell guitars, you can post relevant content to a guitar players forum) and offline (call a guitar teacher and ask him to carry your guitars and promote them to his students.)

Poor Website
The problem: Your website sucks.

The solution: Believe it or not, having a poor website isn’t the worse problem you can have. If you have an amazing product that is priced right and you market it very well, in most cases you can get away with a website that is below average. And, a great website won’t make up for a poor offer. That being said, there are several things you can do to improve your site and increase your revenues. You might want to read this report.

There Are Better Alternatives in the Market
The problem: Your competitors offer a better product, have a more appealing offer or a better price.

The solution: First, you need to understand WHY people aren’t buying from you. Don’t do what most rookies do when their sales are down: lower their prices. Don’t blame your prices for the lack of success you’re temporarily experiencing. My suggestion, once again, is to talk to your customers and to those people who call you and end up buying from somebody else. Learn why the make the decisions they make. They won’t only tell you who they’ll be doing business with, but they’ll also tell you why they’re choosing them. Analyze your competition and copy as many good things from them as you can. If everybody is telling you that they’re going with your competitor because they like their blue widget better than your red one, start producing blue widgets. Be humble enough to let your market make the most important decisions in your business.

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My Thoughts on Money and Happiness

Zeke Camusio — Wed, 23 Jun 2010 16:00:49 +0000

A few years ago, I read The 4-Hour Workweek, by Tim Ferris. Every business book I had read before it talked about how to increase revenues and make more money. The 4-Hour Workweek was different. It talked about making ENOUGH money to live the kind of life you want. Interesting, isn’t it? I never thought there was such thing as enough money. I mean, if you can have more, why would you settle for less, right?

About two weeks later I read an interview in which one of the founders of PayPal -a guy worth tens of millions of dollars- was telling how he sold his Porsche Boxster and replaced it with a much more affordable Toyota Prius. He said that when you have a Boxster, you want a Porsche 911, and once you have the 911, you want a Ferrari. Our minds get used to what we have quickly and, all too soon, what we have isn’t enough. He said he wanted to be a Prius guy, not a Ferrari guy.

Think about it: when you’re a Ferrari person, people have huge expectations about you and you have a lot more pressure on your shoulders than a Prius person. If you’re thinking: “that might be true, but a Ferrari will make me much happier than a Prius”, let me share the results of a research performed by Dan Gilbert, the author of Stumbling on Happiness.

He measured the happiness levels of two groups of people:

Recent lottery winners
Folks who recently lost both legs

A week after the events (winning the lottery or losing their legs), the lottery group was a lot happier than the other group. But, six months after the events, both groups had equal levels of happiness. This is because, after a while, you get used to your new situation, you accept it and it becomes part of your life. In fact, during periods of my life when I was pretty broke, I wasn’t less happy than I am now.

This doesn’t mean that I didn’t work hard to get out of my financial problems. I saw them as a challenge that I wanted to overcome (and I did). But, I learned a few lessons:

Happiness doesn’t depend on how much money I make. I know countless happy, poor people and unhappy, rich folks. I bet you do, too.
There are periods in our life when we feel like getting to the next level, and we should. But, there are also periods when we feel happy where we are and we shouldn’t try to get to the next level just because we can. Enjoying the place we are is a very important part of the equation. If you’re not moving forward, it doesn’t mean you’re moving backward; you’re just in one place and having a good time, and this is a great thing to do.
Make a list of what you want, figure out how much money you need to get it all. You’ll discover that to live the life of your dreams you need a lot less than you thought.
Don’t wait until you have a lot of money to do what you want. I wanted to have a lot of money to retire for five years and travel around the world. Once I put together a big pile of cash, I started my trip. I discovered two things: 1) traveling was a lot cheaper than I thought. I could have started my trip a few years before. 2) Being retired is boring! After traveling for six months I couldn’t help myself and I started a new business.

Making money can be a lot of fun, but you can be happy no matter how big your bank account is. (Yeah, I know this is corny, but it’s also very true.)

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