I am 21 and clueless …

Screenshot 2014-05-21 12.37.01This is quite typical of the types of questions that I receive from time to time:

I’m 21, and am clueless about finance. I want to start up a business at my mid 20s. Should I opt for endowment plans or unit trust?

The first thing you’ll notice is that there are no further details, as though there’s a ‘pat’ answer for every clueless 21 year old.

Still, let me suggest the following if you are 21 years old and also want to start a business ‘one day’:

1. If you consider yourself clueless about personal finance, start by reading everything you can.

Since you are young, start with I Will Teach You to Be Rich – I was weaned on a diet of Rich Dad Poor Dad, The Richest Man in Babylon, and so on …

Warning: The important thing to note is that these books are only to whet your appetite, they will  NOT make you rich … once you reach a certain point, much of the advice will have to be discarded.

2. If you want to start a business in your mid-20’s the best way to prepare is by starting one now:

It doesn’t matter if the business is successful or not, the idea is to learn by doing.

While you are studying, you can easily start an online business: become an eBay seller; start a drop-shipping business; write a blog about your passion (or, perhaps about your financial journey) and package up some of the posts into a series of information products that you can sell.

3. If you are worried about company structures, don’t!

Just get started … and with your first $1,000 in savings (from 1.) and/or earnings (from 2.) see an accountant and do what they suggest … this isn’t the place for such technical advice.

If you do these simple things, you will be financially better off than 99% of your peers within years, if not months, and should remain so for the rest of your life.

Why?

Because they will remain clueless, whilst you will not 😉

The New-Age Lemonade Stand …

Lemonade StandPeople think my son is following in his father’s footsteps …

… but, I didn’t even think about beginning my entrepreneurial journey until I was 26 (and, didn’t actually start until I turned 30).

My son, on the other hand, started his entrepreneurial journey when he was 12.

Whereas most children begin by starting a newspaper delivery round, or opening a lemonade stand – although, at age 10, he wanted to start a cake shop outside his grandmother’s house (naturally, she would bake, he would sell) – my son was a little different:

At 12 years old, AJC Jr came to me and asked for $50 to start his new business on eBay. He offered me 49%. I accepted, just to see what would happen.

And, something did happen: a week later a package from China arrived at our front door, and over the next week a few smaller packages left the same way.

Two weeks later, my son came to me and said “here’s your $50 back” … he bought me back out!

[I didn’t have the heart to tell him that it doesn’t work like that. That’s probably the only non-commercial assistance that I’ve given his business in the last 6 years].

Since then, after growing his eBay store for 3 or 4 years, my son ‘graduated’ to an online service-based business that nets him in excess of $60k p.a. (turning over $100k++ p.a.) and has bought him a car whilst still in high school.

He contracts programmers in India and has 2 full-time customer service contractors in Manila. One of them just sent him a Christmas present and a card thanking him, saying that – because of my son – he can now fulfil his life ambition of opening up his own coffee shop.

Not only is my son setting up his own life, he’s changing other people’s lives already … and, he’s just finished high school.

With luck, and your encouragement and support (but, NEVER, EVER push) your children may embark on a similar journey … after all, the barriers to starting a business (i.e. by going online) have been lifted.

Why should your entrepreneurial child start a mere lemonade stand, when any child can now start an online marketplace for anybody who wants lemonade and anybody who can make it (or supply the ingredients and know-how)? 😉

The Magic Number for successful sales …

Magic Number For Sales

The Magic Number for small-business sales success is 5 …

… this means, that you shouldn’t give up too easily when trying to contact new prospects.

Don’t give up after just 2 attempts at contacting them, your prospect may just be busy, not quite ready to buy, or may really not want to talk to you.

The trouble is, you won’t really know which of these reasons it is – or, whether you really should give up on them – until you have tried to contact them 5 times!

That’s 5 e-mails; 5 voicemails; 5 calls to their cell-phone; 5 handwritten letters; 5 rocking up on the doorstep with coffee and donuts; or …

… better yet, some combination of the above (probably, in the order that I’ve presented).

What is a business plan?

Business-PlansThe other day, somebody asked me:

What is a business plan?

I think they were asking more than the obvious …

… I think they were really asking: “what makes a good business plan? what are the things I should include/ leave out?”

In any event, my answer was – and remains:

“A business plan is …”

A waste of time.

*Keep reading and I’ll tell you the only three times when you must write a business plan*

A very well-known guru once said of planning:

Four things can happen when you plan:

1. You plan and things turn out in your favor

2. You plan and things do not turn out in your favor

3. You do not plan plan and things turn out in your favor, anyway

4. You do not plan and things do not turn out in your favor

Of these, only 1. and 4. are as you expect …

… the rub is that the guru said that all 4 outcomes are equally likely.

In other words, there is no direct link with planning and outcome.

Mike Michalowicz, author of The Pumpkin Plan: A Simple Strategy to Grow A Remarkable Business In Any Field, agrees:

Financial projections for a new company are ludicrous. If we could project financials accurately for a public company for even one day, we’d be billionaires. How can we think we can project reliable financials for a company that doesn’t even exist?

Having worked (actually funded) close to 30 startup businesses to date, I wholeheartedly agree!

In fact …

I have never written a business plan for any of my businesses.

But, I have used financial projections and written executive summaries for three specific purposes:

1. To impress people

I have used a short, one page ‘executive summary’ (like this one) to impress other people i.e. as a ‘sales tool’ for clients, bankers, and investors.

But, make no mistake, these are largely works of faction (fiction dressed as fact) i.e. to be used purely as marketing documents: proposals, marketing and sales presentations, and the like. Do not mistake them with documents actually intended to convince yourself of your business’ future success. For that purpose, I use the following two types of plans …

[AJC: The executive summary that I have shared with you has a place close to my heart: it was my first attempt at a purely online business as a founder/investor. We built the site, but never launched it. It was wonderful, overly ambitiously wonderful … the web equivalent of Howard Hughes’ Spruce Goose]

2. To check if my business is an opportunity worth pursuing

This type looks like the financial part of a business plan, but it’s not a plan, it’s actually a sanity-check:

I did this kind of financial plan (the kind that Mike says is “ludicrous” … and, I would usually agree) only once and you should do the same:

In 1998, I found my Life’s Purpose, and it sucked …

… for me, it meant lots of traveling and time not earning an income (basically, it meant very early retirement). It sucked because now that I knew what I really wanted to do with my Life, I could no longer just sit around and wait for it – and, my business – to ‘just happen’.

So, to passively fund the true cost of my new-found life (an expensive one!), I knew that I simply had to come up with $5 million dollars in just 5 years!

[AJC: for new readers, this is how I came up with the title of this blog, because I actually ended up making $7 million, but it took 7 years]

Now, there was just one small problem: in 1998, I was over $30,000 in debt!

So, I quickly realized that the only hope that I had of going from negative $30,000 to positive $5 million in 5 years was if I could make my business worth that much, quickly.

Working backwards, I asked around (i.e. my accountant and my friends who had their own businesses) to see what my business would need to ‘look like’ in order to be worth $5m to somebody else? The general consensus was that, as a private company if sold to a private seller, it would be worth around three to five times it’s annual taxable profit.

That means my business would need to generate $1m to $1.5 million in profit each year within 5 years …

… with only one small problem: it was currently losing money!

So, in comes the ‘business plan’:

All I wanted to know was: “was it even possible for my business to generate $1m to $1.5 million in profit each year?”

So I drew out a basic business plan (actually, financial forecast) with outrageously large sales growth (and, commensurate growth in expenses) to see: “at what annual sales volume (less reasonable expenses) will it be possible for my business to generate $1m to $1.5 million in profit each year?”

Once I found that revenue (i.e. sales or turnover) number, it was then relatively easy – again, with the help of a spreadsheet – to work out exactly how many customers that I would need, based on some guesses around the size and frequency of their average purchases and so on …

[AJC: now, I’m not even good with numbers and spreadsheets, but I didn’t even need my accountant to help me do any of this; but, if you need the help of yours, go ahead … it’s what they are there for!]

So, with the help of this ‘business plan’ (actually, the ‘financial forecast’ part of the business plan … but, it’s much the same thing), the question became a fairly simple one: ” can I find enough customers to make my business generate $1m to $1.5 million in profit each year?”

Sadly, the answer was: No.

My business would have needed each and every one of the Top 1,000 Corporations in Australia as my clients; given that I currently had 5, that was going to be a stretch [read: impossible] 🙁

So this form of business planning was for one reason and one reason only: to tell me if my business was an opportunity worth pursuing.

The answer, of course, was no … at least, not in it’s current form.

But, it pointed me to the right answer: which was to find markets that were much larger than Australia and relocate. Which we did … to Chicago … and, the rest is history.

[AJC: as it happens, I also had a financial epiphany, and realized that I should be investing – rather than spending – my businesses increasing profits, so a lot went back into the business, so that I could grow without needing to borrow or raise outside capital, but all of the remainder went into passive investments: stocks and real-estate. And, it’s these investments that took me to my first $7m in 7 years. Eventually selling my businesses was a huge dollop of cream on top!]

3. To check if the business can break-even

I do one other kind of business plan (again, I’m now just focussing on the financial forecast section … I never write the other 30 pages typical of most business plans): it’s the one that looks like a typical business forecast spreadsheet [you can download a copy of this example, here]:

break-even

This one has a yearly projection of expected revenue growth, offset by expenses.

But, there’s only one thing that I’m looking for …

… it’s the column, where the bottom-line turns from red to black (actually, from negative to positive … from a loss to a profit)!

In fact, I’ll then fiddle with the numbers in that column to get the ‘bottom line’ number as close to $0.00 as possible (without being pedantic), because what I’m really trying to get a feel for is …

the point where the business breaks-even.

[AJC: in this example, the 2008 column is closest to zero profit (showing a $107,000 loss), and just a few tweaks to the revenue and expenses quickly go that closer to $0.00, or break-even]

I do not care what Date the column says, that isn’t the point.

I do care what the numbers in that column look like:

– Does the sales number look achievable (i.e. for my business, is it more like 6 or 7 mid-size corporate customers than 1,000)?

– How many staff will I need? How big an office? Am I now going to bump into better funded competitors and have to try and steal all their customers, or is the market big enough for all of us?

– Will I need to expand interstate/internationally, franchise, and/or joint venture?

In other words, is it a business that I can comfortably take to break-even (before I run out of money)?

Why?

Well, once I know the business can break-even I know that I can then ride whatever storms come my way and take as long as I need to take to get my business to where it needs to be.

[HINT: see 2., above. Remember: even though I set my goal at $5m in 5 years, I actually took 7 years to make $5m plus a ‘bonus’ $2m]

So, don’t bother with a business plan, unless it’s for one of the three reasons that I outlined, above.

Now, tell me about your business plan successes and failures, so that mine don’t seem so lonely … 🙂

I’m looking for the next $20 idea!

million-dollar-ideaThis is a general call to the wider blogging (and reader of blogs) community:

[Hey, that’s you!]

I’m looking for the next $20 idea!

“Wait!”, you say, “Surely you mean that you’re looking for the next $1,000,000 idea?!”.

But, no (I say, barely managing to stifle a yawn), million dollar ideas are dime a dozen

… why, I have one almost every single day!

[And, I bet you do, too]

No, what I’m really looking for is the next $20 idea …

submitted by a team with $1,000,000 worth of execution.

Derek Sivers said it best:

It’s so funny when I hear people being so protective of ideas. (People who want me to sign an NDA to tell me the simplest idea.)

To me, ideas are worth nothing unless executed. They are just a multiplier. Execution is worth millions.

That’s why I don’t want to hear people’s ideas.

I’m not interested until I see their execution.

idea-execution

Derek Sivers’ chart shows that even the best idea is only worth $20 (whilst the worst ones – which means most ideas – will actually lose you money).

On the other hand, great teams can make even a mediocre idea fly, and take a great idea from zero to IPO in just a few, short years.

So, this chart’s just an example, to illustrate an idea, right?

No.

According to David S Rose (a third generation serial entrepreneur/investor who has personally invested in over 80 businesses), it’s actually a remarkably accurate tool for assessing the current value of the new Internet and traditional businesses springing up all over the place …

Let’s take a couple of examples:

The Big Internet Idea

Let’s start by looking at almost any of the ‘amazing ideas’ bought by large corporates from their founders in the last few years, e.g: Yahoo has a pretty miserable track record when it comes to startup acquisitions, including Flickr, Delicious, and MyBlogLog and Google has also made a series of startup acquisitions that went nowhere.

Could it be that Google and Yahoo selected badly? Or, is it simply that a corporate cannot execute on these $20 ideas as well as their $1,000,000 founding teams?

The clue is in Google’s failed acquisition of Dodgeball … the founder left and started his next business: the hugely successful Foursquare.

So, in this case, Dennis Crowley (founder of both Dodgeball and Foursquare) came up with the $20 ideas but, in Google’s hands, execution of his first idea was worthless ($1), whilst his own execution of his second idea was clearly worth millions.

The Lifestyle Business

But, what happens if you take a pretty weak idea and give it to a good aspiring-entrepreneur?

Then you have Josh, who started a web-site drop-shipping high end camera gear from China to photographers all over the world, straight out of college.

That was a year ago, and now Josh has a great little business.

The idea may not be very good (after all, anybody can set up an online eCommerce store in about 5 minutes these days, and drop-ship stuff from the USA and China), but he has executed on his ideas when so many others simply don’t put the time and effort in, so they fail before they even begin …

…. so his $1 idea x his $100,000 execution really has given him a great ‘lifestyle’ business … earning him over $100k p.a. in just over a year.

Not bad for somebody so young; not bad for anybody who doesn’t have their eyes set on reaching the stars.

Not so, Ruslan Kogan …

Ruslan, a young Australian, was exactly like Josh, just a few years ago:

Kogan started drop-shipping TV’s and other electronic gear from China to Australia. But, what elevated his idea from an easily replicable $1 idea to a $15 ‘great idea’ was branding everything with his own name: Kogan.

But, what turned his $15 ‘great idea’ into the multi-million dollar business that it is today is amazing execution ($10,000,000): http://www.dreambuildinspirelead.com/3-lessons-from-entrepreneur-ruslan-kogan/

Yes, Ruslan’s business, today, is easily worth $150,000,000 ($15 idea x $10,000,000 execution).

See, this unique valuation tool really does work!

So, don’t be the last person in the world to realize that even the world’s most amazing ideas only $20: it’s million dollar execution that counts … if you want a $20 million business?

But, don’t come to me to fund you until you can prove it 😉

 

Help a reader: the results are in!

Readrer Poll

Thanks to all of you who voted, especially those who backed up their vote with an opinion (via the comments section of my post)!

Jason asked whether he should continue renting the commercial condo that his business is in for $1,800 per month OR buy it for $160,000? When he asked his friends earlier he didn’t get much help:

I have asked a lot of people and get about half giving me one suggestion while half give me the opposite!

Unfortunately, as is often the case with these difficult decisions, our vote is split 3:2 …  but, in favor of buying the building.

For example, Zach is emphatically FOR buying the building:

More information would be helpful, but that seems like a good price for $1,800/mo rent. Business or no business, I would take that deal every time.

Whilst, Victor is equally AGAINST:

Don’t invest in something you don’t know much about, you know your business, invest in that, pass on what you don’t know.

So, Jason is right back where he started 🙁

My general advice in these situations, without having nearly enough enough info to give specific/personal advice, is to …

do both. Every single time.

You see, it comes from the advice that my Grandpa once gave me: I remember him recounting an argument that he had with Grandma when they were just starting out. Grandma wanted to buy a modest home, instead of renting what amounted to little more than dumps, being all they could afford as poor immigrants, but my grandfather had other ideas; he said:

From a business, you will always be able to buy a house. But, from a house you will never buy a business.

Sound advice (it certainly guided me), but how does it help in this situation?

Well, it applies in reverse: when you have a business that’s generating cashflow, you have to start thinking about external investments, and buying your own premises is often the best place to start. Of course, you still have to keep the reinvestment needs of the business in mind … after all, that’s what’s generating the cash!

But, what happens when it seems you don’t have enough capital to do both?

That was the situation that I found myself in when we outgrew our last rental office:

I found a building that we could rehab for our purposes, but that I felt had good future capital appreciation value: in other words, a building that I thought – first and foremost – would be a good investment.

It was way over budget (e.g. when comparing old rent v new mortgage), but it seemed too good an investment opportunity to simply pass up.

I had no idea how to value it properly, and it was going for auction, but I found out that the only other serious bidder was a property developer. I knew that he would only pay land value, not much more.

This was a trick that I had employed successfully once before: find a property that developers are interested in, but that you want to own/occupy and pay $1 more than they are willing to bid.

And, that’s roughly what happened (cost me $1k over his losing bid of $1.36m) …

Then the worry started: how was I going to pay for this monolith? How was I going to find the deposit?

I dealt with the second issue (finding the deposit) by employing a tried-and-tested short-term funding method: shorten the time to receive payments from clients and lengthen the time to pay suppliers.

This (temporarily) reduces the amount of working capital tied up in the business at the (hopefully, manageable & short-term) expense of happy customers and suppliers.

I dealt with the first problem (plus, the new problem of quickly replenishing the working capital situation) by not eating for 6 months 😉

This means, maximizing the profits of the business to help cover mortgage costs and rehab costs, whilst quickly rebuilding the working capital of the business.

Tough – very tough for a while – but, manageable.

And, that’s how I made my first real $1 million: I sold the building just a few years later for nearly $2.5m. It remains one of the best real-estate investments that I have ever made.

The only catch, if Jason were to employ this strategy, is that his building doesn’t look like it has much upside potential – with “32 units, of whitch 24 are currently vacant shells” in the complex.

Perhaps, Jason is better off using the month-by-month lease time, when his lease expires, to give him time to find something with a little more upside potential?

 

 

Help a reader out …

Should this reader buy his building or reinvest in his business?

View Results

Loading ... Loading ...

What should this reader do?

Read his story, make a selection, and leave a comment:

We are renting the commercial condo that our business is in for $1,800 per month, we can buy it for $160,000 should we?

We like the building, the location is a bit hard to find, and with a 20% down it will really cut down on the monthly expense but I will eat up $32,000 that we could use to expand the business. I don’t have $32k but I have a friend who offered to lend me half of it, I do have half.

We currently average $15k a month in sales, other than rent we have about $1000 in fixed expenses, I pay myself $2500, and we average about 25% for costs of goods sold. We currently have staff that costs about $2000 per month. This gives us about $4,000 of extra money at the end of each month….so far with this extra money we have bought lots of extra inventory to the point that we have enough, we have bought a commercial truck, the business is 100% debt free and has about $5,000 in liquid assets saved up (And we personally have over $10k), along with 30k in inventory and 10k in tools and equipment. Personally we are debt free other than the house, student loans and car….but with the house at 2% interest and the car at 2.9% and the student loans at 3.25% I don’t see any reason to send any of them more then the minimum because we make 4 times on most inventory that we buy.

So is now a good time to get the building? Or should we keep our cash free to keep buying things that are our core business? We are not in the business of real estate so should we own or rent?

Now, I’m not yet sure exactly what advice to give him, yet, so leave a comment and help us BOTH out 🙂

The myth of the millionaire next door …

weep warning

This post will make you cry.

But, it is a post that I have to write.

It’s one that I have been putting off … and, off … and, off.

Why?

Because, I am going to tear apart one last (well, until the next) tenant of finance …

… one that even I have not dared touch until now.

But, I have finally decided to bite the bullet, because there has been a whole generation weaned on an aspiration that, in itself, is a lie.

Yes, I am talking about:

[shock]

The Myth of The Millionaire Next Door.

[horror]

In case you are too young to remember, The Millionaire Next Door is the title of a 1996 best seller by Thomas Stanley and William D. Danko that was touted at the time as revolutionary but, to me, produced a totally mundane and obvious conclusion:

Most of the millionaire households that they profiled did not have the extravagant lifestyles that most people would assume. This finding is backed up by surveys indicating how little these millionaire households have spent on such things as cars, watches, suits, and other luxury products/services. Most importantly, the book gives a list of reasons for why these people managed to accumulate so much wealth (the top one being that “They live below their means”).

[sigh]

The perception after this book was released, becoming an instant – and enduring – best-seller, is that the typical American millionaire is actually your neighbor, the small business owner who has been working for 20+ years on his business, investing (and, reinvesting) its profits rather than spending on lifestyle and luxuries.

In other words, somebody who slips under your radar; somebody you probably ignore; for good reason …

It’s all fine and dandy: like all “spend less than you earn and save, save, save”-driven strategies you, too, will no doubt become a millionaire by the time that you retire, but there are two problems:

1. What about inflation? Start now and, if you take 20 years to become a millionaire, you are really still only half of one in today’s dollars, and

2. Who says that you can wait 20 years?

I certainly couldn’t.

That’s why I call this type of ‘Millionaire Next Door’ business – an ATM business – little more than ‘a job with benefits’ …

… if you really do want to have one of these businesses, then here’s what you need to do:

Do NOT spend the spare business cashflow on personal lifestyle building (homes, cars, vacations, etc.); instead, use that cashflow to fund an aggressive investment portfolio, outside of your business: one that will one day grow to replace your personal income i.e. the amount of money that you DO take from the business to live off.

When the day comes that this passive income surpasses your personal business income, you become free.

However, this freedom does not come simply from saving and investing passively – otherwise, you are simply following the advice given in the Millionaire Next Door and you, too, will slave for the next 20+ years to get there.

Rather, this true financial freedom comes from investing your business profits aggressively and actively, with a mixture of your money and borrowed money, in things such as direct stocks (no funds for you!), and real-estate.

In this fashion, you may still need to work your business for 20 years before you shut it down, but at least you will retire a real millionaire (or better) in today’s dollars.

Far better, instead of starting a lifestyle business that relies on YOU being the front man (e.g. lawn-mowing round; accountancy practice; design studio; etc.), or a business that is tied to a single location (such as a car-wash; a restaurant; a corner shop) …

… start a business that can scale like McDonalds, invest aggressively, and you (too) may be able to do it in 7 😉

The Myth Of Passive Income

I see a lot of people chasing the dream of passive income.

Like unicorns, the Tooth Fairy, and – sadly – Santa Claus, truly passive income does NOT exist!

The only true ‘set & forget’ passive income comes from sub-standard investments such as bonds, CD’s, mutual funds, dividend stocks, and the like.

All true income-producing investments require at least some work in selecting/maintaining the income source

e.g. Rental real-estate requires work to locate the best deals, then requires further work to locate and retain the best tenants, and requires even more work to maintain the property.

Of course, some of this can be outsourced to Realtors and property managers, but you cannot outsource your worry (e.g. if the property lies vacant and your mortgage payment falls due).

Even more, a business can never truly be passive: you will always have to worry about staff, clients, and finances.

Even if you hire staff to manage all of these areas for you, you will still have to oversee – and, worry about – them!

In my experience, the higher the return you expect, the less passive is your investment.

How to dig yourself out of a financial hole …

If you’d like to catch my nationally syndicated radio interview on Financial Safari With Coach Pete, click this link:

http://www.financialsafari.com/as-heard-on-show/interview-with-adrian-cartwood-11-24-2012/

_______________

I really feel for the author when I receive an e-mail like this one from Rick:

My wife is leaving her job in December, I’m a paramedic here in Chicago and we’re both college graduates.  Our house is upside down, we don’t have much in the way of savings for retirement or otherwise and we’re trying everything to stay afloat financially.  Any help would be appreciated.

[AJC: I changed Rick’s job and location to protect his anonymity]

The worst part is that I can’t really help Rick, for a couple of reasons:

1. I’m not a qualified financial adviser;

2. I don’t know anything about Rick, other than what he has told me in (exactly) 50 words.

But, I can give Rick one piece of specific advice: see a qualified financial professional to help you decide how to deal with your ‘upside down’ house, and work out why you aren’t saving enough, and what to do about it.

I can also give a fairly general piece of advice that Rick can choose to follow or not; and, it’s the same advice that I would give just about anybody who is in a similar situation (under-employed; under-saved; and under-water on their house):

The best way to dig yourself out of a financial hole is to …

… find a way to increase your income!

Cutting costs, while admirable – necessary even – is simply too limited to produce the sort of financial turnaround that Rick and others like him need.

Maybe, Rick can turn his wife’s loss of income into a blessing by refocussing her on starting a business, even it it’s while she actively looks for new employment … a business that can be run part-time (at first) when she does manage to find a new job.

I would give similar advice to Philip, who is desperate for the opportunity to shake off the shackles of being imprisoned in a job:

In 5 years I’d like to not have an office job anymore, working for myself/having my own business. I’m stuck in a job, so I keep it to pay my bills. Designers don’t earn much, so I can’t exactly bankroll my parents’ retirement. I’ve been too afraid to go out on my own.

The best way for you (and, Philip) to overcome your fear of becoming your own boss is to actually start …

… but, start part-time.

Doing something is better than doing nothing, and can quickly lead to more/better opportunities in ways that you could not have predicted in advance: for example, and in Philip’s case, designers can freelance, work (cheaply) on crowd-sourcing sites such as Freelancer.com, 99designs, fiverr.com, and so on.

Even better, Philip could use his own design skills to help create his own web-site or product, and run that part-time to earn some extra $$$ and learn how to run a business – building up his confidence in the process, even if the business never truly takes off.

On the other hand, the business may suddenly find its own life and give Philip the confidence to quit his job and start working on it full-time.

Now, unlike Philip, you may not be a designer … I assume that Rick’s wife isn’t either … but, there are plenty of businesses that you can start part-time that require very little money.

Here are some thought starters (if a teenager can do ’em, surely you can?!): What are some potential low-cost businesses that can be started and operated by a teenager?

But, you’ll never know if you don’t start …

.