Ways to Escape the Rat Race

If the pain of not escaping the rat race is worse for you than failing or discomfort or receiving flak from doubters, read this article.

Play with the building blocks in this article, and in the books you read, like the 4 Hour Work Week, Unscripted, and others.

If you simply had to raise cash, how would you do it? Write down every idea you can think of.  If your answer is to file for bankruptcy, go away.

Take inventory of current ventures, hobbies, investments, and all assets you own.  Where do you see each headed? What are competitors, consumers, and investors in each niche saying?  What are or did your advisors say that led to the purchase or venture in the first place?  Conduct a thorough SWOT and boundary spanning analysis for each venture, stock and asset.

Examine business ideas using the 5 Commandments (Need, Entry, Time, Scale, and Time).  Gauge the demand of each idea.  Zero competitors are probably a bad sign. Several profitable competitors you can beat or take market share from is a better sign.  Would you have a sufficient profit margin?

Eliminate holes in your buckets, people who will poison your well, and idle scoffers who want to bother you or elicit your plans.  Distance yourself from needy people, gold diggers, and starwmen.

Back to SWOT analysis.  What (special) advantages do you, your products, your customers, and companies you own shares of have?  Can these advantages be enhanced? Can these advantages be protected and / or will they work elsewhere?

Do you know your end users or customers?  Do you know when and where to reach them via advertising, to gain feedback, and to approach to be affiliates?

Study your competitors' products, services, sites, and advertisements.  What do they do that you can do?  What do they do you can leave out of your business?

How good of a salesperson are you? Can you determine if a potential employee or vendor is competent? You must have dictatorial control over your business.  Partner ships won't sail.

Read anything relevant to your venture and/or investments.  I'd weigh industry publications, academic journals in your field and the statements of people who have done what you intend to do much more than YouTube gurus or cable news.  Examine biases and possible biases in every source.  Does any expert your consult get paid if you fail or succeed? Are they objective.  Did a friend refer to some expert with hubris that seems really on target and he/she speaks from experience?

Can you handle the workload your venture requires?  What technology could you implement?

Can you stand to be isolated and criticized?  What problems do you and your business face?  Besides rags to riches stories, read riches to rags stories.

Ask yourself, what would you have to do to fail or not do to fail?  Then don't do it.

If you need to learn to code, but are leery of commitment to traditional colleges, see FALCE.

If you need a supportive inner circle that provides objective advice, accountability, and a sounding board for ideas, see the Black Book of the Master Mind series of books.

If you need more cash for a start up, see Fast Cash and Fast Cash 2 kindle eBooks.