You’ve got a goal. Whether or not you’re achieving that goal might be another story. Of course, I’ve come to realize that for me, my goals are being achieved, though in quite a bizarre way. By merely devoting my entire life to achieving my goals I’m earning more than I ever have before in my financial goals, I’ve become a lot more focused than I ever was in high school, and for some odd reason, I’ve developed a weird habit over the past month and a half at the time of writing this, mostly due to summer classes, of only sleeping 4 or 5 hours a night. Was I tired frequently throughout the days doing that? Yeah, I was. It was heavy duty deprivation, but I did get used to it and I had a surprising amount of energy given the circumstances. I got a lot done in such a short period of time. Occasionally during the course of those hours spent studying and not sleeping I would also be running and maintaining business. It was nothing but school, three summer classes, and my entire week was devoted to studying, my weekends were devoted to having fun.

What happened there is simplicity. Simplicity makes a vast difference. When I examine what I am doing with my businesses, I could be said to run about three or four of them, but it is not the number that counts, it’s the results that come out of those. Each one is technically profitable in that they all make more than they cost, but practically profitable has been another story. Still, I cannot help but feel on some level those things are going to change in the future. After all, if it is so easily possible to go from zero dollars to pennies every single day, why would it not be easily possible, simply taking the proper action, time, and effort, to raise pennies everyday into dollars every day? And then dozens of dollars? And then hundreds? Thousands? Finance is very proportional and at the same time exponential. When you start generating a lot of wealth financially society tends to give you rewards for that income, excluding taxes, of course.

So what’s your business? What’s your goal? I feel that the best way to really describe a good way to go about getting more out of your present life and getting a step closer to realizing your goals is simply to describe my own recent personal experience.

I woke up almost every single day at 5:45AM. And waking up early truly does help. All this stuff you have likely read about before about how the early riser gets it all – it’s largely true, and I can see why.

Since the majority of society still operates based on when the sun goes up and when the sun goes down – it simply makes sense to match society’s energetic pattern. By waking up when the sun comes up, you’re essentially in resonance with the rest of the world and how it operates.

My first class of the day was Listening to Music, which started at 7:30AM in the morning. I had to leave my house to get to school 20-30 minutes early by leaving at 6:30AM usually. The routine was wake up, shower, eat, brush, leave. Then, when I got to school I had anywhere from 15-30 minutes to study materials, whether there was a test coming up that day or not. This meant that more than 95% of the time I was totally prepared for class, prepared for tests, or even was spending a little bit of time studying ahead.

If the day was a school day, my life that day was school. If it was a play day, I was going to play hard. Some people manage their time in blocks, or when they study they’ll do 20 minute sessions with frequent breaks. I did not spend time doing this – it just did not seem to be in tune much of the time with how I operate. I seem to function best when I’m taking a couple hours at a time on one subject, working in a very focused manner, then taking about an hour break in between. Or sometimes, I would simply spend 5 hours procrastinating and then 4 hours working. Whatever the case, motivation set in quick for a simple reason.

Military training is definitely something that takes away the fear, but I can also say that I do not agree with the harshness of it. To motivate me to make A’s on tests, it didn’t take much. Just getting a taste of reality and poverty was enough for me. I left my dad’s corporate supplied budget of a few hundred bucks a month plus paid tuition for about three months to try and launch my businesses to a new level. During that time, my money drained quickly enough, and my income increased too slowly.

My girlfriend Kim and I resorted to buying cheap food. The house we were living in was often dark, the curtains drawn shut, and the lights in the kitchen were often dimmed. The workspace of the bedroom, which was also the computer room, was tightly packed with junk and stuff all over the place. At one point, I was even in tears of frustration and sadness because I was trying so hard to make business successful, but nothing was coming in at all. I would work and work and work, try and try and try – nothing was coming in. The days were long, earning not even $7.00 some days. I was working below minimum wage on businesses that were supposed to be able to bring in thousands, even during their first month under the right actions.

It was not a problem of my effort, my effort was sky high. It was not a problem of my optimism, I was highly positive about everything that I attempted. The fact is, attitude and effort are not enough by themselves if the actions you’re taking are not conducive to what you’re setting out to achieve. And it is very easy to get mislead to something that you would not normally do, to something that is not normally successful either. 6 months after working under brutal conditions and losing more money in investment than I even made, I was back to square one, and fortunately enough – back at college. It was a warm welcome I gave it, and there was definitely a renewed energy behind trying.

A college degree is going to get you a relatively guaranteed “faucet” income. Which means, whatever hourly job you might find that is paired with a college degree, will be a backup plan should your passive and automatic income options fail. I’m a firm believer that everyone who wishes to be financially responsible or live the material life that they want should have sources of passive income, even if they are just penny sources like I have had. For some people, it’s ad revenue from their blogs. For others, it’s stocks and bonds. For others, it’s making their hobbies make money. There’s all kinds of options out there.

If I was going back to college, I was going back to college. I signed up for one extra class than I thought I could handle, and hit the books.

Be persistent. The simple act of being persistent is SO vitally important, I do not think that this is something that is stressed quite enough in many places that you will read. For any business that you start, you should first consider whether or not it could even be a successful business. Secondly, you should also consider what the business has to offer you that you may not normally have otherwise, besides money. For me, this blog is something that has kept me positive and focused, and has also been one outlet to express what I’m thinking. My apparel brand is something that allows me to design my own fashionable clothes that I’d like to wear personally. My production company allows me to gain technical and storytelling experience and is a major venue for me to connect with other people and meet new faces. My music is a way for me to let out my negative feelings and also to make an impact on other people’s lives, as well as relate to others. All of these benefits that I obtain from my businesses are vitally important; they’re essential elements of self actualization. Find something that is beneficial on many levels and stick with it.

But for how long? Obviously you do not want to spend a decade on something that was never going to be successful no matter how long you tried it. If you truly believe in a business and its potential, it is likely that you should spend a solid 3-5 years on it before moving onto something else, and during those 3 to 5 years you should be putting a lot of time and effort into that business. If the business involves selling to customers, a lot of your time should be spent seeking out customers. If your business involves simply reaching a particular demographic a lot of your time should be spent researching and reaching that demographic through some marketing plan. At the end of the minimum three years, maximum five years – nothing is happening or no progress has been made, then you pull the plug and cut losses. There are of course limits to this practice, though. Do not go into major debt during that period of time, do not continue with it if there is absolutely no benefit during any of that time period. If there is no room for growth or expansion upon reaching your initial goals, you may not want to continue.

It is interesting how much persistence can make a difference, though. For those who have stuck at some jobs, there have been great benefits. Dr. James Francis, teaching Lifespan Growth & Development at San Jacinto College, remarks that, “the people who truly get the careers and life they want are those who keep at it, keep at it, keep at it.” It’s the reason that people who started out working at McDonald’s as someone who cleaned the grills one day went on to get top positions in the company. Having said that, there is a certain energy that goes with the success behind persistence. You do not just want to show up to work everyday, you want to continue to contribute at an upper level, continue to attempt to innovate and expand or improve.

Know your limits, and push them when you can. I knew that getting 4 to 5 hours of sleep was something I had never really done before. It was not even something that I had planned, it just kind of happened during the course of working so much. Did my body suffer from it? I’d say the damage was definitely minimal and it’s only after taking these last finals that my voice even got a little bit raspy, where it has since recovered. 4 or 5 hours was less sleep than I got in highschool, and I was almost twice as productive. Was the sleep the result of this? Well, no, but the amount of time I made available to projects probably was. What I did notice is that by the time the weekend came around there was some days I felt burnt out and had to go out to unwind with friends for a bit. Instead of studying some Fridays or Saturdays I went out to the movies, or went out to eat, or spent time with my girlfriend.

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