New Markets.
Imagine driving down the street in a car filled with friends. You see a sewing store on the side of the street and you think nothing of it. In fact, you and your friends wonder how does a sewing store even make the rent. Well, although nobody in your social circle would ever buy enough product from the sewing store to cover the rent, it obviously thrives because there IS a demographic out there that patrons this sewing store. So clearly, as much as you may believe you are “in touch” with what consumers want, that sewing store’s existence is proof that you may not be as “in touch” as you believe.
In an earlier post, I mentioned thinking differently and looking for subtle hints at what new opportunities may present themselves. If you have a web site, study the statistics of the site closely and you may find small hints of how possible new markets are actually seeking you and the products/services that you offer. If you see some small clues, change a few things on the site and watch for an uptake in interest and keep the phones lines open, they may just start ordering on the first call. 
Throwing away routines.
We all have routines at work. Wake up early to beat traffic, end up in traffic with everyone else wanting to beat traffic. Swing by the local coffee shop on the way into work. Greet everyone while you check out the day’s workload and get started until lunch time when undoubtedly you’ll have some coworkers who are interested in going as a group. Lunch. Lunch coma. Try to start working again. Get a few things done. Clock out to suffer through traffic again, work out or go straight home and fabricate something that is described as dinner, watch tv, and then go to sleep.
What if you were to throw away this entire routine? If you were to become independent and create your own way of making money. Suddenly, there’s no need to have a routine because you simply do what you want to do, when you want to do it and at your own pace. You could work until 2am, sleep for a few hours and continue at 6am to finish up or laze away the day until 5pm to get some work done The mentality of being an employee where you measure your value by multiplying your hourly by your hours worked or dividing your salary by 2080 hours goes right out the window because you’ve come to the conclusion that there is a larger goal and doing whatever you can do to get towards that goal sooner is all that matters. You can’t measure your progress by time, you MUST measure your progress by achievements and by doing so, you’ll find that you accomplish more. It sounds so simple, because it is, but so many well educated individuals go through life measuring their lives by time spent at work vs the accomplishments achieved overall. Don’t fall into this rut. When you’re running, you don’t stare at your feet, you keep your head up and look at the horizon to see what’s coming up - do the same in life.
Morning toast.
I had the recent opportunity to spend time with a couple of extended family friends who made their fortunes doing what they love. One through commercial real estate in Hong Kong and another who created a shipping port years ago that helped make him a very rich man.
The story about the shipping port fellow will have to wait but I’ll share the story about the real estate mogul right now.
We were talking over morning toast about all kinds of things when suddenly he shared his perspective on how smart people choose where to make their mark. We were watching CNBC about the government bailout money and he referenced Warren Buffet’s (WB) investment into Goldman Sachs. He noted that WB, being an older man, has seen cycles and cycles of troubled/good times over his lifespan and because of this, his ability to spot an investment gets better as he ages.
He also noted the young ages at which accomplished scientists and artists in the world made their marks. These people spent the rest of their lives trying to do an encore (linearly) but couldn’t because as they grew older, their knowledge handicapped them from dreaming the impossible and that achieving the impossible has usually been left to the younger generations who knew no boundaries.
The economy, in contrast, is cyclical, and once you’ve seen the merry-go-round rotate once, you know what to expect as time goes on. So his quick lesson was - if you want to make money in the long term, watch the market and learn to invest.
Honestly, that was the best piece of toast I ever had.