How to start a location and time independent business by Colin Wright.
What's a freedom business?
A business that earns its owner money and time. You build it to create personal freedom for yourself and to support your ideal lifestyle.
Who should start one?
Some examples:
- young people in or freshly out of school to fill in blanks
- unemployed or unemployable
- employed but unhappy with where their work is taking them
Why start one?
They enable freedom. No location commitment means you can travel or stay at home. No appointments means you can fill your day with other activities.
Where to run one?
Anywhere, from your home in the suburbs to a hostel in Southeast Asia.
When should I start one?
Now.
- instead of aiming for work-life balance, try integrating work into your life
- value is time, not money -- focus on producing rewards that make you happiest
- don't settle, it's worth it to pursue an ideal lifestyle and optimize happiness
For time management, Wright recommends:
- the Getting Things Done method by David Allen
- the Pomodoro Technique by Francesco Cirillo
- using a basic task list (prioritize, be proactive, be consistent, monotask, use Parkinson's Law)
For earning money:
- you earn a paycheck from a company by producing value for them
- produce value for other people and do this repeatedly
- create assets and avoid/reduce liabilities
- identify a problem and solve it
- get your product out the door as soon as possible
From the Personal MBA, a business:
- creates and delivers something of value
- that other people want or need
- at a price they're willing to pay
- in a way that satisfies the customer's needs and expectations
- so that it brings in enough profit to make it worthwhile for the owners to continue operations
Regarding bootstrapping vs investment:
- the purpose is to increase your personal level of freedom, outside investments reduce freedom
- instead, consider running a parallel business to earn money and fund your freedom business
- the parallel business could be services based since that's easier to start/run (think freelancing)
If you build multiple businesses with modularity, you can increase the value of each one by sharing resources, customers, and promotional efforts. Think about how Amazon started with selling books online, then all ecommerce items, then server solutions, and now video.
Some tips for running businesses:
- outsource distribution and payments, use PayPal, Google Checkout, Amazon Payments
- consider not scaling and keeping operations small
- create systems out of tasks done repeatedly to optimize hours saved
Some resources:
- Mixergy
- The Personal MBA
- Khan Academy
- SBA
Publishing builds an audience as a form of promotion. Not everyone in the audience will be a customer. Consider setting up a blog, writing ebooks, or newsletters.
Videos is another form a publishing. You can create valuable information or promote other people's products.
Music can be distributed through marketplaces or via your own website.
Games & Apps can be done for a specific platform/marketplace or cross-platform.
Services & Consulting have a major downside in that it's not inherently decoupled from your time. But you can use it to bootstrap another business.
Membership if you can build an audience and provide them with consistent value, distributed via: publishing, forums, and other resources.
Affiliate business sell other people's products for a percentage. See http://cj.com.
E-Commerce sells physical products and delivers them to customers. Try to outsource/automate as much as possible.
Whatever route you take, they'll do better if you have a home base for fans to contact you with.