Regular Businesses Suck
November 6, 2007
I have several businesses in motion. I’m phasing out of a mortgage consultancy in Dallas, delegating most of a real estate investment group I’ve put together in Ohio and in West Palm Beach, and trying my best to automate & delegate more and more of my medical equipment company in Venice, Florida.
I earn a fine living. But I’m not really getting much living in.
For example. I spent about two hours, altogether, selling an ultrasound to a doctor. Even after another hour on the phone with him helping train him on the system, and even after maybe another hour on the combined paperwork and so forth, my total time invested was maybe four hours to earn the commission. A respectable effort, which put me on a par with what a really good lawyer earns as an hourly rate.
But there’s more to it. I would rather do this than be a lawyer, but the picture isn’t perfect yet. What gets left out here are the hours of work I’ve put in not selling that ultrasound. And then, today, the hours I’ve had to put in dealing with the ultrasound when it turned out to have a problem.
Whenever you sell something, you run into a few problems inherent in the whole arrangment:
1.) If it’s a physical something, you usually have to ship it. You might have to stock it even, before you ship it, which is worse still. You have to worry about it breaking in shipping. You have to worry about them not liking it or driving you crazy with questions about it or wanting to return it after a week.
2.) Even if it’s not physical, you still have to actually SELL it. You sell it, you make some money. Then you have to go out and sell another one. If you don’t sell another one, you don’t make any more. This is a problem.
The beauty of a residual income stream is that it’s … residual. The money eventually just keeps coming in. You get it in motion, and it all rolls in. And even when you are first getting started, with it being a web-based business, it’s working around the clock for you, everything is automated!
The traditional business might be for some people.
I’m done with it.
