3 Steps To Financial Freedom

I believe that anybody who truly wishes to be free from the rat race and be financially free must start their own business. Your own business will provide far more security than a regular job, greater financial reward and the flexibility and freedom of the lifestyle you choose. When you are employed you work when you are told to work, you make what your employer deems you are worth and you can lose it all at any time. Follow these 3 steps to financial freedom and you will find more security, income and lifestyle than was ever possible as an employee. Now I know this is all very well to say, but actually starting a business and succeeding in it is a different story, but hopefully these tips will at least get you thinking about it.

Step 1. Make a decision that you want to start and own your own business. Nothing starts until a decision is made. You need to know nothing about what the business is going to be in order to decide that this is what you want to do. It’s only at a later time that money, risk etc become an issue.

Step 2. Make a list of what is that you want to achieve with your business and some requirements that you would like for the business to allow you to do. Clarity and focus is power. I have called this article 3 steps to financial freedom but I could have easily called it 3 steps to travel, 3 steps to spending more time with my family, etc. Find your meaning. For example here are some of the questions and requirement that I posed to myself:

• Minimal start up cost (less than $3000).
• No government intervention or regulation.
• An income of $*******+ per year.
• Freedom to travel any time I choose.
• Income to be passive once set up.
• Automated sales process.
• I don’t want to handle hard goods.
• I want it to be able to generate income in an area I have interest.
• Be able to run it from anywhere in the world.

And the list goes on. The process was a lot more exhaustive than this list indicates, I just want to give you a basic idea. Ok, so now that you have a list make it a goal to find an income source that matches all your criteria. Now I know this might seem impossible but it isn’t! It might take a while, yes, but impossible, no.

So using myself as the example again, here was my next step in the process.

• No hard goods - So I need to sell digital products, information, affiliate programs or advertising, (again a more exhaustive brainstorm is required, just trying to get you going here).

• Freedom to travel - So ideally an internet based business, that way all I need is a lap top and a connection and I’m away!

• Income requirements - for me they are high, so selling other people's products will probably be inadequate, so maybe develop my own digital products and start my own affiliate programs, have other people sell for me, also I’m going to need a large scale means of distribution, (internet is starting to look pretty good).

• Income needs to be passive - I can sell products through a website, have them delivered digitally, have the money sent directly to my bank and all of this through auto responders. I don’t need to do a thing apart from how to set it up. It just keeps getting better and better.

• Start up cost. For me that was quite low, less than $3000.

• web hosting - $300 a year

• Editing of digital products - $300

• Various needed software - $300

• misc - $1000

Great, all in all for less than $2000 and so on, by being specific and knowing what I wanted I was able to find a way to meet all my requirements. As you can see, the choice for me was becoming very easy, it’s copy writing on the internet, that’s the business I need to enter into.

I thought to myself I love personal development and life coaching so I’ll write a book on the subject, start a website to promote and distribute it. In addition to that I can make a little money from advertising, make friends, help people out and start a community, it’s win, win, win! Now was this easy? Of course not, I had to write a book, build a website and fill it with content, as well as learn marketing and promotion, 1000’s of hours of work, but hey, that’s fine. By meeting one of my requirement, It’s in an area of interest, none of it seemed like work, I loved every minute!

I did all this part time while maintaining a full time job as a musician. You don’t have to quit your full time job to do this. My only risk was the $2000 or so it cost me to start, I think most could manage that, what’s more I could easily have done it for much less, I chose to pay for speed and convenience, I could have easily done it all for under $150 if that was my budget.

Step 3. Take action. If you have thoroughly completed the above process then the final requirement in the 3 steps to financial freedom is action. Don’t be afraid of mistakes, you will surely make them and don’t worry overly about the details as they will come to you as you need them. The universe loves a “doer” and will surely reward you handsomely for your efforts, be brave and take a leap of faith in the direction of financial and personal freedom and you will never look back.

So what are the 3 steps to financial freedom? Well hopefully you can see that depends on you but I hope this helped you a little in figuring that out.

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