How To Make a Million Dollars

Simply concoct a way to provide a million dollars worth of value and that’s it. Done. You’re all set.

A million dollars is yours, as well as the only thing besides love and health worth fussing about:

Time…

and of course the ability to find yourself in a unique position in life! One where you have the option to not be in any particular place, on any particular day, doing any particular thing as to earn money. You can go anywhere you wish and you can do whatever you want. A dream? For most. But not if you want it badly enough.

While I have no particular desire to be filthy rich…

I do want to crack open the nut and figure out my own way of how to make a million dollars. The popular method seems to be searching for some great idea, some revolutionary a-ha! moment that transforms an industry or market segment. Like Facebook or Google. I say bullshit. There are clever rascals who make a million dollars a year selling online TV wall mounts for flat screens. Others do it by selling T shits or bowling balls or any other market you may trick yourself into thinking as stupid. It’s not stupid, it’s brilliantly smart to use your enviable powers of intelligence to do something stupid while the truly gifted try to no avail to make the next Facebook or Google (who’s the real idiot then?).

Conventional wisdom vs risk taking

Conventional wisdom is the root of why we all have jobs. Because why would you not have a job? Go to school, get into a good college, get a good job, and have a nice productive life. This is the conventional life template which we all subscribe too without any real thought. Anything outside of this is deemed risky and unnecessary. Besides, why do handstands on the edge when you can be sitting around with all the other folks making fun of those idiots who are doing handstands?

Because you will become a millionaire.

I have talked before about how corporate jobs are normal but they are not natural. Normal because of conventional wisdom, but certainly not natural because they do not head the call of what existence really wants. The call to explore, experience, create, do and transform.

People do stuff

People do stuff, make stuff, wander, explore, learn, grow. It is an innate desire in all of us, as basic and primordial as the desire for language and walking upright. As strong as any call of the wild, as prevalent as our need for sex, love, and companionship. People do stuff…and people need to do stuff, or we die. Maybe not death from our physical bodies worn away through a life spent chasing security, but dripped away from a life spent dampening fear.

We are spiritual beings in human form…

who exist to do more than seek safety and security. If the goal of our time here on this planet was simple survival, then content we would all be with what we have, but we are not. We seek more, always more. This desire is in us and it never goes away, no matter how much we ignore it, pretend it’s not there, sweet talk it to leave your side, or poison it. Fight it you can not. It is an immutable and ever present drive to create, do, be, and explore.

Besides, would we really want it any other way?

The foundations of our lives I believe to be joy and freedom. Nothing more complicated than that. Freedom to do as you wish, joy to like what you do. This is achieve through innovation and experience. If you are not innovating and experiencing what is the point? To copy? To be like someone? To do what others have done? Perhaps as a guide for your own path, but eventually you must embrace the realization that you are the creator of your experience. It is up to you to realize you are already free to to follow your joy and create what you so desire. If you can master this, with much certainty, men wiser than me will say you have mastered you life. For many though, locking yourself in a box for security is a poor shade of freedom, and it is certainly not joy. It’s safe, boring, unfair, and conventional. Which is why blogs and books, speakers, and courses on making more money are so popular. It’s not about the money, it’s about the freedom. What is missing though is the joy. Freedom with no joyfulness is broken, and it is lacking (back to that desire for “more, more more!” it seems)

You are a creative force of nature

You are a magnificent human being, no one else is like you or will be like you, or has been like you. No one will have the same exact upbringing and same life experiences. The combination of everything, from the womb with which you came, from the world you live in right now make you truly unique. What are the chances that you would even be here right now? A million to one? Two million to one? The chances that you would even be here are so slim that it should provide no other reason than to believe in yourself, and why not? Fate, luck, god, genetics, source, believe in you, so why not you believe in you? I believe in me for whatever the hell it’s worth. Embrace that you are unique and stop trying to be a square peg attempting to force its way into a round hole. Let go of all that cumbersome need to control the world around you. To make things as they are for you at the detriment of everyone else and instead just let others be what they desire in their world of experience, and you be the way you desire in your world of experience.

You are astonishing!

You can be the best in the world at something, so why choose to seek safety where there is none? Being the best ain’t easy or quick. It takes conscious dedicated effort over a long period of time. You are not guaranteed success by any time frame, and you are not guaranteed success because you tried. You only get it when you just don’t give up. When you keep pushing and adapting, pushing and adapting till it works. Eventually it will work and you will be astonishing at something….and you should strive for nothing less in life, otherwise whats the point?

Pull the trigger!

Pulling the trigger is hard because it is so easy to keep doing the average and mediocre. To keep doing what you have been doing. To keep doing what you know. At some point if you are going to want to make a million dollars you need to pull the trigger and start gunning for it. You have to do something you see no way of doing right now. You must do handstands on the edge. Ask yourself, if not now, then when? Next month? After you have more experience? When will you pull the trigger?

So I have this idea for a product.

Not a digital download, but a real physical product. It fills a need and an annoyance in my life. I have ran it by a couple of people and the feedback has ranged from “yea that’s clever!” to “that’s retarded!” Whatever, I am just going to run with it because like i said, people do stuff, and I do stuff. I really have no idea where to begin with an invention, the blueprints, manufacturing, prototypes, testing, legalities, and marketing…but I am just going to pull the trigger and figure it out myself with the help of online resources like the Internet as a whole, as well as invaluable information sources like Mixergy and some select posts on the Tim Ferriss Blog (I love the DODO case study). Hey if a guy can build a business around TV wall mounts, I am pretty sure I can get my little product created and to marketed.

The thing with a product and making a million dollars…

is to not go for a mass produced strategy that appeals to everyone. It’s too challenging because the cost of spreading your product and idea is too high. Instead, it seems to be a sounder strategy to appeal to a dedicated small group of people who can really benefit the most from your product and who can potentially lead to a wider market. Besides, it’s easier to sell something specific to someone in particular than it is to sell to everybody. When you go specific, that is when you actually start to make more money per sale because you are not trying to penetrate a mass appeal market that costs and arm and a leg. It’s just impossibly difficult. So I am going for the targeted group, if successful, I can take that extra money and time and really figure out what my strongest selling points really are so i can hone my offer to be even more appealing…but first I have to overcome the most common problem we all face with anything new: where do I begin?