My internet startup takes a lot of moving parts: The developer needs to build the product, I need to sell and market the product, and the CEO needs to raise funds, manage the team, and do the accounting and taxes. Every day we encounter a new obstacle or pitch our idea to an investor or potential client to close a deal. My kind of startup involves a complete immersion of time, money, and mental focus.
The community that I am involved with fully understands this concept. However, I know that there are many of you who do not wish to sacrifice your full-time job or sanity in order to risk running a full-time startup. So if you don’t build an internet empire, what can you build?
What is your ultimate goal?
I want you to sit down and really map out what it is that you want out of your own business before you take action. For example:
Jun Loayza’s goal: To build a company that positively changes the way internet browsers search and find products, content, and publications that they are looking for. Our goal is to have a successful exit within 5 years of $30 million or more.
That’s a shortened version but you get the point. My team and I want the successful exit in 5 years and we’re willing to live like scrappy entrepreneurs right now for the chance at a big payout.
Your goal may be something different. Your goal may be to increase your monthly income by $1,000 in 6 months. Your goal may be to generate $4,000 in revenue per month, allowing you to quit your full-time job and work from Hawaii. Or your goal may be to make a couple hundred bucks more per month to increase the rate in which you’re paying off your student loans.
Whether you’re looking to build an internet empire or are simply looking to generate a few hundred dollars more per month, you need to learn how to work for yourself.
Work for Yourself
Going to business for yourself means you’re going to have to work very hard. But you don’t need to devote all of your effort and time into one business. You can build several small companies that make $200 – $300/month each, and then focus only on the businesses that generate the most income. In doing this, you will be able to scale the business to generate more revenue and eventually automate the business to the point where you only have to spend a couple of hours a week on it.
Imagine this: After a year of hard work, you build 5 small companies that each generate $600/month and take about 2 hours/week of your time. If you are able to accomplish this, then you will be generating $3,000/month at an investment of 40 hours/month of your time. At this rate, you will be making $75/hour.
Sounds quite good, doesn’t it?
Why don’t I do it?
If it’s so easy to generate $3,000/month within 1 year, why don’t I just do it?
First of all, it’s NOT easy. It’s going to take a lot of hard work and trial and error. Stay persistent and do good work, and eventually you will be able to get to your target monthly income rate.
Second of all, this is not my ultimate goal. Remember, my goal is to build an internet startup that changes the way people find content and shop online. Therefore, I spend my time on customer and product development for my startup, rather than building content sites and Ebooks that will generate income for me.
Let us know what your ultimate goal is and the Untemplater team would be more than happy to help you reach it.
Well, sometimes I think, if you want to build a long-lasting startup, you can’t just startup for money, you have to startup for your dream. You have to imagine what is the company, how dose it look like, how does it work. what about the future….etc.
Awesome post! Super encouraging and you are right on the money with your goals and execution plan!
Oh, and by the way, I do support your efforts 100%. I’m play devil’s advocate. I’m also terrified of globalization and the commoditization of work. So many things that were once careers are not a simply commodity on the market place. It’s oh so easy to become obsolete in this world we live in, no thanks to computers, communications, and the Information Super Highway.
How sustainable is that stream of income? Say an ebook gives you a small income until it becomes obsolete and assuming a technology oriented focus, it will become obsolete within months or even weeks. Same goes for creating WordPress templates, those come and go, but all provide a temporary stream of revenue.
I’m still pessimistic about this entrepreneurial spirit, while very respectable, it may not provide the long term growth and knowledge, skills, and abilities that an average (excluding the few that are successful) 20something needs to develop in their 20’s. Sitting at home and blogging about blogging or putting together webpage templates using code that will be obsolete within a year may provide the temporary income. However, what about when this person is in their 30’s, 40’s, and 50’s. It’s a long ways away but that day will come. Will he/she have the necessary skills to remain competitive when the next generation of 20somethings are coding in 3D (or some unknown technology) and we’re still stuck writing PHP.
From a pure mathematical perspective, only a very small fraction of the 20somethings will develop something worthwhile (right tail of the distribution curve), most will be somewhere average in a cube for the rest of their lives.
I’m a little afraid that young college grads see the appeal with making $1000 a month for short term gains. However, life is a marathon and not a sprint.
I am a student in college right now and I all I want is $500 of automated money each month so I can book a flight to Thailand and live like a hermit on the beaches. I’m in the beginning of launching my first tech start up with a few other students and it’s absolutely terrifying hedging my bets on the success of this company while seeing my GPA slip, but than again I am absolutely terrified of graduating to 40 years of soul-crushing work. However, I am extremely curious as to how one goes about launching an online business. I have absolutely zero programming or web skills but I can network and find people who can like nobody’s business, can one launch a successful online business without any prior experience?
“Successful” online business is quite vague. What does “success” mean to you?
I don’t think $500/month is enough to live like a hermit in Thailand. Well, maybe it is, but you won’t have any money left to save up for a house or save for retirement.
GPA matters for people going to the corporate world. Entrepreneurs are not measured by a silly point system.
Thank you for your insight, you’re right about the retirement thing. I merely want to have the ability to put my life on pause when I feel like it, hence the mediocre sum of automated money. However this still doesn’t answer the question of whether or not one needs to have experience in creating web sites or knowing code to build a website. I’m really young and currently have no specific skill sets but I generate consistently good ideas for businesses (I think anyways), can someone be a successful entrepreneur by simply being a visionary and can find people with the skills to put them into action?
I learned how to build a complete wordpress blog in 3 days. You should be able to do the same.
Since you’re so young, I suggest you gain some specific skillsets. The ability to think of “good business ideas” is not enough.
You CAN be successful if you just hire people to do the work for you, but you’re going to need to pay them money. So if you have money to hire people from Elance.com to do all of the work for you, I suggest go for it!
– Jun
Do you know of any other reviews or recommendations for Chris’s ebook? I like the idea, but I’m always skeptical of buying ebooks online.
I know you’re recommending this one, so I don’t take it lightly, there’s just so many crappy “MAKE MONEY ONLINE” ebooks for sale.
I’d say to just email Chris yourself and ask. Not sure how long he’d take to get back to you, but he would answer you and I’m sure that’d be a lot better than simply reading someone else’s reviews. I know it’ll be good after being a reader of AONC for quite some time now.
Plus he’s got a no-gimmicks money back guarantee, just in case it’s not what you thought. (No, haven’t bought it myself yet, but I will be someday here haha.)
I wouldn’t mind building the next Facebook – but I’ll stick with my consulting business.
Just a few facts:
According to Hitwise in May 2009 Facebook had 28% market share in US Social Networking – In December they went up to 47%. Twitter was only at 1.46% in May and listed in the “other” category by the end of the year. Now that they are cash flow positive with 350 million users it’s just a matter of time before their profits go through the roof. I believe that they need to continue working hard to show ROI for their potential advertising clients.
Thanks for the good read Jun!~
Now I *know* I have to buy Chris’ ebook! 😛 Knew I should for a while, time to add it to the list and make it a priority….
My goal is to have a mobile career, really the best fit for my military husband. Not only that, but my hobby isn’t one I can fully enjoy whenever I have free time… I’d prefer something that allows me to make the time when I need it. The thought of building my own business(es) and freelancing appeal to me so much more than a “traditional” job.
After my student loans are cleared, I think making $20k/year would do me just fine… Of course, that’s just the start/minimum. 😉
My goal is to create $10,000 a month in income from membership site. That allows me to express my creativity and challenge myself frequently.
Awesome goal! Good luck RJ and let us know how we can help.
RT @shanemacsay you are a true mentor and inspiration to a lot of folks….
I truly agree with Shane! I think you provide alot of inspiration for people such as myself! You have been very helpful during the few times I have reach out to you.
My goal is to create an internet start up but in the meantime I would like to explore avenues that will help me get out of the 9 to 5 gig. I am a huge fan of Chris Guillebeau! I was introduced to him through Ramit Sethi’s 6 week financial bootcamp where he talked about his ways of hacking the airlines in order to receive great deals/services to travel.
Great goals Monique!
Just to let you know, you must choose to either build a “muse” business, or go all out and build an internet startup that is going to sell for millions. You really can’t do both at the same time.
Focus is the key for the entrepreneur 🙂
Glad I can be running alongside you and that I can call you when I need a break. Jun, you are a true mentor and inspiration to a lot of folks, including me, and I can’t not imagine even after 2 months thinking, what if I had never met this guy?
30 million? Hell, I say go for 100… 🙂
Great post.
Shane Mac
@shanemacsays
Hahaha… I’m going for it bro!
Much love and respect to you as well.
I wouldn’t want to build the next Facebook, either, because as far as I know, for all of its greatness, it isn’t making much money. And I’m sure they have a bunch of VC guys breathing down their necks all the time.
My goal would be to build a sustainable internet business, one that can keep going year after year that I can do for a long time. I’m curious, Jun why are you looking for an exit after 5 years? If you enjoy what you do, it would seem logical to want to do it for a longer period of time.
Hey Kyle, Facebook is actually profitable now. I’ve seen Mark Zuckerberg and it doesn’t seem like VCs are breathing down his neck at all. VCs usually only get actively involved (and breath down your neck) when the company is doing poorly. Facebook is doing great.
I love building companies. The goal of the entrepreneur is to build a startup, scale it, and sell it for millions. Then once he’s completed that task, the entrepreneur does it again. I love the process of solving a problem.
I don’t necessarily want to build a company and hold it for the long-term. There’s a huge difference between starting a company and running the Titanic.
I see what you’re saying, I just think that there aren’t enough people trying to build lasting businesses. I think it’s disappointing seeing a good business getting bought up by giant corporations (ala Mint being bought by Quicken). It’s sad to see great, independent websites and ideas get sucked into some large business’s portfolio. We need more small, independent businesses with great ideas to keep the big guys in check.
What you see as “sad”, I see as “inspirational.” The entrepreneur wants to get bought out and have a successful exit.
Sure, Facebook is unique in that it’s building an empire. Even a large, super amazing company like Zappos was bought out.
It really just depends on what the goal of the entrepreneur is. I do hope to build a long-lasting empire one day; however, I have to have at least a couple successful business before I will get there.
i don’t want to build the next facebook. facebook has stopped being good a long time ago; now it only stands for ignoring its users, calling reduced privacy improved, and refusing to fix persistent problems. even if i were an entrepreneur i wouldn’t want to build something like this.
My ultimate goal aligns more with Chris’s book: I want to create an income stream that allows me to work from anywhere, on my own time-frame. This will allow me to pursue my interests and work with others with my “free” time.