W-O-R-K is a 4-letter word!

Benjamin Franklin once said “The man who trades freedom for security usually ends up with neither.”

I have a question for you:

Why do you go to work? (The real reason)?

I understand that most people go to work to earn a living and to pick up a paycheck so they can pay their bills…but if that’s the only reason you go to work, then you are missing out on the true enJOYment of life!

Is working 40+ hours a week at a job (that you probably don’t like and that doesn’t pay you enough money) really earning a “living“?

The truth is most people aren’t earning enough money to support the lifestyle they dream of. If we were, then we wouldn’t be a nation in billions of dollars in credit card debt living paycheck to paycheck.

It took me 17 years working a 9-5 job in the legal field to wake up and question the system I was a part of.

I began asking myself questions like:

Did working for 17 years in a “good” job put me in a better financial position at the end of those 17 years?
Did I love my job so much that if I had a million dollars in the bank, I still would have gone to work every day?
Was I happy trading hours for dollars?
Was security more important to me than freedom?

The answer to all of these questions was an astounding “NO”.

No…I wasn’t in a better financial position at the end of the 17 years because I was a single mom with 3 children (receiving very little child support and sometimes no child support) so all of my money went to my living expenses.
No… I wouldn’t go to that job at the law firm if I had a million dollars in the bank.
No… I was not happy leaving my family every day and trading hours for dollars.
No…security was not more important to me than my freedom.

I started to think there was more to life than just going to work and picking up a paycheck to pay the bills. At the time, I truly felt like a gerbil on a hamster wheel and the job I had never really took me anywhere (financially or fulfillment wise).

Loral Langemeier, Author of “The Millionaire Maker: Act, Think and Make Money the Way the Wealthy Do” said this about “jobs”:

“Day jobs do not offer safety and security so much as they represent missed time and opportunity.”

Being stuck in a job to just “exist” is not what life is about.

At the end of my 17 year career I was stressed out, exhausted, fatigued, burnt out, unhappy, unfulfilled, disenchanted and broke!

And I didn’t know what I was missing in life… because my job was taking all of my precious time!

So I started studying what wealthy people were doing and then I started doing more of those things…little by little.

And my life started changing.

Within 2 years of leaving the legal field, I had created multiple streams of income and was making 6-figures working 20-25 hours per week! Starting an online business taught me how to leverage my time.

I left the world of trading hours for dollars and entered the world of running an online business and outside sales.

I learned a lot on this journey and I want to share a little of that with you today…just in case you’re in a job you aren’t passionate about and not living your dream life.

Here are my 6 Reasons Why Your Job is Keeping You Broke (and what you can do about it):

No Leverage – When you trade hours for dollars, you are not “leveraging” your time. The only way to leverage your time is to create “passive” income streams that allow you to generate income without trading hours for that income. I earn income from my online business through several passive income streams such as: affiliate income, selling online courses (I do the work once and get paid over and over), royalties from ebooks I’ve written, recurring income from my programs.
Missed Opportunities – You don’t know the opportunities you are missing because you’re at work putting in your time. When you no longer work for someone else, then new opportunities will come your way because a “space” in your life has opened up and nature abhors a vacuum. There are so many wonderful opportunities in the world to create our dream life and our dream lifestyle, but our jobs block us from seeing those opportunities.
You Spend What You Make – I’m not saying this about everyone, but most of the people I know spend what they make. So if they get a pay raise, then somehow a new bill gets created. Maybe they buy a new car, or they buy a new house or they start indulging in more shopping or taking more vacations. Soon the increase in income is being spent and we live paycheck to paycheck. One of my favorite authors, Tama Kieves, author of “This Time I Dance” says “The more you have to PAY, the less you have to PLAY.” I used to own a million dollar house/mansion back in the day…now that my kids are grown up and moved out, I live in a 1200 square foot 2-bedroom loft apartment and I absolutely love it! Big house = Big bills. I don’t miss the bills or the maintenance or the stress of my 5000 square foot house. I’ve never been happier and because I pay a lot less for my living expenses, I get to PLAY a whole lot more!
No Lazy Assets – The average person who works a 9-5 job typically purchases things like cars, houses, vacations, clothing and toys. Those things don’t “make” you money; in fact they “cost” you money. A lazy asset is when you take your income and turn that into an asset that creates more income. It become a lazy asset that makes money for you! For example, let’s say instead of purchasing a new car, you take that income and you renovate your unfinished basement and you turn that into an income producing property! Or you take a portion of your paycheck and you create a profitable online business that brings in passive income.
Paying Uncle Sam keeps you Broke – Why do the rich get richer and the poor get poorer? Because the rich know how to form entities to pay less taxes and the poor just don’t know…so they keep paying Uncle Sam the little that they do have. An entity would be a C corporation, a S Corporation, an LLC, and trusts such as a “Family Limited Partnership Trust”. If you ever want to be wealthy, you need to maximize your tax strategies and optimize opportunities. Working a 9-5 job and continuing to pay Uncle Sam a good percentage of your income is keeping you broke.
You’re Busy, but not Productive – I know so many people with 9-5 jobs who are chronically busy…busy making money for their bosses and the company they work for. But what about you? The culture that we live in tends to reward personal sacrifice instead of personal productivity. If we do less meaningless work, then we can focus on things of great personal importance. Stop being busy and start working on how you can contribute more to the world. We have to stop sitting on the sidelines and get in the game. We do that by making a decision not to live a mediocre, meaningless life and to define your dreams and take small actions every day towards those dreams! Tomorrow becomes “never” so no matter how small the step…take it NOW!

So what’s the answer then? Quitting your Day Job?

If you’re not happy with trading hours for dollars and don’t see any light at the end of the tunnel, then my recommendation is to “wean” yourself off of your job and start creating multiple streams of income part time. Then when those multiple streams exceed your full time income, you can leave that job.

It is my belief that starting an online business is the easiest and least expensive way to creating passive income streams for yourself…and getting out of the rat race and off of the gerbil wheel!

It’s changed my life completely and that’s why I am so passionate about teaching women to take their power back and start creating a life and a business they love.

This is an incredible time to start an online business and one way to do that is to start a blog. If you’d like to me to hold your hand and guide you through this process, then please take a look at my 6-week online course that starts soon: Blogging with Passion 4 Profits!