Everyday Wealth
Renewable Wealth Update, and More On Leverage
I’ve added a bunch of content to Renewable Wealth over the past few days. I had been neglecting it for a while because I was busy with other things, but even the small amount of content that was there brought in a trickle of passive income the entire time, so my stake continued growing behind the scenes.
It was never my intent for Renewable Wealth to be a static “fire-and-forget” site, though, so now that I have some time to come up for air I am adding more content. (Static sites are a great way to earn passive income online , though - we’ll be discussing them more down the line.)
There are Opportunities for Leverage Everywhere
This is a good time to mention the concept of leverage again. You see, green investing is a great interest of mine, and I have been spending a lot of time trying to shift my investment portfolio to being as close to completely green as possible without sacrificing performance.
So here I am doing all this investment research for my own portfolio, which hopefully will produce a nice return for my retirement account as well as my soul. But all of that work can be leveraged to benefit me further if I write about it and share it with others. So, that is exactly what I am doing. I am simply writing about the stocks I have chosen for my own green investment portfolio, with a brief discussion of why I chose them.
The time spent is negligible compared to the total time I have spent on this research, but it allows me to profit further from my own work in several ways: 1) More traffic to my site; 2) When having to make my case for these investments to others, I am more apt to make doubly sure my logic is sound; 3) I can get feedback form my readers which might point out flaws in my thinking; 4) I can get others involved in Green Investing, which is one more tiny contribution to the future of the planet; 5) I can connect with others in the Green Investing community. Not bad for an extra few minutes to write up research I am doing already. Now ask yourself: is there anything you spend a lot of time on that could be leveraged in this way?
Leverage Your Passions
If you have a personal passion that takes up a good chunk of your time, there’s a good chance that other people share it. Consider how you might leverage the time you spend on what you love to help you progress toward financial independence. Put up a site and share your knowledge and experiences. You’ll enjoy it, and chances are you’ll profit as well.
The Secret to Building Real Wealth
My brother is what some might call a ne’er do well. He’s never had much luck holding down a job. He’s extremely intelligent, creative, and charismatic, which of course means he’s utterly unsuited for the typical stifling corporate workplace. To make matters worse, he’s a high-school dropout.
Building Real Wealth
After a series of unsuccessful jobs, he was discouraged, and had a chat with our mother, who told him what I’ve been telling him for years: he needed to start a business and be his own boss. It’s the only true path to building real wealth - there really are no exceptions when you look closely enough. If you get rich in stocks, it’s because you own the businesses you invest in. Dot-Com millionaires don’t get rich off of their salaries, but off of their stock options, which again represent ownership of a business. Even CEO salaries are peanuts compared to what they make off of stock ownership. The list goes on and on.
My brother understood the idea intuitively. The trouble was he had no earthly idea how to go about starting a business of his own.
Build Your Own Wealth by Helping Others
Faced with this quandary, my brother asked my mother what to do. Her response was the most important six words any aspiring entrepreneur can hear. This simple statement holds the secret to unlimited wealth: Find a need and fill it. Repeat this statement to yourself. Think on it. Meditate on it. It’s the secret behind every successful business ever made. If you can manage to follow this extremely simple idea, then your success will be all but assured.
Of course the idea may be simple, but that doesn’t mean it’s easy. How do you find an unfilled need? Well let’s look at what my brother did: He started visiting successful businesses in the small Southern where he lives. He simply walked up to the front desks asked to speak with the owners of the businesses. More often than not, he was let right in. He then chatted with the owners about their businesses and asked if there was a service which would help them out, which they wished were available locally. (As I mentioned, he’s quite charismatic.)
Build Real Wealth With A Few Mops and Some Elbow Grease
As it turned out, this small Southern town was in a bit of an expansive boom, and lots of medium to large office buildings were cropping up downtown, yet many of the standard services for office buildings you see in bigger cities just weren’t available in town. One was after-hours industrial cleaning.
So my brother bought some gear, and started an industrial cleaning business. The very same business owners he chatted with originally became his first customers, and his business quickly expanded by word of mouth. He now has several employees and more business than he can handle. More importantly, there’s no jerk in a stuffed suit telling him what to do. He’s well on his way to achieving financial success, and he’s done it all his own way.
You can Build Your Own Wealth, Too
Trust me, if my brother the high school dropout can make such great strides toward building financial wealth , anyone can. Just follow mom’s advice.