By Marc Goodin
Eighty percent of the time you must work hard and twenty percent of the time you must work smart. One without the other and the odds are you will never join the club.
Working hard is self-explanatory. You are putting in the hours. That simple. Or is it? You must have the grit and determination to be consistent and not give up. On key here is your goals must be clear and important. When something is important enough, you do it even if you are tired, even if the odds are not in your favor.
Working smart is the key and clearly not so easy. The first step is choosing a business that consistently makes multimillionaires. Here are seven keys to choosing a business.
1) Work for yourself. Working for others might provide you with the experience and money to go out on your own, but is highly unlikely to make you wealthy. A salary is the drug your employer gives you to forget your dreams. A lot of people don’t realize that profit is better than wages. Wages will make you a living, but profits can make you a fortune.
2) Choose a business that solves a problem and become an expert at solving that problem. But remember getting started is more important than becoming an expert.
3) Don’t worry about your competition they do not pay you. Take care of your clients and find ways to better serve your clients. And you will be able to charge more than your competition.
4) Choose a business that traditionally makes a lot of millionaires. Real estate has made more people millionaires than any other business. And according to the WSJ, self-storage was the most profitable real estate business in 2021.
5) Choose a business that allows you to grow and profit with other people’s money. Self Storage is very loan friendly because it rarely fails. For every dollar you invest you often get $7 dollars from a lender. So for example, if you invest $1 Million and borrow $7 million you are making profits on $8 million dollars invested.
6) Choose a business that shelters income from taxes. If you are a doctor trading hours for dollars and make $300K, you most likely will give away 1/3 of that profit to the IRS. In real estate, you have depreciation to reduce taxes.
7) Choose a business that has an asset(s) that grows (appreciation) in value year after year.
The second part of working smart is being efficient and productive with your time. Here are seven ways to be more efficient:
1) Start every day off in a positive way. If you get up in the morning and think the future is going to be better, it is a bright day.
2) At the start of every day write down two or three of the most important things you are going to accomplish that day.
3) Use leverage to get ahead. You can’t do everything on your own. Learn how to use your connections and other people’s experience and labor to build your business. Reinventing the wheel will slow you down.
4) You are putting in long days so you need ways to keep stress down and productivity up. Here are my personal favorites:
· Walking for 30 minutes where I can view the water or woods. I have a house on the ocean and a cottage on a river to make this easy. 30 minutes of finishing is perfect too. My wife GP even gets excited when I catch a fish.
· A relaxing cup of coffee every morning.
· Reading 20 minutes a day.
Regularly enjoy the sunset with a glass of wine.
· Regular campfires
· Weekend trips or even weeknight visits with friends. Going to bed early is overrated. We have a few family members and a couple of good friends where the rule is "show up any time". We often hang in the garage where you never know what might happen.
· Work in my garden
4) Write down your long-term objectives and short and long-term tasks to get there. Having a written game plan and keeping track of your critical activities is a must.
5) Be accountable. Being accountable to a team member like a spouse, business partner, or mentor on a regular basis equals faster success.
"Do you want fries with that?" McDonald's has the worst food but the best systems. Where else can you drive up and have your food in 3 minutes? And now they have kiosks inside so you don't have t wait in line to order.
6) Develop a system that makes your service clear and simple for employees and clients.
7) Have someone to share your success and failures with.
Entrepreneurship is hard
Real estate is hard.
Owning a business is hard
9-5 job is hard
Also being poor is hard
Choose your hard
The most difficult mission on earth is to focus on your dreams; the easiest task is to complain.
If self-storage may be a part of making your dreams come true give me a call at 860-830-6764 when we can talk for 10 minutes. Let's see if a Storage Authority franchise would be a good fit for you.
Get more information on Storage Authority Franchise at www.storageauthorityfranchise.com/opportunity3
Marc Goodin is the President of Storage Authority Franchising. www.StorageAuthorityFranchise.com He owns 3 self-storages he designed, built, and manages. He has been helping others in the self-storage industry for over 25 years. He can be reached at marc@StorageAuthority.com or directly at 860-830-6764 to answer your franchising, development, marketing, sales, and operations questions. His best selling self storage books are available on Amazon.
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