Initiating innovation

Holidays...

The perfect time to relax, spend time with loved ones and friends, and enjoy good food; however, for the college student, college graduate, graduate student, or young professional, it is the opportune moment to brainstorm, meditate, and strategize.  Each individual averages three or four creative ideas per year that are worth millions.  Those $ millions never come to fruition, because we leave those ideas and dreams as such.  Thus, down-time like holidays allow you to use this relaxed period of time to "flesh out" those previous ideas or enables time to generate new ideas.  

The way to financial freedom will rarely be accessible as an employee for a single company, rather through entrepreneurship and self-employment.  Do not quit your day job, even if you hate it,  right away, rather allow your side ventures, part-time business(es) to replace your current income.  Once your business income replaces your employee income, the uncertainties of steady income are greatly diminished.  

Do not make the same mistake I made in 2011.  In 2011, I was frustrated with the ineffectiveness and ignorance of administration at a local high school within the Memphis City Schools district. Once I realized that I was working for a leader who did not have his teachers' back, I knew my days were numbered.  Instead of continuing to maintain my employment there, I resigned and pursued my carpet-cleaning business full-time.  I placed too many eggs in one basket.  I often grew frustrated as some days my phone would not stop ringing with potential clients, and other days I wondered if my phone was even powered on.  

What I should have done was to continue teaching full-time and slowly, steadily built my cleaning business part-time.  The key is not to rely on your business for income initially.  Most businesses take an average of five years before they start to generate any profit depending on the business.  By depending on my first-year business to take off and bring back income immediately, I was setting myself up for failure.

The good news is that God does not make mistakes.  Everything happens for a reason.  That error was financially costly, but valuable because it gave me wisdom, experience, and hindsight.  Now as I grow my academic writing service, I do not depend on it for income.  I do not spend hundreds of dollars in advertising.  I spend nothing in advertising or marketing.  I simply mention my writing practice via Twitter, Facebook, or Linkedin.  I build my client base through high quality work, word of mouth, and trust.  Because I am doing something that fits my personality (autonomy and independence), my skills (research, reading, and writing), and goals and values (building a successful business and practicing ethics while ghostwriting for college students), this is the perfect self-created, fulfilling, profitable work.  It has not replaced my primary income stream as of yet, but I am determined to make this a success through my own means and beliefs.  

Subsequently, once we know ourselves well enough (intrapersonal awareness), we can identify those opportunities that were authentically meant for us.  This will enable us to create steady, consistent multiple streams of income as we bypass the economy and Wall Street downfalls towards reaching our own financial, spiritual, family, physical goals towards self-actualization, our divinely orchestrated apex.  

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