by Wong, Allen
Once your side businesses start making more money than your full-time job, then that's when you need to make that tough decision of whether you should focus all of your time on your side business or continue it as a part-time job only. It took me over a year before I became confident that my app business was going to generate income for a long period of time. When it comes to sales, you will never know when your business will flop, and you end up with little to no income. Thus, I didn’t want to risk losing my great job at Columbia until I was sure that my iPhone apps would stay popular for longer than just a few months. And that’s really something that rarely happens. I know a few developers who made hundreds of thousands of dollars the first few months that they released an app, and then they quit their full-time jobs. Later on, people stopped downloading their apps and they started making less than what they made prior to quitting their jobs. Worse off were the ones who already spent the fortune they earned on luxurious things and ended up having to sell them at a loss, because they could no longer afford to keep them.
Becoming wealthy should be a side effect of your work. If you start getting greedy, it might negatively impact your work. It is also very rare for someone to get wealthy in the first place, so that is why I always tell people to do what they love doing. That passion for your work will show in your projects. And even if you did not get wealthy from doing what you love, you will have at least enjoyed what you did. And that is more important than getting wealthy. The greatest thing you’ll enjoy with successful life is not a fancy car or a nice house. Instead, you’ll be enjoying the fact that you are rarely doing what I don't enjoy doing.
So find something you love doing, and make a hobby out of it. Then figure out a way to monetize it to turn it into a small business. I can’t really tell you what that is, because it's hard to predict whether a business will be successful or not. If you make something that you would find useful yourself, then there is bound to be other people who would find what you made useful as well. Those will be your first customers in your path to getting wealthy.
Let’s fast forward and assume that you already got your life sorted out. Here are some more tips on choosing the right path to becoming successful:
1. It is easier to become successful by working for yourself, because your income is only limited by how hard you work rather than by what your company wants to pay you.
2. It is also easier to become wealthy by selling your products to the general population rather than doing services for individuals. Those who do services for individuals are limited by how much time they have. Those who sell products to the general population are only limited by how many people are in the world with disposable income (there are a lot of those).
3. Network. The more people you know, the more help you can get in starting/expanding your business. Just be wary about surrounding yourself people who don't know what they’re talking about and don’t “walk-the-walk”. There are a lot of posers out there who will do nothing but waste your time and/or money.
4. Don’t buy things you do not need, but invest in things worth investing in. The more money you save, the quicker you become wealthy. Save/invest money here and there, and you will accumulate more and more wealth.
The list goes on for the things you can do to get wealthy. You will find the rest of the tips by reviewing this book.
Do I need to go to college to become successful?
College is part of the methodical stage that society pushes you to go to. It is a boot camp for the office job that society wants you to take. But if you don’t go to college, are you doomed to fail?
Your knowledge is limited by your own ambitions and not limited by your choice of schooling. This means that you can still self-educate yourself to fulfill your ambitions (as long as your career path doesn’t require a license to operate). If you plan on becoming a doctor or a lawyer (both of which require graduate schooling and licenses), then yes, you should go to college. But what if your ambition is to become an app developer like me? I can tell you that I could have learned how to code apps without going to college. College actually never taught me anything about coding apps. Apps weren’t even around until after I graduated.
Keep in mind that colleges are still a business, and they've effectively drilled the notion into our minds that knowledge and an opportunity at a good job must be bought for $100,000. It is not true, and many successful college drop-outs can attest to that. Parents who've never been to college see their friends go to college and make lots of money. So, they send their kids to college without paying for it. They’re hoping that their kids could make a lot of money like their college-educated peers. However, colleges should be for intellectuals. An idiot with a degree is still an idiot. The difference is that that idiot is now drowning in debt for a piece of paper that nobody cares about.
What the parents don't realize is that their college-educated peers are making a lot of money because they are smart and/or experienced. It's not because they have degrees. I've seen many lazy people go to college just to take an easy major, party, and have fun. And now they're unemployed (or at a low-paying job) and asking why the "American Dream" is dead. It's not dead at all. It's just that you have to be smart, motivated, and really work at it.
And having a degree in a major that isn’t in great demand is pretty much useless. So, going to college is not as big of a deal as it used to be. Almost anyone can get a college degree nowadays. It’s much more impressive to have a full resume. Employers rather hire someone who actually applied what he learned in the real world. Is it necessary to go to college to have a full resume? Not necessarily. Is it necessary to go to college to be successful? Nope.
Think of college as training wheels. Whether you need them or not is up to you and how well you are at self-education. Also think of college as a safety net. If your ambitions fail, at least you have a college degree to fall back on to get yourself a decent job. Also college is a place where you can build connections and meet like-minded people. Just make sure to weigh that against the hefty price tag that a college degree comes with.
Isn’t getting rich just based on luck?
Luck is just the starting point to great things. There comes a point early on when it stops being about luck and more about what the person did with that luck.
Let’s take a look at Bill Gates’ case. Some may say that he’s lucky, because he was born into an upper-middle-class American family. His family had the resources to send him to private school while other families didn’t. And they just so happened to send him to Lakeside School in Seattle, a school which had a Teletype connection to a computer (something rare for that era). There, he was able to learn how to program. That’s where people point to when they say he got lucky. But doesn’t that mean a lot of other people are lucky, too?
You see, there were many kids who went to that same school. But did they all end up becoming a billionaire? Was Bill Gates the only one who learned how to program? Was he the only one born into an upper-middle-class family? You have take into account the personal side of things as well. Give the guy some credit for actually taking the opportunity and running with it. There were many people who could have done the same, but they didn’t. Just like how there are many people who could have learned how to program in Objective-C and could have made millions of dollars from apps. I wasn’t the only one who was allowed to make apps. I was no luckier than the next guy. I might even argue that my life has been a series of unlucky events.
So, it's not about whether a person is lucky or not. We all get good luck and bad luck. It's about what you do when it's your lucky day and opportunity comes knocking. Do you take risks? Do you make the right choices? The difference between me and the next guy is that I look at every opportunity and I run with it. I don't quit when the going gets tough. I stare at mountains and I say, "Yea, I can climb that." Usually, my body quits on me before my mind does. When I work out, I don't quit because I can't stand the pain. I quit when my body physically cannot work out anymore.
When I code, I don't quit because the programming is too difficult. I quit because I fell asleep on the keyboard. Some call it OCD. I call it perseverance.
What other things did your father teach you besides chess?
My father loved to teach me things. He taught me how to draw, fish, fly a kite, and ride a bike. He told me his stories about his poor background and how he came to the United States. He encouraged me to study harder, because the one thing he regretted in life was not being able to attend more schools when he was younger. Those were all the normal stuff.
He also taught me obscure things. He taught me about racism when I didn’t even know what racism was. He taught me how to fix things around the house. He even taught me to stay at least one bathroom stall away from the next guy in a public bathroom.
Probably the most interesting thing that he taught me was how to think outside of the box and to be aware of people’s ulterior motives. He did it by telling me a fable that he came up with when he was in prison for trying to escape from Communist China. The fable went like this:
In ancient China, there once lived a poor farmer with three sons. They all lived in a house that fitted only one family. One day, that farmer was diagnosed with a terminal illness. He decided that it was time to write his will before he passed away. He divided up his money and farmland evenly, but he did not want to divide up his house. He wanted just one of his sons to have it so that there wouldn’t be any disputes later on when the sons get married and the house gets too crowded. The problem was that he didn’t know which son to give the house to, and he did not have the luxury of time to find out. So, he decided to set up a week-long challenge to settle the manner once and for all.
He brought all of his children to his bedroom and told them about his dilemma. He then told them that he decided to give the house away to whoever was the first one to get him out of the house without physically moving him or physically hurting him in any way.
The eldest son said, “That’s easy. I’ll just set fire to the house, and then you’ll be forced to leave the house.” He then started to go look for a torch to set his father’s bedroom on fire.
The father was disappointed with his eldest son’s solution. “Please stop! If you set fire to the house, then there wouldn’t even be a house left for you to inherit,” he replied.
The second eldest son said, “I can make a lot of noise to annoy you so that you’ll want to leave the house.”
“I can always cover my ears to block out the noise,” the father replied. “Plus, after being scolded by your mother’s nagging voice every night, I’ve developed immunity to noise.”
The eldest son then said, “I came up with a better solution. I’ll take away all of the food in the house. And then, when you’re starving, you’ll be forced to leave the house to find food.” He then went to the food pantry and threw out all of the food that was in there.
The father was slightly less disappointed with the response. “I like your solution, but I’m used to going on for days without food and water,” he said. “So, is that the fastest way to get me out of the house? If so, then it looks like my eldest son will get the house.”
The three sons looked at each other and didn’t say anything. It looked as though nobody had a better solution. It looked like the eldest son was going to get the house.
The youngest son then spoke. “This challenge is too easy. Since you’re confined to this house, we can all just keep taking away the things you need until you’re forced to leave the house,” he said. “I have a better challenge. Why not challenge us to force you to go back into the house?”
The father agreed that the challenge his youngest son proposed was a much more difficult challenge. Since he had access to all the things he needed in the outside world, it would be much more challenging for his sons to get him back into the house. He also didn’t like the idea of starving for several days.
So, he brought all of his sons outside of the house. “Okay,” he said.
But before he could propose his new challenge, his youngest son said, “I already won.” His brothers looked at each other baffled.
“What do you mean you won? You didn’t even get me back into the house yet,” his father asked.
“That wasn’t the challenge,” the son said. “The challenge was to get you out of the house as soon as possible without physically forcing you to leave the house.”
The father was stunned at the realization that he was now standing outside of his house just a few minutes after he had made his challenge. He decided to give his house to his youngest son.
After his father passed away, the youngest son sold the house and bought three smaller houses with the money. He then gave two of those houses away to his brothers.
“Pride, disappointment, and fear all go away when you don’t expect to live another day. What’s left is what’s important. Our time on this Earth is short. Make it count, son.”
– My Father
References
Chen, Bingan. Big Fleeing. Guangdong People's Publishing House, 2010. Print.
Chua, Amy. Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother. New York: Penguin, 2011. Print.
Slumdog Millionaire. Dir. Danny Boyle. Prod. Christian Colson. By Simon Beaufoy. Perf. Dev Patel, Freida Pinto, Madhur Mittal, Anil Kapoor, and Irrfan Khan. Fox Searchlight Pictures, 2008.
Stanley, Thomas J., and William D. Danko. The Millionaire next Door: The Surprising Secrets of America's Wealthy. Atlanta, GA: Longstreet, 1996. Print.
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TO BE CONTINUED…
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