How to escape slavery by running your own business

Danny Burke is successfully self employed as a PC trouble shooter. He is also a builder and designer of computers and an inventor of software. He has strong views on life in general and on how you should run your own business. Danny believes that from the minute you are born your life is controlled by economics and the government. >From the age of five to fifteen you are forced to go to school and after school you are forced to work from the age of 16 to 65. This age may go up to 70 or higher in the UK and elsewhere. People are living longer. So economically it is necessary to raise the age of retirement. People will have to work till they drop. Danny worked for computer companies from the age of 18 to 35 and then one day realised he was a slave. To show you what he meant by being a slave he gave me a brief description of his daily routine. He usually had to get up at 7 a.m. to drive to work by 9 a.m. It took him an hour and a half to drive through the London traffic. A train would have taken two hours and cost more! He would have had to sniff the arm pits of his fellow passengers as well. However, Danny is very tall so the situation might have been reversed. Once he arrived at work he was told what to do by his immediate boss. He was forced to make phone calls; answer emails and get equipment ready. The penalty for not doing these things was unemployment and losing his house and car etc. After his standard 9 hour day he then had another hour and a half fight in the traffic getting back home by half seven. He was working basically from 7.30 a.m. to 7.30 p.m. (a twelve hour day) and sometimes a half day on Saturday. He was working 66 hours a week i.e. 75% of his waking time was spent doing things that he was told to do and forced to do. Extrapolate the above to your life. If you live to 74 that's 55.5 years spent doing things you don't really want to do and being bossed around. Even in your personal time you are dictated to by the government as you have to sort out licences; fill in forms etc (sometimes for good reason) So Danny sat down one day and got very depressed at the thought of dying at 75 with two grand in the bank. He eventually thought about how to break this vicious circle and decided that there is only one way and that is to earn enough money to pay all the bills without worrying. Once you reach a certain cash level you cannot be dictated to. A certain amount of cash breaks your shackles and sets you free. Working for other people ensures that you will remain downtrodden and poor unless your job is among the few jobs that are highly paid. So you must decide how you are going to earn the cash to pay your bills. So you cut out the middleman (your employer) and start working for yourself. In the end it makes no difference what you decide to do. But it is going to involve selling something to someone. It doesn't matter what you sell or to whom. although obviously you would prefer to sell a product that you morally agreed with and which serves a useful purpose. The bottom line is you buy something for a pound and sell it for two pounds. This action will set you free even if it takes years to reach your target. You will still be working towards your freedom from the usual rat race. You may have to keep working at a normal job to support your family in the meantime. Even celebrities make much of their money through sales. David Beckham (the English soccer player) can earn a big salary because his employers can sell products through the use of his image. He might earn a million a year for playing football but will earn 10 million for sponsorship and advertising. So the principle is; you must sell something and decide what you are comfortable with selling. Preferably you should be running your own business and buying and selling as soon as you leave school. Bill Gates dropped out of university before he finished because he saw the opportunity and did not want to miss it. If he had waited till he finished his degree course or got married, the opportunity would have passed him by. Is it risky? You may think starting your own business is a risky venture and that working for someone else is the safe option. This is a fallacy. You might work for an employer for 20 years and then one day you go to work and he fires you and all that 20 years of effort means nothing. Any way you look at it; it is better to work for yourself. However, if you want an easy life, business is not the way to go. It is often easier to work for someone else. If you want an easy life, you will stay a slave. Danny, if he were 17, would leave school and slog his guts out for 15 years working for himself and then retire. Danny admits that he is not fully following his own rules. He is self employed but he is still selling a service which takes up too much of his time. He is making more money now than when he was employed but he would make much more money if he were selling products rather than a service. I asked Danny what skills he uses now to make his business a success. He came up with the following: You have to have a product/service to sell in the first place This product or service needs to be both cheaper and better than the competition or at least as good. You have to get the advertising right. I'm going to say that again, YOU HAVE TO GET THE ADVERTISING RIGHT. So many people have good ideas and good products yet totally fail due to poor marketing. You could build the best car in the world for half the cost of anyone else and you would STILL fail if the marketing was wrong. Marketing is time consuming, boring, expensive (all the costs are up front) and, if you get it wrong, very wasteful. It's no wonder most people don't want to do it. BUT YOU MUST!!!! A lot of people do not follow up the calls and leads they get. You must follow up every single lead you get. You never know which call will make you a lot of money. Even if the call looks unpromising, ALWAYS call back. Danny has many customers telling him that out of 5 people they rang, he was the only one to call back. Even if Danny is too busy to take on a new customer he will ring back and tell them this. He will even recommend his competition if they are desperate. They remember this and will probably call again when he is less busy. Even if the customer thinks Danny's prices are too high, the fact that he called them back will mean they end up coming back to him. Cost control is another major factor. It is very easy to spend more than you are earning. You can earn a