#but from experience these transfers are never clean breaks no matter how managers advertise it

[alectoperdita]

Losing my fucking mind. I'm less than a day into the team transfer and already no less than two instances of someone on the previous team pinging me with a problem they could've just resolved/or does resolve themselves if they worked on it for five minutes before slacking me.

[peachycalpis]

A Tale of Two Teachers (BSD)

The Teacher AU nobody asked for, now with added extras guaranteed to put a smile on your face :)

Pairing: Dazai Osamu / Nakahara Chuuya Words: 8734; Rating: T  Summary: Chuuya is a high school physics teacher and Dazai is a maths teacher. And me? Why, I'm just their student, watching my teachers fall in love right in front of my nose. Notes: Translated with permission from 不談戀愛談老師 -------- Hello. Thank you for coming to listen to the inconsequential story of two of my most beloved teachers. First, I’ll introduce to you the best teacher of my entire high school career, and my favourite teacher ever. I first met Nakahara-sensei when I was a first-year in high school. He was my physics teacher. Everything about him was simply amazing. He was superb, put-together, competent, and just generally all-around fantastic, both in and out of his capacity as a teacher. To be honest, I must have been a saint, or saved the world, or done something amazing in my last life to have gotten him as my teacher. I thank my lucky stars every day that I've managed to have the good fortune of having had him in my life, honestly. Although I’ve just talked him up like I was being paid to advertise him, I wasn’t like this at all when he first came to teach our class. This is not entirely my fault. Rather, the blame lies with Nakahara-sensei. Imagine this: if you saw a young man barely old enough to have graduated from university with the prettiest doll face (even prettier than most girls in our class, I daresay), wearing a three-piece suit that clung to him so seamlessly you knew it was tailored, with a formal-looking hat atop his head, and looking like the scion of British aristocracy who’d transferred here from his swanky boarding school, nobody would have believed he was here to teach, let alone taken him seriously as a teacher. Our class was still abuzz with the whispered speculations about this “new transfer student” when the bell rang and he strode into our classroom with a self-assured air, shrugged off his hat and his coat, and wrote the four characters 中 (naka)  原   (hara) 中 (chuu) 也 (ya) cleanly on the board. His kanji penmanship was impeccable, like everything else about him, and we were still reeling from the shock of the audacity of this “student” in seizing centre stage when he tossed his head back and turned away from the blackboard to give the class a small smile. In that single instant every girl in our class literally imploded and went to heaven. When asked to recount that experience, they’d all agreed that in that instant they had felt as if they had been impregnated by the sheer force of his charming bad boy grin. Yes, he was that fucking pretty. Oh, my previous description is a bit off, by the way. We couldn’t see him clearly at first hovering at our door, so he gave off the impression of being a hottie, what with that narrow tapered waist and those legs that went on forever (the envy of the entire class). But once he entered the classroom and smiled at us, we all fell into shocked silence, because this was not just a hottie. This young man was the hottie. One can never hope to truly count how many young innocent hearts had surrendered to that smile that besieged and disarmed their every defence. Even I, even though I consider myself with a mind of steel, even I had my heart in my throat when I saw him. 

The “student” only waved his hand at us to quiet us down and call for our attention. He made a simple self-introduction, saying that he would be our physics teacher. Our class fell into shocked silence, before erupting into fifty different conversations at once. This hot young male supermodel would be teaching us physics? You had to be fucking kidding us. I’d sooner believe it if you had said he was a new transfer student, look at his clean-shaven face! 

Our class fell into a sort of uneasy hush after that. We were originally elated to have a new hot classmate, but to have said hot classmate as your teacher was a little different. Yes, he was certainly off the charts attractive, but being hot didn’t magically pay bills or teach well. For a while there had even been rumours that he’d only managed to bag this teaching job this young by doing some dirty deal with the principal, and for some time we looked down on him. He must have gotten in through some back-door, or he’d must have known someone on the School Board. Or so we thought. 

But the truth always prevails, and gives you a good knocking between the ears. The undeniable truth hit us like a sack of bricks. Nakahara-sensei was a brilliant teacher. When he taught our class for the first time, our jaws all hung slack with surprise. Who would have known such an elegant, refined man like him would have had such a lively temperament in him, and that temper and dry humour would in turn manifest in particularly interesting and engaging classes? He had none of the nervousness of a fresh-grad teacher, but was assertive, self-possessed and poised. 

Who would have thought that crappy physics equations could have been embellished like so? A simple law on force and motion led to animated retellings of Newton’s life stories from centuries ago, as Nakahara-sensei poked fun at that “friendless nerd Issac who wrote all about the laws of attraction but couldn’t attract anybody.” Every lesson was not only a physics class but a history lecture, a stand-up comedy, and a trivia game show. He could explain the hardest questions without breaking a sweat and he didn’t even stutter when the high-achieving students in the class challenged him on his solutions. The students all called him a god of physics behind his back, because when students brought up hard questions they couldn’t do in class, Nakahara-sensei would have already uttered the answer in seconds while the bookworms and math nerds were still waiting for Wolfram Alpha to load and compute the photo of the question. He did not teach wrong concepts or terminologies and he could explain questions properly and simply, in a way that everyone understood. 

It was at this point that our class realised exactly how brilliant he was. What a package! Not only did he have a face and brains like that, he even had a superb sense of humour and a great personality. Although he was quite strict and serious in class, he would always laugh at your jokes, no matter how cheesy, and return a few well-meaning jabs that made you feel appreciated, ensnaring you in his charm. He’d be smiling at you unbeknownst to himself when he did that, and it was this effortless magnetism that was the most lethal to the budding young hearts in our class. We were enraptured and spellbound by his scintillating wit; every class felt as exhilarating like a shot of a much-needed drug. We were transfixed to the point that the class next door saw him as some sort of evil cult leader.

Keep reading

[richardrobertsimsuccessblog]

5 Things Nobody Tells You About Making Money in Your Underwear

That’s the dream, right?

No dragging your butt out of bed at an ungodly hour, sitting in traffic, being stuck inside an office all day, and slaving away your life for a measly paycheck.

Instead, wake up whenever you feel like it, saunter over to the laptop in your skivvies, and sip a cup of java while you “work.” Take a vacation whenever you want, spend time with your loved ones, and travel the freakin’ world.

Hell, yeah…

Too bad it’s just a fairytale, though. We’ve all seen the scammy ads about making $80 an hour filling out surveys, starting your own online store in a “virtual mall,” making megabucks from reselling old crap on eBay or Amazon. There are a gazillion different variations, all of them promising you easy money, all of them stoking your hope of a better life, all of them a little too ridiculous for you to believe in, even though you really, REALLY want to believe.

But you’re not a fool. You know they’re not telling you the truth. It can’t be as easy as they make it sound.

And you’re right. I’ve made my living on the Internet for eight years now, and while it’s certainly nice, there’s also a lot nobody is telling you. Not because it’s a secret, but because most people don’t actually want the truth. They want to believe it’s easy, fun, straightforward.

If anything though, it’s the opposite, and that brings us to the first lesson:

Lesson #1: You can’t do this in your “spare time.”

Regardless of whether you’re starting a blog, building an online course, or creating your own virtual storefront, you probably don’t think of it as a “business.” It’s a project, a hobby, a “side hustle.” No offices, no employees, no budgets or business plans – it’s just you tinkering around in your spare time.

Right?

Well… not if you want to succeed.

In my experience, people who make a nice living online view it as a business from day one. That doesn’t necessarily mean they get an office or hire employees, but they approach it with the same mindset any sane person would have when starting any other type of business.

For instance, let’s say you’re starting a dry-cleaning business. You’d probably go to work for another dry cleaner first, learn the craft, figure out how you would do things differently, save your money, and then launch your own competing dry-cleaning business with a solid understanding of the market and what it takes to succeed.

In other words, you would put serious thought and effort into it, start preparing months or even years in advance and work your ass off for several years to make the business take off. That’s a normal mindset for anyone starting a new venture.

For some reason though, people’s mindset is entirely different when thinking about making money on the Internet. They are looking for quick and easy, not hard and long. They want a way to game the system, not a way to win the game. They try to minimize their investment of time and money, not maximize their ROI.

And I’ll be straight with you:

That’s dumb.

Making money on the Internet is just as difficult as making money in any other type of business. The capital requirements aren’t as high as opening a brick-and-mortar store like a dry-cleaning business or a restaurant, meaning it’s easier to get started, but you’re also facing global competition. You’ll need to be better, smarter, and faster than entrepreneurs only competing in their local markets.

The only appropriate mindset is to accept that you are investing years of your life and every penny of your savings into a venture that might ultimately fail. If it does succeed, it’s also not going to be because of your creative genius or some magical technology that makes money pop out of your computer. It’s going to be because of hard work, sound thinking, and skill.

Especially skill. Let’s talk about that next…

Lesson #2: Being smart isn’t enough.

We’ve all heard the story of the stereotypical Internet entrepreneur. Some smart kid sees an opportunity nobody else does, works night and day to create a groundbreaking product, and then goes on to become filthy stinking rich. In other words, the equation is something like this:

Smart + opportunity + hard work = success.

And that’s a beautiful story. Like many stories, it’s also mostly true, but it’s missing some important details.

To make money online, you do need to be smart, you need to find an opportunity, and you need to work hard. All those variables are totally accurate. What no one tells you is that there’s one additional variable that’s just as important as all the others combined:

Skill. If we were to modify our equation, it would look like this:

(Smart + opportunity + hard work) X Skill = Success.

  And here’s the part that’s really hard to wrap your mind around:

The specific skill you need changes depending on the opportunity. If you want to start a freelance graphic design business, you’d better be a pretty freaking good graphic designer. If you want to start the next Facebook, on the other hand, you’d better be a pretty freaking amazing programmer. To be more precise, you need whatever skills are necessary to capitalize on the opportunity better than all the other smart, hard-working people pursuing the same opportunity.

In other words, you need to be elite. I’m not sure what the precise measurement of “eliteness” is, but if I had to put a number on it, I would say you need to be in the top one percent of all people worldwide with your skill. That might sound scary, but it’s actually not a very high bar because the vast majority of people doing anything suck. If you have at least a little natural talent for the skill, you can probably become a member of the top one percent with a few years of diligent work and study. Here’s how…

Lesson #3: Education is everything (and nothing).

The whole mythos around Internet entrepreneurs is they spurn education. Steve Jobs, Mark Zuckerberg, and Bill Gates dropped out of school. Tech billionaire Peter Thiel pays entrepreneurs $100,000 NOT to go to college. That’s as “anti-education” as it gets.

Or is it?

If you look a little deeper, you’ll find that most entrepreneurs are devout believers in education, but they also believe that certain systems of education, such as universities, are fundamentally flawed. They espouse a more experimental model of learning where the student states their assumptions, poses a hypothesis, and then proceeds to test that hypothesis, not only to learn but also to hone their skills in the real world.

In other words, entrepreneurs learn how to teach themselves. Not just by reading books, not just by listening to teachers, but by observing the world around them, thinking about what they see, and then coming up with their own interpretations. They don’t depend on anyone to “break it down” for them. They figure it out for themselves.

And it’s not just a learning style. In many cases, there’s no alternative.

With making money on the Internet, for example, there isn’t a degree program or book that’ll teach you everything. It doesn’t exist, and it never will, because the Internet is evolving too quickly. By the time someone created the book or degree program, most of it would be out of date.

There’s one exception: skills. Many of the skills necessary to build an online business either don’t change much, or they are easily transferable. For example, if you learn one programming language, it’s relatively easy to pick up another. Negotiation, business writing, and marketing are skill sets that haven’t changed much in decades or even centuries.

And it’s useful to have a teacher. If you’re learning how to write an advertisement, for example, you can learn a lot faster if you have a master copywriter critique your ads.

In my experience, this is where books, online courses, and other forms of traditional education shine: the acquisition of evergreen skills. You can then apply those skills in the real world to continue learning. For instance, the following skills are always in demand and have long-term value:

Copywriting

Graphic design

Programming

Content creation

Content promotion

Marketing automation

Public speaking

Ad management

Social media management

Project management

Freelancers with elite skills in one or more of those areas often make six figures per year, working completely online. They get to choose their hours, travel when they feel like it, and, and live a pretty awesome lifestyle.

Granted, it’s not total freedom, because they do have to work, but they also have a lot of control over how they work, and in my experience, that’s what really matters. Here’s what I mean…

Lesson #4 You don’t actually want freedom.

Let me guess…

You love the idea of building a passive income that flows into your bank account like clockwork every month?

Maybe it’s the idea of working in your underwear, choosing your own hours, traveling the world, or whatever. The idea is passive income = freedom.

And here’s the good news:

It’s true. Over the last eight years, I’ve built a passive income “machine” that’s allowed me to travel and live a life most people only dream about.

But it took a long time. Contrary to popular belief, passive income isn’t just something you can create out of thin air. It takes time to build, and it’s a five-stage process:

Learn a valuable skill. We discussed this one in the last couple of lessons. I recommend picking one of the ten skills and taking online classes.

Practice until you are elite. Again, you are competing against everyone in the world, so it’s essential you’re in the top 1%. The bad news is, you’ll probably start in the bottom 10% and work your way up, usually by working as either an employee or freelancer.

Start your own business. Once you’ve built a collection of elite skills, you’ll probably run across an irresistible opportunity, and you’ll jump in with both feet. It’ll take you several years or maybe even decades to become a successful entrepreneur.

Replace yourself. Passive income is the result of turning what you do into a system that runs without you. Sometimes an employee replaces you, sometimes you can automate everything with software, and sometimes you simply teach what you’ve learned through an online course.

Fine tune the machine. The bad news about passive income is it’s almost never entirely passive. Yes, you can reduce your number of hours, but you’ll still want to spend a few hours each week fine-tuning the machine. This is where the idea of the “Four Hour Workweek” came from.

And let’s be clear:

You don’t receive any passive income until the final step. From start to finish, I don’t know anyone who has done it in less than five years, and it takes most people 10+.

I realize that’s way more work than you probably anticipated, but here’s the good news:

Chances are, you don’t really want total freedom. What you actually desire is flexibility, and that’s much easier to achieve.

What’s the difference?

Well, freedom means you can get up every morning and do whatever the hell you want. Play golf, go surfing, travel to Paris, or just stay in bed all day. You’re in total control of every aspect of your life.

Flexibility, on the other hand, only gives you partial control. You still have to work, but you decide when and where. For instance, maybe you take your family to Italy in the summer for six weeks, work every morning and evening on your laptop, and then gallivant around the rest of the day.

Still sounds pretty good, right? And the good news is, it takes far less time and effort to get there. Maybe 6-12 months.

Here’s how: take a few online courses on any of the skills I recommended, do a bit of free work for friends and family as a way of building your portfolio, and then apply for virtual jobs requiring that skill. You may not make a lot of money to start, but as your skill grows, so will your income, and you’ll eventually find it easy to replace your day job.

You can also accelerate the process by moving to a cheaper country, which brings us to:

Lesson #5: It sucks to be an American.

Probably going to get flamed for saying that, but it’s true, and not just for Americans. Living in Canada, England, Australia, or many European countries is just as tough, and the reason is simple:

It’s expensive.

Between our houses, cars, meals, gas, and all the other little expenses, it’s hard to survive in most cities for under $3000 per month. In some big cities like San Francisco, New York, or London, you can barely get by on $8-10k a month.

But take a look at this…

I rented a luxury condo on the beach in Mazatlan, Mexico for $1600 a month. A meal at a restaurant was about four dollars. I could get a reputable doctor who spoke English to do a house call for $20. Altogether, I spent about $3,000 a month, and I lived like a king.

And here’s the crazy part:

I was able to make that much working only 20 hours a week as a writer and editor. As my skills improved, eventually my income crossed $10,000 per month – more than three times my living expenses.

There were also tax advantages. I won’t go into the details here, but Google “earned income tax credit.” It’s complicated, but you can actually save a lot of money on your taxes by leaving the US.

Altogether, it’s far easier to make a living online when you’re living in another country, and the lifestyle is better too. The biggest reason I came back to the US is that I eventually started my own company, and banks get a little nervous when you’re processing more than $1 million per year in credit card transactions from your laptop on a beach in Mexico. No idea why… haha. It was also nice coming home after living abroad for years.

The bottom line?

Not only does the Internet give you opportunities for increasing your income, but it also gives you ways to reduce your expenses substantially. It’s by no means a requirement to move to another country, but it certainly makes making a living easier, and when you’re getting started, you can use all the advantages you can get.

Here’s How to Get Started Making Money Online

So, we’ve covered a lot of ground here.

Mindsets, skills, passive income, having the flexibility you want to live the way you want. Hopefully, it’s all starting to make more sense.

But chances are, you’re wondering what to do first.

Should you create an online course? Start a blog? Find a freelance gig where you can learn and grow?

There are a lot of options, and the truth is, all of them are viable. Nobody follows exactly the same path.

But here’s what I recommend:

Figure out what skills come naturally to you. Chances are one or two of the ten skills I listed are easier for you than for most other people.

Buy a few online courses on those topics. In the future, I’ll publish some recommended courses, but until then, just use Google.

Start applying for freelance gigs. You might get rejected a lot at first, but eventually, somebody will say yes, and you’ll make your first dollar off the Internet.

From there, you can scale up. Maybe you’ll start your own business with employees and offices, or maybe you’ll just become a highly paid freelancer. Neither path is right or wrong. It’s just two different lifestyles.

The bottom line?

Making money online isn’t a fairytale. You can do it. You just have to be smart about it and have realistic expectations.

Good luck!

About the Author: Jon Morrow is the CEO of Smart Blogger. Check out his new blog Unstoppable and read the launch post that went viral: 7 Life Lessons from a Guy Who Can’t Move Anything but His Face.

5 Things Nobody Tells You About Making Money in Your Underwear

[alanajacksontx]

5 Things Nobody Tells You About Making Money in Your Underwear

That’s the dream, right?

No dragging your butt out of bed at an ungodly hour, sitting in traffic, being stuck inside an office all day, and slaving away your life for a measly paycheck.

Instead, wake up whenever you feel like it, saunter over to the laptop in your skivvies, and sip a cup of java while you “work.” Take a vacation whenever you want, spend time with your loved ones, and travel the freakin’ world.

Hell, yeah…

Too bad it’s just a fairytale, though. We’ve all seen the scammy ads about making $80 an hour filling out surveys, starting your own online store in a “virtual mall,” making megabucks from reselling old crap on eBay or Amazon. There are a gazillion different variations, all of them promising you easy money, all of them stoking your hope of a better life, all of them a little too ridiculous for you to believe in, even though you really, REALLY want to believe.

But you’re not a fool. You know they’re not telling you the truth. It can’t be as easy as they make it sound.

And you’re right. I’ve made my living on the Internet for eight years now, and while it’s certainly nice, there’s also a lot nobody is telling you. Not because it’s a secret, but because most people don’t actually want the truth. They want to believe it’s easy, fun, straightforward.

If anything though, it’s the opposite, and that brings us to the first lesson:

Lesson #1: You can’t do this in your “spare time.”

Regardless of whether you’re starting a blog, building an online course, or creating your own virtual storefront, you probably don’t think of it as a “business.” It’s a project, a hobby, a “side hustle.” No offices, no employees, no budgets or business plans – it’s just you tinkering around in your spare time.

Right?

Well… not if you want to succeed.

In my experience, people who make a nice living online view it as a business from day one. That doesn’t necessarily mean they get an office or hire employees, but they approach it with the same mindset any sane person would have when starting any other type of business.

For instance, let’s say you’re starting a dry-cleaning business. You’d probably go to work for another dry cleaner first, learn the craft, figure out how you would do things differently, save your money, and then launch your own competing dry-cleaning business with a solid understanding of the market and what it takes to succeed.

In other words, you would put serious thought and effort into it, start preparing months or even years in advance and work your ass off for several years to make the business take off. That’s a normal mindset for anyone starting a new venture.

For some reason though, people’s mindset is entirely different when thinking about making money on the Internet. They are looking for quick and easy, not hard and long. They want a way to game the system, not a way to win the game. They try to minimize their investment of time and money, not maximize their ROI.

And I’ll be straight with you:

That’s dumb.

Making money on the Internet is just as difficult as making money in any other type of business. The capital requirements aren’t as high as opening a brick-and-mortar store like a dry-cleaning business or a restaurant, meaning it’s easier to get started, but you’re also facing global competition. You’ll need to be better, smarter, and faster than entrepreneurs only competing in their local markets.

The only appropriate mindset is to accept that you are investing years of your life and every penny of your savings into a venture that might ultimately fail. If it does succeed, it’s also not going to be because of your creative genius or some magical technology that makes money pop out of your computer. It’s going to be because of hard work, sound thinking, and skill.

Especially skill. Let’s talk about that next…

Lesson #2: Being smart isn’t enough.

We’ve all heard the story of the stereotypical Internet entrepreneur. Some smart kid sees an opportunity nobody else does, works night and day to create a groundbreaking product, and then goes on to become filthy stinking rich. In other words, the equation is something like this:

Smart + opportunity + hard work = success.

And that’s a beautiful story. Like many stories, it’s also mostly true, but it’s missing some important details.

To make money online, you do need to be smart, you need to find an opportunity, and you need to work hard. All those variables are totally accurate. What no one tells you is that there’s one additional variable that’s just as important as all the others combined:

Skill. If we were to modify our equation, it would look like this:

(Smart + opportunity + hard work) X Skill = Success.

  And here’s the part that’s really hard to wrap your mind around:

The specific skill you need changes depending on the opportunity. If you want to start a freelance graphic design business, you’d better be a pretty freaking good graphic designer. If you want to start the next Facebook, on the other hand, you’d better be a pretty freaking amazing programmer. To be more precise, you need whatever skills are necessary to capitalize on the opportunity better than all the other smart, hard-working people pursuing the same opportunity.

In other words, you need to be elite. I’m not sure what the precise measurement of “eliteness” is, but if I had to put a number on it, I would say you need to be in the top one percent of all people worldwide with your skill. That might sound scary, but it’s actually not a very high bar because the vast majority of people doing anything suck. If you have at least a little natural talent for the skill, you can probably become a member of the top one percent with a few years of diligent work and study. Here’s how…

Lesson #3: Education is everything (and nothing).

The whole mythos around Internet entrepreneurs is they spurn education. Steve Jobs, Mark Zuckerberg, and Bill Gates dropped out of school. Tech billionaire Peter Thiel pays entrepreneurs $100,000 NOT to go to college. That’s as “anti-education” as it gets.

Or is it?

If you look a little deeper, you’ll find that most entrepreneurs are devout believers in education, but they also believe that certain systems of education, such as universities, are fundamentally flawed. They espouse a more experimental model of learning where the student states their assumptions, poses a hypothesis, and then proceeds to test that hypothesis, not only to learn but also to hone their skills in the real world.

In other words, entrepreneurs learn how to teach themselves. Not just by reading books, not just by listening to teachers, but by observing the world around them, thinking about what they see, and then coming up with their own interpretations. They don’t depend on anyone to “break it down” for them. They figure it out for themselves.

And it’s not just a learning style. In many cases, there’s no alternative.

With making money on the Internet, for example, there isn’t a degree program or book that’ll teach you everything. It doesn’t exist, and it never will, because the Internet is evolving too quickly. By the time someone created the book or degree program, most of it would be out of date.

There’s one exception: skills. Many of the skills necessary to build an online business either don’t change much, or they are easily transferable. For example, if you learn one programming language, it’s relatively easy to pick up another. Negotiation, business writing, and marketing are skill sets that haven’t changed much in decades or even centuries.

And it’s useful to have a teacher. If you’re learning how to write an advertisement, for example, you can learn a lot faster if you have a master copywriter critique your ads.

In my experience, this is where books, online courses, and other forms of traditional education shine: the acquisition of evergreen skills. You can then apply those skills in the real world to continue learning. For instance, the following skills are always in demand and have long-term value:

Copywriting

Graphic design

Programming

Content creation

Content promotion

Marketing automation

Public speaking

Ad management

Social media management

Project management

Freelancers with elite skills in one or more of those areas often make six figures per year, working completely online. They get to choose their hours, travel when they feel like it, and, and live a pretty awesome lifestyle.

Granted, it’s not total freedom, because they do have to work, but they also have a lot of control over how they work, and in my experience, that’s what really matters. Here’s what I mean…

Lesson #4 You don’t actually want freedom.

Let me guess…

You love the idea of building a passive income that flows into your bank account like clockwork every month?

Maybe it’s the idea of working in your underwear, choosing your own hours, traveling the world, or whatever. The idea is passive income = freedom.

And here’s the good news:

It’s true. Over the last eight years, I’ve built a passive income “machine” that’s allowed me to travel and live a life most people only dream about.

But it took a long time. Contrary to popular belief, passive income isn’t just something you can create out of thin air. It takes time to build, and it’s a five-stage process:

Learn a valuable skill. We discussed this one in the last couple of lessons. I recommend picking one of the ten skills and taking online classes.

Practice until you are elite. Again, you are competing against everyone in the world, so it’s essential you’re in the top 1%. The bad news is, you’ll probably start in the bottom 10% and work your way up, usually by working as either an employee or freelancer.

Start your own business. Once you’ve built a collection of elite skills, you’ll probably run across an irresistible opportunity, and you’ll jump in with both feet. It’ll take you several years or maybe even decades to become a successful entrepreneur.

Replace yourself. Passive income is the result of turning what you do into a system that runs without you. Sometimes an employee replaces you, sometimes you can automate everything with software, and sometimes you simply teach what you’ve learned through an online course.

Fine tune the machine. The bad news about passive income is it’s almost never entirely passive. Yes, you can reduce your number of hours, but you’ll still want to spend a few hours each week fine-tuning the machine. This is where the idea of the “Four Hour Workweek” came from.

And let’s be clear:

You don’t receive any passive income until the final step. From start to finish, I don’t know anyone who has done it in less than five years, and it takes most people 10+.

I realize that’s way more work than you probably anticipated, but here’s the good news:

Chances are, you don’t really want total freedom. What you actually desire is flexibility, and that’s much easier to achieve.

What’s the difference?

Well, freedom means you can get up every morning and do whatever the hell you want. Play golf, go surfing, travel to Paris, or just stay in bed all day. You’re in total control of every aspect of your life.

Flexibility, on the other hand, only gives you partial control. You still have to work, but you decide when and where. For instance, maybe you take your family to Italy in the summer for six weeks, work every morning and evening on your laptop, and then gallivant around the rest of the day.

Still sounds pretty good, right? And the good news is, it takes far less time and effort to get there. Maybe 6-12 months.

Here’s how: take a few online courses on any of the skills I recommended, do a bit of free work for friends and family as a way of building your portfolio, and then apply for virtual jobs requiring that skill. You may not make a lot of money to start, but as your skill grows, so will your income, and you’ll eventually find it easy to replace your day job.

You can also accelerate the process by moving to a cheaper country, which brings us to:

Lesson #5: It sucks to be an American.

Probably going to get flamed for saying that, but it’s true, and not just for Americans. Living in Canada, England, Australia, or many European countries is just as tough, and the reason is simple:

It’s expensive.

Between our houses, cars, meals, gas, and all the other little expenses, it’s hard to survive in most cities for under $3000 per month. In some big cities like San Francisco, New York, or London, you can barely get by on $8-10k a month.

But take a look at this…

I rented a luxury condo on the beach in Mazatlan, Mexico for $1600 a month. A meal at a restaurant was about four dollars. I could get a reputable doctor who spoke English to do a house call for $20. Altogether, I spent about $3,000 a month, and I lived like a king.

And here’s the crazy part:

I was able to make that much working only 20 hours a week as a writer and editor. As my skills improved, eventually my income crossed $10,000 per month – more than three times my living expenses.

There were also tax advantages. I won’t go into the details here, but Google “earned income tax credit.” It’s complicated, but you can actually save a lot of money on your taxes by leaving the US.

Altogether, it’s far easier to make a living online when you’re living in another country, and the lifestyle is better too. The biggest reason I came back to the US is that I eventually started my own company, and banks get a little nervous when you’re processing more than $1 million per year in credit card transactions from your laptop on a beach in Mexico. No idea why… haha. It was also nice coming home after living abroad for years.

The bottom line?

Not only does the Internet give you opportunities for increasing your income, but it also gives you ways to reduce your expenses substantially. It’s by no means a requirement to move to another country, but it certainly makes making a living easier, and when you’re getting started, you can use all the advantages you can get.

Here’s How to Get Started Making Money Online

So, we’ve covered a lot of ground here.

Mindsets, skills, passive income, having the flexibility you want to live the way you want. Hopefully, it’s all starting to make more sense.

But chances are, you’re wondering what to do first.

Should you create an online course? Start a blog? Find a freelance gig where you can learn and grow?

There are a lot of options, and the truth is, all of them are viable. Nobody follows exactly the same path.

But here’s what I recommend:

Figure out what skills come naturally to you. Chances are one or two of the ten skills I listed are easier for you than for most other people.

Buy a few online courses on those topics. In the future, I’ll publish some recommended courses, but until then, just use Google.

Start applying for freelance gigs. You might get rejected a lot at first, but eventually, somebody will say yes, and you’ll make your first dollar off the Internet.

From there, you can scale up. Maybe you’ll start your own business with employees and offices, or maybe you’ll just become a highly paid freelancer. Neither path is right or wrong. It’s just two different lifestyles.

The bottom line?

Making money online isn’t a fairytale. You can do it. You just have to be smart about it and have realistic expectations.

Good luck!

About the Author: Jon Morrow is the CEO of Smart Blogger. Check out his new blog Unstoppable and read the launch post that went viral: 7 Life Lessons from a Guy Who Can’t Move Anything but His Face.

from Internet Marketing Tips https://smartblogger.com/make-money-online/

[stevenshartus]

5 Things Nobody Tells You About Making Money in Your Underwear

That’s the dream, right?

No dragging your butt out of bed at an ungodly hour, sitting in traffic, being stuck inside an office all day, and slaving away your life for a measly paycheck.

Instead, wake up whenever you feel like it, saunter over to the laptop in your skivvies, and sip a cup of java while you “work.” Take a vacation whenever you want, spend time with your loved ones, and travel the freakin’ world.

Hell, yeah…

Too bad it’s just a fairytale, though. We’ve all seen the scammy ads about making $80 an hour filling out surveys, starting your own online store in a “virtual mall,” making megabucks from reselling old crap on eBay or Amazon. There are a gazillion different variations, all of them promising you easy money, all of them stoking your hope of a better life, all of them a little too ridiculous for you to believe in, even though you really, REALLY want to believe.

But you’re not a fool. You know they’re not telling you the truth. It can’t be as easy as they make it sound.

And you’re right. I’ve made my living on the Internet for eight years now, and while it’s certainly nice, there’s also a lot nobody is telling you. Not because it’s a secret, but because most people don’t actually want the truth. They want to believe it’s easy, fun, straightforward.

If anything though, it’s the opposite, and that brings us to the first lesson:

Lesson #1: You can’t do this in your “spare time.”

Regardless of whether you’re starting a blog, building an online course, or creating your own virtual storefront, you probably don’t think of it as a “business.” It’s a project, a hobby, a “side hustle.” No offices, no employees, no budgets or business plans – it’s just you tinkering around in your spare time.

Right?

Well… not if you want to succeed.

In my experience, people who make a nice living online view it as a business from day one. That doesn’t necessarily mean they get an office or hire employees, but they approach it with the same mindset any sane person would have when starting any other type of business.

For instance, let’s say you’re starting a dry-cleaning business. You’d probably go to work for another dry cleaner first, learn the craft, figure out how you would do things differently, save your money, and then launch your own competing dry-cleaning business with a solid understanding of the market and what it takes to succeed.

In other words, you would put serious thought and effort into it, start preparing months or even years in advance and work your ass off for several years to make the business take off. That’s a normal mindset for anyone starting a new venture.

For some reason though, people’s mindset is entirely different when thinking about making money on the Internet. They are looking for quick and easy, not hard and long. They want a way to game the system, not a way to win the game. They try to minimize their investment of time and money, not maximize their ROI.

And I’ll be straight with you:

That’s dumb.

Making money on the Internet is just as difficult as making money in any other type of business. The capital requirements aren’t as high as opening a brick-and-mortar store like a dry-cleaning business or a restaurant, meaning it’s easier to get started, but you’re also facing global competition. You’ll need to be better, smarter, and faster than entrepreneurs only competing in their local markets.

The only appropriate mindset is to accept that you are investing years of your life and every penny of your savings into a venture that might ultimately fail. If it does succeed, it’s also not going to be because of your creative genius or some magical technology that makes money pop out of your computer. It’s going to be because of hard work, sound thinking, and skill.

Especially skill. Let’s talk about that next…

Lesson #2: Being smart isn’t enough.

We’ve all heard the story of the stereotypical Internet entrepreneur. Some smart kid sees an opportunity nobody else does, works night and day to create a groundbreaking product, and then goes on to become filthy stinking rich. In other words, the equation is something like this:

Smart + opportunity + hard work = success.

And that’s a beautiful story. Like many stories, it’s also mostly true, but it’s missing some important details.

To make money online, you do need to be smart, you need to find an opportunity, and you need to work hard. All those variables are totally accurate. What no one tells you is that there’s one additional variable that’s just as important as all the others combined:

Skill. If we were to modify our equation, it would look like this:

(Smart + opportunity + hard work) X Skill = Success.

  And here’s the part that’s really hard to wrap your mind around:

The specific skill you need changes depending on the opportunity. If you want to start a freelance graphic design business, you’d better be a pretty freaking good graphic designer. If you want to start the next Facebook, on the other hand, you’d better be a pretty freaking amazing programmer. To be more precise, you need whatever skills are necessary to capitalize on the opportunity better than all the other smart, hard-working people pursuing the same opportunity.

In other words, you need to be elite. I’m not sure what the precise measurement of “eliteness” is, but if I had to put a number on it, I would say you need to be in the top one percent of all people worldwide with your skill. That might sound scary, but it’s actually not a very high bar because the vast majority of people doing anything suck. If you have at least a little natural talent for the skill, you can probably become a member of the top one percent with a few years of diligent work and study. Here’s how…

Lesson #3: Education is everything (and nothing).

The whole mythos around Internet entrepreneurs is they spurn education. Steve Jobs, Mark Zuckerberg, and Bill Gates dropped out of school. Tech billionaire Peter Thiel pays entrepreneurs $100,000 NOT to go to college. That’s as “anti-education” as it gets.

Or is it?

If you look a little deeper, you’ll find that most entrepreneurs are devout believers in education, but they also believe that certain systems of education, such as universities, are fundamentally flawed. They espouse a more experimental model of learning where the student states their assumptions, poses a hypothesis, and then proceeds to test that hypothesis, not only to learn but also to hone their skills in the real world.

In other words, entrepreneurs learn how to teach themselves. Not just by reading books, not just by listening to teachers, but by observing the world around them, thinking about what they see, and then coming up with their own interpretations. They don’t depend on anyone to “break it down” for them. They figure it out for themselves.

And it’s not just a learning style. In many cases, there’s no alternative.

With making money on the Internet, for example, there isn’t a degree program or book that’ll teach you everything. It doesn’t exist, and it never will, because the Internet is evolving too quickly. By the time someone created the book or degree program, most of it would be out of date.

There’s one exception: skills. Many of the skills necessary to build an online business either don’t change much, or they are easily transferable. For example, if you learn one programming language, it’s relatively easy to pick up another. Negotiation, business writing, and marketing are skill sets that haven’t changed much in decades or even centuries.

And it’s useful to have a teacher. If you’re learning how to write an advertisement, for example, you can learn a lot faster if you have a master copywriter critique your ads.

In my experience, this is where books, online courses, and other forms of traditional education shine: the acquisition of evergreen skills. You can then apply those skills in the real world to continue learning. For instance, the following skills are always in demand and have long-term value:

Copywriting

Graphic design

Programming

Content creation

Content promotion

Marketing automation

Public speaking

Ad management

Social media management

Project management

Freelancers with elite skills in one or more of those areas often make six figures per year, working completely online. They get to choose their hours, travel when they feel like it, and, and live a pretty awesome lifestyle.

Granted, it’s not total freedom, because they do have to work, but they also have a lot of control over how they work, and in my experience, that’s what really matters. Here’s what I mean…

Lesson #4 You don’t actually want freedom.

Let me guess…

You love the idea of building a passive income that flows into your bank account like clockwork every month?

Maybe it’s the idea of working in your underwear, choosing your own hours, traveling the world, or whatever. The idea is passive income = freedom.

And here’s the good news:

It’s true. Over the last eight years, I’ve built a passive income “machine” that’s allowed me to travel and live a life most people only dream about.

But it took a long time. Contrary to popular belief, passive income isn’t just something you can create out of thin air. It takes time to build, and it’s a five-stage process:

Learn a valuable skill. We discussed this one in the last couple of lessons. I recommend picking one of the ten skills and taking online classes.

Practice until you are elite. Again, you are competing against everyone in the world, so it’s essential you’re in the top 1%. The bad news is, you’ll probably start in the bottom 10% and work your way up, usually by working as either an employee or freelancer.

Start your own business. Once you’ve built a collection of elite skills, you’ll probably run across an irresistible opportunity, and you’ll jump in with both feet. It’ll take you several years or maybe even decades to become a successful entrepreneur.

Replace yourself. Passive income is the result of turning what you do into a system that runs without you. Sometimes an employee replaces you, sometimes you can automate everything with software, and sometimes you simply teach what you’ve learned through an online course.

Fine tune the machine. The bad news about passive income is it’s almost never entirely passive. Yes, you can reduce your number of hours, but you’ll still want to spend a few hours each week fine-tuning the machine. This is where the idea of the “Four Hour Workweek” came from.

And let’s be clear:

You don’t receive any passive income until the final step. From start to finish, I don’t know anyone who has done it in less than five years, and it takes most people 10+.

I realize that’s way more work than you probably anticipated, but here’s the good news:

Chances are, you don’t really want total freedom. What you actually desire is flexibility, and that’s much easier to achieve.

What’s the difference?

Well, freedom means you can get up every morning and do whatever the hell you want. Play golf, go surfing, travel to Paris, or just stay in bed all day. You’re in total control of every aspect of your life.

Flexibility, on the other hand, only gives you partial control. You still have to work, but you decide when and where. For instance, maybe you take your family to Italy in the summer for six weeks, work every morning and evening on your laptop, and then gallivant around the rest of the day.

Still sounds pretty good, right? And the good news is, it takes far less time and effort to get there. Maybe 6-12 months.

Here’s how: take a few online courses on any of the skills I recommended, do a bit of free work for friends and family as a way of building your portfolio, and then apply for virtual jobs requiring that skill. You may not make a lot of money to start, but as your skill grows, so will your income, and you’ll eventually find it easy to replace your day job.

You can also accelerate the process by moving to a cheaper country, which brings us to:

Lesson #5: It sucks to be an American.

Probably going to get flamed for saying that, but it’s true, and not just for Americans. Living in Canada, England, Australia, or many European countries is just as tough, and the reason is simple:

It’s expensive.

Between our houses, cars, meals, gas, and all the other little expenses, it’s hard to survive in most cities for under $3000 per month. In some big cities like San Francisco, New York, or London, you can barely get by on $8-10k a month.

But take a look at this…

I rented a luxury condo on the beach in Mazatlan, Mexico for $1600 a month. A meal at a restaurant was about four dollars. I could get a reputable doctor who spoke English to do a house call for $20. Altogether, I spent about $3,000 a month, and I lived like a king.

And here’s the crazy part:

I was able to make that much working only 20 hours a week as a writer and editor. As my skills improved, eventually my income crossed $10,000 per month – more than three times my living expenses.

There were also tax advantages. I won’t go into the details here, but Google “earned income tax credit.” It’s complicated, but you can actually save a lot of money on your taxes by leaving the US.

Altogether, it’s far easier to make a living online when you’re living in another country, and the lifestyle is better too. The biggest reason I came back to the US is that I eventually started my own company, and banks get a little nervous when you’re processing more than $1 million per year in credit card transactions from your laptop on a beach in Mexico. No idea why… haha. It was also nice coming home after living abroad for years.

The bottom line?

Not only does the Internet give you opportunities for increasing your income, but it also gives you ways to reduce your expenses substantially. It’s by no means a requirement to move to another country, but it certainly makes making a living easier, and when you’re getting started, you can use all the advantages you can get.

Here’s How to Get Started Making Money Online

So, we’ve covered a lot of ground here.

Mindsets, skills, passive income, having the flexibility you want to live the way you want. Hopefully, it’s all starting to make more sense.

But chances are, you’re wondering what to do first.

Should you create an online course? Start a blog? Find a freelance gig where you can learn and grow?

There are a lot of options, and the truth is, all of them are viable. Nobody follows exactly the same path.

But here’s what I recommend:

Figure out what skills come naturally to you. Chances are one or two of the ten skills I listed are easier for you than for most other people.

Buy a few online courses on those topics. In the future, I’ll publish some recommended courses, but until then, just use Google.

Start applying for freelance gigs. You might get rejected a lot at first, but eventually, somebody will say yes, and you’ll make your first dollar off the Internet.

From there, you can scale up. Maybe you’ll start your own business with employees and offices, or maybe you’ll just become a highly paid freelancer. Neither path is right or wrong. It’s just two different lifestyles.

The bottom line?

Making money online isn’t a fairytale. You can do it. You just have to be smart about it and have realistic expectations.

Good luck!

About the Author: Jon Morrow is the CEO of Smart Blogger. Check out his new blog Unstoppable and read the launch post that went viral: 7 Life Lessons from a Guy Who Can’t Move Anything but His Face.

from SEO and SM Tips https://smartblogger.com/make-money-online/

[cherylxsmith]

5 Things Nobody Tells You About Making Money in Your Underwear

That’s the dream, right?

No dragging your butt out of bed at an ungodly hour, sitting in traffic, being stuck inside an office all day, and slaving away your life for a measly paycheck.

Instead, wake up whenever you feel like it, saunter over to the laptop in your skivvies, and sip a cup of java while you “work.” Take a vacation whenever you want, spend time with your loved ones, and travel the freakin’ world.

Hell, yeah…

Too bad it’s just a fairytale, though. We’ve all seen the scammy ads about making $80 an hour filling out surveys, starting your own online store in a “virtual mall,” making megabucks from reselling old crap on eBay or Amazon. There are a gazillion different variations, all of them promising you easy money, all of them stoking your hope of a better life, all of them a little too ridiculous for you to believe in, even though you really, REALLY want to believe.

But you’re not a fool. You know they’re not telling you the truth. It can’t be as easy as they make it sound.

And you’re right. I’ve made my living on the Internet for eight years now, and while it’s certainly nice, there’s also a lot nobody is telling you. Not because it’s a secret, but because most people don’t actually want the truth. They want to believe it’s easy, fun, straightforward.

If anything though, it’s the opposite, and that brings us to the first lesson:

Lesson #1: You can’t do this in your “spare time.”

Regardless of whether you’re starting a blog, building an online course, or creating your own virtual storefront, you probably don’t think of it as a “business.” It’s a project, a hobby, a “side hustle.” No offices, no employees, no budgets or business plans – it’s just you tinkering around in your spare time.

Right?

Well… not if you want to succeed.

In my experience, people who make a nice living online view it as a business from day one. That doesn’t necessarily mean they get an office or hire employees, but they approach it with the same mindset any sane person would have when starting any other type of business.

For instance, let’s say you’re starting a dry-cleaning business. You’d probably go to work for another dry cleaner first, learn the craft, figure out how you would do things differently, save your money, and then launch your own competing dry-cleaning business with a solid understanding of the market and what it takes to succeed.

In other words, you would put serious thought and effort into it, start preparing months or even years in advance and work your ass off for several years to make the business take off. That’s a normal mindset for anyone starting a new venture.

For some reason though, people’s mindset is entirely different when thinking about making money on the Internet. They are looking for quick and easy, not hard and long. They want a way to game the system, not a way to win the game. They try to minimize their investment of time and money, not maximize their ROI.

And I’ll be straight with you:

That’s dumb.

Making money on the Internet is just as difficult as making money in any other type of business. The capital requirements aren’t as high as opening a brick-and-mortar store like a dry-cleaning business or a restaurant, meaning it’s easier to get started, but you’re also facing global competition. You’ll need to be better, smarter, and faster than entrepreneurs only competing in their local markets.

The only appropriate mindset is to accept that you are investing years of your life and every penny of your savings into a venture that might ultimately fail. If it does succeed, it’s also not going to be because of your creative genius or some magical technology that makes money pop out of your computer. It’s going to be because of hard work, sound thinking, and skill.

Especially skill. Let’s talk about that next…

Lesson #2: Being smart isn’t enough.

We’ve all heard the story of the stereotypical Internet entrepreneur. Some smart kid sees an opportunity nobody else does, works night and day to create a groundbreaking product, and then goes on to become filthy stinking rich. In other words, the equation is something like this:

Smart + opportunity + hard work = success.

And that’s a beautiful story. Like many stories, it’s also mostly true, but it’s missing some important details.

To make money online, you do need to be smart, you need to find an opportunity, and you need to work hard. All those variables are totally accurate. What no one tells you is that there’s one additional variable that’s just as important as all the others combined:

Skill. If we were to modify our equation, it would look like this:

(Smart + opportunity + hard work) X Skill = Success.

  And here’s the part that’s really hard to wrap your mind around:

The specific skill you need changes depending on the opportunity. If you want to start a freelance graphic design business, you’d better be a pretty freaking good graphic designer. If you want to start the next Facebook, on the other hand, you’d better be a pretty freaking amazing programmer. To be more precise, you need whatever skills are necessary to capitalize on the opportunity better than all the other smart, hard-working people pursuing the same opportunity.

In other words, you need to be elite. I’m not sure what the precise measurement of “eliteness” is, but if I had to put a number on it, I would say you need to be in the top one percent of all people worldwide with your skill. That might sound scary, but it’s actually not a very high bar because the vast majority of people doing anything suck. If you have at least a little natural talent for the skill, you can probably become a member of the top one percent with a few years of diligent work and study. Here’s how…

Lesson #3: Education is everything (and nothing).

The whole mythos around Internet entrepreneurs is they spurn education. Steve Jobs, Mark Zuckerberg, and Bill Gates dropped out of school. Tech billionaire Peter Thiel pays entrepreneurs $100,000 NOT to go to college. That’s as “anti-education” as it gets.

Or is it?

If you look a little deeper, you’ll find that most entrepreneurs are devout believers in education, but they also believe that certain systems of education, such as universities, are fundamentally flawed. They espouse a more experimental model of learning where the student states their assumptions, poses a hypothesis, and then proceeds to test that hypothesis, not only to learn but also to hone their skills in the real world.

In other words, entrepreneurs learn how to teach themselves. Not just by reading books, not just by listening to teachers, but by observing the world around them, thinking about what they see, and then coming up with their own interpretations. They don’t depend on anyone to “break it down” for them. They figure it out for themselves.

And it’s not just a learning style. In many cases, there’s no alternative.

With making money on the Internet, for example, there isn’t a degree program or book that’ll teach you everything. It doesn’t exist, and it never will, because the Internet is evolving too quickly. By the time someone created the book or degree program, most of it would be out of date.

There’s one exception: skills. Many of the skills necessary to build an online business either don’t change much, or they are easily transferable. For example, if you learn one programming language, it’s relatively easy to pick up another. Negotiation, business writing, and marketing are skill sets that haven’t changed much in decades or even centuries.

And it’s useful to have a teacher. If you’re learning how to write an advertisement, for example, you can learn a lot faster if you have a master copywriter critique your ads.

In my experience, this is where books, online courses, and other forms of traditional education shine: the acquisition of evergreen skills. You can then apply those skills in the real world to continue learning. For instance, the following skills are always in demand and have long-term value:

Copywriting

Graphic design

Programming

Content creation

Content promotion

Marketing automation

Public speaking

Ad management

Social media management

Project management

Freelancers with elite skills in one or more of those areas often make six figures per year, working completely online. They get to choose their hours, travel when they feel like it, and, and live a pretty awesome lifestyle.

Granted, it’s not total freedom, because they do have to work, but they also have a lot of control over how they work, and in my experience, that’s what really matters. Here’s what I mean…

Lesson #4 You don’t actually want freedom.

Let me guess…

You love the idea of building a passive income that flows into your bank account like clockwork every month?

Maybe it’s the idea of working in your underwear, choosing your own hours, traveling the world, or whatever. The idea is passive income = freedom.

And here’s the good news:

It’s true. Over the last eight years, I’ve built a passive income “machine” that’s allowed me to travel and live a life most people only dream about.

But it took a long time. Contrary to popular belief, passive income isn’t just something you can create out of thin air. It takes time to build, and it’s a five-stage process:

Learn a valuable skill. We discussed this one in the last couple of lessons. I recommend picking one of the ten skills and taking online classes.

Practice until you are elite. Again, you are competing against everyone in the world, so it’s essential you’re in the top 1%. The bad news is, you’ll probably start in the bottom 10% and work your way up, usually by working as either an employee or freelancer.

Start your own business. Once you’ve built a collection of elite skills, you’ll probably run across an irresistible opportunity, and you’ll jump in with both feet. It’ll take you several years or maybe even decades to become a successful entrepreneur.

Replace yourself. Passive income is the result of turning what you do into a system that runs without you. Sometimes an employee replaces you, sometimes you can automate everything with software, and sometimes you simply teach what you’ve learned through an online course.

Fine tune the machine. The bad news about passive income is it’s almost never entirely passive. Yes, you can reduce your number of hours, but you’ll still want to spend a few hours each week fine-tuning the machine. This is where the idea of the “Four Hour Workweek” came from.

And let’s be clear:

You don’t receive any passive income until the final step. From start to finish, I don’t know anyone who has done it in less than five years, and it takes most people 10+.

I realize that’s way more work than you probably anticipated, but here’s the good news:

Chances are, you don’t really want total freedom. What you actually desire is flexibility, and that’s much easier to achieve.

What’s the difference?

Well, freedom means you can get up every morning and do whatever the hell you want. Play golf, go surfing, travel to Paris, or just stay in bed all day. You’re in total control of every aspect of your life.

Flexibility, on the other hand, only gives you partial control. You still have to work, but you decide when and where. For instance, maybe you take your family to Italy in the summer for six weeks, work every morning and evening on your laptop, and then gallivant around the rest of the day.

Still sounds pretty good, right? And the good news is, it takes far less time and effort to get there. Maybe 6-12 months.

Here’s how: take a few online courses on any of the skills I recommended, do a bit of free work for friends and family as a way of building your portfolio, and then apply for virtual jobs requiring that skill. You may not make a lot of money to start, but as your skill grows, so will your income, and you’ll eventually find it easy to replace your day job.

You can also accelerate the process by moving to a cheaper country, which brings us to:

Lesson #5: It sucks to be an American.

Probably going to get flamed for saying that, but it’s true, and not just for Americans. Living in Canada, England, Australia, or many European countries is just as tough, and the reason is simple:

It’s expensive.

Between our houses, cars, meals, gas, and all the other little expenses, it’s hard to survive in most cities for under $3000 per month. In some big cities like San Francisco, New York, or London, you can barely get by on $8-10k a month.

But take a look at this…

I rented a luxury condo on the beach in Mazatlan, Mexico for $1600 a month. A meal at a restaurant was about four dollars. I could get a reputable doctor who spoke English to do a house call for $20. Altogether, I spent about $3,000 a month, and I lived like a king.

And here’s the crazy part:

I was able to make that much working only 20 hours a week as a writer and editor. As my skills improved, eventually my income crossed $10,000 per month – more than three times my living expenses.

There were also tax advantages. I won’t go into the details here, but Google “earned income tax credit.” It’s complicated, but you can actually save a lot of money on your taxes by leaving the US.

Altogether, it’s far easier to make a living online when you’re living in another country, and the lifestyle is better too. The biggest reason I came back to the US is that I eventually started my own company, and banks get a little nervous when you’re processing more than $1 million per year in credit card transactions from your laptop on a beach in Mexico. No idea why… haha. It was also nice coming home after living abroad for years.

The bottom line?

Not only does the Internet give you opportunities for increasing your income, but it also gives you ways to reduce your expenses substantially. It’s by no means a requirement to move to another country, but it certainly makes making a living easier, and when you’re getting started, you can use all the advantages you can get.

Here’s How to Get Started Making Money Online

So, we’ve covered a lot of ground here.

Mindsets, skills, passive income, having the flexibility you want to live the way you want. Hopefully, it’s all starting to make more sense.

But chances are, you’re wondering what to do first.

Should you create an online course? Start a blog? Find a freelance gig where you can learn and grow?

There are a lot of options, and the truth is, all of them are viable. Nobody follows exactly the same path.

But here’s what I recommend:

Figure out what skills come naturally to you. Chances are one or two of the ten skills I listed are easier for you than for most other people.

Buy a few online courses on those topics. In the future, I’ll publish some recommended courses, but until then, just use Google.

Start applying for freelance gigs. You might get rejected a lot at first, but eventually, somebody will say yes, and you’ll make your first dollar off the Internet.

From there, you can scale up. Maybe you’ll start your own business with employees and offices, or maybe you’ll just become a highly paid freelancer. Neither path is right or wrong. It’s just two different lifestyles.

The bottom line?

Making money online isn’t a fairytale. You can do it. You just have to be smart about it and have realistic expectations.

Good luck!

About the Author: Jon Morrow is the CEO of Smart Blogger. Check out his new blog Unstoppable and read the launch post that went viral: 7 Life Lessons from a Guy Who Can’t Move Anything but His Face.

from SEO and SM Tips https://smartblogger.com/make-money-online/

[claudeleonca]

5 Things Nobody Tells You About Making Money in Your Underwear

That’s the dream, right?

No dragging your butt out of bed at an ungodly hour, sitting in traffic, being stuck inside an office all day, and slaving away your life for a measly paycheck.

Instead, wake up whenever you feel like it, saunter over to the laptop in your skivvies, and sip a cup of java while you “work.” Take a vacation whenever you want, spend time with your loved ones, and travel the freakin’ world.

Hell, yeah…

Too bad it’s just a fairytale, though. We’ve all seen the scammy ads about making $80 an hour filling out surveys, starting your own online store in a “virtual mall,” making megabucks from reselling old crap on eBay or Amazon. There are a gazillion different variations, all of them promising you easy money, all of them stoking your hope of a better life, all of them a little too ridiculous for you to believe in, even though you really, REALLY want to believe.

But you’re not a fool. You know they’re not telling you the truth. It can’t be as easy as they make it sound.

And you’re right. I’ve made my living on the Internet for eight years now, and while it’s certainly nice, there’s also a lot nobody is telling you. Not because it’s a secret, but because most people don’t actually want the truth. They want to believe it’s easy, fun, straightforward.

If anything though, it’s the opposite, and that brings us to the first lesson:

Lesson #1: You can’t do this in your “spare time.”

Regardless of whether you’re starting a blog, building an online course, or creating your own virtual storefront, you probably don’t think of it as a “business.” It’s a project, a hobby, a “side hustle.” No offices, no employees, no budgets or business plans – it’s just you tinkering around in your spare time.

Right?

Well… not if you want to succeed.

In my experience, people who make a nice living online view it as a business from day one. That doesn’t necessarily mean they get an office or hire employees, but they approach it with the same mindset any sane person would have when starting any other type of business.

For instance, let’s say you’re starting a dry-cleaning business. You’d probably go to work for another dry cleaner first, learn the craft, figure out how you would do things differently, save your money, and then launch your own competing dry-cleaning business with a solid understanding of the market and what it takes to succeed.

In other words, you would put serious thought and effort into it, start preparing months or even years in advance and work your ass off for several years to make the business take off. That’s a normal mindset for anyone starting a new venture.

For some reason though, people’s mindset is entirely different when thinking about making money on the Internet. They are looking for quick and easy, not hard and long. They want a way to game the system, not a way to win the game. They try to minimize their investment of time and money, not maximize their ROI.

And I’ll be straight with you:

That’s dumb.

Making money on the Internet is just as difficult as making money in any other type of business. The capital requirements aren’t as high as opening a brick-and-mortar store like a dry-cleaning business or a restaurant, meaning it’s easier to get started, but you’re also facing global competition. You’ll need to be better, smarter, and faster than entrepreneurs only competing in their local markets.

The only appropriate mindset is to accept that you are investing years of your life and every penny of your savings into a venture that might ultimately fail. If it does succeed, it’s also not going to be because of your creative genius or some magical technology that makes money pop out of your computer. It’s going to be because of hard work, sound thinking, and skill.

Especially skill. Let’s talk about that next…

Lesson #2: Being smart isn’t enough.

We’ve all heard the story of the stereotypical Internet entrepreneur. Some smart kid sees an opportunity nobody else does, works night and day to create a groundbreaking product, and then goes on to become filthy stinking rich. In other words, the equation is something like this:

Smart + opportunity + hard work = success.

And that’s a beautiful story. Like many stories, it’s also mostly true, but it’s missing some important details.

To make money online, you do need to be smart, you need to find an opportunity, and you need to work hard. All those variables are totally accurate. What no one tells you is that there’s one additional variable that’s just as important as all the others combined:

Skill. If we were to modify our equation, it would look like this:

(Smart + opportunity + hard work) X Skill = Success.

  And here’s the part that’s really hard to wrap your mind around:

The specific skill you need changes depending on the opportunity. If you want to start a freelance graphic design business, you’d better be a pretty freaking good graphic designer. If you want to start the next Facebook, on the other hand, you’d better be a pretty freaking amazing programmer. To be more precise, you need whatever skills are necessary to capitalize on the opportunity better than all the other smart, hard-working people pursuing the same opportunity.

In other words, you need to be elite. I’m not sure what the precise measurement of “eliteness” is, but if I had to put a number on it, I would say you need to be in the top one percent of all people worldwide with your skill. That might sound scary, but it’s actually not a very high bar because the vast majority of people doing anything suck. If you have at least a little natural talent for the skill, you can probably become a member of the top one percent with a few years of diligent work and study. Here’s how…

Lesson #3: Education is everything (and nothing).

The whole mythos around Internet entrepreneurs is they spurn education. Steve Jobs, Mark Zuckerberg, and Bill Gates dropped out of school. Tech billionaire Peter Thiel pays entrepreneurs $100,000 NOT to go to college. That’s as “anti-education” as it gets.

Or is it?

If you look a little deeper, you’ll find that most entrepreneurs are devout believers in education, but they also believe that certain systems of education, such as universities, are fundamentally flawed. They espouse a more experimental model of learning where the student states their assumptions, poses a hypothesis, and then proceeds to test that hypothesis, not only to learn but also to hone their skills in the real world.

In other words, entrepreneurs learn how to teach themselves. Not just by reading books, not just by listening to teachers, but by observing the world around them, thinking about what they see, and then coming up with their own interpretations. They don’t depend on anyone to “break it down” for them. They figure it out for themselves.

And it’s not just a learning style. In many cases, there’s no alternative.

With making money on the Internet, for example, there isn’t a degree program or book that’ll teach you everything. It doesn’t exist, and it never will, because the Internet is evolving too quickly. By the time someone created the book or degree program, most of it would be out of date.

There’s one exception: skills. Many of the skills necessary to build an online business either don’t change much, or they are easily transferable. For example, if you learn one programming language, it’s relatively easy to pick up another. Negotiation, business writing, and marketing are skill sets that haven’t changed much in decades or even centuries.

And it’s useful to have a teacher. If you’re learning how to write an advertisement, for example, you can learn a lot faster if you have a master copywriter critique your ads.

In my experience, this is where books, online courses, and other forms of traditional education shine: the acquisition of evergreen skills. You can then apply those skills in the real world to continue learning. For instance, the following skills are always in demand and have long-term value:

Copywriting

Graphic design

Programming

Content creation

Content promotion

Marketing automation

Public speaking

Ad management

Social media management

Project management

Freelancers with elite skills in one or more of those areas often make six figures per year, working completely online. They get to choose their hours, travel when they feel like it, and, and live a pretty awesome lifestyle.

Granted, it’s not total freedom, because they do have to work, but they also have a lot of control over how they work, and in my experience, that’s what really matters. Here’s what I mean…

Lesson #4 You don’t actually want freedom.

Let me guess…

You love the idea of building a passive income that flows into your bank account like clockwork every month?

Maybe it’s the idea of working in your underwear, choosing your own hours, traveling the world, or whatever. The idea is passive income = freedom.

And here’s the good news:

It’s true. Over the last eight years, I’ve built a passive income “machine” that’s allowed me to travel and live a life most people only dream about.

But it took a long time. Contrary to popular belief, passive income isn’t just something you can create out of thin air. It takes time to build, and it’s a five-stage process:

Learn a valuable skill. We discussed this one in the last couple of lessons. I recommend picking one of the ten skills and taking online classes.

Practice until you are elite. Again, you are competing against everyone in the world, so it’s essential you’re in the top 1%. The bad news is, you’ll probably start in the bottom 10% and work your way up, usually by working as either an employee or freelancer.

Start your own business. Once you’ve built a collection of elite skills, you’ll probably run across an irresistible opportunity, and you’ll jump in with both feet. It’ll take you several years or maybe even decades to become a successful entrepreneur.

Replace yourself. Passive income is the result of turning what you do into a system that runs without you. Sometimes an employee replaces you, sometimes you can automate everything with software, and sometimes you simply teach what you’ve learned through an online course.

Fine tune the machine. The bad news about passive income is it’s almost never entirely passive. Yes, you can reduce your number of hours, but you’ll still want to spend a few hours each week fine-tuning the machine. This is where the idea of the “Four Hour Workweek” came from.

And let’s be clear:

You don’t receive any passive income until the final step. From start to finish, I don’t know anyone who has done it in less than five years, and it takes most people 10+.

I realize that’s way more work than you probably anticipated, but here’s the good news:

Chances are, you don’t really want total freedom. What you actually desire is flexibility, and that’s much easier to achieve.

What’s the difference?

Well, freedom means you can get up every morning and do whatever the hell you want. Play golf, go surfing, travel to Paris, or just stay in bed all day. You’re in total control of every aspect of your life.

Flexibility, on the other hand, only gives you partial control. You still have to work, but you decide when and where. For instance, maybe you take your family to Italy in the summer for six weeks, work every morning and evening on your laptop, and then gallivant around the rest of the day.

Still sounds pretty good, right? And the good news is, it takes far less time and effort to get there. Maybe 6-12 months.

Here’s how: take a few online courses on any of the skills I recommended, do a bit of free work for friends and family as a way of building your portfolio, and then apply for virtual jobs requiring that skill. You may not make a lot of money to start, but as your skill grows, so will your income, and you’ll eventually find it easy to replace your day job.

You can also accelerate the process by moving to a cheaper country, which brings us to:

Lesson #5: It sucks to be an American.

Probably going to get flamed for saying that, but it’s true, and not just for Americans. Living in Canada, England, Australia, or many European countries is just as tough, and the reason is simple:

It’s expensive.

Between our houses, cars, meals, gas, and all the other little expenses, it’s hard to survive in most cities for under $3000 per month. In some big cities like San Francisco, New York, or London, you can barely get by on $8-10k a month.

But take a look at this…

I rented a luxury condo on the beach in Mazatlan, Mexico for $1600 a month. A meal at a restaurant was about four dollars. I could get a reputable doctor who spoke English to do a house call for $20. Altogether, I spent about $3,000 a month, and I lived like a king.

And here’s the crazy part:

I was able to make that much working only 20 hours a week as a writer and editor. As my skills improved, eventually my income crossed $10,000 per month – more than three times my living expenses.

There were also tax advantages. I won’t go into the details here, but Google “earned income tax credit.” It’s complicated, but you can actually save a lot of money on your taxes by leaving the US.

Altogether, it’s far easier to make a living online when you’re living in another country, and the lifestyle is better too. The biggest reason I came back to the US is that I eventually started my own company, and banks get a little nervous when you’re processing more than $1 million per year in credit card transactions from your laptop on a beach in Mexico. No idea why… haha. It was also nice coming home after living abroad for years.

The bottom line?

Not only does the Internet give you opportunities for increasing your income, but it also gives you ways to reduce your expenses substantially. It’s by no means a requirement to move to another country, but it certainly makes making a living easier, and when you’re getting started, you can use all the advantages you can get.

Here’s How to Get Started Making Money Online

So, we’ve covered a lot of ground here.

Mindsets, skills, passive income, having the flexibility you want to live the way you want. Hopefully, it’s all starting to make more sense.

But chances are, you’re wondering what to do first.

Should you create an online course? Start a blog? Find a freelance gig where you can learn and grow?

There are a lot of options, and the truth is, all of them are viable. Nobody follows exactly the same path.

But here’s what I recommend:

Figure out what skills come naturally to you. Chances are one or two of the ten skills I listed are easier for you than for most other people.

Buy a few online courses on those topics. In the future, I’ll publish some recommended courses, but until then, just use Google.

Start applying for freelance gigs. You might get rejected a lot at first, but eventually, somebody will say yes, and you’ll make your first dollar off the Internet.

From there, you can scale up. Maybe you’ll start your own business with employees and offices, or maybe you’ll just become a highly paid freelancer. Neither path is right or wrong. It’s just two different lifestyles.

The bottom line?

Making money online isn’t a fairytale. You can do it. You just have to be smart about it and have realistic expectations.

Good luck!

About the Author: Jon Morrow is the CEO of Smart Blogger. Check out his new blog Unstoppable and read the launch post that went viral: 7 Life Lessons from a Guy Who Can’t Move Anything but His Face.

from SEO and SM Tips https://smartblogger.com/make-money-online/

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New Post has been published on Bestnewsmag

New Post has been published on https://bestnewsmag.com/home-lifestyle-beauty-may-ave-print-license-article-an-exacting-list-of-desirable-beauty-gifts-for-the-non-basic-mum-in-your-life/

Home Lifestyle Beauty MAY AVE PRINT LICENSE ARTICLE An exacting list of desirable beauty gifts for the non-basic mum in your life

I get uncomfortable Lifestyle around Mother’s Day. I’m calling it an alienating weirdness life Beauty 

  . It’s now not just the competitive advertising and marketing that bombards you for the month ahead, it is also how a few beauty advertisers (and department shop counters) perform.

It’s as if they’re underneath the assumption that each mom is yearning for a vanilla-scented candle, a fragrance from the Nineteen Seventies and a rose-flavoured bathtub lotion too, slather on, before getting into her felt slippers. Look, I’m no longer calling those presents unpleasant, I’m simply saying that the advertising best of a simpering mom who loves Neil Diamond and doesn’t care what you supply her, as lengthy because it’s cream-coloured and scents like lavender, is now not the dominant one.

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http://www.Smh.Com.Au/life-style/splendor/an-exacting-listing-of-acceptable-splendor-gifts-for-the-nonbasic-mum-in-your-existence-20170510-gw1cd4.Html Enough of the primary frame creams and candles. Your mom merits present that reflect her personality. Enough of the simple frame lotions and candles. Your mom merits gifts that mirror her persona. But what’s more bizarre nevertheless is that despite the fact that, in keeping with a few ads, all her pastimes line up with what your grandma became interested in a decade in the past, she by no means seems a day over 39. Oh, she may additionally have gray hair, however, her skin resembles that of Lily-Rose Depp.

You know that catalog mom in her cream satin PJs poking via a fluffy gown, cupping a mug of tea, mouth half open in an indulgent laugh, white tooth gleaming. Perhaps she’s on a mattress, surrounded by way of croissants, a Labrador pup, a rectangular-jawed husband, and exquisite children, who are serving orange juice. It’s low-key alarming that nobody has an unmarried stain on their garb despite the fact that they may be essentially playing with fireplace by way of having all of those dangers in a single bed.

RELATED CONTENT Let’s speak about sheet masks, do they simply work? Why this $12.70 basis has a 25,000 person waiting for to list Or, possibly she’s huddled up on the beach in a gray knit, blonde hair blown softly by using the wind. Her children are younger young adults, which is weird because she looks 25. Maybe she’s carrying a white, fluttery shirt in a lawn, looking by some means each coquettish and serene as she inhales roses.

In different phrases, the Mother’s Day mom is simple. Oh, the gift guide says “for every form of mom” and they imply it – each type of mom who loves the cashmere-experience of coconut body lotion and an oil diffuser smelling of lilies.

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With all of this in thoughts, might also I gift the alternative listing, for non-primary moms.

1.The Bullshit Candle $127 from Mecca.

Don’t fear! The call does not replicate the fragrance. The creators of this particularly fashionable, minimalist black candle just desired to call bullshit on the ones indistinct, simple candle names. It’s in reality wonderfully warm, a traditional blend of Sichuan pepper, grapefruit, tangerine, lavender, rose, lily of the valley, musk, tonka bean, vanilla and guaiac timber. Yeah, it’s layered. Because moms are human, too OK?

2. Tom Ford Lip Colour in Spanish Pink, RRP $seventy-eight/Tom Ford Cream Cheek Color in Pink Sand, RRP $105 available from www.Davidjones.Com.Au

On the surface, this appears a touch cliched, I mean, it’s makeup. But the packaging – luxurious black and gold – is barely edgier than your traditional “tub salts and powder” gift %. And the alternative greater essential aspect is that Tom Ford digs sturdy women. Usually over the age of 35. For proof, check out Amy Adams and Laura Linney in his most current film, Nocturnal Animals, (it is terrific). Or higher yet, watch it together with your remarkable strong mom. It’s same parts terrifying and tender, with extremely good style, which, cmon, you already know who else is.

Three. Evo “The Hairy Godmother” Gift Box – “Repair” $65.Ninety

This uber-cool hair care organization use handiest the fine for all their products, because of a this-this present box, including shampoo, conditioner and “working spray” is freed from all the same old junk like sulfates, parabens, and other chemicals. Allow me to quote the gift container blurb because it’s what each new mother wishes to examine, “We’ve seen the destiny, a sparkling dawn waits for you, you shimmy into the bath.” See that? One day you will shower!

Four. Rodin Luxury Body Oil $a hundred ninety

This is highly-priced however your mother is a sensual being! She has needs and dreams and also you’d higher be given this in case you need to transport about the world with any type of knowledge of precisely how you came into it!

But, even as you are marching for girls’ pride, please also never neglect boundaries, yeah? What I’m announcing is frame oil is great, underwear is not. But you are in a safe area as this body oil, crafted from 11 one of a kind plant and flower oils) is a cult product, (Oprah uses it, want I say more?) and it lately made Goop’s golden listing of spesh ones which might be “clean” (study: also freed from unnatural chemical substances).

Five. Estee Lauder Revitalising Supreme + Cell Power Wake Up Balm $98 available from www.Esteelauder.Com.Au

Lonely is the idiot who buys prescriptive pores and skin take care of his mom, but satisfied is the over-worked, time-poor, worn-out woman with progressed skin. (That’s all people). What to do? Beats me, she’s your mom – find a manner! It’s lighting in a bottle. Like, it actually contains light-reflecting pearls for immediate radiance and anti-getting older generation, leaving skin right away clean and glowing.

How Your Life Experiences Can Benefit Your MLM Business

  “Success is no accident. It is hard work, perseverance, learning, studying, sacrifice and most of all, love of what you are doing or learning to do” Pele. Life experiences are a built-in encyclopedia of situations learned and burned into the mind. You may want to tap into it as situations arise in your MLM business. So, this brings us to the question: How your life experiences can benefit your business? We will get to that question and explore how you can apply your past experiences to your current objectives.

Your life experience can pay off big in your MLM business… Now that you own an MLM business, you’re probably wondering if your previous experiences can help you chart out a course for lifelong success. It can help you achieve your goals, in almost every business, life experiences are transferable. There are repetitive events that are so similar, the only differences are the timing and place of the event itself. If you have experience in the retail industry, especially with customers. You can use your experiences to work with your prospects. You’ll have an edge up on others that are just starting out in this industry.

Everyone has dealt with stressful points in their careers before moving into the MLM business industry. How did you deal with the stress in your last career or job? Maybe you had a routine set up to deal with the pent-up frustration. You could apply your knowledge in stress management in a series of blogs or marketing content for others. As you think about your experiences, can you develop them into marketing material for your business? In this business, you’re here to help others on their journey as either as a new team member or as a consumer looking to improve their health or fitness aspects.

Applying Life Experiences to Business goals and Achieving Results Your life experiences can mean the difference for someone out there right now. What you have experienced is different than others. However, everyone is built differently in the learning aspect. Perhaps you can shed some light on a subject matter that others could not. You have a treasure chest of knowledge and you must use it to help others gain traction in life. Your business goals may be designed from your life experiences in mind. Perhaps a goal could mean improving the way that you market to new prospects. You have gained experienced already in marketing unless you’re just starting out. Your mistakes are good points to improve upon for this goal.

About The Author

David L. Feinstein, noted business coach and home business entrepreneur, is the author of various articles and books that help to empower individuals. To get the real innovative marketing

Type 2 Diabetes – Lifestyle Factors Connected To the Development of Diabetes

  Type 2 diabetes is in many ways a predictable disease. It can be anticipated, if not prevented. The risk factor can be estimated to a reliable degree, based on several crucial factors. And yet, it is still an epidemic in our society. Go figure!

There are several reasons why we leave ourselves vulnerable to Type 2 diabetes as a population. Break down these issues further, and we have excuses and justifications as to why these problems are not addressed.

Let’s focus on the causes. While this is not a final list, most of the primary factors driving the development of this form of diabetes are listed below. These are specifically related to lifestyle, which means they are all under our influence in some way or another…

1. Overconsumption of carbohydrates. It almost always begins with an over-consumption of sugar and carbohydrates. And it usually does not end there, since this factor is usually present along with several others.

Carbohydrates are essential in any healthy and balanced diet. But the key word is a balance. Most people consume more carbs than they need, given most of us are not extremely active individuals. Unless you are living a very active lifestyle or have a physically demanding job, there is no need to eat so many carbs.

2. Poor eating habits. To build on the above, poor eating habits are almost always the cause of diabetes in the long run. Overeating, frequent snacking, and weak appetite control are a recipe for weight gain and increased blood sugar readings.

Remember: it is just as important to remove old habits, as it is to establish new ones.

3. A lack of direction. Interestingly, not having direction behind your lifestyle may facilitate not only the development of Type 2 diabetes but also a multitude of health problems. It is crucial to be mindful of your body and well-being, even if you are not attempting to lose weight or improve your health.

Lacking direction in regards to your health leads to taking it for granted, which could prove costly should you be afflicted with a severe health problem.