MY BIGGEST PREPPING
MISTAKE 4
*Note: W.A, jr. Got the book "Why Lincoln Chose War" yesterday. Most excellent and many thanks. I'll have read it by the time you see this.
*
I really think about the
only, and the biggest, prepping mistake I made was not having an independent
business so that I could work from anywhere.
It really wasn’t a mistake per se, as I did try on more than one
occasion to start a home based business.
I was on the right path but took the wrong fork. I became way too focused on writing, my love,
rather than putting more effort and treasure into a business that would be
successful. Way too many times I tried
to be a publisher, when perhaps I should have just sold other peoples books, or
ignored books and writing altogether and did something else. If I had a business, I could have lived in
the tiniest farthest hamlet in the least populated state and felt much more
comfortable in my seclusion than I do now.
Heck, I could have even still been in my present location, Elko county
being bigger than a lot of other states.
Hundreds of square miles with just a handful of people here and there (
and even plenty of other locations with surface water ). I picked the one spot with the most people
because I needed a job because I didn’t have my own business. This is not only my biggest mistake, it is my
biggest regret. I really screwed up by
not focusing more here. It wasn’t lack
of discipline- I can work hard and still do, especially for someone my
age. I’ve scrimped and saved more than
once to try to start a business, so I know I could have done it. I just made poor choices ( I don’t accept
that a brilliant idea would have still failed due to the economy. I’m too bullheaded. Income might have drastically declined, but I’d
have hung in there ).
*
Even today, no child
support and no rent ( well, I do pay half the girlfriends mortgage, but it is
no more than what the old one cost me in car rentals, beer, gambling and
cigarettes. I look at having my land
being paid off as no rent necessary in the greater scheme of things ), no
stress financially, I still have no idea what would make a good business so I
could escape from the city. I mean,
obviously it must fall within my skill set or I couldn’t make it work. I’m not opening a fine dining
establishment. Or an accounting
firm. I wouldn’t have to like it. After all, it is work. And it couldn’t be a tactical mistake. Such as offering manual labor in a region
full of underemployed men, or using debt.
Or requiring rent. Of course, all
this assumes I actually made a mistake.
I might, by temperament, be ideally suited to what I am doing now. A minimum wage job to make the bills, with
the majority of my mental efforts devoted to my writing, which is not a
business but a labor of love. I like to
think this reality is better off with one better writer rather than one more
mediocre business owner. Or is that
hubris? Or delusion? Anyway, my prepper mistake.
END
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*Contact Information* Links To Others* Land In Elko* Lord Bison* my bio & biblio* my web site is www.bisonprepper.com
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* By the by, all my writing is copyrighted. For the obtuse out there
While thoughtful, I do not think you should consider the lack of a small business an error. Business implies customers, which implies people nearby to buy your product or service. Internet business means relying on infrastructure and customers, which an economic downturn can stifle.
ReplyDeleteThat being said,
To my way of thinking, a doable option might be semi-absent landlord. If you had land that could be operated as an RV park or divided up into other smaller living units, you can collect rent. Live just far enough away to be inconvenient for them to come see you ( or use a PO Box and never let them know where you are exactly)... if/when economic collapse occurs, they can still barter things for their space rent. Even if it comes to the point of never collecting rent again, you can still sit on the ownership of the land should the local civilization rise again. By being semi-absent you don't have to listen to them every day. RV park or camp site has the least amount of infrastructure to be maintained.
Just my thoughts :)
I always thought an RV park was ideal. Never followed through of course.
DeleteMaybe you could turn your writing into fiction, like our Redoubt friend? There are guys out there making a living writing. I'm not talking about Grisham types either. I've been thinking about dipping my toe into the stream and see what happens.
ReplyDeleteBelieve me, I've thought about it. Then I saw the sales, or lack thereof, of the novel. Then I rethought wasting a minimum of three months of my life.
DeleteWhile it might not be fodder for a fiction novel, here's an idea for short stories / column topics:
DeleteSince you love writing and have a well-cultivated antipathy toward yuppie-style preppers, write "anti-stories". All of the prepper fiction out there (that I've read. at least) are tales of how the prepper ultimately prevails in the end by using the high-$ method that the author assumes will work.
OK, how about you turn that around and write a few short stories for the blog about yuppie preppers who aren't the last one in the stewpot (hat tip to your phrase) because those techniques DIDN'T work out so well. Your column has shown the wisdom of low-cost prepping; now go to the other side of the coin and describe how high $ prepping will fail an ordinary working-class person.
If the stories are well received you can write more (keeping some unpublished) and then compile them all into an e-book for sale ("The Stewpot Chronicles", perhaps?).
The guy that did Lights Out also wrote Collision Course, which mostly follows what you are talking about. Anti-yuppie survival.
DeleteI am surprised that you don't put up more Amazon ads here devoted to the things that you write about. A perfect example is that Corona (wheat) grinder. An ad with the photo that they click on, another ad for Amazon search leading from your site to there with a message that it won't cost you any more to buy from here and buy whatever you want, I would buy through such a link. For a great example of what I am talking about head over to this site and look at all the Amazon ads, and his people do buy through him. I have.
ReplyDeletecheaprvliving.com
I have Adblock disabled on your site and I can't find your Amazon link right now.
Since you asked for it, here is another thing you can do. Btw, I own your Frugal Living and the 6 Pack books, this is offered up as a way to pick up sales only, I love the books. Why not go to Fiverr.com and get professional covers made? I can suggest a great artist(author actually) who will make you a fantastic cover for about ten bucks. Well worth it imo. PM for the link to him(or her.)
These suggestions are made in a desire to help.
Covers are cheap, and most likely would marginally increase sales. I just loath all the form over function BS that swamps us everywhere and hate to add to it. And, I did take the suggestion in the spirit it was given, so thank you. Good minions get extra biscuits.
DeleteThis minion just bought all 5 newsletters, got to start the New Year right with some good reading!Come on guys, order up!
DeleteThanks, pimp daddy :)
DeleteSelf employed business in remote low population areas is a hard one for two big related reasons
ReplyDelete1) market - you have to have customers who need/want your product or services.
and 2) Transportation - you have to get your product or service to your market.
The best option I have seen is niche products or services with low to no overhead, and cheap shipping options, sold to a global market via the internet. But these require being near pavement and internet access, which can be hard to get in affordable quantities in really rural areas.
"It takes money to make money" is absolutely true.
It was almost easier pre-Internet, as far as mail order business in the boonies.
DeleteIt is difficult to have a business that you can work from home and live anywhere. I make good money with my side job. Cutting grass and the odd home repair/remodel job. I turn down work all the time but still have some future jobs lined up. With the current economy I could turn it full time if I wanted. After the collapse most of the work will disappear. I have a full time job so i don't devote too much time to it. Of course I have a skill set for it. Wouldn't work in the sparsely populated high desert.
ReplyDeleteI currently work security and make a decent check and have a pension from my law enforcement career. A pension is a great way to go remote as long as it lasts. Alot of locals have security jobs. As times get worse I imagine more folks will want to have security. I had a buddy that convinced a homeowners association to have security. About 100 homes signed on for 2 patrols a day at $100 a year. That's $10,000 a year for 2 trips through a subdivision. Double that and you're making $20K. I live in south Mississippi. 20 some miles from the coast and 14 miles from the nearest small town or store or gas station for that matter. Its a commute to work, with a gas powered vehicle but when things collapse I won't be driving to work anyway.
Is this the ideal place? No but I have firewood, water, decent soil, some game and wild edibles. Folks around me raise livestock and I keep chickens. Goats, cattle, and other small stock are raised by neighbors. Some stocked ponds and the creeks and rivers and swamps can provide food sources too. There is employment for now since this is a coastal area. Sea food can be caught too if I can make it to the coast after the collapse.
Where would I go if I had a choice and my kids were not here? somewhere with large game in a remote area. The Rockies, Alaska, Not sure. I'll likely be where I am. I won't freeze to death at least and I have a great set of neighbors. Good skill sets here on the "hill". Mechanics, Doctors, gunsmiths, and we all try to produce food.
Good series of posts James and thanks to Idaho homesteader for inspiring you.
Are you finding coastal pollution still, from the oil spill? Or was that all over-hyped?
DeleteThings that swim are pretty safe but I wouldn't eat oysters or bottom feeders. Though I have eaten some crab. BP sprayed dispersement on the oil spill. Translation? It all sank to the bottom. But if you are starving you can cast net for quite a bit of food. Not my first plan.
DeleteNot your first plan, naturally, but back up to a back up is a good idea. As long as the food will kill you in twenty years rather than immediately.
Delete"I wouldn’t have to like it."
ReplyDelete==================
That's where you're wrong, and so is everyone else with that attitude that has failed in starting a business.
If you don't like what you do then there is no way in hell you'll put in the 100+ hours per week, for years or decades on end, it takes to make it work.
By doing what you like, it changes your whole way of thinking, it is no longer considered work. It is your life. It's not possible for a person that has been an employee all their life to understand this because of the inherent programming involved.
I worked Christmas day, most of it.
Why?
Because I LIKE what I do, and always have, at least since the age of about 7 or 8. Tonight is new years eve and I'll be sitting right here at my desk doing something I enjoy immensely - designing a custom home that will be built on an island off the southwest coast of Florida for a price of about $800k. I have 2 others very similar that I am working on, so I will be working all weekend until about 11pm each night. Doing something I enjoy, and making decent coin too.
Lead by example. I talked til I was blue in the face for 20 years trying to get my wife to quit her job and start her own business. She was constantly complaining about her job, Finally about 12 years ago she started her business and now she sees what I have seen for the last 30 years. I started my business in Jan 1986 so next month it will be 30 years since I have kept track of my hours so someone else can determine how much to pay me. That's an infantile way of looking at life. I will never go back to that way of looking at the thing that effects the most part of my time on this earth.
My wife is a published author many times over, a managing editor for a global trade magazine, and her business is in doing book indexes for all the major publishers. That's right, she does 3-4 indexes per week for books that will be published and earns about $200-$500 for each.
All of our work comes to us via email and we send our productivity to the clients by email as well. We never interact directly in person with the people that pay us. We are so far back in the sticks that our internet is through a Hughes satellite (shitty most of the time).
We're probably at the best we'll ever be but we both keep striving for more. We are compelled from within.
When I wake up at 6am every morning with out fail I think there is a big money tree out in the front yard with 100 dollar bills all over it and I want to get out there and start picking them before everybody else wakes up.
I would hazard a guess your published many times over wife works all the other gigs writing since conventional books pay diddly squat for the average author. My passion pays squat.
DeleteShe doesn't write much any more as all of her time is consumed by doing indexes for books. I am stunned at the number of books being published each year, and the quality of them. Virtually every swinging cheese dingus out there is being published and I don't know how the publishers are making money off this stuff.
DeleteA key to being successful in any venture is to find a unique angle of some sort. Guess what? Not everyone is successful immediately. But with determination over time success can happen. The key, as I mentioned before is, liking what you do.
You know, everyone gets 24 hours each day to do stuff and most people choose to do something they don't *really like* for 8 hours so they can do things they *really like* for the other 16. Flip that dynamic. Why in the world would anyone do that which they don't *really like* if they have the choice to do otherwise?
No, watching TV is not something someone rally likes. That is just silliness to fill the boredom. If a person has nothing they really like to do, then they most likely need to wear that slave hat a little longer and keep complaining.
By the time I was 29 I had had 33 jobs ranging from 1 day to 4 years and didn't like any of them. Some were beatable, some paid really well, and some were intolerable. But in every one of them someone else was in charge of my life and THAT was intolerable. No matter what it took I had to find a way to earn money while not allowing people to control me. period. And do so while doing something I truly enjoy.
That old saying is very true, "Find a job doing something you love and you'll never work a day in your life".
To that I will add, "It is never too late to live your life as you see fit, you just have to get your priorities in order, and do it."
Onward.
I don't hate my paying job, but I don't really like it either. Yet, I have control over who I need to work for, so I don't feel trapped. Also, this job is keeping me in the best shape of my life ( except cardio ), even compared to the military. Apocalypse work out, with pay. It is a pretty good balance as far as I'm concerned.
DeleteI've researched this topic extensively James (since after my last job, my approval rating for my fellow man has taken a severe hit) and there are some legitimate work at home employment options out there. The ones that pay the best though seem to require skills that I don't readily have, such as being a fast typist.
ReplyDeleteI would suggest that if your preps are in place, and paid for in full, and that all that you need is a little spending money, investigating one of the work at home options would be worthy of consideration. But this also assumes that you are not paying rent. I'm actually considering Amazon's Mechanical Turk to try and generate a little income.
Check out the link below. This is a link of credible employment opportunities listed by a work at home mother. Look under the writing category. Some of the freelance writing jobs actually pay okay. Though if you suck at typing, it might be worthwhile to invest in some Dragon typing software.
http://realwaystoearnmoneyonline.com/non-phone-work-at-home
Thanks for the link, I'll check it out.
DeleteSelf employment is not for everyone. But I do think you should redo the layout of the blog to monetize it. If you increased your amazon listings and took just an hour a week to change products links it would pay more than you normally make for an hour. I remember you had a recommended product page at one time. If this is your passion play with the template maximize this! Hell everyday use 1 paragraph to hawk 1or2 amazon link products. Past lifestyle gives you an edge in cheap and useful plus you work with the homeless list what they consider necessity.
ReplyDeleteP.S. Your a dinosaur the book links should be kindle if available.
I do have a recommended link page at my web page ( bison prepper dot com )but I don't know if anyone goes there. You might be on to something there with more Amazon links on the blog page and changed once a week. Hell, even moved around some. And the hawking paragraph. Hmmmm. Thanks.
DeleteThe added Amazon links seem like a good idea James, and can't hurt. The only problem that I see with this is that the people that frequent your blog already order everything through Amazon through your links (I'm kind of going out on a limb here and making an assumption, but I'm inclined to think that I'm right)
DeleteAdmittedly, I don't understand the sales percentages, or how they work? As a hypothetical, if someone orders something other than the linked item through one of your links, do you get the same commission as if they order the main linked item? If the answer is no, than it would be in your best interest to add many more links to your site.
Commissions are 6%, so you ordering a $10 book gets me 60 cents. The trick is, you enter through my link, order whatever you want. As long as you don't leave Amazon prior to completing the order, I get 6% on everything.
Deletemr. dakin,
Deletegary in bama knows whereof he speaks. his advice is good.
a little blurb about bison prepper.com in BIG letters on the side where one could link to it would be useful. and there a list of all your merchandise with easy ordering info and touch of a button easy ordering.
thanks.
You might also take a look at homestead.org James. They pay $100 for a 2k to 3k word manuscript.
ReplyDeletehttp://homestead.org/WritersWanted.htm