This is the second part in a series on securing your finances by adding new income streams. If you haven’t yet read the first part, it’s best to start from there.

Yesterday I started this series by telling you that you should consider looking for new income streams in addition to the salary you are getting from your regular 9 to 5 day job. I won’t go into details again, but the main reason is to gain financial freedom so that you won’t have to work under the fear of losing your job anymore.

Today we’ll go one step further and define what kind of income sources we are looking for.

But let’s start with a key premise:

I don’t want you to lose (or quit) your job.

The point here is to add new income streams, not to replace your job.

At some point if your income streams are good enough, it’s up to you to decide if you want to keep your job or not. But for now the plan is to keep working and to earn extra money on the side.

That brings us to a new challenge.

If you are already working 8 hours a day for your boss and I claim that you shouldn’t work too much but rather concentrate in your family, how can you possibly build new ways of earning money?

1. Do something you love

This is the most important part of the equation.

If you add something new to your days, make sure it doesn’t feel like work. You don’t want to work eight hours just to go home and start working on something else. So unless you are a cleaning maniac, no cleaning or household tasks this time.

What you need to do is to find out what you enjoy most and find a way to make money with it.

For me one such thing is writing. I love carving my ideas into words and sentences and submitting them to the outside world to read and comment. That’s why I can blog on a daily basis without getting the feeling of working.

If I would hate writing, it would make no sense for me to use blogging as an income source. It would just make my life miserable. The key is look at what others are doing, not to copy them but to get an idea on how you could turn your interests into income streams.

2. Make the money come to you when you’re not working

If doing something you love is the most important part of the equasion, passive income is the practical part.

This is actually pretty elementary mathematics:

If you do something that pays by the hour all you get paid for is the time you spend doing your work. That leads to working long hours and doing a lot of work.

And that’s something we want to avoid.

Building income never comes without work, but we can do our best to maximize the amount of money we get for a given amount of work. This happens by selling value instead of time.

Let’s think about writing:

1. You can write articles for your customers so that they pay you by the time you spent writing. The pay might be okay, but once you’ve sold your time once you won’t get paid for it again.
2. Or you can write an article to your blog where people can read it over and over again. And if your blog is well monetized, those visitors will then turn into income. Income that continues to flow even when you are not actively writing.

You get the point: you need to build something that brings you money even when you are spending time with your family or chilling out with your friends. Of course building that something costs you time and effort (maybe even some money) but when it’s up and running, you can keep it alive with a relatively small amount of work.

And that’s when you can move on to adding another stream of income.

This is it for today. We have formulated the criteria for deciding if an income source is what we’re looking for or not. A good income source:

1. Doesn’t make you lose your current job
2. Doesn’t feel (too much) like work
3. Brings you money even when you are not actively working

Tomorrow we will continue the journey by looking for possible income sources that fit this criteria. Feel free to ask questions, suggest your own ideas, or comment on the ideas presented so far. And get ready to take action!

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Today, your boss (a really nice guy, always taking your side, someone you trust) walks in the room. He looks tired, or maybe he’s just feeling down. He has a few words with some other guys in the room and then he comes to you.

- Hey dude, I have some bad news for you.
- What is it, boss?
- The company has decided to cut its size by 25%. You know I like you so I tried to save you, but there was nothing I could do: you are one of the guys who have to go.
- …but…
- I’m really sorry, man… That’s just how it is now. I hope you find a new job soon.

And that’s it. You’re on your own.

Are you prepared for this?

What would you do if you were in the above situation? Would you be able to keep living on your current life style? I know I would have to change mine. Or to find a new job really quickly.

If you are working but still registered as a student (that’s me!), at least in Finland you really don’t want to lose your job:

1. You have been working, so you don’t get the student benefits until next year.
2. And because you are a student, you don’t get the unemployment benefits either.
3. This means no money coming from the government.

Luckily to me this is still a hypothetical situation. But for many people it’s reality. And way too many people aren’t prepared for it at all.

The illusion of a safe job

Once upon a time (or so I’ve heard) there was something called a safe job.

You got into a good company and spent your whole career working in different roles in that same company. Your finances were pretty safe. As long as the company didn’t go bankrupt, you could just do your job and not worry about losing your income.

I have never seen a world like that.

In the world where I live (and I assume you do too…) work is something that is given you for a year, two years, or for as long as there is something to do. No one even thinks of having you at the same company for a decade or longer.

So much for job safety.

You can get fired at any time with a month’s notice. Or in today’s turmoils it’s well possible that the company you work for goes down the drain and you’re left empty handed.

Your job is gone, and so is your salary.

If working isn’t safe, what is?

This week I am going to guide you through a series of five articles on how you can get back the security by taking the control in your own hands.

If you thought that having a job would secure your life you might feel quite devastated now.

If doing your work doesn’t make your life safe, is there anything that will?

No.

Life is never safe. As Tom DeMarco and Timothy Lister say in Waltzing With Bears: Managing Risk on Software Projects:

If a project has no risks, don’t do it.

But you can make your life safer by knowing the risks and getting prepared for them.

Don’t put all your eggs in one basket

Hardly a new advice.

But funnily enough it’s something we don’t usually think about when planning our careers.

You have a good job? That’s good, so do I.

I think it’s a good starting point, but if we leave it there, we have done just what the old saying tells us not to do. If the company goes down, lets people go, or moves its functions to a lower cost subcontractor the imaginary conversation from the beginning of this article has become reality.

But there is an alternative:

Your boss comes to you and says:
- Hey man, I’m sorry to let you know that we need to cut our head count by 25%. I tried to save you but you’re one of the guys who have to go.
- Don’t worry about it, boss. I’ll be fine. I’m not depending on this company to take care of me. Actually this is just a small bump on the road.

Why?

Because you have more than one source for income.

Instead of depending on your employer, or the government, to take care of you you have assumed responsibility and taken care of yourself. You have managed your risk of losing your job.

That’s our goal this week: to define the path we need to take in order to get to the position where we won’t have to be worried about getting fired anymore.

Stay tuned, the adventure continues tomorrow.

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Billions of dollars lost in missed opportunities.

Thousands of projects that are never finished.

Only a few finished on time.

Countless hours of overtime just to notice that the project still was a failure, no matter how hard you tried.

Yet we still plan our every project for success. After one failed project we try to forget all about it and move on with the next one. “This time we cannot fail. We have learned from our mistakes.”, goes our reasoning.

But when the deadline once again passes without the product being finished, all we can say is “Oops, we did it again!”.

We didn’t think about the risks that were looming on the way. We never prepared for them. We didn’t even identify them! We were just counting on our technical experience - and to be honest - some amount of luck.

Why is risk management so hard?

Many books have been written about risk management, and in theory risk management is widely accepted as something worth doing.

But that’s just theory. Real life paints a different picture: Software developers who think it would be good to do risk management don’t have time to it, don’t feel like doing it, or aren’t allowed to do it.

While all of those excuses might be real, there is more to it. I’m the first to admit that to me risk management sounds like a dentist’s appointment: You know it’s good for you and that you should be doing it, but it’s not something you really want to do now when putting in all the cool new features sounds so much more interesting.

Today when reading Waltzing With Bears: Managing Risk on Software Projects it hit me.

In the book Tom DeMarco and Timothy Lister claim that:

Risk management is something that most of us practice all the time — everywhere except the office.

It was a good sentence so I read it again.

And again.

Then I started to think: “What if…”

What if it starts to go wrong already at this level? What if DeMarco and Lister are wrong and most of us don’t practice risk management even in our everyday lives?

These days we’re so surrounded with the message of positive thinking that it’s really easy to go off and dismiss all risk. Some even go as far as to say that we shouldn’t think about negative things at all.

But if we don’t plan for risks at home, how would we do it at work either?

It has to start from us

Let’s do a simple exercise.

Think about all the risks you are facing at home and your actions to identify them and prepare for them. Count how many of them you just try to ignore instead of actually handling. You might be surprised with the results.

Here’s a short list of risks to get you started:

1. Fire: Do you have a fire alarm? Does it have a battery in it?
2. Thunder: Do you unplug your electronic equipment during thunder storms? What about when you leave your home for a weekend?
3. Unemployment: What will happen if you lose your job? Do you have a backup plan?
4. Credit: What about if you don’t have enough money to pay for all your expenses?
5. Car accident: Do you check your car tires, oil, fluids and so on to prevent your car from breaking on the road?
6. Bicycle accident: Do you wear a helmet when driving your bike? Do you teach your kids to do the same?
7. Sickness: Do you have a health insurance? Do you exercise to keep yourself healthy?

The list could go on forever. There are so many risks in our lives that we would like to simply ignore.

And if ignorance is the thing we choose in our everyday life as often as possible, how can we possibly be expected to take responsibility at our workplace?

That’s what risk management is all about: taking responsibility on your actions.

And it has to start from you. Not your boss, not your subordinates. You.

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Good morning, folks!

I know it’s not morning for all of you when you read this. Maybe not even to most of you. So good day, good evening and good night, depending on what time it is wherever you are!

This morning I wanted to share a quick tip that I have learned from my morning experiences during past few days:

I wake up at 5 AM and take the first bus leaving from my stop every morning. At that time there aren’t many people at the stop waiting for the bus so after a few days you sort of get to know all the people traveling on the same bus.

You know their faces. You know which seats they will occupy when they get on the bus.

But you never talk to them.

A few days ago I decided to make an exception. There is this middle aged lady who I have seen every day for a few months already, never having said a word.

This time I collected all my courage and said it out loud:

“Good morning!”

You should have seen her face.

Her smile was so bright when she answered “Good morning” that you could even hear it in her voice.

Yesterday she was the first to greet me. This time I was the one with the big smile.

Try it! Say hi to a stranger. You’ll love it.

And if you don’t want to take my word for this, here’s a related post from Hello, my name is Scott: Practice intentional discomfort.

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During the last few months I have written a few posts about the importance of family and how taking care of your children always has to come before your work. I think that a rewarding career should be one that includes both work and family in good proportions.

So you might imagine my excitement when I found out that that’s exactly what Mike from Stay at Home Dad, Geek Style is doing.

Mike is a young dad and he has lots of things going on: At 21 he is the father of a beautiful baby girl called Alex. He is a new business owner, web designer and SEO (Search Engine Optimization) expert. And recently he decided that it makes the most sense for him to stay at home with his daughter.

To me that sounds almost like a dream come true.

In his blog Mike talks about the everyday life of a stay at home dad trying to combine work and family, but also lets the reader get close and personal: Mike tells about his ambitions, going to rock concerts and having to decide between right and wrong.

After reading the blog for only a week or so (actually, the blog hasn’t been around for much longer than that yet) I already feel I know this guy better than some of my real life acquaintances. I really hope that Mike will be able to keep up with blogging and sharing his experiences and thus inspiring the rest of us geek dads.

To put it short, Stay at Home Dad, Geek Style is an interesting read for any geek dad out there (and based on the comments, many moms are reading it too). If you haven’t seen it yet, go check it out now. And while you are at Mike’s blog, don’t forget to check out his Stay At Home Dad Digital Camera Give-Away, in which Mike is giving away a brand new Canon PowerShot SD750: All you have to do is make a post like this one!

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Don’t be a programmer

Wow. That’s harsh.

You can imagine my first reaction when I saw those four words in my blog statistics. Someone had actually found their way to this site by typing “Don’t be a programmer” in a search engine!

At first it felt like a joke (it is actually quite funny to see someone find a blog written by a programmer with a keyword like that, isn’t it?), but when I thought more about it, it started to make sense:

Don’t be a programmer!

Here’s what Dictionary.com tells us being a programmer means:

pro·gram·mer [proh-gram-er]
–noun

1. a person who writes computer programs; a person who programs a device, esp. a computer.
2. a person who prepares program schedules, as for radio or television
3. a person who prepares instructional programs

Also, pro·gram·er.

And that’s it. There’s nothing about crafting a product to fill your customers’ needs. No single word about users and how they feel when using your product. No mention of designing your work. Nothing about choosing the best solution for the problem at hand.

A programmer writes computer programs.

Is that what you are doing now? Is it all that you want to be doing?

Think about your own work: Is writing code the only thing you do? Or could it be possible that you are not a programmer after all? I think that most of us who are being called programmers actually are not.

But who are we then?

What defines who we are is our focus. If you don’t care about anything else than your code, then you really are a programmer.

But software is about much more than just machine instructions.

It’s all about people.

A software developer is a person who concentrates on the people using the product, their needs and dreams. He talks to future users, acting as a mind reader figuring out if what they say they need is what they really need, and then creates a solution that meets these vague but ah-so-important requirements.

The solutions usually come in the form of computer software, but I don’t think that’s always necessary. The best solution can be sometimes be something as simple as buying a piece of paper. That’s a solution a programmer would never come up with.

Be open. Be curious. Listen to your customer and find the best solution for him. Don’t be a programmer.

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If you’re a blogger, just looking at the above graph will tell you more about my feelings today than this post ever could.

For the rest of you: The graph shows a snapshot of the amount of people subscribed to my full RSS feed throughout the almost three months that I have been running this blog. As you see it has had its ups and downs, but the trend has been a growing one all the time.

And yesterday I finally reached my first milestone: 100 subscribers (103 to be exact).

So, as you can imagine, yesterday was a big for day to me.

And you are the ones I need to give my thanks to. Thank you all for your continuing support!

A growing community

Although it feels great to have 103 subscribers, that’s not what makes this number so great.

It’s the community behind the number.

A community of likeminded people who share similar values and interests.

A community of 103 (and actually even more, because not all of you are using RSS) likeminded people.

If we all get together there is huge potential for meeting people with inspiring stories and interesting ideas, getting to know people from all around the world, and chatting about things that are important to us.

Although I am doing most of the talking by writing these posts, that’s not how it has to be. I encourage you to use the comments form you can find at the end of any of my blog posts for chatting with each other just as much as with me. If you have something to say about the topic in the post, that’s great. But if the discussion goes a bit off the track, it doesn’t really matter - it just means that there is something more interesting to chat about.

Also if you have an important question you’d like to ask from the community, or if you want to share your ideas by writing a post, drop me some e-mail and I’ll organize it so that your thoughts will get posted.

Will the real subscriber please stand up?

Okay, enough me talking for today. It’s time to hear what you guys have to say.

If you wish to remain an anonymous reader, that’s fine with me. But if you want to let other readers know about you, now would be a great time to step up to the microphone and introduce yourself.

Starting a conversation couldn’t be any easier than this: In this case a simple “Hello, World!” is already considered a great comment!

Once more, thank you! I hope you are enjoying the ride because this is where the fun really begins!

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I haven’t done any speed linking before, but when I stumbled across these great articles that fit perfectly in my theme I just had to go for it for the first time

So here you go: Three great articles about finding your dream job and finding happiness.

1. Is Your Dream Just a Metaphor for Your Ideal Work?
   In his post, Tony D. Clark from Success from the nest points out that while the dreams we have can offer clues into what our ideal work may be we are often so focused on the dream itself that we lose sight of what we’re really after.
2. What is your dream job?
   Lynn Tryong from Wise Bread asks us to share inspiring stories of finding our dream jobs, or even figuring out what it is we want to do and actually taking steps to getting it. As a bonus, an Amazon gift certificate worth $25 is given to a random commenter.
3. Focusing on four simple questions can be the key to fulfilment
   In this post from Lifehack.org, Slow Leadership blogger Adrian Savage presents a list of simple but effective questions and answers to think about when trying to find happiness at work.

Is there more? Maybe you have seen (or written) an article on the same topic? If so, write a comment and let me know about it - I’ll check it out and add it to this post.

And one last bonus link from the Chief Happiness Officer:

4. Top 10 reasons why constant complaining is so toxic in the workplace
   Maybe you are actually already working at your dream job, but you don’t realize it because of all the complaining that is in the air.

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Here’s a simple but effective idea for bloggers, writers and any creative people looking for inspiration:

1. Pick a notebook and a pen.

I carry one of both with me all the time so that whenever I have a new idea I can act on it right away and never have to worry about forgetting my ideas again. But if you don’t want to get into that habit, that’s OK: just take a piece of paper and a pen with you this time and we can move on.

2. Go to a local bookstore, supermarket or news stand.

Any place with lots of different magazines is great. I just did this yesterday by visiting the nearest super market on my way back home from work. It didn’t have quite as many magazines as a bookstore would have had, but enough to get my inspiration flowing.

3. Look at magazine covers and write down any of the titles that sound interesting to you.

Don’t be too selective.

If a title sounds fun and makes you want to read more, write it down.

Funnily enough I have noticed that girly magazines such as Cosmopolitan have some of the best headlines while Science magazines can be a bit boring. Just get a good mix of everything that pleases you and you’ll see how much fun it can be.

Yesterday I collected the following list:

1. Who is the most powerful man in sports? (It’s not who you think)
2. The 7 habits of highly successful suck-ups
3. 18 ways to re-invent the game you love
4. The secret of Red Bull
5. 39 summer gadgets
6. When to trust your gut. Or not.
7. 1074 summer hits
8. Ready for autumn
9. Super easy make up + win the ideal kit
10. Could your blog cost your job

There are some list topics like “The 7 habits of highly successful suck-ups”, some seasonal topics such as “Ready for autumn” and even some promotions like “Super easy make up + win the ideal kit”.

4. Be inspired.

Don’t copy. That’s just boring.

Instead, look at the headlines and let them inspire you. You might get an idea for a great headline. But it can just as well be an idea for a great topic to write about, or a successful software product you will build in the next few weeks. You can even use them as your e-mail headers!

And remember that you don’t have to use all the material you find. Just take the gems and ignore most of it. You can do the exercise again at any time - and it doesn’t cost you anything.

5. Try it

What do you think? Does this make sense?

Maybe you have tried it already?

If you haven’t, go ahead and give it a shot. It would be great to hear what headlines appeal the most to you, so feel free to add your own list in the comments section.

May the inspiration be with you!

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This is a guest post by Graham Lutz, a young entrepreneur blogging about business and entrepreneurship at The Young Capitalist. Check out his blog, I’m sure you’ll enjoy it just as much as I do. But here we go: the stage is yours, Graham!

So ya know when you see that preppy kid you knew from high school, and 2 semesters into college he’s turned into a skater type who does drugs? What the heck happened to that guy? How did he go from being the big man on the high school campus to one “F” away from failing out of college?

His environment changed.

He was not ready for the fight it would take to maintain his standards, so he succumbed. When I speak about this subject, I generally find that people are violently opposed to the notion that they are simply a product of the environment in which they live. The fact of the matter is that the majority of our thoughts, actions, emotions, behaviors, and habits are a a reflection, whether directly or indirectly, of our environment.

One may like to think that they are not susceptible to the “product of your environment” ideology, but people are inevitably pulled down to the lowest common denominator among their peers unless there is a healthy atmosphere of personal development and growth. This then becomes a choice. Do you like what you have allowed your environment to mold you into?

If not, something needs to be done.

It may be your social circle, your co-workers, business partners, teammates, or even television and print publications that have formed you, and it is now up to you to change your environment. We have two main avenues through which we are effected; our eargate and our eyegate (i.e. those things you see and hear). This being the case, some drastic action needs to be taken and having now made the decision to change yourself for the better, you meet the challenges that come with that decision.

Let me give you an illustration.

You have a 20 oz. cup of water that has been systematically and consistently filled with dirt. You cannot empty the cup and there is a steady stream of muddy water flowing into the cup. How do you cleanse the water? It seems to me that the first course of action would be to stop the muddy water from entering the cup, so let’s divert the muddy water into the sink. Second, we must clean the water, but like we heard earlier, we cannot empty the cup. We now have to begin to flush out our cup with clean water. First we pour 1 oz. of clean water in, and it gets a bit lighter in color. We then pour in more and more. Eventually the clean water will flush out all of the dirt left over from the flow and we are left with a perfectly clear glass of water.

So are our minds. The cup is your brain, the dirt is your friends dirty jokes, the latest news stories, celebrity gossip, sitcoms, and everything else you see and hear on a daily basis. Before you can begin to change the way you think and the actions you take, you must first stop the incoming negative flow. Personally, I cut out my cable television and stopped listening to the local news. As you can imagine, it was quite a shock to be without my daily information consumption, but I quickly found out that my life was much more enjoyable without the junk.

The next step is to engage in a proactive personal development program including reading, audio materials, seminars, and mentorship. The best program I have found is through John Maxwell’s Maximum Impact. From there, you need to make the hard decision of whether or not to continue down the same social path. This is one of the hardest decisions you will make in your life, and I sincerely hope that this has been helpful so please do not hesitate to contact me if you would like to discuss this further!

I want to give a big thanks to Jarkko Laine for allowing me the honor of
writing to his audience!

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