Joining The Make Money Online Challenge To Stay at Home
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I have written about dreams. I have written about goals. Soon I am going to write about actions. But there’s one thing I have avoided all the while: sharing the details for the one dream and goal that drives me to all the side business activities I write about.
I want to be a stay-at-home dad.
When I go to work every day and spend most of the day away from my family, I risk missing out on many important and exciting events that take place during the day. Things like Oiva taking his first step, or learning his first real words. And it breaks my heart to hear him cry when I close the door in the morning.
But there are two things that make this quite a bit more complicated than just taking few months off and let the government support our family:
First, to do that we would have to lower our living standards significantly. Mari is still studying, so we can’t just switch roles.
Second, I would love to make this a more permanent thing than just a few months.
Which leads to my goal: to be able to support my family by working from home running my business from home in a way that lets me concentrate in my family rather than work like crazy.
That’s my 4-hour workweek dreamline.
The 4-hour Workweek for the insanely interested
Photo by chris1h1
Again, two things:
First, if you work on a side business, adding more and more work to your days is hardly a feasible solution. In fact, it gets really hard rather quickly. Even more so, if you don’t want your life to be just about work.
Second, if you are insanely interested in everything, you want to be free to play experiments on different things, not just get a lot of work and then keep doing it day in day out.
I just finished reading Tim Ferriss’s much discussed book, The 4-Hour Workweek, today and concluded that the muse business approach presented in would be perfect for me for both of the above reasons. A business that takes four hours a week to maintain is much more suitable as a side business than one that requires always more hours with every new customer. And a business like this gives you the freedom to use your time any way you want! Exploring all the things you are insanely interested in (like learning baking from a real French baker or watching your kid learn new skills).
Earlier this week, my friend from the Caribbean, Mark Hayward started his Anywired-Middlebrook Make Money Online Challenge.
Mark is planning to get something started by the end of April, and this post is my way of saying that I will do the same. By doing so, I will be moving closer towards my current ultimate goal of stay-at-home fatherhood. And naturally I will keep you posted on everything that I’m doing to get there, as well as all my results, both successes and failures.
In upcoming posts, I will share my ideas and more details on my plan, but right now what I really would like to do is to listen to your ideas. What do you think I should do to reach my target this month? Feel free to suggest anything that comes to mind and I’ll see how it fits into my plan.
Even small ideas matter
And finally the last piece of inspiration that finally got me started with this project: the one and only Christine O’Kelly. Her blog post on how she made almost $3000 with her 26-page eBook shows that it’s worth chasing even the small money and not getting stuck at thinking that if you can’t make millions right away with your idea, it’s not worth doing.
Let’s try out things, and then tune them as we go, shall we?
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April 4th, 2008 at 2:46 am
Hi Jarkko - It’s GREAT to have you on board! I am really curious to see what the both of us will come up with…
At present, I have a couple of ideas. :)
Mark’s last blog post: Lifestyle Design With a Purpose: 5 Volunteer Resources that can Help you Travel the Globe and Make a Difference at the Same Time
April 4th, 2008 at 8:22 am
Can’t wait to hear more details on your plan Jarkko. I agree, a four hour work week would be great for my little side entrepreneur website start ups. Sounds great, but I just don’t see how it’s possible. I think I’m spreading myself to thin as it is now. I’ve been working on a new site tonight for over six hours alone (reason why I’ve not been blogging hardly at all), so I don’t see how I could do it in four hours a week. Maybe I need to get my hands on that book!?
April 4th, 2008 at 10:16 am
Dear Jarkko,
Having a child is gift from God, Oiva is the cutest gift.
I am not a family man yet, but I can put my feet on your shoes.
I know the feeling of child or teens missing his/her dad to tell their problems or just piece of talks of daily things.
I am 22 right now, but i have goal that when I am going to be father someday.
I want to be with my children all the time.
Send them to school.
Listen to their problems.
And lot a more.
But i realize the only thing that can steal that experience from me is my job.
Perhaps my suggestions is, you are on the right track. Keep it up.
Our job is for our family,
Your job is for Oiva.
And if the job is stealing the precious time for Oiva and your family.
I think this is not helpful in the future.
One more reminder.
Lets pray to God and do our part.
Thank you and More Power
April 4th, 2008 at 11:11 am
@Mark: Yep. I’m curious as well :) Great to be on board! This is like continuing to do what I was doing anyway, but with some turbo charge…
@Deron: Those were my thoughts as well, before I read the book.
The one big thing that I realized from it was that is that the four hours / week approach doesn’t work that well in all kinds of work. You can’t do web development (yourself) in four hours, for example.
The trick is to build a business that relies mostly on outsourcing: you create a product, then pay others to do most of the work, and work for four hours yourself. This frees the rest of your time to do whatever you want. If that’s creating web sites, perfect! The difference just is that now you don’t have to do it for the money :)
I don’t know how it works, but I’m planning to find out… Getting there, however, requires a lot of work, so no, I’m not having four-hour weeks right now…
@Don: Thanks for the encouragement! Wise words! This is a long term plan, and I don’t know how it will turn out, but I’m ready to find out.
April 18th, 2008 at 8:52 am
Hey!
Your blog is lovely! That’s a great idea staying at home, enjoy with family and at the same time make money.
April 18th, 2008 at 1:16 pm
Thanks! I sure hope I can pull it off :)
April 25th, 2008 at 10:05 am
Hi Jarkko,
Great information. The best part is you can make money while you are sitting at the comfort of your home.
May 29th, 2008 at 1:06 pm
Hey!
There are many benefits of starting your home based business. The best is you can work at the comfort of your home eliminating all the hassles like working for unlimited office hours and relief from traffic jams.Truly the best way to make money at your own comfort.