Wednesday, July 20, 2016

What Happens When You Start Making Money?

Stick with this make money online stuff and eventually you may start making some money. In fact, the more you stay with it, the higher the chances of earning.

That's the good news!

You may even start to make enough money to give up your regular job. If this does happen, you are now faced with situations that you have never come across before. You need to worry about:

  • Taxes
  • Time Management
  • Eating Right
  • Exercise
  • Separating Work From Home Life
  • Taking Time Off and Dealing with Sickness
  • Dealing with Loneliness

Taxes

If you ignore the tax ramifications of your online earnings, expect to get a visit from the tax man. While many countries have different rules surrounding this topic, most want their share of your profits.

Taxes have become quite complicated, especially with respect to online businesses. For this reason, consider hiring a professional tax advisor. They can help you navigate the treacherous waters of the tax code.

If you decide to hire someone, make sure you find a qualified professional. In the United States, this usually entails someone with a CPA certification. This is not to say all CPAs are good or even qualified. For this, you need to get some references, preferably from friends.​

Time Management

It's wonderful that you are working for yourself but this can be a double-edged sword.​ You know have the responsibility for assigning your own tasks. Before, you had a boss to do it for you (most of us, anyway). Now, it's all on you.

There are too many distractions in your home and way too easy to hit up those distractions. It's a good idea to create a space for you dedicated to working. It can be an office but whatever you choose, make sure all your family members understand it is your workplace. This is not to say there can never be interruptions. You just want to try to keep them at a minimum.

Another factor when dealing with your own time management, is to come up with tasks that are the most likely to keep you on track with your goals. You did make goals, didn't you? If not, it's back to the drawing board! Don't ignore this.

But, when you do have your set of goals, make sure what you do on a day-to-day basis will get you to those goals in the quickest amount of time. It's easy to say that you were busy cleaning up thousands of emails (and sometimes this is necessary). However, this should not be part of your regular routine if it does nothing in meeting your goals.

Eating Right

This is not just the domain of working from home. People don't eat right when working in a company, either. However, it's easier to sneak in bad food when others are not watching. When you work in an office environment, you may get people to comment when you eat chocolate cake everyday for lunch. It's okay to do this once in a while. A steady diet of it will get your coworkers' buzzing.

That isn't the case when you are working at home, by yourself. If you have access to that chocolate cake and no one is around to see you eat it, the temptation will be greater for you.

The best approach is not to avail yourself access to that chocolate cake to begin with. Don't buy it. Have healthy snacks that you can use as a replacement. Contrary to popular belief, plenty of great-tasting healthy snacks exist in the marketplace.

Getting Some Exercise

You don't have to be a marathon runner to stay in shape. Too many people associate exercise with running five miles per day and lifting twelve times their weight (exaggeration!) Walking is a fantastic exercise that can be done anywhere. Take the time to schedule some regular exercise into your working-from-home routine.

Separating Work from Home Life

When you worked for a company, you went to work for set hours and then came home. In most case, except for extraordinary circumstances, when you were home, you didn't think much about your job. Perhaps a thought or two would pop into your head about a situation you were dealing with. But, for the most part, there was a natural separation between your job and your home life.

When you are working for yourself at home, it's to easy to bounce back into work mode. Maybe you get a call late at night, and you feel compelled to handle it. The problem is, when you don't draw the line in the sand, those lines blur. You end up working way too many hours on your business.

While you see and hear about stories of people "burning the midnight oil," this should be the exception, not the rule. If you burn out in your business, you are going to eventually hate doing it and it will suffer in a big way. Keep the lines clearly delineated.

Taking Time Off and Dealing with Sickness

Just because you work for yourself at home, doesn't mean you don't deserve to take a vacation. Everyone needs a break from work. You don't even need to go away for you to refresh yourself. Commit to taking a couple of days for you time. Read a book, play piano, or whatever you like to do as part of your leisure plan.

Being sick is also going to happen whether you work for someone else or yourself. It's too easy to simply push forward and work through your sickness. Sometimes, you have no choice due to deadlines, etc. However, doing this can prolong your sickness which means you will continue to work while you are miserable.

If your business follows the model where you exchange hours for dollars, being sick cause you anxiety as you won't be making any money. However, if you give yourself time to rest, your recovery is likely to be much quicker than working through your sickness.

Another option is to create a business that earns passively, whether you are working or not. It's like dividend-paying stocks. They pay you consistently (all things being equal) over time. There are plenty of businesses that you can set up that offer recurring commissions (think paid subscriptions!)

Another option is to hire people to do your work for you. This way, if you do become sick, the work continues. Of course, a lot depends on the people you hire as to whether work actually gets done when you are away. One way around this is to outsource the work so that you can check in to ensure things are getting done.

Dealing with Loneliness

One common complaint among self-employed business owners is the loneliness that comes with the job. It's great to be able to set your own hours and work in your proverbial pajamas (not actually a good idea!) However, you don't always have people to talk to. You may have clients that you speak to on the phone or interact with online. But, it's not the same as a camaraderie that exists with coworkers in a company.

If you start feeling like this, you may be tempted to hit up a neighbor or a friend to spend time with. It's okay to do this on occasion. Just keep it to a minimum and only when you are caught up on your work. If you need some face time with people, consider joining clubs or groups, preferably related to your business. When you do this, you get to spend time with people while networking at the same time.

Conclusion

Working at home for yourself can be a rewarding career choice. It's not for everyone and there different challenges that you will face. Use the guidelines from this article to help manage those challenges.


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Monday, July 11, 2016

How About a $70,000 Minimum Wage?

With all the talk about minimum wage being set at $15 per hour, how about a $70,000 minimum wage?

This isn't a commentary about whether companies should be required to pay a minimum of $70,000 per year per employee. It's about an actually company, Gravity Payments whose CEO took a massive pay cut to equalize pay of his employees.

Gravity Payments is a Seattle-based company. Dan Price is the CEO and founder. He read an article that the optimal amount any person should be making is $70,000. According to the article he read, less than that leaves people feeling stressed out. They can't be the best they can be when they are stressed.

Interestingly, according to what he read, making more than this amount does not lead to huge increases of happiness. This is why it's considered optimal.

How Did He Fund This Pay Increase?

This happened in 2015. At the time, his salary was close to $2 Million. He reduced his salary and used the reduction to pay for the salary increases.

Did It Work?

Thumbs Up Down

I think it depends on who you speak to. He lost a couple of clients who were under the belief that the increase in salaries would result in higher prices. He also lost some key employees who thought it was unfair to reward some employees and not others. Also, many employees at the upper end of the pay scale were hired and compensated for their experience and training. Their pay was not adequately adjusted during this experiment.

Outsiders believe it's a publicity stunt to draw attention to his company. This some truth to this as you are reading about him and his company right here (have you heard of him or the company before?)

CEO's of other companies think the move makes them look bad. I suppose that is their problem, however. He doesn't owe them anything, although these kinds of actions can get you snubbed at business networking events.​

In an interview on Fox News, Dan Price stated that he believes the move will help his company and that he has received several leads from potential clients that want to do business based on the values he has set by implementing this payment plan. He also denies the move was made for publicity, although he admits that the company received a lot of buzz due to it.

In another Fox News interview, a panel discussion points to Price struggling with the move and is having a difficult time because his salary is set at the same $70,000 as the other employees.

The main reason why two of his star employees quit was because they felt the move overly rewarded weaker employees and didn't reward those in the skilled labor camp.

In another twist to the story, shortly before the announcement of the salary increases, Lucas Price served his brother with a lawsuit claiming he was hoarding profits. Lucas started the company with Dan. The criticism is that Dan was using the increase in salaries as a way to show that he is generous and to tie up the money to keep it from Lucas.

Why Not Apply to Gravity Payments Yourself?

In the Money

If you're making less than $70,000 you may be tempted to put in an application to the company. Not so fast. You'll be among several tens of thousands of applicants, a number that jumped threefold since the company announced this plan.

The good news is there are other companies who are following suit and increasing rates of pay for employees. It's unclear if they are doing because they believe in helping their employees or if they just want the publicity pump to prime.

After all, Gravity's sales and profits have both increased due to the move. Whether or not that is sustainable is anybody's guess that we will see over time.

References

O'Brien, Gael. "It's Not Easy: The Challenge of Paying Employees a $70,000 Mininum Salary" Business Ethics RSS. Business Ethics, 03 Aug. 2015. Web. 11 July 2016. <http://ift.tt/29R9I5T/>

Becker, Sam. "The $70,000 Minimum Wage Experiment Reveals A Dark Truth." Cheat Sheet. CheatSheet.com, 04 July 2016. Web. 11 July 2016. <http://ift.tt/29KVNLK>

Davidson, Paul. "Does a $70,000 Minimum Wage Work?" USA Today. USA Today, 26 May 2016. Web. 11 July 2016. <http://ift.tt/29R9lbL/>

What Do You Think?

Do you believe setting a minimum salary as described here can work? Do you think it will encourage too much contentment and allow the weaker employees to coast? Or do you think as the CEO does, that it helps people to concentrate more on their work by not struggling to pay bills? Let me know in the comments below. I'd love to hear from you!

Also, please share if you like what you've read!

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