Playing Cash Mission games

I was wondering if anyone would be interested in playing a game where you get real challenges to make money. We can have a leader board setup and list top performers in each challenge, and best of all you get to keep all the money you make...

Phase One Complete

Yes, the formal phase of the 50c challenge is complete, and can you believe it, we made quite a tidy sum. Even though the game has formally ended, Tanya and I decided that we want to take this all the way to the million.

It's been a while since my last post, this is mainly due to the very diverse nature of pies I am getting my fingers into. Exiting and interesting times indeed.

So on this very fragmented post I actually just want to tell you about the major lesson I have learned from the last 3 months. Passive income. Yup you have heard the term, read it in all kinds of books, but until you experience the joy of getting money without having to do any work you cannot begin to realize the power of getting money without having to work for it.

Ok so now for your challenge, let's see with how many sources of passive income you can think of. Then ask yourself, how can I begin benefiting from these?

Good luck to you

Feedback and Goals

I'm not familiar with the rules of football, so apart from knowing that ball in net means goal, I have no idea what a good play looks like. The game of football elicits no excitement from me, in fact I can't understand why so many people watch and enjoy football. You see I do not understand the visual feedback I get when watching a match, and thus I am unable to feel the excitement that makes football something akin to religion to a large part of the world population. Clearly the problem is not with football, but with my lack of understanding.

So what does this have to do with goals?

If you are playing a game and you do not receive clear feedback on your actions, and thus do not know if you are winning or loosing, you will inevitably loose interest in the game. The goal of any game is to improve until you win, the same is true of any goal in your life. The question is what differentiates the skill of pushing console buttons in the correct order from any other goal? Yes, feedback! The feedback from your button pushes are clear, in enjoyable games, and thus you can see yourself improve until you reach a certain level of competence. When you work towards a goal often the feedback is not as clear for various reasons, ranging from unclear, immeasurable goals to uncertainty as to what constitutes a move in the right direction. Ensuring that you are much more likely to give up on said goal.

When you set goal, make the goals measurable. Make sure that you clearly define what a good move is. When you make one of these moves, feel the joy and excitement of knowing that you are now that much closer to your actual outcome. This will give you constant bursts of enjoyment with each micro choice in the right direction, and quickly alert you when you are moving away from your intended outcome. You will thus reach your goals more consistently.

Why not give it a try?

Taking the plunge

There is a definite inner conflict that happens when you invest your hard earned income in a venture with no guaranteed return. On the one hand you (and by you I really mean me) have the promise, excitement and potential of a new venture, on the other hand you might loose it all.

Luckily for me, this is challenge money, not mine at all. So it happened that Tanya and I decided to invest in an online venture. You will have to wait a little while to find out exactly what this business is all about, I will tell you that it is in the health industry...

So there I was standing in a bank queue with a tin full of cash in my hands, ready to pay for our domain registration and web hosting, and I realized why a lot of people get stuck in their own particular rut. Fear is a nasty character, some how it convinces you that you do not want to do what ever is causing you to be afraid. More often than not, the reason you give yourself has nothing to do with fear, and so you sabotage yourself. I'm afraid to invest in our new business. Afraid that it might fail, losing out capital. Afraid that I will embarrass myself while trying to build the business. Afraid for a million other irrelevant reasons. Then I look into myself and take the plunge anyway. Immediately I feel some of the apprehension turn into excitement. We have calculated the risk, weighed our options, the business has potential and makes sense. The decision to jump makes all the difference.

I heard that Donald Trump asks himself what the worst case scenario is, if he can live with that, he goes for it. I came to understand something of that mindset. Face the reality, acknowledge the fear for what it is, make your decision, and jump.

50c Steps in Life

In life neither success nor failure is reached through giant leaps, rather it is the multitude of small steps and little decisions that take you in either direction. We see the giant effects of a million small steps and marvel at the ability one person has to achieve such lofty standards, whatever they may be.

Of all the lessons I have learned during this challenge, this lesson is probably the one that up until now have influenced me the most. Every day you make choices, simple choices that either take you closer to your goals, or pulls you further away. Each of these choices seems trivial, in the bigger scheme of things is will make no difference of you act on this one choice or not. The cumulative effect, on the other hand, is staggering. Before you know it your inconsequential actions have either pulled you into the dark caverns of failure, or propelled you into the stratosphere of success.

Many people, me included, try to find the one thing that will make all the difference in their lives. Today I want to tell you that there is no single big thing, no One Gate to open, no final wall. All your small choices, all the little obstacles, adds up and becomes the snowball that is your life, your success, your choice.

I'm not skipping out on the small actions, if I keep getting the small things done, the big things take car of themselves. There is another part of the equations, that is seeing the big picture, having clear goals, for they are what pulls your small actions in the direction you want your life to go. Without that picture, your actions will tire you out and lead you nowhere.

Looking for something new

The cold wet winter we have all been waiting for finally arrived this week, and it is freezing. Still there is no rest for those who want to make some money.

The fudge business eventually slowed down, like we knew it would. New business opportunities need to be explored, and not only explored, but put into action. If their is one thing that I have learned to be true it is that there is a fine line separating the successful from the rest. Those people who are successful take action, massive immediate action. The rest gets bogged down in lists, planning or excuses. The challenge is simple, how does one turn a little over R200 into R400? What industry to be in, and how to go about it.

I have just finish reading "Around the World in 80 Trades" and it became an inspiration to me. Now to find the product to trade...

R600 000 in one day, sounds like a scam to me

I recently received an email from Dr Hannes Dreyer, in this email he claims to have helped a student to build 2 businesses and within the first 24 hours of operation (not counting all the setup work done) the student made more than R600 000. I was, and still am, sceptical. But what the mail, and my subsequent research have done, was to make me think about the process of building a business and the capital used to do it. Is the traditional knowledge really true, do you need massive amounts of risk to really make money.

During the first part of this challenge I have already found that you do not need to have money to make money, in fact, starting out with nothing I have already made more than R130. Yet it has taken a long time, but mostly because I had to spend small amounts of time on my projects. Also this amount is only my part of the challenge money, for as you know Tanya and I have been sharing our profits. So yes you might say that R130 is not a lot of money, but you would agree that making R260 from R130 is possible. You would probably not have believed that one could make R130 from nothing, without one cent invested, and only selling goods, not services or time. So no you definitely do not need money to make money.

Maybe the conventional wisdom that suggests that Dr Dreyer and his student should not be able to show that kind of returns without running a scam, may be mistaken. I will continue investigating. Do not get me wrong, I will not encourage you to invest in businesses that promise you millions up front. You have to do your research, and do it thoroughly. What I am saying is that maybe we should push our businesses for bigger returns, and expect more from ourselves than anybody else ever would.