What if I told you the lunatic on the other end of that email could actually be right.  What if I told you that you could actually make money 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 365 days a year, and with almost no effort.  You would probably call me crazy too!

At first this idea sounds impossible, a bold faced lie more likely, however in practice it’s actually quite common.  I want you to close your eyes for a minute and imagine that you have all of the money you could ever need and you no longer are required to get up and go to work every morning.

What would you do?

Would you get up and go fly fishing? Maybe take your bike out and go for a long ride?  Perhaps you would go to the museum and study the contemporary sculpture exhibit and ask yourself over and over, How can they honestly pass this as art? Maybe you’d gather your friends in front of the TV:  beercan, chipbag, and remote.

Imagine if you could get paid to do whatever it is you do in your free time when there are no other responsibilities. Imagine you could get paid to simply live your life.

Think about your favorite celebrity…

1. Shaun White is an incredible snowboarder and gets paid to travel the world in search of the best spots to ride
2. Martha Stewart has managed to turn her love for cooking, entertaining, and decorating into a multi-million dollar enterprise
3. Donald Trump was fascinated with real estate as a young man and has literally built an empire
4. Oprah thrives on enriching peoples lives through sharing touching stories and information
5. Paris Hilton is famous for being…. well, famous.

…they all have one thing in common:

Their life is their business.

We may not all be superstars at something, like Shaun White there are boundless opportunities in our everyday lives to take advantage of.

I recently returned from a trip to Costa Rica which was part vacation, part volunteer work.  I entered the country with an excitement to explore a new culture and a new language; I left the country primed with two potential business startups and a new business partner.

Last week while picking up some milk and eggs at our local food market I ran into the owner we started chatting about his business.  He brought up the idea of a new website, I brought up the idea of re-useable shopping bags, I left with a gallon of mik, a handshake and a promise to deliver both the reusable bags and the website.

So while that email spammer is probably still peddling empty promises of easy money, making  your life your business could be your real cash cow.  Unique opportunities are presented to us every single day.  To begin, all you need to do is open your eyes to the possibilities. Make your business your life.

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The vast Majority of people falsely assume that working for a large corporation is the safest way to make a living, but what happens when your employer downsizes and you get laid off?  What will you do then?  You have no control and no say in the situation, your only option is to accept it and move on.  Becoming self employed puts the power in your hands, quite literally, you will fail or succeed based solely on your own actions, abilities and determination, rendering the above scenario inconceivable.

However regardless of the source, relying on a single form of income is risky business.  Whether it is a paycheck from an employer, profits from a business venture, or passive income from an investment property you are putting yourself in harms way.   Again, what will you do when something out of your control goes wrong, the economy slows and your business starts losing money?  Or your investment property requires unforeseen repairs that break the bank?   A single source of income is a single point of failure, and only one step away from financial disaster.

Diversification is the answer and is just as important to your financial freedom as it is to your stock portfolio.  Diversification is a  back up plan for when things go wrong with one piece of the puzzle. Diversification gives you the peace of mind to know you can rely your other profit centers until the problem has been remedied.  As a result I have decided to focus my attention on three activities I am very passionate about, The Three Pillars to My Financial and Personal Freedom, are small business, real estate investing, and… blogging.

Everyone has their own individual passions, dreams and ideas, and it is absolutely imperative that you follow the dreams you are passionate about.   Achieving personal and financial freedom is essentially being the business of you.  You have to love what you do, and let the money follow your passion.  There is no separation between work life, and real life, there is just life.  The goal is to live the life I want to live, without worrying about how I am going to support that kind of lifestyle.  It will just happen, Why?  Because I am in the business of me, my life is my business, and the rest will take care of its self.

For the most part this website will be focusing on the he Three Pillars to My Financial and Personal Freedom; small business, real estate investing, and… blogging.  I will be documenting my experiences in an attempt to convey the lessons I have learned along the way, both good and bad, and will shine the spotlight on other inspiring entrepreneurs in an effort to learn from their successes and failures alike.

I hope that this exercise will not only prove to be a valuable tool for my climb down the corporate ladder to financial freedom, it is my hope that KirkHatesWork will provide you with an immensely useful resource for you on your own personal journey to financial independence.

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So when websites first started coming out with the “Live Help” buttons a few years ago, I was elated. ” Screw sitting on hold for 15 minutes wasting cellphone minutes”, hop online and talk to someone instantly; it was a much more satisfactory way of getting to a real live person, quickly and efficiently.

However now it seems as though those have gone by way of automation as well. Is our capitalistic society so deranged that padding the bottom line is so important we are willing to give up every last bit of humanity in our world? How any company expects to provide any level of customer service or satisfaction from the use of such technology is beyond me.

Check out the most recent interaction I had over at Adobe.com…

Please hold as we route your chat to an Adobe Representative.
Welcome to Adobe.com! My name is Jason. May I assist you with your selection today?
Jason: Hello, how can I help you?
Visitor: Hi Jason, what is the difference between photoshop and photoshop extended?
Visitor: does extended have other applications included other than photoshop? or pre installed plugins?
Jason: I’ll be glad to help you.
Jason: Adobe Photoshop CS4 Extended software delivers all of the unrivaled image-editing power of Photoshop CS4 plus much more, including breakthrough 3D painting and editing, rich motion graphics editing, and enhanced image analysis.
Jason: Adobe Photoshop CS4 software provides improved access to its unrivaled power through a more intuitive user experience, greater editing freedom, and significant productivity enhancements.
Visitor: sure, I read that on the site, but what does it really mean, is it fundamentally a different application with different features and menu items, or does it simply have a few different plugins or is it just photoshop packaged with another application that assists photoshop with 3-4 elements
Jason: The Adobe Photoshop CS4 Extended is the same as Adobe Photoshop CS4 with more features.
Jason: Ok this is really cool. Photoshop CS4 Extended lets you paint directly on 3D models and wrap 2D images around 3D shapes. It also has more smooth panning and zooming with much better clarity than previous versions.
Visitor: are you a robot or a real person
Jason: I’m a live person and my name is Jason.
Visitor: Do you have a set of automated responses you can choose? Because honestly just resending me information that I have already read on the website is not helpful
Visitor: that is not a value added service
Visitor: Is there anything you can tell me about the differences between these two products that isn’t on the website?
Thank you for chatting with us today.

WTF?! FAIL

I want to go back to the time when companies put the customer first. A corporations number one obligation is to make a profit for its shareholder. We have already proven in the latest economic downturn that’s a bunch of bullshit. Shareholders, and taxpayers were screwed in favor of the corporation, so lets at least put the customer first!

We are so subservient to our corporations that we don’t even see how the decisions we are making effect our everyday lives.   God save humanity… corporations are ruining the world!!

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1. Make meaning. The people who wake up in the morning wanting to make meaning usually succeed. The people who want to make money usually fail. Those who perpetuate good things, cause good things, or end bad things – those are the innovators.
2. Make a mantra. “Most organizations make mission statements and most mission statements suck.” A mantra is no more than two or three words. For example, Wendy’s should be “healthy fast food;” Nike stands for “authentic athletic performance;” eBay represents “democratization of commerce;” and Target could be “democratize design.”
3. Jump to the next curve. Don’t be satisfied battling it out on the same curve. Macintosh created a whole new curve, not a slightly better DOS computer. The telephone was not a slightly better telegraph, it was a whole new curve. Most organizations define their business on the curve they’re on. If you truly want to be innovative, it’s not about doing things 10 percent better – jump the curve to do something 10 times better!
4. Roll the DICEE. All innovations share the following elements.
   Depth: Create great products and services that are revolutionary (i.e., Reef makes a fanning sandal to protect feet and has a metal clip to open a beer bottle).
   Intelligent: Someone has anticipated what’s necessary (i.e., Panasonic developed a flashlight that takes three sizes of batteries so you’re sure to have one on hand).
   Complete: Not just the leather and steel and glass of the car – it’s the totality of the experience, it’s the Lexus experience.
   Elegance: The beauty of the industrial design.
   Emotive: Generate strong emotions – people love what you do or hate what you do, but they are certainly not indifferent. The worst case is that people don’t care about what you do.
5. Don’t worry, be crappy If you wait for perfection, you’ll never be ready.
6. Polarize people (emotiveness). Many organizations try to be all things to all people, which inevitably produces mediocrity. Don’t try to anger people, but do not hesitate to alienate a group.
7. Let 100 flowers blossom For example, Apple’s original goal wasn’t to spark a new desktop publishing industry, but it did encourage many software companies to write programs for the Mac. Apple Computer would have died if the Aldus Corporation hadn’t developed PageMaker for the Mac in 1985 – thus expanding the Mac beyond a simple word processor or spreadsheet tool.
8. Churn, baby, churn Take version 1 of your product, and make it 1.1 and 1.2 and 1.3. To be an innovator, you need to be in denial. Ignore the bozos who keep telling you it cannot be done. Then listen to customers to see how to fix your product.
9. Niche thyself. You want high uniqueness and high value. If you’re a great value but not unique, then you always have to compete on price (i.e., Dell Computer). If you’re only unique without value, you’re just a clown – you own a market that doesn’t exist. If your product/service is neither unique nor valuable, fahgeddaboutit! You want to produce something that is unique and of great value to the customer, like the Smart car, which can park perpendicular to the curb, among other things.
10. Follow the 10-20-30 rule. Create a maximum of 10 slides in a PowerPoint presentation; deliver it in 20 minutes; the optimal size font is 30 points.
11. Don’t let the bozos grind you down. Rich and famous parses to “lucky” not necessarily smart. “If you want to know what God thinks of money, just look at who he gives it to.” So watch for Bozosity. Take a shot of Bozosity to inoculate yourself against it

His message also included “The top 10 things he wishes teachers would teach students.” It struck a chord with me and I think applies to anyone interested in business as well.

What our schools do should prepare people for living. Part of living is working. But generally speaking, we’re preparing people for life, not work.

1. Teach students how to figure out anything by themselves.
2. How to explain anything in 30 seconds.
3. How to do a one-page report.
4. 10-20-30 rule of PowerPoint (see above).
5. Optimal length of an e-mail is five sentences, without an attachment.
6. How to survive a meeting (basically you get what you want out of the meeting and then you park your brain).
7. How to run a meeting (start on time, end on time, involve as few people as possible).
8. How to work as a group (the solo brilliant person doesn’t work in business).
9. How to negotiate win-wins.
10. Learning is a process not an event. It’s a lifelong process that is not limited to school.

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Replace your homepage with a twitter search.

In an interesting move along the social media scene, Skittles, the candy company replaces its homepage with a search for Skittles on twitter.

Check it out.

www.skittles.com
(May be loading slowly)

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5 Tips for Startups and Entrepreneurs Via ReadWriteWeb

But the real nugget is the last line:

So the advice of the day? Stop paying $5 for a latte, invest in a basic coffee machine and start innovating.

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Aside from its amazing potential as a tool to expand my web services to UI consulting, it pulls my eco/ethical heartstrings as well. Clearleft, is donating 10% of the proceeds from all sales to saving the Gorillas. This is an awesome model more companies should follow.

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There is still a long journey ahead of me until The Green House Effect’s can be seen, but the wheels have been set in motion. I am on my way to achieving one of the goals I had set out to achieve all those years ago. I will be writing more about this site, in the future, as I feature it as one of my “Entrepreneurial Endeavors”.

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The documentary argues that there are a number of outside forces and pressures on students to choose a specific career, or to follow a pre-determined path that is deemed conventional or culturally acceptable.

The film goes on to say that students in larger and larger numbers are succumbing to external societal and cultural pressures to take high paying jobs instead of following their dreams and doing something that will make them truly happy. More and more graduates are giving into American culture, family expectations and the love of money forcing them to make those decisions and follow careers paths they wouldn’t otherwise follow if those pressures were not present.

Kirkhateswork.com was featured as an example of this rebellion against the traditional mold.

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