The 100 Dollar Hour

In her book, Making a Living Without a Job, Barbara Winter describes how she and those she coaches earn their livings in many different ways. The book is available below.

In my lens making money when you have a scanner personality
I introduced this idea so that those who were worried about whether they would enjoy a particular way of earning money could find out by doing it, without commitment to do any more than that if they didn't enjoy it, or found out it was too time-consuming, or took too much in the way of resources or energy to do.

By committing to earn $100, you are going to give the opportunity a chance to prove you can earn (I bet that you have spent hundreds on opportunities that earned you not a cent); but you also are not committing your very soul to it until you know it's a good thing for you.

The first thing you need to do is set up a time when you can implement this idea. Winter recommends an hour each day, if possible. However, it will work with 15 minute segments, or with once or twice-weekly timings. This is harder, however, because you may lose momentum between each session. You may need to give up a TV session, or get up a little earlier to find the time. This is a test of your commitment to changing your life.

Next, you need to come up with ideas that could make you money. Write them all down. Any idea that is not written down may be lost forever. Quantity is much more important than quality at this stage. You need to keep adding to your list all the time while working on other ideas in order to keep the pump primed.

The, you need to choose one idea. If you have come to the end of your hour, or the time you have, make a note of where youe are in your thoughts, and come back next time to continue working on it. Here is where you flesh out the idea, and plan exactly how you can earn $100 from it. Now is the crunch. Do you think it's a good enough idea, and attractive enough to you for you to be able to commit to it until you have made $100 from it?

By the way, that's $100 profit, not turnover before expenses.

If the answer is yes, then make that commitment to yourself. Decide that you will do whatever it takes to make that profit, and will not make any final decision to quit or to expand the idea until you've made that money. Once you have succeeded in your aim, you will have a much better idea of what you want to do with the idea.

Now you take that idea, and begin to work on it. It's as simple as that.
Now, because it is simple, it doesn't mean that it's easy.
Getting moving can take a lot of will-power, and I don't have a lot. The important thing here is to just think of the next step. For example, I need to set up a web page. This is much too scary for me, so I break it down into smaller steps, do I need to find a web designer, or find out an easy way to do it myself? Which host to go with? OK, so the next step for me might be posting on a suitable forum to get people's recommendations of a web host that has easy templates. I can do that, so that's my next step.
If my next step is to telephone potential customers, and I find that too scary, then my next step is to make a list of contacts, with their contact details, or to make a memory nudge sheet of points I want to make during the call. That would be the next step.
If you get to a step that's got to come next, and you can't make yourself do it, set up an appointment with a freind or mentor to come and sit with you while you make those first calls.

Now, one of your $100 ideas may take time to come up with the goods.
For example, you may have committed to earning $100 from Squidoo lenses. This will inevitably take a while, because you have to build quality lenses, and wait for the regular payouts to build into an income.

So what you do is to set up the time needed to keep the project moving, and then take part of the "$100 hour" to start working on another project and get that one rolling.

It is important to keep records of the income and expenses for each project separately, firstly for tax purposes,a nd secondly, because you need to know when you've made your $100 profit.

Now you need to take your records and allow yourself a period of time to reflect on what you did, and what happened.

Is this a project that you want to continue?
If so, do you want to build it into a bigger business, or keep it small and part-time?
Can it be made less time-intensive, to allow room for other projects in your life?
Is it an idea that you now don't ever want to have anything to do with again? Then you don't need to. The power of this idea is that there are no commitments to the long-term until you know that you came make money out of it with enjoyment.

Well done, even such a small amount is evidence of a commitment to, and trust in yourself to be able to change your life yourself, without relying on someone else.

In my lens The Scanner Daybook
I show you one of Barbara Sher's best tools for scanners, the Scanner Daybook. This will be very helpful in your $100 dollar hour quest, as a great place to plan and ponder over your new ideas.