Waking up the entrepreneur in your mind

I found the book "Rich Dad, Poor Dad" by Robert Kiyosaki in the library about a year ago. I took it home, read it quickly and began dreaming of developing an incredible business where I would be making zillions of dollars and it would be so cool and everyone would be so thrilled and and and . . .

The truth is, I have always lacked an entrepreneurial spirit. I've thought of various ways to trade my time for money, but have rarely gone past the idea of owning my own job. Let me back up and use a recent example:

One of the concepts discussed many times in Rich Dad, Poor Dad is the idea of Assets and Liabilities. Assets make you money and liabilities cost you money. His most commonly used example is owning your own home. Your home is actually a liability because it costs you money, but rarely generates money, whereas a rental home would be an asset because it generates money.

I've often looked around my house for items that I could use to make money. As spring brought the rain and sun, I looked out at my lawn and realized the grass was out of control. I scoured craigslist for a lawnmower and found a beauty being sold by some people who were moving! Perfect. I rushed to their home and purchased the mower at a screaming deal.

My wife got home that night and saw that I'd bought the lawnmower. She didn't disagree with my purchase, but simply mentioned that as long as we're buying things, she had a completely different prioritized list of items she would like to acquire. Over the next 12 hours or so, the passive remark made me think that maybe I shouldn't have just gone out and spent money we can't necessarily afford to spend. My solution was to use this new asset and put it to work mowing other people's lawns!

Back to craigslist I went, and trying to stand out from the competition, I basically wrote out the scenario of "put my lawnmower to use so I can pay for it". Surprisingly I got responses! I was officially in the lawn mowing business with one post on craigslist and a lawnmower I wasn't entirely sure was going to live very long. 

I mowed my own yard once, one customer's yard, and on my third use of the mower my fears came true. It died. I called a few friends to describe how the mower died, and they all agreed that it was dead unlikely to be resurrected.

I've since gone on to buy another mower, a different brand and significantly better quality for actually less the price of the first, and have kept in contact with my customers, so hopefully in the end I can meet my original goals and keep going!

I tell this story for a couple of reasons. First, it coincides with my ongoing goal of $100 a day, and second, this has ignited my entrepreneur mind. What things can I do to start generating some cash? 

Then I began thinking, what about leveraged profit systems where I could have a business with more people working for me. They get paid for their efforts and the business is also paid for their efforts. Okay, I'm not quite there yet, but that's where I'd eventually like to go.

My entrepreneur brain has fired on, and I think that is one of the most valuable things that could have happened to me. Having a job is great, owning your job opens up new possibilities, but owning other people's jobs is where you begin making real money. Now I just need to figure out how to do that.