Free of the cursed job, I had set my mind to going into business. I very quickly realized that I did not know the first thing about business and I decided that my first focus should be to aborb as much learning and business education as possible. No sooner had I taken this key mental step than the Universe decide to make its move. I received an email one day from a former colleague inviting me to a business seminar. Now I knew immediately what this was about. In my final week at my former place of employment I had started a conversation in the kitchen one day with someone I had never spoken with before. I questioned him on his feelings and opinions regarding the WTF problem. He told me that he was building a networking business outside of work. I instantly dismissed that. I knew all about it. To his credit he said no more. Now, some 4 months later I get this email. I knew immediately it was an invitation to his little pyramid business. My mouse hovered over the delete button, my finger poised and then it occurred to me. I want to be a well informed business man. My focus is self education. I should endeavour to understand the precise details of how these shonky pyramid schemes work and to be able to articulate the fault in their logic. So I accepted the invitation and I went along to the preview.

Now, until this point, I had managed to understand all by myself (with the help of a few dozens of books) that the big picture for a free life is ownership of income producing ASSETS. That is the defining attribute of the rich - they own things that put money in their bank account no matter whether they work or not. We live in a free market capitalistic democracy, which at its core is based on the ownership of the means of production by private citizens. Its is each persons free right to own and to be rich. So I had decided at this point that my mission in life from now on would be the acquisition of ASSETS. But what assets are there around the place and what do I have to do to own them. Theres real estate, theres paper assets, theres intellectual property and then there are businesses. I'm not going to examine each of these here but suffice it to say that business is the fast option for somebody starting with more or less nothing, not having a brilliant creative streak and not happy to wait 20 years for a portfolio to accumulate equity against inflation.

Kiyosaki describes 2 different kinds of business: small business and big business, the difference being, big business is system based business, it runs on autopilot, whereas small business - the owner is the business. When he stops, so does the money. So straight away I'm only interested in big business. Now there are only 3 types of big business. Most people only know about 2 types and nobody has invented a type 4 yet. The first type is your traditional corporation, which you can build yourself, if you've got the smarts and the guts. The second type is a franchise. Somebody else already built it and you rent their formula for a while. The third type is a network marketing system also called a referal marketing system. You join the network and through a process of referal you extend the network. The products and services that flow through the network give rise to a residual income to those who did the work to extend the network. Pretty simple really. What it all boils down to is that the best shot the average joe has at  passive income based, ASSET ownership type, financial freedom with a low risk, high predictability, low startup cost, medium term (2-5 year) equation is network marketing, also called referal marketing or private franchising. And the big boy on the block when it comes to network marketing is ta dah - Amway.

And so my lofty quest ultimately has found a vehicle by which to realize itself. And inexorably I have come to face the fundamental obstacles that lie waiting for all who would scale that mountains lofty heights. Any success book or successful person will reveal the same universal truth. There is a price to be paid for true success. There are fundamental obstacles that must be overcome, obstacles inside, that are in fact shortcomings within ones personal character, foibles, weaknesses, fears, failure habits and petty concerns. The path to success is the path to a higher self, a truer, stronger, wiser self. Unfortunately, personal growth is an uncomfortable even painful process, change I am slowly learning usually is. Some people ask "Well do I have what it takes?". A better question is "Will you give what it takes?" And in the vast majority of cases the answer to that question is "No!". Success is not about the majority. Thats a sad fact. Its an interesting question why that is the case, but the fact remains, to live tomorrow the way other people cannot, one must do today what other people will not. Of course none of that herd who surrender will ever acknowledge their own unwillingness to pay the price of success. No, Amway gets the blame of course, network marketing gets the blame. Make no mistake, the emotions are real. Those people are genuinely angry, confused, upset, broken. Their unconscious inner childs response to their upset that the rewards they deserve where not effortlessly forthcoming is the intellectual equivalent of a juvenile tantrum, all manner of creative explaitions and conspiracy theories abound. But the truth is, winners never quit and quitters never win! And this actually is cause for relief for those of us who will never give up. The higher the price to be paid, the greater the rewards. If it was easy and common for network marketers to succeed, the rewards offered would be only a trifle compared to the reality of what they are. But success is not easy. Success requires a self transformation, a deliberate release of the personal failings we have, a purposeful striving and discipline of work for new strengths and new capacities. Material success is merely a side effect of the capacity exercised by a self transformed individual. And that is now the struggle in which I find myself engaged, a struggle with change, with personal growth, a battle against my fears, my foibles, my failure habits. I am now engaged in a fierce and difficult battle against a most powerful and capable enemy - myself.

Like most people I was sold on the idea of "work hard at school, go to university, get a good job..." which I bought, hook line and sinker because it came down from the breast - down the trusted line from mommy and daddy. Not that they were to blame, thats what they were sold and they only did what they thought best for me. Its a systemic conspiracy that goes much deeper, but maybe more on that later. Well I did that, good little jonny foreskin all through school (pat on the head jonny) and five years in uni. Then eight god-forsaken-years-of-wasting-my-life-in-a-job later I started to suspect. Actually it was a bit earlier than that, probably around age 30, but I only really started to look around maybe four years ago: reading books, going to seminars, talking to people, basically trying to answer my one burning question - WTF? And as I am beginning to discover it is apt to do, the universe answered my question. Seek and yea shall find. Events conspired to assist me and I was presented with an opportunity for voluntary retrenchment, which I seized upon and stepped out into the cold, the vacuum of paycheckless space, where you are truly free, free to starve, free to be homeless, free to confront all your fears of poverty and abject failure, and also free to rise up and claim your dreams. You see, I had been reading books, and I had got some ideas into my head and in so doing, developed a really bad attitude towards THE JOB.

In fact this is not where it begins. Theres going to have to be another entry or two for "The Story So Far...". But on this the first day of March 2006 AD, I inaugurate, The Blog! May it record my rise to success, the achievement of all my aspirations. May this blog ultimately be a tale of victory over adversity as I struggle on my grand quest. But right now... bed-time.