Your financial life has a certain trajectory, similar to a train on a track. There will be twists and turns, but you can easily determine where you will end up if you stay on the financial track you’re currently on. What if the traditional methods of working hard, cutting expenses, and saving don’t work for you?
Brown bagging it every day won’t cause you to jump tracks and end up somewhere completely different. The guy living in the mansion overlooking the ocean didn’t buy that house by clipping coupons, and the chick passing you in a $400,000 Maybach didn’t get that way by eliminating her morning latte. For most of us, the gap between where we are and where want to be is so wide that we’ll never be able to close it by following traditional financial advice.
What’s the solution? If you’re tired of scraping by you’ve got to create. If you want to move out of your apartment or make more than minimum wage, you’ve got to create. If you want a big house overlooking the ocean, to travel first class, to quit your job, or to drive your dream car, guess what? The answer is in the other 8 hours. The answer is to shift from being a full-time consumer to being a part-time Cre8tor.
A what? A Cre8tor is a creative entrepreneur who has a day job but wants more. He isn’t content with the status quo, and is less than thrilled with the thought of working another 40+ years. He knows that the only way to “jump the tracks” to get to a new financial level is to do something different during the other 8 hours.
A Cre8tor utilizes his strengths, passions, and/or expertise to create something unique and valuable, maybe he’ll start a blog, work on an invention, write a screenplay, or start a business. If you settle for a paycheck, you’ll only be worth what your employer pays you. But if you create something valuable, there’s virtually no limit to your worth.
A long commute, brainless boss, and an empty bank account can wreak havoc on your outlook, hope, and purpose, but a side project or venture can bring inspiration to your life. When you’re passionate about what you’re creating during the other 8 hours, you can endure even the worst day. It will change your whole morning routine.
Creating provides purpose and it provides a reason to get out of bed in the morning. It provides the hope that life can improve. When you create, it engages your mind and your soul.
Should you really spend some of your precious other 8 hours creating, or would we be better off having fun and enjoying ourselves? Studies show that most of us are not fulfilled mentally or emotionally in our day jobs. We work, not because we are passionate about what we’re doing, but for a paycheck.
Even though you might be stuck at your day job doing something that doesn’t fully capture your mind and heart, that doesn’t mean what you create during the other 8 hours has to feel like work. In fact, it shouldn’t feel like work at all. I want you to be excited and passionate about what you create and about the potential results you can achieve.
With very few exceptions, anybody who has attained any level of financial success has created something. It might be a book, a CD, an invention, a website, or whatever. Look around you. Everything you see was originally just an idea in someone’s head.
You are living in the most exciting and mind blowing time we have ever experienced. It is rich with opportunities that literally didn’t exist just a few years ago. Unless your last name was Rockefeller or Carnegie, it used to be incredibly difficult to become rich. Becoming a millionaire wasn’t even a dream or an ambition. It was such an impossibility that it wasn’t worth a moment’s thought.
Because of technology, efficiencies, and a global economy, it’s much easier to become wealthy with much less effort than at any other time in history. As a Cre8tor, you’ll add more excitement and purpose into your life. You will live your passion and make more money.
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In his new book, The Other 8 Hours: Maximize Your Free Time to Create New Wealth & Purpose, Robert empowers people to live life to the fullest by radically changing the way they spend “The Other 8 Hours” — the 8 hours not spent sleeping or working. Robert has appeared as a financial expert on 20/20, Good Morning America, Dr. Phil, ABC Morning News, NPR’s Marketplace and in The Wall Street Journal, Newsweek, BusinessWeek, Money Magazine and many others.
-what do you think of the ideas above? Have you given any thought to being a creator? What has stood in your way?