Being good in what you are doing – being it a day job or own business – is maybe the most important factor for personal and financial success. It’s also considered the hardest part of the puzzle, that’s why most people try to succeed in other areas – marketing, connections, luck, or just faking their professionalism.

Photo by kevindooley at Flickr

That is so, because being good in your job or business is considered hard. But it is not. People believe it’s hard, because most people are not professionals in their job. You are seeing this every day – how much time did it take you to find a really good dentist, how many restaurants offered you food that sucked, how many fitters you had to change before you find yours?

If you agree that most people are not good in what they do, how do you expect them to say that being good is easy? Of course, they would claim that being good is very hard and they are doing their best.

But here lies the real opportunity: if so many people suck at their job or business, then all you need to do in order to be considered good, is to suck less. Sucking less doesn’t sound that hard, does it? And from sucking less to doing the things really good there is no big gap.

Being better than most people in your job or business is not hard – it takes just two components – passion and mind.

Passion

What does it mean to have passion at your job or business? It certainly doesn’t mean you should enjoy every minute of work and smile like an idiot all the time. It doesn’t even mean you should wake up every day full of energy and willing to start work. If there are days when you don’t want to go to work, moments when you are angry or bored, or just feel lazy, that’s OK. It doesn’t mean you are not passionate. You are not supposed to burn of energy every day and every minute.

To be passionate about your deals means to believe in the direction that you are going to. To feel that what you are doing has some real value to you and to the world. To be eager to learn new and better ways to do your business. If you are passionate at your work you will certainly have some moments of enjoyment – moments when you look at what you have done and say “good job!” to yourself. They don’t need to be there all the time, not every day or in every project, but you will have them. That’s it to be passionate.

If you feel that you are doing something wrong, if you wake up and go to work with resistance every day, if you count the hours to the end of the work day, or if all you care about is the money you’ll get paid (or will make through your business), then you are not passionate. In this position you can’t be happy and can’t achieve long term success. First, your daily round is pain. If you hate your work, this means you hate at least 50% of the time you are awake. How can this make you happy? Second, if you don’t have any passion at your work, you will never be able to be good. If you are not good, you are unlikely to achieve professional success and make good money long term. Maybe you get paid well now, but do you truly believe this can last forever? Maybe tomorrow, maybe next year a more passionate worker or company will come here to replace you. Working at a job you hate is a wrong choice no matter how well it pays.

In such case you should leave it as soon as possible and start doing something that makes you feel good. You’ll have an immediate profit – your daily round will no longer be pain, but pleasure. Even if you get paid less for it, it’s certainly better to be paid less for having fun that being paid more to suffer. And you are going to gain more long term, because working something that you love gives you much better chance to become good and get paid more in the future.

Alternatively you can try to develop passion at what you are doing. If you think it’s so important to keep running your current business or working at your current job, why don’t you try to make yourself like it? There are passionate people in every business so there is certainly something to like in yours. You can try to find it: read related information, meet passionate mates online, learn how it can be fun.

The first route is better but requires more courage. The second route is safer, but if you can’t develop your passion, you can lose few years not revealing your full potential and not living the life you want.

Mind

Most people prefer to follow someone’s advice instead of thinking on their own. I see this in the software business every day. People and companies follow mindless standards, use mindless tools and implement mindless practices because they are accepted as industry standards. When the first web 2.0 startups came few years ago and decided to get things done instead of following the industry standards the big companies made laugh on them. But the web 2.0 startups just blew out the competition – in the same way Google preferred to get things done instead of following industry standards and blew out Yahoo, Altavista and even Microsoft.

If you want to be good, you need to think. You need to question mindless guidelines and standards, you need to challenge what’s believed to be right. I don’t mean you shouldn’t follow anything, but you should question everything. Is it really good or some mindless suit said it is? Is the way your company work the right way or it is working like that because the others are doing it? Once you start questioning you will see that many things are wrong. It doesn’t require a genius to see that, it’s often just common sense. But most people simply don’t dare to question things, that’s why it’s easy to be better than them.

Mind goes together with passion. When you start to question common bias you’ll start finding better and smarter ways to do things. This will help you feel more passionate and having more fun when doing your work. As a result of that you’ll become better than most people in your work or business.

Remember, most people are plain average. Being good doesn’t require tons of hard work (being best does however because there are few, but enough people who want to be better than average) – all it takes is doing things better than the average people and companies. They don’t work with passion and do mindless things, so if you are not like them, you will be better. That’s all*.

* Being good/better than most doesn’t guarantee you financial, professional or personal success. But it’s a large part of it, maybe 50%.

Here is a little schema that may help you figure out how to improve your finances and your life in general. I hope you’ll manage through all the arrows 8-). For at least 90% of the people the problems and solutions lie in the below chart. If you believe you are from the other 10%, I’ll be glad to hear what important branches might be missing.

Earning alternative income is getting quite popular at recession time. For some people the only income source in the next few months or years will be alternative anyway – no matter if they want that or not. So it’s especially useful to explore various opportunities for earning alternative income and be prepared now in case you get laid off in the hard times. Don’t worry if that happens – you may even realize that having different sources of income is far more secure and probably more fun than having a job.

Photo by
The BrassPotato at Flickr

The alternative income method I am going to present you now is one of the very few methods that can be used by just everyone. That’s true – even if freelancing, writing, making photos or drawing pictures is something you can’t do, there is at least one other thing that you can do well. Most people can do well more than one thing, but even one is enough, because there are always other people who want to do the same thing as well as you, but don’t have the knowledge, experience and skills for it. Here comes your chance to earn money by tutoring such people (and why not even turn it into a small business).

There is no limit to what you can teach others do, neither to how old your audience can be. If you are a carpenter, there are many people who want to learn woodworking. If you know how to tell good jokes, be sure, there are many other people who want to know the same. Even if you are a professor in a very boring subject, there are at least the students who want to learn more about it (because they have to prepare for their exam). Don’t say that what you can do is useless unless it’s eating hamburgers (some will argue that even eating burgers is an useful skill to have).

Private One To One Tutoring

The most conventional and easy way to start making money is to do private one-to-one tutoring. You can find your customers by posting an ad in your local newspaper, Craiglist, some local web portal, or just pinch a sheet of paper on the classifieds wall in your local supermarket.

Eventually, you’ll need to test your tutoring skills on some friend for free. Sometimes people who are very good in their job are not at all good in teaching others to do it. It’s OK, teaching is a skill that you’ll learn along the way. If you know your subject, you should be able to transfer your knowledge to others.

Private one-on-one tutoring is easy because you can work from home and there is no investment required. The income potential however is limited, because there are only so many hours in the day that you can tutor. Even if your customers (yours students) are very happy and you have enough request, you just can’t work more than 6 – 12 hours per day.

Group Tutoring

One way to scale your tutoring business is to start teaching several people at the same time. Sometimes this will not be appropriate – for example if you teach how to date women (no kidding, that’s one of the most profitable niches), your students may feel uncomfortable to show themselves in front of the others. But for most professional subjects people will be even happier to meet others who learn the same and discuss the subject together.

Teaching a group of people instead of a single person lets you scale your business – whether you will teach one of five at the same time, you spend almost the same time and effort.

The main issue with group tutoring is that you will need a room for it. Inviting 2-3 persons at home may work fine, but if you want to teach 10 – 20 people together, you’ll probably need to rent a conference room at a comfortable place.

Usually group tutoring needs you to be incorporated and licensed. So chances are you’ll need some investment to earn alternative income by this method.

Online Tutoring

One way to avoid the room problem is to start tutoring online. Now it’s not that hard to set up online audio and video conferences through Skype, NetMeeting and other similar softwares. All you need is a good internet connection, and of course your students need to have it too.

Of course, many people still prefer face-to-face tutoring, but there are enough who will appreciate the lower price and the saved time and money they’ll have because they don’t need to travel.

You have good chances to succeed in areas that are not yet explored by the professional webmasters and the typical customers. Web designers for example will not be surprised if you offer online tutoring of web design, because there are many individuals and companies who already offer that. But if you offer to teach gardening online, many of your potential customers will find your proposal innovative and exciting.

Turn Your Tutoring Into Product

The main problem with tutoring is that it’s a service and is hard to scale. Of course you can teach 10 or 20 people at the same time (online), but hardly more. The best way to scale your tutoring service (and almost any service by the way) is to turn it into product. How?

First, and most popular option, is to write a book, e-book, audio book or record instructional videos. You can self-publish the book and sell it as many times as you wish (that’s even easier if it’s an e-book or audio/video distributed online). The downside is that you’ll usually work on your stuff in isolation only guessing whether it will be bought or not.

A more flexible option is to package your stuff as a membership site – online teaching program where people pay for access (recurring) rather than for a finished product. The second advantage (in addition to recurring payments) is that you can develop your tutoring program on the fly along with receiving customer’s feedback.

In both cases your teaching can turn into automated income generator which is far better than getting paid per hour.