Questuosus

Let’s be really brutal about this. Most people don’t have what it takes to be “the boss”. Why? Because “the boss” is the person who makes decisions that affect people’s lives and livelihoods. He doesn’t always make the right decisions but he always makes decisions. A successful boss makes more good decisions than bad ones. And when he makes bad decisions he accepts responsibility for the consequences.

On the Right Side of the Boss

I vividly recall a conversation, from my corporate management career, between myself, another middle manager and the company president whose name was Jim. Jim asked us both about our opinion on a topic. I gave my opinion first, politely but assertively; as it turned out it was diametrically opposed to Jim’s view. My colleague responded next. “I don’t know Jim” he said “what do you think?”. Jim gave his view on the topic. “Yes” continued my colleague, “I would tend to agree.” It was clear to me that no matter what Jim said, my colleague “would tend to agree”. He didn’t have any confidence in his own convictions; he was more concerned about being on the right side of his boss.

No Yes-Men

The famous Hollywood movie mogul, Samuel Goldwyn, is quoted as having said: “I don’t want any yes-men around me. I want everybody to tell me the truth even if it costs them their jobs.” Goldwyn was born in poverty and worked his way to fame and riches by sheer hard work, a dogged determination to succeed and by having absolute and total conviction in his own ability.

Cogit Ego (sic) Sum
The ability to make decisions is what distinguishes leaders from followers. Followers hesitate to make decisions because they are afraid of being wrong. Leaders have the self-confidence to stand by their decisions – right or wrong. But there is an important distinction between self-confidence and ego. Many people possess a strong ego. Ego is defined as an exaggerated sense of self-importance. Early in my career I had a friend who quit the corporate world early to set up his own small, one man, unincorporated retail business. One of his first actions was to order business cards on which he described himself as the “president” of his company. My friend was enamoured with his own sense of self-importance. Fortunately he also possessed sufficient business acumen to make his business grow to the point where he hired several employees, incorporated his company and thereby qualified himself in law to use the title of “president”.

It is critically important to be honest with yourself. Do you want to be “the boss” to groom your ego, or because you desperately need an outlet for your bottled up leadership ability?

Be Honest With Yourself
If you plan to be your own boss, ask yourself these questions:

Do I have the self-confidence to make and act on decisions that affect the viability of my business and the livelihood of myself, my family and my employees? Am I willing to take responsibility for and accept the consequences of being wrong? Are my motives based on self-confidence and a

Administrator General Topics Be Your Own Boss

Ground Floor Opportunity

Twenty five years ago earning a college degree seemed like a ticket to success. The first steps on the corporate ladder were a bit of a rude awakening when I learned that “ground floor opportunity” meant starting at the bottom. But after a few years my natural talents began to emerge and people noticed – people who mattered noticed. Soon there were “ground floor” people calling me “boss”. Business travel took me around the country and around the world. Life was good. Corporate credit card, frequent flyer points, fine dining in expensive restaurants.

Yes Boss
Years passed and more promotions came my way. Now people who had people calling them “boss” called me “boss”. Early career thoughts about upgrading qualifications slipped into history. I knew that I really ought to go get that part-time executive MBA degree, but my career seemed to be moving along so why bother?

Stuck Near the Top
Then the bad times came. Cutbacks, reorganizations, downsizings. I survived but my employer was beginning to look shaky. Time to polish the resume and take a look at who else might be in the market for my abilities and experience. A few interviews but no job offers. I had made it to the heady heights of middle management and was learning that the number of jobs available for people at my level was dramatically less than for the “ground floor” brigade. But worse still, competition was stiff. No recently upgraded qualifications? No chance! I was a victim of my own success; stuck in a dead-end job with no escape route and my predicament was all of my own making.

How to be the President!

I knew I had the ability, experience and ambition to make it to the top. I looked very carefully at the company for whom I worked. How did the man at the top make it? How did he get there? The answer was very simple – he started the company and built it into a national corporation of which he was the president. My way forward suddenly seemed very clear.

Administrator General Topics 10 Key Motivators for Financial Independence, Dead End Job

Threaten Them with a Gun!

So you think you are underpaid? So does everybody else who works for somebody else. If you are a member of a union you are subject to a collective agreement. When your contract comes up for renewal your union will put a gun to your employer’s head and threaten him with deliberate and planned disruption of his business unless he agrees to the union’s demands. Your employer will be highly motivated to automate your job out of existence, or move it to another country where he can lower his labour costs. Believe it or not, workers in some other countries are very grateful to receive a paycheque from a western industrial corporation seeking relief from escalating labour costs. While your union may view your employer as a source of corporate social assistance, your employer has an entirely different perspective.

If you are a non-unionized employee, your payscale is more likely to be based on merit. However, what you think you merit and the value your employer places on your efforts may be poles apart.

What Did You Do for the Bottom Line?

It is very easy – when you are the employee of a big corporation – to develop earnings ambitions that exceed your value to your employer. Don’t misinterpret that last sentence. You may be a highly productive and popular employee, but exactly how much do you contribute towards the bottom line? Did you directly make sales that increased the gross revenue of the company? Did you directly influence cost savings that improved the profit margin? Yes? Can you quantify that? Are you able to take sole and direct ownership of a measurable revenue improvement or cost saving? If you can put a hard number against your achievement you may have a claim to earning a tiny fraction – lets say 5% – of that number in compensation. That will be your impact on the bottom line – your contribution to your employer’s net profit.

Here is a key thing to remember:

Employers do not hire workers to maintain the workers’ standard of living. Employers hire workers to perform a job and seek to compensate them at no more than the fair market rate for the work they perform.

You Are Worth Exactly What You Make Now!
In real terms, you are worth exactly what you are earning right now. If you disagree then do something else that will earn you more. Get a higher paying job – if you can. Or, go work for yourself. If you choose the latter option you will face the cold, hard reality that you will eat tomorrow what you produce today. If you really have what it takes you may substantially improve your income.

Administrator General Topics 10 Key Motivators for Financial Independence, Higher Income

Wage Slave!

Perhaps the single biggest motivator for people seeking financial independence is the fear of losing their job. Once we become accustomed to being “wage-slaves” we build our personal economies on an income stream that we take for granted. Our outgoings (perhaps including savings contributions) expand to absorb the entire amount of our income. Take away that income and our personal economies collapse very quickly.

I was once a wage-slave. I recall, very vividly, the sudden end of the income stream that I took for granted. There were signs of course. Secretive meetings between human resources staff and my manager, re-organization plans, rumours. My employer’s business was performing poorly and all the staff were alert to signals that the Sword of Damocles might be hanging over their own head.

The Beginning of the End

One day I was called into my manager’s office where a human resources staffer was sitting alongside him. The pronouncement of my “termination” was clinical, emotionless and short. In the space of a five minute encounter my career was over. More importantly, my income was gone. The mental torture was almost intolerable. It is very easy to make plans for your future when that future is secure. It is very difficult to calmly gather your thoughts and make plans when your future has been unexpectedly and painfully snatched away.

The End of the Beginning

After a couple of layoffs during a downturn in the industry in which I worked I knew I had to have a plan. I re-organized my finances, paid down my debt and developed a strategy to insulate myself from the usually devastating effects of job loss. The last time an employer laid me off was a very different situation. My boss was a nervous basket-case as he handed the sentence of termination to me. I consoled him with re-assuring words and whistled as I left with my final severance cheque.

Administrator General Topics, Uncategorized 10 Key Motivators for Financial Independence, Fear of Losing a Job, Wage slave

There are a lot of reasons why we seek financial independence. While everybody may be motivated in their own unique way the majority of us can probably identify with one or more of these generalized ideas:

10 Key Motivators for Financial Independence

1. Fear of losing a job
2. Desire for higher earnings
3. Escape from a dead-end job
4. Desire to be own boss
5. Pursuit of a vision
6. More free time
7. Escape from debt
8. Desire for early retirement
9. Separation & Divorce
10. What is your motivation?

Yes, #10 is an open invitation for you to add to the discussion. I don’t have all the answers. I have been an employee and I have been an employer. I have been fired and I have fired others. I have been financially comfortable and I have been cash-strapped.

Along the way I have learned a lot. The day I stop learning will be the day they lower my big wooden box down into the ground. So I hope that by sharing my experiences and observations you too will learn and, in turn, become a teacher.

Oh, and one final note. True financial independence is an illusion. We are always financially dependent on somebody. That somebody could be a spouse, business partner, shareholders, the taxman. We can really only aspire to a greater degree of daily financial independence.

But, don’t despair, more financial independence means more fun!

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Ghost Writing

Why start a business blog? How to start a business blog? Benefits of a business blog. Secrets of the ghost writer.

Book-keeping

Mortgage Brokers

Realtors

Insurance

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Gene Autry sang the song “Ghost Riders in the Sky” in the 1949 Hollywood movie “Riders in the Sky”. The song is a favourite of mine so I couldn’t resist corrupting it for the title of this page.

What is a Blog?

The word “blog” is a shortened version of “web log” meaning an online journal or diary. A blog is a type of website that contains sequential “posts” (short articles) that are usually referenced by the date they were published.

Blogs are also characterized by offering the ability for readers to enter comments. The comments in a busy blog can sometimes resemble a discussion board or forum.

Why Have a Blog?

If you are in business a blog is a useful tool for showcasing your expertise. Clients like to do business with people who are recognized experts. Readers can be casual visitors to your site or they may become subscribers. A subscriber is somebody who has all your posts sent to him automatically.

A blog also helps you build a prospect list. People who read your posts regularly are more likely to convert into clients.

Previously, you would have published a book to achieve the same goal. Interestingly, once you have published a large number of posts you might be able to convert your blog’s content into a book.

How to Start a Business Blog

Blogs fall into two categories; hosted blogs and self-hosted blogs. A hosted blog is one located on a common server along with many other blogs. A popular service is Google’s “Blogger”. Most hosted blogs are free.

A self-hosted blog is one located on a server for which you pay a fee. Questuosus (this blog) is a self-hosted blog. Self-hosted blogs provide more flexibility and are usually owned by serious business bloggers.

You can set up a free hosted blog in about 5 minutes. If you choose to use Google’s Blogger, simply go to www.blogger.com, register as a user and start blogging.

Most serious bloggers register their own domain and operate a self-hosted blog because it is simply more professional and more likely to influence potential clients.

Ghost Writing Services

Blogging can become very time-consuming. Readers expect to see new posts with great regularity. You will quickly lose your loyal readers if you post irregularly or take long breaks. If you want the benefits of owning a blog without the obligation of regular posting you need a ghost writer.

A ghost writer will generate posts for you and publish them in your name. A good ghost writer will even suggest new topics and new angles on old topics. Think about your particular area of expertise. Can you come up with over a thousand different articles on your subject? That could be what you need to keep a blog alive for just 3 years. A ghost writer can help you achieve that.

How Else Can You Benefit From a Ghost Writing Service?

Are you a good writer?  Can you captivate a reader? A good blog ghost writer has more to offer than good grammar and spelling. Writing for the web is a specialized art. There are millions of blogs and hundreds or thousands dealing with your subject. A good blog ghost writer has to attract readers before he can captivate them with compelling content.

Search Engine Optimization

Fortunately there are specialized techniques to attract visitors to one particular blog when there are a large number of similar blogs available. These techniques are called “Search Engine Optimization (SEO)”.

Benefit Summary

A good blog ghost writer can:

• Help you develop a business plan for your business blog
• Help you minimize the costs and maximize the Return On Investment
• Help you design and set up a business blog
• Help you come up with hundreds, or maybe thousands, of topics to write about
• Help attract visitors to your blog through Search Engine Optimization
• Perform the day-to-day task of writing and publishing blog posts for you

Ask yourself these questions:

• Do any of your competitors have a business blog? If the answer is “yes” they are ahead of you already. If the answer is “no” you have a chance to leap ahead of them.
• Do you have natural writing ability? Does writing come easily to you? Do words simply flow as soon as you sit down at a keyboard? If the answer is “yes” then nothing is stopping you – start blogging today. If the answer is “no” you may need a ghost writer.
• Do you have the time to be a blogger? For most business people the answer is “no”. Their time is better spent pursuing sales prospects and managing business.
• Do you have an advertising budget? I can show you how to reduce the amount of money wasted on non-productive print advertising and divert it to a productive blog.

Hiring a ghost writer is not expensive and does not involve any long term commitment. In fact, if you are already spending money on marketing your business, you may not have to incur any additional cost at all.

How to Find More Information

Now is the time to find out more. Use our contact form to make an initial, no obligation inquiry.  Just let us know how to contact you and we’ll help you decide if business blogging is right for you.

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Read what Questuosus is all about:
About Questuosus

Read about the owner of this blog:
About Me

Contact the blog owner

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Benefit: Highly Targeted Ads

Questuosus is funded by sponsorship from advertisers. Your ads on this site will be seen by readers who have a specific interest in your area of expertise. How do we know? Because “keywords” in posts and editorial pages have been selected from the most common terms used in Google searches.

How Much Does It Cost?

If you place an ad in a newspaper your money pays the costs of operating the newspaper. If you receive a poor response to your ad your money is wasted.

Imagine offering to pay for that newspaper ad on the basis of a small fixed amount for each person responding to your ad. The newspaper wouldn’t accept it because they know their ads have an extremely low ROI (Return On Investment). But that is exactly the principle on which Internet advertising is based.

Set Your Own Price

If you advertise online you are almost guaranteed a high ROI. Advertisers submit a “bid” for how much they would like to pay for their ads. Yes that’s right, there are no fixed rates. If a website (or blog) is new its owner will usually accept low bids.

As the site gains popularity, advertisers who bid higher will get more prominent ad placements than the low bidders.

How Does It Work?

You can bid in 3 ways:

1. CPC (Cost Per Click) – you pay a fixed amount for each valid click through to your site. If nobody clicks your ad, your cost is zero.
2. CPM (Cost per thousand impressions) – you pay a fixed amount for each thousand times your ad is displayed irrespective of whether anybody responds to your ad.
3. CPA (Cost Per Acquisition) – you pay a fixed amount for each qualified lead or sale resulting from a click through from Questuosus.com.

How Much Should You Bid?

• CPC bids should range from 5 cents to a dollar or more per click
• CPM bids should range from 50 cents to a dollar per thousand impressions
• CPA bids should be based on a percentage of the value of your sale

Act Now While Bids Are Low!

Please use the following form to submit your bid or request further information.

Thank you for interest in Questuosus. Your submission will be sent by email. A reply will be sent to the email address you enter in the form.

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The Inspiration for Questuosus
Hello, my name is John Corby. I was born in London, England in the middle of the 20th Century. When I was 29 years old I emigrated to Canada. You might say: “so what?” Well, it was that move that changed my life and inspired “Questuosus”.

A Well Educated Pauper
When I applied to the Canadian consulate in the UK for immigration papers I was asked how much money I would be taking to Canada. It was an embarassing question since I was a well-educated pauper with a good job offer in Canada.

My Story
The immigration officer shook his head and told me I would have to save for a long time if I wanted to buy a home in Canada. It was a setback but I was determined that I would make the move anyway. I would like to meet that officer again and tell him my story.

I bought my own home just six months after landing in Canada. Within my first five years in Canada I bought and sold at least a hundred other homes. I started a retail business within three years. In my third year in Canada my wife and I flipped a million and a half dollars in government bonds.

After 16 years I was self-employed, jetting around North America on my own nickel, renting luxury limousines and staying in expensive hotels. Then I got greedy. Never get greedy.

After a short stay in the “Employment Penitentiary” I was back to self-employment building financial independence through real estate and retail businesses. My story is one of ups and downs, of exhilaration and despair. Let me share it with you through this blog.

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