Make More Money: How to Use Your Other 8 Hours
In his new book, The Other 8 Hours: Maximize Your Free Time to Create Wealth & Purpose, MoneyWatch blogger Robert Pagliarini explains how to make more money by tapping into your creativity. Follow his eight rules to success.
If working hard, cutting expenses, and saving aren’t working for you, maybe it’s time to become a Creator — or, as I like to call it, a Cre8tor.
A Creator has a day job but wants more. He figures out a way to use his strengths, passions, or expertise to create something unique and make money from it. Maybe he’ll start a blog, as I have on MoneyWatch, work on an invention, write a screenplay, or open a part-time business. When you’re passionate about what you’re creating during the hours when you’re not holding down your day job or sleeping — what I call “the other 8 hours” — you can endure even the worst day.
Becoming a successful Creator isn’t easy and takes work. But by following these eight rules, you’ll increase your chances of bringing in a new source or income:
1. Keep Your Day Job
Stable income from your job will provide you with a safety net while you transform yourself into a Creator.
2. Go Nuclear
The time, energy, and investment you put into your other eight hours should be disproportionate to the results you can achieve. Going nuclear is about extracting the greatest results from the least effort. Put simply, you need to get a lot of bang for your buck.
3. Know your HABU
The real estate industry has a concept called Highest and Best Use (HABU). Properties are based on the best use of the land that will produce the highest value. When you use the other eight hours to create, you must focus on your HABU — your unique talents, skills, and experience that will produce the most value.
4. Limit Risk
- Enlist the support of others.
- Negotiate discounts and concessions on everything.
- Pull out of dead-end projects.
Instead of taking a lot of risk, the Creator’s goal is to limit the risk of a financial catastrophe. If you’re in the start-up exploration stage, don’t commit more than about 2 percent of your income or savings to any one project. If you pass this initial stage, you can commit a little more to the project — maybe 5 percent of your income/savings.
Three other ways to limit risk:
5. Swing Often
If you’re trying to hit a home run and catapult your finances to a whole new level, it pays to swing often. The most ambitious Creators will have two, three or more projects in the works at any time. The assumption is that just one will make it.
6. Market
Even the best products won’t sell unless people know about them. There are loads of resources that will help you get more of your stuff in your customers’ hands. I have several free resources that will help you become a Creator at other8hours.com.
7. Monetize
The Creator has two objectives: to have fun and to make money. Too many people think the recognition of what you’ve created is the objective, but recognition can’t pay the bills. So figure out how you will convert your product or service into money.
8. Have Ownership
Unless you’re a star athlete or A-list entertainer, you won’t get megarich working for someone else. True wealth is from ownership.
Excerpted from The Other 8 Hours: Maximize Your Free Time to Create Wealth & Purpose, by Robert Pagliarini.
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