Future Plans (Blog)

[Savage]

Use this thread to discuss the following entry from Steve Pavlina's blog:

Future Plans

[Henrik]

Interesting. Thank you for sharing. Do you think you´ll combine traveling and seeing the world with doing seminars/workshops in other countries than the US (like in European countries for instance)?

[takkaria]

Please consider making not only dead-tree books but downloadable PDFs too. Other than that, I'm glad you're going to be going more in-depth on various topics. Should be interesting to see this develop.

[colonel]

Thanks a lot for sharing your plans for the future. I've been wondering what they would look like

Workshops and seminars in Germany, too, please

+ 1 vote for a book on subjective reality - loved that podcast

[Savage]

Initially all the products I make will probably be in electronic form only, so the books will likely be ebooks first, and audio/video would be downloadable as well.

Doing seminars outside of Vegas as well as setting up a Toastmasters-like organization for personal development are also likely, but for now I'm just thinking about the next couple years. A lot can change in that time, especially tech-wise.

[Jill]

Sounds like a smart biz plan to me. Good luck with it!

[shant121]

Absolutely looking forward to it Steve! So your students can choose whether to eat brown rice or not :P It'll exciting to see how you utilize technology to reach the maximum people. Wish Erin and you all the best!

[Roberta]

Steve: You are an inspirational writer and thinker. And, I know making a good
life for you and family is important. But, try not to bring chaos into your life.
Once you hire a staff, you become the employee of and organization. You have responsibilities as the ‘boss’ ceo, president etc. If your business is small you run the risk of your small staff becoming ill, pregnant etc right in the middle of a deadline...then you have to take over. Having passive income seems ideal for a writer. Besides you and Erin have organized your household to be ‘self employed’ not employees. Just something for you to think about.

[eternomi]

Good luck. We definitely need more peacemakers in the world.

[impaul99]

Originally Posted by Roberta

Steve: You are an inspirational writer and thinker. And, I know making a good
life for you and family is important. But, try not to bring chaos into your life.
Once you hire a staff, you become the employee of and organization. You have responsibilities as the ‘boss’ ceo, president etc. If your business is small you run the risk of your small staff becoming ill, pregnant etc right in the middle of a deadline...then you have to take over. Having passive income seems ideal for a writer. Besides you and Erin have organized your household to be ‘self employed’ not employees. Just something for you to think about.

Not necessarily. Hiring a few people to take over some of the more "less creative" tasks on your plate can help to save your energy for creative endeavours. For example, in a company I work for, the first thing I did when given the role of running things was to hire an assistant who does all of my spreadsheets, and runs all my numbers. This is something I used to do myself (and hated it). She loves to do it and it frees me up to provide more value with my time.

Steve's next level of income he will be going for is probably in the $1M+/year, which means he's got to be making $3000-$4000/day. It's hard to do that when you spend half the day doing administrative things that someone else would HAPPILY do for $15-$20/hour (not sure the rates in Vegas).

My advice to you Steve would be to be REALLY particular of the attitude of the person you're hiring. Skills can be taught, but attitude is almost impossible to change. Make sure you hire someone who contributes to your level of positive energy, not the other way around. Even if it takes months to find the right person, in the end it's worth it. Once you find good staff, treat them really well because human beings offer the absolute best rate of return on investment. Just my two cents.

[Erock]

Keep up the good work. That's all I have to say.

Erock

[Keith]

Originally Posted by Steve Pavlina

[...]as well as setting up a Toastmasters-like organization for personal development[...]

Ooh, that would be verra, verra cool!

[Savage]

Originally Posted by Roberta

Steve: You are an inspirational writer and thinker. And, I know making a good
life for you and family is important. But, try not to bring chaos into your life.
Once you hire a staff, you become the employee of and organization. You have responsibilities as the ‘boss’ ceo, president etc. If your business is small you run the risk of your small staff becoming ill, pregnant etc right in the middle of a deadline...then you have to take over. Having passive income seems ideal for a writer. Besides you and Erin have organized your household to be ‘self employed’ not employees. Just something for you to think about.

While having passive income may yield an easier life, I don't want an easier life. I want a challenging life.

But the most important criterion is whatever serves people best. Staying small just isn't the optimal choice if I really care about helping people.

When you're doing work you love, taking on more work isn't such a bad thing, even if it means restricting your freedom a bit.

[Savage]

Originally Posted by impaul99

My advice to you Steve would be to be REALLY particular of the attitude of the person you're hiring. Skills can be taught, but attitude is almost impossible to change. Make sure you hire someone who contributes to your level of positive energy, not the other way around. Even if it takes months to find the right person, in the end it's worth it. Once you find good staff, treat them really well because human beings offer the absolute best rate of return on investment. Just my two cents.

That's very good advice -- I certainly intend to follow it. I learned my lesson about working with people with the wrong attitude many years ago.

[Fusebox]

Congratulations Steve (and Erin) on your achievements thus far. I wish you the very best for your new challenges.

[stocktrading101]

Congratulations Steve (and Erin) on your achievements thus far. I wish you the very best for your new challenges.

Major Bump! Congrats Steve!!

I can't wait to see where your journey will lead you next, best of fortunes always!

[kalyanganjam]

Congratulations
Congratulations steve & Erin. Thanks a million for sharing the thoughts. am very curious to see you contributing higher quality work.

Thoughts / Ideas.
Steve, I am not sure if you 'll continue to accept donations, I recommend keeping that option ON. As you probably know there could be many many people who would be willing to donate but do not have financial capacity at the moment. Thats the case with me. I just started to doing financially well, I attribute majority of this to you. I was also inpired by concept of Tithing and started that last year and I would like Tith some to stevepavlina(llc) this year.

I would also like to continue to contribute to steve pavlina (LLC) If there's a system to contribute remotely over internet like forum moderators for this forum are contributing.

I am also considering option of me buying your products and giving them to who are desperate to use them but do not have finances to buy them. May be you can set up a system for such people to submit a request for your products and then publish that list so that any one can chose to donate that product would be able to do that. because, no matter how reasonably you price, It would not be easy for people from countries like India to buy ( 1 USD = 45 Indian rupees) which means even 20 $ would be nearly 1/3rd of an average persons monthly salary.

English is not my mother tongue and my ability to express is also not very polished. I apologize if am being wrong or not clear.

Kalyan Ganjam

[judge45]

If this was my site, I would make it a members only site. Have some free stuff as teaser copy, but make people pay a subscription $100/$200 a year or $20 a month or something like that.

Cut down the ads to a bare minimum and offer all your products as pdf's and podcasts to members.

It's ironic that you would call them your 'future' plans, when you clearly only believe in the moment, which of course is the only really logic approach.

I'd join if it was a subscription site, then I wouldn't feel guilty about not donating.

HTH

Jeff

[Scorpibear]

This blog entry was a good reminder for me to look broader at my business and do not consider it as a blog only. Thank you, Steve.

[ricky]

Hey Steve,
Do you think you're inspired to do this because of the Million Dollar Experiment? Is the income from this going to be counted towards that experiment? Just curious... :-)

[Glass Joe]

Congrats Steve.

And I'm still looking forward to you someday publishing PD books similar to how Tim O'Reilly publishes computer books. (i.e. many books by many different authors, but all existing under one single quality-controlled coherent publishing label.)

Instead of publishing "animal books" like Tim O'Reilly does with different animals drawn on the cover, you can publish "veggie books" with different veggies on the cover!

And instead of a colophon in the back of each book, you can have a veggie recipe! And one of your first books could be "Public Speaking: The Definitive Guide" with a picture of some garlic on the cover.

I'm only half-joking here. I mean, even though I hope you start your own PD publishing company some day, which I think will be cool, I already know that you aren't going to go about it by mindlessly copying someone else's formula.

[lucas2007]

Hi everyone,

I read some time ago that famous blog post "10 Reasons You Should Never Get a Job". I found it seductive, but unrealistic: if everyone followed this advice, the existence of thousands of companies, of our economy would be in danger. Now, Steve says he is going to enlarge his company, have employees. Isn't this a bit contradictory?

Thank you all for your attention.

[Savage]

Originally Posted by lucas2007

Hi everyone,

I read some time ago that famous blog post "10 Reasons You Should Never Get a Job". I found it seductive, but unrealistic: if everyone followed this advice, the existence of thousands of companies, of our economy would be in danger. Now, Steve says he is going to enlarge his company, have employees. Isn't this a bit contradictory?

Thank you all for your attention.

Overall I still think it's crazy to want a job. Fortunately there are a lot of crazy people in the world.

Seriously though, I addressed this in the follow-up post here:
http://www.stevepavlina.com/blog/200...se-and-values/

[lucas2007]

Originally Posted by Steve Pavlina

Overall I still think it's crazy to want a job. Fortunately there are a lot of crazy people in the world.

Seriously though, I addressed this in the follow-up post here:
http://www.stevepavlina.com/blog/200...se-and-values/

Hello Steve,

Thanks for your quick reply. I read that post, too. But I think employees will always be in a vulnerable, submissive position because you will be the boss, their superior and all those good values you pretend to manifest in your company will depend on your good will to implement them.

Sorry for my "weird" english.

Bye.

[Dan.Linehan]

Originally Posted by lucas2007

Hello Steve,

Thanks for your quick reply. I read that post, too. But I think employees will always be in a vulnerable, submissive position because you will be the boss, their superior and all those good values you pretend to manifest in your company will depend on your good will to implement them.

Sorry for my "weird" english.

Bye.

Meh.. this is why good managers build trust. So the relationship isn't "pretend."

[Dan.Linehan]

Originally Posted by Glass Joe

Instead of publishing "animal books" like Tim O'Reilly does with different animals drawn on the cover, you can publish "veggie books" with different veggies on the cover!

And instead of a colophon in the back of each book, you can have a veggie recipe! And one of your first books could be "Public Speaking: The Definitive Guide" with a picture of some garlic on the cover.

I would totally buy that..

[lucas2007]

Hi,

Ooops, It seems I didn't use "pretend" with the real meaning in my mind, sorry, english is not my mother language. Replace it with "want", instead. But I think my idea stands correct because the employees always know who has the final word in everything, who has the power to destroy the trust relationship and simply say "You are fired"...

[Savage]

You can say, "you're fired," to any kind of relationship. "At will" employees can fire their bosses just as easily. For a key employee, that can have a significant impact on the company that gets left behind.

Any human relationship that takes its existence for granted is ultimately doomed.

[seeker5]

Originally Posted by lucas2007

Hi,

Ooops, It seems I didn't use "pretend" with the real meaning in my mind, sorry, english is not my mother language. Replace it with "want", instead. But I think my idea stands correct because the employees always know who has the final word in everything, who has the power to destroy the trust relationship and simply say "You are fired"...

There's a big difference between the work environment in the U.S. and other countries. It's so incredibly much easier to get a job in the U.S. compared to other countries as a whole that being fired or quitting isn't as bad as it is in other countries. I know plenty of people who've quit because they weren't happy with their bosses or their company.