Get rich quick is not all it's cracked up to be

It's a strange paradox of life. I go to my physician and I ask him how to feel better and he looks at me with this fixed gaze and says 'don't eat junk food and exercise well.' So he's basically asked me to do the two things I don't do; eat healthy and exercise. Great! I walked out of the clinic feeling like I had wasted my time. If I wanted to hear someone tell me to eat better and exercise, I’d have called mum. It's been some time since I have. Anyhow, later in the day, I was at this comedy club where one stand-up pointed out that for every dollar Americans spend on fitness centers, 19 are spent on cocaine. Sounds about fair. The reasoning was simple; half a minute spent snorting cocaine makes you feel invincible. Two weeks of exercise makes your whole body feel sore. I had to laugh at that, but it's true. We want everything, and we want it now. We want love now, we want to get rich quick right now and we want everything to be fast and easy, including our women. Boom! Maybe I have a career in stand-up waiting for me...maybe not.

There is innate truth in it though. We look at the big dream, that larger than life project and just crawl back into bed. And then I see people chasing get rich quick schemes and so many banner ads saying you can make thousands of dollars sitting at your kitchen table in your underpants. Of course those offers are tempting, they're meant to make you go weak in the knees. It used to be the case that you needed to spend hours upon hours building a business (or a blog) before you saw any returns at all. Writing paychecks to everyone else, spending long hours toiling away used to be normal. But the technology revolution has gone and changed things forever.


The technological revolution means that we can market to a far wider audience than previously possible. And because we can do this on a shoestring budget, it takes up next to time and offers greater profits. We are the pampered tech generation. Gone is the 60 hour work week. I don't think most people even remember what that's like! But sometimes, you just have to work your derriere off. Sometimes you have to burn the candle at both ends, that's just the way it is. And sometimes, in business and in blogging, money isn't going to wing itself to you overnight. These things can take time.


But sometimes, and I feel this way too, it takes a whole lot of effort, perhaps more than I'm willing to put in sometimes. It's the same thing with exercising; my normal day job takes so much out of me that I have no time to put into any secondary stream of income that will see me get rich quick, far less any exercise. Business (and blogging) isn't just about turning up and watching the money roll in. It takes brain power and that is something not a lot of us are willing to expend.


Freedom, money, stuff; you can have it all just so long as you don't bank on get rich quick schemes. It might take time, some effort, some cerebral exertion, but it could be worth investing your time in. The reason it's so difficult are the same reasons that makes it so worthwhile.