Jim Penman spent 15 years as a lawn-mowing contractor and argues that service businesses like window cleaning beat the crowded race for tech startup success. You get lower competition, flexible hours, and real money without the burnout.
I think people chase too many shimmerers too much of this thing. People want to be. They want to be an online guru, they want to be somebody making a fortune out of Facebook, they want to be an entertainer, they want to be a high tech entrepreneur. Look, these are all great if you can get there, but the fact is 99.9% of those who tries aren't going to succeed. But if you go out there with a lawnmower or a window cleaning wedgie or those kind of things and have the right attitude, you can succeed. You have to be determined. You have to get through the early stages, but you can be successful and there's no upper limit. It's so much easier to succeed in an area where the competition is so poor because these are jobs people think, they think it's not worth doing. I think people have a bit of a contempt for manual labor. And I think one of my great assets is that I enjoy physical work. I still enjoy gardening. I was a gardener for 15 years, a lawn mowing contractor, and I loved it. I loved being outside. I loved the satisfaction of doing a job well. And if you have that kind of willingness to work physically and take pride in doing a great job and take pride in what you're doing, it's a great business. It's also got flexibility too. That's the other thing too. People might have great jobs where they're paid, you know, like high six figure income, but they're working in the city and they work there long hours and they commute couple of hours each way and they hardly see their kids except at the weekend when they're too exhausted. And their kids grow up without a father or without a mother. What's the point of that? The great thing about a service business is you work from home and it's incredibly flexible. You can work the hours that you want. Now I might work weekends, I'm talking now, on a Saturday, and I might work late in the evenings. But I take my kids to school and I talk to them on the way, I drive them to school and I often pick them up. And I spend time with my children in different ways. I know my children very, very well and yet I run a successful business. That's what service business is good for. Service business is great for that flexibility of lifestyle, and yet it can produce an income that's at least as good as any other option.
Rising mental illness and falling birth rates have the same cause, it is this.....
