Author: Dan Miller
Publisher: Waterbrook Press – 262 pages
Book Review by: Paiso Jamakar
To do what you love to do and make a lot of money at it is the desire of most people these days. If you’re in a job you hate and are making a salary that barely pays for your living expenses, you wish you could do something else – a different job you would love in which you would make more money, or perhaps even your own business where you can have a growing income.
But how do you turn that desire into reality? Dan Miller gives you the answers and shows you the way to fulfill what is in your heart. The fulfillment of his own desires did not come easy to Dan – as you will see from two examples below. But those failures made him wiser. He now imparts the valuable his wisdom he gained and the worldly experience he acquired to you through this book, so you will not dread your Mondays. This is Dan’s way of providing value to you.
Dan Millar was born into a religious and conservative Mennonite farming family in rural Ohio. His family members worked hard at their farm, and he started working at it from a very young age, taking care of his daily chores. For him, work then, was not supposed to be something to enjoy. He writes: “exhausting farm work was a matter of survival; work that you enjoyed demonstrated egotistical selfishness.”
As he worked in the fields, he was imagining things he wanted to do in his life and one of his early sources of influence was Earl Nightingale, particularly his 33 1/3rd rpm record The Strangest Secret. The message that stuck in his mind from this record was that he could be everything he wanted to be simply by changing his thinking.
Dan, at that early age just after finishing high school, was looking to make money. Ideas were constantly churning in his mind on how to do that. As a hardworking student who got good grades, he qualified for and got an $1,800 tuition grant from the government. He felt odd having that much cash sitting in his bank account for him – many months before his college tuition payments were due.
Having read ads about making money quickly in the vending, he plunked his entire eighteen hundred dollars to buy ten hot cashew-vending machines. The company representative that came to see Dan advised that they be place those machines in high- traffic places, which turned out to be sleazy, hot bars where Dan himself had never been allowed to enter.
Cashews mold if they’re not stirred about every 12 hours or so, so the bars owners told Dan to hurry up and get his machines “outta here” or else. Dan auctioned those hot cashew machines for just ten cents to the dollar and most of his cold cash was gone. Now he had to scramble to recover his tuition money.
A second instance of impulsive investing in a business was when Dan got carried away with the lure of making big bucks in a business described by the sellers as “enjoyable, rewarding and profitable” – the fitness business. After “three frustrating years” he sold his fitness center at a public auction, taking a $430,000 loss.
To get to the gist of the message that Dan Miller conveys to readers, after his costly lessons, I came upon this statement that he writes in his Introduction:
“This is one of the core concepts of No More Mondays: you have to look inward for the keys to your success. Knowing yourself well will give you the necessary insight for choosing work that leads to both fulfillment and financial rewards. Trying to mimic someone else’s success will usually lead to heartache and disappointment.”
The path to finding your fulfillment is of course not straightforward, unless you’re one of those people who discovered and confirmed your calling at an early age. If becoming an entrepreneur is your heart’s desire and you have the qualities to become a successful one – having a strong desire to make money and having money-making ideas, creative thinking and problem-solving, being able to sell, and the natural ability to handle people, money and time well, then good for you.
Why? Dan presents statistics that show that 74 percent of millionaires in the United States are business owners. While not all business owners are entrepreneurs, this is an area where there is no limit to the amount of money you can make. On the flip side, there are also huge risks in business ownership, as shown with the examples above.
If however, you want to find fulfillment in doing what you love to without the potential risk of owning a business (and losing money, whether it’s yours or someone else’s) then looking for a different but fulfilling job is the path you can choose to follow.
But to ensure success in locating and getting your dream (or near-to-your-dream) job, Dan suggests that a change in the traditional employee mindset of trading hours for dollars needs to occur in you, if you fit in that category. In today’s world, employers are looking to instead, trade their dollars for your value. And the more value you can provide them, the more money you are likely to get.
Dan suggests that you transform your thinking from being an employee (trading hours for dollars) to being an independent contractor (trading value for dollars). That leads you to transition yourself from being an employee to becoming a business owner. And you can do this gradually even when you’re employed in a company. (As a matter of fact this is more secure, having some guaranteed income, before jumping into self-employment where you have no revenue until you get your first customer and make your first sale).
Even if you do not own and sell products as business owners do, if you have skills that are marketable and you are able to find buyers for those skills, you can start developing a revenue stream, and eventually an income stream, that is the equivalent of revenue minus expenses.
So if you are aching to discover your true calling in life, or already know it and looking to either get a fulfilling job or a good money-making business, the first thing you need to do is know yourself well. Getting to know yourself better than you already know will enable you to find the right job or the right business. Read this great book by Dan Miller to get started right.
