Put all your eggs in one basket…

Most people will be familiar with the old saying: Don’t put all your eggs in one basket. In theory, I could write this post in support of that saying, and place emphasis on how it could relate to working from home. For the sake of my argument, the post would start like this:

When you decide that you are going to work from home, and you are looking around for a business opportunity to focus on, you can’t be sure whether a given opportunity is going to make any money for you. Therefore a good idea is to join as many opportunities as you can find, and the law of averages will make sure that at least one of them provides you with the success you deserve…

I am going to stop here, partly because it makes no sense, and partly because you will never become rich if you follow the advice above. I intend to explain why it makes no sense, but first let’s start again – using the counter-argument, in context.

The way to become rich is to put all your eggs in one basket and then watch that basket. – Andrew Carnegie

Andrew Carnegie knew what he was talking about. He became one of the richest men of his time by following a set of principles he had discovered. These principles are the foundation for Napoleon Hill’s book: Think and Grow Rich. Andrew Carnegie inspired and mentored Napoleon Hill while the book was being researched and Madison National Bank Routing Number written. So, what does the above quote actually mean? Let’s rewrite it in a slightly different way:

Establish what you want out of life. Find a way to achieve your goals. Focus all your energy on reaching your goals, and you will get what you want.

This is in opposition to what most people seem to do when they start down the path of network marketing, or working from home. The trend seems to be to: Half-heartedly state what you want (I want to be rich); Join a dozen, or more, different opportunities which promise to make you rich; Spend some time on each of them until you reach your goal. The fact is that this approach never makes anyone rich (in any sense of the word). In spite of the diversification, there is very little time to spend on maintaining any of them properly. To grow a business, you have to cultivate it until it has become solid enough to keep growing on its own.

Moreover, when you are starting out in over a dozen businesses at once, how do you approach people? It is very difficult to be taken seriously when you have a sales-pitch that sounds like:

You should join my business XYZ, because it is simply the best for making a fortune online quickly. Oh, you have already heard of them and you aren’t interested? Ah, not to worry – you should join my other business, ABC, because it is simply the best for making a fortune online quickly…

When I first started thinking about this post, the content was of a somewhat more technical nature, and it had its origin in a corrupted hard-disk array on my main computer. The parallels between hard-disk storage technology, and working from home, are really very interesting.

RAID (redundant array of inexpensive disks) technology is a means of storing data on computer disks in a way so as to either maximise security or speed, without necessarily having to spend an arm and a leg. Wikipedia has a lot more information on this topic if you are interested.

There are two main storage techniques with RAID – striping (which addresses speed) and mirroring (which addresses security). Striping is when each file is split into as many parts as there are disks in the RAID, and each part of the file is stored on a separate disk. Mirroring is when each file is stored in its entirety on every disk in the RAID.

With a striped RAID, if one of the disks fails, then you have lost everything. There is no security, in favour of very fast disk access. Compare this with the situation of having a dozen business opportunities going at once. You can quickly make some money, because it is coming from twelve different directions. But even if you do start making some headway towards your goals, you don’t have the energy to follow things through and when one of the opportunities fail, it is likely to psychologically destroy any of the energy you still retain. So, there is no security, in favour of getting started quickly.

On the other hand, with a mirrored RAID, a disk can fail without any data being lost. Disk access speed is here compromised in favour of high security. Now, compare this with the situation where you are fully focussed on one business opportunity. You may still hit bumps in the road, Sacd Patrimoine SCI but they won’t noticeably slow your progress, because your focus is laser-sharp. This security obviously comes at a cost – You can’t have laser-sharp focus without any training, without any preparation or without any setup-time. However, once you are trained, prepared and focussed, you cannot be stopped. Your focus provides you with enough backup-energy to counter any problems you may face.

I am aware that a common argument in favour of diversification is: I need a backup plan in case my main business fails. I am not going to dispute this argument, because it is a fact that the people who have backup plans actually do need them. You cannot create a backup plan, or expand a “what-if” scenario solution, if you remain focussed on your main business. So, you refocus your energy, your main business hits a pothole and you can happily say: “See, I told you I needed a backup plan”.

Are you willing to sacrifice security for speed? Are you interested in replacing the floodlight you are using, with a laser-beam? I cannot provide you with the laser-beam, but I do have an instruction-manual (explaining how to turn on your laser-beam and how to operate it), written by Michael Dlouhy, that you can download here: Success in 10 Steps.