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Reading through my bloglist, I keep coming across a common theme. Prepare for Retirement.

Now this isn’t a bad thing, but a number of bloggers are doing such a good job that they’re actually able to retire early. I started thinking, "Would I want to retire early?" If I suddenly didn’t have to work, would I know what to do with myself.

The first reaction is "Of course, sit back and relax!" but there’s only so much time that one can waste before they start to waste away.

Imagine a day, where you don’t have to get up at any particular time. You can eat whenever you want, do pretty much whatever you want, and then go to bed whenever you want. You don’t have to show up for work, you don’t have to worry about money (within reason) and you don’t have a boss you report to anymore.

Sounds pretty good.

Now, do that again the next day. And the next. and the next. It starts to resemble a home-grown version of "Groundhog Day. It gets,… BORING.

If you’re really lucky, you’ve been doing something you love for a long time already. (If not, time to change jobs before it’s too late!). When you’re forced to find something NEW to love, it might take time.

Here’s What I’ll Do

If I get to the point where my passive income makes up for my active income, which I’m hoping to do within 10 years, I’ll put the job on notice; You need me, but I don’t need you. As long as I still feel it’s beneficial all-around to keep the job, I will. Extra money never hurts when preparing for the future. But even then, there’ll come a time when it isn’t fun anymore and it’s time to leave.

After that - Year 1, Month 1-2 I’ll take a year off and just enjoy. Knowing myself, I figure I’ll last about 2 months before I start itching to do something. But in that time, I’ll settle down to a daily schedule that everyone is happy with, and I can stick with. I’m big on schedules, it’s the only way I consistently do things.

Year 1 - Months 3-12 - I’ll start dinking around with different ideas, mainly small business ventures, just to get the experience more than the money. Going from a job mentality to an entrepreneurial mentality isn’t the simple jump all these get-rich-quick gurus push. There’s a REASON that 9 out of 10 businesses fail in the first 5 years, many of them jump before they’re ready, or don’t plan for bad times. I’m an Optimistic Pessimist, I know things are going to go wrong, I just hope they aren’t as bad as I predict. Makes for good Risk Identification and Management skills.

Year 2 - By this time, I should have;

• Identified the business/industry I’m interested in getting into.
• Got the family’s buy-in for the venture (both from a money standpoint and a psychological standpoint).
• Made some friends/contacts in the business.
• Learned QUITE A BIT about the basics of; starting a business, managing growth, producing a service/product, and all the other little things that go into the day-to-day of a business.
• Worked out various methods of capitalization and finance, and put together a solid business plan.
• Worked out an ‘emergency’ plan to figure out what to do if the business turns out to be a dud.

So Year 2 will be mostly putting the ideas into action. Starting the business, lining up suppliers, sales, and advertisement/marketing, and acquiring capital. Then the business starts running.

Year 3-5 - This is the takeoff stage of the business. Working to stabilize the company and grow it. As more employees are needed, identifying and acquiring additional management personnel to transition more of the day-to-day management to will be important. I want the business to run itself by year 5 if possible.

Year 6+ - By this time, the company should be fully autonomous and running itself. I plan on removing myself from day-to-day activities and maintain an advisory-only role. I then will concentrate on going back to the Year 1 point and starting over; Identifying another field of interest and starting another company. This time around, it should be much easier since I already have years of experience behind me. The business creation knowledge is already acquired, as are the funding resources (from the currently running company) and additional assistance is readily available (within limits) also from the flagship company.

Wash, Rinse, and Repeat until I get tired of building businesses.

Any readers out there with experience doing this or word of advice?? We’d all love to hear your viewpoints!

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