Music as an asset?

We’re living in interesting times indeeed.

In the last few years cryptocurrencies have become well known to the mainstream, but the industry is constantly evolving and hasn’t really matured to the point where the majority understands it. But more and more sustainable coins and especially tokens are being launched where there is tangible value behind it and this year and the next we’ll probably see STO’s really start maturing to the point where it becomes a natural way of investing in companies.

However, the latest thing to emerge from the crypto-craze are NFT’s.

If you still haven’t heard about NFT, it stands for Non Fungible Token which is used especially in the world of arts to give a person ownership or “copyright” to an image, music or a “digital sports card”.

Yes, it sounds crazy to own a digital image that can be copied everywhere and anywhere, but the drops are selling for millions as we speak!

Many big artists like Snoop Dogg and Grimes have jumped on the wagon and are selling digital art. The crazy thing is that they still haven’t sold music (as far as I know). They simply created some images that they are selling for about a yearly salary or more!

So I thought, WTF is this? People are actually paying millions for an image from these new “NFT artists” that grow in popularity every single day.

I’m not going to use time in this post to talk about how crazy I think some of this NFT-thing is, I’ll just leave it here for you to ponder about:

This image sold for $69 million! One of the most popular NFT artists is called Beeple and people are paying MILLIONS for the “feeling” of owning his images.

Beeple – Sold for $69 million

And artist CryptoPunk are selling images like this for more than $7 million a piece! 😮

CryptoPunk – Sold for $7.57 million

It can be hard to make sense of it all and the latest NFT craze got me intrigued and even though I think most of it is just a big fat hype like so many other things in the crypto-world, there are some really exciting things coming that I see great value in and where it makes more sense….at least to me.

The first thing that has been happening in the latest years is that artists are able to take alot more control and keep more of the rights to their content than before. At least if they don’t sell their life away in a 360 deal with a label.

And NFT’s open up for some great solutions for musicians and fans like funding, copyright and royalty sharing.

Imagine being an artist and you need funding for your new single, album or music video. Then you can call on your fans to invest in your project. And yes, in this scenario I say invest and not speculate because it would be an investment backed by a tangible value – the music.

Fans would get royalties for all streaming based on their share in the song, the album or even the entire brand of the artist.

Let’s say that you’re an up and coming artist that has already gathered a small, but strong following. You can now let your fans invest in NFT’s for your album and they will in fact receive their royalties. Now, we all know streaming income is not that great, but it can still be a great way for fans to feel that ownership and if you have thousands of them, they will most likely actually promote the album and push for more streams as well because now they are earning money on it.

Let’s say that it costs $5000 to produce a song. You get 1000 fans to invest $5 each. Now they all own a piece of that music. After about 1 million streams, they would in fact start to make a net profit if you only count the streams. Let’s say that it does this in a year and then continues to do 1 million streams every year, maybe for decades!

Well, then you have 100% yearly ROI which in fact is an extremly good ROI and for an artist with a good reputation and following, it could be low risk and great ROI for the fans!

This and the fact that the NFT’s are considered “scarce collectibles”, much like being the rightful owner to something truly unique gives it the potential to increase in value like famous paintings or other types of art.

In addition, if a song has 1000 owners, they will probably push it like crazy on social media, share with all their friends and proudly talk about it on forums and it would very soon be picked up by algorithms and playlists on streaming services.

And even though NFT’s is the hottest thing in the crypto-world right now and it is probably a hype in regards to where it is in 2021, but there are some really cool and interesting technologies emerging from this craze!

It will be exciting to follow this technology! 🙂

What do you think about this?

How much would you pay for this image of Snoop Dogge Coins?

Snoop Dogge Coins Priced at more than $100 000

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8 Online Businesses You Can Start TODAY!

More and more people are looking for ways to make a secondary income from home. Some are looking to replace their full time income and some are even dreaming about financial freedom.

No matter where you are and where you want to go, getting started with a Home Based Business or an Online Business has never been easier…..or cheaper!

I always tell my students that I could list 50 different ideas and show you how to be up and running in just a few hours. Some of them even just a few minutes. However, there is ONE thing that all businesses need which is why I also teach my students on focusing on this ONE thing, first! Because if you nail that one, you will be unstoppoable in ANY of the others.

But before I explain it, let’s take a look at 10 Business Models you can start right away and be up and running TODAY!

Some of these ideas also work great in combination.

1. A Brand
Yup. You don’t even need a business anymore. You just need a brand! Influencers are constantly building their personal brand and then opportunities will come their way once they get enough followers. However, gaining those followers will take a lot of time and a lot of work and if you don’t want to use your own name or personal brand, you can always invent one. Once you have the brand, you can start selling and building a following using FREE traffic from Facebook or Google. Yep, you normally need to pay for traffic from the big boys, but if you set up a “self liquidating lead system” all followers are basically free. Meaning, you sell enough products to cover your ad costs so all your ads, leads and followers are free.

2. A Teespring Store
If you’ve decided on your own brand, you can set up your own webshop using Teespring or similar services in just a few minutes. The great thing about a service like this is that you have zero setup and running costs. Teespring will make money whenever you sell a t-shirt or any product they offer. After running my shops on Shopify for many years, I actually prefer Teespring because of the ease of use and low running costs. No storage of products. No up front costs. No difficult shipping fees etc. because everything is handled by Teespring. Simply upload the design and start selling.

3. eCom Business
If you have products you want to sell it has become increasingly easy to sell them online. Systems like Shopify, Woocommerce, BigCartel, Wix or Squarespace are useful tools that you can use to set up your own webshop in just a few hours or minutes, depending on your level of expertise. If you’re not sure how to set one up, but you’re determined to start selling, you can use Fiverr to hire someone for a very low fee to set it up for you. I always suggest thinking like an entrepreneur and business leader, not like the solopreneur all the time. Because the time you will save by hiring someone else to do technical stuff for you can be a very positive calculation if you take a look at the whole picture.

4. Affiliate Marketing
More and more people are getting involved in Affiliate Marketing and there’s no doubt that people are making a lot of money from these type of business models. The most important skill as an Affiliate is that you learn how to drive traffic. Your job is actually nothing else than driving traffic to someone else’s landing page or sales page. You make commissions when people are buying someone else’s products. A great way to set yourself up with a business that has very low cost to start and a great potential. It is easier than ever to find something to sell online and by using systems like Clickbank you can find thousands of products in basically every niche possible where you can start selling and making commissions already today! However, Affiliate Marketing requires great skills in running ads and steering traffic and if you truly want to be successful in Affiliate Marketing, you should make sure that you understand the TCC method! Don’t just give your customers away to the partner you’re affiliated with. Make sure that you collect the customer data using a landing page of your own. This way you’re able to re-connect and sell other products to them later! Another great tip is to keep to the 3 major niches that never change, no matter the situation in the world. These niches are health, wealth and relationships.

5. Become a Consultant
Too many people are thinking that they need to develop products in order to sell something online. Nowadays, we also see that a lot of people are creating their own courses or trainings which they sell online. And many of them are making A LOT of money! However, selling your own course is still your own product. Which means that you will have to create it, unless you’re selling other people’s trainings, but then you’re an affiliate marketer. But there is another way to become a consultant overnight, which basically means that you help people or businesses solve problems. And how can you solve a problem unless you know how to solve it? You hire someone that knows how to do it! Did you know that I can help you with ANYTHING? Yes, ANYTHING! Do you want traffic to your site, just tell me and I’ll make it happen….for a fee ofcourse. Do you want to have a YouTube video for your business created? No problem, I can make that happen. What about building websites for businesses, running Facebook and Google ads for businesses or maybe even teaching kids how to play the violin? The thing is, if you are able to establish a connection with someone, find a problem/challenge that they have and then solve that challenge, then they will gladly pay you for it! And how can you solve ANY problem? You hire someone else to do it! Let’s say that you have a business and that you need a website created. Even though I actually know how to create quite advance websites, I would help you out the easy way. Because today you can get almost any expertise from Fiverr or Freelancer.com. That is why it is possible for anyone to help anyone with anything in today’s market. The opportunities are limitless! Ofcourse it is best to focus on something you’re personally passionate about, but I would suggest you simply find a niche and learn to solve a problem in that niche using other people to actually do it.

6. Become a person for hire
As I explained in #5, you can hire people to do basically anything you need done today. However, if you have certain skills, you can very easily become a person for hire as well. Do you have a great voice for vidoes? Why not sell that skill on Fiverr. Do you have IT or programming skills. Then sign up to Freelancer and start earning money by working from home for someone else that need those skills. The biggest challenge with this, except that you need certain skills, is that the market is extremely saturated right now. There are so many people around the world with amazing skills in design, sound design, coding, marketing, sales and more that costs almost nothing to hire! This is why I will always prefer to be on the “business owner” side of things. It is much safer and you have much more control on how much money you make.

7. Dropshipping
A lot of people are talking about Dropshipping and it can for sure be a great way to make money online. Dropshipping is basically where you set up your own eCom store using Shopify or similar systems, but instead of keeping a storage and shipping the products yourself, you simply do the sale, collect the money and then order from a supplier who ships the product directly to the customer. No storage. No upfront costs for product development or purchase of products. But certain technical skills are needed and as always, you will need to drive traffic to your site. I think Dropshipping is great and I have used a combination of dropshipping, affiliate marketing and ordinary shipping on my sites throughout the years, but today there are many other ways that are much easier to get started with and have a lot more potential of freedom than running your own online store.

8. Network Marketing
A business model that is often left out on lists like this, but I think should not be, is Network Marketing. After all, there are more than 100 million people around the world involved in this industry and it’s generating more millionaires every year than all the others combined. So why aren’t more people talking about this? Well, I think some of it is because of the reputation the industry has and also the fact that media does NOT want this model to be the preferred choice for marketing products and services, because if word of mouth marketing was the preferred way to promote something, big media companies would loose their income from paid ads and marketing. Because YOU would get that money insead.
Ok, let’s face it. The world hasn’t really understood the concept of Network Marketing and the true power of it. When it comes to creating time AND money freedom, I truly believe that there is no business like it. It is a model where you team up with a company that already have developed products and systems for you to tap into. Basically Network Marketing is the same as Affiliate Marketing, but with the added value of the potentail of leverage and residual income. Now, if you’re going to do Affiliate Marketing or Dropshipping, why wouldn’t you want to add leverage and residual income to the mix? Because a business without leverage (making money on other people’s efforts) or residual income (making money several times over after the first sale) cannot create time and money freedom. It’s just a simple fact. You MUST have leverage and residual income in your business in order to create true time and money freedom. The challenge with Network Marketing, however, is that the business-model has a bit of a stigma to it from inexperienced marketers/distributors nagging friends and family to buy their products. I always say, “Network Marketing is the worst job in the world, if you do it wrong. But Network Marketing is the best job in the world, if you do it right!”. Network Marketing is the only business-model where you can start with very low skills and build as you go through FREE coaching from people who are already successful. That simple fact alone makes it worthwhile to take a REAL look at the model and while all other business-models require skills in driving a lot of traffic to your businesses, Network Marketing is the only model where it IS possible to build a large, international business without paying tons of money for ads and traffic because of the leverage through other people’s efforts.

So there you go. 8 different businesses that you can start and be up and running TODAY! And if you see the similarities between all these you also see that ANY business needs customers! No matter what type of business you start, you should understand that connecting with the customer is the most important thing in ANY business.

I hope this was valuable and if you need any help getting started, just let me know and I’ll gladly be of service! 🙂

The Skill Of Making Money

Isn’t it strange. Most people use years of their life learning certain skills so that these skills can in turn make them an income. This is why people go to school. To learn something that they can exchange for money throughout the rest of their lives.

But why take the indirect approach and learn skills that can make you money when you can instead learn the skill of making money directly?

Today, you can learn basically anything on the internet…for free.

Everything from learning to play the guitar to eyebrow dancing, walking like a crab or learning to talk backwards.

But if there’s one skill you should learn above all others, I suggest you start with the skill of making money.

Because what I’ve noticed is that in today’s world, the skill of making money is actually the most important skill you can have. And before you shout how you hate money and that it’s unfair that the rich are getting richer and how “everyone cannot be rich. We need doctors, nurses, teachers” and so on…please take the time to read this entire blog.

It’s just an honest truth! Yes, we need all these people who are crucial to a society, but all of us also need to make money!

And the ONLY reason someone would make a claim that “we need doctors and nurses” when I mention making money as a skill, is if they believe making money is the same as having a job or what you do for a living!

Let’s be totally honest! We ALL need money! We ALL need an income! But what if you could make as much money as you want and then do whatever you want on the side of that? Actually, what if your “money making activities” took just a small fraction of your time and your main focus in life could be on contribution and creating value?

Wouldn’t we all have more energy, be more happy, be able to contribute more to society?

And right now your mind is probably fighting this very idea because you’ve been taught your entire life that the only way to make money is having a job! Which couldn’t be further from the truth!

Noone is actually paid on their time! You’re paid on the VALUE you contribute or create in that time!

So the first thing you need to understand is that money is everywhere around us and it’s enough for everyone. For someone to get rich doesn’t necessarily mean that someone needs to stay poor!

We often hear about inflation and how we cannot just “create more money”. But what if we created more value? If we created more value, then more money could be created without the inflation. Isn’t that right?

So let me ask you, how focused are you on creating value?

Yes, I agree that seeing children and families in developing countries struggle hurts and noone deserves to live that way today. There are wars and bad stuff happening, but I truly believe that despite all these troubles we are able to overcome them as a society if we work together and educate the world.

Have you ever heard that on the airplanes they tell you to “put on your own mask first”?

Why do they say that? It’s because if you faint, you’re not able to help others!

Or to put it this way: if you’re not even able to help yourself you’re definitely not able to help others!

I’ve been broke all my life! And I’ve never even thought about contributing to others that much. I created my music, but I always felt underpaid as a musician. But in recent years I’ve come to terms with the fact that our music is not interesting enough for enough people. And that’s ok! I create what I would listen to myself. But by having different income streams, I am now able to not stress and feel frustrated about it all the time! I enjoy it more than ever!

But when it comes to money I see so much fear and negativity in the world!

It’s really strange because it’s something we all need and it’s something we all care about! Yet, most people actually tense up and start saying things like “Well, money is not that important to me.” and pretend that they don’t care.

But I want you to be REALLY honest when you answer these questions:

1. If money was NOT an issue. Let’s say that you had 200 million in the bank. Would you continue doing what you do today?
   1. If yes, great for you! Then you’re right where you should be, but we both agree that you could do MORE of what you love!
   2. If no, then money is VERY important to you. Actually it’s so important that you’re willing to sell your precious time to get more of it!
2. If you got rich, would you be able to contribute more or less to others?
   1. If your answer is more, great! Then you should start creating a plan on how you can make the world a better place immediately! Doing otherwise would make you a selfish person!
   2. If your answer is less! Fantastic! Then you know WHY the universe will never give you a lot of money because if you would use that money for selfish acts only, then you don’t deserve it.
3. If you got rich, would the world get better or worse?
   1. If the answer is better. Great! Then you know that playing small is not serving the world! It should be your duty to get there as fast as possible!
   2. If the answer is worse. Thanks for being honest! Now you know why you’re not rich and why you’ll never be rich! Because in most cases you actually need to contribute or create something the world needs in order to get rich!

When I ask these questions most people will answer yes and that the world would be a better place if THEY got rich. But if others get rich, that’s a bad thing? Where’s the logic in that!

Some even say “Yeah, because only bad people will chase money!”. Yeah, well. If that’s your logic you also understand that because “good” people like you are always broke it gives room for all the “bad” and rich people to do what they do.

So how about you step up and help more “good” people like you get into the top 1% then?

I hear people complain every day about the rich getting richer and how unfair the world is. This is actually the true global pandemic! We’re creating an entitled population that focus on what they GET before they even think about what they should GIVE!

And this is the main reason why society is OFF! Because this goes against every universal law that we know!

As you sow, you shall reap!
As you give, you will get!

And probably a thousand more sayings similar to this has been rooted into history in all cultures of the world. Yet, we find ourselves out of balance in today’s society and I belive that we must focus a lot more on entrepreneurlial education that ever before because the entrepreneur understand that he needs to CREATE before he can EXPECT!

Entitlement is at a larger scale than ever before! We just want want want! And the crazy thing is that the mindset of making money is actually the opposite! Even though many believe it’s evil it’s actually what you all want and now I’m gonna be straight up and tell you the reason why the rich are getting richer and the majority is not!

You see, it’s not because of the rich taking your money! It’s because you give it freely away!

Yes, you heard me right! You need to wake up and realize the reason why “they” are rich and you are broke is because the majority created that world of our own choice!

We all did! It’s our own fault! But the great thing is that it is possible to change it! And it starts with you changing your mindset about money and realize that learning the skill of making money is in NO WAY a bad skill to have!

When the first stimulus-check during the Covid-19 pandemic were paid to the people, Amazon saw an immediate spike in their numbers. How crazy is that. People get 1200$ from the government to pay their bills and be able to survive for the next couple of months and they immediately spend billions of dollars on their favourite online platform turning Jeff Bezos into the richest man on the planet! The weeks after, the same people turn to the internet and complain about him getting richer and how unfair it is that he is not paying taxes.

Well, what if all of us had a choice? You realize that you actually have a choice if you want to pay taxes or not?

No? So what is the TRUE difference between those who pay taxes and those who don’t?

The tax system is fantastic really. I learned this the hard way when I had to pay 100 000€ in additional taxes some years back. Oh my god, how that hurt! But that lesson was the best I’ve ever had!

You see, the tax system when simplified, works like this:

1. You pay taxes when:
   1. You spend money selfishly on yourself
   2. When the money is doing NOTHING just sitting in the bank
   3. Or when you are not using money for GOOD of the majority
2. You DON’T pay taxes when:
   1. You spend money on others. Like charity, giveaways or similar
   2. Your money is DOING something. Like being used to build your business or someone else’s business
   3. You are using money for GOOD of the majority. Bulding business, giving value, creating something….simply put….building society and helping the world move forward!

How crazy is that to think about? Total, complete shocker, right?! 😮

This is why paying zero taxes is actually a good thing!

So the main takeaway here is to understand that money is not the root of all evil! Poverty is!

This is why you should re-think your education right now! I coach a lot of people and I see most of them are actually afraid of making money and therefor they are not turning “making money” into their priority! Because they have been taught that people who make money are “evil”!

Strange that all the “evil” metalheads I know are broke then! 😉

Ok, I hope you got some value out of this and changing your mindset is not done overnight and certainly not by reading ONE blog post like this! I just wanted to nudge you a little in the right direction. So if you want to move forward and start re-programming your mind and learn the skill of making money, read on. If not, your journey ends here.

The skill of making money

The skill of making money is actually quite simple. Because it’s not even a skill. It’s just a priority and focus!

Imagine if you from today just shifted your focus to learning how to set up additional income streams without risk and tomorrow you would actually have a tiny bit better financial situation.

It’s like loosing weight. I remember this fantastic bit on Mad TV I saw one time where they were doing an infomercial for a new weigth loss program. It took the bull by the horns and just nailed the essence of it all.

EAT LESS – MOVE MORE

Haha. That’s actually how easy it is to loose weight.

But what about money? Isn’t it just the same?

SPEND LESS – EARN MORE

If you spend less and earn more, then your financial situation would increase quite rapidly? Not by big steps, but small small steps at a time.

If you decided to save some money today, you would have more money tomorrow. But the question should be how to use that money to create more and here is where it’s getting a little more tricky. Because most of us don’t have any education in this.

The great thing is that there are countless opportunities out there to create income streams fairly easy
The bad thing is that today there are countless opportunities out there to create income streams fairly easy

But I like to keep things simple so I wrote another blog post about how it’s basically just two things you can spend your money on. Read more about those two things in THIS blog post.

It’s all about a decision and focus! Make that decision that in 2021 you DESERVE to be able to set yourself up financially! And that it’s a GOOD thing to do so!

If there’s one skill we should master in the world today it is for sure the skill of making money. The skill of creating value!

Decide to learn the Skill Of Making Money and you’ll never worry about money again!

The TCC method!

Many people see the world going into the abyss right now.

But there are also more people than ever having their life’s biggest awakening in situations like these, when their lives are being disruptet and they realize that they need to change!

They need to change how they think!
They need to change how they act!
They need to change how they respond!
They need to change what they do!

And as more and more people are looking for ways to make money online or start their own business I also see people making the same old mistakes over and over again. Mistakes that, with just a little bit of research, could have been prevented.

Anyone who’s been in business for a while understand that the core essence of running any business is actually to solve problems for people. If you can’t solve a problem, you won’t make money.

By problems I mean everything from solving the problem for people looking for something to eat to solving the problem of helping someone start their online business.

Entrepreneurs are problem-solvers and the more people you help solve their problem and the bigger the problems you solve, the more you get paid as an entrepreneur.

But here also lies the challenge. Because now more entrepreneurs than ever are being born! They jump into entrepreneurship launching their own webshop, getting involved in affiliate deals, selling on Amazon or starting their own consulting business.

They all are trying to find SOMETHING to sell! They are focused on WHAT to sell!

But here’s the difference between those who truly will thrive in the coming years and those who will be more frustrated and burned out in some years from now.

You see, there’s something I call the TCC method that is crucial for any new entrepreneur to understand! Actually, I think you would be CRAZY to start ANY business without understanding this concept in the new decade!

Because today, ANYONE can with just a few clicks of a button find whatever product to sell and most of the time at the best price.

This is why I flipped everything around and stopped focusing on WHAT to sell or HOW to sell it. Actually, I started focusing on WHO to sell to!

The inspiration for this blog-post came from an article I read on Entrepreneur.com where they had interviewed an up and coming restaurant CEO that had started to ask their customer what they wanted. So they basically made up the menu from the customers’ needs and wants. This had made a great positive impact on their turnover.

But think about this, it’s very natural and it’s actually more easy than trying to guess their customers’ needs through sales statistics and such.

So, if you’re thinking about starting your own business, think about this.

What if you forgot about what to sell and how to sell it for a minute and started focusing on TCC!

What is TCC, you might ask?

TCC stands for The Customer Connection!

Imagine focusing ONLY on customer aquisition FIRST! Gathering a huge pile of customers first. And then you can basically ask them what they want!

I want a new car! Great, I’ll get you a new car!
I want a Michael Kors purse! Great, I’ll get you exactly the one you want!
I need flight tickets to Spain! Fantastic, here’s your flight tickets!

You see, if you connect the customers FIRST, you will never, ever be worried about how to monetize your business because let’s face it…..everyone needs stuff all the time anyway! It’s just that they might not want exactly what you offer at this time….unless you offer EVERYTHING!

All companies like Facebook, Google, Snapchat, Instagram, AliExpress, Amazon and most other big companies focus their MAIN ACTIVITY on TCC! And when they have their customer data, then they can focus on monetizing which becomes the easy part! They simply offer them what they want at the exact time they want it!

Today there are a few systems that help you do this on a grand scale even if you’re running your own little home based business and this is the concept that I used when launching my own online business a few years back and I was able to generate a sales volume of 10M euros in just 24 months earning commissions on “everything” people bought.

Don’t waste your time setting up a webshop…unless you have customers asking for it!
Don’t waste your money trying to produce products, apps or services that you don’t even know will work in the market!

Simply turn the tables, gather the customers first and THEN help them fill their needs! And automize as much of the process ofcourse!

No product development
No setup
No costs upfront
No technical setup

Plug & Play – Freedom Come! 😀

You can only buy TWO things!

Did you know that in reality, you only can buy two things?

You either buy an asset…..or you buy a liability!

Think about this, if you developed the same love for buying assets as people have for buying a new car, clothes and other knick-knack, it wouldn’t take long before you could retire!

Of course you need to spend some money on buying all the necessary things, but we purchase mostly with our feelings so what if you felt the same excitement when purchasing something that put more money into your bank account as you do when you purchase something that take money out of your account?

After many, many years as a broke musician….spending all my excess money on things I didn’t need. Like beer, partying and junk that I found. Ok, we all need some kind of social life and not every beer is a “waste” of money because we do build relationships that for sure has meaning and value in life.

But I could have saved those 50€ I paid for those Swiss clogs that I bought at a gas-station when I was drunk on tour one time!

The piont is, I have now finally developed what is called a “Millionaire Mindset” and even though I’m not where I want to be yet, I finally feel that I am well on the way…because my love for purchasing assets has actually outgrown the love for purchasing liabilities!

Imagine all the ladies that love shopping! If you had the same love for shopping cashflow! Yes, did you even know that you can purchase cashflow? 😮

Many immediately think of assets like property that you rent out or stocks etc. and because of the lack of education in schools about assets vs. liabilities we always freeze when looking at stocks or spending our money on something we can “lose” money on.

But think about this, if you spent 100€ on some knick-knack and 100€ on dividend paying stocks. Even if the stocks took a big hit, it would still be financially better than the knick-knack! And of course with a potential to get back after a downfall.

If your main focus would be to purchase cashflow, you would over time have a lot of…….cashflow! 😮 :o:o

Am I saying that you immediately should be throwing your money at everything that moves in the stock-market? Absolutely not.

I’ve found that the best way to get started is small steps and to have a team of people around you that know more than you, that you trust and that have results!

Then all you need to do is follow their advice which in most cases will be better than your own anyway.

And don’t look for the get rich quick-fix! Have patience and trust the process.

Over time you’ll develop a love for shopping assets and see that no matter how “bad” your investments have been, they’re probably better than purchasing chocolate for Saturday at an avg. price of 50€ per kilo anyway!

Happy shopping! 😀

FPA – what does it mean?

IPA – you heard it before.
Some people immediately think about beer and some people think in business terms and about Income Producing Activities. Me? I like both 😉

But better than IPA is the FPA! Anyone know what that means?

Well, if you’re building your own business, especially online, you should!

You see, most people who start any type of business do this because they want to create more freedom! Not only money, but they want to be their own boss and control their own time!

Just ask anyone who’s ever started a business before “Why did you start your own business? What was the REAL reason behind it?”.

Of course some people see a need in the market or they are passionate about what they do because it’s THEIRS and they are not wasting their time building someone else’s business.

But, really…..if you dig deep enough, most entrepreneurs are looking to create freedom!

And I bet, most people are actually dreaming about freedom! Even people who are stuck in their mindset “money is not important to me” I bet would admit that they would like more freedom! Right?

And this brings me back to the IPA vs FPA!

You see, in business everyone is so focused on IPA – Income Producing Activities and while this is great to make more money, it doesn’t necessarily meet your end goal to create more freedom!

Why, because freedom is created by something else than just “making money”!

There are two ingredients you must have to create freedom, no matter what type of business you run. How do we know this?

Well, just look at all the business-owners out there who suddenly became slaves to their own treadmill. They actually created “a job” for themselves that pays less per hour than working for someone else would.

The intention was to get more freedom, but most business-owners I know have actually less freedom after they started their own business. If they have a lot of money, they never have time. And if they have a lot of time, they never have money!

So why is it like this? Well, it’s because most people don’t understand and thus don’t focus on the FPA!

So what is the FPA? Yep, you probably guessed it by now. We’re talking about Freedom Producing Activities!

You see, in order to create freedom these two principles must be applied!

1. Residual Income (Recurring commissions, cashflow)
2. Leverage

Let’s look at residual income:
You actually wouldn’t need that big of a residual income to have a lot of freedom if your lifestyle needs weren’t that big.

I remember when I first started out in online biz I wanted € 3000 a month and thought that this would be freedom – if it was residual! Now, if I had to work every day to create 3000 a month, it would not mean freedom to me. But if I was able to earn 3000 euro every single month WITHOUT working for it, then I would have freedom. Because this money would pay all my bills and I could live and travel wherever I wanted.

So, the point is – Residual income is the only income that can produce a lot of free time.

Did you even know that 3000 euro a month would be equivalent to having 3 000 000 euro in the bank at 1% yearly interest? 😮

So you see, if you used let’s say 90 days to create an online business that paid you 3000 euro every single month in residual income, the value of it is FAR MORE than most people even comprehend.

Would you agree that building a business using existing tools online for 90 days is easier than finding a way to make 3 000 000 euros? Yeah, thought so.

Even if it took you a year or even 5, I hope that you now understand the value of residual income and how it must be applied if you want to create more free time!

I could be speaking about residual income for days here, but I’m not going to do that right now as it’s impossible to teach everything in a simple blog post.

So let’s move to the next principle which is leverage:
Leverage is where you can create “more time” or “more money” without YOU doing the work. It is also crucial for scalability in any business.

For example, many business-owners have people working for them. This is leverage on other people’s efforts. A famous saying is “It’s better to earn 1% from 100 people’s efforts than 100% from your own”.

But you can also use money for leverage. You invest money and you can make money from your money without spending your time.

But leverage is also crucial in order to create scalabililty in your business.

Why would you want to scale? Well, you learned that residual income creates a lot of free time. But if you’re going to do everything yourself, you might not be able to scale to the level of income (and free time) that you want.

Leverage will help you get to where you want FASTER!
Leverage will help you get MORE of what you want which in our case is FREEDOM!

And this is actually the reason why so many business owners are stuck! They haven’t even thought about this! They keep grinding it away every day and don’t even realize that the focus they have never ever will give them more freedom because they are not fucused on FPA – Freedom Producing Activities!

So what are FPA’s? Well, any activity that will give you more freedom over time.

For instance, I would rather work 1h today and earn 10 euro a month for the rest of my life from that hour than immediately get 100 euros for that hour of work.

Even though 100€ an hour is quite good if you think in terms of “normal” salary. But why would I choose 10€ over 100€? Because after 10 months I would net profit 10 € every single month from there on.

So if I spent 10h more, instead of making 1000€ I would now have 100€ a month. Now I leverage my time to create more value because at some point, even with a great hourly wage, you would need to sleep, eat and do other stuff.

But if I kept on going every single day I would in time set myself up with a lifestyle that most people dream about, but not many are willing to do.

It’s actually not that hard to do, but most people are so programmed by society, friends, family and school that they would rather choose an hourly wage and be stuck in the ratrace their entire life.

If you want freedom, you must apply the principles of residual income and leverage!

I hope this was valuable and if you know a business owner, in traditional business or online that needs to read this please go ahead and share it with them! 🙂

10 things you might not know about Kolossus!

In April last year I wrote a post with 10 things that people might not know about our Armada album. The post was quite popular and it seemed like the fans appreciated that kind of information.

So, I thought I’d do the same with Kolossus so here we go:

1. Since the studio we recorded Armada in went bankrupt, as you can read more about here, we took over the studio ourselves together with producer Rune Stavnesli. So we spent the studio budget on buying equipment to run our own studio. The same equipment has been used for all Keep Of Kalessin recordings since. The studio was already built, but all equipment was ripped out so we had to install everything from scratch when it comes to studio monitors and other equipment. But even though we used some money to install everything we have saved a lot of money on all albums since this recording.
2. Once again, we realized that we had put the bar too high in regards to our own performance. We were struggling and using way more time than anticipated when we started recording. This resulted in less time to mix etc. so the production lacked some power, in my opinion.
3. We constantly pushed the releasedate for the album because we never were able to finish the album. The releasedate was pushed so much that we at some point just had to say. Ok, enough is enough. We just need to get this album out there! Kolossus was released on June 6th 2008, but we were talking about pushing it further and into the fall of 2008. However, we decided to have it out before the summer. This stressful push for release resulted in the fact that we weren’t able to do any festivals in 2008. So it wasn’t until 2009, a whole year after the release, that we did the festival run for this album.
4. Kolossus is a truly unique album. It doesn’t sound like anything else out there and when I hear the riffs on this album, I often think “wow. did we actually do that?”. I think that Kolossus has some great moments to it and my personal feeling is that it’s still an underrated album in the metal scene. Maybe lacking a bit in production, but the feeling and style of this album is truly unique.
5. One of my personal favourites for this album is “Escape the Union”. Which also have one of the better leads I have done.
6. If you listen to the bass on this track, you’ll be amazed of all the detail and how cool this bass recording is!! Especially the part from 5:16.
7. I had never done sweeping before the Ascendant track. After the song was done and I was listening to it in the studio, I told Rune. “Hey. We need a guitar lead here!”. He agreed and I started testing a little bit. I was listening to the part and I kinda heard what the lead should be like in my head. I then told Rune “Wow. Imagine doing it like this and then going into this part just sweeping before we move on to something like this”. Rune said, “yep, you’re right we HAVE to do that!”. “But I don’t know how to sweep!”, I said. “Well, you gotta learn!”.
   At this point we only had a few days until we had to deliver the master and I tried sweeping before, but never really managed to do it. I told Rune that I would need at least 2 weeks to learn the sweeping I wanted on this track, but he told me that I’ll be able to learn it in 2 days! I sat down, started to practice and I nailed the solo in 2 days! 🙂
8. As I’ve mentioned in interview and forums before, I think the Ascendant video did just as much harm as good. We had great ideas for this video and it looked really cool when were filming it, however when we got the edit from the director, I said that this was totally not acceptable. I said to the record label that we needed to re-edit the entire video. We did some edits, but due to rush and pressure from the label we released it without doing all the changes I wanted to do. When we released it there was a lot of negative comments and I just regret not holding my ground so I could have gotten a video that I could be proud of. I saw the comments and I understood where they came from because I actually agree with everything they say! The video became way to cheezy and unfortunately that was the result of me crumbling under pressure from the labels. Lesson learned!!
9. The middle part of the Kolossus title track is very much inspired by the scene in Xerxes Tent in the movie 300. I remember watching this movie and this scene had just an amazing atmosphere which inspired me greatly to create this title track.
10. The cover art and the band photos are inspired by the computer game Oblivion as well as the movie Alexander. Some metal heads think it looks too “soft”, but I think it looks epic and it captures the mood we wanted. And besides it’s definitely something different than your ordinary corpsepaint band! You can probably see the resemblance, but you can also see the difference in budget for a blockbuster movie and a metal band as well! 😉

    

    

    

    
    

Hope you like the article and maybe you learned something that you didn’t know.

Listen to Keep Of Kalessin on Spotify!

Why you need a CRM system for your band!

Nowadays, almost every business has their own CRM systems!

Yes, I said that almost every BUSINESS has some kind of CRM systems and guess
what, your band is a BUSINESS! And before you get your head wrapped around that fact, you can kiss your dream of being a rockstar goodbye!

It may sound harsh and “non-idealistic”, but that’s the honest truth. Even though you’re still in the garage rehearsing hours and hours just to get to play in the local pub, you’re still in business.

You’re a starting business. You’re an entrepreneur just as much you are a musician.

Here in Trondheim we are 4 guitarists and “band owners” that are about the same age and about the same music style.

I consider myself as the least skilled guitarist of the four of us, but still my band has the biggest fanbase and making the most money of these 4 bands. All bands are on the heavier side of the music biz.

I remember talking to some of them one time and I explained why my band was doing better than theirs and it’s very simple. They use 80% of their time “on the guitar”, rehearsing and getting better and writing songs, and just 20% “in the office” doing boring administrative tasks.

I on the other hand, use 80% of the time in the office and just 20% on the guitar and writing songs etc.

And that’s the reason why my band is the biggest of these 4 bands!

Many musicians don’t realize that their time is more well spent doing the actual work! Doing the boring stuff like sending out e-mails, booking shows, planning tours, pushing for labels, lobbying at festivals or traveling and showing up at the office of the record label they want to sign them.

They tend to get caught up in writing music, not getting the music out there, so they write more music and not pushing that music out there and then writing more and more, but never really get any attention for their new album.

Now, I’m not saying that Keep Of Kalessin is the biggest band out there either and we have done a lot of wrong things in our career. Maybe the biggest one is lack of consistency when it comes to releasing albums and going on tours, but we have also done many things right because we’ve been able to tour the world and make some money in the process. Which is more than most band’s out there manage to and I see that the big difference is actually where the focus is. If you don’t keep focus on the business, you’ll never really get your band off the ground! The day and age when managers picked you up and signed you to a big label while the band was out there drinking and partying and let everyone else take care of business is absolutely over!

So, one of the most important tools when running your band business is actually gathering your fans’ information.

Facebook is great, followers on Instagram and Snapchat is all fine, but to have your own CRM tool is a great way to keep contact with your fans and you can build your own fanbase slow and steady and know that you will really be able to reach them. You can also have statistics and analytics on how well your e-mail campaign is doing as well as do special deals for a certain group of customers sorted by gender, age or adress.

The great thing about this is that when you for instance have a new T-shirt in your webshop, you’re able to send an e-mail campaign with an offer for this t-shirt. If you have a few thousand mail-adresses in your list, it should be possible to create instant revenue from that list by offering the fans a good deal on the new shirt. Promoting shows, selling merchandise etc. is way more effective with a good CRM system.

You don’t need a huge fanbase to start, but I think that if you just start and gather this information, you’ll some day be very glad you did that even though it’s in the beginning of your career.

There are countless CRM systems out there and earlier I used MailChimp, but since this is just an e-mail sender, I feel that I need more. So I’ve been using Wix for some time to gather e-mails from the fans of Keep Of Kalessin, but recently I’ve also been moving my database over to Cashback Solutions by Lyoness.

In Cashback Solutions, I get a full CRM system, not just an e-mail sender. This includes statistics and analyzis on a very professional level for a very low price compared to any competitor. But there is also one crazy benefit of choosing Lyoness as my partner for CRM systems and that is the opportunity to get paid whenever the fans of Keep Of Kalessin is buying their daily household products! Imagine as a band not only getting paid when your fans buy music or merchandise or go to your shows. But rather when they buy things like groceries, gasoline, clothes, shoes and more! Lyoness gives you the opportunity to earn money whenever your fans buy what they normally buy anyway and there is no other company on the planet offering that solution! I honestly just love what this company is doing!!

And besides, aren’t we all kinda fed up about all those different type of loyalty cards and customer clubs now? So why not share ONE customer club with thousands of other businesses instead of trying to create your own!? Lyoness’ motto is actually “Together we are strong!” and I couldn’t agree more!

Lyoness is a global shopping community offering benefits to all their customers in any type of business.

This means that our customers can save money in many different stores like Carrefour, Lidl, OMV and thousands of small and medium sized businesses across the globe as well as thousands of online stores. Our fans happily save money with their Keep Of Kalessin Cashback Card or the Cashback App on what they are going to buy anyway, and the band gets a cut of every transaction! It’s unbelievable and it’s absolutely brilliant, if you ask me!

If you have any questions on how this would work for your band or business, please don’t hesitate to contact me on mail@morningstarmusic.no and I’ll be happy to assist and teach you a thing or two about it.

To sign up for the Keep Of Kalessin Cashback Card simply go to http://www.keepofkalessin.com/fanclub and fill in your name and e-mail and you’ll be contacted by us!

I wish you success in your endeavours and hope you found this post a little enlightening!

 

all the best,
Arnt

It’s not Trump, it’s you!

What is going on in the world? Has the world gone mad?

Seeing all this anger and frustration all around, one must really start to wonder, how did we end up in this situation?

Now, I’m not from the US, but I have many friends over there and besides, Trump becoming President has shaken the world, not just the United States. We feel it’s repercussions all over, also here in Norway.

But wait, is it Trump’s feeds and statements that are shocking? Well, he has said some weird things that I don’t think belong in a political election, but when I come to think about it, it’s not Trump’s posts that scare me the most! It’s the posts from the people! The total lack of self awareness in the world today is scaring me way more than Trump being President!

People are out rallying and demonstrating! They show their anger towards one man that many american’s elected into office. I’m not going to go into detail whether or not he won fairly, and frankly that doesn’t even matter in this post, because this is not a political post, but rather a call to raise awareness among people!

You see, it’s not about Trump! It’s about you! It’s about us, the people of the world! We all need to wake up!

I agree with one thing Russel Brand said, and that’s “we created this situation. We created the conditions for this to happen and it has been going on for a long time! And now all of a sudden, everyone is so surprised!”.

People take to the streets and show their anger! I see posts all over facebook like “Is it the beginning of a new world war?”, “Is WWIII really starting?”.

Seriously? Do you really think that fueling an environment of fear, hate and disrespect is going to turn the world on to a better direction?

Hasn’t it always been, and won’t the world always be a reflection of the people living in it? The environment we all live in? Didn’t we in fact create this environment ourselves?

There’s definitely something wrong with the world and it isn’t Trump! It’s the total lack of responsibility taken by the people! For the last few decades it has been growing into this. Our children grow up in an unsafe environment with fear mongering all over the media regarding the economy, terror, the environment or whatever the media can find.

The focus is always on the problem and not the solution! If you focus on trouble, you will have more trouble! The world is going in the direction where the focus of the people lies!

And why is the media doing this? Because YOU watch it! They give you what you want! You’re complaining that there’s “nothing on TV”, but you still keep watching it! And the freedom of choice in regards to online video content hasn’t made it any better! Because the choice of the people is to seek negativity and feed their brains with content even more narrow minded than mainstream media.

The most viewed videos online are for the most part non educational, brain degrading content feeding into exactly this zombie state of existence.

There is a whole world out there of free education that can propel us into a brighter future and we don’t even care to watch it! We want the easy fix. We tend to go for a quick 10 second laugh instead of life fulfillment.

The world is on the brink of destruction and it’s not because of Trump! It’s because of us! The people! Don’t you get it? If everyone would just stop spreading fear, anger, hate and going on with their warmongering all day, but rather took responsibility of their own live’s and the life of other’s around them, our community would immediately improve!

Just look at all the people out there in the streets, first blaming Obama and now Trump and almost every President before them for their lack of success.

Don’t you all have work to do? If everyone used that energy to be productive, you wouldn’t even be in this mess!

I’m not saying that we should totally neglect all our problems, but I am saying that each and every one of us should start taking some responsibility! We often hear that you are responsible for your actions, but what’s more important is that you are also responsible for your lack of action!

What we really should do, is start teaching personal development in schools at a young age because the world cannot continue on this track of self degradation!

I want you all to watch this video by the great Darren Hardy! I think he’s spot on in this video and I think it’s a lesson everyone on planet earth should be taught!

You see, everything starts with YOU! This is how the people can take back control! You simply do it! You take back control of your life! You take back control of your future! You support and help each other. You take responsibility for your own actions and don’t go around blaming the government for your failures! You have done that for way too many years already! Now, get over it! Be done with the whining and the blaming and get out there and be productive!

I still have hopes for a great future for humanity! There are great forces working towards a better future, but sadly there are also great forces working to hold the control through fear.

The great thing is that we all have a choice! We all can choose which side to root for! Your future is based on the choices you make today! You can choose where you will put your focus in the next minutes, days, months and years! Your future will be determined not by Trump, but by all the small choices you make from today and moving forwards!

We must understand that voting for the good is not done by hating the bad! It’s not done by spreading more fear, anger and hate. It’s through education, understanding, peace and compassion!

At the other side of fear lies a world of opportunity for you and your friends and family! A world of abundance! A world of peace and prosperity! You can simply go out and grab it if you just wake up and not let yourself be paralyzed by this overwhelming focus on negativity!

For the hope of a better future, with peace and love,
Arnt

 

 

 

 

 

The simple rules of residual income!

If people had a choice, we would agree that everyone would’ve wanted to set themselves up with residual income. The opportunity to have income generated while you sleep, while you’re at the beach or on holiday. Income streams that continue to flow regardless of the time you put in is a dream for most people.

As a musician I’ve touched into residual income on royalties from radio rotation or album sales, but in 2017 these income streams have become close to obsolete after music streaming services and downloading took over the market.

In the last few years, I’ve made it my mission to study the options of setting up residual income streams and in this quest, I’ve learned that the overall rules for this is actually not that difficult to understand so I’d like to share them with you all in such a simple way that anyone can understand it.

There are 2 basic rules that you MUST follow in order to reach financial freedom. I often hear people talking about their dreams and how they want to “get rich” or be “financial free”. However, most of them totally neglect these simple rules and hence, never achieve the freedom they covet.

Understand that if you don’t follow these 2 basic rules, it will actually NEVER happen for you unless you win the lottery!

This information is a gathering from years of studying and reading books and the information is actually quite easy accessible, but for my part, I actually needed some mentors to tell me where to look. So hopefully you can learn a little something from this blog post to push you in the direction of reaching your dreams.

Ok, here we go!

This is the Cashflow Quadrant as illustrated by writer Robert Kyosaki in his book with the same name.

In this image you have the four ways of creating income in today’s society.

The E stands for Employee, meaning that you’re working for someone else and earning money by selling your time to your employer. We all know how that works. And it’s the safest way to never be financial free, yet for some reason the majority of people spend most of their time and focus here! But you must know, if you spend the majority of your time in this quadrant, you have no chance on reaching financial freedom except winning the lottery!

The S stands for Self Employed or a small business. Now, there are way too many people who think that they are on the road to freedom by starting their own business. However, studies show that most people in the S quadrant actually have less time and less money than if they worked the same amount of time as an employee. Don’t fall into this “entrepreneurial trap” like myself and so many other of my friends and other entrepreneurs have done before you!

The B is for Big Business or if you own a system.
There are many people who get the S and the B mixed up or they think they will start on the S and grow into a B, but the chance of doing so is extremely small and I’ve come to learn that much of the difference between the S and the B is the focus that they have. People in the S are often focused on their product or service. They have some kind of expertise in a field and they keep their focus on selling that service or product and their time is required for their business to run. However, the people in the B quadrant normally have a much higher focus on expanding the business and building leadership within their organisation. What everything actually boils down to is leadership. The B quadrant is built through great leadership and main focus on building more leaders within the organisation, while the S quadrant is built on focus on a product or expertise, often the expertise of the founding entrepreneur which means he is still selling his time instead of earning money on other people’s time.

The I is for Investment. This is where you can put your money to work for you. However, most people think of this as high risk and never get involved. Most of us know about the I, but most of us think that the jungle of stock products and securities look way too complicated to get involved into.

Now, when you look at the cashflow quadrant where 95% of people on the left side own only 5% of all assets in the world and 5% of people own 95% of all assets it is quite obvious that you must start taking steps over to the right side if you’re looking for financial freedom! It is ONLY on the right side that you’re able to generate residual income!

We all agree that earning residual income is a more lucrative way to earn money than selling your time. So if everyone agrees to that, why is it then….that only 5% of people are on the right side of the cashflow quadrant?

The answer is two things: Knowledge and Fear!

We don’t spend enough time to learn about the different opportunities, and hence we let our fear of the unknown stop us from living the life of our dreams!

Understand that rich people spend their time, energy and money on aquiring assets while broke people (the 95%) spend their time and energy working for others while they spend their money on liabilities.

So let’s look at the 2 basic rules that got my focus to shift and in a very short time has totally changed my economic situation going from dead broke and in debt, to having multiple residual income streams and a future that is looking extremely bright!

RULE NUMBER 1:

If you are looking for financial freedom there is absolutely no way around the fact that you need to put your time, energy and money to start setting yourself up on the RIGHT SIDE OF THE CASHFLOW QUADRANT! And here you can choose between the B and the I.

If you fail on understanding rule #1 and continue to use your time on the left side of the cashflow quadrant, you have to understand that you will basically work until you’re dead and you can kiss your financial freedom goodbye!

Switch your focus, today!

Ok. now that we have rule number 1 established it would also be interesting to know the options on the right side, wouldn’t it?

Some people feel overwhelmed with the opportunities out there, but when you really look at the right side of the cashflow quadrant, there are actually only three major classes that all opportunities are put into. And this brings us to rule number 2.

RULE NUMBER 2:

If you are going to get involved in the right side of the cashflow quadrant (which you must do in order to achieve freedom), you actually only have three classes to choose from.

And these are:

Business
Real Estate
Securities (Stocks, bonds, mutual funds etc.)

If you fail to choose any of these, it means that you’re still on the left side of Cashflow Quadrant and you need to go back to rule number 1!

Out of these three options, most people actually choose Business as their way to freedom. However, if you really look at it. Building your own business is the option that normally requires the most money to start, the most knowledge, the most time spent and also has the highest failure rate. How come so many people choose this option? Yes, they might have a passion for what they are doing, but I also think there’s a huge lack of knowledge in these simple rules.

Real Estate can be very lucrative, but you normally need some money to start and owning your own real estate business can also become a job and the return might not be that great in comparison to what you put into it. But it might beat buiding a traditional business in regards to the time you spend on it.

People generally think that securities has the highest risk of all these options, however the fact that it’s possible to start with a very low investment makes this option the one with the least risk. Normally this option has a “the higher the risk, the better the return” philosophy, but it is possible to find good long term options and savings plans within the jungle of the different securities available.

Now, there has come a fourth option to the market and I will explain this in later blog entries. This option is what I have chosen to put most of my focus on simply because it’s less risk, higher return and easier to understand than any of the other options.

Like I said, this information is a gathering from the overall view on economics after reading countless books, blogs and going to seminars and watching videos on the topic. I think Robert Kyosaki is one of the few that explain things in a very easy way, while it seems like many other write’s almost deliberately try to confuse people or try to impress with their fancy knowledge.

Kyosaki wrote the book Rich Dad, Poor Dad which I suggest everyone reads if they’d like to learn the basics on how to escape the slavery of modern society working paycheck to paycheck.

In this book, Kyosaki explains in a very simple way how rich people use their time, energy and money to aquire assets while broke people use their time and energy to work for the rich while they spend their money on liabilities, like I mentioned above. And I took these principles and boiled them down to this blog.

This simple knowledge has for sure changed my life. Maybe it will do something for you too so I hope you got value from this!

thanks for reading!

all the best,
Arnt