Goal Setting & Financial Freedom
Money isn't everything but it's one of the the easiest things to measure when using goal setting to increase your personal income.

Earn Extra Income Through Effective Goal Setting

In today's desperate economic climate, everyone is looking for ways to earn extra income and/or reduce their debt. The good news is that there are plenty of opportunities out there if you want to put in the time to find them. The process starts with effective goal setting. We're going to give you some specific samples of goals that will help your financial condition. You will need to tweak them to your specific situation.

Let's start with setting a financial outcome goal to earn an extra $500 per month. Again, you can change this number to whatever makes sense to you but be realistic. You can always increase the number if you find you're exceeding it consistently, an obviously desirable scenario. Next, let's set a performance goal to make three contacts per day in your desired field(s) of expertise. Decide whether email or phone contacts, or both, will count towards your goal.

You'll note that we mentioned outcome and performance goals above. It's important to know the difference. An outcome goal is defined by a specific outcome at a specific date in time, e.g.. to earn $500 extra per month. A performance goal is one that is defined by a specific amount of activity or "performance", e.g.. to make three contacts per day. Studies in goal setting effectiveness have concluded that performance goals are usually more effective than outcome goals. It's not the purpose of this article to explain why this is so but we're recommending you convert as many outcome goals as you can to performance goals. Click here for a detailed discussion on performance and outcome goals.

Financial Freedom as a Field Services Independent Contractor

Have you ever considered becoming financially independent? Perhaps you considered it only a fantasy. It's not as difficult as you might think, especially in today's climate. The internet has opened up doors that you may not know about. I'm not talking about the barrage of junk email telling you how you can get rich on the web. For the most part, those are all empty promises by someone trying to do just that... get rich on your naivety.

What I'm talking about is building a real business for yourself. For the purposes of this article, I'm going to focus on a business as a computer field service technician. Wait now. Before you bail on me, hear this. You don't have to be an experienced computer geek to get into this business. There are several website "facilitators" that consolidate computer related contract jobs from their clients. Some are complex but thousands of them every day simply require someone to pick up a printer at FedEx, bring it to a retail or office location, unplug a broken printer, plug in the new one, and bring the broken one back to FedEx. A job like this might take you an hour. There are even simpler examples where you need to go to a string convenience stores and put new labels on an ATM machines. Surely this doesn't take any special "technical" knowledge. There are no interviews, no experience required. You simply register on these websites and start bidding on the work posted.

The nature of the work we're talking about is field service. Field service technicians are those that go on site for a client to do anything from simple, half hour, broken printer replacements to complex, 2 day infrastructure networking. For the latter, yes, you would need to be more experienced. However, replacing a failed printer can be as simple as picking up a new printer at a FedEx hold location, bringing it to a retail location, unplugging the bad printer, plugging in the new one, and returning the old printer in the new printer packaging. For this type of work your client just needs feet on the street. They can't afford to hire full time technicians to be on standby when they need them. So, they reach out to independent technicians to perform jobs. They will provide you with step by step instructions.

So, how do you find out about these jobs and get started? In the past ten years there have been several web based platforms pop up that act as glorified staffing agencies. In years gone by, the companies seeking technicians would go to a "temp agency". These agencies would find a technician for the client and charge them exorbitant fees and the time it took to identify a qualified technician was quite extensive. This traditional staffing model still works today for longer term contracts, typically IT staffing where the technician comes to a client location every day for an extended period. But, for short term field service events, this model is no longer effective and has become cost prohibitive.

These web based platforms match companies seeking field service technicians to computer technicians seeking contract work. You simply register on the website, completing a profile indicating your skill sets and skill levels in several areas. Clients seeking technicians post work orders with descriptions of the work. You can bid on the work orders. If you're just starting out, you bid lower than the asking amount and you'll get the attention of the client. Just as you're looking to earn extra income in this economy, clients are looking to reduce costs. So, you can easily get into this industry by being the low bidder. After you gain some experience and build a good reputation, you can start increasing your price.

Each platform works a little differently and have different clients. However, most of their clients are large service providers or OEMs (e.g. Fujitsu, NCR, Dell). The work you perform is usually at a site of one of their clients, often a large retailer, financial institution, or convenience store chain (e.g. Wal-Mart, Wells Fargo, Super America). Your contract is with the web based facilitator. They are the ones that pay you. You accept their terms and conditions as an independent contractor when you register on their website. The process works like this: After you register, you search for work orders and bid on the ones in your area that suit you. The clients reviews the bids and chooses the technician they want. If you're chosen, you perform the work per the work order instructions, you mark the work complete on the platform, the client approves the work order if work is completed to their satisfaction, and the platform company pays you. Reputable platform companies will pay you within 7-10 days after the client approves the work.

We mentioned at the beginning that this is a great way to earn extra cash. While that's true, it's also a fantastic career option. As you become more familiar with the industry, you may consider forming your own company and build doing this work full time.

There are many "non-technical" people that use these services to earn extra income by bidding only on the simple, non-technical jobs. However, if you want to build a larger book of business on your way to financial freedom, you're going to have to get more serious. You'll need to start by forming a personal plan through goal setting. Your plan will include your income goals, goals on learning how to form an LLC, educational goals to keep you informed on the industry protocols, technology goals to allow you to bid on more complex work, etc. It's not the scope of this article to teach you effective goal setting techniques and strategies but if you visit the link below, there is enough material on the subject that, if heeded, will ensure your success in whatever you do. For all the details on becoming an independent contractor, click here.

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If you're serious about goal setting, you're going to need tools to aid in designing, refining, and following your plan. We've developed a tool we call the GoalTender but there are many others available on the web and we encourage you to research several articles and tools before investing your money. What works for one person may not work for you.

Closing Thought

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