Your Product Plan
Previously we wrote about 15 ways to grow your business using products. One item that we could add to this list is: Use products as your retirement plan. We don’t usually think of ‘growing your business’ and ‘retirement’ in the same sentence. And, neither do we usually think of our product plan as the pathway to our retirement. However, it raises a really important question:
What’s the point of your business? In other words, what’s your end goal?
This is crucial to help you with your overall business strategy and more specifically, your product plan.
Your Retirement Plan
I first started thinking retirement a few years ago. Then I got distracted. Now, I’m back on track working in my strength by creating products for myself. And, this suggests that my obvious product plan is to turn it into my retirement plan. Let me explain how it works…
1 Traditional Retirement
The traditional way to retire is to work in a job until you hit 65 and then retire. In this context, it meant ‘stop working’. Today, this version is limited for many people. Firstly, you need a job to retire from and you need enough superannuation to make it work. Whilst, pensions are still available, I don’t see them as being a big part of my future plan.
2 Passive Income Retirement
A more contemporary way to retire is the investors plan. The common pathway is that of the real estate investor. Simply put, you buy enough properties until the income you receive is greater than your expenses. Then, you can retire and live on your rental income. It’s considered passive because once the property is bought and rented, you earn your money by not doing a lot thereafter.
3 Mini-Retirement
Tim Ferris in his best selling book The Four Hour Work Week suggests that instead of working 40 years straight until you reach 65, that you take several mini-retirements along the way. This safeguards against the tragic possibility that you might not make it to 65. Instead, take several six month or 12-month breaks from your working life. He cites some wonderful examples of cruising the world on a yacht or living in a cheaper country like Thailand and enjoying the local culture.
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4 Business Retirement
Traditionally, the business retirement model revolves around having employees do the work for you. You retire and they keep thing humming along.
5 Product Plan Retirement
Tim Ferris updates this model with a business based on systems and outsourcing. You still run things and it only takes you four hours per week to keep the dollars coming in. In his case he was selling vitamins online. I’m proposing the same model based on information products. Let’s say your retirement target is to earn $100K a year. What product plan would you need to achieve this? In rare cases, an inventor may be able to create a single product to earn that amount each year. More likely, you’ll need multiple products to do this.
My Product Plan
My product plan is simple: create 12 products this year. That’s one per month. Some of these might earn $100 a month, others $500 a month and some might earn $1000 a month. My view is that I don’t need to create best-sellers, simply plenty of good sellers. In the short term this product income can supplement my current income and fill my superannuation. And, in the medium term I’ll generate enough money from product sales to not to have to take on client work. This will be retirement for me.
What’s your plan for retirement? And, in particular, how does your Product Plan fit in?
