Interview with Billy Murphy of Forever Jobless

On August 1st, 2012 Billy Murphy launched www.ForeverJobless.com and I immediately subscribed. Billy is a former professional poker player turned 7-figure online business owner, with some very interesting insights.

What follows is an exclusive interview with Billy as he was launching his first blog last month, which he intends to be "the best blog about making money on the internet."

He certainly has a great start, with hundreds of comments on each of his first few posts and over 4,000 Facebook Fans already. It's worth following along to watch exactly what he's doing, and how he's growing such a loyal readership so quickly...

1. When people ask you the best way to make money, or get started as an entrepreneur, what initial advice do you offer?

Learn from those you aspire to be like, and ignore everyone else. If you are taking advice from people who haven't been where you want to go yet, you are wasting your time.

So many people are trying to learn how to make money by reading books or blogs on the subject written by people who don't know how to make money. It's insane.

Find a couple people who have accomplished the things you want to accomplish, and listen to what they have to say. No one else.

One of the biggest things aspiring entrepreneurs struggle with is: they don't know what they don't know. So, they are not good at knowing who's advice to take. The easiest way is to find people who have achieved the things you'd like to achieve, and listen to them. Ignore the other people. They may have good intentions of helping, but they don't know the best ways, or they'd be there themselves.

2. Mindset has obviously played a big part in your success. What is your best tip, or favorite quote, regarding Mindset - and why?

Do not fear risk.

Most people make all of their decisions based on trying not to lose – which is often the suboptimal strategy if their goal is to win. For example, instead of creating a huge business that will help them achieve their goals, they only try things out where they don’t risk anything.

All they're doing is guaranteeing themselves NOT to hit their goals, because they’re so emotionally caught up in not taking risks. The “risks” are actually less risky for them if they pursued a big opportunity, but because of the emotional response most people have to decision making, they often fail to realize this. Their emotions tell them to fear the downside, as opposed to listening to their logic which would tell them to factor in the upside.

If they take a “risk” and succeed, they can accomplish their goal. If they don’t, they may avoid “risk” in their mind, but they also avoid any chance of real success. Avoiding a road that could lead to success, just to avoid risk, is how most people make their decisions.

That’s a lot riskier in my opinion.

3. What one thing would you advise people NOT to do as they set out on the path of becoming an entrepreneur?

Don't partner. So many aspiring entrepreneurs have this idea that they need partners to start a business.

Are there exceptions? Yes. However, the huge majority of the time, people should not be partnering. Often people looking to partner are looking to do so because they think their partner knows how to help the business make money. If that’s the case, they are often only going to acquire partners who aren’t good either. Why -- because someone who knows how to make money will know they don’t need to partner with someone who needs them in order to be successful.

There’s pros and cons to having partners. The only time it makes sense to partner is when the partner brings something irreplaceable to the table. I see so many newbies wanting to partner and they don’t have any skills worth partnering with. “Hey, I’m a programmer with an idea and need a partner”…. so, what they’re saying is they literally bring nothing to the table for a partnership. There’s a million programmers and a million ideas. THEY need to partner because they need someone who knows how to execute/make money. The ability to execute on a high level is an irreplaceable skill-set, because not many people do it well. Programming or having an idea, is not.

4. In your initial post, you said you were interested in expanding your personal network. What types of people would you most like to meet?

I'd like to meet other entrepreneurs who are doing interesting things, and making a lot of money doing them. Most of the entrepreneurs out there who make good money aren't blogging about it, so I'm hoping that putting myself out there a bit will help those type of people touch base with me.

There's huge benefits to having a great network of people, and it's something I didn't concentrate much at all on in the past.

I like meeting smart people who are doing interesting things. I enjoy talking business with people who really know their stuff. It's valuable to have people you can bounce ideas off of and brainstorm with, and there's not a high % of those type of people who really know what they're doing. Those are the guys I enjoy talking with.

5. Given you just launched ForeverJobless last month, what can we expect from you in the coming months?

The best blog about making money on the internet. My goal with the blog is to have Forever Jobless be substantially different than the other blogs in the space. I don't plan on talking about all of the same subjects as other blogs. When I do, I'll probably have some sort of unique spin on it.

I'm going to be talking in depth about how I built some of the businesses that I have. I'm going to be talking about incorrect assumptions most entrepreneurs falsely believe, and that are holding them back from making a lot of money.

My goal isn't just to teach people what to do, but how to change their mindset and the way that they do things, that will enable them to make substantially more money, and be much more successful.

I may even take some of my subscribers businesses and break them down for everyone to see, to show how they could make a lot more money with it, and what's holding their business back. I notice most people are doing a lot of the same things as everyone else, and no one seems to realize it's suboptimal, and that a few small tweaks could make them a much higher amount of money.

My goal is to change the way people think. The readers I can do that successfully with, will change the whole way they do business, and in turn, make them a lot of money.

Find Billy Murphy at www.ForeverJobless.com and on Facebook.

Best,