Live Better, Be Free, Flourish My Little Children

My name is Richard Spicer. This website is owned and operated by my corporation, Duchess and Duke Inc. This is what I’ll use to inspire you to do the same things that I’ve done and am in the process of executing. Just what am I about?

I’m about freedom. I’m about being debt free and about working as hard as you can, but for yourself and for nobody else. With the near limitless resources available there is no reason at all for you to work for someone that you don’t want to work for. You can make a living outside of somebody else’s great idea and create your own. 

I tried reading books on stock investing and on franchises and even dabbled with an MLM. What I found are these are great systems for getting rich IF you created the system or if you’re an insider, which I would never be. Besides, my goal isn’t riches, it’s freedom and the people associated with those fields are focused on riches and measure success in money while I measure success in being able to do whatever I want whenever I want. – constant cash flow. Therefore my goal is not to have 10 million dollars in a stock portfolio but to have 3 or 4 businesses that constantly generate 3-10k per month a piece. 

How will I do that? Well – the old fashioned way but added in are some modern improvements. First – I learned how to make something. Soap. Then I learned / and am still learning how to brand something. Then I learned how to use the web and set up a shopping cart and then I set up 3 websites.

There are a lot of people out there advocating making money from drop shipping, which to me sounds great, but unlikely. I don’t think that it’s impossible to make money drop shipping, I think you just have to build the beast for a lot longer because the margins are smaller and that means you’ll need quite a few sales before the big bucks start rolling in. Now I could be wrong – I’ve only taken a glancing look at drop shipping and at some point I may hire a fulfillment company to package and ship my soap and possibly a contract manufacturer to produce it. 

Basically I have three brands. iwillescape.com, sevenoutofseven.com, and duchessanddukesoaps.com. I will sell soap and skin care products that I make myself, with my wife, on sevenoutofseven or 7/7 and duchessanddukesoaps.com. I’ll retail, wholesale, and private label. If I can sell 2,000.00 bars a month I’ll be grossing over 85k a year which is quite a bit more than I’m brining in gross now.

I’d love to focus on the why. Why working for a soul crushing mega-corporation doesn’t help anybody and why to find personal satisfaction in your life you should work for yourself but answering why doesn’t solve the problem. As an aside, You may feel differently, and completely enjoy being deeply rooted in “corporate culture”, and if so I don’t think this will appeal to you. But if you have a yearning to be free and work for yourself and keep what you earn, keep reading. Back to my point, the How answers how to fix your situation. I will focus on the how. 

The steps are simple. Just like a farmer cannot hope to grow anything by just tossing a sack of seed around and letting it rain, you cannot grow a business without first cultivating the ground. I have wanted to start a business since I was six years old, possibly earlier. I clearly remember designing my business cards and handing them out to people. When I was 12, I registered my first domain. I had it in my mind to build an auction website that could compete with Ebay. I bought some books on building a graphical user interface with DHTML and another book on basic HTML and some books on Javascript and got started. However the subject matter was still a tad over my head and I failed. After that I spent several years dreaming about starting a coffee shop, a credit union, being self employed as a mortgage originator, or starting a successful real estate brokerage business. I failed at all of these but then again I’m only 23 and so I think I got a lot of it out of my system early on.

After I got married and bought a house, I started to get very serious about spending more time with my family and focusing on what’s important. My friend, Ron, was reading a book called The 4 Hour Work Week. I absorbed it and quickly got to work implementing what I had learned. I highly recommend this book. I read it 2 years ago and after reading it I forgot about it and got focused on learning how to make soap. At first it was a hobby but after I realized it was a viable business I started implementing what I learned in 4HWW automatically. I also read the Rich Dad Poor Dad series and gleaned a lot of information from that as well. In preparing the ground, I recommend doing those things. You should also take into consideration what you’re passionate about. I’m passionate about quality of life, and in a small way nice soap really enhances your quality of life. So does nice coffee, the finest shaving implements, travel, and any hobby that really gets you back to our roots. Wood turning is another example. There are lots of hobbies and equipment available you can get into that really get you pumped that can earn you a lot of money. Take sewing for example and then go to www.etsy.com and take a look at what custom clothing is selling for on there. 

Anyway I hope you’ll keep reading and checking back. I’m going to provide a list of resources for people and soon I’ll have an e-book available on what you need to get your store up and running and a list of tips/tricks that I’ve picked up so far. It will be priced at 10.95. Contact me if you have any questions. Richard@iwillescape.com