Starting Your Own Business. Are you the reason it didn't work?

Nothing will change until YOU change.

It has been said many times over; "Doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results is a workable definition for insanity."

Nothing will change in your life until you make a decision to change yourself and do something differently than what you have been doing. You are where you are in your life because that's where the things you have done and the decisions you have made have put you.  

Are you broke?  Do you have a job but hate it?  Are you unemployed?  Are you driving the car you want to drive or living in the house you want to live in?  Are you saving money for retirement?  Fairly simple questions aren't they?  For most people, the answer is NO!  The real question that needs to be asked is "Why am I in this position?"

 Excuses-Excuses-Excuses

Yes, yes, we have all heard all the excuses.  "I need a better education."  "It's the economy!"  "My boss hates me!"  "It takes too much money to start my own business."  "I've thought about starting my own business but all my friends said that I couldn't do it."  I could fill pages and pages with the excuses I have heard.  When push comes to shove, they are just that, EXCUSES!  

It's only human nature to try to blame something or someone else when things go wrong.  Remember, when you point a finger at something else, there are three fingers pointing back at you!  Majority Rules!  You, my friend, are the real problem.  You can't fix a car with broken tools.  You can't fix your life if you are broken.  So the first place to start fixing your life is fixing yourself.

If you don't fix yourself, nothing will change.

 Self-evaluation is often uncomfortable. People around you, and life in general, do a fine job at beating us down.  Why should we participate by doing it to ourselves?  Because if you don't, nothing will change!  When it comes down to it, YOU are the central figure in your life.  What you do affects every thing else in your life. It's not being selfish or self-centered to focus on yourself and what you are doing.  It's survival!  If you don't survive well, others that are connected to you will not survive well either.  Be it coworkers, your family, your friends or just people in general, if you are doing poorly it impacts everyone else in some way. On the other hand, if you are successful and thriving, it benefits those around you.  

When you are doing well, you are upbeat and excited about life.  The people that you come in contact with can be positively effected by this. If you have money to spend, it benefits the businesses you patronize and the economy in general.  Being upbeat and excited is like a beacon on a dark night.  It draws people to you and lifts their spirits. It provides people with an example that one can win at life.  Wouldn't you like to be that example?  You can be!

Okay I'm ready - How do I start?

 

The first thing you should do is to look at where you really are.  Strip away the social veneer and really look at where you are in your life.  This establishes a starting point so to speak.  Without a starting point to measure against, how would one know if any progress is being made?

The next thing is to decide where you would like to be.  Call it a target or a goal.  Whatever it is, it's something you want to move toward.  Don't be overly concerned at this point about how you're going to achieve that goal or target.  That part will be discussed a little further on.

 

 

Wish - Want - Need - Got

 

Consider this concept: 

Wish; This is something you would "sort of like to have."  It would be nice, but it is unlikely you will put in the effort needed to get it.  As my father used to say "If wishes were horses, beggars would ride."

Want; This is something you would really like to have. This might be attainable but it's going to take some work.

Need;  A "Need" is something you are much more likely to put in the effort to attain.  "I need to eat" or "I need to put gas in my car or I won't make it to work" or "I need to pay my rent or I will be living on the street."  

It's amazing how it works.  Needs some how get accomplished.  Wishes and Wants are less likely to happen.

So what's the message here?  Turning your wishes and wants into needs.  It's a "mental" adjustment, that's all.  It's as simple as that, turn your wishes and wants into needs.  When you turn them into needs, you'll figure out how to get them. 

"Dream Building"

The goals or targets that you set should be real to you.  They should be something that you really need.  

Go-ahead, start dreaming.  But don't just do it in your head.  Make it real, write it down on paper, start collecting pictures of the things you really want.  Make a craft project out of it if you will.  Get yourself a poster board and start cutting pictures out of magazines and sticking them on the board.  Find pictures of the exact car that you would really like to be driving.  Pictures of vacation spots you would like to go to.  Pictures of the house you would like to live in.  Pictures of anything you want.  Be detailed and definite.  If you want a red BMW of a certain model, find that exact picture.  Remember, these are your "wants" that you're going to be turning into needs.  A picture of something "sort of like" the thing you want is not good enough.  It needs to be the exact same thing to work its magic.  

So..... where are we now?  By doing a sincere and honest self-evaluation, we have established our starting point. (Call it "Point A".)

By doing some dream building and then making those dreams real to you by finding the pictures of those exact things, (call this point B) you have now established the parameters of your journey.  Now you know where you are and where you're going.  Next comes the road map.  

To be continued..........

Building a Financial Wall

Building a Financial Wall 

Alas, Long gone are the days of our parents and grandparents when one could work at the same job for 30 years and then retire with a decent pension.  This pension combined with Social Security was enough to live comfortably for the rest of one's life.

Bad economic times, financial disasters and outright fraud have gutted most pension plans, leaving a huge number of honest people financially destitute. Now they are attempting to live on Social Security alone and that is a joke, although a cruel one. I know this because I'm one of those.  As a result of choices I made throughout my life, I must keep working or start looking for that packing crate that will be my new home.  Not a great position to be in.

Hang on! There is hope!

Regardless of your age or current financial state, there is hope. In this day and age of technology and the internet, there are opportunities to launch a business that will make money come in the door that do not require one to reenter the workforce and take another "job."  There are numerous online "work from home" opportunities available.  Yes, yes, I know, scams abound.  Many are designed to lighten YOUR wallet and fatten theirs.  Been there, Done that!  Not even a crappy T-Shirt to show for it.  With some careful "due diligence" one can find legitimate work at home businesses that do very well IF one follows the path of other successful people that have done well in the same business.

The key to success is Duplication

Long ago, I was taught that the key to success is duplication.  What does this mean?  Duplication means; Find someone that has what you want, be it a lifestyle, a nice car, a successful career or whatever and find out how they got it and then do exactly the same thing.  One does not need to reinvent the wheel.  There are plenty of successful people that are willing to share their methods and tools with others as a form of "paying it forward" and helping others dig themselves out of the ruts they were once in and that you have created for yourself.  I am now involved in one such business myself and it is gaining momentum rapidly thanks to the mentoring I am receiving and the tools I have been given.

Where is the employment and business growth?

Which industries are growing and which are shrinking?

 Due to various factors, some industries grow while others shrink. This is important for those still in school and contemplating a career.  Training to be a buggy whip artisan these days does not hold much promise!

I recently read an article on LinkedIn that had a great graphic representing the industries that are growing or shrinking.

Quite enlightening!  Many of the solid, tired and true areas are shrinking. MY belief is that is somewhat due to the aging population. The areas of Health Care, Wellness and other related industries are projecting pretty strong growth.

What is to be learned from this?  If you are looking for employment, training for a future career or looking to move out of one of the more traditional, but shrinking industries, this is where you should be looking.

I myself have launched an online business in the Wellness field and it's growing rapidly. Proof in the pudding so to speak!

My Adventures in the On-line Marketing games

Recently, I have been exploring several opportunities in the online business area. There are thousands of these available.  In fact, it you happen to put in an email address asking for more information, you will get deluged with hundreds of offers by email and phone.  If you do request more info, be prepared to some heavy traffic. 

Given this result, I would strongly suggest that you create a new email address specifically for this type of activity. Grab a new gmail, Yahoo, or other email address.  These are free and you can have as many as three gmail addresses that you can be signed into at the same time.  Just enable multiple login feature.

With the high unemployment rampant in this this and other countries, many are turning to home based businesses as a solution.  Thousands are making it work.  Unfortunately, millions more are getting scammed out of money they can little afford to loose.  Sorting out the real deals from the scams is tough.

Scams, Scams and more Scams!

There is no end to the amount of scams you will be exposed to if you choose to pursue this course of action.  There ARE good, workable online businesses out there but they are often masked by the "noise" that the scammers make.  Strident claims of "instant money for no work" are just blatantly stupid. If you fall for one, you will be sucked into the downward spiral to oblivion where all stupid people eventually end up. You can make money but you have to throw your ethics out the window and sink to the level of the scammers and become one of them yourself. Do you really want to go there?

The usual mechanism is to sign up "for free" and then get pounded by relentless "up-sell" and promotion to sign on to yet another tie-in offer to make even more money. The more money part is for THEM, not you, unfortunately. 

I recently stuck my toe into the water as an experiment on one "opportunity" that looked interesting and doable.  By the time I had had enough of the increasingly strident demands that I step up to the next level of the program "where the real money was" I had spent about 30 minutes wading through pages and pages of their "long form sales letter" pitch.  The capper was when I was going to be forced sign up for yet another "affiliate marketing" tie-in program that I had absolutely no interest in doing, in order to continue.  At this point I stopped and sent a request for my money back, including a rather scathing comment about there deceptive practices.  They quickly refunded my money ($19.95) so that at least was a good mark in their favor.  I sort of expected that this test was going to go this way so I was not really surprised that it did.

So, what is a person to do?

There are good programs out there, I'm running at lest two of them right now and I am making money.  Yes, there was some minimal investment to really make it work. There really is "No Free Lunch" and sometimes one needs to fuel the fire a bit to get it going. Ultimately, I got an ROI (in a pretty short time actually) that was many times my initial investment. WIN!  It's not a lot of money but a few hundred dollars a week is nothing to sneeze at in these tough times.  For some, it's the difference between paying a bill or talking to the bill collectors. If you are just sitting around at home being depressed because you are unemployed, its worth a shot. A little money is much better than NO money. Just be careful and read all the fine print and look out for the "gotchas" buried way in the back or the Terms of Service etc.

Be Careful!

Do a search on "home based business scams" and you will be surprised. In my research I ran across a few sites that "rated" home based businesses.  The one I discusses above was top rated on one of them yet turned out to be pretty scammy itself.  I strongly suspect that at least some of the "rating" sites are scams themselves that are simply set up to mask the scammers.  Like many "review" sites, the reviewers are paid to write positive reviews.  What value does that type of review have? NONE in my view. This even happens on well known sites like CNET for computer and technology products and software.

The bottom line is that one can make money on the internet, millions do every day. If you are careful and do your due diligence and research before plunking down your money or signing up, you can find one that works for you.