So many businesses are in so much of a scramble for new customers at any cost that they don’t realize some simple truths that could make the search for customers far simpler and far more rewarding. These simple truths are:

• Quality of customer should outweigh quantity
• Existing customers should be easier to service than new customers
• Loyal customers are many orders of magnitude better than transactional customers.

Let’s look at each of these different types of customer in more detail:

When the number of customers is larger it is often more difficult to maintain ongoing relationships. I am sure you have dealt with companies before where you are assigned a number – a customer number or account number for instance which means that in the eyes of that company you are just another number. The Peretto principle states that 80% of the business comes from 20% of the customers which demonstrates that 80% of that whopping number of customers have probably only bought once from you and feel mistreated because they feel that beyond the purchase there has been no warmth and no ongoing relationship. Some customers on the other hand completely abuse your customer support by calling every day to complain about minor or non existent problems. Some of these customers could even be spreading negative remarks about your company. It may be well worth your time to periodically review which are the best 20% of your customers and focus on these. You may even choose to stop doing business with those who are not considered to be valuable customers. It is far better to have a smaller and more manageable customer base that see the value in what you do and will likely become repeat customers.

So many companies focus on the development of new business tasking entire sales forces to go looking for new customers and they do this at the expense of keeping existing customers satisfied.  After all, the customer bought from you, so you must have been offering something of appeal to them in the first place. There must have been an element of trust also, because customers only purchase when a level of trust is felt. Even though you may very well have delivered everything promised, it does not hurt to have a follow up call every once in a while just to make sure that the customer is still happy. Providing exceptional customer service to an existing customer base will not only keep your existing customers happy but will also likely lead to repeat business or referrals.

Then finally we have customer who see doing business with you as a transaction. Perhaps when they did do business with you, you were the fastest, cheapest, best, easiest to deal with or only company available. These customers will typically show no loyalty and will continue to shop in the same way – looking for the best deal at the time. Loyal customers on the other hand feel compelled to buy from you even if you are not the fastest, cheapest, best, easiest to deal with or only company available. Take Apple, Southwest Airlines and Harley Davidson for example and you will understand that loyalty guarantees repeat business and a cult like following that is contagious, whereas transactional business is based on manipulating customers at the time of purchase and may result in repeat business in the best of cases, or it may end up with a loss of your customer to the competitor who pulled the greatest manipulation trick of the day.

Think about what you need to do to obtain quality, loyal customers and to keep those customer happy and your business will thrive beyond your wildest dreams.

Although it is becoming increasingly difficult to detect scams, there are still a few warning signs to look out with some of the most common signs listed here:

• Any opportunity that tells you that you do not need to work to build wealth. Wealth without work is at best “luck”.
• Any opportunity that tells you that you can start making huge amounts of money with a $0 outlay. $0 outlay opportunities will likely only make you small amounts of money.
• Any opportunity that tells you that you can make a huge amount of money within weeks. In fact I would typically avoid anything which gives actual earning figures, because those figures are probably going to be something you can not make within a few months of starting your business. Whilst a number of business opportunities allow you to build wealth faster than traditional business or franchise models; success will never happen overnight.
• Any opportunity that claims you will get instant leads that are ready to buy from you. Leads take time to generate and come as a result of a potential buyer trusting you. No matter which way you look at it, this will be the one part of your business that will take the most amount of work.
• Any opportunity that suggests you will be financially rewarded just for recommending the opportunity to others. Unless money is paid by a potential customer; you can hardly expect to get any money in return.
• Any opportunity that suggests that all you need to do is spread the word to your friends and family. Whilst friends and family may be good candidates for your products or services; you will more than likely upset those closest to you or quickly discover you don’t have enough friends and family to sell to in order to sustain a wealthy lifestyle. Instead look for an opportunity that teaches you how to market to people you don’t yet know.
• Any opportunity that provides a rags to riches story of someone in your neighbourhood. There are a number of scams which identify where you are and then present a fake story of someone who lives nearby you who is having success. It is always easier to relate to someone who is close to home who has had success than someone on the other side of the planet. The problem is that these so called “success acts” don’t exist. Don’t fall for any opportunity whereby the names of the leaders in that business opportunity can not be uniquely identified, contacted and verified to be real people.

Whilst this is quite a lengthy list, if you keep this close by when researching, you’ll be much more adept at detecting the few good business opportunities amongst the swarms of scams.

This is great because it is an entrepreneurial move in the right direction and allows a person to start taking greater control of their destiny as a self-employed business owner. When I refer to self-employed business owners I am talking about small businesses that may consist of just the business owner, or may include a few other employees who work for the business owner, but unlike corporations, the business owner is a linchpin in their business. Despite the numerous rewards this business model brings, a self-employed business owner, however, has to face a number of downsides which are often not immediately thought of, and had these come to light earlier, may have resulted in a diffenret strategy being taken.

For instance a typical self-employed business owner has most likely not come to the realization that now they have to take on every possible role; not just the one they were doing as an employee. Suddenly this means that sales, marketing, finance, IT support, recruiting and customer support are all part of the job description. Whilst some of these may be outsourced, outsourcing the lot could be very costly. It is likely that these additional burdens will seriously reduce the amount of time the business owner can actually work on income producing activity.

Whilst the control over taxes and tax benefits are superior to that of being an employee, a self-employed business owner will still be paying taxes at a higher rate than a corporation. So this could mean more income but more of it paid to the Government in the form of taxes.

Finally whilst the self-employed business owner has control over his or her tasks, unlike being told what to do by an employer, the self-employed business owner is still exchanging time for money. There are two red flags that appear here:

1. There are only so many hours in the day which can be worked; which means that income is capped.
2. This means that if the business owner stops working in their business, the business will potentially come to a halt.  A corporation, though, would involve its business owners working on the business, allowing them to take holidays or even stop working yet still receive financial benefits.

To see the difference let’s use an example: Compare depending on a pay check which is proportional to the number of hours worked  - this is what typical employees and self-employed business owners have to look forward to; and now consider the music, book and film industries in which the products are created once and ongoing royalties are paid even after the work is finished, which is similar to the way business owners of corporations get paid.

The key difference then is in whether a business owner is working in their business or on their business. “In” and “on” are similar words but in this context have very different meanings. Being self-employed may not be as liberating as first imagined and could result in overwhelm followed by a few headaches. It is not at all surprising then that an employee is said to lease a job; a self-employed business owner is said to own a job and a corporation business owner is said to create jobs. Which of these positions would you rather be in?

If you are dependent on one of the following four nest eggs waiting for you in the future, then you are in for times of great financial hardship and lots of broken promises, for all that is likely to be awaiting you is an empty nest:

Your spouse: even those of us from cultures where marriages are not arranged, our parents always tried to encourage us to try to find a partner who may be a little wealthier than us. “You don’t want to struggle, financially, like we did” they say. Some of us, like Elizabeth Taylor, are fortunate enough to marry into money, but therein also lays peril. With prenuptial agreements and divorce rates as high as 50%, the chances of still being married to a rich spouse are low. Your nest egg could shatter the moment those divorce papers come in the mail.

Your family: rich relatives are nice, but also few and far between. In most cases the family you will fall back upon will be your kids – after all those years you spent raising them, caring for them, clothing them and feeding them; now they can repay the favor. Whilst the average family may provide temporary support, ongoing financial support from your family is often short lived. The cost of supporting you for prolonged periods is likely to eat into your family’s nest egg. With not enough egg to go around that will leave everyone hungry.

Your government: my parents would have been living on the streets had it not been for a government paid pension. The problem is that when you reach retirement age, it is very likely that the Government’s pension fund will be completely dried up. Both social security and Medicare benefits will cease to exist. If you are expecting the Government to help you out, then you are in for a shock. Even increase sin tax today can not prevent this nest egg from exploding.

Your boss: whilst your boss may be paying you a healthy salary today, the moment you stop working for him or her, your boss has no concerns for you or your financial situation. A long time ago employers would pay a pension plan to loyal employees who have spent a life time in service. That nest egg stopped being the flavour of the month some 30 years ago.

If you are depending on one of these nest eggs to be waiting for you, then you seriously need to act now and find an alternative way to provide an adequate investment for your future. Starting a business is likely to be the lowest cost w ay to start. Failing to do so is going to leave you with more than just egg on your face.

Firstly, we had the global financial crisis which was essentially the result of financial practice in the US. Though this was not the single cause of the US economy taking a nose dive, nor was it the first in a string of events, it was the one which is associated with the greatest devastation and will be remembered for many years to come. After all it was responsible for the second biggest tumble of the stock market, the first being 1929 with the Great Depression following.

Secondly we have the Internet. The world has become a lot more connected and many of the barriers which were once responsible for determining success and failure have been obliterated. Almost anyone can practice freedom of speech and get their message out to the rest of the world whether it be personal or business oriented.

So, let’s look at how, regardless of where you may live, you can use these to your advantage:

1. Marketing is the first port of call when it comes to finding customers, or better still, having customers find you. The once localized mediums of newspaper, radio and TV and semi localized medium of magazine, which, incidentally, were also very costly have been replaced with low cost marketing methods on the Internet. If you are on a low budget or in a country on the other side of the globe you can still reach the rest of the world
2. Import and export laws made it difficult to ship products from one country to another. Now, with an Internet business with electronic products shipping is a thing of the past. It is very easy to create an electronic product and have it available for download the moment someone purchases it. This means you can be located anywhere in the world, as could your buyer.
3. Whilst those from an English speaking background tend to think of the Internet as being largely composed of information in English, there are a growing number of web sites in other languages. In fact, English is on the third most widely spoken language in the World. Mandarin and Spanish eclipse English. If you can speak English plus another language you have greater reach than many of us. Even for those who speak very little or no English, business in foreign languages is taking place online.
4. International payments in different currencies were once a nightmare to deal with. Nowadays we have e-commerce systems and payment gateways to make payment across time zones and geographic borders seamless. You can essentially do business with anyone who has a credit card or account with an online payment system, such as PayPal.
5. Even during a recession, regardless of where we live humanity tends to have similar reactions. We tend to clamp down on buying luxuries and concentrate on the necessities. It does not matter where you live because if you can provide anyone, anywhere in the world with one or more of the necessities they require during tough financial times, then you have a sustainable business.

The entire world is open for business 24 hours a day. It does not matter where you live; you can have a piece of the action and a piece of the profits if you have an online, recession proof business. Don’t use your geography as an excuse. Had I used this as an excuse, you would not be reading this blog post… for I, also, do not live in the US.

Let’s start with the word risk. Risk of failure occurs when there is a likelihood of failure and an impact of failure. To understand this better I am going to use a non business example that plagued us all at one point in time. Crossing the road. Sure, it is a piece of cake now, but think back to when you were a child.

Crossing the road was risky because there was once a time when you did not know that:

• There are road rules in place to give both motorists and pedestrians rights of way under different circumstances.
• Being struck by a moving vehicle had the chance to at best, injure you, at worst, kill you.

Therefore, crossing the road was risky because the likelihood of getting hit was high and the impact of being hit was high. By understanding and using aids to cross the road such as crossings, traffic lights, overpasses and underpasses we reduce the likelihood and impact of being hit by a moving vehicle and, consequently, the risk. Reducing risk is a two step process:

1. Understand what causes high risk
2. Use any resources available to reduce the risk

Now let’s go back to starting a business and use this same two step process to understand the risk:

1. Risk is considered to be high because of:

• The perceived rate of failure of new businesses
  • Lack of a good business model
  • Lack of a business plan
  • Lack of a financial plan
• The chances that the business may not be profitable
  • Lack of customers
  • Lack of a good product or service offering
  • Lack of reinvestment of profits
• The feeling that will follow if failure does occur
  • Loss of time and money
  • Humiliation

1. Resources available to reduce the risk are:

• A mentor who has already been through a similar process who can draw on experience and offer guidance. It is important to find a mentor and not and advisor.
• A well written business plan – this is half of the equation; the other half is following the plan
• A well written financial plan with detailed actionable items if profits are not received within the expected timeframe. Naturally, following the plan is important.
• A well written marketing plan that helps customer find you; as opposed to you finding customers. Again following the plan is key.
• Products or services that are in demand and stand strong even when the economy takes a dive.
• Perseverance through the expected obstacles
• Belief in yourself to be able to overcome any unexpected obstacles
• The knowledge that failure is an important step along the path to success. IN fact multiple failures may arise before success comes.

Granted, you will not be able to remove risk, nor will you be able to avoid it – risk is just a part of life, but if you understand it and know how to reduce it, then the level of risk should be acceptable and you should no longer fear starting a business. Start living by the motto “without risk there is no reward”.

1. Downsizing: how many times have the “job cuts” headlines in newspapers caused your heart to miss a beat until you realized that it was a completely different industry, at which time a sigh of relief swept over you? There are many reasons for downsizing, but at the root of most of the reasons for downsizing are financial worries. Regardless of whether there are economic recessions or not, when businesses run the risk of being unsustainable, panic sets in and employees are usually the first to feel the pain. Business owners, on the other hand, typically only lose their jobs if a business is in such financial ruin that it can not recover even by selling off assets.
2. Market changes: there was once a time when the railroad and shipping industries reigned supremacy. What happened? The airline industries started to take away their business. Now a century later airline industries are struggling as the business world has adapted to video conferencing in the many situations where people does not need to be physically present for a meeting. With technological changes some goods and services become redundant, and when an entire industry starts to crumble, job security is not an option. Although painful for business owners, they do have the power to adapt to technological changes by acquiring people with new skills.
3. Automation: continuing on from technological changes, sometimes it is not that new skills are required as one industry collapses and another emerges; sometimes; people can eb replaced all together. From planting seeds to collecting road tolls, technology has replaced these manual labor intensive processes with automated processes. If you hold a job in which your output is the result of a series of logical procedures rather than the output of creative expressions, then chances are that you have no job security. It is only a matter of time before a computer is doing your job far more efficiently than you ever could. For the business owner, having a computer rather than one or more people is an easy choice to make.
4. Offshoring: in recent times jobs have been going offshore to India, Vietnam, Philippines and China to name but a few places. It makes perfect sense for the business owner when skilled labor is available for a fraction of the cost. Think about it. In the US, if you are told you are one in a million it means there are some 250 people just like you. In China if you are told you are one in a million there are 1,400 people like you. I bet you are not feeling so special now? When the skills you have become a commodity then the value of your skills become lower and this is the reason why skills can be sourced from a larger pool elsewhere will send you job packing with a one way ticket to Asia.

Even if you are one of the most successful employees in your current industry, your job security could be at threat. If you are a business owner you can use these threats to your advantage; if not you may not have a leg to stand on.

Agreed, achieving success is hard work. Going that little bit further is even more difficult, but the rewards are truly breathtaking. Those who want to complete the last mile of their journey, the part of the journey where all of the fun begins, need to take on the IDEA. That’s right, not an IDEA, but the IDEA.

The IDEA is made up of four strategies that will allow you to maximize your wealth whilst reducing the effort required for creating wealth – essentially the goal of any individual that has built success but wants to grow beyond just a one off experience of success to a consistent series of successes. This is the ultimate definition of working smarter rather than working harder.

The IDEA consists of:

• Investment
• Delegation
• Elimination
• Automation

So, let’s take a closer look at each of these strategies:

Investment is the key to growing your success and resultant income beyond which any individual is capable of making through exchanging hours of work for hard earned money, whether you invest in your business, the financial markets or property. Investing does carry the risk of failing to produce return on investment, but when risk is understood and the return is positive, it is extremely rewarding. Investment should never be confused with saving. The two are very different strategies with investing providing a much greater return on your capital.

Delegation is a necessary efficiency strategy when you find the work load is too great, and failure to keep up with the work load will impact your income potential. Care must be exercised when delegating as productivity, and wealth creation, could be impacted if delegated to a person who is less than capable. Two common methods for dealing with delegation are to find an employee with the skills and capability, or to look to third parties via outsourcing. Delegation does not mean giving up full control, it just means leveraging others to help you focus on the more pressing tasks of building upon your success and increasing your money making activities.

Elimination may not seem so important on face value, but even the most effective people can have poor habits that, if not attended to, can start to impact on productivity and wealth creation abilities. Looking at any tasks you do which are neither urgent nor important and eliminating these will either reduce the amount of time you are spending on work, or free up valuable time for completing more important and urgent work.

Automation is for those repetitive tasks that chew up valuable time, or even those simple mundane tasks which with minimal effort can be automated. In fact any task which does not involve human intervention like emotional decisions, complex thought processes or morality issues, can usually be automated and will ultimately contribute to productivity and wealth creation.

Using all of these four strategies together can help us to perform a task once and maximize our return from that single task allowing us to benefit from multiple passive income streams.

If you have already conquered success, are you ready for the IDEA?

The bird was a great idea, but the lady with the pamphlets had no idea about marketing a business. She offered me a pamphlet and I said “no thanks”. I took a few steps and then a brain wave struck. I thought I would actually assess just how good, or poor, the marketing strategy was, so I took a few steps back. Her face momentarily lit up when she thought I had changed my mind about wanting a pamphlet. I asked the lady why her company was marketing the early bird car parking and the reply was that they were struggling to fill the car park at $27 per day so they reduced it by $10 per day and felt the need to advertise it. I then asked her how long they had been standing out the front of the car park handing out pamphlets and she stated that it had been each morning from 7am when the car park opened to 9am each morning for the last 6 weeks. I then proceeded to ask about the results since the marketing campaign had started and she stated that they had not seen an increase in the number of customers.

The young lady seemed to take offence when I suggested that she was standing in the wrong place to attract new customers. Somehow though, she must have thought about what I said because I noticed this morning when I returned for a follow up meeting that whilst the oversized bird was there pointing to a “$17 early bird parking” sign out the front of the car park, the lady was not there. I was later disappointed to find that whilst the lady did move to another location to try to entice a new set of customers, she was still not standing in the perfect place. Where was she standing? At the train station!

Now what is wrong with that? Well first she was standing outside the car park where she worked. The problem with this is that the customers who already use her car park know about the fantastic $17 offer so a pamphlet is not necessary; people who don’t know about the great deal this car parking lot has to offer and are looking for a car park will see the oversized bird and the sign and will, if they know it is a bargain, choose to park there. Now she was outside the train station which has loads of people, but what use is a car park to people who commute to work by train? You might argue that there is chance that the train commuters may on the odd occasion drive to work, or perhaps they only took the train today because their car is being serviced. On average, though, most of these people would not be looking for a place to park a car, no matter how good the price is.

The young lady would have been best placed out the front of one of the other nearby car parks to hand out pamphlets to those who had parked their cars in more expensive places to let these people know that there was a cheaper and potentially better option. The price differential may have been strong enough to entice these people to become customers, despite having to walk a little further from the $17 a day car park to their work places.

All too often I see this fundamental marketing mistake being made – thinking that anyone could be a good target. Regardless of your business type it is crucial to make sure that when you have a great service or product to offer, that you know who your target audience is and are marketing to it and nobody else. The quality of the target audience is far more important that the quantity.

Speed limits are constantly broken, whether it be the average speed demon on the highway breaking the 50 mile per hour limit or the likes of Andy Green who broke the land speed record in 1997 traveling at more than 760mph.

Athletes also challenge speed and physical endurance limits regardless of whether it be swimming, weightlifting or running. Some unscrupulous characters bent on excelling have even resorted to using illicit substances to further push the limits.

Turning to domestic matters we also seem intent on pushing debt limits. Spending limits are often exceeded. How many of your neighbors do you know who do not have some amount of credit card debt to speak of? Not many, I bet.

Did you stop growing at 5 feet tall but wanted to be a little taller? I guess that’s why we have high heel shoes, step ladders and stilts for those who wanted to reach beyond their physical height limits.

What about Alcohol limits? There are records for the most drinks consumed and then there are legal blood alcohol concentration limits, which once exceeded clearly tell us we should not be driving. Of course those limits have been smashed multiple times.

British explorer, Robert Falcon Scott was intent on challenging the prolonged human tolerable temperature limits when he set off on an expedition to be the first to trek across Antartica in January 1912. He died on that journey, defeated by Norwegian Roald Amundsen.

Edmund Hilary wanted to go beyond the normal human survivable altitude limits in 1953 being the first to conquer Mount Everest.

But why is it that the human race seems so intent on pushing limits?

I couldn’t help but notice also that once we push the limit it is only for a small gain. It seems that we are a competitive bunch. Give us a challenge, reward us with a prize and we will push the limits. Despite this willingness to accept a challenge to keep pushing the limits further and further it is quite odd that there is one area of life where so many people don’t seem intent on pushing the limits – the mind.

Asking the average person to open their mind to a new idea is often met with negativity, yet it is the key to mental and spiritual growth and the most important limit of all that should be pushed if there is desire to succeed in business and creating wealth. And above all, it is the one limit that if exceeded, will provide a huge gain.

Firstly. what’s the number one goal most people set? Money. The problem is that money should not be your goal! Do you get happy when you see vast amounts of money or even pictures of vast amounts of money? You probably do; in fact your eyes have probably glazed over with dollar signs right now, upon reading about money, but think about it carefully, is it really the money you are ecstatic about? Those valuable bank notes are just paper (or plastic in some countries) with some ink infused pictures and numbers. It is the image of what you can do with the money that leaves you glowing inside.

Conversely, loss of money does not leave you upset – it is the knowledge of what you can no longer achieve because of such a loss that eats away at you. For instance, you can genuinely feel excited at the fact that money can allow you to retire, or take your family on a three month cruise, or the shiny new sports car that your empty garage has been longing for. These are all things you can get emotional over. You can genuinely grin from ear to ear when you think about retiring from your job, when you daydream about taking your indulgent holiday experience or when you imagine driving your sports car on the long open roads. You can visualize the experience, feel it, smell it, taste it, and hear it. If your goals do not set your senses in motion and bring a genuine smile when you visualize those goals, then you need to find goals which do, because it is those goals which will bring reward, and those goals, only, which will give you a sense of purpose, a sense of achievement and the overwhelming desire to take action to achieve those goals.

To become successful money is important, as important to your pockets as oxygen is to your lungs, but it is not a goal, but merely a vehicle to help you achieve your goals.

Successful people set goals that stimulate the emotions and intrigue the senses. If, when you visualize your goals all you hear is the flapping of paper and all you smell is the mustiness of the inner lining of your wallet then you need to think about what money can do for you rather than think about money itself.

But that was 5 years ago, all is well now, right?

Don’t be so sure. We are just 4 to 5 years away from more troubling times when millions of baby boomers retire. This is going to put a drain on financial systems as:

(1)    Retiring baby boomers start to withdraw income from their retirement funds – which is going to cause the share, currency and commodity markets to take a dive; or

(2)    collect pensions which come out of tax payer dollars – the problem is there just aren’t enough tax payer dollars to keep so many baby boomer pensioners happy. After all the Government is broke!

So, just 5 short years away we could be looking at another global recession? Absolutely. Do you have a plan to beat the coming recession? You could go and bury your head in the sand and try to resurface once the economy rebounds, but that’s a lot of time in the sand and if you have read my blog posts on time, you see I do not gladly tolerate time wasters. You could, instead, find a more productive way to get through the coming recession and build wealth. Doesn’t that sound like a better option?

You see during the Global Financial Crisis as it has come to be known, more than 10 trillion dollars were “lost” – but we all know that money never vanishes – sure it may no longer be in your hands, but it is in the hands of somebody else. Money is never lost; it just exchanges hands. Now here is the clincher sentence in this blog post: Money always transfers from the hands of the poorly educated to the well educated. And when I say educated I do not mean those who graduated from a prestigious school or those with a double college degree – I mean those who are financially educated.

A financial education is fantastic but also just a starting place. It is only valuable when what has been learned is put to use and among the simplest ways to use that education is in building a recession proof business. That’s right – there is such a thing. Think about it – even the jobless or financially desperate still need some things to survive during tough economic times. Food, air, water, shelter are a few. Another which comes to mind is information.

Information?

If you have a business which teaches others how to thrive during a down economy you will rake in the money. Think about it, but not for too long, then act on it by starting a recession proof business and you will be the recipient in the next great global money exchange when the new recession strikes in 5 years time.

Well at least this excuse has some merit to it. If you are flat broke, having to beg and borrow, and lest I even say steal, just to put food on the table for your family… then you have a legitimate excuse. If on the other hand you have a few thousand dollars put aside or have the ability to save a few thousand dollars within the next 12 months, then you’d better take note, because you have or will soon have the capital you need to start a successful business.

But how? Terrific question. Logic will tell you that starting a business is very expensive and worse still, it may be a few years before you break even and then start making a profit, and finally, most disturbing of all, most new businesses do not survive more than 5 years. But your logic is outdated.

In the 20^th century, which is more than a decade ago, a business did require a huge capital outlay. You had two choices:

(1)    you built a business from scratch

(2)    You leveraged a franchise to get you established more quickly.

In both cases you needed to rent or purchase a facility from which to work; you needed equipment; potentially uniforms and more than likely staff. A franchise offered you the ability to leverage an existing well established brand name and marketing system but limited your creativity. Still, not a bad compromise if it allowed you to start turning profits in 2 to 3 years instead of 5 years.

But now we are in the 21^st century and we have moved from an industrial age to an information age. We therefore need a new way of thinking to recognize the huge business opportunity that lay before us in the Internet – the huge engine that is driving the information age and a new breed of online business. You can work at home – and your start-up costs almost vanish: no more property rental or purchase cost; nor more uniforms; no more staff; and no more equipment – of course only if you have a computer and an Internet connection, and the ability to market online at little or no cost was completely unheard of only a few decades ago.

The online business model provides a powerful way to make money in the 21^st century with low starting capital costs and the average tome to profitability being reduced from years to months.

But the word I am thinking of is not lengthy, nor is it difficult to spell or even pronounce for that matter. And it would hardly boost your score if you used this word in a game of Scrabble. It is just one of those words that so many people are afraid to use.

No idea? Well I just used it.

…the word I have in my mind is “no”.

To be precise it t is not really difficult to say this word – it is difficult to say it with intent. But that is not the worst of it. The truly rotten thing about not being able to say “no” when you really ought to is that it can severely erode your chances of success. How many times has an uninvited guest dropped by when you had plans to do something else and you wanted to say “no” but couldn’t? I’m sure you can relate to the difficulty of saying “no”. Sometimes it is incredibly difficult. Let’s look at some success damaging examples.

Do you have prospects that suck the time and life out of you and have not bought anything from you? Chances are those time wasting prospects torment you because you live in false hope that they may one day buy from you, and as such you did not say “no” to them.

Do you already have customers that want to make sure they get every bit of time out of you for  the little money they paid you? Chances are you have those customers because you did not have the heart to say “no” to them.

Do you have people who finally get their point of view across to you after several email exchanges back and forth over the space of an hour that could have been more succinctly covered in a 2 minute telephone conversation? Chances are you allowed that email exchange to occur because you failed to say “no”.

Do you give up the chance to work one more hour and produce an extra few thousand dollars of income in favour of catching up with friends to see a movie? Chances are you sacrificed making money for spending money because you failed to say “no”.

Let me ask you a question: “With 168 hours in a week, can you get away with a little time wasting?”

I am hoping you answered that question with a “no”, because you need to overcome this weakness and get used to saying “no”. I understand you may not win any popularity contents by saying “no”, but would you prefer to be popular or successful?

Now, if you have not watched the video and want to do so before I begin analyzing and discussing the results then watch it here.

Amy found two results that she really was not expecting:

(1)    That someone would not feel like it was an instant pay day and take all of the remaining one dollar bills from the tree.

(2)    The some people, despite the money tree being right in front of them, somehow did not even notice its existence.

Let’s look at the first case. Money, freely hanging on trees is not an everyday occurrence – Scarcity often invokes an “act now” mentality. How many times have you been tempted to buy something in a sale because that low price was for a limited time only? Despite that though most people seem to only acquire what they need or, more to the point, only what they think is acceptable. In this case, though many of the pedestrians probably could have used $100, they felt it was unacceptable, morally, to take more than a few bills from the tree. Most people do not want to feel as though their actions are the culmination of greed. On the other hand there may have also been a few who would normally be greedy, but given such an unusual occurrence treated the money tree as suspicious and acted out of character for the fear that if they did display greed someone they may know may have seen that display. Image is important to almost everyone and putting on a display of integrity, whether genuine or not, is a typical human trait.

The second case is much more interesting in that a number of people walked by the money tree without reacting at all, suggesting that they did not notice it. This comes down to the Reticular Activating System (RAS), a part of your brain known for helping you maintain focus n your goals. To demonstrate how it works let me give you an example. Since May 2007 I seem to be able to spot a Volkswagen Golf with minimal effort, almost like a sixth sense, yet prior to that I hardly noticed any on the road. Since I purchased one myself, my RAS is coming into play to help remind me that I bought a popular car. The truth is, however, that there were most likely just as many around previously, only my RAS considered a Volkswagen Golf to be “noise” and filtered out the noise. Of course, this is not limited to just cars, but anything we buy or sets our heart’s desire.  Back to the money tree, if people were not looking for a money tree, then chances are that these people, though subconsciously recognising existence of the money tree, did not see it because it was filtered out by their RAS. This explains why some people don’t see perfectly good opportunities right under their noses.

These two cases illustrate that if your goal is to be successful and wealthy then you need to expand your mind beyond the idea that having too much money is greed and focus your goals on what you would do if you did have a lot of money, otherwise you may be passing up the opportunity to reach your goals when you are presented with a money tree.

To help answer that question I recently stumbled upon an intriguing experiment performed by successful author, film maker and salad maker, Amy Krouse Rosenthal, who decided in the middle of 2010 to fulfill a long time dream by going to a Chicago street with enough foot traffic and hang 100 one dollar bills from a tree. That’s right, Amy created a money tree. Each of the bills had a removable self adhesive note on it with a motivational or inspirational message and a link back to Amy’s web site. The opportunity was a lucrative one – $100 of freely available money in a tree in clear sight and reach of pedestrians. It’s not every day you find money like that waiting to be plucked from a tree.

Now the next step was to sit back and see what happened… and for the benefit of you and I, Amy filmed this and placed the video online.  What do you suppose happened?

Well let’s think about all of the possibilities:

1. One person would see the money tree and take all 100 bills off the tree
2. Some people would help themselves to a few bills
3. Some people would help themselves to just one bill
4. Some people may just read the notes and not take the money
5. Some people would see the money and resist taking it because they thought it would be stealing
6. Some people would see the money and resist taking it because they thought it was a joke
7. Some people would see the money and resist taking it because they thought that if someone who knew them saw them taking the money it would not look good for their image
8. Some people would not even see the tree, as though it was invisible
9. Something else unexplainable

Now, I know how much it pains some people, myself included, to read about a climax before seeing a video, so I am not going to tell you what happened. What I will do in my next blog post, about 3 days from now is analyse the results.

Before then, I highly recommend that you find out what happened to the money tree by watching the video here.

Today I want to talk about real estate with a completely different frame of mind.

And I do want to talk about how this real estate is available at pre-gold rush prices. And better still I want to talk to you about how this real estate can make you wealthy.

But first I need to get you thinking on the same wavelength as me. When I am talking about real estate I am approaching it in the current times – we are in an information age and I am betting you are thinking about real estate from the former agricultural or industrial ages. Confused? I am talking about online real estate – web sites!

Think about it – when you buy a domain name for $5, $10 or perhaps as much as $30 you have effectively just bought yourself a piece of land to do whatever you wish with it. But you really need to be thinking about how your online real estate investment can make you money. You can go and sell your real estate at a later stage when it has increased in value, or you can build on it with the intention of keeping it and making residual income from it.

You can build a simple page, just like a house or you can build an expansive web site or blog which is like a skyscraper. And then you, effectively, rent it out. How? Good question.

There are three methods of making money with your web site:

1. Advertise – join an ad network which will place ads on your website and every time somebody either views or clicks an ad (depending on the model the ad network uses) you be paid some money. This is the least lucrative of the three methods, but it is also the simplest to set up.
2. Sell products – you could sell your own products or you could sell products made by others – the case of the latter, you will be known as an affiliate which is just another way of saying you are a reseller. For every sale you make from a product advertised on your web page you get a commission.
3. Create a membership site – you would need to create your own valuable products and content to give to paying members, and it would need to be updated so as to keep members coming back and, well, paying you. This is, by far, the most difficult of the three web site money making ventures, but is also the most lucrative.

If you are new to online real estate then I would suggest you try the first or second money making strategies to begin with.

Real estate at pre- gold rush prices – it really does exist.

Stickiness is key. In the current day and age, your web site is most likely going to be the first point of contact a prospective customer will have with you and is the best place to start creating that all important stickiness factor.

Now, I am not talking about search engine optimization or copywriting for advertisements in this blog post. I am talking about when those things have already worked to bring a new visitor to your web site. What follows on from that is the crux of this blog post: keeping the focus of your web site visitor and showing him or her that you have something of value and the biggest tip I can give you is to always be conscious of a visitor’s time as attention spans are short. Visitors to your web site are looking for something and if they can not find it quickly you can be certain they will give up and move on – where’s the point in inadvertently sending prospective customers over to your competitors?

The layout is extremely important. If things are not laid out logically, then the visitor will get frustrated and leave. Ensure that your most important information is closer to the top of the page as not all visitors are prepared to scroll down to find the information.

The colors can be of importance as well. Try to use lighter pastel color backgrounds where there is text, and text should be in black, except when it is a heading. Make sure headings are clear and larger than the text of your content. Also do not use fancy fonts as these make it more difficult to read.

Then look at how your text is formatted. If you have a continuous block of text it is often quite daunting in appearance and may result in visitors choosing not to read your content. Break up the content with these strategies:

• paragraphs
• subheadings
• sections
• insert media – images or video

As crazy and wasteful as it may sound, having some white space is essential as it looks like there is less content to read and will increase the chances of the visitor considering reading your content, then it is up to your copywriting skills or video production skills depending on the format of the content that follows to keep the visitor interested.

Another useful thing to keep in mind, and this is more of an odd one, is that when you create forms, an essential part of any web page that is tasked with capturing the names and contact details of visitors who have shown interest in what you have to offer, pay attention to the button on which the visitor has to click to send their information to you. This is called the “submit” button and by default, it will be labelled with “submit”. Studies have shown that leaving this with the default label is less likely to get visitors to give you their contact information. Instead, be more creative with, for example:

•  “Sign me up for my newsletter”
•  “Give me my free book”
•  “I want to attend this course”

These help reinforce to the visitor why they are in fact giving you their information rather than clicking on “submit”, which for all they know, could be submitting their information into a black hole.

Finally you will most likely be giving something away for free, which is always a great tactic to entice the visitor to want to give you their contact information freely… it is a trade, more or less – their information for your free item. Think about why some breakfast cereals sell well…because of the free toy inside the box.

Following these tips in order to keep visitors interested in what you have to offer is essential. So why not make your business and web site just like honey – sticky, but sweet.

Money is the currency we use and a couple of eggs get exchanged for about $1 rather than a small loaf of bread.

In order to make money you must have something of value to exchange for it. Those are the simple mechanics of life – to live you need to buy and sell items of value and making money comes from the selling part of the equation…. simply put you need to be in the business of exchanging products and services for money

Whether you like it or not, you need to be a salesperson. You may shudder at the thought of that term, proclaiming a lack of ability or confidence in making sales, but there are reasons why this fear has mounted.

When I say “salesperson” you probably conjure up an image of the worst salesperson you ever dealt with: loud, pushy, obnoxious, self indulgent… and the list of adjectives goes on. Perhaps you have encountered a salesperson who did not listen to you say you wanted the $10 Casio watch just as a means to know the time and insisted that you needed the $10000 Rolex watch which was foremost an exquisite piece of jewellery which also happened to let you know the time; or perhaps the rude salesperson who kept you waiting for 10 minutes whilst they were on the phone to a friend, and then upon finishing the call blurted out “I was busy, what did you want?”

Let me point out that there are salespeople who simply have the title, and there are salespeople who live up to their title. What I am suggesting you become is the latter. A good salesperson will:

• Always hear what the customer has to say before making suggestions
• Not make assumptions about the customer’s knowledge of a product or service.
• Realize that the reason the customer is there is because they have a problem and they need a solution.
• Always be of the greatest service to the customer.
• Understand the buying signals of a customer. After all, not all customers are there to buy, some are there to browse.
• Understand that buyers often take time to choose and then purchase.
• Understand that a customer will only buy from someone they can trust.

A good sale will involve a conversation, not a lecture on a product or a forceful push of a product down the customer’s throat.

In fact smart salespeople will leverage multiple resources to get the sales process in place long before an interaction with a customer. Now, with the Internet this becomes easy because you have low cost access to web sites, mailing lists and social media… all of which help establish a level of trust before a customer actually makes an advance to buy.

To be a good salesperson, keep those images of nasty dealings with bad salespeople far from your mind and just follow the simple steps here and, with practice, you will master the art of exchanging products and services for well-deserved money.

When looking up the definition there seems to be some mixed feelings around exactly what an entrepreneur is.

Some believe that an entrepreneur is an innovator, some believe an entrepreneur is someone who is able to launch a business, and some believe it is filling a void in the market for a niche that has not previously been targeted. In essence all of these point to a person who does not follow everyone else and branches out from the norm to do something different. That does not sound so bad when expressed in those terms. Why be normal when you can be special?

Whichever definition you adopt there is nothing to fear. Let us now analyze these definitions and see how each of these could apply to you.

When we talk about innovators we immediately jump to the conclusion that an innovator is a pioneer, an inventor or someone with a new idea. And that is not a bad conclusion to jump to, but where most make their mistake and start to get scared stiff at the thought of being an innovator, they assume innovating means product innovation; but, innovation could apply to process or procedure. You could take a very common product from a saturated market but if you package it differently or promote it differently that would make you an innovator. A classic example I came across a few months ago to demonstrate innovation was the late Michael Jackson. Wearing gloves was not new, but wearing one glove only was.

Launching a business may also seem scary, and particular risky, but unless you want to stay chained up in the corporate world until you retire, with a mediocre salary, average retirement payout and little or no pension to fall back on, then you need to take money making into your own hands and there is no simpler way to do that than to launch a business. This will be your fastest, lowest cost, lowest risk entry to a journey to being successful.

Also the word niche leaves many running for the hills, tail between legs, but this is just a fear of going against the masses, doing something different and standing out with the concern that if failure occurs, humiliation will be inevitable. In this world, so many things have been done before that finding a niche and using the Internet to promote your niche will still leave you with more than enough devotees who will follow your every move and commit to you as loyal customers. Finding a niche and filling a hole in the market is the best way to propel you on the fast track to success.

Would you prefer to be the sheep that follows everyone else, or the wolf that looks down on the sheep strategizing your next move? If you are scared of going alone, don’t be – wolves travel in packs too. What do I mean by this? As an entrepreneur, you are never alone if you reach out to a growing community of like minded entrepreneurs and build your circle of influence around those who are there to help you.

I think at some point in our lives all of us have an idea that if followed through and executed as we see it in our dreams or visions, could rake in some money – even a million dollars or more, but there are two problems:

1. The creator of that idea does not recognize it for its true value and dismisses it.
2. The creator does in fact recognize it to be a great idea of value, but fear prevents further action and eventually it gets dismissed.

Notice how in both cases, despite the thought process the end result is in the opportunity being dismissed.

Let’s look at the first case. This is the most common one and stems from the fact that many of us are not in tune with what others may be looking for. Though we may have a good idea, we think “that will never work,” or “who would buy that?” Truth be told, you don’t even need to have a great idea of your own. If you can find an already good idea implemented by somebody else and you can do it better, faster, cheaper or simpler then you have an opportunity. I know I have done this example to death, but it really is the best example to illustrate my point – Apple’s iPod. It was not the first MP3 player on the market, nor was it the last, but it solved the problem of being able to quickly get your favourite tunes into your pocket or blasting out of your car stereo system – mobile music and lots of it, without having to carry around awkward CDs or cassettes.

If you want another example, think of Sir Richard Branson with his Virgin brand. He has been able to offer fun, friendly and cost effective services in travel, fitness, cellular phone, music and finance simply by observing what was on offer and how it was falling short of what a global market was looking for.

So if you are in this camp, then what you need to do is find a product or service that you could improve on and get to work. There is your million dollar idea.

If you fall into the second camp where you do constantly have great ideas but dismiss those before getting started or shortly after getting started, this comes from the fear of failure. The best advice I have to offer here is that failure is OK. In fact, for each time you fail you get stronger and closer to your visions. The trick is to fail quickly so that you don’t spend an entire life time trying to execute your million dollar idea, because if that be the case it will probably cost you a million dollars instead of make you a million dollars.

If you often fail to progress your million dollar ideas to completion, be sure to write those ideas down so that you can clear your mind and come back to those at a later time. Perhaps then you will rekindle your former spirit and will then be able to make a fresh start on taking your million dollar ideas through to success and wealth.

There you have it. If you think you haven’t got any million dollar ideas – think again. It is not a valid excuse. There is always a way even if you have to borrow that idea or put the idea on ice and come back to it at a later stage.

People who reply in this way do so from a fixed mindset who fail to recognize that people can change, and also want to place the blame on others for not allowing them to have these skills, when in fact the failure to have these skills is wholly their own fault. Or perhaps this has been your response when someone in what seems to be a very good job role has talked about their living?

It is possible to change attitudes, albeit over a longer period of time, but changing knowledge is far simpler and can be done over a shorter period of time with learning. Applying what we learn then allows us to develop skills. Yes, we will most likely make some mistakes along the way, but this sets us up for greater opportunities and enhances our knowledge and skillset. Most people who become successful realize that there was a point in their life when they were not successful. A change was required to become successful. Becoming a different person, one who believed in success and creating different actions taking on new challenges and developing the knowledge and skills to resolve those challenges is what got them to success. In effect, these people have reinvented themselves.

Nowadays it is very common for someone to reinvent themselves by completely changing industries and developing new skills in order to forge a path to success. I studied physics at university, worked in information technology and now run a successful business in which I had to develop business, finance, marketing and teaching skills.

Not making radical changes as to who you are and what you do, you will not be making radical changes to what you have and what you want, which is inevitably to be successful, so start learning something new today to grow your mindset and skillset.

The source of a reply such as “I do not have the skills” is a fear of change, a fear of learning, a fear of failing which always stems from the fear of “what will others think of me if I do this”.

The best piece of advice I can give anyone with this poor excuse is: Don’t concern yourself with what others think of you and don’t let it interrupt your actions and disrupt you from your goals; this is not their life to control, but yours. You are in control of your own destiny and if to reach the destiny you desire, embrace it, commit to it and live it.

What do you do? Well, I can tell you what 97% of people would do. They would give up. Why bother? Someone has beaten you to it. And that’s where I draw the line. That is a poor excuse. A true leader who is deserving of success will see this only as a minor stumbling block.

Take your typical newsworthy athlete. Choose a sport; it doesn’t really matter – because the outcome will be the same. Let’s say that athlete competes in the Olympics and wins a gold medal. What next? Well they could claim in a moment of victory that they are the best in the world… and that is the truth. But a good athlete will not stop at that. They will not only try to win gold and that same title of being the best in the world 4 years later – they will aim to break their record – a swimmer will aim for a faster lap time, a weightlifter will aim for lifting a heavier weight, a gymnast will aim for a performance of greater complexity. What’s the common theme here? – they all aim higher.

So if you feel that someone has taken your million dollar idea and beaten you to the market – don’t see it as a lost opportunity. Instead, see it as an opportunity to challenge that competitor. Perhaps you will be able to offer a competing product which is faster, better, cheaper or easier and gain recognition for being the best. Persevere; Don’t give up. It may still be able to make you a million dollars – it may even make you multiple millions of dollars!

It was the early 1970s and TV had become the dominant medium for entertainment and education. The number of TV networks was growing and now the consumer often had so much TV programming choice that there was bound to be a clash of two good programs. Now a real innovation would have been to build a time machine to be in multiple places at the same time to watch all of the TV you needed, but considering it is now 2011 and the idea of a time machine is still a fantasy, we’ll have to settle for the next best innovation that lets us enjoy clashing TV programs – the video recorder. And that was Sony’s sure winner. Though it may have faded as the centrepiece of the living room with the DVD player, Digital Video Recorder (DVR), video games console and even Internet connected TVs nowadays, for about a quarter of a century the video cassette recorder, or VCR, for short had its glory days. The very concept of being able to capture a TV program to watch it at a later stage was a major innovation and Sony was first.

But, as I am sure you will know, Sony was not the winner. Just a few years later, another company also created its own version of the VCR which used an incompatible technology and video format, but surely that was not a threat. After all, Sony was the first, and Sony’s technology and video format was superior. What Sony failed to do was make the technology accessible. Sony kept its technology to itself, whereas JVC realized that it could license its technology to other technology manufacturers and collect royalties in doing so. Sony was about to embark on an ill-fated journey with its Betamax format as the video wars commenced and JVC and its licensed VHS partners took the lead.  Despite Sony’s ongoing innovations with its superior technology, it suffered not only from a lack of presence in both technology and titles to rent from the video libraries but also a lack of recording time. One VHS video tape could capture as much content as three Betamax video tapes. Sony eventually admitted defeat and produced a VHS VCR in the 1980s and seemingly learned its lesson having won the high definition digital video disc format wars with its Blu-ray technology.

You can have the best products and be first to market, but unless you make your products accessible either directly or through affiliates, if necessary, then your good work may be at a loss.

Being first doesn’t necessarily make you a winner.

Let’s imagine that you tell your friends and family about your plans to start a business with ambitious plans for success and wealth with the intention of quitting your job within twelve months. What is going to happen? You’ll probably be shot down in flames with reactions from “Why would you want to do that?” “That’s too risky?” “What’s wrong with your current job?” “Are you crazy?” to worse still “You’ll fail!” Brutal! Unless you are one of a the few who thrive on this negativity and use it as a source of passion and fuel on which to prove you are right and those who shot you down are wrong, it is highly likely that before you’ve even begun you’ve been knocked down from the rush of doing something new and exciting to thinking you are doomed to fail.

It is difficult, because we are influenced in life by those around us, in particular loved ones, who see the pain and anxiety if we try and fail. Because they have not been in a similar position they can only speak from their experiences and not yours and project their thoughts on to you. Suddenly your thoughts are overshadowed with doubt by their thoughts of what may feel like wisdom, yet is really just self doubt and inexperience. So what is the solution to avoiding these demoralizing experiences?

I am not saying that you should not listen to those who are closest to you. What I am saying is that your current circle of influence can possibly prevent you from making the changes in your life that you need to make to embark on success. I am not saying you should abandon your current circle of influence either. What I am saying is that you should expand your circle of influence to include spending more time with those who have what you want to have, who are the kind of person you want to be and are doing what you want to be doing. Then, when your circle of influence is inclusive of these people, discuss your ideas for success with these people only. By having the right conversations with the right people in your circle of influence you’ll be able to make the right decisions not only about your path to success but also on many other paths you take in your personal life too. Limit your discussions to those who are on a need to know basis.

After all wouldn’t it make sense to discuss your plans for success with someone who has already gone down that path so that you can learn from their victories and their mistakes?

In the last few years the Internet has exploded with communications tools. Blogs and social media have given everyone with Internet connectivity the ability to rant and rave about anything and everything. This freedom of speech comes with its pros and cons. Cons in that there is so much information on the Internet that it is sometimes hard to pinpoint what we may be trying to find as we desperately wade through conversation about what someone ate for lunch 10 minutes ago or perhaps someone seeking social approval for putting their Christmas tree up in October, but the pros far outweigh the cons. Breaking news is just that; no sooner an event happens and all the details with photos and videos are published online within what seems like seconds! Another pro is that this new form of communications also gives us a voice to communicate to the world about our business.

There was a time when the word twitter was seldom used, and when it was it described the occasional chatter birds made, but nowadays I hear the word twitter many times a day which either means that the birds are making a lot more conversation now, resulting in us talking about it more, or it has another meaning.

What exactly is Twitter? It is what you get when you merge a social media application which lets you shout out your every thought or action to the rest of the world with a blog, which lets you write themed content targeted for a specific audience. In fact this combination is called Microblogging because it provides publishing of messages limited to 140 characters in length.

So how could Twitter be useful given its limitation in message size? Firstly it is widely used meaning that it ranks well in search engines. It allows private and public messaging which are called “tweets” allowing you to target messages to specific audiences or to broadcast to anyone who cares to show an interest in you and follow you. It allows you to insert links which means that you can direct followers back to information on your web site. One of the most powerful features is that it also allows other people to resend your message to their followers, whilst giving you credit for having created it. This is likely to result in more twitter users following you.

If you do not want to be a twit, but would like to tweet, start using twitter to stay connected with your customers and gather a huge audience of avid followers in the process.

Psychologists believe that there are two possible mindsets that humans can take on. One of those mindsets leads to success, whilst the other does not. These mindsets are, according to leading psychologist and mind expert, Carol S. Dweck, the fixed mindset and the growth mindset. As the names imply, the fixed mindset is one that is stationary, has a finite set of beliefs and actions associated with those beliefs whereas the growth mindset is one associated with having an open mind to new ideas and modifying actions over time in order to grow.

Let’s look at my favorite analogy – the cherry tree. Those with the fixed mindset are like seeds that are planted but fail to grow, and those with the growth mindset not only grow but blossom and produce many seasons of fresh, juicy cherries. Another way to phrase it is that if you are not growing mentally, spiritually and intellectually as a person, you are dying.

But how do we know which mindset we are in? Well, we typically mimic those we most closely associate with – those in our circle of influence. That could mean our family, friends, colleagues or even casual acquaintances. If these people have a limited set of beliefs, do not believe in change and are often cynical then we tend to observe, be influenced and copy.

Over the next few days try to consciously observe which mindset you belong to by looking at whether in a given situation you are positive or negative, whether you take criticism from others constructively or destructively, whether you see the glass half full or half empty, whether you believe something you have never seen or heard of before could be possible or impossible, whether you see failure as a dead end or a path to new opportunities. Based on your observations you should be able to see whether your mindset is of the fixed kind or of the growth kind. It is difficult because your mindset may differ for different situations – that is normal. If you are finding that most of the time your mindset is fixed, though it may be hard for you to grasp, but change is possible and developing a growth mindset is something you can do, and will need to do, in order to become successful.

The best news of all though is that those with fixed mindsets can be transformed into growth mindsets.

Most miraculous of all, that very notion is with all of us despite which country we were born; which country we now live; what language we speak; whether we can speak at all, for that matter; what color our skin may be; what gender we are; how old or young we are; how tall or short we are; how heavy or light we are; whether we have lived the lives of saints or sinners; whether we are smart or dumb; or what we have learned or failed to learn in the past.

So what is this almighty great and powerful equalizer?

Take a guess!

Well, if you guessed a heart, or love you are not on the same wavelength with me. What I am thinking about is far more powerful than love, and without it, love could not exist. Have I thrown your mind into chaos? Any other guesses before I reveal the identity of this great equalizer?

What is it? It is time. Each day every human being has 24 hours of time upon which one may use however one desires. Unlike money, if time is wasted or stolen, it can not be replaced. Unlike the Universe, time can not be contracted or expanded.

Time does not stop for the weak, the needy or the strong – it just keeps marching on oblivious to its surroundings. You can, however, think of it as the one thing you do have an abundance of and the one thing in your life you have an influence How we use our 24 hours each day is yet to be of written, so start taking control of your destiny and writing your future and make your time on Earth well spent by doing something right now.

Now let me ask you – Has your perspective of the future changed at all? Have you made a new year’s resolution to use your time wisely this year? What does the next 24 hours entail for you?

Perhaps I am harsh for saying this is the weakest excuse, but I too have used it in the past and it got me nowhere. I had to change and I had to change quickly because time wasting is close to being unforgivable if you are committed to being successful.

We all have 24 hours every day and, since we can not go back in time or ahead in time, how we use that time this very instant is something we have control over. If you have used this terrible excuse then I suspect that it is control of your time which is the problem. In that case I have two words for you: “compromise” and “sacrifice”.

Compromise is the simpler of the two to embrace. Let’s look at some compromises you may be able to make to free up some of that precious resource we refer to as time:

• Instead of going out with drinking buddies for 4 hours on Thursday nights, go out for 2 hours and spend the remaining 2 hours on personal development.
• Instead of watching two movies on TV on Sunday night, use your TiVo or VCR to record the movies and watch them later, allowing you to skip the commercials which would amount to at least an hour of extra time to research business ideas.
• Instead of checking email constantly throughout the day, commit to only checking email once and spending no more than an hour reading and replying to email, to gain an additional hour to commit to financial education.

Notice what you can do with a little compromise?? – create 4 hours of time per week for embarking on success. Compromises are a great way to start as they allow you to gradually give up inefficient, time wasting activities. These are just examples, but if you put on your creativity hat you may even surprise yourself.

Now, let’s consider what some sacrifices may be:

• No longer reading the newspaper in the morning whilst on the train. This could provide an hour to gain a financial education.
• Not watching reruns of The Simpsons, Seinfeld, Two and a Half Men and South Park on TV freeing up a possible 2 hours each week to spend on personal development.
• Spending an hour less per day on Social Media sites allowing time to research business ideas and learn online marketing.

That’s at least 14 hours per week of freed up time which amounts to a little more than 4 weeks per year. Amazing! After making compromises, sacrifices will be easier to swallow, but if you have a strong mind and the determination to sacrifice certain aspects of your current life. right now, which are obstacles on your journey to success, then I salute you.

Don’t be fearful of making radical changes in your life in order to gain time for more valuable activities. After all, wouldn’t you prefer to work hard now and enjoy life later rather than enjoy life now and be miserable and penniless later in life?

Let’s back up a bit. Christmas is a time for giving; not receiving. Let’s rewrite that as “Anytime” is a time for giving; not receiving.  That’s where a lot of business starters fail. They have their minds set on the goal of being profitable and wealthy – on receiving rather than giving.

To be successful in your business you must be constantly giving – you must be giving away information of value with the knowledge that most of your prospective customers may never give in return; but the few who feel bound by a powerful need to uphold the notion of reciprocity will in fact give their money in return. By focusing on the giving the receiving will take care of its self.

Two great examples of this are Google and Wikipedia. Google was adamant that it wanted to give its users the best search results possible. For a few years Google concentrated on this and kept improving its results without even having the slightest thoughts about how it would receive money in return for its efforts. Nowadays we know that Google’s largest revenue stream is advertising, known to many as Google Adwords, but keep in mind that the receiving came a few years after the giving. Wikipedia is the free encyclopedia updated entirely by volunteer subject matter experts. This collaborative approach means that there is a community of givers who are working without the thought of receiving.

Think about your journey to success right now and ask yourself whether you have been focused on giving or receiving. If it is the latter, move the focus from you to your prospective customers and I am sure you will notice a world of difference, and then by what seems to be magic, you will in fact start to receive for all of your giving efforts.

…And to answer my previous question – Why would I write a blog post on Christmas day?  Because anytime is a good time to be giving and that is what I am doing with this blog post.

Happy Holidays.

This got me thinking – how do you create such immense value in your business? How do you have something so valuable that it is not only in demand but increases your income potential and profitability beyond your wildest imagination? You also need to have something that is precious, unique, irreplaceable and valuable.

Too many times I see copy cats who see that a particular market is popular and dive in only to turn the market into a commodity whereby the only incentive left to choose one product within that market over any other is based solely on price. Don’t get me wrong, I love a bargain, as do most of us, but as business owners we don’t want to be fighting over crumbs like a couple of seagulls; what we really want is something special that holds its value and the answer is innovation.

If you are sighing at the thought of having to be innovative, you need not worry too much. Not all of us have to be on the forefront of cutting edge design and new ideas. There is nothing wrong in taking an existing and proven product and promoting it in a unique way. But if you think this is not being innovative, then I have news for you. Innovation does not only apply to the product but also in the way it is packaged and presented. I know I refer to Apple quite a bit, but they are a great case study for business starters, owners and marketers… Consider the iPod – it was not the first MP3 player to see the light of day, nor will it be the last, but it was innovative in that it was presented as “a 1,000 songs in your pocket”. Also think about the millions of dollars invested in an anti gravity pen to be used by US astronauts when in space. Russian cosmonauts instead opted for an innovative solution that was, by no stretch of the imagination, new – a pencil. Innovation is best described using a new or existing solution in a new and creative way.

To be valuable to your customers you do not necessarily need a new product bursting at the seams with more features than any human could ever use; you do not necessarily need a new and eccentric hair raising idea; you do not necessarily need the cheapest prices on the planet – you just need something unique and that something will hold value and increase your success and, consequentially, your income potential.

How precious are you to your customers? How valuable are you in their eyes?

In a society that is dependent on money and tends to measure success by how much money one has, regardless of whether you believe that is right or wrong, it is difficult to get by without having even the slightest interest in money. Now we know that when it comes to choosing our goals for success, money should not be the goal, but a byproduct of our success. We also know that money does not grow on trees, so how does one find that actionable opportunity that will lead to success and money without robbing a bank, waiting for a wealthy relative to leave a healthy inheritance or hope for a touch of luck in some form of gambling stint?

When it comes to earning an income there are four categories of people, according to bestselling author, business coach, financial educator and entrepreneur, Robert Kiyosaki, which are described in his book “Rich Dad’s Cashflow Quadrant: Rich Dad’s Guide to Financial Freedom”.

So let’s introduce the four categories of people.

1. employees
2. self employed
3. business owner
4. investor

Most of us start in the first category, employees, and finish there, because that is what we were taught to do and, until about 40 years ago, it was great advice. Sadly times have changed but so many of us have not changed with it leaving us as a tired and aging population that is… well, penniless, endlessly waiting for money that will never present itself. As an employee you are effectively enslaved to one or more bosses who control your time and money during work hours and often dictate your working hours. You could think of it as being imprisoned for a period of time each work day. If that’s not bad enough, the government is also taking a slice of your money as taxes leaving less for you. As an employee you really need to work hard to increase your income and chances are that an increase in salary also means an increase in working hours.

The second category, self employed, is for the few that show some initiative and realize that to control time and money they need to be the boss. This is great in principle, but if you think through this idea to conclusion there are only so many hours one can work and unless one can increase the value of oneself drastically, there will be a capped income earning potential. If self employed people recognize this then they will most likely move into the third category.

The third category is a business owner. Like self employed the control of time and money is in the hands of the business owner, however, business owners recognize that having employees to delegate work to or outsourcing work to trusted third parties will quickly increase the value of the business and not make it dependent on a single person. A business, once established should be self sufficient and will be the easiest way to break away from the cycle of exchanging time for money.

Lastly we have the fourth category, investor, which is where we would all start if we had the finances to do so. Those in categories one and two will probably struggle to reach income levels to get to category four, but business owners would see this as a logical step and often embark on this path once they start receiving a steady business income. Investing is where the work hours reduce and the income accelerates like a snowball down a mountain slope. This is the very essence of passive income at work and is perhaps why Richard Kiyosaki says “the wealthy do not work for money, money works for them.”

So if your money situation is not looking the best, consider moving from category one to category three. Instead of finding a part time job to boost your income; start a part time business – it will pay off in the medium to long term.

1. Strategy: it is always important to have a well-defined strategy that gets you from an idea to the end goal. This may not always be visible at the time an idea is conceived but it should be formed during the journey to success. Without strategy you will be like a tumbleweed drifting in the wind – nobody knows exactly where you will end up. You must have a strategy for success.
2. Understanding: without understanding your limitations and finding ways to overcome those through development or delegation you will constantly hit roadblocks that may dissuade you from either starting or continuing on your journey to success. You need to understand and then embrace your limitations in order to succeed.
3. Collaboration: an important one – no successful individual completed the journey alone – conquering Mount Everest took a team; landing on the moon took a team. Your success depends on collaborating with others. You need to find a mentor and likeminded people with whom you can mastermind.
4. Consistency: successful people make up their minds quickly and change their minds slowly. They will make a choice and take consistent action on the necessary tasks which help them on their journey to success. This is in contrast with the sporadic activities performed by the majority of people on the planet who only show consistency at looking for the next best thing. You need to be consistent in your actions.
5. Education: you may have graduated from school or gone on to graduate from college, and for most of us that is where we believe our education stops. Those who wish to succeed know that formal education is just a beginning. Self education is a powerful ongoing means by which you can propel yourself to success. You can either grow mentally by learning or die mentally by believing you have all the knowledge you require.
6. Energy: without a little energy to power your creativity, you will struggle to stay focused on your goals. Energy fuels your body and helps keep you innovative and passionate about your journey to success. You must be energetic to remain active on your journey to success.
7. Discipline: whilst consistency ensures constant action, persistence is what keeps you motivated when things don’t go to plan. No journey to success ever goes smoothly. Expect bumps along the way, but commit to being persistent. Stay disciplined and you will be rewarded frequently on your journey to success.

If you are serious about the journey to success then make sure you have each of those seven areas covered: Strategy; Understanding; Collaboration; Consistency; Education; Energy; and Discipline.

So that is where the bulk of the problems appear to originate… most pass over opportunities as they don’t know what to look for when it comes to opportunities for success. Experience tells me that the root cause is not totally in the failure to recognize opportunities but the fact that many would not even know where to begin looking, so let’s look at the where to find opportunities and what opportunities to look for.

There are many places that business opportunities may appear. There are the classifieds in your local newspaper, for example, or the odd magazine on your newsagency shelves that targets entrepreneurs or small business owner hopefuls, but as you may have guessed, the Internet is by far the best choice, teaming with more opportunities than you have time to read. Therein lies a problem though; The Internet could very well be a source of information overload, but don’t worry, there is a way to narrow down the choices quickly.

So that covers, the where, now let’s tackle the what!

Unless you have huge amounts of capital to begin with, most businesses (including franchises) will fall outside of your budget. One of the rising stars in this area though is home based businesses which require very little upfront capital and can also produce a fast return on your investment. Imagine the luxury of working from home yet pulling in a six or seven figure income!

Next, we need to beware of bad opportunities. There are more untrustworthy people on the Internet trying to push get rich quick schemes or should I say “scams”.

Finally you need to look for a business that comes with support. Starting alone can be daunting, so it helps to have a community of mentors from which to learn and lean on when the going gets tough; but also training materials on preparing your mindset for business, leadership, sales, marketing and finance will be essential to your journey to success, so ensure any opportunities you pursue include at least one of these types of education.

If there is one piece of critical advice I can give you, it is to do plenty of research before committing to your new business opportunity. Look out for scams and research as many reviews, testimonials and case studies you can find from those who have already tried the business opportunity you are thinking of pursuing. Tried is the key word here, because there will be a plethora of individuals who write reviews without experiencing the business opportunity.

These obstacles all stem from fear of failure, which we know the real reason to be a fear of what others will think if failure occurs.

Do you think that genius implies success? Well, success in not a measurement of how smart you are, nor is being smart a guarantee of success. What brings about success is identifying a goal, finding an opportunity to reach the goal and taking consistent and persistent action until you reach that goal, overcoming any obstacles that crop up along the way.

Some of the most unlikely characters in history achieved success despite failing an element of their schooling or dropping out early on. For instance:

• Henry Ford barely received an education yet founded Ford and became one of the most successful figures in the automotive industry.
• Bill Gates was a Harvard dropout, yet this did not stop him from embarking on a vision of having a personal computer on every office desk and making in excess of $50 billion.
• Andre Agassi, dropped out of school in ninth grade before going on to win 8 Grand Slam titles and become a tennis pro at 16 years of age.
• Jennifer Aniston decided that going to college to further her education was not as important as getting her nose remodelled, which went a long way to getting her into popular sitcom “Friends” and many other TV and cinema productions.

French moralist and essayist, Joseph Joubert once said “Genius begins great works; labor alone finishes them”. Just because someone has a high IQ, an aptitude for learning and a bunch of great ideas does not mean success. The following are required to achieve success:

1.            Believe in yourself and the possibility of success

2.            Conceive a great idea

3.            Retrieve the tools and resources to act on the idea

4.            Achieve your idea by taking action

5.            Receive the rewards as a by-product of achieving your idea

Admittedly many of us stumble even with the first requirement. Geniuses, on the other hand are likely to get as far as the second or third requirement and come up with enough potential million dollar ideas for all of us, yet they fail. Why? Thomas Edison had many ideas for creating the light bulb and many of these did not work. Of the thousand or so ideas he did have, only one of those worked! So is it a matter of just identifying that winning idea?

Finding an opportunity to carry out the idea is the next stumbling block, and may even defeat some of the geniuses. I have come across geniuses with great ideas but they don’t seem to know how to establish the money or the means to launch their ideas.

Finally, taking action is required. A genius, once again who has the idea and the opportunity may not be inclined to take action. Recall that a genius has the intellect, but perhaps not the ability to work hard to turn the products of intellect into products of reality.

From my analysis, you don’t need to be a genius to be successful. In fact I would argue that what separates one who is a genius from one who is successful is the ability to take action.

Those who thrive and ultimately become successful in any endeavor detach themselves from the negativity and create a bubble of positivity in which to succeed. I am not talking about being delusional but finding good where there would seemingly be none, finding the silver lining in each cloud, or finding a four leaf clover in an endless field of three leaf clovers.

It’s not that hard to be in a state of positivity if you can take three mood changing actions. The first is the hardest to grasp, but the other two cannot follow unless we master the first.

These three actions are:

1.            take responsibility for all actions including your mistakes

2.            forgive yourself and then forgive others

3.            be grateful for all of the good things in your life

Taking responsibility for all of your actions is difficult. Most of us are happy to boast when we do something good, but quickly try to shift the blame when we make mistakes. BY contrast I know I am responsible for each of my actions so it is my fault if those actions do not have the desired outcomes and you also need to understand that you are responsible for all of your actions and the outcomes of those actions. Instead of saying “I could not help it”, “it was an accident”, “it was not my fault”, “he did it”, “she did it” or “not my problem” simply accept that whatever happened was because you chose to be at that place, at that point in time – it was entirely your fault. Only if you were not present, physically, mentally and spiritually could it not be your fault.

Once you have accepted responsibility for your actions and accepted any blame for making choices that led to undesirable consequences, then you can start to forgive. Who do you forgive… well, there is only one person at fault to forgive, and that is you. If you can forgive yourself, you can stop beating yourself up for any mistakes you made, learn from those mistakes and move on. If you can forgive yourself, forgiving others who accept responsibility for their mistakes becomes a whole lot easier.

When you have accepted responsibility, forgiven yourself and moved on then you can start to be grateful for all of the good things in the world. Do you hate it when it rains? I don’t…to me, the rain means my vegetable garden gets the water it needs to grow and the reservoirs fill up with plenty of water to help me quench my thirst during the hot summer months and fill the swimming pool so I can cool down on scorching hot days. Do you hate paying taxes? I don’t, and don’t assume I have gone mad for saying so. Paying taxes means I am earning a substantial amount of income to support my deeply loving and devoted wife and my adorable little girl, who are beacons of light in my life. Try it… think about something you hate, or even despise, and spin it upside down. Find that silver lining. Create a positive experience from it and then tell me how good you feel and how much better your day becomes because of a little gratitude in your life.

Negativity surrounds you, but only if you let it consume you will it become that roadblock to your success. Combat it by accepting responsibility for all your actions, forgiving yourself and then others and seeking gratitude in your life. You can the move from hopelessly surviving to hopefully thriving.

In order of application:

1.            People

2.            Processes

3.            Technology

First we must start with the people, and not just any people; people who bring out the best in you. People largely make up your circle of influence and the aim is to make that circle stronger as you build your social network with not only more people, but those who share a common interest with you, which is the passion to be successful and the recognition that working together will help all members of your circle of influence achieve success. Another name for this community of like minded souls is a “master mind” group. How foolish I was in the past when I heard the term “master mind” and thought it was a group of social outcasts who got together in underground lairs to plot destruction of the world and mass chaos unless a hefty ransom fees were paid. I guess I watched Austin Powers one too many times. Getting back on topic, Sharing your goals and achievements as well as failures with your master mind group will help you all learn from time costly mistakes and become successful a lot quicker.

Once you have your people in place, it is time to put what we have learned from those people into practice. This is where your processes come into play. Here you define your goals, visualize your goals, create action plans to reach those goals perhaps, in the process, creating lots of smaller goals or milestones along the way to which you will take small but steady steps to achieve. Also your processes must take into account the process of retrieving the tools and resources you need to succeed with one of the most important resources being continued learning from your circle of influence. Remember that process define not only that you must do to achieve success, but also that you must not do; such as aimlessly wasting time watching too much entertainment or TV.

There will come a time when your money making activities hit a peak and you will want to start to ease your way out of the driver’s seat to take a look around you and enjoy life. This is where technology comes to the rescue, helping us do those monotonous and repetitive tasks quickly to the extent of automating those tasks. Now that is truly working smarter, rather than working harder. Of course, unless you have mastered your money making activities by engaging the right people and processes then leveraging technology is not going to help.

If you want to be amongst the minority of individuals who know how to thrive and build success. you simply can not get by without connecting with people with common goals, putting all of the necessary processes in place and leveraging the benefit of technology to carve out the fastest possible path to take you to success.

Now, if I say “breakfast cereal”, chances are the first thing that comes to mind is cornflakes – if I go one step further and say “breakfast cereal brand” I am sure the majority of you would think of Kellogg’s, but if I say “milk brand” then Kellogg’s would not come to mind. Not to be intimidated by this, however, Kellogg’s decided that if breakfast cereal with milk was a great breakfast combination and it had one half of the puzzle solved then why not finish the whole puzzle and start creating milk. Fantastic idea in theory and it probably would have worked, but Kellogg’s was not content with that idea alone – it instead wanted to package the two together. What a winning combination? Well, actually not, it was a big flop.

Kellogg’s launched Cereal Mates the next best thing to breakfast cereal – that is breakfast cereal packaged with a small container of milk. After all the two go hand in hand – they are mates, but the problem is that one of the mates, the milk, likes the cold and the other, the cereal, is quite flexible about temperature. The compromise was to put them together in the refrigerator and that was the fundamental flaw. With the exception of my wife who first pours milk then adds cereal, but that’s another story, most people think of pouring the breakfast cereal and then adding the milk, just like adding a condiment such as salt, pepper or sauce to a steak. Mmmm…. steak! Now I feel quite hungry, but back to the blog post…. As a result consumers thought of Cereal Mates as breakfast cereal with milk and, when shopping, looked for Cereal Mates in the place where breakfast cereals should live – on the supermarket shelf. The problem was that Cereal Mates were hiding over in the refrigerator near the milk and sales were dismal. Perhaps cereal and milk are not best mates after all!

If you are promoting your product in places where your customers can not find it, then you will also suffer dismal sales.

I could understand that in a new market with a small but soon to grow customer base and a lack of distributors, that the cost of production and distribution of CDs would be high and that it would only be a matter of time before CDs would increase in number and decrease in price.

But one of the things I did find hard to swallow was that even as the choice increased I found myself often buying a CD album only for one track. In most cases the other eight to fifteen tracks I simply had no interest in. Now you could argue that the music industry was just offering music as it had done before – after all there was nothing new about the concept of an album – it had existed on cassette and vinyl record; all that had changed was the media and the technology to play the media. Tradition and heritage can be problematic when market perception is changing, though. You could also argue that the music industry felt a responsibility to fill up the media to its fullest capacity of up to 74 minutes of audio for a traditional CD, though the CD single offered reduced capacity when it was released – after all this is just adding value.  But it should be noted that if a CD contained only one track or a dozen, the physical space it occupied was the same. But all I often wanted was one track – sure having some bonus tracks might be nice, but not when it comes out of my hard earned expenses. What I wanted was to pay only for the tracks I wanted.

In the late 1990s the status quo of the music industry would be sent into turmoil with the release of the MP3 and even more so when it was seen as more than a fad but as a revolutionary business model in 2004 when Apple legitimized it as a business to sell MP3s via its iTunes Store. It is important to note Apple did not invent the MP3, which is important in itself, because a business does not have to be built on new inventions – it just made the MP3 more accessible, and accessibility is key to building a strong market with a strong following. Now here is what I had been waiting for – the ability to buy just the tracks I wanted. Furthermore there was a lot more choice – any music artist who could produce an MP3 could sell it, whereas previously we were at the whim of the music industry who decided what they thought we should listen to.  But the most important distinction is that it was in a convenient format ready to go without requiring me to pay for the artwork and more costly distribution and other tracks which I simply did not want.

The music industry received a long overdue wakeup call. The best businesses in the world deliver exactly what the customer is looking for, nothing more, nothing less. If there is more to deliver, then separate it into a different product or offer it as a free bonus.

Don’t make customers pay for what they don’t want.

It truly is difficult to recreate the sensation one feels when going to the cinema even with a good investment in home cinema technology and a popcorn maker. It’s good but not quite the same. But, believe it or not, there was once a time not that long ago when the cinema business was in trouble. Patronage was at an all time low and film studios resorted to the legal system to try to shut down the threat to its profits. But what was the threat?

Video. The 1980s saw the video cassette recorder, or VCR, gain popularity. Around the same time one hit wonder, The Buggles, released a song titled “Video killed the radio star”, but little did they know that it was killing off the big screen business too. Looking back it seems preposterous. How could that small innocuous device have such an impact? Firstly it provided convenience, which is one of the merits of a good product – why go out and spend money on movie tickets and overpriced snacks when you could relax in the comfort of your home and watch a move at your leisure? Secondly, as video rental libraries cropped up to capitalize on the film industries initial losses, there was a lot more choice. Your local cinema complex may have screened up to half a dozen current movies, but your local video library had hundreds, if not thousands of titles to choose from. Choice is a big factor in pleasing the consumer. Finally, the sound quality, picture quality and comfort level of a typical tired old cinema of the 1980s was much in need of a revamp as it was hardly distinguishable from that of watching a video at home on your television. Having a differentiator from your competitors is important.

It seemed that cinema was doomed, but with Hollywood film studios realizing that they too could make additional revenue from video and continued to make refinements to the movie going experience with better seating, larger cinema complexes to screen more movies concurrently, bigger screens and larger than life sound. Then of course recent innovation has seen 3D movies grow in popularity. I even saw a 4D movie advertised recently with the fourth dimension being aroma. (Remind me never to see Back To The Future in 4D, I don’t think I could handle the manure scene).

So the important lesson that the movie industry learned is that it is not enough to sell a movie ticket and some luke warm salty popcorn. Going to see a movie is about the experience. Whatever your line of business may be look beyond your products to create an experience that your customers will never forget.

Don’t just sell a product, sell an experience.

Take a cherry seed. It has the power to grow, blossom and produce an ongoing passive and residual supply of cherries. But unless it is planted it is simply just a seed. If it is planted and not nurtured, it will die. If it is planted and not given enough resources such as sunlight and water, it will die. Once it gets to a certain point in its life it your cherry tree can become self sustaining, and in spring each year it will produce a mesmerising display of blossom followed by a harvest of fruit. Then simply take one cherry, extract the seed and plant it and you can start the process all over again. The power of reinvesting to produce multiple harvests of ripe red succulent cherries all starts with just one cherry seed.

Now take a business idea. It has the power to grow, blossom and produce an ongoing passive and residual supply of income. But unless that idea is acted upon it is simply just an idea. If it is acted upon and not followed through, your business will die. If it is acted upon and not given enough resources such as time and money, it will die. Once it gets to a certain point in its life your business can become self sustaining, and will continue to produce a steady income that you can live on. Then simply take some of that income, and reinvest into the business or invest into another business and start the process all over again. The power of reinvesting to produce multiple streams of passive, residual income all starts with just one idea.

Ahhh, now that makes sense, I hope.

It is the same five step process:

1. Believe that you can make it happen; believe in yourself
2. Conceive an idea that can help you build a solid income producing business
3. Retrieve the resources and knowledge you need to get started
4. Achieve your goals by acting on the idea with the knowledge and resources you have retrieved
5. Receive continual rewards for your efforts

Many great ideas die because of hitches in one or more of these five processes. If your idea is not seeing the light of day, remember that you can not reap fruits of labor if your cherry seed has not yet been planted.

Who better to learn from about the successes following an act of gravity than physicist Isaac Newton, famous for formulating the ideas of gravitational forces following an incident in which an apple fell from a tree?

Ironically, in the 1990s we had another story involving an Apple, Newton, gravity and success that followed. Prior to Steve Jobs rejoining Apple and taking the helm as CEO, Apple seemed to be downward spiraling, as if gravity had taken hold of it to an all time low when it released a handheld product named “Newton”. This incident for Apple was then followed by great ideas including the iMac, iPod, iPhone and iPad.

So it seems when gravity is pulling us down we should not despair – there are always ways to come out on top with great ideas – and lucrative ones too.

So how does one continue to thrive instead of barely survive during times of economic woe? Here are five tips:

Stay positive and stay focused whilst everything comes crashing down around you.

1. Remember that if you if you have fallen to the bottom, the only way you can go is up.
2. People look for someone for guidance and help during these dark times; if you can help others you will be rewarded. Be the one who offers a solution whilst others can only see problems.
3. A falling economy is not a loss of money but a transfer of money from those with problems to those with solutions.
4. Even in a fallen economy there are still plenty of people looking and willing to pay for information on:
   • Health
   • Wealth
   • Wisdom
   • Love

So when gravity makes an apple fall, remember that there are plenty of great ideas that can follow. Don’t let a falling economy be an excuse for why you are struggling to prosper in your business.

With the increase in hours worked one would expect that given that in a job we exchange time for money we should be better off than merely surviving – we should be thriving, but as I look around at the average person walking down a city street just before 9:00 in the morning I do not see immensely wealthy people; I see people who are in debt living from one pay check to the next; using coupons to pay for groceries; reading the menu in the restaurant from right to left; and cash has been replaced by a shiny piece of plastic with your name on it which boldly says – I’ll use credit and will pay this off later. These people are not thriving.

There are three common beliefs that get you into this situation:

1. Thinking that eventually we will conquer the debt – a pay rise or change in interest rates or even a lottery win will save us in the nick of time. The truth is that inflation and interest rates are rising faster than pay rises.
2. Thinking that someone will bail us out – perhaps that retirement fund will come through and we will be wealthy upon retirement or that a pension plan will keep us in the money when we are elderly. The truth is that you have placed trust in money managers who have no accountability for building you wealth to retire on – they get paid either way. They win; you lose. Don’t depend on your government – it is more broke than you are.
3. Thinking that your job will let you build wealth – if you work for a private company the only ones who build wealth from a job are the business owners you work for; if you work for a public company it is the shareholders who are getting rich whilst you do all the work.

You need to change your beliefs and realize that if you want to build wealth you need to take responsibility for it and begin now. Who care more about your financial freedom more than you? Nobody!  It does not matter whether you are fresh out of school, due to retire next year or somewhere in between… NOW is the time to act. Do you want to spend more time earning a living or would you like to enjoy life more and live an earning?

What I propose is that you contemplate starting an online business. It is not as difficult nor as costly to start as you may think and, whilst it is not for everybody, the average person can use it as a launchpad for building wealth and, or as I like to say – for living an earning.

Enriching our lives is the perfect business partner and a good friend. A friend you have probably relied on for answers for at least a decade, a friend that has kept up the communications with you, a friend that has kept you entertained as well as informed, a friend that has taught you new tricks.

Before you go delving deeply into your school or company photos, furiously trawling through past emails or frantically casting your mind over imaginary friends your mind has conjured up in search of this seemingly important but long lost friend, that you are desperately trying to figure out whom it is who is so important, yet you have forgotten about them, let us think about it for a moment. Could a friend this dear to you be so far from your mind? If you want a clue – what you are doing right now? That’s right you are reading a blog post, and what makes that possible? – our very important, long lost friend it seems – the Internet!

That’s right. Mystery solved. The Internet is your friend and greatest business partner, allowing you to keep your business running 24 hours a day, 365.25 days a year, helping your business reach existing and new customers, even if you may be sleeping. Isn’t that just the ultimate business partner? – you sleep and the Internet allows you to still produce income!

Why don’t you spend a minute or two becoming reacquainted with your Ultimate Business Partner!

At the risk of sounding like Po’s father, I, too, am going to tell you that there is no secret ingredient. That’s right – there is no secret. Simply put, success is the result of hard work. Hard work is the result of consistent and persistent action. Action is what you must take if you want to be successful. If you thought there was a magic pill you could swallow, a horse you could bet on that was going to win every race or a single click of a button on a web site that could bring you success, as you sit back without lifting another finger whilst you get comfortable in your favorite armchair, then I need to point out that you do not have the mindset of a successful business person. With some work though, the mind can be changed.

Success is setting yourself goals and following through with action until those goals have been achieved: nothing more; nothing less. Those goals must always be in your mind when reaching for success. There are two ways to achieve the goals you desire – luck and work. Luck is an easy path but is very much hit and miss. Some classic examples are gambling, participating in lotteries and entering competitions. The probability of attaining the results you desire is miniscule. Work on the other hand provides a step by step, structured path to getting the results you desire with a much greater probability of success. Sure, it takes time, but it is a proven winner. The key words here are consistent and persistent. When was the last time you arrived at your destination without taking a journey to get there? When did your cherry seed suddenly turn into a tree bearing fruit? It takes time for quality results.

The point is, success without the journey is meaningless, and success without meaning is luck, which is far less appreciated. I am sure you have heard of people who have made millions by winning a lottery or by choosing the winning horse in a race only to have lost it all because their success came with no meaning.

Working to reach success involves taking a journey along a structured path to your goals. Luck on the other hand is about arriving at your goal without taking the journey.