Category Archives: Inspiration

A great source for motivation, PF Buzz.

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The world of blogs is huge.  There are over a million active bloggers, and millions more who do it every now and then.  Tens of millions of people read blogs every day.  Of course you know this, you are reading this blog right now.  But what it new that I want to tell you about it a site called PF Buzz.  The PF stands for personal finance.  It is a group of about 50 blogs all about how to make more money and save the money that you make.  Almost anything you want to know about this subject you can find in one of these blogs.

Now I do not agree with all the other viewpoints, many are designed to show you as an employee how to save the money you make, but as I have said before earning more money is a much better focus than saving money. I am a business person not an employee. It is still great to know what other people are thinking.

The biggest value of this site is the awesome blogs on personal motivation, and there are many of them.  They tell you how to think correctly, how to be organized and how to set goals and generally how to be successful.  This is the important stuff that if you read every day will put you in the right mindset for success.  I have PF Buzz on my Firefox Bookmarks toolbar so it is always there, only a click away.  If you want to be successful I suggest you do the same.

Daily Self Motivation Made Easy

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If you read any good book on self motivation one of the main things that they say is put your goals in writing.  It is proven over and over that those who do are MUCH more successful.  As you know the top 5% of our nation owns about 80% of the resources of our nation.  It is also proven that among this top 5% over 90% have written goals.  They may have done that because they are success driven, they also may have become successful because they had written goals.  But the same data says that of people in the bottom 80% on income earners only 2-3% of them have written goals.  This is a huge contrast.  If there is anything that can determine success it may be having written goals.

I also have been talking to successful people, and almost all agree that you will not be really successful until you have a WHY, a reason why you NEED to be successful to meet the purpose of your life.  Many tell you that you need to have a BIG why.  You need it do be 10-20 years out.  For many people they like to put their why as a photo montage on top of just writing it, have the photos of the car, the house, and the lifestyle you want.  This makes it more real.

I take this much further, I also make a HOW.  It is great to have a why, but with no plan you can never get there.  Next I have Mid Term Goals, these are usually goals that are 6 months out, something that is hard enough that it will push me but not so hard that it is unrealistic.  Some of them are Goals on what to do with the success we make, others are business benchmarks to make sure we get that success.  Lastly, and most important, I have a Daily Action sheet, this is a list of activities, that I need to do daily in order to get to the Mid Term Goals.  If I do this action then the goals should be simple.

Now I take all of these and put them in 28point font and print them out and hang them on the wall of my bathroom.  It is a place where I have time to read a few times a day, but also a place where not too many others will see my goals.  Because I am a business person, I try not to share my goals with W2 people, you know the people who work for someone else.  The reason is simply because they don’t get it, and they almost always are more negative than positive.  But because my readers here are NOT like that I will share my list HERE, simply click HERE to download it, edit it so that it has meaning for you and post it.

Action Plan for today. If you don’t have it already, then write down your Why, How, Mid Term Goals, and Daily Action, and put it somewhere you can see it daily.  DO IT NOW, WHILE YOU ARE THINKING ABOUT IT

Tell me what you think, leave a comment, and you made your own signs I would really like to hear from you about what you put on your sign.

I am torn between all that is possible

Business, Computers, concepts, Entrepreneurship, Inspiration, Marketing, MLM, real estate, , , , , , ,

Right now I feel that I am at a cross roads. I know so much, I know so much that I could never hold down a job, I know what it out there, and working for someone else is not an option. I am a true entrepreneur. Now that being said there is so much out there that I can do but I have limited time and limited focus. I choose to spend a good deal of time with my family because that is a priority. Let me tell you, my readers, what I am thinking about right now.
My main company for over a decade has been Emerald Computers. It was a great business from 1997 until about 2003 but then the industry changed, and got much more cutthroat and less fun. Also the profits dropped out. I lost my passion for it. Passion is a subject I have been thinking about a lot recently. If you do not live your life doing what you have have passion for you are living a wasted life. 80% of people can not stand their job, they can not stand what they now do for a living. 20% of the people their work is their passion, and they love to do it. For years I loved computers, not because of the technology but mostly because I could open peoples eyes up to what is possible and I loved that. But my business did less and less of that and more and more of the grinding out work that was not fun. When the passion left so did the profits. I went from averaging 70 hours a week working my company in 2002 to about 30 in 2005 to almost less than 5 in 2007.

I always was thinking about Real Estate, how it is a business where you make real things that stand there for many years. I know people that drive around a city and point out buildings they had a hand in making a decade before. Also I LOVE the art of the deal, where you negotiate price and terms and come up with a deal. It is like a huge game, trying to get the best for your side in every deal, nothing in business is more fun for me. Real Estate is the land of the largest deals, and the fastest way to make real big money. You can be creative and make transactions by bringing parties and ideas together in unique ways.

Now the problem with real estate is that you need knowledge or you need money. I don’t have this type of money because my computer company took it all, and my knowledge is all theory. I think I know at least 90% of what I know, but every time I think I have it all figured out I find out more I don’t know. Because of this a fear has set in so I do nothing, which is the worst thing of all to do. When you do real estate with no money to invest you will find the deal every now and then but it is far from steady, so I wanted to have something that was more steady.

Because of this I started looking for a MLM, because before Emerald Computers, and even during it I made some good money in the world of MLM business. With all the tools I have for online marketing and communications I figured I would have a huge advantage at any MLM that I would join. So I spent a good deal of time looking into everything that I could do. After looking for months almost all of the major MLM businesses that I saw were promoting a health product that they produced for $5 and sold for $50. I figured out that I really don’t have a passion for doing a MLM that is based on a health product, I think deep down that many of these don’t work, and that even if they do I don’t want to spend my life selling them, I have more important things to do.

So after a while I decided to work with a company called Nouveau Riche. What they do is have a college right down the street from my house. For 1 week every two months they teach a full week of really high quality classes about Real Estate. I bought the CD version of these classes, they were good. Next they provide a community of investors. It all sounded really great, just what I wanted to do. Then I really pushed it hard, trying to find people to invest with, trying to find people to pay to go to the college. They had an event where you could invite people to and they would have a 6 hour sample of classes that were taught by the school. I had been to them in the past, and they were great. At the end they would have a short 30 minute sales pitch for the college. This time there was new leadership and they promised it would be even bigger and better than before. I was really excited. I invited over 100 people. I got 40 people to say they would be there. It was all going well. Then on the day it was backwards, it started out with over two hours of hard sales, worse than if you went to a timeshare. That was followed by even more sales, and then an hour of decent education, followed by 2 more hours of hard sales. The people I had there all felt screwed, and lied to. They wanted education and what they got was this junk. After that day I have not gone to any meetings and have not talked to any leaders in the company, it was a bust for me.

So then I started looking a MLM that was for something that I could stand behind. I set down some rules. First it had to be something that was a good value, it had to save people money or make them money. Next it had to be something that was product driven, I wanted to product to sell the company. (One of my best friends Fred Coit is a big leader in Monavie and they have a great product driven company.) But next I wanted to do something that I would have a passion for. Last I wanted something with no marketing restrictions. You many not know that most MLM companies have many restrictions on how and where you can market, and I wanted something I could hit heavy online, and be creative with my marketing.

After about 2 months of looking I finally decided on SendOutCards, they offered a product that was only 1/3rd the cost of the competition with better service, it was product driven meaning that most people in it only really promote the product. I think that they are the BEST MLM for my style.

Now I am torn. What do I do with my days, I have a computer company, I have a ton of time, energy and passion devoted to getting into the real estate business, which is my true passion. And now I have this new business that is really fun and has a great product. For the last two month I have been floating. I have been like my 10 month old son, I focus on whatever seems the best at the time, but I may change on a whim. Last week a typical day was for me to wake up and talk to a few computer customers, then talk to a real estate agent about some houses then call a few people and tell them about SendOutCards. For the last few months when people ask me what I do for a living I really don’t have a good answer for them. I was at a meeting last Wednesday where I stood up and talked about Emerald Computers and SendOutCards, handed out flyers for SendOutCards and business cards for Capital Active (The Real Estate Company). I must have seemed very confused to some of these people.

So this is where I sit now. Emerald is the business that is putting food on my table, it is what I live on but every time I want to make money I have to trade large amounts of time for it. Sometimes it is easy and I get a call and make $500 in 2 hours, other times I make calls all day and make nothing. SendOutCards could be a huge business and with two months of good effort I could have a team large enough that I could pay all my bills from the money it makes. And Real Estate could make millions with ease and joy if I could get all the pieces to the puzzle together.

So my question for my readers, is this multitasking normal for someone who is a serial entrepreneur, and what would you do? This is interactive so please leave a comment, I will reply to them.

The best MLM for me, and why

Business, Computers, concepts, Entrepreneurship, Inspiration, Internet, Investment, Marketing, MLM, , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

I finally did it, after about 3 months of research, investigating, going to meetings and trying to figure out what I wanted I finally selected the BEST MLM that I could find.

I have been in many MLM / network marketing companies, I have been to hundreds of meetings over the last 15 years, I have built teams, I have sold products, I have marketed many things but this is the first time that I stood back, and researched the pros and cons of different MLM concepts. You may remember back in April I wrote a series of blogs about the idea of a MLM. You can read them HERE, HERE, and HERE. I never wrote the last two in the series because I was still doing my research. In the process I actually joined 4 other MLM companies even before I was sold on them and all of them did not pan out. But now I finally found the best MLM company I have ever seen, more on that later.

So what makes this company better than anything else I have ever seen. There are so many reasons why. Read these reasons and compair them to any MLM that you are looking at.

Well first it is a product that EVERYONE can use, it is easy to understand, and everyone has a need for it. It also is something that you can easily prove, too many MLM promote a product that you just have to have faith that it works. (Most nutritional companies.) But for me the MOST important reason I think that this is the best MLM is because it is a great value, cheaper than normal way of doing things, and the reward of using this product is measurable and instant. You can sign up and start making money the same day, and with only three sales you are already in the black, in MOST MLM companies it is very hard to become profitable, in this it is easy. There is no other company doing anything even close to what they are doing. They are old enough to have their act together but not too young to be saturated. They are in a multi-billion dollar industry and with a radical new way of doing things will take huge market share from the two companies that have over 80% of the market share. Another thing I really love, is that everyone who hears about this product says something like “Of course that is a better way to do it, sign me up.”

If you are in a MLM now, or are thinking of joining one read that list and objectively think about how the company you are with stands up to all of these things.

The name of the company is something you probably never heard before. It is Send Out Cards. What they do is print and mail physical greeting cards that you select, customize and order online. It is a great business tool, allowing you to follow up and keep in contact with all of your co-workers, customers and business contacts. It is also a great personal tool, helping you make the people around you feel good. If you would like to try it out right now I have set up a special offer for all of my blog readers, you can CLICK HERE and you will receive a free account where you can send out two cards to anyone you like, you can play with all the features and see how it works.

Even if you are already busy building your own business you need to look at Send Out Cards as a marketing tool for that business. What would happen if you were able to follow up with EVERY prospect 2-3 times? What would happen if you sent a thank you note to each of the top 20% of your customers, how much extra business would they bring in. Think about it, try out a demo now.

I hope this blog shows some light on your journey to success. If you are looking for the best network marketing company around this one may be for you, it may not.

Phoenix Business Expo – What Fun

Business, Computers, concepts, Entrepreneurship, Inspiration, Internet, Marketing, MLM, Money, , , , , , , , ,

On June 25th We went to the business Expo. This is a once a year event put on by the Phoenix Chamber of Commerce. It had 200 businesses that purchased a space there. One thing they did that I really liked is that they made the price very cheap so that even the smallest business could afford it and they limited each business to only 1 booth. Most were 10×10, about 50 were just a table around the outside and 5 were larger for the sponsors. I have been to many events where some large company buys up 10 booths to show off everything and drown out the competition. None of this was here.

To me this is one of the most fun things I get a chance to attend during the entire year. You get ideas of what other people are doing. You get to see what people think will be successful. You also get to see booths from distributors for many of the MLM’s, it lets you see which ones are popular beyond the internet.

The motto of the expo this year was “Stay Up in a Down Economy”.

The highlight of the expo was a free seminar they hosted. It was all about the new way of marketing, using relationships, the first speakers was Victoria Trafton from the Referral Institute of Arizona. She talked about how it is so important to build up relationships with your customers and get them to refer your business.

The second speaker was Raymond Lambert. He is an expert at using a website called linkedin. Here is his LinkedIn page. I have known about linkedin for a long time now I even created a profile about 6 months ago, but I never realized how big and important it is. After going to his event I would suggest that everyone create a linkedin page. It costs money to get the advanced features but it may be worth it so most people. He really made it hit home that this is a great way for you to build any business you are in, or to just promote yourself.

The last speaker was Dave Barnhart from Business Blogging Pros, here is his blog and his other blog. He has a business where he helps people unlock the power of blogging.  Most of what he said is stuff that I already knew, but I only knew them because I am a blogger and a techie.   After it was over I talked to him for a few minutes and he was very smart and knowledgeable.  He suggested that I try Feedburner, and that I also try Typepad instead of WordPress because it has many more features.  If you are looking for someone to help you blog you can call me for the basics, but if you really want the advanced stuff call Dave.  (He lives only a few miles from my office, I think I will call him later and ask if he wants to market eachothers products)

As a direct result of this Expo I have already wrote over $1,500 in business and I have reminded many previous contacts about our company.  I have upgraded my linked in page, and added more features to this blog.  I also handed out over 100 business cards and collected about 100 so that I can call them this week.  After the expo was over they had a great reception, free food and 2 hours of mingle time with about 400 other business owners.

All and all it was a great event, that I look forward to all year.

You are meant for much more than you are now.

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Yesterday I saw the movie “Wanted“. In general it was a great action flick but one of the main premises was that most of us live up to only a very small part of our potential. There is so much more that we should be doing, and most of us have tragically missed our calling. Here is a quote from the movie, it is not perfect but close.

It a choice, Wesley, that each of us must face: to remain ordinary, pathetic, beat-down, coasting through a miserable existence, like sheep herded by fate, or you can take control of your own destiny and join us, releasing the caged wolf you have inside. ……. This is the decision that lies before you now: the sheep, or the wolf. The choice is yours.

This is something that I have always thought about, There is so much more to living than the meager existence that most people live in. This is something that has always challenged me, I know that I have been called to be much more than I am today, I know I have wasted a ton of time and a ton of effort with little progress.

There is a group called SwitchFoot that sings about this concept. They have many songs about this the best of these is “Meant to Live” and “Dare You to Move”

Here are some quotes from these songs.

The tension is here
Between who you are and who you could be
Between how it is and how it should be

I dare you to move
I dare you to lift yourself up off the floor

We were meant to live for so much more
Have we lost ourselves?
Somewhere we live inside

Dreaming about Providence
And whether mice or men have second tries
Maybe we’ve been livin with our eyes half open
Maybe we’re bent and broken, broken

We want more than this world’s got to offer
We want more than the wars of our fathers
And everything inside screams for second life, yeah

They are good poets. Click the links and watch the videos.

You we are all meant to live for something more than our current existence. This is something that I strive to go for often, but usually it gets lost in the busyness of the day. To remind myself I wrote down my “Why” the reasons that I do what I do. I posted this in my bathroom so I read it each day as I get ready. I also posted my “How” and my short term goals.

Find your calling and go for it.  Do it today.  Don’t wait for an uncertain future to do what you want to do with your life.

Thanks for reading, please post a comment.

Are you money motivated?

Business, Computers, concepts, Entrepreneurship, Inspiration, , , , ,

I have found that some of my best thoughts have been posted on other blogs. Over the last few days I have written a series of comments on another blog and I would like to share them here.

I had a very successful computer business. I was working 80 hours a week, and it was my whole life. It was not so fun. I wanted much more with my life, so I started to replace myself. I first started by finding people who could do what I did the same or better. This let my focus on other things. I soon took this too far, spending only 20 or so hours a week working on this business, the rest of the time doing other things and working at my church. I also started a few more businesses on the side. Everything was good, then I really started taking it far, I decided that I liked to travel so I soon was spending weeks at a time away, they could still call me but that was about it.

I had put systems in place, the only problem was that I did not put systems to watch the people managing the systems. My flaw was that I thought everyone was like me…honest and money motivated. So I put in place a system where an honest person could make a lot of money by doing fun work that helped people. The problem I found was that most people are NOT money motivated, when they have enough money they stop working, and second I found a few too many people who were not honest. Due to people not being honest and taking my customers and my assets and also due to lazy people who sat on the payroll I lost about 400k in a matter of 2 years. Much of this time I was away, traveling while managers said it was all going perfect, but they were the main crooks.

Finally I took on a partner, he bailed us out financially. Scaled back the business and made it manageable. The damage had been done, and we shut down our retail operations in Nov of 2007. We still try to sell online, but very little comes from that.

I still think that the idea of systems works, and my goal was always to be able to travel, and leave it to people, but the problem has always been the people. In my years I have employed at least 100 people, some were great and some took me for thousands, I just wish I could know in advance who is who.

Then some people asked me questions…here was my answer.

First when I mean money motivated, I mean people that want to earn big money. Most people are fear motivated, they have the fear of not paying the bills, and not having food, and not having a safe place to live BUT once those fears are gone (Once they earn enough money so that they don’t have to worry) very few people that I know will continue to do what it takes to make higher levels of income. This is why 80%+ of people have crappy jobs and are not really striving to do better.

You second question was, what would I do different. Well FIRST off I would have got out of the computer industry back in 2003 or so when it became super price competitive, and there was no margin or market. I also would not have borrowed the 300k+ that I did to keep my company alive, I would have just let it die and go start something else. But if I had to keep the company I would have had more time mentoring the employees. I would have spent more time figuring out who was good and who was bad and got rid of the bad people. I would have been much quicker to fire people, and slower to hire them.

I also would have spent a lot less money on print advertising and spent a lot more money paying people to make phone calls and go door to door. Our return for that was at least 20 times higher than any print ad we ever did.

600 Word Essay, for 7m7y

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Over the years I have always known that I was different, I could not even think of getting a job, I had to be my own boss. I have always seen ways to do things better, ways to make more money and systems that could be done to make it all work better. For most of my life that has worked out very well for me. But recently I have lost my way. One big reason, I believe, is because of the people I am around. They try to talk me out of the ideas I have. I don’t have many friends that are successful the way I want to be, and when I have found successful people I get some information from them but mostly they don’t see me as a peer. So a few months ago I started blogging, I used wordpress. I was able to find many other people who thought about success the way I did and some of them even had achieved it. I quickly found google reader and added the top blogs I liked to read to my reader.

I was now finding a ton of useful information. But I knew I needed more, I needed to find successful people that I could hang out with, bounce ideas off of. I needed a mastermind group, I found a few local ones, they were very expensive to join, and the people in there were great at running their business but not really what I was looking for. I also went to seminars, I found a few really good people there, one guy who I sat next to, was cynical about the content and did not stick around, we talked a bit so we traded cards. I told him I would call him later with a summary of what he missed. So I did just that, and when we talked he told me that he was a large commercial real estate investor, (Something I always wanted to do). I knew of many of his projects, most of which are worth tens of millions. A few weeks later we met for lunch and we talked for about 2 hours. I got great encouragement from him but he was way out of my league, he did tell me that if I ever found some good deals that I should call him up.

Around this time, AJC, the author of one of the blogs that I read regularly, 7million7years, decided to have a contest. This was a contest for this multi millionaire to personally mentor and help 7 people. This guy was the real deal, and even better he was a techie like me, he made his money in business and also in investing in real estate, everything that I wanted. This was what I was looking for. So I signed up. I was hoping to finally find the key that had been missing, to find the wherewithal to finally go out there and get what is mine. He first asked for an application that I quickly filled out, next he asked for a 100 word bio, I also quickly sent in. Next he posted that bio and tested the finalists on how to drive traffic to it. I did a popunder and a 120 second refresh metatag from my most popular site, I also mentioned it here and here in my blog. I also sent a few emails to friends to go look at it. I made the top 30, now I doing the next test, a 600 word essay, so that I can make the top 15.

I made the top 30 in 7m7y.

Business, concepts, Entrepreneurship, Inspiration, Investment, Money, real estate, , , , , ,

I don’t know if you remember.  But a few weeks ago I told all my readers about how I was entered into a contest called the 7 Millionaires in training.   Well last week the announced the top 30 and I was in it.  On thursday of next week I will be hoping to be in the top 15.  From there it will be the final 7.  The prize for this contest is something really cool and really great, it is a mentorship from a highly successful serial entreprenure and real estate investor.  It does not say how long this will last but I bet it will last until most of the final 7 are millionaires, at least that is my hope.   Cross your fingers and wish me good luck., God knows I need it.

His blog is really good, find it here, he has written many of my favorite articles like this, this and that.

If you would like to tune in, there is a web broadcast show every thursday night at 6pm PST.  Click here.