Tag Archives: Jason Dragon

I’m Back Again.

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It has been a while, about 11 months, from the last blog entry.  I did this because I really needed a break.   I had posted a lot of stuff, but I started to feel that I was simply rehashing things that others had said, and that they said much better than me.  But this is no longer the case.  I have done a ton of reading, a ton of meeting with people in the interim.

For the last 8 months I even ran for office.  I ran for city council here in Peoria Arizona.  It was a hard fight but at the end of it all it turns out that people in this area much rather have big government than someone who will sit there and stop the goodie train like I would try to.  I ran for office because I wanted to make a change and simply being a leader in the Republican party was NOT enough.  I also am active in the Tea Party movement.  But after doing all of this I decided I wanted to do more, so I ran for office.  I basically put my life on hold.  It cost me about $2700 to run but the real cost was my distraction from my normal life, from the business I enjoy, the family I love and even from blogging.  I did learn a lot, and I got a new perspective on life.  All told I am glad that I did it, and looking back I made a few mistakes that if I had not made them I would have won.  I think the biggest mistake was being so openly Republican in an area that is mostly democrat.  The next biggest mistake was trusting people so quickly, and having these people become traitors and use the information I gave them in confidence against me.

But now that this is all over I am going to make life simple again.  Focus on making money, getting my thoughts together by blogging, focus on my family, and I will even try to get into shape.

My very steep mountain I plan to climb. (My Mission in life)

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This entry is about my mission in life, and my mindset right now.

My goal, is to be very wealthy.  I don’t really have a personal need to be wealthy but I have felt for a long time now that it is my calling in life to be so.  The reason for this is that I can help many people out, so that I can leave a legacy for my children and their children and to help the Kingdom of God in all of this.  I want to be the one who builds schools, churches, community housing projects and so on.  I have had a desire for this for many years but have gotten distracted a few time.  Now I feel like I am behind schedule, I have this huge goal and to accomplish it I need to act now and act aggressively.  I need to have a very steep slope to my net worth mountain.

The good news is that in times like this, with economic turmoil and such it is actually easier for a smart person who sees the trends to gain massive wealth.  I can buy stocks in good companies for huge discounts.  I can buy houses for cents on the dollar.  These things will always rebound, they may take some time but they will.  I can take advantage of the huge wave of people who are eager to snatch onto the dream of finally being their own boss, I can consult with them and make tools for them to get there easier, because I have been there my whole life.  Of course I will charge for this service.

My goal is to have a net worth of $5 million dollars by the time I am 40 years old, and $10m by the time I am 45.  (I am 33 now)  I will consider any donations I have made to be part of my net worth.  To get there I would need to earn a huge amount of money.  I will invest most of that money until I get to my goal.  This is a very steep mountain to climb.  I have made money at this rate in the past buy I grew my company too fast and trusted people who screwed me and soon I was bleeding 10k+ per month.  I have learned that lesson but I do know that I can not do all of this myself.  I need to use other peoples money and other peoples time to get to where I need to be.  If I do everything that needs to be done I will never make it, never even get close, I have to hire others to join me.  For over 10 years now I have always had at least a few people who work for me, people who I can call when I make a sale.

So to make this goal I need to really start to climb, to earn huge amounts of money.  Well that is actually much easier than you may think it is.  There is more opportunity now simply because the market is totally inefficient right now.  This means that prices are all over the place for the same item, mostly caused by crazy desperate people who are selling things at fire sale prices.  This lets us take advantage of research and work to find the best price on something and sell it to someone who does not do the research.  This can be done on houses, cars, computers, information, labor, and almost anything else that can be bought and sold.   You can buy cars for $5k that sell for $10k the next week.  You can buy houses for 20k that were once worth 200k and sell them for 80k with ease.   I just bought over $1500 in computer parts from a guy for $100 simply because he got them from a guy who went out of business and had no idea what they were worth.  Money is just sitting there everywhere waiting for someone to pick it up.

Right now is the best time I have ever seen in my life to buy Real Estate, and probably the best time there will be.  You can buy a house now for such a low price that you can rent it out and have the rental payments cover the entire cost in under 5 years.  You can then hold on to these houses for 10 years and sell it for many times the purchase price.  This is the main way I plan to make my long term money, but I need to fund this with short term money.  My plan for this is to sell websites, sell business opportunities, such as this one or this one.  I have another huge idea in the works that I think will make a million dollars in the next 3 years as long as it is done right.  I need all of this because I have a high goal.

Mindset is Key.  mindset

Less than half of a percent of the population in the US has a net worth over $1 million dollars, and with the current market that number is falling.  Most of the population is deep in debt and the ones that are not don’t have a huge net worth.  Most people simply do not posses the entrepreneurial spirit, they do not have the mindsets required.  They do not even have this as a goal.  There is probably less than 2% of the population that is serious about being an entrepreneur, about being truly wealthy and free.  For me and these others like me we must have a different mindset from the rest of the world.  What works for the normal, happy to have a job, people in this world actually hurts us.  And what works for us does not work for them.

There is about 10% of the population that thinks that they are an entrepreneur, people who have gone out and created for themselves a business, or they dabble on the side trying to run a small home based business but most of these do not have the correct mindset.  They simply do not see it.  For years many of my friends have fallen into this group, and for years I have talked to them, tried to show them the way.  Given them books on the subject like the awesome E-Myth by Michael Gerber.  All with very little result, they almost never get it, and they just can’t figure out why even when I tell them directly, so for the most part I have stopped.  I love to deal with the people who have the right mindset already.  You can tell someone simply does not get it when they keep saying “You can’t do that” but in reality there is very little we can not do.  We can buy houses for 10 cents on the dollar and not use one cent of our own money, we can sell a service to a client for one price and then hire someone else to perform that service for a much lower, yet still fair price.  We can do something once and get paid for that work for a long time to come.

entrepreneurTo have the correct mindset you must realize that there are different rules for us.  I have found that people like Donald Trump, Robert Kiyosaki, Ric Edelman, Dean Graziosi and Adrian Cartwood can equip you with the correct mindset.   For the other people who are not entrepreneurial they can listen to people like Suzy Orman, Clark Howard and David Ramsey but for us much of the information they say is toxic to our mindset.  They focus on what to do with the money that you earn, how to divide it, how to save it and such, and they focus very LITTLE on simply making more.   They focus on how you should not used debt at all.  I agree with all of this for “normal” people.  I think that normal people should only take on debt to go to college and buy a meager house, and maybe to buy a first car.   They should save their money for retirement and live a very frugal life.  They should max out their 401k and invest in mutual funds.  (For all people even these I strongly suggest that they separate their home equity from their home, it make much more sense.)

But for us E-Type people this is crazy talk.  I know I can do much better in life than that sort of existence.  If we have a good idea we should borrow to make it happen if we don’t have the resources ourselves.  We should keep an eye out for the needs of others and look for ways to fill those needs.  We should delegate anything that we can to free up our time to focus on growing our business.   We should focus on increasing our income 10 times as much as we focus on where it all goes.

E-Type people should give away money with abandon to worth causes.  I personally believe in Christian education and I help out many children go to private Christian schools, third world children who would not have a good education if I did not help out, now they have a chance to be something great in the future.  Almost every millionaire I know gives away more money per year that most people earn.  I remember a few years ago my Grandfather walked into his local church and gave them $100,000, just a few months before he died.  I remember growing up with my uncle and seeing him write checks for $5,000 when a missionary came to his local church.  I remember he would always give us $10 or so every time the offering came by and we would dump it in, teaching us to give.  I have a good friend locally who makes over $50k a month and gives over $10k of that away each month.    We are blessed to be a blessing, the more you send out the more you will get — people just don’t get it.

Final Thoughts

I really hope that you have gotten inspired by all of this.  I was inspired by the 7m7y project recently.  And just this week by two other great guys.  We really

Computer Entry: Trends in Computer Pricing

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I have been in the computer industry now for over 15 years.  During that time some trends have been the constant, that prices drop, and new technology is always making things.  So as of today this is what I am seeing in the world of computer pricing.  Here are my basic findings.

Laptop computers are very affordable. Laptops have been falling much faster than desktops, I think this is because they are all made by 7 main highly competitive companies, and they are trying to push eachother for market share.  The world of desktops is still controlled by many different companies and most all computers are built by companies in the same nation they are bought.  This raises costs, and reduces competition.

Margins are increasing. I have noticed that most stores that sell computer hardware have really increased their margins.  I was at Staples today and most of the hardware they were selling was at least 2.5 times their cost.  That is much larger than in the past.  I have seen this trend in retail stores.  Basically they know that if you want/need it now you are willing to pay.  In computer systems the big companies have really increased margin on desktop computers.  This makes a small company like me much easier to compete.  I think that most of this is due to the large reduction of competition in the retail market, most local computer stores are out of business and even big companies like COMP USA are basically gone.

Monitors have leveled off. LCD monitors have been coming down in price for a long time but they seem to reach a point where they don’t go down any more.  19″ and lower size monitors are only 10% less than they were a year ago.  22″ monitors are down a bit more but they still are near the price they were a while ago.

Hard Drive Prices are plummeting. Storage is king, this is mostly due to the higher data density.  They can put more data on the same hardware as before simply using new technology.  In just the last 2 months 500GB hard drives are down over 20% and most drives are down over 15%.  They are much cheaper than they were last year. Even with the decline in prices

RAM has leveled off. RAM is always going up and down, DDR2 RAM, the main RAM used to make computers is going down a bit but is fairly stable.  DDR has really dropped in price, at the start of the year it was double the price of DDR2, but not it is just a bit more.  I think this is mostly due to lowered demand of DDR.  If you are using a computer with less than 1GB of RAM right now then do yourself a favor and upgrade!!!

CPUs Fell off a cliff. The largest change in systems prices has come from the CPU.  They have fallen like crazy.  1 year ago a 6400 Athlon 64 was over $400 now you can get a Faster Quad Core version for UNDER $160.  Most CPU have lost over half their value, and the stock prices of AMD and INTEL have followed.

Motherboard have increased in price. The motherboard is the HUB that everything connects to.  Due to the higher demand and more precice demand of the rest of the better hardware it is now required to use a much better motherboard, so the average price of a motherboard has gone UP about 10% in the last year, but for that extra 10% you get much more for your money.  The old ones simply don’t exist any more.

Cases and Power Supplies have gone up. Power Supply Units have gone up slightly due to increased power stability required by todays newer motherboards, CPUs and RAM.  But cases have gone up by over 15%.  They are the largest and most bulky part of the computer, the production cost is tied to that of commoditys and they have gone up, and their shipping is tied to the price of OIL and we all know about that.

Optical Drives continue to decline. This year we have seen a 20% decline in the price of Optical Drives.  They simply can make more for less.

Flash Memory has plummeted. The price of flash memory has also fell like a rock.  Flash Memory is an open standard so cheap Asian production has killed the prices, this is great for us the customer, we now can have lots of memory to carry with us, or use in our toys.  The only thing that dropped faster than the memory prices is the stock of SanDisk, the largest producer.

Over all desktop systems have dropped about 10% in the last 3 months, and about 30% in the last year.  Now is a GREAT time to buy.  If you have a computer that is more than 3 years old then you should really think about upgrading to a new system.  It is a whole new world out there now.  Also many people may have bought a computer 2 years ago or so, but you purchased a computer that was built with 2 year old technology then you need to upgrade.  You will be glad that you did.  Click on the Image to the right to see our prices.

Want the power to grow your company. Here it is!

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I have talked to hundreds of people who own their own business.  Most of them had the same exact problem, they worked way too much.  They never had enough time in the day and usually never got to the important things that needed to be done to take their business to the next level.  They worked too much working in and for their business and not enough time working on their business.  This is a plan that will keep you stressed out, busy and poor.  There are two things that must be done when you are in this situation.

Bar Graph showing growth
Grow your business, learn how

The first one is to make systems for everything.  You need to write a system for writing an invoice, a system for cleaning the bathroom, a system for opening and closing your business.  When I was in business I wrote over 50 systems for various things, from how to pack a computer for shipping to how to make a phone call to a business.  You also need to create the paperwork and checklist for these systems.  We had a document for when a customer would leave a computer at our store, to documents for figuring out commission.  Later on I moved the most popular forms online and customers and employees would fill them out at a hidden website.  So this is what you need to do, systematize, document the system then create the resources (Documents, tools, equipment, etc.) to make system work.  Having a system makes everything you do predictable and much easier.  Buying a franchise is usually little more than buying a system with a marketing package, a high quality system will run your business, and is worth the tens of thousands they charge, but it is even better if you make it yourself.  It took me less than two months of working after we closed to write all of our systems and support material.

Now that you have a system in place you need to leverage it.  That brings us to part two, duplication/delegation.  When you have a system in place it is much easier to train people, to measure there performance, and get them to exactly what you want them to do.  People like to know exactly what is expected of them, most people like to have a system in place.  Now that you have a system you can start to delegate things that you have always done.  In many small business the owner does everything, they clean the bathroom, they do the banking, they service the customers.  One thing I have heard often is that if you can find someone to do something that you do and they can do it 80% as well as you do then have them DO IT.  When you have delegated to too many people that you can’t manage them, then promote someone to be a manager and delegate the delegating to them.

Think about what your company will look like if you doubled its size.  Then think about what would happen if you doubled it every month.  Without a system and with out delegation you will be sunk.  This is the number 1 thing that keeps most small business small.  You have to design and run your company as if there were 100 locations, what would you do different?  If you own a small business and working without a system and delegating, 60 hours a week you really have a glorified job working for your “business”.  A business is a system, it becomes viral, easy and fast, and other people do all the work, and you simply manage it.

For much more information here are some books you need to read on this subject.

HERE is another blog entry by one of my friends that expands on this concept.  Please read it.

I am Jason Dragon and I hope you enjoyed this, subscribe to my blog, and tell others about it.

July, A record month for this blog and why

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This month has really been a great month for this blog, it looks like Jason Dragon is getting some critical mass. July of 08 had over 2.3 times the unique visitors as the second best month, May of 08. Blogs are suppose to go up but this is a lot faster than normal. July 30 was the best day ever passing July 24 by 6 hits.

The stats say that this is due to a few things. First I started a Computer Entry section which is simply a page that has a list of all the blogs that I wrote on the subject of computer, but this page is very popular, it is on the top 5 of my pages every month. In that section I wrote an article about Laptop computers, and from the day I wrote it it has always been in the top 2 of all the pages. It now is by far the most popular article that I have ever written. But there is an article I just wrote yesterday, about StoresOnline, that had the LARGEST first day viewing of anything I ever wrote, it had more views than my entire blog was getting last month. The subject is something that many people are asking about online.

I also did a few things differently, I blogged a bit more with 14 entries, my previous record was 12. I also added my blog to StumbleUpon, I did not put the links from my blog so I really only got a few hits from that. But the MAIN area where I got more hits was by finding great blogs that had content that was much like mine and if I found a place where I could push the conversation forward, almost half of my new visitors came from that. I also was added to the Planet section of PF Buzz along with many of the top Finance blogs. I also was able to get more hits by adding more tags to my articles, I have about 20% of the hits coming from this. I also added myself to twitter finally, I have been trying it out before I publicize it but you can check it out if you like. I also rewrote my personal webpage at JasonDragon.com.

My best blogging moment of the month was due to a fairly unpopular buy very important blog I wrote, about why our country is in trouble economically. I linked to the Perot Charts site and the right hand guy, Mike Poss, of Ross Perot noticed the link and came to my blog, read it and took the time to email me about it. I always liked Ross Perot so it made me feel good to get this note.

In other blogging news I am still in the race for the 7m7y contest. This is a contest that could be described as mentorship by a really great and successful guy. He is going to mentor only 7 people and he is willing to do it for 7 years. He will help them all become multimillionaires. He will document the process and write a book on it. In two weeks or so the final 7 will be selected, I really hope I am one.

Thank you to all my readers, and all the people that subscribe to this blog, if it was not for you I would not be doing this, and this process has really taught me a lot.

Thanks, Jason Dragon

The best MLM for me, and why

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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.