Your New Year's Resolution:Start A Home Based Business

Start your New Year off with a Home based business. I always tell people that unless you are working for yourself, you're simply fullfilling someone else's dream. And you know it. I have learned many exciting techniques in running a successful home based business and I would like to share them with you.

Now Consider this:

I am sure, if you have been reading my posts for long, that you see it is possible for you to start your own business and kick start your legacy Are you beginning to see how realistically staggering it truly is? If not, I need to apologize to you because I haven’t done my job.

I am extending you an open invitation to duplicate my success and the success of countless others by first changing your mindset and then your life. If I was able to do it, I I know you can.

So I ask you...

         Will you be the next Success story in a home based business in 2016?

Sadly, most people have flat-out given up on the life of their dreams... and they've resigned themselves to a life of struggle, lack, and limitation.  They suffer in the Land of Opportunity.  And they are fooled into believing the lie that it has to be this way. Most people don't realize that with proper leadership and the right opportunity, virtually anyone with desire can achieve the lifestyle and level of income the want with ease!

I'm living proof: Ever since I've started my home based business I feel a rush of internal excitement. I am literally helping people just like you exit the rat-race and achieve the same level of success I enjoy.

You need to possess a willingness to be successful. The individuals you associate with will help you be that person.  Successful people tend to affiliate with others who posses the same attributes. 

Wishful Hoping & No Action is Not Going to Cut It.

 

Here a three reasons why:

 

1.  There is nothing Casual About Worthwhile Achievement.  You must Earn your way to success in life-no matter what you do.  Only then will you achieve  a casual life style with enough money for you and your family to enjoy it in style. My personal achievement channel was my home based business.

 

2.  Trying is Not Doing. People with a " see what happens" attitude get to see what happens,alright...they sit their lazy butts down as they "see" others rapidly making wheelbarrels of success-but they  never do it themselves.  The success of entrepreneurship depends soley on YOUR drive and desire.

 

3.  You need to be honest with yourself to avoid wasting your time in a home based business.  If you only kid yourself, you won't experience a positive change in your life until you First make a postive change. Through personal growth techniques I realized that focusing on positive energy will replace the negativity that is keeping you from achieving the success in your home based business that is vital for your financial freedom.

 

I deserve my success because I took charge of my life.  If you’re wondering what I do with the rest of my time, I spend it with my family; I help worthwhile charities, I ENJOY LIFE and I CHOOSE MY ACTIVITIES.

Make 2016 the year that you decide to move forward and not just be a pawn in creating someone else’s life.

 

Budgeting- Another Business Swear Word

Ugh, budgeting is one of those topics we'd rather avoid, but in business, it's an absolute necessity. To prepare a reasoned and thoughtful budget, an accountant must start with a broad-based critical analysis of the most recent actual performance and position of the business by the managers who are responsible for the results. Then the managers decide on specific and concrete goals for the coming year. It demands a fair amount of management time and energy. Budgets should be worth this time and effort. It's one of the key components of a manager's job.

 

To construct budged financial statements, a manager needs good models of the profit, cash flow and financial condition of your business. Models are blueprints or schematics of how things work. A business budget is, at its core, a financial blueprint of the business. Budgeting relies on financial models that are the foundation for preparing budgeted financial statements. Those statements include:

 

--Budgeted income statement (or profit report): This statement highlights the critical information that managers need for making decisions and exercising control. Much of the information in an internal profit report is confidential and should not be divulged outside the business.

 

--Budgeted balance sheet: The connections and ratios between sales revenue and expenses and their corresponding assets and liabilities are the elements of the basic model for the budgeted balance sheet.

 

--Budgeted statement of cash flows: The changes in assets and liabilities from their balances at the end of the year just concluded to the projected balances at the end of the coming year determine cash flow from profit for the coming year.

 

Budgeting requires good working models of profit performance, financial condition, and cash flow from profit. Constructing good budgets is a strong incentive for businesses to develop financial models that not only help in the budgeting process but also help managers in making strategic decisions.

Bookkeeping Basics

Being that we are so close to the end of the year, I thought I would do a small post about book keeping. This is where a lot of self employed and new small business owners get confused, frustrated and sometimes in trouble with the IRS.

Most people probably think of bookkeeping and accounting as the same thing, but bookkeeping is really one function of accounting, while accounting encompasses many functions involved in managing the financial affairs of a business. Accountants prepare reports based, in part, on the work of bookkeepers.

Bookkeepers perform all manner of record-keeping tasks. Some of them include the following:

-They prepare what are referred to as source documents for all the operations of a business - the buying, selling, transferring, paying and collecting. The documents include papers such as purchase orders, invoices, credit card slips, time cards, time sheets and expense reports. Bookkeepers also determine and enter in the source documents what are called the financial effects of the transactions and other business events. Those include paying the employees, making sales, borrowing money or buying products or raw materials for production.

-Bookkeepers also make entries of the financial effects into journals and accounts. These are two different things. A journal is the record of transactions in chronological order. An accounts is a separate record, or page for each asset and each liability. One transaction can affect several accounts.

-Bookkeepers prepare reports at the end of specific period of time, such as daily, weekly, monthly, quarterly or annually. To do this, all the accounts need to be up to date. Inventory records must be updated and the reports checked and double-checked to ensure that they're as error-free as possible.

-The bookkeepers also compile complete listings of all accounts. This is called the adjusted trial balance. While a small business may have a hundred or so accounts, very large businesses can have more than 10,000 accounts.

-The final step is for the bookkeeper to close the books, which means bringing all the bookkeeping for a fiscal year to a close and summarized.

There are quite a few good accounting programs out there. I am not an affiliate and I am not getting any kickbacks for this, I just enjoy the program and passing it on to you guys.

I have been using this for a few years now and it is awesome. It’s free to use and they have other pro services that you can purchase. For over a year, I used the free services solely and it worked great for my start up.

Go to Wave by clicking here if you are interested.

Being a Continuous Learner

When people ask me what business I’m in, I often say, “I’m in the learning business.”  It sounds intriguing, and it is certainly true.  But, truth be told, we are all in the learning business.

 

Why?

 

Because as humans, we are learning machines.  We are most alive and functioning closest to our potential when we are learning, adapting, adjusting, and finding new ways, approaches and techniques to improve our lives (or the lives of others) in some way.

I believe in the above statements.  They are as true as any other statement I could write here.  But rather than talking about the philosophy of humankind, let me get much more pragmatic. 

 

Change and Learning

Change is all around us.  Some say the rate of change is increasing, but whether that is true or not, this is definitely a fact in our business lives.  Products change, Customers change, process and policies change.  We are put on a new team, we are entering new markets, and we have set new goals.  In all parts of our daily professional lives change surrounds us.

In order for us to cope with that change, we need to be willing and able to change.  And learning is a key component in developing that ability.

So when I talk about continuous learning or life long learning, I’m not suggesting everyone needs to take a course at their local college, or go back to school for a new degree.  Continuous learning is an attitude and a set of behaviors that allow us to succeed in our ever-changing environment, and is the best lever we have to turn who we are today into who we want to be tomorrow.  Change requires learning and conversely, there is no learning without change.

So if life long learning doesn’t necessarily mean the “professional college student” and doesn’t require us to be the person who was always asking questions in every class we ever attended, what are the behaviors that make up a true continuous or life long learner?

I’m glad you asked.

 

The Behaviors

 

There are some common threads among those who actively are learning and growing as professionals (and humans).  Life-long, continuous learners:

Have a beginner’s mindset. If you approach anything with the mindset of an expert, you will learn nothing.  With the expert’s mind, you are looking for confirmation and validation of what you already know; a beginner on the other hand, looks constantly for one new tidbit, one or more ways to expand on their current expertise.  In other words, expert or not, they don’t think that way, because they know that only with a open, beginners mind, can they benefit from the learning opportunity.

Make connections. Peter Drucker, the famous and influential management thinker wrote, “To make knowledge productive we will have to learn to see both forest and tree. We will have to learn to connect.”  Continuous learners do that.  They continue to think about what they have learned in one part of their life and how it relates to and connects with challenges, problems, opportunities and situations that occur in other parts of their life.

Are flexible and adaptable. Learning requires change, so continuous learners realize that they must be willing to adapt and change if they want to grow.

Are always learning something. Continuous learners learn new things “just because.”  They’ve always wanted to play guitar, so they take lessons.  They want to ride a unicycle, so they try it.  They learn how to quilt.  They learn a new language. These people don’t invest the time required just so they can play “Love Me Tender” or say “good morning” in Chinese.  They also do it because they realize that our brains are like muscles.  The more we exercise them the stronger they will be. 

Are continuously curious. One of the most powerful learning questions we use is “Why?”  Why is the question of the curious.  Continuous learners remain curious about people, places, important and mundane things as well.  By cultivating their curiosity they are adding to their knowledge and perspective, while exercising an important part of our learning brain at the same time.

Learn in multiple ways. In school we learned in a relatively limited number of ways, which unfortunately leaves some people with a limited view of learning.  Continuous learns know that they can learn by reading, by listening, by trying, through others, with a mentor, etc. (etc.!) 

Teach others. Something magical happens when you teach someone something – you suddenly understand it better yourself.  Continuous learners teach others not just to help the other person (or to show them how much they know) but because they know it helps them deepen their mastery of their own learning.

 

How to Use This List

 

Now that you have read this far I hope you are convinced of how valuable it can be to be a more active learner.  You have also read a list of characteristics.  Now that you have read that list of characteristics, I’d like you to read it again.  As you read it ask yourself these questions:

How well do I stack up against these behaviors?

Which ones would I like to get better at?

Who do I know that is exceptionally good at each of these characteristics?

How can I learn these traits and habits from those I know who are better at them than I?

Your answers to these four questions (and the action that you take) will put you on the road to being a more continuous and life-long learner.

Enjoy your journey.

 

 

9 Strategies For Regaining Your Work Life Balance

 

I like working with independent professionals and artists because of the way the work life balance shows itself in our lives - for us, life, work, and business exist in a nexus from which we cannot easily extract our ways of loving, relating, and making meaning. The challenges we face in business inform our personal lives and personal challenges affect our businesses.

Rich as it is, the relationship between personal and professional life can be rocky and maintaining that work life balance is often a tricky issue. I experienced this before when, within a few weeks of declaring some new goals for my business, my wife lost her job unexpectedly followed my my daughter needing surgery just a few days later. If this wasn’t bad enough, a job that I was doing on a major client’s personal items messed up due to a material flaw in the product he purchased, but, though it was on him, he decided to discontinue our working relationship. All of these factored together to lead to a personal melt down.

The problem was that I felt like a loser. I enjoyed the work that I did with this client and I couldn’t get out of the funk. Before I knew it, we were looking bankruptcy in the eye and didn’t know what we could do other than give up.

I've been caught between the promptings of my spirit and the requirements of my business more than a few times, and I knew all sorts of success formulas, but none of them seemed to help. I also knew it was possible to take care of ourselves and our businesses if we are willing to do the work, but I couldn’t shake the funk and it led to a deep depression.

We lost our house, one of the cars and had to move to the other side of the state; we had to borrow money from family just to get settled, but my wife had gotten a new job and I was able to reestablish my business in a better location and things finally started getting back to a level that I could see a light.

As Les Brown once said, “When you fall down, always land on your back. That way you can always be looking up no matter how low you fall.”

Here are nine strategies that, taken together, can help to change course without abandoning the destination and help you restore your work life balance:

 

1. Don't panic.

Even if you feel panicky, you can choose modest, recoverable steps to address the situation. This is no time to get a divorce, fire an employee, or buy a new computer system. Tip: Talk with a coach or therapist to get perspective.

 

2. Return to Source.

Whatever your spiritual orientation or tradition, connect with what for you is the Source of life or spirit. Know that there is something larger than you that encompass you. Spend at least 15 minutes each day connecting with that Source. (I like Mark Silver's Remembrance Practice described in his free downloadable workbook Getting to the Core of Your Business.)

 

3. Take a body inventory.

Are you sleeping well? How are you eating? What's your energy level? If these are not up to par, get a professional evaluation and take the steps that will restore your well-being.

 

4. Tell the truth.

Sometimes energy flags when we've gotten into a pattern of pleasing others or living according to standards that are not our own. Notice if there is any misbalance. Notice where you're being less than forthright with yourself and get clear about your motives, then clean it up.

 

5. Keep good company.

Are you stimulated and encouraged by your peers and clients? Do you have great playmates? Playing on the wrong playground with the wrong kids is neither fun nor productive.

 

6. Tune Up Your Thinking.

There's substantial evidence that managing the way we think can have a profound and lasting effect on mood and motivation. See Amazon.com for books you can use to tune up your cognitive skills and/or make a date with a therapist. (If you are otherwise in good psychological health a skilled coach can help, too.)

 

7. Set Healthy, Flexible Boundaries.

Yes, real life and real business are intimately connected, but that doesn't mean that you need to give up your privacy. To find your work life balance, set boundaries so that you can feel generous without feeling depleted and available without feeling invaded. Keep them flexible, because things change.

 

8. Create or Refine Systems.

We can't manage real life and a real business without good systems. Look at where things feel most out of sorts and resolve to create or improve a system to get things on track.

 

9. Keep the Goal, Drop the Plan.

Sometimes the best way to achieve a goal is to let go of our plans. Promptly and clearly revise commitments and offers as necessary to bring current activity in line with current resources. Why abandon ship when you can drop anchor while you make some repairs?

For me, these strategies led me to go past what I was doing and concentrate on this dream that I had to help others get out of the rat race and make a legacy that the future will benefit from. Having stopped the war between myself and my business and realizing that there was more to me than my work, I was able to restore my work life balance and now feel more engaged with the things that I choose to take on (like writing this blog and creating a training program.) My goals have went from safe to audacious and are now shining possibilities instead of looming obligations, and if it takes a little longer to reach them, arriving will be all the sweeter.

In 2016, make it a goal to balance your life.

 

 

Are we our own prisoners?

 

Imagine a person in a prison. He/she has been imprisoned for life and will wait till death in the prison.

What can possibly motivate such a person? What do these people look forward to in their lives?

Sometimes, we are also prisoners of our thoughts and our past deeds. We also have nothing else to look forward to. We only have regrets. At least, we can do something about the conditions, but the prisoners can do nothing. Life can be depressing at times. How to inspire ourselves in such conditions?

 

What is inspiration?

 

'Inspiration' the word as it is commonly understood means to experience a state of mind that propels us to work happily, try to achieve goals, and feel good about ourselves and the world.

 

How to break open the prison?

 

When we are not inspired and can set no goals, we feel that we are so helpless that nothing can be done. The first step would be to try finding stories of people such as Helen Keller who overcame so many difficulties to emerge victorious. That will give us a basic thought that things are not that bad. We will open at least one door of our prison with this thought.

 

Then go back in your memory. Try and think of instances when you felt good because of some achievements. It could be something very small. Anything. Like coming first in the class in your second year in school, or getting a good remark from a teacher for an essay or for a math answer. That will break open another door.

 

Now begin counting your blessings. Do you have a functioning kidney? Can you see? Can you hear? Can you smell? Are your hands ok and so on. Will you sell your eyes for any price? No! Who said that you have no money? You are a wealthy person who is unaware of your wealth, your blessings, Isn't it? This will open one more door.

 

Break the last door open by thinking of the goals you might want to achieve. Believe that you can do that. Start planning. Think of ways. Talk to people. Be ready for a long struggle but with a firm resolve that you will achieve the goals. This will take you out of the prison of your thinking and make you a new person ready to fight.

 

Get set to go ahead. You are a winner in making!

As always, here’s to your success.

 

 

Believe In Yourself And You’ll Change Your Life!

Today is my birthday and as a special gift to you, I want to send you some inspirational videos and a free book to help you in this upcoming year. It doesn’t ask for your email address, I am not soliciting anything, this is for you and your success, absolutely free.

Just click here and enjoy.

You may have heard someone say this about beliefs. It sounds contradictory, even ridiculous, but you had better believe that it’s right! Understanding your beliefs, how they control your life and the traps caused by beliefs is a key ingredient in the mental game of success.

WHAT ARE BELIEFS

Very simply beliefs are those things that we believe to be true.

”If  You Believe You Can Or You Believe You Can’t, Either Way You’re Probably Right…”

You may have heard someone say this about beliefs. It sounds contradictory, even ridiculous, but you had better believe that it’s right! Understanding your beliefs, how they control your life and the traps caused by beliefs is a key ingredient in the mental game of success.

WHAT ARE BELIEFS

Very simply beliefs are those things that we believe to be true.

The first trap is that beliefs are personal – what we believe is not the same as what other people believe – two people can look at exactly the same thing and have different beliefs about it… and both can be right.

Yet we all fall into the trap of believing that our beliefs are right while anyone who holds different beliefs is wrong!

Some beliefs are built from shared experiences – we all believe that gravity will cause objects to fall to the ground – most people recognise this one! These basic beliefs which come from incontrovertible external facts are shared by the whole of humanity.

However, the majority of beliefs are not so clearly defined. They are about ourselves and the world we live in- who we are, how we should react, what is good for us, what is bad for us, who we should trust, who likes us… These beliefs are more likely to be shared by smaller groups of people – our friends, family, our cultural groups – or be personal to you as an individual.

Beliefs are formed throughout your life, in childhood, by copying people you respect, as a results of repetitive events, or even single, very emotional or traumatic events. You can also pick up beliefs from your culture and your environment. You will have some beliefs for your entire life while beliefs about some things may be changed several times during your life.

It is also important to realise beliefs are not values. Values are more fundamental statements about what is important for you and often underpin your beliefs. You can find out more about values in my article “Are Your Personal Values Aligned With Your Path to Success?”

 Values frequently support your beliefs, although you can also hold beliefs that conflict with our values. Getting beliefs and values lined up is important if you want to be successful.

While you have maybe a few tens of values, you certainly have thousands of beliefs about every subject under the sun.

WHAT DO BELIEFS DO FOR US?

Beliefs are like a lens through which we look at the world. Like a lens they fundamentally distort, reshape and change the importance of the information that we take in through our senses creating the view that we really have of the world.

Beliefs have a strong effect on your behaviour, if you believe you should do something or think something then you usually end up doing or thinking it!

Beliefs strongly influence both what we do and what we learn from our environment - it is difficult for you to learn anything or do anything that you believe is going to be unpleasant or bad for you.

"IF YOU BELIEVE YOU CAN OR YOU BELIEVE YOU CAN'T..."

Beliefs not only shape our view of the world but they also control the way that we react, for example if you believe that someone does not like you, you are not going to react to them in same friendly way that you would to one of your friends.

Of course it may be that your belief is completely mistaken, that person may actually like you. However because you have decided that they don’t like you, you continue to react to them as if they were hostile and little by little their opinion of you becomes more negative.

If only you had started with a more positive belief…

Another example is the well known medical “placebo effect” in which something as simple as water administered in a way that causes you to believe that it is the drug that is going to cure you can in fact be as effective as the real drug.

 

==>Beliefs can have a shockingly powerful grip on your mind!!

 

WARNING - LIMITING BELIEFS CAN RUIN YOUR LIFE!

We’ve seen that beliefs can shape our world by affecting the way we perceive it and by affecting the way that we react to it. We have also seen how powerful they can be. This can make them a fantastic tool for you or a mortal enemy.

Positive beliefs that support your goals and values  will produce very positive results for you. However, through no fault of your own, you have almost certainly acquired some limiting beliefs during your childhood.

Limiting beliefs often begin with you saying to yourself “I can’t…”. They may even have been true, or are still true at some time in your life. The danger is that you are likely to automatically apply these beliefs to the rest of your life – jeopardising your future and your success. 

For example it may be true that you don’t know how to do something today, but so often, the way that this is expressed is as “I can’t do…”. If you say that often enough it becomes a belief and as you’ve seen, this belief becomes the truth.

Even worse are limiting beliefs that are not based on the truth but on some belief that has been instilled into by your parents, your friends, your society… If you believe that you’re destined to be poor or that you’re not capable of making money, well the outcome is inevitable.

GIVE YOUR BELIEFS A CHECK-UP

Think very carefully about your beliefs, for the next seven days, watch yourself as you interact with people. Look for those “I can’t…” statements. Identify them, write them down, ask yourself just how much harm are they doing you. Do you really want to let them kill your chance of success?

Every time you find yourself making one of those “I can’t…” statements, turn it into a “How can I…” statement – “I can’t make more money” becomes “How can I make more money”. Can you feel the difference? If you do this consistently you’d better believe that you will find a difference in your life!

Again, it's my birthday and you get a gift. Click here to get an absolutely free, no solicitation, no requests. Just enjoy.

Christmas Shopping For Your Employees

If you have employees or you deal with quite a few sub contractors and your company has had a successful year financially, you may, want to share some of that success by giving out bonuses. My suggestion is to not just give bonuses, make it personal and show your employees that you see them as individuals and not just a means to an end. Purchasing Christmas gifts for your employees also.

Christmas shopping for your employees is not an easy task, however. There are a number of factors, which contribute to the difficulty of the situation. The number of employees is one such factor. You may have a large number of employees and they may not share similar interests making it difficult to decide on a gift. Additionally, you may be concerned with the prospect of employees talking about their gifts and jealousy arising if it is believed some employees received more expensive or better gifts than others. This article will discuss some of these concerns and will offer tips for dealing with these dilemmas.

Favoritism is a serious issue which all bosses should carefully consider when Christmas shopping for their employees. Bosses should assume the gifts they give to their employees would be discussed and compared so it is wise to not purchase any gifts, which will be viewed as favoritism. One way to avoid this problem is to purchase the same item for each of the employees. This may seem impersonal but office politics often takes precedence over sentiment and in this case it is wise to give each employee the same item to avoid any potential problems. I started my journey in self employment with a purchase of a laser engraver, so I assure you that you can get the same thing for all of them and make it absolutely personal by placing their names on the item.

You may opt to give more expensive items to higher-ranking employees. This is an acceptable practice as long as each employee on the same tier is given the same gift and employees on higher tiers are given the same gifts as their peers at that level; make the gift fit their position.

Bosses also have to consider finances when Christmas shopping for gifts for their employees. This is a particularly important concern especially in cases where the boss has a large number of employees working for him. In this case the boss may have to consider giving only small token gifts due to the large number of employees. If you are paying for these gifts out of your own pocket, it is not reasonable to expect to purchase extravagant gifts for many employees.

In some cases, you may purchase gifts for the higher ranking employees (managers, foremen, etc.) and a lot them a budget to purchase Christmas gifts for the employees that work under them as it is viewed to be a method of keeping morale high and retaining employees.

The important thing here is to express good will to your employees and sub contractors by making them feel that you were thinking of them as an individual and not a number. The smallest gesture can go along way. Even though they appreciate the bonus, it still doesn’t have the same impact as a personal gift.

Now, saying that, don’t skimp on the bonuses. If they truly deserved the bonuses, make sure that you don’t use that extra money on gifts and leave them with financial issues because they might have been depending on that bonus to help with their Christmas shopping.

 

5 Keys to Success

Can you believe that 2016 is just around the corner? I believe that this is a beginning of renewal for the country, the world as well as ourselves. Change happens, it is unavoidable and if last year didn’t go as smoothly as you would like, know that this year is a new beginning, so start gearing up for it now.

Follow these five steps in creating your plan for success and make this year the beginning of greatness for you and your family. 

Successful people know what they want and work out a strategy to get what they want in order to get where they want to be. This is the very foundation for building success. 

With the New Year just around the corner you have to remember the adage, “if you always do what you’ve always done, you’ll always get what you’ve always gotten” then ask yourself what you could do in this new year to be more successful.

Step #1 Build the right plan.

This plan has to be yours and yours alone. As long as you work on a plan for someone else, then that plan is his or hers and not yours. Everyone’s plan is unique and different, so make your plan.

If you find yourself working on someone else’s plan you may find yourself in a successful situation, but it will be a golden handcuffs type of situation.

Also, if you build your success off of someone else’s plan you will only find that when you reach the top of the success ladder, you had your ladder against the wrong wall.

Step #2 Keep a Journal.

Think of this as a written record of your life. Ideas, plans, strategies, etc., all need to go in this game plan. Never rely on memory.

Quotes that inspire you, reflections of the day; it all needs to be recorded so that you can stay on track and keep an account of where you are going and where you have been.

Step #3 Reflection.

Playing off of step 2, make time to reflect. Study the things that you have done right and wrong. Like I always tell my clients, friends, even my daughter, “he who only knows one side of a wall is often defeated by that which is on the other side” so it is important to, not only review your victories, but also your mess ups. Keep record of it all and reflect on it all to know how what to do next time and what to improve on.

At the end of each day, take time to go over the previous day and create a game plan for the next day.

Step #4 Set Your Goals.

Again, this is about you, set your goals, not what you need to do for your boss at work, or someone else that is using your time to advance their agendas.

Creating goals is the number one most important thing that you can do to move yourself forward.

Every effective game plan is written down, studied, modified and gone over again and again. Make sure to know your destination and what you need to know or achieve in order to reach that destination and then create a game plan to get there.

Step #5 Take action

The one thing that separates the successful person from the not so successful is action (or lack there of).

The number one thing that kept me in a state of despair, poverty and depression was this very thing. When it came to ideas, my brain was a computer, but when it came to following through, I dropped the ball so many times.

I heard the cemetery once described as the biggest concentration of wealth, intellect and achievement because there were so many people buried there who had the knowledge, ideas and creativity, but never acted and it died with them instead of spreading. I always thought this was sad, but true.

Values were meant to be costly. If they didn’t cost much, we probably wouldn’t appreciate the value.”-Jim Rohn.

I know I said five, but here is a bonus one for you. Values…Your values will tell the world who you are and what you are made of. To have effective goals, they must first be rooted in your values or you will not be committed enough to stick with them.