On a regular basis, I attend a variety of meetings in Chicago that are centered around building wealth. As you’ve probably heard, one of the secrets to success is to surround yourself with “like minded” people. I’ve found this to be a great way to connect with others and learn about real business opportunities that work.
A philosophy I subscribe to is to find what other people are doing to be successful and replicated it. There’s no need to overcomplicated or make things harder than they should be when all of the hard work has already been done for you.
Take inventors, for example. Thousands of people rack their brains to come up with the world’s greatest gadget. They come up with a great idea, spend thousands of dollars on creating prototypes, spend thousands more on advertising to bring their product to market and wait for the paychecks to arrive.
A few weeks pass and there’s no results, so they dump more money into advertising with a different message and medium. After they’ve exhausted their life savings, they finally admit to themselves that they had a good idea, but there just was no market for their product. It’s a sad story, but it happens all the time.
Those on the fast track to wealth do what already works.
What I’ve observed over the years of attending small “master mind” meetings is that the members built their wealth in pretty similar fashions. In fact, with an exception of a few people, you can break down the members into 4 groups:
Real Estate Investors
Network Marketers
Internet Entrepreneurs
Equities Traders (stocks, options, forex, etc)
Many of these individuals own other businesses or invest in antiques and art, but just about everyone I encounter is involved in one of or all four of these areas. The reason being that these are tried and true business models that work.
The business models above can produce passive and residual income, can be automated, and profits naturally grow over time with the right attention. That’s not to say that these are easy ways to make money – they all require significant up-front effort – but these models possess some of the best qualities you can find in owning a business.
Another observation that I’ve made is that every successful person I come across had someone they considered their coach, which has formed the way they attack their business. For example, there are a number of ways to make money online (think eBay, website advertising, membership sites, etc), but if you were to ask one of the Internet millionaires in my group who they studied under, you could immediately understand how they approach their business.
Having a coach allows you to have a focused and effective strategy, which is critical to your success.
I could probably rattle off 100 different ways to make money online – some better than other – but most with the potential to produce a significant amount of income. If you tried to tackle every one of those methods, you would fail miserably. But if you were strategic and followed a focused plan that works, your success is only limited to what you allow yourself to achieve.
Once you’ve identified how you want to create your wealth, then you want to find a successful coach. In the past, finding a mentor was a bit tricky. I remember as a young real estate investor I had to basically beg investors to allow me to work for them for free in exchange for their mentoring. Most would refuse, but eventually after regularly attending real estate investing meetings, I would build relationships with the big player and find someone that was willing to show me the ropes. It wasn’t until after I proved I was serious about building wealth that anyone would listen to me.
Looking back, I can’t blame them…
There are too many people seeking the magic bullet, but not willing to put in the effort to build a real business.
Finding a coach is a lot easier today. Since most people now have high speed Internet and more services allow streaming video, some of these successful people are offering one-on-one coaching programs online. Instead of going to meetings and having to find someone locally, anyone can receive coaching from the top entrepreneurs from across the globe.
This, of course, will typically come with a fee, which is really an investment that should produce and income that far exceeds your initial payment. If it does not, quickly pull the plug. There are better places for your to invest your money and many business models that will allow you to produce an income pretty quickly (given that you put in effort).
Should you join a mentoring program that happens to fail, you should have no problem getting 100% of your money back. Any respectably coaching program will guarantee you produce $X in a certain number of days or your money back.
On the online world, Mack Michaels is a well known entrepreneur that grosses over $2 Million a year by promoting other people’s products online (read his story here). Not long ago, he turned his focus towards helping others build an online business, and his private coaching program has been wildly successful.
Mack’s personal mentoring program provides a way for you to get off the ground running and not just produce some money online, but create a giant stream of income. There are plenty of guides and resources you can read to learn how to make money online, but no book is as dedicated to making sure you are a success as Mack is. His reputation relies on making sure you make money by doing exactly what he tells you to do.
You can find out more about Mack’s Maverick Money Makers program, but you may want to watch some of this video first…
Did you know that retailers bring in as much as 40% of their annual profits just in December? That means they could have an outstanding year but still fail if the holiday doesn’t bring consumer traffic, and that’s the was very fear among retailers. As a result, retailers pulled all stops to compete for your business, and America was ready.
Early reports show that this may shape up to be one heck of a December, as sales are already up 7% over last year. That’s great news for retailers, great news for consumer confidence, and great news for the economy at large.
There are incredible deals out there, and now may be the time to make those big purchases you’ve been putting off.
I, for one, have been considering purchasing a new laptop for some time. I’m always reluctant to buy technology because it seems as soon as you buy something it is already out of date. However, I couldn’t resist the opportunity to take advantage of the 12-hour sale that HP was running with Microsoft Live SearchCashback.
That sale got me a top of the line laptop with 40% cash back from Microsoft, plus an additional $270 cash instant rebates from HP, and a number of free upgrades. I thought it was too good to be true until I saw my order confirmation.
That’s just one example. There are huge discounts all around and probably more to come as companies need to pull in as much cash as possible. But there’s another reason you might consider spending now. Tax incentives.
If you own a small business or have a home office, you can sweeten your deals by not only buying stuff cheap, but reducing your tax bill as well. Come April you may be happy you spent the money when you did.
If you’ve come across any other great buys, leave a comment here….
Whether you realize a direct or indirect impact, the recession affects you in one way or another. It’s become a dangerous snowball that began with the weeding out of weak or overexposed businesses. As it has grown in size, it can affect your job and put at risk the things you need most.
Have some of your job benefits disappear, or has the free wireless Internet access you use while waiting for your oil change become extinct? Chances are you or someone close to you has lost their home or job, and are struggling to make ends meet.
Take my brother, for example, who was until recently a very successful mortgage loan officer in the Phoenix, Arizona area. He sold re-finance loans to help people take advantage of the rock bottom loan rates and, in some cases, pull some equity out of their homes. As a home owner, he relied on his income to pay his mortgage.
Since the mortgage and credit crisis, it has been increasingly difficult for him to sell loans. It had such a great impact on his life that he watched his once comfortable income plummet to virtually nothing. He took a second job to pay the bills, but even that wasn’t enough and he was left facing his own financial crisis.
After struggling to produce enough income and having depleted six months of emergency savings, the recession effects got the best of him and he lost his own home.
Was he one of the foolish who bought more than he could afford? At the time he bought a home that was completely in reason with his income and he had saved several months in emergency savings. My brother did everything we are taught to do financially, and he thought he had achieved “the American Dream.” Months later he realized just how quickly the economy and the snowball effect of the market can take the American Dream away from you.
His home is gone, his credit is destroyed, and now he makes more money waiting tables at a nearby restaurant than he could at his “safe and secure” job.
Just like many other Americans, his income is squeezed and future uncertain, and he is faced with no other choice but to cut back his living expenses to the bare minimum. He is “lucky” as a single adult. Many families don’t have the luxury of cutting back any more than they have with children and dependence, and are forced to add more credit card debt with no end in sight.
As a result, many business are running anything but business as usual, as their monthly revenue stream is experiencing a drastic setback. Since those businesses are selling lower volumes of services or products, and therefore losing profits, they are forced to cut costs themselves and increase their prices.
This, of course, has some affect on an increasing inflation rate, which is not good for anyone. Less money coupled with higher costs means dangerous times.
As a result of higher costs of business and lower profits, businesses have to make serious decisions. Because of the credit crisis, they can’t get approved for more loans or credit from the bank. As a result they are unable to write your paycheck and either have to start laying off employees or close up shop all together.
That, of course, worsens the condition for those who are already strapped for cash, which means more tightening and/or increased credit card debt. Once again hurting businesses funnel down to families and individuals.
So hopefully you are not touched by the recession directly or through a loved one. Perhaps it is an indirect exposure when you look at your community and see the impact on the lives around you. How many neighbors have you seen with children, parents or other family members coming to live with them? How many boarded up homes do you pass on your way to work?
These are troubled times for all of us, which requires us to think strategically and have a “what if” plan of action. It’s easy to think, “it won’t happen to me. I have a great job, a stable income, and I’m smarter than that.”
