Are you brainwashed?

I was listening to a recording of a successful CEO that managed to motivate a huge number of people, but one of the criticisms he received was that he was "brainwashing people."  Obviously, he took offense at this at first, until he realized that he was brainwashing them - he was brainwashing them to be a success.

You're always either brainwashed to be a success, or your brainwashed to be a failure.  Which are you going to be?

Maybe we should take the brainwashing a step further - we should brainwash people to be a success, and then form a cult around it.  :-)

Why should you start a business now

Most people might think that a down economy would be the worst time to launch a new business, but actually, it's exactly what we need.  And it's exactly what you need.  If you are having trouble finding employment, or improving your income, taking matters into your own hands is the perfect solution.  Apple and Microsoft were both formed during the downturn of the 1970s.  And it's not just a way to provide for yourself, but for anyone you might employ as well.

Now, while there are plenty of books out there on business building, online materials, articles, and such, so I won't go into detail here.  But I do suggest three options for you:

1) If you have something your passionate about and you want to build a business around it, find someone who has business expertise who you can partner with.  This will help you prepare vital documents, but it will also help you in the negotiation process - high financed people have a tendency to want to deal with those who operate in a dispassionate manner, but your best creative ideas come from your passion - your business partner will be the person who can give potential financiers what they want.

2) If, on the other hand, you're the one with business expertise, find someone who has something they're passionate about that you can turn into a marketable product.  A business needs to be built around something, and if it's something one person can get excited about, it's more likely others will get excited about it as well.

3) The third option is to partner with a franchise.  These have done all the research and development for you, and all you have to do is promote the product(s) or service(s) to others.  Many traditional franchises are too expensive for the average citizen, but thanks to the internet, you can find a franchise that is easy to run with low overhead and that can even be operated on a part time basis around your current job, if need be.  You can find a list here.

This is the first step.  Once you have your business up and running, then you can focus on expanding it to build prosperity for yourself and others.

The Business of Health

As most people in America realize, the health industry is a multibillion dollar industry, if not a trillion dollar industry.  Insurance companies are getting wealthier and wealthier, while many of us are becoming sicker and sicker.  Now, it's not my purpose here to outline the virtues of a universal health care plan, even though I believe this to be in the best interests of our country.  Instead, I have two focuses - first, you should know that investing in preventative health through supplementation, maintaining weight, and exercising is an investment in yourself that will ensure you greater clarity and strength to accomplish your goals.

You might also want to consider making health and wellness a secondary source of income, if it is not your primary source.  It not only has the benefit of being a universal concern, particularly in today's environment, but as you learn more about your own needs, you likewise gain the ability to assist others who have those needs.  Plus, it's a business that need not take up a great deal of your time if you don't want it to, because you can simply talk to those around you and help them whenever they request it.  It's one of the few fields where you can use it as a side business if you wish, or build it aggressively if you choose to do so.

You can read more about health and wellness at my health blog: http://healthinthenavel-ma.blogspot.com/

Do you love your job?

I spoke to a friend the other day who I had worked with previously on a video game project. She's an artist, but she couldn't continue with the project for financial reasons. When I chatted with her over Yahoo, she told me about her job in corporate America, and I asked her some details about her responsibilities. I asked her if she enjoyed it, and she told me she did. I asked her what she enjoyed about it, expecting to find some description of her tasks that revealed new talents and interests she didn't know she had. On the contrary, she told me a story of a conversation with her boss where he noticed she was unhappy there, and she said she decided to start enjoying her job because she spent so much time there instead.

Now, to be honest, I think she just convinced herself that she enjoyed the job as a matter of corporate political expediency, when the truth is she doesn't really enjoy it after all. She's an artist, and that's what she enjoys doing. Her job is something she tolerates, but she's convinced herself she enjoys it because she thinks that's what's expected of her. Now, don't get me wrong, I'm sure there are lots of people who sincerely enjoy working in an office, and that's fine. But I suspect most of the time, it would be sufficient for an office that the person holding the job doesn't dislike the job - they know what their job duties are, they're willing to do them, and they do them and do them on time.

So what does that mean for you? Well, if you have loftier goals than your current occupation, that's okay. You shouldn't feel obligated to love a job. Just do what you know you're supposed to do, and keep good relations with your employer. Meanwhile, you can seek a strategy to get from where you are now to where you want to be, whether that be a strategy to get your dream project launched, or an online business to provide you residual income, or whatever it may be. In fact, email me if you want some assistance with this - I'll coach you through it free of charge. (And in this economy, free is good!)

The Universe Has a Funny Way of Working

How many of you have seen The Secret? Do you believe in the power of manifesting? I've had some experiences that have led me to believe in it. First was my engagement to my fiancée. I was so focused on being married in spite of all those around me who might have told me I was obsessed, that it was unhealthy to want it that badly, but I kept focusing on it, until I found a woman who I fell in love with, and who fell in love with me, and we decided to get married.

One detail. She lives in Russia.

So I have to go meet her before INS will let me bring her back to the U.S. and marry her. And that means a plane ticket. So that's where my focus has been. Now, if you're reading this blog, you may know that I have an online retail business, and since my job only allows me to save up a limited amount of money, I've been focusing on that to provide the extra income. But a strange thing happened last week - in a bad corporate economy, in a company that has a hiring freeze and a raise freeze, we got a huge job that required lots of overtime from all involved - including me.

I was focusing on the money for the plane ticket. I wasn't focusing on how I would get it.

Now, make no mistake, I still have a long way to go in terms of saving money. But the thing to notice is that I was focusing so much on the end result without focusing on the means to that end. Never mind that my business will also allow me to achieve financial freedom through residual income, through leverage, and will also allow me to solve all sorts of problems for many people. The name of the game now is to focus on that vehicle, and not just the end result, so that I can achieve that result, as well as everything that goes along with it.

Combining our power

Given the current state of the economy, we're probably going to find that we can't look to anyone in positions of authority to help us out of the mess we're in.  Probably what's going to have to happen is we're going to need to band together.  But how?

Well, when you think about it, money simply came about as an evolution of the barter system - you gave someone something they wanted, and in return, they gave you something you wanted.  Money just facilitated the exchange - you could offer something in exchange for money, which you could then spend on something you needed from someone else.  We were fairly good at being interdependent at first.  It's just that the system broke down when most of the money got concentrated up at the top, and we started depending on the upper class for our sustenance, rather than depending on each other.

Well how do we get that back?  Well, if there's a way that we can regain our interdependence.  For example, the franchise I've partnered with allows us to combine our purchasing power so that every dollar we spend goes to benefit each other - even when we shop at a place like Best Buy.  The average customer that would go to my portal can earn rewards points towards future purchases, so that's a natural way to save money, but those of us who have chosen to partner with this franchise not only earn the rewards points, but we can actually earn income based on our shopping habits, and helping other people save and earn income as well.  Plus, we learn how to live healthier, how to improve our health naturally, without the need for pharmaceuticals, and we connect with members of the community and help them achieve their goals and objectives, and through that, we increase value for them as well.

Isn't this the way society's supposed to work?

When the Job Market doesn't work

I talked with my mother the other day, and I was telling her how I was frustrated that I could only save $200 a month from my income. Now, to me, thid sisn't seem like much, because what I'm saving for is a plane ticket to Vladivostok, Russia, to visit my fiancée (and not just because I miss her and want to be with her - it's because the immigration service requires us to have pictures together to demonstrate that we have a relationship before they'll grant her a visa), and with plane tickets to Vlad in four figures, $200 a month doesn't sound like much. But when I told her this, she was so proud of me that I was able to save that much, as if that's a lot to be saving out of one's monthly budget.

Of course, what that made me realize is that in our day and age, going through the job market no longer works. Yes, I have a job, and yes, it meets my needs and allows me to save, but it's not allowing me to reach my full potential of being married and raising a family, let alone fulfilling other professional and personal goals of mine. And with a raise freeze, that probably won't be changing anytime soon.

And if the job market isn't working for me that does have a job, how much more is it not working for those that haven't been able to find a job, or who lost their job recently?

Out of the thousands in America who are unemployed or underemployed, we should be able to band together and interconnect together. With the amount of companies going bankrupt these days, there are fewer and fewer traditional employers. So what's the alternative? Well, if there are fewer and fewer employers, then there will need to be more and more entrepreneurs.

I'll write more in the coming days about this, but in the meantime, why don't you ask yourself, if you can't depend on the traditional workforce, what are you going to do to make sure you don't have to?

The Solution is the Blessing!

I know a lot of us are concerned with the state of the economy, we're afraid of our incomes shrinking, we're afraid of losing our jobs, and we're afraid of prices skyrocketing. These are uncertain times, to be sure. How do we make them certain? Only one way - to take things into our own hands.

I, like many of you, am a religious person. Many people of my faith may look at this as some sort of trial, and the trial is some sort of blessing. Trials are not a blessing. Trials are problems. Problems have solutions. And it's the solution that is the blessing.

I set up this blog because I know that I can address the questions that may be weighing down on you. How do you stretch your dollars even further, or if you need to increase your income, how can you do that? How can you take matters into your own hands when all the institutions you were taught to depend on are failing?

Were you taught to do well in school, go to college, and get a good job? Yeah, so was I. Now, I don't regret going to college - I learned a lot at Berklee College of Music, and I loved my time there so much I didn't want to graduate. And do I have a job? Well, yes, and I'm one of the lucky ones that my company isn't downsizing right now, even though they've had to institute a hiring freeze.

But let's face it, I also know it's not enough. It's not enough for someone that wants to use his skills and talents he gained at Berklee. It's not enough for someone who values the institution of marriage so much that he's willing to go as far as Vladivostok, Russia, to make it happen. And it's not enough for many of you who don't even have the luxury of a stable job to depend on.

This blog is for those of you who find yourself in this position.

Keep reading. Write back. Send me articles.

The focus is on the solution.

The trial is not the blessing. The solution is the blessing. :-)