Posts Tagged ‘Money’
Thursday, June 24th, 2010
I am sure that most people who own their own businesses have faced this decision at some point or another, and probably more than once. It is the decision between taking on a project that is outside the main line of work and earning additional revenue, or declining the project and sticking to what the company is good at. It can be a challenging choice, especially if you are not over-booked or if you need some extra cash. Some people always follow the philosophy of “do whatever it takes to bring in revenue.” But that is a dangerous path to head down, since it can easily take away the necessary time from keeping your company focused and improving on your area of expertise.
We are all dealing with the same amount of time, so we can’t do anything about that. The only thing we can do is manage our time to the best of our abilities. Now if you are not sure what you want to do, maybe taking on anything that comes is a good idea. It should give you a good understanding of what is required for the completion of different tasks and projects. Once you know what you want to do, it can be tempting to go on tangents while you build up your customer base, but it will always take away from learning and developing your skills and knowledge in your field.
I don’t have any stats on this, but it would not surprise me if most business owners faced this type of dilemma on pretty regular basis. Even when the company is established, in order to grow it needs to expand. It can expand the services, or alternatively it can expand on the number of clients serviced. Again not an easy choice. This post is not intended to provide an answer, as I do not really have one; more importantly it is intended to draw your attention to the common dilemma. And I welcome any thoughts you may have on this.
Until next time,
V
Tags: Action, goals, Human Behavior, Money, Success, Time Management
Posted in Success, Taking Action | 1 Comment »
Wednesday, June 9th, 2010
We have all heard the “get the good grades, a good education, and then your life will be set” from our parents or our teachers or someone else. I have heard it countless times, and even bought into it for a good part of my life. Good grades are often a must if you are pursuing an academic career. Overall, a degree can definitely open some doors for you, but only doors in a given building where a degree is required (and remember, “C’s get degrees,” so good grades are not a necessity). That being said, I definitely do not subscribe to the idea that good grades or degrees are essential to successful, fun, and fulfilling life.
An interesting article was sent to me earlier, and it is well worth a look. It is entitled “100 Famously Successful People Who Skipped College“. The level of success that these people have attained in their careers is astounding and many of their stories are very inspiring.
While formal education is not a prerequisite for success, ongoing education in your field is a must. In this context education encompasses all the possible ways that you can improve your knowledge, skill, or ability on a given subject. It can come in a form of reading books and magazines, finding things online, attending conferences and trade shows, or listening to experts in the field talk (just to name a few). It is by being the best in your field that you’ll make yourself very valuable and irreplaceable to your customers or employers.
Until next time,
V
Tags: Action, Education, goals, Inspiration, Money, Personal Power, Success
Posted in Success | 1 Comment »
Friday, May 21st, 2010
There are many things that are considered incompatible for some reason, and one of these combinations is environmental sustainability and profitability. It seems like you can either make money or be good to the environment. That is what most corporations are screaming when any talk of ‘green’ legislation comes up. There are some companies, however, that caught my attention who have been able to reduce their environmental impact AND make more money in the process. And these are not companies that are selling ‘green’ technologies – these companies have nothing to do with that. They are just doing their thing, but doing it better, and making more dough in the process.
Google is one example, where they have taken numerous initiatives to reduce energy use at their facilities and implemented technologies that paid for themselves in a few months. So at the end of the year, they had a net increase in profit due to increased savings. That makes it much easier to sell to the shareholders the requirement for other money saving technologies that pay for themselves and put money in your pocket over a longer term.
This ‘green’ field is just one of the areas where you can get ‘both’ positive results. Are there any other areas that you can think of where there are two (or more) outcomes, that are normally thought of as incompatible, that are in fact very compatible with a little creativity?
Due to the long weekend, my next post will be on Wednesday.
Until then,
V
Tags: Action, goals, Money, Responsibility, Success
Posted in Success | No Comments »
Wednesday, April 14th, 2010
I had a fascinating discussion with a friend of mine that strongly relates to the idea presented yesterday about how it’s much better to create something instead of competing with others.
Here is my friend’s logic: every person in this world is unique – we have unique DNA, we look differently, and we develop differently as well. Even identical twins do not turn out to be the same person, since they develop slightly differently.
Now since everyone is unique, then everyone must have something that they are better at than anyone else in the world. And if they are better than everyone else in the world, then the competition becomes largely irrelevant.
So, if you could find what that ‘competitive advantage’ was and could monetize it, what affect would it have on your life?
My friend developed a program that helps you find that edge. I’m not going to do an explicit plug here, but if you are interested, email me and I’ll connect you to him.
Until next time,
V
Tags: goals, Money, Success
Posted in Success | No Comments »
Friday, April 9th, 2010
This relates a lot to the yesterday’s post on self-image. I’ve heard this question asked, “what is in your container of certainty?” I thought that ‘the container of certainty’ was a really cool way of expressing the idea.
The concept is pretty simple and straight forward – you will always get whatever is in your container of certainty – no more, no less. You will not get what you want nor what you wish for, but rather what you truly expect. Every time I write something related to this concept, I am in awe from the power that comes once you understand and internalize that idea. Personally I’m starting to get there after all these years, but I’m a slow learner.
So what is in your ‘container of certainty’? What kind of life are you expecting? What kind of relationships are you expecting to have? What kind of work do you expect to be doing? What is your expectation when it comes to health and fitness? Just some food for thought…
Until Monday,
V
Tags: Energy, goals, Human Behavior, Law Of Attraction, Marriage, Money, Neo-Spirituality, Relationships, Success, Universe
Posted in Energy, Neo-Spirituality, Psychology, Relationships, Success, Universe | No Comments »
Tuesday, March 9th, 2010
1. Your monthly income became your weekly income?
2. Your annual income became your monthly income?
Bob Proctor asks these two questions in one of his seminars, and the interesting thing is, most people cannot answer them with any amount of detail or clarity. When he asked a couple of people, they responded with “I don’t know…”, mainly because they never really thought about it. And to be honest, when I first heard him ask those questions, I had no answer ready in my mind either.
So here is another question for you. Is it at all surprising that people who do not give much thought to what they would do with drastically increased incomes, never actually increase their incomes significantly?
I gave it quite a bit of thought and figured out exactly where I would channel the increased flow of abundance. I found that exercise quite a lot of fun. If your answers to the above two questions are unclear, I would encourage you to give it a much thought and figure it out. And when you do – when your picture is clear – you will be able to open yourself up to the opportunities to make it so.
Until next time,
V
Tags: Bob Proctor, Law Of Attraction, Money, Success
Posted in Success | No Comments »
Wednesday, January 6th, 2010
Now that you figured out what works and what does not work, I want to share with you another strategy that I found useful. You did figure out what works and what doesn’t work, right? If not, go do that now!
Anyway, as the title says, this strategy is called ‘The Critical 6′. I came across it through James Arthur Ray; James Ray mentions where the strategy comes from, though at this time I can’t put my finger on it. In any case, the strategy is pretty simple (but not easy).
Write down the 6 most important things to do today and rank them in order of importance from 1 to 6. Go to work on #1 and don’t do anything else until you are done. When you are done with #1, move on to #2, and so on. If you are not done with all of the items on the list, the remaining ones roll over to the next day, so if you were only able to finish the first 2 tasks on the list, you roll over the remaining 4 to the next day. The suggestion is to come up with your own Critical 6 in the evening before you start the day, so that you know exactly what it is that you need to do.
So go ahead and do that now…come up with the 6 most important things to do today, and get to it!
Until next time,
V
Tags: Action, goals, James Arthur Ray, Money, Success
Posted in Success, Taking Action | No Comments »
Tuesday, January 5th, 2010
So I would like to get the year rolling by making up my mind that I will do certain things differently. I would hallucinate that most of you feel this way around this time of year, setting all kinds of resolutions. The trouble is that we feel like this every year, do things differently for a few weeks, and then go back to our usual patterns. I see this every year at my gym where during the first 2-3 weeks of January, the gym is packed.
Last year I wrote a post on changing only one thing this time around – it will not feel as daunting of a task meaning that you may actually stick to it. Bob Proctor offers an interesting exercise by asking three questions:
1. What are you doing?
2. What works?
3. What does not work?
Now, stop doing the things that do not work and focus on the things that do. The 80/20 rule applies well here. There are just a handful of activities that you are doing that are bringing you most of your results. Just focus on those activities! Sounds like common sense, but common sense is not common practice. It is so easy to get sucked in to the 80 percent of activities that keep us occupied, yet are pretty much fruitless.
So, what works for you?
Until next time,
V
Tags: Action, Bob Proctor, Irrational Behavior, Money, Success
Posted in Success, Taking Action | No Comments »
Thursday, December 24th, 2009
Bob Proctor talked about how the amount of money that you make is directly proportional to:
- The need for what you do,
- Your ability to do it, and
- The difficulty that would come with replacing you.
Bob Proctor says that point number one pretty much takes care of itself if you are currently working. Otherwise, if there was no need for what you do, you would not be working in that field. It is a little more tricky if you are thinking of staring your own business. In that case you will need to do some market research to see if there is a need for what you want to do.
Now if you think about it, if you just focus on improving your ability to do whatever it is that you are doing, it will automatically become more and more difficult to replace you. So I suggest that you only focus on becoming the best in whatever it is that you are doing. That way you will become irreplaceable, and like Bob Proctor said, the same people who were paying him $4,000 a year are now paying him $4,000 an hour! This is one of those very simple, yet truly profound concepts that you NEED to get if you are going to make a lot of money.
Tomorrow is time for a Spiritual Mind Treatment, so I hope you ‘tune in’.
Until next time,
V
Tags: Action, goals, Money, Success
Posted in Success, Taking Action | No Comments »
Wednesday, December 23rd, 2009
A good friend of mine shared with me recently an exercise from Jack Canfield’s book The Success Principles that involved figuring out the amount of money that I need to live my ideal life. Pretty much what you need to do is to make a list of all the things you want to do and have and then figure out the cost of doing those things. The instructions for the exercise suggest going into as much detail as possible. When you figure out this number, it will give you a target to shoot for. I suggest coming up with this ‘ideal life’ amount for 1-2 years from now, 5 years from now, 10 years from now, and 20 years from now. Chance are the figure will change as you go because now you may be thrilled about taking any kind of vacation, but later on you may want to fly first class and stay in 5-star hotels. And the reason why I suggest doing it in a step-by-step manner is because a 1-2 year figure will likely be smaller and more believable than a 20 year figure. And when the income goal is more believable, you are more likely to actually act and do something to move towards that income goal.
So here are some of the suggestions to get you started as far as the expenditure categories are concerned…
- What kind of a home do you want to live in? Where? How much does it cost? What would be the montly payment?
- What kind of car(s) would you like to drive? How much do they cost? How much is insurance, gas, and maintenance?
- What kind of places do you want to go to eat to? How much is the meal? How often do you want to go out?
- What kind of other actvities do you want to do? What kind of sports? How often do you want to do them? How much does it cost?
- What kind of causes would you like to support? How much do you want to contribute monthly?
- What kind of vacations would you like to take? Where? How often? How much do they cost?
- Would you like to help out your parents? How much do you want to contribute?
- Would you like to provide your children with education? How much does that education cost?
- What kind of ‘toys’ would you like to have? Motorcycles? Boats? Airplanes? What the cost of the ‘toy’, insurance, and maintenance?
- Would you like to buy a small country?
- How much would you like to invest on monthly basis?
- Would you like to own any vacation properties? Where? What is the cost?
- What kind of furniture would you like to have? What is the cost?
- What kind of clothing would you like to wear? What is the spending budget that you would like to have?
- How much do you want to spend on self-development and learning?
- How much would it take to do all the personal care activities, like massages, yoga, acupuncture, etc?
- How much would it cost to pay all the bills that you may have, like food, cell phone, internet, etc?
- Would you like to go to plays, concerts, or sporting events? How often? How much do the tickets cost for where you want to sit?
Hopefully this gets your creative juices flowing…If you would like to share your ‘ideal life’ numbers, please do so!
Until next time,
V
Tags: Action, goals, Money, Success
Posted in Success, Taking Action | No Comments »