Are You A Talker Or a Doer?

Like it or not, the world is composed of two types of people – talkers and doers. Which one are you?

About 10 years ago, a friend of mine made a life-altering decision. She had been presented with an opportunity to spend one year as an exchange student in Europe, in several different countries. Now, she didn’t exactly come from a family of world travelers, nor were her parents wealthy enough to send her overseas for an extended amount of time. Come to think of it, no one in her poor neighborhood had even dreamed of doing such a thing – they were to busy struggling with their day-to-day existence.

The temptation to not consider it any further was certainly very strong. She had no idea what she might be getting into; She didn’t know any foreign languages. Going overseas for a year meant not working, spending lots of her hard-earned savings (and in her neighborhood, that meant a lot!) and leaving behind family and friends, something that she had never done before. More importantly, when she would come back, she’d come back broke.

She went back and forth for quite a while. In then end, she said, “what the heck – the worst that can happen is that I hate it and come home early. Who knows when I’ll have this kind of time again?” Her curiosity was getting the best of her. She called her school counselor. “Sign me up”, she said.

Needless to say, her family thought she was crazy and didn’t believe she was actually going until she scraped together her meager savings and left for the airport two months later.

Lessons Learned
Initially, the trip across the pond was a total disaster. To begin with, the airline bumped her entire group – 50 people – leaving her to find other airlines to get to Europe. With her luck, she ended up on the later flight. Then, she ended up spending 10 hours in the airport before she finally left. She was thinking that she probably should have listened to all the people that told her she was crazy to go. She arrived, exhausted and with a mean case of jetlag in Europe the next day; she got to her apartment and passed out.

A funny thing happened the next day. After getting out and exploring a bit, she discovered that she actually liked Europe. It was so easy to travel and get around. She found her way to the nearest travel agency and bought a train pass.

The next week, she traveled to a few countries – all on her own, because several students were too afraid to travel outside the “base” country. This isn’t to say that she wasn’t apprehensive, because she was; however, she made a conscious decision to overcome her fear because she wanted to find out what else was out there. She wanted to know what was beyond the sheltered world that she had once known. She discovered that train travel across Europe was quite easy and safe, if one just used common sense. After the first week, she traveled, alone, to a different country every week. She felt a newfound sense of independence, freedom, accomplishment and success that she had never felt before, and it felt great!

Her year in Europe was a real eye opener for her. It exposed her to things that she would never have experienced otherwise. She would never have experienced different cultures, systems, met as many new people or learned that she had a very adventurous spirit and thirst for knowledge. And she would have never met her future husband. They ended up running his restaurant together, quite successfully, in Berlin for another year, before they both returned to the States. She was not as broke as she had imagined she would be!

What’s the lesson from all this? Don’t let fear hold you back – nothing great is ever accomplished without some risk. Fear is what keeps 99% of people from becoming successful in life. Don’t let that happen to you – know what you want and go for it!

What You Need To Know

Attaining success in life is completely up to you. Sure, there are some factors that you just can’t control. The answer? Don’t worry about them – worry about factors that you can control – you and your actions and your thinking.

Points To Remember:

Be open to all possbilities. Don’t discount an idea just because it seems new to you.

• Don’t let fear of failure dominate you, although it can be very powerful. Fear is what stops 99% of people from being successful.

• Recognize that sometimes you have to take a risk – successfully negotiating risk-taking is what makes one successful in the long run.

• Always keep an eye out for new opportunities.

Success in life is about finding inner peace, satisfaction and emotional stability. You can’t achieve that until you change your thinking, start thinking out of the box and take some risk. This applies to business as well as to your personal life.

You’ve got to be able to step out of your “comfort zone”.

Some Of The Pillars Of Success:

• Plan your work, and work your plan!
• Strive for excellence. Set your own goals – don’t try to reach the goals of others
• Make a commitment and stick to it!
• Accept that disappointments are a fact of life. Instead of allowing them to hold you back, overcome them and you will become stronger.
• Turn every experience, whether good or bad, into a learning experience.
• Live each day as if it were your last; have no regrets.

Some Final Words…..

There are more talkers than doers in our society. Which one are you? Do you wait for things to happen, or do you make them happen? If you think that things will happen for you if you just think about it and fail to take action, I have bad news for you. They won’t. The only thing worse than procrastinating for a day is procrastinating for a day and a minute.

It’s time to stop thinking about making a change to ensure your future success and time to do something about it. Starting a home based business if the first step that you need to be willing to take – for your financial independence, your financial security and that of your family.

If you don’t look out for you, who will? I have the answer – no one. If you are ready to take control of your destiny then now is the time to start. I can show you the way – but it is up to you to make the decision to change your life for the better and take that first step. Remember, you’re not alone – we are with you! Take the time to fill out the form on the main page to get started on your new path to success today – because time isn’t going to wait for you to make up your mind.

You hear it from every segment of the media: The Baby Boomer generation is quickly becoming the “retirement generation.” While some boomers – defined as those born between 1946 and 1964 – have already retired, most are still working and wondering when (or if) they’ll be able to retire.

There is another segment of the population, those younger than the “baby boomer” generation, who live in an entirely different work landscape – a landscape where job security and working for a single company for 30 years and retiring with a pension is a thing of the past.

The federal government’s own social security web site states that most retirees will need about 70% of their pre-retirement income to maintain the same lifestyle. Yet Social Security replaces on average only 40%. That means you better have an impressive portfolio of savings and investments ready to make up the shortfall.

The Government Accounting Office estimates that an average-income couple who receives $20,000 annually from Social Security at age 62 needs investments of over $500,000 to bring their annual retirement income up to $46,000.

Do you have a portfolio of $500,000?

Okay, so you can probably manage to live on less than $46,000. But here is some not-so-good news. Stan Hinden, in the September, 2006, AARP Bulletin reports that more than half of workers 55 and over state they’ve saved less than $50,000 for retirement. How can that be?

People in today’s environment have not followed in their parents’ footsteps of staying in one job forever. Many of us have changed careers a number of times, sometimes for better pay, sometimes because we got downsized or outsourced. Unfortunately, changing jobs frequently means we’ve missed out on becoming fully vested in some of our employers’ 401K plans. Our payouts or rollovers have been tiny or nonexistent

• Some of our lives took turns we never imagined. We’ve been overwhelmed by large medical expenses for ourselves, our children, or our elderly parents. These kinds of expenses can be real retirement-wreckers. We may have little more than a few thousand dollars left.

• Changes like divorce often mean retirement savings, even company retirement plans, are split between spouses. When you say good-bye to a relationship, you say good-bye to half the money in your retirement plan, and you have to work hard and fast to play catch-up.

• We wanted our kids to have college educations. We borrowed from our 401Ks to finance ever-escalating college costs.

• Some of us had to drop out of the workforce altogether to care for elderly parents or grandchildren.

• Some of us are overextended due to poor spending habits. Struggling to pay off credit cards leaves little for retirement savings.

• Some of us have just plain worked hard our whole lives and budgeted carefully, but have never had much of anything left over to save.

• There has been no increase in real wages-that is, purchasing power-since the mid-70s. Despite the happy faces on TV, a lot of us are still struggling just to get by.

Not too long ago, people worked for one company for most of their adult lives, faithfully putting in their time and counting the years until they could retire and start to enjoy life. The company pension was one reason people stayed at jobs they didn’t even like. “At least,” they thought, “the company will take care of me when I’m old. I won’t have to worry.”

A recent trend is for major companies to reduce retirement benefits to workers who believed the company would be there for them in their retirement years. Cuts in post-retirement health insurance benefits are the most unpredictable and the most worrisome for people who are entering their 60s. The few people who even qualify for such programs find that the initial modest premiums and co-pays for themselves and their spouses have skyrocketed to the point where they are simply unaffordable. And by the way, Medicare doesn’t cover dental or vision care. People can buy separate policies for these, but the coverage is usually meager.

Then there’s the longevity “problem.” As we live longer and longer, our retirement dollars must stretch further. What if we run out of money? What if we’re old and sick and poor?

As many companies convert employee pension funds into “cash balance” plans, retiring employees are given lump sums – the money you’ve accumulated in your pension plan or 401K. At that point, you’re on your own to create a “do-it-yourself” pension.

You could take a crash course in investment planning. You could hope you’ll find a trustworthy financial advisor, but there is no way to be 100% confident about putting your financial future in the hands of someone you barely know. Either way, it’s difficult to feel really secure about your financial future in retirement, and the chances are you can’t afford to lose a bit of your nest egg to bad investments.

Quite simply, neither today’s nor tomorrow’s retirees can afford the luxury of feeling secure.

By now, you’ve probably figured out where your retirement prospects fall among all these possibilities. You might be wondering if you’ll ever be able to retire, or if you’ll have to just keep working for the rest of your life. Yes, it’s challenging. Yes, it’s scary.

But there IS an answer. Instead of letting other people determine how you will spend your “golden years,” you can take charge of your life now.

It doesn’t matter if you must stay home to take care of a spouse, parent, or child. It doesn’t matter where you live. It doesn’t matter if you’re one of the many who has not saved enough for retirement. Even if your love to travel, you can establish and build a business using just the Internet and a telephone. Successful professionals will teach you how to stop trudging along on the worry treadmill and start speeding down the road to success. You will be amazed at how quickly you can turn your life around!

The sooner you get started, the sooner you can stop worrying about an uncertain financial future and let yourself think about all the wonderful possibilities of a truly secure retirement. It’s your life, and you should be the one controlling it. Take the first step today by filling out the form on the main page for more information.

So, you’ve decided to start a home-based business?

Good for you!

You’ve just joined the ranks of 79 million North Americans who are expected to start their own home based business in the next 3 to 5 years according to Forbes Magazine.

You may be juggling a full time job, a part time job and family life. You know that there are many things you need to do in order to successfully start your business and work from home.

Don’t let anyone fool you into thinking its going to be easy. It can be simple but it won’t be easy. If it were easy everyone would be rich working from home.

How are you going to fit your business project into your daily commitments?

It’s easy to become overwhelmed and lose focus. Losing focus will cause you to take no action. Action is essential to moving on from where you are now, to where you want to go.

Here are 5 critical tips for staying focused and razor sharp when starting your home business enterprise…

1. Break It Down:
If you have a large task to tackle, it is always easier when you break it down into smaller components. You’ll find it easier to focus because you won’t feel as overwhelmed. For example, ‘Register a business name’ can be broken down into: ‘Think of five business name ideas’, ‘Find out how to register a business name’, ‘Get registration form’ and so on.

2. Keep A ‘To Do’ List:
Once you’ve broken down major tasks into smaller ones, make and keep a ‘to do’ list. Always keep a note pad and pen with you so that you can jot down any new ideas as they arise.

3. Schedule Your Time:
Every evening, decide on three to five tasks on your ‘to do’ list that you wish to accomplish the following day. Stay focused on these tasks and only move on to the next tasks on your list once these have been completed.

4. Set Goals:
This is critical. There is nothing that will keep you more focused than setting goals and writing out your goals. Visualize exactly where you want to be in a month, six months and a year.

In a month’s time, do you want to have registered a business name and have a fully functional home office set up? In three months time, how many clients or team members do you want? How much revenue do you want to generate in a six month’s time?

5. Say No:
Be assertive and carve out more time for your home business. Saying ‘no’ to that extra demand by your boss every once in a while can get you home one hour earlier a couple of days a week.

How about cutting back on the amount of housework that you do? How about watching less TV? Thats a BIG time zapper. Imagine how you could channel that extra time into your home business enterprise…

If you put these 5 tips into practice, you’ll definitely find it easier to focus and stay razor sharp so you can achieve your ultimate goal of working from home and putting more LifeStyle back in your life.

P.S. Pay particular attention to Tip # 3 above. As a Home Business Owner and Entrepreneur, once you gain control of your time you will eventually have all the time you will ever need…