A Refreshing Way To Look At Your Goals

Gardens, not buildings

Great projects start out feeling like buildings. There are architects, materials, staff, rigid timelines, permits, engineers, a structure.

It works or it doesn't.

Build something that doesn't fall down. On time.

But in fact, great projects, like great careers and relationships that last, are gardens. They are tended, they shift, they grow. They endure over time, gaining a personality and reflecting their environment. When something dies or fades away, we prune, replant and grow again.

Perfection and polish aren't nearly as important as good light, good drainage and a passionate gardener.

By all means, build. But don't finish. Don't walk away.

Here we grow.

This post is courtesy of Seth Godin's blog which I highly recommend here

Shocking Which? poll reveals many 'borrowing money for food'..

Which? poll reveals many 'borrowing money for food'..

This alarming report published in April 2013 makes for alarming reading. When I last looked, there were nearly 800 comments and counting...

The survey suggests many households are cutting back on essentials.

One in five UK households borrowed money or used savings to cover food costs in April, a Which? survey says.

It suggests the equivalent of five million households used credit cards, overdrafts or savings to buy food. The consumer group tracks the spending habits and behaviours of 2,000 people every month.
Which? boss Richard Lloyd described the findings as"shocking". The government said tax and benefit changes meant working households were now better off. The figures come despite official statistics last week showing that personal insolvencies had dropped to their lowest levels in five years.

The Which? monthly tracker involves researchers interviewing a cross-section of the population online. The results can then be filtered by age, income, gender or region. Of the one in five households borrowing or dipping into savings to pay for food, most were low income families - half of whom earned less than £21,000 a year.

Average household earnings in 2011 were about £37,000, according to the most recently available data from the Office for National Statistics.
Among the group who used savings or credit to pay for food:

Eight out of 10 (82%) worried about food prices

More than half (55%) said they were likely to cut back on food spending in the next few months
Nearly six out of 10 (57%) said they found it difficult to cope on their current income
A third (32%) borrowed money from friends and family in April

A typical weekly food bill averages about £76, Which? researchers said, up 4% on last year.
Of all the people polled, the research showed:

A quarter said they were living comfortably on their incomes
More than a third - 36% - felt their finances were under pressure
Almost one third - 31% - cut back spending on essentials last month, and were most likely to be women aged between 30 and 49.

'Mixed economic picture'
Mr Lloyd, Which? executive director, said: "Our tracker shows that many households are stretched to their financial breaking point, with rising food prices one of the top worries for squeezed consumers.

"It's simply shocking that so many people need to use savings or credit to pay for essentials like food."

BBC business correspondent Joe Lynam said the economic picture in Britain was decidedly mixed these days.

“Families face a cost of living crisis and are being forced into debt
or to use their savings simply to put food on the table”
Mary Creagh Shadow environment secretary"

It's true that millions are at what Which? describes as 'financial breaking point', yet retail spending is growing, as are house prices, while the number of people in work is at a record high."

He added that average real incomes in Britain had fallen to the same levels as a decade ago because salaries were not rising but the cost of living was.

"The good news is that the economy is recovering, albeit at a glacial pace. The bad news is that it's not happening quickly enough for millions who are genuinely struggling to make ends meet," he said.

A spokesman for Oxfam said millions of people were under pressure from a combination of rising prices and stagnant incomes - with their problems added to by cuts to services and safety nets.

Mary Creagh, Labour's shadow environment secretary, said the UK was facing a "growing epidemic of hidden hunger".

"Families face a cost of living crisis and are being forced into debt or to use their savings simply to put food on the table".

"This incompetent government needs to wake up to the human cost of their failed economic policies and change course now," she added.

A government spokesman said nine out of 10 working households would be better off as a result of last month's changes to the tax and benefit system - with the average working household better off by more than £300 a year.

"The economy is healing: the deficit is down by a third, over 1 million private sector jobs have been created and interest rates remain low," he added.

Make Money Online or Build a Business?

With more and more of us using computers across an even broader age range, it's obvious to see why we might consider ways for our new shiny piece of technology to earn its keep. Whether it's by a popular online auction site or any number of sites promising quick riches, it's easy to see why making money online has such appeal:

• it can be quite anonymous - you can set up relatively cheaply and promote other people's products (you don't even have to produce your own products or hold stock)
• there are no age restrictions - so the internet has massive appeal to those in-between jobs, those with a family or people looking to supplement their income, to name but a few (incidentally over 70% of US households are looking to start a business from home right now)
• there are no 9-5 restrictions, so you can work the hours to suit your present lifestyle
• the internet truly has a global audience, although not everyone will want what you have to offer
• Internet marketing is a process, so it can be learned at your pace in your spare time
• the Internet is not gender specific - in fact women have a better eye for relationships which is key to any sort of relationship marketing, and essential online
• there's a lot of free information available, meaning anyone who takes the time, can learn anything they need to succeed

I'm sure you can think of many more.

What does Google think?

I just typed 'make money online' into Google and it returned 2,430,000,000 results!

So you can see there's a lot of interest here. But this creates a big problem. With those numbers where do you start?

Good question.

Sounds like there are a lot of folks out there with solutions. But who do you trust? This is why the get rich quick crowd do so well because there are so many choices. Those in search of how to make money online are easy prey for the quick riches solution because I suspect they think most of the hard work has already been done for them. I thought this myself initially!

This 'thinking all the hard work has been done for you' kind of attitude leads to a kind of not taking this 'make money online' thing very seriously. Even worse, making money online for the newbie is seldom regarded as a business.

Sound silly? It's not.

Why having no business experience matters

Many people who embark on the trail of internet success for the first time, seldom have any real business experience. Ask any successful business person and they will quickly tell you that success depends on systems. Think Franchises like McDonalds - systems that work wherever. The sole trader who does the work himself rarely has the know-how to look beyond their own way of doing things. Think of your business as a system of ways of doing things then scale the systems. This is important.

And the internet takes a whole lot more commitment to succeed especially if you're planning to do-it-alone. You can just walk away if things don't work out especially as there's no-one watching you, and you can just quietly quit if you want.
 
I've found over the last 13 years or so that online products and services fall broadly into two categories:

1. make money online (get rich quick)
2. legitimate products (many of which don't offer you everything you need to succeed. In other words there's an up-sell - usually a cheap initial product followed by more expensive products later usually culminating in an expensive monthly membership site).

Don’t mistake movement for achievement

It’s easy to get faked out by being busy. The question is: busy doing what? If you've succumbed to some of the 'make money products' you're likely to discover that most don't deliver on their promises. The next question is how long are you going to follow this approach before taking the time to do some proper research?

This might be a good time to ask yourself why you want to make money online in the first place.

What type of income do you want to create? Short-term or long-term? How about both? Serious or keep buying into the get-rich-quick offers?

Only you can decide.

You're already working so why not start doing it right? I've bought many products over the years but the one which lives up to its promise I stumbled upon quite by accident whilst working on another project!

It's a company called Site Build It!, or SBI and it shows you step by step how you can turn any hobby, passion or skill into a viable online business. What you probably don't realise is that almost any topic can earn money with a website (the get-rich-quick sites don't tell you that do they?)

Put your brain and motivation to good use

You don't need programming skills or web design knowledge, an existing business or a product to sell (a common question, just your knowledge and motivation. SBI has all the tools you need, and they take you step by step and teach you how to use everything - even helping you find the perfect topic for your site; how to build it, get traffic to it, and how to make money with it, no matter what it's about!

Sound incredible? It's not!

Have a look at the Video Tour to get an idea of how it works (or the Quick Tour if you're in a hurry).

Dig into this information and spend some time learning about how you can make real money whilst building a real business. This is undoubtedly the best way of doing it; make money online and build a business! 

The late Malcolm Forbes said "The biggest mistake people make in life is not making a living doing what they most enjoy."

Now you have no excuse!

When Working Smarter is Dumber

This article comes from an idea by Edward Shapard at EdwardShapard.com about how to work smarter, not harder which you can read here. It had a profound affect on me, and I'm sure it will on you.

The moral of the story is that it's all very well developing systems to help you get more done, but are you factoring in the time (read: down-time) it takes to perfect your system? It takes time to get things off the ground so ensure the project you intend to spend your valuable time on warrants it. This applies to many scenarios, and I'm sure you can of a few of your own.

Take the plethora of "successful" internet marketers these days who brag about their huge incomes from zero to $zillions in a matter of days, even hours. But again, like the character in Mr Shapard's story, they fail to inform us that it took four or five, even ten years to perfect their "system" before it made a cent. Get the picture? And what were they doing before that? Developing, tweaking, designing, troubleshooting etc. (again think Mr McDuck!)

Any kind of personal development is a case in point.

Let me explain. I can recall (with some discomfort when I look back at it) the reams of notes and exercises I performed diligently as part of my personal development "education" process prescribed in some of the books I read. Although many of the exercises were useful, my point is, don't get bogged down with the 'how to's.' I discovered the 'system' could be, and is in fact, never ending!

Sounds silly. It's not.

Think more in terms of Herbert Spencer's famous quote "The great aim of education is not knowledge but ACTION."

Look at your own life and identify if the time you spend on attempting to work "smarter" is, in fact dumber. I wasted hours (and numerous notebooks!) looking for answers I didn't really need. I got caught up in the system instead of the action part. The system was the action and it had zero tangible results. Less is more is certainly true for me, what's true for you?

Can 'The World's Most Influencial Thinker' Help Us Succeed? (The answer is far more surprising, and more fascinating, than we could ever have imagined)

Do we really need another book about success?

In his book 'Outliers' Thomas Gladwell defines success as '...this perennially interesting question; and there are so many different answers depending on who you ask and when you ask them. And that is why we keep returning to it. If there was some simple little algorithm we could apply, it wouldn't capture our imagination in the same way.'

The Economist says 'A compelling read with an important message; by understanding better what makes people successful we should be able to produce more successful (and happy )people'

William Leith of the Evening Standard adds 'It will make you feel happy. It will make you realise that if you're not successful it might not be your fault'

Time says 'Makes geniuses look a bit less special, and the rest of us a bit more so'

Gladwell argues that there is something profoundly wrong with the way we make sense of success. In fact, you may never look at some sports in the same way again. 'Outliers' is a book you won't want to put down. It's easy to read and Gladwell goes to great lengths to evidence his conclusions. Many times I found myself reading past my daily cut-off point just to get to the next chapter and the conclusion of his next revelation!

I first discovered the book from a close friend. We often discussed careers over the years and this was one such occasion. We had been discussing the length of time and the amount of work we had been putting into our present careers when my friend remembered a figure from Malcolm of 10,000 hours (or ten years) to become expert enough in your chosen field before a breakthrough to success! This number seemed about right (ask my wife!) What's more, Gladwell cites many examples from sports teams, software programmers, and rock stars to name but a few!

Before you can become an expert in your chosen field, you need the opportunity to learn how to be an expert - and this takes time. Many people look for a quick solution to bypass the amount of time it takes to succeed, but this is only part of the equation as Gladwell skillfully explains.

'Outliers' by Malcolm Gladwell discusses the eternal question of why some people achieve so much more than others. The answer is far more surprising, and more fascinating, than we could ever have imagined.

Do You Really Want What You Say You Want?

Eric Thomas is somewhat of a phenomenon. Here is a guy who passionately tells it how it is! Eric gets down to the nitty-gritty and puts the 'real' reasons in your space as to why you may not be achieving the kind of success you say you want. Take note, Eric pulls no punches here (I was even a little shocked myself).

Winston Churchill famously once said "Men occasionally stumble over the truth, but most of them pick themselves up and hurry off as if nothing had happened."  This is one such truth.

I trust this brief video gives you that extra impetus to go after that which you say you want. If nothing else, I'm confident you'll be looking up more of Eric's dynamic videos!

The Story of Self-Talk And How To Empower Yourself

Shad Helmstetter provides proven evidence about how our programming during our childhoods is responsible for the people we are today. More importantly, he offers practical suggestions and exercises on how we can change and improve our chances of success today in his book called 'What To Say When You Talk To Yourself.' I highly recommend it.

Dr Helmstetter reckons the average 18 year old has been told 'No' or what they could not do more than 180,000 times! And during his speaking engagements he has met people who could not recall a single instance of being told what they could do!

Isn't it about time you started programming yourself for positive change in a way that's already familiar to you? Dr Helmstetter shows you how you can re-program any part of your life that has been holding you back.