My T-Shirt that says Future Millionaire

Back in 2005, I bought that t-shirt from Old Navy. They had a line with some other like unemployed and broke, but “future millionaire” really standed out. To them it may of been a joke, but to me, it was seriously upblifting. I was intrested in all things stocks, it seemed very appropriate. Now, four years later, I still have the shirt, the same job, and a net worth of negative 589 dollars(whoohoo!). But for a positive, I am married now, so there is one good difference. Other than that, nothing else really changed. Did that shirt just became more of a setback?

I have read a lot on positive thinking, and other books like The Power Of Positive Thinking and other books by Norman Vincent Peale. He seems to support this idea. But reality is – it kept the goal from happening, since affirmations have to be treated like they are in the present. I am a Millionaire is more effective. More than just saying future millionaire, since it places it as a future hope. Is it better to be prepared to take action, than hoping for a later time? So, make your affirmations today, and keep at it. If you just affirming for the future, you only make your goals daydreams.

Lego Pen I Bought. Has nothing to do With This Post. Sorry.

Once again, and still in beta, its the action steps! This year I am going to make posts on the action I take and place a bookmark in the action step page, instead of writing it as one big section.

Since I am personally restarting this year, I am going to start off with a very similar theme from last year. Just bear with me for a few weeks while I get things kick started again, if your a previous reader of the action steps. I am also in the process of building up things again, too. I am personally a bit more prepared this year, than the last to have the guts to dip into the unknown and take some action.
My plan is to have a normal post and an action step post, so the action steps will not ever replace a normal post for the week. Some weeks will not have an action step, since some steps may take several weeks, or even a month.

The First Action Step- Make a Decision To Change
Believe it or not, you have something to the tune “when such and such event happens, I will start an [insert industry] business.” Quite frankly, events are never perfect. The savings are missing a few thousands, or you haven’t won the lottery. The tax return is less than expected, the kids haven’t left the house(yet) or you haven’t have the money for a new computer for the past 3 years. Reality is these things 80% of the time are excuses to non-commitment. It is protection from failing. Put all these setbacks aside for now, and just say Im going to start a small business and grow it into another and then into investments.

The first way to commit is by taking some action everyday, and not just making a verbal commitment. While it helps to have an commitment written down as a statement, you need to back up that statement by taking the time out to learn, to execute and maintain about your select business. Since learning is the first and the easiest, commit about 15 minutes a day, or more. Then in 3 or so months, when your brain is stuffed, its time to put what you learned into action. Then maintain your action by having yourself complete a task or two, to make sure your not giving up or stagnating.

How did I do this step?
I made my commitment on paper. I wrote it up in OpenOffice.org(I use to work in Ubuntu Linux, but right now Im trying out OpenSuse, if you must know) and printed one copy on some resume paper, and one on copy paper. I signed both of them, making it look like a contract. The nice one was hanged on a board. I recommend using a cheap frame if you wish to make it stand out more. I try to read it everyday before work, to remind myself. I do take a lot of my learning to print, since I am not allowed a laptop at work. During breaks, I read whatever I printed out. I also use the same time to figure out a to do, and I keep it to less than 3 a day. Sometimes I break a task down further what the goal is, and the tools I need to complete the task. Name of the game for a cheap startup is momentum. You have to keep moving or else you will get bored and do something else.
Next Week, I will post another action step, covering more about learning and cash stuff. So stay tuned. I am Also going to leave up the previous actions step page till the then, to give you some time if you wish to save yourself a copy.

A Rant that left my keyboard..in a nice condition

It’s a new year, which means seeing the gyms packed, people speed walking in black sauna suits on the sidewalks, SlimFast being bought in large amounts, and the self help sections in bookstores being camped out by customers. In a few weeks the gyms will be hardly busy, the sauna suits, get replaced by moms wearing sweatsuits pushing strollers, and co-workers lighting up cigarettes will remove the nicotine patches for the duration of their smoke break. All of this just because tax season came around to fill them with the stress of getting a return, instead of owing the government money. Okay, well that isn’t the reason why of course, its because their resolutions had no staying power and with the weather being cold, no one has the need to look good in a swimsuit.

I bet, like me you might of made some business resolutions too. Like to finally start one, save more cash, or join some program. I am the master of non-committing startups(this maybe being the 6th year in a row not doing anything) so I can say what will keep your wealth dreams from ever happening by following these steps to just appear like…your on your way. Just like Any other resolution.

Step One – Take only action when you reach x amount of savings-Quite frankly, waiting around for the cash means that cash isn’t being put aside in the first place. The concept of Pay yourself first, means buying what you want, pay your bills, and then save.

Step Two – Sit around, another year researching the next big thing, within the big things(insert your favorite category, investments, real estate, or internet businesses) trying to figure out one requires the least amount of thought and action-This one easy to do, since new programs come out all the time. Plus it’s a lot of work researching all these websites, forums, and periodicals, for this advice, enough that you feel like you’re creating a business in the process.

Step Three-Joining several of these programs you researched, look at the information, decide its not what you thought it would be, and join another one covering almost the same exact material in the previous one did and still decide you cannot do it-This will leave you in a endless researching loop, making you look even busier and you’re spending your cash, so you must be getting somewhere, with your new knowledge you keep

Step Four-Over analyze everything, becoming busy going thru the details, and when it doesn’t exactly turn out just perfect, freak out, and give up.

Step Five-once again, don’t work on your business ever, because Researching is busy work worth pursing. Just keep at finding more and more details, till you decide you can get, more research done. Knowledge is power, right?

So enough of this attempt of satire. What does it really take?

Time-Even if you can commit 15 do it. But you will only get 15 minutes worth of results at first. When you reach a different level, its probably a different story. Make the day count by doing really what needs to be done. The rest can be wasted on twitter, blogging, or researching. These things are easier to do since you know how to do them already, the important task is unknown territory you need to spend that time on.

Money – Actively set aside money to invest in your business. I am going go against the flow and say your education isn’t in the same budget. Its easy to spend money on a book or on a real estate program. But its hard to spend money on a google ad, a website host or pressing the buy button in your investment account. Emotionally draining and scary at first to be exact. Your dollars matter more when risk is in play. And education is a small risk compared to working. Let what you learn work, even if it doesn’t hold all the answers. It really never does.

Faith-You will have failures. Big time failures. You’re going to  lose out while reality trains you that what is the correct or incorrect way to do somethings. But keep at refining, investing and trying to produce some good results.

I am the one who didn’t follow this advice. 2008 ended up being bad, because of it. Very much so till the very end of it. But sadly most of it wasn’t because I followed this advice, its because I choose to really focus on what didn’t bring results. And its more expensive too, because I put all my research and money that I spent on programs(some which cost month to month) aside. And all it would have taken was a try at using what I learned.

So to sum it up, the big three items into a resolution you can use is – Conqueror the unknown by constantly moving. That the only Resolution you really need this year if you need one.

While 2008 left me with a few screw-ups, 2009 already is turning out better. While it seems odd to start up again during a recession, nothing more can convince me its an horrible time to. If you look at the previous web 2.0 startups, such as Facebook, and Google(well..they got big during the recession, but started just before) they were building up while the rest of the world was hoarding their money from any outside influence. The mantra of “finding a need and filling it” stills stays true in this time. Their also some other good reasons to start.

1. Gas prices have dropped, big time- Gas may have prevented money for some low wage earners(say 12 bucks an hour or lower) from saving up for starting a small side business. If you still have your job, you might notice that you have some small cash flowing in. My savings are at least 20-30 dollars per fill up. Instead of buying t-bone steak, or eating out 2  times more a week, with this savings, you could place some of it aside to build up some capital.

2. Price of equipment purchases have dropped in some cases by 12%-40%- the price of an computer LCD 22 inch monitor use to run $279(US) on average. Now its less than $180(and that’s with the after Christmas sales, or really not on sale) for even an high end one. The netbook, if you can type on reduced sized keyboards(or plug in your own), you can have a laptop starting at $279. Intel has released a new CPU line, dropping prices pretty low in some cases(quad core processor for $180). Goods like desks and such really have stayed the same, but they weren’t that expensive to begin with(50 dollars buys you a basic top with 4 legs at ikea, and it looks quite nice). So deals are going to be plenty, and you won’t have to wait or try to fight with someone to get it, and still walk away getting something at a decent price, and quality.

3. Outsourced labor competition may go up- While some are laid off from work, some might resort to doing work on rent-a-coder and other outsourcing/temp. Agencies. Using outsourced workers(and they don’t have to be in a different country, they can be from here) and paying them 12-30 bucks an hour for 1-3 hours worth of work, will help you get the ball rolling in an area your struggling with. At the same time your putting food on the table for someone else. If you been recently laid off, this might be a great time to outsource your talents, you excel at. You can do do a few hours a day of outsourced work, while looking for a job. Who knows you might find the freelance gig enjoyable, and drop the job search.

There is only one bad thing about recessions. It requires a lot more pacence with customers. They might move a bit slower sometimes. They might research a product a bit more or give it 24 hours to think about it. But the needs and wants still remain. Figuring out a strategy to meet this slowdown, is a key. But, if you work with them, and give a good product or compelling reason, they will buy.

So Welcome to my relaunch(third time a charm!), and hopefully yours.

In the past 2 weeks, I had a bout of sher laziness and burnout. Which was kind of odd. I had all my blog articles ready to be typed in, yet somehow I couldn’t even lift my hands to type on the keyboard. While I could rattle on how the constant loss of moving caused me to lose my business momentum and so on, I decided to instead talk about ways to prevent burnouts and possibly recover from them.

Burnouts are harder to deal with in beginner home businesses. Its frustrating to do so much work yourself, even if its less than what you might do in a typical workday, at your job; then have no results seem to happen. Its also common to have unrealistic expectations regarding your results. You can have burnouts in a mental sense, a financial sense, or a physical loss sense(loss of property, or even loss of energy, due to bad health or stress) Most blogs think burnouts are a matter of self control. Even the most productive, end up throwing their systems away for a day or two, or at least they take an afternoon nap! So maybe taking the idea of rest, instead of self control is better. Take 1-2 days off your business, like you would do from work. If your most productive days are your weekends, just use another time in the evening to work something else.  Sunday and Mondays are my days off, for example. Use this time to tend to another hobby, maybe catch up on the tv shows(DVR’s are huge time savers) or play a video game. I try to balance my hobbies too, instead of going hardcore at one for one month and then moving on to the next one for another. This way I don’t end up crashing, even as OC it sounds, plus that behavior could translate out into your business without knowing. Aside from giving your business its own weekend, the ability to start moving again when you burn completely out, is a hard one. Its just a matter of just doing it. Slowly creep back, lower the size of your to do list even if its down to one thing, just make it count.

Financial Burnout
Its really easy to not spend any capital investing in your home business. In these internet days, its even easier. However, some capital will be needed to sustain and grow, or step up to the next level. It doesn’t have to be much.
Where I was personally hit by when to start using capital, was when I was learning at Wealthy Affiliate, where they teach about starting out with bum marketing, where you use free resources, and write product reviews, and other articles about products. The amount of volume needed to get a bite, is understated a bit, but its easy to get burned out(mentally, not financially, unless your buying products at the same time), by not getting any traffic. I needed to make some changes, by increasing not only my volume, but maybe investing in creating websites to drive traffic to. That requires investing in a domain, which is less than 10 dollars a year(my WA membership includes hosting). But, its easy to say, no I don’t need to spend any money in till I make a profit to reinvest, even more so if you have an entirely broke mindset. So, you keep getting burned by not having any bites(mental) and you cannot then fulfill your money goals, when you could just spend some money you would spend anyways in investing in your business. The opposite can happen too. You spend too much on everything about learning, and not starting on doing, or you end up spending too much on towards a problem that need to be more tweaked or dropped, instead of its capital(*cough* our government *cough*).
Instead of becoming like the many who spend and end up failing before they could make it, just adjust capital slowly, from your own sources, making sure that it will truly benefit you in the long term.

Physical Burnout
This is a combo of mental that goes with this. You get tired and your health isn’t so great. You decided to place it on hold till you have the time freedom. Or you get a physical loss, like your computer is stolen, or it becomes broken down. The health one is easy to answer, the loss and malfunction- not so much. here some guidelines.
The loss of equipment can be a nightmare without a backup. But sometimes you can lose your backup too! Push to saving as much data you can onto the the web, using an email account, or Google Docs, etc. I have some redundancy for my writings, since I write drafts in notebooks. If your data is small enough, save it to a USB thumbdrive and keep it on your keychain.
Normally also to keep in mind of computer breakdowns, its only due to one part of a system failing, not the entire system. So, it may not be the hard drive. If it is, normally its very audible, you hear more grinding and files seem to take a bit to open, than normal. Thats when you need to get that data off quickly! Keeping some cash to drop about 200 or so dollars on a older system with a CRT Monitor from a local mom and pop store, and a up to date burned dvd of Linux somewhere, could get you back working in till your able to replace it with insurance, or rebuild. Or just ask around, some geek might have a collection going that you could borrow some parts from.
For your health, just keep it in balance. If your relying on 3 red bulls a day to go, something out of whack. Take some time to balance some time in to exercise, and eat a bit better everyday.

Rebuilding from a burnout is hard work, and instead of just trying to get back into the swing of things again, it might be better to just keep things balance, and aim for it. Its harder to maintain it this way, but done in small ways, you will feel a lot less guilty when your not doing anything, and fight your fear of failure.  Plus, remember even the productivity bloggers have days when they chill out for a bit.

Tags: Procrastination, Burnout, productivity, home business

While I spend time working on part 2 on project, I found this posting about personal management, and all. Talks about some Traps you can run into.

MyStrategicPlan/blog | The 5 Traps of Personal Performance Management

Tags: PersonalManagement, Home business mangement

I admit I am not very good at working with todo lists. The problem is, not there inflexibility time wise, or their attempt to plan your entire day, its their ability to keep dictating to what you haven’t done, because you listed too many tasks to do! I have seen such things as giving each task a priority level, such as a ABCDE system, or giving tasks no value, and having each day only 3 “big” things to work on and thats your main focus. After reading Getting Things Done by David Allen, I’ve become more adept at doing tasks, but not at applying his full system. So I hodgepodge it for now. Till I find at least, a good task manger program in Linux. To me, its really not about general tasks, its about tasks to be done in a project by project setting. Becoming good at planning projects, I find helps more tasks get done, even when I work on the non-essentials ones,like emails. or reading blogs leisurely.

My Current Major Tools For This Right Now
I still write mostly on paper, since I’m not allowed to use a laptop at work. So, I do end up with notes, and other writings all over the place. So now, instead of scraps of paper, I carry two legal pads. One is my to do list, and the other I write my articles, copywriting and budget stuff. Then, I dump everything I written for the day once I get home from my job, and place accordingly to my blogs, websites, etc. Backups of the documents I write can be placed at Google Docs, since I write them without special formatting. To do Lists stay on paper. I do write on the todo pad with synopses of articles, mindmaps, and other general planning things. I don’t try to set more than 3 days ahead worth of tasks on my to do pages. I have a bit of a gap thou, by not having a weekly plan. I just have monthly and a daily, for now.

For things that require a bit more than writing an article, say like creating an entire website start to finish, I create a physical folder for it, and since its my business, a codename. Project Iris, eagle, foxtrot, blue cheese, Churchill, Leroy, or m2-73d4m, it doesn’t matter what you name your projects after. I like to keep a naming schemes using generals of the past. This gives my business a bit of fun and project organization at the same time. I then can place documents, to dos, and references needed into this folder, for reminders, since each project sometimes cannot be worked on exclusively. I will get more deeper into projects later, for now I want to focus on task management and planning.

Learning To Plan
Most of us have a paycheck to paycheck mentality. Thinking beyond to years, or months ahead is a hard habit to start. Even if circumstances cause for new plans, its better to have some ideas or benchmarks you need to work on. For example, I have some tasks I need to start on when certain milestones are met(for example, when I incorporate, when I meet some other tasks, or profits). Instead of saying when we hit this milestone, we will do this. Instead, I would look into the next task when it hits the beginning of October. This creates limits, and expectations to keep moving, regardless of whats happening. I have planned till about December for now. Each month has about 10 or less goals, changes, tasks, or projects. The sheet that this is written on, is posted up on my magnetic board. This creates a viewable Timeline and a schedule to follow by. Earlier I mentioned that I have a gap, by not having weekly plans, but daily plans. If you wanted to, you can form up weekly plans from that month to month schedule. Doing this monthly planing does make your business a lot less mystic about what you need to do. Even if you got a task out of order, or a milestone that cannot be reached, due to constraints. The most important part thing to take away from this is to use it to pull your home business out of the dream stage, and moving to reality. It also brings some sanity, into what really needs to be accomplished.
On the second part of this article I will dive deeper into the project aspect. So stay tuned!

Here an article I found while going thru stumble.upon, talking about money tips to quit your job and go solo. Something, I preach of course, but noneless useful to know.
http://blog.mint.com/blog/finance-core/9-smart-money-tips-to-help-you-quit-your-job/

Tags: moneytips to quit your job, quitting your job, home business money tips

Its is more by far a media producers, than media consumers world these days. People write blogs, produce videos on YouTube, and share other media works like photos or a useful shell script. People are getting more active, than ever before, and the consequences of this is good. Its not a taboo to teach another even if themselves are not a master(myself included). YouTube proves this often.  I saw a small lesson on  learning Arabic and a person complained that a newbie shouldn’t be teaching, this due to her ability to not  pronounce some words correctly, even if she admits it. The true reality is this – its better to provide a seed, to plant an interest, than it is to expect someone to suddenly only teach when they have bloomed already.  By  becoming active in the learning process , by teaching a skill to someone, even if incomplete, you end up learning more. One way is by comments on how to suggestions how to do something correctly.

Is it time to get public with your exploits? I think so. Why would you want to? To build a support group mostly. One of the keys to self improvement is to surround yourself with other successful, or wanting to succeed, like-minded individuals. By contributing information, and getting comments, like “keep up the good work”, or “awesome”, and “this video sucks,”(whoops! thats not suppose to be there!) you get the feed back you need to fill yourself with to keep on going.

Most books that cover this tidbit, make it sound like you just suddenly have it happen as more and more your exploits attract the attention of others. But reality is, you have to work for your fans. Blogging exposed this to me a bit. For example, for traffic, you just don’t throw a post up with reverent tags and then hope for traffic. No, I have to work by going to forums, or being part of some group, and interact with others, and someone might click on my signature link. I brought more people to my blog that way than just tagging.
Its really time consuming, and I can always do more, but for now I hope to benefit my core niche a bit with what I have currently(I hope).
Find ways to work for your customers/audience, and if your consistantly give them wat info nuggets they need, over time, they might return a favor with a sale or a nugget of info you need. Utopian? A bit, I admit. But it works, and thats all that matters.

An Update Note on Action Steps
Once again, I am reworking the action step section on my blog. I have let it slip to inactivity while I was lazy, and now when I am working on my business much more. Mostly, I am thinking about creating a whole blog about it, where I have nearly a post per week covering each of the steps in detail, but I have to build up the articles first before I attempt to do that. So right now its the early phases of being redone. Last time I got stuck on the muse part, since thats what I’m currently working on, and really didn’t have a game plan. Now, I think I have a bit of an idea what my muse goals should be. So sometime in September, or so, I will have some idea to do with that section. Till then hold tight, and I apologize for the time delay. I want to let my business dictate the direction of things, instead of just picking stuff by theory, which wouldn’t be as relevant. I will not be taking the section down for the time being, since there really no appealing reason to.

Tags: seo, internet interaction, web promotion, internet promotion, home business promotion, action steps to building a home business

I know this is 4 Days Late, I apologize. I had a internet outage, that happened to be the Cable Company fault. Anyways, Here is my new FaceBook Stuff…

Just do a Search for Edward White(my name) and Add me as a friend. I Post updates on the notes or on the wall.

Also, I can be contacted now by IM on aim, as edwardposcap if you want to chat business stuff. Feel free to chat or drop a line. This is open to any reader of the Blog.