SuccessfulMindset

I love this video excerpt from “Rocky Balboa” - there’s so much truth in it. Watch it and then read on for my thoughts…

It really isn’t how hard you can hit in life, because no matter how hard you hit, someone or something can always hit back harder.  It’s when the unexpected setbacks in life come that we are truly tested. 

Will we give up, or will we press on? 

Will we continue to do what we know is right regardless of the circumstances, or will we succumb to mediocrity and always wonder how things might have been had we stayed the course? 

Will we take ownership of where we are in life, or will we continually maintain a position of weakness and blame someone else for where we find ourselves?

The bottom line is that those people who are successful in life don’t make excuses…they simply put their head down and move forward regardless of what’s going on around them.  They eliminate distractions and they become disciplined at doing the daily things that move them forward toward their goal.  And it’s that discipline that sets them apart from everyone else.

I strive to be as disciplined as possible at focusing on the daily activities I must accomplish in order to be successful - and sometimes it’s really, really hard!  There are days I feel like doing nothing at all, and other where I’m superman and can’t be stopped!  It’s finding that consistency of effort, in whatever you do, that will allow you to move on to greatness and success.  It’s not easy, but it’s a worthy journey.

And when setbacks come, when you haven’t been consistent as long as you should have been, when the task of getting the momentum and drive back up seems overwhelming…what do you do?  Do you stay down with a stunned look on your face hoping the ref hurries his count to 10?  Or do you pick yourself up off the mat and decide to go one more round?

Fighters fight.  Winners Win.

Who do you strive to be every day?

To your success,
Steve

Ok, so in today’s day and age, most of us have certain pieces of technology that we use so often that if we were to lose them or forget them, we feel like we’re naked when we walk out the door.  I thought I’d throw together the quick list of thing I use so often in my business and personal life that without them I wouldn’t be nearly as effective and efficient as I am (or at least hope to be).

So here’s my list: 

1. My Laptop - An HP Pavilion DV1000 with an upgraded 2GB of RAM.
   I use my laptop every day, and I’m probably on it at least 5 hours a day between checking personal and business email, webconferences, blogging, and web development for my business team.  I’m not quite sure what I’d do without it.  It’s a great machine that looks good, runs well, and has a nice slim profile.  It’s not the lighest or sexiest laptop in the world, but it’s held up pretty well this last year that I’ve owned it.  Not sure what I’d do without WiFi and Panera!
2. My Cell Phone - Motorola Q from Verizon Wireless
   This is my most valuable mobile piece as it syncs wirelessly with Outlook on my laptop, so even when I don’t have my computer with me, I’ve still got all my contact info, calendar events, and email access.  Every time I update a contact or schedule an appointment on my phone, it wirelessly syncs with my laptop so when I get home and open the lid, it’s already in my Outlook Calendar.  It’s also got internet access via Verizon’s EVDO network, which is comparable to high-speed wireless…so if I absolutely have to know what movies are playing where I’m at, or get lost and need to use Google Maps for Smartphones, I can pull it up without any trouble.  I also love that the phone will dial from phone numbers saved in the notes section of an appointment…just a handy feature that makes followup calls a snap!
3. My Bluetooth Headset - Samsung WEP200
   This little thing is awesome!  It’s an in-ear design, so it fits much like and bud-type headphones…no hooks or anything.  And it’s so small its hardly noticable - no more CyBorg walking around.  It’s got awesome sound quality so I don’t have to strain to hear people on the other end, and most of the time they don’t know I’m on the headset.  The battery life is great - I can get a full day out of it, probably talking a total of around 4 hours on it, and on standby the rest of the time.  I really love not having to hold my phone up to my head all day, and the freedom to have my phone in my pocket or on the table while I’m doing other things while talking is a great time saver.
4. CommuniKate 2.0 Video Webconferencing
   I plan on doing a post in the future outlining the what CommuniKate is and how I use all its functionality, but for now I’ll just say that in terms of being able to communicate with large numbers of people all over the country at the same time and convey ideas online is awesome!  Sometimes I use the video option, but most of the time the screen sharing or presentation sharing works just fine.  I run at least 4 webconferences a week, most of the time more, and for $35 a month for unlimited usage, this is definitely a time-compounder!
5. And Last, my iPod Nano
   I remember the day I heard about 1GB harddrives and thought, “How could you ever fill it up?”  And now, with my 4GB Nano having only 23MB free, I know!  It’s not hard to fill up an iPod with music and informational audio.  Most of my storage space is taken up by business-related, self-development and thought-process talks ripped from CDs or downloaded from podcasts (and this blog on podcast! See the link at the top of the post or to the right in the sidebar) - awesome stuff to listen to on a regular basis…in fact it’s key in developing a winning attitude.  Most of the time I just listen on the headphones, but sometimes I’ll throw on my FM transmitter to listen while I’m in the car.  It’s just an awesome alternative to having to lug around 200 CDs!

So that’s my list.  I’ve found that these pieces of technology allow me to be many times more efficient and effective with my time than before I had and used all of them…and they all work together to create a very mobile and low-overhead business operation.  I love being able to go anywhere in the country and be able to operate the exact same as if I were here at home…it’s just a cool feeling to know you can take your business and life anywhere in the 21st century and not be locked into an office all the time!  Lifestyle…it’s what we’re all after, right?

So what’s your list?  What things can you not live without?  Post ‘em in the comments section and we’ll see how much we all have in common!

To your success,
Steve

Do you remember what it was like when you were a kid and you would daydream of all the things you’d accomplish some day?  The cars you’d drive?  The trips you’d take?  The places you’d see?  Maybe  you still do that today while you’re at work or in traffic, or maybe on Sunday night while dreading having to head back to the office the next morning.

Or maybe you don’t anymore because it all seems so far away and impossible to achieve…with bills to pay, debt to pay off, and a huge list of things that aren’t all that important but still remain undone and require attention, sometimes it’s easy to get bogged down and burried underneath “life”.  And it’s kind of sad.

So here’s what we’re going to do: I’m giving you permission to sit back and relax for a second.  Go ahead, take a deep breath - actually, take two or three and just push back from the screen for a second and go the place you’d most like to be right now…  Where is it?  What are you doing?  What’s the weather like?  If you could be anywhere on the planet right now doing anything you wanted, what would that be?

What is your “Perfect Day” like?  Who do you spend it with?  Where do you go?  What do you drive or fly in on your way there?  Are you headed to Europe on a private jet with some of your closest friends where you’ll stay at 5-star accomodations until you take your Mediterranean cruise?  Or maybe you’re driving up to your log cabin outside of Aspen for a week of skiing and snow-mobiling…or perhaps you and some of your buddies are taking your exotic sports cars on a tour of the US, looking forward to trips through Kansas, New Mexico, and Arizona where you can really see if they hit 200mph!

Maybe you’re just sleeping in late and having a nice quiet breakfast with your spouse, strolling around the mall and then catching a movie…and then going to see another one right after because you don’t have to wake up to go to work the next morning! 

It doesn’t matter what your perfect day or your dream is - it just matters that you have one and know what it is!!  Without a dream, without goals, we just wander through life hoping that some day it’ll get better.  But without goals and dreams, without something to continually shoot for and strive for, you’re destined to fade off into mediocrity like 98% of the rest of the population that’s waiting for something to happen.  The day you wake up without a dream is the day you die.

Ben Franklin said long ago that most people die at the age of 22…sadly, they’re not burried until 65. (paraphrased)  You don’t have to be one of those statistics…you can choose to dream again!

Here are some of the things I’ve found that help to get the dreaming parts of my brain working again (takes a while to get the rust off after too many years in The Matrix!):

• Pick up magazines at B&N or Borders with lots of pictures of your favorite things: cars, homes, travel destinations, etc
• Check out websites that have similar content: RobbReport.com is a great one
• Cut out pictures from the magazines and put them up on your fridge so you see them all the time (Tip: What you see you give strength to)
• Sit around and dream together with your spouse or friends - talk about how life WILL be when you get where you want to be
• Write down some of those dreams and start working on turning them into goals
• Develop a gameplan to achieve those goals and do something each day to bring yourself closer to them

When we do things like this it makes each day worth living and we’re excited to get out of bed (provided we got enough sleep!) because we know that each day brings us closer to that dream, and that’s how we’re designed to live.

Sometimes I hear people say, “I wouldn’t want to do that - it’d only remind me of what I can’t have.”  And my response to that is, “All the more reason to get started NOW.  You are no different or less special than anyone else on this earth who has accomplished those things - you must simply believe that you’re worthy of accomplishing them and then find a mentor that can help get you there.”  That mentor can be a live person (the best option), books, CDs, etc - there are many sources to learn and grow from, but the key is to first believe it’s possible, and then plug in to a source that will help guide you on the path to your dream. 

So, sit back, take a deep breath, and spend some time thinking about that perfect day…go back often…and eventually, if you take action, someday in the near future you’ll actually be there!

To your success,
Steve

If you’re like most folks, you’re probably in some way, shape, or form trying to get from where you are in life to a point that you feel would be a much better place to be…from Point A to Point B.  And that’s a good thing - striving to improve your position in life is the essence of success.  But there is a key to that process that most people are unaware of, and the key is that you must first improve yourself before you can improve your position. 

Most people mistakenly think that Point B is the final destination - the place they’re striving to reach.  But that’s not entirely correct.  Point B is actually the launchpad to the goal, which is Point C.

Here’s what that looks like:

The Process

So here’s how it works.  Once you’ve determined that you want to improve your position in life, you’ll have to start to change some things about you.  And once you’ve come to the point that you have changed in enough positive ways, you’ll actually be able to make the move from where you are to where you want to be.  Now sometimes those two things can happen simultaneously, but more often than not the change in us comes before the change in our position.

Think of it like a video game: you can’t go to level 3 until you’ve mastered level 2, and in order to master level 2 you’ll probably have to learn some new tricks that you didn’t have to use in level 1.

So what are some of the things most of us have to work on?  A very short list would include:

• People Skills in general
• Listening Skills
• Self-image
• Speaking Skills
• Understanding our own personalities
• Understanding the personalities of others
• Our capcity for leadership
• Learning to be “others-centered” instead of “self-centered”
• Serving before expecting to receive
• What do your finances honestly look like

And the list goes on.

Most of the time though, we have a hard time knowing what, exactly, we personally need to work on - we’re all perfect, right? ;)  That’s why developing a heavy reading habit is essential because the more exposure we have to the way things are supposed to be, the more we realize we’ve got some areas to work on.

You can start by evaulating your current relationships at home and at work.  What are they like?  Do you consistenly think about how to serve other people, or is it more often than not about what you can get?  Do people come to you for help with things?  Are you someone others would consider a leader in more than the positional sense? (ie, would they follow you if you didn’t have your title?)  Are you an effective communicator?  Do you have a healthy self-image in all areas of life, not just your job or your hobby?

Another great thing to do, if you have the guts to do it, is to ask someone you trust to let you know if there’s anything they see that you can change about you in order to become a better, more liked, and more respected person.  This is a tough one, but one that will ultimately be of great help. ** A word of caution: make sure you have determined in your heart and mind to not be offended by the answers you get.  You might be upset and sad, but you’ll eventually get over that.  If you become offended, you’ll only harden your heart and be worse off than before you asked the question.  If you’re not emotionally mature enough to handle the answers, then it’s best that you hold off on asking the questions until you can handle it.

While introspection is a tough thing to do sometimes, it’s absolutely essential to do if we ever expect to reach our final destination.  If we already possessed everything we needed to be at Point C, we would already be there.  There are things we need to learn, know, and apply before we can expect to reach the goal…and once we get to Point B, consistent application of what we have learned is all that stands between us and the final destination!

To your success,
Steve
 

While most of us wouldn’t really need a reason to get paid without doing any work, I think it’s worth talking about the realities of why we all need passive income in today’s society if we ever hope to get ahead (or just break even in some cases).

I guess the first thing I’ll do is clear up that first sentence: you and I will never get paid without doing work of some sort, but the difference comes in how we work - hard, or smart.  A combination of both is the best, but most people haven’t been trained on how to work smart, so they just keep working hard hoping that some day they’ll get ahead…for most people, someday never gets here. 

We get paid based on the amount of value we add to the world.  The more value you add, the more you get paid.  With passive income, we must learn and implement ways that pay us on an ongoing basis for the value we’ve added to other people’s lives.

So, now that we’re clear on the fact that you will never get paid for not doing anything, let’s talk about why it’s necessary.

Income Insurance

The best way I can think of to describe why anybody would want passive or residual income is what I like to call “Income Insurance”.  Think about it: we’ve got insurance for everything…health insurance, car insurance, home owners insurance, renters insurance, life insurance, pet insurance, fire insurance, long term care insurance…we’ve got insurance for everything except our income.  What happens if you’re in an accident in your car?  No big deal - insurance will help cover it.  But what happens if you get laid off, fired, or for some other reason can no longer earn your active income?  Different story, isn’t it?

Passive income through multiple streams or outlets is a form of income insurance because if you lose one, you’ve still got income coming in from the other sources.  This is something that everyone needs - it doesn’t matter where you are in life, and it’s especially important if you happen to have fallen for the lie that if you’re on the fast track in the corporate world you’re “doing pretty well” because of your high salary.  Chances are if you’ve got a high salary, you’re just broke at a higher level - and the fall from that height when you get fired or laid off is going to hurt just that much more because you will have become accustomed to that lifestyle…and if there isn’t something in place to back you up or keep you afloat while you scramble to get another job, life isn’t going to be very pretty.  If you have multiple streams of passive income, or at last one or two that are impervious to market flucuations, you’ve got some insurance on lifestyle.

That’s the practical side of the house - digging your well before you’re thirsty.

But there’s also the fun side of the house…and that gets into Lifestyle.

Here’s my definition of Lifestyle:

Lifestyle: Do what you want, when you want, where you want, how you want, with who you want, without worrying about how much it’s going to cost or getting the time off of work.

That’s true lifestyle - freedom of choice unencumbered by financial restrictions.

The only way that becomes a reality is through passive or residual income.  When you’re in the active income arena, you’re limited by the number of hours in a day and how much your employer is willing to pay you per hour (or per year, which is many times worse than the per hour case once you do the math!).  No matter how hard you try, you just can’t get that 25th hour squeezed into the workday!  And even if you did work 24 hours straight for a day or two, you can’t keep that up very long before you crash for the next 3 days.

Lifestyle = Money + Time

Here’s another definition of lifestyle: Lifestyle = Money + Time.

Everybody knows it takes money to have lifestyle, but what people don’t often think about is that it also takes a time.  What good is the $300k/yr job if you spend 100 hours a week at the office?  There’s no time left to live life and enjoy it with the people you love!  So what if you drive an SL55AMG and have an 8,000 sq ft place…if you only drive the car to and from work and your mansion is a bed-and-breakfast for you, what’s the point!?!?

But flip that around and make $150,000 a year but only have to put in 15 hours a week…now that’s got some potential!  You’ve got money coming in whether you’re really doing anything or not, and now you’ve got the time to go play and enjoy life doing the things you enjoy doing and spending time with the people you like spending it with!  That’s lifestyle.

The question is, “How do we get to that point?”

There are MANY answers to that question, and just as many books on the subject, but a few of the bigger and more well-known methods are:

• Real Estate
• Coin Operated Businesses (car washes, candy machines, etc)
• Network Marketing
• Franchises
• Investments

…and many more.  It all boils down to how many streams of income can you generate that operate and pay you regardless of your involvement with them.

A couple of great books on the subject are Robert Kyiosaki’s ‘Rich Dad, Poor Dad’, ‘Cashflow Quadrant’, and ‘Rich Dad’s Guide to Investing’.  Those are three of the best books on learning and understanding the basics of residual/passive income and what options are available to everyone to create it.

I personally have experience with real estate and network marketing, and can say they are both excellent ways to create passive income – as long as you know what you’re doing!  If you don’t, both can be quite frustrating, time consuming, and money-losers instead of money-makers.  Having a system in place for both is required for long-term success and residual earnings.

Over the course of this blog I plan on getting a little more in-depth on the subject of networking and network marketing.  The technology of today makes this THE number-one way to create long-term & massive residual income – but, as I said, it must be done properly in order to be effective.  And when it is, when you can use cell phones, Bluetooth headsets, video webconferencing, podcasts, Google, blogs, social networks, and any other host of technology available today, you’ve got the ability to create lifestyle wherever you are, whenever you want to!

To your success,
Steve

What is a Blog Carnival?

A Blog Carnival is a list of reader-submitted posts all on one theme. Sometimes a blogger will host the carnival on their own blog each time the carnival runs, other times the carnival will move from blog to blog and be hosted by another person each time.

Why Take Part in a Blog Carnival?

Blog Carnivals are a great way to meet the other bloggers in your niche, people who write about the same things you do. It is also seen as a way to get more exposure, links, comments and traffic.

How do you take part in a Blog Carnival?

Pelf has the answer over at the Authority Blogger Forum

if you visit the official Blog Carnival website, there is a list of on-going carnivals that you can join.To join, all you need to do is either write a new post or find an existing post and submit your post by using the appropriate “submission form”. But before you submit any article, it would be good to check if the “host” has fixed a topic on the up-coming carnival. You do not want your post to be “rejected” for not being on topic, do you?

Once you have submitted a post, you are encouraged to blog about it, and on the day the “carnival” goes LIVE, remember to visit the host and all other carnival participants. Other bloggers will also be visiting your blog from the host, and that’s how you “meet new bloggers of similar interests”.

Pelfs advice has to be the best explanation of taking part in blog carnivals I have read and prompted this post.

Post from Chrisg.com

Yaro Starak is the next featured problogger on Andy Wibbel’s Problogger Confidential series.

The call is on August 1 @ 9pm EST (USA time) and it’s not too late to register if you want to listen to him, or grab copies of previous interviews or register for future guest probloggers.

To register go here -

http://probloggerconfidential.com/yaro

I’m not entirely sure what Andy is going to ask Yaro about, but I expect it has a lot to do with how to become a professional blogger :-). Jim Kukral and Chris Garrett have already been featured in interviews for this series.

Two weeks after Andy does an interview with an expert, he also does a mastermind conference call with everyone who subscribed so you can focus on implementing what you learned.

Have you ever thought about how different life often turns out from what we thought it was going to when we were kids?  Ever wondered why there seems to be a small percentage of people that live the life they want to, and then there’s just pretty much everyone else?

Ever wonder why that is?

Here’s what I’ve come to understand.  Most of us, as children, have big dreams and goals for what life is going to be like - we’re going to save the world by being doctors, lawyers, teachers, astronauts, soldiers, policeman, firefighters, business people, etc, etc, etc.  And somewhere along the line in the growing-up process we decide we’re actually going to become the profession we always dreamed about (or something else simply out of not having any specific passion or goal…often times guided by the high-school guidance counselor based on some test scores we got back at one point).  So, we’re off to college to get the degree we need to succeed in our chosen profession…

Once we get to college and have chosen our major, the process continues as we’re told which classes to take in order to graduate with said degree so we can go on to get that high-paying job.  And once we make it into the working world, while it can be exciting at first, it doesn’t take long for “the grind” to set in, and before you know it, 23 years, 5 companies, and 12 jobs later, we’re not quite where we thought were going to end up.  Bills, stress, little free time, often times not very many genuine friends…what happened?  Where did all the dreams and passions go?  What about the trips we were going to take and family we were going to raise?  What about all the things on the “someday” list?  Seems like “someday” woulda been here by now, but…

And here is what I think the difference is: Choosing a Profession vs Choosing a Lifestyle.

Most of us have dozens of dreams and goals in our early years, only to find that later in life very few, if any of them, have been accomplished.  The reason for this is that money is required to turn dreams into reality (in most cases) - and most of us in our professions make just enough to get by (and barely, if you look at the statistics) and not enough to fund the rest of our dreams…and so slowly but surely, they start to die.

The answer, then, is instead of picking a profession, pick a lifestyle and begin to take forward action towards achieving that lifestyle!  It’s all a matter of what questions you answer.

Here’s what I mean by that: since early childhood we’ve all been asked the question, “What do you want to be when you grow up?”  And we all answered it and became something - our current profession, which has us where we are today.  So the better question to answer is, “How do you want to live?”  The answer to that is every dream you ever had!

But to get from here to there, from Point A to Point B, we need the proper vehicle.  Once you answer the question of how do you want to live, the follow-on question is “How long do you want to take to get there, and how much work do you want to do in the process?”  The answer to that question will determine what vehicle you ultimately choose.

There are many, many vehicles to choose from - and through the course of this blog we’ll talk about a lot of the different options available to create lifestlye…but they’ll all come down to the thought-process of creating residual income, since that’s the only way to leverage your time enough to create lifestyle.

How we think and what we do with our time make all the difference in the world…and I’m excited to continue posting about those topics here at successful-mindset.com in the future.

To your success,
Steve

Well, this will be the first official post here at successfulmindset.com.  My vision for this site is to comment and post thoughts on the subjects in the tagline: success, finances, freedom & lifestyle…and the 2.0 comes from the fact that I’ll try to take the spin I see on things which is the ‘new rich’, lifestyle over shear dollars in the bank mentality that I think our generation is coming to understand and desire. 

I’m excited to start this journey of blogging and I know I’ve got a lot to learn about how to do it effectively, but I think it’s going to be a lot of fun spending time thinking about and posting on some of the subjects I’ve come to be passionate about over the last few years.  With a little luck and a whole lot of hard work I hope to have a large reader base that benefits from the thoughts and ideas posted here…helping people around me live better and more focused lives is one of my passions.

So with that, we’ll call it a night.

To your success,
Steve