We’ve all done it. We decide to find a new job, or start a business, and the first things that we think about are the types of work we are qualified for, what employment is available, or what type of business we think that we could succeed at. How is it possible that an entire culture so completely ignores their own desires when it comes to making career decisions?

Am I saying that you should ignore the facts and try to sell surfboards in Siberia? No. However, if you lived in Siberia and you really wanted to sell surfboards, you COULD find a way!

There is an almost global self-limiting belief that our ability to make money is dependent on factors that  – in truth – are merely side notes to a wealth creation plan, rather than being the main considerations:

• To do a certain type of work you need a certain type of education. I call B.S.! Actually, what you need is experience, and the only way to get experience is to do the work. Ask any college grad under the age of 25 who is out looking for a job right now how effective their degree has been in landing them a high-paying position.
• The economy has a lot to do with the success of any given business model. I call B.S.! Yes, the economy is a factor, but if the economy is the main consideration, why are people still buying Jaguars, Ferrari’s, 5-figure pieces of jewelry, cinema-like home entertainment systems, and why are they still taking vacations to the Bahamas?
• A proper business plan is needed to ensure success. I call B.S.! When I ran my own personal training business, I shut it down at the height of my success when I would have made $100,000 that year. My entire business plan consisted of a website and one monthly advertisement that I paid less than $10 per month for.

There is only one factor that should be your prime consideration when you are trying to decide what you want to do for a living, and that is what you want to do. No matter what it is that you truly enjoy doing in life, there is some way that you can make money by doing it.

• People get paid right now to go bar-hopping with tourists on paid “pub crawls”.
• People get paid to design, test, and play video games.
• People get paid to eat at the finest restaurants, and then write about it.
• People get paid to write smarmy content on the Internet even though the content is given away for free.
• People get paid to travel all over the world and film themselves enjoying the global culture.
• People get paid to go diving and snorkeling in the most beautiful waters that this planet has to offer.

I could go on and on, but you should get the point by now. You can get paid to do what you love, no matter what it is that you love to do.

Pretty cool, huh?

The fastest way to determine whether or not your present career or a career that you are considering is going to be successful over the long-term is to write up a Personal Vision Statement for your career, and then simply compare your career options to that statement.

In order to write up your Personal Vision Statement, you simply need to ask yourself:

1. What do I truly enjoy doing?
2. What parameters have to be a part of (or absent from) my career?

That’s it! Don’t turn it into an 8-page dissertation – this is just an outline that you can use as a sanity check when you are considering your career options. Here is my example:

• What do I truly enjoy doing? I enjoy empowering people to create success and happiness in their lives.
• What parameters have to be a part of (or absent from) my career? The majority of my work has to be able to be done from anywhere in the world, and my work has to include residual sources of income.

Do you see how this is an outline that I can use to compare career options, rather than it being a business plan? Whenever I come up with an idea for a business, or when I am offered a job, or when I consider getting involved in a joint venture, all I have to do is compare that opportunity to my Personal Vision Statement. If the business idea, the job, or the joint venture does not fit into my Personal Vision Statement, then I do not get involved in it.

This is not rocket science, people, so please don’t over-think it. Ask yourself those 2 questions, and then give yourself honest answers based on what you want – not on what you think is possible.

What is possible is limited only by what you believe that you can do. Create that belief by being passionate about your desires, and success will be a natural – and glorious – side effect.

Acknowledgment: This post was inspired by Shama Hyder’s free report, Online Marketing Plan. Thanks, Shama!

In today’s world, “relationship marketing” is finally starting to take the place of obnoxious advertising and in-your-face sales techniques. Time is rapidly becoming your most valuable commodity, and outsourcing tasks that you personally don’t need to do is becoming a necessity, rather than just an option. How do you pay to outsource tasks when you don’t yet have the customers that you are trying to reach, however?

As recent readers of this blog are aware, I have decided to get back into health and fitness coaching as my primary service offering, and marketing a brand-new health-related business – especially locally – can be both challenging and expensive. There are mailing lists to buy, print jobs to do, postage to pay for, research to be done, resources to obtain, websites to be built and managed – and on and on the list goes. Once a new business has a presence, then word of mouth and other marketing methods take over, but until that point, money is normally needed to grease the wheels in order to get a new business venture off the ground.

In brainstorming ways to finance the needs of my new business venture, it occurred to me that I could put together an informative blog post about the process, and help some other people at the same time. So, that being said, here are four ways to save the day on a tight budget!

1) Ask for Donations

There is a very untrue belief that no one wants to help anyone else out; that there is this all-encompassing “What’s in it for me?” mentality that all people subscribe to. Although it is true that everyone wants to get something out of their efforts, sometimes all they want is to feel like they have contributed to a worthy cause.

Again, if your product or service is truly beneficial to other people (rather than only benefiting your own bank account), then there is no shame in asking people if they are willing to help you in your efforts to benefit others.

If people believe in what you have to offer, then they will also believe that their donated money is going to be well-spent on a cause that they believe in. Also, whenever you ask for a donation, you’ve got nothing to lose. If these people aren’t already giving you money, and then they also refuse to give you a donation, then you have lost nothing in the effort.

Allow people to choose their own donation amount, however. It’s up to THEM how much they want to contribute.

My version of this Idea: If my 3 years as a personal trainer and my 2 years as a personal development writer have caused you to have enough faith in my ability to help other people, then please consider donating to the cause. I am building both online health and fitness groups (such as the Million Dollar Body Challenge), and I am reaching out to the people in my local community as well in order to offer them quality help and support, but without breaking their bank accounts.

2) Have a Sale

If you already have products or services that you offer, have a sale in order to get more customers interested. You have already spent the time, money, and energy to put together your product and service offerings, and since that time, money, and energy is already gone, you have nothing to lose by giving people a temporary break in the price.

Be smart about your sale, however, and don’t devalue your products or services by offering them for less than they are worth. However, a temporary price reduction in order to generate some additional interest is a win/win situation for you, as well as your customers.

Also, make it a discount worth their time! A 10%-15% discount is like getting a raise at work for only a quarter an hour. Yes, it helps, but it’s such a small help that it isn’t really all that enticing. Make your sale prices low enough that your customers really want to take advantage of the opportunity.

My version of this Idea: On the low end, my most inexpensive eBook only costs $7, while on the high end, I have products as high as $37. For the purposes of this effort, I am offering a full 30% discount off of all of the following Today is that Day products. That’s almost 1/3 of the price, but you are still getting 100% of the value:

You can click each link to be taken to the sales page for that product. When you get to the checkout process, just put in the coupon code “SAVETHEDAY” without the quotes, and you’ll be all set:

• Energy Harmonics
• How to Invoke the Law of Attraction
• Personal Development for Stupid People
• Mental Meltdown: Weight Loss begins in the Mind!
• The Definitive Weight Loss Guide to Bodyweight Exercises that Shred Bodyfat

3) Make a one-time Offer

Your products or your services are priced at a certain point, and they include certain features, benefits, support, guarantees, etc. Your customers pay you “x” amount and they get “x” value in return. That is the routine, and normally, they have to stick to that routine in order to take advantage of your products and services.

A one-time offer (or OTO, for you Internet marketers), is a one-time only offer when they can get your products or services for a price or in a manner that will never happen again. The one-time offer should offer TRUE value, though, and not just be a sales gimmick. If your one-time offer is truly offering them a value that they won’t be able to get any other time, then you have created another win/win situation for you and your customers.

Keep your integrity whenever you create a one-time offer, however. Don’t say that it’s “now or never” to your customers, but then turn around and make the same offer a month later. If it’s a one-time offer, only offer it ONE TIME!

My version of this Idea: As promised several months ago, the Premium membership rates at Personal Development Partners are now paid every month, instead of every 6 months. The people who came on board before the change are grand-fathered in at their 6-month rate forever. For anyone who didn’t take advantage of that offer, but you still want to join the site (without paying $19.95 every single month), you have this one opportunity to buy a lifetime membership to PDP for only $57<
/strong>. You will have full access to all of the Premium membership privileges at the site forever, but you’ll never have to pay another dime.

4) Have an Auction

One of the best ways to empower a potential customer to know that they are getting enough value for their money is to ask THEM to decide how much they think it is worth. By putting a price tag on a product or service yourself, you immediately cause a potential customer to make a snap decision about whether your product or service is worth a given amount of money.

By putting something up for auction, you send the message to the customer that you are willing to entertain any reasonable offer that they are willing to make in order to have access to your product or service. At the same time, you release your own attachment to making a certain amount of money.

Also, this can be a valuable research tool for future products or services that you may offer. If you think that whatever you are offering is worth a certain amount of money, yet people consistently bid much lower (or higher) than you expected, then you will now have a mini-market survey at your disposal. This can help you to not only price your products or services in an appropriate manner in the future, but can also help you to make sure that you are creating enough value, and then expressing that value to potential customers.

My version of this Idea: I am auctioning off the complete package of everything that you have just read about (all Today is that Day products and a lifetime membership to PDP), and in addition, I am going to take on one full-time client that I will coach through a 90-day health and fitness program. The coaching program will include all of the following:

• A 30-45 minute telephone call each week to discuss anything and everything related to your health and fitness program. (U.S. residents only)
• A personalized exercise program based on your goals, the equipment that you have access to (even if that is none), and the time that you have available to exercise.
• On-going nutritional advice based on the physiological factors involved with whatever your fitness goal is, and maximizing those factors to keep you on track, but without any faddish or hard-core dieting programs.
• Unlimited access to me via email for any and all support needed during the entire 90 days.

In order to place a bid for the full list of Today is that Day products, a lifetime membership to Personal Development Partners, and a personalized 90-day health & fitness coaching program, simply click here to send me an email with your bid.

Each person who bids will be contacted directly, and the winner will be chosen on Wednesday, April 30, 2008, and notified of the next steps to take.

As you have seen by reading this post, one of the keys to financing a new business venture is to do the same thing that you should have been doing all along – providing value.

If your products or services are not valuable, then you shouldn’t be selling them anyway. However, if you have products or services that are worth what you are asking for them, thinking outside of the box for ways to create additional value – or a lower perceived price – can kick-start an additional flow of currency that you can then apply to your new venture.

Inspired by a message from my blogging buddy Stephen Martile over at Personal Development Made Simple, and my own recent announcement about the Wealth Creation for Superior Living podcast, this post is meant to help you open your eyes about the fact that you don’t have any money because you either:

1) Don’t manage your money effectively, or

2) You simply don’t make enough of it to begin with

For most people, it is probably a combination of both of those reasons, yet every single instance of wanting money – but not having it – will fall under one of those categories.

If you don’t know how to manage your money, then Stephen has shared a very cool system for doing so, and he even has a possibly award-winning video about it. On the other hand, if you don’t make enough money to begin with, then realizing that more money will be needed to power your dream lifestyle should be the kick in the butt that you need to start finding a way to make that happen.

Effective Money Management

This category is for people who want to save money, but they simply can’t figure out how to do it. No matter how many times they try to budget their money, they still end up broke, and they still never manage to save any significant amount of money, or they never manage to pay for that car, house, or dream vacation that they’ve been saving for.

For these people, a course in money management is far more important than figuring out a way to actually bring in more money. If you have $50 per week left out of your paycheck after you pay your bills, and you can’t manage even that relatively small sum of money, what makes you think that you will be able to manage a larger sum of money?

If managing the money that you already have (however much or however little) is a problem for you, then you don’t need more money (yet); you first need to manage the money that you already have by changing your relationship with money.

Here are 2 paid and 3 free resources for doing so:

Paid Resources:

Brian Tracy’s Profit Maximization

James Arthur Ray’s Million Dollar Mindset Series

Free Resources:

T. Harv Eker’s Secrets of The Millionaire Mind Teleseminar

Money Management Tutorials

Online Money Management Software (interest request)

Need to Make More Money

If you can budget, save, invest, and diversify with the best of ‘em, but you simply don’t have enough actual income to ever do much more than pay your bills, then it’s time to change those circumstances.

The first thing for you to realize is that your J.O.B. (Just Over Broke) is potentially one of the worst possible ways for you to make money. Without even giving it much thought, here are several great reasons to NOT depend on your job for financial success:

• You will always be trading time for dollars. “X” amount of time equals “X” amount of dollars – always.
• You have no job security. It doesn’t matter who you work for these days, your job could go away in an instant.
• You do not control your income level; your boss or management team does.
• You will always be limited by what you are “allowed” to do in order to bring in additional money.
• You will always have to deal with the schedule of your employer and/or your customers, even if that schedule is not conducive to creating additional wealth.

So, if a J.O.B. is not the way to make money, then how you are supposed to get your hands on the cash? Simple: Realize that a J.O.B. is only one model of creating wealth, and then find a model that works better for you:

• Internet Marketing
• Networking Marketing
• Investments
• Consulting
• Contract Work
• Virtual Work
• Coaching

Think that you don’t have the skills or the expertise to get involved in one or more of those business models? Consider the following:

• Internet Marketing and Network Marketing are both HUGE and growing industries, both of them have a free or very low-cost threshold for entry, and both of them have individual “niche” markets that are exploding with new business. For Internet Marketing at its finest, I recommend Armand Morin and/or Shawn Casey as gurus worth listening to. For Networking Marketing, I have worked with and used the products from both Tahitian Noni International, as well as Pharmanex.
• Investing is not just a game for the rich. Even a small investment can yield a result that can then be reinvested in something else, and then that return can be reinvested, and so on down the line. Quality information about investing is free all over the Internet.
• Consulting and Contract work has never been easier to get into than it is right now. As people learn that getting quality help is more important than hiring the most prestigious service providers, becoming a consultant or a contract worker isn’t much more difficult than showing that you can be dependable, and that you do quality work. Check out FreelanceFolder.com as an awesome resource for learning about contracting or consulting work done on a freelance basis.
• Virtual work can literally be done from anywhere with an Internet connection, and there are people right now paying other people to do everything from surf the Internet for them, to tend to their social bookmarking needs, to participating in forums and message boards. Not rocket-science stuff, and anyone with an Internet connection is eligible to check it out. Read this awesome article for more information about that field of work.
• Coaching is one of the hottest trends in wealth creation right now, and with good reason. As people are starting to become more empowered and starting to believe that they can truly create wonderful lives for themselves, their first question is , “OK, how do I do that?”. The people with those answers are in demand! Check out So
  lutionBox for more on coaching careers.

The Bottom Line

Regardless of whether your financial issues are related to poor money management skills or a lack of (presently) available capital, you do have the ability to turn it around! Embrace that ability and start living your life, instead of worrying about your money.

There are certainly people who want to believe that they can use the power of positive thinking to manifest some cold hard cash, and having a positive attitude is certainly a step in the right direction.

However, positive thinking alone will not manifest financial success, nor will the Law of Attraction.

Let’s compare the Law of Attraction to the Law of Gravity.

If you stand on top of a tall building and drop a rock over the edge, that rock will surely fall to the ground. However, did the Law of Gravity make you drop the rock to begin with?

The answer, of course, is No. The Law of Gravity is simply the tool that you used to get your rock from the top of the building down to the ground.

The Law of Attraction works the same way when it comes to making money. Let’s rephrase that same question, inputting our money and LOA variables:

If you properly use the principles of conscious creation to manifest the circumstances needed to attain financial success, you will certainly attain said success.

However, the Law of Attraction did not create the financial success for you.

The Law of Attraction in this instance is simply a tool, like the Law of Gravity was a tool in the previous example.

Using the LOA as a tool for attaining financial success means just that – using it as a tool. In this case, you are using the tool to manifest the circumstances that will create the wealth, not the wealth itself.

People who think that they can magically manifest piles of cash by simply sitting around thinking about it will quickly find themselves in the poor house.

Your ticket out of that poor house is not to focus on the green stuff and then just sit around and wait. Rather, your ticket to success is to focus on what you want and then be on the lookout for the circumstances that you manifested as a result of that focus.

Normally this will come in the form of a burst of inspiration for you to take some sort of action. That action might be something obvious like making a wise financial investment, or it may be something that seems completely unrelated to your financial goal.

Perhaps you will be inspired to attend a social event that you otherwise might not have gone to, and at the event you end up hooking up with a new business partner, or a mentor who helps you get from the poor house to the rich house.

You might be inspired to take up a hobby that will actually cost you money up front, but then eventually snowballs into a wildly successful business. Don’t believe me? There are people right now making large sums of money off of making purses and clothing out of recycled juice boxes and other containers. Anything is possible!

How to Make Money with the Law of Attraction

Okay, so you are willing to believe that it is at least possible to make money with the Law of Attraction, but how does one go about doing it?

The same way that one goes about doing anything else with the Law of Attraction – with feeling!

It is always about consciously creating the feeling of having the success that you want to have. If you focus on trying to come up with a plan or a scheme for getting rich, you might be waiting for awhile.

However, by simply focusing on already feeling like you have attained success, that is when you will find the inspired action that was discussed earlier. I’ll give you an example straight from my own life:

I have several primary goals, and I can tell you right now that they aren’t cheap. To attain my goals in life, I need cash, and a lot of it. Not because money makes me happy, because it doesn’t. However, money buys me freedom, which does make me happy.

So, in order to manifest that money, I focus on a daily basis on the feelings of already having achieved the success that I want to achieve:

• I visualize my goals, and all the while I am visualizing them as if they have already happened, and I am simply standing there in a glow of perpetual happiness and success.
• I affirm my success daily by using phrases such as “Money comes to me easily and frequently,” and “Since I live on the beach, I can…”
• I am true to who I am as an individual, and I experience an inordinate amount of pleasure on a daily basis just by doing so!

Do any of those systems cause financial success to land on my desktop in one lump sum, causing me to instantly grab my horse and ride off into the sunset, living happily ever after? Nope!

However, the cumulative effect of doing all of those things on a daily basis causes me to feel good, to feel happy, and to feel successful.

As a result, I literally have more ideas for making money come to me than I could possibly take action on. I use EverNote to keep track of all of the ideas that I manifest, and let’s just say that my copy of EverNote is in need of a vacation…

Check out the following story swiped from an email I received from my friend Namaste:

“Michelle Goering of Vancouver, British Columbia, read the book THE ONE MINUTE MILLIONAIRE in December of 2005. The book is co-authored by Mark Victor Hansen who co-created the Chicken Soup For The Soul series. She was excited about the idea of making an enlightened million and a few weeks later, on January 12, she formed a team that met together for the first time. They called themselves (ok this is cheesy but it worked) the MillionHares. It took four weeks of incubation for them to come up with a GREAT IDEA. By February 16 they were testing and marketing the idea. By March 11 they had found a buyer for their idea and negotiated a seven-figure contract. Michelle went from idea to payday in 99 days!”

Michelle certainly made it possible to make a cool million in a very short period of time. Is Michelle’s story a rare occasion? Sure it is. Bob Proctor – a man who has been studying and creating wealth for more than 40 years – says that only about 1% of the population of this planet control around 96% of the wealth. So, yes, Michelle’s story is rare, but that is actually the entire point that I want to make. Michelle is one of the rare people who will ultimately fit into that very small 1%. Her success story is rare, but only because we believe those type of stories to be rare! If I had started out this post by asking if it was possible to make a million dollars, most people would have said Yes. The world has plenty of people who have made a million dollars or more in their lifetime. It was the question of whether or not that million dollars could be made in 3 months that threw you for a loop and kicked your “I don’t believe it” engine into overdrive. If I may quote the sage wisdom of the mighty Yoda:

“THAT is why you fail.”

You see, our beliefs power our very existence, and it does not matter if your beliefs are steeped in poverty, or abundance. Whatever you believe is the truth IS the truth, simply because you believe it. The question of whether or not it is possible to make a million dollars elicits a completely different instinctive response than the question of whether or not it is possible to make a million dollars in only 3 months. As long as you continue to allow your beliefs about health, wealth, and happiness to be limited, your results will directly correspond to those belief limitations. If I may once again quote a great teacher, this time a living, breathing human, Dr. Michael Beckwith from the movie ‘The Secret’:

“We are Unlimited beings!”

So, the only question that you have to ask yourself is if you are going to continue to be shocked when confronted with something as staggering as making a million dollars in 3 months, or if your gut reaction will be something more along the lines of “I don’t need 3 months. I’ll do it in 2!”