What does the mindset of the wealthy look like?….

For one, wealthy people are forward thinkers. They do not dwell on the past, their mistakes or the mistakes of others. They realize focusing on the past will never propel them to the future they desire. They are visionary thinkers and they move towards their goals regardless of their circumstances. They look at their circumstances as learning experiences rather than platforms to gripe about their negative situations. They make life happen instead of letting it happen to them.

Successful people also are driven by a desire to succeed. They believe they deserve success and follow it despite the obstacles. This does not mean they never have a bad day or experience hardship. It’s quite the contrary. The difference is they act in spite of the external. They try to keep the vision of where they are going available so they can use it to muster up motivation when needed. They fail just like everybody else, but they dust themselves off and keep going. They realize these failures are simply springboards to greater success.

How can I do this you say? If you feel like you could never adopt this mindset, you are right! You can’t just get it instantly. The truth is you can get there but it does not happen overnight, especially if you are prone to perceiving your world through a negative light. It will take some re-training and focus, but it can be done. Start perceiving your world and your business in a positive light and when you hear the negative thoughts, replace them with positive ones. When obstacles come your way in business, re-train your mind to value them instead of complaining. When you overcome them, you will be stronger and more motivated. If you think like you are wealthy you will become wealthy. Here’s to your success!

I often reflect on the major areas of my life when thinking about business decisions because a correlation always….. exists.  What I mean is people often think they do not have what it takes to overcome obstacles and succeed. They fail to remember the inner strength they were forced to call upon in past life circumstances. If you ever bought or remodeled a house, dealt with a sickness, parented a child, changed careers or went through any other life transformation, you most likely faced a few brick walls. The skill to fight these battles is in you; it just needs to be recognized and nurtured.

When you face obstacles in your business, it is no different than your life. Which way do you go? In the face of the trial or do you run away from it? You know as well as I do running away from it never makes it go away; it just delays it a little while. Some people give up because they feel they do not have what it takes to make it. Others change their perception and muster through it. How can you change your mindset so you can climb over these hurdles?

When you face a difficulty, your first impulse may be to retreat. Don’t worry; this is very common. You can think it, just don’t do it! At this point, you must change your thinking about what obstacles actually are. They are only as difficult as you perceive them to be. See them as small and see yourself as possessing the power to face them and overcome. Next, change your mindset concerning the nature of the obstacle itself. These situations are meant to make us stronger and supply us with more motivation to move forward. So, essentially, they are needed and are facilitators to business success.

You really can get through any difficulty you face with your business. The old adage, “When there is a will, there’s a way” identifies with the strong desire present in each one of us to succeed. Stay connected with that desire, believe you can do it and your business will always enjoy continued success.

You can run the best looking website and the greatest business in the world, but if you are not targeting the right… people with your services, your company will not go anywhere. You must research your target audience and know what makes them tick. Who are they? What are their burning questions? What are their problems? The answers to these questions are like gold to your campaign because they will give you a direction and an audience to sell your services.

I wish I could tell you there are super secret ways to determine who you are targeting, but it really comes down to brain power. If you are selling pink shoes, what is the first thing that comes to mind?  Maybe young girls or teenagers or a specific age range? A professional, fun woman or maybe a mother of girls? You can also type in your main keyword in Google and look at your competitors. Research their website and enter their URL into a demographic tool such as quantcast.com. This will give you a better idea as to who they are targeting and give you a more detailed look at your demographic. Don’t get stuck in competitor data, though. Think outside of the box and see if you can target others who would be interested in your business.

Once you determine who your prospects are, you must put yourself in their minds. Think about what qualities they would look for in services. As you are going through this process, visit your website and other web real estate and imagine you were them. Does your offering solve their problems? Is your website and content offer answers to their questions?

The more you can solve the problems of your target audience, the greater chance you will gain customers for life. The same old website design just will not do. There are too many copycats on the web and people are looking for authenticity and a real answer to their issues. Focus more of your time on this effort and you will see a great increase in your business over time.

Imagine if you took all the time you spent reading emails, purchasing and researching products and actually put…. it to use with one or two solid marketing methods. Your business would definitely benefit. The truth is the only true way to make money online is to offer value. Don’t be lured in by “get rich quick” schemes or shortcut programs. Though some marketing methods will help you to automate your tasks, you can never get away from providing value and unfortunately, this does take some time. You cannot expect to put up a website and become rich in two weeks. I don’t care what new method you are using or what the gurus are promising. The basics of internet marketing worked ten years ago and they will work ten years from now and they do not change. Focus on authenticity, valuable content and showcase your honesty and willingness to help your prospects. This attitude will do more for you than all of the best tricks combined.

I understand you may desire to learn more about the internet from a few other “star” marketers and this is fine. The problem arises when you do not know when to stop. Focus on one or two marketers you deem valuable and unsubscribe from the rest. You will not miss anything. If these two people are good at what they do, they will give you all of the information you need.

If you spread yourself too thin with all of this information, not only will you get mentally overwhelmed, you will never follow through with even one method! These methods take time to work and they require your attention and focus. If you keep changing to others, you will never complete anything, which means you will never see true profits for your business. Dedicate only a small portion of your day to researching new trends and watch your patterns. Remember, the grass isn’t always greener on the other side. Don’t fall into the “hype”. Stay focused on the value you provide to your customers and everything else will fall into place.

I guess we can just go on with our lives and go down with the ship like a bunch of rats on a sinking ship or….. may we can take a more assertive approach and just crawl into a corner somewhere with walls on both sides of you, get in the fetal position and sit back and wait for it to happen all around you.  There is nothing you can do about it!  Right?

Well, if we continue down the same path without making any changes in our lives in 2010, then we will be going down with the proverbial ship.  But, if you want 2010 and the future to be different than the past and different than what the masses are experiencing at this time, take charge and do something different.

I refuse to be at the mercy of governments, economies or even natural disasters. I chose to do something to take control of my own destiny.  I am not going to sit around and worry about whether or not it’s the right thing.  I am going into action and figure that something will come of it.  So should you.  So what if the house of cards is collapsing around us. There’s too much history of people who have not only survived in similar economic and global crises but they have actually flourished.  What do those of you who are in real estate tell your clients?  I’ll bet you are telling them, and rightly so, that there is a fire sale going on out there and now is the time when you take advantage of the market conditions. It’s true isn’t it?

Are you telling me that virtually everyone is going to suffer as a result of this economy?  I do not think so. It’s just a matter of taking control of your life and getting aggressive as a self-employed, entrepreneur who has nobody telling them what they are worth or what extras you have to do at work to get that promised promotion.

Look around you.  Get creative.  Get aggressive and get positive about what you can do to take control of your life.  For example, have you heard it said lately that this economy is great for making people re-evaluate their lives as far as money, investments, or their job security?  This is literally the best time for entrepreneurs to make serious money.  You and I should be looking for the windows of opportunity that are out there instead of a corner to crawl into.  Besides, the view is much better from the window.

These same feudal principles are slowly creeping into our society today.  Through heavy taxation and manipulation, the middle class today is fading into extinction.  The political forces which govern our current society thrive on the idea of oppression.  The poor and middle class are manipulated into believing that decisions are made for their well being.  When in reality, they are given “just enough” to get by.  The more they put their hand out, the more they are controlled.  It is a vicious cycle.

Our current government hates the middle class.  The middle class represents everything that America used to be: opportunity, hope, potential. These values can create greatness—and greatness to our administration is a threat—greatness cannot be oppressed. We must be aware this is happening.  Higher taxes suck the life from the middle class.  Every new government program that we accept puts our hands out a little bit farther.  This is all by design.  If our administration can get people to think that they need and rely upon the government, all hope is lost.  The extinction of the middle class is predicated on our need for the government.  The more we need, the more feudal we become.

We must resist the urge to give in.  The middle class must remain self reliant.  Government programs grab our short term emotions, but long term they are oppressive.  They strengthen our reliance on the nobles.  The nobles do not want people to progress.  Progression is destructive to their power and control.  We must always remember that no matter who we are or where we live—we are full of potential.  Potential has always been the life blood of the American dream.  Without it, the middle class will become extinct.

You start off with a metal cage containing five monkeys and inside the cage hangs a banana on a string.  After a little while one of the monkeys will try and climb up to grab the banana.  As soon as the monkey starts climbing up to reach it, someone sprays all the other monkeys with cold water.  Some time later another monkey tries the same thing but the same thing happen again: the other monkeys are sprayed with cold water.  After a short while whenever a monkey tries to climb up and grab the banana the other monkeys attack it.  Monkeys are smart and so they quickly realize that if any of them go to get the banana, the rest of them will get the hose and consequently they attack any member of the group who tries to get the banana.

Once this happens we can take one of the monkeys out of the cage and replace it with a new one.  As you can imagine, after a short while the new monkey will try and grab the banana but the other monkeys, remembering what happened before, will attack him so they don’t get sprayed with water.  Eventually the new monkey will get the message and even start attacking others when they try and grab the banana.  At this point you can take out another one of the original monkeys and replace him with a new one.

If you keep repeating the process enough times, you will reach a point at which none of the monkeys in the cage have ever been sprayed with, or even seen the hose but they will still attack any monkey that goes near the banana.  If the monkeys could speak and you asked them why they did this they would have to answer:

“Well this is just how we do things around here.”

This is very much what working for a large company is like sometimes.  Things are just done the way they are because it’s the way they have always been done. Anyway I’m probably drifting a little bit off topic, so here are a few of my reasons why having a regular job might not be for everyone.

1. Being told what to do

I’m not sure how other people feel about this but I am one of those people that hates being told what to do.  In fact my logic about this is so twisted that if you tell me do go and do something then nine times out of ten I will go and do the complete opposite.  If you want to get me to go and do something, tell me not to and I will probably go and do it for you.  Needless to say, I don’t do well in a situation where I am being told what to do all the time and I’m sure many of you are the same.

2. Working To Make Someone Else Rich

Nothing is more draining than realizing your work is not really benefiting you in any way and is, as far as you are concerned, pointless.  No matter how hard you work in a regular job, your efforts will typically be of benefit to someone else but not to yourself.  This makes working hard seem futile and hence it encourages people not to work hard which is terrible. Employees are there to make management rich.

3. Management

A good manager can make you feel involved and proud to work for a company but a bad manager will make you feel like shooting yourself every time you step foot in the office.  Sadly a lot of managers don’t do their job as well as they should. In my humble opinion, the main function of a manager is to make staff work to the best of their ability at all times and to make them feel enthusiastic about doing it. Sadly very few people really do feel this way. If you love your job then chances are you have a good manager behind the scenes.

4. Profit

When you work for someone else, someone else controls how much you can earn and this is really not good if you are intending on getting rich any time soon. You don’t get to choose the hours you work or how much you can pay yourself.

5. Thinking For Yourself

Most employers have little interest in what you think, they just want you to get you head down and do the work that is required no matter how smart of useful you believe yourself to be. While this takes the burden of making decisions off of your shoulders, it also means that you start to lose the ability to think and rationalize for yourself which is not good at all. Over time you will become conditioned to carry out all sorts of stupid tasks without thinking about why you are doing them. Some people however may actually like not having to take responsibility or make decisions. I guess it all depends on the individual.

6. You Don’t Really Learn Much

No matter how good you get at your job, most people don’t really learn very much from doing the same things day in day out no matter how complex the job is. If you work in customer service for example you will probably end up being really good at dealing with the public but little else. Doing the same thing day out does not really give you any great experience nor does it give you the chance to develop and improve yourself.

So there you have it. Those are my six reasons why having a normal job may not be suitable for everyone.

So what happened? Let’s take a look at some raw data:  from 2001 to 2006 home building was off the charts.  Single-family housing starts were up to a seasonally adjusted rate of 1.8 million a year even though population growth did not warrant this new inventory.  From 1999 to 2001 the rate was hovering around 1.2 million.  So 600,000 properties were being added each year above the normal trend and this lasted for 6 years.  Of course, this number has collapsed at a pace not see since the Great Depression.  So again—why did this occur?  #1) Too much building.   #2) Ignoring the demographic trends of the market itself.

Think of the dynamics of a healthy market.  Those persons involved in the normal housing process, sell a home and in most cases will buy a “move up” home.  This can be a new or existing home.  Either way, they are clearing some of the vacant inventory off the market with typically two transactions taking place (buy and sell).  With foreclosures, it is normally a one and done deal.  Someone losses their home, and the person buying that home is merely taking over inventory that has already been accounted for.  This is why the foreclosure figures are so important.

What does all this mean?  There is an enormous amount of overhang in the market.  Home sales have increase slightly over the last quarter.  However, this increase cannot be credited to an economic recovery, but to a continued collapsed in the home prices themselves. Why are we assuming that if prices continue to go up, people will keep on buying?  The driving force right now is affordability, not economic recovery.  With that being said, we are merely treading water.  We have years to work through this. There is no magic solution in this process.

The main problem (other than lack of effort) is that most people simply don’t take the right approach. When you begin your business and you’re hit over the head with all the different marketing options out there for you it can be overwhelming, and you might feel the need to try every lead generation method out there… well don’t! This is where most people go wrong.

DON’T SIGN UP FOR ANYTHING UNTIL YOU KNOW WHAT YOU ARE DOING!……
You can’t waste your time putting little bits of effort into 10 different methods of lead generation. None of your efforts will be particularly fruitful, and you’ll be wasting your time.

Instead of trying everything and mastering nothing, focus your efforts on ONE particular method of lead generation and master it. This might seem a little sparse, but it’s not… any one lead generation method can produce limitless leads if exploited to its fullest potential.

Now don’t get me wrong… I’m not saying don’t try your hand at a few different lead generation methods when you first begin, because if you don’t, you won’t know what you’re good at. Try a few different methods, and see which produce any leads for you. Then find a method which you enjoy doing and which has given you some results. If you can produce one lead with any given method, you can produce 100 leads… if you can produce 100 leads, you can produce 100 leads… and so on.

It’s tough going in the beginning, but mastery is the key. One you’ve found your niche, always strive to improve your conversions by improving your technique. Seek out answers and help on message boards (i.e. Better Networker) or from colleagues. The outcome is you will find yourself mastering one lead generation method netting you free leads……then move on to something new and master it as well.

As a start for anyone, I would recommend writing articles and creating videos… both are incredibly powerful lead generation methods. Not only can you produce tons of leads, but you establish yourself as a marketing authority, and someone who provides others with useful information… someone who can teach… people love this. If you truly hate or are just not good at either of these methods, there are plenty of other options out there for you (classified ads, radio, social media, e-mail marketing, and so on).

As a final note, laziness is never an excuse. You have to actually work to get results, and you can’t claim one method hasn’t worked for you without truly trying your hand at it. So get to it, and start mastering your marketing!