Why You Should Write Down Your Goals

I recently read about a study in a book called “Look Within or Do Without,” by Tom Bay. According to Mr. Bay, Harvard Business School did a study on the financial status of its students 10 years after graduation and found that:

* As many as 27% of them needed financial assistance.

* A whopping 60% of them were living paycheck to paycheck.

* A mere 10% of them were living comfortably.

* And only 3% of them were financially independent.

The study also looked at goal setting and found these interesting correlations:

* The 27% that needed financial assistance had absolutely no goal-setting processes in their lives.

* The 60% that were living paycheck to paycheck had basic survival goals (such as managing to live paycheck to paycheck).

* The 10% that were living comfortably had general goals. They thought they knew where they were going to be in the next five years.

* The 3% that were financially independent had written out their goals and the steps required to reach those goals.

Yes, the results seem a little too perfect, but I’m not surprised at the overall implication. I work with many bright, ambitious people who have everything they need to get what they want – and who work nonstop – but fail to make the progress they desire. Yet when I suggest they could do better by setting goals and writing them down, as well as planning their days, getting in early, and doing all those other things we talk about each morning, much more often than not my suggestions are met with amused derision. I understand why you’d want NOT to write down your goals. It seems so contrived. So banal. You think that it may work fine for someone much less intelligent – much less individualistic – but that it’s not for you. Yeah, that’s the way I used to feel.

For years, I felt that way about anything that smelled of positive thinking, personal power, or self-help. Then, almost by accident, I stumbled onto Stephen Covey's productivity and time-management program – and that changed the way I thought about self-help. Prior to that, I had small successes, but felt like I was spinning in place. Since the humbling experience of admitting I could do better by structuring my life according to the banalities of good advice, I’ve become much better at defining and reaching my goals and finish virtually all of my pet projects. If goal setting can work for Harvard Business School graduates, shouldn’t it work for you too?

[Do you know how Facebook and Google became the most powerful companies in the world?

It’s NOT helping you share pics of last night’s dinner...
It’s NOT searching for drunken cat videos…

And it’s DEFINITELY NOT about free Gmail accounts.
 

The simple truth is Facebook and Google SELL TRAFFIC.

They SELL TRAFFIC to business owners, and that advertising revenue alone has turned them into billion dollar companies.
 

Traffic is the most valuable commodity on the internet, and that will never change.
 

This is why using the Traffic Authority business system is the ultimate way to make extra income in your business…
 

Click here to watch the video and start your own premium traffic business today!]

How to Achieve Moral Perfection: The Ben Franklin Formula

“What is moral is what you feel good after and what is immoral is what you feel bad after.”– Ernest Hemingway (Death in the Afternoon, 1932)

Ben Franklin, one of the World’'s wisest writers and thinkers, began his adult life with a very ambitious goal. He wanted to achieve moral perfection.

Moral perfection. Today, even the idea of it sounds pompous and proud.

Most of the people I know don’t even think in these terms. On a conscious level, they think about their family, their friends, their work. When it comes to achievement, they talk about money or fame or even happiness.

But the idea of devoting your life to an abstraction — and one so hard to define and difficult to reach — well, what’s the point?

To understand Ben Franklin’s ambition, you need to consider that for him morality meant something that may be different than what it means to you. For Franklin, morality was a way of behaving that resulted in a balanced life that contained the best of all possible human experiences.

The kind of morality that might result in self-mutilation, ethnic or religious warfare, or suicide bombing is not the kind of morality Ben Franklin was thinking of.

Morality, for Franklin, was the right way to act in any given situation. That included what you did to earn a living and how you treated your kids. It encompassed your behavior as a friend and neighbor as well as your intellectual pursuits. It was about your personal hygiene and your manner of speaking. It was about all of you — private and public, personal and social, physical and spiritual.

Here are Franklin’s prescriptions for moral perfection:

1. “Temperence: Eat not to dullness. Drink not to elevation.”

2. “Silence: Speak not but what may benefit others or yourself. Avoid trifling conversation.”

3. “Order: Let all your things have their places. Let each part of your business have its time.”

4. “Resolution: Resolve to perform what you ought. Perform without fail what you resolve.”

5. “Frugality. Make no expense but to do good to others or yourself; i.e., waste nothing.”

6. “Industry: Lose no time. Be always employed in something useful. Cut off all unnecessary actions.”

7. “Sincerity. Use no hurtful deceit. Think innocently and justly; and if you speak, speak accordingly.”

8. “Justice: Wrong none by doing injuries or omitting the benefits that are your duty.”

9. “Moderation: Avoid extremes. Forbear resenting injuries so much as you think they deserve.”

10. “Cleanliness: Tolerate no uncleanness in body, clothes, or habitation.”

11. “Tranquility: Be not disturbed at trifles or at accidents common or unavoidable.”

12. “Chastity. Rarely use venery but for health or offspring — never to dullness, weakness, or the injury of your own or another’s peace or reputation.”

13. “Humility: Imitate Jesus and Socrates.”

As Randy Cohen points out in his column “The Ethicist” in The New York Times Magazine, the particular virtues that Franklin selected “are, above all, practical. They promote diligence and accomplishment.”

That’s what we are doing here, isn’t it? Trying to accomplish the practical goals in our lives?

When I started "Seven Years to Seven Figures", I asked you to identify your four utmost life goals. I suggested that one of them be health-related, one wealth-related, one about the social you, and the fourth about the personal you.

The method we’'ve been using to achieve our goals is both practical and empirical. We imitate the successful behavior that has worked for others with the reasonable expectation that it will work for us.

That’s what Ben Franklin did. And even though he never achieved moral perfection, he believed that his radical idea of attempting the effort was a good one. “Tho’ I never arrived at the perfection, I was (by trying) a better and a happier man than I otherwise should have been.”

Take a few minutes today to review Ben’s list and compare it to your own life goals and to the work you’ve been doing to achieve them. Ask yourself if you are doing enough or too much. Consider the more “radical” virtues by today’s standards: chastity, humility, and temperance.$

[Do you know how Facebook and Google became the most powerful companies in the world?

It’s NOT helping you share pics of last night’s dinner...
It’s NOT searching for drunken cat videos…

And it’s DEFINITELY NOT about free Gmail accounts.
 

The simple truth is Facebook and Google SELL TRAFFIC.

They SELL TRAFFIC to business owners, and that advertising revenue alone has turned them into billion dollar companies.
 

Traffic is the most valuable commodity on the internet, and that will never change.
 

This is why using the Traffic Authority business system is the ultimate way to make extra income in your business…
 

Click here to watch the video and start your own premium traffic business today!]

The Connection Between Your Thoughts and Your Success

“”The price of greatness is responsibility.”” – Winston Churchill (1874-1965)

If you’’ve done some thinking about what you want from life, you may have discovered that becoming wealthy is not at the top of your list. This presents a dilemma: If you spend your prime time on some other goal, you may live poor; if you focus primarily on making money, you may fail at what you value most.

This is the problem of a friend of mine who runs a 3-year-old career counseling and training business. After a strong start, sales had reached a plateau and profits were shrinking. He was working hard, he said, but things were slipping through the cracks. Some of those things were important. Shareholders were’n't happy.

He felt overwhelmed and unappreciated. He was thinking about quitting. We took a look at what he was actually doing,– the specific tasks he was finishing every day. – What we discovered was that he was not working smart. He was wasting time on unimportant problems that, through prior neglect, were becoming emergencies.

All that could be fixed in time and by some task-management work, but there was also a more serious problem. He didn’t have any good ideas about how to boost sales and increase profits. “I’'ve tried everything,” he said. “I just don’t know what else to do.”

How To Tell If You Don’t Have What It Takes

The bells went off. This was the statement of someone who has psychologically abandoned his job. The ship is sinking, and the captain doesn’’t know what to do.

This may seem hard to accept, but you cannot run out of ideas unless you have run out of commitment. Exasperation is what happens after you stop trying. And ideas stop coming only after you stop thinking.

It took some time, but my friend finally recognized this to be true. It became clear to him when our conversation turned to the process of his thinking. I had asked him what he thought about when he daydreamed. “My fiancée,” he answered.

To make a long story short, my friend was spending all his spare time and most of his creative energy thinking about his impending marriage. Since he was still working 10 hours a day, he felt like he was still doing his job,but he was’n't.

To run a successful business, you have to think about it day and night. That means you daydream about business at home. My friend was doing just the opposite.

Test Yourself

Do you spend time thinking about your personal life at work? Even attending to it by phone calls, texts and e-mail messages?

Or does your day fly by and you find yourself sneaking in extra work at home and dreaming about business problems?

If you are fully committed to your work, you will dream about it …at night and during the spare moments of your day.

Blunt, purely rational approaches do not solve the really tough problems. They require an imaginative approach that normally comes from dreaming.

How You Dream Determines How You Do

If your underlying emotional drive is directed at your personal life, you will never find the creative solutions you need for your business problems. And if your primary concern is business, you may never figure out how to fix your personal problems.

What I am saying, is that you need to manage your daydreaming just as you do your time in general. You must recognize where your creative energy is going and ask yourself if that is in accordance with your life priorities.

In my friend’s case, he could not solve his business problems because he was spending all his emotional energy on his engagement. His daytime business thinking was ineffective because it lacked emotional intensity. His nighttime thinking was taken up by his personal life, but even that was suffering because of the anxiety he faced because of work.

“"So what should I do", he wanted to know. "“I want my marriage to work and I also want my business to succeed. I am not prepared to give one up.”"

“You may have to,” I told him. “At least temporarily. This may be one of those situations where you can only accomplish one thing. You may have to choose. Postpone the wedding until the business is fixed. Or get a less responsible job.”

He did’n't like those choices. And so we worked out a plan that hedged the bet. He would work only eight hours a day, but the eight hours he worked would be good ones. He would not allow his personal life to interfere. This could only happen, we agreed, if he took better care of his engagement, which he would do by spending two extra hours a day focused on it.

The little thinking we do in our spare moments is valuable thinking. It connects the dots and provides us with the emotional and imaginative energy to achieve creative breakthroughs. If you are losing your grip on work and daydreaming about something else, it’s time to reassess your priorities.$

[Do you know how Facebook and Google became the most powerful companies in the world?

It’s NOT helping you share pics of last night’s dinner...
It’s NOT searching for drunken cat videos…

And it’s DEFINITELY NOT about free Gmail accounts.
 

The simple truth is Facebook and Google SELL TRAFFIC.

They SELL TRAFFIC to business owners, and that advertising revenue alone has turned them into billion dollar companies.
 

Traffic is the most valuable commodity on the internet, and that will never change.
 

This is why using the Traffic Authority business system is the ultimate way to make extra income in your business…]

Seven Years to Seven Figures: The Truth About Money

Today is the day you discover the politically incorrect truth about money.

This lesson will probably be much different than the one your parents taught you. I know my mother would have disagreed with what I’m about to say.

Pinching pennies is a losing game. Obsessing about cutting costs is a waste of your valuable time and energy. You see, the only way to truly create financial independence and take control of your future is by adding value to the world and creating your own economy.

You don’t build wealth by extreme cost cutting. Instead, you build wealth by increasing your income so you have much more money to save and invest.

“But Ray”, you might protest, “right now all I can do is try to cut expenses”.

I understand. I’ve been broke.

Unfortunately, personal “austerity” can only get you so far. Sure you can cut and slash expenses to the bone, but eventually the fact remains that you always do get down to just the bone.

However, you have to eat. You need a roof over your head. And there are always going to be emergencies that come up. Those are mandatory expenses, and you can’t cut them.

Let’s take a look at a $40,000 per year income.

In the United States, a person making that much money, with no dependents, would be getting about $600 per week in take-home pay. Let’s say your monthly expenses are $900 for rent, $300 for transportation, and $300 for food.

You’re left with $900 per month for everything else.

But wait, there’s more. Reality usually throws in a spouse, a child, even a pet, and things start to get tight. Real tight. Real fast.

That leaves with you two choices.

Put your positive energy into earning more money.

Or exhaust yourself with the negative mindset of cutting costs.

You can only do one or the other.

As NY Times best-selling author Ramit Sethi eloquently put it:

“We have limited cognition and attention, so each additional thing we try to focus on means an overall reduced amount of willpower and attention.”

If you had to use your limited willpower to cut back on $2 a day of something you love, versus learning how to negotiate a $10,000 salary increase, which would you rather do?”

Exactly.

Stop trying to cut costs to the bone.

Now you might find this callous or cold, that’s fine.

But I’m asking you to trust me…and to take all the energy that you put into slashing your budget and transfer it over to creating value.

It will make all the difference in the world to your wealth building efforts.

It’s easier – and more positive – for you to ADD value to the world and earn greater rewards than it is for you to try and cut costs.

It’s easier to make money than it is to slash expenses.

Now before you disagree, just hear me out.

Making more money is a simple equation.

After all, you are already making money with your skills, right?

So to make MORE money, all you need to do is take your skills, add the way you create value and do it for more people.

That’s it.

Add more value = make more money.

It’s not rocket science.

Nor is making money the root of all evil.

The correct phrase is:

“The love of money is the root of all evil.” – 1 Timothy 6:10

BIG difference.

And not only is money NOT evil, but in fact, money is the answer to a LOT of life’s problems.

Don’t believe me?

Try going without money for a day.

You might be able to do it if you spend all day in bed, but you sure as heck better not allow your browser surf over to Amazon.com…because you’ll wish you had money then.

So back to your money problem.

If you need more money, the best thing for you to do is to switch from a negative cost-cutting mindset to a positive value-adding approach. 

If you need money, you must find a way to MAKE more of it.

You can only slash your spending so far. At some point you’ll hit the bone of necessity – and you can’t cut that.

So you need to switch your energy over to creating more value.

Better to do it now while you’re young and full of energy.

Yes, this message is politically incorrect. And yes, it goes against everything that you and I were brought up to believe…

That making money is hard.

That getting rich probably involves something shady.

That it’s better to be frugal and clip coupons and drive an extra mile to save a penny on gas (even though this is the ultimate waste of time). That approach is WRONG.

I dare you to believe me…that you can add value to the world, make it a better place, AND make more money ALL at the same time.

In fact, when you make more money, dozens of people will directly benefit from it.

OR you can deny this premise and live in a zero sum game world…thinking that if you make money that it must be by taking it from someone else.

You can slash to the bone or you can afford your $6 daily lattes.

It’s your decision to belive the truth about money or to deny its existence. Your choice.

Choose wisely.$

[Do you know how Facebook and Google became the most powerful companies in the world?

It’s NOT helping you share pics of last night’s dinner...
It’s NOT searching for drunken cat videos…

And it’s DEFINITELY NOT about free Gmail accounts.
 

The simple truth is Facebook and Google SELL TRAFFIC.

They SELL TRAFFIC to business owners, and that advertising revenue alone has turned them into billion dollar companies.
 

Traffic is the most valuable commodity on the internet, and that will never change.
 

This is why using the Traffic Authority business system is the ultimate way to make extra income in your business…]

Need a Boost? Try a Little Gratitude

For my American friends, Thanksgiving is typically a time to look back at the past, and to reflect on all those things we’re grateful for in our lives. Sure, it can be fun to indulge in a little nostalgia. But that gratitude is also tremendously important to your success.

Pausing to think about everything that you’re grateful for brings your life back into perspective. Those small annoyances don’t seem so important anymore. You feel energized. More alive. More positive about yourself and the world around you.

Gratitude also makes you more resilient in the face of setbacks. Tell me, what’s more productive? Getting mad at your staff for making a mistake that just cost you a pile of money and a customer? Or taking a deep breath and feeling thankful for the fact that those very same employees also make it possible for you to avoid the tasks you hate and focus on the stuff you’re great at?

The second choice will melt your anger like a burning candle. And it’ll get you back to focusing on action rather than self-indulgent lamentation.

Gratitude just makes sense.

So how do you do it? How do you actually go about identifying all those areas to be thankful for in your life?

I like to use this great little exercise. I found it many years ago in a rather hokey self-help book. Now that’s not normally my kind of reading at all. But the exercise made me sit up straight, fold down the page and come back later on to make a few notes.

Here’s how it goes…

Grab a piece of paper, and write these words across the top: “I’m thankful for…” And then divide your page into 3 columns.

Label the first column “Things”. Take a few minutes to write down all the material things you’re glad you have. For example, I’m thankful for my Keurig machine. For my collection of books. For having a reliable computer and a nice big Apple monitor. You get the idea.

In the second column, labeled “People”, list all the people in your life, past or present, who you appreciate. I’m thankful for my children. I’m thankful for my old hometown friends, who have been as close as family since our high school days and beyond. I’m thankful for having a great partner in my online business, and an amazing team of dedicated employees. And the list goes on.

Finally, label your third column “Other,” and list anything that doesn’t fit into the other two.

Most people find this last category confusing at first. But I thought it was the easiest one of all.

I’m thankful for my freedom. For having the ability to exercise. For good health. I’m tremendously thankful for my love of reading, because it’s opened so many doors.  And I’m incredibly grateful that I have the ability to travel and experience so many exciting new things, and then to share those things with my readers.

You get the idea.

It’s a really great exercise because it reminds you of just how much you have to be grateful for. It also opened my eyes to how much we can complain in the day to day — when most of us really have so little to complain about.

Sure, I tend to focus on what’s not perfect in my life. I’m driven, so I’m always tweaking things, trying to improve the road ahead rather than just sitting and looking at my past small accomplishments. But still…

Taking a few moments to remind yourself of just how many great things you have in your life changes the way you feel about everything. It brightens up your day. It gives you more energy. You walk taller, and you learn to let those small annoyances slide.

No matter how bad things are, you’ll always find something to be thankful for. And I can say this even about my most frustrating lean years, when I felt so trapped and when I thought I’d never be able to live my dreams. Looking back at those times, I’m thankful I had access to an excellent public library. And that I had a great mentor to teach and inspire me.

I encourage you to find a piece of paper and a pencil and give this little exercise a try today.

It doesn’t matter if you live in the United States and you’re celebrating the Thanksgiving holiday surrounded by family and friends, or if you’re an expat Canadian like me who’s just going along for the ride.

It’s worth a few minutes of your time. I promise.

[Do you know how Facebook and Google became the most powerful companies in the world?

It’s NOT helping you share pics of last night’s dinner...
It’s NOT searching for drunken cat videos…

And it’s DEFINITELY NOT about free Gmail accounts.
 

The simple truth is Facebook and Google SELL TRAFFIC.

They SELL TRAFFIC to business owners, and that advertising revenue alone has turned them into billion dollar companies.
 

Traffic is the most valuable commodity on the internet, and that will never change.
 

This is why using the Traffic Authority business system is the ultimate way to make extra income in your business…]

The One Characteristic Of All Great Leaders

“A leader is a dealer in hope.” – Napoleon.

What do I think is the most important quality of a good leader? Let’s start by stating the obvious: A good leader is one who inspires people to follow. It is not someone who uses force to push people to do things against their will. It’'s no great talent to bully people. The only thing that takes is an advantage. A bigger body. A quicker mind. A position of authority. The great thing about great leaders is that they know how to get people they CAN’'T bully to follow their lead.

Napoleon, for example, was a guy who had a lot of power. Napoleon could have run his campaigns by threat and force – and maybe he did. But he must have done more than that, because, according to the Duke of Wellington, the mere presence of him on the battlefield made his soldiers braver and stronger.

That’'s got to come from something more than fear. My guess is that it has something to do with his vision. (We’'ll have to do a little research on Napoleon one of these days to see if this theory holds up . . . but go with me on this for the moment.)

All great leaders do one thing in common: They put into the hearts of their followers a conviction that what they do (which is what the leader asks them to do) has meaning.

I don’'t think there is anything else you can add to that. Some leaders carry positive messages, but not all. Some leaders have visions that are brilliant, but not all. Some leaders love their followers. Others ignore them. Some leaders understand exactly what they are searching for. Others have only a vague idea.

If you work in an environment where good thinking is valued and the freedom to develop ideas is fostered, you are very likely to feel good about what you do. And if you feel good about what you do, you will work hard and smart.

There are obviously a lot of other things to be said about leadership. And there are probably plenty of things you can do to lead more effectively. But for the moment, I think it pays to ask yourself: “Do I give those around me the feeling that what we are doing is good and worthwhile?”

Before you answer that question, ask this: “Do I feel that what I am doing is good and worthwhile?”

[Do you know how Facebook and Google became the most powerful companies in the world?

It’s NOT helping you share pics of last night’s dinner...
It’s NOT searching for drunken cat videos…

And it’s DEFINITELY NOT about free Gmail accounts.
 

The simple truth is Facebook and Google SELL TRAFFIC.

They SELL TRAFFIC to business owners, and that advertising revenue alone has turned them into billion dollar companies.
 

Traffic is the most valuable commodity on the internet, and that will never change.
 

This is why using the Traffic Authority business system is the ultimate way to make extra income in your business…]

Real Estate Investing: Don’t Assume Your Tenants Know What Not To Do

Entering the world of real estate investing as a landlord is not everything it is cracked up to be. For every success story, there is an equal amount of stories regarding tenant incompetence. Not paying the rent on time or at all is certainly a bad scenario. While this is unfortunate, there are plenty of other things a tenant can do to devalue your property or force money to bleed from your budget. It is up to you to make sure they know what they can and can’t do.

The first rule of thumb as a landlord is to assume that your tenant knows nothing. Depending on where the property is and who your target tenants are, this may be their first time renting. Even if it is not, they may have come from a situation where the rules were a little less strict. Before your tenant signs the lease, you need to spend the time and go through it line by line. Even if you think that you are putting too much information on the lease and that many of the items are common sense, it is best to keep them on so there is no misunderstanding down the road.

Seemingly common sense items like flushing things down the toilet, getting a satellite dish or grilling inside the house must be explained and included in your lease. You may laugh, but believe it or not, all of those things happen with tenants from time to time. This is not even including damage to furniture, knocking down walls, candles in the house and emergencies. The more detailed you are in the ground rules of the property, the less likely they will be to do them.

Like any other situation, you need to pick and choose your battles. If you make every rule the one rule that absolutely cannot be broken, nothing stands out as a priority. Smoking, pets, parking rules and noise restrictions should be the items that you place at the top. Attach a punishment for each of these items. It is not an exaggeration to say that if there is smoking in the property they will be evicted. Accordingly, it is wrong to evict someone for parking in the wrong spot.

Most tenants will respect your property, but they will not make it a priority to keep it pristine because it is not theirs. This may lead them to do questionable things if the opportunity presents itself. This is where the communication you had with your tenant before they moved in becomes so important. If you are holding a deposit and clearly define what the actions are, it will cause them to think twice before they jeopardize their deposit.

Dealing with tenants is usually as easy or as difficult as you make it. If you are up front with them on what their expectations are and what the consequences are for their actions, you will have a much better experience. Not every tenant will follow the rules, but if you assume they know nothing and go from there, you will have a much better chance of having a better tenant.$

[Do you know how Facebook and Google became the most powerful companies in the world?

It’s NOT helping you share pics of last night’s dinner...
It’s NOT searching for drunken cat videos…

And it’s DEFINITELY NOT about free Gmail accounts.
 

The simple truth is Facebook and Google SELL TRAFFIC.

They SELL TRAFFIC to business owners, and that advertising revenue alone has turned them into billion dollar companies.
 

Traffic is the most valuable commodity on the internet, and that will never change.
 

This is why using the Traffic Authority business system is the ultimate way to make extra income in your business…]