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Best Business Ideas for you

Best Business Ideas.

Best Business Ideas

Day 1 of Life 2!               Image from fffcpas.com

“Screw your career path, live your story.”  Jason Seiden

You would like to start a new business, but are not sure where to begin? So many people claiming to have or offering the ‘best business ideas’ for you. There are so many business opportunities, but either creating a business that suits you, or picking up an idea that could become your business can be a real challenge.

Get the idea wrong and you are a square peg in a round hole – a very bad fit.

Get it right and you are in harmony, and very often, in profit, with the best business ideas!

Getting your business ideas right is critical!

How do you select the best business ideas?

A great question to begin with, before you start looking around for a business, is to ask whether you should actually be in business! Are you an entrepreneur type personality, who can or would enjoy the cut and thrust of running your own solo enterprise, with far-reaching visions, energy and enthusiasm to drive you and a determination to succeed no matter what?

Perhaps you are a person who would work well within a team, conquering the business and corporate world together, each playing to the other’s strengths? You might love the business environment and the opportunities it presents, but would prefer to be part of a team when you tackle the world of business.

This is the crux of it: the best business ideas that suit one person are not the best business ideas that would suit another! Choosing your business approach must be based around your business personality, and knowing whether you are a solo entrepreneurial type or a corporate team player or partnership type is fundamental to the best business ideas turning into successful businesses!

As a first step, take the QUIZ on the Life Change 90 website “Should you be the boss in your own business?

That will give you indications of how to approach your business venture, whatever it is. Then it is time to look through those best business ideas and choose your opportunity.

Best business ideas

Steve Jobs – the ultimate entrepreneur, founder of Apple.              Image from ndtv.com

Short of a starting point when looking for the best business ideas?

Choosing the best business ideas is important, and tailoring these best business ideas to your own style, personality, resource level and ambitions is critical. There is an old saying “Bite off more than you can chew, and chew like crazy!” (Quote from Joe Joyce)… That’s OK as far as a recipe for stress goes, but it doesn’t always auger well for success. Perhaps a personal audit of what you love to do and what you can do, and monetizing that idea is a better way to create the business you want, from all the best business ideas available.

The Business Profits Program begins right at this point, tailoring your business idea around your likes, loves and abilities. If you looked at a dozen small businesses, all the same type of business, perhaps using a mechanical repair business as an example, you would find every business was different in subtle ways to the other eleven. They began as successful business ideas and let’s face it, auto repairs is a great business to be in – provided you get a few things right, by tailoring it to the person doing the business!

One person may be a lover of American Muscle Cars and specialise in that area – the rumble of huge V8 engines and heavy metal. Another person loves high performance European sports cars, especially Italian cars, and creates a specialist workshop for them. Yet another person could love the hot-rod scene and turn vintage and veteran cars into flaming street hot rods. And there will always be a need for someone to service the family car, for the other folks that just go to work each day and use their cars as personal transport rather than as symbols of a youth that they cannot leave behind. All are very successful business ideas, but each is tailored around the personal likes, loves and resources of the business operator. And that is how you must consider your best business ideas too. They are only ever successful business ideas when they are integrated with the personal interests and passions of the operator.

Best business ideas

American Muscle Cars – a passion for some.                    Image from Autocity.com

Whether you have an idea for a new business, or are actively seeking the best business ideas, it will be well worth your while to look at the Business Profits Program, to put into the worksheet what you have and what you want to create, and see what new and potentially very successful business ideas come up for you. The program looks at what you like to do, or be, what you are good at and what your resources and strengths are, before showing you how to work through them to combine them into one of the successful business ideas you always desired, but were not sure how to create. It’s a powerful start.

Once you have the idea, the next thing is to start designing it around where you really want to go with it, and that will be the subject of a future blog. For now, check out the Business Profits Program and choose from amongst the best business ideas out there, to design your next career move around!

If you know other people either in business, or wishing they were, who might like to review their business ideas or are looking for the best business ideas, send this to them. They will thank you for it!

Til next time, fair winds and full sails.

Ray Jamieson

Love everyone, trust a few, and paddle your own canoe.  Barry Moltz

Other related blogs from Life Change 90:

Life Change 90 Relaunch

RISK

Empowerment through Challenge

Jim Rohn, Business Philosopher

Jim Rohn

Jim Rohn at home on stage.                                      Image from healthsourcelaunchu.com

I remember Jim Rohn.

Jim Rohn

What a way to think of life!                 Image from mylifemantras.blogspot.com

You must take personal responsibility. You cannot change the circumstances, the seasons, or the wind, but you can change yourself. That is something you have charge of.       Jim Rohn

One of the most quoted names of the business world in recent decades is E James Rohn (September 17, 1930 – December 5, 2009) or Jim Rohn, as most people knew him. Jim Rohn joined the speaking circuit during a period of #life change for him in the early 1960s with a talk at his local Rotary Club and in 1963, he delivered his first public seminar at the Beverly Hills Hotel. When he walked onto that stage, he walked into history to become one of the most influential speakers and motivators of the modern era, until his passing on December 5, 2009.

Some of the most famous and notable protégées of Jim Rohn include:
• Mark R Hughes (founder of Herbalife International)
Tony Robbins
Mark Victor Hansen
Jack Canfield (author of the “Chicken Soup for the Soul” books)
Brian Tracy
Chris Widener
T Harv Eker

I first discovered Jim Rohn through his recorded seminars when I became a member of the Australian Institute of Management in Spring Hill in Brisbane, in the late 1980s. They have an amazing library and I utilised it to the max! Through borrowed cassette recordings, I devoured his wit and wisdom and came to respect him greatly. In April 1990, he visited the Gold Coast in Queensland and I attended my first seminar with him, a weekend Leadership Program. This began a friendship that I was privileged to enjoy for some years, until Jim retired in the USA soon after the year 2005. After our first weekend together where we chatted as often as I could get time with him, we caught up each time I attended his programs and seminars here in Queensland over the last decade before his retirement.

Jim was a man of small stature, but a giant in the business and speaking world. “Business philosopher” is the title that was coined for him and it is so apt. He exuded wisdom wherever he spoke, the wisdom that only comes from someone’s experience, never from a curriculum or textbook!

Through those many hours of recordings played on my car stereo, reading his books, emails and attending his programs, his philosophy and wisdom became a powerful influence in my life also. I was fortunate that I was also able to speak with him when he came to Australia, because the old saying:
A single conversation across the table with a wise man is worth a month’s study of books
is ever so true. Speaking with and sharing a table with Jim Rohn was a real privilege.

Jim Rohn

Jim Rohn Philosophy:                                           Image from millionairemarketingmachines.com

A sound bite from a Jim Rohn Seminar
The first evening seminar I attended with Jim was in Brisbane and only went for a couple of hours. This is part of the session:
“Last year when I was here, I recommended a book to you – “The Richest Man In Babylon”. How many of the people from that evening are here again tonight?”

About three-quarters of the room, over 500 people, put their hands up.

“Thank you, that’s great – nice to see you coming back again. Now, keep your hands up if you went out and bought that book.”

All but about 50 hands went down.

“That’s about right” he said. “Only around 10% of the people you talk to will take action on your advice, no matter how valuable you believe it is for them!”

He went on to talk about the book, and about how easy it was.

“It’s easy to buy, it’s easy to read, it’s easy to understand. However, it’s also easy not to buy! To buy this book, you need to make a conscious decision to become a better person, and that’s harder than not buying the book”.

That’s Jim Rohn philosophy, simple and profound. I love it! And yes, I bought the book.

Learning is the beginning of wealth. Learning is the beginning of health. Learning is the beginning of spirituality. Searching and learning is where the miracle process all begins.      Jim Rohn

Jim Rohn authored a number of books, simple and easy books too. Full of his profound style of wisdom, and so relevant to everyday living and working in business. Jim’s life story is fascinating and well worth studying for a moment. He was a sales clerk in his early years before he was offered a job in direct sales by a very switched-on mentor. He soaked up the teachings of this mentor and propelled himself to success in that company and then the next company when he changed. He wrote and spoke about his success and the teachings of his mentor throughout his speaking career, inspiring the millions of people he reached around the world. It’s the lessons that can only come from experience, from face to face dealing with people, observing and learning from experience. His experience is what makes it so valuable. His style of delivery is what makes it so powerful and profound.

I was privileged to attend Jim’s Leadership weekend, and many other events at which he spoke, and even worked with him onstage at Brisbane once, when he and the great Zig Ziglar were in Brisbane.  That was a wonderful event and I had the chance to speak with both these great men during and after their events.  Since then, I have added all of Jim’s writing to my library and more than a few of his audio programs – more than a national treasure, this man had something worth listening to!

I’m proud to say that through my career in coaching, consulting, and public speaking, I have applied many of the lessons I learnt from Jim Rohn. Those familiar with his work may detect his influence in the Life Change 90 Program, although the original inspiration for that program came from Og Mandino, who I wrote about last week. Jim’s influence comes through most strongly in the Business Profits Program, because above all, Jim Rohn was an excellent business operator, very successful, very smart. Having Jim Rohn on your team would be valuable for everyone, and especially if you were starting a new business, or revamping one that was a little tired – Jim Rohn energy would inspire any business and any team!

Whether you are interested in the personal life change that Jim Rohn inspired world-wide, or whether you would like some of his philosophy in your business program, there’s something here for you. I’m also proud to say that I think Jim Rohn would be honoured to think he had a small role in the development of either of these programs. His legacy lives on also.

To find out more about the Life Change 90 Program, click here.

If you have a business or would like to begin one, it most likely could benefit from the Business profits Program, so click here!

Either way, the wisdom of the ages will be with you, allied with the technology of the 21st century, to propel you forward to success and achievement of your desires, now and far into the future. I wish you well with your desires.

Til next time, fair winds and full sails.

Ray Jamieson

Recent relevant blogs:

Og Mandino – Lessons from the Master

Life Change 90 Relaunch

RISK

Empowerment through Challenge

Starting a small business

Starting a small business

Amazing Garden – courtesy of gardeninfluence.com

“A goal without a plan is just a wish.” ― Antoine de Saint-Exupéry

Starting a small business

Starting a small business has much in common with starting a garden.

Starting a small business

Window Box Garden – courtesy of deborahsilver.com

A garden can be as small as a window box of herbs or colourful flowers, or acres of magnificence such as featured in some of the famous gardens of the world. Louis IV for example. Many acres of magnificent gardens, breathtaking in scope and features, a delight to experience and home to so much life and enterprise.

Starting a small business

Gardens of the Palace of Versailles, in France. This was NO ACCIDENT!        Courtesy of rothseye.org

However, these gardens both have much in common with starting a small business.

Each began with an idea, an inspiration. Someone, at some time, had to have the idea and inspiration to create either the small business, or the garden. Without that initial inspiration, neither is possible.

Starting a small business

What an idea! – image from shopigniter.com

“Without leaps of imagination or dreaming, we lose the excitement of possibilities. Dreaming, after all is a form of planning.” ― Gloria Steinem

In some cases, some people just bought seeds and scattered them. Some people just opened the doors on a business and hoped for the best. Both these strategies grow weeds, and soon fail.

Starting a small business

WEEDS!                   Image from hillconsulting.com

Starting a small business successfully requires the same strategy as starting a garden; you need a plan to work to. The best gardens, like the most successful small businesses, saw life through a very clear plan.

Not every garden was planned initially to look like the final completed picture, just as small businesses grow and evolve into their ultimate operation. Over time, the conditions and circumstances of the garden change, just as the small business environment you work in changes. Both must evolve, adapt and change with the times, so they can not only survive, but thrive!

Gardens are living, breathing organisms, teeming with life and activity. So are the most successful small business. Let’s look at what they have in common.

The initial plan is crucial.

Gardens have a creator. Someone had to start them off, create the idea and concept, mark out the seedbeds and plant the first seed. Someone also had to start the business, have the idea and stock the shelves.

Gardens need the right environment and location, soils and climate. With businesses, you must be where you can make sales and service your clients. Location is everything, whether a home based internet business, a corner store or a major retail outlet or service centre. Your location is just as critical because in the wrong location, all you get for either is a surfeit of weeds.

The climate? The business climate is just as important as the temperature and rainfall expectations for your plants. Some like it hot, others will die there – get it right. The business climate must be right for the business you are operating in that environment. Snowboards don’t sell well on the beachfront!

Choice of soils – just like the foundations of the business – crucial. Are your soils shallow and stony, or rich and deep? What is the foundation of your business? The marketability of your concept and the strategy for implementing it. Fundamentals for each enterprise.

Gardens need supplies of nutrients and water as their life flow. Fertiliser, water at the right time and volume, pruning, harvesting and weeding. Just as businesses do. Marketing, promotions, advertising, management strategy and ongoing training for everyone. Staff numbers and training need to be managed for efficient operation also.

Starting a small business is so much like gardening. You even need bees! Gardens need bees to pollinate flowers, to ensure the survival of the plants in the garden season after season. In starting a small business, you need to ensure you have access to bees also – both worker bees for your internal team and customer bees to ensure that the fruits of your labours multiply as profits, to ensure you are back next season also.

Starting a small business

Busy little bees! – Image from care2.com

“Give me six hours to chop down a tree and I will spend the first four sharpening the axe.”  ― Abraham Lincoln

There is so much in common with both starting a small business and starting a garden, and knowing this we can plan for success in both, with the crossover of common sense and knowledge required for either enterprise.

Back to the beginning. Neither your garden, nor your business idea have a snowball’s chance in hell of success without their creator knowing and understanding what they are starting, and have a plan for its success. Whether you create your own plan, or get a landscape gardener or an accountant to do it for you, there must be a plan. The great benefit of creating it yourself when starting a small business is that you will get much closer to what you want, what you dreamed of and what you are passionate about.

The challenge is filling in the technical bits, to make sure your plan is complete.

Small business creation and planning is now very easy.

The Business Profits Program provides all the tools you need for starting a small business plan, and much more. It takes your original idea, or prompts you to create one if necessary, locates your resources, skills and capital, then shows you how to combine them into a business model. It asks you how you will define your business, identify your target market, finance your enterprise, produce goods or services, market them to the intended clients and launch your business with a degree of success that even your accountant would be happy to achieve.

However, it doesn’t help with planning a garden. Unless you want to make a business out of your garden. Then it could become the most valuable tool in your garden!

The Business Profits Program: it takes what you already know and have, and turns it into an exciting and profitable business!

It provides the foundations for starting and operating a business, successfully. Take a look – you’ll be glad you did!

If you know some other folks who are either in business or thinking of starting one, please send this article to them. They will thank you, I’m sure.

Til next time, fair winds and full sails.

Ray Jamieson

“Someone’s sitting in the shade today because someone planted a tree a long time ago.”  ― Warren Buffett

Other related blogs from Life Change 90:

Life Change 90 Relaunch

RISK

Empowerment through Challenge

Life Change 90 Relaunch

Life Change 90 Relaunch

The Life Change 90 Relaunch!

Tonight we are launching an effort which holds the promise of changing the course of human history. – Ronald Reagan

Who would have thought that since last publishing Moving House some time ago, it would have taken this long to resume blogging on Life change 90? When we relocated to our new home, a modern, single level home in a reasonably new estate, that we would have had internet problems!

However, as you can see in the Spaghetti photo, the builder was a budding electrician, but without staying power. He stopped before the job was finished and the wiring was an absolute nightmare! The technician who eventually sorted out the tangle was flabbergasted. Eventually, he solved in as in the fable of the Gordian Knot. He found the active wire, and bypassed everything else to start all over!

The time offline wasn’t totally wasted though. As you will see from browsing the Life Change 90 website, we decided on a Life Change 90 relaunch, with a whole host of new goodies for you. More you ask? Let’s take a look at what the Life Change 90 Relaunch means for you.

First change with the Life Change 90 Relaunch

First, the Life Change 90 program has been reworked, and is now at Version 2.1. We considered the feedback we had, corrected some typo errors (my typing mistakes there), simplified the instructions more, added a whole new goalsetting module up front and changed the 1-31 sheets at the end, to make it simpler to use, and we have found it also flows much more easily between days and sections. You will love it! Check it out!

Then, as life change is often as much external as it is internal, we decided to work with and assist those who are thinking of a life change into business for themselves. Perhaps second only to the dream of owning your own home, comes the desire to be the boss in your own business. The Life Change 90 Relaunch has really come to the party for you.

New features with the Life Change 90 Relaunch

First new item in the Life Change 90 Relaunch is the free download Quiz, “Should you be the boss in your own business?” This is a quiz to look for your inner entrepreneur. Whilst it’s nice to think we could be Sir Richard Branson or Warren Buffet if only we had the chance, perhaps there is a different model we need to look at. Not everyone can be the “front” person in a business, although many can. Many people work best with a partner, or with a board to advise them. Only a few can be the solo entrepreneur, and this Quiz can help you find out what your best model of business management would be. Check it out HERE, and in the Side Bar on the right of your screen.

The #Life Change 90 Relaunch also gives you the next step in the “be your own boss” business process: how to create, plan and launch your own business. We created a new download for you there too.  It’s called the BUSINESS PROFITS PROGRAM. Check it out HERE!

Life Change 90 Relaunch

The Business Profits Program

This program is designed to enable you to look at your situation, decide where your strengths are, what you have to offer the business world and then to design a business around it. Then it helps you totally plan your business, right up to and beyond launch day, and even assists with identifying business partners, if that is what you need too.

This program is the essential tool to make sure your new business venture – if you desire to and choose to create one, doesn’t become one of the sorry statistics we hear bandied around about how many businesses fail. Businesses that don’t prepare correctly fail, and if you use this program, yours is most unlikely to be one of them!

The Life Change 90 Relaunch is the start of great things to come. New blog topics prepared, new products, and whole new focus to add to the already powerful Life Change 90 Program that has already been providing #empowerment to so many people.

Come on, join the crowd and come check out the Life Change 90 Relaunch. See you there.

If you felt this article could have helped you relaunch your life with your own business or a fresh start elsewhere, please share it with others. Pass it on, because just like you, and me, there are so many people praying for a new start in their lives too.  We need to help them where and when we can.

Til next time, fair winds and full sails,

Ray Jamieson

If you believe you can, you probably can. If you believe you won’t, you most assuredly won’t. Belief is the ignition switch that gets you off the launching pad. – Denis Watley

Prayer for change

#prayer for change

Prayers count, no matter who prays!
Image from www.atotheword.com

“Be who you are and say what you feel, because those who mind don’t matter, and those who matter don’t mind.”
Bernard M. Baruch

A Prayer for Change

While looking at my blog today, I chanced upon a section of the dashboard I hadn’t noticed before.  It showed the search terms people had used most to find my blog online.  It shocked me to realise what it meant.

The two top terms were:

  1. Prayer for change in my life

  2. Empowered Person

If ever there was a cry for help, both these terms are screaming it from the rooftops! Prayer for change and seeking empowerment!

For two decades I have delivered life changing workshops and seminars all over my country on exactly these topics, and the cry has been the same:

“I expected more out of life than this, by now!”

#prayer for change

I expected more out of life than this, by now!
Image from www.sott.net

I have heard it from teenagers, from young disillusioned couples, from parents with teenage kids, and from retirees, who were struggling still, after a lifetime of struggle.  A #prayer for change, if ever there was one!

When we were in school, we were told, and probably you were too:  “Study hard, get good grades, get a good job and have a good life!”  Well, these people all followed those directions and by the time they came to my workshops, that is how they felt – ripped off!  It was a lie, and they had fallen for it!  And now, they have this prayer for change!

There’s nothing wrong with having a good education and getting a good job.  However, that’s not it – that’s just the start!  Your education continues and it’s a lifelong program you are enrolled in!  The school of life is never on holidays – it always has something to teach you!  The question is – are you ready, willing and able to learn?

“Be yourself; everyone else is already taken.”
Oscar Wilde

For those people truly desiring change and empowerment, we have provided the Life Change 90 Program. Click here to learn more about Life Change 90.

For those people searching for a prayer for change, here is mine – click on this link for the whole blog:

Today, My Perfect Day

A day that I could begin by being of service to another, to start their day also with inspiration and love.

A day when I could plan and begin projects – dreams that could take all of my tomorrows to complete.

A day I would live as though it was my last, as though there would be no tomorrow.

A day when I would play the games I play to the limit,

To laugh as hard as I can,

To love as passionately as I am able,

To work and achieve to my capacity,

yet with time to rest and relax with my loved ones

until we are full of the love we have for one another.

A day when there is time to reflect,

To consider those whose fortunes have not yet been realised, as mine have,

To pray that they may be realised – soon.

A day which closes with a Prayer of Thanks to the Great Spirit and all the guides I have,

for watching over me through this day,

and to ask them to guide me through the next,

so that again someone might say:

“I’m glad that you came by!”

© Ray Jamieson 1993

#prayer for change

A pot of gold, after all?
Image from wordlesstech.com

For those searching for Empowerment, there is a whole series of empowerment blogs for you, everything from Financial Empowerment, to Empowerment for Men, Women, Children and Teens, and explanations on what Empowerment means and how to gain it!  The full list is below.

Thank you for your searches, and thank you for looking to Life Change 90 and our program for the answers to your prayer for change, and for your personal empowerment, in whatever form you desire it.  I hope we have helped you and you know that we will continue with our aims to empower many more people, in times to come.

If you feel this article has empowered and benefited you and you feel it could benefit the personal empowerment of other folks you know, please reblog it, share it with your friends and associates.  It might be the day you changed someone’s life for the better!  If that was that special person in your life, then congrats: you just changed your own life too!

Til next time, fair winds and full sails, and I hope your prayer for change is answered!

Ray Jamieson

Please also refer to my other posts on Empowerment:

Empowerment through Emotional Intelligence

Financial Empowerment

Empowerment

Empowerment for Men

Empowerment for Women

Empowerment for Teens

Empowerment for Children

Personal Empowerment

What would an empowered man do?

Empowered by love

Financial Empowerment

#Financial Empowerment

The financial jigsaw puzzle
Image from intentionalwealthinstitute.org

Update: Feedback is that this post on #Financial Empowerment is almost brutal. Sorry, but it has to be – people in financial crisis are often also in denial.  I know – I was one of them! This blog is from my hard-earned and learned lessons in financial empowerment!  I needed some ‘hard talking to’ in my time of crisis, and I don’t want you to go through what I experienced, because of my denial!

However, the post is not all bad news! If you recognise your symptoms below, you’ll be amazed at the reasons for why we do and feel what we do, and delighted with the range of options and solutions.  The links take you to even more detail on the solutions available to everyone who needs financial empowerment.

Financial Empowerment

There is an elephant in the room.  A great big ugly elephant.  We talk about empowerment and self development and personal growth but when someone mentions ‘money’ or being wealthy, too often, thoughts or whispers of greed, selfishness, get rich quick, or some other such demeaning slur appear.

There is even that famous Bible quote:

“It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle, than for a rich man to enter into the kingdom of God.” (King James Bible).

However, any quote taken out of context can take on a whole new meaning, such as this one does!

So many people have hidden behind this and other poverty based quotes to make excuses for their lack of abundance, without even realising it.  They believe these quotes and old sayings (“life wasn’t meant to be easy” is another!) are actually facts.  THEY ARE NOT!

“Take responsibility for your finances or get used to taking orders for the rest of your life. You’re either a master of money or a slave to it. Your choice.”Robert Kiyosaki

It’s time to say IT IS OK to have money and wealth.  It’s NOT OK to be poor and just accept it! 

It’s NOT OK to have to worry where the next dollar or the next rent or mortgage payment is coming from.  It’s NOT OK to have your child’s next meal in doubt because you don’t have the money to put a meal in front of them.

#Financial Empowerment

Down on his luck, by Frederick McCubbin
Image from www.artroom.com.au

Why would you NOT have all the money and financial empowerment you need, or want?

There could be some absolutely valid reasons.  Bad luck.  Bad management of a situation.  Bad start in life.  Got robbed.  Got divorced.   Got taxed.  All valid and perfectly good reasons to not have any money.  If you are OK with reasons for not having money that is, rather than the money.

If this is you now, are you planning on staying this way? 

If you are unhappy about your financial situation, read on – there is much to learn and much to look forward to!

Is it OK to be broke? 

Most teenagers and students visit “Broke” during their high school or university years, just after leaving home.  Possibly the best time to visit, when you are young and life has so much promise and you are so enthusiastic about it.  You also don’t have family responsibilities then.  Enjoy the experience of living on the financial edge, learn the financial empowerment lessons and then get the hell out of there!  Life is better with a full wallet!

How does a lack of financial empowerment affect men and women differently?

In ancient times, men were the hunters, women were the nurturers.  This imprinted in the DNA of the human race and reflects in their emotional states today, thousands of generations later.  A man who could not hunt and provide for his family was shamed.  Today, men feel humiliated to be without work and income.  A woman in ancient times who could not nurture her family was considered of low worth and status.  She had to take scraps or be married off to a low status male.  Today, very little has changed!  Jean M Auel’s excellent and very well researched books, starting with “Clan of the Cave Bear” demonstrate this perfectly!

Let’s look at what it means to be lacking in financial empowerment, for both men and women.

Financial Empowerment for women

A woman without money in the 21st century in the western world is a woman who has to educate herself and develop a career to support herself, or to be supported by someone else.  She must develop an income stream to pay for the necessities of life.  If she cannot do this, she has to choose between doing without the necessities of life, or being at the mercy of someone who has them.

Perhaps she will find a husband, someone who will be delighted to take her just as she is, and who promises to support her forever.  Lots of women have thought this; many have made wonderful lives being supportive wives for their loving husbands.

#Financial Empowerment

Since my divorce….!
Image from www.sincemydivorce.com

But many have found that after a time, their marriage and support program suddenly ended.  Perhaps through tragedy, or for other reasons, sometimes divorce.  Now, they are older, perhaps wiser, but many are still without an income and a way to pay to live.  That doesn’t mean that a divorced woman cannot cope – just that sometimes, the divorce is financially devastating, and they are left with little money and a family to raise, and often on a solo parent benefit or part-time wages.

Financial empowerment for women is vital.  Not just for the feeling of satisfaction, but for the independence it brings.  Ladies, if you are financially independent, you can choose where and who you want to spend your life with, for reasons other than necessity and somewhere to live.  An important goal.

Financial empowerment for men

Guys, there is probably nothing more disempowering than looking at your family, and knowing you cannot provide for them.  Not being able to pay the mortgage or the rent, rationing the children’s food, losing the car to the finance company, all for the want of a better cashflow.

#Financial Empowerment

Super Dad!
Image from thewonderfulworldofnothing.blogspot.com

The other side of the coin is great!  You feel invincible and powerful when you have financial empowerment.  When you know that your financials are OK and that the house and car are paid for, and the family is secure, you feel king of the castle.  So you should.  Supporting and empowering your family is perhaps the greatest responsibility that most people could ever have.

Financial crisis happens, far too often.  It happens to good people, to great people, and to most of the people who don’t understand money and financial empowerment.  But there’s also a way through it.

The key to financial empowerment is education.

I don’t mean reading, writing and arithmetic, although they are important.  Financial literacy education, understanding the financial empowerment principles that make the money world go round.  They aren’t too hard to learn, though they can be harder to put into practice.

“No one lives long enough to learn everything they need to learn starting from scratch. To be successful, we absolutely, positively have to find people who have already paid the price to learn the things that we need to learn to achieve our goals.”Brian Tracy

The world has changed since I was a boy.  Fifty years have made a huge difference.  A house now costs half a million dollars here, but fifty years ago, $2500 would have got you one.  A car was $500, now it is $40,000.  But wages were much less!  Fifty years ago, it was 365 shillings per week, around $36.  The princely sum of $1,800 per year.  Now, in Australia, the average annual wage is $75,000.    Prices have increased but so has our income.

What HAS changed is the opportunity level!

In this age of technology and information, a person no longer needs a factory or huge amounts of capital to start a profitable business.  Many people work their own business from anywhere in the world they want, as long as they can connect a computer, laptop or even tablet to the internet!  As long as they have a skill they can apply, a second or even a primary income is available for anyone, if you become educated in how to market something of value to the world!

There are businesses set up solely to market skills, such as Elance – working as contractors in a virtual world, with real people at either end.  Computer technicians often repair your computer problems from their own office, working on your computer remotely.  People with a little money can invest online and make a living as traders.  You can set up a business, consulting, buying, selling, trading, creating, almost anything you want, as soon as you launch your own website and get your story online.  There are even people making a good income writing blogs, just telling stories online.  There are numerous ways to either supplement an income, or replace it, and there is no discrimination in the virtual world.

What is Residual Income?

Think about your wage.  If you don’t go to work, you don’t get paid.  No residual income.  Think about the rent on a house.  The owner could be in Spain, New York or Sydney.  The rent still goes into their bank account.  That is residual income.

Make money while you sleep.  Set up your income streams as businesses at which your presence is not required, fully automated, and the money will flow to you, wherever you are. Click this link for more details and alternatives!

Examples of residual income are:

  1. Financial investments, shares, term deposits etc.  You need a lot of money initially and the Return On Investment (ROI) is from 1% to 5% usually.  $1,000,000 at 5% is $50,000 pa.
  2. Investment property.  In Australia, an investment property starts at around $350,000 and higher, and ROI is either negative (profits from tax benefits) or up to around 5% clear.
  3. Leasing out equipment, rental cars, machinery etc.  Lots of money initially but a higher ROI, because of a shorter working life of the equipment.
  4. A second job?  Doesn’t qualify, as there is no residual income.  However, this is where most people look when they need more money.
  5. A business with employees.  If you can set it up so that it makes a profit while you are not there, yes, ongoing residual income.  However, bricks and mortar businesses are struggling the world over.  Many do not make a profit at all.

Can you make money online?

There is an alternative, made possible by the technological revolution and the internet.  It is possible to start a small business online and set it up to operate globally, fully automated and delivering profits into your bank account, wherever you are.  Many are very successful; the operators have replaced their regular income and quit jobs, to live on the ever-growing profits of their fully automated online businesses! Click this link for more details and alternatives!

Examples of online income streams:

  1. Contracting your skills, such as through ELANCE, or being a virtual assistant
  2. E-Bay trading, buying and selling items
  3. Shares and options trading, taking a parcel of money and actively trading with it – be careful of the risks! Only for skilled traders!
  4. Consulting and providing advice, for a fee
  5. Website sales of an item, product or service, sometimes digital products or information
  6. Using a website in conjunction with a bricks and mortar business for mail-order sales
  7. Writing and publishing online
  8. Networking of a business opportunity online, building up a global downline network

NOTE: 1-4 are usually not residual income streams although they are internet businesses.

#Financial Empowerment

Internet Business Opportunities!
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These opportunities are there for everyone.  If you have a skill or a product range, you can sell it online, anywhere in the world.  If you see a networked business opportunity, you can have a global business almost overnight, with residual income coming in from all over the world.  And you don’t have to leave your day job!

If you are also a member of Life Change 90, you can enjoy Personal Empowerment, as well as Financial Empowerment!

Think about this:

Are you earning what you are worth right now?

Are you earning what your family needs right now?

Are you earning enough to fund the dreams of your future, right now?

If not, what are you going to do about it, and when?

There ARE answers, and you can find them in the links here.  I look forward to seeing you at the top, earning lots more than you are now!

If you feel this article has financially empowered you and you feel it could benefit the financial empowerment of other people, please reblog it, share it with your friends and associates.  It might be the day you changed someone’s financial fortunes and future for the better, not just your own!

Til next time, fair winds and full sails,

Ray Jamieson

 “Take action every day. It doesn’t have to be dramatic action, but every day, stick with it. Spend time on things that make you proud, that stretch and strengthen you.”Phillip Humbert

Please also refer to my previous posts on Empowerment:

Empowerment

Empowerment for Men

Empowerment for Women

Empowerment for Teens

Empowerment for Children

Personal Empowerment

What would an empowered man do?

Empowered by love

Empowerment through Emotional Intelligence

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