Now, my friend also had a copy of The Millionaire Course: A Visionary Plan for Creating the Life of Your Dreams by Marc Allen. I find that I am more in alignment with his vision of financial freedom, and here is why:

My idea of Financial Freedom is the ability to choose to do what you wish with your life, without the need to think about if there is enough money to do what you want. In order to break dwn what this REALLY means, you’ve got to really understand what money itself IS.

Money, in a spiritual aspect, is representative of the flow of spirit, via the Law of Circulation.

Money is basically what makes the world go round, as far as sustaining a sort of co-existence of a multitude of different manifestations of spirit.

If you had enough income piling into your bank account to meet your basic necessities, such as food, a place to live and clothes, how would like be different?

Now, you may be saying “but I DO have enough money to provide for the necessities.” And you may be correct. But, the real question I want to ask is, “HOW do you get that money?” Is the income you earn each month Linear (i.e., from working in a job or a self-employed business type setting), or is it non-linear, leveraged, and passive?

I read once somewhere, and I cannot remember where, about a quote that is attributed to Garry Trudeau, the creator of the popular comic strip “Doonesbury”:

My entire goal is to create a lifestyle that does not require my presence.

How beautiful an idea is that?

Now, take this in idea into mind to see why I don’t entirely agree with Brian Tracy on some of his ideas about Financial Freedom. Before I do, however, please let me remind you that Brian Tracy IS a self-made millionaire many times over, so his ideas DO work for him.

Brian Tracy’s approach to Financial Freedom, from my understanding of what he says on the tape, involve arriving at it from the point of awareness of a traditional employee. On the CD set, he tells the story of how, by making himself an indispensible employee and developing a workaholic mentality, he ended up earning more than many people in his company combined. From the employee mindset, this is brilliant.

Marc Allen, however, embraces what he calls the “Lazy” approach to Financial Freedom. Note that by “Lazy”, we do not mean the same thing as sloth. Laziness in Allen’s model of Financial Freedom, means to take whatever creative ideas you have, find out how to turn it into an income-producing business, and building that business up to a point of profitability. By automating your business processes as much as is possible, you have now created a recurring stream of income that will flow, whether or not you wake up by 6am, or even by noon!

The problem that I see from the employment method is that you have to be at work everyday to keep the income flowing long enough to create investments and such that will eventually create the recurring income streams.

So, what different things can you do to create automatically recurring streams of income?

• eBay Set up an eBay store which features products from reputable drop-shippers. Drop-shippers are essentially companies which manufacture and ship products on behalf of other companies. Say, you had an eBay store that sold leather-bound widgets. The eBay store can be set up to auto-list the auctions. All the leather-bound widgets are set at a minimum price of $10, which is the cost to have the drop-shipper make and ship them. The auction ends at $19.95 for the widget. The buyer pays you via whatever method you choose. $10 of the $19.95 gets automatically sent, with order and shipping information to the drop-shipper. the Drop-shipper slaps on a logo that you made up, and they have on file, to the widget. The product is shipped out, you have your $9.95 left over. That was easy, right? But remember, the eBay store can be set to auto-list auctions on a recurring basis. So, say that you are running 7-10 auctions for leather-bound widgets at a time. Set it the store so that once an auction ends and finalizes, an identical new auction lists 12-24 hours later. You’ve just set up a system of making $9.95/day or so. That equates to nearly $300 of gross income for YOU, and exactly $300 for the dropshipper. That’s just from widgets, though. What if you also list the latest hot products? The only time you’d really have to invest each week (other than the initial setting up of the system) is to do some cursory product research to find what people are looking for. Neat, huh?
• You can also get into Internet Marketing. That is such a huge animal to tackle, that I am going to have a whole other post for it. For now, however, feel free to check out this FREE 33-page mini-course in Niche Marketing (PDF)
• Network Marketing This is one of my personal favorites. Network marketing is such a splendidly weird business model. I say weird, because it’s devilishly simple in the basic concept of it. In corporate America, if you try and help someone get ahead, you run the risk of them taking credit and passing you by. In Network Marketing, you actually get REWARDED for taking a new business partner by the hand and showing them the ropes of your particular business. This model works extremely well for Real Estate Brokers who make a little tiny commission off each of their agent’s sales. How would you like to be the person who recruits and sponsors 2 new people each month, and teach them to sponsor 2 people each month? How many people would be in your business team at the end of a year? A few hundred maybe? Nope. Over 8,000! 8,190 to be precise. And, since Network Marketing is built on the concept of getting paid a tiny piece of the commissions generated by each person in your organization, you’ve went from nothing to massive passive income. Of course, as with any other sort of business venture, it’s understood that many of that original 8,190 people will drop out. It’s been shown that only 5% of the population ever set and attain goals. Even 5% of 8,190 is a whopping 409 people. Would you like to get paid on the efforts of 409 people, day in and day out?

Those are only 3 methods of creating residual passive income to help fund your lifestyle. The key is to create the systems such that they do not require constant meddling on your part.

What I think works as a better guidance system is to make sure that your own network marketing business are built on a strong stable foundation of Triangle. This insight hit me while driving earlier.

So, as it is, I am now restructuring my thinking regarding my Network Marketing business endeavor as follows:

Mission: My Mission, as I wrote it down, reads, “To sell as many memberships to as many people as possible.”

Out of this missions sprung a separate, yet equally powerful mission, “To hold the running company record for organizational recruiting AND sales.”

This secondary mission, in a sense, is important because it supports the primary mission to sell as many memberships as possible, through the power of leveraging my efforts through others by recruiting them into my organization.

Team: This refers to my recruiting methods. I am always looking at new or novel ways to recruit team members, in a fashion that is duplicatible.

Leadership: This refers to my ability to get people motivated and focused to follow the simple daily activities that are essential to create enough forward momentum. I will be holding a weekly training for my team. Also, to help set a beneficial example for my team, I will be reading at least 10 pages or 1 chapter from a personal development book each day, which ever is more. Also, I will listen to 15 minutes or 1 track of a personal development audio program, whichever is longer.

Cash Flow Management: Of all money I make in the form of commissions or payouts, I plan to reinvest a certain amount back into the business. As an example, say I made $1,000. I’ll take a certain amount and purchase marketing materials and supplies. I’ll also use some of the money to reward people in my team for jobs well done.

Communications: This refers to the external and internal communications. This is where most network marketers beieve is the only part they need to focus, in order to succeed. For my communications component, I am making 2 company/product exposures per day. In our business, an “exposure” is simply the act of getting a 3rd party marketing tool into a prospective business partner’s slime. We use things like magazines, DVD’s, CD’s, etc., to simply tell people about our products/services. The materials do the talking for us, and never get tired.

Systems: This is the real meat of a network marketing business plan. Systems, as outlined before, are where the rubber meats the road, so to speak. When you develop systems for each part of your business plan and execute them properly, it takes a lot of the guesswork out of the process.

Systems I plan to work with here are:

• Recruiting/Sponsoring
• Sales Presentation

These things, when executed like clockwork, done over and over, compounded over time, will ensure success.

Legal: Not really much to say here, other than I intend to use the services of an attorney to either incorporate my business or even LLC it. I will do this for assett protection as my main focus.

Product: All you can really do here is to actually KNOW your product/service in and out. Learn the product presentation. I am right now working on developing a presentation that I can comfortably deliver in 15 minutes, as well as one that can be done as an Elevator Pitch.

I hope this makes sense to you. If not, Email Me or Comment and ask for clarification!

Take care of yourself and others!

The Product is at the pinnacle of the triangle because it is, in the overall scheme of things, not as important a function as the other parts of the triangle mentioned in the previous articles. This is not to say, however, that the product is NOT IMPORTANT. Without a product that provides some use, utility or value to the paying consumer, all the other parts of the triangle really become just theory.

The product, simply stated, must address and fill some need in the marketplace. The successful entrepreneur is one who can position him- or herself in front of a growing trend by finding a void in the marketplace and then filling that void.

The positioning in front of the trend is where the real money of business is made. A perfect example is the bottled-water industry. At one time, people would literally laugh at you if you offered up the idea of putting water into a bottle and selling it. The few who positioned themselves in front of the bottled-water trend have profited massively and, consequently, don’t need the information in this article

This bring up another important point: opportunity. If you are attempting to build a business that addresses a genuine market need, expect a low number of the people you talk to to actually get involved with you. This is where opportunity is seized. If you went invented something spectacular, then went out and talked to 10 people about it, and 9 bought immediately, the opportunity may well be farther past than you think. Expect and hope that only 1 out of 10 people will get involved with you in the beginning. As your product, idea or service slowly and gradually matures, you’ll creep to the 2% market penetration point. It seems that companies all throughout history had to reach the 2% market penetration level before reaching what is known as critical mass.

I suspect this may be somehow related to the “Hundredth Monkey Effect”. So, in conclusion, find a need, fill that need, price your product or service fairly and keep customers coming back!!!

The article links are Mission, Team, Leadership, Cash Flow Management, Communications, Systems., Legal, Product
The Legal aspects of owning a business can be daunting. So daunting, in fact, that in order to be a legal practitioner requires a license. It must be a scary world, right?
The legal arena, in regards to business, covers very numerous and different types of law. Some of these are Intellectual Property Law, Immigration Law, Tax Law, Import/Export Law and Debt Collection. Please bear in mind that this is not an inclusive list.

All that can be really said about this area is that the cost of an attorney will likely be far offset by the amount of money saved in the long run, and by the opportunities an attorney can help you take advantage of.

Any further comments?

The article links are Mission, Team, Leadership, Cash Flow Management, Communications, Systems., Legal, Product
An example of a system is the human body. The human body is in essence a systems made up of systems. Each system is made up of organs, and is dependent on the functions and processes of every system in the body. If just one system is out of balance or functioning improperly, the entire body system suffers as a result.

An example of systems that I am quite familiar with is the collection of systems on a submarine. Systems there include things like the ventilation system, the water systems, hydraulic systems, air systems, sewage/sanitary systems and the list goes on. We as submarine sailors are required to gain an in-depth understanding of each system and how the systems inter-relate to other systems. Once again, if just one system is out of commission, either the whole system suffers, or the other systems must somehow be allowed to compensate, leading to degraded operations.

In business, systems are vital to the long-term growth and survival of a business. Business systems are basically a collection of steps and procedures designed to accomplish routine tasks. These tasks are designed and performed keeping the company’s Mission in mind.

As an example, I am currently employed at Pizza Hut as an evening delivery driver. Systems there include such things as making sure the dough and pizza pans are prepared for the next day. This is necessary because the dough requires a minimum amount of time to rise before being used to build those delicious pies. These steps are all done each night, in proper sequence, to ensure that we are able to satisfy our mission of feeding as many customers as possible. A system is basically a procedure that, if followed, will better the chances of getting the task performed for which it is designed.

The power of business systems comes from the fact that they take the emotion, guesswork and confusion out of daily oiperations. Systems are even found in our personal financial lives. A household budget is an awesome system that, if designed and used properly, ensures a family will always have enough money to meet basic financial requirements (a.k.a., BILLS), and is able to save money for future retirement or investing. I hope this article sheds some light on the importance and power of systems. I am, of course, open to comments you may have to help bring more insight.

Steve Pavlina has an excellent article he’s written titled Getting Organized, which outlines using the power of systems to keep your office (and your life) clutter free.

Take care of yourself and others!

The article links are Mission, Team, Leadership, Cash Flow Management, Communications, Systems., Legal, Product
In this article, I’ll be touching on the Communications aspect of the B-I Triangle™.
Communications is made up of two types: External and Internal.

External communications has to do with the methods and ways a business sends and receives information to the outside world. This may encompass marketing and advertising, press releases, product recall bulletins, and so on.

External communications are any communications with the outside, that affect your business’ goodwill and reputation.

Marketing and Sales have to do with any methods of poduct awareness and product exposure to the public. This could involve direct mail campaigns, television and radio ads, Network Marketing, print advertising and even something as “small” as printing up business cards.

Building a sales and marketing force into your team is essential if you plan on long-term product profitability.

The article links are Mission, Team, Leadership, Cash Flow Management, Communications, Systems., Legal, Product
Cash Flow Management is absolutely essential to a company’s ability to fulfill the stated mission. Cash Flow is the lifeblood of any business enterprise. Cashflow can be likened to the blood pumping through your body right now. You have a vast network of arteries and veins which carry life-giving and life-sustaining blood and oxygen to different parts of your body. The body, through it’s own autonomic ability to control flow rates in each area, mainains a perfect balance of blood flow to help ensure long life.

Cash Flow is, according to Robert Kiyosaki’s Rich Dad, “the most important word in the world of money.”1
Cash Flow management encompasses one of the most seemingly-boring subjects in the world of money: Accounting.

Accounting is the collection of principles that concern tracking the flow of money into an out of an organization. Along with accounting come the things knows as Financial Statements.

Robert Kiyosaki has stressed the importance of being able to read Financial Statements. If a person gets proficient at reading Financial Statements, that person is now more equipped to be able to evaluate the fiscal health of a business before buying stock, or buying the company outright. Of equal value is the current business owner who knows how to read his own financial statements.

The keeping of regular Financial Statements enables a business to be able to spot trends in the company’s performance over time. If trends can be localized early enough, the business may begin to evaluate what factors led to the trend. If it’s a downward trend, the comapny might be able to reverse a previously made suboptimal decision, or further capitalize from upward trends.

Basic parts of the financial statement are as follows:

• Income/Earnigs Statement
• Expense Statement
• Balance Sheet

The first two are fairly self-explanatory. The balance sheet is a sort of snapshot of where your company is at the time you look at it. The balance sheet shows your company’s net worth, which in it’s basic form is income/assets minus expenses/liabilities.

If accounting and numbers aren’t your thing, you may want to look into hiring an accountant AND a tax attorney. The tax attorney is useful to help keep you abreast of tax law changes and any tax loopholes which might improve your tax position. And, a tax attorney might be typically more effective in the case of an audit than an accountant. If you find yourself under audit, it also can’t hurt to have BOTH of them present with you.

References: 1 “Rich Dad’s Guide to Investing“, Robert T. Kiyosaki, with Sharon L. Lechter, C.P.A.Up next…

“The B-I Triangle™: Communications”

The article links are Mission, Team, Leadership, Cash Flow Management, Communications, Systems., Legal, Product
Well, what exactly is a leader? Is a leader the same as a manager?
Let’s answer:A leader is someone who is responsible and accountable for the actions of the team. Sounds simplistic, right?
That’s because it is. Leadership is the ability to keep the team focused with single-minded determination to achieiving the team’s mission. How is this done?

First, it’s done through the creation and proper utilization of training for the team. Let’s say a bunch of doctors had the mission of making you well through the proper usage of prescribed medciations. Would you want these doctors invovled in your health care, if they had no training, or if their training was out-of-date or woefully inadequate?

Second, it’s done through maintaining proper communications channel both between you and your team, and also between you and the outside world. In the case of some rather large companies, the “outside world” is used here to mean, anyone outside the team. In the case of business self-ownership, the entire company can be considered your team.

Third, and probably one of the most important for a team’s long-term existence, is the ability to review
and self-corrent. This is called the “Ready, Fire, Aim” approach. Implement a plan, see how it works, and adjust accordingly. Once you find something that works, stick with it, while also exploring possibilities of even better methods.

How leadership differs from management is simple. Leadership is a skill set that can be LEARNED through management. Managers are typically the ones who work the same hours or more as their team/subordinates. Case in point, my managers at Pizza Hut. This dedicated bunch of people are sometimes there more than the rest of us. This is due in part to things like added paperwork, employee issues, customer servicing, etc…

The true test of leadership is your ability to teach your current team all the duplicable systems they need to get the job done WHETHER OR NOT YOU ARE THERE.

The article links are Mission, Team, Leadership, Cash Flow Management, Communications, Systems., Legal, Product

A good business team is set up as what Napoleon Hill called, in his book “Think and Grow Rich”, the Mastermind Group. Says Hill:

“The coordination of knowledge and effort of two or more people, who work toward a definite purpose, in the spirit of harmony….No two minds ever come together without thereby creating a third, invisible intangible force, which may be likened to a third mind.”

In essence, this is saying that when each member on a team is driving toward the same goal, the collective attitudes, knowledge and philosophies of the entire group begin to mesh together and act as one mind. It is a collective conscious entity that runs through the entire group.

In order to maximize the team’s effectiveness, each person on the team must bring some unique skill or ability to the table. This leads into a brief discussion of recruiting and hiring. Most employers are quick to hire and slow to fire. If you want to maximize the odds of building an effective team, begin to do exactly the opposite. Be slow to hire, and quick to fire. Interview each prospective team member, both to make sure that they are a good fit for the team, and that the team is a good fit for them.

Further, if a current member of the team begins to drift from the team’s mission, the other team members must help that person to get back on track as rapidly as possible. If this cannot be done quickly, it will adversely affect the quality of the Mastermind. In these extreme cases, that person must be removed from the team as quickly as possible.

A substantial trait of a team that is designed to last for years is the team’s ability to be Systems-Dependent, as opposed to People-Dependent. If one person in the team seems to be the glue that binds the team together, what happens when that person leaves or dies? Water will rise to it’s own level. Here, too, the team’s Mastermind will naturally settle to it’s own natural competency-level.

A systems-dependent team, however, will basically not care if any one person leaves or passes on. Systems are the procedures that get the mission of the team done as quickly and efficiently as possible. More on systems will be covered in part 6 of this series.

A good example of building an effective team is in football. The players on any team, whether it’s a winning or a losing team, have access to the basic “systems” of football. These would be the basics such as running, tacking, and kicking. The only thing which separates a winning team from a losing team is the team’s master of the basics, coupled with single-minded focus.

The team must maintain single-minded focus on the mission of both the team and the company.

I hope this article helps with understanding of why building a winning team is important.

The article links are Mission, Team, Leadership, Cash Flow Management, Communications, Systems., Legal, Product

The mission of a business is the most essential aspect to it’s survival.
The reason the mission is so very important is that it serves to keep the organization focused and guided toward a specific end result.

The mission of a business serves as a guiding light during all stages of the company’s growth and existence. The mission solidifies the entire organization’s collective efforts and operations.

In his book, Kiyosaki outlines how the mission is actually made of up two parts: the spiritual mission, and the business mission.

The spiritual mission, for the company, is the part where the company focuses on what life-enhancing value can be brought to the public. For the Ford Motor Company, Henry Ford’s original mission was simply “to democratize the automobile”. This implied Ford’s wish to make automobiles affordable to the masses rather than just the wealthy few.

The business mission, likewise, is more focused on the brick-and-mortar profit-generating goals of the company. A good example of this, for the proverbial XYZ Corporation, could be “To be the market leader in our industry, earning in excess of $100Million per year.”

The ideal situation is for both the spiritual and business missions to be balanced with one another. If a company focuses too much on one aspect and not the other, the long term growth or even the very existence of the company will be in danger. In essence, the mission of a company is to provide as much value to the public and the marketplace, while maintaining enough profitability to CONTINUE to remain in business as long as possible to keep providing the value.