Waking up the entrepreneur in your mind

I found the book "Rich Dad, Poor Dad" by Robert Kiyosaki in the library about a year ago. I took it home, read it quickly and began dreaming of developing an incredible business where I would be making zillions of dollars and it would be so cool and everyone would be so thrilled and and and . . .

The truth is, I have always lacked an entrepreneurial spirit. I've thought of various ways to trade my time for money, but have rarely gone past the idea of owning my own job. Let me back up and use a recent example:

One of the concepts discussed many times in Rich Dad, Poor Dad is the idea of Assets and Liabilities. Assets make you money and liabilities cost you money. His most commonly used example is owning your own home. Your home is actually a liability because it costs you money, but rarely generates money, whereas a rental home would be an asset because it generates money.

I've often looked around my house for items that I could use to make money. As spring brought the rain and sun, I looked out at my lawn and realized the grass was out of control. I scoured craigslist for a lawnmower and found a beauty being sold by some people who were moving! Perfect. I rushed to their home and purchased the mower at a screaming deal.

My wife got home that night and saw that I'd bought the lawnmower. She didn't disagree with my purchase, but simply mentioned that as long as we're buying things, she had a completely different prioritized list of items she would like to acquire. Over the next 12 hours or so, the passive remark made me think that maybe I shouldn't have just gone out and spent money we can't necessarily afford to spend. My solution was to use this new asset and put it to work mowing other people's lawns!

Back to craigslist I went, and trying to stand out from the competition, I basically wrote out the scenario of "put my lawnmower to use so I can pay for it". Surprisingly I got responses! I was officially in the lawn mowing business with one post on craigslist and a lawnmower I wasn't entirely sure was going to live very long. 

I mowed my own yard once, one customer's yard, and on my third use of the mower my fears came true. It died. I called a few friends to describe how the mower died, and they all agreed that it was dead unlikely to be resurrected.

I've since gone on to buy another mower, a different brand and significantly better quality for actually less the price of the first, and have kept in contact with my customers, so hopefully in the end I can meet my original goals and keep going!

I tell this story for a couple of reasons. First, it coincides with my ongoing goal of $100 a day, and second, this has ignited my entrepreneur mind. What things can I do to start generating some cash? 

Then I began thinking, what about leveraged profit systems where I could have a business with more people working for me. They get paid for their efforts and the business is also paid for their efforts. Okay, I'm not quite there yet, but that's where I'd eventually like to go.

My entrepreneur brain has fired on, and I think that is one of the most valuable things that could have happened to me. Having a job is great, owning your job opens up new possibilities, but owning other people's jobs is where you begin making real money. Now I just need to figure out how to do that.

Skin in the game

I'm a terrible poker player. When I play Texas Hold 'em, I think I have good cards and will struggle to not keep up with the bids in order to just get a glimpse at whether the next cards will do me any good. I get so excited about the prospect of having a good hand, I completely disregard whether anyone else at the table actually has a better hand. I'm not calculating, nor am I reading the other players; I am simply deciding if I have enough chips to lose in order to see if I can win.

I told my neighbor this one day, and he said "You're the kind of person we LOVE to have at our table."

I am not the kind of person who really likes to take risks, or decide I'm going to go do something spontaneous or outrageous (both words ending with a ridiculous amount of vowels), but I am the kind of person who will find myself in a situation where I just keep wandering down the rabbit hole.

Sometimes you wander into something good. Rarely, but sometimes. Most often, aimless wandering leads you nowhere.

Recently I came across an opportunity to generate an income from home, and I've been completely thrilled by it. The training is fantastic, and I was willing to put in $20 to learn how to do it. So worth it. So so worth it.

But I wanted to know how I could do better. The training for that was more money, and then there is more training and more training. I'm not a patient person. I'm not calculating. I want to know what I need to know, and then I want to apply it as the situations come to me. I learn by doing, but I also know that I can't learn everything right away. So ideally I see the training, file accordingly and as things come up, I know where I can access the necessary information.

This is a crazy tangent.

My bad poker / aimless wandering conclusion: when you have skin in the game, you're going to focus your energy at making things happen. I have skin in the game. We can't afford for me to go off on some wandering expedition to the middle of nowhere. However, what I am so excited about is that I've finally found a direction. I don't feel like I'm wandering anymore. I feel like I have a destination and this program is my vehicle to get there.

I feel really great today, and I'm very excited about our future.

I suck at network marketing

In the last year, I can't recall exactly how many network marketing companies I've looked at, or been talked to about, had people ask me if I wanted to meet, etc. SFI, Team National, a health line of some kind, another health thing, Amway (yep) and my most recent, I believe, was D$ Domination.

I almost signed up for Team National. I learned quite a bit about it and I believe it is a legitimately great company, tons and tons of benefits, savings, rewards, etc. The biggest downside though was that it's all about sales. You're not selling products, you're selling memberships, and parting people (temporarily of course) of $2000. Some people are good at it, but I did not see myself being good at it.

The problem with Network Marketing is that you have to really good at networking AND marketing. OR you really need to be into the product, and then get really good and networking and marketing. You have to be willing to sell and sell and sell and never give up, calling all your family and friends and neighbors and co-workers and and and... it sounds like a lot of work. Gosh, the nerve.

(I'm being sarcastic).

Here's my problem. I'm really shy. If you've ever talked to me, you might think I'm not. But I really have a difficult time interacting with people, and do out of outright necessity. That's the truth. I'm someone who surges with anxiety when I have to call someone on the phone, and though I've never had Xanax, am pretty sure I'd lose all functionality if I was on it.

So here are a few things: Team National costs about $2000 for a membership in which you never have to pay again. If you actually use the membership, you'll save that much in a year or two. If you sell it though, you're looking at serious money coming in. It's a pretty cool deal.

The biggest problem I had was that we couldn't afford to hand over $2000 at the time because we're not in the market to be buying much of anything right now (hence not getting much in savings) and I don't have a significant amount of confidence in my salesmanship to begin generating income in the immediate future.  So after some discussion with my wife (we'll call it that), we decided this wasn't the best venture to journey down at this point in our existence. If anyone is interested though, Team National is a pretty stinking great company, it is real, it can do amazing things.

Fast forward to finding DS Domination. It costs $20 a month to get access to the videos, and resources to get you started. Of course, like most anything, you can always "invest" deeper into the business to be even more successful. What I like about this though is that the guys who run it emphasize to make your money back before you put more money in. Take your time, build your business, see the benefits, change your life and then help others change their lives!

It took me a week to make a sale on ebay, and it was at a loss. Another week went by and my store was in the black, but I'd not quite recouped my investment. Another week and I'd finally crossed that $20 threshold! Three weeks to make a profit. Ouch. But yay!

So here is my quandary: I've seen success, at least at a miniature tiny little level, and so I'm excited about this program! What these guys have put together is amazing and I want to share this with the world! I want to tell my friends and family and relatives and neighbors and dogs and cats and radio shows and start a blog on it, etc. By the way, this is exactly what Network Marketing companies want you to do. That's what it's all about...

BUT I SUCK AT NETWORK MARKETING.

I'm not thrilled about "selling" this to anyone. I'd rather just say "I am finding success with this." There are certainly better ways to present it to the masses, but I'm not particularly interested as coming across as the "network marketing guy".

Here's the deal: I have been an affiliate of this company for ALMOST as long as I've been a member of the company. It's a separate cost, but I saw the value instantly. I've been an affiliate for two months now and I've yet to convince a single person to do more than chuckle at this model. I'm completely fine with this because it almost cost me $2000 to learn that I really suck at network marketing.

However, if someone were to actually join my team, they would find out that it takes a lot of inertia to even begin to get started and to stick with it for the full 30 days you pay for at the beginning. I was absolutely thrilled with this company, thrilled with my success, and still struggled to keep the energy level up to max out my first month. But I dug deep and made a point to work on this every day. See my post earlier about "you can make fun of me until I make a profit." I have my reasons for wanting success, and I'm extremely happy that there are ways to make money with this company from home, without having to sell it to anybody. That is truly great.

I've posted this before, and I'm sure it's a matter of time before google tells me they don't want these links on their blogs, but this is the video that sold me on this company: For Network Marketers. They made this to show people who are successful network marketers, but what it told me was that I actually had a chance. How amazing is that?!

In conclusion, I'm magically still involved with this company (almost two full months now) and I'm beginning to see the tide turn. I'm beginning to witness that it's not just taking my money, but actually generating money from my living room. I realize that my situation is unique, but I also realize that EVERYONE's situation is unique. If I can make money through this network marketing company as someone who really sucks at it, then I bet there are people out there who are drooling at the opportunity to do something like this.

I don't think they should give me access to a computer. I end up just typing a bunch of words.

Cheers!

Rich Dad's Application in My Life

I want to talk about the book "Rich Dad's Guide to Investing" by Robert Kiyosaki, or at least one of the concepts discussed in this book.

First off, if anyone out there has heard of the Rich Dad book series but has not read any of them, do it. Read them. All of them. Any of them. It doesn't matter. They are written in a way that mysteriously doesn't tell you what to do, but in a way to make you think differently. I cannot begin to describe how your brain starts looking at things differently with the mentality he urges you to take.

Anyway, one of the big messages that Rich Dad emphasizes constantly is to buy, build, or create assets to help you get rich.

I have an accounting background and had a pretty clear understanding of Generally Accepted Accounting Principals' definitions of assets and liabilities. But Rich Dad emphasizes that the assets he is talking about are not necessarily the things you might expect. For example, most people consider their homes or cars assets. Rich dad says that if it is costing you money to have it, then it is a liability, not an asset.

However, if you flip that around and have a rental house generating money, or a car that is somehow making you money, these would be assets.

But to dig a little deeper, one of the common issues when people try to acquire assets is that they do not have the money required to buy the things they think will make them money. Another example is me, and my lack of money to buy much of anything.

The book makes you think about what you have, things you can do, businesses you can start, etc. in order to begin building up your asset column. I may not have any money, but the more I think about this concept, the more I realize that I have a few assets that can help me generate money.

I'll mention it because that's what I seem to do in this blog, but my eBay business, which was spawned from DS Domination, is a great example of an asset generating money for me. It so far has not created a huge amount of money, but yesterday I reached $150 in profits for the month. I consider this better than $0 I would have made without it.

The other side of DS Domination is the network marketing portion. Robert Kiyosaki and spoken and written many things regarding his support towards network marketing companies because they represent a HUGE business opportunity with little capital or risk. At this stage of my existence, I couldn't tell you if I have the right personality to be an incredibly successful network marketer, BUT what I like about this company is that I don't have to be good at selling this to people in order to make money with my eBay business. I am excited about having a team of folks who are ready to change their lives with me, and help many many others change their lives as well. But that will come.

The other asset I currently have, but have not yet found a way to generate income is with my little ukulele. I posted a few video tutorials for my niece when she got a ukulele, and I've been quite surprised to see over 500 people subscribe to my youtube channel. At the beginning of this year, I decided to try and reach 10,000 subscribers by the end of the year. How will I do that? I don't really know, but I think it's surprisingly attainable. The one issue that keeps me from really pursuing this is that I don't really see a financial benefit to these efforts. But that comes back to thinking about how I can turn this into an asset that generates cashflow.

There are a number of other things that I have that I'm sure if put to use in the right way can begin to generate income, but the best assets are the ones that can reach and help many people. Ask not what the people can do for you, ask what you can do for the people. The more you can personally help, the more dramatic the effects. Considering that we live in a digital age where we can access people all over the planet, I think it is important to keep in mind that our bodies and efforts stay local, but that our businesses can reach anyone on the planet.

Those are my brief thoughts on the concept of Rich Dad's concept of assets, and how I can personally apply them to my life.

I have links in this blog that lead you to outside sites. I really like DS Domination and am happy with my personal results, which is why I'm sharing it with the world. Thanks.

You can't succeed without difficulty

The human brain is amazing, and also extremely flawed. We can come up with the most amazing tools and inventions, innovations and creations. The human brain is able to accept data, process and store it, and use the information gathered to navigate the world in new ways.

Yes, it is an amazing thing.

One of the big flaws my brain has is how it deals with difficulty. How it navigates hardships and negative experiences. When the going gets tough, the first response my brain shouts out is "Quit!"

So I tell my brain "No! I want to win! I want to succeed!"

The immediate response: "You're not going to succeed. You're not good at this. You're not good at anything."

Maybe taking to a certain extreme to paint a picture, my brain is inherently negative, especially when trying new things, or navigating the real world.

Another example I can give is on that day where I had one customer that clearly did not like me. She was just a negative person who wasn't going to be pleased no matter what I did. It doesn't matter that the previous 99 customers were elated, happy or just indifferent about our interaction; I'm not going to remember any of them. I'm going to dwell on the nasty lady that didn't like me.

It is inevitable that we will experience difficulty, negativity, people who don't like us, obstacles that seem impossible to overcome, and any other experience that can be the thing to stop us dead in our tracks. One of my favorite quotes from Jim Rohn is "You can't succeed without difficulty. You can't fly without gravity." There is always a force pushing you down, but it's your job to push back and overcome those forces.

I'm going to talk about my experiences with DS Domination, and my ebay store to provide examples of the difficulty I've experienced so far in my recent venture. After talking with my sponsors, I've gathered from their experiences that my troubles are rather concentrated, but here we go.

I want to start by saying I am very intentional about this business, following the training provided, implementing tracking tools and spreadsheets, and a variety of other safeguards to ensure success.

Anyway, I found this company and got excited about it right away. After starting it, I knew there would be a learning curve, and my mantra from the start was "Don't Quit! Don't Quit!" Another quote I really like is "People often overestimate what they can do in one year, and underestimate what they can do in 10 years." The trick is "Don't Quit!" I want to succeed in the long run!

It took me a few days to finally make my first sale; it was at a $10 loss. Ouch. That's okay. In the next week, I'd made three sales that brought me into the black. I was feeling pretty good. My fifth sale, the item was out of stock. My sixth and seventh sale generated customers who demanded returns, sale eight went unpaid, and my 10th sale would have been a $25 profit, until I had to pay $24 in sales tax.

On one day, I sold two items that were out of stock; different stores, different items. I also sold one of my most expensive items (about $600), but turned out to profit about $5 after taxes and fees gobbled up any extra money. I was grateful I came out ahead actually.

I say all of this because I've had a pretty high concentration of bad experiences with this business, but the truth is my bottom line keeps gradually going up. There is a learning curve, and with every bad experience I have, I try to learn how to not make that mistake again. Instead of throwing up my hands and quitting, I keep chanting my simple mantra: "Don't quit! Don't Quit!"

No matter what kind of success you wish to seek, no matter what venture you want to take, business you want to start, ladder you want to climb, there are going to be obstacles. Always. Our biggest obstacles are not the little thorns that stick us on the journey though; the biggest obstacle is to not quit. You just have to want to get to your destination so badly that you're willing to take the hard road.


... and that is my lecture for the day.

My own personal testimonial

I wanted to put together a quick testimonial of my experience with DS Domination, now that I've been in it for a little over a month. Here it goes:

Link 1: http://www.dsdomination.com/sp/pro?aid=Turgerburger

Link 2: https://www.dsdomination.com/sp/com?aid=Turgerburger

How exciting to meet your goals! I broke through my second overall goal today!

I started this blog with the intention of training my brain to start thinking about ways to make some substantial money for my family as a part-time thing. The long and short of it is that I came across DS Domination and have begun to realize how exciting this part-time thing can be.

When I signed up for the company, I set several goals for myself:

1) Make $1 online: <-- My first sale was a $10 loss!! It took me around 10 days to make the sales that brought me into the black, but I met my first goal!

2) Make $100 online: <-- I'm excited to say that I met this goal today!! With all other funds floating around such as cash back and store credits, it's hard to fully keep track of the extent of the money I've actually made, BUT solely based on the profits of my ebay store, I broke $100 today. It's March 5, and I started this venture on January 30. So it took me longer than I would have preferred, but it happened!

What's funny was that yesterday, I was sitting at about $94 in profits and thinking to myself that I was one sale away from breaking the goal. I woke up this morning to a "CHING!" on my phone, and then made two more sales by 9AM. So not only did I break $100 today, I made $54 so far today.

Now I know there are people out there who look at this post and say "whoop dee do. Get a job and you can earn that in a couple of hours." They would be right, but that's the point. I don't want a job. This is MY business making ME money. I'm not an hourly worker, I'm putting in the effort that may or may not result in wild success, but at least it is my own story.

So there you go. It's happening. Slowly, but picking up speed every day!

The world of online. It is and isn't what you want it to be

I encountered a conversation today that I would like to revisit in the privacy of the interweb.

I got to talking to someone about my ebay store, which is inspired by a drop shipping business that will likely be named in this post.

I basically described what drop shipping is to a very close acquaintance, and how I was having a lot of fun doing this business and that it was actually making me money. Sometimes not a lot of money, but sometimes a little. 

The response came in several questions. I don't have all the questions written down, but I'd like to address a few of them.

1) Is there a learning curve? My response was: Yes. I lost money my first sale. I've actually lost money on a handful of sales. However, I've profited on more sales and am making a profit my very first month of business. It's not much, but I'm surprisingly in the black.

2) What is the pay for your time? My response: A business doesn't pay hourly. I am making an investment by putting my time toward a larger goal. I consider it building a net to go fishing. There is no hourly connection to building a net and catching fish. But there is a very STRONG correlation between the size of the net and the number of fish caught. I'll admit, it's a different concept than putting in six hours and getting paid directly for six hours.  What's also different is that an hourly wage doesn't change, regardless of if you made your company $100 or $10,000. I can't say whether my time spent will make me any money, or big money. It's all about which fish I catch.

3) Will you let me know when you start making a fortune? My response: I'm not planning on making a fortune. I'm telling you now that I'm into this business, and I'm excited about it. But I will definitely pitch in and buy you a nice dinner when I have proven to be successful. I see no reason why I would hide this from you, considering it is common knowledge and many people are doing well with it. Yet surprisingly, the more effort I put in, the better I do as well. 

It's not about market saturation. It's not about getting rich quick. 

What I am excited about with my online business is that it directly correlates to my personal efforts. It is an actual business making actual money. It's using real customers buying real products. 

Admittedly, I'm a middle man. But rest assured, I'm becoming a very good middle man, and learning that there is a large population who is more interested in working with the middle man than figuring out how to deal with the direct source. 

I'm not a wild success story yet, but I've had success. I'm not a wildly enthusiastic person about much of anything, but let me tell you I am thrilled to have come across this program. 

And best of all, you don't have to believe me, and can even tell me I'm a fool for signing up for this. The fact is, I have a growing following in another blog I do, a growing following in a youtube channel I have, and I've made approximately $2 in the last two years. I've made over $60 in my first month of this program. 

I'm not particularly excited about $60. But I'm excited about doubling that amount next week. I'm excited about making triple that the week after. You can't argue with money in your bank account that you didn't have before. It's real enough for me.

If anyone out there is interested, I signed up through here: http://www.dsdomination.com/sp/pro?aid=Turgerburger

There's a few things I want to point out about signing up for this program: 1) It is an affiliate program and that means there are people above you who really want you to succeed. Take that however you want, but I personally see it as a mentoring tool and have used it several times. In other words, they want you to succeed because when you start making money, it will eventually make them money. 2) You're paying for training to help you navigate the online world. Again, I tried the online world for two years and made close to nothing; and within the last month have a completely different view on how to make actual money working from home. It is an actual thing and can be done.

That's all.

Why? Goals! How?

I woke up about a month ago feeling low. Just low. Stuck in a place where I wasn't sure what I should do, which direction I should turn my life, how I could even begin to achieve anything.

I was feeling sorry for myself. It was pretty pathetic.

I had come up with this $100/day idea prior to that, which probably made me feel even more sorry for myself because I wasn't even coming close to achieving this goal, and no idea how to even begin approaching it. Very lost, very frustrated, and tired of not winning.

There are all sorts of motivational materials out there that deliver a single message with a lot of fluff around it: set goals. Goal setting is the message that everyone teaches, and I've spent plenty of my own time talking about goal setting and how it gives you a strange hope for the future, despite hurdles along the way.

The little seed behind goals though is not as often discussed, and that's "why". Why do you want to set goals? What is it, exactly, you want out of meeting your goals? I mean sure, meeting my earnings goal of $100/day is going to make me feel pretty good about myself and could very well change things in my life, but the "why" needs to be clearly defined before truly embarking on reaching your goals.

I'm going to take a side tangent for a moment: I have my professional training in accounting and auditing. I was taught and trained to be methodical, skeptical, and pay attention to details. I'm going to come out and say that all of that was a bad fit for me, and I decided to leave the profession to the people who it was a good fit for.

What I found funny about the people I worked with in this setting was that they seemed immune to motivational speakers. We had plenty of people come to our office to provide enthusiastic trainings, funny stories, and overall tried to provide a message of improving and goal setting and blah blah blah. I remember after almost every training I went to, there was always the group of people who grumbled "That was a complete waste of time. That's not relevant to us."

For some reason, I liked the motivational speakers. Maybe it goes beyond your day to day lives, and is meant to inspire you to be the best you can be.

I don't know why I added that side tangent, but I think it was to say that after leaving the audit community, it opened me up to freely listening to more motivational speakers, stories and messages about achieving what you were meant to achieve.

Also, the more messages I listen to, and the more books I read on success, the more I don't want a job. I don't mind having a part-time job to get me out of the house, but I also have found more and more reason to be my own boss, work my own hours, own my own job. I want to be my own story and be successful on my own terms.

Now for the plug, and this is absolutely true for me. When I woke up that morning a month ago, sleep still in my eyes, I crawled out of bed and went to go make some coffee. I decided to check craigslist for work and I came across DS Domination. It immediately made sense to me, but as a trained skeptic, I decided to do some research on it. Ebay is free. Amazon is free. The only cost is learning how to piece them together to make your own store. Your own store you can run from wherever your computer sits.

I decided to try it and before I did anything else, I made a list of "Why? Why? Why?" What do I want to achieve? What will I do if this actually makes money, etc. I then made a list of "Goals! Goals! Goals!" Starting small: 1) Make $1 online. 2) Make $100 online. 3) Make as much as I make at my part-time job. 4) Make twice as much as my part-time job. 5) Make as much as my wife's part-time job. Etc.

I looked at these lists and decided I needed on more list: "How? How? How?" 1) Complete all provided training. 2) Commit to putting time in daily (with minimum set goals and weekly big goals for myself) 3) Learn how to talk about this with other people.

What I find the most interesting about all of this goal setting, why's and how's is that ever since I found a vehicle to exert my worries and efforts, I haven't felt down. On the contrary, I've only made about $70 so far with this program, but I'm excited about it. I'm confident that I'll reach goal #2 in the next couple of days, and that next month will see a surge of growth and the month after will be even more.

I have a vehicle to accomplish the things I want, and it's on my own terms. I can't begin to tell you how excited that makes me about our future.
 

My first $100 day!

This will be a short post.

To break it down, I worked 6 hours today at $10/hour: $60.

I signed up a club member which gives me a $15 bonus.

I sold two items on ebay for a $19 and $6 profit: $25

$65 + $15 + $25 = $100.

That's how you do it my friends. It's almost too easy...

Sowing and Reaping

I listened to a Jim Rohn speech recently, and the story of "Sowing and Reaping" came up. If you've never heard this, it is a great message. If you are a farmer, and you have good seed, you need to sow your seed. Keep on sowing, and eventually your seed will find good ground to produce on.

BUT, there are many obstacles you will encounter before you're going to get your seeds to produce. You'll lose seeds to birds, some plants will choke and die in the thorns, some will fall on shallow rocky ground and die on the first hot day, but eventually if you keep sowing, some seeds will make it to good ground. You just have to keep on sowing.

Mr. Rohn clearly presents this better than I do, but the first time I heard this story, I recognized myself as one of the seeds that will fall to the wayside, or get eaten by birds or won't produce to my full potential.

But sometimes we need to recognize where we fall short or are lacking so that we know where we can improve.

This goal I've set recently to make $100/day is not an easy goal, and without clear avenues on how to get there, I've been a little stuck. I found DS Domination and it clicked with me right away. I wanted to make sure it worked for me, and then I'd start spreading the word. Yesterday was my first day of telling other people about it (I posted on Facebook, which is something I don't do much of anyway), and I was immediately reminded of this sowing and reaping story.

Many, many doubters presented themselves. Some people acknowledged that it was an okay thing, but weren't interested. I've yet to find anyone who has expressed a positive position, nor any interest in joining the program.

So here we go, do I quit, or do I keep sowing? Do I keep spreading the seed in the hope that someone will want to join in this adventure?

Yes! I will. I decided the day I came across this program that it was going to be a great vehicle to take us places we've never been, and I'm not going to be easily swayed otherwise.

Of course, I don't know who would actually read this, but if you know me at all, I'm a very "swayable" person who gets discouraged easily. That is why I'm shocked that I'm still excited about this program. Despite the negative response, I'm going to keep on sowing the seed. It's a very strange thing.

The other really cool thing about this program is that it provides value without me signing anyone up. So regardless of how many people say "that is a silly program and you're never going to amount to anything," I can turn around and keep selling things. I don't need their support to succeed. I'll keep sharing my results because a doubter can change his mind quickly if he sees someone succeed.

I've got my goals written down for today and for the week, so I've got to work towards them. That's me signing out.

By the way, if anyone out there wants to see how this actually works, there are weekly webinars provided. Here is a great one to watch:

http://www.dsdomination.com/webinars/1/index.php/?s1=Turgerburger

Network Marketing: Is it all a big scam?

Is network marketing a big scam? With companies like Avon and Amway and many, many others, I think it's clear that they are real companies that run a perfectly legal operation. The trick is, it's hardly ever about the product. The way to succeed in network marketing generally is by recruiting people. I learned this from Dave Ramsay, actually. Not personally, but from one of his callers. In order to succeed, you need to be excited about what the company does, you need to share the word with many, many people, and of course you cannot give up. You have to treat it like a job, even though it's NOT A JOB. It's actually a small business; your own small business.

I am an introvert; not the best candidate for a network marketing business. Also, I, like so many people out there, was not sitting at home one day wishing that someone would call me up to see if I wanted to sell benefits packages, make-up, or anything of the sort. It's true.

It gets tricky though because I crossed paths with someone who is a very good salesman, who happens to be a member of Team National, a network marketing company that sells a benefits package. He quickly cleared up the fact that if I was willing to put in the work, phone calls, and follow-up, this particular company was real, paid what they said they would, and could help me make a pretty substantial income. The big hang-up with this though was that I didn't see myself succeeding in convincing my family, friends, neighbors and strangers walking by that this was right for them. It's quite possible that in five years, I'd be making serious money from this company, but I just couldn't envision it actually working for me.

It's not that I walked away from Team National, it's just that I'm holding off to join the party. I honestly believe that signing up would open the door to amazing learning opportunities, and I'd eventually become moderately successful. Not wildly, but moderately. I'm realistic.

Taking a step back though, I walked away from this experience with the idea in my head that if I found the RIGHT network marketing company for me, I'd be happy to go down that road. It took a while, but one presented itself. I've mentioned it before; DS Domination.

This company is brilliant because it provides value for people who don't want to be an affiliate marketer, and by "value" I mean actual money. You can use the tools provided, learn how to start your own business and walk away. But, if you use the tools and see how they help make you money and how EASY it is, you will then want to tell your friends, family, neighbors and strangers walking by. It's actually kind of brilliant. This video is the one that convinced me to sign up immediately (click here to watch said video).

I've been in this company for two weeks, and have made $40 profit. That may not sound like much, especially when I'm trying to earn $100/day, but hey, $40 is better than $0. I anticipate making exponentially more next week and the week after that. I also have confidence in my future which you can't put a price on. I'm not kidding, this company is legitimate, has an outstanding business model, and retains a significant number of people who sign up because these new people keep finding more and more value in what it provides.

Watch the video, sign up, and let's go!

Side note, we are having an awesome snow day today. It's not relevant to this post, but it's quite pretty outside.

On a relevant note, I am an affiliate of this company and links from this site may take you away from blogspot. I think there is legal jargon outlining my having to say that, or something like it. hmm, I should learn more about this.

Three ingredients to success

Since I've started my goal of making $100 a day, there is one particularly defeating task to overcome: actually making money.

I have come to realize that it is in my best interest to not get discouraged, but rather stay focused on on three key ingredients that will inevitably lead to my success: Staying active, staying connected and produce something. Let's be honest, sometimes it is not possible to make money through your efforts, especially at home, but what is more important is to take on the day with the mindset that you are able to provide services that have value to someone out there in the real world.

For example, since I've started this goal, I've made a point to reach out to family and friends, asking them if we can have play-dates/work-dates. The kids can play and the adults can work. I don't expect to get paid through these efforts, but these efforts are keeping me connected, keeping my network strong, and keeping me active. It's funny how staying active is addicting, and leads to keeping active.

So, to reiterate my three ingredients to success:

1) Staying Active: When I sit around and do nothing, I seem to find myself repeating said inactivity again and again. My daughter gets super bored and acts up because she isn't being stimulated and on it goes. However, if we are active, going around and participating in the world, getting stimulated, etc., we see how great it is and keep staying active. It's funny how that works.

2) Staying connected, while simultaneously strengthening and building a network: It is one thing to be productive in your house, keeping the dishes clean and the floor swept (which I'm not always 100% good at), but it's another thing to stay connected to people around you. Do you know your neighbors? Who was the last person you called on the phone? There are a lot of people around us, and it is important that we stay connected with our people. I have been making an effort to stay connected with friends, family, people I used to work with, and people I have met recently. You never know what doors will open when you're connected with people.

I heard the other day that rich people build networks. It doesn't matter what you do, or how you do it. What matters is having a strong network of people. I have personally never been a "networking" kind of person. In a crowded room, I tend to either shut down, or find one person I know and stick to them. I recognize that networking is important, and that I should improve, and so I'm trying to reacquaint with old acquaintances. The more networking I do with my existing network, the more I open myself up to more people.

 3) Produce: I often confuse "staying active" and "producing" as the same thing. They are not. Active, to me, means keeping busy. But keeping busy can mean many things: taking out the garbage, reading a book, watching a movie, playing dolls with my daughter. "Producing" is where we create, or provide a service that has value or meaning. It is debatable that this blog is me producing something. I'm reaching out into the world. It may not be of any particular value to anyone, but it's something I'm providing. Going to my mother-in-law's house to weed her garden is producing because I'm providing a service of value that may not generate money, but feeds my other two ingredients of success. Selling things on ebay is a form of producing because I'm generating money for my family.

There you have it. A little insight into my thoughts. I sure do like to ramble. Stay active, stay connected and produce something of value. It will lead you to greatness, or at least that is my plan.

"Make fun of me until I make a profit"

I woke up on Monday morning to help make breakfast and get my wife to work on time. In my grogginess, I got the coffee going then sat on the couch. After having a very low day, low week, low feeling for a while, I was quite honestly just feeling sorry for myself. That's a different story for a different day. So I pulled out craigslist to look for a part-time gig of some kind, and came across someone saying I could work from home using ebay and Amazon.

Oh brother, I said, but decided to look anyway. The coffee was still brewing, after all.

Click here to watch the video, by the way.

It started out really dorky, so I just kind of rolled my eyes and stopped paying attention. I can't remember when I started paying attention again, but it made so much sense to me. It was like setting up a convenience store online. How crazy is that? So I decided to learn a little more about the company, which is called DS Domination. I couldn't find any bad reviews because 1) it's a fairly new company, and 2) there aren't negative reviews out there. The fact is, it works and makes people money.

I then learned it has a network marketing side to the company. Oh brother, I said again. But THEN, I found THIS video (click here to watch the affiliate video). I highly recommend watching this video if you have ever considered network marketing, or are in network marketing.

So now I have a quandary. My wife is 10,000% against network marketing programs. As in, she carries the weight of 100 people's complete hatred of network marking companies. I had to convince her to let me spend $20 so that I could get access to the tools this company offered. "ugh," she said.

I made a deal with her. I told her I was confident I would make the money back quickly, and I believe my exact words were:

"You can make fun of me until I make a profit."

I then signed up and began devouring the material. Truth be told, it is super interesting to me. But as the days went by, I wasn't making any sales. I began feeling like a fool for signing up for this still program.

Until the day I made my first sale. After fees and everything else, I had LOST $10! I was never going to get out of this hole I dug myself. I was sure I would make my money back in one day. Not so.

A few more days went by without anything and then it finally happened. I made a sale, and then another and just like that, I was in the black! Not by much, but at least I'd made my money back.

I'm still in the very early stages here, but have made a potential believer in my wife, and am building an ebay business. Two very big things in moving towards achieving my goal of making $100 per day part time in 2014.

So there you go. I kid you not, DS Domination is real. Ebay and Amazon are free to join, and DS Domination provides great instruction on how to get them making you money quickly.

Who knows where my $100 will come from tomorrow. I have yet to make $100 in a day since I've started this goal. Granted, that was two weeks ago. Anyone out there have any ideas?

Until tomorrow.

Multiple sources of Income

I've set a goal for 2014: to make $100 per day, every day. This means that every day, I will do my best to actively pursue earning $100.

This is a part-time effort because I am also a stay-at-home dad. 

So, that leaves the next very big question: how are you going to do that? The answer is, I don't know yet. But what I do know is that I have several ideas of how I can possibly generate a little money. And I know that if I actually actively apply these ideas into the real world, they could actually generate money. AND I know that if I do multiple things that generate a little money, it can begin to add up to more than a little money. 

What are you talking about? That is the question you just asked me.

Multiple sources of income, silly. Four words, plus an unnecessary one. There is nothing I have access to at the moment, that I am aware of, that will make me $100 per day by itself. I even have a part-time job on the weekends that pays $10/hour. I only put in six to seven hours a day, so that won't even cut it.

But, I can use that job as an example of multiple sources of income. If I put in a seven hour day ($70), and earned a bonus ($15) and got $5 in tips, that brings me up to $90. Who knows, maybe I made a sale on ebay that day to bring me up to $100. 

Or maybe I can find someone who randomly wants to pay for ukulele lessons. Who would do that? Believe me, I've wondered that many times, but I've also considered offering that service to my community. I could provide those any given day.

All I'm trying to say is that every day should be a fresh day to approach generating a few dollars, with $100 being the goal. How you get there can be a jigsaw puzzle, but how good does it feel to fit that last piece into the puzzle? Exactly. 

Of course, I'm always looking for new ideas on ways to earn money part-time from home. If anyone out there has a remarkable idea, I'm all ears. 

Until next time.

Day 1, well, actually about day 20, but who is counting

On January 15, 2014, I sat down and wrote out a plan of how I could make $100 per day for the year. A little background first, I am a stay at home dad, and have been for the past two years. My wife is a pretty remarkable woman who is 1) a professional, and 2) supportive of my staying at home. She does urge me toward things that I am interested in, but does not apply pressure by saying "Get a job." That is a rare and amazing thing, and I recognize that.

But it's not like we can truly afford me staying at home. Or at least, me stay at home and not generate any income. We can make ends meet, but with student loans, and various other living expenses, there is little left for fun, for pizza, for pretty much anything at all.

Long story short, I have decided to try and make a little money on the side. But how? And truly how much would be necessary to begin a significant change in our lives?

I settled on $100 dollars per day. I will work toward earning $100 per day, while remaining a stay-at-home dad. Who knows how, really. But it's my goal. Here are a few ideas to get me started:

1) This blog. Who knows, maybe someone out there will be interested in something like this. Welcome! I originally intended on writing every day about my efforts, but that clearly did not happen since I started this blog 20 days ago. Oh well.

2) Active gigs. I will make an effort to muster up enough courage to post services on craigslist, from manual labor, to ukulele tutorials. Who knows. All I know is that busy people don't have time to chop wood, and I happen to have a chainsaw. Seems a match made on craigslist.

3) Direct Sales and MLMs. You might say ugh, but I am confident that the right multi-level marketing company is out there for me. I have a friend who introduced me to Team National, which I think is a great one but am currently not an affiliate of. I also am a huge believer in DS Domination. I am an affiliate of this though (I've been in it a week and have turned a profit so far).

4) Part-time job. I currently work for a tasting room where we pour wine and make merriment. I make more than minimum wage, but not really. So this is one of those jobs I don't truly rely on to build a fortune, but it is an outlet to interact with adults on the weekend. I can also count on a little extra spending money on the side.

5) The magic of ebay. I do love a good garage sale. Or MOVING sale. Moving sales are where it's at. But I find it absolutely magical the way you can invent money on ebay, but I am bound and determined to learn, and to eventually succeed! (Here's another chance to mention DS Domination, which teaches you how to use ebay effectively).

These are my initial ideas for how to begin generating a little extra money on the side. One of these days I will create a graphic like a "Fund Drive" or thermometer thing that has a total of $36,500 ($100/day), and I'll slowly climb my way up throughout the year.

Wish me luck! And if anyone out there has ideas for how to generate money as a side job, I'm always interested. Cheers!