On April 15th we get to see both how close last year’s guess was to how much we actually made last year and we get to make our best guess to how much we will make this year. It can be a challenge because the IRS and the state revenue departments want 4 equal estimated tax payments on April 15, June 15, September 15, and January 18.

It still beats being an employee though and having someone else decide how much money comes out of your paycheck every week. My quarterly tax payments are based on income less expenses instead of just income like those with paychecks have to pay, so I have to pay less in taxes than I did as an employee.

Wayne Woodworth
You can be self-employed too

Financial freedom is the ability to go about your life, doing what you want to do, without having to worry about money. Sounds cool and maybe too good to be true, right?

Well, it is true because I know a few people who have it. I have blogged a lot about Loral Langemeier and I believe she has financial freedom. Some other people I follow that you may have heard of, like Mike Dillard, Bob Proctor, and Joe Vitale, also have financial freedom. Closer to what I’m doing, Reid Nelson and Dave Johnson are high-ranking Nikken distributors who have achieved it.

I think that you and I should also be on that list, don’t you?

I quit my job 3 weeks ago today, totally voluntary, so that I could focus on building my own businesses. My primary business is with Nikken, a research company originally from Japan, that offers very unique technologies to help people feel better without having to rely so heavily on drugs and surgery. My goal is to build a team that cares enough about other people to want to offer alternatives for staying healthy,  building income, and establish their own financial independence.

I had some one-on-one time recently with Reid Nelson, one of the people I mentioned above, about what he sees as our real business. He doesn’t see Nikken and network marketing as selling. Instead he describes it as building distribution networks for some amazing products and our income is earned by moving product through those networks. I have to agree with him. I can’t remember the last time that I sold any product and I still get a check every month. I have a website that sells product for me and I get rebates from the product that I buy for my own use. The people on my team buy product for themselves and I make some income from that as well. It’s really a very useful way to look at it.

If this sounds interesting to you, please leave me a comment or contact me through my contact page. I can also be reached through my product site at www.getmywellness.com where you can also see those amazing Nikken wellness products I mentioned.

Wayne Woodworth
Building financial independence through distribution networks

I’ve talked about Loral several times here, mostly about her Cash Machine Workshop live event. The reason I devote so much time to her is that she is for real. She isn’t selling a program that requires you to spend a wad of money to learn a bunch of new skills so that you can hopefully start to make a little money in a year or two. She encourages you (at the live events she pushes you) to use what you already know to start making money today. Once you are making money, then you spend the money to hire the team that will support you.

Here’s the description of the book:

Turn what you know into dough!

You Don’t have fixed potential, why accept fixed income? By following Loral’s simple and straightforward approach, you’ll put more cash – $1000 or more a month, into your pocket in no time. I’ve helped thousands of people make extra cash fast. People from all different backgrounds, in a variety of situations, all over the world. People just like you!

Get on the list to be one of the first to get the book. Click here  to Loral’s site.

In the big lead-up to the book, Loral has recorded a free 20 minute video that is all content. You can get to it by going to my PlayLikeAMillionaire site and entering your name and email address. If nothing else, it’s a great free introduction to Loral Langemeier. Go check it out.

Wayne Woodworth
Play Like a Millionaire

In 1971 President Nixon took the US off the gold standard, which changed how our money works. Prior to 1971, the dollar was based on gold, which has intrinsic value. To save money was equal to saving gold, so it made sense to save money for retirement or college because it would hold value.

Since 1971, the dollar is no longer money because it doesn’t have any real value backing it. It is now a currency. The word “currency” comes from the same root as “current”, like an electric current or air current. Currents require movement for them to exist. Likewise, a currency requires movement for it to maintain value.  As you can see from our current economy, as the movement of the dollar slows, the value of the dollar decreases and the economy suffers.

Historically, all currencies eventually go to zero.

Are you listening to those financial advisers who are telling people that they need to reduce their spending, pay off debt, and save for the future? If the value of our currency does go to zero, what will your savings be worth?

So, what do you do? How do you secure your financial future? I’m not a financial adviser, so I can’t tell you what to do. I can tell you what I’m doing though.

First, I’m listening to people like Robert Kiyosaki, Donald Trump,  Bob Proctor, and Loral Langemeier. They teach that a job is a lousy way to make money. Kiyosaki, in Rich Dad Poor Dad, said that a job is a good place to learn a new skill, then move one once it has been learned. The thing I like about these teachers is that they preach what they practice. They look for new sources of income and then use that income to buy more assets that generate even more income, and that is what they teach others to do.

Loral Langemeier, in her Millionaire Maker books and Cash Machine Workshops, teaches people how to build a business as an asset, and that’s what I am doing. To be an asset, the business has to generate a sustainable income. I am building my business in network marketing and affiliate marketing which means that I generate income by promoting products from other companies. That allows me to quickly start making money without the up-front costs of developing a new product.

Once I have a business that produces a steady stream of income, I can take that income to buy more assets that then generate more income. Those assets can be investments in other businesses, real estate, gold, gas, oil, or anything else that has a value and an income stream.

This plan doesn’t mean that you have to live without comforts. In Increase Your Financial IQ, Kiyosaki gives an example of how he bought an expensive luxury car.  He took some money out from one of his assets and invested it so that it would make more money. He gave instructions to the person who managed the investment to let him know when it had increased to the point where he could afford the car, pay the fees for managing the investment, and still have the original value of the asset left over. It took some time to accomplish it, but the car was purchased without any money from his own pocket or by decreasing his net worth. That’s a pretty cool deal, huh?

To summarize, the dollar is a currency and all currencies throughout history have eventually failed. To keep our currency alive and maintain it’s value, it has to flow, which means that saving it in a bank account isn’t the right thing to do. A better way to prepare for your future is to convert your money to assets that maintain their value and generate an income of their own. One such asset is a properly structured business, which in my case is in network marketing.

Just as a reminder, I am NOT a financial adviser. Go check out the books by Robert Kiyosaki, Donald Trump, and Loral Langemeier then find a good financial planner to help you decide what is best for you. Ask your financial planner if he or she is wealthy and if he or she got that way by doing what they are advising you to do. If they aren’t, then find another planner.

Wayne Woodworth
Network Marketing Entrepreneur

I heard about a study recently of 1600 businesses conducted over a 25 year period about how they used business plans. 70% of the businesses surveyed had no written or verbal plan of any kind, 27% of them had only verbal goals, and only 3% of them had their plan written down. What you need to know is that 98% of all the wealth in those 1600 companies was held by those 3% that had written goals.

Do you see how important it is to have your plan written down?

There are many reasons why a written plan is so effective. One reason is that the process of writing down your business goals actually forces you to think about them and clarify them. You have to know what they are so that you can write them down.

A written plan also gives you a place to go to reset your focus. Flesh out your plan with the specific actions that you are going to do to achieve your goals. Also keep your plan in a place where everyone involved in your business can see it and refer to it. It becomes the document that guides everyone’s actions and keeps everyone on track to accomplish your business goals.

Another way that a written plan can help your business is when you talk to potential partners and/or investors. A business with a written plan will appear much more professional than a business with no plan or just a verbal one.

If you would like to know how to create a simple plan, I recommend Loral Langemeier’s The Millionaire Maker’s Guide to Creating a Cash Machine for Life book or her Building, Leading, and Protecting Your Business audio program.

Get your plan together so that you can join the 3% of businesses with 98% of the money.

Wayne Woodworth
The business man with the business plan

If you don’t know who Loral is, then you need to find out about her now. She is the Millionaire Maker and she teaches people how to become millionaires in three to five years. She has several best-selling books, cd programs, a radio show and live events. Her remaining Cash Machine Workshops for 2009 are in San Francisco, Los Angles, and Seattle.

There are several people out there teaching people that they need to become financially independent and how to do it, so why is Loral the best? What really impresses me the most about Loral Langemeier is that she is real. She isn’t one of those seminar speakers who stays up on stage and never interacts with the people who paid to come see them. She uses the same door to enter the room as everyone else. She is on the floor interacting with people while she is teaching. If you have something that will help her business then she will work a deal with you right then and there because it shows everyone else how it is done.

She is also balanced. She doesn’t sacrifice her family to do these events. Her family travels with her as much as possible. She has a beautiful little daughter that came with her to our workshop in Atlanta. She’s a mom, a wife, and also happens to teach people how to build teams and become millionaires.

You can learn about Loral and her teachings by reading her books and going through her CD programs. The best way is to get to one of the upcoming Cash Machine Workshops. When you come, you have to be ready to play. Everyone at the Atlanta event made some amount of money. If you would like to talk to somebody about the best way to get started on your path to becoming a millionaire, then leave me a comment and a friend of mine who works with Loral will get back with you.

Wayne Woodworth

My wife, Michelle, doing 5 minute chair massage in the Market Place during the August 2008 Cash Machine Workshop in Atlanta

If you know anything about the stock market, you know that the experts say that you need to diversify your stock portfolio.  You have a better chance of making money if you have it spread out over multiple companies in multiple sectors.  That way you are insulated from the risk of something happening to one company or even a whole sector.  If you remember the Enron scandal then you probably remember hearing stories of people losing their entire retirement savings because it was all invested in that one company.  You may also remember the “Dot Com” bust when that entire sector took a huge dive.  Mutual funds are a great way for ordinary people to diversify their stock holdings because they provide a single place to invest money that then gets invested in a broad sampling of companies that have been selected by an expert.

The current economy has shown that it is really necessary to diversify at a higher level.  I don’t know about you, but my 401k is only a fraction of what it used to be.  Fortunately I’m still fairly young and have time to recover.  But what about all of the people who have retired or are about to retire?  They have seen their retirement money cut in half, or even to a third of what it was a year ago.

I suggest that people look into asset diversification.  What are other things that you could invest your money in that may insulate you during a poor economy?  There are many things.  A lot of people like real estate.  When times are good and prices are up, you can sell houses for a profit.  When the economy is bad, you can hold onto them and rent them for an income stream.  That makes a lot of sense if that is something you are interested in.

An investment avenue that I like is precious metals like gold and silver.  When the economy is down, like it is now, the values of metals go up.   I also heard today that people like Warren Buffet are recommending that people buy gold because they expect the price to keep going up.

I found a program where you can invest a fixed amount of money every month in gold and/or silver on a savings plan.  You aren’t just investing in something that you never see, like with stocks.  You receive the gold and silver as it is paid for.  You will probably save more money stuffing your mattress with gold and silver than you will stuffing it with dollars.

Wayne Woodworth
I invest in my 401k and in gold. I don’t hide it in my mattress though. It’s too hard to sleep on.

DISCLAIMER: I am not a financial adviser. This is just my opinion and what I have chosen to do with my savings. Please consult a real financial adviser to see what is right for you.

The idea behind a 401k is a good one.  You can take part of your paycheck every month and invest it long-term in some financial vehicle that will hopefully grow and become enough money for you to live on when you retire.  It’s a lot better than Social Security because it has a chance to earn money through whatever investment it is in while Social Security can’t.

The problem with a 401k, or any other investment like it, is that you have invested in paper and ideas.  Like what has happened in the past year, most investments have declined and some have gone away completely.  When a company goes under you don’t even get your original money back.

To balance that risk you can invest a part of your money in something that has intrinsic value, like private gold and silver.  These tangible assets do go up and down in value but they aren’t likely to “go under” during our lifetimes.  Unlike with stocks, if the company that issued the gold or silver fails, the investment doesn’t lose its intrinsic value because it is accepted as money all over the world.

I have found a company, YOUnique Wealth, that issues private gold and silver.  They are creating a plan where regular people can make a fixed monthly investment, just like you do with your 401k, and they send you gold and / or silver.  Here’s an example of how it works.  You decide to invest in gold, put in $250 a month, and the gold costs $140. The first month you will get one gold medallion at $140 and the remaining $110 will be held until the next month. The second month you put in your $250, add in the $110 that was held over, so you have $360. They will send you 2 gold medallions ($280) and roll the remaining $80 over. It works the same as your current paper investments because you can only buy whole shares. If you look at your investment account you will usually see some amount of cash sitting in a money market or something.

To find out more, there is a Big Day event starting soon, August 12th at Noon EDT. There will be short 15 to 20 minute informational calls every other hour starting at that time.  Go here to get the schedule, get on the calls, and start stockpiling your precious metals.

Here are the two videos that are on that page. The first one is Bob Proctor.

BTW, I’m not a financial adviser. I like gold and silver because they have held their value a lot better than the dollar over the past several years and they have real value as opposed to the dollar, which is just paper.

Wayne Woodworth
Gold and Silver are valuable and shiny

I have been subscribed to Bob Proctor’s 6 Minutes to Success for a couple months now and I look forward to it every morning.  It is a daily video that is only a minute or two long in which Bob Proctor talks about a specific concept for you to think about during your day.

So far the episodes have covered a wide variety of topics, such as:

• The 6 Steps to Success as described in Napoleon Hill’s Think and Grow Rich
• The 7 Positive and 7 Negative emotions and how they control you.
• Your mental muscles
• Focus
• Gratitude
• Responsibility

At the time I’m writing this, Bob has just started going through the Laws of the Universe.  The first one is that Energy just is.  The idea is that things just are.  They are neither good nor bad or any other quality that we ascribe to them.  For example, $10 is just $10.  If is was your paycheck for a week’s work you might think it is bad.  On the other hand, if you just found it laying on the sidewalk it would be a pretty good thing.  In and of itself though, it is just $10, no more and no less.  It is a powerful idea because it gives you complete control over how you interpret everything you experience.

I recommend that you check out Bob Proctor’s 6 Minutes to Success.  They let you try it out for free for the first week so what do you have to lose?

Wayne Woodworth
Building my success in just 6 minutes a day with Bob

Until about 30 years ago, the value of the US Dollar was tied to the value of gold.  We were on a gold standard.  In 1971 President Nixon abolished the gold standard which made it possible for the government to have more money printed without it being backed up by anything.  You’ve got to hear Glenn Beck’s description of this and see his chart.  It is amazing and somewhat disturbing.

I recommend that you convert some of your savings into something that will hold its value while all of this insanity is going on.  I found a great place to get private gold and silver.  Right now they are even offering a FREE GIFT just for taking a look.  You have nothing to lose and everything to gain.  Go ahead and check it out.