I was listening to Bob Proctor’s Six Minutes to Success yesterday. At the point where I am in the series he is talking about the 11 characteristics of great leaders as Napolean Hill laid them out in Think and Grow Rich in the chapter on Organized Planning. In this particular video, Bob Proctor was talking about the 10th characteristic – a willingness to assume full responsibility.

There are two kinds of responsibility, being responsible to someone or something and being responsible for something. We are responsible to others,  our customers or employers for example to give our best for our compensation, but we can never be responsible for others. Neither can we hold other people responsible for us.

Bob Proctor says that responsibility is the key to freedom. If we blame others for our problems or lack of success then we make ourselves victims of things and people we cannot control. Once we take responsibility for our own actions, our own successes and failures, we have the ability to change them for the better. You can’t change the world but you can change yourself.

What would you like to improve? Finances, health, happiness. What are you going to take responsibility for today and change for the better?

Wayne Woodworth
Responsible for my own success

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

One easy way to stand out from the crowd is to be responsive to your customer, so it is important there are ways for them to interact with you. This is especially important when your business is only online.  An easy way is to allow your customers to post comments on a blog or to have a comment page where they can send you a message. But that’s only half of the equation. You also have to respond. Your standing with your customers will increase immensely if you actually answer the questions and comments they have. That will help you create a relationship with your customers because you have shown that you are a real person.

For brick and mortar-type stores this is very easy because there is a sales person for your customers to interact with. In the online world there is just a webpage. As I already said, comment forms are one way to make yourself available to your customers. Social media is another great way. Your customers can become friends or fans on Facebook and they can follow you on Twitter. This works great for building a community among your customers. Don’t forget to be active in your new community.

Wayne Woodworth
Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/getwealthy
Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/yonderwillow

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.

On the other hand, if you travel in small business / entrepreneurial circles, you hear people talk about being unemployable.  I’m not talking about people who have no skills and no ambition.  These are bright people with a lot of skills.  So why are they unemployable?

Because they choose to be.  They are of the mindset that they cannot be employed by another person because they have chosen to set their own course, take responsibility for their own results, and not allow any external agency to set limits on what they can accomplish.

I first heard this term in August 2008 at one of Loral Langemeier’s Cash Machine Workshops.  If you have never heard of Loral before I suggest you take a look at what she teaches.  She has come to be known as The Millionaire Maker and her best selling books are published under that title.  One of the things she teaches is that everyone should build a Cash Machine, a way to quickly make money with skills you already have.  Once you do that and have money coming in based solely on your own efforts and ideas you will understand what it means to be unemployable.

So, what are you going to do?

Wayne Woodworth
I’m becoming unemployable too.

If you have ever studied personal growth then you have probably heard that if you aren’t growing, then you are dying. That is very true. If your business isn’t growing then you will soon find that you have been left behind by the other businesses in your market. Things are always changing, new technologies and methodologies are constantly being introduced. A regular training program is the best way to keep up with everything that is going on.

Training is even more important when you are building your business online where things are constantly changing.

I have decided to build my business online, and it is much more than just building a website and waiting for people to show up.  Right now social media and blogs are the big thing, and most people don’t understand them, especially social media.  Fortunately there are a few people who do have it figured out and they are willing to teach the people who will listen.

So far, the best training programs I have found for Internet Marketing are Mike Dillard’s Magnetic Sponsoring and Ann Seig and Mike Klingler’s Renegade Professional.  They both have a network marketing flavor but the material is appropriate for any small business looking to build its presence online.  If you are completely new to the online world, then I think Renegade Professional is best.  It provides very detailed, step-by-step instruction.

In building a business it is important to stay up to date, improve your existing skills, learn new skills, and learn from other people’s mistakes so that you don’t make them yourself.

Wayne Woodworth
FYI, spam is not the right way to use social media.