How each person handles authority, or succumbs to the authority in their life, has a major impact on their financial hardwiring. This’s because your financial hardwiring is a partial imprint of your psychic apparatus. If you could think of circuits on a computer’s motherboard for a moment as your financial hardwiring, then the microchips and transistors on the board would be your experiences. Those experiences fuse onto the mind’s motherboard, and they help to determine the dominant forces in a person’s psychic apparatus. Our psychic apparatus molds and shapes itself based on our experiences. 

Separate your sheet of paper into two separate columns. On that paper, write the old saying, and write down the ways in which you lived your life according to this old belief that’s ingrained in your mind. Then, on the right side, rework the belief. Rework it so that it serves you. Poke fun at it if you have to, but do this exercise. After you reword the old belief, write down the reasons why you’ll live by the new belief from now on. Go back to your financial goals to look at the reasons why you wanted to achieve those goals. Reference those reasons why, and write down reasons why you must live by the new beliefs. Write down why you must rewire your financial hardwiring. Keep these new beliefs with you, and each month, come back to them when you repaint your financial picture and reset your goals. Don’t have New Year Syndrome when it comes to doing this work. 

The problem is that it’s easy to ignore hidden beliefs and debt when you choose not to look at it. When you tuck it under a rug and push it away, your ego can do a lot to help serve itself in these situations. Don’t allow this to happen. Don’t allow your ego to run your life in this manner. Make sure that you do each of these exercises, and you put your heart into it. Don’t just do it for the sake of doing it; do it because it matters. It matters because it’s your future on the line. It’s so important to manifesting a bigger and brighter future for yourself and your family. Realize how important your financial hardwiring is, and work on rewiring it. At first, it will be hard because you’re exposing the truth that your ego doesn’t want you to see. But, eventually it will get easier to see; the ego will shrink as you become empowered with the truth. If you can think back to anything that you overcame in the past, think about how you built awareness to where you were, versus where you wanted to be. It makes all the difference, and assessing and reassessing it is critical. You must constantly see where you are, versus where you want to be. You must always do this; it’s one of the most important parts of the process. It’s one of the most important parts of the millionaire method.


The Millionaire Method: How to get out of Debt and Earn Financial Freedom by Understanding the Psychology of the Millionaire Mind by R.L. Adams

You have to understand why you’re deciding to spend money on something today, which you’ll need to work for years to pay off in the future. You have to understand those decisions, especially when the item you’re purchasing is beyond your means and becomes a depreciating  

When we allow debt to run our lives, it doesn’t matter how much income we can generate. It doesn’t matter because the debt can merely cancel out the income.  

Without understanding why we do the things we do, we can never truly tackle our debt. If we do tackle it temporarily, it will only be racked back up again at a later date because the true emotions and feelings weren’t dealt with in

By dealing with the psychological aspects of debt, you can help to eliminate it once and for all. 

Make the decision to understand your emotions, and retrace your thoughts, and you will feel remarkably better. You’ll realize that it’s not as bad as it seems because knowledge is power. Once you have the knowledge, you have the power to fix your situation. 

This is an important part of understanding your psyche, because when you can understand the inner wrangling and shed light on it, you can work to fix the problem. 

Remember, fear and anxiety are the body’s warning signals. It’s trying to warn you that something is wrong, so you have to go digging. Don’t just sit there and allow yourself to feel uneasy. Try to understand what’s truly bothering you. Try to unearth those thoughts and trace them back to their origins. This can be difficult, but it’s not impossible. Pay very close acute attention to your emotions and your thoughts.

A clear understanding of why you make the decisions that you make when it comes to money and spending, is critical for achieving success.

So, if you’re serious about succeeding financially, the first thing you need to do is create a lay of the land so to speak. You have to outline your present debt and income situation. How much debt do you really have? What are your total monthly expenses? How much are your interest rates for each of your revolving lines of credit? You have to take a close and detailed look at these. You can’t choose to ignore them any further if you’re serious about succeeding with the millionaire method. If you’re serious about achieving your financial goals, you have to first take an honest look at your present financial situation, and go from there.

Your debt and your exact monthly expenses are not things that you can guestimate. If you don’t have the exact numbers, overestimate, but you have to start somewhere. You have to start by outlining your present situation, no matter how bad it may be. You have to look at your financial picture from a very honest perspective, and spell it out for yourself. Lay it all out in front of you. How bad is it? If it’s really that bad, then you really do need to do this. You need to shock yourself into realizing just how bad you’ve allowed things to get, because if you don’t do this then you’ll continue along on the same path, and things will only get worse.

The Millionaire Method - How to get out of Debt and Earn Financial Freedom by Understanding the Psychology of the Millionaire Mind (Inspirational Books Series) by R.L. Adams

As we’ve seen, it’s usually much more important to focus your efforts on making money as soon as possible than on borrowing startup capital.

The more I focus on these things, the better off I am.

In short, they are as follows:

1. Price your product or service in relation to the benefit it provides, not the cost of producing it.
2. Offer customers a limited range of prices.
3. Get paid more than once for the same thing.

Principle 1: Base Prices on Benefits, Not Costs

In Chapter 2, we looked at benefits versus features. Remember that a feature is descriptive (“These clothes fit well and look nice”) and a benefit is the value someone receives from the item in question (“These clothes make you feel healthy and attractive”). We tend to default to talking about features, but since most purchases are emotional decisions, it’s much more persuasive to talk about benefits.

Just as you should usually place more emphasis on the benefits of your offering than on the features, you should think about basing the price of your offer on the benefit—not the actual cost or the amount of time it takes to create, manufacture, or fulfill what you are selling.

Principle 2: Offer a (Limited) Range of Prices

Choosing an initial price for your service that is based on the benefit provided to customers is the most important principle to ensure profitability. But to create optimum profitability or at least to build more cushion into your business model, you’ll next want to present more than one price for your offer.

The key to this strategy is to offer a limited range of prices: not so many as to create confusion but enough to provide buyers with a legitimate choice. Notice the important distinction that naturally happens when you offer a choice: Instead of asking them whether they’d like to buy your widget, you’re asking which widget they would like to buy.

Principle 3: Get Paid More Than Once

The final strategy for making sure your business gets off to a good start is to ensure that your payday doesn’t come along only once—you’d much rather have repeated paydays, from the same customers, over and over on a reliable basis. You may have heard of the terms continuity program, membership site, and subscriptions. They all mean roughly the same thing: getting paid over and over by the same customers, usually for ongoing access to a service or regular delivery of a product.

(Note: Don’t get too hung up on the exact numbers here. The point is that in almost every case, a recurring billing model will produce much more income over time than will a single-sale model.)

The key to this model is not market share. It’s share of the customer. And to gain more of each customer’s budget, you first have to zealously treat every customer as a “best” customer, no matter which ones actually end up becoming the proverbial “customer for life.”

The $100 Startup: Reinvent the Way You Make a Living, Do What You Love, and Create a New Future by Chris Guillebeau

“If you've got a dollar and you spend 29 cents on a loaf of bread, you've got 71 cents left; But if you've got seventeen grand and you spend 29 cents on a loaf of bread, you've still got seventeen grand. There's a math lesson for you.”

― Steve Martin

Love this quote. Think about it.

Discipline matters on cash flow, particularly where money is tight. 

You will want to spend the extra, but remember that you are generating money from the system you have the products you sell, from what you already own, and since you need money to grow, you need to spend less on things that do not generate income. For every dollar you spend you need what you bought to make two dollars or more. You have to keep the machine running. 

Once you are ahead, put some aside for any future issues or growth, returns, system problems, etc. Always be looking for new opportunities, and always look for a way to make more and spend less. The best solution is something that you can make that is low cost to produce and low cost to ship and most importantly, people want. You can make more money, you can find new things to sell, but you cannot get more time, it is infinitely valuable. To create something that takes hours to create and then sell for pennies is to destroy any chance you have. Value your time.

D

"If you’re not sure where to spend your business development time, spend 50 percent on creating and 50 percent on connecting. The most powerful channel for getting the word out usually starts with people you already know. If you build it, they might come … but you’ll probably need to let them know what you’ve built and how to get there. When you’re first getting started, say yes to every reasonable request. Become more selective (consider the “hell yeah” test) as you become more established. Use the One-Page Promotion Plan to maintain a regular schedule of connecting with people as you also spend time building other parts of your business."

One of the things "you need"  to do is remember you actually need  to make money. "This may sound simple, but busy entrepreneurs can easily become overwhelmed with all kinds of projects and tasks that have nothing to do with making money. Putting the focus on income and cash flow—measuring everything else against those standards—ensures that a business remains healthy.

Remember that the goal of business is profit. It’s not being liked, or having a huge social media presence, or having amazing products that nobody buys. It is not having a beautiful website, or perfectly crafted email newsletters, or an incredibly popular blog. In larger businesses, this is called accountability to shareholders. Business is not a popularity contest. The CEO doesn’t get away with saying, “But look at all these people who like us on Facebook!” Shareholders will not accept that. You are the majority shareholder in your business, and you have to protect your investment. You have to make sure that your recurring activities are as directly tied to making money as possible. There’s nothing wrong with having a hobby, but if you want to call it a business, you have to make money."

The $100 Startup: Reinvent the Way You Make a Living, Do What You Love, and Create a New Future by Chris Guillebeau

Discipline matters on cash flow, particularly where money is tight. You will want to spend the extra, but remember that you are generating money from the system you have the products you sell, from what you already own, and since you need money to grow, you need to spend less on things that do not generate income. For every dollar you spend you need what you bought to make two dollars or more. You have to keep the machine running. Once you are ahead, put some aside for any future issues or growth, returns, system problems, etc. Always be looking for new opportunities, and always look for a way to make more and spend less. The best solution is something that you can make that is low cost to produce and low cost to ship and most importantly, people want. You can make more money, you can find new things to sell, but you cannot get more time, it is infinitely valuable. To create something that takes hours to create and then sell for pennies is to destroy any chance you have. Value your time.

D

Find your niche, know it - then drill down further.

What the internet has shown us all, is that no matter what we like, what odd quirky thing we find interesting, we now know there are similar people with similar interests out there online. The more we understand that, the better the business.

That is our niche, and now we go for the long tail market.


The Long Tail is a interesting term and it has gained popularity recently as a way to describe a retailing strategy where you try to carry and sell a large number of unique items with no or little carrying costs and sell relatively small quantities sold of each – usually in addition to selling fewer popular items in large quantities.

The concept was popularized by author Chris Andersen in his book by the same name, The Long Tail.

The distribution and inventory costs of successfully applying this strategy allow a business to get to solid profit out of selling small volumes of hard-to-find items to many customers instead of only selling large volumes of a reduced number of popular items. The total sales of this large number of "non-hit items" is called the Long Tail.

Less competition, more margin

D

Here are 6 Reasons Why You Should Raise Your Prices Immediately;

1. You are long overdue.

When was the last time you raised your prices?

It probably has been a long time since you have raised prices, and everywhere you go you are now paying more for gas, groceries, everything. What was the price per gallon for gas the last time you raised prices? Have you kept pace?

2. Raising Prices increases your confidence.

People always undervalue themselves and then by extension their products or services. Raising prices and seeing what the market values you at and not what you value you at really increases your confidence as an entrepreneur.

Don’t be a bottom feeder.

Best customer surveys say;

That the customer thinks that you have great quality, great customer service, great technology, but high price, and that is a great survey response. The customer is telling you why he buys from you and why they know your higher price is worth it.

3. Raising Prices gives your product added value.

Do I want to learn marketing from a person charging me for a $9.99 eBook and I try and figure it all out, or would I prefer someone charging me $2,000 to get me all set. Price sets expectation.

4. Raising prices allows you to get more profit.

That is why you are in business, right?

Seriously, this why you are here, right, this is why you sell.

Enough said.

5. If you raise Prices you make more margin, which is more money.

With more money, you can work less and still make the same amount of money.  Maybe money isn’t the end all be all, but having time is crucial. It is how you build, reinvest, grow, and live.

I can get more product, ideas, make more money, hire more people, but time is finite. You cannot get more.

Use it.

6. The final reason to Raise Prices:

Raising prices is scary and very hard work, but the fact that raising prices is scary is the very reason why you should raise your price;

How will you know what your business can do or what will work if you don’t try. So try.  If it doesn’t work, just go back.

Growing a business is all about experimenting.

Go experiment.

D

PS: 

 If you have decided to raise your prices, I will soon show you how. There is an art. 

D

Start Small, Stay Small: A Developer's Guide to Launching a Startup

 by Rob Walling 

Changing Your Time Mindset

 It’s a big leap moving from employee to entrepreneur. One of the biggest adjustments is accepting that time is your most precious commodity. Dollarizing The phrase “dollarize” is used in sales to describe the approach of showing your prospect how your price is less expensive than your competition due to the amount of money they will save in the long run. For example, you can dollarize a screw10 by showing how your deliveries are always on-time, your defect rate is half that of your competitors and your screws can withstand an additional 500 lbs. of stress, each resulting in time saved in material handling and warranty calls. If you take it a step further and you possess the appropriate data, you can approximate how much money your screws will save your prospect in a given year based on the number of times your competitors deliver late and how many defects the customer will avoid by using your screws. It’s a powerful technique and a way to turn an otherwise commodity purchase into a bottom-line savings.

Dollarizing Your Time In the same vein, dollarizing your time is the idea of putting a theoretical dollar amount on each hour you work. If you value your time at $100/hour it makes certain decisions, such as outsourcing work to a $6/hour virtual assistant, a no-brainer. Putting a value on your time is a foundational step in becoming an entrepreneur, and it’s one many entrepreneurs never take. Skipping this step can result in late nights performing menial tasks you should be outsourcing, and an effective hourly rate slightly above minimum wage. It never seems like a good idea to pay someone out of your own pocket for something you can do yourself…until you realize the economics of doing so.

Approaches to Dollarizing Your Time There are two approaches to dollarizing your time. Choose the one that makes the most sense for your situation.

Approach #1: Freelance Rates If you are a freelance developer or consultant, you probably have an hourly rate. This is a good place to start. If you bill clients $60/hour, then an hour of your time is worth $60. If you don’t perform freelance work, do a search on Craigslist or Guru11 for freelancers in your local area with similar skills. As a developer with a few years of experience you’ll likely see rates in the $40 and up range. Frankly, if you have no other information, stay at $50/hour is a good number to start with. 

Approach #2: Salary If you don’t perform freelance work or have difficulty finding comparative freelancers online, another approach is to divide your current salary + benefits by 2,000 (the approximate number of hours worked in a year), rounded up to the nearest $5 increment. It varies widely, but a typical benefits package including 401k matching, disability insurance, health care, and time off can range from 20-45% of your salary. You can come close to determining the real dollar amount using your pay stub and a bit of math, but if you just want to take a swing at it use 30%. So if your salary is $60,000 per year, 30% of that is an additional $18,000 making your effective salary $78,000. $78,000 divided by 2,000 gives you an hourly rate of approximately $39/hour, or $40/hour when rounded up to the nearest $5 increment.

Be aware that freelance rates are nearly always higher than salaried rates because freelancers spend a portion of their time on non-billable tasks such as invoicing, marketing, sales, etc… They have to increase their billable rate to make up for these non-billable hours. Ultimately it’s up to you, but I would tend towards using the higher freelance rate for your time, especially since it’s closer to what you would receive on the open market if you chose to pursue freelance work.

Realizations Several realizations stem from dollarizing your time. 

Realization #1: Outsourcing is a Bargain Once you’ve established you’re worth $50/hour, paying someone $6/hour to handle administrative tasks or $15/hour to write code seems like a trip to the dollar store. Outsourcing aspects of your business is the single most powerful approach I’ve seen to increasing your true hourly rate as an entrepreneur.

Realization #2: Keep Work and Play Separate Wasting time is bad. Boring movies, bad TV, and pointless web surfing are expensive propositions. If you aren’t enjoying something, stop doing it

Work hard and play hard, but never do both at once.

Realization #3: Wasting Time is Bad If your time is worth, say $75/hour, standing in line at the bank is painful. Sitting in traffic is another money waster – every non-productive, non-leisure minute you spend is another $1.25 down the drain. Since it’s not practical to assume you will never wait in line again, the best counter-attack is to have a notebook and pen handy at all times.

Realization #4: Information Consumption is Only Good When it Produces Something The following discussion excludes consumption for pleasure, such as: reading a novel, watching The Daily Show, catching a movie, etc. Consuming and synthesizing are very different things; it’s easy to consume in mass quantity. It’s much more difficult to synthesize information. Have you ever read through an entire magazine only to realize you can’t remember any specifics about what you just read? As someone who likely enjoys consuming in large quantities, at some point you will realize that you are wasting an enormous amount of time. I highly recommend putting the following into place: When reading blogs or books or listening to podcasts or audio books, take action notes. Action notes are short- or long-term to-do items that apply directly to my businesses.

For example, I listen to several SEO podcasts. If they mention an interesting website, I make a note to check it out the next time I’m able. As they mention a new SEO technique I create a specific to-do to try that approach on one of my websites. I make the action note specific so I can act on it quickly the next time I have a few spare minutes. If I were to write something general like “Google Webmaster Tools,” it doesn’t help me. But if I write “Create Google Webmaster Tools Account for DotNetInvoice,” I can act on this quickly and cross it off my list without having to do much real thinking. Action notes allow you to quickly determine which resources provide real value and which are fluff.

Start Small, Stay Small: A Developer's Guide to Launching a Startup 

There are only 3 ways to make more money.

Of these, one of the ways is one that every one tries to do, one is a step always ignored and one of the ways is usually procrastinated on or avoided.

1. You can sell more - this is the one everyone wants to do. How do I sell more to more customers? How do I convert more? I do I sell more products to each customer? This step is the one we all want because we think it is the easiest, but getting new customers is hard and expensive and there is a limit to how much one customer will take. The more products, the more customers, the more potential profit, but there is more to it than this one step.

2. You can charge more. We all avoid this one. I have been through and help set up do many price increases and each and every time sales swore it wouldn't work. It always did. People avoid this one because you gave to lay the ground work, show customers why you deserve a price increase, and then sell it. It is done every day, trust me and you need to learn it. I know companies that haven't increased prices in four years! Do you know what the price if gas was four years ago? Think of the money left on the table by you avoiding the work.

3. This is the one everyone forgets, particularly when talking about on line business, and it is the most important one;

you need to do it for less. You make money when you buy, not when you sell. Find ways to buy raw materials for less, improve freight, server costs, hosting, virtual assistants, travel costs, any that takes your hard earned money. Any money saved goes straight to the bottom line, aka, your profit margin. The more efficient, the more cost effective, the more money you make.

D