by J Timothy King

Why be an entrepreneur? You know, entrepreneurship isn’t for everyone. And it isn’t as great as entrepreneurial bloggers say it is. Being an employee has some serious advantages. Here are the top ten reasons to remain a wage slave:

10. Some people actually like being employees. At least that’s the rumor. And they spend an awful lot of energy complaining— er, I mean, proclaiming to the world how much they love it! And if you’re one of them, you may be better off as a wage slave. Because an entrepreneur needs to spend that energy making things better, not complaining about how bad things are.

9. It’s easier to coast on through. I mean, to be an entrepreneur, you’d actually have to be motivated. How many people are excited, motivated, and still miserable? Trust me, you can be just as miserable without the motivation it takes to succeed as an entrepreneur. The boss is motivated enough for both of you, and he can always browbeat you when he needs a little extra performance. No need to become engaged in what you do.

8. You don’t have to do any of the hard work. You don’t have to make any of the hard decisions. The buck does not stop here. There’s always someone higher up in management. If you ran your own business, you’d have to make it work. But as a wage slave, there’s someone else whose job it is to figure that out. That’s why it’s easier to get a job than to run a business. It’s the low-hanging fruit. And easy come, easy go.

7. It’s a dog’s life. To paraphrase Steve Pavlina, when you want to increase your income, you have to sit up and beg your master for an extra Scooby Snack. And then you roll over and have your belly rubbed. And who doesn’t love that?

6. You need something to blame your fears on. And if you had no employer, who would you blame then? Who would take responsibility for your fears? Or your future? Trust me, you’ll be much happier if you can make it someone else’s fault when you’re miserable.

Check out the rest of the list at JTimothyKing.com

by Alvin Soon

I was reading Marc Allen’s The Millionaire Course and wondering why I’ve always seemed to have problems with money. Growing up, my family turned from being well-off to struggling and it seemed like I got stuck with this ‘poverty consciousness’ along the way.

Then I got to wondering about difficulties at work. Why was it that something I could have finished in much less time took much longer for me to complete - and why was it such a struggle to get it done?

I decided to turn to Lesson Eight of Allen’s book; ‘Discover Your Core Beliefs and Change Them’. After just 10 minutes of soul-searching, I was shocked to discover what I did.

Change Your Beliefs About Money Or Sabotage Your Financial Wealth

After doing some reflection, I discovered I had these unconscious beliefs about money:

1) The more money I want, the harder I have to work.

2) If I really want to make a lot of money, I must have an immense amount of knowledge and skills.

3) I don’t deserve to make more than I do now.

Writing these beliefs down brought home how they were sabotaging my financial success. It even felt ridiculous because I knew people who worked very little and made very much, who didn’t know more than I did and made much more than I do. And I certainly deserve as much as anyone else to make as much money as I wanted!

It was clear I had to change my beliefs about money or I would never be able to achieve the level of financial wealth I desire. (more…)

by Brian Tracy

More than eighty percent of self-made millionaires in America began with nothing or in many cases, less than nothing. I can certainly relate to that because when I was growing up and right into my early 30s, I never had any extra money with which to start a fortune. It seemed to me that there was always enough, if not more than enough bills, to absorb every penny I earned. I was always in debt.

Be Ready for Your Opportunity
And even if a great business opportunity did come along, I wouldn’t have been able to do anything with it. As I began studying financial success and self-made millionaires, I noticed that almost everyone around me was in pretty much the same boat. The idea of becoming really wealthy was a distant dream with very little possibility of coming true. You may be in the same situation, with more bills than money or assets.

Look at the Numbers
The statistics are a little scary. Of 100 people who reach retirement age, according to insurance industry statistics, only one will be wealthy. Four out of the hundred will be financially independent; fifteen will have some savings put aside. And the other 80 will be dependent on pensions, still working or broke - this after a lifetime of well-paid work in the most affluent society in human history. Now why does this happen?

Why People Retire Poor
There are two main reasons why people retire poor. First, they never decide to retire rich. They wish and hope and pray, but they never make a firm, unequivocal decision that they’re going to do it. Second, even if they do decide to retire rich, they procrastinate until it’s too late. They always have some good reason for putting it off.
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By Janet D. Swerdlow

Do you want more money right now? Do you have the mind-pattern to attract it? This is the key that only the wealthy know! They always have plenty because their mind-patterns only know wealth. There is not a doubt in their minds of who they are, what they have, and what they will have.

Do you live with a mind-pattern of scarcity and lack? What did your parents tell you when you were a child? Things like, “Money doesn’t grow on trees, we cannot afford it, it is too expensive”? These kinds of words imprint you with scarcity and lack.

Do you have abandonment issues? While this may seem entirely unrelated, be aware that “money” can abandon you as easily as people. Working through any abandonment issues with people strengthens the mind-pattern that holds onto money and all that money buys.

People can abandon you emotionally as well as physically. If you felt emotionally abandoned by either parent, there is a good chance that your financial wealth abandons you also, leaving you feeling stranded in life.
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by Ellesse @ Goal Setting College

There is a feature in the Investment section of my Sunday local newspaper that I’ll never skip, even though I’ve a notorious reputation in my circle & family for missing out on important news. It’s a weekly success story column on people who’ve made it good in the respective domains. And when I say “made it good”, I’m actually referring to the fact that they’ve carved a niche for themselves in the selected fields, lived a fulfilled life serving others with their skills and amassed quite a fortune while doing so.

As I continue to read such columns every week, I’ve noticed one common trait in all the featured personalities. Yes, not one of them. Not some of them. But all of them.

Despite the fact that they’re from different backgrounds, all of them possess the same mindset when it comes to money. In the past, I couldn’t put a name to this mentality. But after embarking on my own personal development revolution many years ago and recently having recapped this concept from the first free lesson in Bob Proctor’s Science of Getting Rich program, I’m starting to see the light at the end of the tunnel.

This is the infamous money consciousness that renowned personal development gurus have been referring to all these years.

From a layman’s point of view, this is what we call the wealthy mindset. This wealthy mindset basically means, irregardless of the physical condition that you may be currently in, so long as you see yourself bathing in financial abundance, your actions will maneuver in a way to manifest the wealth that you see yourself enjoying in the first place. If you possess the wealthy mindset, your endeavours will acquire the Midas’ touch. Literally.

The fortunate thing is, all of us possess the innate ability to fire up this wealthy mindset and there’re in fact different approaches to do so. Below are the top 5 steps.

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Wow, so there is a new thing that I just discovered this evening, called Social Lending.

According to Wikipedia:

Person-to-person lending[peer-to-peer lending] is lending done between individuals circumventing the bank’s traditional role in this process.

Community lending had the advantage that people’s interpersonal relationships fostered increased fiscal responsibility. The risk was that without the benefit of diversification, when something went awry the entire community could suffer.

Lending through banks has benefitted from scale and diversity. By pooling the available money supply and lending it out again, the impact of any one default would be trivial in light of the timely payment of the vast majority of the notes. The downside to this model is that it has introduced greater transaction overhead and removed community loyalty from the equation.

New ventures are seeking to blend traditional practices with new scale economies via online marketplaces. The marketplace serves many functions. Most notably it facilitates bringing borrowers and lenders together. Furthermore, it simplifies what might otherwise be a cumbersome process to properly document and service the resulting loans.

It is hoped not only that these new markets will be more efficient by removing the bank as middleman, but that factors leading to default can be mitigated by reintroducing a social component to the mix.

The leader in this industry is the UK’s Zopa.com, which loans to only UK residents that pass a credit rating requirements. But, the company that seems to be the most altruistic is Kiva.org. Kiva community loans money to poor residents of some of the poorest countries in the world. Helping entrepreneurs worldwide. Such a wondrous deal!

There is also Prosper.com, which can loan you up to 25,000 for your personal use, payable back with whatever % you qualify for.

So, now more than ever, if you have a good idea, in which you wish to cultivate greatness, you may do so by finding people to help you finance your dreams!