Your Wonderful Life

“Freedom is the oxygen of the soul.” ~Moshe Dayan

This is the Fifth Part in a series of articles I have written about making money online.  Read the others here:

• Making Money Online Part One
• Making Money Online Part Two
• Making Money Online Part Three
• Making Money Online Part Four

I can clearly remember the first time that I first associated the internet, and making money online, with freedom and with my future.  I had been back to work just a couple of years, after my 10 year early retirement, and I was starting to explore the internet.  All of my old ways of growing my business and getting clients still worked perfectly and my business was doing well.  The internet had not been any part of my previous business model and I was curious about what it might do for me.  So, being me and loving to give seminars, I started to attend seminars about the internet and at one of them I had a huge revelation!

Online Business Empowers Freedom

I was sitting in the very back of the classroom, my normal location so I could leave easily if the seminar was lousy, and the speaker started to talk about how he was selling a few short e-books that he had written online.  At this point, I didn’t even know what an e-book was and I sure didn’t know how to sell it!  Then he said that he made an average of $100 additional US dollars each and every day, 365 days per year, from the sales of these e-books.  Now $100 additional dollars per day wouldn’t support me - but it wouldn’t be a bad start either!  So, I raised my hand and asked what his topics were and how long these e-books were - expecting an earth-shaking length and topics of great importance.  Wow, was I in for an eye-opener!

Two Billion English Speaker Internet Users Equals Massive Online Opportunity

He said his e-books were about 85 pages in length, dealt with the care and maintenance of certain types of pets, sold for $29 dollars US apiece and were unconditionally satisfaction guaranteed.  His next statements completely changed my world view.  He said that:

• at the time of this seminar that he was giving, there were approximately 2 billion English speaking internet users
• and that the number of English speaking internet users was growing rapidly
• and that in a market that large, there was already a huge number of people that would like to pay you for something you already know about
• and your products just have to be good, not necessarily great, offer a great guarantee and be visible…
• that all you need to figure out is how to reach them and give them the opportunity to pay you for something you already know!

A Huge Number of People are Waiting to Pay You for Giving Them Something You Already Know

Wow!  Double Wow!  Since that seminar, my life has never been the same.  I have learned so much in such a short time: organic search engine rankings, SEO, e-books, auto-responders, merchant banks, blogging and so much more.  Follow along with me this year and you can watch the internet change my life and change yours as well if you wish!

A Simple Step by Step Plan for Making Money Online

Since we are talking about making money online, tomorrow will be the last day that you can sign up for Yaro’s and Gideon’s Become a Blogger course. I highly recommend it.  Step by Step, week by week, you will be guided and encouraged to build an online presence and then to monetize it - to make money from it.  I did lots of study on my own - I still do, but their course is the best that I have seen.  If you are just getting going making the internet pay off for you, or you are just beginning, then consider taking their course.

Till next time…Jack

“Action is eloquence.” ~William Shakespeare

“Word is getting around. People of every age and lifestyle are being drawn by the promise of educational opportunities, good-paying jobs, an affordable cost of living and a high quality of life.” ~ Omaha Mayor Mike Fahey

I spent the day today in Omaha, Nebraska.  At the time of this entry, Omaha has one of the most robust economies in the USA.  As evidence, I saw lots of signs saying “now hiring” on the windows of companies and lots of “sold” signs on houses.  These are both very good things!  I even heard radio ads advertising for employees and offering signing bonuses!  This is unheard of in most of the country.  So what makes the difference?

I am going to guess that a large part of this relative economic health is due to Warren Buffett and his holding company Berkshire Hathaway being headquartered in Omaha.  The effect of this kind of wealth concentration, in the relatively small area of Omaha, has got to be quite significant.

So what does this have to do with you and I and making our lives better - what can be learned from the current state of Omaha and Warren Buffett that will benefit us?  I expect that once I have the chance to model Mr. Buffett, something that I will have to do from books at first, and then hopefully face to face someday, there will a tremendous amount of useful information.  I am sure that Warren Buffett has great empowering beliefs, and habits, and philosophies that would be of benefit to adopt - at least if someone wants to be completely financially free!

Omaha and Online Business

For now, I am just going to make this very simple analysis.  If I needed to find a place where I could likely find a job that paid me well enough to support my family - then I would consider moving to Omaha.  This comes from a simple analysis of the “economy” in Omaha.  For you and I, today, if we needed to find a place where other people, ordinary people and extraordinary people, were able to make a good living with relative small startup money and a better than average chance of success - then I would say Online Business is the way to go.  I would say - in a very clumsy comparison that still feels very true - that Omaha, Nebraska is much like Online Business - a great place to consider making a move.  Wow that still sounds silly, but feels true!

Anyhow, I like Omaha.  I knew when I moved to Iowa to take care of my mom, that Des Moines would be too small for me.  I suspected that Omaha and Minneapolis and Kansas City and Chicago would end up being the markets where I spend most of my face to face time in business development and that is turning out to be an accurate prediction.  I also suspected that moving to Iowa would be a great incentive to move my business online - that has also been true.  More about that another time.

Bye for now…Jack

“‘Open for Business’ is a sign of the times in Greater Omaha.  Building upon the foundation of four Fortune 500 headquarters – Berkshire-Hathaway, ConAgra Foods, Kiewit Corporation and Union Pacific Railroad – a variety of well-known and start-up companies are being attracted by the area’s loyal workforce, extensive telecommunications infrastructure and location in the central United States.” ~VillageProfile.com

“Eighty percent of success is showing up.” ~Woody Allen

I just finished ready the book Woody Allen by Eric Lax.  This biography was published in 1991, just before the huge mess that developed between Woody and one of his adopted daughters.  This timing is good for me - I wanted to extract what made Woody such a tremendous comedic talent and I am not concerned with the huge errors that he has made.  I have long wanted to add more comedy to my seminars and studying people like Woody Allen is a part of that process.

Here is what I was able to extract from this biography that I believe relates directly the the uncommon success of Woody Allen:

• He had a long-term plan for what he wanted to accomplish over a period of decades.
• He was willing to be terrible at something in order to learn - if he thought it was important. (Woody was not a natural stand-up comic.  By all accounts he was terrible - but he kept at it.)
• He had the courage to continue to be bad at something that he felt was important until he got it right.
• He is extremely loyal to his friends and business associates.
• He made his life simple - in order to have more time to focus on his craft.

Now I need to fnd some early audio and video copies of Woody performing - I think there is more to learn here.  I also need to find the courage, as Woody did, to be thought bad at something while I learn to be good - and eventually great.

Till next time…Jack

“I don’t want to achieve immortality through my work. I want to achieve it through not dying.” ~Woody Allen

“If opportunity doesn’t knock, build a door.” ~Milton Berle

This is part four of a ongoing series about making money online.  If you haven’t yet read the other parts of this series, you can find them here:

• Part One
• Part Two
• Part Three

In my next post we will talk more about what you can do to make money online and what I have been doing, but for now you have a unique opportunity to begin the process of making money online this very week.  Like most opportunities, this one doesn’t last forever - in fact it will only be around until this Friday.  Yaro Starak and Gideon Shalwick, my blogging coaches, have just given me permission to tell you that their famous blogging course is now open…

Become a Blogger Training Course

But they are keeping doors open for ONLY 5 days, and then they will shut it again for the rest of the year!  This may sound arbitrary, but they said that they needed to limit the numbers somehow.

Last time they opened doors, they were bombarded with a flood of new members signing up, and they had to close the program to the general public for a few months to take care of their new members.  And I wanted to make sure you, my readers have the opportunity to get in this time.

It’s one of the best, if not THE best blogging courses out there at the moment, and is recommended by dozens of professional bloggers around the world.  I certainly owe a tremendous amount to what I have learned from Yaro and Gideon.  But don’t take my word for it, go see for yourself over here:

Become a Blogger Training Course

Till next time…Jack

PS: Don’t forget that you only have 5 days to get in on this. When the clock strikes 11.59pm on Friday, June 3, 2009, they will shut the doors, and then you wont be able to get in until next year!

Become a Blogger Training Course

“The people who get on in this world are the people who get up and look for the circumstances they want, and, if they can’t find them, make them.” ~George Bernard Shaw

“Death is not the greatest loss in life.  The greatest loss is what dies inside us while we live”. ~Norman Cousins

Two more celebrities from my youth died yesterday: Michael Jackson and Farrah Fawcett.  I didn’t know either one personally - my connections to them were very average: I lusted after Farrah in college and had her famous poster on my dorm room wall and I admired Michael’s dancing and performing skills.

Still, I was saddened to learn of the death of these two and I looked for the source of my sadness.  I discovered that I was actually sad about my own impending death.  Yep, that’s right - the death of others that were significant in my life somehow reminded me of my own mortality.  Is it bad to be reminded of this from time to time?  No, I think it is actually a great gift - a painful gift to receive and unwrap perhaps - but certainly a gift!

I believe that I am here on this planet for a purpose - in the words of one of my trainers from long ago: “That I bring unique medicine to the world”.

So what does this have to do with online marketing?  It actually relates directly to, but you will need to come back tomorrow to learn my perspective on this - I am off to work with a consulting client and my time has run out for today.

For now, follow this link from my online business coach and see what you think:  Yaro and Gideon’s Youtube Marketing Video.

Till next time…Jack

“No one can confidently say that he will still be living tomorrow”. ~Euripides

“What you can do, or dream you can, begin it. Boldness has genius, power and magic in it.” ~Goethe

(This is the second part of a continuing series about making money online.  You can read the first part here. )

I am a very good coach and consultant and public speaker.  I’m not saying that to brag -  I have paid a significant price in the only currency that really matters - life - in order to earn these skills.  I was a Dale Carnegie group leader for 8 years and helped to train many hundreds of salespeople.  I invested 2 years in my early NLP training and I invested a tremendous amount of time and money following Tony Robbins and working for him for free.  Many thousands of people have attended my Business Skills Seminars and seen me perform.  In my coaching and consulting practice, I estimate that I have personally worked now with more than 3500 business executives from virtually every type of industry.   Sometimes I was I great match for my clients and sometimes not as much; still I learned from every single session and continued to become more skillful.  It was only natural that when I came back to work after my early retirement that I return to coaching and speaking.  Still, there was a real problem.

There was a real problem…

I had come down with a serious case of the travel bug.  I had discovered, in my early retirement, that I loved to travel and live in other locations and countries.  I have always loved adventure and moving to a new country, learning the language, learning to thrive…these things all felt like a marvelous adventure to me.  So what was the problem?  The problem was that everything that I was trained to do involved my directly being in a certain location!  I was trained to be a wonderful face to face coach and consultant and speaker.  When I was face to face with a client, there was never a doubt in my mind that if they were serious about change and getting new results, I could help them to make that happen.  If I a group of people were attending one of my business seminars and watching me, I knew with absolute certainty, they were going to leave with new skills and choices.

The problem?  There were really two.  I had no freedom of location.  Everything I did, from coaching to consulting to speaking involved me being at a certain location at a certain time.  Worse yet, I had no residual income stream.  If I didn’t speak or consult that day, I made no money that day.

When I retired the first time, the internet was just becoming a force.  AOL was king.  Most people did not have a computer at home and cell phones had just gotten smaller than a briefcase.  The internet was no part of my original business success at all.  When I came back to work and started to dream of my ideal future business, the words that kept coming back to me were: “Freedom of Place” and “Residual Income.”

Freedom of Place and Residual Income…

Freedom of Place: What if you could make all of the money that you need to thrive while being able to live where ever you want?  You could take a year and tour the world.  You could move with the seasons and always find great weather.  You could take a copy of a great travel magazine and resolve to visit and enjoy every location mentioned in that issue - all while earning your required great income.  How great would this be?

Residual Income: What if every day that you worked you were building up a pool of residual income - money that would support you in style for the balance of your life.  I’m not talking about the paltry sums in your government controlled and pillaged retirement account.  I’m not talking about money in your IRA or other stock investments that may or may not even be real - Madoff and Stanford anyone?  I’m talking about real money, controlled and earned by you, that keeps coming in month after month, year after year.  How great would that be?

Hire a Great Coach…

I help my clients to achieve their dreams much faster than they could without me.  Naturally, I believe that hiring a great coach is one of the secrets of success.  I hired a few great coaches when I started on my quest to “Freedom of Place” and “Residual Income”.  One of them has really stood out and provides a great return on investment.  I am mentioning him again today for good reasons - he and his partner only take on new students a few times per year; he provides great information and he is very reasonable in cost.  If you are serious about making money online, then follow this link to Become a Blogger by Yaro and Gideon and read what they have to say.

Till next time…Jack

“Courage is rightly esteemed the first of human qualities . . . because it is the quality which guarantees all others.” ~Winston Churchill

“Don’t focus on having a great blog. Focus on producing a blog that’s great for your readers.” ~Brian Clark

I am going to be talking about making money online for the next week or so.  This has been a mission of mine for the past few years.  I think just a bit of my background may be useful here.

Some of you know that I was successful at making money fairly early in my business career.  I retired, I thought for the balance of my life, when I was 36 years old.  It took me just about 12 years to achieve this first retirement.  (When I was 24 years old, I had set the goal for myself of retiring before I was 40)  People talk about being bored when they are retired and what a mistake it was for them to ever quit work.  Not me!  I traveled the world.  I lived in other countries.  I worked on my private pilot license and flew great small planes.  I invested nearly 2 years becoming a very accomplished sailor.  I got my advanced scuba certifications.  I went back to school and studied with masters of coaching and personal evolution - my time studying NLP and working with Tony Robbins are great highlights of my life so far.  And then the money ran out!

It’s not quite as simple as that.  I knew I was not a cheap date and I had a good stream of investment income.  And then a wonderful investment opportunity in a Canadian company came my way in 1998 and I took a big chance - either all of my financial dreams would come true or I would need to start again.  Things were great for 18 months or so and then the bottom fell out of the market - you may be old enough to remember the rise and crash of the dot coms.  Anyhow, most, but not all of my money evaporated in a very short period of time.

I could have cut my lifestyle back considerably and done alright, but I had gotten used to living well and I did not want to change until I had to.  So, I lived well and high, literally high in my penthouse overlooking the ocean in Vancouver British Columbia, until I had to go back to work.  So, I have already had nearly 10 years of wonderful retirement.

So, what does any of that have to do with making money online?  I believe that moving my business online is the future that will fully fund my next early retirement.  When I came back to work, I set myself the goal of retiring again, at a much higher level, before I was 60 and I am certain that I am going to make it.  I am also certain that the internet is going to be a key component of making this happen.

For today, I would like you to follow this link provided by my blogging coach.  His name is Yaro Starak and he and his partner Gideon have been instrumental in transforming my business.  If you let them, they will transform your business as well.  Here is the link to their Become a Blogger site and training course. The free report there has already been downloaded over 20,000 times and I found it quite useful myself.

Next time I will talk more about what the internet has already done for my business and what it could do for yours.

Till next time…Jack

“The first thing you need to decide when you build your blog is what you want to accomplish with it, and what it can do if successful.” ~Ron Dawson

“Commit to be fit”. ~Author Unknown

So I did complete my 3 day protein only fast.  I ended up losing 7 pounds of bodyweight in those 3 days.  My energy was pretty good during those days - I was able to walk and workout and function at a fairly high level.  Today was my first heavy workout since I returned to more normal eating.  I will be curious to see how sore I am tomorrow.  In the past, when I would water fast, I would be quite sore after my initial workouts.  I expect to see some different results with this protein fast.  The really intriguing question will be anwered over the next week:  What did protein fasting do to my set-point?  Or to say it another way: how much of that 7 pounds do I keep off in the next week?

Stay tuned for more adventures in returning to optimal bodyweight!

Bye for now…Jack

“A bear, however hard he tries, grows tubby without exercise”. ~A.A. Milne

“The best of all medicines is resting and fasting” ~ Benjamin Franklin

I am going to fast for the next 3 days.  This will be a little different than the fasts that I have done before - my longest water only fast was 24 days - for this fast I will be exercising and taking vitamins and consuming protein - only protein.  I am not going to be eating any carbohydrates.  I am not going to be eating any fats - with the exception of the fats that I am going to supplement thru flax seed oil and fish oil.  I am only going to be consuming protein.  How much protein?  Well, for this short experiment, I am going to consume approximately 180 grams of protein per day.  This works out to about 1 gram of protein for each pound of what I would like my lean body mass to be.

So, why am I doing this?  I am doing this because I am ready for the next step in returning to my ideal weight.  I’ve made great progress this year.  I am wearing clothes smaller in size than I have been able to wear in nearly 7 years.  Still, I have a long way to go and I am anxious to get there.

So, why a protein fast?  I want to see how well I feel while protein fasting and I also want to see how it affects my set-point.  I think that water fasting has a natural tendency to raise my set-point…the natural weight that my body tries to maintain.  I want to see if exercise and protein fasting will achieve a similar result in quick weight loss without raising my set-point.

I have water fasted before and experienced great results.  Water fasting is a wonderful way to heal yourself from serious injury.  Water fasting is however very challenging mentally and ultimately, the weight that you lose comes back.  I’m going to see how protein fasting works instead…just for three days!  Stay tuned and see what happens.  I will be blogging and tweeting about this daily.

Till next time…Jack

“Life expectancy would grow by leaps and bounds if green vegetables smelled as good as bacon”. ~Doug Larson

“The important thing is not to stop questioning”. ~ Albert Einstein

I am almost always looking for ways to achieve things more quickly, or more elegantly, or with less stress.  One of my missions, almost since I first entered the business world, has been to get my assigned or desired tasks done as efficiently and effectively as possible.  This works out well in my coaching and consulting work with clients and works out well in my ongoing quest for my own personal growth and evolution.  People usually have already figured out slow and painful and stressful ways to try to accomplish things.  They usually do not need a coach for that!

This leads me to modeling.  In my early training in NLP, or Neurolinguistic Programming, I was taught the basics of modeling…extracting the processes, and beliefs, and actions that enable people to achieve extraordinary results.  You knew you had done good a good job of modeling someone when you could achieve the same results in basically the same situation in the same amount of time.  Modeling someone that already has the result that you want is a wonderful way to save time and effort.  They have already figured out a path that leads to great results.  Now this may not be the only path that leads to really impressive results; one is always free to model others and combine or meld the different patterns and look for an even better overall result.

Now this finally gets us to the heart of today’s note - modeling Albert Einstein.  I wish Albert had written an autobiography - these are often marvelous distillations of wisdom and ideas - especially if written near the end of the author’s life.  Although there are many books written about Einstein and many books that have collected his letters and essays, Einstein did not write an autobiography.  Sad.  Still, there is much to be learned from this genius of the 20th century just from second or third hand observation.  What is second or third hand observation?  It is reading a book; in this case reading a biography about Einstein.

I am currently reading “Einstein - The Life and Times” by Ronald Clark published in 1971.  This is an interesting book, it certainly gives some great insights into Einstein, and it also covers a bit of world history during the great scientists’ life.  This is not a light read - at 864 pages - it is anything but a light read.  Not sure if I can recommend this book in general, I’m a bit less than half-way thru, I think this book is perhaps best for true Einstein followers and science history buffs.  Still here is what I think I have modeled so far that I think contributed greatly to Einstein’s success:

• He was extremely good at being focused.  He would often need to be interrupted and told it was time to eat or sleep.
• He loved to surround himself with other great and stimulating minds and would often talk for hours with others from the scientific community.
• He spent significant amounts of time immersed in music and sailing.  It is my belief that he used both of these activities to free his unconscious mind to solve problems and invent new perspectives.
• From his early days as a patent application clerk to his college professor positions, Einstein excelled at getting himself jobs that paid him well enough while still allowing him ample time and energy to work on his scientific endeavors.
• Einstein was great at getting someone else to handle all of the mundane aspects of his life - cooking, cleaning, shopping and so forth.

I’ll go over these observations in another entry and look at the implications of them.  For now, ponder this:  If you were really focused on one great task and you surrounded yourself with other great minds and bounced ideas around on a very regular basis and you found activities that you loved that freed your mind to think and you made enough money efficiently so that you had lots of time to devote to your one great passion and you had someone else handling all of the little time stealers for you…what could you accomplish in a decade or so?  (Ten years is about how long it took Einstein to put together the vast majority of the work that would make him famous.)

Till next time…Jack

“There are only two ways to live your life.  One is as though nothing is a miracle.  The other is as though everything is a miracle.” ~ Albert Einstein