Building Wealth - Cutting Costs

OK, I want to be clear on this one, I mean you really need to read this book whether you are a salesman or not. I just finished reviewing it and I think it can help anyone that wants more out of life in the way of wealth and simply in the way of happiness. This book was authored by award winning salesmen and entrepreneurs Neil Franklin and Jack Spirko.

They call the book, the definitive book on how to sell and I think they are spot on. It is just that they don’t just teach you how to sell in regard to product as a professional sales person, they also teach you the philosopy of effectively selling yourselves in all walks of life. Here is one of my favorite quotes from the book,

“Deep inside you exists another person. That person has the knowledge, expertise, experience, and wisdom to guide you throughout your life. It’s the real you. We use the term real because most of us live our lives as actors, fulfilling various life roles as we have been conditioned to do so since leaving the innocence of childhood“

This book is indeed deep and even a tiny bit spiritual but it is actually very easy to read and understand. I am going to read it again because like most books that are really deep you get more each time you read through it. Here is another quote that might make that a bit more clear,

“As the child matures, the programming by parents and society continues. Now this young adult has to get admitted into a competitive university, get his first job, or possibly ask for a raise if underpaid. The sad part is that at age five, he would have known exactly what to do and would have asked fearlessly.”

Again I highly recommend you have a look at picking up a copy of this book, it is one I can honestly say is worth far more then the cost. Spend just a bit of time learning to adapt some of these principals to your life and indeed the return of investment will be huge. You can even preview and read the first 12 pages of the book at this link.

~ Cost Cutter

Writing a business plan can be a daunting task the first time you do it. So many would be great entrepreneurs have a great idea and need funding for it, some even self fund or boot strap their business and they all have big plans. They will tell you how big their company will be some day or why you should invest your money but most do not have a formal business plan.

Just this last week I was presented with a new idea that I really thought was excellent and the entrepreneur was clearly working hard and committed to getting the product to market. She was excited, smart and full of enthusiasm and of course wanted me to invest in her idea.

Now here is the reality the venture could be huge or a huge flop and that risk is always present so the risk is not why I turned her down. Nope it was the lack of a business plan that did it. She even had great packaging and was lined up to do trade shows and meet some perspective buyers from major retail chains. The risk is still there so I must make a risk assessment as an investor.

How I make a risk assessment

This is pretty simple I know the results if the product totally flops that is a 100% loss right? Yet what a business plan will tell me is what I can expect to see in gross sales and return of investment at various levels of success. How can an entrepreneur expect investment if they can’t even tell me the return I will get and in how long if things go right, mostly right or moderately successful. I need the numbers for all those out comes to weigh the risk reward, without that I can’t even get started.

I also may not understand the market, the supply chain, the competition and the total market cap and opportunity in a new niche.   I need it spelled out and I need to understand the marketing that the company will use to communicate its message to the world. Additionally if I am to put my money or even just partner with assistance/consulting with a company need to know their vision.  More importantly I need to know they understand their own vision. All of these things are addressed with a proper business plan. Even if you don’t want investors you need a business plan to be sure you have your own vision right, your own risk/reward ratio strait and to help you make the right decisions.

How do you do it? Easy turn to one of my heroes in business, Donald Trump for some free assistance. Trump University offers a free How to Write a Business Plan course you can sign up for and lean a ton from. I also recommend the excellent free business templates available from Score. They have templates for business plans, financial work sheets and other needs.

As I have said many times on this blog one of the best ways to build wealth is with the proper use of real estate as part of your investing portfolio. The problem for most people is simply where do you start? I mean there are countless techniques like buying foreclosures, land lording, flipping properties, buying foreclosures and foreclosures or buying and managing multi tenant properties.

I have always also believed that in the day and age of the internet it is collective intelligence that helps people skip making countless mistakes in favor of learning from the mistakes and experience of others. Today by sharing information people are able to do more and learn more faster then ever before So, when I was asked to have a look at a new real estate website, Investors Lounge Online, and their brand new real estate investment forum I was happy to do so and let my readers know about it.

I found the site to be beautifully designed with excellent resources including a great articles section, advice on financing, great FAQs, advice on auctions and a ton more.  The site even offers some great real estate tools.   I think however, it is the forum with the most long term potential.  Right now it is brand new and it could really use some folks to join and get it started off with a bang.  The forum is feature rich and again the design is just excellent.  They even have translation functions into 10 languages, talk about bringing collective intelligence across the globe.  With outstanding information and resources and a forum that is sure to become an outstanding resource of its own Investors Lounge makes my list of recommended sites.

Today the Down Jones Closed down a significant 370 points (almost 3%).  The question is why?  The answer, The Institute for Supply Management’s January report on the service sector, which accounts for about two-thirds of the economy, said the service side of the U.S. economy dropped sharply . The index dropped to 44.6 last month from a revised reading of 54.4 in December.  This the lowest number since 2001.

So what the heck is the real meaning of this?  The simple way of putting this is the U.S. economy is in a definite decline on the “service” side of the economy.   This is bad because so much of our economy (66%) is service based.

So what’s next?  It’s possible the services side of the economy could rebound some in February, like the manufacturing side did in January after its’ own slide in December.   The benefit of the Federal Reserve’s two big interest rate cuts in the latter part of January could also help spur the service sector back into growth mode later this year.

The key to understand here is this is another shot across the bow of the coming war that is a imminent recession that sooner of late will happen.  My advice yet again is to make sure you are not fully exposed in stocks right now.  We had a few good years but a slide is coming have a heart to heart with your advisers and put some of your investments into something safer for the next few years.

Look I am not for driving like a maniac or speeding in school zones but I also really feel that most traffic tickets are nothing but another revenue source for our bloated government. As my blog is about keeping money in your pockets rather then putting it into bad investments (is their a worse investment right now then our Government?) when I was asked to look at a new website called, Ticket Bust , that shows you how to fight a speeding ticket I was happy to do it.

Unfortunately these guys seem to only be available in California but if you live there I would have a look at their website.  They are so confident that they can help you they offer a money back guarantee and that is one of the reasons they make my list of recommend sites.   The reality is traffic tickets are one of the legal issues most of us have to deal with sooner or later (I have had to), so I am glad their are companies out there like this to help consumers.

So please comment below, have you ever used a service like this to handle a ticket?  How did it work?  Have you ever beaten or gotten a ticket reduced on your own?  If so how?

I have blogged a lot on gold, silver and other metals thus far because I firmly believe that they represent a great hedge against inflation, a good long term investment and because I feel they offer a lot of protection from the coming recession. So when this article from Forbes hit my RSS Reader this morning I was quick to have a look at it. The article is title, Gold’s Allure Growing, and I recommend you give it at least a quick read.

While I found the article interesting and quite accurate I do feel they sort of glossed over a key reason for gold going up recently and a reason that gold will continue to go up for quite a while. Here was the only mention of this factor in the article,

“Demand for the metal is also strong in Asia, for jewelery and as a store of value.”

That was the only mention of this factor in the entire article and I find this very much missing the boat. Why? Well, because with China and India what we have is more then 2 Billion (with a big B) people who are rapidly growing their middle class and both societies have a tremendous appetite for gold jewelry. I recently read a report on of the foremost expert on gold and mining operations who stated that we currently have “at least a 10% shortfall on the production vs. demand for gold most of which is attributed to the rising demand in India and China for gold jewelry.”

In other words those 2 billion people are buying gold faster then it can be extracted from the ground. The big issue with that is it has never happened before. The demand for gold has always been based on how rare it is and that has always created a demand yet until now anyone could always buy as much as they could afford. Today we have unmeetable demand and the demand is growing faster then the production and again this is the first time in modern history that such a condition has existed in the gold market.

I highly advise any investor (small or large) to have a serious heart to heart conversation with your financial advisers about putting at least 10-20% of your holdings into gold, gold funds, etc. The increased demand and declining dollar together make gold a real winning opportunity at least in my opinion right now.

In my site philosophy I explain in commandments 4 and 5 that I think every person today should be to some degree “self employed” and have some business of their own. Today the easiest way to make that happen is to make your money with internet marketing and one of the best things you can sell are either software that is down-loadable or informational products that can also be downloaded. With that all you need to do is create the product and market it, there is no inventory, no shipping, no real expenses.

To do it right though one thing you will definitely need though is ecommerce software or what is commonly referred to as an online shopping cart.  I was recently asked to check out a site called AmeriCommerce which provides the tools to do this.  I found there software is very easy to integrate and quite robust at the starting price of only 39 Dollars a month and if you need help with integration or even some help with web design they can provide that as well.

I like this platform for a few reasons

• Easy integrations with Google Check Out and PayPal
• Very stable platform that is simple but also robust for power applications as well
• It is search engine friendly
• Offers a ton of features
• Tracks your ROI (return of investment)
• Allows you to set up affiliates programs
• And a ton more

So check out AmeriCommerce if you need a good shopping cart program and the best news is they offer a 14 day free trial with every program so you can be sure of their quality of service before spending any money, for that they make my list of recommended sites.