Business

Successful People Build Wealth Through Consistency

July 11, 2019 by Rich Gaines

Sell, do work, sell do work. Up-down, up-down, Owning a business can feel like being on a roller coaster.

Up you go, finding customers, wondering how to pay the bills, dealing with employee headaches and client emergencies. Then you reach the top and down you go, money is coming in, you are busy delivering your products and services, you get to relax and enjoy the business a little bit until you get to the bottom and it the climb up the roller coaster starts all over again.

The cost of being on a roller coaster is you never seem to get ahead.

It’s like the old saying you keep doing things the same way but you expect a different result. Or worse, you do many different activities and nothing seems to change.

What does it take to build wealth?

It takes consistency. In his book Great By Choice, Jim Collins talks about two explorers each of similar age and experience, each having similar weather conditions, leading their respective teams to the south pole in October 1911. Roald Amundsen and Robert Falcon Scott used vastly different methods to lead their teams and in the end, one team succeeded while the other resulted in exhaustion and death.

The famous principle describing the team that succeeded in reaching the South Pole is called the 20-mile march.

Regardless of the weather, Amundsen kept to a disciplined number of miles (20) of trekking each and every day. By contrast, the team led by Robert Falcon Scott would march 40 and 50 miles when weather conditions were good and hunker down when the weather conditions were poor. That meant in good weather, the men were driven to the brink of exhaustion.

A more familiar example of the 20-mile march is in driving your car.

I call this the redlight, greenlight way of driving. The redlight car speeds off at the first sign of green only to stop at the red. This happens over and over again. The greenlight car, on the other hand, doesn’t speed off when the light changes. The greenlight car goes smoothly and evenly at the speed limit so that each time the greenlight car reaches the stoplight the light turns green. The green light car keeps moving smoothly along and eventually passes the redlight car stopped and waiting for the light to turn green. You might also know this story as the tortoise and the hare.

Successful people know that consistent steady progress in building the foundations, systems, customer base, culture, and people is how you build wealth. Business owners that continually change direction, looking for the next best gimmick eventually fail.

The foundation for consistent steady progress is patience and passion.

Passion for your business is the fire that keeps you going every day. It’s what gets you up early in the morning and keeps you up late at night. With passion is patience. Knowing that each day, you do the 20-mile march and you set up consistent actions for success. You do a little each day that moves the needle forward.

Eventually, you reach the tipping point and like the roller coaster, you glide into your home destination.

For more information on Growing your Business by Design, creating financial well-being and steps you can take to grow wealth please visit our website at www.businessgrowthbydesign.com.

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3 Simple Steps to Build Wealth Like a Millionaire

July 3, 2019 by Rich Gaines

Do you ever wonder why your neighbor drives an old car wears older clothes and doesn’t have fancy furniture?

The reason is that you didn’t realize that your neighbor is a millionaire. Being a millionaire doesn’t happen by magic. It happens with disciplined mastery over your money. Yes. Believe it or not you can become a master of your money. It is within your control. People that become millionaires use three simple steps. they make money, save money and invest money.

Your business is like an ecosystem in nature. Every part of the business is independent, sales, marketing, operations, accounting, legal, tax and so forth, yet each part of the business is interdependent, one cannot exist without the other. You can’t have sales without demand for the product and you can’t have money without operations.

The problem is that many business owners make basic money mistakes, which can be avoided, preventing them from saving and investing money. These mistakes include focusing solely on sales, trading time for money and messy math.

When business owners focus only on sales, they typically take the revenue and profit from the sales and plow it back into the business. Their thinking is that they will be able to expand the business and some day there will be enough value in the business to sell. Often times, however, the business owner will be older, maybe sick or the business becomes obsolete and they have failed to save for their future.

Service businesses that charge by the hour, simply trading time for money are one of the worst offenders and the hourly rate is one of the most difficult ways to become wealthy because there are limited hours in the day.

By far, the one, single massive mistake that a business owner makes in becoming wealthy is in not understanding the businesses financial information; profit profit margins, product mix and business expenses. All of these basic mistakes prevent business owners from achieving financial well-being.

To make the shift and avoid the money mistakes it takes 3 simple steps

Step One in building wealth like a millionaire means gaining mastery over your money.

Money Mastery means knowing how much it costs to make your products and services, what kind of pricing you need for your products and services to give you an edge in making more profit, what products are the best products that sell for the greatest price and keeping costs under control.

Step number two in Building Wealth like a millionaire is to keep the money you make.

Keeping money you make requires setting goals, and taking the money you make and putting it into different money saving buckets. Some of the buckets you may consider include a savings bucket for short term purchases you want such as a television, an investment bucket for long term wealth building, an entertainment bucket to have some fun and reward you for doing a good job of saving your money and lastly, maybe a charitable bucket.

Step number 3 in Building Wealth like a millionaire is to invest money.

The single most underutilized wealth-building strategy is a 401(k). A 401(k) is a place where you can invest your money, tax deferred or tax free. Any growth on your money is tax deferred or tax free and you don’t have to start taking money until you are 70 ½. That’s a long time to let money grow for your use in your later years. There are all kinds of programs and tax strategies using 401(k)’s. When starting early and being consistent, the money in a 401(k) will make you a millionaire over time.

Building Wealth like a millionaire means changing your approach and how you think about money.

One simple action step you can take to change the way you think about money is to create lifetime net worth goal. How much money would make you comfortable once you are ready to stop working.

This action step provides clarity, focus and a completely different foundation for how you think about your business, how you price products and services and deliver value to your customers.

For more information on Growing your Business by Design, creating financial well-being and steps you can take to become a millionaire please visit our website at www.businessgrowthbydesign.com.

For a free E-book- Business Strengtheners- Strategies to move from Survival to Stability and Affluence please go to www.businessgrowthbydesign.com/strong

Action Guide: 3 Critical Choices

June 6, 2019 by Rich Gaines

Business growth expert Rich Gaines talks about the 3 choices you need to make in order to ensure that your hard earned money is there for your future and for generations to come!

Everyone leaves a legacy. The only question is whether it will be one of your own choosing or one chosen for you. Part of leaving a legacy is to preserve what you have.

What will you preserve for future generations?

Watch this short video and discover how you can leave a legacy.

Get your FREE Action Guide here:

https://businessgrowthbydesign.com/3criticalchoices

Action Guide: 4 Proven Profit Strategies

May 30, 2019 by Rich Gaines

Business growth expert Rich Gaines talks about the 4 proven profit-making strategies that you can immediately in your business to make more money.

Business owners work hard and they are passionate about what they do but many times the money they make doesn’t reflect their efforts.

Watch this short video and discover 4 proven profit strategies.

Get your FREE Action Guide

CLICK HERE FOR INSTANT ACCESS

Wealth Preservation: Equity

March 20, 2019 by Rich Gaines

Equity is what is left over after you figure out what you own less what you owe. This is called your balance sheet.

You don’t really own your home until the mortgage you pay is fully satisfied. If you don’t believe me, remember back to 2008. How many people bought homes and lost those homes.

The banks didn’t come in and say gee you are a nice person you can stay in the home awhile until you can pay again. The banks took the homes.

What you own are your assets. What you owe are your liabilities. Assets minus liabilities is what you have left over. It has nothing to do with your cash flow or how much you make or how much you spend.

How much you make and how much you spend is more about whether you have money or are broke each month.

As you may have guessed, preserving wealth is about building your equity. Building and preserving what you have left over.

What you have left over can’t be taken from you because you don’t owe anyone. Once your car is paid off, once your copy machine is paid off, once your home is paid off, it is yours to do with as you please. No one can tell you what to do.

How many of you like people telling you what to do? How many of you would like to be in a position where you can’t be told what to do?

The only way to do that is to build equity and the only way to build equity is to get rid of debt and put money away. We will discuss putting money away a little later.

Get out of debt. Credit cards are evil.

You say to yourself oh I will buy this nice drill set or microwave or stereo on credit. I will pay it off next month. Next month comes and you see the credit card bill. Except that your son had to go to the doctor suddenly because he broke his arm or your daughter had an unexpected dental bill. I don’t have $300 to pay off the credit card. Oh, look. I only have to pay $20. I can do that and so you do. The next month the statement comes and the debt is now $282..80. Wait a minute, I thought I paid off $20.00. Well, you did but the interest on the $280 remaining was 10% per year so 1% of $280 is $2.80. That’s $2.80 that you now have to work for and you received nothing from it.

Suddenly your hours get cut and now you can’t pay the credit card at all.

Except you used the credit card to pay for your car repairs, your gasoline, your frappe latte, your hairstyle, your new pants, your subway sandwich and now the credit card is $2,000 and it is costing you $20 per month in interest. Failing to pay the bill the banks (the really nice ones that like you) hike the interest to 20% so now the interest is costing you $40 plus the late fees and penalties of another $40. Suddenly your $300 dollar microwave, drill set or whatever is now over $2,500 and it keeps going up.

You are working for nothing. How much could you do with an extra $40, $60, $100 per month. Get out of debt.

How do you build equity toward your wealth preservation?

You have to save and put money away. When you save and put money away then you start letting that money work for you and grow without you having to work for it. Owning rental properties is a great way to build equity. You buy a property (yes it is not yours yet). You rent the property and the rental income you make goes to pay the debt so it costs you nothing. When the property goes up in value you get the benefit of that increase and you didn’t have to work for it. That’s building equity on your way to fortifying your wealth.

Our vision is to enhance the way people think and talk about wealth not only in money but in values, beliefs and traditions. Our mission is to show people how to strengthen their business and fortify their wealth through 5 simple steps. Survival to make ends meet; Security for business and family; Affluence in enjoying the fruits and benefits of the hard work put in to make money; Influencing others through clarity of purpose and vision; and Legacy of how you will be remembered and the impact and difference you can make in the world.

Thank you for being a part of our Straight Talk community. What step of wealth are you in? What can you do to get to the next Step?

Wealth Preservation: Verify

March 8, 2019 by Rich Gaines

W. Edwards Deming once said you can’t improve what you don’t measure.

So think about a goal you have.

Are you verifying the progress towards that goal? Oftentimes we set a goal as the end result and forget about verifying the progress along the way.

I am sure many of us have heard the age-old adage, success is the progressive realization towards a worthy ideal.

Verifying progress simply allows you to focus in on specific areas of improvement that need to be made in your business, your website, even your health and nutrition plan.

Did you know that a space shuttle is off target 99% of the time?

It’s constantly making slight adjustments based on the feedback that the measurement systems are sending into the computer. Verifying progress simply allows you to know where you came from where you are so that you can determine where you are going.

Another example of this idea is to trust but verify.

Strategic and collaborative partnerships are established between people who have common interests and objectives. One of the single most important points to do when collaborating with others is to define the roles and responsibilities of each person.

More importantly, is to verify that the other person is actually fulfilling what they are supposed to do so that the overall success of the project is assured.

Our vision is to enhance the way people think and talk about wealth not only in money, but in values, beliefs and traditions.

Our mission is to show people how to strengthen their business and fortify their wealth through 5 simple steps.

Survival to make ends meet; Security for business and family; Affluence in enjoying the fruits and benefits of the hard work put in to make money; Influencing others through clarity of purpose and vision; and Legacy of how you will be remembered and the impact and difference you can make in the world.