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March 31, 2009

Putting Savvy Before Necessity

When put to the test, people are endlessly adaptive, inventive, cunning and resilient. These are some of the qualities that have helped us survive eons of changing, challenging conditions to emerge as the dominant species on the planet.

We share many of these qualities with other creatures. I recently read about a chimp in an outdoor zoo that doesn’t like being gawked at, so overnight he gathers piles of rocks and places them, strategically, around his pen to hurl at visitors when they arrive. Luckily, chimps only know how to throw underhand.

There’s an extra quality that humans have. Call it savvy. If the chimp had it, he might build a pile of rocks big enough to climb out of his predicament. Which brings me to the predicament we all find ourselves in, one way or another: the recession.

According to a New York Times article, economists who have tracked trends in previous recessions found that when the economy turns down and jobs disappear, more entrepreneurial businesses spring up. In other words, when people are forced to stop working for someone else, they figure out how to make money for themselves.

The ability to reinvent ourselves is in each of us. It’s part of human nature. But why wait until you are forced to dig deep before you find the motivation to become an entrepreneur? Why not be proactive? Why not gather some rocks ahead of time and work toward building a castle where you can live happily ever after?

You are probably familiar with the expression “The best time to look for a job is when you already have one.” Well, that’s also a good time to launch your own business. When there’s no pressure. But if you are out of a job, don’t despair. It’s always a good time to become an entrepreneur.

The Internet has created countless opportunities for “virtual” businesses, particularly over the last five years with so many people shopping, meeting and communicating online – the mass embrace of Web 2.0 social media. There are literally millions of business opportunities online if you know where to look and how to develop them…or if you simply connect with someone who can show you the ropes.

The Internet has become a multi-purpose business tool that brings individual entrepreneurs together with entire common-interest communities to provide vast resources for business leads and clients, connections to partners, suppliers, product delivery systems, support networks and on-demand, quality training from successful professionals. Why go through the pains of starting a brick-and-mortar business, complete with overhead costs, employee headaches, etc.? You can find a way to turn your passion into a business – without searching for a job that ultimately may or may not do it for you – by using the power of the Internet and social media.

Don’t worry if you can’t identify a passion as the basis for your business. There are so many options out there. And you can let your entrepreneurial drive be your passion.

I’ve talked with so many people who have lost a job (unfortunately), and one of the most frequent comments I hear from them is that when you lose a job you also lose a ready-made social network. To prevent isolation from setting in, one of the ways people stay connected with the world and with each other is through the Internet. What I have discovered (and helped to create) is a network of committed entrepreneurs. Each of them knows that by helping him or herself they help each other.

Before the recession affects us any more than it already has, let savvy, rather than necessity, be the mother of invention. Let’s see how many small businesses that we, as entrepreneurs, can build, and how quickly we can climb out of this predicament.

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March 16, 2009

I Can’t Wait To Be Old

When I was twenty-two, I dated a girl (let’s call her Rebecca) who used to say, “I can’t wait till I’m old!” She was 23, beautiful, witty, extremely well read. She had what seemed like two-dozen close friends who adored her, compared to my two or three who frequently questioned my morals. She wasn’t running away from anything, wasn’t an alcoholic, had a bunch of bright career prospects. And yet the girl wanted to be 60.

At first I thought she was kidding, or simply romanticizing old age as a place of relative calm and invincibility. (People are much less likely to break your heart at 60 than at 23, for instance.) But lately I’ve realized that, even at 23, she must have felt her youth slipping away, pummeled as women (and men) are by images of the teenage ideal in magazines, TV commercials, and ads. She foresaw losing her looks through her late twenties and thirties. And she just wanted to be spared the agony.

Now that ten years have passed, her desire to be suddenly old makes sense, in a way. I find myself frowning at gray hairs in the mirror, and lie to myself by attributing them to stress instead of age. Maybe it would be nicer to just zip to 60, and spare myself the slow decline?

When I was 22, though, I didn’t share this sentiment. I didn’t want to be 60! I wanted to be 22! At that age no one judges you on your accomplishments, since you haven’t had much opportunity to live. They only see your “promise.” Everything is ahead of you. Moreover, you are not yet to blame for how your life has turned out. Other people are guilty for that (parents, teachers, etc). You’re innocent.

But the fact that America worships such innocent young people—aimless kids who have yet to be tested or to prove themselves in life—seems to me a fairly dismal state of affairs. Obviously it’s about looks. Young people look better on stage than old people. They look better on camera than old people. But when looks become a reason for us to read a book or listen to an album, for example, society is in trouble.

Recently, I read an article explaining how fed up established authors are with the comparatively huge advances first time novelists receive. Just because they’re young! And their book jacket photo is cute, or sexy. Americans are buying these books, the older novelists say, simply in order to live vicariously through a young, sexy novelist. In truth, the book may have no substance at all, no wisdom, only the residue of a cute young person’s experience in the world. But Americans are becoming so youth-obsessed that getting a glimpse of what it’s like to be young today is enough, and more valuable than living through the mind of someone who has seen and experienced hardship, and navigated his or her way through it.

Maybe it was John Updike’s death that got me thinking in this slightly morbid vein. Which then got me thinking about Philip Roth’s inevitable demise, and how strange it is that such a vigorous man as Roth, so full of life and sexual potency, could possibly die. I’m sure he’s as amazed as anyone. As he himself once wrote: “Old age isn’t a battle; it’s a massacre.”

Yet old age doesn’t frighten me the way it seems to frighten Roth. Lately, I’ve come to look forward to it in a sense. Aging can be a graceful process, for both women and men, as long as they don’t succumb to the youth-media and cosmetics blitz that threatens to empty everyone’s psyche and bank account. Yeah, it’s sad to get wrinkles, to lose your mental and physical agility. But look at guys like Tom Jones, Client Eastwood, and Sean Connery, for instance. Connery looks almost as good today as he did at 30, just in a different, more refined and dignified way. He seems to be no longer in the grips of his own libido, which can make even the most graceful of dudes seem sleazy and indecent.

Chances are I will look nothing like Connery when I’m his age. Still, I’ll know more than I do now. And at this point in my life, however cheesy it sounds, knowing more about the world, and understanding my place in it, seems more worthy of worship and respect than unlined skin and innocence.

As for my old sweetheart—who must be now, what, 33?—I hope she’s not still wishing for a sexagenarian’s existence. People are going to start living till 110 pretty soon, which makes 30 the new 20, or even the new 10. By the time we’re 60, 60 might even be considered young.

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March 16, 2009

Inertia, It’s Not a River in Egypt

I just looked up inertia on Wikipedia: “… the resistance of an object to a change in its state of motion [...] inertia means that an object will always continue moving at its current speed and in its current direction until some force causes its speed or direction to change.”

Inertia is everywhere, in all physical objects and in every one of us.  This is not necessarily a bad thing.  For a long time I relied on inertia to get me going in the morning so I could get to the job where I earned enough to get through the day so I could get up the next day and do the same thing, again and again, day after day.

Even though in my daydreams of wealth and generosity that wasn’t exactly what I pictured my life to be, I accepted it.  Routine can become comfortable.  It’s common to develop a kind of psychological inertia, to know what to expect, to go along doing your thing, surviving.

Whatever path you are on, you can become driven by inertia…right up until you get that gnawing feeling that you’re going nowhere fast.  In that case, guess what?  You are. That’s inertia for you.  But, if you have ambitions, things you want to learn about, places you want to go, people to meet, a sense that you want to be part of a greater good, a desire to earn more money, well, then inertia becomes a force you have to overcome.

Going back to our definition of inertia, changing a body’s direction or speed (or both) requires an outside force.  When it comes to people and inertia, however, that force can also emerge from within.  It starts with a desire but also requires making a decision and following it with action.

It sounds simple, and it is.  But simple doesn’t equal easy. You may have the desire to change but not the will. That’s no longer inertia at work. That’s something called laziness: perhaps the single greatest obstacle to achieving your goals.  That’s when coasting is no longer passive and has become an active form of resistance to change.

To put it bluntly, you can’t be lazy and successful. Lazy entrepreneurs are the 90% who fail.

Spend some quality time with yourself.  Listen to your heart.  Figure out the top five things that you know you can change to take your income to the next level.  (You will know what they are because you know yourself better than anyone else.)  No matter how difficult or challenging they may seem, put them on the list. The more resistant you are to completing a task, the higher up on your list it should go. Work on each of the five every day until they are completed.  And, if working on these things means getting help, seek it out.  Talk to an expert.  Get an education. The responsibility is yours. Just remember, inertia is at your side whether you like it or not.

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March 16, 2009

Don’t Make the Concession to Recession

In case you haven’t heard, our government wants us to understand that “It’s going to get worse before it gets better.”  If that’s true — and many, many experts seem to agree that it is — the further the country dips into recession, the steeper the climb will be for just to get back to level ground.

That means one thing (or many things) for the national and global economy, and something else for individuals.  For us, that might mean regaining a lost job, creating addition income to subsidize a recent salary cutback, or working to restore the value of an erstwhile investment. But we don’t have to wait for the economy to turn itself around to change the course of our personal finances.
It takes a lot to extinguish the hope that lives in the American spirit. People are beginning to realize that, if they really want to secure their family’s financial future, they can’t be working for someone else. They have to become entrepreneurs.

The truth is, each of us can begin our own turnaround.  It starts with a mindset, with a decision, and it can start as soon as you make that decision to not only pull yourself out of a hole, but up on to higher financial ground.

At CarbonCopyPRO, today’s leading Internet marketing education company, we are finding that people are searching for the tools and know-how to create alternate forms of income.  (In fact, even in this doom and gloom economy, CCPRO’s business has gone up 30% since this time last year, and 40% since December.)

Whether they have recently joined the growing ranks of the unemployed, are fearful that their jobs may be threatened in this downsizing environment, or have seen their investments shrivel as the market is buffeted by mob psychology, many are realizing that they can still have a hand in their own prosperity if that hand is guided by knowledge.  And they are turning to CarbonCopyPRO to get it.
CarbonCopyPRO is not a get rich quick scheme.  It is a proven training program, combined with a marketing engine and a support team, that helps you acquire business strategies and frees you to grow your business. It offers an education on how to create a business model that is positioned to capitalize on major, converging trends over the next ten years.

The CCPRO approach is based on creating solutions for people, as opposed to counting on their ability to afford and purchase products and services.  Anyone can learn it and use it. Anyone can launch themselves on a self-reliant trajectory toward greater financial security. You just have to be willing to roll up your sleeves and dig in.

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