The Fearful Mind and Working From Home

Working from home on the internet was an idea that was spun in the mid 90's. Once the internet was open to the public in 1994 it gave, birth to the concept of working from home. At one time data entry was one of the most used, phrases in the search engines when looking for home employment. People quickly realized most of these ventures were too good to be true. There were even so called companies back then that allowed you to purchase a list of work at home job leads for a fee.

I have bought into these ideas only to receive a vague list of job opportunities that did not exist or just lead to a dead end. So, after I and many others were presented with these types of opportunities in place of actually it caused much of us to develop a fearful mind when looking for online employment. To further this fear, the online business scams followed along with multiple others. The problems is many people seek to still work from home for a variety of reasons, but find it an almost impossible task.

How to Better Your Odds

Although it is frustrating to look for a work at home job or business that is actually legit there is no reason for you to give up, but instead prepare yourself.

For Work at Home Employment

First rule, never pay to work for an employer on or off line.

Research past, and present workers, there's always someone online who is already doing or has done the position you're seeking with a company.

Get an insight about the potential company that you are applying to by reviewing as many reviews as you can about the company. Be sure to think logical when doing this. If someone has an irrational complaint then I would not give that too much thought.

Gain experiences off line, a lot of people looking for an actual employment position online don't realize majority of these companies are looking for someone who has off line experience.

One way to do this is to find your area of interest such as phone work and find temp positions off line that will allow you to build your experience.

Contract work, I have found that there is a lot more contract work available online then actual employment opportunities. This may not be what you want in the long run, but you must realize a lot of contract work allows you to build your online resume while generating income.

For Online Businesses

Be realistic, If you go to a website and the website owner (webmaster) is promising that you will make large sums of money with little to no effort that only requires your onetime fee then your red flag for a scam should go up.

Don't allow the desire we sometimes have to achieve our goals with little effort to take over. If you do then you are making yourself a target audience for scam artist.

Find out what interest you first, In order for you to have any idea of what type of online business you want to have, you must first know what interest you along with what your strengths and weaknesses are.

Try starting with a scratch piece of paper and writing down what comes to mind. Allow yourself to write freely about what you would love to be doing for a living along with things you would not. This may not sound like an useful idea, but by following this simple first step you better your odds of building a business that was meant for you not somebody else.

Patience and the willingness to learn, an important lesson that you must understand when building a business online especially a website business, you must have patience and the willingness to learn. There are so many steps that come with having a website business. If you do not have the proper foundation to start, you will not build a successful website business.

The way you can help yourself be more patient and make it easier for you to learn is too set small goals. If you allow yourself to focus on one small goal at a time instead of building a six figure income, you will find that patience will come naturally.

You will also be more open to learn new things simply because you have become realistic and are not frustrated from trying to build a business the artificial way. You have realized having a business of any sort is an ongoing learning experience.

Remember...

It is understandable to have fear when looking to do anything online especially if it involves an investment, but do not let scam artist and miss leading information stop you from achieving a very achievable dream... To be employed on line or self-employed online working from home.

How to Keep Paperwork From Driving You Completely Insane

If you're a CEO, chances are that you HATE paperwork. The thought of facing that pile of paper on your desk makes you break out in hives and drives you to drink (more coffee that is). For most leaders, paperwork is the thorn in their side that takes all the joy out of doing their job. Does this sound like you? Read on.

For the past ten years I have worked in the financial services industry. (If you have never worked in this type of industry, let me assure you that the paperwork NEVER ends.) When you're dealing with money it seems like even the smallest task requires volumes of paperwork all of which needs to be processed immediately. It is not uncommon to have a stack of paperwork 6 inches high on my desk that needs proofing, scanning, faxing, signing, filing etc. I remember a Seinfeld episode when Newman explained why postal workers have such a high suicide rate by saying "the mail never stops, it just keeps coming and coming!" I empathize.

Let me share with you some tips I've learned when dealing with paperwork that have kept me from going completely bananas. (Feel free to share in the comments section your best tip.)

    Simplify. Look through your stack and separate out what could be done by somebody else. Physically get the paperwork off your desk and onto theirs asap.

    Prioritize. Review the remaining stack and do what needs to be done first, first. Don't leave an important task to the last minute. Take one action step towards getting it completed immediately.

    Don't multi-task. Handle one piece of paperwork at a time and don't put it away until you have finished doing whatever you need to do to it. Don't answer the phone, don't check your email, don't shift your focus. Your rate of making mistakes will increase if you're distracted from completing your task.

    Do it right the first time. The only thing worse than doing paperwork once is having to do it again. Don't cut corners, do it right the first time through so that you (hopefully) never have to see it again.

    Use a tracking system. Initiate a way to keep a record of what what sent to who and how it was sent. Do not rely on your memory when it comes to paperwork, your auditor will not be happy.

Handling paperwork is like running on a treadmill. You do it because you want to be healthy but it feels like you're running and running but never really getting anywhere. The road never seems to end!

Take heart, you're doing a great job and dealing with admin is usually an unavoidable part of the role of being the ED. Don't be shy to ask for help if you need it.

My Adventure When I Sold Gold and Silver Online

This is my adventure into buying and selling rare metals online and using eBay as an auction platform.

I've done this for about 4 years and I've been able to make a little profit here and there, although this is not my trade, it's a great way to have fun with the buying and selling of metals online.

Where I Started

I started with selling a small 1 gram of gold, then I went on to sell a half ounce of gold at a profit. My first big profit was when I kept a big bar of silver for over 2 years and was able to make a 1,500 dollar profit (well it was just keeping up with inflation) but my family was surprised by how much the value changed. Buy the end of it I was selling gold and silver bars and coins worth up to 4,000 dollars. Almost all of my gold and silver bars were kept in a bank safe. To rent the safe from the bank I lost about 18 dollars to keeping that bank safe drawer every year. It was weird going into the bank almost every other week just to take inventory and then doing some calculations when other bank clientele rarely ever used the safe.

How I Did It

I would actually buy them straight off eBay itself and then I waited for the value of gold or silver or even platinum (whichever one I was preparing to sell) to rise up before I put it back on eBay. Sometimes then took about a year or so could chance in a course of a week. This was during the height of the recession so people had more faith in gold and silver stock, not to mention platinum for a time as well. So it wasn't too hard to get the timing right because the price of gold and silver and other rare metals were on the gradual climb. There were times when it even peaked quickly although I wasn't quick enough to capitalize on the big peaks of value.

I've only been able to work with 24k gold and .999 silver and fine .999 metals such as .999 platinum. Anything less would have to be evaluated by a very good appraiser. That's on you to decide the cost. But for 24k gold there is always kitco.com which has a daily valuation of your gold or silver amount in ounces. If you have more than an ounce you can convert it back to one ounce to start the valuation. That's how I evaluated my metals. It was a daunting task to time the buying and selling right because I was unable to sell at the peaks immediately unlike people who actually owned actual stock.

Overall, I learned a lot about timing, and how rare metals were priced compared to the US dollar. Inflation just made the price of gold look higher than it is because it was compared to the US dollar. I also learned at sometime in 2008 there was a great demand for platinum and thank god I was also to capitilize on that. It was a lot of fun and it's an easy way to understand how money and rare metals are valued.

Part 22 - Develop a Role Model

The term role model generally means any "person who serves as an example, whose behaviour is emulated by others".

Research is showing that role models are having a profound influence on the career decisions that people make. Therefore they seem to enhance the desire to become entrepreneurs and multimillionaires.

In my own research, which concerned the identification of future research topics in entrepreneurship, the variable called role model is shown to be one of the most important issues in the creation of new entrepreneurs.

Role models are increasingly being identified as a major influencing factor in explaining why people make the choice of pursuing an entrepreneurial career.

Autobiographies and life stories of successful entrepreneurs are serving as, not only a source of motivation and inspiration to prospective entrepreneurs, but also as an indication of what strategy should be used to achieve success within various environments.

Already successful entrepreneurs also enhance people's desire to become entrepreneur and experience the entrepreneurial self-efficacy of individuals and, ultimately, entrepreneurial independence.

If you want to succeed as an entrepreneur you need to take action now and find yourself some worthy candidates. You can look for potential people in magazines, books and among the people you know. Make a point of searching widely, identifying candidates and studying them so that you can choose the best role model that you can really admire and look up to.

You can even have more than one role model. You should preferably select a role model to which you have easy access. The person that you really admire in your environment that you can consult and possibly adopt as a mentor, with their permission of course, that can guide you through the process of becoming a millionaire.

You should also choose a guru from somebody that you respect and admire, but who is not within your environment, that is a highly successful entrepreneur, such as Bill Gates or Richard Branson. Read a lot of biographies and make your choice.

Reading the biographies of these amazing people can be highly educational and a great inspiration to yourself. In many cases they can also assist you in formulating your success strategy.

Read widely about the people involved in your field to become highly successful and learn from their experiences so that you do not have to reinvent the wheel. You can gain an enormous amount of valuable lessons and information from reading about their personalities, characteristics, and how they manage to overcome the difficulties and problems that they manage to solve in their path to success.

You will be truly amazed at how powerful a good teacher can be. Make sure you choose the right person and not somebody that could have a negative influence on your ethics, your behaviour and your personality.

Never stop reading about success. Steep yourself in a success environment. Mix with successful people and their success will rub off on you. Be willing to follow their example and take their advice and you will go a long way to shortening the journey to becoming a millionaire.

One particular observation that I made regarding online businesses or Internet businesses is that the successful ones follow system and guided by a mentor.

Develop the habit of having a Role Model. Get inspiration and guidance from your role models, learn from their roadmaps and strategies, and you'll be well on your way achieving success.

Part 21 - Be Decisive and Goal Directed

One of the most important qualities of successful entrepreneurs and millionaires is the ability to be decisive while being goal directed.

Decisiveness is the willingness to make decisions, even in the face of complexity or uncertainty. Decisive people evaluate available information, apply their judgement, and make a choice amongst the various possibilities it is easier to be decisive when we are clear about our values and goals.

Successful entrepreneurs have a tolerance of risk, ambiguity and uncertainty. The calculated risk takers would prefer to minimise and share the risk. Managers need to deal with paradox and contradiction and they know that any decision runs the risk of be wrong, but they also know that perfect clarity is rarely available and that indecision can be more costly. It also means taking responsibility for the outcome of the decision.

Sometimes a situation occurs where no action is taken but in those cases the specific do-nothing decision is taken. Think carefully, and then make decisions quickly, but you must also know when to say "we'll see" and do nothing for the time being.

You must develop the habit of making quick decisions but make sure that the decision outcomes are accurately monitored and that quick feedback is received so that if you find you have made a mistake, you can quickly self-correct and do something else.

Successful people are creative and goal directed. They try for more things than other people do, which means that the probability of eventually finding the right way of doing things, at the right time, is much higher than it is for people that try only one or two things.

Indecisive people get carried through life like Oak leaves in the wind, never establishing a fixed direction, and never being directed towards a goal.

To be directed towards the goal you need to know the detail of what you're going to do. I have asked people what they are going to do and they tell me; I'm starting an Internet business, I am going to work from home, and I am going to make money.

But if I ask them any details such as, "What are you going to do to make money?" they cannot give me an answer. When you adopt the habit of being decisive and goal directed your entire life becomes more productive and you move faster in your chosen direction and the people around you. This releases a higher source of energy that produces enthusiasm and increases your motivation that pushes you much faster towards your goal.

If you can clearly visualise your goals in your mind decision-making becomes a lot easier. If you are goal directed and your decisions made within the framework of desired outcomes, it allows you to be optimally creative and innovative in making the right choices to overcome the problems that arise. The actions that need to be taken are then more easily identified.

The action that you can take now to develop the habit of being decisive and goal directed is to clarify your goal and then ask yourself what single action, if done correctly and timelessly, will have the greatest impact on your goal.

In these exercises you should be as honest with yourself as possible. Be ruthlessly honest. Be obsessed with wanting to exploit opportunities that can result in you being a millionaire. Be goal and results orientated. Make sure your goals are set high but higher at realistic and develop the burning drive for achievement and growth.

Developing this habit will take you a long way to developing the skills required to be a successful entrepreneur, especially when combined with the other skills as covered in the 23 articles series on the Habits of Successful Entrepreneurs and Millionaires.