As I was browsing through the internet just a minute ago, I stumbled across a few freelance websites. I know there are quite a few around, some are better than others. However, I want to introduce 2 website which caught my attention. Firstly because of their professional set-up, but also due to the fact that around 50% of their members are full-time freelancers, making a professional living. Having browsed through the websites, I am astonished about some of the professional services some people offer.

The first website is Elance.com. Elance offers a platform for employers and freelancers, who are able to find each other through a bid process. Elance freelancers offer anything from web design services, to financial services, writers, photographers, legal consultants, marketers, and much more. The lay-out of the website is clean, and in fact freelancers are able to display their total earnings to the community. Some have earned over $100k with their services, and around 50% of all freelancers do this work full-time. Furthermore, Elance offers an escrow service, so that money is sure to be paid by the employer, and to reach the freelancers’ bank accounts.

An alternative to Elance is vWorker.com. vWorker is built much in the same manner as Elance, with currently offering 2,409 open jobs. Also vWorker guarantees payment via escrow services.

A third website I found, which I thought is pretty funny, is fiverr.com. Fiverr is a platform where freelancers, or workers, can quote a job or the kind of work, any work, they are prepared to do for US$5. Many offers are crazy and funny, such as doing 10 backflips, or a running 7 miles in a gorilla costume. Others have a more serious nature, such as proofreading resumes, or practicing conversational skills in a foreign language for 30 minutes.

All in all, I am surprised about all the innovation on the internet. I haven’t tried out the sites mentioned, but I certainly may. Why not try and make a few extra bucks… the opportunities are there.

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I finished reading CASHFLOW Quadrant, by Robert T. Kiyosaki yesterday and I feel a bit obliged to write about it. On the one hand, because the book is partially filled with incomplete information, being too vague, and for some part promoting illegal practice (e.g trading stocks based on insider information), on the other hand because the book still does make some good points… and it’s a great motivational book by the way. I know, I know, when I read my first book of Robert Kiyosaki, I was quite positive about him, until I did some further research on the topic.

The Cashflow Quadrant basically describes four different quadrants, which characterize how people earn their money. Without wanting to go into too much detail, the left side of the quadrant represents employees and self-employed people, which count for around 80% of the world population and possess about 5% of the wealth on this planet. The right side of the quadrant represents the 20% of the population possessing 95% of all wealth: business owners and investors.

This means, that people on the left side of the quadrant are putting time and effort into a businesses, which are owned by people on the right side of the quadrant, and they get a small fee for doing so. Therefore, the one and only way to reach true financial freedom is to switch from being employed, to owning a business or becoming an investor.

The CASHFLOW Quadrant is not only a great motivational book, but it highlights a way of thinking, which most people are not familiar with; it tries to pull people away from their inner reality, which is usually to work hard and make a career at a large and noteworthy company, and to give them a taste of what life would be like if they would mind their own business, in stead of someone else’s business.

Robert Kiyosaki does give some real life examples, such as investing in real estate and then having someone renting it to pay back mortgage. Additionally, his advice is more based on psychology and ‘attitude matters’, than on the science of doing business.

Still, one phrase which caught my attention was ‘Mind Your Own Business‘. Relating this to what I read in the CASHFLOW Quadrant, and relating this also the all the negative criticism, I give it two meanings:

• Reaching true financial freedom and exceeding the living standards of the average working population (this last phrase is important to me, as some people might find an average employee’s salary as satisfying) means building my own business and investment activities; it means that the time of work I put in my activities is detached from my earnings, and it means that I should be minding my own business, instead of someone else’s business.
• Having greater confidence in my abilities, especially in my abilities to learn by doing. It is very easy to gain more and more, and even more information from various books, mentoring sessions, or coaching seminars… but many so-called gurus’ main business is just being a guru. Knowing this, I find greater potential in myself to select information I can truly learn from, from recognized authors in their field, and to take small steps towards building wealth and learn from that.

Mr. Kiyosaki seems to be under the attack of many criticists, obviously not without reason, claiming that Robert Kiyosaki is a motivational speaker rather than a refined business man, and fully incapable of providing financial advice. If you want to read more about criticism on Robert T. Kiyosaki and his work, you can visit John T. Reeds site, or the article ‘Rich Men, Poor Advice’ on the Wall Street Journal.

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Author: Ev Nucci

“Humankind cannot bear much reality.” T. S. Eliot

No matter how bad things are, like millions before you, you can create a new future. I have, so I know what I’m talking about. You find out who people are in the bad times, not in the good.

Re-writing your future is a state of mind

You are never too old , it’s never too late to start anew. And if you think you can’t take steps backwards in order to take steps forward, think again.

Danny Aiello began acting at 40, Rodney Dangerfield at 42, Gloria Stuart was 78 when she was nominated Best Supporting Actress for Titanic, Peggy Ashcroft was 77 when she won Best Supporting Actress, and Jessica Tandy won an Academy Award at 80 for Driving Miss Daisy.

Grandma Moses (one of the most important self-taught artists of the 20th century) started her painting career in her seventies and Bill Traylor started drawing at age 83. In business Irene Wells Pennington became known in her nineties when she straightened out her husband’s oil business, Colonel Sanders started Kentucky Fried Chicken in his sixties and Taikichiro Mori founded his business in his 50s and is the richest man in the world.

So you think you’re too old to start anew? I think not!

1. Failure is part of success. Don’t avoid it. You need to fail in order to succeed. Every failure is one step closer to success. If failing is a problem for you, then change your mindset. The one percent fail- up and perceive failure as learning opportunities. Without learning opportunities, or practice, how can you get better? Many people are so afraid of failing that they spend their lives avoiding their gifts; or worse, they failed a coupled times and gave up because of it. For years I gave numerous speeches that went well. Then I gave one speech that bombed and it was so humiliating I froze, months later I had a meeting that didn’t go very well. Those two experiences sent me to Toastmasters where I learned how to give a speech.

2. Become extraordinary. Do what you say you’re going to do. Accept responsibility and criticism. Being extraordinary takes work. Go the extra mile. Go above and beyond. Do what the normal person won’t do…be the extreme! And learn what extraordinary people do, study them, learn from them. While at Toastmasters, I learned I had an issue with criticism and had to learn how to accept criticism, to thank the person sharing it with me and to understand that it wasn’t personal. This was an issue I had to learn how to deal with from a professional coach. So the point is that I went from one problem and solved it, to discovering another problem and solved it to back to the original problem. That is what extraordinary people do–they don’t give up. Ever. And when people tell them they can’t achieve something, they think to themselves, “watch this!” Extraordinary people never stop learning, and it’s not about how many letters you have after your name, or what you school you went to, it’s about continuous learning–and knowing that the more you know, the more you don’t know.

Be extraordinary, handle criticism with grace and dignity.

3. Study your successes Take out a yellow pad of paper. Write down your successes. What were you doing? What value did you bring? What are you really good at? What does everyone say you are great at? What’s staring you in the face? What is your gift? What and where have you repeatedly succeeded? Where is there a cross between extreme anger and happiness? That is passion.

4. Study your failures The one percent fail- up. Failures are learning opportunities. Without learning opportunities, you can’t get better. What have you learned? What patterns emerge? What did you do that could have done better? Use this time as a time to evaluate and learn. I have learned the most in my life from my failures—not from my successes. In the next post we’ll address structured achievement relative to goals that will address setting a weekly fear/dream goal.

5. Happiness is not the key to success. It is a choice. Money does not make you happy. I know people that have jobs they hate because of the money they make, relatives that are wealthy, miserable and alone. Money doesn’t fill your home with laughter and love. Money is nothing more than a by-product of your job. Success is a choice. Happiness is a choice. You choose to do the job your were hired to do and choose when and how to leverage that job into another. Life is a series of choices.

6. Trust yourself. Watch for the yellow lights or listen for the voice inside. If something doesn’t feel right, it isn’t. I call it, “validate and verify.” Check out what it is that your voice is telling you. Don’t rush. What is that yellow light? Generally, I count how many yellow lights I see in a situation and if I count more than three, it turns to a red light and I don’t move forward. It signals the requirement to have a conversation, and flags that something isn’t right. Every time I didn’t trust myself or ignored the yellow lights—mistakes were made.

7. What miracles have you created in your life? Go to a quiet place and on a yellow pad of paper, write out every miracle you have accomplished in your life. Everything you achieved or created that you never expected to and is a miracle in your mind. List every one. On an index card write down the ten that are mind blowing to you. You simply cannot believe you ever achieved that goal. This is only for you, it doesn’t matter how big or small it is. This is your Miracles card. I put myself through college; it’s a miracle I went and graduated. That is one of about 50 on my yellow pad. Save the back of the index card for the next assignment which is in the next post. Until then, when you get a little depressed one of the things you will do is look at your Miracles card and remind yourself that nothing is impossible.

8. Have the courage to self-reflect. It’s takes courage to reflect on your dreams, vision of how you want your life to be, who you want to be, how it is currently structured. The reality is that we structure our lives around other people’s constraints. Our dreams and our visions are bigger than the constraints around us. If those constraints are too much, you must be willing to ask yourself some dangerous questions.

Take an honest look at your own life. How much is your life in alignment with how you are spending your time and energy? You have to take responsibility to thrive and flourish wherever you are. Think of yourself as a social architect, you create the rules of the game. Whoever has the goal, makes the rules. You may decide that you need to change some of the dynamics in your life in order to get yourself to the next level. You may have to change some of the players and your environment. Have the courage to look at your life and make those decisions.

About the Author:

Ev Nucci is CEO of Nucci Consulting Group, a retained search firm that specializes in the asset management industry. She spent the last three decades building high performance organizations. She started 5 companies, worked as an executive for Johnson & Johnson where she was part of starting two divisions, then ran 15 operating companies, did a start-up for Baxter, started her own company which she grew to to be an industry leader and she sold five years later to the industry giant. In 1996, she founded NCG and leveraged her talent for building high growth organizations to Wall Street. In 1998, she started working with a small fixed income firm, by the name of BlackRock and spent the next ten years working with founders and they have grown into the largest asset management firm in the world. Most recently she served as a consultant and Director for Armored Wolf, LLC a global macro hedge fund. She has interviewed over 15,000 people over the last three decades.

Article Source: ArticlesBase.com – Laid off? Out of work? Life is all about creating yourself!

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I have to admit: on several occasions I have really thought about starting my own business. And in fact, most people I know have had the same thoughts. The thought alone made me do some investigations about what to do in the initial stages, and how to approach setting up a company. And one topic I have consistently encountered is the business plan; a good business plan is absolutely mandatory prior to setting up a successfull business. Writing an excellent business plan serves two main purposes for the upcoming entrepreneur:

1. The business plan forces upcoming entrepreneurs to think over each and every aspect of their future busines; it forces entrepreneurs to dig into every detail of their idea, from the basic concept to the market and market developments, the name of the company, legal issues, financing, competion, personnel, and to put them on paper. A great amount of new businesses actually go bankrupt because of flaws in the business plan, or the complete inexistence of it.
2. The business plan is an important tool for convincing third parties to do business with you, be it banks, venture capitalists, friends and family, or investors. It is a marketing and presentation document, without which any company or person is unlikely to do business with you or lend you money.

The form of the business plan is quite irrelevant, it may be made using Excel, a word processing program, or another program specifically designed for creating business plans. Whichever method you choose, each business plan should be clearly structured, and should contain the following information:

The Management Summary

The Management Summary is the final summary of your business plan. It is usually at the very front of the plan, and it is intended to sum up the most important information for managers, who may not have the time to read through the entire document. The Management Summary is usually written at the end, when the rest of the document has been completed, and should contain the most important key facts of the business plan. Additionally, the Management Summary should convince the reader why the business will be so successful based on these key facts.

Business Concept

The business concept should provide the opportunity, that you have thought over all the aspects of your idea, its products and services, suppliers, and the market. What is it exactly what you want to sell? What makes it unique, or why is it going to be successful? How or where did you get the idea, and why are you so passionate about it? Explain the idea as detailed as you can.

Have you already identified your market? Who will be your customers? Where do they live, what are their living habits, and which age do they typically have? Are they individuals or corporations? And last but not least, how is your product going to serve your customers, what benefits will they have, and how will it make their life easier? Why should these people actually buy your product?

Additionally, find out who will be your suppliers, and include it also in the business plan. At what price will you be buying goods and equipment, where are the suppliers located? Will you be using only one supplier or multiple suppliers?

Company / Organisation

A company can have different legal structures. What will the legal entity of your company? For example, in the U.S. a Limited Company (Ltd.) is a legal entity, so is a sole trader. Legal entities differ strongly per country, the best source of information is your local chamber of commerce. What are the pro’s and con’s of that legal entity?

Also describe the future workflow in your future company. If you need personnel, how much do you need, and what tasks will there be for them? Who will be reporting to whom? Will they be full-time or part-time employees?

Location

Your business will need a location, and often the location makes the difference between earnings or losses. Explain thoroughly why you have decided for a particular location. By doing so you should take into account the infrastructure, costs for telecommunication, heat, water, average salaries and wages, taxes, buying power, etc. Gather as much information as possible. Perhaps you have access to databases, which are able to provide this information.

Competition

Researching competition can be quite time consuming. As with the rest of the plan, be as specific as you can: who will be your competitors, and which are the most important ones? What is the market share of these competitors? What is their pricing policy, and their method for distribution? How will your competition probably respond to your market entry, and what differentiates you from your competitors, i.e. what do you intend to offer what they can not?

Employees

This section is a more detailed elaboration of the requirements of the future employees. What tasks will they be having, who will reporting to whom, and where will you get your employees? Additionally, which qualities do you find important, and which salaries will you pay to which employee? How about taxes? Where will you find your employees? Will you advertise in the local newspapers or perhaps online? How much do such advertisements cost?

Advertising

How do you intend to make your potential customers aware of your product? Will you advertise, and if yes, where? How much does this cost? Be as specific as you can, you may even already design your future advertising campaign and attach it to the business plan. This will show others that you have truly thought about your concept in the greatest detail, and that you are serious about executing your plan.

Opportunities & Threats

Opportunities and threats are aspects of the business which are ‘out of control’ of the entrepreneur, and should not be confused with ‘strengths and weaknesses’. An opportunity of threat might be a specific trend, governmental developments, changes in buying power or tax, specific actions of your potential competition… anything that you can not control directly, but which should still be taken into account. A well written opportunities and threats analysis demonstrates that you are focussing long-term , and you are taking each and every possibility into account.

Goals

Here you can define the goals of your business. Where do you want to go after setting up the business? Where will you be in 1 year, in 3 years, 5 years and 10 years? Try to quantify your goals as much as you can, for example by stating:

In 5 years time, the business should have a market share of xx%

In 3 years time, the annual revenue should be xx US Dollars.

Finances

Last but not least, you will need to write down the projected initial investments, operative costs, and projected reveneues and taxes as detailed as possible. There are many factors to be considered here, and there are many templates available on the internet which you can download for free. Additionally, perhaps the best first point of contact would be your local chamber of commerce; they might have templates available which are specifically customized for your market, or they might know where to obtain such templates.

Writing a good business plan of high quality will take up much time, but it is essential for your future business to succeed. Perhaps, the business plan will in the end even demonstrate that your initial idea is not feasible at all, or that the company would not make any profits. In that case, be happy that you found out during the planning phase and that you had a chance to abort, rather than setting up the company without a plan.

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