What do you consider most important:

• Making money OR
  
• Spending time with family

What is your answer? It’s pretty obvious right? Most people would say that spending time with family is most important and you know what…they are exactly right! That is more important, but, if you have no money, are you going to enjoy that time you spend with your family? Or are you going to even have that time to spend? Money isn’t everything right, but what is everything without it? What is your life like with money….and without it? Think about it a bit.

I will be straight up honest with all of you right now…I put money making above family time! Yes, you heard me right. I put making money above family time, but I have a good reason. Here it is…If I am not making money, I cannot fully enjoy my family time. If I can’t provide a good living for my family, while I am with them, I will be thinking of what a failure I have been to them. While with them in physical form, my mind will be somewhere else! My mind will be thinking about the money I am short that month or the bills coming up. So in reality, I am not even truly spending that time with them.

Time spent half-heartedly is time wasted! If you aren’t giving something all you’ve got, if you aren’t completely present, it would have been better if you weren’t there at all. If I am to truly enjoy my family, I must know that I have everything else in order. Given I don’t have to have billions of dollars coming in before I am comfortable. I just have to know that my short term future is immediately taken care of. For example, if I know that my rent or mortgage is coming up next week and I don’t have but fifty bucks in my bank account, my wheels are turning. Since I work from home, I have the freedom to choose my schedule right? So, if my kids get home from school and want to go catch bugs, it’s 2:30 in the afternoon, should I pick up and go catch bugs right then? I wouldn’t be able to truly enjoy that time with my kids because my mind is preoccupied with bills, so I would hold off until I feel I have accomplished all that I can with my work day. Then maybe when six o’clock rolls around, I can hang out with my kids. Now this is just an example but how true is it.

In order to be truly present in the lives of my family, I must make money. I must provide. That is my first and foremost responsibility to them. Once that is done, I can then devote all of my energy, authentically, to them. Family is always first in my mind, that’s why I make the choices I do. It’s to ensure that I will always be there. As a father who missed out on 8 month out of the first year of my oldest daughters life, I know what it’s like to have your child look up at you and not recognize who you are. It’s not something every father dreams about.

Money is a lifestyle tool. Make enough of it and you can live your life however you want to. That’s the important principle here. Now let’s make it happen!

Let’s scrap the dictionaries for today and define what Entrepreneurship is. I think it’s more of a concept or an idea rather than a thing or a status. It is an action word and something that does not revolve around everyone. It is a choice, a role and a journey all in one. It is the very concept that the American economy and several economies around the world thrive on and depend on for survival. It is the idea that will propel you, I and the rest of humanity toward a better financial future. It’s the backbone of all commerce. It’s the reason jobs exist.

Wrap your thoughts around this: Entrepreneurship is the process of making YOU better, more profitable and more capable. I love the fact that the word “process” is used here. Entrepreneurship is a process that involves taking risk, failing, succeeding, learning, growing, connecting, changing, consistency and many many more! You can’t just take a college course and say, “BAM, I am now an Entrepreneur. Now where’s my money?!” It doesn’t work that way and never will. A college education cannot teach you how to become a true Entrepreneur. Business ethics, economic education and other skills will only take you so far in the process. More is required.

Now allow me to get a little religious here without getting too religious. We all have heard the phrase, “Entrepreneur spirit!” When someone has the spirit of an Entrepreneur, it’s almost as if they are possessed, controlled and driven by some unseen force or power. They have that extra bounce in their step, their creative wheels are always turning and they live each day with more than average passion. They have a definite purpose.

The Entrepreneur spirit is the additional piece of the pie. It is the thing that an educational institute cannot teach. It’s kind of like a talent. In order to become better at that talent, you must use it and exercise it. Some are born with it, others aren’t.

Entrepreneurship is a process of taking an idea and changing it into an enterprise that will benefit OTHERS. The trick to making a fortune is to find a solution to a problem. Right!? Is it really that simple? Yes, it is. If someone wants to listen to music all day, the Entrepreneur makes the mp3 player. If someone needs shoes in Africa but can’t afford them, the Entrepreneur starts a business that can provide shoes for the needy. If someone is looking to change their lifestyle from struggling to flourishing, the Entrepreneur provides the income opportunity. Supply and Demand. I would think, for an Entrepreneur, it is reversed. Demand and Supply!

Entrepreneurship is the process of learning to be truly FREE! What does it mean to be “Truly” free? Does it mean to live in a country that allows you the right to do as you please, to come and go as you may? Does it mean the right to practice your choice of religion or exercise your right to freedom of speech? I live right here in the USA, the land of the free. Does that mean I am truly free?

Freedom, true freedom, is Entrepreneurship. No boss to govern you, no time restraints (unless you choose them), no requirements or outside dictators. It’s just simply you, your creativity, your ambition and your ability to choose for yourself the lifestyle you are to live today and tomorrow and the next day. Wake up in the morning because you want to, not because you have to. Entrepreneurship gives you the ability to create solutions, assist and inspire others and in turn, get rewarded for it.

Life in Entrepreneurship is a blank canvas. Most people would be terrified by it as they think of their lack of artistic ability, but the Entrepreneur in spirit is excited about it because that means he can do with it whatever he chooses. No coloring within the lines, no clashing colors and no defined picture. Just pure freedom.

When the sun goes down at the end of each day, I can say that I am living free. As the sun rises in the morning, it rises just for me. It gives me another today to create my day as I see fit! All in all, my worst day as an Entrepreneur is far better than my best day imaginable not as an entrepreneur. I can truly say, “I am Free!” Can you?

For the last several years, my wife Amy and I have been teaching ordinary people how to create success in a home based business. These people range from stay at home Moms to former military officers and all have one or both of these  common goals: Time Freedom or Financial Freedom. It seems that as people realize how much fun they are not having in their current lives, they start to look for alternate ways to provide them with a different kind of lifestyle. Most people, including you, want a change to take place in their financial life or their personal life. Most people have no idea what that change is, but they know they want it. Some people are very clear on what they want to change but have no idea how to do it.

This is where we come into the picture. We were at this same stage several years ago. I was in a job, knowing I didn’t want to be there, yet I didn’t know how to change it all. Hats off to my wife for finding the way to make that change occur. She discovered a simple system designed for people with zero experience in network marketing or internet advertising. It is a system designed to inspire change in people’s lives. It is a system created by visionaries who wanted that change to happen in their own lives and then in the lives of thousands of others as well.

The simple fact is, most people spend their entire lives just living day to day. They fail to plan for their future. They fail to plan for much of anything thinking they have a sense of security. Until one day, that security ends with a layoff or a dip in the economy and then what?

Why live your entire life enjoying the struggle when you have the ability to skip the struggle and just enjoy life. Time Freedom is reserved for those who step out of the ordinary. Financial Freedom is reserved for the ones who are willing to take a risk and stick their neck out on the line. To have both, it requires leverage. Leverage over your time!

That is simply all my wife and I do. We show you Leverage!

What is an Entrepreneur who is everywhere all at once without ever having to set foot outside his home? Wealthy! Wealthy with Time and Wealthy with Money!

I think it’s about time for you to learn how to walk the walk that most of the people you associate with everyday will never walk. It’s time for you to learn how to walk the path of Leverage!

Here’s a quick review of an RSS submission site at http://www.rsshugger.com. Instead of paying to get my site listed in on their site you can opt into posting a simple blog with a link back to their site. It’s a well designed website with an okay Alexa rating. The important thing is the link to your blog and the continually updated content there on their site. I think it will grow into something big in the near future. Check it out!

There are also many other sites out there you can submit your RSS feeds to that will increase your readership and rankings in the listings. I know this blog is mainly entrepreneurship and Personal Development, but look for a post in the near future with a list of sites to submit your RSS feed to.

Many of you know that I am part of many social networking sites on the net. Honestly, creating profiles on social sites has been a little addicting and before I knew it, I was part of several hundred social sites ranging from Home Based Business Communities to Personal Development Communities. Trying to stay somewhat active in all of them is quite frankly impossible.

One of the things I wanted to accomplish was to link all of these social sites with my blog so that when I published a blog post, it would show on my social profiles. Some social networks aren’t as advanced as others, so I wanted to pick several of the main ones I was active on. Some of the big ones are Facebook, Myspace, LinkedIn, and Twitter. How could I update these places without having to do them all individually or without having to find a WordPress plugin for each individual social site?

Ping.fm

I discovered a site called Ping.fm that did exactly what I was looking for. It is a site that can send an update to all of these major social sites as well as many others simply by typing it on their website. All I had to do is configure my social sites on Ping.fm, enter an update and click “Ping It!” It keeps track of your character count for the character sensitive micro blogging sites such as Twitter. You can also choose what you want the service to do on any specific social site such as micro blog or status update.

So, the next task was to figure out how to update all of these social sites every time I post a blog entry with a link back to my blog post. Since I use WordPress software to power this blog, I found a plugin that works perfectly called WPing.fm. You can configure this plugin to update Ping.fm with the title and a link to your blog post. Very cool!

This one plugin has increased my readership to my blog and saved me so much time. I have made thousands of dollars from the readership I get from this service as well.

They are continually adding new social sites to their list so check back to Ping.fm frequently.

For me, I give it 5 stars out of 5.

If there is a better service out there, I would like to hear about it. Because as of right now, Ping.fm is it!

I have always had a huge interest in the Roman Empire. I don’t know if that interest came after watching “Gladiator” or if it is something I have always had an interest for. What an insane time to live on earth! The more I look into it, there was very little individual moral value, very little trust and a lot of death! It seems that the only way for the Roman empire to survive was to constantly expand. The people thrived on it and from some of my reading, it kept order in the empire.

Now, I don’t know if this is an actual quote from a Roman Emperor or not, but I thought it was profound. I first heard this while watching a movie, believe it or not! I swear, sometimes I wonder about myself. At times, all I speak in is movie quotes. Maybe I should just invent a new language called Hollywood! The quote was spoken by the character who played Octavius in “Night at the Museum.” He said, “We Expand or Die!”

Now the translation for the time of the Romans was to explore new lands and conquer. Power, wealth and death are the key benefits of that sort of expanding. For the Romans, it was a way of life.

“We expand or die!” The same can be said of us today except we must expand in a different way. We must expand individually. What happens to someone who chooses not to expand themselves? And no I’m not talking about physically! Nobody wants to be a walking blimp! I’m talking about our learning, our knowledge, our experience and our minds. We must expand in order to truly live. Someone who fails to grow, fails. We are all given life so that we can truly live. Living is learning and we learn by doing. Starting from birth we are born to grow, physically and mentally. Our bones grow and our muscles grow. Something is seriously wrong if they don’t. Our minds too, are meant to grow and expand. What is a cell phone without cell phone service? A waste! So are we unless we choose to expand our minds. Someone going through life, not fulfilling their true potential, is struggling against their natural inheritance. Everything about our existence is about thriving and learning to the absolute best of our abilities!

We Expand or Die!

The way to expand is through Personal Development, experiences, knowledge and learning. It is a continual process. The other day my daughter told me she wanted to become an athlete when she was a teenager. That question led into a conversation of what it would take to become an athlete. I reminded her of our last hike we had and how it wasn’t so easy. She complained almost the entire hike. After our conversation, she realized that the hard things make her stronger and the moment she stops doing those things is the moment she will get further and further from her desire of being an athlete. It’s a continual process.

Consistency brings results. Sparsity brings struggle. Doing nothing brings nothing. The moment we stop expanding is the moment we truly do die!