Bright Builders isn't the only eBay training around, and certainly not the cheapest. However, the value I've already gotten seems worth my investment.
I'm not going to detail the training here - this isn't a sales pitch, and you'll find no affiliate link on this post. But I figure that the tons of material here, with web pages, mp3's, Camtasia videos, and all by people who are certified by eBay as knowing their stuff.
While I've only had the first lesson, I've been able to absorb most of what there is no their site and have a good idea where I'm heading with it. Down side is that this training is initially scheduled to take place every other week - which might be a good schedule for most, but I'm a bit more motivated than the regular Joe/Josie.
You see, that hefty chunk of change on a credit card is the key point to resolve. Sure they guarantee you'll make it back, but it requires you work at it. However, the idea that I can make these payments as well as cover other bills and meanwhile quitting my day job is just too much of a motivation for me to turn down.
The life of a wage-slave
Let's look at what 90-some percent of our nation does: slave for their wages. Essentially, you are giving away roughly half your waking hours each week in exchange for usually a fixed pay scale, which you hope increases each year to keep up with inflation.
Practically, you are a wage-slave and frankly are just pissing your life away. I know of people who work a factory job and set it up to get overtime for more pay. So they're working 50+ hour work and probably live no more than 1/2 hour's drive away (add an hour to their work day). Say 60 hours a week total. Now that means that their weekend is half-used up, giving them a single day of rest and then back at it again. So you can buy that big boat for the lake - you can only use it two or three times a year.
Let's talk taxes. Figure at a subsistence level, you're giving up around 30% of your pay every year to the government, most of which you'll never see again. And figure that as the government isn't popular with anyone (even those who work for it directly), you're just tossing 1/3rd of your money down the tubes. Currently, when you get overtime, it throws you into a higher tax bracket - so now you're throwing 50 % of the money you make away. At $30,000 a year, you keep $20K. At $50,000 a year, you keep $25K.
You work 50-60 hour weeks to make that $50K. So your weekend is roughly 10-20 hours usable time.
One story I was told: a girl went to college to learn the best-paid job possible - dental hygienist. After working for a year, she found out that her take-home pay was the same at full time employment as they would be if she only worked part-time. So she cut back her hours and spent the rest of the time either surfing or skiing. 20 hour work week, 50 hours personal time.
That is the insanity of paid employment - working for someone else. The more you work, the less you get paid. Adding another part-time job just kills you off slowly. No time for yourself and the taxes and deductions are as much as they can possibly take from you without sparking a revolt (known as election upset).
How working for yourself is viewed by the government
Really, this is the best way to get the most use out of your earned income. You earn it however you like, not trying to fit into a uniform schedule and dress-code that someone else considers optimal (Can you say: "Would you like fries with that?").
The government actually wants you to go into business for yourself. That's why they give "perks" to corporations. They want you to form a corporation to get the tax breaks you deserve.
Corporations are legal entities - meaning they are viewed as a person legally (where the "corpse" part comes in as part of that word). Now, despite all the class-warfare going around, you never really tax corporations. Every tax you put on them simply raises their costs - which is passed onto you with higher prices.
Corporations aren't taxed on total income - they are taxed after expenses are taken out. (I'm shorthanding this tremendously, but the basic fact are sound.) AND, the government gives out tax breaks to encourage corporations to act, invest, spend in certain ways. Like advertising is all written off, even if it didn't result in increased sales. And charitable donations (like to a non-profit you are on the board of) come out before any taxes are paid.
If you set up your corporation in states where there are no corporate taxes, then you only have to pay the Federal taxes. Now I'm telling you here to go ahead and pay all the taxes you're supposed to - but don't set yourself up to pay more than you have to.
An online business doesn't have to have an actual physical location. So you could live in one state and work for a business in another. While your servers (and bank accounts) could be in a foreign country. So, depending on the laws, you can actually set up your business to operate at a bare minimal tax level.
Or you could continue paying out the wazoo as a wage-slave here on Planet Earth in America. (And several countries have even higher personal income taxes than ours - but we are one of the top corporate taxers that exist.)
My point here is that you should be working for yourself and not the government or anyone else. Our government is telling you to set yourself up as a corporation and then contract your labor to another company - or better yet, create a new product people will buy and then sell it to them. The highest penalties they have are for people who make a lot of money personally. So you're not supposed to make money - your corporation is. That corporation is supposed to reinvest (spend) excess income and not show any income on paper. (Funny enough, it tells workers to stay poor and so pay less taxes, while corporations are supposed to stay "broke" on paper - to pay less taxes. That's just the way the system is set up.
Who actually pays taxes
The smart rich own nothing and all their expenses are paid by their corporation. They don't have earned income and so can't be taxed personally. The dumb rich pay exorbitant taxes personally, due to the amount of salaries they earn. Sure they have more money, but they don't get to keep much of it. (Politician Edwards falls in between. As a multi-millionaire lawyer, everything went to his corporation, and he paid very few dividends to himself as the only stockholder. As a politician, he campaigned for the poor, but was unable to keep his own finances secret - like the size of his house, you could see it all from a distance.)
Reagan changed the tax laws because of the problem he ran into as an actor. Finally landing a great movie role, he found that over 80% of what he was going to make went straight to the government - he was going to keep very little of it. Shortly after that, he got into politics through the Actor's Guild, and then as California's governor.
Anyway, I didn't intend to spiel on and on about taxes. It's just a point of control. Other people have it, you don't - that is, if you only work for earned income as opposed to going into business for yourself.
When you're running your own business, you can say what goes where and what expenses you are going to make - as a corporation, you keep all your money until you are done spending it and then you pay taxes on what's left over. As I mentioned before, taxes are viewed by the corporation as another expense - they are figuring out what's going to be left over to either reinvest or pay to stockholders as dividend (which can then be taxed by the government as personal income).
Who pays all taxes, actually? The employee - that working class individual and those white-collar people, all those who work for someone else and are told what to do each day as opposed to making their own decisions about what they want to accomplish that day and why.
As these politicians tell you so-and-so should pay more taxes, realize that it's probably you and me she or he is talking about.
How to really control all your own income, profits, and taxes.
Work for yourself - fire your boss.
The solution for retired boomers with fixed incomes is to put a small percentage of that aside to play with and invest in real financial independence. What they do have in spades is time. So take that time and convert it to earning income again. But what you do to earn income will mean changing your mindset from employee to entrepreneur.
If you thought taxes were bad, this is even more insidious.
Basically, you've been trained to be an employee (and dutifully pay taxes) your entire life - from the moment you were born, all the instructions and coaching and lessons you've had were entirely and completely designed to make you a creature of habit - being able to sit in a box or on a line and take whatever is dished out.
Factually, one author traced back our current educational system to the Prussian military model, which was used to create a single military force from the separated states of post World War I Germany. (Which force was then used to create World War II.) Seems the old general figured that if you kept people segregated by age and then trained them in large groups, they'd be all set to obey orders as a company or platoon.
In reality, the best schooling is proving to be home schooling (who wins all those spelling and geography bees?) and programs which are self-paced give better results. Lock-step training keeps the bulk of the class tied down to the slowest member (who is constantly getting D's and hearing about it).
But turning over a lifetime of training isn't all that hard - it takes persistence, but you've retrained yourself constantly during your life. You just have to find out how to take control over those tools you've been using all along.
Your own personal re-training tools to change your life (and make you as rich as you want).
- Nothing is permanent except change - and it doesn't keep a steady pace (change changes, too).
- You can change any habit in 30 days, regardless of how long you've had it.
- Your world view is reinforced by your surrounding environment.
- But your own thoughts are dominant over everything else. Everything else.
So get over any idea that you have retired (or will retire) into some sort of Security. No security ever existed - but you do have choice. Everyone was born with Free Will - it's what makes humankind that way (and not our opposable thumbs). (And forget the idea that Social Security will be around or that you are going to be allowed to spend any of it. Nice having governments, but it's damned hard depending on them...)
Second, any mental habit you have can be changed in about 30 days if you consistently work at it. That's one serious truth. "The Secret" DVD had that number come up consistently. When I researched it out, it turned up studies by various universities which covered the findings that any mental pattern or habit or conditioning would change in 30 days (gradually) if you regularly reinforced a substitute pattern over the top of it. People were enabled to quit smoking if they consciously got a drink of water every single time they had an urge to smoke. And there are other examples. But the key point is to daily and probably several times every day (yes, that's every single day) for at least 30 days put a new pattern in effect and consciously use it - and whatever is keeping you from achieving that will dissipate or move to the background.
Third, your environment is constantly reinforcing whatever you think about yourself. For that matter, whatever you think about the world at large. Now I'm not stating you can change a Democrat into a Republican if you constantly surrounded them with campaign literature and videos - oooh, that's not a pretty picture either way... But you've surrounded yourself with stuff and that stuff is telling you the same thing back. Want to get over a nasty break-up? Get rid of anything around you that reminds you of that person. An age-old trick - taking a long vacation was also the same cure. Look around your work space, or your home and see what you have sitting there. Want to change your mind? Change your space - rearrange the furniture and fittings, or get some different ones.
Fourth, the oldest "secret" is that your thoughts make up your life. Sure - follow Earl Nightingale's "Strangest Secret", which he got from Napoleon Hill ("Think and Grow Rich"), which he in turn got from Charles Haanel ("Master Key System") and that came from Thomas Troward ("Edinburgh Lectures") who figured it out from studying each of the major religions' scriptures in their own language. Of course, even older than that is Huna, which shows that this idea has been floating around since before recorded history.
Look around your life - what you think determines your actions, which determines your results. Any attitude (or lack of it) is the difference between winners and losers in any competitive sport. Geniuses have generally a very unique approach to life, composed of both intuitive inspiration and persistence toward a goal only they can see. In both cases, it's the personal attitude which launches the progress toward the result (or impedes it).
How to apply this to make yourself an entrepreneur - and a lot of money meanwhile
The trick is that most of your attitudes are on automatic. Meaning that they have become habits.
But, you recall, habits can be changed. The trick is to set it up so that you constantly remind yourself with what you want to be, do, or have as the result. This used to be called "affirmations" - which have been widely panned because people didn't understand how they worked and how to make them work.
The first thing is to set up a vision statement that works.
Just like sales and marketing - people respond to emotions. So you really have to get into the feeling of being, doing, or having whatever you want - and in the tense that it's already there. (Check out "The Secret" DVD for more data on this - but Earl Nightingale also covered it in his "Strangest Secret" recording, available for free online.)
Now, you set up your vision statement and read it with the feeling it's already occurred - you know, full 3D full-on vision of it - two or three times every day. Follow the synchronicities and intuitions you get on this as you go.
The next thing is to have a plan. Work out backwards of what you need to do in order to achieve or acquire what you want. Getting a million-dollar income is going to mean starting out with some income weekly that you produce yourself, independent of any job or pension. Use your time, invest it, and provide some valuable service others will pay you for.
Go over Napoleon Hill's "Think and Grow Rich" again - those sections having to do with planning. The old adage applies: Plan your work, Work your plan. That plan has to align with your vision statement, has to back it up.
Review your plan weekly and write a list of To Do actions which will move that plan forward that week. And take that weekly To Do list and create daily To Do lists and follow them. Work these over back and forth - and start making that plan create your vision.
Those three steps: Vision statement, Plan, To Do's - these are everything you need to do in order to change your world into what you want it to be.
Yes, just that simple.
Now, about that environment you live in... You're going to want to do some changing here. Whatever you've put around you has or hasn't helped you become where you are today - looking at making yourself into a millionaire or at least financially independent.
Look over what you're reading and listening to (including your friends and in-laws) to see if these are helping you or hindering you. If they aren't helping you, replace them with something that is. Listening to "shock jocks" on the morning commute and horrendous news and weather on the evening ride home - these aren't making you rich. Period. Replace them with recordings by Brian Tracy, or Robert Kiyosaki, or anyone who has made themselves rich and can now talk the talk honestly.
Same at home. TURN OFF THE TV. Period. Doesn't get you anywhere. Get your news from the Internet - but don't spend forever getting it. Instead, set up a system which will give you inspirational or educational MP3's so you can transfer them to your car for the commute and also listen to them as background data.
Set up your computer to give you all the PDF's on marketing and financial planning you can find. Study these. Buy books (or check them out from the library - cheaper) and read them regularly to find out what you could be and should be doing to achieve what you really want out of life.
What you're doing is reinforcing your vision, making it become a reality around you. Bit by bit - much like building a tall and wide brick wall - that reality will start showing up around you.
Don't look for the immediate. It can happen, but look - you've taken a lifetime to program yourself into the state your end. All you've done, month after month, is to reinstate and strengthen these patterns and habits. So it might take a bit to undo it. But you'll see progress if you look for it. And when you see it, reinforce it.
Summary - let's recap:
1. You can change your world, nothing stays the same. Just take control of the change process.
2. Figure out what you want out of life - write this out in the past tense.
3. Review this daily, getting all the emotion of that - as if it's there right in front of you.
4. Get a plan that works for you so you can achieve this vision - revise it as many times as you need to when you find it needs improvement.
5. Work out weekly and daily To Do lists to get that plan accomplished. Get these done to result. Move them forward until they get done - or find out why they aren't and rectify that reason.
6. Surround yourself with supportive material - change your environment to help you make that transition into your new life.
Once you've got all this done, you can then simply change your vision to encompass a new goal. And then repeat those steps above to get that new goal achieved.
These steps aren't original to me - the authors I've mentioned above all said this same thing in their own way. And these principles are in all the major religions and philosophies on this planet.
Look, there are a lot of people wanting to help you improve your life. Tons of them. There are thousands of books and recordings which do nothing but call out for your to read and listen to them. Pick out the ones which will help you to form that new life. Study, read, listen to them. Absorb them.
And then start looking for hints, clues, and surprises around you which say your new life is arriving...
Best of luck to you and - Good Hunting!
