Today could have been a frustrating day.

I began my day intent on creating a new great new training module for my team and learning a new software application that would save me time and money in my business.

When I arrived in my office (across the hall from my bedroom LOL) my best laid plans seemed like they were endangered because I had all of these situations(notice I didn’t call them problems) to resolve. I realized that I had not been paid for some consulting work that I had done, and when I called their accounts payable department I got the run-around. I received cryptic and annoying letter from my bank and another form letter from another company claiming I had committed error. To cap it off, a huffy email from an hot-tempered lead was sitting in my email in-box.

I could feel my fists clench as I envisioned my once productive workday sacrificed to busywork.

After a momentary spiral, I remembered what my millionaire mentors have told and shown me–Always approach your business solution focused, rather than problem paralyzed.

Remaining solution focused maintains your power and clarifies what’s really important.

In business, profit and productivity are important because we, as entrepreneurs, no longer trade time for dollars. We only get paid for results.

So I completely set the challenges aside. First, I invested a few hours in creating that new training module and learning that new software just as I had originally intended. I wasn’t about to let those issues throw me off my game. Only after I had stayed true to my priorities did I turn to the challenges I faced.

I followed-up on the outstanding invoice for my consulting services first because I deserve to be compensated for my expertise. Then I placed two brief calls to resolve the other two matters. In a total of fewer than six minutes, both issues were resolved in my favor. I left the grumpy lead’s email completely alone because she had already shown me that she didn’t qualify for my time. It wasn’t personal.

All told, the challenges that seemed monumental, and could have wasted my entire day, took less than 30 minutes to resolve. I devoted the rest of the afternoon to the business I love.

The next time you face what seem like a laundry list of problems. Re-define them as challenges, and make the decision to stay solution focused. You will protect your time, and you will have mastered another dimension of the millionaire’s mindset.

What’s the state of your internet business toolkit?

Is it overflowing with rusty, outdated tools that barely work?

Too many home-based business beginners AND season internet entrepreneurs answer yes to that question.

If you use one company for web hosting, another for autoresponders, yet another for video marketing…..

If you have logins and passwords scattered across your desk…

If you have wasted hour after hour trying to master one unique system after another….

AND

WORST OF ALL, if you pay hundreds or thousands of dollars in separate monthly fee for each of these services…

THEN YOU HAVE AN OLD TOOL BOX FILLED WITH RUSTY TOOLS.

What good is that?

In case you are new to this blog, there are a few things you should know about me.

First, I only discuss what’s working for me in my own business. No bashing of useless stuff or pay-for-post blogging. I’m an entrepreneur, not a hired gun. I have been an information marketer and home-based business entrepreneur for several years now and have invested countless hours scouring the Internet looking for tools and resources that would keep my skills on the razor’s edge of innovation and skyrocket my business.

Second, you and I both know that time is our most valuable, and limited, asset. That’s why I’ll never waste yours or mine.

Third, I do what works and ALWAYS pay attention when successful people open their Rolodex and disclose their insider secrets. (Many times they keep their secret weapons to themselves.)

As I uncover resources that can assist you because I use them in my business, I’ll let you know what they are so that you can evaluate them for yourself.

What’s the other secret to home-based business millions?

Mindset.

Mindset.

Mindset.

Far more than a matter of attitude and more critical than motivation, mindset is the key to prosperity. What is mindset: the guiding habits of the mind that shape belief and action.

What could be more important than mindset?

Nothing.

Ask almost anyone who has achieved something great in life, and you’ll hear a common thread: they started out with a vision or an idea within themselves long before they saw the results materialize in the physical world.. Then they focused with clarity and intensity on that vision, created habits of the mind to support that vision, and finally organized their actions to make the vision real.

Too often entrepreneurs mistakenly think that should invest their time cultivating their skill and neglect their mindset. The truth is that the mind and the soul are the places from which all great results originate.

Here’s how Napoleon Hill explained it:

“Any dominating idea, plan, or purpose held in your conscious mind through repeated effort and emotionalized by a burning desire for its realization is taken over by the subconscious and acted upon through whatever natural and logical means may be available.”

What are your dominating ideas? What do you spend your day telling yourself? It matters far more than you might think.

Robert Collier, the man who wrote The Letter Book, the secret weapon of the world’s best copywriters, also was fascinated by the power of the mind and the nature of mindset. He spent years studying the true path to success. He said, “Vision gives you the impulse to make the picture your own.”

The process of creating a vision and making it your own is another definition of mindset.

So if you are the path to becoming a millionaire, cultivate and refine your mindset. After all, money is energy and you can draw the millions you seek closer to you by cultivating your mindset.

Millionaire Secret #1:  Mastery of Time

Internet Millionaires understand that time is their most precious asset and they allocate it carefully.  Whether it is with a pen and paper, an Excel spreadsheet, or a PDA, millionaires carefully apportion their time and DECIDE how they will invest (not spend) it.  Ask a millionaire what they’ll be doing tomorrow at 3 pm and chances are she will be able to give you a specific answer.

Here’s a tip, because millionaires understand the value of their time, they appreciate punctuality and understand being late as an insult and an indication of poor character.

Millionaire Secret # 2: Mastery of Specialty

You’ve heard the expression, “jack-of-all-trades, and master of none.”  The jack-of-all-trades rarely becomes a millionaire.  Millionaires recognize their strengths, build on them and collaborate with other people who have strengths in areas where they are less competent.   They don’t invest their precious time trying to perfect their weakest areas.

Millionaire Secret# 3 Mastery of Niche

Ask a millionaire to describe his niche, ideal client or prospect and they won’t say “everyone.”  Millionaires know their niche and focus on selling their products and services within their niche.  The business market in general is going in the direction of niche markets because customers have more choices regarding places to buy their products.

Millionaire Secret #4 Mastery of Untapped Markets

The mastery of niche and specialization create exciting advantages for millionaires.  Since they know so much about their current customers and their needs, they also know whom they do not yet serve and can identify and cultivate untapped markets.

Millionaire Secret # 5: Mastery of the Backend

Millionaires develop several profit centers that allow them to sell products and services to more customers.  The backend part of any company supports these profit centers.  It diversifies a business to bring in money through many different areas.  Millionaires don’t rely on retiring early based on one profit center.

Internet Millionaire Secret #6:  Mastery of Systems

Millionaires know that systems are the key to true efficiency.  They automate as many services as possible.  This will allow you to sell services 24 hours a day 7 days a week online.  Automated services centers cut down on costs and help customers at all hours of the day.  This also means that millionaires conserve their energy for other work, or even play, rather than making their businesses completely dependent on their presence.

A 9-5 job is only short term income. It can be a lot or a little, but fundamentally it is still short term…

Why?

Because the moment you stop working, you stop making money immediately!

Your boss may tolerate your laziness for a few days but if you don’t put in the hours, you will never get anymore pay whether it is weekly, daily or monthly pay!

If you keep on trading time for money, you will never be free from your job!

Online assets are different. Here are a few principles that you can apply to your online business strategy:

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Leverage the Internet to Attract Customers: You can draw in traffic from search engines or viral marketing.

•

Connect with other Internet Marketers. You do not need to build a mailing list if you have created a fantastic product that will keep customers buying and affiliates selling over and over again.

•

Build Your Mailing List. The money is definitely in the list. It takes 15-30 minutes to write a proper E-mail to your mailing list. The great thing about E-mail marketing is you will take the same time to mail your list regardless if your list has 100 people or 100,000 people

•

Cultivate Your Reputation Online: A blogger may start with no RSS subscribers, but the more you blog and the more you network, you will be blogging for the same effort but with more people reading your blog (and you will be able to monetize from the traffic!)

•

Outsource Work. If you are making good money, you will be able to outsource your work to other people and spend more time on marketing your products (hence, making more money!)

Let’s take a look at a typical Internet Marketer…

In your 9-5 job, you may get increments and bonuses and your salary will most definitely exceed your online income in the first few months, but after awhile, when your online assets start generating residual income, you will be able to quit your job once you have all the elements in place.

Think long term

Do not just think of earning ‘enough’. You need to think long term and build a business that is sustainable.

It is like shooting for the stars. If you shoot for the stars, you might not be able to clear the skies, but at least, you will be able to cross the fence.

If you aim too low or too short term, you will fail easily because more than often, we usually don’t usually accomplish our goals to our expectations.

Build your business around your interests

In some business models like blogging, you must be passionate about what you are doing.

If you do not build your business around your interests, people will be able to sense it. It would look ‘fake’ and you will not be able to sustain your interests. Before long, you will be thinking about giving up.

If your business if focused on your interests, you will not feel as though you are taking another job. After all, having ONE job is already bad enough. We want to FREE ourselves from our job, not get another one.

Invest your salary into your business

Certain business models require you to make some investments. Like outsourcing, buying domain names, paid traffic and others. Do not believe the myth that it doesn’t cost money to build a business online – it is inexpensive but NOT free.

The advantage of having a job is that you can invest some of your salary to get things done. After all you only have 4 hours and the weekends to build your business. You must learn to invest your time AND money wisely to achieve maximum results.

1) Silence the Critics

Expecting a slick business strategy to begin the list? Nope. Great business owners have long known that all success begins in the mind first. Understand the difference between constructive criticism and destructive doubt.

In your business, you will have those confidence killers, dream stealers, fun suckers…whatever you want to call them who might attack your ambition. You will have people who try to tell you that you can’t achieve your goals, that what you try won’t work. Set the criticism aside and don’t engage them!

Instead surround yourself with mentors, coaches, and like-minded people on the positive path to their dreams.

2) Understand Your Target Market!

Do you understand your target market? Are you aware of their pain, needs, desires and driving ambitions? Does your website speak to your target audience? (It doesn’t have to be pretty or perfect to be highly effective.) Successful work at home entrepreneurs understand the importance of a quality customer experience. Make some changes so that visitors and customers feel from the moment they visit your site that you are helping them solve their most pressing problem.

3) Define Your Signature Style

Pick up any business publication and you will hear a ton about personal branding. But what is it? Branding really just refers to the creation and consistent articulation of your core principles and a signature style in every aspect of your business. What about you? Are you working on your brand? How will you stand apart? And remember, your target market doesn’t have to be just like you- but the more that they identify the uniqueness of your company or product, the better the chance that you will convert customers into fans.

4) Constantly Expand Your Internet Marketing Education

Effective marketing is the foundation of profitability. If you cannot connect with your customers, the quality of your product or service won’t matter. From the largest corporations to the newest start-up, businesses shift more and more of their marketing budget and energy to the internet. The best news for today’s entrepreneurs is that video, article distribution services, autoresponders and social media are making vastly reducing the cost of marketing.
Are you learning all you can about internet marketing so that you can succeed in your business? Do you reinvest in ebooks, coaching and mentoring, and software?
If not, you’re cheating yourself and your business.

5) Take Action
The most successful work-at-home business owners know that action beats deliberation every time. In business, as in the rest of life, the more attention paid to action, the more dynamic the results. If you get stuck, join a forum or ask for help. Better yet, find a mentor and mastermind.

From the covers of magazines to business shows, entrepreneurs receive great admiration.  But new entrepreneurs often make the mistake of putting successful people on a pedestal and then talk themselves out of their own greatness by saying, “I could never be like that.”

Think only “certain people” from “the right side of the tracks” are the ones who become successful entrepreneurs?  A recent Kauffman Foundation report suggests that you think again.

Researchers from the University of Akron, the University of Southern California, and Duke University surveyed 549 entrepreneurs who founded businesses in some of the most dynamic sectors if the economy released the report in July 2009.

“The Anatomy of an Entrepreneur: Family Background and Motivation” paints a compelling, and surprising portrait of what makes entrepreneurs tick.

From computing to health care, aerospace to electronics, successful entrepreneurs reported some surprising things about themselves.  What were some of the most surprising findings?

Most of these entrepreneurs came from middle class or working-class backgrounds and half the group and were the first in their families to start a business.  Less than one percent of them came from extremely rich or poor backgrounds.

Why did they take the entrepreneurial plunge?

The report finds several top motivations.  They wanted to build wealth, see an idea of theirs come to fruition, and they wanted to own a company.  Also interesting, they found little appeal in working for someone else.

Think that entrepreneurs are hard-driving single guys?  Not so, says the report.  Most of them are actually middle-aged married folks with at least one child at the time they began their companies.

Is it Labor Day or Festivus?

The two holidays are easy to confuse.

Back in the 90s, I watched my share of Seinfeld.

In the December ’97 episode entitled, The Strike, Kramer goes back to work at H&H Bagels after his 12-year strike because workers had finally achieved the pay increase he and the others had been demanding.

One day at the bagel shop, Frank Kostanza explains how a doll inspired him to create he origins of Festivus–—the alternative holiday he invented as to protest the commercialization of Christmas.

The Festivus celebration begins with the Airing of Grievances in which people sit around a table and recount the ways that they have been disappointed or offended.

Sound familiar?

Around pools, parks and backyard barbecues this Labor Dar, lots of people will complain about jobs they hate, criticize co-workers and bosses who have disappointed them, and express fear of looming cutbacks of all kinds.

That sounds like Festivus to me.

I took a visit over to the Department of Labor website to read about the history of the holiday.

According to the Labor Department:
“Labor Day, the first Monday in September, is a creation of the labor movement and is dedicated to the social and economic achievements of American workers. It constitutes a yearly national tribute to the contributions workers have made to the strength, prosperity, and well-being of our country.”

Labor Day began within the union movement, not on a Monday but Tuesday September 5, 1882 in New York City. On June 28, 1894, Congress passed the act that made it a national holiday.

If you work for someone else, don’t waste beautiful day acting like Kramer or Frank from Seinfeld. Don’t bore your friends and family with your grievances. Make the change that counts and decide to get the information you need to achieve true freedom.

If you are already an entrepreneur or home-based business owner, keep your distance from the Festivus revelers you might encounter today. Don’t join the celebration by complaining about the challenges you face.

Here’s the bottom line: When you escape the world of toil, the thankless labor that makes you miserable, Festivus, like Labor Day, isn’t quite so much fun. Make this a constructive and pleasant day by getting out of the rat race and on the path to free enterprise.

Back in the 1980s, if you passed a newsstand, you had to have seen a picture of Kathy Ireland.  She was a Sports Illustrated model who graced the walls and dorm rooms of men around the world.

I remember seeing her face and likeness, but she never said anything particularly memorable that I recall.

Fast forward twenty-plus years, and the situation is completely different.

Since leaving the modeling industry, Ireland has transformed herself from a super-model into a super businesswoman.  She reigns over a multi-billion dollar empire.  Her business philosophy intrigues me, and every new entrepreneur or home-based business person owes I to themselves and their businesses to pay attention to what she says:

“And, my beliefs are that the business needs to serve the family rather than the family serve the business.”

That’s one compelling idea!

Too often entrepreneurs import bad habits of their employee mindset into their businesses and structure things in ways that exhaust rather than empower them.

As employees they accepted assignments that conflicted with their family obligations and felt diminished.  Or, they fumed as they operated on someone else’s schedule because they thought they had no choice.

New entrepreneurs have a chance to structure their business lives on terms that suit the rest of their lives, but sometimes forget that fact.  Home-based businesses offer even more flexibility, but the key is to build a business to suit your family.

Shift your mindset TODAY.  Stop running your business like you are an employee, rather than the owner and boss!

The creation of a business to suit your family is the ultimate in luxury lifestyle.  Better than fancy boats or swank vacations, lifestyle freedom is a priceless perk of home-based business.

Ireland’s business principles shed light on a key to her amazing career.  Take her advice, and mine, and create a business that serves your family.

Jennifer Baszile

Ever wondered what’s the difference between a small business and a home-business?  It’s an important question, and I’ve been trying to figure out the answer.

After lots of thought, research, and consideration, I think I’ve got it.

The short answer: scale versus lifestyle.

According to the Small Business  Administration and the Small Business Act 15 U.S.C. 632(a), small businesses are independently owned and operated but are not dominant in their field.  Small businesses are further defined by their small scale in three other key areas: employees, profits and operation.

When I read this definition, I cringed.

Who goes into business wanting to remain a minor player in the industry?

Not me.

I’m convinced that the words we speak and the ideas we hold in our heads shape our reality.  That’s why I define myself as an entrepreneur, not a small business owner.

As an entrepreneur, I set no limits on the scale of my business.  That’s exciting.

So what about or home-based business?

According to the folks at Entrepreneur.com,  a home-based business is “a business whose primary office is in the owner’s home. The business can be any size or any type as long as the office itself is located in a home.”

Don’t be fooled by the “home” in home-based business.  It’s not a model that revolves around place. A legitimate home-based business is quaint only if you want it to be.  Home-based business is a lifestyle.  Just ask Tim Ferris, author of The 4-Hour Work Week Unlike small business, it is not limited in terms of scale.

The internet has revolutionized the home-based business model and has made it truly and completely portable. Your home can be anywhere in the world.  Feel at home on the beach?  Wonderful.  Want to make Argentina home for six months?  Fine.  You can even run your business from your kitchen.

Home business opportunities eliminate most of the downsides of small business.   No more panic about making rent or payroll in lean times.  No more exorbitant production or manufacturing costs.  No more doing business in the minor leagues of the industry.

With the right training, proper business model, and plenty of community support, there’s nothing small about home-based business.