Mission #3-10 Congratulations

Objectives:

• To start immediately toward your exciting financial future.

Your Story:

Having completed this course, you now have a basic understanding of the characteristics and behaviors necessary to achieve financial independence. Please allow yourself the opportunity to seize this moment and place yourself at the starting line of a promising financial future. If you have that warrior spirit, you now feel invigorated and full of enthusiasm for the challenges ahead.

You can do this. You deserve this. If you're smart enough to select a realistic venture and determined enough to believe in your own abilities, you can do this. There is no mommy or daddy or boss holding you back. Go. Go. Go.

Here is the secret to small business success; there is no secret but there are rules:

1. Offer a quality product or service that the market demands.
2. Appreciate your customers and ask for more business.
3. Copy Success. Find the leaders in your industry and do what they are doing.

The necessities of small business operations are mentioned here and extensively documented elsewhere. Let this course serve as a first small step in your lifelong business education. The knowledge is there for you to take and implement. Read. Read. Read. Never presume that you know enough. Research the mechanics of your business and involve yourself with the leaders in your field. Look for the personal and business mentors who want to help you. These mentors are out there with hands extended waiting for you. Just look, ask and listen. Additionally, seek opportunities to help others and become a mentor yourself. You will learn by teaching. Continuing education will make you a creative person and keep your business vibrant and alive.

Within two to three years, your initial career goal should be an annual income of $80,000 - $100,000 a year. This will put you in the top 10% of wage earners. This will be enough money to support your family, live comfortably and have enough left over for our investment program. You must become an investor. Investment is the second part of our program. Investment is the direct path to early retirement.

If you are ex-SF, you can make an immediate six-figure income from security work. Be sure that this money is going home and being put toward investments. Also, given your line of work, you'll want to buy all the life insurance you can. If you're not around, as the AF SF PJs say "That others may live."

However, if you were not SF, as most are not, and presuming that you are starting from scratch, just out of the service, not many jobs will pay you $80,000 - $100,000. Yes, as we said, many companies will hire you because you can take orders and then gladly pay you grunt money.

But, why waste your warrior skills making grunt pay? If you have the courage to volunteer to face combat, in comparison, any difficulties you may face in business will be a joke.

These days when you start a job it may be on the ground level. You may be asked to sweep, answer phones or run errands. You may feel underutilized. You are probably right. Man up. Survey the landscape. Make a plan. Take action. With the spirit of the Action Principles® guiding you, you won't be sweeping for long.

Perhaps, after a decade or two of service, you can make $80,000 - $100,000 as teacher, civil servant or union member.

But, we haven't got decades to wait. Our plan is to be rich and retired in a decade or two.

If you have one of these secure jobs, you can't sit back smug and content and average.

To be extraordinary, you have to be doing something in addition to your primary job. You need a lucrative part-time job to make up the wage gap. For example, you have to be a teacher with your own after-school tutoring business. Or, you have to be a firefighter with a contracting sideline. Or, you have to be a letter carrier with an Ebay business. Or, you have to be a union bricklayer with a masonry side business.

You have your full time good job and you have your part-time good job and together you meet your financial goals.

Remember, being a waiter or waitress or bartender or landscaper or window washer or taxi driver or real estate agent or car salesperson isn't a glamorous profession. However, worked properly with a warrior mindset, any of these jobs can pay a low six-figure income. Some will view these jobs as tedious and demeaning. Some will view these jobs as the direct route to a fantastic financial future.

The busy personal trainer will make a lot more than the lazy lawyer. Be the drone or be the warrior? This is your life to choose.

You finish college and start a canoe rental business. What kind of a job is this for a college graduate? They laugh. In six years, you turn that canoe rental business into an adventure travel agency that you sell for seven figures. They stop laughing.

I Hate The Family Business

Working in your family's business may be the last thing you wanted to do. Maybe, you went into the service to avoid having to work in, for example, your family's furniture business. Now, you have matured. Now, you are a warrior. Now, you realize that working in your family's furniture business gives you a tremendous career head start on your peers. If you can reach your goal of $80,000 to $100,000 working in the family business, suck it up and do it. If your family would never treat you and pay you as more than a peon, then definitely don't do it. In that case, use your knowledge of the business and use your family contacts. Smile at the relatives and go into business for yourself. As Gandhi said, "First, they will ignore you. Then, they will laugh at you. Then, they will argue with you. Then, you win."

Make the money you deserve. Complete this part of your mission. You know where you want to go. Now, just decide how you will get there.

It's Boot Camp Again

All over the world, armies transform civilians into soldiers the same way, boot camp. From day one of boot camp, there is no more old you. Now, there is a new you.

From day one, kicking and screaming and exhausted, you are forced to start thinking, breathing, acting like a soldier, sailor, marine or airman. Like the phoenix rising from the ashes, you are reborn as a warrior. In military boot camp, you had a drill instructor hovering over your every move. You were not allowed to fail. You march or die. You marched.

In the continuing Master Success Courses, I will fill the role of your business DI. Of course, I can't hover overhead. But, if you choose, I won't be far. Every day, there will be new entries to Success.org Blog, Facebook and Twitter to read. Every day, you can check your email and read your Action Principle^®.

I need no credit for your success. I am simply passing on to you what was given to me by my mentors, DIs and martial arts teachers. Largely, your success will be a result of your acknowledgement and use of your success spirit, which has been honed by your mentors and your own hard work. Realize that you can accomplish great things and that you deserve the rewards of success.

Alone. Alone, take your twenty minutes of quiet time to reflect, plan and re-energize. Alone, you are self-disciplined. Alone, you will commit to a self-imposed boot camp of reading and research and mentors and trying and failing.

Who has the discipline and the courage to do this? Less than 20% of Americans. Don't forget, you are among the elite. An advantage isn't an advantage if you don't use it!

You do what has to be done. If you have to work fifty hours, you work fifty hours. If you have to work six and sometimes seven days a week, you work six or seven days a week. If you have to drive an old car or live in small apartment, you do that. You do what needs to be done. You are an extraordinary warrior. This is what it means to be an extraordinary warrior. Suck it up. In twenty years or less, you will be a multi-millionaire. Feel the warm sand under your feet as you stand in your Hawaiian shirt with a Pina Colada in hand. This will be you. The average drones will be driving to work, worried about bills, hating their jobs and that boring hellish routine will continue tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow.

Do you remember how many books you have to read to become a world authority on a subject? Forty. Not ten. Not twenty. Not thirty. Forty. If you are a house painter, start reading forty books on home improvements and contracting. If you are a long distance truck driver, start reading forty books on the transportation industry. If you are going to sell rare coins, start reading forty books on numismatics. If you are an embalmer, start reading forty books on the funeral industry.

Read. Listen to podcasts. Watch video. Get ideas. Test your ideas. Ask your mentors. Ask your employees. Ask your customers. Study your competition. Study the leaders in your industry. Learn. Take action. Repeat.

There is no other way. This is the Master Success way!

You became tough by facing challenges. If you had an option, you might not have done all that studying and hard work. If you had an option, you would have avoided all this pain and anguish. There was no option. There was no Plan B. There was a glow within you, an ambition, a passion to succeed.

The test is not over. Every day, you will have the option to not push and not challenge and not risk. Since no one will be judging you but yourself, it will be easy to quit. You will only disappoint yourself. Now, your mother, your wife and your beer-bellied friends are all around you telling you that it's ok to be average.

So, pop open a few beers, grab the chips, turn on the game, lift a cheek and fall back to being average. Push over on that couch because you won't be alone. Waddle on over and welcome to the Average Club.

The philosophy of your Action Principles® is very clear to improve yourself and help others. You are smart and tough. You don't need a lot more than to do what you already know you should be doing.

Why would you ever cast yourself with the lazy and pampered? Make your Action Principles^® spirit a matter of pride.

Never whimper about your lot in life. Never complain about what 50,000 or 5,000 or 500 or 5 can't do. They aren't warriors. Never listen to the uninformed excuses of others. Instead, start proving what you as one person can do. Never characterize yourself as anything but a warrior: a tough thoughtful spiritual person of action. Assess your strengths and put them to work, first for yourself, then for your family and then for those less fortunate.

You can run a small business or be a commissioned salesperson and make a very comfortable living for yourself and your family. You can chart your own course in life. You can take a small business and make it large. You can make money and invest and retire early. You can enjoy the leisure time to pursue personal development and make your one life meaningful.

Not everyone can do it. Not everyone will do it. You are a warrior. You can do it. You deserve it.

PUSH ON!

Start your next course in the Master Success Program, now.

Operational Limitations:

• You are alone. It is you. Do it or don't do it.
• You must start your own boot camp and be your own DI. This is called self-discipline.
• The least glamorous business may provide the best opportunities to achieve your income objectives.
• You may hate a family business and yet this may be the easiest and quickest path to success.
• Sorry, there are no excuses.

Seeds for thought:

• What are the three rules for business success?
• What is your annual income goal?
• What does courage mean to the warrior spirit?
• What can you do if you have a good full time job that is short of your income goal?
• What are the possible advantages of working in family business?
• What should you do if family members do not pay you the proper respect?
• Why do you have to become your own DI?
• Describe the Master Success Business system in one paragraph.
• What is the philosophy of the Action Principles^®?

Jargon:

Accounts payable - Money owed to suppliers.

Accounts receivable - Money owed by customers

Balance sheet - Also called the statement of financial condition, it is a summary of the assets, liabilities, and owners' equity.

Bankruptcy - Financial condition of being unable to pay debts.

Buy-in – consent or cooperation.

Capital - Money invested in a firm.

Ethics - Standards of conduct or moral judgment.

Heads up – Giving a notice or warning.

Inflation - The rate at which the general level of prices for goods and services is rising.

Pension plan - A fund that is established for the payment of retirement benefits

Portfolio - A collection of investments.

Prime rate - The interest rate at which banks lend to their best customers.

Ramp up – To supercharge and bring to a higher level.

Security - Piece of paper that proves ownership of stocks, bonds and other investments.

Questions and Answers:

Don't people who go to really good schools like Harvard and Stanford have a big advantage over people who get a state or community college education?

There are many top rated universities that offer a top rated education. The key word in the last sentence is offer. The education is offered, but you have to take advantage of the opportunity. With this in mind, there are very few institutions of higher education that don't provide superior academic opportunities to a motivated student who can take advantage of them.

To be a successful student, you must embrace the qualities and attributes associated with all kinds of success. They are persistence, determination, hard work, and planning achievable objectives and realistic goals. It means taking life with a positive mental attitude.

If you live near a good university, that university will offer plenty of opportunities for you.

Remember, how important it is to have a clear direction. After five years, almost sixty percent of graduates are not working in the fields in which majored. So, in the majority of cases, where those students went to school and the courses they took, don't really matter.

You seem to write a lot about asking retired folks to work as your mentors. If these people retired to get away from business, then why on earth would they want to help me?

They would want to help you because you are so charming and enthusiastic and persistent that they just can't resist. You know what to ask them. You ask them. You go home and write them a thank you note acknowledging the sacrifice of their time and the value of their advice.

To break the ice, see if you can be introduced through a referral. Call your local trade association for names of possible candidates. Better yet, become actively involved in your trade association and find retired members yourself. Perhaps when you make one contact, that contact will lead you to another.

Remember, not everyone has to be your advisor. You only need a few. There's that handy formula again, "SW3/N" - "Some will. Some won't. So what? Next!"

Think of your Sergeant Majors and senior NCO staff. The job of the senior staff is to bring along the junior staff and the grunts. They do it willingly. You will find that anyone who you'd consider as a mentor will operate with the same mindset.

You make small business sound like something that anyone with military experience can succeed at. Isn't this a little naive?

We all know that not everyone in the military possesses a warrior spirit. There are slackers and goldbrickers. But, compared to the general population, many fewer. In this age of terror, of IEDs and roadside bombs, whether you are SF, drive a Humvee or are a cook; it takes courage to be in the military. The world of entrepreneurship is easy.

Small business success depends on hard work, persistence, determination, and well-researched objectives and goals. Success depends on flexibility and on a continuing commitment to improvement. What is my competition doing and how can I do better? What are the best in my industry doing and how can I copy them?

To be successful, you have to appreciate your customer because it is the customer, and only the customer, who is going to give you the money to make your week's pay and to make your financial dreams come true.

Not everyone can understand or apply these principles but warriors stand a much better chance.

Action Plan:

• Consider your strengths and limitations. Weigh your options. Figure out what you can do to achieve your income objectives. Turn over the twenty-year hourglass. Start doing it.

Support:

• Starting a business advice from the Canadian government: http://canadabusiness.gc.ca/gol/cbec/site.nsf/en/bg00328.html
• Stating a business, advice from Australia: http://www.flyingsolo.com.au/a171896320.html
• Starting a business, advice from England: http://www.smallbusiness.co.uk/5.2/start-a-business/
• From the Riley Guide to starting a business: http://www.rileyguide.com/steps.html
• For grants to start a business: http://www.ventureworthy.com/Grants-for-starting-a-small-business.asp
• Free online small business course and resources: http://www.suite101.com/course.cfm/16707/seminar
• For lots of good small business links from the University of Maryland: http://www.sbdchelp.com/links.htm
• From the Small Business Development Centers: http://www.sba.gov/sbdc/

Inspirational Insights: