So, I have been thinking about this… wait just a minute, someone is calling me on my cell phone. “Hello, this is Dave Kelly. Yup. Um-huh. Real World: Motivational Speakers? I like it. Send me an email. Thanks.”
Sorry about that. Anyway, I was going to say… wait, now my phone is buzzing. A text message. Oh, that’s good. Gotta text back. “U R kidding. LOL. HA!”
So, the thing with distractions is… A tweet! Let me see, what is my friend, who tweets his every move fifty-plus times a day, up to?
Of all the traits that make a person successful I think the most underrated is energy level. You can be brilliant, you can be a master salesman, you can be an inventor without equal, but it takes energy to convert those talents into success. Many talented people achieve nothing more than average success and I think that for many the missing ingredient is inability to take their ideas and talents and drive them forward. That’s where energy comes in. That’s how important it is.
How many good ideas have you had that you never acted on? High energy people can act on many ideas—often simultaneously—taking full advantage of the numbers game. They may fail at many more attempts than the average person, but ultimately find success through their relentless forward motion. They become the preverbal “irresistible force”.
Vacation season is upon us and plans are now being laid for what could be the single most expensive week of the year for more than a few people.
Vacations are often the biggest single component in the family entertainment budget, and often (and easily) can run into thousands of dollars for a single one week trip. In many homes, the family vacation has become an annual rite, bordering on necessity.
But in a lot of households, the past few years have been draining on the budget, with one or more periods of unemployment and possibly investment losses as well. Recovery from such hits is often only gradual in coming and it may be best to come out of the gate slowly if you’ve experienced either or both situations.
From a pure financial standpoint the best advice would be to not take a vacation. Vacations are NOT necessities, no matter what the prevailing attitudes in your community or in the culture at large, and you should not be leaving bills unpaid or your bank account empty to make them happen. This truly is an expense that should not be incurred unless all other expenses are paid AND some money has been put away for savings AND the trip can be paid for without incurring significant debt.
With that caveat on our minds let’s focus on ways to take vacations at much lower cost.
A standard credit card gives you the security and ease of use to access funds at anytime, anywhere, online, over the phone or in person, and while not all credit cards can be opened for business use, there is a wide range of business credit cards to choose from to keep your corporate spending documented, and give your business the same purchasing freedom you have come to rely on with your personal credit cards.
Benefits of Business Credit Cards
Don’t worry that your business is too small or doesn’t make enough purchases to warrant a business credit card, because there are so many different types of business credit cards available you are sure to find one to suit your business. So check out all the benefits your business can get from using a corporate credit card:
How is it that that some people seem enormously successful, yet astoundingly they have more free time than the rest of us? Have you ever noticed as well that some people who are incredibly busy are at best only moderately successful? Perhaps you’re one of them, always busy, but not having as much to show for your efforts as you think you should.
The typical human reaction to this apparent contradiction in the natural order of things is to assume that the successful person with all the time on his hands is a) lucky, b) has an “in” with important people, and even c) must be doing something unethical, immoral or illegal.
While each of those considerations isn’t beyond the realm of possibility, there’s a far greater chance that the successful person with all of the free time on his hands has found a way to maximize his results while minimizing his efforts. He manages to do this by saying “NO” to unproductive tasks, either by making it clear to others up front that he won’t engage himself in them, or by simply refusing to participate.
Logically, isn’t that what we should all be doing?
How do we define rich and poor? The dividing line is more subjective than real in that we tend to think of rich as anyone with substantially more than we have, and poor as anyone with substantially less. Since we always see ourselves as more or less in the middle, how do we determine at what point we might transition into “having money”?
Trying to fix a dollar amount that moves us into that status is probably a waste of time.
A more useful metric might be the point at which:
we earn more money than we need to live,
we have savings in excess of predictable contingencies, and
we’re debt free.
For example, a middle income person living beneath his means, and having above average savings with zero debt probably has more economic options, more day to day freedom, less stress, and probably even more unencumbered cash flow than a high income person living above his means with below average savings and an excessive level of debt.
In this example, the middle class person has reached the all important tipping point where money is now working in his favor, rather than against him, often described by the term “money goes to money”.
That is what Fortune (Charles S. Dutton) asks of Daniel “Rudy” Ruettiger near the end of the movie “Rudy”. This is after Rudy has been denied the opportunity to dress (be on the sideline in uniform) for the final game of his senior season at Notre Dame. Rudy was never good enough to be a member of the team, but he spent two years working harder than anyone as a member of the practice squad. At the end of his junior year, Notre Dame head coach Ara Parseghian promised to let Rudy dress for a game during his senior season due to his hard work and dedication.
But after Rudy’s junior season, Parseghian decided to retire.
The new coach, Dan Devine, did not know about this promise, nor did he intend to let Rudy dress for a game. Rudy went through the entire season checking the weekly dress schedule and never saw his name on it. After the schedule for the final game was posted and his name was not on it, Rudy decided to quit. He walked out of the locker room determined to miss his final practice.
Then he ran into Fortune, who had been a mentor to Rudy. And Fortune reminded him of who he was.
Rudy returned to practice. The seniors rallied to his side and convinced the coach to let him dress. He even got into the game for the final couple of plays. The movie ends with Rudy being carried off the field by his teammates. But it almost never happened!
I am really into setting an objective, quantifying it, putting together a plan, and then going after it with everything that I have.
That is cool to me. It gives me energy and excitement. Provides purpose.
When I was in elementary school, I set a goal of being 6’3” tall. I am 6’2”. Not bad. Almost got there. Betcha didn’t know height is controlled by goal setting! Are you short? Raise the bar, set a higher goal!
Sometimes, though, it makes me do goofy things. Take for example, “Gonzo’s Great Gold Quest”. This was my attempt to achieve my goal of qualifying as a Gold Medallion member of Delta Airlines Sky Miles program.
One of my guilty pleasures is watching the audition shows of the various performance shows like American Idol and Last Comic Standing. So, of course, I was in front of my TV last month to watch the American Idol audition shows.
Some very talented people who auditioned received the golden ticket to Hollywood.
Some really bad singers did not and they were legitimately surprised when they failed to make it to the next round! (Don’t you think some of them just had to know how bad they really were?)
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