Life Change 90

Whether you have an idea for a new business, or are actively seeking the best business ideas, it will be well worth your while to look at the Business Profits Program, to put into the worksheet what you have and what you want to create, and see what new and potentially very successful business ideas come up for you. The program looks at what you like to do, or be, what you are good at and what your resources and strengths are, before showing you how to work through them to combine them into one of the successful business ideas you always desired, but were not sure how to create. It’s a powerful start.

Just as a pet can be more of a challenge than a gift, so too can the holidays. John Clayton

Best Business Ideas for you

Best Business Ideas.

Day 1 of Life 2! Image from fffcpas.com

“Screw your career path, live your story.” Jason Seiden

You would like to start a new business, but are not sure where to begin? So many people claiming to have or offering the ‘best business ideas’ for you. There are so many business opportunities, but either creating a business that suits you, or picking up an idea that could become your business can be a real challenge.

Get the idea wrong and you are a square peg in a round hole – a very bad fit.

Get it right and you are in harmony, and very often, in profit, with the best business ideas!

Getting your business ideas right is critical!

How do you select the best business ideas?

A great question to begin with, before you start looking around for a business, is to ask whether you should actually be in business! Are you an entrepreneur type personality, who can or would enjoy the cut and thrust of running your own solo enterprise, with far-reaching visions, energy and enthusiasm to drive you and a determination to succeed no matter what?

Perhaps you are a person who would work well within a team, conquering the business and corporate world together, each playing to the other’s strengths? You might love the business environment and the opportunities it presents, but would prefer to be part of a team when you tackle the world of business.

This is the crux of it: the best business ideas that suit one person are not the best business ideas that would suit another! Choosing your business approach must be based around your business personality, and knowing whether you are a solo entrepreneurial type or a corporate team player or partnership type is fundamental to the best business ideas turning into successful businesses!

As a first step, take the QUIZ on the Life Change 90 website “Should you be the boss in your own business?”

That will give you indications of how to approach your business venture, whatever it is. Then it is time to look through those best business ideas and choose your opportunity.

Steve Jobs – the ultimate entrepreneur, founder of Apple. Image from ndtv.com

Short of a starting point when looking for the best business ideas?

Choosing the best business ideas is important, and tailoring these best business ideas to your own style, personality, resource level and ambitions is critical. There is an old saying “Bite off more than you can chew, and chew like crazy!” (Quote from Joe Joyce)… That’s OK as far as a recipe for stress goes, but it doesn’t always auger well for success. Perhaps a personal audit of what you love to do and what you can do, and monetizing that idea is a better way to create the business you want, from all the best business ideas available.

The Business Profits Program begins right at this point, tailoring your business idea around your likes, loves and abilities. If you looked at a dozen small businesses, all the same type of business, perhaps using a mechanical repair business as an example, you would find every business was different in subtle ways to the other eleven. They began as successful business ideas and let’s face it, auto repairs is a great business to be in – provided you get a few things right, by tailoring it to the person doing the business!

One person may be a lover of American Muscle Cars and specialise in that area – the rumble of huge V8 engines and heavy metal. Another person loves high performance European sports cars, especially Italian cars, and creates a specialist workshop for them. Yet another person could love the hot-rod scene and turn vintage and veteran cars into flaming street hot rods. And there will always be a need for someone to service the family car, for the other folks that just go to work each day and use their cars as personal transport rather than as symbols of a youth that they cannot leave behind. All are very successful business ideas, but each is tailored around the personal likes, loves and resources of the business operator. And that is how you must consider your best business ideas too. They are only ever successful business ideas when they are integrated with the personal interests and passions of the operator.

American Muscle Cars – a passion for some. Image from Autocity.com

Once you have the idea, the next thing is to start designing it around where you really want to go with it, and that will be the subject of a future blog. For now, check out the Business Profits Program and choose from amongst the best business ideas out there, to design your next career move around!

If you know other people either in business, or wishing they were, who might like to review their business ideas or are looking for the best business ideas, send this to them. They will thank you for it!

Til next time, fair winds and full sails.

Ray Jamieson

Love everyone, trust a few, and paddle your own canoe. Barry Moltz

Other related blogs from Life Change 90:

Rather, demonstrate in your life what they aspire to, with the love and satisfaction they also desire, through knowing and using the tools available to them also and which you will not only learn, but develop as habits through Life Change 90. Show them what they want to see and let them know it is available to them also. Join me in Life Change 90.

Google Teenage Problems.

Looking like the weight of the world is on her shoulders. Image from visual photos

I AM SHOCKED!

Teenagers only have to focus on themselves – it’s not until we get older that we realize that other people exist. Jennifer Lawrence

I was originally going to write about the most influential and positive role models of my early life, and did a little research on it. I looked for how many searches people did on the topic, and found that there were only 30 searches (globally) for that exact search and around 3,000 for that topic in general.

However, in the same search program, which brings up “related topic searches”, I also found:

Search topic Exact match Broad match

positive role models for teens                   10                                   100
positive role models for teenagers           30                                   270
positive role models                                   720                                 18720
positive role models for girls                  70                                    630

However, the search also found:

troubled teens    4400                            171600
teen depression                                           9900                           386100
teen pregnancy                                            49500                          1930500
teen pregnancy help                                 590                               14750
teenage problems                                       6600                             257400
teen issues                                                   2900                             113100
teenage depression    8100                              307800
teen suicide                                               18100                            705900

Not necessarily a good role model either! Image from belfasttimes.co

What is this saying about what is really going on with teenage problems?

There are more searches each month globally for “Teen Suicide” than there are for all the positive searches for good teen role models! There are so many more people seeking solutions to the teenage problems, than there are seeking positive ways to prevent the problems!

That lifts the scab on the huge issue of teenage problems. I confess, until I saw this, I didn’t realise the incredible depth of the teenage problems issue, even though I have written about the topic in general previously in my blog on “Empowerment for Teens”.

What is needed, obviously, are many more positive influences and role models for children and teenagers, to influence the growth and development of our youth so that these teenage problems are prevented – rather than becoming teenage problems needing treatment!

We can all play a role in this – literally! Are you a good role model for youth? Do you lead with an example that you would be happy your children could follow? Or would you be concerned if your children did as you demonstrated, but not as you said?

Children learn by example and follow the leads given by their most powerful influences in those formative years. Those potentially positive influential people are firstly, their parents, family friends and especially friends of their parents who they see regularly, and their teachers. They are also greatly influenced by what their own friends and peers do and say – mostly learning their habits – good or bad, because in the early stages of learning at least, they still don’t know the difference!

Peer groups – they can make or break a teenager! Image from tagesthemen24.de

How can we break this cycle of teenage problems?

Who were the most influential people in your early years? What did you learn from them? What can you still learn from them, on reflection?

Let me tell you of a few influences of my early years, to explain what I mean.

Aside from my parents’ influence, we had a family friend called Dennis. He was an amazing guy and a lot of fun to be with. He met my Dad when I was around 4 or 5 years old, when we were having some construction work done on the farm. He was a friend of the builder, and Dad and Dennis hit it off. He often came up to do a bit of spotlight shooting after this, and that was when we met his wife, Norma.

Norma was a paraplegic. She had been wheelchair bound since around age 18, when a car accident changed her life. She and Dennis were sweethearts at the time and he never left her side. They married and were fortunate to have a child. Dennis was a man’s man, worked as an electrician in the steel mills at Port Kembla, but was also a devoted husband and father, with strict personal disciplines and moral standards that he lived by. He set an example that has stayed with me for all of my life.

When Norma died, I was about 16. She and Dennis had become part of our family, even though they lived 200 miles away. It hit us hard, but Dennis was our strength through it all. He is still strong and courageous, well into his eighties now. He remarried and shared a wonderful relationship with his second wife until recently when she also passed away, again leaving him alone. I spoke to him about his loss and he was shaken, although still his wonderful, compassionate self. I thanked him for the example he had set me for my life to aim for, and he was most humble. He said it was just a day at a time and his aim was to make each day count. Dennis, you certainly did – your days and mine also. Thank you.

Teachers can have a huge influence on the enthusiasm and appetite of youth for all things exciting and perhaps forbidden. No one knew this better than the other major influence in my early years, that of John Stanley Gabb, the wool classing teacher and registrar of the Cootamundra Technical College. He was only a small man, and his uniform seemed to be a white dustcoat and shiny black shoes, over a shirt and tie. He was always well-groomed, probably around 40 years of age when we met, and I was 15.

His class was about a dozen unruly farm teenagers who were ostensibly there to learn to class wool, so they could handle the shearing season on their own farms. However, living miles from town and company meant these guys were also out for a day off the farm, to play up and create merry hell wherever they went before, during and after the class. John Gabb was equal to the task.

Big John Clark was a great example of the students. He would stand up near the front of the room, one foot on the chair seat, elbow on his knee and told jokes non-stop for as long as he was allowed, never cracking a smile, never pausing and knowing that the rest of the room was unable to draw breath for the laughter. But John Gabb was able to judge exactly when was the right time to intervene and say “OK, Guys, let’s give that a break and work on what we are supposed to be doing.” Always firm, but never authoritarian, and always respected.

Respected so much that when these boisterous teens had trouble, he was also the one they went to for advice. No, he wasn’t their agony aunt, but he was a great first step in the process, usually before the boys told their parents the problems they were having. Over the four years I knew him, these informal chats prevented probably half a dozen major episodes of teenage problems that I knew about. He also had other classes and there were a few hundred students at the college, whom I never met. However, he made it his business to know them all, and be available to them.

Twenty years later, I went back to Cootamundra to find John Gabb, and he had retired. As it happened, he retired to the Sunshine Coast in Queensland, only an hour’s drive north of where I lived. I was running my seminars at the time and made it my business to call in to his home, to thank him personally for the influence he had in my life. I did not realise during my time at college how powerful he was. It was only a decade later when I faced certain challenges that his lessons, teachings and examples were the ones I used to pull me through. As I began writing my seminars, teaching and lecturing from the stage to quite large groups of people, I realised how much of his influence was still coming through.

That’s the thing about solid foundations and good principles, they are right and correct, down through the ages. John Stanley Gabb was influencing young people still, all around Australia, through my work, twenty and thirty years later, as he sat in his lounge room up on the Sunshine Coast. When I met him again, his welcome was warm. When I told him what I was doing, and thanked him for the powerful influence he had been in my life, his eyes teared over and he thanked me for telling him.

People such as these are the ones who really make a difference. I know that I could have had serious teenage problems if not for their influence. I was as wild and strong-minded as any other teen, perhaps more than most, but I had great role models in these people, as well as the examples set by my parents. I was fortunate. It seems so many more kids are not, or there would not be so many searches for teenage problems on Google!

Again, I ask you, are you a suitable role model for your children, and those of your neighbours and friends? Or will those children be searching for “teenage problems” on Google as well?

Are you a good role model for her to follow? Image From strategylab.ca

If you are happy that you are being all you can be, as a role model for today’s youth, then I congratulate you. If you feel you could do more, then may I recommend a look at Life Change 90?

You already know you CANNOT TELL children and teenagers how to act and behave. That’s just an invitation to rebel against you and everything you stand for.

Few things are more satisfying than seeing your children have teenagers of their own. Doug Larson

Til next time, fair winds and full sails,

Ray Jamieson

You have teenagers thinking they’re going to make millions as NBA stars when that’s not realistic for even 1 percent of them. Becoming a scientist or engineer is. Dean Kamen

Related Blogs

Empowerment for Teens

Empowerment for Children

Empowerment for Men

Empowerment for Women

Success Habits

Jim Rohn, Business Philosopher

Jim Rohn at home on stage. Image from healthsourcelaunchu.com

I remember Jim Rohn.

What a way to think of life! Image from mylifemantras.blogspot.com

You must take personal responsibility. You cannot change the circumstances, the seasons, or the wind, but you can change yourself. That is something you have charge of. Jim Rohn

One of the most quoted names of the business world in recent decades is E James Rohn (September 17, 1930 – December 5, 2009) or Jim Rohn, as most people knew him. Jim Rohn joined the speaking circuit during a period of #life change for him in the early 1960s with a talk at his local Rotary Club and in 1963, he delivered his first public seminar at the Beverly Hills Hotel. When he walked onto that stage, he walked into history to become one of the most influential speakers and motivators of the modern era, until his passing on December 5, 2009.

Some of the most famous and notable protégées of Jim Rohn include:
• Mark R Hughes (founder of Herbalife International)
• Tony Robbins
• Mark Victor Hansen
• Jack Canfield (author of the “Chicken Soup for the Soul” books)
• Brian Tracy
• Chris Widener
• T Harv Eker

I first discovered Jim Rohn through his recorded seminars when I became a member of the Australian Institute of Management in Spring Hill in Brisbane, in the late 1980s. They have an amazing library and I utilised it to the max! Through borrowed cassette recordings, I devoured his wit and wisdom and came to respect him greatly. In April 1990, he visited the Gold Coast in Queensland and I attended my first seminar with him, a weekend Leadership Program. This began a friendship that I was privileged to enjoy for some years, until Jim retired in the USA soon after the year 2005. After our first weekend together where we chatted as often as I could get time with him, we caught up each time I attended his programs and seminars here in Queensland over the last decade before his retirement.

Jim was a man of small stature, but a giant in the business and speaking world. “Business philosopher” is the title that was coined for him and it is so apt. He exuded wisdom wherever he spoke, the wisdom that only comes from someone’s experience, never from a curriculum or textbook!

Through those many hours of recordings played on my car stereo, reading his books, emails and attending his programs, his philosophy and wisdom became a powerful influence in my life also. I was fortunate that I was also able to speak with him when he came to Australia, because the old saying:
“A single conversation across the table with a wise man is worth a month’s study of books”
is ever so true. Speaking with and sharing a table with Jim Rohn was a real privilege.

Jim Rohn Philosophy: Image from millionairemarketingmachines.com

A sound bite from a Jim Rohn Seminar
The first evening seminar I attended with Jim was in Brisbane and only went for a couple of hours. This is part of the session:
“Last year when I was here, I recommended a book to you – “The Richest Man In Babylon”. How many of the people from that evening are here again tonight?”

About three-quarters of the room, over 500 people, put their hands up.

“Thank you, that’s great – nice to see you coming back again. Now, keep your hands up if you went out and bought that book.”

All but about 50 hands went down.

“That’s about right” he said. “Only around 10% of the people you talk to will take action on your advice, no matter how valuable you believe it is for them!”

He went on to talk about the book, and about how easy it was.

“It’s easy to buy, it’s easy to read, it’s easy to understand. However, it’s also easy not to buy! To buy this book, you need to make a conscious decision to become a better person, and that’s harder than not buying the book”.

That’s Jim Rohn philosophy, simple and profound. I love it! And yes, I bought the book.

Learning is the beginning of wealth. Learning is the beginning of health. Learning is the beginning of spirituality. Searching and learning is where the miracle process all begins. Jim Rohn

Jim Rohn authored a number of books, simple and easy books too. Full of his profound style of wisdom, and so relevant to everyday living and working in business. Jim’s life story is fascinating and well worth studying for a moment. He was a sales clerk in his early years before he was offered a job in direct sales by a very switched-on mentor. He soaked up the teachings of this mentor and propelled himself to success in that company and then the next company when he changed. He wrote and spoke about his success and the teachings of his mentor throughout his speaking career, inspiring the millions of people he reached around the world. It’s the lessons that can only come from experience, from face to face dealing with people, observing and learning from experience. His experience is what makes it so valuable. His style of delivery is what makes it so powerful and profound.

I was privileged to attend Jim’s Leadership weekend, and many other events at which he spoke, and even worked with him onstage at Brisbane once, when he and the great Zig Ziglar were in Brisbane. That was a wonderful event and I had the chance to speak with both these great men during and after their events. Since then, I have added all of Jim’s writing to my library and more than a few of his audio programs – more than a national treasure, this man had something worth listening to!

I’m proud to say that through my career in coaching, consulting, and public speaking, I have applied many of the lessons I learnt from Jim Rohn. Those familiar with his work may detect his influence in the Life Change 90 Program, although the original inspiration for that program came from Og Mandino, who I wrote about last week. Jim’s influence comes through most strongly in the Business Profits Program, because above all, Jim Rohn was an excellent business operator, very successful, very smart. Having Jim Rohn on your team would be valuable for everyone, and especially if you were starting a new business, or revamping one that was a little tired – Jim Rohn energy would inspire any business and any team!

Whether you are interested in the personal life change that Jim Rohn inspired world-wide, or whether you would like some of his philosophy in your business program, there’s something here for you. I’m also proud to say that I think Jim Rohn would be honoured to think he had a small role in the development of either of these programs. His legacy lives on also.

To find out more about the Life Change 90 Program, click here.

If you have a business or would like to begin one, it most likely could benefit from the Business profits Program, so click here!

Either way, the wisdom of the ages will be with you, allied with the technology of the 21st century, to propel you forward to success and achievement of your desires, now and far into the future. I wish you well with your desires.

Til next time, fair winds and full sails.

Ray Jamieson

Recent relevant blogs:

Og Mandino – Lessons from the Master

The Business Profits Program: it takes what you already know and have, and turns it into an exciting and profitable business!

Starting a small business

Amazing Garden – courtesy of gardeninfluence.com

“A goal without a plan is just a wish.” ― Antoine de Saint-Exupéry

Starting a small business

Starting a small business has much in common with starting a garden.

Window Box Garden – courtesy of deborahsilver.com

A garden can be as small as a window box of herbs or colourful flowers, or acres of magnificence such as featured in some of the famous gardens of the world. Louis IV for example. Many acres of magnificent gardens, breathtaking in scope and features, a delight to experience and home to so much life and enterprise.

Gardens of the Palace of Versailles, in France. This was NO ACCIDENT! Courtesy of rothseye.org

However, these gardens both have much in common with starting a small business.

Each began with an idea, an inspiration. Someone, at some time, had to have the idea and inspiration to create either the small business, or the garden. Without that initial inspiration, neither is possible.

What an idea! – image from shopigniter.com

“Without leaps of imagination or dreaming, we lose the excitement of possibilities. Dreaming, after all is a form of planning.” ― Gloria Steinem

In some cases, some people just bought seeds and scattered them. Some people just opened the doors on a business and hoped for the best. Both these strategies grow weeds, and soon fail.

WEEDS! Image from hillconsulting.com

Starting a small business successfully requires the same strategy as starting a garden; you need a plan to work to. The best gardens, like the most successful small businesses, saw life through a very clear plan.

Not every garden was planned initially to look like the final completed picture, just as small businesses grow and evolve into their ultimate operation. Over time, the conditions and circumstances of the garden change, just as the small business environment you work in changes. Both must evolve, adapt and change with the times, so they can not only survive, but thrive!

Gardens are living, breathing organisms, teeming with life and activity. So are the most successful small business. Let’s look at what they have in common.

The initial plan is crucial.

Gardens have a creator. Someone had to start them off, create the idea and concept, mark out the seedbeds and plant the first seed. Someone also had to start the business, have the idea and stock the shelves.

Gardens need the right environment and location, soils and climate. With businesses, you must be where you can make sales and service your clients. Location is everything, whether a home based internet business, a corner store or a major retail outlet or service centre. Your location is just as critical because in the wrong location, all you get for either is a surfeit of weeds.

The climate? The business climate is just as important as the temperature and rainfall expectations for your plants. Some like it hot, others will die there – get it right. The business climate must be right for the business you are operating in that environment. Snowboards don’t sell well on the beachfront!

Choice of soils – just like the foundations of the business – crucial. Are your soils shallow and stony, or rich and deep? What is the foundation of your business? The marketability of your concept and the strategy for implementing it. Fundamentals for each enterprise.

Gardens need supplies of nutrients and water as their life flow. Fertiliser, water at the right time and volume, pruning, harvesting and weeding. Just as businesses do. Marketing, promotions, advertising, management strategy and ongoing training for everyone. Staff numbers and training need to be managed for efficient operation also.

Starting a small business is so much like gardening. You even need bees! Gardens need bees to pollinate flowers, to ensure the survival of the plants in the garden season after season. In starting a small business, you need to ensure you have access to bees also – both worker bees for your internal team and customer bees to ensure that the fruits of your labours multiply as profits, to ensure you are back next season also.

Busy little bees! – Image from care2.com

“Give me six hours to chop down a tree and I will spend the first four sharpening the axe.” ― Abraham Lincoln

There is so much in common with both starting a small business and starting a garden, and knowing this we can plan for success in both, with the crossover of common sense and knowledge required for either enterprise.

Back to the beginning. Neither your garden, nor your business idea have a snowball’s chance in hell of success without their creator knowing and understanding what they are starting, and have a plan for its success. Whether you create your own plan, or get a landscape gardener or an accountant to do it for you, there must be a plan. The great benefit of creating it yourself when starting a small business is that you will get much closer to what you want, what you dreamed of and what you are passionate about.

The challenge is filling in the technical bits, to make sure your plan is complete.

Small business creation and planning is now very easy.

The Business Profits Program provides all the tools you need for starting a small business plan, and much more. It takes your original idea, or prompts you to create one if necessary, locates your resources, skills and capital, then shows you how to combine them into a business model. It asks you how you will define your business, identify your target market, finance your enterprise, produce goods or services, market them to the intended clients and launch your business with a degree of success that even your accountant would be happy to achieve.

However, it doesn’t help with planning a garden. Unless you want to make a business out of your garden. Then it could become the most valuable tool in your garden!

It provides the foundations for starting and operating a business, successfully. Take a look – you’ll be glad you did!

If you know some other folks who are either in business or thinking of starting one, please send this article to them. They will thank you, I’m sure.

Til next time, fair winds and full sails.

Ray Jamieson

“Someone’s sitting in the shade today because someone planted a tree a long time ago.” ― Warren Buffett

Other related blogs from Life Change 90: