Wednesday, August 18, 2010

I Have A Vision

There is a great need in our country for vision. There is a great need throughout the world for vision. Advertisement surrounds vision. Everything that we use everyday, whether it be the television, our phones, or the computer, there we find advertisement. And advertisement is someone trying to impress upon you with their vision.

If our visions match, I may have found a new customer, and you a new product. The cycle of vision. They say that "Those who have the vision lack the money, and those that have the money lack the vision." Cycles are meant to be broken. And I enjoy breaking out of the box.

Lets discuss vision. I know you have some type of vision. Children have visions of how their life will be when they grow up. "When I grow up I want to be a ..." What? What did you want to be. I wanted to be a preacher, a firefighter, an engineer/architect... The list goes on. I still want to be all the things I wanted as a child.

If I advertised to your inner child, would I win the sale? Let's not make this about sales, how about friendship? If I impress you to share in my vision, I have gained a friend. If I paint a picture with my words, and you can see that picture, then we have connected. That is the essence of good communication. However if I try to paint a picture of a beautiful garden and what is transposed into your mind is a nightmare, then our communication has obviously failed.

Problem is, in failure we have to find the place where that transposition went wrong, so it can be fixed. Did I speak/type it incorrectly, or did I misrepresent it in my tone of voice, body language, facial expressions? Was it merely a misunderstanding that could not have been prevented? Vision is important, because "Where there is no vision, the people perish."

It is the job of a good leader to properly introduce and explain vision to those they lead. Or it will be heartily rejected. That can lead to a lot of unnecessary problems. But if that leader effectively describes that vision, then the people will back him up wholeheartedly. 

It is my goal to communicate well. I don't want to be misunderstood. I don't believe anybody does. We all desire to be understood, whether we speak much or not.

How to win friends and influence people is a good book to help with the common problem. But it cannot give you vision. If you have no vision, don't step up to lead. If someone gives you their vision, and tells you to lead your people with it, then be clear to get their vision across the way it was given to you.

If you have no vision, pray. All of my visions come from God. You may see that as conceded or delusional, but to me that is giving credit where credit is due. I may be stuck in a rut, but I'm more wealthy than the richest man on earth. Its all in how you look at it. That's the treasure of good vision.

Today it is becoming increasingly obvious that we are running out of vision. Good vision only goes so far, and then another is needed. Thankfully we are only given some of the vision. If we had the whole picture then we would either give up, or there would be no more room for new visionaries.

A good visionary recognizes the quality in others, and builds a team to further the vision. It is in the best interests of all of us, everybody, that vision is not given up on. America will fall for lack of vision. The world system will fail for lack of vision.

Get the picture? Vision is extremely important. And that saying, "Those with the vision rarely have the money, and those with the money rarely have the vision." only bears testament to the fact that there needs to be a system for getting the two together.

If your vision is limited to two or three great ideas, you need help. If your vision has a stopping point, it's not full, then you need help. Every visionary needs help. Everybody needs help, just as much as everybody needs vision.

Don't take people for granted. Everybody you see everyday; none of them are just scenery in your life. Many of them have great vision, and many could be that person you need to help you. And you could be the person they need to help them. How can you know, if they are scenery?

I've put one link in this post. That was for the book "How to Win Friends and Influence People" - you can buy it at the link. It is definitely worth the seven bucks you may spend on it. But it is the least of my concerns in writing this.

My concern is the value of vision. It is more valuable than time or money. Vision is what gives us time and money, and vision is what will fix the mess our country is in, and the messes we get into in life. I trust God for the vision I need.

I would not have found the opportunity that inspired this blog and my savings, if not for the great God that I serve. And that's the truth. I've been writing about my search for a startup business, primarily because it has been a long and strange search. But the rewards are far better than money. They say happiness cannot be purchased.


Vision can be bought, but it is more a gamble than an investment. Build a visionary team, make visionary friends, and surround yourself with good council.

Wednesday, August 11, 2010

Special Deal from Geeks.com

Dell Core i5 Dual-Core 2.26GHz 4GB 500GB DVD±RW 17.3" Win7 Home Pre w/Webcam & 6Cell Battery $595 @ Geeks.com  Limit 60 Laptops!

I'll post a few special deals as i find them or am notified of them from time to time. If you need a special (especially on computer equipment or other business related equipment) check out my blog, or request a special. I'll find you a good deal and post it for you and anybody else.

Jesse

Monday, August 2, 2010

The Value of Research

They say that time is money. This is very true. We trade our time for money, be it $7.25 for an hour or whatever you may make. There has to be a better trade-off! Personally I value my time much more than this, but have found it difficult to locate a way to improve on the value of my time.

You could spend all of your time looking for a higher paying job. Then is the higher pay a reward for the time spent looking, or a higher reward for your current time? You could start a home based business. Working your job, and then working your business to try to supplement your job's current income. Think about that, you're spending more time, more money (capital) on the business...

There has to be a mathematical equation to define this by. Unfortunately, that equation will usually end in LOSS.

Lost time, lost income, lost investment. There are over 100,000,000 websites out there. How many bring in income that can be equated to adequate gain for capital, and time? Less than 97% I'd say. But then again, I may just value my time more than others. How much is your time worth to you?

More to the point, the 3% that do bring in an adequate income (resulting from traffic), are (a) run by major corporations supplemented by television advertising, or massive multi-million dollar advertising efforts (I can't afford this!), (b) take massive groundwork, and advertising campaigns, and already have some sort of business base somewhere, or (c) were started by individuals, and small businesses using SBI! (Site Build It!). And by the way, 65% of the top 3% were option (c)!

I want to count myself in that number. Research. This is the way that I have learned what I have learned. I have spent countless hours trying to learn and figure out how I would make money on my own. What was the Google search that found it for me? "best way to make money online with no overhead (or investment)"

Best Ways to Make Money Online With No Capital. Search it for yourself. Here's what I found.

The first three things listed there, I've researched and/or tried before and found the website's recommendation to be correct. They are a waste of time! The 4th, I hadn't read much about for some reason, like it was some great internet secret or something. The fifth and best way, I've been planning on since I was 15 or 16!

We took a trip to Canada with our Church youth group. It was an awesome trip, we got to see Niagara Falls, Montreal, (spent most time there) Toronto! What an awesome trip! (Thanks Bro. Barton!) We passed out tracts, got in trouble, (as young men often will,) played pranks, the usual fun stuff for kids to do.

I remember while we were headed up, we were getting close to Niagara Falls, I mean we were just about to cross over the border into Canada. Somebody pointed and shouted "Hey I can see the statue of Liberty!" which was pretty dumb considering how far from it we were. There was a building in the distance that LOOKED like the Statue of Liberty. I was fooled. Luckily a young lady with us happened to be the bigger fool, and shouted out, "Oh yeah I can see it too!" (* Sometimes it is better to keep your mouth shut and be thought a fool, than to open it and remove all doubt!!!)

Saved by the Southern Belle.

Anyway, to continue, on that trip I learned that the American Dollar was worth around 17 to 20 cents more than the Canadian Dollar, however the quarters, (the change) was worth the same and could be used on either side. Well, it didn't take long for me to figure out a way to make money off of it. If you took $100 American to Canada, changed it into Canadian Dollars, and then changed that into Quarters, well right there is $17 to $20 profit! Just bring back the quarters, put em in a Coinstar, and woohoo! I'm a little richer for the wear!

Okay, I know that's not the way currency exchanges really work, but any loophole you know. !!! Personally, now with the way that our economy is, and with the way that the entire worlds currency relies on our own to provide and detail its own worth; when ours fails, (which we have allowed it to do, being fiat currency and all) the whole world's will also fail. Best to invest in the new world currency, if you invest in any at all.

But number four on the list, is still quite promising. More and more people are researching online before they make any purchase. Be it a large financial transaction (a home purchase is the largest investment most Americans will ever make, followed by vehicle) or small, (if you know how, you can find enough coupons online, to buy $100 worth of groceries, for around 14 cents) they are looking online for a way to pinch their pennies.

As this trend becomes more and more habitual, the search engines become more and more intelligent at providing for their results, closer and closer matches to what people are actually looking for. It used to be, that you had to be a search engine guru to find anything. You had to know how to word your search terms correctly in order to get what you want out of them. Although you still must do so, it is not anywhere close to the way it used to be!

The same goes for websites. If you wanted to be in the top ten results on Google, for however many key search words; you had to search those words, find your website in the list of a thousand plus results, and click on your website. Catch this; you had to do all of that millions of times. Again, the search engines (SE's) are getting smarter, and now do most of the work for you! As new websites pop up, and are found in certain searches, even if they are at the bottom of the list, the SE's look through the entire website, and begin to determine their relevance to those search words based on content.

The better the content is written to comply with what the SE's know their users are looking for, the higher in the list of responses those websites will climb. Think about it, that is SO much easier than it used to be!

Here's the big deal. The number four way to make money online, is affiliate marketing. The number one way to affiliate market, is to start a website using a program, (SBI!) that does all the hard research work, design and layout work for you. Do the research for yourself. You will only prove me right! The best part, is the investment in start-up can be as little as $0. It just depends on your own ability to depend on yourself.

Are you willing to do the research? The results speak for themselves! Remember, Time is Money. And that is the Value of Research.