August 9th, 2016 The person who chases two rabbits catches neither
Today I was turned down by a fiduciary, instead of wallowing in self pity I turned to Confucius. So here is another audio only post, be sure to leave some feedback in the comments.
August 6th, 2016 Motivation Rant
Today I decided to do an audio only on the subject of motivation. Feel free to let me know how you like it.
August 3rd 2016, Don't focus on the dot
Today's vlog is about making sure we that we don't get tunnel vision. So sit back and enjoy today's vlog.
August 2nd, 2016 Success isn't over night
Just yesterday I decided to walk to the beach, to get some exercise. The entire walk was a little over 6 miles. Just because I exercised one time, I can not expect to instantly get into shape. Success is the same you can not expect it to come over night. Yes that is the topic of today's post.
Recently I picked up the book "Bounce" by Matthew Syed. The book goes over the ten thousand hour principle. For those of you who are unfamiliar with this principle, it basically means that to become a master at something takes a minimum of ten thousand hours. It goes in depth about many professional athletes and musicians, describing all the hard work they did to achieve their greatness. Everyone believes that they were naturally gifted but in reality they put in the hours. Think about the thoughts that go through your mind when you see someone successful. You think to yourself that the person is either lucky or it was easy for them.
If you are currently not succeeding at a certain aspect of your life, give it time. People usually give up right before they find success. Failure is a major part of success because we can learn from it. When we were learning to walk as babies we often fell, yet we all learned how to walk. Just look at J K Rowling, she never gave up and she achieved success. I highly recommend picking up the book, it is a great read
July 30th, 2016. Received some great tips today
Today I was fortunate enough to receive a couple of tips at work. They were not monetary tips, no they were greater than that. I received a book and a good review. Might not sound like a lot but it made my day.
The book was given to me by a professor of plasma physics from Columnist University. Like I stated many times before, my job allows me to meet interesting people. The professor comes in from time to time to have talks with me. The book was an unexpected gift, it is a book about math. We had a conversation yesterday and I spoke of my past as a mathematical athlete. I never expected him to take note of it and get me a book to further my learning on the subject. Out of the kindness of his heart he took it upon himself to give me a gift that would help me better myself. As many readers of this site know, I love reading so this is a perfect gift for me.
The second gift was from a lady who works in realestate. Just like the professor she is in her 70s, so they both have a wealth of knowledge. She wrote a nice note for my boss. Just that little token of appreciation shows that what I do is appreciated. Remember it's the little things that count. Before you guys go off saying that money tips are better, stop. Money will only last for so long, but these gifts will stay with me till the end.
July 28th 2016, Knowledge is only potential power
I know everyone says knowledge is power, but it is only potential power. Execution trumps knowledge any day of the week. Do you know who said this Tony Robbins, before you go knocking him just stick with me until the end of this post. So sit back and get ready to learn.
Most of you reading this post might not know this but I am very knowledgeable when it comes to weight training, yet my physique tells a different story. I have all this knowledge on weight training but I'm doing nothing with it. If I were to apply the knowledge on myself then I can better my health. If i was to post the knowledge on this site or YouTube I can help may other people better their health. Just by having the knowledge does not grant me power it just gives me a little more leverage than the average person starting out. At the same time a person who starts a journey to get in shape with no knowledge on working out has power. The power to change their life.
Another example of knowledge being only potential power and execution trumping knowledge can be seen in the financial world. Lets take a little look at financial advisers and economic professors/teachers. The advisers give you advice on where to invest yet they do not invest in the same funds. Isn't that weird they say how good it is based on their years of expertise but they do not invest in the same fund. Now look at economic teachers and professors, they teach students about the economic world but they are drowning in debt. How can they teach from a book when they have no real world experience in the subject. If a financial adviser is living from paycheck to paycheck and giving financial advise then something is definitely wrong.
This is one of the main reason I started this blog was to practice expressing myself to my audience, while at the same time becoming a teacher. Let me know in the comments what you thought about this post. Also let me know if you agree or disagree with me, there is no right or wrong when it comes to opinions.
July 26th 2016, We can not only drink from one river
Earlier today, I was talking to a friend of mine about entrepreneur based audios on YouTube. We both have certain people who audios help with our mindsets. The only problem with the audio's that we listen to is that they are limited by the sources. What that basically means in layman's terms is that the information is limited to the knowledge of the person teaching. So because of that we need to constantly gain access to a multitude of teachers. That is how I came up with " We can not only drink from one river."
Think back to when you were a child, think about who your teachers were. I'm not talking about our kinder-garden teacher, I'm talking about the people who raised us. We learned many things from them, both good and bad. Have any of you seen the movie The Water Boy? The main character goes to school because of a football scholarship, but he does bad at first in his classes because he had only one teacher throughout his life (his mother). During the course of the movie, he has many individuals to learn from and evolved as a character. If he would have only lived by his mother's teaching then he would have not gone to college, been able to play football and he wouldn't have been able to get married at the end of the film. He learned that in order to survive he would have to learn from many teachers.
This post actually ties into my vlog the other day about having an empty cup. We have to keep our minds open to any learning opportunities. In the subject of money I have many teachers, some you know others you have never heard of. I listen to Dave Ramsey any time I take a shower, he talks about getting out of debt and doing safe investments. At the same time I listen to Robert Kiyosaki who recommends using debt to build wealth. Two completely different views on acquiring wealth, but I do not follow the teachings to a tee. Its all about acquiring one or two golden nuggets from each teacher. For those of you who do not know what a golden nugget, it is a wealth of knowledge in a small package. These two financial moguls are not my only teachers, I also learn from Tony Robbins, Warren Buffet, Jack Bogle, and many more that range from some of my customers to some of my close friends. You don't need to learn every single thing that each person knows you would close the door on the wealth of knowledge from the other teachers.
In closing I want to ask you each and everyone of you a question. How do you find your favorite book, song, band, movie, food or etc? You try multiple things don't you. You hate some of the items along the journey, like some of the items and totally love other items. Basically you can not knock something until you try it. So I want you to find a couple of experts in one of your favorite subject matters and try to pick up some golden nuggets from them. Let me know in the comments what you learned.
July 24th, 2016. Having an empty cup
Today is an amazing day, because I am able to share something that I learned from Bruce Lee. Yes that is right Bruce Lee, he was not only an amazing martial artist but a great philosopher. So sit back and enjoy today's video.
July 21,2016 Are you prepared for war?
Just the other day my brother sent me the above image and I could not help but fall in love with it. This conversation can be applied to almost every aspect of our life. It is essentially saying it is better to be over prepared than under prepared.
One way that we can make sure we are over prepared for life is having an emergency fund. Approximately 62% of Americans have less than a thousand dollars in savings. That basically means that only 38% of people are prepared for a minor emergency. Without an emergency fund we are one paycheck away from being homeless. If you don't have an existing emergency fund, start one today and get it up to a thousand dollars first. The goal is to get it high enough to cover three to six months of expenses.
Another aspect of life that we need to be over prepared in is life insurance. Approximately 38% do not have life insurance. Death is inevitable and we have to prepare accordingly. A funeral is expensive, there is the cost of the plot, the wake, the casket and the headstone. A basic term life policy for twenty years can be as low as twenty a month. There are many options for life insurance, I'm no expert in on insurance so I'm not going to compare term life vs whole life insurance.
This was a small post but it is food for thought. So make sure you stay prepared in life.
July 19th 2016, Are your friends real?
Today I decided to talk about real friends vs associates. Let me know down below in the comments what you think. Also if you want to get our weekly news letter feel free to click on the subscribe/support us tab
July 18th 2016, New Day, New me
As the title states, today is a new day in my life. Today is the day that I take my first step towards the life I want. I have mapped out a plan of action and will do my best to stick to it. This action plan is in conjunction with my work schedule. Before you say that you don;t have anytime, I work 54 hrs a week in 6 days. This is not including my commute time which is two to three hrs each way. So don't think it's impossible and read on.
The action plan I have developed is no walk in the park. If I follow it to a T then success should be guaranteed. The downside is for the next year or two I will not have a "life". When I say that I will have no "life" means that I will have little to no leisure time. This is a concept that I learned from listening to Dave Ramsey and his proverbial "living on beans and rice". He uses this analogy to tell his listeners to cut unnecessary expenditures and save money to tackle debt. The "living on beans and rice" concept relates to my time management, I need to cut out the time wasters. I need to budget my time wisely, because lost time can never be regained. Not everyone is born with the same amount of riches, yet we all are born with the same number of hours in a day.
After reading the previous chapter, you might be asking yourself why I don't just do a little more instead of jumping head first. Whenever you are fully immersed in something you tend to pick it up faster. By fully immersing myself in my action plan I will pick up ways to get more done in the allocated time. You also need to realize that you have to think big, you have to value and believe in yourself. By doing only the minimum how can you expect to get the same returns as someone who works their tail off. It's the same as attempting to pay a credit card off by only paying the minimum. Success is like an iceberg, everyone sees the success (the tip) but fail to see the hard work
July 12th 2016, We are spoiled
Today’s post is going to be about an interaction I had today with a customer. The customer came in and spoke with me about a documentary they were working on, it was actually pretty interesting. The star of the film was a young boy from South Africa that loved to dance. After hearing the boy's story, I realized how good we have it as Americans.
In today's society, the average American whines and complains about any little thing. We as American's are spoiled and we have spoiled our children. There is no reason that kids should be posting “FML!!! My parent's got me the wrong colored IPhone for Christmas. I'm going to break it so they have to buy me the right one.” This is an actual post that a child made and there's thousands more just like it. This little boy from South Africa has never owned a cellphone or even an ipod. He was given a cracked iPhone 4 ( a device that is 6 years old) and cherishes it. He is not complaining about the color or the fact that it is cracked because he knows that it is not a necessity but merely a luxury. It's not only in technology that we are spoiled, think of fashion. I hate it when I see someone wearing a pair of “designer” jeans that have holes in them. Someone taking a pair of jeans and cutting holes in them does not justify it costing a couple of hundred dollars. I was shown pictures of this boy wearing normal jeans, his expression was priceless. It was his first time wearing blue jeans and he was modeling them in the mirror. The jeans did not cost much and didn't have any big branding or holes in them, yet they brought joy to this child.
Before you go off saying that we can't compare American kids to this child from a third world country, stop just stop. Where he lives there is no electricity and his grandmother has to buy prepaid electricity cards. Most people lose their minds when there is no wifi, imagine what they would do if they didn't have any electricity. This young boy is forced to live with his five other sibling in his grandmother's two bedroom house because his mother is a drug addict. His grandma sells homemade donuts to make ends meet. One day a woman purchase from her and seconds later a drug dealer who was waiting in line picks up this women and uses her as a human shield. Why you might ask, it’s because a rival drug dealer decided to do a drive by shooting to try and kill the man on the line. These are the conditions that this boy lives in, yet he is still able to smile and chase his dream. What's your excuse?
The reason I wrote this post today is not to make anyone feel bad for this boy. Don't pity him, instead learn from him. His situation is much worse than most of ours and he doesn't complain about it. There has been many cases of police killing civilians and instead of peaceful protesting, people are killing cops. Stop trying to justify your actions with wrongs that are happening elsewhere. Look at the Trayvon Martin riots, people decoded to use his case to riot and loot. Two wrongs don't make a right!!!
July 9th, Let's Start Reading Again
These past couple of days have made me question society. You might be thinking what is making me lose faith in society. Mobile phone games, everywhere I turn someone is on their phone playing a game. The reason that this is grinding my gears, is due to the fact that no one is reading anymore.
As a little experiment I want you the reader to ask ten people a question. Ask them when was the last time they read a book. Some of the people that I have asked have stated that the last billion they read was in college. When I hear that people don't read, my heart skips a beat. Knowledge is power, if we are not learning then we are not growing. After we graduate from school, we have no one to teach us about the many trials life puts us through. That's where good come in, there is almost one book per subject. There's even books that teach a craft, like all the for dummy books.
Listen, I’m not trying to say that you can't enjoy your commute. All that I am saying is we are throwing away valuable time. So many people spend their work down time on social media and games that it outweighs the time they spend actually working. Everyone always says they hate their job or they want more pay yet, they don't attempt to aquire a new skill set. I'm not saying that reading will solve all your problems, but it can help in many ways. People sometimes turn to alcohol or drugs to escape reality and these substances can have bad side effects or even cause death. You can read a nice fiction book and escape reality that way, worst case scenario you dislike the book or it leaves you craving more. So read a book and feel free to let me know how it went.
July 7, 2016 Ambition
Beginning of July and the weather is already bad. As I sit here typing this post, it is over 90 degrees outside. For the next five days the weather will stay like hot. !right sound like a dream come true for many of you, but that's not the case for me because I am stuck inside working. So today I want to talk about ambition.
Ambition is a strong desire to achieve something. When I hear the word ambition, a voice asks me how bad do I want it. How badly you want something, is the true definition of ambition (in my opinion). For most big decisions in our lives, we make a decision based on a want. Think about the reason some people get married, to fill a void, to not be lonely, because they want to spend the rest of their lives with the person and many more. These are all wants, all our decisions are fueled by a want/desire. Ambition is one of the few things that can help us to change the direction of our lives (in a good way).
The reason that I brought up the weather is because I am unable to enjoy it. The only way that I can enjoy the weather on a consistent basis is by changing my current situation. I would need to be able to live without the need of employment. To many of you reading this post, the concept of living without the need of employment sounds insane. The concept is actually quite freezable, that is if you have enough ambition. What is it that drives you to make you want to do more in life. What drives me is time. I want to be able to enjoy what little time I have left on this planet. Through society we are taught that we need to work for forty or fifty years until we are able to retire. Why do I have to wait until I'm seventy years old to buy a nice sports car and drive it through town mid day. So whenever I commute to work and see men over forty going to work, I tell myself that won't be me.
Ambitions don’t have to only be for “big” things. Years ago I wanted a pair of headphones that cost $250. To get the headphones I didn't buy any food at work for a month and just ate cup of noodles. So whatever your ambition is let it drive you to success.
July 2, 2016 A Fateful encouncouter
As i stated in previous posts, my job allows me to meet people of all walks of life. Today I was able to borrow fifteen minutes from someone who worked in the financial industry. I know that everyone reading this is saying to themselves, big deal I know accountants and stock brokers. The person I met was in their 90s, had been through the great depression, just celebrated their 70th Harvard reunion and they are worth millions of dollars.
If you were to see this person on the street, you would think that they were just another old person. I did not know that this person had a wealth of knowledge before hand. The topic came up when I was printing an email that one of her students sent her. I asked if she was a professor and she responded that she worked in the financial industry. After knowing that finances were their area of expertise, I started talking about my return in the stock market. As of writing this post I am currently up 20% in the stock market. Might not sound like a lot to some people, but the average return for investors is 7%. There in front of me was a financial mogul and as a young investor, I was not going to let this opportunity pass me by.
The first topic that we discussed was diversification. The old saying is true do not have all your eggs in one basket. The second topic that we discussed was investing in companies that pay dividends. The dividends will be reinvested and help with your gains. Next we spoke of investing mostly in companies that do most of their business in America. The final piece of advise that I was given was.... Don't pull out of the market, stay there for the dark times because it can always get better. Time is your biggest asset when investing.
I kept these topics vague, because I can't reveal all my secrets. The topics themselves are gems that I will live my investment life by. I recommend picking up some investment books to learn more. This person will be bringing me a list of stocks that they recommend and that list I will publicize
June 21, 2016 A treat
I recently found an old poem of mine that I wrote a little over ten years ago. This poem won me a competition and got me some Mets tickets. This poem was published in a book, so to prove it here's a high res image of the poem. Hope you enjoy.
June 16, 2016 Ghost writing
Over the past few weeks, I have learned a very valuable lesson... If you want something done right do it yourself. I decided to pay someone to write something for me, to test the waters of a ghost writing partnership. This is a recap of my journey with ghost writing.
Let me define the term ghost writer; Ghost Writer - a person whose job it is to write material for someone else who is the named author. I can hear your inner-voices saying, "Josh aren't you an author, why are you hiring someone else to write for you?" Yes I am an author and could have done the job myself, but i decided to test out the waters. I used the site upwork.com to find a free lancer. The process was fairly simple. You set up an account as someone looking to hire a worker. You then create a job ad that lays out what you are looking for and how much you are willing to pay for the job. You get to send the ad to some of the best rated authors. Other than that, freelancers can contact you in regards to getting the contract. The site has an app that has a nice messenger to allow you to speak with the freelancers throughout the duration of the contract.
I received many applications for my request, it struck me as odd that all of the writers were not from North America. After speaking with all the clients, I decided to go with a writer who showed passion in the idea. Communication was essential, I had to give the writer a general idea of what exactly what i was looking for. After giving them the terms of the agreement a contract was signed. After a milestone was reached, I was sent the work that had been done up to that point in time. If the work was up to par, then some of the funds were released. I had originally thought that the job would take about a month or two to complete. The job took this person only two weeks.
Once the work was completed, I read it from start to finish. The work looked "perfect" in my eyes, hey I was ready to run with it. After having ca couple of people read excerpts from it, I decided to look at it as a consumer. I liked the skeleton of the work but hated the execution. So I had to decided to redo the whole thing, So I lost money on this investment, not much but I don't like to lose.
The purpose of this post was really just me going over my journey with hiring a ghost writer. I'm not saying that outcome reflects the average outcome of hiring a ghost writer. If you decide to hire someone to do work in your place, just make sure that you don't review the work with rose colored glasses. Hey I do some ghost writing for sites.
May 26, 2016 Where I've been
So recently many of you readers have been sending me emails regarding my mini hiatus. The reason for this hiatus was actually for you the reader. Sounds like an oxymoron but it actually a hiatus to work on some stuff for my loyal readers. All of the work that I have done over the past week has been in preparation of launching my first book. It will be live soon, just have to go through it one last time. At the bottom of this post you will find the cover for it.
May 24, 2016 Vlog Episode 4, My setup
Sorry for the long delay withing posts, my life has been pretty hectic this past week. I will go into more details about that tomorrow. In the mean time here is a video about what I use to run this blog. In case you this blog is ran through square space. Hope you enjoy and I will see you in the next one.
May 16, 2016 Having a Breakthrough
Today’s topic is another powerful topic that I am blessed to be able to talk about today. Today's topic is about having a breakthrough. Before you pass this blog post as something that does not apply to you STOP. Stay along for the journey, no matter where you are in life this information is crucial.
Before we can dig into achieving a breakthrough we must define what a breakthrough is. The Webster definition of breakthrough is a sudden increase in knowledge, understanding, etc. My definition of a breakthrough is… Your eyes are finally exposed to the cold hard truth. The reason that I define a breakthrough like this is because when we have a breakthrough we see the world for what it is. Everything seems to fall into place and it all makes sense. In network marketing we called breakthroughs “magic moments”. It's a magic moment because it's almost like magic how everything makes sense by flipping one switch.
The way most people have their breakthrough is by being fed up. Yes that is correct; most people have breakthroughs by hating their current situations and decide to do something about it. A prime example is my personal situation, I want more from life yet I always felt like I was in a rut. I was browsing the web and looking at memes; when I came across a book named How to make a million F*cking Dollars. I did not buy the book but there was a recommendation for a little book called The Total Money Makeover. That little book changed my life not only financially but in almost every other aspect of it. Before you go rushing to buy this magical book to uncover the secret of life, pump your brakes. This book only talks about getting out of debt, but the book represents my first step into taking control of my life. Years ago I decided to try network marketing because of a pain I felt in my work place. I got back stabbed when going for a new position and saw no hope in attaining more finances through the conventional way. I believed that network marketing was my solution and my breakthrough, but it was a halfhearted commitment.
That's the problem with some of these magic moments. They sometimes are not true breakthroughs because we do not have 100% commitment. When you have a breakthrough you never want your life to go back to the way it was before. A prime example is an overweight person who has become physically fit, ask them if they are willing to become obese again. Their answer more than likely will be no. In my breakthrough I became fed up with not having financial freedom. After seeing how retirement truly is in America for those unprepared, I made a vow to myself saying that will not be my situation. If you have a breakthrough no matter how big or how small your breakthrough is follow through with it.
Take that pain that forced you to snap and have the breakthrough, to help you stay on task. If you are fed up with your current situation then you will do whatever it takes to get out of it. Success is whatever you make it, but are you successful because you only see the world through rose colored glasses.