Start a New Business with a No Excuses Approach

Start a New Business with a No Excuses Approach:

January is an amazing time to starting thinking about what you want in life. It’s fun and exciting to dream about how awesome a new year will be. You set goals, you get excited…

Then the excuses set in.

“The person who really wants to do something finds a way; the other person finds an excuse.” ~Author Unknown

If one of your goals this year is to really start the business you have been wanting to start, these might be some of the excuses:

“I don’t have time.”

“I don’t have enough money.”

“I don’t know what to do!”

In the 50 millionaires I interviewed last year, I found a common theme. They have a No Excuses Approach. That doesn’t mean they don’t have any excuses. They do. But they don’t let their excuses stop them from getting something they want.

So if you truly want to make 2012 the year you kick butt and take names – You need to get rid of the excuses. So here are some reasons for the excuses and how to get past them.

Reason #1: FEAR

Fear is a basic survival mechanism. When ever we don’t know the outcome, fear comes to the forefront of our minds. That’s when we make excuses so we don’t have to move forward. Get over your fear with these tips.

Reason #2: DIFFICULTY

How difficult or long you think the task is really matters in what you accomplish. Based on coaching many clients, most people have A to Z thinking when it comes to starting new projects. They know they are at the beginning right now (A), but they want to know every letter in between A and Z before they start.

Because that is extremely difficult to know, the “it’s” can turn into excuses.

“I really need to know how I’m going to market the book I want to write. Even though I haven’t written it yet.” – Person who then proceeds to listen to the latest podcast on book marketing, but still doesn’t start the book

It keeps us from even taking the first step!

Reason #3: BELIEF

If you think you will die if you try public speaking, then you won’t ever do it. Instead (to satisfy our ego) we decide to make excuses. It’s easier than changing our beliefs, but it leads to a life filled with excuses. If you believe you can do it, no matter what, you will not let an excuse stop you.

Instead find and replace your limiting beliefs.

Combat Any Excuse

You don’t necessarily need to which reason is behind the excuse to move past it. Here is what you can do:

Recognize Them

The better you are at being honest and recognizing them as excuses the easier it will be to discount them and counteract them. If you don’t notice them, ask a friend to stop you every time you give an excuse. It brings a lot of awareness to your excuses! (I know from experience.)

Logically Counteract Them

Here are a few common excuses, plus an article for each to help you counteract them:

• “I don’t have time.” - 50 Business You can Start in Your Spare Time


• “I don’t have enough money.” – How to Start a Business Without Money


• “I don’t know what to do!” – How to Start a Small Business

Take Immediate Action

Then take immediate action. Choose the first step that you can do and do it. Derek Sivers told me the following:

“Whatever scares you, go do it because then it won’t scare you anymore. With almost anything once you do it, it’s not as scary as you thought it was.”

Rinse and Repeat

Even if you get rid of one excuse another may pop up. Be diligent in recognizing them and moving anyway!

A No Excuses New Year

This year, stay motivated and excited. Don’t give your excuses your energy. They are only a small bump in the road. Try these techniques and have an amazing year!

“We will either find a way, or make one.” – Hannibal

(Photo credit: Businessman Jumping a Gap via Shutterstock)

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After paying off $70,000 and quitting her corporate job, Jaime started her own business. Four years later she has been on CNN, MSNMoney, Success Magazine, Fortune, Yahoo's homepage twice and more. She is a business coach and speaker plus she interviews self made millionaires weekly for their tips, advice and stories. An Eventual Millionaire is a person with a goal to become a millionaire, eventually, but they are dedicated to an enjoyable life and an enjoyable business now. Download the Eventual Millionaire Manifesto.

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Pay Down Your Debt Fast: The Snowball Effect

Pay Down Your Debt Fast: The Snowball Effect:

Paying for school sucks.

You end up getting a decent education (maybe), but come to quickly find out that most of what you learned is not exactly everything you need in the real world. In fact, you may find that you learn more in the first six months at your new job than you did during your entire time at school!

What hurts worse is that most people, at least in the US, are paying more every year for school. This means larger and larger amounts of education debt as well as consumer debt. Think of all that pizza!

But, the size of your debt doesn’t have to scare you. Trust me; it scared the hell out of me for a while. This is how I dealt and continue to deal with it.

Budget

A debt snowball doesn’t work without a good budget in place. I know that this may be the last thing that you want to hear about getting rid of your debt, but seriously, it won’t work without a budget. I didn’t realize the strength of budgeting until I got on the You Need a Budget bandwagon and followed that “system.” This helped me see my life in the form of item buckets and a “Buffer” so I could get close to being a month ahead on all my bills.

Having this leeway in your money is the first step to trying to find the little extra each month to pay down your debt fast. When you have the month buffer sitting in front of you, you can more realistically and with less fear, approach paying down your debts.

Make the list

Next, you need to know the exact amount of each of your debts as well as their interest rates and minimum payments. After you get this information you can make the list in either two forms:

1. In order from lowest to highest amount.


2. In order from highest to lowest interest rate.

To be honest, most people will tell you to pay the highest interest rate debts first. That makes sense for the most part, especially if you want to save money with some debts with ridiculously high interest rates. But, I chose to pick my lowest amount first.

Why?

Because I could get satisfaction of paying off one of my debts and see the effects of the debt snowball faster. That’s all.

You should take it by a case to case basis though. Try to weigh how much you owe against the interest rate to see which method is better. You may even need to approach it a different way, like if you have a very low debt amount with a super high interest rate and a huge debt amount with a mediocre interest rate. You have to see which way you are paying more money in the long run, then avoid that way.

The law of three

After you know your minimums and add them and everything else you need in your life to your budget, you should have some shillings left. If you don’t, this isn’t the post to tell you how to make more money. Instead, try to stick to the absolute essentials in your budget. If you have entertainment money; cut it. We will create some of that shortly.

Now that you have some extra money un-budgeted for the month, you have to split it into three equal pieces for:

1. Savings


2. Debt


3. Fun money

Some debt gurus will say that you shouldn’t have any fun money, you should strictly concentrate on paying down debt and saving. I say, “screw that,” that is unless you are in dire straights and need out of debt in a hurry.

This extra money you have for debt, that is the money that you will put on top of your minimum payment to your first debt in the list you made above. Once that first debt is payed off then you will move the minimum plus the extra money for debt to the next debt payment and so one.

See it? A snowball!

Here is what is awesome. None of this accounts for you making more money during the month. As soon as you start pulling in any more money, you can throw it towards you debt, or use it as more play money, or buy some pizza. It doesn’t necessarily matter.

Now calculate

You can do this on paper, if you are like a crazy mathematics ninja, but I prefer the digital way because it is easier to keep track of and idiot proof. One of the best ways that I have found that works on Mac and PC is with the trusty ol’ Vertex42 Debt Reduction Calculator Spreadsheet. I first saw this thing mentioned on Get Rich Slowly in 2006, but it still holds true today. Since then I have migrated to an iPhone app called DebtPayoff Pro that is great. There are many more out there, but these are the ones that have worked well for me in the past and present.

Now that you have a tool you can enter all your debt information, how much money you are going to throw extra toward your debt, and the starting balance date. Then you can get an idea of when certain debts will be paid off as well as when the total debt will be paid off. If you are putting away a decent amount of money extra toward debt, you are going to be very surprised at just how fast your debt diminishes.

Now party

Paying down your debt fast can feel like the biggest burden in your life, especially if you have a lot of it. The truth of the matter is, if you can cover your minimum payments right now and have a little money extra every month, you can put a serious hurtin’ on your debt.

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Stretched Like A Nylon Wire

Stretched Like A Nylon Wire:

Field Music "A New Town"

The Brewis brothers of Field Music are masters of stoic, tightly composed formalist rock. Their melodic sensibility is clearly derived from Paul McCartney (and his various musical progeny), but they replace McCartney's loose ease with OCD rigidity. This could be a recipe for musical disaster, but they own it - it always sounds like a very honest expression of a particular sensibility. "A New Town," from their forthcoming album Plumb, breaks little ground for the band - well, unless you want to focus on the inclusion of odd bubble sound effects – but it's an example of the band at their best, when their precise, meticulous execution of layered rhythms and melodies serves to illustrate the mindset of the lyrics, which approach the dissolution of a relationship with an almost ridiculous degree of forced rationality in a highly emotional situation.

Pre-order it from Amazon.

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