Those are my toes in Costa Rica.

I’ve been an entrepreneur for over 15 years.  I learned what it means to be an entrepreneur from my mom.  She started a wordprocessing business back in the day when word-processing equipment filled a room and women were secretaries, not business owners.

Entrepreneurial-ism is in my blood no doubt.

So much so that recently when faced with making a decision that would double my income while decreasing my time commitment, I immediately began to think about all the new ventures I could start with all the time I would now have available.

Wait. Stop. The voice of reason (my husband) says to me while I’m preparing dinner (I love to cook) and we are sharing a lovely bottle of wine (another favorite pastime.)

He continues by asking…why are you in such a hurry to add more to your plate.  This question makes me pause and ponder.  Why not just wallow and focus on what is in front of you and spend your time doing more of what you love like cooking, gardening and traveling?  Isn’t this the reason you became an entrepreneur in the first place…to have a lifestyle where you can spend your time doing the things you love?

But I have such a great idea that offers incredible value to so many and it is such a good opportunity…how can I not act on it?

And he responds, ‘you are an opportunity junkie.’

Bam…it hits me between the eyes.  That is my problem/talent. When I see a good opportunity or create one, I feel obligated to jump in, start bringing it to life.  It is my duty, especially if it offers a ‘greater good’ component.  What I don’t always do is contemplate if it fits in my life or if I will want to maintain it once I’m done with the creating phase.

I love the creation stage…great idea…must act…now.

Thankfully, I married a man that has the grace to suggest that I slow down, sip some wine, cook some food and allow myself to enjoy the life we have created.

As an entrepreneur what motivates you to slow down?

One Key to Building Wealth

I’ve never heard it put so well and I can’t remember where I heard it exactly.

It hit me between the eyes though as one of the best wealth building tips I’d heard in a long while.

It was so simple, such an easy barometer to use when making any purchasing decisions.

Why hadn’t I heard it before?  Why didn’t they teach this simple concept to me in any of my 16 years of formal education?

It seemed to me that ignoring this simple concept had caused a great deal of the economic problems facing so many now days.

Here it is.

Don’t finance anything that doesn’t appreciate.

So for example, our family operates with one car.  We have for over a year.  Sometimes we borrow my mom’s car but we have owned just one for awhile.  I want to get another car but since learning this concept, it just didn’t make financial sense to pay interest on an asset that goes down in value every day.  We’ve decided to wait until we can purchase a used car for cash.

On a smaller scale, it certainly doesn’t make sense to pay interest on a meal that is gone in 20 minutes, or on a piece of furniture or on a blouse that will be out of fashion in a few months.

Putting anything on a credit card or financing anything that does not appreciate means you are losing twice…first you are paying interest (more than the purchase price) and then to add insult to injury the value of your purchase is going down while you are paying more for it.

Simple, right?

So next time you go to pull out your credit card, think about the interest you will pay and add it to the price.  Still want it?

Do you know how much something really costs you when you pay for it with a credit card?

The other day I was chatting with a client about the Profit & Loss statement for her business. While this client owns 3 different businesses, she was still unclear about what the P&L was telling her at the end of the month.

As a business owner or even just for your personal financial well being, knowing what your P&L statement is telling you is crucial to your wealth building.

Paying attention to these reports and making decisions based on what they tell you is a clear sign that you have a business and not just a hobby.

A P&L as it’s name suggest tells you whether your business is making a profit or loss but there is so much more it can tell you.

It will tell you if you are spending too much making your product (if it is a physical one).  It will tell you where you are spending the highest percentage of your revenue.  It will tell you which products bring in the most revenue.  And if you listen closely, it may even tell you how to turn the final number at the end from red to black.

Take the time to learn what your P&L is trying to tell you.  Schedule some time at the beginning of every month to review the previous month’s report and make adjustments according to what your report tells you.

If you haven’t created a P&L for your business yet, start using a program like Quicken or Quickbooks…or better yet hire a bookkeeper to help you set up your books and teach you how to maintain them.

If you need a referral to a good bookkeeper, give me a call.  I have worked with a few over the past 10 years.

Studies have shown that there is a direct correlation between how well a woman takes care of herself financially and how well she feels about herself.

What do you think your P&L will tell you?

Many of you know I’ve been going through Ann Evanston’s 30 Day Social Networking Coaching Club Challenge and Ann, the sassy social media marketing authority, asks us to examine our limiting beliefs before learning how to effectively use social media to market our businesses.

After going through the exercise, I recognized a few limiting beliefs I had, but nothing I categorized as monumental.  But wouldn’t you know it, after going through the brain aerobics last week I discovered a few that were lurking in the closets of my mind.  I realized that limiting beliefs can hide in the roles you believe you are or are not.  For example, I just recognized that I have a limiting belief that “I am not a writer” and “I am not a marketer/salesperson.”

I discovered this lurking limiting belief because of the aha moment I had recently.  One of my tasks for the upcoming week includes a couple hours of writing.  My initial reaction….ughhhh.

And of course the writing I was planning to do was related to my marketing and so that limiting belief joined in the game.

Then before my mind could gather support for those limiting statements, I caught a glimpse of how much I enjoyed the finished product last time I dedicated some time to writing.  I love finding and using interesting words.  I enjoy the search for just the right action way to express myself.  I recognize good writing when I read it.

Wait. I am a writer.

And then I realized I AM building relationships and my business IS growing, so my marketing IS working. Stop.  I am a marketer/salesperson.

Like in my last post, this was another ‘big aha’ for me. Those limiting beliefs were keeping me from completing tasks, keeping me from keeping my word, keeping me from reaching my goals.

My big BONUS: Getting rid of those two lurking limiting beliefs has made it easier to be more disciplined!

Limiting beliefs can be insidious, lurking and hiding in places we would never think to look.

Where are you hiding your limiting beliefs?  Do they serve you?

The contributor of the photo in this post is PAUL FARMER

You never know what you will learn.  Friday morning at the Women Entrepreneurs of the Bay Area meeting, Joanne Sperans of Volo Coaching delivered an exercise that has had me thinking and aha-ing all weekend.

Time is sweet so straight to the bottom line.  At the end of Joanne’s exercise you walk away with a list of qualities that describes you because you recognized them in your family and friends.  That made me stop, process and then really look at my list.  Did I identify with every entry on the list?

My moment came when my eyes hit ‘disciplined.’  Wait. Did I think of myself as disciplined?  I had spent envious moments admiring the trait in others but didn’t think it applied to me.  And that bugged me.

Back to my moment…because now mere recognition qualified you for ownership, I had to reconsider whether I was disciplined.

I gave myself a point for recognizing discipline in my mother and my husband.

Then noted…’hmmm, I’m proud of getting more done than I said I would this week.  That takes discipline.’

Followed by, ‘I’m exercising every day like I wanted to. That is a positive step.’

By then I was looking for ways to reinforce ways that I have become more disciplined (isn’t it interesting how the brain works to find support for new beliefs, good or bad?)  What do you know?

I’m better than I was giving myself credit for.   And while I still have a ways to go, recognizing that I’m making progress and not “are we there yet-ing” myself literally stopped me cold.

That moment has been an eye opener for me.  Now, when faced with a decision that questions my discipline, I am going full force towards it because now I recognize it as one of my own.

What qualities are you admiring in others that you can now call your own?

Check back later this week for the second part of this ‘aha’ moment…

The New Year always brings thoughts of starting over.  For the last few years it seems that my New Year thoughts revolve around more exercise and better organization around daily finances.

Exercise is a matter of momentum for me.  I really don’t like doing it until I’m about 10 minutes into whatever form of exercise I chose that day.  It is hard for me to remember how much I like it at the 10 minute mark when I am warm and cozy in bed or busy doing a hundred other things.   But once I get started I thoroughly enjoy feeling the sweat drip down my face and my heart pumping to get the blood moving around.

Better organization of finances is really just a matter of remembering that putting off that little 30 second task every day compounds like interest so that at the end of the year instead of just 3 hours of work you actually have 3 days of work to get everything in order.

I tell my kids all the time to spend the extra 20 seconds to get their things put away and not left on the floor.  I realized I need to take my own advice when it comes to organizing my daily receipts so that I don’t have a huge box to deal with at the end of the year.

So here is what I’ve done to make this the last year for these two ‘resolutions.’

For exercise, it takes 21 days to form a habit and in my case I really need to form the habit of getting to that 10 minute mark.  I have 24 days left in January so just enough time to get that habit formed by the end of the first month of the year.  No more “I’ll take three months or by the end of the year.”  I’m going to lick this one in January and spend the rest of the year reinforcing the habit.

To conquer organization I’ve already set up a quick system that takes just 30 seconds everyday.  I’ve propelled myself in other areas by simply remembering how 30 second delays compound so with my system already in place I feel confident that I will be able to keep this going as well.  It doesn’t hurt that I’ve enlisted my bookkeeper to keep me on task as well.  Her favorite quote…‘garbage in, garbage out’ rings in my head every time I want to postpone my daily tasks.

I’ll check back in with you all at the end of January to let you know how it is going.

What have you done so far to make sure you aren’t making the same resolutions next year?

We’ve all read in a number of places that your attitude has the biggest effect on the quality of your life. Just last week while watching the movie “Eat Pray Love” there was a single line of dialogue that struck me.  The line was something like,”until you begin choosing your thoughts with the same deliberation that you choose your clothes every morning, you are going to be in trouble.”

This got me to thinking about how we choose to think about retirement as well.  Why do we wait our entire lives to retire?  Instead of making retirement that time later in life when we get to sit back and enjoy all of our hard work, after a life time of effort, why not do it now?  Create a life of choice now.  Create an uncommon life now.

But where do you start?

It occurred to me that I should start living every day as if I chose to do everything that happened in that day.    So I started with the language in my head, I started with the thoughts I choose every day.  I replaced “I’ve got to” with “I get to”.  Instead of “I should”, I say (if even just in my head) “I want”.

After a few days I introduced this idea to my mom.  She is a bookkeeper and regularly submits payrolls for a number of different small businesses.  Typically she makes the comment, “I have to do payroll.”  This simple comment implies obligation.  When she changed the comment to “I get to do payroll today” she realized that it made her feel lighter and more empowered.  And the “get to” is closer to the truth because she gets paid every time she completes a payroll.  You may think it is just semantics but I have learned when I use language again and again that strips me of control, I feel that I have less control.

This simple change in the language you use daily, if given attention and done with deliberation will start to change the way you see retirement.  Instead of waiting for the day you will retire, or for the day when “x” happens, you will live a life of choice now and living a life of choice has changed everything for me.

Don’t believe me?  I challenge you to change your language for 30 days.  At the end of the 30 days I bet you will feel that you own your time, your life and your choices.  For me this is the definition of retirement…living every day doing exactly what I want, what I choose.

What will you choose?

Do you know what ROI stands for?  It’s a term bantered about the investing world.  What is the ROI?  How do you compute ROI? What is the annualized ROI?  When is ROI not ROI?

Okay…the most common definition of ROI is Return On Investment.  To illustrate, let’s say you invested $10,000 in a mortgage note and you calculate that you have received a return of $1,000 on that note.  To calculate ROI, you would divide the return you received ($1,000) by the amount you invested ($10,000).  The ROI would be 10% on that investment.

It is important to note that the initial $10,000 you invested is still in tact and owed.

To compute annualized ROI, in that same situation, let’s say the $10,000 mortgage note you bought returned the $1,000 over two years.  To compute annualized ROI, you would just take the total ROI and divide it by the years it took to receive the return.  In this case $10,000/$1000 would give you an ROI of 10% and an annualized ROI of 5%.

It is important to calculate the annualized ROI of all of your investments so that you can make accurate comparisons of the returns you are receiving.

Finally, when is ROI, not ROI?  When Return on Investment becomes Return OF Investment.  This little preposition can make a huge difference.  If you are receiving a return of investment in your payments, you must deduct the amount that is designated as the return OF investment to get an accurate calculation of your Return ON investment.  Return of investment means just that, you are receiving back your original investment and this should not be included when calculating Return on Investment.

I know it may seem like semantics but it will make a significant difference if you confuse these two terms.

In reviewing the ROI of your investments, what are the other considerations you make before making a decision?  Have you done a comparison of your investments recently?  If not, what’s keeping you from taking a look?  I’d love to hear your thoughts, leave your comments below.

If you want to learn more about the options you have regarding investing for your future, subscribe to our blog (top right) and we will immediately send you our special report on the “7 Things That Will Keep You From Retiring”.

This webinar covers the first part of the unique strategy we outlined in week one of this webinar series. This is one of our favorite topics…and we managed to squish a ton of the pertinent information into just a little over 30 minutes this week.

Listen to this recorded webinar and learn what the secret investment is, how to find it and real examples of what we’ve seen this investment do for clients.

Invest for the Future and Secure Your Retirement from Darcie Newton on Vimeo.

Don’t miss next week’s webinar when we go over the second part of the strategy and put all the pieces together for you once again.

Please leave your comments or questions below…and opt-in (over to the right) for our special report on the “7 Things That Will Keep You From Retiring”.

Do you know where all your money is?  I know this may sound like a silly question but I’ve talked with several people recently that did not.

So here is the quick, down and dirty, 5 Minute Monday tip.  If you don’t have a current statement for all of your accounts (checking, savings, retirement, education, 401k, annuities, stock trading accounts, etc.) spend 5 minutes tracking them down.  If you have more missing than you can track down, no worries, spend 5 minutes now and get as many as you can.  Then schedule the time to find the rest.

Once you have all the statements collected you can do some calculations and find out how well you are doing.  Are your investment accounts returning a satisfactory return?

And once you have determined your returns you can ask yourself…On your current path, will you be able to reach your goals?

Once you know the answer to that question, you can make decisions to change your direction or continue on.

The first step is to bring all your resources together and get them organized.  I’ve heard it said several ways but the bottom line is that money does not follow chaos.

Start now so that you can begin 2011 organized and confident in the decisions you will make about your future.  Are you ultra organized or only just kind of organized?  What would help you be more organized?