LEONOR HERRERA

The one fact in life about money that is clear is that while you can succeed at things accidentally, you’re more likely to experience success if you plan for it by setting goals and sticking to your realistic plan of goal achievement.

If you want to be successful financially, you’ll be much more likely to experience success if you create a plan, track the plan, review the plan, adjust as needed, and keep moving forward than if you do nothing and wait for the accident.

Financial Goals Should Be:

• Long-Term – Some goals are very long-term goals and may encompass a year or more in overall planning. But you could also have a five-year plan for something such as taking five years to pay off a vehicle for your business.
• Medium Term – This may mean quarterly, or some other period that is shorter than your long-term plans. Maybe you want to plan content for your site quarterly, or you want to put out a new product every single month. This should be included in your medium-term planning.
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One reason most experts know that goal setting requires specifics is that they also know that when you measure things and track things, you can then discover how to move those numbers in the direction you want them to go.

Want to build your list? State it in very specific numbers how big you want to grow it, how fast you want to grow it, and exactly the steps you’ll talk to accomplish it based on your research. Then track it. Analyze what you’ve tracked, adjust, continue, and repeat. As you track the effects of your actions, you can improve and correct.

One thing to start tracking right now is your income and expenses every single day. The great thing about this is that you can track using an old-fashioned spreadsheet, or you can even just use a small notebook that you keep with you. But you can also use fancy software that can make this process super easy if you want. Either way, it’s not going to take too much extra money or time out of your day to do this. But the results will ast...

One of the first things you should do now that you realize that you may be working with some money mindset issues is to make a list of the money-making activities that you can do each day and set it in your schedule to do them every single day.

What are Money-Making Activities?

When you ask any business owner to do money-making activities first, sometimes they look at you like you have two heads. But the fact is, a money-making activity is simply an action that gives you an opportunity to earn money from it. Therefore, it’s different for each type of business. But, for a generic online business, the following are all money-making activities:

• List Building Activities – The more careful you are about how you build your list and the bigger the list gets, the more money you’ll make. Create a freebie offer, improve your opt-in form, integrate better technologies, and so forth.
• Affiliate Activities – Your affiliates are probably the first people you should look to for helping you get m
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There are three common limiting beliefs about money that could be affecting your ability to earn and keep more of your money.  Let’s talk about these three common limiting beliefs about money and you can determine if you have this belief even slightly and then follow the tip to end the problem.

Money is a Limited Resource

This is something you’ve been taught since you were little – not only by your parents, but also by your school and society. Money is treated as if it’s a finite source. But it really isn’t. Especially now that money is not backed by the “gold” standard and instead is just a made-up figment of your imagination. When they need more money, they can literally print more.

Think of this. When a bank loans out money, it’s creating new money out of thin air. If you put 100 dollars in savings, the bank can now loan out 80 dollars of that money (and remember you still have your 100 dollars that you can spend if you want to). They’ll collect interest payments on which earns ...

Creating a new business from scratch online is not expensive. Almost anyone can start a blogging business, for example, with about 150 bucks – depending on whether you need a business license or not. But the blog site will cost you about 20 bucks for hosting plus the domain name to get started. That’s really nothing in the scheme of things if you think about it. That’s why most people who start an online business bootstrap it.

Bootstrapping a business means that you don’t get a loan and just use some extra money out of pocket to get the business started. As soon as possible, you use only the money you’re bringing in from the business to run the business. It’s a great way to start an online business. But, it’s easy to get into a rut of not investing enough money in your business when you are bootstrapping it.

The best thing you can do though, especially when bootstrapping, is to put all the money back into your business as soon as possible. The best way to figure out what this amount ...

There is a vast difference between two people when one has a wealth mindset as compared to a limited “poor” mindset. A wealth mindset is one of abundance. It doesn’t mean just money either. It means riches physically and spiritually, too. A wealth mindset focuses on being physically healthy, forming good relationships with others and yourself, and on being healthy financially today and tomorrow. But you may wonder, “What does this have to do with my business?”

When you have a wealth mindset, you start to realize that in your business you have assets and investments more than you have expenses. For example, if you have a business, your website is an asset. Your email list is an asset. Each paid product you offer is an asset. All these assets will affect your bottom line for months and years to come.

As an individual, your investments that you focus on now will be paying off tomorrow. Investing in a 401K, an IRA, or other investments that are designed to be long-term investments encomp...

The fact is, almost everyone has limiting beliefs and mindset issues that hold them back that formed unknowingly around something. But money mindset issues lead to this problem due to the lack of financial education that most people have. Most people learn everything they know about money from their parents. What parents know is 100 percent tied to their own education and financial class they were born into. This type of knowledge is more likely to be passed forward through close family relationships rather than school education on the topic.

These mindset issues show up easily with proof. It shows up in that eBook you wrote 6 months ago that you haven’t launched because you think your writing isn’t good enough, but you haven’t hired an editor who could advise you and you’re just sitting on it. In fact, you might have already started on another project instead of launching the first, second, or third.

Mindset issues show up because you spend hours trying to make graphics using softwa...

The first thing you need to do in order to tackle any erroneous mindset issues you have is to seek to discover your current money mindset. You can use typical self-discovery methods like journals and tracking, but you can also seek help from a mindset coach.

• Track Everything – Start with tracking all your finances – business and personal. You want to know every dime that’s coming in and leaving and why. Using this as the catalyst for your journal will also help you know what types of information you need to study.
• Keep a Journal – The best way to identify issues that you may be sitting on is to keep a journal. Anytime anything to do with making choices comes up, write it down. Write down the pros and cons of every single choice for a while so that you can learn to make choices based on facts.
• Tell Your Story – Sometimes it can help to sit down and write the story of your financial life. How did you grow up? What happened when you had money drop in your lap? Did you make good choic
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Money mindset makes a huge difference in how a person reaches and handles success.

If you have a poor mindset and fill your thoughts with limiting ideas, you may experience:

• Less happiness and passion – You may only dabble in the niche you really love that lights you up because you are too busy doing things to get ready to do the thing that you’re passionate about. You know the trap. You have to figure out each step of the process and you feel like you have to do it all yourself - when you really don’t.
• Less confidence in your skills – Because you don’t expect to succeed, you lack confidence in your abilities and skills. You don’t feel as if you deserve success, so you don’t experience it.
• Inability to make logical money-based decisions – When it comes to money, due to all your fears surrounding money, and all the poor life lessons you’ve had your entire life regarding money, you find it stressful and hard to make choices and often make them based on fear instead of logic.
• Probl...

Even if you work hard at disconnecting from your notifications and only checking the news twice a day, it’s still important to intentionally disconnect with the world and focus on yourself and your own thoughts each day.

How do you really feel about the project you just completed?

How do you really feel about what’s going on with your daughter?

The way you feel about something may not be clear when clouded by other people’s thoughts and emotions or distractions from the world.

Your thoughts build your reality, and your mind – both conscious and subconscious – is what creates your thoughts. You are in charge of what you allow into your mind based on what you read, consume, and whom you surround yourself with, and the sources you choose in which to educate yourself. It’s all up to you.

Most thoughts are subconscious and not something you are aware of at all times. This is mostly because you cannot actually think of more than one thing at a time, so thoughts will pop i...