LEONOR HERRERA

Surely your mom or grandmother has told you the secret to life already, right?

You know, “Fake it ‘till you make it?”

You’ve heard that before, right?

Well, while you want to always ensure every decision you make is based on reality, you can at least give this idea some thought each time you have a decision to make.

Ask yourself, “How would someone with a thriving online business do this?” When you get the answer, figure out how you can do it within your means.

If you don’t believe in this idea, think about the fact that scientists have discovered a few “fake it until you make it” ideas and discovered that the idea of pretending you’re already successful at something works.

• Smiling – Studies have shown that if you make yourself smile anytime you are feeling down, you will lift your mood. It will actually be improved; it’s not just pretend It’s pretend when you first start, but then it ends up being real. This is the reason many phone sales professionals have mirrors to look at
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It doesn’t really matter what type of mistake you make in life – there is always a lesson to learn from the mistake. The trick is understanding that there is a lesson, finding the lesson, learning it, and figuring out what can be done differently in the future.

Realize You Made a Mistake

Before you can fix anything, you must name it and claim it. Accept the mistake, know that you made it, and be open about that and honest about that with yourself and others. Making mistakes doesn’t make you weak. Imagine if Thomas Edison had given up after every single mistake. No, instead, realize you made the mistake. That’s the first step to learning from it.

Identify the Cause of the Mistake

When you examine the mistake, it’s easy to step back and see the overview of it, but the best way to not make the mistake again is to examine the mistake to the point where you know the exact moment in time that your thoughts sent you to the wrong decision. If you can find that decision point that turned ev...

The truth is, it’s going to be very difficult for you to delve into yourself to figure out what your money blocks are all alone. It’s not that it cannot be done, but sometimes it’s just not easy to see what’s going on with yourself. Sometimes you really do need someone who is trained to help lead the way for you. You can find this person by looking for a business coach.

You can find all sorts of business coaches today. If you believe you have money mindset issues that you want to deal with, the best coach for you is someone who deals with mindset issues, and you may even find someone who deals specifically with money mindset issues. It’s such a huge problem that it’s not surprising if there are people offering solutions for this very real problem.

• Ask Your Network – When you come to believe a business coach will help you with your mindset issues, go ahead and let your network know that you’re considering coaches and would love recommendations.
• Follow Them – Based on the recommenda
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let’s get to this a little more directly. The examples, while common, may not necessarily relate to your situation but the process of discovering the blocks you have, and mitigating the block, is the same.

Write down a list of past money mistakes that you’ve made that you know for sure were a mistake now because the data is in and shows the mistake clearly. For example, did you fall for a timeshare presentation and now you must pay for the same vacation for the rest of your life and even pass it on to your kids? Did you buy a home because you thought it was a good financial idea or for some other reason? Do you have student loans that you regret?

Write down the story about why you made the choice you made regarding the idea you had that you now call a mistake. Then write down why your ideas at that time were wrong, how you know they were wrong, and how you can in the future ensure that when you make financial choices you really give yourself time to educate yourself and never make ch...

If you’ve ever wondered why some people are good at making decisions while others tend to procrastinate, it has to do with the amount of self-awareness the person has. You can come by this self-awareness by finding a life or business coach who deals with mindset issues, or you can join masterminds, challenges, and groups to work through these issues. 

But make no mistake, most people have some form of money mindset that is contrary to what is in their best interests. Thankfully it can all be fixed. You can identify the limiting mindset, research the issue, and educate yourself about it so you can learn by data and numbers that your life experience is subjective. Stats can help you overcome that fact.

All of this takes practice and self-awareness to know when the examples you’ve witnessed – while not wrong – may not always be right. But you’ll learn how to trust your instincts because it’s based on your education and study of the situation.

For example, when you learn that a person w...

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 ...