You would want to know just about everything about a prospective business partner before going in on a new venture together. Strengths, weaknesses, skill set – you would take careful inventory of it all.

But have you done the same for your most important partner of all – yourself?

Having a blind spot for where you still have work to do in developing your skills can be fatal. You must apply a clear-eyed view to where you are likely to fall into trouble – be it in marketing, operations, hiring, or elsewhere – and identify how your plan for remedying the weakness.

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Summary:

When hiring team members, you very likely take a long look at the strengths and weaknesses they bring to the table. You want to know where they can help you reach new heights and where they have weaknesses that you may want to work on. But are you applying the same scrutiny to yourself?

You are, after all, the most important partner you’ll have in any new venture. It’s critical that you take a full inventory to know what you bring to the table as well. So how do you best take stock of your strengths? Should you be focusing on them – or placing more emphasis on improving your weak areas?

Read on to learn more on how to better know yourself to create the future vision you have in mind.

There’s an old saying that I try to always keep in mind: “If you aren’t moving forward, you are moving backward.”

Not acting with intention and a sense of purpose each day will very likely lead to your dreams going unfulfilled. Simply hopping in your car and driving off toward the sunset will not easily lead you to the coast – not as quickly as if you bring along a map and a GPS to guide your journey.

If you aren’t developing and implementing a clear action plan to achieve your goals, the dreams that you hold are most likely crumbling right in front of you without you even seeing it. You can’t entertain wishful thinking when it comes to making progress on your mission. It is nice to have dreams and fantasies, but these should be relegated to when you’re sleeping, not when it comes to your life goals.

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Summary:

Are you on pace to make your dreams for yourself a tangible reality – or are you setting fire to them each day through inertia and lack of focus?

Maintaining progress toward your goals requires daily diligence, ruthless focus, and a sense of your own weaknesses. Lying to yourself will only set you up for disappointment down the road.

It isn’t enough to set a plan – it requires continual follow through and an ability to examine whether or not it is getting the job done.

Read on to learn more about how you can ensure that your course of action is steering you in the right direction – and how to adjust that course when necessary.

Being able to effectively communicate your ideas, both in writing and in public speaking, is one of the most important skills for any successful person. The watchword here is brevity – far too many aspiring thought leaders fail to recognize the importance of maximizing as few words as possible.

In a time of increasing options for how people can spend their time online and what content they have at their fingertips, it is more important than ever that you can quickly and succinctly distill any message you want to relay to an audience. In many cases, you will only have one or a limited number of opportunities to reach an audience you are targeting. It’s on to you to do everything you can do to maximize the potential power of these interactions.

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Summary:

Some of the most powerful tools at your disposal are your words. Nobody else is going to be able to communicate the power of your business venture better than you can. It is increasingly common for business professionals to spend considerable amounts of time presenting and speaking on their work for various audiences, ranging from potential consumers to venture capitalists considering investing in your idea.

In order to maximize the potential for your earnings, it’s important to develop some comfort with delivering the story of your ideas in a concise and compelling manner.

Listen to learn more on how you can use your words to deliver impactful messages and share your work with wider audiences than you previously imagined.

It takes time to build a dream. But you need to take the time to live it too.

It may seem counterintuitive to mention to-do lists or prioritizing in the context of living a fun life, but learning how to focus on a few key priorities – and minimizing needless burdens on your time – will help ensure that you have more time for building memories.

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Summary:

With your sights focused on building a successful and independent future, it can be very easy to put off living in the here and now. Fun and relaxation might seem like something you are working toward in the distant future, not a concern you have time for right now. But the truth is that tomorrow is guaranteed for nobody.

Life doesn’t need to be such a slog. The reason to achieve success is to be able to enjoy it and to build happier lives for your family and friends as well. Vacations, time out to recharge, hobbies – all of these will not only keep you sane and balanced, but will very likely be rejuvenating enough to make your work a greater success as well.

Read on for some more tips on how to set boundaries between the personal and professional – and ensure that you are wringing the greatest enjoyment out of your life journey.

The smell of coffee. Birds chirping. Sunlight streaming into the window blinds.

The morning doesn’t have to be all bad! And yet so many of us continue to prefer to sleep through one of the most enjoyable – and yes, impactful – parts of the day.

Listen to learn more about how to make mornings the most productive part of your day, and turbo charge your success.

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Summary:

How do you feel when you think of your morning routine? Are you filled with dread, imagining hitting the snooze button and slogging into your day?

A key to your success is to win the morning.

The early hours are key opportunities to catch up on your top priorities and knock out your goals for the day while everyone else is still snoozing away. You’ll find that a common link among successful and high-achieving professionals is that they have found a way to exert control over and make the most of their mornings.

Using some simple time management and focus techniques, you’ll begin each day with positive momentum, setting yourself up to achieve far more than you ever imagined you could – all before lunch!

Read on for more insights on how you can use the morning to your advantage.

So what’s your plan?

Not having a vision laid out in explicit detail on how you aim to drive toward your goals is a surefire sign that you are not serious about your goals. The simple act of just committing your objectives and strategy to paper makes it exponentially more likely that you will follow through on what you need to do.

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Summary:

No matter where you want to go, you’ll need a plan to get there.

Whether your goal is a new house, early retirement, or a new business, the only way to get there is to plan far ahead. Too many of us nurture half-baked dreams without ever breaking them down into the necessary action steps that will guide us along the way.

Listen to learn more on how you can divide and conquer with your plan of attack, use the power of visualization to keep your goals in your sights, and ultimately lay the groundwork for attaining big money and big happiness for your future self.   

600 Seconds.

Doesn’t sound like a lot of time, does it? And yet

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Summary:

Would you believe me if I told you that the most important part

A common trait of many top performers that I know is that they

I have adopted the tactic of using a daily efficiency planner to

Listen to learn more about how you prepare to win each day – by

If you are interested in a proven, defined pathway to success, you might consider the possibility of franchising your way to freedom.

It's important that you take time to investigate the pros and cons of franchising, and evaluate whether a particular franchise is the right fit for you.

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Summary:

You don’t necessarily need to come up with an entirely new concept or business model in order to be a highly effective entrepreneur. Many swear by the franchising model, in which you take on the challenges and opportunities of running a branch or multiple branches of an existing business.

A franchise offers a number of built-in advantages, such as joining an established brand that may not need as much explaining or marketing to reach your target audience. Be mindful, however, that franchising presents unique challenges of its own, in terms of running a business while still working within an existing corporate set of rules that you may have little or no control over.

Read on to learn more on what it takes to get started as a franchisee.

It might be humbling to admit it. Many of us pride ourselves are making our own way in the world.

But if we look back at our journeys and how far we have come, it will be impossible to ignore the influence of those in our lives who have helped guide us and support us along the path.  

Making full use of a mentor or simply someone to bounce ideas off of can make an enormous difference in helping you attain the success that you seek.

Listen for tips on how finding the right mentor and how to make the most of this important and potentially life changing relationship.

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Summary:

We all like to style ourselves as heroes and world champs. The pull of the myth of the lone warrior is strong – it’s why we gravitate to inspirational stories of individuals who prevail alone over great odds. 

The image makes for a nice story, but the reality is almost always a bigger picture – one that involves the support and help of mentors in order to succeed. You may think that you can get where you want on your own, but I assure you that can land there much faster if you are benefitting from and learning from the experience of a mentor from the beginning?

So how do you identify the right person to be a mentor? And how do you make sure that you are using your time together to the most productive degree possible, ensuring that you both are getting what you want out of it?

Read on to learn more on identifying and making the most of your mentors and the potential mentors in your field.

Get rich fast, or get rich slow. Which is it for you?

Here, I provide an overview of methodologies that could just turn out to make you a fortune. You will need to do some more digging to figure out which method is right for you.

The safety net method is a slow and steady approach to achieving wealth. Alternatively, the get rich quick method can help you achieve your goal of financial independence in 5-7 years.

You may choose to use one or both simultaneously, depending on your goals and personal strategy.

Listen to see how these methodologies can help you increase your net worth and achieve the lifestyle you are after.

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Summary:

You’ve heard of those fake get-rich-quick schemes and you may have even heard of get-rich-slow methods of compounding interest as a concept. But what if there truly was a way to ensure that you could retire “rich” by having a specific plan. Would you choose a proven method to get rich fast or the proven method to get rich slow? (And when I say “get-rich-fast,” I mean in five to seven years.)

Well it’s a trick question really, because actually you can use both methods simultaneously; you don’t have to choose one or the other.

There are literally tens of thousands of people around the world getting rich on the Internet, fast! There are also people using the more traditional slow build methods of getting rich and ensuring their futures. Neither is wrong, but you must know what you are doing in both cases.

You can use real estate and/or stocks or you can use proven Internet methods to get rich also. On the internet, you have numerous choices. One of your key decisions will be do you sell your product or do you sell someone else’s as an affiliate.

Becoming an expert in your own personal niche market and creating a brand around yourself can be done fairly easily with some planning.

Or you could choose to become an affiliate marketer and sell other people’s products while building the valuable asset of a mailing.

I have just glanced at the topics here and there would likely be a lot to learn whether you want to get rich slow or get rich fast. But, rest assured, that if you decide that you want to get rich fast using the Internet, it is doable with the right set of plans.

I suggest using both methods of getting rich fast and getting rich slow, simultaneously. Because it is possible, and you can do it!