TRANSFORMING YOUR LIFE - EARNING $1 MILLION CASH IN 184 DAYS

One Million Dollars Cash In 184 Days - Project Start: July 1 through December 31, 2006

Nearly five years ago when I started this journal, the goal I had was to revisit and provide some new insights into the subject of business startups - techniques, marketing and promotion strategies, etc. Between 1993 and 1999, I'd written columns on self-employment and small business entrepreneurship for three different newspapers - Chicago's Afrique Newsmagazine, Chicago's Streetwise Newspaper sold by the homeless, and the member publications of the National Newspaper Publishers Association, an association of community newspapers. For me, the columns allowed me to promote the idea of self-employment and a non-profit organization, Self-Employment Enterprises Leadership Forum, Inc. through which I offered workshops and training classes for low-income residents.

I was, to my knowledge, the only person in the country writing columns on entrepreneurship and business development targeting low-income residents and encouraging them to create their own jobs and businesses as an alternative to welfare or criminal activity. I stopped writing the columns in 1999 - to this day seven years later I'm not sure exactly why. The columns connected with thousands of people and I have the letters to prove it. But I think one reason I stopped writing the columns was my perception that I needed to focus on taking and implementing the very advice I offered to my readers. And at that time I think I really questioned whether I had achieved enough financial goals in my own life to justify continuing to offer this feel-good rah-rah advice.

For nearly three decades - since I'd started my first self-employment venture, free-lance photography, at 17 years old - I'd gotten involved in nearly every kind of creative enterprise and information/consulting business. In 2001, just a few months before those planes hit the World Trade Center, I was looking back at my life and saw a lot of work and great ideas but not a great deal of permanent income or assets to show for those three decades.

So in 2001, I found this site Blogger and decided to create one about entrepreneurship and new-biz insights. And I had every intention of adding regular posts to this blog. But like for most of us, life intervened, and pushed the intentions I had to the back burner.

Stuff just comes up, people, and it happens to all of us so don't let it bother you when it happens. In my own case, within the past five years I've acquired a family (wife, three children and one on the way). If you're a family person, you know and are experiencing the reality that other family members always offer distractions that can take you off your path, because they are who they are to you and they want what they want from you and as a family member you feel obligated to pay attention (which is not a big problem but takes getting used to. You learn to deal with these human dynamics and manage yourself and them and believe me it takes time to get used to all these people in your life tugging at your pantslegs and demanding your time - because, as my 33-month-old son likes to say, " I love you, daddy", right before he begs for the candy or juice. Cute, huh?

But here I am back at this blog thing again and I'm still taking about building this multi-million-dollar business enterprise.

One Million Dollars Cash In 184 Days

But this time I've got a plan and this time I'm putting a time limit and parameters on it. 6 months, starting July 1, 2006, and by December 31, 2oo6, 184 days later, my goal is to earn and have in the bank or somewhere else $1 million in cash. THAT'S RIGHT, ONE MILLION IN CASH! Originally I created a 30-day plan to complete this task and then I thought to myself, hey, limiting myself to 30 days would put undue pressure on me and besides, since the median income in America is about $50,000 and the most I've ever earned (gross income, that is) in any one year in my life officially is about $40,000.00, I'm talking about generating 25 TIMES THAT AMOUNT for myself within the next 184 days.

So to accomplish that goal would be a feat for me as well as for nearly anyone in this country. So I said to myself, let's increase the time frame to six months which would give me more time to make it work and if I accomplish the goal in a shorter time frame than six months, great!

We'll start with $100.00 cash and the tools we have on hand: the Internet, three working computers, many parts of older computers, three leased copiers, fax machines and laser printers, my own brainpower and 35 years of entrepreneurial/self-employment experiences and knowledge about technology, writing, photography, videography, business development, publicity, planning and organizing. I'm also partnering with a number of other people in various business endeavors with profit potential but whatever funds we receive through them won't count for this project. And we do have a couple of consulting contracts that may provide additional funding but we haven't collected those funds yet and in this endeavor we agree to only count the cash we have in hand.

I'm not exactly starting from scratch but my position of cash and asset ownership is similar I think to many people in America. I wasn't born into wealth and most of my family members are working class people. So if I can do it - generate $1 million cash in my bank account in six months, using totally legitimate methods available to anyone - then I think it demonstrates the ability of anyone in America - or elsewhere in the world for that matter - to accomplish the same goal.

I'm inspired to finally launch this endeavor by the informative articles I found in a new magazine, http://www.millionaireblueprints.com. If you haven't seen it, check out the link here. You can download copies from their website for $4.95 (a great idea but you can buy it on the newsstands for $3.95; I like the magazine but they may have to rethink their use of the Internet on that one - they would sell a great many more subscriptions at full price through a FREE distri bution of the *.pdf files - just my opinion).

The magazine's stated goal is to deliver "detailed examples, step-by-step instructions and specific blueprints from self-made millionaires". After reading the latest issue cover to cover I can honestly say this book lives up to its goal - as a business writer, it's the kind of magazine I wish I'd published when I was writing my column (I might yet do it someday!)

Two other inspirational sites for me:

(1) this guy Kyle MacDonald who conceived the idea of trading a red paperclip for a house - he's at http://oneredpaperclip.blogspot.com, and this is an awesome idea and it's awesome to me how far this guy's idea and original goal have carried him - national and international publicity, travel and many great resources. I do believe he will make it and get his house!

(2) Alex Tew, a 22-year old (wow!) British guy who launched an idea to sell a million pixels to pay for his college education and ended up generating $1, 037,100.00 from his site, http://www.milliondollarhomepage.com. Check out his blog at http://www.milliondollarhomepage.com/blog.php - fascinating reading! And proof enough for me (although I didn't really need it) that anyone can come up with an idea and make it work if they allow themselves to think outside the box and believe enough in an idea to pursue it and see it through.

I've used two sayings since 1991 that incorporate my beliefs about success possibilities:

A dream without a plan is just a fantasy(tm)!

To be it, you've got to believe it(tm)!

So here it is: my plan is to earn and deposit a million dollars cash for myself by December 31, 2006. What am I selling? Here are the products and services I am selling:

• My 35 years experience as an entrepreneur (mostly struggles to make ends meet)
• My ability to help myself and others start businesses that make money immediately (from $10,000 to $200,000 within the first 120 days of startup - up to now I hadn't been able to sustain those successes but I believe I've learned how to start a company and keep it going)
• My ability to advise other people on how to start business enterprises and make money at them (there are many people who will testify to the results they generated putting my advice into action)
• My ability and success in writing grant applications and business plans that generate money (over $500,000.00 so far in seven years for two dozen non-profits).
• My knowledge of technology tools (e-mail, websites, blogs, forums, and the technology behind them), videography, photography, marketing, promotion, graphic design, writing, publishing and consulting in these areas; and
• My ability to recognize the profit potential in quirky, off-beat, out-of-the-box ideas and help others make those ideas work!

Many people out there have skills and are considered educated, intellingent, and smart, yet they don't make enough money or build enough wealth to sustain themselves and their families. The question I asked about myself and all these people is why? The answers I come up with involve thinking outside the box (that is, not thinking like the majority is programmed to think) and being a curious and keen observer of human nature.

I believe there are three kinds of people in the world:

the educated - those who've read and studied and received degress and other certificates of educational accomplishment

the smart - those who have a natural capacity for acquiring and using knowledge, whether educated (as in formally educated) or not;

the clever - those who may or may not be formally educated but who are smart and have the added capability of seeing beyond what they learn and what's obvious to do what we classically call "think outside the box" and synthesize many disparate ideas into new and unique ones. These rare people include the small percentage who "change the game" with their ideas and innovations. I include among their number Bill Gates, Steve Jobs, Larry Ellison, Steven Spielberg, George Lucas, Sam Walton, Oprah Winfrey and most other "outrageously successful" people.

For most of my life, people categorized me as being "educated" and "smart". Some even called me "a genius" (although I never understood exactly what they meant in calling me a "genius" - and I later learned that my IQ and test scores place me on the borderline of what's considered "genius" level, according to Mensa).

35 years slogging through the entrepreneurial trenches, however, have convinced me that only "clever" people are really successful in this world. Kyle MacDonald and Alex Tew are clever people. BET's Robert Johnson is a clever man (that is I believe why he was able to start a company with $15,000 and sell it for $3 BILLION). Do I think cleverness can be learned? Well, I think we can think outside the box. I think we can synthesize apparently unrelated concepts and ideas into new innovations.

But I think that all of us suffer from three issues that will always challenge our ability to conceive and implement successful concepts:

The opinions and ideas of others about things we say and do

The internal self-talks scripts that play over and over in our subconscious minds, subliminal programming created by decades of the accumulated statements of family, friends and so-called teachers, mentors, and advisors;

Both the above challenges fuel the third challenge:

Our own internal fears.

We'll talk a great deal more about these challenges in the next seven months. They affect you, me and everyone. But you can't let them stop you. And we won't.

JULY 1, 2006 KICKOFF - THE MILLION-DOLLAR-NET-CASH PROJECT(TM)

So for now, here are the bare details of our project and how we will proceed:

Start Date: July 1, 2006

Amount We Start With: $100.00

HOW WE WILL SPEND OUR INITIAL $100.00 IN STARTUP CAPITAL

What We Will Spend $100.00 On:

100 U.S. Stamps - $39.00

100 White Envelopes - $5.00

1000 Printed Sheets - Flyer And Application - $50.00

Total Left From $100.00 = $6.00

Each new post of my blog will detail:

• Our day to day investment/earnings totals
• An explanation of our spending/investment strategies
• How we are building our income-revenue momentum
• As well as my opinions and comments along the way

I'm excited about the journey and to see if we can make this plan work. So keep reading. I'm happy you're along for the ride.