Unbeatable Mind, by Mark Divine, was highly recommended by a friend who read it a while back. I have to say, it not only lived up to all expectations, but CRUSHED them straight over the Green Monster (left field fence of Fenway Park, a baseball reference). Unbeatable Mind combines the characteristics instilled in Navy SEALS with the spiritual embrace of a Tibetan Monk.

Summary of Unbeatable Mind

One major point of Unbeatable Mind is defining your purpose.  Defining your purpose can be accomplished by asking yourself the tough questions and visualizing the human being you want to become while focusing on your impact on the world. Defining your purpose is a DEEP, soul finding exercise, and makes you ask if you have a burning fire for what you are doing with your life.

This is challenging, but essential for understanding why you are on this earth.  We are all unique, we are all who we are today by an infinite amount of choices, feelings, and experiences. Our main goal is to help other members who are looking for self improvement, whether this be financially, for their health, or for their well being.

Mark Divine was a Navy SEAL and describes the SEAL Training experience. Divine addresses what the SEALS are known for – MENTAL TOUGHNESS. In the first phase of training, the third week is called “Hell Week”. The new SEALS are put through brutal and difficult operational training on little sleep; it is a test of mental toughness, physical ability, critical thinking, teamwork, attitude, etc. On average only 1 out of 4 students make it through “Hell Week”, which is universally known as one of the most difficult military entrance programs.

“When a man is beaten, tormented, and defeated… He is ready to learn something.” – Ralph Waldo Emerson

Speaking of mental toughness, here is one of my favorite movie scenes of all time from Facing the Giants… if you ever think you can’t do something, just try your best.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-sUKoKQlEC4

Mental Performance Strategies

Unbeatable Mind gives various strategies for improving mental toughness and mental performance. Mediation and breathing are keys to calming and focusing the mind. One exercise that Divine advocates, and something I have actively practiced since college, is Box Breathing.  It is a simple breathing pattern that consists of a 1-1-1-1 ratio.

Box Breathing

Box breathing is performed as follows:

1. Exhale completely
2. Inhale deep into your lungs for 5 seconds
3. Hold the breath in for 5 seconds
4. Exhale for 5 seconds
5. Hold breath for 5 second
6. Repeat

This slows down your breathing, which is integral to reducing stress, and focuses your thoughts. SERIOUSLY, if you’ve read this far! Give it a try now!

11 Secrets of Mental Success

In addition to the various exercises Divine presents for us to improve our mental abilities, Divine gives 11 secrets to success, which I’ve listed below.  These secrets fit with the principals taught throughout the book.

1. Live an examined life, and embrace sacred silence.
2. Know your ONE thing, your purpose, passion, and principles.
3. Connect all your small actions to these.
4. Develop mental and emotional control: Master the Big Four of Mental Toughness and Emotional Resiliency
5. Challenge yourself to find your 20X, and improve daily.
6. Turn to others in service, and develop a winning team.
7. Align to win in all three spheres of I, We, and It.
8. Select SMART-FITS targets.
9. Employ KISS “good enough” planning.
10. Take massive action, and then fail forward fast.
11. Never, ever quit.

Our Recommendation for Unbeatable Mind

What I enjoyed most about Unbeatable Mind is how Divine  talks about his life experiences and gives actionable steps for us to increase and improve our mental toughness and mental performance. We are all different, but may as well stand on the shoulders of giants. I highly recommend Unbeatable Mind to anyone looking to increase their personal performance! Mental toughness is a highly underrated trait and skill; be the one who has it and succeed beyond your wildest dreams.

Your level of success will rarely exceed your level of personal development , because success is something you attract by being the person you become. – Hal Elrod

Readers: have you found your one thing, purpose, or destiny?  What do you love doing?  What’s your passion?

Why does strategic thinking seem so tough sometimes? Why are some scenarios very scary to deal with, especially when there’s a need to be decisive? Is there a decision making framework which we could tap into to help in these situations?

Decisive: How to Make Better Choices in Life and Work, by Chip and Dan Heath, is all about improving your decision making.

In Decisive, you will learn about the villains and common pitfalls many people struggle with in making decisions, and a framework to enable better decision making.

Being able to make good decisions is a great skill to have. Decision making is a key component to becoming better as a person, making more money, and climbing the corporate ladder.

Are you looking to become a better decision maker? Would you like to make better choices in life and work?

The rest of this post includes a summary of Decisive, takeaways from Decisive, and a reading recommendation for you.

“A remarkable aspect of your mental life is that are rarely stumped”. – Daniel Kahneman

Book Summary of Decisive

Decisive is a book all about decision making. In the first part of Decisive, the authors talk about the four villains of decision making. After discussing these villains of decision making, the authors provide a decision making framework to make better decisions.

As discussed in Decisive, there are four villains of decision making:

• Narrow Framing
  • People naturally view a problem as “this or that”
• The Confirmation Bias
  • People naturally will seek information that support their beliefs and this tends to warp their understanding and perspective
• Short-Term Emotion
  • People are influenced by emotions that will fade over time
• Overconfidence
  • People generally will have too much faith in their predictions

To overcome these four villains, the authors discuss the W.R.A.P framework for better decision making. The W.R.A.P. framework is as follows:

• W = Widen Your Options
• R = Reality Test Your Assumptions
• A = Attain Distance Before Deciding
• P = Prepare to Be Wrong

Below, let’s go into each of these in further detail.

Widen Your Options

The first thing to do when looking to become a better decision maker is to widen your options. If you are tasked with making a decision, it is important to think about all of the possibilities, rather than be closed minded.

When looking to make a decision, people should consider more than one option, and adopt a “this and that” mindset.

When studying companies, only 29% of organizations considered more than one alternative (versus 30% of teenagers). Often our options are more plentiful than we think.

Considering opportunity cost can help you avoid a narrow frame (what am I giving up by going down this path?).

A few strategies to widen your options include:

• The “Vanishing Options Test”
  • What if your options disappeared? What would you do then?
• Ladder up
  • For example, a swimsuit firm looked at sharks to develop technology to build a high performing swimsuit
• If you feel stuck, look for someone else who has solved your problem
  • No need to reinvent the wheel!

When you consider multiple options simultaneously, you learn the “shape” of the problem. By widening your options, you can understand the problem better, and be more unique and original with your solution.

Reality Test Your Assumptions

After widening your options, the second strategy for making better choices is reality testing your assumptions.

To reality test your assumptions, you can do the following:

• Consider the opposite
  • Considering the opposite can help you understand the problem more fully.
• Spark constructive disagreement within our organizations
  • Ask “What would have to be true for this option to be the very best choice?”
• Test your assumptions with deliberate mistakes
  • An example in the book was a women who went out on a date with a guy who wasn’t her “type”. She ended up marrying the guy!
• Ooch – run small experiments to test your theories.
  • Rather than jumping head first, dip a toe in.

Some other ways you can reality test your assumptions is looking to figure out the average and base case of a scenario.

For finding the average and base rate of a situation, it’s important to be rational and think critically.

If you can’t find the “base rates” for your decision, ask an expert. Experts are good at estimating base rates, but bad at predicting.

To gather the best information, zoom in and zoom out. Consider both the minute details and the big picture.

By reality testing your assumptions, you’ll be in a better spot to make a good decision.

Attain Distance before Deciding

After reality testing your assumptions, it can be best practice to take a step back and attain distance before making a final decision.

Fleeting emotions tempt us to make decision that are bad in the long term. For example, sales people are trained to prey on customers’ emotions.

To attain distance before deciding on a major decision, you can do the following:

• Use the 10/10/10 strategy
  • How will I feel in 10 minutes, 10 months, and 10 years about this situation?
• Ask yourself: “What would I tell my best friend to do in the same situation?”
• Examine your core priorities and principles. Look at your long-term emotional values, goals, aspirations.
  • What kind of person do you want to be?
  • What kind of organization do you want to build?
  • The goal isn’t to eliminate emotions, but to honor the emotions that count.

Our decisions are often altered by 2 subtle short-term emotions: mere exposure, we like what’s familiar, and loss aversion, losses are more painful than gains.

A study showed students wouldn’t sell a mug for $7 when they wouldn’t pay more than $3 for it.

After distancing yourself from the problem, you can gain a better perspective on the situation.

Prepare to Be Wrong

Unfortunately, it is very difficult to predict the future. When making a decision, realize that you may be wrong.

And this is okay.

For thinking about what could happen, remember the future is not a “point”, but a range of possibilities.

One great strategy when looking to make a decision is using the concept of bookends. Consider the best case and worst case scenarios (in the book, these are called the pre-parade and pre-mortem scenarios):

• Examine the pre-mortem scenario: “It’s a year from now. Our decision has failed utterly. Why?”
• Examine the pre-parade scenario: “It’s a year from now. We’re heroes. Will we be ready for success?”.

By bookending, anticipating and preparing for both adversity and success, we stack the deck in favor of our decisions.

After making a decision, to make sure we don’t compound on bad decisions, it’s important to create tripwires.

Creating tripwires is asking the question, “If we aren’t successful by this future date, we will kill the project.”

Tripwires help since we tend to escalate our attachment to a project that is going poorly. Many powerful tripwires are triggered by patterns rather than dates, metrics, or budgets.

With these 4 decision making strategies, we can make better decisions in our life, work and career.

Takeaways from Decisive

With every book you read, it is a must to have takeaways and actionable items to implement in life.

For Decisive, the two main takeaways which stuck with me over time have been the bookending method, and using the 10/10/10 strategy.

Many people, including myself, look at the worst case scenario when thinking about something outside of our control and comfort zone.

However, this is just one case in a range of possibilities.

After thinking about the worst case scenario, it’s important to also think about the best case scenario, and realize the end result will probably land somewhere in the middle.

With the second takeaway, by applying the 10/10/10 strategy, I’ve been more strategic with my daily purchases and expenses.

A lot of times, I’ll be craving some snack. Then, I’ll think that in 10 minutes, or 10 months, I won’t even remember my craving, and I’ll be fine.

This helps me save money and stay healthy.

There are many amazing takeaways in Decisive, and I highly recommend this book.

Our Recommendation for Decisive

Making good decisions is so critical for success in this world. By making better choices in your life and work, you can avoid headache and reach your goals.

Decisive is a fantastic book which will challenge your thinking and mindset. Through learning about making better choices, you can open your mind to all of the fantastic possibilities of the world.

Readers: do you use a strategy for decision making? Do you fall victim to the villians ever?

Are you interested in making more money? Do you want to become rich? Are you interested in learning how to get rich?

How to Get Rich, by Felix Dennis, is a no nonsense summary of how Felix Dennis, founder of Maxim magazine, got rich. Dennis takes us through the ups and downs of his business life and personal life, and also gives his opinion on how to get rich (not just rich, like really, really rich).

Dennis started out in the United Kingdom in the late 60’s, and worked his way to riches by owning his own publishing business. In addition to the main publishing business, he was a partner in many other deals and opportunities which helped grow his wealth.

In the beginning of the book, he states he is worth somewhere between $400 million and $900 million pre-tax. However, because much of his wealth is illiquid, he didn’t really know (or care; he was rather old at the time of writing How to Get Rich, and didn’t care about much except the pleasures of life at his stage in life.)

How to Get Rich is not a self help book, as Dennis states multiple times, but outlines and discusses many principles, virtues, and lessons on how to get rich.

The rest of this post includes a summary of How to Get Rich, takeaways from How to Get Rich, and a reading recommendation for you.

I’m concerned that the fear of failing, in the eyes of the world, is the biggest impediment to amassing wealth. – Felix Dennis

Book Summary of How to Get Rich

How to Get Rich discusses various topics one needs to be aware of when looking to become rich.

These topics include, but are not limited to:

• ideas
• luck
• ownership
• negotiating
• delegation
• focus
• self-belief

Below are some main takeaways from each of these skills for becoming rich from How to Get Rich.

The Importance of Executing Your Ideas

Ideas are worthless without action. 

Dennis discusses the importance of executing your ideas numerous times throughout the book.

Some remarkable quotes from the book include:

• “The follow-through, the execution, is a thousand times more important than a “great idea”.”
• “It is how ideas are implemented that counts in the long run.”
• “Ideas don’t make you rich. Correct execution of ideas does.”

Essentially, without an action oriented mindset, you will not be able to become rich. If brainstorming and coming up with ideas is all you do, then you will not be successful with your business.

The Role of Luck in Becoming Rich

What makes How to Get Rich great is how Dennis discusses his successes and his failures.

When he is discussing the topic of luck, he talks about how he ended up in the hospital due to his drug use.

What was lucky about the situation is that he insisted on going to his cottage and since he was not in New York City, he was able to be diagnosed quickly and accurately in a smaller hospital. This allowed him to turn his life around and continue to make more money.

This event was certainly lucky; Dennis could have died from this event.

When building, growing, and owning a business, there are many events and outcomes which can be influenced by luck.

If you want to become rich, you will have to have luck on your side.

Why Ownership is Important When Looking to Become Rich

If your goal is to become rich, Dennis argues ownership of a business is critical.

Working for other people, as an analyst or a manager, will rarely lead to extreme wealth.

When owning a business, you tap into a different wealth building equation. With a business, you are increasing your wealth by both receiving the cash flows from the business, but also own a valuable asset.

If you are working for someone else, all you get is your salary or hourly wage (which is inevitably tied to the hours you work).

Some interesting quotes from How to Get Rich about ownership include:

• Cash flow management is the most important thing in a small business.
• Managers rarely become rich.
• “To become rich, you must be an owner, and you must try to own it all.”
• Ownership is the only thing that counts.
• “Delegation and promotion is a way to get rich.”
• “Build a program of carefully tailored delegation and well-deserved promotion. This will create an atmosphere of loyalty, efficiency, and camaraderie that feeds upon itself.”

Why Delegation is the Key to Maximizing Your Businesses’ Potential

Each person only has 24 hours in a day. There is only so much time for learning, work and executing on your ideas.

If you want to scale your business, and scale your wealth, hiring others to help you will be critical.

Working with other talented individuals can help you grow your business, and allow you to get more done over time.

Delegation of tasks will free you up to think more strategically, and focus on what really matters for your business.

Some remarkable quotes from How to Get Rich on delegating include:

• “Talent is the key to sustained growth, and growth is the key to early wealth.”
• “Identify it, hire it, nurture it, reward it, protect it, and when the time comes, fire it.”

The Importance of Focus on Your Path to Building a Business

Focus is one of the most important skills to cultivate if you want to experience growth in your life.

While it seems like multitasking is a great way to get ahead, being able to focus and be consistent with your actions over time will be much more beneficial.

What’s the most critical item to get done today? Can other things wait?

Focusing in on the one thing that is necessary for success today will allow you to move forward over time and grow your business.

Why You Need to Believe in Yourself for Success

Do you believe you can achieve your goals? How’s your mindset? Do you believe you can do whatever you put your mind to?

Believing in yourself is incredibly important when trying to get out of your comfort zone, building a business, and growing as a person.

When looking to become rich and wealthy over time, self-belief is incredibly important.

Through affirmations and mindset work, you can trick your brain into believing whatever you want.

Here are some remarkable quotes from How to Get Rich on self-belief:

• “Belief in yourself and faith in your project can move mountains. But not if you insist on trying to scale the mountain by an impossible route which has already failed.”
• “Boldness has genius, power, and magic to it.”
• “Without self-belief nothing can be accomplished. With it, nothing is impossible.”

All of these great tips were very interesting and thought provoking in How to Get Rich.

Takeaways from How to Get Rich

With every book you read, it is a must to have takeaways and actionable items to implement in life.

There are many amazing takeaways from How to Get Rich, but two main takeaways stick out:

• Owning a business will help you become rich faster than holding a regular job (if done right)
• Focusing in on one thing at a time is so important for getting things done.

Similar to the book, The Millionaire Fastlane, building and owning a businesses can result in the rapid creation of wealth over time.

There is a lot of risk in starting and owning your own business. However, done right, you can grow your riches through both the cash flow of the business, and the asset value of the business.

The second takeaway is the importance of focus in life. There is only so much bandwidth you have to do work, so the best strategy for success is to determine what matters for you in this moment and do it to the fullest.

Multitasking and trying to do too much at once will not lead to success as a business owner.

How to Get Rich is a fantastic book about business, life and getting rich, and I definitely am thankful I read it.

“The world is full of money. Some of it has my name on it. All I have to do is collect it.” – Felix Dennis

Our Recommendation for How to Get Rich

How to Get Rich is extremely insightful in giving tips on how to get ridiculously wealthy.

With a combination of story telling, tips and raw details, How to Get Rich is an entertaining and informative book for people interested in business.

Whether you are interested in entrepreneurship, have started a business, or already have a built business which is successful, you will get something out of How to Get Rich.

Readers: do you enjoy books on entrepreneurship? Are you interested in running your own company?

Making more money in your 20’s is a great way to set yourself up with a fantastic financial foundation for your future. To make more money, you need to provide more value. Learning different skills can help you provide more value and in this post, you will learn 9 skills and learn how to grow in each of these skills to become better as an employee.

Is there a promotion you want at work? Are you looking to grow your salary? Would it be nice to have more money coming in each month?

The first thing you should do when trying to increase your salary at work, is start working on yourself, and build your skill set above and beyond in your current role. Sometimes that can be hard to figure out.

However, the best way to start is to focus on your soft skills.

Soft skills are your ability to relate to people and manage projects.

When employers are looking to promote people, they keep in mind hard skills, the skills needed to do the task at hand, but really look at soft skills. Good leaders possess these soft skills and use them well. Problem solving, delegating, motivating, and team building are all much easier if you have good soft skills. 

In this post, I’m going to share with you 9 soft skills that you can cultivate in your 20’s to grow your salary and make more money.

9 Must-Have Soft Skills to Grow Your Salary in your 20’s

Below I’ve listed the 9 must-have soft skills you need to start cultivating if you want to find success in your career.

1. Communication
2. Self-Discipline
3. Team Player
4. Big Picture Thinking
5. Leadership
6. Customer Service
7. Conflict Management
8. Problem Solving
9. Negotiation

I’ve dug deeper into each of these soft skills in the following sections.

Let’s get to work practicing these soft skills and you’ll be well on your way to growing your salary fast.

1. Communication

The first and arguably most important soft skill is communication.

Focusing on your communication allows you to 

• Mitigates conflict
• Increase employee engagement
• Better client relationships

All of these are things your employer looks at when looking for promotions and salary increases. They want you to be a team player. They want you to be focused on bringing in quality clients and producing quality products. 

So, how can you become a better communicator? You can practice active listening, and practice assertiveness.

Active listening

Communication starts with listening. Active listening is a skill that allows the listener to be fully engaged in the conversation.

You should first concentrate all your attention on the speaker. Put your phone down. Set your Skype icon to busy. Be prepared to be fully invested in the conversation.  

Next, understand what he or she is trying to say. Ask questions. Reiterate what they’re saying in your own words. Make sure that what has been communicated is clear and write down any actionable steps that came out of the conversation. 

This allows you to remember the most important points of the conversation. If you need to do anything to follow up, put it on your calendar immediately. 

Practice Assertiveness

The other side of the coin to communication is to practice assertive communication. Active listening is important because it builds a foundation of openness and cooperation. You’ve already shown to the other person that you’re willing to listen well and collaborate. 

But that’s only half the battle when it comes to good communication. You need to be assertive as well. This doesn’t mean getting all up in someone’s face demanding something.

Instead, you want to express both positive and negative ideas in a way that is open, honest and direct. 

To do this, you need to have specific goals in mind before starting the conversation or meeting.  Ask yourself questions to help figure out what your goal is. 

• What do I want out of this conversation?
• Is there something that I need for this person?
• Is there some kind of feedback I am looking to get or give?

And frame your conversation off of that. Make sure that you stay on task – especially when giving constructive criticism. And that you make sure that you listen, as well as speak assertively. 

If you want to try practicing your new skills in a stress free environment, join your local Toastmasters chapter.  It’s a local speech group that helps members work on their communication skills. 

2. Self-Discipline Through Consistent Efforts

Self-discipline is key to mastering your current job and showing enough dedication to rise up the ranks of your current organization.

It’s a great soft skill to have in your back pocket because your boss wants to see that you’re a self starter and dedicated to your work. The self-discipline required to do this well is definitely a skill you want to foster. 

To grow your self-discipline, deliberate practice is the way to start. 

One of the best ways to do this is to practice deliberate practice. This is a systemic practice of mastery.

The basic idea is to break down each aspect of your task and practice until mastery. You want to increase intense focus and ability in specific areas of your craft. You start with smaller tasks and increase to bigger tasks until you have the entire skills mastered.

Self-discipline takes time and consistently to see your efforts brought to fruition, but it will definitely help you achieve confidence in the area you want to master. 

Focus on taking back your time

The second thing to think about when developing self-discipline is focus on taking back your time.

Self-discipline and habit forming go hand in hand. Once you’ve planned out your deliberate practice steps, you need to make sure that you schedule them on your calendar well ahead of time. The more mental energy you put in at the beginning, the more likely you are to actually form the habit you’re trying to build. 

So, take a moment at the beginning of the month to plan out your schedule. Pencil in time to practice each skill. And then make sure that any items you need are prepared ahead of time. That way, you can just jump right into the activity.

When you do this, you remove decision fatigue. You have already decided, beforehand, what your schedule is going to look like. And it makes it easier to stick with. 

All of this in turn, increases your self-discipline, and your boss is sure to take notice. 

3. Teamwork is Critical for Success in the Workplace

Teamwork makes the dream work.

Knowing how to cultivate teamwork is a soft skill your boss will really appreciate. Your boss wants a team player because working together and collaborating is going to achieve the best, most innovative results. You want your boss to see that you’re engaged and committed to working well with your team.

This mentality helps with their bottom line profit and creates an atmosphere of positivity. 

Being a team player also helps highlight your individual strengths and weaknesses and highlight your ability to lead. When you take ownership over something you do well, but then allow your teammates to own their own projects, and make each work together shows how strong of a leader you can be because you aren’t micromanaging your coworkers and you’re trusting them to do their part in part of the process. 

It’s empowering for everyone, and it gives your boss space to work on more pressing issues.

How can you be a team player?

• Ask questions. 
• Don’t try to do everything by yourself. Let your coworkers help you.  
• Suggest innovative solutions to other coworkers. 
• Take suggestions your coworkers give you seriously.
• Drill down on your role in the company and make sure you know how your role affects others

4. Big Picture Thinking

Big picture thinking separates employees from managers. It is the ability to step out of your work and see the larger impact of what your organization is doing.

When you utilize big picture thinking, you can be more innovative in your work and help achieve the larger organizational mission.

Bosses love to see employees taking initiatives . They want to see you see patterns in complex problems and come up with new ideas and solutions. 

Big picture thinking allows you to keep your eyes on what the whole of your organization is doing, and keeps you connected to their mission. It also

• Allows you to lead
• Keeps you moving forward
• Promotes teamwork
• Encourages collaboration and allows you to see what others see
• Keeps you from avoiding the mundane

So what are some things you can do to practice big picture thinking?

Analyze how you think. If you sweat the small stuff, are focused on perfection, or try to hold an entire project by yourself, seek to know why. And then change it. Instead of sweating the small stuff, ask how this impacts the entire project – if it doesn’t you can ignore it.

Instead of focusing on perfection and finding yourself stuck on the same series of tasks, step back and look for larger opportunities. If you are trying to do an entire project by yourself, start delegating. Give others tasks so you can focus on the best practices for the organization at large. 

5. Leadership

A good manager is always looking for his team to have soft leadership skills. Learning to lead is a skill that will stay with you your entire career and give you opportunities no other skills can.

Developing the leader inside you is one of the best ways to rocket launch your career into a higher pay scale. It’s one of the best skills you can hone in order to increase your salary at work.   

The best leaders lead from a strong teamwork base. They take feedback well and make sure the entire team feels respected. They use strong communication to take teams to newer heights and create the best projects. To be a good leader, you need to do the following things. 

Define goals and expectations

Before you try and lead on a project, you need to know what the goals and expectations are for the project.

Take some time to create a strategy before you meet with your team and explore what the project should look like step by step.

Utilize some big picture thinking and make sure to get involved with what the project should look like.

Consult with other people if you need to gain clarity before speaking with your team members. 

Clearly deliver your message

Make sure that you communicate with your team well. A clear message is one of the most important parts of leadership.

Without it, the people you’re working with will become confused and discouraged. Practice what you want to say several times and make sure you have the best tools to communicate the most important parts of the projects a few times beforehand. 

Keep everyone involved 

The worst thing you can do as a leader is to not delegate. You really want to make sure that everyone on the project is involved in the project and bought into the final result. 

They need to have everything they have for success. So make sure that you’re communicating well and asking them questions. 

Listen and show empathy 

Not everything is going to go well on a project you’re leading. A good leader always listens first and shows empathy to frustrated coworkers. Hear people’s concerns and make sure that you’re always willing to troubleshoot problems.

A leader is only as good as their team, so you want to make sure that yours trusts you and wants to work with you to put together the best product possible.

6. Customer Service and Likability

If you have a front facing job, customer service is a skill that is necessary. And even if you aren’t front-facing, having great customer service and making sure you’re well liked by the team as a whole can do wonders to getting that higher paycheck. 

First you want to make sure that you know your product on the inside and out. The best customer service comes from being knowledgeable and able to answer any questions people ask. You want to make sure that your teammates can trust you to handle things well. 

Second you want to make sure that you’re always friendly and open to helping other people. This starts by having a friendly and open demeanor. You always want to listen first before speaking. Make sure you understand their concerns and don’t hog the spotlight. Also, make sure you’re asking questions and providing the best information. 

Customer service and likability come down to relationships. You really want to make sure that you’re actively fostering those relationships and putting your best self forward.

7. Conflict Management

Conflict management is an essential soft skill for anyone wanting to grow their salary at work. Mitigating conflicts at work helps keep the team happy and working towards the best final project.

Bosses look towards employees with good conflict management skills to help them keep everyone focused on teamwork and good products. It takes a lot of confidence to settle conflicts well, but with a little practice, you’ll be well on your way. 

Let The Person Explain and Actively Listen

This is the most important part of conflict resolution and management. You have to facilitate a space where all persons are heard and respected.

Without this, no change is going to occur and nothing will change. Take turns talking and reiterating the main points of the conversation so that the big issues are addressed.

But, make sure you’re not bringing up old conflict. Really try to focus on the conflict at hand. 

Show a Willingness to Compromise or Collaborate

After all the major concerns have been addressed. The next step is to be willing to compromise and collaborate. Look at the problems you’re having and ask everyone to bring solutions to the table. Then try and find the best mix of solutions with everyone’s input. In order for any problem to be solved, all frustrated members have to feel like they have decision power in the solution. 

Even if you think your solution is the best – or that you’re the right person in the conflict – put those feelings aside. The goal is to work together, so you should prioritize resolving conflict over being right. 

Remember the Importance of the Relationship

Ultimately, you want to continue working as part of a team. And a huge part of conflict management and resolution is to keep the relationship at the forefront of the conflict. If it’s a client you’re struggling with, remembering that clients get you paid is huge. If it’s a coworker, remember that you could be working with this person on a long term level helps put things into perspective.  

8. Creativity, Design and Problem Solving

Practicing creative and innovative design allows you to delve deeper into problems and work to create collaborative solutions. Your boss wants to promote people who bring interesting perspectives to problems and who work to create a more efficient system. 

You want to bring a solution-focused and action-oriented mindset on the table. And know that designing is more than creation of products. You can also use design theory to improve your office’s systems, protocols, procedures and customer experiences. 

However, you cannot practice creative problem solving in a bubble. Make sure that you’re holding brainstorming sessions between you and your coworkers. Test different products and systems with them. And get them involved in the thinking process. The more people that are involved in an innovative project, the better the final product will be. 

Definitely use creativity and design to your advantage to make your boss notice you and give you that raise. 

9.  Negotiation

The final soft skill essential to a pay raise at work is negotiation. Not every boss will recognize your hard work and then advocate for you to get a pay increase. You have to advocate on your behalf. 

Talk to Your Boss 

Bring up your concerns to your boss well before they establish their budget for the year. Start asking for more responsibility as a precursor to more pay. Open strong communication lines and establish a positive relationship. 

Prove your Value 

In order to negotiate well, you need to prove your value to the company and to your boss. Keep a list of all your major accomplishments in your role. Make sure you highlight your unique skills that made your accomplishments important. 

Do Research in your Role

If you have a good relationship with coworkers in similar positions, ask them what they make. If you don’t, use websites like Glassdoor to help approximate what you should be making with your years of experience. 

Ask for More Money

Use the time that you’ve spent on collecting data for your benefit. Sit down with your boss and tell them that you’ve been taking on more responsibility and show them the pay data for your role and say that you’re looking for a pay increase to match your increased responsibility. 

Need more guidance? Here’s a comprehensive guide to asking for more money at work.

9 of the Best Soft Skills to Grow Your Salary at Work

Here are the best skills to help you grow your salary. Use them to get more involved at work and show your boss that you’re serious about making more money. 

Practice these soft skills at work and you’ll be well on your way to growing your salary fast.

Make no mistake, statistics is hard.

Many people use statistics informally in their lives daily. Sometimes, these people use statistics without understanding it fully.

Maybe you are someone who works in with data and statistics, and don’t have the concepts and assumptions nailed down.

Would your job be easier if you knew these concepts? Would it be valuable if you had simple explanations and stories for why different statistical concepts make sense?

What if you could learn to think statistically, and apply the concepts of statistics appropriately?

Thinking Statistically, by Uri Bram, teaches you to think like a statistician and understand at a high level some of the big concepts of statistics.

Thinking Statistically looks to help you understand three powerful concepts of statistics using every day language and examples.

Far from a textbook, Thinking Statistically is an easy and enjoyable read which will lead towards success when using statistics in your daily life.

The rest of this post includes a summary of Thinking Statistically, takeaways from Thinking Statistically, and a reading recommendation for you.

“The sexy job in the next 10 years will be statisticians… and I’m not kidding.” – Hal Varian, Chief Economist of Google

Book Summary of Thinking Statistically

Thinking Statistically teaches you to think like a statistician without worrying about the formal statistical techniques.

Thinking Statistically discusses three main concepts. The best part of the book is it does so without using equations or scary math. Instead of equations (which the author purposely stays away from), every day language and stories are used to discuss these concepts.

Staying away from the details helps make this book more digestible for the average reader.

Concepts and abstractions can be useful. You don’t always need to know the details backing them up.

There are three concepts which Thinking Statistically touches on:

• Selection Bias
• Endogenity
• Bayes’ Theorem

Let’s go into more detail on each of these statistical concepts.

Thinking Statistically about Selection Bias

Selection bias is everywhere, and creeps up on us whenever we take a non-random sample and act if it were random.

Some data is so sneaky that it biases itself. Whether or not a particular piece of data arrives in your final sample is dependent on the value that datum would’ve taken.

One of the examples in Thinking Statistically was how selection bias caused pollsters to miss-call President Truman’s re-election.

In 1948, the polls were taken over the phone. Guess who had phones in the 40’s? The rich Republican leaning people – not the Democrats. As a result, all the polls thought the Republican candidate was the most popular candidate.

This was far from the truth – President Truman won re-election with ease.

Thinking Statistically about Endogenity

Endogenity problems occur whenever the supposedly-random error term turns out to be correlated with a variable in your model, or with one that should’ve been in your model, but wasn’t.

For example, most models will take the form Y = X + intercept + random error term.

Essentially, if you are looking to model a certain event or probability, you want to include all relevant variables in your model. If you don’t include all relevant variables, you could have some issues with prediction.

One of the examples in Thinking Statistically on endogenity is how college GPA is completely useless as a measure of a student’s ability.

Many of us think college GPA can be expressed as a function of effort and ability. Though, one factor we are leaving out is the difficulty of the coursework for a given student.

If you leave out the difficulty of courses taken, you expose yourself to endogenity problems.

Thinking Statistically about Bayes’ Theorem

Bayes’ Theorem describes the probability of an event, based on prior knowledge of conditions that might be related to the event.

For example, if cancer is related to age, then, using Bayes’ theorem, a person’s age can be used to more accurately assess the probability that they have cancer, compared to the assessment of the probability of cancer made without knowledge of the person’s age.

Thinking Statistically didn’t do the best job of explaining Bayes’ Theorem, but the thoughts presented in the book were good enough for everyday uses.

Takeaways from Thinking Statistically

With every book you read, it is a must to have takeaways and actionable items to implement in life.

The main takeaway from Thinking Statistically is be careful when:

• presenting data
• making assumptions on a population of data
• thinking about what could explain a certain event.

There is so much data around us. With so much data, there will also be a lot of noise. Removing that noise, and understanding the trend will be step one of getting to the details, and step two will be applying these statistical concepts to understand more fully the problem.

Turn on the news and you will here various statistics on different studies occurring down at your local university.

Just make sure to be careful when looking at a study or some research. You can lie with statistics very easily…

By understanding the data, understanding the assumptions and models, and thinking statistically, you will be able to more accurately understand complex situations.

“There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies, and statistics.” – British Prime Minister Benjamin Disraeli

Our Recommendation for Thinking Statistically

Thinking Statistically is less than 100 pages long, and is a quick read. Thinking Statistically is also quite enjoyable, as the author has a number of silly comments scattered throughout the book. In addition, there are some pictures, and various  stories to back up real life events where people made false judgments when working with data.

Thinking Statistically is fine book for increasing your understanding about statistics, and the concepts and theories of selection bias, endogenity and Bayes’ Theorem.

If you are looking to learn more about statistics, definitely check out Thinking Statistically.

Readers: do you use statistics on a daily basis? Do you follow the concepts above in your thought processes?

“Do you have everything?” Mom would ask as we took our backpack full of clothes, toothbrush, books, game-boys, music, tools, homework, and anything else you could imagine for a four hour car ride to our farm in Wisconsin.  As all of six of us plus the dog got into our Plymouth Chrysler mini-van. There were two choices: the fast “94” route or the scenic route… Of course mom wanted to go the scenic route;  the scenic route had amazing views, beautiful farmland, and guess what… cows…

Seth’s opening analogy is comparable with the beauty of the scenic route lost on us kids. Imagine driving through perfect farmlands, seeing the most beautiful black and white Holstein cows.  Soon after seeing these cows in groves, you became desensitized to these amazing creatures.   Then you see something totally different, your eyes focus on it, it is completely remarkable.  A PURPLE COW.  It is unique, remarkable, one of a kind…. until you see more of them, and more of them, and more of them.  At what point does the purple cow become lost in the sea of the familiar?

Summary of Purple Cow

Purple Cow by Seth Godin is about marketing.  The purple cow is a simple, yet impossible to define concept.  It is about standing out in a world where consumers have seen everything, but in a way that provides value to the customer.   In essence, the purple  cow is about making your brand, product, service, image, etc. remarkable.

Websters defines remarkable as “worthy of being or likely to be noticed especially as being uncommon or extraordinary.”

“In a crowded marketplace, fitting in is failing.  In a busy marketplace, not standing out is the same as being invisible.” – Seth Godin

So if we know what remarkable is what is it’s opposite:  Common, average, familiar, inferior, normal, ordinary, regular, similar, standard…. you get the point.  Average isn’t so bad?  If there are 85 people in a bar, and Bill Gates is one of them, the average net worth of each individual is $1 billion dollars.

“There are three lies: lies, damned lies, and statistics.” – Benjamin Disraeli

Though according to Godin, the opposite of remarkable is none of these.  It is actually something that is very good.  WHATTTT? Have you ever been on an airline and they get you where you wanted to go and they did it safely? Did you tell anyone?  What would make this flight remarkable?  Something horrible beyond belief, right? (screaming triplets next to you, crash landing in the pacific, forgetting your phone charger…) Or something unbelievable, such as an upgrade to first class because they liked your shoes, served free champagne because it was your birthday, or gave you free tickets because they liked your jokes…

There are three camels: a papa camel, a mama camel, and a baby camel.  Papa camel has 2 humps, mama camel has 1 hump, and baby camel has no humps.  What did they name the baby camel?

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So… what are possible solutions? How do we create a Purple Cow?

It’s obvious…. create a product/service/design that STANDS out from the competition.

To help your creative juices flow, check out some examples of purple cows.

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Readers: what examples of Purple Cows have you seen?  Do you believe in Purple Cows?

P.S.  The baby camel’s name is Humphrey. 🙂

What would life be like if you could easily make money online with webinars? How nice would life be? What if you had access to money on demand?

Everyone these days is trying to get rich.

People want money, and want it now. Many people turn to blogs, a brick and mortar business, or trading their time for money by selling their services.

One under-utilized medium of getting information and products to your customers is webinars. Surprisingly, webinars are both more effective and have all the benefits of a blog or traditional business.

What would you do if you could have money on demand through webinars?

Money on Demand, by Steven and Corinna Essa, shares with us 16 ways to build wealth online through webinars. Creating a profitable webinar is possible with the right formula and strategy, and webinars can be very lucrative.

Make no mistake, creating webinars and selling a premium product can be hard work. However, building a profitable webinar business could be your ticket to the creation of the online business of your dreams.

The rest of this post includes a summary of Money on Demand, takeaways from Money on Demand, and a reading recommendation for you.

Book Summary of Money on Demand

Money on Demand shares 16 ways to build wealth through webinars.

The 16 ways include, but are not limited to:

• Using your knowledge and expertise to provide high value content for your viewers
• Partnering with other experts and facilitating the webinar for their viewers
• Selling and promoting other people’s products – making money through affiliate marketing or licensing
• Interviewing experts and using their fame to get exposure for you and your brand
• Producing webinars for businesses and securing contracts to produce recurring income for your services
• Securing advertising on your webinars

Money on Demand goes into detail for each of these profitable webinar strategies, and provides a webinar blueprint.

Webinars are incredibly powerful for marketers and entrepreneurs. When looking to make a sale, you need to earn the trust of your customers.

Why Webinars Are Such a Powerful Marketing Tool for Online Businesses

People attend a 60-minute webinar because they have a hunger to learn about the topic covered.

A webinar allows you to present to hundreds, or even thousands – of people at a time from anywhere in the world. In addition, the typical conversion rate of a webinar is 10% (compared to blogs and sales pages which typically convert at 1%).

This means, if those 100 people show up, statistically speaking, 10 people will convert (purchase) on your product.

People like webinars because they are interactive, are personal, and packed with information.

With a webinar, you are engaging in a one on one chat with your viewers – you are the expert, teacher, and leader of the presentation.

This is one advantage over blogs or text-only web pages: by allowing your viewers to see your face, your brand and product is more personal. People want to buy from people!

“Everyone has an invisible sign hanging from their neck saying ‘Make me feel important’. Never forget that message when working with people.” – Mary Kay Ash

Finally, with all web business, webinars are cheap to produce, satisfy the law of effection, and are able to scale. Securing a domain can be as cheap as $4 a month, and once set up, thousands of people can view your video and enter your sales funnel.

For a few hours of your time, you can produce a series of videos and content and let it sit on your website. In exchange for an email address, you will deliver high quality content and generate leads for your business and product.

How to Produce a Successful and Profitable Webinar

Producing and creating a successful and profitable webinar is possible with the following strategy.

Most webinars are structured in the following way: provide value for two-thirds of the presentation, and shift to selling for the last one-third.

If you have a 60 minute webinar, this would be broken down into 40 minutes of high value education, and 20 minutes of selling. At the end, you could finish with a question and answer session. This last section is important as you can nurture the hot prospects by defeating objections to why they should buy.

For webinar software, screen capture can be done through a service like Screencast-o-Matic or Open Broadcast Software (OBS).

For hosting your webinar, you could stream on Facebook, YouTube, or on a meeting software such as Webinar Jam, Zoom or GoToMeeting.

Now that we have talked at a high level about producing profitable webinars, let’s get into the details of what should be included in your webinar.

Steps to Create a Webinar to Sell Your Products and Services

Creating a webinar can seem a little intimidating.

However, your webinar can be great through the proper preparation and strategy. Money on Demand provides us with a very solid webinar creation strategy.

Below is a high level summary for producing a successful webinar:

• Coming up with a great introduction
• Structuring the content in 3, 5, or 7 steps
• Illustrating the steps with stories and case studies
• Introducing your product or service

Let’s get into a more detailed discussion on each of these webinar sections.

Creating a Great Introduction for a Successful Webinar

When starting your webinar, you want to capture the attention of your viewers. You want your viewers to get EXCITED about your product, service or information.

The first ten or fifteen minutes of a webinar are very important.

Make sure the introduction covers the following topics:

• Identify the webinar’s intended audience
• Describe who you are and why you’re sharing this information
  • Answer the question “Why should I listen to you?” Include as much evidence as you can that you have experience in the field. Show how you’ve achieved significant results yourself as a result of implementing the strategy that is about to be revealed in the webinar.
  • This will establish that much-needed trust. Trust is a vital component for closing sales. As I always say, “nothing sells more than proof.”
• Explain why the audience will benefit from this webinar.
  • To ensure the audience stays engaged throughout the whole presentation, make sure you whet their appetite with what’s about to come.

By creating a great introduction for your webinar, you will start creating the necessary trust and authority for your presentation.

Structure the content in 3, 5, or 7 steps

The next step after the introduction in your webinar is to structure your content in 3, 5, or 7 steps.

If you are presenting on weight loss, this could be the “7 steps to lose that stubborn body fat”.

It’s important that the content flows well, so the viewer feels you’re taking them from point A (not knowing anything or knowing very little about the topic) to point B (having a clear understanding of how they can achieve the results promised in the title)

These steps should provide the viewer great value and information, and further build trust towards your brand and expertise.

Illustrate the steps with stories and case studies

When going through the various steps of content in your webinar, you will want to illustrate the steps with stories and case studies.

Try to include in each step a story or case study to illustrate each point made.

For example, talk about how your client, Lucy, identified that her bad habits were the cause of her lack of results. Once she started applying your strategies, she found success.

The more you include stories and case studies, the easier it will be for your audience to digest the information and remain engaged. Too often, presenters treat webinars as tutorials or lectures, which is the fastest way to lose your audience’s interest.

Introduce your product or service at the end of your webinar

After the information, you can transition to introducing your product or service.

To transition smoothly from the content to the selling, it’s important to announce you’re about to offer an opportunity for people to go further, faster.

Say: “I’ve delivered priceless information to you, right? But if you haven’t followed this system before it could be a little overwhelming, right? Is it okay if I share with you how you can achieve your weight loss goals the fast and easy way?”

By following this structure, you will connect with your intended audience, establish yourself as the expert, and promote your product effectively.

After the webinar, you will want to follow up with email marketing and additional sales procedures to keep your viewers and leads warm.

Monetizing for Your Profitable Webinar Business

If you are an expert in a subject, sharing your knowledge and expertise can be the product.

Once you produce one webinar, you can continue to produce other informative webinars and establish yourself as an expert in the field. This is similar to other content based online businesses, where your content is the product.

One-on-One coaching is an easy way to monetize free content and webinars. You are the expert and can help people with your expertise. Coaching can be structured in 30 minute one-on-one sessions, premium group classes, or email coaching.

Online courses, eBooks, or physical products can be used to monetize your webinar as well.

At the end of the presentation, the goal of your webinar is to establish trust and authority, and show your viewers the potential of your product, service and methods.

Takeaways from Money on Demand

With every book you read, it is a must to have takeaways and actionable items to implement in life.

For Money on Demand, there are two main takeaways:

1. Video and webinar sales pitches convert on average 10% vs. 1% for blogs and traditional pages.
2. Webinars aren’t that difficult to produce and are personal, interactive, and just as informative as an e-book, blog, or online course.

With these two takeaways, the next step is brainstorming which subjects you have expertise in to produce a high converting webinars.

Once you have a target audience and a topic, you can draft an introduction and outline of the content, and start promoting your event.

What’s great about the Money on Demand webinar method, you don’t need to have a product to sell. You could come up with the product afterwards, offer coaching, or produce more webinars!

Money on Demand shows us it is possible tap into the world of making webinars to make sales, and is very inspiring with some of the stories included.

“Having the world’s best idea will do you no good unless you act on it. People who want milk shouldn’t sit on a stool in the middle of the field in hopes that a cow will back up to them.” – Curtis Grant

Our Recommendation for Money on Demand

Money on Demand is packed with actionable steps on how to make money online while utilizing the power of the internet and webinars. Webinars aren’t new – but with an abundance of blogs and written content on the internet, webinars will continue to become a bigger part of sales and marketing in the future.

Most get rich online books are full of fluff and contain few actionable steps.

Money on Demand is far from a book full of fluff.

Getting in front of a camera isn’t for everyone, but there are numerous other ways you can utilize webinars to build wealth. Promoting, marketing, and setting up webinars are alternative routes. Of course, if you are an expert, you can produce and promote your own product or coaching.

Webinars convert higher than traditional web pages and will give your sales pitch a personal touch. Learn about the power of webinars with Money on Demand.

Would you be interested in doing webinars to build wealth online? What topic are you an expert in? Would you be willing to get on camera and share your knowledge and help others?

Would you trade grinding for five years to be rich for life? Would you be willing to sacrifice upgrades and luxury to improve the chances of financial freedom and becoming wealthy? What would you do to become rich for life?

I have a few big questions for you:

• what do you think you’d have to do for five years to become rich for life?
• are there any steps you could take in the next five years to drastically improve your financial situation?
• what would life be like if in five years you could wake up rich – compared to where you are today?

The answers to these questions are very important.

You have the power to drastically improve and impact your financial situation with the right choices and strategy.

For me, since graduating college a little more than five years ago, I’ve lived within my means, exploded my income, and worked to build wealth.

Now, I’ve saved up a solid amount in my retirement and investment accounts, paid down my debt, and have a strong emergency fund.

Even without the investments, just by having paid off my debt and having an emergency fund, this gives me an opportunity mentally to take more risk at work and look to further my career and hustles.

For you, you can do this too.

It will take time, but it’s not too complicated and will be totally worth it.

In this post is to talk about the math, the mindset, and the strategy you can take to do this in the next 5 years.

Becoming Wealthy is Determined by a Simple Equation

Becoming wealthy and saving more money is determined by a simple equation:

(Income – Expenses) * Time = Increase in Savings and Net Worth

If you make more than you spend, and do this for a number of years, you will build your net worth and grow your savings.

Add to this equation, investing wisely, making good financial decisions around your savings, and learning about personal finance over time, and you have the potential to drastically improve your financial situation.

In my opinion, time is the most important variable in this equation.

If you do the right things financially for a month, sure things will get a little better, but rarely will a big month have a huge effect on your overall financial situation.

If you do this right for a year, you can get to an even better situation, but again, in my experience, things don’t really change.

To experience the biggest effects, you need to dedicate at least three to five years of your future life to living within this equation.

Overnight success doesn’t exist, but over three to five years, it is certainly possible and attainable.

Winning with your money is within your reach and you can do it.

How Living Within Your Means for Multiple Years Can Lead to Having More Money

Everyone’s situation is different, but just to illustrate the potential of this simple equation, let’s do some math.

If you make $50,000 a year, and spend $40,000 a year, you will have $10,000 left over to put towards your financial goals (investing, emergency fund, debt payoff, etc.).

$10,000 might have a big impact on your financial situation, but in terms of becoming rich, this won’t go too far in today’s world.

However, take this and throw it in our equation.

($50,000 – $40,000) * 1 Year = $10,000

After one year, we get $10,000. But let’s look at five years (yes this is basic math but I’m getting to the point).

($50,000 – $40,000) * 5 Years = $50,000

What would you do if you had $50,000 more in the bank? This would certainly be a change in your financial situation – I know an extra $50,000 would be great for me!

Now, what happens if you start making tweaks to the other variables?

What if you could eliminate $5,000 in expenses per year? What would this look like?

After one year:

($50,000 – $35,000) * 1 Year = $15,000

After five years:

($50,000 – $35,000) * 5 Years = $75,000

An extra $25,000 because you were able to trim your expenses by $5,000.

What about if you increase your income as well by $5,000 a year?

After one year:

($55,000 – $35,000) * 1 Year = $20,000

After five years:

($55,000 – $35,000) * 5 Years = $100,000

Again, $20,000 is a lot, but not enough to drastically impact your life. $100,000 on the other hand? That’s a great start to financial freedom.

Obviously there are many combinations and ways to play around with this equation to start to see how much you could save in five years.

But with these examples, I hope I’ve shown you the potential of this simple equation and how you can improve your financial situation in a big way over a few years.

How to Become Wealthy and Rich

Now, let’s talk about how you can actually take advantage of our equation and build wealth for the future – starting TODAY.

Below are seven steps you can take to start your path to financial freedom and success.

1. Determine Your WHY
2. Develop a Mindset to Avoid Lifestyle Inflation
3. Track Your Income and Expenses
4. Cut Unnecessary Expenses
5. Focus on Exploding your Income
6. Learn about the Basics of Investing
7. Stay Consistent Over Time

Let’s dive into each of these steps in greater detail below.

1. Determine WHY You Want to Become Rich

Here’s a fact I’m sure you know: money doesn’t bring happiness.

However, money can be a tool which allows you to live a life you want to live.

Why do you want to improve your financial situation?

For me, I want to improve my financial situation to provide a stable, secure and stress-life for my future family.

It’s not about having nice cars, clothes and a big house for me – I don’t need these things to be happy.

I want to be able to spend time with people I love and do the things I want to do with my time.

This is why I want more money.

What’s your why?

• Do you want to spend more time with your family?
• Get out of debt to live stress-free?
• Go out to your favorite restaurants?
• Travel to exotic places?
• Buy your favorite cars?
• Live in a big house?

Any of these could be your why and it’s up to you to figure out what makes sense to you.

If you have a why, you will figure out a way.

2. Develop a Mindset To Avoid Lifestyle Inflation and Live “Poor”

Lifestyle inflation is one of the biggest traps people fall into regarding their personal finances.

Essentially, lifestyle inflation can happen in the following way: as a person’s income increases, then their expenses increase.

As you can see from our equation above, it doesn’t matter how much money you make if you spend it all.

Avoiding lifestyle inflation can be done with by making a conscious decision to limit luxuries, live like a college student, buy used, etc.

For me, this is easy – I wear shirts I’ve had for 10 years, shoes I’ve had for 5, bought a used car, and only replace something if it’s broke.

This somewhat goes back to my why as well. I’m happy by doing things which bring me enjoyment – not by the clothes I wear, the place I live in, or the car I drive.

To me functionally is more important than the glamour, and for this reason, I’ve been able to keep expenses low.

Over time, as your financial situation improves, it is totally okay to spend more money, but until that point, keeping expenses low will be important.

3. Track Your Income and Expenses

Before focusing on improving your income and expenses, you need to KNOW how much you make and how much you spend on a monthly and yearly basis.

What gets measured, gets managed. – Peter Drucker

Tracking your income and expenses is the first step to becoming better wit

The four personal finance metrics you need to know for personal financial success when it comes to tracking finances are:

• Net Income
• Gross Expenses
• Savings Rate
• Net Worth

For our purposes, net income and gross expenses are the two which apply to us most and are the focus of this article.

Net income is what did you make in income, after taxes, for a given period? You can find this out by looking at your paystubs.

Gross expenses is the total amount of money you spend during a month.

After you have these two numbers, you can then start to budget, identify spending weaknesses and get on the path to financial success.

4. Cut Unnecessary Expenses

The fastest way to improve your financial situation is to cut unnecessary expenses.

One thing I will say though is you should focus on the BIG expenses of housing, transportation and food first, and then look at other expenses.

While yes, subscriptions, coffee and other expenses do add up, if you can reduce your rent or mortgage payment by $200, this will have the same effect as cutting your daily Starbucks.

Or if you decide to take the bus to work instead of driving, this could save you $400 a month in parking and gas – again, a much bigger impact than cutting a streaming subscription.

For me, I take the bus to work, I house hacked for four years, and I don’t have too many subscriptions.

While I could improve on eating out, I eat in and cook quite a bit.

Looking at where you are spending your money can help with reducing expenses, and then taking action will help you save more.

5. Focus on Exploding Your Income

Next, you should focus on increasing your income.

Five years is a long time, and you can do a lot with your spare time to make more money, get a promotion, or start a side hustle.

During the last five years, I’ve nearly doubled my salary. With this, and by keeping my expenses essentially flat, I’ve been able to increase the (Income – Expenses) piece of the simple wealth equation substantially.

Increasing your income is all about providing VALUE and being unapologetic and unafraid to ask to be compensated for that VALUE.

Examples of providing more value could be:

• taking on more responsibility at work
• changing jobs to a more lucrative position
• gaining a certification and applying it
• starting a side hustle
• investing in real estate
• or flipping things

All of these can lead to more money coming in each month.

It’s up to you to figure out which strategy is best for you, and while it might not be easy at first, I know you can do it.

6. Learn about the Basics of Investing and Keeping Your Money Safe

Finally, learning about investing is important for building long term wealth.

At the beginning of your journey, investing won’t bring as many gains as focusing on your income and expense. But after five years, your investments will play a big piece in your overall wealth.

During this time, you can learn about investing through reading books and blogs, build an emergency fund, and start to put money away into:

• retirement accounts
• taxable investment accounts
• real estate
• a business

While I’m someone who likes to try and hit home runs with my investments, starting off, it’s important to invest wisely and assess your level of risk tolerance.

Once you understand your relationship with your savings and money, then you can start to invest more with a purpose and in a way which makes sense for your goals and future.

7. Stay Consistent Over Time

As we talked about above with our math calculations, time is the multiplying effect which can supercharge your progress.

While time goes slow, it is incredibly powerful.

If you decide to put your head down for the next five years, I can almost certainly guarantee things will be different for you and you will be in a better financial situation.

Five years is a long time, and by putting the principles of personal finance to work, I bet you can only dream of the progress and success you could make over time.

The power of compound interest does not just apply to investing – it applies to everything in life.

By adopting a mindset which favors intentional planning and action, you can and will find success in your life.

Are you going to be consistent and grow your money?

Are You Going to Be Rich in 5 Years?

After reading this post, you have a great resource and strategy to go out and make the next few years count.

While the progress might come slow, trusting that time will bring success will make all the difference.

Over the last five years, I’ve been successful with my finances and now I’m living a great life.

I don’t really worry about money anymore, but this wouldn’t have been possible if I didn’t sacrifice and live within my means for the last five years.

Now, I want this for you. I’ll look forward to seeing you become successful over the next few years and on to living the life you want and deserve.

Have you ever been down to your last fifty dollars? You didn’t know where to go? Were you energized by the fact you had no where to go but up? What you experienced was the power of broke…

The Power of Broke is a book about how being broke, on a tight budget, and hungry for success can be motivating, exhilarating, and a catalyst for great success. The Power of Broke is a story book profiling a number of successful entrepreneurs who didn’t have large amounts of funding starting off.

I was drawn to reading The Power of Broke because I’ve seen Daymond John on the popular TV Show Shark Tank and wanted to learn more about his story. In addition, I’m constantly looking to surround myself with the ideas of successful business owners and entrepreneurs. There is no better way than to read about them in books!

When your back is up against the wall, your bank account is empty, and creativity and passion are the only resources you can afford, success is your only option.

Summary of The Power of Broke

Daymond John has been practicing the power of broke ever since he was a teenager in Queens. With a $40 budget, Daymond started selling t-shirts to his friends out of the back of his van. Desperation breeds innovation – Daymond put his creative ways to work, growing his company over the years into the billion dollar brand FUBU. Each and every day, Daymond John wakes up and says to himself, “Rise and Grind!”

The SHARK Points of Business

Daymond John wrote The Power of Broke to tell the world it doesn’t require million dollar funding to build a brand and be successful in business. Essentially, to be successful as an entrepreneur, you must apply the SHARK Points of business:

• Set a Goal
  • Where are you headed? What’s on tap for the next year? Think about what’s possible. Think about what’s in reach. Write it down.
• Homework, Do Yours
  • You have to know your stuff in the market you are. You have to identify what the customers want and need to be successful.
• Adore What You Do
  • It comes down to passion. You have to love what you are doing. If you don’t, then it’s empty.
• Remember, You are The Brand
  • It all starts with how you carry yourself, what you put out into the world, the way you interact with your audience, your customers, the marketplace. It’s on you. Just you.
• Keep Swimming
  • Don’t give up, don’t give in.

When you have nothing to lose, you have everything to gain.

The Power of Broke Confirmed

The Power of Broke discusses the stories of a number of entrepreneurs who came up from nothing and applied the SHARK Points. The people profiled are from many different industries – music, social media, fashion, food, internet marketing, extreme sports, and consulting:

• Steve Aoki – Musician, DJ, Record Producer, Music Executive
  •  Maxed out 10 different credit cards totaling $90,000 to fund a record.
• Rob Dyrdek – Skateboarder, Producer, Reality Show Star
  • When he was 11, he didn’t have the money to enter a skateboarding contest, so cut a deal: if he recruited 10 others to enter, he would get in for free. He did it and continued to turn heads with his brand.
• Gigi Butler – Entrepreneur, Cupcake Boss
  • Started a cupcake business with just $33 to her name and grew it to a company with $35 Million in annual sales.
• Jay Abraham – Executive, Consultant, Public Speaker, Direct-Marketing Guru
  • In the 1970’s, Jay Abraham started by delivering 8-track tapes to various stores in a $500 beat-up van. Soon after, he bought a small company out of bankruptcy, applied some silly sales techniques (deals which resulted in negative 45 cents for the initial sale) and built it into a $60 million dollar company.
• Tim Ferriss – Author, Motivational Speaker, Entrepreneur, Angel Investor
  • Many of you know Tim Ferriss from his books (The 4-Hour Workweek), but many of you don’t know he was working for a non-profit and driving his mom’s hand-me-down minivan before finally landing his book deal!
• Ryan Deiss – Entrepreneur, Digital Marketer, Consultant
  • Created many online businesses in college and nearly got wiped out when he lost track of his products. He overdraft $250,000 and had to figure out how to pay his debt. He paid off his debt, but then owed another $250,000 in taxes to the Government! In 3 days, he utilized the power of broke and got it done!
• Mark Burnett – Television Producer, Bestselling Author
  • Mark Burnett came to the United States from the U.K. and working at an insurance company and selling t-shirts in his spare time in L.A. As his t-shirt business grew, so did his dream to adventure. He set up races and contests for extreme people and this set the stage for the show, Survivor. Now, after almost 20 years, he is the producer of many top action and contest TV shows.

I loved reading about all of these people’s stories. It was truly eye opening and inspiring.

“The meaning of life is the process. The meaning of life is in the conversations we’re having right now, and you can have the same conversation with a waiter or a janitor or an executive at a top company. It’s all in the process, and in my case it’s in my commitment to add value anytime I interact with anybody. If you can get that in alignment, find a way to help someone else while you help yourself, then everything else flows.” – Jay Abraham

My Takeaways and Action Steps

With all books, I look to have a couple takeaways and action steps to apply in my life.

In Jay Abraham’s passage above, he talks about finding a way to help someone while you can help yourself. I completely understand his point and want to be able to provide value to many people. I’ve already started this by creating this blog and sharing my personal experiences. I’m also very happy that over 20 people have downloaded our free debt destruction tool in the past week!

Property #2

Reading The Power of Broke pushed me this the weekend to think outside the box and look to expand my horizons. I’ve been watching the real estate market for some time now and have a goal in 2017 to buy another property. I did it over the weekend! Property #2!!

I had my offer accepted on a 2 bedroom, 1 bathroom place. The house needs some cosmetic upgrades to the bedrooms and living room. This will be a large undertaking over the next 3 months. I’m going to look to rent out  my current house which will bring the following tasks: finding renters, applying for rental license, and cleaning and fixing up the house and yard to get it ready. Then once I close on the other house, I’m going to paint, clean, and redo the floors of the new house! I’m excited and ready for the high stress period coming up.

UPDATE: I ended up not going through with the house due to foundation issues.

Suffering produces perseverance; perseverance, character; and character, hope.

Our Recommendation for The Power of Broke

If you are looking to start a business and are looking for ideas, pick up a copy of The Power of Broke. You don’t need capital to start a business – Daymond John proves that by featuring numerous successful people who started with less than $1,000 in the bank. Get after it! Apply the SHARK principles: set a goal, homework (do yours), adore what you do, remember you are a brand, and keep swimming, and you will be on your way to success.

I’m very glad I read The Power of Broke. Even if you aren’t interested in business or entrepreneurship, reading about the stories of various people we read about is always interesting. For example, I didn’t know much about Tim Ferriss before reading The Power of Broke. I am glad I now know a little more of his story to success. All the stories energized me to get to work! RISE AND GRIND!!

Innovation happens from the bottom up, not the top down.

If you have been broke, did your motivation and results soar? Is frugality a psychological trick which forces us to save? Would you purposely stress yourself out to become success?

Creating a budget is a great first step to take when looking to improve your finances. Make 2021 your best year with these great budgeting tips for 2021. Learning how to create a budget and save money with your plan is easy, and you can get started today with this post about budgeting your money. 

Are you looking to take control of your financial situation? Would you feel better with some more money in the bank? Do you want to win with your finances?

One way to take control of your personal finances and save more money is to budget.

While budgeting isn’t the sexiest or most fun thing to do with your time, setting a budget and sticking to your budget can be the key to reaching your financial goals.

In this post, I’m going to share with you how to create a budget in the year 2021 in 5 easy steps.

What is a Budget?

First, what is a budget?

A budget is just a plan for how you spend your money every month.

That’s it. Nothing fancy. It’s just you telling your money what to do.

But it can be a lot more than that if you’re constantly stressed over your finances. When you make a budget, it suddenly becomes a lot easier to:

• See where your money is going
• Figure out what you’re wasting money on
• Create a plan for paying down debt
• Build an emergency fund for rainy days
• Save and invest for retirement or your kids’ college
• Plan out your financial goals
• Understanding your spending patterns and triggers
• Stop freaking out over money

That last one is really important.

Money is not everything in life, but it is a tool you can use to create the life you want and deserve – without stress.

How to Create a Budget in 5 Steps

To create a budget, all you need is a pencil and paper, but using a computer can help if you are a spreadsheet nerd like me 🙂

Creating a budget isn’t too hard if you know the right steps to follow.

Below are the 5 steps you can take to create a budget:

1. Learn about the Different Budgeting Methods
2. Identify What You Enjoy and Don’t Enjoy Spending Money on
3. Track Your Personal Finances to Understand Your Income and Expenses
4. Understand Your Spending Habits and Eliminate Any Spending Weaknesses
5. Implement, Track and Tweak You Budget Over Time

Now, let’s dive into each of these budget creation steps in more detail.

1. Learn about the Different Budgeting Methods

Budgeting doesn’t have to be hard or complex, and there are a number of different ways to make sure you are spending your money on what brings you joy.

First though, it’s important to learn about a few budgeting methods, and figure out which one makes most sense for you.

The four budgeting methods I’d like to share with you are:

1. The 50 / 30 / 20 Budgeting Method
2. The 80 / 20 Budgeting Method
3. The 60% Solution Budgeting Method
4. The Cash Envelope Budgeting Method

Let’s dive into each of these in the next section.

Budgeting Methods to Learn Before Starting to Budget

The 50 / 30 / 20 budgeting method involves spending 50% of your take-home pay on needs, 30% on wants, and 20% on investing and/or debt repayment.

With the 50 / 30 / 20 budgeting method, you only have 3 line items to track every month – it cannot get much simpler than that!

What this method requires is for you to clearly define what is a need vs. what is a want in your life.

After defining your needs and wants, you just need to sort all your monthly expenses into a need or a want, and add up each category.

The 80 / 20 budgeting method is an even easier version of the 50/30/20 method.

If you don’t want to make the effort to discern between wants and needs, you can just lump them into one.

In this budgeting method, 80% goes to your wants and needs, and 20% goes to investing and/or debt repayment. That’s really all there is to it!

The next budgeting method is the 60% Solution. This budget has five categories for your GROSS income (ie. pre-tax) outlined below:

• 60% to “commited” expenses
• 10% to retirement savings
• 10% to long-term savings
• 10% to short term savings
• 10% for “fun money”

This budgeting method effectively suggests you can live off 60% of your gross income.

This budgeting method really simplifies expense tracking since all your “committed” costs are lumped into one category.

However, it carries the same challenges as the 50 / 30 /20 method since 60% may not work for your household.

Finally, the cash envelope budgeting method is the oldest form of budgeting out there.

In fact, the word budget originated from the Old French word for purse.

While the cash envelope method requires the most effort out of any method on this list, it is still relatively simple.

The cash envelope budgeting method requires you to go old school by using nothing but cash for all your purchases.

Now that you’ve learned about these different budgeting methods, let’s move on to step two.

2. Identify What You Enjoy and Don’t Enjoy Spending Money on

I have a few questions for you to think about when thinking about your budget.

These questions are more related to your life, than money, and will bring the answers you need to start improving with your finances.

The questions for you are:

• What are you passionate about?
• What do you enjoy doing most?
• Is there anything holding you back from doing these activities more?

The purpose behind these questions is to get you thinking about MATTERS to you.

For me, I’m passionate about spending time with my family, being healthy and active, and learning.

Since these are my passions, then I need to align my spending habits with these passions.

What does this look like in practice?

• For my health, I’m not afraid to spend a little more money on healthy food and supplements. I am finding spending some money on a relatively nice bike, a rock climbing gym membership, and equipment which can help me reach my fitness goals.
• With learning, I’m not afraid to invest in myself and buy a course, a book or seek help.
• For spending time with my family, I’m fine spending money at a golf course my dad wants to play, or taking my family out to dinner once in a while.

For you, figuring out what you like spending money on with make the budgeting process easier.

Also, you can then figure out what you don’t like spending money on to come up with ideas to eliminate through your budget.

3. Track Your Personal Finances to Understand Your Income and Expenses

Next, it’s time to get a complete picture of your personal finance situation.

The 4 metrics you need to know for personal financial success when it comes to tracking finances are:

• Net Income
• Gross Expenses
• Savings Rate
• Net Worth

Below we dive into each of these metrics and statistics so you will know how to calculate them.

Net Income

Tracking your net income over time will give you a picture of what you are working with financially.

Let’s start off with an easy one: net income. What did you make in income, after taxes, for a given period?

The easiest way to do this is by just looking at a recent pay stub.

You’ll see your gross income listed out, which is what you made before taxes.

It should also list out all of your deductions, like FICA, federal, your state tax (if any), etc.

If you have investment income, or have any other freelancing or consulting income, you can find your gross income by adding up what you are paid each month.

Below gross income, if you’re looking at your pay stub, you’ll find your net income, which is the income remaining after all taxes.

Essentially, your net income is what you have to work with each month and year.

If you make $5,000 a month after taxes, then you know you have a maximum of $5,000 you can live on for all of your expenses and saving goals.

Hopefully, over time, this number will go up as you become more experienced and valuable to your clients or employer.

For me, I use income to judge how effectively I used my cash in a given period.

Tracking net income allows you to plan what to do with that income to best set yourself up for financial success

Gross Expenses

Next, we have gross expenses. Your total gross expenses is a very important financial statistic to calculate for yourself.

After income, calculating gross expenses – the total amount of money you spend during a month – will help you identify any weaknesses in your budget.

You can track your expenses however you find most effective. I split my expenses into some broad buckets, and then dive deeper to get a better understanding of where my cash is actually going each month.

• Discretionary Spending
  • Food and Drink
  • Shopping
  • Recreation
  • Travel
  • Hair
  • Home Improvement
  • Cash Withdrawal
• Utilities
  • Internet
  • Gas
  • Electric
  • Water
• Mortgage/Rent
  • Principal on Mortgage
  • Interest on Mortgage
  • Home Insurance
  • Property Taxes
  • Private Mortgage Insurance
• Auto
  • Gas
  • Auto Insurance
  • Maintenance
  • Auto Loan Principal and Interest
  • Parking
• Other Insurance
  • Health Insurance
  • Dental Insurance
  • Umbrella Policy
  • Life Insurance
• Other
  • ATM Fees
  • Other random charges and fees
• Taxes
  • Federal
  • State
  • Social Security
  • Medicare

If I had kids, I can imagine having more line items for diapers, clothing, child care, sports, saving for college, etc.

Like I said, you can categorize your expenses anyway you’d like. Personal finance is personal! 🙂

For example, I lump food and drink together. Splitting them up makes sense as well, but I don’t drink as much anymore, and as a result, I simply have kept it as food and drink.

As part of your overall financial picture, tracking gross expenses can reveal areas of improvement (are you spending too much on a cable subscription when you rarely watch TV?).

Over time, you can make tweaks and grow to make sure you are on the path to financial success.

Savings Rate

Savings rate is a very important personal finance metric to track.

Once we have our income and expenses for a certain period, we can move on to a slightly more complicated metric: savings rate. No, it’s not too complicated, just some division added to the mix 🙂

A person’s savings rate is the percentage of income which a person saves in a given time period.

Simply put, it can be calculated as (net income – gross expenses) / net income.

Let’s say a person makes $5,000 in a month. They spend $2,500 of it and the rest is saved in their savings account. Then, their savings rate for the month is 50%, or ($5,000 – $2,500) / $5,000.

Now, it gets a little bit more complicated once you start to factor in contributions to investment accounts and principal payoff of debt.

For me, I don’t count these as expenses. With contributions to investment accounts, you aren’t giving your money to someone else, rather you are putting it somewhere else for your future self.

For paying down a debt, I do consider interest to be an expense.

At a minimum, people should aim to save at least 10% of their income. Personally, I’d suggest aiming for 25%+ to help you become wealthy more quickly.

Net Worth

The final piece of financial information to track for your personal finances is your net worth.

What is your net worth?

It is your assets minus your liabilities.

What are assets?

Assets are things a person owns which have value. Typical assets include houses, cash, stocks, bonds, cars, precious metals (jewelry, etc.), currencies, businesses – and the list goes on and on.

Next, what are liabilities?

Liabilities are things a person owes, either to a bank, a financial institution, or another person or business. These include credit card balances, mortgages, auto loans, personal loans, liens – and the list here goes on and on as well.

To calculate your net worth, subtract your liabilities from your assets.

Knowing your net worth is crucial to tracking your finances. Focus on growing your net worth and you’ll be on your way to financial success.

“What gets measured, gets managed.” – Peter Drucker

4. Understand Your Spending Habits and Eliminate Any Spending Weaknesses

After you’ve started tracking your spending habits with step three, now you can look at your spending and identify any weaknesses.

One of my favorite quotes is “what gets measured, gets managed”.

After tracking your personal finances and figuring how much you spend on a monthly basis, you can then start to attack certain areas of your spending to save more money.

For example, if you see that you are spending a ton of money on food, maybe $1,000 a month, and you think this is too much, you can make note of this.

For me, I spend about $400 a month on food for myself. There are months were I spend $500, and when this happens, I know that the next month I need to reign in my spending.

For you, you should look about at all of your spending categories (housing, food, transportation, entertainment, etc.), and also look at the big picture to see if there’s anything you can change to reach your financial goals.

5. Implement, Track and Tweak Your Budget Over Time

No one can ever make a perfect plan – the world doesn’t work this way.

But with solid preparation, you can create a plan for your budget which will get you on the right path.

After a month, you can revisit your budget to see how you did. If you think there were certain categories which were too restrictive on your lifestyle, you can raise the spending limits on those categories.

For example, if you wanted to only spend $500 on food and drink, but ended up spending $600, then maybe you actually want your budget for food to be $600.

At the same time, you need to keep in mind your financial goals and to make sure that if you raise any spending limits, that you lower others (unless you are comfortable with saving less).

Over time, you can figure out a budget which makes most sense for you and get on the path to financial success!

Create a Budget Today to Save Money This Year

Taking control of your financial situation with a budget is the first step to financial success.

By following the steps above, you will know where your money is going each and every month, and better understand how to hit your financial goals.

Now, it’s time to take action and get your budget set for a successful financial year in 2021.

How awesome will it feel when you have a bigger emergency fund, you are able to worry less about work, and able to be more in the present?

These are the things I want for you and I hope you can achieve them in 2021.

Thanks for reading!

Readers: what’s your favorite budgeting method? Do you have any budgeting tips I missed here?