For over 5 years I have always wanted to be more involved in investing in real estate.  I have helped out many people with their investing, but the amount of investing that I have done for myself was not enough.  Sure I bought a few properties but nothing that was a turnkey money making solution….well that is UNTIL NOW.

Over the last few months I have spent countless hours educating myself, working on my connections, and working on a new website for Capital Active.  Well it is done now.  I have a functional site up and running.  But the REAL work was done finding and securing assignments on over 30 awesome wholesale deals.  You heard me right, you can now click HERE and find over 30, way below fair market value properties that you can invest in or simply buy for your own use!!!  This has me really excited.  It was a lot of work but it is worth it.

On top of having all of these great deals, I also have lined up people to help home buyers buy these homes, and if you are an investor we can help you find a tenant.

The readers of this blog will have the FIRST shot at buying these houses from me.  If you are interested in any of these please contact me ASAP, I hope these will go fast, they should because they are killer deals.

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Everyone wants to be a millionaire.  I always had it as a goal, a first step.  First I wanted to do it by the time I was 25, then I set it for 30.  Now I have a goal of doing it while I am 35.  But this time I have a firm plan to get there.

First off most people think that if you are one you will be set for life.  In many cases that is correct, but in most cases it took risk to get the million and most people who have it take those same risks and lose it.  There are ways to earn without too much risk, but mostly that is very slow.  Other people simply go crazy, they get the money too easily and spend it all.  Over 80% of lottery winners have a negative net worth just 5 years after they win.  They get this huge lifestyle, and then spend spend spend, and when the money runs out they borrow like crazy.

I personally know a lot of millionaires.  I don’t know of any who made the money trading time for money or having a job.  I know a few who won it, but the VAST majority worked hard, ran a business and invested the profits.  Some are in farming, some are in insurance, other have a business in one form or another but most are in real estate.  And all of the millionaires that I have asked about this invest heavily in real estate.  Time and time I hear that no matter how you make your millions that real estate is the best place to store the money.  Another common factor among those that have made and kept millions is that they live WAY below what you expect.  They drive older cars, they don’t shop at the fancy shops.  Most of them live on less than 60k per year.  That is still 5,000 per month.  While they were making their money they lived on much less.  Those people you see shopping at all the ritzy malls and spending thousands of dollars are usually people who earn a lot, and spend even more and have a negative net worth.

So what does it take to have a net worth over a million dollars.  I define it as all assets, at the price you could sell it for today minus all debt.  It is hard to value a business so I usually set that as valued as 8 times last years earnings as long as you project those earnings to go on.  Using that measure I actually was a millionaire once during the years that my business was really profitable, but I could not project that computers would become a commodity and that my business would start to lose money at huge rates until I was in the hole.

Also you can only grow your net worth from your personal profits each month.  If you have $3,000 in monthly expenses you need to deduct that from your income before you see if you have enough.  For me I have about $3,000 that I must spend each month to stay current.  About half of that is servicing debt, and could be gone if the interest rates were not so low.  If I am starting with a net worth of zero and I want to be a millionaire in 2 years I need to pack away about $42k per MONTH.  That is a crazy number, and that is why people with jobs don’t hit it.  Even if you had 8% interest on your side and you wanted to do it in 10 long years you would need to save over $7,000 per MONTH.  This is why less than 1% of the people are millionaires.  Even if you earned $120k per year and spent only $3k per month it would take you 10 years of constant effort.  The biggest problem is that when you earn that much, you usually hang out with other people who earn that much, and they start talking about their new cars, second homes and their vacations, and you feel “less than” for living on such a meager $3k per month and you can not maintain it.  It is like a bucket with a ton of holes in it, the more water you pour in the faster the holes take it out, and it never really gets full.  So the answer is clearly not a job, even a high paying one.  You have the limit of how much you can earn because of who you work for and with.  So a business is really the only answer, but to have a good business you need to be as good or better than all of the other businesses out there, or you need to have an idea that really sets you apart.  If you have a really great idea that can duplicate all over the world you can even become an instant billionaire.  This is what they folks at YouTube, Facebook and Twitter have done.  The first ones cashed out when the company was only 7 months old.  The second two have yet to cash out, though twitter just sold 2% of the company for $200 million, making the company worth over $10 billion.  But it is hard to come up with such an idea, most usually stumble upon it early.

So now we all have an up hill battle to climb.  So if you want to be a millionaire in 2 years from today you need to come up with an idea that makes you $50k per month on a constant basis.  Or if you want to build and sell a business you need make one that earns $125k-$150k next year, and that number is AFTER your take from the company because the company will need your or someone like you after you sell it.  The way you design a million dollar company is much different than the way you design a company that just pays your bills.

When you are looking for a large net worth you need to keep in mind the laws of large numbers.  One of the easiest ways to get there is to sell a product over and over.  Even if you only make $10 each time you do it, that means that you need to sell 100,000 items.  So plan your business accordingly.  If you need to sell 100,000 items that means that about only one out of every 1,000 households needs to buy your product.  Depending on your product that may mean that only 1% of the population even needs to know about your product.  But to even get 1% penetration may be a hard thing to do.  But one good viral video could do it for you, or one good endorsement.  Thousands have made it rich this way.

You can also get there by helping others reach for their dreams.  Imagine if you could help people earn a living and you got a cut of what they did.  For me this was always by hiring sales people.  I basically would set their wages to where they would get 40% of the profits that they generated.  I would pay for their phone, a place for them to work, I would help them close deals and I would design the products that they sold, I would even pay for them to have a base salary in case sales were slow that week.  The more successful they would be the more successful I would be.  If I have 3 or even 4 of these people it would keep me busy.  Imagine if I had 30 or 40, and if they averaged making $2000 for themselves per month, that means that each one would make me $3000 per month.  That alone is a million in a year!  Becoming a millionaire is REALLY a team sport.  I don’t know anyone who has worked to get a million who did not have a team behind them.  Most people I know help out people all of the time because the more people they help the more they make in the long run.

If you want to make it rich selling something, or helping other people get rich you need a system to manage the entire thing.  A system is really the key.  The good part is with a little math you can start to think about the system now, you can design the system now that will take you to the millions you want to have.  A good system with the right principles will take you there.  Run a simulation on your system, if it does average will it get you to where you want to be, is your system too small?  Is your system too hopeful, does it require that something unknown will happen to catapult you into your success, if that is the case it probably will not happen.  You can’t predict such things.

I really hope this helps you put your dreams in perspective.  And I hope you start to think how duplicating a successful system will get you there.  You need to focus on people, you need to focus on results.  Your plan must have the muscle to get you to your goals.

When you get your millions remember the little guys, remember to give back.  Millionaires are some of the nicest, most humble and most generous people I know.  Most millionaires are not they greedy people the movies and media make them out to be.  They usually are very humble because they know that peopled helped them along the way, and that being nice to people and helping others is the key to their success.  They feel lucky that they made it.

As always, please subscribe, and if you liked this blog please comment, I read them all personally.

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Well the stats are rather convincing.  Look HERE for all of the stats. For houses priced under $175k there is very little inventory and prices are going up.   WOW, this makes me feel much better.  What is most awesome about this is that most sellers still don’t know, so there are plenty of really good deals out there. 

I want to make my money in real estate and I see that the time is getting short.  I spent over 10 hours today working on my real estate business.  Tomorrow I plan to do at least 8 hours.

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The other day Adrian posted a great blog entry that really got me thinking.  His idea is that the number one most important lesson to be learned by people who want to be rich or be better off is not delayed gratification, not saving, and not any of those other things that all the books tell you.  Instead it is the concept of actually respecting your money.

Please read his blog, it is good, but I want to take it even farther.  I think that you respect for money is based mostly on what you learned from your parents.  When I say respect I mean that you value money, you value the stuff that you own that you bought with your money.  I have found that most rich people I know have a deep respect for money.  Some of the richest people I know watch where they spend.  They almost never throw anything away, they will have a sale first.  This is not being frugal, these people will invest in very expensive quality items that will give them long term enjoyment and even have a residual value.  They will buy things, but when they do they make sure that they get the best value.  They also think long term, and they look at the total cost of something, including the financing cost.

For years I have been in retail sales, owning my own computer company.  I have always had the hardest negotiation with those that were rich.  They would fight for every dollar to get the best deal, and I would give it to them.  But the people who could barely afford my services would never ask for a discount.  I have had friends who are always out of money, but they would ask me to go out to a restaurant with me and they would spend 2-3 times as much as I did.  I value my money, so I look for the best value when I spend it, at a restaurant that means usually having a coupon and usually I order one large item that will fill me up.  But most people order a smaller item, then the add on the salad, an appetizer and then if that is still not enough they add on dessert.  This same guy also had his car break down, it was going to be 400 to fix it, so he decided that it was time to get a newer car.  He found a car that was worth about $7000 and he bought it from a dealership that caters to people like him, he paid over $11,000 after he traded in his old one, and he agreed to 24% interest.  He did not need this car now, and I had connections he could had used to get it much cheaper BUT he needed it THAT DAY, he could not wait, and he paid the price for it.

Needing gratification now is the KEY that keeps most poor people poor.  Companies know this.  Car dealerships are told to get people to fall in love with the car then tell them that they need to buy it now to get that one.  One of the most profitable segments in our economy right now are the rent to own stores, just pay a bit now and you can take these new items home.  The typical price is about 350% the price you would pay if you just bought it at walmart today.

But the other most common trend among these people is that they never would think of starting their own business.  They usually don’t think about selling their old stuff, they simply give it away.  A friend of mine is in charge of cleaning up houses after they give their keys to the bank, and it is astounding how much stuff of great value they leave behind.  They leave furniture, toys, TV’s, computers, clothes lighting, and boxes and boxes of stuff.  Why did they not sell this stuff, and pay their mortgage…we will never know.

People that respect and value their money are able to live much much longer with out money.  A lot of people who own businesses now are also hurting, they have lost their business, they have lost their credit, yet almost all of them that I know are doing quite well, they manage to find money to pay the bills each month, they sell things, they dabble in freelancing for other companies, they do consulting, but the bottom line is that they do what they need to to keep afloat.  Then I know other people, who have never had that drive, and they sit at home all day playing video games, and they do nothing other than look for handouts.

This fundimental view of money does a lot more than effect our personal lives, it also shapes our nation.  Because the rich and poor spend money so differently they often scratch their head when they look at eachother.  When I had a lot of money, yet I would still buy things on sale, and I drove a modest SUV and such, many people wondered why I did not spend more, why I was also so “cheap”, it was not logical to them.  And then I look at them, and how much they spend when they have nothing and I can’t understand it, it is not logical to me.

To me and others the most frustrating part of people not respecting money is when it is your money that they are not respecting.  At this time our governments are spending money at record levels, our money, and they are doing it with very little respect.  They give money away, they waste money all over the place.  Right now they are spending our kids money, but soon they will start spending ours.  The plan to start taxing energy soon, and many other things.

So think about how much you respect you money.  I would love to hear what you think, please leave a comment.

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The world as we know it is over, unless something drastic happens in the next 24 hours or so.  For the entire history of our nation business has been the engine that has spured our growth.  And the engine of big business has been the ability to raise and borrow money.  This has been done by selling bonds, basically chunks of debt.

This is how corporations work.  A corporation is a business owned by the stockholders.  Most companies sell stock to raise money to start out with, this is called an IPO.  But after a while if you keep selling stock you dilute the amount that each person owns.  It is basically like taking on more and more partners in your company, meaning you own less, and you control less, and these partners share in the profits.  So most companies find it much cheaper to borrow money by selling bonds.  These stakeholders do not share in the profits or any upside in the company, but they also are the last to be hurt by and failure in the business.  As the business operates they also accumulate other debts, to vendors and to employees.  If a company fails it is just like a small business that fails.  The owner equity is wiped out first, the assets are sold and the bond holders get paid first and in full, and then if there is any money left over the other debts are paid.  Only after all of this is paid does the owner get anything.

In the history of large American business many companies have gone bankrupt, and it has always worked this way.  Almost every time the stock is wiped out.  Some companies survive by getting bought out, others simply restructure and are able to get out with little pain.  But here is the big change.  In recent times the government has gotten involved in being the largest bond holder of many companies, but the government does not look our for the best interest of US the tax payers, they don’t mind taking a loss.

See a few weeks ago Chrysler declared bankruptcy, and their stock was wiped out.  The company basically had three large creditors; The Government, the Union for future pension and health insurance payment, and the bond holders.  Lucky for Chrysler they found a buyer in Fiat for 35% of their restructured company, the problem is that this buyer is only willing to pay much less than what the company actually owes.  The Government is not really looking to get their money back so they are willing to take a major loss, the problem is that the Government used TARP money to invest in Chrysler and that was illegal, but that is a mute point now, they are just rolling over.  But the problem is that the Government and Obama have decided that the BULK of the money should go to the Union, heck Unions are the ones that put democrats in office.  So the Government decided to write the plan in such a way to pay only 29% of debt owed on the 42.5 million of debt of the bond holders, the people who should be first in line.  While the unions are getting 55% ownership in the new company, and the federal government is getting 10%.  A group of the bond holders spoke up and rightly said that they were not being treated right, that they should be first in line, not last.  The one Justice of the Supreme Court of the US saw it this way also and decided to stop the sale to Fiat under this current plan.   A huge amount of pressure came from the White House to allow the Fiat sale to go on, and the Court caved today and let it go on.

Now what this does is it creates a terrible precedent in US law that bond holders are no longer first.  This means that the people who invest get in bonds get none of the upside and much more of the downside risk, all for very little return.  This move will freeze the bond markets even more, in a time that we need them very much.  This also sets up the precedent for when GM finally gets done with their restructure.  The correct thing to do would be to wipe out the Unions.  These unions are the root cause for the failure of these companies.  Line workers start at more than $70 per hour in pay and benefits, many with tenure make well over $100 per hour.  And then they retire with a huge pension and a huge health care bill.   With such a high labor cost the average vehicle made by GM had over $7,000 in labor cost.  Newer, non-union plants owned by Nissan, Toyota and such have average labor costs per vehicle under $1,500.   So if GM wanted to make a vehicle for a cost of $20k (Sales price much higher), they would have much less money to work with to buy materials and make profits, in fact they have not made profits for many years, and now pay thousands per vehicle to cover their debt.  So if you spend only half that as your competition on the parts going into your product then your product can not be as good for the same price.  So during the 80’s and 90’s they just built a lower quality car, and recently they started building a much higher quality car, but at a much higher price.  In both situations it caused a steady march of customers away from these companies, and a vast loss in market share, making it even harder to do business.  The unions were like a boa constrictor, killing the company by squeezing tighter and tighter, but the Obama plan for GM is to give the unions over 90% of what they were promised, and they have taken no real concessions, not even a payout.  While the Government is willing to take only 60% of what GM owes the tax payers, and what about the bond holders.  Well they are going to get somewhere between 19% and 29% of what they are owed.  This is crazy really.  But this is payback to the unions for supporting the democrats, and a step into the much more socialist America that we find ourselves in.
If secured creditors keep loosing their rights then our capital markets will simply fall apart.  I was getting hopeful about our economy recently but this will really put a crimp on things.  It also does that help that the federal government needs to issue over $100 billion in bonds each month just to stay afloat with all the spending that is going on.  How much longer will people keep trusting in these bonds, when you see interest rates start to go up you will know that the trust is fadeing, and when that happens there will be even more trouble for us.

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When you are looking to join a MLM you may find that some are VERY VERY complex while others are very simple.  Well I love math, and I always lean towards the very simple ones.  Complex MLM’s tend to not do as well as others, and also you never really know if it is all correct.  Some MLM’s are so complex that you are never quite sure what you are going to be getting paid.  I love math and I like to take a company comp plan and test it by pushing it to the max.  With most comp plans it is easier to do that by flipping it over, seeing how much the company has committed to pay out for any one sale.  Next I look at the MLM from a break even point.

So on to the math.  The MLM is called eFusjon.  My first thought was that they could not spell, I even had to Google how to spell it just to write this blog.  First off this business model is unique to anything that I have seen, it is very interesting and it is PURE math.  And I love math.  The way it works is very simple, you get paid $5.27 for each active person that is in your downline.  It is a 3 wide system, you have a left, center and right person.  But this is where it gets interesting, you share your left and right spot with other people who are to the left and right of your sponsor, the first one who fills the spot gets it.  If they put someone in under you then you are paid $1.20 per month on those people.  To be able to earn money you need to have three active people who you personally sponsored, and if they go inactive for 60 days their spot is erased.  The payment goes for 15 levels deep.  So when the whole system is full that means that 15 people are making $5.27 on your order, and as long as you are not in the center that other people get paid $1.20 off of your orders.  From my count this can be a VERY huge number, well if the company had millions of people in it and no one dropped out meaning that you had 15 levels full of people above you there would be (1+2+3+4+5+6+7+8+9+10+11+12+13+14+15) 120 people who get the $1.20 override.  People.

So this means that on a $120 order that the company must pay out as much as $199.05 in commissions.  This is probably why they stopped paying $10 (Personal) and $5 (Sides) like when the company first started, because at that rate they would actually loose money on each order even with only 30,000 people in the company.  Of course a full system is over 100,000 people and only then would they start to pay out such huge numbers, but it will still be only half that get generate that much commissions for their upline.  I figure they need about 500,000 or so members for the system to stop working, and thus for them to be forced to change the system, I predict they will choose to change it once there is about 200k or so people in the company.  That may be some time from now, as there is only 30k at this time.  Also if people drop out that will also make holes in the chart which will also save the company money.  Of course they also need to produce the product for the $120 amount, and pay all of their bills.  One other thing that may save them is the fact that someone must recruit 3 before they get paid, and many never will do that.

The product is an energy drink, and it is healthy, and if I would buy it in the stores I would probably be willing to pay up to $1.50 or even $2.00 for a can, but I am really cheap.  Others would pay $3 with ease for a quality product that does what this does.  So lets say that it is worth $2 a can.  Well their price, with shipping and other fees is $166, for 48 cans.  So in my book you are getting $96 in product and paying $70 to participate in the MLM.  Now with a payback of about $5 for each person on your team you need 14 people to break even.  But it is much easier, because your upline can only put three people under each person so they must put people under you, and you get the full $5 for people in your direct upline, and $1.20 for people from the sides.  So if you find an active team you can quickly be in positive range.  If you find a superstar who can bring in 100 people in a short time then you would be making $500 a month.

So after looking at all of this, and crunching the numbers it all comes down to the team you are joining, and how many people you think you can bring in yourself.  So I looked at that.  The team that was showing me this has been in the company for less than 45 days, and they already have over 850 people.  They 2.8% of the entire company, and they are a group of builders that should have no problem putting in a 100’s per month.  Next the my good friend Fred was going to be directly above me, and he put in over 80 people in his last MLM in only 3 months, and that MLM was much harder to put people into.  Next I looked at the people I know, and how it would be easy to put at least a dozen of them in, and then they will put people in also, building a large group.  I know I need 14 people to make it even in my mind.  And with all of this I figured that 14 would be easy to get, I can probably even do it this month.  I need 32 to make this business totally free, and I think I can do that in the second month.  So I made the leap and I joined.  Most MLMs are built on math but most people who join them never look at the math.  I have looked at over 20 MLMs in the last 2 years and I have only joined 3 of them, simply because the math did not work on the others.  On those other ones there was no component of your upline building your team so on those I did not make money.   If you want to join in on my team will also receive the benefit of all of this, CLICK HERE to sign up, we will help you build into profitability ASAP.

I try to keep my personal brand to be that of Emerald Computers, the company that feeds me and pays my bills.  Most of the time that is all that I mention to people.   When I was looking at the math for efusjon I also took Emerald Computers into consideration, and that I may be able to sell computers, services, or websites to many of these people because of the fact that this company is very heavy into online marketing.  This made it a very easy decision, just from the few people there I already made two new clients who I should see this week.

One more final thought, another interesting part of this companies comp plan is the fact that you can sign up again and again under yourself.  So you can go a few levels, then you see a superstar, so you join again, and now you are double dipping, getting paid twice on their team.  It costs you $150 each month for each position so if you can create locations that pay more than that per month it is to your benefit to do so.  Plus you get more product to use.

I hope this helps, and I welcome any and all comments.

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For years now my printer of choice has always been a laser printer.  I like the faster speed, more quiet printing and the quality of the output.   The drawback of any printer is that it needs to use ink or toner.  Companies know that you need it, and they also know that they can make a cartrage that works perfect stop working by design.  Designing a way to make something stop working is one of my most hated things in the world.

HP is by far the worst offender at this.  They design their printers to count the pages, and then stop working when they reach a specific number and force you to buy more ink, even if your cartage works perfect they make it stop working by putting a chip on it that tells the printer that is has printed enough pages, even if it is still half full.  This makes is almost impossible to refill or even recycle the cartridges, they simply need a new chip that can only be had from HP.  Lexmark recently sued a company that made chips that worked with their printers.    In Europe these chips are ILLEGAL, because it blocks recycling.

For this reason I have avoided all HP printers for many years.  So I have this trusty brother printer.  It was a really good deal and prints fast and with high quality, but today it stopped working.  It flashed the toner light, and said toner low.  I was just finished with a print job and it worked perfect, nice and perfect then all of a sudden it stopped.  I had to print something really important so I kept turning off and on the printer, I even took out the toner a few times and it would power up and do a test then say flash the toner light.  After I while I decided to search the web and after a ton of research I found that other people were able to fix this.

How brother steals your money

It is so simple.  Look at the photo, in the center there is a hole, the printer shines a light into this hole, it bounces off of a mirror on the other side and then a detector will tell you the toner is bad if it sees light.  But as you can tell the whole is rather high up.  So you could have toner for 100’s more pages left in there.  So I simply took a black sticker, folded it up and blocked the whole, and guess what, my printer prints perfect now!

I know that they are out there to make a buck, they don’t make money on the printer, but they sell the toner cartridges for WAY too much money to compensate.  They design them to fail and this makes them last much less.   This makes the cartridge cost more, due to the added complexity of the mirror and lens.  It makes the printer cost more to make.  It even makes them put more in the landfills.  But it lets them sell many more cartridges.  At least brother is easier to fool than HP.

If you are reading this because you have the same problem I know this will help.  I would ask that you let me know that this helped you by posting a reply, it is easy and free.

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After over 100 hours of my time and many more time from others, I finally have the cart that I always wanted for Emerald Computers.  It works perfect, it allows people to custom design their own computer system, it is easy to modify, it is easy to update.  Of course this is not the end of development.  I will be updating and adding new products as the market changes, I will also add much more data about each product in the coming weeks.

This cart software is one of the most advanced cart programs that exists today for anywhere under $10,000.  It does all of the advanced tricks that the huge companies do, like cross selling, up selling, layered navigation, full CMS support so you can have many skins and change in an instant.  It has bread crumb navigation also, user accounts with total control of access, tier pricing, built in SEO urls, client feedback system, cloud tag programs, and a hundred other cool features.  I am really glad that I decided to get this software, it totally rocks my world.

Everything us up and live RIGHT NOW, and I am letting the readers of my blog be some of the first people to view it.  Soon I will be linking it in with my main website. If you want to check it out and tell me what you think then CLICK HERE.

On a business note, I am really thinking that this will revitalize my company, and allow me to reach my goals in much less time than I thought before.  Wish me luck.

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I have gone silent on my blog for the longest time since I started it.   I have had two main reasons for this.

Reason number 1 is because my wife has been ill recently.  We spent 8 days in the hospital and I have had to put my business on the side to do much more with the kids.  She is feeling better now, and that leads me to my second reason.

For about 3 years now I have had an idea to help people sell computers online.  There are a ton of people who strongly believe that the future of business is online, and for most types of business I agree with them.   People compare and shop for things online, but they will always need some things to be in person.  For computers it is definitely online.   Now here is the problem, people want to make money online, but they simply don’t have the tools or knowledge that they need.  There are many companies that I have found that take advantage of this.  They take a very basic, and hardly working cart, and they put it online, and they give some basic consulting information.  They sell this to people who don’t know much about the Internet or about computers and they sell this for many thousands of dollars.

There are also many people who want to drop ship products, and for about 4 years now my company has been listed in books and many drop ship websites as a source of high quality computer systems.  We have been contacted by over 2000 people who have asked us about this.  They call me, they email me but 98% of them have never purchased anything.  Part of that is my fault because when I get little return from something I pay little attention to it.   Recently I updated my website and as a part of the application to do something with me I asked them where they currently are and what their goals are.  I would say that 90% of them have not yet created a cart, nor do they have much of a plan.  I totally understand this, because to install a good cart out there takes a ton of knowledge and work.  I am a complete computer expert and I still had to call tech support, and it still took me many many hours to figure out.  If someone does not understand HTML, PHP, JAVA, FTP, Linux Permissions, and 20 other things I don’t see how they would ever get it up on their own.  So they rely on these companies that “sell” carts.  The problem is that most of them leave you with an empty cart, and then they give you a list of companies like me and you need to create relationships with them.  There are a few that fill your cart up with items, but all the ones I found sell either really useless stuff that no one buys, or really over priced items that simply can’t be sold.  All of this is a huge discouraging mountain for the once gleeful and hopeful would be entrepreneur.

There is one local company that we know of that sells websites that are totally cookie cutter, they offer nothing in the way of custimization other than one “About Us” page that lets the merchant put a few small sentences about themself and their contact info.  It sells products that have not changed for over 30 years, like candles, lotions.  The problem is that they charge over $12,000 just to have one of these sites, and they charge thousands more to accept credit cards, and thousands more for consulting.  They then charge monthly hosting fees in the 100’s of dollars and if you ever stop paying you lose everything.  We have a sister company that offers help and consulting to clients of this company, and we have talked to 100’s of people, and we have NEVER talked to one who actually made a profit, yet this company sells 20-50 of their sites per day, mostly focusing on low income or elderly clients who know nothing about computers.  At least 20% of the ones we talked to did not even have a computer, many others could not even put food on their table but were asked to borrow $12k or more from friends and family to start thier business.  (If you can’t tell this type of business practice makes me really mad.)

So what is my project.  Well first off I am building a site that sells the best and most popular computer products.  My site will use the latest design techniques and latest eCommerce tools.  I am putting everything on our site with small markup for me and a 20% profit margin for the people who but these sites.  I plan to sell this site for UNDER $1000, and this site will be a REAL oppertunity, something where people can make REAL money.  If they pay us $1,000 to build the site they only need to sell $5,000 in computer hardware to start to make money, and in computers that can take just a few days.  And the prices that I have on my site are VERY good, so they can advertise the site and make money right away.  People will be able to  add any other items they want to sell, they will also have the ability to totally customize the site.  And for a small fee we will even host it and update it daily.

So I have been spending almost all of my limited time building this site.  So far I have a 100% functional site, it has RSS Feeds, over 500 inventory items, and the complete ability to clone the site.  I still need to finish a few things so it is NOT open to the public yet, but I think that in the next week it will be.  I am excited to call these people and tell them that I finally have the ability to help them reach their dreams.  I have a great cart, that is affordable, functional and has products in it that allow them to make money from day one.  This has really been my goal for about three years now.  Part of my mission in life to help other people out.

If you would like to be on the list of people who I will call when this goes online, then go HERE.    If I can keep out the distractions I will have it up soon.

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That is a huge and growing Generation Gap in the United States.  They have been talking about this at church recently.  About how there is a “Missing” Generation in the churches of America.  How people from 19 years old until 35 are vastly underrepresented.  I am in that group, and I agree, we are vastly underrepresented.

A Quick Warning: This blog entry will be about averages and the groups as a whole, there will always be exceptions to every case but generally the following is true.  I deal with the general public all of the time and I have had friends of many different ages.  I will use the way a church operates during this entry to show the differences.   Watch this video to see facts about the world you may not know. 

The older generation simply does a poor job of relating to our generation.  There are some fundamental ways that we think differently, and these differences get in the way often.

Interactive vs Broadcast

To me the most profound difference is the way that we interact with other people and with the world.  For most of those over the age of 35 the world was mostly a broadcast world.  People made TV Shows, made newspapers, books, and gave sermons, and you sat there and watched or listened.  You appreciated what was going on and that was it.

But the mindset of the people under the age of 35 is an interactive one.  We grew up with video games and soon after computers.  We decided what we would watch, what we would listen to, and when.  We want the world to work together.  In corporate America this has created the power of teams, almost every successful business puts people in my generation in teams, and empowers those teams to make some decisions.  This is why the most successful show on tv is American Idol, we want to vote to see who stays on.  We have YouTube and Video On Demand, so we can watch anything we want on out time table.

The successful church must realize that for people in this generation the Sermon is just the introduction to the conversation, and they must make ways for the conversation to go on and to get the input When they don’t we simply feel frustrated.  Our generation is very tech savvy so even if they brought the conversation online afterward it would much better than the way it is cut off now.   The older generation is done, and ready to move on.  The successful churches introduce the topic and start the discussion online days before the sermon on the pastors blog, and comments are posted and replied to, so when the sermon comes on sunday my generation is excited to go and see it to see if what we said made a difference, it makes us hunger for it and we are sure to attend. I am talking about much more than just saying Amen here and there.  Actually that looks kinda fake to us.  I often feel like a pastor is up there trying to answer all of the questions that he thinks that the audience may have but never bothers to ask them what their questions are.

Values

On Tuesday night on ABC they have a show called “What would you do”, it is basically a hidden camera show where they set up situations to test peoples ethics.  On the show they said that one of my generations main values is the Value of Tolerance.   Our generation is very diverse, and people often express their thoughts by how they dress.  I really don’t think that the older generations gets that we really don’t care that much on how you dress.  We will take how you look and make some preconceived notions but if your actions are different we quickly can change that.  Who cares how you look, it is about who you are.  I think that much of this comes from the fact that successful people in our generation come with all sorts of different looks and different backgrounds.  I basically will treat you the same if you wear a suit, or if you wear torn shorts and a old raged shirt as long as you act the same.  I think that much of this also comes from the fact that we carry on most of our relationships online or on the phone.  I have people I have talked to for hundreds of hours over a period of more than 5 years, who I have done business with, who I joke with and have tried to inspire and build a relationship, but whom I have NEVER met in person and never even seen a photo.  I think that concept is totally foreign to people in older generations.

Another main value of my generation is Truth.  Being real, being authentic.  I think that we are much harder to offend than people of older generations.  We want to get to the point, to get real.  The point where it starts to get good for us is well past the point where older people get offended.  One thing I find very lame in church is that pastors stop way too early, they stop before they get to the meat, or the truth because if they do keep going on someone may get offended and walk away, but in doing this they look weak to our generation, unwilling to be authentic for fear of what others may think.  Remember that our generation is the generation of tolerance, and because of that we are hard to offend, plus we have seen it all and heard it all on TV and on our computers.  For us it is about community, we know that no church is perfect, and no church leader is perfect, and that it is OK to have opinions that are different than the leaders.  Older people want to find the church leader that thinks exactly like them, and for this reason the leaders usually are reluctant to take a stand, this keeps the older generation from leaving but it looks completely fake to my generation and turns us off.

One huge value of older folks is that of Authority.  But to us we know that the world has become interactive, and that for many decades we have been betrayed by authority giving false information, and because of this we doubt everything.  For the boomers you just tell them that something is true and they run with it, but we research it, we have Goggle at our fingertips and we use it, 23 Billions times a month on average.   We know that big companies can have no web site at all and we know that a guy running a business in his underwear in his dining room can have an impressive and huge website.  We know that some crazy person can edit Wikipedia and change the information you are reading.  We also know that an unknown with a good idea can publish it and have a million readers in a few days.  For most of us there is no ultimate authority or truth, it is just millions of interpretations of truth.  This is the very reason that it so very hard for the church to reach us.  First there is only a broadcast, no conversation, and when they broadcast they tell us what is their truth, but their truth is different from what others have said and they do little to prove their truth.  They read something out of the bible to people who may not truly believe the bible is truth, they have heard so much that discredits it.  Again this is why a conversation works much better than a broadcast.

Another value of our generation is that of Equality and fairness.  Most of us believe that everyone should have an equal chance at success, that we should all have a say in things.  We all want a turn to share what we know, we want to be empowered.  In business school there were a lot of good lessons, and one that stuck with me the most is delegation.  First if you are a leader you need to delegate as much as you can, you cast the purpose and vision of the company and then delegate to smart people who have bought into that vision and give them the power and freedom to do what it takes to make you successful and the results will always be more than you ever thought it could be.  If we don’t know the WHY to a task, and how our efforts fit into the big picture than we feel like what we do is not so important so we just don’t do it.

  Another virtue of our generation, and one that has caused some of the largest generation conflicts is the Ubuntu concept.  People in my generation see the world as one huge mass of humanity.  We should be helpful to others, we should share with others, we should build a community of caring, trust and unselfishness.  An African word has been used for many decades to express this concept, that word is Ubuntu.  Recently a group of programmers took this concept and named their operating system after it, because they built their entire OS on this concept of community.   They call the OS Ubuntu, in a few short years it is already better than windows, and as more things work with it it is gaining market share, recently passing the Mac OS as the second most used OS, and I think that it will overtake Windows as the most popular OS in the world in the next decade.   People in my generation make stuff so that it can be useful to others, and we don’t care if they use those things, and for the same reason we don’t ask if we can use what you made, we download your music, and your movies and use them however we see fit.  An open society is in direct conflict with the current system of copyrights.  Some smart companies are releasing their content to the web, and letting people change it and build on it, making those companies totally hip and cool.  While other go after and sue people who do the exact same thing, GM recently after people liked one of their commercials so much that it was posted on youtube and 3 million people viewed it, then they sued to take it down, are they that dumb.  (Well I did see their stock price recently so I guess that is my answer.)

We are used to information on demand.  I can access more information from my desk in 20 minutes than what would take a whole day in the library of congress just 20 years ago.  We are a generation that is flooded with information and rich content, but at the same time we yearn for a real human connection.  We don’t just want to sit in a lecture but we want to be part of the conversation and push it forward.

Final Thoughts

There is a verse in the bible that goes “Teach a child in the way he should go and he will not depart.”  By the time someone turns 21 they have formed 95% of their habits, and generally decided where their life is going.  For 100’s of years church was the center of society, but in the 1960’s it started to fade, there was a leadership crisis and for the first time the population as a whole doubted if we would be involved in a war.  Until the 1950’s most expression was banned, and by the 1960’s it was unleashed, and there was a new culture that was raised up, one without God at the center.  The people who were teens during this time did not go to church much and did not make it important to their kids.  The concept of church lost critical mass, it was very uncool to go to church.  Almost everyone that I know under the age of 35 is in church because they grew up in church, very few found church later on.  Now we have millions of “Unchurched” in our generation, many have never been to church or when they did they felt like they went to a lecture, they made no connection, they felt like they had no say in anything so they just never went back, and they took that opinion with them.

To reach these people is a very hard task now, because they feel that they are doing fine now, and that they don’t need God.  Many churches express God like a Magic Gene who solves all of your problems.  My current church is not like this but many churches I have visited basically have the same theme over and over, “Life is hard, life is tough, the world is unfair and against you and you need to make God part of your life so he can fix it.”  I hate it when I hear people say this.  To my generation life is awesome and great, we have more at our finger tips now than even existed for our parents, we are generally happy with out lot in life.  The message that would work for us is this “God can be your best friend, he will help you when you need it and celebrate with you when you do good, he has great plans for your future, full of hope and success.  The better you follow His advice the closer you will get to His vision for you life.  Join us and you will have an entire community at your side working to make God will happen in your life.”  Too bad few churches today are preaching this.  I love how we say in our church “Success to you and Success to the kingdom of God”  Because that is really what it is all about, lining up our definition of success with that of what will create success in the kingdom and then going for it.

The church that successfully reaches my generation will be the one that speaks the truth holding nothing back, allows us to participate in the conversation, allows us to discover what is truth, and allows us to all work together to build a community, getting rid of the idea of leaders and followers.