Some Ideas to get the Million.

If your goal is to make a million dollars, there are a couple of easy ways to reach your objective:

If you are looking for the easiest path to wealth, inheriting the money would have to be at the top of the list. Of course you have little control over this.

Marrying the money would probably be the next easiest, assuming you can find an appropriate spouse (Note that I did not take my own advice here and followed the path of "true love" instead).

You can buy lottery tickets or head for Vegas and hope for the best. It seems like there should be an easier way, and in fact there is...

If you want to make a million dollars, all ya gotta do is put $5 in a bank account every day. Just about anyone can come up with $5 a day. It is not a huge deal -- heck, a pack of cigarettes costs $5 in a lot of places these days. You put the money into an account, like a stock mutual fund, that gives you 10% per year interest on average and presto. In 42 years you have a million bucks. What could be easier than that?

The problem is, who wants to wait 42 years? It takes too long. What do you do if you want to short-circuit the process and make a million bucks in less than 5 years? There is only one way to accomplish that reliably...

Yes - you need to start a business. In America, starting a successful business is the surest, most controllable path available to you for making a million dollars in less than 42 years.

And really, this decision to start a business gets us to a key part of our conversation. There are two mentalities at work in our economy today. Either you can be someone else's employee, or you can be the one who hires the employees. You can work for a business, or you can own a business of your own.

Now please note that I am not saying that "being an employee" is a bad thing, Iam an employee as well. There are lots of good reasons to be an employee. For example, being an employee is a great way to learn how a business works so that you can open a business of your own. You simply need to become an employee with that approach in mind. In other words, you work so that you can learn the ropes. Go into the job with the intention of learning everything you possibly can while someone else pays you to get your education.

So let's assume that you have made the decision to start a business, and you have worked to learn the ropes. If you follow this "start your own business" path, then what people will call you is... An entrepreneur. The dictionary definition goes like this:

A person who organizes, operates, and assumes the risk for a business venture.

Here's another definition:
An entrepreneur is someone who starts successful businesses. People are not very kind to those who start unsuccessful businesses. The instant you are successful, however, you are a hero and they start calling you an entrepreneur. The instant you lose some money on the market some trust on you is lost as well.

The whole point of creating a successful business, of course, is to have it generate money. There are two ways to extract the money from a business you create. You can either take the money out as you go along, in the form of a salary and dividends. Or you can sell the business and take your reward in a lump sum. Or, in the ideal case, you do both.


In the ideal case, the money that you pull out of the business is being generated as passive income. For example, let's say you start a restaurant. You hire all of the staff, and then you hire someone to manage the staff so the restaurant "runs itself" without you ever having to actually be there. That is passive income. A house you own that generates steady rental income every month is another example.

Note that the dictionary definition of the word "entrepreneur" includes the word "risk." That is important. If you are starting a business, you are going to have to invest both your time and (in many cases) your money in getting the business going, There is some chance that the business will fail without generating anything. Businesses fail all the time. That's part of the game. There are three things that you should keep in mind...

Woody Allen's quote is so true: "Eighty percent of success is showing up." If you will simply take the first step toward starting a business, you improve your chances of success dramatically.

The first reason for that is obvious -- if you don't take the first step, then you will never start a business and you cannot possibly succeed at it.

The second reason is more important. If you ever listen to motivational speakers like Dennis Waitley, Tony Robbins and Zig Ziglar, one thing you will hear over and over again is this interesting fact about setting goals -- if you will simply take some time to create some goals for yourself and then write them down, the chances of reaching your goals goes up by a huge amount. It is huge. Putting your goals on an index card and taping them to your bathroom mirror so you see them first thing every morning is also a smart move. I do not know why this works so well, but I do know that it works.

So what you should do is write down on a piece of paper a few goals for yourself, and one of them should be, "get my xyz business going," and you should tape your goals to the bathroom mirror. I would do that today.

Churchill's quote is also right on target: "Success consists of going from failure to failure without loss of enthusiasm." What does that mean? It means that, whenever you stretch yourself and try to do something successful, there are going to be failures along the way I experienced some hard failures in fact It will take me a couple of months to recover. Sometimes lots of failures will come. All you can do after a failure is get up and try again. If you keep doing that, one of two things will happen -- either you will succeed eventually, or you will die. And if you die, then you won't care anymore. And at your funeral people will say, "You know, he never amounted to anything, but you sure have to give him credit for trying. The guy had a lot of heart." And the final objective is what matters.

Larry King's quote is amazing in its accuracy: "Those who have succeeded at anything and don't mention luck are kidding themselves." That is so true. The thing is, luck can only happen to you if you try something. If you will just take the first step toward starting a business, and then the second, and so on, you immediately open yourself up to the beneficial power of luck. If you don't, then luck cannot happen to you. Everyone who has ever succeeded has benefited from luck -- sometimes lots of luck. But you have to be playing the game in order for luck to find you.

"If you try, there is some chance of succeeding." If you don't try, obviously, there is not. You've got to be playing the game in order to win.

"Those who keep trying eventually do succeed." That is a fact of life. Luck favors the prepared, and it also favors the persistent.

You will hear people say, "Nine out of every 10 businesses fail, so why bother?" Here is another way to look at that -- the chance of success is 10 percent. You start nine businesses that fail and then the tenth one succeeds and you make a million bucks -- those are damn good odds. Compare that to a lottery, where, for example, 9,999,999 out of every 10,000,000 tickets fail. And tens of millions of people play the lottery even though the odds are that bad. Starting a business is not as easy as buying a lottery ticket, sure, but keep in mind that, "Anything you practice gets easier." Let me repeat that, because it is very important: "Anything you practice gets easier." The more you practice something, the easier it gets.

So the first business you start, it is going to be hard. You don't know anything. You will make mistakes. You will try things that don't work. Whatever. But the second business you start is a lot easier. And the next one is easier still. Right now you look at "starting a business" and it looks hard. That's because you've never done it before. You haven't practiced. Simply start practicing and it will become trivial eventually What I would suggest is that you get rid of your television. Take the music off your iPod.

Instead go get some audio books that talk about starting businesses. Put those on your iPod and listen to them over and over again. The first time you listen, they might not make much sense. That's because all of the material is new. The second time through the book it will make a lot more sense. And then the third time you will understand what is going on. Practice makes perfect.

Now you are starting to get somewhere. You have taken some steps. You are learning about starting a business from the books you are listening to. Let's look at the environment...

All that you need to do is to find something that people would find valuable...

So come up with an idea. Find something that you can do in the American economy that would make people's lives better and that they would be willing to pay money for. Build a simple business around it. Start making a profit.

What you have created is called a "cash cow." You have a business that generates excess cash. Now, either you milk the cow, or you sell the cow to someone else. That's it. Suddenly you have become an entrepreneur. Then either you go relax on your Caribbean island, or you try to start another one. And it will be a lot easier the second time because you have been practicing.

Start by putting some business books on your iPod and listening to them in every spare minute you have -- while driving, while walking between classes, while waiting in line, whatever. Most books now come on CD or as an MP3 file. Here are five books that I would start with. These are "mindset books" -- they get you into the right mindset to start a business:

Mindset books:

• Rich Dad Poor Dad by Robert T. Kiyosaki - A perfect book for getting you head in the right spot to start a business.
• The automatic Millioanaire, by David bach - Teaches you how to manage your finances. A basic guide to "saving $5 a day to become a millionaire in the future.
• The One minute Millionaire, by Victor Mark Hansen - a little over the top, but encourages you to think differently about starting companies and building wealth.
• How to be a Billionaire, by Martin Fridson - Really makes you look at the world differently.
• The Warren Buffet Way, by Robert Hagstrom - Not light reading, but helps you see how one of the richest men in the world thinks about the business world.
• Never Eat Alone, by Keith Ferrazzi - Helps you to think about business relationships differently.

That's it -- start reading these books and thinking about something you can do that other people will find valuable and let me know. We are on our way. We just have to take that first step...

And once you make your first million, please let me know by sending me an e mail.Or if you have some interesting idea to reach the goal of a Million in less than 5 years you are welcome to share it!

Best Regards.

JC.

Some basics to Invest, from Buffet

Warren Buffet became the world's richest person by adhering to simple but critical tenets. Here are his rules for smart living and savvy investing.

Last year's market madness didn't just flush away $7 trillion in wealth. It almost flush away my own idea of becoming a Millionaire in less than 5 years, but to defeat my objective the market will have to do more than that...

It also washed away a lot of investors' confidence and left them stumped about the best position to take now. "Somewhere between cash and fetal," quips one pessimist.

In such downbeat times, let's consider a dose of optimism, wisdom and insight: the basics as taught by that perennial investing Master, Warren Buffett.

For new investors or those now starting over, there's good news here because Buffett's investment success comes from some easy-to-grasp human qualities as much as sophisticated expertise in balance sheets.

Buffett would be the first to say his positive philosophy played a big role in his becoming the richest person in the world (before he gave most of his loot away).

Changing your basic psychology can be tough, so new investors may have a leg up here because they don't have ingrained bad habits. But for anyone, a psychological makeover is worth the effort if you hope to recover your losses in the market's next leg up -- and then make the right moves for the rest of your life.

My tour of the essence of Buffett's wisdom starts with the simple psychological lessons taught by the master, many of which are applicable in life outside investing.

Lesson No. 1: Be frugal

If the economic downturn is forcing you to live simply, look on the bright side: It's making you more like Buffett.

Buffett lives in the same modest house in Omaha, Neb., that he bought more than five decades ago.

How does this makes him a better investor? First, it gives him more to invest.

Second, a frugal investor will demand this quality from managers. Buffett is leery of corporate waste. Excessive executive pay or silly perks are red flags. Buffett once quipped that companies stack pay committees with "sedated Chihuahuas."

Third, frugal people don't need fast returns to support extravagant lifestyles. This leaves them free to think more clearly about when to buy and sell stocks, making them much better investors, believes Stephen Shueh, a Buffett expert and managing partner of Roundview Capital in Princeton, N.J.

Lesson No. 2: Wait for the 'fat pitch'

Resist the itch to constantly buy or sell stocks.

"Lethargy bordering on sloth remains the cornerstone of our investment style," quipped Buffett in his 1990 annual report to Berkshire Hathaway shareholders. Have the patience to wait a long time until some market turbulence brings the "fat pitch," as Buffett calls it, or stocks of great companies trading at really cheap valuations.

Lesson No. 3: Be a contrarian

A great way to make money is to go against the crowd. "We simply attempt to be fearful when others are greedy and to be greedy only when others are fearful," Buffett explained in a 1986 letter to shareholders.

So be skeptical of the conventional wisdom. Not because the crowd is always wrong but because the crowd's wisdom is probably already reflected in market prices.

When the investing public is extremely negative, it's usually a good time to buy stocks. When investors are confident, be careful.

Lesson No. 4: Stick with what you know

One of Buffett's basic rules is: If you don't understand a company's product or how it makes money, avoid it. He calls this "staying within your circle of confidence."

This isn't always easy. During the late 1990s boom, Buffett famously avoided tech companies, confessing that he could not understand what they did. He looked dumb until the bubble burst. "Ultimately, when it came full circle, he was proven right,". However in my case being part of a tech company myself (www.rahaxi.com) I sometimes put part of my trusted investements on it why? because of the simple reason that I undertand the sector and I´m a part of it.

Lesson No. 5: Don't depend on others to say you're right

If you are in need of constant affirmation about your investment decisions, particularly from the stock market, you won't be able to invest like Buffett, that's because Buffett makes outsized returns by purchasing disliked value stocks that are so beaten down they're often virtually ignored by the talking heads. They won't be on TV every week telling you that you made the right choice.

Lesson No. 6: Buy companies cheap

This is the essence of being a value investor. The first step involves calculating what Buffett calls an "intrinsic value" for a business -- either by examining what similar companies sell for or calculating the present value of all the cash that will be generated by a company in the future. For more details on how to do this, you'll have to consult books such as "The Warren Buffett Way" or "The Inteligent Investor.

Next, build in a "margin of safety" by purchasing a stock well below its intrinsic value.

Buffett doesn't pay much attention to earnings per share, a common measure of value. Instead, he likes to see companies with good return on equity, solid operating margins and reasonable or no debt. He also likes to see that companies generate a lot of cash and that they invest it well or return it to shareholders in the form of dividends or buybacks.

The key throughout this analysis is to look back over five years or more. Buffett wants to see a consistent operating history; he's not into startup companies. He also prefers to gauge how well a company does in different kinds of markets, not just the good times or the latest quarter.

Lesson No. 7: Look for companies with economic moats

A key characteristic supporting consistent operating history is a sustainable competitive advantage. In other words, a company should have a barrier to entry -- or a kind of moat -- that keeps potential competitors at bay.

This could be a patent protection on drugs, high costs to get into a business or simple brand power, fund manager Lowenstein says. "Franchise" businesses like these can do well because they have the power to raise prices. In contrast, companies in "commodity" businesses have to take whatever price is set by a competitive market -- which can crush profits during hard times.

BNSF Railway is a great example of a "franchise" business. It's pretty hard for anyone to lay enough track in North America to start a competing railroad. Coca-Cola, another long-term Buffett holding, has barriers to entry in the form of a strong global brand and distribution system that is hard to replicate.

Lesson No. 8: Buy big, concentrated positions

Most professional money managers protect against risk by diversifying. Buffett goes against the crowd here, too. When he finds a company he likes, he piles into it big time.

This is crucial to his success. Money manager Hagstrom calculates that if you eliminate a dozen of Buffett's best investment choices over his career, he's only an average performer. Buffett thinks his risk protection comes from understanding a business better than the market does and then being patient enough to buy it at the right price.

Lesson No. 9: Hold for life

Buffett quips that his favorite holding period is "forever." Embedded in this concept are two key Buffett tenets I've already alluded to. First, it's worth investing only in companies that are good enough to outperform for decades. Next, you have to think on your own and avoid the madness of the crowd.

"Buffett believes that unless you can watch your stock holdings decline by 50% without becoming panic-stricken, you should not be in the stock market," And believe me it feels hard, but then again I talked to a friend of mine and he said you know is not over you only lose when you sell so by keeping that position 6 months from the turmoil I can honestly tell you it is safe now.

This doesn't mean buy and forget. Buffett tracks his investments closely and gets out when he thinks that they are fully valued or that trouble is on the way, Buffett sold big positions in Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac the home mortgage companies that blew up last year.

Buffett is not infallible, however. He still owns big positions in Gannett and Washington Post even though he forecast at his 2004 annual meeting that the newspaper business would see nothing but trouble for decades.

The price of his company's stock -- always a major part of his wealth -- dropped 31% in 2008 and continued to follow the market down early this year. Lately, it and the market have been rallying back.

Lesson No. 10: Believe in you and In the world

Unlike most investors, Buffett doesn't tweak his portfolio depending on which party is coming into office or where we are in the economic cycle. This may make him seen naive. But it also has him putting money to work now, when many others have lost faith in the U.S. economic system. It's a move that will likely make him a winner down the road yet again, or if you are so diversified like I'm trying to be Invest in Mexico, Russia, Europe or Asia.

After all, the current fears about the long-term prosperity of the world Institutions and companies make no sense, Buffet wrote in an October op-ed column in The New York Times. That's why he was buying stocks before the current rally began.

"These businesses will indeed suffer earnings hiccups, as they always have," he wrote. "But most major companies will be setting new profit records five, 10 and 20 years from now."

So let's keep the right attitude for the right journey, I'am pleased to give e mail advises and comments to all of those that have dropped me a line I'm not yet there but I will keep in touch, to end this article I want to show you an inspiring event that involved Buffet and Gates not so long ago...and I guess the idea in all that you do is to be POSITIVE!!! Enjoy and comment.