The Best Gift to Give Your Children for the Holidays

During the Christmas holiday, most families are racing around to find the perfect gift for their children. As your children get older, you may be tempted to give a gift of money to them. Your children will most likely frivolously spend this money on an IPod, video games, etc.

Best gift for the season – Fund in IRA for your children

When our son turned 18, I convinced my wife that we should gift money into an IRA. Funding an IRA is the gift that keeps on giving. Since we funded an IRA at such an early age, we are ensuring a good retirement for him.

How does funding an IRA keep giving?

1. Our son receives a bigger tax refund. For a $2000 deposit, he receive over $500 back on his taxes. How’s is that for a Christmas present.
2. Our son has $4500 in the IRA and is 22 years old. Even if we never invested again, this IRA at 8% annual return would be worth over $100,000 by retirement.
3. It’s awesome estate planning. If we kept this money in our own investments, eventually it would become part of our estate and subjected to death tax.
4. We protected the money. In other words, our son cannot spend it prematurely without sustaining an early withdraw fee. This fact keeps his hand out of the cookie jar.
5. We are teaching him a valuable lesson about saving. He’s proud of the fact that the balance is going upward, therefore, giving him confidence and security for his future.

Best part of this gift is now our son is carrying the torch. He inspired me to write this blog because he asked how much he could put into the IRA this year. I am very proud of him and glad that he has learned a valuable lesson.

Demember Theme: Creating Checklists and Schedules

These two projects took huge amounts of my time over the last month but the payoff is more free time. I found some bugs in the Quickbooks integration and waiting for the vendor to fix them so I have been unable to calculate my November results. It's killing me!!! because I keep a close eye on my result.

Demember Theme: Creating Checklists and Monthly Schedules

I noticed an ebbing flow every month appearing in the business. This month I want to take all of the activities that cannot be automated and create checklist and monthly schedules to perform against.

It appears that missing specific activities diminishes my results significantly. We test students for belts at the end of the month and this influences the timing of the activities.

Here’s a quick list of activities by week:

Week One:
Start our marketing campaign for the month
Send out e-newsletter
Week Two
1. Weekly e-mail with special offer
2. Create Test List
3. Identify Upgrades and Renewal Students
4. Order Belts and Take equipment inventory (we save on shipping by doing this once a month)
Week Three
1. Weekly e-mail with special offer
2. Invitations to Renewal Students
3. Schedule Renewal Conferences
4. Hand out Test Applications
Week Four
1. Weekly e-mail with special offer
2. Perform Renewal Conferences
3. Test Certificates
4. Exam Graduation

This is just some of the main activities during the month. I want to create a written form and checklist as a template for renewals and new students. Well, it’s off to work for me.

Key Strategy III: MVP - Most Valued Program

I feel that as part of my overall strategy to become the Million Dollar Business that I will require a real estate investment at some point. There is something appealing about owning the property where you run your business.

To discover more about Real Estate investment, I purchased some books on the subject. The first one, I read, was Trump University Real Estate 101: Building Wealth with Real Estate Investments by Gary W. Eldred. He talks about making your property the MVP or Most Valued Property in the area.

If you watch house flipping shows, this is exactly what they do to properties. They purchase a property and add a few upgrades - granite counter tops, paint, expand a bedroom, etc. Then, they sell the house for a profit. The house flipper, in a sense, increase the value of the property.

MVP - Most Valued Program

I adapted this strategy to apply to my business. I call it the MVP or the Most Valued Program. Instead of competing with other programs for a market share of students, you attempt to increase the perceived value of your program.

The idea is to become the most valuable program and set your tuition accordingly regardless of what your competitors are charging.

Ways to Making Your Business an MVP

1. Create a Fantastic Sales Presentation - A great sales process highlights the benefits of your program. To maximize it's value, paint a picture of what your program will provide them.
2. Crisp and clean environment - Make sure your business is the cleanliest around.
3. Develop a top level curriculum - Your curriculum should address not only the basic moves but also should act as a personal development tool.
4. Provide superb student services - Follow up with the students consistently.
5. Systematize everything - People love consistent service. Systematizing assists you to provide great service while saving you time.

These are just a few ideas for making your MVP business. With a little imagination, you can indefinitely continue to improve your systems.

Pearl S. Buck Charity and Creating Abundance for yourself

We kicked off our Pearl S. Buck Sponsor a Child Program. Christopher Grasso from Pearl S. Buck International spoke to our students about the children they sponsor in Asian countries and their lifestyle.

To demonstrate the effect that one dollar per day can have on these childrens lives, he took a dollar bill and ripped it into four parts. Each part represents the four basic needs that one dollar provides Food, Education, Medical Care, and Social Needs. Its amazing how kids start paying attention when someone starts ripping a dollar bill. Some of the children told me afterwards that they thought he was crazy for ripping the dollar bill.

As part of our fundraiser, Ester and I decided to donate $25 per new enrollment. Giving to charity brings up an important question.

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Why do most wealth-building experts agree that giving part of your earnings to charity actually creates wealth?

From David Bach, the Automatic Millionaire, to T. Harv Eker, Secrets of the Millionaire Mind, to Jack Canfield, Chicken Soup profess the value of tithing. I noticed the same effect in Ester and my life. Every time we donate, whether it was to the Alabama project or giving stuff to the Womans Place, afterwards, we experienced a windfall of good fortune.

So whats the secret? Is it Karma maybe, but I think the answer lies in a change of mindset. Donating your time and/ or money puts you in an abundance mindset. Yes, thats the key. Nothing will assist you more than maintaining that abundance mindset than giving.

It makes sense. Think about it. The reason people do not give is that they feel they cant afford it. This thinking is a scarcity mindset. Truthfully, our school goal means that if everyone in our school donates $1 and convinces one other person to give $1, we meet our goal. I dont know many people that cant afford $1 and if anyone does feel this way, I believe that this scarcity mindset is hurting them more than you can believe.

Create an abundance mindset for yourself today and donate to a good cause. If not money, donate your time and start the abundance process for yourself today.

Click Here to donate and stimulate your abdundance mindset today.

Turning Problems into Opportunities

Yesterday, I got the all-to-familiar call from the parent of a student. They were asking to cancel their membership. In the past, this phone caused huge levels of stress for me. Understand that I put a lot of time into each student and feel a personal connection with them and their family.

How did I change my perspective?

Now, I view these phone calls as opportunities. You see, I realize now that in most cases the reason for quitting is more then the student becoming dissatisfied. Most of the time, it’s that their life situation has changed and they are reaching out for help. They are looking for a solution.

By offering them a solution, you not only re-gain a customer but you also increase their loyalty.

Take 3 steps to turning problems into opportunities.

Active listening – Be attentive and completely listen to them. Ask questions that get the customer or student to talk through their problems.
Focus on Solutions – Once you completely listen to the customer, offer solutions that solve the problem.
Resell the benefits – Sometime a customer forgets why they started receiving a service. Ask questions that prompt the customer to talk about the benefits they’ve received so far.

Using these three steps assists bringing the customer back to you. What happened during my call? The student decided to stay. Another touchdown for the home team!