Well, another year is upon us and it’s time to decide how we are going to prosper in the New Year. Have you thought about the following year yet and what you want to accomplish…where you want to be?

So many of us approach the New Year with a whole bunch of resolutions, most of which are things we don’t want to do in the following year or bad habits we want to eliminate.

For example:

• “I’m going to quit smoking.”
• “I’m going to stop drinking.”
• “I’m not going to eat so many sweets.”
• “I’m going to stop watching so much TV.”
• “I’m not going to eat so much fast food.”

…I could go on

So, what’s my point?

Well, my point is that in order to prosper in the future, we must focus on what we want to accomplish and the good habits we want to form.

Remember, what we focus on, we attract into our lives. If we only focus on eliminating bad habits, we are still focusing on those bad habits (even if we are trying to remove them from our lives).

Instead, why not focus on what we want in our lives. Why not focus on the habits we want to form, rather than habits we want to break?

Why not put some goals down on paper that we can hold ourselves accountable to, rather than saying we are going to “stop doing this or that.”

I personally don’t make New Year’s resolutions, at least not in the traditional sense. Chad and I sit down before the end of the year and first reflect on the previous year. Then we decide where we want to be one year from now, both personally and professionally.

We write down our business goals and our personal goals. We write them down because just saying them isn’t enough. We need to physically put them on paper so we can look at them and as we progress over the coming months, hold ourselves accountable.

We are very specific as well. We write down specific numbers for our business, not just “We want to make more money in our business next year.” If we aren’t specific, then how will we know where we are going and how will we know when we get there?

How will we know what steps to take in order to ensure that we will accomplish those goals?

So what’s the difference between this type of planning and a New Year’s Resolution? A “traditional” resolution is an arbitrary change in your life effective on January 1st, nothing more.

By comparison, a solid plan based on recent history and future goals is something you can continuously work towards and hold yourself accountable to.

It’s the same personally as well. Here are a couple of examples of the New Year’s Resolutions from above and alternate goals you could set instead.

Resolution: “I’m going to stop watching so much TV.”

Goal: “I’m going to read one book a week.”

Resolution: “I’m going to stop eating so much fast food.”

Goal: “I’m going to learn to cook at least 5 new dishes a month.”

Resolution: “I’m not going to eat so many sweets.”

Goal: “I’m going to learn to make fruit smoothies and have one at least 3 times a week.”

You get the idea

Changing our mindset from what we will stop doing in our lives and focusing on our bad habits to specific things we can start doing in our lives and focusing on forming good habits can change the entire direction of our lives.

Let’s stop making “New Year’s Resolutions” and start making some solid plans and setting some goals so that we can accomplish anything and everything that we want and deserve both in our professional and personal lives!!

“The only difference between a rich person and poor person is how they use their time”
~ Robert Kiyosaki

What do we all hear over and over again?

“I just don’t have enough time.”

or…

“If only I had more time.”

People using “a lack of time” as an excuse to why they can’t get things done. We’ve all done it or said it at one point or another in our lives.

It’s when we realize that we can control how we spend our time that we begin to prosper in life.

Chad and I always joke around and call our TV a Time Vacuum because if you let it, it will suck you in and you will end up wasting so much time watching so much unnecessary garbage.

Now, we are not saying that it is all bad or that we never watch TV…cough, cough…24...but we don’t allow our time to be monopolized by it. When we first started our own home based business, we made it a rule to watch zero television (luckily 24 wasn’t in season…phew).

We did this because we wanted to make sure we were 100% focused on our business and we knew one show would lead to another, then another and so on.

Also, when we started our business, we were going through such a learning curve that we needed to spend the time acquiring the skills necessary to be successful that nothing else seemed all that important at the time.

We knew the potential for our business so focusing our energy on the things we needed to in order to be successful wasn’t difficult for us.

We were so passionate about achieving our goals and so inspired by what we knew we would accomplish that we found we couldn’t even sit through a show, even if we wanted to.

It’s amazing how much time you have when you decide you want something bad enough. To be honest, once we allowed ourselves to watch TV again, it didn’t seem all that important…well, except for 24 of course!

Every day our lives are filled with choices and the decisions we all make will shape our future.

Instead of watching that “quick” 30 minute sitcom, why not learn a new marketing skill, or listen to a personal development CD, or spend some time writing an article and providing value to the marketplace?

Maybe going out to dinner and “bar hopping” every weekend with friends, week after week won’t be on your agenda, at least not every week…

…but I bet you’ll be amazed at what you can accomplish if you make those types of decisions. If you make the choice to spend your time and energy on the things that you want most out of your life.

How much time do you spend reading? How about learning a new skill set? It’s easy to complain about how our lives are so miserable, but it’s truly up to each one of us to make our circumstances different.

There will be times when you will have to make sacrifices and maybe you will have to miss a TV show from time to time, or a night out on occasion, but it’s these types of decisions that separate the rich from the poor.

Let’s all remember next time we catch ourselves saying…

“…if I only had more time”…

…that we are all in control of our lives and must take control over our actions and the decisions we make every day or else we will spend our lives reacting to things instead of making things happen.

Today we are going to talk about an important resource to help you build your business credit which is something you should start thinking about today, if you haven’t already.

I just got off of a teleseminar with Scott Letourneau and Joseph Facchiano.

Who are they?

Well, Scott Letourneau is an Incorporating and Business Credit Expert. He is the CEO and Founder of both Nevada Corporate Planners, Inc. (NCP) and Fast Business Credit, Inc.

He knows what he is talking about and he is definitely in the business of helping entrepreneurs set up and run a successful business.

Now, when it comes to incorporating, we hands down recommend NCP, but that’s not what we are going to be talking about today. We are going to be talking about business credit.

Now, let’s talk about Joseph Facchiano.

Joseph Facchiano is a certified business performance coach, entrepreneur, speaker, and author. He also worked at Dun & Bradstreet for more than 7 years.

What is Dun & Bradstreet?

Well, Dun & Bradstreet (D&B) is, according to their website “the world’s leading source of commercial information and insight on businesses…”

Basically, for our purposes, we are going to look at them simply as the credit reporting agency for businesses similar to the way Equifax, Experian and TransUnion are for consumers.

The reason why we are telling you about this is so you can understand the value that Scott Letourneau and his business experience can provide you.

Understanding how to separate your personal credit from your business credit is essential to you in the long term and his Business Credit Builder Program will teach you how to do that.

He networks with many respected individuals in the field of business credit and banking and knows how to get the right information, and more importantly, helps you to implement what is necessary to build good business credit.

Sometimes it is easy as internet marketers to get caught up in the “marketing” mode and lose focus on the fact that we are entrepreneurs and we have our businesses to take care of.

That is why it is refreshing to have someone of Scott Letourneau’s character and experience level to help make sure our businesses are on track! He provides a wealth of information and we can’t recommend him enough.

If you feel as though your business credit isn’t where it should be or don’t even know what it is, then you should check out his website at FastBusinessCredit.com where they offer you a free 30 minute consultation.

Trust us on this one, because this topic is too important to be overlooked and not something you want to wait on so get started now and you can thank us later

By the way, we surround ourselves with great business people and experts like Scott Letourneau. He is just one of the many people we have the privilege to know through our network of contacts.

Chad and I have both met him in person and listened to him speak at conferences live and have even had the opportunity to be a part of a Q&A with him in a room of less than 20 people – so we can tell you first hand that he knows what he is talking about!

If you would like to join our team so you can have the opportunity to network with some of the most respected individuals in varying fields of business, then all you have to do is click here to get your special offer from us to join our team of entrepreneurs!

“Sprint Nextel Plans to Cut 8,000 Jobs in Quarter“

“Caterpillar Moves to Cut 20,000 Jobs“

“Starbucks Will Close 300 Stores and Open Fewer New Ones“

“ING Will Cut 7,000 Jobs and Its Chief Will Leave“

“62,000 Jobs Are Cut By U.S. and Foreign Companies”

What (aside from being disheartening and intimidating) do the above have in common? Several things:

• They are all headlines pulled from the New York Times
• They are all headlines from this week
• They are all signs of a growing problem

Take a look again at that last headline. On Monday, January 26, 2009 62,000 jobs were lost.

62,000.

And those weren’t all. Pfizer and Wyeth are in the midst of a huge merger that will cut 19,500 more jobs. On Wednesday (1/28/09) Starbucks announced they were closing 300 stores and cutting up to 6,700 jobs. Home Depot cut 8,000 jobs. Circuit City, with more than 30,000 employees is closing it’s doors.

Now, we are sorry that the picture is so bleak… and we truly hope that no one reading this post has been affected by these events – and if you have, we are sorry and wish you the very best.

The reason we are bringing this up is because while it is unpleasant, the truth is that this isn’t going to go away… things will likely take some time to turn around, and could very well get worse before they get better. A lot of people, literally more and more every single day, are feeling the effects of this situation in a very big way. We personally know someone who was laid off by a company he had been with for years. Eventually, that company bought out his next employer and guess what they did? Laid him off again!

So the big question becomes “What do I do if this happens to me?” or “How do I protect myself and my family?” The answer is to literally take matters into your own hands. There are so many different ways to make money from home, on your own time, on your own terms.

The events of the last week have shown, more strongly than ever, that “job security” is a thing of the past.

We strongly encourage anyone reading this, or other articles on the topic to start looking for alternatives. For ways to take control of your financial future and rely less on a big company and more on yourself.