With my newsletter I expose the truth about several life topics (money, law, health, etc), news and general information that you likely won't see in the mass media. If it’s in the mass media, it’s probably not important for you to know about it.

    I got my Bachelors in Science in Electrical Engineering  in Bogotá, Colombia (South America) where I worked for two major telecommunications companies. I decided to come to the U.S. to advance my career, work for larger international corporations, get an M.B.A. (Master of Business Administration), and be an important executive for an American company. That was my dream, as the dream of almost all my friends. I fulfilled my dream; I came to the US, worked for Nortel in the Boston, MA area, I got my M.B.A., and then worked for Alcatel-Lucent in several positions (as a technical support engineer, as a networking consultant, and as an offer/product manager for the Caribbean and Latin America region). I was now a highly paid executive for an American corporation traveling extensively around Europe, Latin America, and the Caribbean. Soon I realized that I didn't have a life. I had a lot of prestige among my peers, friends, and relatives; but something was missing. I needed a life; I needed freedom. I wasn't able to do what I wanted to do, when I wanted to, where I wanted to, with whomever I wanted to, for as long as I wanted to, without having to worry about money.

   

    In the back of my mind there was always something that told me that I had a different calling. When I was in high school I used to sell things to my classmates; when I was in college, I used to sell t-shirts and jeans to my classmates also. I was very successful at my t-shirt and jeans business; I developed a network of distributors throughout the campus; I was the master broker, and they were the retail distributors. I was amazed at myself. Then it came graduation day, and I had to do what my family and my teachers told me to do: to get a job!

  

    So, I got a job. My most recent employment was with Alcatel-Lucent in the Miami, FL area; everything was wonderful until Nov. 6th, 2002. My whole department was dismantled, and I was gone with the wind. My immediate reaction was to look for another job. I sent 100's of resumes to employers, friends, and acquaintances. I got zero responses. I was panicking. Oh my God, what will I do? What will happen to my employer-sponsored H1B work visa? How am I going to make a living? etc. All of this was going through my mind, and at the same time, I had a feeling of freedom. For some strange reason, I felt well about the whole situation: I was home most of the day, occasionally meeting some friends for lunch, going to the beach on Mondays, laying in my hammock at 2:00 p.m. for a siesta; in other words, I was doing was I always wanted to do. I was free! I was doing what I wanted to do, when I wanted to, where I wanted to, with whomever I wanted to, for as long as I wanted to, without having to worry about money because I had savings. I said to my self: this is the life that I want to live. So, I started asking myself questions...how do I do it? how do I pay the bills after I run out of money? etc, and I started getting answers.

    As author Vernon R. ("Vern") Martin says "If you find your why, you will find your how." Vern also says that asking "how" questions to yourself is the key to all success. There is something positive about asking yourself questions; I was doing without knowing it, and got my answers. I answered to myself that I needed to start a business. I always wanted to do it, and this was the perfect time to do it. So, that's what I did; and I have enjoyed every single moment ever since. It will be impossible to tell you all that I have learned since November 6th, 2002; I've learned more in a few short months than I've ever learned in my costly and extensive M.B.A. There is a great deal of business and personal finance literature out there so that you can start educating yourself about personal finances.

    I realized that M.B.A. students learn how to make money for somebody else, instead of how to make money for themselves. Likewise, I realized that wealth is not the same as income. If you make a good income each year and spend it all, you are not getting wealthier; you are just living high. Wealth is what you accumulate intelligently, not what you spend. Loosely speaking, an employee who makes $40,000/year it's the same as an employee who makes $400,000/year; they all live paycheck to paycheck. The only difference is that the one that makes $40,000/year drives a cheap Honda Civic and has a $120,000 mortgage, and the one that makes $400,000/year drives a Mercedes Benz and has a $1,200,000 mortgage. Wealth is not measured by money. As the advertisement of a financial organization says...”Wealth is not measured in millions, it is measured in a feeling called freedom.” Wealth can also be measured by time; you have freedom when you have time to do the thing you want to do, how you want, when you want, with whom you want, for as long as you want.

    When you have a job you make a living, but when you own a business, you create wealth. I am not telling you to quit your job; just start thinking differently about your future. Start adding additional streams of income to your life. If you haven't done it, consider it time for educating yourself on investing. The only reason anybody, in my opinion, should work is to learn and to generate cash to invest or to learn about a business/industry so that he/she can open his/her own business. As author T. Harv Eker, in my opinion, author of one of the best material in financial education, says, "If you're going to work hard anyway, you might as well get rich...and the quicker the better!" I highly advise you to attend one of T. Harv Eker’s educational FREE tele-seminars; his teachings can easily change your financial life.

Click Here To Register For T. Harv Eker’s Educational FREE Tele-seminars

   

    One hundred years ago, about 90 percent of our ancestors were entrepreneurs. Now the number is between 10 and 20 percent. By moving from the farms to the factories, we delegated our freedom to large, centralized organizations. We got soft. We lost our entrepreneurial skills. And now that the new paradigm of the world is changing, we've been forced "back to the farm" so to speak - back to individual responsibility. The whole world is moving away from centralized authority of every kind. With downsizing, companies are splitting into profit teams: smaller PT boats instead of lumbering battleships. Many of those who have been downsized are realizing that being an employee is even riskier than being in business for themselves. That's what fueled the incredible home-based business revolution of the 1990's, when home-based businesses were being created at unprecedented rates.

    You can have a job and have your own business; a job is a means to accumulate investment capital for your own business or a means to learn about an industry or a trade so that you can open your own business some day. You can also treat your job as as your own business if you don’t see yourself as an employee, but as a “consultant” helping your employer accomplish a goal. When you see yourself from the perspective of a “consultant” for your employer, you open a world of opportunities for your employer and for yourself because instead of looking forward to receiving a paycheck you are actually looking for ways to enrich the existence of your employer, thus enriching your existence with the hopes of partnering with your employer in future endeavors where you could possibly create more value.

   

    Two of the most important decisions you will make in life are: “who will you marry?” and “what business will you start?” Your partner in marriage is important because this person will have the most impact on how you live, where you live, what you do when you interact with friends, and who you spend the most amount of time with. The reason that the business that you choose is to important is because you spend more time in your business than any other single activity. It also has the largest impact on your financial position, far beyond anything else (in most cases). So, it would only make sense that you would pick a business that was the right fit for you.; a business that fits with your strengths.

   

    Building a business is where the journey begins...not where it ends. The overwhelming majority of business fail - and of those that endure, the overwhelming majority of those are nothing better than a glorified job for the owner. Almost all small businesses don’t reach the potential that they could. It doesn’t matter whose statistics you look at. Some statisticians say that 80% of business go out of business in the next five years. Other say that only 4% of all businesses survive in the long run, meaning 96% will go out of business. Let’s also not forget that the “lucky” one that stay in business, most of them will be nothing more than glorified jobs for the owners. When you look at statistics like that, it becomes increasingly clear that the choice is between being a slave to your business (if you’re lucky enough to survive) or actually growing your business, which certainly requires uncommon sense.

    According to the U.S. Small Business Administration two-thirds of new business survive at least two years, and 44 percent survive at least four years. Dun & Bradstreet also released a study that revealed that of the small business that fail, 90% do so because of lack of skills and knowledge on the part of the owner.

    If you are interested in starting a new business or improving your existing one, I highly recommend the teachings of Rich Schefren at Strategic Profits, I highly advise you to read his material on the Internet Business Manifesto, available for free. Watch this video of Rich Schefren speaking brilliantly about building a business online.

   I currently help companies bring new products to market in the U.S. and Latin America & the Caribbean. If you’d like to have a good understanding about the channel business and how to succesfully launch a product in a new market using channels and distributors, read the following article that I wrote titled Understanding Channels and Distributors: Love them or lose them!.

To your success,

 

Julio G. Martinez-Clark