Steve Oliphant’s Musings

My wife is keeping a blog at merriemelody.blogspot.com

Of course it is prettier and more entertaining than mine. Of course I may be biased.

http://zenhabits.net/2008/02/20-things-i-wish-i-had-known-when-starting-out-in-life/

Everyone seems to want to get rich quick, make money with little or no effort, basically have a fortune handed to them with no effort on their part.

Of course, I shouldn’t say everyone, because there are plenty of people who claim they don’t want to get rich. They don’t want to “sell out”, or to become one of the people they despise, you know, the people who think they are better than than you because they have money and you don’t. Those people think that wealth equals snobbishness.

The are others who think that the those who are rich got there by getting lucky breaks, having relatives give them money, knowing the right people, winning the lottery, or some other “lucky” circumstance. They think that wealth is a product of fate.

And still others who are afraid of money. They don’t want to have the responsibility that comes with having money. They would rather have somone else tell them what to do and how to live their lives. They think that a JOB equals security.

And of course there are the ones that want to get rich, but they don’t understand how. They spend time, money and effort on things like playing the lottery, investing in schemes that are quasi-legal at best, multi-level marketing, and buy every e-book, course and seminar that gurus’ claim will show them how to make million overnight. They think that all it takes to get rich is having the right knowledge.

Because you are reading this, you probably belong to, or at one time have fallen for some of the misconceptions in the last group. I know I have. I don’t believe in playing the lottery, or gambling with questionable investments, but the seductive ideas put forward by the those peddling their MLM programs and their seminars and courses are hard to resist.

The sales letters don’t usally lie, or even mislead. But the overal opinion and view seems to be that aquiring the right knowledge will make your rich and successful. It will, but not by itself. To be successful you have to apply that knowledge in a focused and effective way. And the sales letters make it sound like that will be easy to do.

But in reality it’s not. No matter how great the hype, or even the truth of a guru’s system other guru’s systems will always look attractive, and once you see the actual work involved, the next hyped system that comes along may be better. Focus and perserverence is the key, and at least for me, focus and perserverence are hard.

This is a long winded introduction to my main point:

The secret to getting rich – quick or slow - is to build a viable business.

Create a product that helps people and delivers more value than you charge for it.
Use proven marketing techniques to let people know about your product.
Set up processes that can be automated and constantly improve both your product and your marketing.

When you have your first product set up and selling, repeat the process creating more products until you are making as much money as you want.

That is how you get rich.

It requires knowledge (you probably already have enough of that). It requires work, and and it requires focus.

I will be releasing how-to videos and tools to help you (and me) on this path. Some will be free, and some I will charge for.
http://www.isuccess.com has some videos and tools. More will be available soon.

But the important thing to remember is that you CAN and SHOULD get rich. Don’t believe the lies and misconceptions, be wary of the hype, pick your path and stay on it.

Getting rich slow can happen faster than you think.

Here is to your success!

-Steve Oliphant.

If you have ever wondered why you always seem to get the opposite of what you want, you probably Need to train your eyes to see color again. Check it out.

There is an oldish adage “count your blessings” that seems to be very appropriate at the moment. I have been feeling down because of some slight difficulties in my life, but those problems pale in the large perspective of things.

“Count your blessings - name them one by one” I am not going to do exactly that, but I did want to put down some things that are very right and good about my life that I am grateful for.

1. I have a wonderful wife who is intelligent and wise and beautiful and sexy and loves me.
2. I have children who each have their own unique qualities and traits and who I love and who love me. I am proud of all of them for various reasons.
3. I have a very good - better than I deserve - family that I was raised in.
4. I learn things easily. I enjoy learning and thinking and appreciating the beauty around me, both God made, and that coming from the talents of others
5. Music
6. Literature
7. Income, high (very high by most of the world’s standards) quality of life. I am never hungry unless I choose to be, I have a home and (too many) possessions.
8. I have the ability to find something to appreciate in every circumstance I have ever been in. I sometimes forget this and pay with a bit of depression. But when I remember and act on that ability, I cheer myself up quickly.
9. A sense of humor. I can (when I choose - need to choose more often) find something funny about pretty much anything.
10. The ability to assume that others are doing their best to get along. I attribute slights and insults from others to misunderstandings and circumstances I am not aware of. I am probably often wrong, but I like living in this world that I have created with my outlook that is full of good people.

That is all for now - I am going to bed - how wonderful to have a nice warm dry comfortable place to lay my head each night!

Tomorrow is going to be an absolutely great day. No matter what happens in it.

Whether you use Microsoft’s Internet Explorer that comes default with Windows Operating Systems, Safari with your Mac, or Firefox there is one simple change that you can make to your browser that will increase your productivity by an order of magnitude.

This change does NOT require you to add any of the multitudes of toolbars and widgets available for your browser. It does NOT take longer than 30 seconds. It WILL help you to stay focused and get done what you need to get done.

Think about your internet usage habits. When you first turn on, or resume your computer and bring up your browser, what do you see?

If you are like most people, you see a start page that includes all the latest news stories, human interest stories, and top trends in fashion, sports and entertainment. It takes more will power then I have got to keep from clicking on links that are interesting, and before I know it, hours have passed and whatever it was I set down at the computer to do, has not been done.

The way to keep this from happening is to set your home page to either something very non-distracting, like Google’s search page (NOT their iGoogle page or your gmail page), a blank page, or a page that you make.

This is easy to do.

First, navigate to the page that you want as your home page. You can do this by clicking on the location field, and entering in the url of that page. To use google, enter in http://www.google.com. If you are using file on your computer, the URL would look like: file://c:/mypage.html (assuming that you have a file named “mypage.html” in the root of your C drive.)

On the latest version of IE (Internet Explorer) find the icon in the tool bar that looks like a house. To the left of it is a down arrow that will pull down a menu when clicked. One of the options on that menu is “Add or Change Home Page”. When you click on that, one of the options is to “Use this webpage as your only home page” Check that and then click “yes” and then you are all done. The next time you open your browser, it will be set to a page that keeps you more productive and on task.

The following video shows how to do what I am talking about:

I have a young son who is a bit behind his age group developmentally. One of his favorite things is to listen to me sing. Very sweet right? Well after two hours or so of the same song, it gets a little old. So I recorded myself singing the song into the computer, and then whenever he begs me to sing it, I can boot up my laptop, and put the song on continuous play, and he is happy and I can work.

Except like most things in life, it is not that simple.

Now whenever he sees me sit down with my laptop, he associates that with the song, and sits besides me, and demands that I play it.

Which seems kind of sweet also, I mean, I do like him to sit beside me. But one of the things I do for work is record screen shot – how to videos, where the screen is recorded along with my narration. And of course, I can’t do that while he is listening to that song.

So, I found another thing that is a favorite of his. Popcorn. We have a hot air popcorn popper and one of his favorite things is to watch a batch of popcorn pop. But even more, he likes to sit down and taste the bowl of popcorn.

Yes, I mean “taste” and not “eat.” That would be better.

You see, he has an oral aversion, which basically means that he has a really hard time swallowing things. We feed him through a special tube that is in his stomach wall. But he doesn’t mind putting things (like popcorn) in his mouth, he just won’t swallow.

The dogs in our house LOVE him. Because he tastes, chews, masticates, and thoroughly slimerizes his food, and then spits it out somewhere. If a dog is around, he gives it to them. (Unless I am sitting next to him, then I am his first choice.) But if not, he just spits it back in the bowl. This can make sharing popcorn with him quite an adventure. Is that extra butter? Or is it one that he has thoroughly tasted?

And so while I have distracted him from wanting that song played (over and over and over and over) he is sitting next to me trying to share his popcorn, giving me all the pieces he has tasted even though I tell him to give them to the dogs instead. It makes it hard to get things done. So I better type this while I can.

Timothoy Ferris has a great blog post on
traveling with children. I am going to go show my wife.

This was a wonderful Christmas, we were able to get each of our children the thing(s) they wanted.

And we were able to get the Christmas dinner dishes done without the usual whining and complaining.

We played the dishes game.

This is game is deceptively simple, and surprisingly fun. It works if there are at least 4 people participating, but the more the merrier. It makes the chore of cleaning up the kitchen and washing dishes after a big meal into a fun activity. Here is how it is played.

We use a pen and paper. One person is “it” or the writer. That person chooses a number between 1 and 100 and writes it down. Then everyone else takes turns trying to guess the number. The writer tells everyone after their guess if the actual number is higher or lower. When someone guesses the number, then they go start the dishes. Then a new writer is chosen and a new number is written and everyone (except the person currently doing dishes) takes turn guessing again. When someone guesses the number, they trade places with the person doing the dishes.

But here is the catch. If a number right next to the writer’s number is guessed, then the writer has to trade places with the person doing dishes.

So, if I was the writer and I wrote down “19″ then the first person guessed “50″ I would say “lower” the next person guesses “10″ and I say “higher”. If someone then guessed “19″ I would show them my written down number and they would go do the dishes. If someone guessed “18″ or “20″ then I would go do the dishes. After each change of the dishwasher, a new writer takes their turn.

It is more fun than it sounds, and it is a great way to avoid complaining and/or help out the host.

If you have more than 6-8 people, it works best to have 2 doing the dishes and rotate through them.

I learned of this game from my sister-in-law, and having grown up grudgingly taking my turn at doing the dishes, and watching my children do all they can to avoid the dishes, (I wonder who they learned that from!) I really appreciate the goodwill and fun it brings to a what has been a chore to avoid or complain about.

Aaron Brandon asked about how to stay motived while working on business. One of the answer’s (Aaron’s favorite one) was Relying on motivation is risky - that is a new blog for me and one that I want to spend more time investigating.