If that’s your aim, check out the article: Where To Be An Entrepreneur It’s about 10 startup-friendly cities–and their respective success stories.

I like the success stories as much as the city information, and I was surprised to learn that there were cities across the nation in most regions (I didn’t notice New England or any place from Washington DC northward) that were highlighted.

I think that when cities appear that didn’t strike you as very “entrepreneur friendly” appear on such lists from all over the country, you may just find you’re in a place where creating a new business for yourself is easier than you imagine. Even if you’re not planning to move, you may gain greater confidence in yourself and your ability to start a business if even places in the “rust belt” can spawn new life.

It’s free – except at the price of your email of course.

Not sure what your mission statement should be? I understand. Sometimes it’s hard to wrap so many interests and loves into one short paragraph.

To help, here are some example mission statements to get you thinking.

Here’s a post from Jim Whelan that is worth considering:

At a breakfast roundtable this morning I heard all kinds of excuses about performance. They were all laughable. Maybe not to those who believe this kind of crap, but they certainly were to me.

Now I heard any number of things, pure pessimism, stock market theories, fierce competition, prospects saying no, and then the one that really got to me, waiting for business conditions to pick up.

That one really threw me for a loop.

Successful salespeople sell in all kinds of conditions. One of my friends was in the middle of a sales presentation to a Thai family when the power went out. He went to his truck,pulled out two powerful flashlights, and brought them inside.

The flashlights helped the family find candles, and he finished his presentation, and did all the paperwork by flashlight, and candlelight. That was a $38,000.00 deal.

Almost everybody else I know would have packed it in when the power went out. This same salesperson once drove over two hours to see a prospect, a farmer. When he arrived, the farmer was on the roof of his barn, and refused to come down, saying he changed his mind. My friend calmly removed the ladder from the side of the barn, and told the farmer he could stay on the roof as long as he liked.

Then he walked back to his truck with the ladder.

Suddenly, the farmer had another change of heart. Two hours later they wrapped up a $30,000.00 deal.

Sales ain’t bean bag.

Just like the Marines, you adapt and improvise, depending on the conditions you find. I often surprised prospects by showing up in the middle of a storm. Believe me, it isn’t hard to close those deals.

Business conditions will never be ideal. The market will never do just exactly what analysts think. What benefit can you possibly get by waiting?

I can guarantee you one thing you’ll get by waiting.

No sales.

No revenue.

No paycheck.

That certainly is not a pretty picture.

What all these excuses boil down to is fear. And any salesman with fear in his heart is not going to be successful.

Good salespeople need to get positive, and stay positive. If you follow that simple rule, you’ll weatherproof yourself.

From the big saddle,

Jim Whelan
The Chairman of the Board

I release my manuscripts initially in pre-typeset form. This way, readers can spot errors that I have missed. I will make the corrections before I typeset the book.

Ignore the spacing of bold-faced subheads. These will change when it is typeset.

My goal is to get this book in final form, with indexes, in late November. Then I will remove this version from my site.

You can also sign up for his ezine at GaryNorth.com

Till then you can report errors to If you spot an error, send an email to me:
garynorth @ garynorth . com (remove spaces before hitting “send”)

Speak English as your first language

Have a credit card

Have a pay pal  account

Can go to an internet marketing seminar

Can write and proof read an article in less than 6 hours on your chosen topic

Are not immediatey perceived as a terrorist by your target audience

Can cash a check for US Dollars

You have numerous advantages over this internet marketer.

Yet she has earned as much as $6300 in a single month.

Here’s the article

Here’s her blog

Thanks to Ron Coble for the tip!

Can get a merchant account

I was pretty heavily involved in trade shows a while back… the hotel kind. The issue most exhibitors have is that they don’t generate leads because they can’t attract people to their booth for more than grabbing free pens and novelties. You have to have some way to interact with people or they’ll just glance at you out of the corner of your eye. That means lots of booth rentals produce zero leads because the folks just stand there and they don’t “work the floor”.

Online exhibitors as a result should stand a better chance at turning their dollars into leads as long as they get to put their face in front of the web cam at an online event.

From their press release

Online expos are nothing new, there are many organized and carried out through the year. What sets this venture apart is the fact that participants will be connected live via a voice enabled web conference room that can be accessed by both Mac and PC systems. The direct connection brings the entire experience up to a level that closely resembles being at a real live event.

Another difference is the emphasis on education to grow one’s business. Organizers want to provide attendees with more than a sales pitch. Munson says: ‘We do more than show off exhibitors; a major goal is to give home business owners and opportunity seekers a well rounded expo experience that equips them with cutting edge information. We really want them to come away with something more than just a couple of prizes!’ At their first event that was held in November 2006, they had a massive response to their event. Wendy Cooper, co-owner of Business and Learning, states ” We had such a big response to our first event, it was amazing. Our goal is to build on what we experienced the first time around.”

Admission to the Business and Learning Expo is free. You can pop in for any of the scheduled exhibitions to learn more about the products, services and business opportunities offered by the expo exhibitors. There are also daily free networking sessions where you freely interact with other attendees.

The evenings are set aside for keynote messages provided by leaders in the Work at Home industry. Some of the experts include Well known internet marketing expert Kelly McCausey of Work at Home Moms Talk Radio as well as Publicity Expert, Shannon Cherry of Cherry Communications just to name a few! Keynote topics include how to harness the power of a focused business and how to get the most out of your publicity efforts, just to name a few. A complete list of speakers and topics as it develops can be found on the website. http://www.businessandlearning.com.

Recognition reaps rewards with customers… if you can find something to recognize people  about, they appreciate it and will often reciprocate with more business and referrals.

So where do you get cheap ways to recognize people?

Try these free printable certificates and coupons!

There’s even a sample gift certificate you can have them customize for your business for a few bucks.

But hope isn’t a plan.

Do you know the difference?

From the Cognigen Times, September 2006 edition…

Hope Is Not A Plan

One of the philosophies of successful business people is the reality statement that “Hope Is Not A Plan”. This is even addressed with dozens of examples in the new book by Anderson Cooper, television news anchor.

Do you see the difference? Hopefully you do, since the difference between “hope” and “plan” is even more stark than the difference between day and night. You can hope that you ace your physics exam at school. You can hope you get that raise at your job. You can hope you have enough month left over at the end of the money where you can still make your car payment. You can hope that the hurricane sighted in the Atlantic does not make landfall near you next week.

There is nothing wrong with hoping. The very act helps us to understand what we want to accomplish, what we wish for in our lives, in personal relationships, in various activities and endeavors, and yes, frequently in terms of our future financial situation.

But hope is not a plan.

Hope without action almost has negative value. Some experts say that hope in and of itself, with no accompanying plan is nothing more than day-dreaming, and does not really constitute one’s real hope or dreams or goals. Why? Because if it was a REAL hope, then a plan of action would accompany it. Without a plan of action, the hope is nothing, a waste of mental energy.

You can hope you ace your physics exam, but to make that hope a reality, you study, you research, you learn, so that your hope can become a reality. There is the action that can enable your hope to become real. You can hope for a raise at your job, but the action is to know and understand what is required of you to get there and to put that understanding into action. You can hope for financial comfort for yourself and your family, but without a plan to get there — a plan that you create, endorse, and PUT INTO ACTION, that hope is nothing more than a daydream or a passing fantasy.

The people who are most successful in the world today have deployed their action plan. That does not mean that the first plan they came up with is the one they need to live with. Rather, as situations change and circumstances change, the plan is changed accordingly. The key is that they put their plan into action, every day, without fail.

Are you committed to your plan or simply “involved”? As an analogy, think of a good breakfast of ham and eggs. The chicken was involved in making that breakfast possible, but the pig was committed.

….

In say 3-5 years from now, if you keep doing what you are doing now, can you honestly say that you will be where you want to be at that point in the future? If not, then today — right now — is an excellent time to implement your PLAN.

1. Never Initiate a project and

2. Never attempt to “Motivate” anyone…

Why?

For the most part these just don’t work as anyone who’s tried to build a network marketing organization knows, you have to find people who are already looking for change who find your opportunity to be the right vehicle.

The rest are gone before they start… it’s just a question how long the autoship will last.

So Sirolli tells the people tasked with helping nurture young businesses to never initiate and never motivate… just help the people initiating something on their own because they’re already motivated.

If you need motivation to do your business, you’re in the wrong business.

If you’re not familiar with the Rich Dad Poor Dad book, there are 4 quadrants wherein people generally function. They’re called the “Cashflow Quadrant” visible on this book cover.

The “E” and “S” quadrants are occupied by the employed and self-employed who depend on the efforts of their own production on an hourly basis. It’s only when systems kick in that people create businesses and investments that produce returns not necessarily dependent on their personal production like the E and S quandrants.