7 steps to get yourself out of debt
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Today, I posted on my Facebook page that I will be out of both secured and unsecured debt by the time I am 40. A rainfall of friendly kudos preceded my announcement. Then, a friend of mine asked, “Ok… so how did you do it?” That inspired today’s blog.

Here is how I will be out of debt by 40.

1) I set an intention: In 2013, I set an intention with a timeline. “I will have no unsecured debt by the time I turn 40.” Originally, the car wasn’t on my radar. I just wanted the cards gone. Since 40 is such a milestone, that’s the timeline I set. At the time, I also set having a PhD by 45. But I haven’t quite tackled that. Tackle one BIG intention at a time to minimize overwhelm.

2) I put it in writing: It wasn’t enough to just want it. I had to put pen to paper. I wrote out all my bills and balances to get an idea of what I was really looking at. It was scary, but I kept going until every single bill with its current balance and payment was listed.

3) I got real: Once I knew what I was looking at, I devised a plan to start making it go away. I could eat an elephant one bite at a time. It wasn’t so scary to look at my smallest card and say. “Ok, I’m going to pay YOU off.” Yeah, I personalized it, sometimes going as far as to name them as I paid them down. “Ok, Credit One. This is your last payment. And once you are done, I’m going to cancel you because I don’t need you.” I did it and then used that money (an extra $50 a month) to pay down my next one and so on.

4) I took action: Then I actually did what I said I was going to do. I didn’t just write a plan and put it on the shelf. I worked it to the best of my ability and my circumstances.

5) I was open to how it would happen: I left room for the universe to work. It wasn’t like everything went according to plan at ALL! In fact, at one point I was so frustrated that I had a temper tantrum. Which leads to…

6) I consistently reaffirmed my desire: Reaffirm my desire. It’s not enough to set the intention once, I had to set it over and over again.

7) I kept doing it until I was successful: Consistently repeating steps four through six results in success that feels easy and free. It doesn’t feel burdensome or overwhelming.

I have a few thousand left on a car and all my debt is gone. But I won’t stop there. I’ll set another goal. At the beginning of this journey, my credit score was in the low 400s. I was recovering emotionally, mentally, and financially from a divorce with a bankruptcy on my record. I’m getting SO close to the 700s now I can TASTE it.

Intention: My next goal will be to build my credit from high 600s to high 800s by 42.

I’ll tackle that goal in the same way, always using purposeful intention as my guide.

I’m thinking of offering this process as a part of life coaching. I can set up steps one through three and, if the client wants, I can help with the rest through accountability. But, as all coaches will tell you – it’s your action that creates the result. With intention, planning, action, reaffirmation, and more action, anything is possible!

I mean it. Anything.

Low budget? Here’s how to save $$$$!

Recently, we’ve had the opportunity to work with several wonderful companies across the nation. All of them faced a similar issue. “We need help but agencies want to charge us an arm and a leg to do it for us.” My response to that is, “well, how much are you able to do on your side?” Inevitably, the client will come up with a list of marketing activities they could use current staff to do. At that point, they start to see that human resources are usable to get things done. Need a business to business database? How about setting your admin loose on the Internet and having them pick up the phone to get names, numbers and addresses? LinkedIn is a fabulous resource that can get you in front of the right people. Need to revitalize your social media? How about educating that excited young intern on how to execute your social campaigns? Two private hours invested in development can lead to hundreds of hours of execution, a project you didn’t have to pay an agency for.

Every marketing tactic has a hard cost and a sweat equity cost. When executing your campaigns, weigh the cost of each. Could you develop your team through education to get it done at a lower cost?

These days, there’s an agency for everything: advertising, marketing, social media, direct marketing, pay-per-click, copywriting, graphic design, web design – and yes, we have these experts at our disposal too. However, if you have a low budget, nothing delivers results per dollar like education.

Today’s Exercise: Take some notes! What do you need done? Write the project name at the top of a piece of paper. Then, make two columns. Column One: Resources I Have, Column Two: Resources I Need.  Now, next to those two columns, add two more columns with a $. This represents what those resources will cost you to complete the project.  (Feel free to budget if you don’t know the actual cost of what you need.)  Now, look at what you need. Is there any way you can leverage what you have to fill any of those needs? Change the columns until the budget fits your target amount.

This simple exercise will help you resource plan your project. Need to talk it out? Do so in the comments below. Need help resource planning your next project? Can’t make it fit within your budget?  Contact us.

Are your goals SMART or LAME?

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You can plan all day long until you are blue in the face. Yes, until you make real goals and make them SMART, you might as well consider your brain a very high functioning toy. Entrepreneurs especially are great at that. New idea! They play. New product! They play. However, in all that playing and planning, some end up trying to put the roof on a house with no foundation. They get the steps out of order so, like a house with no foundation, the ideas don’t stand on their own.

SMART goals are nothing new. Yet, often, people get so caught up in the excitement of “getting going” that they put on the jet packs and fire off in the wrong direction.

Here’s how to set a SMART goal.

SMART goals are:

Specific: What EXACTLY are you looking to accomplish?

Measurable: What METRIC are you going to apply to this? What does success look like in NUMBERS?

Attainable: With the resources you have at your disposal, is this DOABLE?

Realistic: Can this really happen or are you dreaming up a big pretty business UNICORN?

Timely: How LONG do you give yourself to accomplish this goal? How much TIME will it really take?

Today’s Exercise: Think of one goal you have. Just one. Make it a shorter term one – say within a month. Now, make it SMART. What changed about your goal? Does it seem more or less attainable?

Discuss your experience below.

By the way, LAME goals are:

Lengthy

Assumptive

Malicious

Expensive

More on that later…

For now, we now have a NEW LinkedIn Group for FREE HELP for Entrepreneurs, Business Owners and Business Leaders. Go there now and cash in on your What Works Quick Question and meet others like you around the world.