Over on the introduction to this site I discuss the pros and cons of various businesses. Self-employment offers the ultimate rewards: income, freedom and flexibility, provided you start with the right venture. Nowadays there are more opportunities than ever, including the old standby: the brick and mortar store. You see them every day, so if you’re considering self-employment you must have asked yourself: “Are they worth it?”

Brick and mortar will never die, but it’s showing its age. Now that the Internet’s here, traditional stores are no longer at the heart of business. Next to other opportunities, brick and mortar has five big disadvantages:

Complexity: Brick and mortar stores are the among the most complicated business opportunities out there. You need to do a staggering amount of work before you even open the doors. You need to research the area, get shelving, secure a lease and rope it all into a working business model. Franchises try to make it easy for you but they don’t always succeed. Every community is different; a franchise’s “one size fits all” approach wont necessarily work.

Hours: With brick and mortar, you rely on people to wander in. They set your hours, not you.  If you close the door on a sunny day you’ll lose hundreds or even thousands of dollars in lost revenue. You’ll spend your days manning the counter and fretting over receipts. That doesn’t feel like freedom, does it?

Investment: Brick and mortar businesses drain time and money. Physical space and physical products don’t come cheap.  Even after laying out a business plan, you’ll be assailed by hidden costs and emergencies. Many businesses fail in the first few years because their owners just run out of savings.

Inventory and Stock: You need stock and you need to track it. In a brick and mortar business you can’t rely on point of sale data because theft and accidents make it less than accurate. At the end of the day it’ll be your job to count every item. Worse yet, you might even have to pay taxes on unsold stock

Rent: Last on this incomplete list (did I mention customer liability, shoplifting and staff costs?) is rent. Retail space doesn’t come cheap. You might think to save money by choosing an out of the way location, but your business will suffer when fewer people come by.

Fortunately, there are ways to run a business without falling into the brick and mortar trap. The Internet and the evolving market have spawned other options. Some of these are true turnkey businesses that can help you succeed now, and not after a few years of draining your savings. Contact me for more information.

“Nothing succeeds like success.”

That mantra first appeared in print in 1868. It is an indisputable fact that success tends to breed success. The formula works in sports, entertainment, and business.

But that is just too obvious, isn’t it? What about the person who hasn’t yet tasted the sweet nectar of success? What about the person who wasn’t voted “Most Likely To Succeed” by his or her classmates? Or worse, the one who was elected as such…and then proceeded to make a mess of things?

Plenty of people know how to take money and make more money with it. It is another aspect of success breeding success. But how do you transform debt into wealth? How do you take a negative and turn it into a positive, a loss and make a gain of it? That is another story entirely.

Look at the following formula and fill in the answer:

Failure + Failure + Failure = ______________.

What answer did you reach? Did you answer, “Failure?” If so, you are probably right. It is certainly possible that a person will remain on a destructive path and follow one disastrous decision with another.

Or, did you answer, “Success”? If you did, you are right! Success may breed success, but no one has ever succeeded without experiencing failure along the way!

Did you know…

1. Babe Ruth struck out 1,330 times in his career? Of course, none of us remember all of those failures. We remember, instead, that he hit 714 homeruns!
2. Thomas Edison failed nearly 2,000 times before he discovered the right filament for the incandescent light bulb?
3. JC Penney went bankrupt in his first business venture and later lost $40 million when the stock market crashed in 1929, but recovered to build the first great retail chain?

Ruth, Edison, and Penney…three of the greatest names in American history. Each experienced more than his share of failure, but we remember their successes. Why? Because they never gave up and they never gave in to their circumstances.

Legendary football coach, Mike Ditka observed is fond of saying, “Success isn’t permanent and failure isn’t fatal.” Billionaire Malcolm Forbes adds, “Failure is success if we learn from it.”

Perhaps you are drowning in a river of debt. Bad luck, bad timing, maybe even bad decisions have conspired to bring you to a place of financial difficulty. You can transform that debt into wealth. You can stop the bleeding and begin the healing.

Here are a few key points to transforming debt into wealth:

1. Consolidating debt is not the answer. It has to be eliminated, or transformed into assets.
2. If you always do what you have always done, you will always be what you have always been.
3. Change is not easy, but it is essential. You have to change the way you approach your debt and the way you amass your assets.
4. Compound interest compounds debt exponentially, but it works the other way, too…when you are the one earning it rather than paying it. Albert Einstein called compound interest the greatest mathematical discovery he ever saw. He said those who understand it profit from it, while those who don’t understand it never finish paying for it.
5. Debt becomes wealth because its elimination has the two-fold effect of eliminating high interest being paid on the debt and creating interest income through investment.
6. Nearly 100% of the people who will read this article already have the means to transform debt into wealth. It isn’t about how much you make, because this is a sliding scale. Debt is almost always proportionate to income because you will only have the ability to amass a certain amount of debt based on your income and ability to gain credit.
7. Hopelessness is a feeling, not a fact. The only hopeless person is the one who gives up.

Debt elimination is one thing. Transformation is another. It is being done every day by people just like you. You can do it, too. But you have to do it. It won’t just happen on its own.

Here’s to your success!

Related Terms:turning debt into profit,turnkey debt elimination