Tag Archives: success

Posted on

How To Become An Entrepreneur?

As a child, I dreamed of being an entrepreneur, of starting a business. At age 25, I began Land Ark Homes. It was a modest home building business that grew in 20 years to build over 350 luxury estate homes. I became a legitimate entrepreneur.

SONY DSC

This is a shared dream, many of us want to be an entrepreneur and run our own businesses.

Throughout those 20 years I began focusing more on my strengths and passions and delegating responsibility to others with skills that complemented mine. Later, I was free to focus on what I did best and eventually find the work I love. With that came the responsibility of partners and employees. Ultimately, my job became serving people: the staff and our customers. This is one of the secrets to winning in business – being eager to serve.

Posted on

See How Easily You Can Learn To Have More Energy

There is a shortage of energy in our lives…..personal energy.

“I’m so busy! Stressed! Tired! ”  – does that sound like some of your friends?

Maybe even you?!

For many people, work is stressful, time is limited and there’s always an endless list of things we think we should be doing. Countless emails, interruptions, distractions and decisions; it’s hard to get our work done. Often the first thing to be dropped is you! The things you do to keep healthy can suffer. But it doesn’t have to be this way.

Track Record close-up

In the Bible, Paul us teaches that all growth is – spiritual growth. Growing to become more like Jesus Christ!

But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control.  

Galatians 5:22-23

As it relates to our health, self-control is the hardest part of personal growth.

The Power Of Full Engagement by Jim Loehr and Tony Schwartz says that managing energy, not time, is the key to high performance and personal renewal. This resource, helps you learn how to mange your own energy to have better health. Avoid a personal energy crisis.

Posted on

Can You Really Be Younger Next Year?

Life is a battle on many fronts, but most of the time knowledge and preparation can help you conquer! So it goes with your health. There are times when I find it difficult to make the right decisions about proper nutrition, health and fitness. It’s always easier to eat the donut, rather than the apple; to use a slight cough or stuffy nose as an excuse not to start or maintain my health and fitness routine.

iStock_000012067655Small

There are so many resources on health and fitness and of course, we all know we should maintain and care for the body God gave us! We know, our body is the vehicle through which we live out our life. The state of our physical bodies and our emotional health impacts all areas of our life. Yet 1/3 of people are overweight and 1/3 are obese.

Posted on

How To Be RICH? – Start GIVING!

Headlines surround me with the enticing message of how to get rich. Those same headlines say, to be happy I need the newest and best “stuff”. I am tempted to focus my admiration on people who are richer than me. Most people think of someone as rich if they make double what they do. It’s called the Doubling Up Wealth Theory. If we make $30,000 we think someone who makes $60,000 is rich.

iStock_000014923722Small

 

But who is really rich?

We spend so many years trying to get rich but we rarely realize how rich we already are. On a worldwide scale, we ARE rich.

The statistics are staggering. More than half the world’s population lives on less than $2 per day.Go to Global Rich List and insert your family income. If you earn more than $30,000, you’re in the top 2% of all individuals in the world. If you earn more than $40,000, you’re in the top 1%. To poor people in the rest of the world, anyone from the west is “rich.” Bill Gates or you.

Once we realize we’re rich, where do we learn how to be rich?

Posted on

Who Else Wants To Be A Millionaire?

As a luxury homebuilder, I observed something very odd. People buying million dollar homes often didn’t have much wealth – they just had large incomes.

They pulled into the sales office in a luxury automobile and coveted the appearance of wealth. But wealth is much different than income. Wealth is what you accumulate, not what you spend. (Remember my Italian mentor from my first job….. )

iStock_000004054301Small

 

Have you dreamed of owning a nicer home? We all love things of beauty. I made my living in the housing industry by identifying a profitable niche. I loved building big, great quality, beautiful homes and neighborhoods. They were my art. However, there is a balance in being able to afford things in the short term and being able to accumulate wealth in the long term.

Posted on

How To Be Done With Debt

Flash back to 1985 when I received the best piece of personal finance advice! Picture me, working my summer job as a laborer for a bricklaying company trying to pay for university. What was the best advice and who gave it to me? It came from an Italian bricklayer in his tattered and torn work clothes. You’ll need to read this aloud in an Italian accent while waving your arms enthusiastically to get the full effect.
“Stevie it’s not-a how much-a you make, it’s-a how much-a you save.” The significance of his statement stuck with me! Many of my university professors talked about personal finance but had not been in the marketplace.iStock_000008650446Small

These educated professionals were not practicing personal finance as well as this man who earned probably half of what they did. Arriving in Canada from Italy, penniless, this man owned 3 houses in downtown Toronto worth a substantial amount of money. He had learned one of the dirtiest words in personal finance: discipline. As my parents often had, we will have arguments, fights, worries, pain and disappointments until we practice what this wise bricklayer taught me. I believe it is based on the following Biblical personal finance truth.

In the house of the wise are stores of choice food and oil, but a foolish man devours all he has.

Proverbs 21:20

Posted on

Seven Decisions That Determine Personal Success

What if you could make seven decisions that could alter your success in life? What if someone had studied the biographies of over 300 successful people and filtered them into a list of seven key decisions? What if you could read a gripping fictional tale to understand these decisions and, like millions of others, change your thinking? Discover a story that can help you uncover life changing attitudes!

iStock_000004462832Small

 

The Travelers Gift by Andy Andrews is that book. This is exactly what the author did to change his life. At age 19 Andy’s mother died of breast cancer and then 6 months later his father died in a car crash. What would you do? Andy’s life crashed. He spiraled downwards until he finally became homeless. Living under a bridge he worked odd jobs. Eventually he started going to the library and reading about successful people. After Andy had read over 300 biographies of successful people, he boiled it all down and wrote “The Travelers Gift.” At that moment his life was changed. Yours can be changed as well.

Posted on

Who Has Time For That?

If you feel that there are never enough hours in a day, you are right! The clock keeps ticking whether we like it or not. But what are we spending our precious few hours on?

Here are some astounding facts:

  • The average person watches TV over 4 hours a day. That’s 28.5 hours each week.[1]
  • The average internet usage is 43.5 hours per month.[2] That equates to an hour and a half each and every day.
  • The average Canadian spends an unbelievable 32 days each year commuting to and from work.[3] That’s over 768 hours trapped in your car every year!iStock_000004879552Small

It’s no wonder we feel we don’t have enough time.

It’s because of that last statistic that Zig Ziglar suggests we turn our vehicles into “rolling universities.”  Tossing in a CD or tuning into a podcast can help turn your commute into learning time.

But what should we focus on?

Posted on

Are You Living in Your Strength Zone?

In my life, many things have come easily… and many things frustrate me to no end. There are things that  I just cannot seem to do!

iStock_000023017793Small

In our homebuilding business, I was blessed with the right strengths for managing people’s time, money and expectations for a new place to call home. However, as I transitioned into my second half of life, I didn’t know what my real strengths were. No one ever encouraged me to explore them or told me how to find them. What a frustrating feeling!

Do you see a man skilled in his work? He will stand before kings; He will not stand before obscure men.

Proverbs 22:29 ESV

Posted on

What Does Success Mean To You?

We measure it, strive for it, endlessly compare ourselves to others’ and often it requires great sacrifice – but what is success anyway? Look up the definition and success is: “setting a goal and achieving it.” Sound reasonable? Well that’s true until one starts to think about what goals we should strive to achieve? Our world usually defines success in terms of money, fame, popularity, followers, etc. but let’s take a more alternative view of it.

iStock_000001469116Small

 

Charles Stanley offers a great definition of success that I love in his book “Success God’s Way.” He defines success as “The continuing achievement of becoming the person God wants you to be and accomplishing the goals God has helped (or directed) you to set.” This is very different, almost counter intuitive, from society’s view.