Do You Have a Poverty or Prosperity Mindset?

What are you passing on to the next generation?

1-john-03

In the movie Hell or High Water, towards the end, one of the actors makes the statement, “My parents were poor, my grandparents were poor — poverty is a disease that is passed generation to generation.”

Poverty is a relative term. According to some sources, 90% of the world’s population live on less than $10.00/day. According to that estimation of poverty, our welfare class live like kings with their food stamps, paid rent, air-conditioned houses, TV’s, cars and Obama phones.

However, poverty is not determined by how much money you have, but by how you think. Professional ball players making millions still think the same way they did while growing up and many go bankrupt within a few years of retirement.

Poverty mindsets — Here are some common ones:

  1. Won’t go into certain stores because they don’t feel good enough to go in.
  2. Can’t save money or make more than they need.
  3. Always jealous of what others have.
  4. No matter how hard I work, I can never make ends meet.
  5. Struggling is the story of my life.
  6. Might say: I’m short on cash, I’m hard up or I’m broke.
  7. Spends most all of the income every month.
  8. We are just scraping by …. On and On.

Our culture, our politicians and many times our religion are our enablers by the attitudes they expound. All the following quotes have one thing in common. Poverty is something a person is born into or has thrust upon them, and it is not the fault of the individual, nor can the individual do anything about it. It takes some greater power than themselves to extract them from the poverty.

“There is enough in the world for everyone’s need, but not for everyone’s greed.” Frank Buchman, protestant evangelist.

What he is saying is to meet the needs of all the people, we will have to take from the have’s and give to the have not’s. This is only accomplished by force — taxation or at the point of a gun. Clearly, a socialist mentality.

“The test of our progress is not whether we add more to the abundance of those who have much; it is whether we provide enough for those who have too little.”   Franklin D. Roosevelt, 32nd President of the United States.

Here we see that the poor can do nothing about their situation unless a power like the government provides for them. The poor are victims.

By these attitudes, we have developed a permanent underclass that is dependent on the government for assistance. We need a better understanding of how poverty and prosperity really work. Each has its own mindset.

P.J. O’Rourke — You can’t get rid of poverty by giving money to the poor.

Prosperity mindsets — come from God’s Word, the Bible

  1. Genesis 32:12 I will surely make you prosper.
  2. Genesis 39:2 The Lord was with Joseph so that he prospered.
  3. Deuteronomy 28:11 The Lord will grant you abundant prosperity ….
  4. Joshua 1:8 Keep this Book of the Law always on your lips, meditate on it day and night, then you will be prosperous and successful.

Here is a self-talk positive mindset that you can alter or use if you wish.

  •  I am a son of the God, who created the heavens and earth.
  • The One who parted the Red Sea and the Jordon River at flood stage.
  • The One who caused the sun to go backwards and caused it to stand still.
  • I am a son of the God, who set the stars in their courses,
  • The One who forgave all my sin and seated me at his own right hand in Christ.
  • The One who loves me so much he gives his angels charge over me.
  • My Father owns the cattle on a thousand hill. (Psalm 50:10).
  • His hand is with me in everything I do. (1 Chronicles 4:10)
  • It is His wish above all things that I prosper and be in health even as my soul prospers. (1John 1:2)

Whatever you focus on expands. If you have a poverty mindset, it will manifest in your life.

If you have a prosperity mindset, it will expand and become the way of your life.

Put another way: whatever you confess, you will receive. So confess you are a child of God, with His blessing on your life and expect to see His hand at work in your life every day.

Decide today that for your family “the buck stops here.” You are starting a new tradition of Godly prosperity to pass on to the generations that follow us.

Learning how to do proper self-talk in the area of prosperity is all part of The Prosperous Life.

(For more on this topic read our book Poverty vs Wealth available on Amazon.)

 

 

Hoping To Get Paid!

construction

If you take a job “hoping” to get paid, several things happen.

Just like a dog can smell fear, people can “smell” that attitude in the contractor.

It communicates that:

  1. You don’t have much confidence in yourself or your ability.
  2. You are not a real business.
  3. You come off as a low status contractor or business.
  4. When you give away your expertise and/or your knowledge for free, that is the poor contractor mentality. It is also why so many contractors are poor. They don’t really think much of themselves or the service they provide.

But that is not the only problem. The real problem is what happens in your mind.

Think about how you feel each time you take a job or look at a job “hoping” to get paid. At the least, it is demeaning. You feel terrible on the inside and at the mercy of the person.

I sent a text to another contractor today that stated: “They are hiring you or buying your services to see if the unit can be saved. Whether the repair of the unit looks acceptable or not, they have still hired you. Don’t do anything for free hoping to make a little money. That damages your psyche.”

Some people, knowing how you feel, or see yourself, will use that against you. “Well, that is not quite what I expected. I was expecting something a little better.” Now you feel guilty for asking to be paid. Many times things cannot be made perfect.

There are much better ways of dealing with these situations.

You have to have enough respect for yourself to believe and know that you deserve to be paid. That attitude has quite a different “smell,” and most people can tell that one, too.

I had a builder call today and ask me to look at a certain problem he had and let him know if it could be repaired. I told him he might as well let me repair it while I was there because the cost was the same for a trip charge to “look” as it was to repair. Once it was repaired, then he could decide if it would be acceptable or if not, replace the unit. He agreed to that idea. I will get paid even if he replaces the unit.

By handling the situation this way he knows he will have to pay for my services either way. It feels much better for me also. It is fair to him and also to me and my family. Rather than doing this inspection for free, I could be doing another job that paid.

People should expect to pay you. They are paying for your expertise and knowledge. Folks should expect to pay for that. We have many calls where they just want us to “come take a look” at their problem, whatever it is. We are upfront and tell them it is $XX.XX for us to “look”. Knowing that we have a service fee for looking at a problem, many are glad to pay it.

So I recommend they send us pictures, and we can go from there. Since we do charge for inspections, we try to solve problems over the phone from pictures and give those recommendations for free.  Once I explain why we need the pictures, that we are trying to save them the cost of an inspection, they are usually grateful.

If people in your area learn you are willing to come “take a look” for free, you will not have time to make a living.  They will bury you in calls.

When you tell clients up front what you charge for your services, generally, they are willing to pay that — especially if you come recommended.

If you don’t bring up the cost of an inspection until you tell them it cannot be repaired, they many times will balk at paying you. They will say you did not do anything.

It is not fair or honest for people to expect you to give away your recommendations for free if you have to visit their job site. It is also not fair or honest to have you attempt to do a job they know may not be perfect and then expect not to pay if it is unrepairable. With inspections sometimes that is unavoidable, especially if it is for a large client. But even with them, you can be frank and let them know what your fee is for inspections, recommendations or advice.  Remember, they are hiring you to attempt to repair or to recommend.

It is also not fair to your family to give away for free what has taken you years to acquire in knowledge and expertise. Your family deserves better than “free.”

You will also be able to hold your head a little higher, people will have much more respect for you and they will have more respect for your recommendations and attempts to make a bad unit acceptable. This feels far better than “hoping” to get paid.  It is a completely different attitude.

This is not done with any arrogance or haughty pride but just with an expectation of being paid for your service whether it is an inspection or an actual job.

These things are worth thinking about both for your psyche and your pocketbook.

This is all part of The Prosperous Life.

 

It’s A Miracle! (First posted in 2016)

Education, The Elections and The Bible

open bible 01

I saw today that elementary and high school students all across the U.S. walked out of school in protest of Donald Trump’s victory. Amazing. Do you think those kids came up with that idea simultaneously all across the country or were they put up to it by their teachers? Think about it.

Many people have felt that our schools have become classrooms for indoctrination rather than education on every level and especially college. This is evidenced by the younger grades walking out in protest and the fact that many of those rioting and protesting are also very young and of college-age. How did our country and our education system get to this point?

According to Samuel Blumenfeld in his book, N.E.A.: The Trojan Horse in American Education, written in 1984, the American socialist John Dewey, the father of American education, and his cohorts were looking for a way to change our society from capitalism to socialism. They became the first agents of change. (This term is what teachers today commonly call themselves. Now you know what change they are really fostering.)

In the 1800s, a German Kaiser lost some battle, and it made him so mad that when he came home he founded public education in Germany. His goal was to produce young men that would follow orders and not ask questions.

John Dewey and those of his ilk went to Germany to see if that might be the ticket for changing our culture and thus was born “public education” in the United States.

If you want people that don’t ask questions and just do what they are told, you need a fairly ignorant population. This is why the book, Why Johnny Can’t Read, was written in 1955. The author found that the NEA had designed a system to teach reading that caused 30% to 40% of our children to be functionally illiterate. Thus, many either never learned to read or reading was very difficult. As a side note, it used to be against the law to educate slaves. The more educated a person becomes the more questions they begin to ask. Why are you free and I am a slave, etc. Even today we have a low literacy rate.

People that don’t read or can’t read have the same result — both are ignorant. Ignorant people are easily led and do what they are told on TV or by other liberal politicians.

“The children who know how to think for themselves spoil the harmony of the collective society…” John Dewey.

John Dewey and his associates knew what they were setting out to do would take longer than their lifetimes. They also learned that to put their ideas into children’s heads at such an early age they needed their like-minded people teaching in the colleges. This is why liberals are in the great majority of professorships around the country. They do more indoctrination of the secular humanism, socialist, progressive movement than they do education.

Our country has been in the grip of this ideology for a long, long time. Our public schools were founded on the principle of socialism. It is basically the worship of a type of secularism, part of the Progressive Movement.

Several thousand years ago another group of people was faced with a somewhat similar problem.

Because of certain sins of Solomon, the kingdom of Israel was split into a northern kingdom then called Israel and a southern kingdom that became known as Judah. Judah had been founded on the worship of Jehovah similar to our country which was founded by people wanting to be free to worship God without persecution. Judah stayed with the worship of the one true God, Jehovah. Israel’s new king Jeroboam set up two idols for the people of God to worship so they would not go back to Jerusalem to worship lest he lose his kingdom.

From the inception, the northern ten tribes were founded on or worshiped idols. Judah stayed with the one true God for many generations until Jehoshaphat, a good king and follower of Jehovah, had his son marry the daughter of Ahab hoping to have a more peaceful relationship with the northern ten tribes of Israel.

This wife brought the idols of Israel into Judah, and that began the downfall of the tribe of Judah. Now the tribe of Judah began to have kings that worshiped idols more and more. They would occasionally get a good king, but the evil worship of idols became very rooted in the culture of Judah.

For example, when Hezekiah became king, he cleaned out the temple and reinstituted the worship of the one true God, and all seemed great until his death. When Hezekiah died and his son Manasseh took over, the evil sprang back up like a dormant plant and became even worse than before.

The evil had not really been rooted out, it just went into hiding and waited for a more opportune time. But it was alive and well, and the evil came roaring back.

Finally, because Manasseh shed so much innocent blood in the kingdom, God had the tribe of Judah carried away into captivity by the Babylonians like Israel had been carried away 150 years earlier by the Assyrians.

  • 2 Chronicles 36: 15-21 And the Lord God of their fathers sent warnings to them by His messengers, rising up early and sending them, because He had compassion on His people and on His dwelling place. But they mocked the messengers of God, despised His words, and scoffed at His prophets, until the wrath of the Lord arose against His people, till there was no remedy. Therefore He brought against them the king of the Chaldeans, who killed their young men with the sword in the house of their sanctuary, and had no compassion on young man or virgin, on the aged or the weak; He gave them all into his hand. And all the articles from the house of God, great and small, the treasures of the house of the Lord, and the treasures of the king and of his leaders, all these he took to Babylon. Then they burned the house of God, broke down the wall of Jerusalem, burned all its palaces with fire, and destroyed all its precious possessions. And those who escaped from the sword he carried away to Babylon, where they became servants to him and his sons until the rule of the kingdom of Persia, to fulfill the word of the Lord by the mouth of Jeremiah, until the land had enjoyed her Sabbaths. As long as she lay desolate she kept Sabbath, to fulfill seventy years.    (New Kings James Version)

Therefore, the only solution for the land and the people was that they went into captivity. The land had rest from all the idolatry for seventy years — two to three generations. Then the people returned home.

It is interesting to note that before the captivity Judah worshiped a multitude of gods, but after they came home they NEVER worshipped idols again. That evil root had died out.

When Jesus Christ came on the scene 400 years later, he reproved the religious leaders for many things, but idol worship was not one of them. They had learned as a culture and never worshiped idols again.

God had these events written for our learning upon whom the ends of the world are come. We ought to really think about that. We are God’s children if we have confessed Jesus Christ as Lord and believe that he was raised from the dead (born from above). We have God’s spirit living in us so that we can see spiritually what is going on.

Many people all over the world and in this country were praying for the Presidential Election of 2016. I believe God heard those prayers and tapped many of his children on the shoulder and said “go vote.”

Now is NOT the time to relax. It is the time to be awake and pray. It is the time to ask God to send people into the colleges to teach the next crop of teachers that will teach our youth.

I have already seen where teachers of the blue states are thinking of moving to red states to indoctrinate the youth “properly” in order to affect the next elections. We cannot all go and teach, but we can all pray to the God of Heaven, our Father, and ask Him to fix our education system.

  • 2 Corinthians 10:3-4  For though we walk in the flesh, we do not war after the flesh: (For the weapons of our warfare are not carnal, but mighty through God to the pulling down of strongholds;)
  • Ephesians 6:12  For we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in high places.
  • Ephesians 6:18  Praying always with all prayer and supplication in the Spirit, and watching thereunto with all perseverance and supplication for all saints;

It is often said that those who do not learn from history are doomed to repeat it. We do not have to repeat the experience of Israel. We are sons and daughters of God by birth. We have His spirit born within us so that we can spiritually see the attacks that come at the church, and from whence they come. Many of the church’s children are in public schools, and thus we need to pray to God to send workers into the colleges and schools that will teach the history of our country, why we have a constitution and how it works, and teach the benefits of capitalism.

Our constitution was written the way it is by men of God for our protection, so that we, as their offspring, could enjoy The Prosperous Life and have a country where we are free to worship, free to speak God’s Word and free to send the message of the gospel to all the world.

So, as the scriptures say repeatedly, “Watch and pray.”

 

The Windows of Heaven

 

overflowing

There are four very nice promises about receiving when we give.

  • Malachi 3:10 …. if I will not open you the windows of heaven, and pour you out a blessing, that there shall not be room enough to receive it.
  • Pro 3:9,10  Honour the LORD with thy substance, and with the firstfruits of all thine increase:  So shall thy barns be filled with plenty, and thy presses shall burst out with new wine.
  • 2 Corinthians 9:6   But this I say, He which soweth sparingly shall reap also sparingly; and he which soweth bountifully shall reap also bountifully.
  • Luke 6:38 Give, and it shall be given unto you; good measure, pressed down, and shaken together, and running over, shall men give into your bosom. For with the same measure that ye mete withal it shall be measured to you again.

These are four illustrations of the same truth: as you give, you receive back much more than you gave.

  • The first promise tells us it will be like the windows of heaven opened up for us.
  • The second says our barns, savings accounts, and wine presses shall be full.
  • The third tells us it takes a while to see the crop we are producing by following these principles.
  • The fourth tells us some of the prosperity will come from people giving back to us.

So we learn that prosperity can come from people giving back to us or God opening the windows of heaven. That it is a slow growth process like planting and reaping. And that it will be like a barn bursting at the seams or the windows of heaven opening to us.

When we read about the windows of heaven being opened and blessings pouring out, I think sometimes we feel that if we give, God will immediately shower gold coins down upon our head. Not seeing this come to pass right away can cause some to feel that giving does not work. But when God uses the illustration of sowing, we know that it takes a while once the seed is sown for the harvest to take place.

There is a rule in life that says that things that are equal to the same thing are equal to each other. If A equals D, and B equals D and C equals D, then A is equal to B, which is equal to C.

These four promises simply show different aspects of how we receive back from God for our giving.

Very few things in life happen instantly. Prosperity is growth over time, like most of the rest of the things in God’s creation. Children take years to grow up. Crops take months to grow. Our prosperity is not in our paycheck. It is in what we do with part of the check.

We need this slow growth process like a crop to learn how to handle the increase in finances. Our minds need time to grow accustomed to handling larger amounts of money, to learn to be good stewards of it, and to learn how to invest or trade with it to see it grow.

According to Dave Ramsey, if you put $35.00 per week away in a savings account and invest it in a good growth stock mutual fund at 15%, you could retire in 40 years with $890,000.00 to $1.5 million. This could be done on a federal minimum wage. A very nice slow growth process.

If you worked at federal minimum wage for 40 years and retired a millionaire, could you feel like God opened the windows of heaven?

Prosperity is built over time rather than being a cash machine whereby we give and God then gives us rent money. This is not to say He will not or could not do that, but we need to take a long-term perspective on prosperity. It is not how much you make, but what you do with what you make. Do you spend it all or save part? It is a huge difference down the road.

So, as you give and save, remember to be patient. You don’t reap the day after you sow. But it will come back to you, pressed down, shaken together and running over so that over time it will be like the windows of heaven have been opened to you.

This is another part of The Prosperous Life.

How to Make Yourself Heard

Marketing

SONY DSC

When I first went into business for myself, my first client said, “I already have a service provider, but they won’t answer the phone, and they won’t call me back.” So that became my first rule: Always call them back; always be available. One thing I’ve learned, people will accept a lower standard of quality if you are easily available. Not returning phone calls is very frustrating to people no matter how great your quality of books, services or products are. If they are in a hurry, if they need it done right now, and they know they can get a hold of you, they will call you even if your quality is not as good as the other guys. This is not an excuse for poor quality, but just to show how important good marketing is. Being available by phone is part of marketing.

You don’t have to be the best in your field to be successful, but you do have to know about marketing. Marketing can include many different things:

  • the way you dress,
  • phone call etiquette,
  • business cards,
  • websites, etc.,
  • AND knowing who holds the key in your market.

One of my accounts told me that they used our quick responses to phone calls and service calls to sell their products because the other service provider at times took months to get the jobs done. So we use our fast response to phone calls as part of our marketing. We put on our business cards, “We return telephone calls promptly.” That wholesaler used us to market their products.

Marketing does not have to cost a lot of money. I like the principles of Guerilla Marketing which is low cost or no cost marketing. It is very effective even though it might be free. One of the best authors on the subject is J. Abrams. He is great at Guerilla Marketing and has written several books on the topic.  Getting Everything You Can Out of All You’ve Got: 21 Ways You Can Out-Think, Out-Perform, and Out-Earn the Competition is one of his well known books.

Sometimes all it takes is one or two good ideas to make a huge difference in your marketing.

I remember reading in one of Robert Kyosaki’s books a conversation he had with a young female writer. He said, “I have read your work and you are very good.” “Yes,” she responded, “but I don’t sell very many books.” Robert said, “You need to look into marketing.” She responded, “I am a college grad, and that would be ‘sales’!” (Sales are a little beneath the class of a college grad). Robert told her he was not nearly as good a writer as she was, but he sold a lot of books. He said that marketing is the key. You don’t have to be the best at your craft, but if you can market well, that will put you right up at the top.

If you have days or a week or two when you are not busy, (as we all do if we run a small business or are self-employed). One thing to know is that you will get busy again. So, in those off times, that’s when you can concentrate on marketing. You work on:

  • your website or websites,
  • work on your twitter accounts,
  • clean out your truck,
  • organize your materials,
  • post to Facebook,
  • post to Instagram,
  • work on expediting your processes,
  • or talk to your mentors.
  • talk to the key pins in your marketing process such as wholesalers, manufacturers, or large clients.
  • read books on marketing.
  • strategize.

In order for people to beat a path to your door, they have to know about you. Every field requires a different marketing strategy. Marketing can also include branding, a logo, and/or twitter accounts. If you are marketing a book, Michael Hyatt’s book, Platform: Get Noticed in a Noisy World is helpful.

Another book is Jeff Walkers book: Launch: An Internet Millionaire’s Secret Formula To Sell Almost Anything Online, Build A Business You Love, And Live The Life Of Your Dreams.

Probably the biggest key is to pray a lot. God’s hand is with you because you are one of His children, and you should expect to see His hand at work to open doors for your business and to protect your business.

The Bible says that wisdom is worth more than rubies. Marketing is a type of wisdom. Once you learn the importance of it and the rudiments of how to do it, it can make you a lot of money. Without marketing, you could have the greatest service, product or book in the world and be very short on sales.

I have asked many people what they do to market their business. Many times their response is, “My work speaks for itself, and I get most of my work or business through referrals.” I believe this is a lazy man’s way of saying he is content with what he gets even if it is not much.

Marketing works. If all that was required was word of mouth, why do so many businesses advertise?

Walmart, Kohl’s, Stihl, movies, drug companies, Ford Motor Company, and the list goes on forever. It is because marketing works.

Many people are very good at what they do, like the female writer above, but they never really reach their full monetary potential because of a lack of understanding of marketing. We want to not only be good in our craft, business or books but good at marketing too. That gives us a full package for a prosperous venture in our living The Prosperous Life.