Lewis Empire

Inspiring Words

A colleague of mine handed me an excerpt from a book he was reading. The quote said, “Are you taking the opportunity to inspire those around you through each interaction you have?”

It was an interesting idea that made me wonder if it was possible to achieve such a lofty goal. Can you truly inspire those around you all the time?

Maybe it’s impossible to inspire everyone but I’ve started to think about this in terms of spheres of influence. For example, your family is your inner circle, friends a second, colleagues a third and others being a fourth layer of influence (you could also say customers as the fourth and strangers as the fifth.)

I’ve decided to give it a try, starting with my inner circle and working my way out as time goes forward. My goal? The happier I am at home and in my personal life, the stronger I will be when things are challenging at work!

It’s time. Join my RSS feed.

Everyone Needs To See This Brain Teaser

Are you a left-brain (logic) or a right-brain (big-picture) thinker?

When I first saw this I concluded that it must be turning in the same direction all the time. Then, suddenly, the thing turned in mid-stream and started turning the opposite direction! Of course, this is all based on how my mind was processing the information.

Have a look at this Brain Teaser. If you’re anything like me, you’ll have the whole office addicted shortly!

Join my RSS right now!

The Free Ride Is Over in 2017

I was watching a show earlier this evening that had a couple of people talking about the coming Baby Boomer crisis. According to their calculations, there will be a huge market and economic crash in about 2017. This is the date that the government will officially start paying out more in retirement benefits to aging Baby Boomers than they are taking in from the public.

Won’t that be nice? All of those people who are still working will be supporting all of those retired at a ratio of about 2:1 (rather than the 20:1 that our grandparents paid out.)

Their forecast is that even financial assistance that is currently available to young people will dry up. I’m talking about student loans, small business loans etc. The available cash will be sucked up by all the extra health care costs and medications.

Based on my research, it looks like we’re heading towards this crash. Even knowing this, I got stuck in the same rut in thinking that it’s a long way off. It’s only 9 years away (I’ve also heard estimates that it will hit in 2013) so be prepared.

It doesn’t matter how old you are. Start doing your own research and at least be aware of the issues that aging Baby Boomers will bring to the forefront in politics, taxes and your lifestyle.

Let the countdown begin. Keep track with my RSS Feed.

Do You Know Your Strengths?

As I mentioned in my previous posting, Play To Your Strengths with Marcus Buckingham, I have begun the journey towards focusing on my strengths and removing those aspects of my career that utilize areas that I am weak.

When I say this, what I mean is that I’ve decided to take control over my career (again), get rid of the auto-pilot and really push my goals forward. To do this, I’ve latched onto a growing “Strengths Movement” that has been developed over time, but has more recently been brought forward by Buckingham.

The Strength Movement
To summarize the strength movement, I guess I would personally describe it as,

Aiming your life in a direction that allows for a continual use of the talents and strengths that are most prominent, bring you the greatest sense of accomplishment and helps you create a successful life.

Based on the strengths finder profile, I should be moving my life in a direction that uses:

• Futuristic- inspired by the future and what could be and inspire others to the same
• Strategic - create alternative ways to proceed and can spot relevant patterns
• Ideation - facinated by ideas and able to find connections in seeminly disparate phenomena
• Intellection - characterized by intellectual activity and appreciate intellectual discussions
• Activator - can make things happen by turning thoughts into actions (often impatient)

It’s good to know what I should be moving towards. Just last week, my brother and I were discussing things that we are passionate about. I came up with a number of things but most prominent was my indoor soccer. As you can imagine, we had a good laugh and decided that there probably wasn’t a lot of money in playing indoor rec league soccer.

What I realized was that the passion that I have during soccer is in the competition of the game and the friends I play with.

So my next step is to figure out how to spot futuristic trends and patterns by combinding different ideas then motivating others around me through discussion while taking action on my ideas (and play soccer on the side!)

Let’s see what I can do!

PS. Thanks to Dan at dcrblogs.com for pointing out my problem in his post The Secret Behind The Secret. I guess I did lose sight of what I wanted.

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Tags: marcus buckingham, strengthsfinder, strategic, blogging, achieve success, multiple streams of income

What Do I Want To Do With My Life?

Have you ever had one of those months? Everything at work seems to be going slow or even badly? As you can imagine, I’m in the middle of one of those…

I’d like a little advice from people on this one. How do you handle people who are difficult to work with or do not seem to care about moving themselves or the company forward?

I’m looking for some great thoughts on this topic because, to tell you the truth, I can’t stand the standard advice of

just ignore them and they will go away

Guess what? It doesn’t happen!

Think about it from this point of view. I am a very positive person who always tries to see the positive side of things. Recently, I’ve been in a number of situations where I just feel like I am being dragged backwards by people around me. It’s not the type of situation where I can simply find different people to work with or that type of thing. I truly don’t mind my job and usually look forward to getting my work done. The part that is driving me crazy is such a cliche I hate to use it: Two steps forward, one step back!

A Broader Topic
Maybe this just comes down to a need for me to express myself a little more outside of work and get my mind focused on other things. In years past I’ve been active with desiging websites, real estate investing and my artwork. Recently, as you can guess, I’ve been less active with my external things and have been specifically focused on the job and career.

As I think back, maybe this has been an ongoing problem for me over the last few years. I have been looking forward to creating businesses and real estate ventures and now that all that is temporarily on hold, I’ve got nothing to make me feel that I am working towards something greater than myself.

The Big Question
Earlier today, I went for lunch with a director in the company and he asked me about my personal growth plan for the next one to five years. As I thought about it, I realized that my personal growth plan five years ago (continue to advance my personal finance and investing education) had been fulfilled and I was at a loss as to where to go next. I came up with a few things specific to my web businesses but I didn’t really have a good answer for him.

Everything I talked about was in things I wanted to do; rather than growth that I wanted to obtain.

I guess this is just a rant. Maybe I’ll solve some of these issues on the ride home tonight!

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Drowning in Debt? Throw Them a Brick!

I was watching an advertisement for H&R Block today (yes, it is that time of year again) and I noticed something that completely blew me away. All the ads I’ve seen are based around a person getting their money back instantly and being able to enjoy their money right away. Right now, H&R Block is offering their “instant refund” as a “refund anticipation loan” that you receive on a pre-paid Master Card. Doesn’t this sound like a great idea?

Assuming you are approved, (is it even possible to be declined these days) you receive your anticipated refund as a credit on the Master Card. Here we are, in the middle of a credit crisis in America and hey, if you want your tax refund, let’s throw it on a credit card for you. Just make sure to spend the exact amount of your refund or else you’re back on at 18 ½ percent! Want to transfer the cash to your bank account? That will be a $2.50 transaction fee from Master Card. Do you want to cancel your credit card? Call us up so we can offer to reduce your rates, then, if you choose not to, we can drop your card and negatively affect your credit even further! Can anyone else see any issues here?

They’ve decided to take the people who need to have their money ‘instantly’ and offer them the newest poison pill in our society – more credit. I am amazed by the people who have overpaid on their taxes all year but then need the refund before they walk out the door.

Obviously it’s not the government’s business to determine how much credit a person should take so no regulation is needed. I’m also not here to blame the credit card company for their business practice – credit is not forced on people and neither are poor spending habits. I’m just wondering how a company can promote a service like this as somehow helping people. If their motivation was client focused, why wasn’t a pre-paid debit card offered or a pre-pay only credit card – with no requirement to maintain an account?

The credit card obviously offers some interesting options for H&R Block. What happens if their client doesn’t deserve the refund they thought he did? He walks out with a credit of $1000, spends it, then realizes that he should have only received $500. Guess what? You can bet that H&R Block will want their money back and next month this guy will have a nice new $500 invoice from Master Card. Now, rather than having blown his refund and going back to life, this guy has blown his refund and owes an additional $500!

My advice:
1. Get a certified accountant to do your taxes – especially if you have any business income.
2. Wait for a refund in cash – then re-invest the difference
3. Even better, use your refund to pay off the other credit cards and then invest the difference.

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Where to begin?

I’m not sure how I can explain my sudden disappearance from the blogging world. It was as if one day I was enjoying myself and making sure to write something new each day, then WHAM. I just stopped. I don’t think it was anything specific that directed me. It just seemed that all of a sudden I didn’t find the time or energy to get back on the computer and write.

As I look back at the last few posts, I realized that at about the time I stopped, I had just had my house painted and had everything in total disarray. I moved my computer into a less central area of my house and didn’t even get it hooked up for a month (I relied on my business laptop.) Even this is a poor excuse.

The thing that made me start writing today is, well, I’m not sure why. I’ve sat down a few times over the past two months and started to write but simply lost my desire and left the thought unfinished. I guess I thought that whatever I would write after leaving for so long would need to be mind-blowing and completely original. Guess what? I decided that if I was going to wait until the perfect moment, I may never get anything done in my life.

I suppose I actually missed getting my ideas down here and interacting with people around the web. Who knows if I’ll get any of my original readers back but I suppose that’s my own fault.

I guess if there is a lesson in all of this: if you’re going to get your house painted, be prepared with a month’s worth of posts ready to go!!!

Play To Your Strengths with Marcus Buckingham

Recently, I’ve been reading a lot about the theories of playing to your strengths and focusing your efforts and career in a direction that achieves this goal.

Here is a great video to get you started:

Travel the World with DeboHobo.com

As part of my recent quest to increase my RSS I decided to give away a Lewis Empire site review as the prize. Of course, this was supposed to happen at then beginning of November; however, since I am still without a regular computer at home (and I’ve been up to my eyeballs at work) I simply haven’t had the opportunity to get this review completed.

My very first website review is for a fellow blogger who started in June 2007, DeboHobo.com! First, let’s all take a moment to sign up for Deb’s RSS feed. Hey, while you’re at it, let’s sign up for mine as well!

DeboHobo.com is a blog is a travel resource. Her advice to you: Read, Enjoy and Escape…

First Thoughts
The thing I like most about Deb’s site is that it is a great compliment to her travel website at mytravelscenes.com. What a great way to not only generate traffic for your ecommerce site, but also have a place to write about everything that you are passionate about.

I found Deb’s site about 5 months ago through JohnChow.com. I think I was responding to one of her comments and figured I should visit the blog of the person I was agreeing with! Who knew that I would still be reading her blog 5 months later and that she would win my first ever site review! If I’m ever in Dallas, I’ll be sure to buy Deb a coffee (the $5.79 good stuff of course.)

Writing Style
The nice thing about Deb’s blog is that although it is a travel site, she does not feel that all of her articles need to be about travel only. She writes a little about her own life, her favorite drinks (strange elixirs that call to me each Friday) and other blogs she likes. I’m a huge fan of people adding their own flavor to the mix. While I like to travel, it’s the stories and personal thoughts that usually keep you coming back.

A great category for guys
Deb has a ton of great articles about a saving money when travelling, travel destinations and everything else travel related. She also has some great ‘Top 10′ lists of interesting and useful things to do and see.

One excellent series that Deb has written is her Top 10 Guys Only Holidays. If you’re looking for ideas for a guy’s weekend out, this is a great place to start. My two favorites on the list (which happen to be #9 and 10) are Surfing in Sydney and Sport Fishing in Panama.

Check it out if you suddenly find that you’ve got a lot of money in your pocket and the wife or girlfriend have decided to go visit their families for a week! Although my wife isn’t going anywhere until at least the new baby (to be) is a year old AND I don’t have my travel budget up high enough, it looks like I’ll live vicariously through Deb’s site…

Setup
I really like the three panel blog setup. Although I use a two pane look, I have been considering changing for quite a while. The nice thing about Deb’s is that her advertising and links don’t take away from the content as so many others do. Maybe it’s the darker background but everything seems to blend in quite well.

I can’t remember the exact day that Deb switched her ‘look and feel’ but I like the final result. I’ve heard a lot about having white text on black as a negative but I think she’s put together a combination of color (not just black and white) that gives the site a laid-back feeling. The bright orange heading brightens the whole site and the theme is carried through her main body and side pannels.

So far, I haven’t heard what the significance of the butterfly is (other than true long-distance travellers) so I hope to see a comment from Deb about that.

My Recommendations
Since this is a review, I should put in some suggestions as well. Here they are:
1. I would like to see a ‘Recent Articles’ section on her site. Rather than scrolling through a few pages to find the article names, I like to be able to scan the articles and read the ones that appeal to me.
2. I would also like to see Deb add a section that has her favorite articles or those that can help the most. Maybe I’m just biased because I added one myself but I think it allows readers who come across your site to find your best articles first and hopefully become regulars.
3. Add a comments box to the top of the article as well as the bottom. Right now the comment box is a little difficult to find (below the bookmarks) so I would suggest that it be moved up a little as well.

I hope you’ve enjoyed my first site review. I had a great time going back through Deb’s posts over the past six months. As you may know, she started blogging at about the same time I did. Im glad I was able to find her site.

Take my advice and visit DeboHobo.com soon. Of course, add the DeboHobo RSS feed to your account and enjoy her articles each day!

Yeah, but what do I want?

Continuing my 62 Success Principles Challenge, I’ve come up on a very interesting chapter. This one is titled “Decide What You Want” and the basic premise is that in order to work towards something, you need to know what you’re going to learn (Be), experience (Do) and get to play with (have).

One of the great sections of the chapter deals with not living someone else’s dreams. Basically, it says that you need to live your life the way you want it - not the way your parents, friends, teachers etc. planned it out for you.

Has this ever happened in your life? Did someone of authority or even perceived authority try to influence your direction with both positive and/or negative comments? As I think about this statement, I realize how difficult it must be to ensure your child keeps a postitive direction without pressuring your dreams onto them.

I know that I have been very guilty of directing those around me and applying the correct pressure when the time was right. I always thought that it was more a matter of me know what the other person wanted before they did themselves. In most cases, I think my advice turned out for the best; however, I was living through my dreams.

What are my dreams? I enjoy working towards passive income streams and cash flow producing investments. Others enjoy building their career within an organization by working more and longer to succeed. What I didn’t realize early was that my dream of being an entrepreneur was not shared by everyone. Can you believe that not everyone has the same thoughts, goals and dreams? Wild!

It’s funny. As I look back on this chapter, I thought that this would be one of those that was nice to read but, since I already have a good idea what I want, not that important. Reading my post now, I realize that I’ve probably just changed a part of my personality that didn’t always move me forward.

A Meme

I’m not really sure what Meme even means but I’ve been challenged to a whole bunch of them so it’s time to shoot out one of my own.
Of course, I will be challenging the following bloggers:
Dan
Joanne
Debo
Jeanne Dininni
Mike

In The Success Principles, this chapter asks you to make your list of 10 things you want to do, 10 things you want to have and 10 things you want to become (in fact it’s 30 but I’ve made it easier here…) Here’s my list.

Do

• Live in Europe for one year
• Write a novel
• See the pyramids in Egypt
• Go on an archaeological dig
• Take surfing lessons
• Teach a class
• Go to a World Cup soccer match
• Get my scuba certificate (Barrier Reef)
• Learn to sail
• Earn over $1,000,000 in one year

Be

• Fluent in French and Spanish
• A multi-millionaire
• A rolemodel for my children
• Successful entrepreneur
• Leader in my field
• A recognized artist
• An excited, positive and passionate person
• Expert negotiator
• Real Estate investment expert
• A grandfather

Have

• Winter home/acreage in the mountains (ranch style)
• Star Trek TNG pinball
• Porsche
• Vulcan Nomad Motorcycle
• Passive income greater than my expenses
• 30 rental properties
• MBA degree
• My own island
• A large freshwater fish tank
• A group of 7 or picasso painting

Thanks for reading! Want more?