wealth

Listening is a Gift

Posted on Mar 11, 2009 in wealth | 10 comments

Recently it was brought to my attention that my blog is becoming more of an advertising venue. I was delighted to get such candid and honest feedback. As a designer, I’m constantly trying to extract nuggets of honest opinion and it can be extremely difficult to come by.

I usually have to coax it out of people, ensuring them they won’t hurt my feelings. I’m pretty good at taking it in, digesting it and turning into an improved product. But this time I’m confused what to do with this information.

All these things I’m creating, I’m putting them out there to improve other people’s lives. To give them a chance to learn from my experience and try something new. I sacrifice my early mornings, weekend, and personal time with the people I love so I can get these products together — not to get rich, but because I hope they make a difference for someone.

Some have told me I’m an inspiration and love hearing about my latest creations. But I have also heard otherwise. So I turn it back to you my friends, what would you like?

Does it bother you that I write about my products on my blog?

I’m listening….

Inside Secrets of an iPhone App

Posted on Mar 5, 2009 in wealth | 3 comments

It started with just a trickle. Every few days someone would write to me inquiring about how I created my iPhone app, Gratitude Journal. More than happy to share everything I know to jump start their project, I would send them a long winded reply. Followed by a couple more emails of items I forgot.

From there it grew to more emails, long chats on Skype, and even more emails. I found myself repeating the same message spending hours sharing my story with anyone who asked.

This prompted me to create the ebook “Inside Secrets to an iPhone App – the essential non-developers guide to creating your own app”.

This book outlines everything it took to transform my wishful idea in my head to a top selling app on the iTunes store for only $500. It describes how to create a winning design, how to outsource the development at an affordable rate, and all the surprises along the way.

There are plenty of technical manuals out there, but what about people who don’t care to learn cocoa development? Their iPhone ideas are exception and just need to be brought to life. This book is designed to help them do just that.

I’m also throwing in two additional ebooks for free. The first is “Interviews with the Best” where we get to hear from the makers of Classics, iSteam, Weightbot, and the best selling app of all time, Koi Pond.

The second free book is “How to Promote Your App”. This handbook is a collection of everything I learned from promoting my app as well as from months of researching blogs, attending seminars and webinars, and asking everyone for advice.

Sign-up to get notified when the books are available, and your name goes into a drawing for a free copy!

Get Notified: iphoneappsecrets.com

I’m so excited to help more people get ideas out of their head and onto the iTunes store. And then onto my Touch.

As always, I’m donating 10% of all revenues to charity.

Want to get rich? Give it away!

Posted on Jan 14, 2009 in wealth | 0 comments

Last summer I came across Grosgrain, a blog where a woman creates gorgeous outfits for her little girl then just gives them away. Every piece is unique and cuter than anything I’ve seen since shopping in Paris.

Today she’s giving away a gorgeous top in my size, so of course I’m putting my hat in the ring hoping to score this darling one-of-a-kind. If you want to win, just create a link to her blog.

I have never spoken to Kathleen Dougherty, Grosgrain’s owner. But I’m guessing she’s filled with stories of good fortune coming her way. See, if you want something, go ahead and give that to someone else and eventually it will come back to you in some form or another.

You might think, “But what do I have to give? I can’t give someone a job or a pay raise?” But you can! Make introductions, give glowing references, or help them with their resume. The universe will catch on and give it back to you, I promise.

Just this morning I told my favorite yoga instructor that I would build her a website. She just started a new yoga shop and her site is always down. About an hour later I was in the process of signing up for a yoga course costing $400. But my instructor got back to me and offered me free unlimited yoga for helping her out. See how it cool this works?

So if you want to get rich, start by giving something away. It can be as small as an email introduction or blogging about someone’s amazing site. I promise that whatever you put out there, good or bad, will come back to you three-fold.

Rich Dad Poor Dad Workshop

Posted on Aug 5, 2008 in wealth | 11 comments

Last night I attended a free workshop Learn to be Rich. It’s part of Robert Kiyosaki’s “get rich” empire. I just finished his book Rich Dad Poor Dad and happen to be on their mailing list, so I decided to check it out. What I discovered was quite fascinating.

About 50 people showed up for this free two hour event. A sharply dressed man was the MC and introduced a lovely young lady, Jessie Connor, a former Apprentice contestant. She showed pictures of her with celebrities like Regis and Katie Couric (to build credibility) then one of a worn down shack — that’s where she grew up.

She told us her rags to riches story and credited her success to investing in a three day Rich Dad course where she learned everything she needed to get wealthy from real estate. You see where this is going. She was pushing this course. “Sign up today and you get half off PLUS we’ll throw in a ton of extra stuff.” The cost Р$495 for two people. Not bad.

Right away a lady stood up and registered for the class as our host Jessie encouraged others to follow. “Limited spots available!” I want to believe that lady genuinely felt a calling rather than the Rich Dad folks picked her off the street and paid her (she looked rather rough).

Then she gave us a taste of what we would learn in the course. If any of you have been to the course or any like it, I’d love to hear from you. Or if you have further insight about these topics, let me know. Here’s what she had to say.

During a foreclosure, there are three stages of opportunity:

1. (Before) Pre-forclosure. Using Craigslist, she puts an ad “If you know you won’t make your next payment, call me.” Then she does a Sandwich Lease to Own. The link does a better job explaining this than I ever could.
2. (During) Auction. She doesn’t like this method because there’s too many details. So she didn’t get into it much.
3. (After) REO. This is Real Estate Owned (aka owned by the bank). For each house, the bank must have 8X the delinquent loan in reserve. Hence why so many banks are tanking right now. So they’re desperate to unload these properties and will do it at a bargain.

She also talked about:

• Using lenders money to fix the joint.
• Something about 3 month rehab and secondary markets. I didn‚Äôt really catch it.
• Tax Liens and buying them at auctions (but she didn‚Äôt say how).
• Wholesaling is a great way to rehab (buy-fix-rent). There‚Äôs no money down, you use options and there‚Äôs earned income ($5 – 10K each).

I’d love to learn more about this, but didn’t have it in me to hand over $495, although some of it was intriguing. We all know the housing market is “half off” at the moment, so now is the time to buy. Maybe I’ll catch the Get Rich folks the next time they’re in town and I’ll be the first person in the audience to sign up. Maybe.

The Girl Effect

Posted on Aug 3, 2008 in wealth | 0 comments

Colin’s birthday was a month ago and he insisted “no gifts!”, so I decided to give his present to two girls in Africa instead. I had just came across this video and was so moved I instantly selected one of their charities. We gave two girls in Uganda some chickens so they could have eggs and later raise more chickens.

The cool thing is that I received an email from the folks from The Girl Effect last week with an update. They’ve held the town meetings, set up times to kick in the chicken loans and the ladies will be in full business very soon.

You have to give to receive. It’s part of the law of attraction and karma. So if you would like to start giving, I highly recommend The Girl Effect. I’d also love to hear all about it when you do!

Sitting Out The Bear Market

Posted on Jul 29, 2008 in wealth | 0 comments

There’s a lot of advice circulating about what to do with your finances during the bear market. As we wait for the market to bottom out (hopefully soon), we’ve been contributing more to our savings account than the market.

A few weeks ago I charted our income vs expenses over the past 12 months. I went through all our savings account statements and was shocked at how quickly our interest went down over the months despite increasing our balance. In fact, we were earning mere 0.15% on our money. That’s better than losing it on the market, but it was time to change.

A friend told us about eTrade’s saving account services. I already use eTrade and have been pleased with their service, so I decided to check it out. The benefits are clear.

Let’s do some simple math. Moving $1000 to an eTrade savings account would make me $33.00 a year in interest compared to $1.50 from my current bank. In addition, I would save $83.40 a year in my bill pay service. Top it off with saving a few $2 ATM fees, and that’s $120.90 more in my pocket from just moving $1000 over to eTrade.

There’s plenty of other banks offering better interests rates. I picked a service with which I’m familiar. I also based my decision on the usability of their site (also why I chose my current bank). Hopefully the bull market will kick in this fall like many analyst are predicting. Until then we’ll park our cash and read up on some good investment books.

Million Dollar Experiment

Posted on Jul 25, 2008 in wealth | 0 comments

I came across this experiment in a blog I found today. It’s based on the intention-manifestation model of reality, where the goal is to generate $1 million of additional wealth for each person who chooses to participate. The rules are simple, participation is free.

The concept is that we collectively “put forth” and intention each day and the laws of attraction will bring additional wealth into our lives. The post is outdated so I’m bringing it back to life so we can manifest millions for each other. To participate, all you need to do is put forth this intention for 60 seconds every day:

In an easy and relaxed manner, in a healthy and positive way, in it’s own perfect time for the highest good of all, I intend $1,000,000 to come into my life and into the lives of everyone who holds this intention.

It doesn’t quite roll off the tongue so there’s a couple of freebies to help you remember each day.

Help You Remember

• RSS Feed – a reminder sent to your reader every day.
• Wallpaper – a little cheezy, but hey, we‚Äôre talking about $1M

Disclaimer

I did not come up with this experiment and have no idea if it will work. The guy who did claims they accumulated $5,677,075.71 with 1599 active participants. I don’t quite have that many readers, but I’m sure we can muster up 50 bucks between us!