The PBS television show I watched described how a couple in New York City closed their coffee shop because of the recession.

In some cases, closing down a business that is running at a loss is the right thing, however in many cases, a business can be saved instead of being closed down, especially if there are leases and penalties and further losses to be incurred by the closure.

There is a little-known way to redeem a business and move it back into profitability.

How can one turn a business around without incurring additional costs and risk?

Turning It Around with Joint Ventures

We’re talking about a blood transfusion here, not a brain transplant. But then it does take a different way of thinking to rectify this frightening situation.

“You’ve gotta know when you hold ‘em, know when to fold ‘em, know when to walk away, and know when to run” is right.

But it’s good to know that most entrepreneurs are unaware of the most valuable, lucrative option available to them – Joint Ventures. Thousands of businesses could be saved with Joint Ventures.

Leverage Your HIDDEN Assets

Instead of focusing on what is drowning us, like insufficient sales and customers, high overhead, bank loans, and so on, let’s focus on what we DO have:

• hidden assets,
• resources,
• relationships,
• credibility,
• access,
• a database,
• inventory,
• location,
• a brain and a work ethic – these are qualities that are seldom found…

we have far more than we don’t have. We might be rowing our boat along with breaking back and blistered and bleeding hands, while we have access to a seventy horsepower outboard motor we’re not even aware of…

Create 100% Profit Without Cost or Risk

Business is not about selling more cups of overpriced coffee and muffins. It’s not about getting more customers. It’s not about increasing sales and cutting costs or feeling important – it’s about NET PROFIT.That is the true purpose of business: To make the maximum after-tax profit, as fast as possible, with the least cost, risk, time, effort, and frustration.

Joint Ventures allow one to leverage existing resources, access and leverage the resources of others, and create multiple additional income sources – fast – all at 100% profit, with no cost or risk, and little time.

Discover Your Existing Resources

How can the coffee shop owner leverage existing resources? He starts thinking about what OTHER people want – his customers, people who are not his customers, his vendors, his competition, the public, tourists… Then he starts solving problems – linking supply and demand, like a broker or middleman, and getting paid an ongoing commission on all the resulting sales. Zig Ziglar said,

“You can get anything you want out of life, if you’re prepared to help enough other people to get what they want.”

Enter Joint Ventures.

Create Income and Increase Value

The coffee shop owner can Joint Venture with the hair salon who is also in the financial doldrums. When a customer indicates an interest in buying jewelry, real estate, or finding a cab, Ka-ching! When his vendors need help with their problems, when someone is looking for a good printer or needs renovation services – all of these are income opportunities.

The coffee shop owner can use Gift Certificates to create income and increase value, work with tour guides and dentists, and set himself up as a go-to guy that gets stuff done.

He is literally surrounded by lucrative Joint Venture opportunities, and he’s right in the middle of New York City. He has the gold mine, and I have the shovel.

Reality Check on Small Business Joint Ventures

In fact, someone who really understands Joint Ventures would never open a coffee shop to begin with. But that’s why most of the owners of small and medium-sized businesses operate at about ten percent of their potential profit, and why they work too hard, too long, and risk too much, for far too little.

For more information on the power of Joint Ventures visit us at www.jvwidom.com, – we have solutions.

Too many people have jumped aboard the Mediocrity Train and caught the viral Excusiologist Flu that came sweeping in with the recession.

Everything gets blamed on the recession, from halitosis and hiccups to oversleeping and body odor. People make excuses for lethargy, low sales, their dogs’ fleas, and failing to stop at traffic lights.

ENOUGH!

Contrary to what the media is feeding you, not everyone is suffering during this recession. And YOU don’t have to, either.

Racing car drivers know that if they look at the barriers, they will hit them. We tend to move in the direction we look.

I know it’s true – I regularly race along a certain forest path on my trusty bicycle, and at one point I always had to slow down to avoid hitting a particular tree stump. Yesterday, I took my own advice, and instead of looking at the tree stump (where I didn’t want to go) I kept my eyes on the path beyond the tree stump (where I did want to go) and amazingly, I found I could negotiate the same route at twice my previous speed.

How They “Hit the Stump”

If They Really Wanted to Work

If these two loafers really wanted work:

1. Why are they not waiting tables, serving in a bar, washing cars
2. Or, better still, offering to work for nothing for two weeks so that a prospective boss can see how great they are and offer them a job?
3. How about working on a commission basis?

Too much like hard work? Don’t like being accountable for getting real results, perhaps?

Few business owners would turn you down if you offered to get paid for results on a part-time, independent agent, basis. Think about that one!

A Sure Way to Stay on That Couch

Businesses receive thousands of resumes, most of which are discarded without even being looked at. In fact, if you want to make sure you can stay on the couch and play video games when you get tired of playing with your kids, just keep on mailing out your resume.

You’re NOT RESTRICTED to a Job

Times have changed. There are thousands of opportunities to get out there and make money, and I’m not talking about “investments” or Network Marketing. DollarMakers presents regular, free seminars, and offers plenty of complimentary information on how to make money with no cost, risk, selling, regardless of one’s circumstances, using Joint Ventures.

Here’s the bottom line:

You make money by creating value. While you’re waiting to get a job, there is no excuse not to work, and there are many opportunities to work. No work is below you, and you never know whom you will meet and what you might learn when you get off your fat ass and go to work.

• Staying at home feeling sorry for yourself and leeching off your wife is not what a real man does. Whining about the economy doesn’t pay for your beer and cigarettes.
• And “going back to school” in order to get better qualified to get a job is the most ridiculous cop-out I’ve ever heard.

Only One Way to Have Money – EARN It!

Increasing the minimum wage isn’t the answer, either, nor is bigger government – that’s just thinly-veiled socialism. Hand-outs, welfare, and protectionism is simply government’s way to imprison the productive population and empower the losers and leeches.

No- the way to make money is to EARN it by creating value, and getting a job is virtually a guarantee that you will never get rich. Take another look at your choices, and take a GOOD look at becoming a Joint Venture Broker. There is no excuse why you can’t make money as a JV Broker, regardless of your skills, education, or background.

Take a good look in the mirror, buddy – be a man! And wives, perhaps it’s time to lock the fridge, unplug the XBox, and send your hapless hubby out to work, or perhaps YOU should fire him, too.

“No passion so effectually robs the mind of all its powers of acting and reasoning as fear.” ~ Edmund Burke (1729 – 1797)

One thing that stops most people from achieving their goals is the fear of failure, embarrassment, loss, or anything that they currently have and don’t want to lose.

This fear will prevent them from moving forward – the perceived threat and pain – until the pain of their present condition or their approaching condition exceeds the potential danger that they fear.

By examining the things you fear, you might get perspective and change your mind about whether or not that fear has the power you currently bestow upon it.

• What do you fear?
• How can you diminish that fear?

Fear Failure?  Try This.

For example, if you fear failure, think about this: If there was nobody else in the world but you, no other people – would you fear failure? No, you wouldn’t. Because you don’t fear failure per se – you fear the opinions and ridicule of other people.

And anybody who likes you and cares about you would not ridicule you if you failed – they would help an support you, so why worry about the opinions of people who don’t like you or care about you?

Fear Loss?  Try This.

If you fear loss:

• What do you have to lose?
• What is the risk factor?
• Specifically, what would happen if you incurred that loss?
• Could you cope with that loss?
• Is the reward of facing your fear worth the risk?

Think objectively, not emotionally. Write down the pros and cons. Be rational.

1. How can you reduce or prevent the risk?
2. How can you change the situation, protect your assets, or shift the risk?

Fear is usually illogical and based on our conditioning and self-esteem, instead of hard facts. We assume a whole lot of things that are generally not true.

How a Professional Evaluates Risk

Imagine an engineer, and architect, or a scientist evaluating a risk. Would they cry, wring their hands, get angry, shout, hide, or rant? Probably not – they would get out their calculators and have meetings with other analytical people, draw diagrams, make plans, discuss the situation, and find a solution.

The architect doesn’t start whining, “But what if the bridge falls down? What if the floor collapses? I’ll be so embarrassed!” Analyze your fear, get the input of experts, talk with people who have been that route before and succeeded, and then make a logical, adult decision.

The “What if?” Game

Play the “What if?” game. It works well if you write things down.

• What if that person dies?
• What if this project fails?
• Exactly what would I do?
• What steps would I take?
• What would happen?
• Whose advice I need?
• What would I do?
• What could I do?
• Why would I make that choice?
• What would my alternatives be?
• Exactly what would this cost?
• How do I arrive at that number?

When you view life like a monopoly game or a chess game, you can override your conditioning, bias, self-talk, beliefs, and fears.

When you align yourself with successful, mature people who have experience in the field, it gets even better, hence the Mastermind effect of the DollarMakers Joint Venture Club and the DollarMakers Women’s Club – create a support system that will help you avoid the pitfalls of emotionalism, mysticism, and negative conditioning. Together, we can do amazing things.

Most Fears Never Even Happen!

The things you fear are not always all they’re cracked up to be. Several recent studies indicate that over 85% of all that we worry about never happens. Our minds tend to make mountains out of molehills.

Fear is not bad – it’s a warning light that we should consider, and when the warning light goes on in your car you don’t start crying, get paralyzed with fear, or sell your car; you take it to the shop and get an expert mechanic to check it out, or you take the time to read the manual.

• Sometimes,  an inexpensive item or a small adjustment is all that is required.
• Sometimes, it’s more expensive, but less expensive than a seized engine.

Consider the situation calmly and you will find that all you have to fear, as a smart man once said, is fear itself.

When you’re in a deep, dark hole with slimy, steep, slippery sides, and the water is pouring in, you usually only admit that you have a problem when the water touches your nostrils. Until then, you:

• live in denial,
• hope for the best,
• write pathetic “business plans”,
• hide,
• and make weak excuses that nobody believes.

Many flock to “business networking meetings” where they desperately try to sell stuff to other broke people, or dig their hole even deeper with ineffective advertising.

Worse still, they hire unemployed business failures who label themselves “Business Consultants” or “Coaches” and charge an arm and a leg to steal the last money you can borrow. (They’re also in a debt hole!)

Some people have lots of money, but they have no time and their debt is time.

How a Bad Situation Turns Worse

Either way, when your money, credit, or time is flowing out faster than it is flowing in, the murky, smelly water rises until it’s high enough to get our attention. At that point, we try to make a logical business decision while in a state of panic.

That’s when we start to understand the old saying, “desperate people do desperate things”. Situational Ethics kicks in faster than a speeding bullet.

And I am now addressing the people who are in this very situation, or who have the courage to see that it is approaching like the proverbial oncoming train.

What Do You Do?

When you see you’re finally about to drown in the hole you so carefully dug, who do you call?

• A three-year-old with a pink, plush toy?
• Do you call over to the “life coach” in the hole next door?
• Do you invite an advertising salesman over to pour a few extra barrels of water into your hole?
• Or sign up to sell real estate or life insurance?

I know this sounds familiar to some of us, since I have been there myself. How did I very narrowly avoid certain bankruptcy on one scary occasion? Not by doing what I had always done, I assure you. Not by second-guessing people who were capable of saving me, and not by resorting to the arrogance born of fiery fear.

Here’s What I Did

Here’s what I did, and what you might want to consider if a few lungfuls of water is not your cup of tea:

1. Find the most successful, competent, insightful, straight-talking people you can, and give them a vested interest in helping you out of your hole.
2. Follow their instructions to the letter, or they’ll throw you back like the minnow you are, faster than you might imagine.

My Story

I was in bad trouble. I was about to lose everything, and those I had expected to help me (family) were not coming to my rescue, in spite of the fact that I had never approached them before (and never will gain.) The bank was about to pull all of my credit, and things looked darkish. My panicked decision was to sell my house and rent in order to get out of debt, so I called in on my smart, successful friend and asked for his advice.

Help at Last

Gerald Voutsas took an objective, relaxed look at my ridiculous plan, showed me that it definitely would put me deeper in the hole, and offered an alternative solution as quickly and easily as passing me another ginger biscuit. I did exactly what he told me to do, and he saved my asset.

It took a few months, and lots of hard work, but I learned my lesson and I never put myself into that situation again. I avoid those dark holes like the plague, and the way I teach Joint Venture Broking is based in part on avoiding that kind of deep, dark hole.

“But where do I find these experts?”

OK, I know you’re going to ask me, “But where do I find these experts?”

That’s why we created DollarMakers. I wanted a decent financial planner, so I went to a very good friend who is also my Joint Venture Partner, very wealthy, and a successful lawyer, and asked him whom HE uses for his financial planning (insurance). Now we use the same insurance guy. Birds of the feather. Successful people know other successful people.

And only someone who is happily not in a hole can help you out of the hole. “The blind leading the blind” is an everyday occurrence in business, masterminding with the mindless…

Bottomline

Elicit, then follow the expert advice of real experts to the letter. And don’t you dare second-guess, question, or slack off. I listened to Gerald, and I didn’t drown.

Many people are suffering in this recession, but they’re digging themselves deeper into the hole by the way they choose to respond to financial problems.

My friend’s wife told him to stop spending his time visiting banks to borrow more money to survive the financial downturn, but rather to spend that time MAKING money.

Usually, wives have to read this and put their husbands onto the right track, since they generally seem to have a better handle of the response to financial strife.

Here’s what won’t solve your challenges:

1.    Hiding From Your Creditors

…that just makes them angry, and you don’t need angry creditors. Communicate and make token payments if necessary – be on time, whatever the amount of the payment, and don’t make them run after you – you will lose.

2.   Blaming Others

Stop winging, whining, complaining, blaming, shaming, and naming other people and the government for your financial problems – you’re just irritating people, alienating winners, and using up time that might otherwise have been used to make some money and solve problems. Bewailing your fate will further deteriorate your resolve, belief, and self esteem. We tend to believe what we say, so talk positive.

3.   Taking Advice from Just Anyone Who Gives It

Don’t take advice from people who are more screwed up than you are, those with a hidden agenda, or those who don’t already have what you want.

4.   Making Desperate or Hasty Decisions

Take a rational, financially secure person with you if you assist on attending “money-making seminars”, and don’t make quick decisions – desperate people do desperate things, and you should realize that you could make bad decisions when you’re feeling overwhelmed.

5.   Hiding from Your Responsibilities and Pain Through Addiction and Diversion

Stop hiding with dope, cigarettes, drink, video games, food, and movies – confront your options and get to work. If you say you can’t find work, work as a commission only salesperson. There is no excuse not to work while you play at home like a child.

6.    Cutting Back in the Wrong Areas

Don’t cut the wrong costs – the first things to go should be the television services ($80 per month), booze ($100 per month), cigarettes ($300 per month), and movies ($60 per month), and other wasteful things.

7.   Continuing to Do What Does Not Work

Stop doing what doesn’t work – stop wasting your money on MLM (network marketing), Lotto tickets, gambling, and anything else that doesn’t make you money.

8.    Spending Time with Losers

Stop spending time with other broke, self-employed / unemployed losers and start mixing with winners. Associate only with positive, successful, optimistic people.

9.   Not Working on a Commission Basis, While Looking for a Job

Analyze what activities are providing you with an excuse not to get out and work on a commission-only basis, and remove them. You’re job, when you are unemployed, is to get a job, and while you are looking for a job, to WORK on a commission-only basis. Women, stop allowing loser men to live off your income and force them to work.

10.   Tuning Into Hopeless Media

Stop reading newspapers and watching CNN. The media won’t give you any hope.

11.   Waiting for Someone Else to Save You

Stop waiting for Obama or any other politician to solve your problem. Say, “If it’s to be, it’s up to me!”

12.   Limiting Yourself

Finally, stop thinking there is nothing you can do. The best advice I can give you is to use Joint Ventures to create financial freedom. You can start earning real money, fast, IF you will work hard and do whatever it takes.

Bob  Carlson writes,

“Not too many years ago, most people did not need retirement plans or help with retirement planning. Retirement lasted only five years on average. Not everyone retired. Those that did retire generally had adequate income from employer pensions and medical expense coverage plus Social Security and Medicare.

All that changed.

• Life expectancies increased, dramatically increasing the length of retirement to 20 years or more.
• Employers reduced or eliminated pensions. Employees save and invest for retirement on their own through 401(k) plans and other accounts.
• Employer-paid retiree medical coverage is greatly reduced, and Medicare raises premiums.

Americans more and more are on their own for retirement and must plan for much longer retirements.

‘Game Changing’ Events that Make Us Re-evaluate

To complicate things, retirement finances have changed and are changing rapidly. Bull markets rapidly turn into bear markets which become financial crises. Investment options change all the time. Taxes, long-term care, medical expense coverage, annuities, life insurance, estate planning, and other aspects of your retirement finances rapidly have innovations and turmoil.

Currently, we are experiencing real ‘game changing’ events that will require everyone to re-evaluate their retirement plans:

• A bear market that wiped out 50% and more of some retirement portfolios in a year.
• Likely tax increases in the next year or two.
• The financial instability of Medicare, likely to lead to means-testing or other major reductions in benefits.
• Questions about the future of insurers that sold life insurance, annuities, and long-term care insurance.
• Low interest rates and dividend reductions that slash the income of retirees.

Where Most Get Their (Poor) Advice

Now there is no shortage of people seeking to be the retirement advisors for tens of millions of Baby Boomers: brokers, financial planners, accountants, insurance agents, mutual fund companies, and more.

Too often these advisers have their own agendas or are so busy marketing and managing their businesses that they do not keep up with the latest news and trends. Cookie cutter approaches and rules-of-thumb dominate too much financial advice. Personal needs, situations, and desires can take a back seat or be pushed out of the vehicle.

Tackling It On Your Own

But if you attempt to tackle retirement planning on your own, you can easily become confused and overwhelmed by the mountain of advice available to you.

Type the search term ‘retirement planning’ into Google and it returns about 13.5 million hits. Type in ‘IRA’ and it returns almost 50 million hits! And most of these hits are for websites that simply want to sell you a particular product, or contain information that’s out of date.”

I Agree Wholeheartedly.

…And those “Advisers” are all asking you spend MORE money, take more risks, and trust them, so that they can earn bigger commissions on your risk!

Surely you’re tired of being ripped off?

Here’s My SOLUTION:

How about creating more income – residual income from multiple sources – with no cost, risk, or selling, no investment, and little time, regardless of your financial predicament, age, or background? That’s exactly what DollarMakers offers you.

Have a look at our website -lots of free stuff, information, and help. No obligation. No spam.

There’s even an e-book on how to retire in one year.  That’s right.  You heard me correctly.  ONE YEAR.

What have you got to lose? It’s not too late to turn your autumn years of scarcity and fear into the best years of your life.