OK, So I’ve decided to support Barack Obama

Yesterday I was in the supermarket checkout line and I saw the normal tabloids at the counter. Here is a copy of the Mational Enquirer.

The National Enquirer alleges that Senator Obama has a terrorist friend, has screaming matches with his wife and other women and lastly his alleged friendship with Mr Rezko.

I reiterate my previous post, an epic battle. I must admit that if I could not behave like Senator Obama. By now I’d be so pissed off that I couldn’t see straight. I admist Senator Obama’s cool under fire (it seems presidential to me), his public unflappability (by now I would have cursed Bill Clinton out) and his aplumb ( I will denounce, rebuke, rebut, refute, remonstrate, snubb) anyone you need.

Keep up the good work Senator Obama

BTW - Don’t worry, I will go back to my normal posts next time

You Create Your Own Success - The Story of Jason McElway

I recently received this Youtube video in an email. The video is of a young autistic by Jason McElway that has been the manager of his high schools basketball team. Jason has done everything the team needed as a manager, he has been the water boy, the cheerleader and the gofer.

His enthusiasm and exuberance has been so vivid he Dad is often afraid that Jason will get a technical foul and cost the team a game. Jason is a gamer. After a long season, Jason coach, Jim Johnson allowed Jason to suit up for a game and finally Jim called Jason’s number and Jason was in the game.

When Jason entered the game he tried a couple of shots and they where all air balls, but the next shot was a 3 pointer. Jason ended up scoring a total of 20 point total. Jason created his own success and you can to.

Black History Month - A Celebration of My-Story

Today is February 29, 2008, the last day of Black History Month in a leap year and I wanted to write a note about Black History Month and it’s impact. Black History Month was created in 1976 as an extension of what was then known as Negro History Week. Negro History Week was created by Carter Woodson in 1926.

Actually, the idea of Black History Month is somewhat controversial, many people believe that celebrating the history of one race for a month is wrong. To me it doesn’t really matter because I look a Black History Month as somewhat of a waste, the media trots out some black historical videos and never tells anyone and by then the month is over.

The purpose of this post isn’t to debunk Black History Month but to remind us that history is written today by people like you and me. Certainly Barack Obama is writing history by his unprecedented campaign for the presidency, he knows and we know he is writing history on a major scale.

But history is written everyday in much smaller ways by people like you and me. For example, I’m trying to write history by encouraging and fighting for entrepreneurship and financial education for all of us. So my question today, is What are you doing to write history? What are you doing to write history in YOUR family?

As Black History Month ends, link about next year (It’s coming no matter what you do), think about how you can write your own history, so next Black History Month isn’t Black History Month but My-Story Month. That way we can truly celebrate BLACK HISTORY. Thats my goal for next year. Join me

What is wealth? What is Income?

My last post talked about sub prime mortgages and the fact that “The erosion of wealth is staggering”. So, I’ve decided to talk a little bit about wealth, wealth thinking and how you can develop what I call a wealth ethic.

The question is “What is wealth?” According to Webster, wealth is defined as “abundance of valuable material possessions or resources or,abundant supply or all property that has a money value or an exchangeable value” but reading this definition doesn’t provide clarity. So again “What is wealth”?

If you go Google “What is wealth?”, you get a slew of results but no answers. So lets agree on a definition, lets agree that wealth is determined by how long you can maintain your lifestyle without you having to work. In other words wealth means for the sake of this blog that you can live the way you live without having to create any more income.

Which takes us to the next question, “What is Income?”. Income is the money that you generate from your effort or the efforts of others under your control. In other words income is the money you generate from work. Income is not wealth, income is money you receive from your efforts personally or from your business.

Over the next few days, think about ways to create wealth and income. It is possible to do both.

Sorry for not posting

I got a bunch of email asking about why I stopped posting and the simple answer is life. Like many of you I’m facing some challenges in my family including children (my daughter is very ill) and siblings and frankly haven’t been able to focus on posting. Of course there have been tons of topics to post about. The presidential campaign provides material like nowhere else and I gues will continue to provide material. I must admit while I am excited that there is a Black man running for president, todays problems outstrip my excitement.

There is also all of the economic news going on in the US and the world. Theres the sub-prime mortgage mess which I know is causing many people challenges (I will be writing about that this week) and there gas prices, food prices the credit crunch and more. Basically it seems as if the worlds economy is having the flu and if thats the case we are getting pneumonia.

So start your education, find a mentor, learn to invest in assets that throw off cash. I know some great mentors that are teaching real estate investors (checkout Chrles Petty http://visionarypropertyinvestments.com/). Charles is an expert real estate investor and his systems have worked for many people.

I’ll be posting again soon.

Follow the Money - How to take back the Black Hair Care Market

The more I think about it you should be pissed. At least I am from the prospective of business ownership, I am pissed. The black hair care industry is a 1.7 billion dollar industry that is controlled by Koreans.

The question is “How to do we carve a share of that market, identify the market and the customers and finally put a fence around the customers so they can’t or won’t buy from another vendor.

One strategy is to create a continuity income stream, create a mechansim where consumers of hair care products essentially get the same products over and over again. for want of a term, a subscription for hair care products.

That is one of many strategies to get our share of te black hair care market

Follow the Money - How to take back the Black Hair Care Market

I’ve decided to give this a shot because I want to generate thinking about how we can protect our business opportunities. These post are not anti-Korean, they are pro African American business, what I mean is that I respect the Kireans for seeing a marketin, defining the customer and effectively marketing to that customer, we should do the same.

The challenge is how do we build and maintain business in the same market. Over the next few post I have  suggestions both for consumers and business owners. In this post suggestions for consumers:

• Tell your stylist that you want products created by black manufacturer’s. This is important becasue black hair care manufacturer’s create jobs for other African Americans but thats not the only reason. Making stuff is the backbone of business, creating products, services etc creates a foundation for building. So demand hair care products frmo black hair care manufacturers. To help we will create a list of them here, lets support them.
• Be beautiful and support stylist that use our products.
• It’s your hair, products sold and made by blacks are just as good as other products and in some ways may be better

Here’s the reality, black women are a hug market if you support black stylist that use products made by black manufacturer’s even the Koreans will be forced to level the playing field. So demand products made by your own. Take no shorts

Dedicated to your success

My apologies to all

I recently fixed some problems on this blog and what I didn’t realize is that their where a bunch of messages stacked up. Those messages where sent all at one time and that was an error. Most of them where old posts. So I apologize for any inconvenience my error caused and will do my best to not have that happen again.

Once again please accept my apologies, I am truly appreciative of your permission to email and will not abuse it.

Thanks for your understanding.

Dwight Miller

Leaving St Lucia is tough but I’m excited to get home

I’m on my way home; this post is a lesson in systems. You see my flight is at 8:30am so there is no way I made this post today. You see, I use a system called WordPress to create the blog and an auto-responder to send the blog post to you automatically. So this post was made on Saturday long before I left St Lucia.

So, one of the most important aspects of entrepreneurs is creating and using systems that do things automatically so you can focus on building your business, not the mundane details of running a business.

Every successful business uses some system and the truly wealthy typically bought, created or duplicated a system that created great wealth. Here are some examples; Henry Ford actually created two systems. The first, most people remember and that’s the assembly line system. The system that most people don’t remember or think about is the dealership system.

Bill Gates didn’t create a system he bought MS-DOS from another developer and sold it to IBM. So Bill Gates is an example of melding a system with a vision to create wealth. BTW, Bill’s vision was that everyone would have a computer and that vision is almost true.

The founders of Google did almost the same thing. They didn’t invent search engines; they didn’t even invent pay per click marketing. What they did was improve on an existing system to create wealth. The improvement was to simplify the process of searching and marketing on the Internet and that’s how they got rich.

So, this post is about the power of having a system to create wealth and the idea that you don’t have to create the system you can plug into an existing system and still reach your goals. “The Phenomenon” is just such a system, a system you can plug into, tailor to your business and create your financial independence. Join me on “The Phenomenon Call” and learn how you can plug into this powerful system.

Dedicated to your success

BTW. This post is also about thanks. (Back to gratitude and the power of friendships) so I want to thank Derek Lewis and Paxton Baker for making my trip to St Lucia possible as well as the folks in St Lucia. Thanks Paxton and Derek and I love you both and I will be forever grateful.

St Lucia Trip, Great fights in St Lucia last night

Great fights last night and a good time had by all. Some of the fighters are Andre Ward, Chad, William Joppy and I don’t remember the rest because I spent my time partying.

Today, I’m going to watch a basketball game I call the Geezer Bowl. This is basically a basketball game between some middle age men that had flashbacks of their youth. Hopefully no one will get hurt but today’s story is about lessons learned and as importantly creativity.

My plan is coming together and I actually have done a ton of writing along with making long posts on two blogs. I am excited about the plan. I intend to use my talents as a coach and teacher to help people that want to learn how to start a business or test the viability of a new product or service.

The idea is that instead of spending lots of money hoping that a business or product idea will work, you create a mockup of your business. You then market and test your business idea as if it where real to see if there is a market, what the market will pay, what words the market needs to hear to buy, basically compile all of the needed information to see if the idea is an idea that people will spend money to use. After you know all of that information, you can roll out the business or product and predict with relative certainty the success of the venture.

I call this process Start-A-Business-Backwards it’s focused on you, specifically, what you want out of the business before tons of money is spent, instead of spending money hoping and praying that your business, product or service idea will work.

I also am continuing to roll out the Black Genius Network with the idea of sharing he success and ideas of other entrepreneurs. These are typically entrepreneurs that have experienced their own “Phenomenon”. They have created their own businesses that are very successful and they’ve experienced that success quickly. Wait until you hear some of these stories, they are incredible and you can learn a lot from their experience.

So subscribe to the BGN and join Start-A-Business-Backwards. Join me while I create my own Phenomenon and also learn how you can create your Phenomenon as well.

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