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Starting from a young age, we are taught that we need to work hard, get a job and earn our money. This mentality is great to motivate youth to get off the couch and develop a little bit of ambition. The downside of teaching everyone that they need to work hard to earn their income is that it develops a scarcity mentality. It also causes us to think that the only way for us to create income in our lives is to work harder or to generate it by adding a second or third job into our already busy lives. This type of “work is the only way to get money” thinking can also lead people away from their true purpose in life, their true passions

One clear example of this type of narrow mindedness came about in my own life. I was always taught that in order to be successful I needed a lot of money, and therefore that meant that I needed to get a very high paying job and work grueling hours. And I did. I got several high paying jobs and worked upwards of 60 hours per week, despite still being enrolled in school in a co-op program. It was all great for awhile because I believed that I had reached my “success goal” and that I was finally successful because my income was coming from a high paying job. But then things started to unravel, as they are so likely to do in such situations. My health got worse and I started to loose my hair, my acne flared up and I was always tired. My relationships suffered immensely because I had to move away from my boyfriend, my friends and family.

That’s when I started researching the law of attraction and other forms of intentional creation. It didn’t take long for me to realize that we are powerful beings and that we can create income in different ways in our lives. This happened to me a few short months into my employment with “a big successful company.” I had been practicing visualization and feeling at one with lots of money. I went to sleep one night while listening to a relaxation MP3 that left me feeling so free, joyful and loved. The next morning I received a paper from my company that asked me to fill out some forms because I was being offered a scholarship. As it turned out I was given $7500 of scholarship money toward continuing my university education.

Little Known Truth

In life the equation might seem very complicated, but if you factor out some common denominators and eliminate some redundant terms you get left with a fairly simple way to calculate your worth. It looks a little something like this:

What You Give Out = (What You Get Back) x (Multiplication Factor)

A lot of people think that the equation is way more complex and so they undertake something more along the lines of:

(Exchange Time through Work = Money) => (Use Money to Buy Things = Shortlived Joy)
Divided by (Use Money to Regain Health, Relationships, Dreams = Lack of Energy)

Your Job is Not Your Only Source Of Income

Every day we are reminded that we need to pay our bills. Sometimes we think the only way we will ever be able to pay all our bills or afford a special vacation or toy (house, car, boat, etc) is through getting a raise at work. I have seen it countless times. People put off their dreams because they think that they need to wait to get a promotion at work to afford it. I’m not saying that you should go out and spend tons of money putting things on your credit cards, because that would be dangerous for your credit rating. What I am saying is that sometimes if you stop focusing on work as the only source, you will see that you have so much more to offer the world than just your time at the office or at your job.

Here is a more tangible example of giving and how you can expect to receive. Most people understand that if you want to receive more smiles and compliments, you should give out more smiles and compliments. This works only if you give compliments out and smile genuinely and not simply in order to receive them yourself, otherwise people will pick up on your game. In the long run people will begin to compliment you and treat you the same way as you treat them. Why would it be different with money? If you give out money with no expectations of receiving it back, but with the understanding that the more you spend it with love, the more it will return to you from loving hands. For example instead of begrudging the local hair dresser a tip, why not give freely within your means? When you tip at restaurants, do so with the understanding that this is how you would like to be treated. A shift will take place in your own life and you will find yourself receiving similar tips and income.

Photo by Per Olga Wiberg

Allow It To Come In From The Opposite Direction

If you are hoping to get a specific sum of money to pay for a special item in your life, then do not be attached to where it will come from. Sometimes you will receive the money as a gift from your family or an old friend who owed you years ago will suddenly pay you back. Other times you will win money through a raffle prize or you might find a $50 bill outside in the park. Life is truly magical and simply being open to allowing the income to flow into your life from any direction speeds up the arrival of this money.

Conclusion

As it turns out, this type of shift takes some getting used to because we are all so conditioned to thinking that our jobs are the source of our income. In the case of my scholarship money, it took a few months for me to receive it. During that time I was so worried that it wouldn’t materialize, that the reference letter I had asked of my teacher would not be sufficient and that maybe they would just up and change their minds about my value. In hindsight I can now say that by focusing on what I could give others and what value I could provide, I was worthy of that scholarship. It was only by allowing myself to realize that income is not only dollar bills in your hand, but discounts off items, bartered services, and unexpected gifts or prizes.

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This is a guest post from female entrepreneur Anita Mahaffey, writing about her experiences with starting her own business.

What do night sweat pajamas and a summer in Turkey have in common? For 49-year-old mompreneur Anita Mahaffey, the connection goes deep and in fact years later catapulted her into a business manufacturing and designing a line of menopause sleepwear called Cool-jams to help combat night sweats and hot flashes.

“As I boarded my flight in 1976 to spend the summer as an exchange student in Turkey, I would have laughed my way off the plane if someone told me that in 30 years I would be back in Turkey manufacturing hot-flash sleepwear. I had no idea that my past would come back to tap me on the shoulder in such a big way.”

Fast forward to the birth of Ms. Mahaffey’s second child in 1987. To spend more time with her growing family she decided to leave corporate marketing to pursue her own business. She recognized that a small business would allow her to spend more time with her children, while enabling her to pursue her dream of entrepreneurship.

“It was natural for me to think of establishing some kind of import/export business there,” Ms. Mahaffey explains. “I understood the culture and loved the people. While researching different business ideas, I discovered that Turkey had grown into one of the biggest textile producers in the world. It was an easy decision to choose textiles as my importing focus.”

Ms. Mahaffey returned to Turkey to renew relationships with her old exchange student friends. She discovered that some of her Turkish friends were now successful business owners who had the same vision of exporting textile products. By collaborating with a friend and his factory, she soon began developing sleepwear programs for many of the largest U.S. retailers and catalogs.

In 2005, while making a routine visit to her factory, she discovered a new micro-fiber fabric. Ms. Mahaffey, an avid hiker and runner, was accustomed to wearing micro-fiber apparel while exercising because it wicks away perspiration and dries quickly.

Ms. Mahaffey explains, “As soon as I felt this new fabric, I knew I had a winner. The “hand-feel” was incredible…very silky, soft and lightweight…nothing like the rough textured micro-fiber sports apparel I had at home. It seemed like a promising fabric for hot-flash sleepwear. I must admit, part of my motivation was to develop a pajama to provide relief for my own menopausal-related night sweats. I also knew that there were probably millions of other people with the same problem. If this fabric tested well, it would be the answer to my prayers.”

Mahaffey quickly became fixated on the idea of creating a line of pajamas that would help to remedy night sweats. The fabric was tested by an independent laboratory, confirming its wicking and quick-drying properties. The test results stated that the fabric dried 100% faster than cotton or poly/cotton blend fabrics. The micro-fiber rapidly absorbed moisture, pushing it through the fabric so the moisture evaporated quickly.

This was the start of Cool-jams.

“Customers can find other sleepwear lines for night sweats, but many of the products that we found were expensive,” explains Ms. Mahaffey. “We decided to create a collection of high quality products priced 25-40% lower than competitor’s products. We hope to make a difference in people’s lives by making night-sweat pajamas more affordable.”

There are many causes for night sweats, including menopause, chemotherapy, certain medications, obesity and thyroid dysfunction. Sometimes people’s internal thermostat just runs warm, a problem that can affect men and women alike. To provide a solution Cool-jams offers a line of women’s sleepwear in sizes ranging from small to 3X. Mahaffey also plans to add a Cool-jams men’s sleepwear line for spring 2008.

Cool-jams, Inc. was founded by Anita Mahaffey in September 2006. At this time, Cool-jams sleepwear can be found online at www.cool-jams.com. The website offers a variety of micro-fiber sleepwear as well as free tips to help combat night sweats.

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There are plenty of rich men and women out there. Yet most of us tend to respect those rich people more if they managed to get to where they are on their own, say without inheritance money. In fact, I personally love rags to riches stories and reading about how people made it big through sheer will and determination. Most people might label people as “self-made” when either a man or a woman goes from a regular life to that of a millionaire or billionaire. My question recently has been about where the law of attraction and the idea of deliberately creating things comes in. For instance, how does the lottery fit in to the self made millionaire definition? Would you consider it to be a fluke or a luck of the draw event? So would lottery winners automatically fall into the category of rich women and men who are not self made and who got it easy? I would like to explore this question, and if you disagree with me I would love to read what you think in the comments section.

After doing some extensive research in the area of the wealthiest women in the world, I discovered that most of the top women actually inherited their wealth. Personally, I don’t think there is anything wrong with gaining tremendous wealth through such means. However, I want this weblog to act as inspiration for the rest of us regular women out there, who want to be able to take charge of our finances and increase our incomes. So I started researching more into the self-made millionaire women out there.

Photo by Jeremy Brooks

Traditional Self Made Millionaires and Billionaires

Most of the time when we think of self made millionaires and billionaires we think of women who have made a great impact on this world. Indeed women like Oprah Winfrey and J. K. Rowling have captured the hearts of many people. It is probably because of their tremendous passions that they have amassed such large amounts of personal wealth. They are definitely examples of rags to riches, although they both came from different backgrounds. Oprah Winfrey grew up in an impoverished neighborhood and fed her imagination and her mind by reading many books. She states that she learned about all of the possibilities of the world through her readings and this helped her to expand her horizons. She made it big and landed her own talk show after working as a news anchor first. J.K. Rowling is the author of the hugely successful Harry Potter books. She was down and out on her luck when she first started writing the books. She was a single mother trying to make ends meet. After receiving a slew of rejections from publishers she broke through and got the first Harry Potter book published. Now she is one of the richest authors in the world.

Millionaires and Billionaires Through the Law of Attraction

I am a strong advocate of the law of attraction and the power of our intentions, when performed properly. I do believe that we possess tremendous personal power and that we can achieve anything that we put our heart and minds to. I have tried to incorporate this belief when writing for this weblog, since I think that everyone can benefit from the tools that the law of attraction can give us. For example simply being grateful taking the time to make goals for ourselves and following through with our intentions can make huge impacts and changes in our lives. I am a living example of these techniques. In addition there are several people who have been influenced by the law of attraction. Jack Canfield is the co-author of the Chicken Soup for the Soul books and he often explains how he managed to create his current reality. He was flat broke and making less than $8,000 per year when he started to focus on increasing his wealth using the law of attraction. In the movie “The Secret” he describes how he would look at a pretend $100,000 dollar bill every day. After he started doing this consistently, things started to shift for him and he got lucrative ideas, events unfolded and he managed to amass a large fortune. Today Jack Canfield teaches some of the techniques he used to increase his wealth through positive thinking and other tools that increase the efficiency of the human attraction mechanisms.

Jack Canfield is definitely a self made millionaire. Although he used the law of attraction to set the wheels into motion, most people would agree that he created his wealth “by himself” and not through inheritance. However, I believe that we never do anything completely by ourself in this world. We are not in a vacuum and we are constantly supported by the good of the Universe, whatever name you choose for it.

Lottery Winners Via Law of Attraction

The final group of wealthy people I wanted to discuss were those who get rich through the lottery. Like most people, I used to think that the lottery was a hoax and that no one I knew would ever win. Until my childhood friend’s family won $12 million dollars. I will call my friend Sarah to maintain anonymity. After watching the movie “The Secret” my friend and her family decided to set the intention of winning the lottery. Her father wrote himself a cheque for $10 million dollars and her mother wrote herself a cheque for $500,000. The whole family was having fun with this new way of thinking and they enjoyed going through the exercise of planning what they would do with the money. They had organized how they would split the money, who would get what percentage and so on. My friend Sarah even started telling people that her family was going to win the lottery. Most people huffed, thinking it was just a bunch of mumbo jumbo. But then in July 2007, her father went to check his lottery ticket, like he does every week. When he put his ticket into the machine, a song started playing and the numbers 12,000,000 started flashing on the screen. He remained calm, because he already knew he had won. He had set the intention and he knew that he was a winner. When he called his wife to let her know, she didn’t believe him because everyone had already been talking about winning the lottery so much. But it was true.

Personally I am a lot less skeptical when it comes to putting out intentions into the Universe. I don’t recommend that everyone should immediately rush off to buy lottery tickets. But I would like to change your perceptions about what a self made millionaire or billionaire really is. If someone were to set the intention of becoming a billionaire or millionaire, and they focused on their current joy and fulfillment I believe that they would achieve their goal eventually. I consider this to be the definition of a self made millionaire. In reality, I think that traditional self made millionaires and billionaires must have used the law of attraction along the way as well. Oprah Winfrey herself states that she did not know of the existence of “The Secret” but that she used some of its techniques in her youth to advance in her life.

I would love to hear your thoughts and comments on the idea that we are all self made millionaires and billionaires. Does your definition include lottery winners and deliberate creators?

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Photo By: Olivier Terrier

After reading a few insightful articles about successful blogging techniques, I have decided to put a more personal touch into this weblog. I am already working on a redesign of the layout, but I thought I would make the first step and talk about my personal experiences with the billionaire woman lifestyle. The first topic that I wanted to discuss relates to money, because most people who are researching the lives of millionaires and billionaires are looking to increase their personal wealth. I strongly believe that learning from others’ successes is the way to go. Although I have yet to make my first billion, I have learned a thing or two during my time about creating passive income.

What is passive income?

Passive income is money that you can earn or make without being actively involved in making it. That might seem a little bit strange to most people. That is because we are mostly trained to believe that the only way to make money is by trading time for dollars. But with the internet and indeed even before the internet, there are ways to create an income without putting significant time or resources into the process. Of course I am not saying that you will be able to just flip a switch and floods of money will come pouring it to your life. But I do believe that anyone can create additional streams of income using their skills, their talents and interests. First, let me explain what a wise man once told me about the two models for making money.

My father once told me that there are two ways to make money in this world:

1. You can sell a product.
2. You can sell a service.

So how do these two methods relate to the idea of selling time for money? Well the most widely known models require that a person be present to provide a service, for example in the case of a sales clerk, a dentist, a hair dresser or a consultant. When it comes to products, you must invest the time to create the products and then invest the time to generate sales - either by cold calling, marketing or creating a buzz through word of mouth. Either way, both of these models have required someone to run the business operations - until now. With the advent of the internet and other forms of telecommunication, we are now able to provide a service without being present and sell products without being available in real time.

My personal experience with passive income

First I will explain how I turned a $400 investment into $4000. I am not saying that I am a genius for creating this return on my investment, but I think that by sharing this experience I will be able to help other women and men in this world to break out of the old thought paradigms and make things happen for themselves. When I decided that I wanted to create some passive income, I had been searching the internet for many months and buying tons of hyped up internet marketing products. In fact, I probably spent more than $400 just on information products that promised to make me rich overnight. Fortunately for me, most of these products had refund policies and I soon got burnt out from reading so many poor quality products. I am not saying that all internet marketing products are of poor quality, but that I was not doing a lot of thinking before buying all of these products. I also was not very used to having a credit card to play with, so I’m going to forgive myself and call it “the phase of the first time credit card user with internet access.”

Photo by: Brandy

Finally, I got frustrated with all of these guides and business proposals and decided that I would just build web sites and see if I could earn money from Google’s Adsense ads. I bought my last information product, which was Joel Comm’s Adsense Code. This ebook gave me the motivation to take this business model seriously. I also decided to purchase a software product to help me create the web sites more easily. Although I had been designing web sites since I was 12, I wanted to automate the task of designing layouts. I really wanted to focus on writing quality content and on increasing my rankings in major search engines. I opted for the X Site Pro software package, which cost me about $230 Canadian dollars at the time. After creating my first web site with the software, I started generating a significant amount of adsense income. In fact, in October of 2005 I made over $500, which more than covered the costs of the X Site Pro software. I never looked back!

I have been creating web sites using X Site Pro ever since. In fact in 2007 I made $4000 with adsense alone. I am not claiming that this amount is an earth shattering sum of money. However, considering that I did not actively work on my web sites for more than a few hours per month, I would say that this is a good stepping stone toward my long term goal of generating passive income. Now why did I say I turned $400 into $4000? Well I would have to say that I spent roughly $400 on purchasing domain names, hosting, a few software packages (like X Site Pro) and a few ebooks along the way. Although most of the costs were upfront, I have continued to earn residual income on all of my web sites since then. I have in fact made more than $10,000 since October 2005. Of course I plan on increasing these figures in the coming year and I look forward to sharing my findings with all of my readers here.

So what can you do if you would like to start generating your own streams of passive income? My advice is to pick a business model and stick to it. The internet is littered with possible residual income generating schemes, but if you keep buying ebooks you will get information overload and never get anything done. In fact, this is what stopped me from generating any money in my first few years learning to use the internet for business purposes. Here is a short list of possible ways to create passive income that I have come across. If you want a complete list of possibilities, visit this guide by Freelance Switch.

Passive Income Generating Ideas

• Blogging - see ProBlogger
• Stock Photography
• Content Web Sites
• Affiliate Marketing
• E-mail marketing
• Copywriting or Freelancing - not necessarily passive

I hope that this article has provided you with a more concrete example of how to create a passive income stream in your life. Here are action items:

1. Research different passive income opportunities.
2. Pick a passive income generating scheme and stick to it.
3. Set up your system.
4. Manage it every now and then.
5. Watch your bank account collect the dollars and smile knowing that income is always flowing.

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In my search to find out more about billionaires and to help inspire women to become billionaires, I have come across many interesting trends. Recently there have been some downturns in the value of some already established billionaires and millionaires, due to the subprime mortgage crisis in the United States. However, the downturn in the US economy has not been a bad thing for some, since the number of Billionaires in the United Kingdom rose from 33 to 42 by the end of 2007. Similarly two new Canadians became billionaires this past year.

However the number of American Billionaire Women is still extremely high, with 36 female billionaires from the United States. Looking at the percentage, out of 62 billionaire women in 2007, 58% of female billionaires reside in the United States. If you want to see who these billionaire women are, stay tuned because I will be focusing in on each one in the coming weeks and months as new billionaires are made.

What does this mean for the number of billionaire women? Let me quote Forbes Senior Editor Pete Newcomb about the increasing number of women billionaires:

Interviewer: Does the increase in self-made women billionaires reflect business being more open to women or the economy changing to favor industries traditionally more open to women?

Pete Newcomb: I think it just shows the growing number of women entrepreneurs. 40 years ago that wasn’t a viable option. For the most part, women didn’t leave college planning to pursue a career in business.

I could not agree more. There is obviously a difference between self made billionaires or millionaires and those that have inherited their wealth. However, these days with the internet and the changing of traditional family roles, women are allowed to take a stand and earn their share of the family’s income. It is only by changing our thinking about the possibilities of creating income that we will see an increase in female billionaires. After all, if women can be successful at running a household, why wouldn’t they be successful at running a small company, and from there upward to a large company and then even larger roles.

So if you are a woman looking to increase your net worth, why not subscribe to this site and stay informed about the different changes you can implement in your life to help you skyrocket to billionaire status.

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Photo by James Phelps

In my article about the power of gratitude I outlined the reasons why everyone should incorporate more gratitude in their lives. For most us, we tend to focus on what we are grateful for a few times per year, if we’re lucky. Thanksgiving is one of the most loaded holidays because it was meant to remind us to be grateful for what we have, but instead we decide to tax our bodies by stuffing them to the brim with fatty foods and falling asleep in front of the television. This is hardly the way to focus on what we are grateful for. Read more »

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Photo by Luz V. For beginners it may seem hard to even envision themselves as being truly financially free, financially stable or even debt free. But it is possible, and there are definite steps to take to achieve this freedom. The process of starting down the road to financial freedom can be undertaken in three steps: making a commitment and setting your mindset, instilling yourself with a feeling of conviction, and finally undertaking bold action in the face of uncertainty.

Read more »

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This web site was set up with the intention of pushing more women over the one billion dollar threshold. However, after much internal discussion with myself, I discovered that really the amount of money one amasses in their lifetime is not nearly as important as the joy they experienced. Nonetheless, I really like the idea of everyone becoming a billionaire, so I am sticking to the name.

However, the mission of this web site is to help everyone, man or woman, young or old, rich or poor, to feel the amazing life force that we each have within us. I want everyone to experience the inner joy of the billionaire. That is why this weblog will often have posts detailing case studies of billionaires, how they made their billions, how they act, feel and smile. I strongly believe that by emulating those people who we deem to be successful, we can learn from their failures and overcome our own fears.

So join me as I explore my own feelings toward becoming a billionaire woman. I must mention that at the time of this writing I am not a billionaire, nor am I experiencing all of the inner fuzziness that most successful people seem to exude. But this weblog is here to help me express my findings on the topic of inner joy and living the billionaire’s lifestyle.

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