I feel strongly about self employment. I love being my own boss, and I envision more and more people will be self-employed in the New World. Having made the transition from a corporate employee to a small business owner recently, I also know there are a lot of questions and fear among aspiring entrepreneurs.

This eBook guides you from the embryonic phase of “Can I possibly start my own business? Do I have what it takes? What does it take to be a successful entrepreneur anyway?” to the point you make the leap of faith with a clear vision of your success. It consists of three parts:

Part I: Myths & Reality
Part II: 5 Steps to Self-Employment
Part III: Your Success

A lot of materials comes from the posts I wrote on this Yes to Me blog, but I have added new ideas and insights, and put them all together in an integrated one vision, one process. It discusses paycheck mentality vs risk management skill, our attitude about marketing, very practical suggestions about business names (which is a key to effective marketing), the unavoidable issue of money, our secret fear of success that deters us, and a lot more.

Spiritual entrepreneurship

Throughout the eBook, I point out how spirituality can help you in the endeavor of starting a new business. If you think spirituality has nothing to do with the real world challenge of making money, you are in for a good surprise. If you think spirituality is a drawback, putting you to a disadvantage against those aggressive “practical” type who would do anything to make money, you are in for an even bigger surprise.

I know this from my own experience. I don’t think I had the courage to quit my cushy corporate job if it wasn’t with my spirituality. I don’t think I could survive the transitional phase when nothing much was happening (at least on the surface) if I didn’t have the willingness to contribute to the world. Now, this year, which is my second year, I’m making more than I did in the corporate world and my business is growing. Doing what I love and by helping people.

This eBook is a gift to you and to the world. You can just click on the icon on this page or on the sidebar to download it. You are also welcome to share it with your friends.

Social entrepreneurship

The eBook is free, but if you find it valuable, please consider making a contribution to Kiva. Kiva is not a charity — they help entrepreneurs in the developing countries by lending money for their businesses. Those entrepreneurs will pay you back. You can then take back your money or re-loan to another entrepreneur.

When I think of the many small business owners all over the world, I feel so inspired and I’m sure the feeling is doing me good in my business. Plus, by making them rich, we are developing a worldwide market — for your business.

I appreciate if you could leave a comment with your thoughts on this eBook. Perhaps I will revise and enrich the eBook in the future to make it even better, and your feedback is priceless in such an effort.

My gratitude also goes to those many entrepreneurs who have inspired me through the interviews and other communications. Entrepreneurs are never alone (which is another critical point I make in the eBook). In fact, I will be publishing several more Interviews With Successful Entrepreneurs soon — interviews with some spirited business owners that I came to know recently. (Stay tuned!)

In What The Heaven Is Value?, I pointed out lack is an illusion.  If you want to make money, it’s critical you see this clearly.  So in this post, I am expanding on this concept, and I’ll use my own business as an example.  (It made $6K in January – not a super glamorous figure, but not too shabby for a nine month old one-person business, I guess) (Photo by shoebappa)

For those of you in a hurry (because people seem to be in a hurry when they talk about making money), here is the essence of the post:
The shortcut to abundance is to develop your spirituality so that you see abundance instead of lack.
If you get this, you are done.  If you didn’t quite get it, read on.

Lack is an illusion

In reality, things are just the way they are.  For example, it rains a lot in Oregon.  That is how Oregon weather is – it is not about lack of sunny days.  But in our thinking, we can make it about lack of sunny days if we so choose.  And make ourselves miserable doing so.  Or we can see abundance of rain water and make money. Like these people who make soaps with rain water, which is naturally soft water.

In that lengthy post about value and lightworkers / darkworkers, I described how the same world could be experienced either as the world of abundance and harmony or the world of lack and pain.  There was no real change between the two – in the latter, people just adopted the bad rumor of lack.

If things are just the way they are, you may argue, it is neither lack nor abundance, it’s neutral, isn’t it?  Good point.  However, things “are”, not “are not”.  Abundance exists, but lack does not – it’s the absence of abundance.  Just as darkness is the absence of light.  Thinking lack exists is an illusion.

“All the powers in the universe are already ours. It is we who have put our hands before our eyes and cry that it is dark.”  — Swami Vivekananda

Likewise, we are putting our hands before our eyes and cry we don’t see abundance.

Lack of income?

In the comment section of that post, I conversed with Hunter Nuttall, who I so respect and adore:

Akemi: Really? You still see lack? Give me an example and I’ll incorporate it in my future post. (Be it YOUR lack, not like starving children in Africa. Because that is a different issue. You don’t really know about those kids.)
Hunter: Well yeah, I see lack. For one thing, I have no income. Isn’t that a pretty big lack?

I guess this may be the case for some other readers, too.  And yet more readers are afraid of the lack of income.  So let me make a point here to help you.

First, let me ask you if all your material needs are met with or without income.

After I quit my corporate job in October 2007 and until I started to make money in June 2008, I had no income source.  But I always had roof over my head and foods on the table.  I had a chance to talk with Hunter about this, and the conversation went something like this (quoted with his permission):

Akemi: So are you experiencing any material lack?
Hunter: Well, no.  Not now. . . But I’m afraid I will.
Akemi: How long is your money going to last?
Hunter: Umm . . . I don’t know.
Akemi: You don’t know?
Hunter: . . . No.
Akemi: Okay, then you have enough money.  If you are really short of money, you know exactly how long it will last.

Note about homelessness

People say they are afraid of becoming homeless.  Fear of homelessness keeps people stuck in their jobs they so loathe.  It’s such an effective control system that I wouldn’t be surprised if some exploitative managements were paying those people in the back.

However, I’m pretty sure people who are in alignment with the energy flow of Divine Abundance would not go homeless.  Homeless people are either:

1. Extremely out of alignment and stuck.  Like believing it is possible to become homeless and continuously acting with that fear.
2. Working on some spiritual lessons that can be best learned in homelessness.  For example, the soul may be choosing to experience abundance in an extreme rugs to riches scenario.

And here are three examples of people who rose from homelessness to abundance.

• Alex Smith, owner of Alara Wholefoods in UK, started his business with 2GBP, about $3, that he found in the gutter.
• Chris Gardner, owner of stockbrokerage firm Gardner Rich and who wrote his story in The Pursuit of Happyness that was later turned to a movie, was homeless with a toddler while he was interning.
• Neale Donald Walsch, well-known writer of Conversation with God series, was homeless for almost a year after his car accident.  Yeah, not just a homeless but a homeless with a neck collar.

I’m just listing these people to show the incredible possibilities.  But again, I don’t think we particularly need to become homeless to enjoy abundance.

Limiting thoughts about “income”

Next thing I want to ask to those of you who see lack of income is your idea of “income”.  Is that limited to certain ways, like paychecks or established business income?

Money is just energy and it can come in various ways – if you let it.  But paycheck mentality runs deep in many of us.  Even those who become self-employed carry over this mentality.

Are you comfortable receiving money in unexpected ways or do you want “income source” that seems solid, like employment?  Does it bother you if someone just sent you money, like as donation?  Does it bother if you just picked up a $100 bill?

I’m not saying you should rely on these haphazard incomes.  I’m saying you might want to open up to all kinds of possibilities of income, all kinds of income sources.  So you always have income possibilities – as long as you don’t refuse it by believing you have lack of income.

Seeing abundance everywhere you go

To make money, you first need to see abundance.  You can’t create abundance out of lack – I mean your stubborn belief of lack.  It looks like this:

Dark grim outlook of lack: “There are no good business ideas, people don’t have money and they are not buying anything, and I don’t have any money or connection or expertise to do anything, maybe I’m not interested anyway . . .”

Gee, I just felt really awful.  Let’s get back to abundance consciousness, quick!

. . . okay, I think my vision is restored.  I see abundance now.  I see lots of people, with lots of dreams and desires, and therefore tons of opportunities to serve these people.  Energy is flowing, and all I need to do is to get in this flow.

Do you see it, too?  Look around and say out loud what you see abundantly, whether they are visible stuffs or invisible needs / wants / etc.

When you notice “lack”, take a moment and think if you can change your viewpoint to see abundance.  For instance, you see lots of people losing their jobs?  Means there are lots of people who will benefit with support services in their job search or businesses development.  Think you live in a small town where there isn’t enough market for your business?  Can you go online?  The population is exploding globally, you know.

Share abundance to get more abundance

One excellent way I know to tap into increasing abundance is to share the abundance.  Come up with a win-win game plan that make everyone better off – that will attract more people and money.

I just started promoting my new eBook by affiliate program.  Affiliate programs are easy way to share abundance.  My affiliates make money by promoting great products that improve customers’ lives, I make money, too, and customers are happy to easily find such great products.

Do you know other win-win game plans?  I’d be interested – let me know in the comment ; )

How I started my business

I had a pretty good job as executive admin before.  My motivation to go into business myself was more about the sense of service and increasing love and freedom for all, including myself.  In other words, releasing the light energy trapped in darkness.

I knew there were many many people who would benefit from my Akashic Record Reading service because I was one of them myself.  I had struggled many years trying to make sense of my life, always felt as if there were invisible walls around me.  So I saw abundance of potential customers – all I do is to reach out.  And by doing this, my lifelong experiences, many of which were troubling at the time, become my assets – another abundance.

I also write for this blog.  This is a free access blog and I hardly make money with it right now, but I enjoy writing and sharing my thoughts, so I do it.  I have abundant resources within me.  And I sense there may be yet another abundance that I may be able to tap in by doing this.  I’ll see.

Okay, enough about me.  Here is another person working to release light from darkness, or “eliminate the chain and changing the fucking world”, in her own way.  While making good money herself (reportedly $200K last year)  And yes . . . a lightworker can use bad words – be quite good at it, for that matter ^_^

Do you see abundance now?  And with that empowered vision, what are you going to do?  If you are not doing what you aspire to do, what is stopping you?

This is the final post for the Inside Out Approach To Entrepreneurship series. In this series, we learned how to find your passion, developed it to a marketable niche, checked our readiness to make the leap, and made sure we are right on with our marketing. So you are close to start your own business, or maybe you already have started it. (Image by exper)

Take time to review the business plan

As you get into the task-overload stage of starting a new business, it’s critical to take time to remember the big picture of your business and review the business plan, whether it is written out or not. I know this is hard, but don’t get caught up in filling the orders or doing administrative work!

The key here and going forward is to build reliable business management system, rather than to address each and every single issue at a time.

There are many kinds of business systems. At Yes to Me, we have already talked about building efficient customer service systems (that require less of your time) and ways to find the ideas to build such systems. Marketing needs systematic approach, too. Also, you need reliable accounting system and HR system that cater to your specific needs – and if you are a home-based or small business owner, you probably want to hire outside service for these. You might need professional assistance from lawyers, web designers, and tech support, too.

In this post, we are going to talk about the kind of business systems that allow your business to grow. This is where I am now that I have been through the startup phase of my business.

How can you grow your business without spending more of your time?

I am currently the only person in my business. I do the actual work to fill orders while I also work on marketing and administrative tasks. I only have 24 hours a day (no, I haven’t yet figured out how to expand my time or travel the linear timeline ^_^ ), so as long as I stay in this I’m-the-only-service-provider condition, my business growth is limited. And I also know I’d eventually get bored.

Some possible solutions to this situation are:

1. Build the organizational system to hire other trained intuitives or contract them out so that my business can get more things done using my marketing channels. (Of course, there must be an excellent quality control system for this to work.)
2. Build other income-producing system, perhaps by developing products, such as books and CDs.
3. Partner up with other complimentary businesses to build synergetic business system. For example, partner up with hands-on energy healers so we can refer clients to each other and to start new programs that bring synergetic effects.

The point here is to keep or enhance the service quality, not compromise it, by building the system. Compromising the service quality is suicidal. There is no point in building a system that eventually loses clients and kills the business. Don’t make that mistake.

At this time, I’m only thinking up these options, and I’m confident this is exactly what I need to be doing now. It’s important to think several steps ahead when it comes to business.

How can you spot the opportunities to build business system that brings growth?

This, again, goes back to the first step of finding your love and passion. Now that you are in business, doing what you love day in and day out, you know more about it and how you relate to it. You know exactly which part you really love within that passion you identified in Part 1. The part that you are also strong at.

It may be marketing – talking about your beloved service or products, how they can help people (just like you!), and networking with like minded people. It may be learning and studying the subject even further and passing that expertise to larger audience. Or it may be thinking up new approaches, new combination of services, new possibilities.

Now dream up ways to let go of other parts of your business. I know this is scary. You just started your own business, you feel good to be your own boss and to be in control, why the heck would you want to let any tiny part of it, you’d say. But that is the only way to grow your business.

Of course, you don’t have to grow your business. You can keep it small and tidy. That is your choice.

But if you do want to grow your business, building reliable system is a must.

You may also want to hire a coach or consultant. Some people are just not very good at seeing patterns – they really just see individual cases as individual cases and address them as such without even thinking there may be a better system to address them. If this sounds like you, get help from someone who can see and think in terms of system.

Has this series been helpful to you?

I know this has been a fast, info-loaded series. Starting your own business takes a lot. Did I miss something that you want to know about starting a business? If you are an aspiring entrepreneur, what is your biggest challenge now? Let me know by leaving your comment!

And if you like this series, please link to me or stumble on the post. This Inside Out Approach To Entrepreneurship is the flagship series of my entrepreneur side. I appreciate your support very much

Learn marketing or go bust

This is yet another thing I did wrong when I first started as a new entrepreneur, so learn from my mistakes. I didn’t fully understand the importance of marketing. I had the typical employee mindset – I thought if I offer excellent service, somehow the clients would show up, and I’d make money. Wrong. (Image by Patrick J Lynch)

Right now, there are tons of professionals who can offer outstanding services and yet have so few clients. Many are forced to go back to regular employment out of financial needs. I was pretty close to the low point. Gee, just remembering how I was feeling with that dim outlook makes me cringe.

If you can, start learning about marketing ASAP while you still have employment. It will save you a lot of heartache.

Get Clients Now! — marketing coach in a book

For me, there were two things that helped me to get clients. One, I hired Naomi Dunford and got her personalized advice. It was well worth the money. Two, I read several books on marketing, including Get Clients Now!

This book is like a marketing coach in a book. After briefly explaining the marketing theory, it shows the various approaches from which you are to choose and make your own specific action plan for the next 30 days. It is so practical. Many books talk about marketing ideas that sound nice, but after reading those books, I found myself saying to myself, “Okay . . . so what do I do?” With Get Clients Now! you are writing down your action plan by the time you are one-third way of the book.

It even shows the relative effectiveness of each marketing approach (Let me tell you, advertisement is low in the ranking) so you get to make informed choices. Then you make a checklist, and work on the plan day in day out. The book comes with daily encouragement, the author talking to you from the page as your marketing coach.

It’s important to choose the approach that utilizes your strengths. I like writing, so I blog and network through this platform, but there are other ways. For example, a friend of mine has made a strong connection with the local alternative health center, where people who are more open to spiritual healing gather. If you are like hands-on face-to-face communication, this kind of approach is great.

Regarding the 30 day plan I made according to the Get Clients Now!, I haven’t completed it honestly. It was so effective that I got plenty of clients somewhere in week 3 and forgot about filling the checklist. Now I know clients come in waves, so there may be times in the future when I need to do more marketing – but then I know what to do. I go back to this book, make a new plan, and work on it.

Marketing is about communicating your love for the work you do

Here is the surprising part: I now love marketing. I used to hate the idea of marketing and sales, to talk people into buying my service. I felt shallow when I had to do it. It didn’t fit into my philosophy of “Live and Let Live” And I usually didn’t make the sale, so that added to my negative feeling and hesitation about marketing.

I have a different idea about marketing now. Marketing is about introducing and educating people about the thing I love so much. I love it, I firmly believe it has lots of value, so I want to talk about it. Just like I want to talk about the great movie I saw. I don’t care all that much if my “marketing” results in immediate sales. If it does, it’s great, and I know my service has more value than the money my clients pay, so I feel good. If it doesn’t, I still feel good because I know I gave them valuable info.

Ironically, it seems to me that the less I care about the immediate results of my marketing, the more sales I make. By far, the best marketing gig I’ve done so far for my Akashic Record Reading was the interview Hunter Nuttall facilitated. I worked on that interview over the long Labor Day Weekend without expecting sales at all. I did the interview because Hunter is my friend, he had my reading and had lots of great questions that I found interesting too. It’s an interview, so there is really no sales talk. But the readers picked our enthusiasm, they asked many thought-provoking questions in the comments, and a good number of them contacted me directly ^_^ (And I’m sure the posts were great traffic attractor for Hunter, too. It was a win-win-win for Hunter, readers, and me. Now send a few more interviews like this my way, and I’ll be rich ^_^)

So again, it’s critical to choose your business niche based on what you love, as we discussed in part 1 of this Inside Out Approach To Entrepreneurship series. Your love and passion will show when you talk to people, and therefore it will affect your sales. And when you love what you do, you almost owe to deliver it to the appropriate audience. How can you possibly keep that goodie to yourself? Love is better shared, we all know that.

Do you like marketing? Do you have great marketing ideas? (I’m still learning, so I’m all ears if you do!)

Further reading: Learning to Love Networking Learn three practical techniques to make your great first move in networking that is critical in any marketing. Or read on to Part 5 of this series.

This post is for Blog Action Day 2008 that is about Poverty.

It’s also a supplement to my last post on how to start your own business because the issue of money is unavoidable when you quit your job and make the leap of faith. (Photo by Kaptain Krispy Kreme)

Real cause of poverty

When we think about poverty, it’s so easy to focus on the existing tragedies such as the homeless people or the starving children in Africa. I feel for them, but I’m asking you to put those issues aside for a moment and think why poverty exists. Let’s take care of the root cause first.

Now imagine two individuals – two brothers, with the same educational background. Will they achieve the same level of financial status as they proceed in life? We’ve seen similar cases and know they won’t, right? So what makes one succeed, while the other fails miserably? It’s their thinking. One is focused on wealth, abundance, and success, and the other only sees lack and poverty in and around him.

In my previous bank job, I was told never to judge customers by their appearances. A stinky homeless-like guy may have tens of thousands of dollars while the guy in nice suit may be deep in debt. (As bank employees, we knew this.) I also read that Donald Trump once said, when the economy was down, that the homeless guys had more net worth than himself because they had some coins in their papercups while he was deep in debt.

So what makes Donald Trump rich? He focuses on abundance and success. While the guy on the street worries like crazy and never touches his savings.

Kiva: Empowering the have-nots

This understanding that poverty starts not from external lacks but from the internal scarcity thoughts has taken roots in our social awareness. For example, charity. Charity used to be about sending money to the needy. This only helped the needy superficially and temporarily. Now organizations like Kiva lends money to the people who currently don’t have the money but are willing to make some. They treat the people as those who have the full potential to become rich – just not there yet. This is empowering.

Do you still think there are absolute poverty? People who just can’t climb up from poverty because of their outwardly circumstances? Well, I’m not going to argue – there may be because this physical world is not perfect. For those of you who think that way, however, the real question may be: Are you using their poverty as an excuse for you to stay stuck?

I’ve seen this pattern of thought. For example, Po Bronson’s book, What Should I Do with My Life?: The True Story of People Who Answered the Ultimate Question describes people who say something like “Oh, but those poor immigrants . . . they take the worst jobs . . . I feel bad being so picky about what I want to do in my life . . .” As an immigrant myself, I say BS. Don’t use us as an excuse of your procrastination and lack of courage. For the same token, don’t use people in poverty as your excuse. Pick up after yourself and the world will be a better place.

10 principles of spiritual money practice to eliminate poverty and to become rich yourself

There are a lot you can do right here and now to decrease the world poverty, and only you can do them because they are about your own spirit. In the meantime, they will make you rich

Here are the principles of spiritual money practice (I will be explaining them into more details in my future posts):

1. Let go of your scarcity thoughts. One by one, as they surface in your mind.
2. At the same time, expand your spirit to allow higher level of abundance for yourself and others. (My Dream Money Project is a fun way to do this.)
3. Accept money as a form of natural abundance. There is nothing dirty or evil about money. We can do a lot of good things with money.
4. Learn to see the current situation, financial or not, as a vehicle to learn the valuable lessons rather than being stuck in it.
5. Learn to see the possibilities behind what meets your eye. There are a lot of opportunities to make money.
6. Take responsibility for your own life. Don’t wait until you win the lottery to do what you want to do. Use the power of your free will and free choice to create your own life.
7. See abundance in nature. Be amazed how God (or any name Divinity) has made this physical world so abundant and beautiful. Isn’t the sunrise literally priceless?
8. See everyone as your equals and treat them with respect. Money goes around and comes through people.
9. Start your day with gratitude and end your day with gratitude.
10. Enjoy giving.

If you are an aspiring entrepreneur – the startup money issue

You might want to do some math how much money reserve you need to quit your corporate job and start your own business. Alternatively, you can take a part-time job or rely on your family’s income. But still, there is a point when you cut your umbilical cord and step into the unknown. No amount of money can make this transition completely safe.

When I was starting as a new entrepreneur, I often thought about the Kiva beneficiary in another country that I was supporting. Or about Muhammad Yunus, the banker to the poor, and his story of lending money to a woman who wanted to buy a goat to eventually sell its milk. (If my memory serves me well, she expanded her business further and later became Mr. Yunus’ business partner) It gave me tremendous courage in the uncertain days of early entrepreneurship.

What is your money hangups? Write them in the comment as a way to overcome them!

Further reading: This book review is about how to become a millionaire.