How To Go From ZERO to £Multi-Million Property Empire

Learn how Progressive Property went from dining room to a £Multi-Million business through unplanned, organic JV's and none of Rob Moore's money.

COULD GOVERNMENT ISSUED CRYPTOCURRENCIES BE THE FUTURE?

Prominent economist Mohamed El-Erian sees a future in which an “officially sanctioned” cryptocurrency will exist.

GOING CASHLESS

“We are moving away from cash,” El-Erian says. “Go to Sweden and you’ll see how fast.”

In Sweden, just 2% of the country’s transactions are conducted with cash, and that number is expected to decline further down to 0.5% by 2020. Countries like Canada, the US, and the UK show similar stats.

Despite his predictions, El-Erian understands that we are still years away from cryptocurrency US dollars:

Change in consumer habits and trust in the new medium doesn’t happen overnight. It’s not something that we’re going to see in the next three to five years.

WHO BENEFITS FROM GOVERNMENT ISSUED CRYPTO?

Governments launching their own cryptocurrencies via private blockchains seems like a smart move as the dollar and other fiat currencies continue to lose value and more citizens discover Bitcoin. Venezuela was the first major country to pull this off after suffering from a hyperinflated currency and severe economic issues.

However, given that the whole point of Bitcoin is to subvert government and bank control over an individuals money, its hard to see how a crypto dollar that tracks all of your transactions, earnings, and tax liabilities will be the favored choice by citizens. A government controlled cryptocurrency goes against the blockchain ethos of decentralization and self-governance, making it no more valuable to regular citizens than today’s fiat money.

What may become a useful crypto-currency for institutions to trade services across borders may not be what is adopted by citizens’ seeking autonomy over their spending and finances.

Despite this, countries like the US, who have a dominant position on the world stage could ensure that a government-issued cryptocurrency becomes as ubiquitous and in-demand as the current fiat US dollar.

‘BITCOIN IS OVERPRICED’

Unsurprisingly, Mohamed El-Erian is skeptical about Bitcoin’s status as a currency, and has in the past claimed that Bitcoin is overpriced and that governments “will not allow the amount of adoption that it is currently priced at.”

His comments show a fundamental lack of understanding of how the technology works, and how the act of ‘allowing’ is simply not a choice in a decentralized globally distributed system.

Perhaps El-Erian’s prediction for governments issuing their own cryptocurrencies is less about migrating away from cash and more about trying to usurp Bitcoin and maintain control over financial markets in the long term.

Bitcoin economist Saifedean Ammous has been quick to respond to El Erian’s thoughts on government-issued cryptocurrencies.

"Nothing can be both ‘government-issued’ and ‘like bitcoin’. Government currencies are already mostly digital. Making them any more ‘like Bitcoin’, by introducing cryptographic payment clearance & automated monetary policy, can only mean ending government control over them."

On an institutional level (e.g., government to government or bank to bank trading on private blockchain ledgers) it sounds like officially sanctioned cryptos would be a successful initiative, but for general user adoption, I certainly wouldn’t bet on it.

Source: http://bitcoinist.com/government-issued-cryptocurrencies-future/

LET YOUR MONEY GROW

There is one simple thing that separates the rich from the poor – this one principal is the reason the rich build more and more wealth, and the poor get even poorer, and traditional streams of education fail to teach our youngsters meaning most are faced with having to figure it out for themselves… and most never do.

But first, let’s look at defining the problem in simple terms so we’re all on the same page – what’s needed is some basic definitions of common terms that are often misunderstood.

One of those big problems we face as a society in this modern age is debt. More specifically – bad debt.

There are two types of debt you can have – good debt and bad debt. The difference? Well, the simple defining difference is that bad debt is credit you obtain and then use to purchase liabilities – or several liabilities. This could be taking out a loan for a new car, or purchasing this years holiday on your credit card. Good debt is credit that you leverage in order to purchase assets – this could be taking out a mortgage to purchase a rental property that’s going to return you a second, almost passive income.

The first thing we should probably clear up is the definition of an asset and a liability – they are not what most people think they are! For example, the house that you own and live in – is it a liability or an asset? Let’s make the assumption that you’ve been lucky to pay off your mortgage and you own it outright – how would you answer that question bearing that in mind?

Most people believe their home is an asset – especially if they have no mortgage on it. How can it be a liability when I haven’t got any credit to support it’s ownership and I have a store of value in the property’s equity? Well, according to Rich Dad Poor Dad, the simple definition of a liability is something that costs you money to own, and an asset is something that you own that provides an income over and above the expenses incurred to own it.

So, in the case of your house, unless you’re renting it out and making a profit, it’s a liability – it costs you money to own it and live there! You pay water and electricity bills to keep it operational, you pay council tax for the pleasure of it existing within a certain jurisdiction, and you probably pay insurance to protect the potential downside. If you’re not charging rent to someone to live there over and above YOUR costs then it’s costing you to own it. It’s worth mentioning also that if you rent it out but don’t make enough from the rent you’re charging to cover the expenses then it’s still a liability – the defining difference is whether it achieves positive cashflow or not.

Hold on, I hear you cry, but I don’t have a mortgage and I can sell my property for hundreds of thousands of pounds if I wanted to so it’s an asset because when I sell it I’ll make lots of money! Erm, not quite. You see, you only realise the paper value stored in a property like that once you sell it… and you can only sell it for what someone is prepared to pay. For example, you might have been unfortunate in a relationship and going through divorce where you need to sell quickly – you’re a highly motivated seller, and there are no buyers in the market for your type of property who are prepared to pay what you want to sell it for. All of a sudden, the value in your assets diminishes considerably simple because of someone else’s perception of value.. which could be drastically different to yours! You only realise the value in an asset like that at the point of sale, and there’s no guarantee you’ll find any buyers at the time you’re looking to sell, and there’s no guarantee that if you find a willing buyer that they’ll want to pay what you think it’s worth. This doesn’t sound like a very reliable asset to me – especially given the potential return can so easily change based on multiple variables that are completely out of your control. Yes – you might sell and make a profit, but you might equally have to sell at a loss, and you won’t know which it’s going to be until the point of sale.

Now that we’ve clearly defined good and bad credit, and the definition of an asset and a liability, let’s have a look at the key problem most people face when it comes to finances – financial education.

The one key difference between the rich and the poor is this; the rich know how to master their money and create assets that provide multiple streams of income – more simply, they understand the art and the science of putting their money to work in a way that means their money makes them more money without the controlling person having to exchange time for more money.

But this is exactly the opposite of what we’re taught in school, where the focus is on finding a skill, becoming qualified, and then finding a position where you can exchange your time for money for the rest of your life.

Okay, but what’s wrong with that?

Well, nothing if that approach aligns with your values and allows you to achieve your goals in life. However, the key limitation with this approach is this – you only have 24 hours in a day like everyone else, so what happens when you reach a point where you’re exchanging all those hours for an hourly wage? Well, when there’s no more hours in the day to exchange, you’re not only burnt out and unfulfilled because you have no time to direct towards the things you love in life (let’s face it, most people are far from doing a job they love), but you have now hit your earnings ceiling. How do you earn more when there’s no more time to exchange? This is the key limiting problem with this approach.

Yes, most of us will have to start with this inefficient exchange in order to generate our first income, but it’s what we do with the fruits of our labour that really defines where we’re going to mature into wealthy people or poor people. For those of us who have been lucky enough to have some financial education, we start to do things with our money that let it grow all on it’s own. For those who don’t, they spend all their spare money on holidays, new gadgets, and toys – aka liabilities!

This behaviour sends us into a downwards spiral that can be extremely difficult to get out of. You earn money, and use that money to buy liabilities. Those liabilities increase your monthly outgoings, meaning you have to exchange more time for money to increase your income so you can continue to service the new liabilities you have purchased. You increase your income further so you again have some surplus (but you’re now working 12 hours days and barely seeing your family), and then you use that surplus to purchase more liabilities… and so the vicious cycle continues. Can you see now why this behaviour is so destructive to people’s finances? Can you see why we have such a problem with bad debt these days? All because financial education is considered unimportant by our educational institutions. This needs to change, and this change starts with you educating yourself, so you can go on to educate others and set the next generation up for greater levels of financial success.

So, how do the wealthy grow their money?

There are multiple strategies people use, but they can all be classed as one form of investment or another. You could invest in stocks and shares that not only appreciate in value but that pay you a dividend throughout the year whilst you own them. You could invest in the wild west market of crypto-currencies and benefit for the massive bullish gains we’ve seen in those markets in recent years (I was trading Bitcoin at $900 at the start of 2017, and it’s now broken right through $10,000 – all in under 12 months). You could put your money into cash-flowing investment properties, or you could either start your own business or invest in one.

There are so many strategies you can employ to make your money work for you, rather than you working for money. All it takes is the commitment to educate yourself in whatever vehicle you choose and get started.

I’ve written several blogs on trading and investing that you can find by searching those tags so please feel free to check those out to get some more information on these strategies – there’s also loads of great resources on-line, but there’s also a lot of shit. Be careful and do thorough research from reputable sources.

You can also join my trading education group on Facebook by clicking the following link: LG Trading

You can find some of my trading and investing blogs at the links below:

• Trading: The Basics

• Understanding The Stock Market & Trading

• Financial Wealth: What, How & Why

Enjoy! Please drop me a comment if there’s additional content you’d find value in me covering on this subject!

Source: https://littlegreysays.com/2017/11/29/let-your-money-grow/ 

How Hustling Only Makes You Tired Not Rich

In this video Dan Lok, The King of High Ticket Sales says 'If you ever want to be rich, you've got to work smart' Find out how hustling only makes you tired not rich.

Today is Your Most Important Trading Day

Had a bad run of trades? 

You sat down at the computer last week with your cup of coffee and your favourite pair of lucky slippers on, just another trading day. You were making good progress, and there was a little whisper from way back in your head saying, 'I think we can do this. We're getting there...'

And then you went into self-destruct mode. Trade after trade of emotional trading, the monster coming out of nowhere and taking control, firing off orders like a stereotypical office-manager flipping notes at the pole-dancer after one too many drinks.

It hurts. Hurts like hell.

But tomorrow will be different, right? You sit in the corner of the room after the trading destruction derby and feel awful about yourself. You go for a walk and try and figure this shit out. It needs to change and YOU need to change.

You get revved up and ready. Tomorrow will be different. You're going to change and become more disciplined.

Right?

Except, you've been saying that for six months, a year, longer even.

Until you come to realise that you only ever have TODAY to trade effectively, you are going to continue making excuses and mistakes.

Every day when you wake up and sit at that computer, that is your most important trading day. Not yesterday. Not tomorrow. Today.

You want to be a trader? You need to be willing to focus yourself TODAY. The discipline needs to be there TODAY. The ability to follow your rules ODAY and never mind how long your setup is taking, or the loss you made yesterday that you want to make back.

It sounds like it should be easy, but it isn't. We all have 'off' days. You know the ones where we wake up and it feels like a greyness has settled over the world. We don't want to work, we certainly don't want to do anything difficult.

But guess what? Today is the most important trading day. And when you are feeling like that, you should underline those words on a post-it and stick it to your computer monitor. Because those are the days when the damage tends to be done.

When you feel like that, try this... Just don't trade.

I'll give you a minute to get over that ground-breaking statement. It can be hard to grasp.

Today is your most important trading day. And every day, focus number one is protecting your account. If you feel like rubbish, the best defensive move can be to simply stay away.

Approach every day like it is your only trading day. Don't allow yourself to slip and then assure yourself that tomorrow will be better. In trading, you don't have a guarantee of tomorrow. That damaging behaviour you keep carrying out WILL one day pull your ability to trade from under you. The account will disappear and you will be left with nothing. It won't matter what you tell yourself on your walks or when you're rocking back and forth in the corner of the room. Because you will have allowed yourself to forget that TODAY is your most important trading day, and that will have finally caught up with you.

If you want to succeed, in trading or anything else, you need to come to terms with the fact that all you have is today to make it happen. Your focus and your drive and your determination needs to be there today. Not tomorrow. Not yesterday.

Think of the constant dieter. Always tomorrow. Always next week. And in the interim, they continue on with the destructive behaviour that continues adding to their problem and making it more difficult to overcome.

Now think of the person who loses all the weight. They decided that TODAY is their most important dieting day. All of their focus and determination went into it and they stuck with it on every today.

If you want it, whatever it is, go get it TODAY.

I hope you've all had a great trading week!

James Orr

Source: http://www.thinklikeatrader.co.uk/2018/05/today-is-your-most-important-trading-day.html

Finding “Unicorns:” Questions to Ask Before You Invest in a Startup

Many people ask me about startup investing and how to get started.  

This post — while for informational purposes only and not investment advice — is intended to show you how one successful investor approached the early-stage game.

Jason Calacanis (@jason) has made 125 early-stage startup investments and picked 6 “unicorns” (startups to exceed $1B in valuation) — one out of every 21. Based on his AngelList profile, Calacanis’ investments includes: Tumblr, Cozy, Thumbtack, Rapportive, Uber, Chartbeat, Groundcrew, Evernote, Pen.io, Nimble, Crossfader, Signpost, Calm, many many more. He’s accelerating his deployment of capital and plans to invest in an additional 150 startups over the next 30 months.

The following guest post is an exclusive excerpt from his new book, Angel: How to Invest in Technology Startups—Timeless Advice from an Angel Investor Who Turned $100,000 into $100,000,000. Using stories from his own angel investing career, Jason wrote this book as a playbook for aspiring angel investors.

In particular, this post focuses on questions to ask founders before you invest, but it also serves as a tutorial on how to ask better questions in life and in business.

Enter Jason

A THOUSAND FIRST DATES

The life of an angel is all about managing a deal funnel, which includes three distinct steps: sourcing deals, evaluating deals, and, finally, picking which founders you’re going to fund.

Meeting with founders for an hour is the most frequent technique for angels to decide who to invest in, but certainly not the only one. There are some angels whose primary technique for selecting investments is to follow other smart investors, drafting off of their meetings and deal flow.

Another technique is simply to review the core metrics and decide based on those. This can be done by reviewing a deck or by checking public information sources, like the App Store rankings, and traffic monitoring services, like Alexa and Quantcast.

Some investors have a huge Rolodex and simply invest in the founders they already know, a technique that worked extremely well for investors who knew Elon Musk (Zip2 and PayPal before Tesla and SpaceX), Evan Williams (Blogger before Twitter), and Mark Pincus (Freeloader and Tribe before Zynga).

Of course, the “invest in who you know” approach would mean you missed the biggest startups in history: Mark Zuckerberg, Bill Gates, Evan Spiegel, and Larry Page, who all hit the ball out of the park on their first try—at the ages of nineteen, twenty, twenty-one, and twenty-five, respectively.

Meetings are important and free. You should take a lot of them. Ten one-hour meetings a week is a good target for a professional angel. Half that if you’re doing this part-time.

My best advice to you as you start dating is to be promiscuous with meetings—but a prude when it comes to writing checks. Don’t be a tramp like I was.

I’m going to take you through the four most important questions I ask all founders. The goal of asking these questions is not just for you to understand the business but also so you yourself can answer four critical investor questions:

1. Why has this founder chosen this business?
2. How committed is this founder?
3. What are this founder’s chances of succeeding in this business—and in life?
4. What does winning look like in terms of revenue and my return?

HOW TO ASK QUESTIONS

Your job in these meetings is to play Columbo, the unassuming and always underestimated detective from the classic TV show that started in the ’70s and ran for more than three decades. Your job is not to show off or demonstrate how smart you are by explaining to the founder what they’re doing wrong or by bragging about your heroics as an investor or, even worse, as a founder yourself.

You want to have big ears and a small mouth in these meetings. You want to ask concise questions that take no more than a couple of seconds and then listen deeply to the answers, considering them with every fiber of your consciousness as you write your notes on paper—just like Columbo.

Listening like this will serve two virtuous goals, the first being that the founder will feel heard and understood by you.

If people believe they are being deeply listened to, they will talk more.

This is why, when you talk to your therapist about your mom, they say “hmm…” while tilting their head and looking at you with sympathy. Then they add, “Tell me more about your mother,” or “Unpack that some more,” or simply “Your mother…”

There are six words, four words, and two words in those responses. The last one is the most powerful because it just hangs there, inviting you to build on the topic.

You want to be Dr. Melfi, Tony Soprano’s therapist, sitting patiently while the passion and pain pour out from the boss you’re meeting with. If you’re a great listener, you will be a great investor, as well as a great friend, a great parent, and a great human being.

Second, if you are hyper-present in the meeting, thinking deeply about the founder and why they are taking on the irrational pursuit of starting a company, which comes with a greater than 80 percent chance of failure and a 100 percent chance of suffering, then you will be able to make a better decision on whom to invest in.

Basically, if you shut your trap and listen like a detective or a therapist, you’ll be able to uncover the answers to those four questions better than other angel investors.

You’ll have more hits and fewer misses.

QUESTION ZERO

When you are starting a founder meeting, ask one icebreaker question to get your subject warmed up.

How do you know Jane?

If you were introduced to this founder by a mutual connection, you can quickly establish common ground by asking these five simple words. Listen to the answer you are given and construct a follow-up question based on their answer. So, if the founder said that they worked with Jane, your next move is to say, “You worked with Jane? What was that like?”

I have a game where I try to say things with as few words as possible because it reminds me that this meeting is not about me, it’s about them. It also makes me sound wise, like Obi-Wan or a Toshiro Mifune character.

These are the exact four questions I ask every founder. The answers to these questions will give you most of what you need to make your investment decision. We spend the first half of our hour-long meeting exclusively on them. Then we go deeper.

1. What are you working on?

The reason I phrase this question as “What are you working on?,” versus something more company-specific, like “What does Google do?” or “Why should I invest in Google?” or the supremely horrible “Why do you think Google is going to succeed after eleven search engines have already failed?,” is that it celebrates the founder (the “you”) and what founders do (the “work”). It shows that you have deep empathy and you recognize that this isn’t about what the thing does (Google helps you find stuff), but rather it’s about people (Larry and Sergey write software that helps people find information faster).

2. Why are you doing this?

Again, five simple words that are focused on the founder. When I ask these first two questions, I almost universally see founders melt into their chairs. They relax, let their guard down, and feel like I care about them, which I do. Just like Columbo cares deeply about the suspects he’s interviewing when he asks, “So, what do you do here?” when he walks into their office, as opposed to leading with “Where were you on the night of the murder?”

Just like Columbo, I’m looking for killers and I’m trying to eliminate suspects.

There are some really, really bad answers to the question “Why are you doing this?” The worst two answers, which you’ll hear often, are “To make money” and “Because INSERT-SUCCESSFUL-COMPANY-NAME-HERE doesn’t do it.” If folks are building a startup for money, they will eventually quit when they realize there are many better ways to make money faster and with more certainty. If you want to make a lot of money, you’re better off being a world-class programmer on a very esoteric and in-demand vertical and getting Google or Facebook to give you $1 million-plus a year in stock and cash for ten years in a row. You have no downside, you can work a couple of hours a day, and you get unlimited free food.

If you’re building something because another hugely successful company doesn’t already have that feature, well, you’re wildly naive or, more often than not, plain old stupid. For years people pitched me on startups that were supposedly going to be Google search for news, Google search for video, and Google search for books and magazines. We all know how that turned out.

More recently I’ve been pitched hard on “Uber for food,” “Uber for helicopters,” and “Uber for shopping.”

While there have been some successful startups built by running ahead of market leaders, in general, those kinds of startups get crushed or bought for small dollar amounts. Summize was a search engine for Twitter, back when Twitter was so technologically incompetent that they could barely keep the service online. They bought Summize to catch up, as well as TweetDeck, a more advanced client for reading multiple feeds at once, but the return to the investors in Summize and TweetDeck for these acquisitions were minor when compared to the returns of the company that bought them.

The big problem with “founders” who build a feature that a market leader will inevitably get to—and I use quotes here for a reason—is that they lack vision. The act of selecting a feature as their life’s work, as opposed to a full-blown product or a mission, disqualifies them from being a true founder.

Elon Musk didn’t build a battery pack: he built a car and eventually an energy solution that included solar, home batteries, and, perhaps when you read this, a ride-sharing service like Uber.

It’s okay to start small, but it’s not okay to be a small thinker.

The right answers to “Why are you building this?” tend to be personal. Travis Kalanick and Garrett Camp built Uber because they couldn’t get a cab in Paris at a technology conference. Elon Musk built SpaceX because he wanted a backup plan for humanity. Elon’s earlier idea, that no one knows about, was to put a series of greenhouses in space to back up the biosphere— just like the Bruce Dern movie Silent Running—which, as an interesting aside, came out five years before Star Wars and featured drones that were an inspiration for R2-D2.

Zuckerberg was awkward with the ladies, so he built a social network that would show him their relationship statuses.

Think about that for a second: Is there anything more important than procreation? Not according to Darwin or Freud, so Zuck’s lack of game led to the fastest-growing consumer product in the history of humanity, largely based on people needing to find a mate or to connect with previous lovers (as demonstrated by the number of divorces that mention Facebook in their filings).

3. Why now?

This question has been floating around the Valley for a while, and the first time I heard it was from my friend, Sequoia Capital’s Roelof Botha—the venture capitalist who convinced me to become a “Scout” for their firm, which led to my two greatest investments to date: Uber and Thumbtack.

If you unpack this question, you’re really asking, “Why will this idea succeed now?”

For Uber it was simple: mobile phones were becoming ubiquitous and they had GPS. In fact, another company had already tried to help you order a cab via SMS messages a year before Uber came on the scene. Their “why now” was simply “text messaging,” but that, frankly, wasn’t enough. Without advanced mobile CPUs (central processing units) to power big beautiful touch screens with military precision GPS (global positioning system), there would be no Uber.

For YouTube, which had Roelof Botha as its first investor, the “Why now?” was a confluence of factors and breakout successes that tend to be born during these perfect storms. First, bandwidth costs plummeted after the dot-com crash. Second, storage costs were dropping due to this new thing called cloud computing. Third, blogging was taking off. Millions of folks were writing tens of millions of posts every week and YouTube offered a clever way to embed their videos on other people’s sites—reaching a massive audience for free.

There were dozens of video companies before YouTube, but they all charged people for bandwidth and storage, which meant that if you wanted to post a video on the internet, your reward for going viral was a ten-thousand-dollar server bill. Instead, YouTube sends you a thousand-dollar check from the ads they run on your hit video.

Dropbox, which launched onstage at the first year of my LAUNCH Festival and was also funded by Sequoia Capital, had the same “Why now?” as YouTube: plummeting bandwidth and storage costs.

Founders tend to have these “Why now?” insights without recognizing how profound they are. When I started my blogging company, Weblogs, Inc., in 2004, I had a very simple thesis: I believed that great new writers publishing five short, unfiltered posts a day would get more readers than established journalists writing one story, edited by a half dozen people, once a week.

When I had this realization, it was perfectly clear to me, but even the New York Times journalists didn’t see it. I remember running into legendary tech journalist John Markoff at the Consumer Electronics Show in Vegas when our blog Engadget was covering it for the first time. He asked me how many people we had at the show and I said fifteen. His jaw dropped and he asked me how often they were filing, and I said four times.

He replied, “You’re going to do sixty stories at CES?”

I said, “Actually they’re posting four times a day. So sixty stories . . . per day. How often is your team filing?”

He said they had three journalists at the show and they would do two or three pieces each over the next month. So, they were doing six stories and we were doing sixty a day for five days— three hundred total.

In some ways, “Why now?” is the most important question about the business you can ask because there are so many folks constantly trying the same ideas over and over again in our business.

Google was the twelfth search engine. Facebook was the tenth social network. iPad was the twentieth tablet. It’s not who gets there first. It’s who gets there first when the market’s ready.

4. What’s your unfair advantage?

Founders with breakout startups often have an unfair advantage. Google had their Stanford connections, filled with talented algorithm-writing engineering geniuses. Facebook launched while Zuckerberg was still a student at Harvard, and they used their understanding of campus culture and directories to figure out the dynamics of building online social networks that scale. Mark Pincus launched Zynga with a multi-year cross-promotion deal with Facebook, which allowed Zynga to tag along with Facebook as it grew at an astounding rate. Mary Gates was on the board of United Way with the CEO of IBM, which led directly to IBM hiring her son Bill’s new company, Microsoft, to build the operating system for their first personal computer.

Said another way, this question is asking, in just four words, “What makes you uniquely qualified to pursue this business? What secrets do you know that will help you beat both the incumbents and your fast followers?”

Sometimes, founders will not have an answer for this question. And that’s okay. This is one you often end up answering while looking in the rearview mirror.

WHAT HAVE WE LEARNED?

After asking these four founder questions, which in total are sixteen words, you should have an excellent idea of what this person is building and why.

These four founder questions give you a great starting point for answering the four investor questions every angel needs to ask themselves before investing. Remember, we want to figure out:

1. Why has this founder chosen this business?
2. How committed is this founder?
3. What are this founder’s chances of succeeding in this business—and in life?
4. What does winning look like in terms of revenue and my return?

After thirty minutes and four questions, you’re going to have a strong sense of why the founder picked this business, why it might work right now, and, of course, what they are building.

What you probably won’t know are the tactical details of how they plan on executing on their vision, including their go-to-market strategy, what kind of team they have, the competitive landscape, and the nuances of their business model.

You are going to find out the answers to those questions in the second half of your meeting. But this is the foundation.

Source: https://tim.blog/2017/08/04/questions-to-ask-before-you-invest/

What Is Happening To Crypto? Here’s The Truth… (And Some Things To Consider)

In this video Crypto Zombie discusses what is happening with the markets and cryptocurrency as a whole.

Managing Your Personal Finances as an Entrepreneur: 14 Tips From Leading Experts

As an entrepreneur, it's important to have your personal finances in order, because you never know what may happen with your business ventures.

There's no doubt about it that being a successful entrepreneur requires a lot of expertise in a lot of different areas. Arguably one of the most important aspects to becoming a successful business owner is having your finances in order; after all, with no money, you've got no business. So, to help aspiring entrepreneurs take their next step towards building their empire, we've asked 16 expert entrepreneurs for their best piece of advice for managing your personal finances. Here's what they had to say:

1. Diversify!

"Diversify. Diversify. Diversify. I know that's canned advice you would hear from almost every other "financial expert," but it rings especially true for entrepreneurs. Here's something you might not want to admit to yourself: your entrepreneurial venture has a greater chance of failing than succeeding (gasp!). By diversifying and placing funds into another side business, alternate investments, or just setting aside cash, you will give yourself breathing room in the event that you have to call it quits or need to pivot to another business. In my own experience, I have been able to diversify into other ventures that operate independently of each other and that has led to constant growth and more exciting opportunities."--Jeff Rose, GoodFinancialCents.com

2. Plan For Inevitable Rainy Days (Or Months)

"Since many entrepreneurs have to deal with irregular income, it's important to budget your personal finances around that to make sure that you have savings that you can draw from in the leaner months. You need to know that you can cover the essentials like housing, utilities, insurance, and food. So add up those critical expenses and put aside enough to cover at least a couple months."--Tom Drake, Canadian Finance Blog

3. Plan For Your Future

"Don't forget, you should still be saving for your retirement. Even on a fluctuating income you should aim for a small bit of savings each month. A good starting point would be to open up a Roth IRA and contribute the max each year. If you want to do more, consider a SEP IRA or Solo 401K account, which will help you shelter a lot of your business income from taxes."--Philip Taylor "PT", Founder, FinCon, PT Money: Personal Finance

4. Separate Business Funds From Personal Funds

"When you're an entrepreneur starting your own business, it can be a good idea to keep your personal finances and business finances separate. Not only will it give your business more credibility and a sense of legitimacy, but in some cases it may also help reduce your personal liability were something negative to happen down the road. It will also help you to be organized when it comes to paying your taxes, managing your bills and other payments."--Peter Anderson, Bible Money Matters

"It's simple but vital: Keep business and personal accounts separate and document profit distributions to yourself. As a one-person business, I didn't set up separate accounts soon enough. The CEO of a 10 or 100 employee business wouldn't use corporate accounts as his own; why would somebody running a company of one or five?

Not only do separate accounts make tax-time easier, they're essential if you want to sell your business or you face litigation or bankruptcy. In the worst case, intermingling personal and business accounts may negate the protections offered by your business structure."--David Weliver, Publisher, MoneyUnder30.com

5. Keep Your Expenses Below Your Income

"Never forget that expenses rise to meet income. This is the gist of Parkinson's law. This is the reason that a couple months after most people get a raise, it feels just as tight financially as it did before the raise.

Without an intentional effort, houses, desks, kitchen sinks naturally get messy and cluttered. We have to take action ON PURPOSE to keep things clean and organized. The same ON PURPOSE effort needs to be made to keep our expenses BELOW our income."--Bob Lotich, ChristianPF.com

"Since you probably have a budget for your small business, make sure one is in place for your personal finances as well. It can be easy to let managing your own money fall through the cracks while trying to grow and expand your endeavor. Use a website like Mint (it's free) and enter in accurate amounts for your monthly bills. You'll probably need to estimate your income unless it is consistent. Then, work on reducing all monthly bills. Your ultimate goal is to get your spending under your estimated income. Once you have a surplus, use it to pay down your credit card debts, start or improve your emergency fund, or set it aside for your retirement."--Andrew Schrage, moneycrashers.com

6. Automate Your Bill Payments

"When you're spending every waking minute on building a business or releasing a product it's easy to overlook personal bill payments. Automated payment services that let you setup specific rules for each bill and alerts for exceptions allow you to put your bills on auto-pilot and focus on your business. If you use a credit card you can help avoid leaking money via fees and interest by setting up spending limit, payment due, and late payment alerts."--Ben Edwards, Money Smart Life

7. You Get What You Pay For

"Hire the best people, not the cheapest. If someone is willing to work for free, say no. You want someone devoted to the project, not someone who regards it as a passing hobby that they can tackle in-between episodes of Dancing with the Stars."-- Paula Pant, Founder, AffordAnything.com

8. Protect Your Most Valuable Asset

"Many entrepreneurs overlook their need for disability insurance even though their ability to earn an income is their most valuable asset. Stop thinking "it won't happen to me" and know that it could. (The Council for Disability Awareness has some great stats here). Ask yourself how your family would live without your income or what you would do for income if something happened to you. What are your options? Are you protected? (Note: Life insurance is also very important if there are other's dependent on your income)."--Mary Beth, www.workablewealth.com

9. Maximize Retirement Savings Options

"Those that are self-employed have significantly more options when it comes to retirement savings. Beyond traditional 401k and IRA plans, the self-employed should consider SEP IRAs, individual 401k plans, and even defined benefit plans. These alternatives enable entrepreneurs to save significantly more for retirement in tax-sheltered accounts. For example, a SEP IRA enables a self-employed individual to sock away up to $52,000 this year for retirement. With a defined benefit plan, some are able to save more than $100,000 a year in a tax-deferred account.

Some of these options can become quite complex. As a result, it's best for entrepreneurs to contact a tax or retirement specialist to understand which alternative is best for them."--Robert Berger, doughroller.net

10. Take Your Business On A Money Date

"Check in with your business budget often by establishing a money date ritual. Each week I take myself and my business out to lunch where I review my accounts, create reports, and update my financial goals. It makes doing mundane financial tasks like paying quarterly taxes, or putting together monthly reports, a lot more fun and less of a drag. I actually look forward to getting out of the office (and indulging in a sweet treat afterwards), where I list out positive business accomplishments that have occurred over the past week or so. A money date is the perfect opportunity to reflect on what you've accomplished, where your business is now, and where you're headed."--Carrie Smith, carefulcents.com

11. Seek Out Professional Tax Advice

"Spend some time and money on getting professional tax advice from someone who works with small businesses and entrepreneurs. There are many tax savings to be had if you know what to look for. On the flip side, you can get yourself into trouble very quickly if you don't know what you're doing. Critical areas to look out for include reporting income and expenses, home office deductions, hiring employees vs. contractors, and more. It's money well spent (and will often pay for itself!)."--Ryan Guina, Cash Money Life

12. Strive To Smooth Out Cash Flow

"Consider your personal finances like you would a business. A business has access to credit in order to smooth cash flow for various operations. As an entrepreneur, your income might be variable, so having some sort of mechanism in place to smooth cash flow in your personal finances makes sense. I have a low-interest personal line of credit connected to my checking account. If a client pays late, or if there are other problems, all of my automatic payments are made smoothly. Usually, when the money does come, I can then pay off the line of credit immediately--without ever paying interest. Smoothing out cash flow in your personal finances is just as important as smoothing it out in your business."--Miranda Marquit, www.MirandaMarquit.com

13. Keep Your Business Expenses In Line

"Don't go overboard with your expenses! There's this myth that expensing something magically moves the expense to a tax-free wonderland but the truth is you are still paying for the expense. With income coming in and a company credit card it's easy to let your profits slip away with small expenses. Run your venture lean and only spend on what you need for the business."--Glen Craig, Free From Broke

14. Negotiate Everything

"When it comes to business, make sure you negotiate everything. Contact your credit card processors, your suppliers...contact everyone and renegotiate your terms on a regular basis. Everyday, our business is constantly bombarded with new vendors offering their services at competitive rates. Make sure you strike a conversation and pit your existing vendors against the new ones and you can save tens of thousands of dollars a year."--Steve Chou, mywifequitherjob.com

There you have it--personal finance tips from the pros that will help you build the businessof your dreams. Remember, as most of these experts explained, success is all about striking a balance with your finances. If you are cheap, you're not going to get quality results, but if you're too extravagant, you're likely to end up in the red and ultimately fail. Be smart, be frugal, and put money into things that will grow and you will be well on your way to success.

Source: https://www.inc.com/murray-newlands/managing-your-personal-finances-as-an-entrepreneur-14-tips-from-leading-experts.html