It is almost impossible for me to pass up a good contest, so I have entered one at Site Flip University (http://www.siteflipu.com). Bryan Clark is the webmaster and has a great site going.  See the contest here:

http://siteflipu.com/30-days-of-site-flipping-contest/

The contest is to get an original site up and running and attracting visitors within 30 days.  It does seem like a long time, but to get some good visitors it is no time at all.

So here is my entry Professor Prosperity (http://www.professorprosperity.com)

How can you help?  Sign up for my feed, and visit often.  This may be against contest rules, but if you are not cheating (or maybe just bending the rules a little bit) you are not trying .

Here is my competition:

http://blogfluff.com

http://acthighbrow.com

http://traveltipsdigest.com

http://gogreenlifestyle.net/

http://reggae-artists.com

http://bloggerssearch.com

http://frugalzeitgeist.com/

Again vote for me by subscribing to my RSS feed and my soon to be email list.  Also don’t forget my competitors.  Visit them also there are a lot of very talented people out there.

Conceive It, Believe It, Achieve It

Coach Kip

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“Poor people have jobs, Rich and Successful people have careers.” - Colin Cowherd ESPN Radio

I heard this over the radio one day and it took me a while to figure out what he meant. It was one of those days where I just had a few minutes to tune into the radio. As soon as I turned it on I heard this. I don’t know what lead up to this statement but it struck me and stuck with me.

I brought up this statement with my students, most of whom fall into the poor or poverty social class, and they all understood exactly what I was saying.

I explained it like this:

Poor people have jobs. They work for money and nothing else. So what happens? Is a person who makes $250,000 a year poor? Maybe not by money standards but what is their life like? How much do they work? How much do they enjoy themselves?

If they just have a job that pays well they are probably not completely happy. Actually if they are like most of us they have a job that they just don’t like. It is nice to make a lot of money but are they happy?

What is the sense of making a lot of money when all they do is work? Then what happens? When people work in a job that they are not happy in they need to supplement this unhappiness with something. Some buy toys, a bigger house, new cars, and more. Then what happens? They have to keep working to pay it off. Some are more destructive and turn to alcohol or drugs. Still others take their frustrations out on others.

Rich and successful people have careers. What do they work for? They typically don’t work for money, they get money as a result of their effort and their hard work. Instead of working for money they work to learn. They learn what it takes to get to the next step. That next step may be the next rung up the corporate ladder (something I have no interest in). For some the next step is to open their own business. For others it simply is a case of lifelong learning.

These people may not be rich with money, but they are rich and successful with their life. They are happy because they are doing things that they love to do. They are successful not because they work hard, but because they enjoy their work. Since they enjoy their work they tend to spend more time with it, and they tend to do a better job.

So what are you doing? Are you happy with your job? If you are maybe you should begin to learn and turn it into a career. What is the next step? Where will it take you in the future? If you are just starting out don’t worry about the money right now. If you work for money you will rarely get ahead. If you work for your career then you will find the opportunities will come to you and you will get paid soon. The money comes as a secondary result of how well you develop your career.

Be patient, I know it is hard, I fell into those same traps, but there is a payoff in the end.

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We have always been taught backwards. This coming from a teacher.

I remember going into the guidance office and they said “Coach Kip, what would you like to do with your life?”

Heck I didn’t know, at that time I still wanted to be a professional football player. I had no idea what my career was going to be. I stammered “A teacher I guess?”

And so it was, from that point on I was defined by what I wanted to do. I was put in classes that helped me get into college. I was advised on the best colleges for teaching. I went to one of the best Universities in Michigan for teaching, Northern Michigan University. I then promptly dropped out of the teaching program.

Why?

I was beginning to see how that would define me. As I got into my teaching classes I found that students were already getting cynical. I found that I was not getting support for math and sciences in our open discussions in class. I was finding it difficult to write papers on philosophies and issues that I did not agree on. I would not let it define me.

I got a degree in physics instead. Why? I thought physics was cool. I had no idea why. I had no idea what I was going to do with it. I just liked science and physics. So I graduated.

I got a good job but it did not satisfy me. Heck I lived in Russia for four months, I lived in Argentina for a month, and in Dubai for three months (I stayed in the original buildings that are shown with the arrow). Besides that I traveled all over the United States. Still not very fulfilling to me. It was not me. It was not the definition of who I wanted to be. So I went back to school.

I got a teaching degree along with a mathematics degree. I became a teacher. I was lucky. I did not get a teaching degree because I wanted a job, I got one because that is who I am.

So what does that mean to you?

Define - Learn - Do.

The better question that the guidance counselor could have asked is “what do you want to be?” I may have answered a professional football player, but hopefully she would have steered this 145 pound weakling in a different direction. I could have decided who I wanted to be. What I wanted to be. How I wanted to live. What I wanted to have. I could have formed a decision on that

Define

Instead of finding something that you want to do, define who you want to be. Once you define who it is that you want to be the steps are more simple. The steps are also in reverse order that we usually take them in.

Learn

Once you have defined yourself you learn how to become that person. For some it is education, and schooling. For some it may be an internship. For others it may simply be setting a stricked budget to get what they want.

Do

Once you have learned how to get what you have defined for yourself it is a matter of doing it. This can be very difficult because you are bound to make mistakes. Guess what, making mistakes is part of living. It tells you that you are alive. So make mistakes.

Let me give you a little secret. Instead of doing what it is that you think you need to do to get to your definition of life…that sentence and the process is very difficult to understand, I know I have done it that way for a long time…FIND SOMEONE WHO HAS DONE IT BEFORE AND DO WHAT THEY DO.

I am not yelling, just using it for emphasis. Don’t reinvent what has already been done. Just find someone who has the life that you want and copy what they do. Will that make you successful alone? No. But it will get you started. It will then be your task to make it your own. Making it your own, and living the way you want to live will be your success.

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Well it has been quite hectic around here. As most of my readers know we are getting together funds, sponsors, advertisers to purchase a boat so that we can live on it for the next 15 months to two years. It should be a great experience.

My favorite question is where are you going to live? Duh on a boat. We will not really have a harbor to call home. We plan on traveling much of the time, meet new people, and expand our knowledge. (Check us out at TrekkingAround.com).

In doing this it has really made me keep things in prospective. There really is no need to have all this extra junk. It made me realize that I was working for possessions, for junk. Why did I need all that stuff? I have a nice little townhouse that is now for sale. That was good for me. I would have liked to have been in a nicer part of town but I was living on a golf course. The problem was that I was spending all my time working and spending money on possessions that I did not need. Half of the time I would get a bill for something that I did not even know I had. I had no idea why I bought it and I had no idea where I put it. It was terrible. I was working to pay off credit card debt, house debt, student loans, car loans, and trying to keep up with all the bills. Bills are not hard but they tend to change from time to time. Sometimes they change the due date on them, and if you are not paying close attention then you miss that change. Not a very good thing.

So we had a fire sale. Everything must go and what does not go is given away. Yes my wife gave away a little too much but that is OK.

Without all these distractions I have been able to focus. To really focus. With out all these distractions I have become refamiliar with what I really want.

That may be a good practice for you to. Get away from the things that are distracting you. If you are not happy go somewhere so that your distractions are gone. Go to a quiet park, go to the beach, take a drive into the country and stop on the side of a little used road.

Then think. Take a pad of paper and think. Think of what it is that you really want. Think of what you can do without. How bad do you want it? What are you willing to do to make the change? Are you willing to change?

Einstein “Doing the same thing over and over expecting something different is the definition of insanity.”

What is it that I want? I will post more at another time but basically it boils down to this. I want enough money to be able to travel with my wife, play golf, play on a boat, and enjoy life before I have to retire and I am too old to really enjoy life.

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Who owns your life? You do. Actually the only thing you truly own is your life. I got that from a Los Lobos song called A Matter of Time. It is a great song.

It struck me that too many people go through life thinking that they are a part of life, that life owns them, they can only react to what life gives them. It is completely the opposite.

In the path of discovery we must first go through this step. We must, as Dr. Phil says, ‘get control of ourselves before we can ever begin to grow’. Of course I am paraphrasing but it seems that the messages are almost all the same.

It does not matter who you talk to, or listen to, or watch, they have a similar message. Life does not take you where you want to go as the popular saying goes, you take life where you want it to go. You own it.

Take control.

Take charge.

Live life and have fun.

Conceive It, Believe It, Achieve It

Coach Kip

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Where does inspiration come from? Is it something you read, some one you listen to, is it in nature? I think that inspiration comes from you!

Thats right. I think that inspiration comes from inside you. For example. I don’t know how much you read but I read a lot. For the last year and a half I have read almost nothing but business books, success books, and self development books. It may sound boring, but I have a long way to go to get to where I am want to be, besides it is a lot less expensive than a shrink.

So what do I get out of it? I am glad you asked. I get what I need to get at that time. OK that was a little complicated what does that mean?

First I have observed that most books have the same message. So why do I keep reading them over and over again? First off the voice of the writer, or the style of the writing, sometimes strikes a chord when said by one author, but means completely nothing when a different writer says the same thing. When I read Donald Trump’s Think Big and Kick Ass I begin to think big. But when I read Russell Simmons Do You! and he says think big, it does not hit me the same way. Why? Because when I read Donald Trump that is what I expect to get. I was not expecting that from Russell Simmons. I was expecting to get some more insight into my students and hopefully see things they way they do. Instead I got a whole lot more. Russell Simmons had a completely different message saying the same things that I read from everyone else. BTW It is a fantastic book and everyone should read it.

Second, while I am reading a book I may not be ready for the message that the author is trying to tell me. I could read it 100 times but if I am not ready for the message I will never get it. So when people tell me I should not read all those books because they all say the same thing I tell them “Yes but I was not paying attention to the last one.” I wasn’t. I was not ready for the message so I missed it.

Book clubs, and book discussions are a great place to get something that you did not get before. I never really liked Oprah before. I didn’t get her and I really thought that is was just a place where women went to get their daily instruction. Now don’t get me wrong I don’t watch her every day, but my wife watches her often, and when the topic interests me I will tune in for a little while. So I was convinced to join the online discussion on A New Earth by Eckhart Tolle: Awakening to Your Life’s Purpose (Oprah’s Book Club, Selection 61). What a great experience! For those of you who are not doing so it is not too late to join. We are only on Chapter 2 and you can download all the discussion at Oprah.com in video or podcast form. I get so much more listening to others talk about the book. It is a fantastic experience.

So what is the point? Keep reading, keep learning. Maybe you were not quite ready for the for the message the first time you read or hear something. But maybe now you are. Read as many books as possible, read them often, and re-read them. Take time for yourself to learn. You never know how successful you may become.

Conceive It, Believe It, Achieve It

Coach Kip

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I have just recently discovered an interesting thing about myself. At Christmas break I announced to the school that I will not be returning after this semester. I resigned my coaching position and informed the administrators that they will need to find a new Algebra teacher. It was a relief, it was exhilarating, and it was scary all th the same time. It was a big step toward achieving my goals, and that is working from home and being a stay at home dad (no I don’t have kids yet but we are practicing a lot).

Here is the interesting thing. I was worried about me not focusing on my students and getting them to pass the end of the year test. The last year I had the highest scores and it is very important to me to stay that way. By resigning I was afraid that it would not be as important to me as in the past. Kind of like when the commentators talk about a lame duck coach who has just one year left on a contract.

Now I am even more motivated and excited to do well on the tests. My goals have become higher and I am more motivated to achieve. So where does the motivation come from?

Some people are motivated internally. They have a drive and goals that matter only to them. To them it is personal. It is something that they have to achieve just to achieve. Awards, accolades, and money are not relevant.

Some people are motivated externally. They have a drive and goals that are motivated by fame, fortune, and awards. It is the result that matters more. That is what is important to them.

So which is better? It depends what you want. I have found that I am more motivated by things that are important to me. Being the best teacher in school comes with no awards, and no rewards. I don’t get a plaque or a raise. So why is it important to me? Ego? In some cases that may be it. Not me. To me it is being my best.

If you want a big house, a fast car, and more money than you can spend then being externally motivated may be right for you. But how do you get there? To be externally motivated that desire must be an absolute burning desire. It must be so large and so important that you cannot live without it. If that desire is not that strong then maybe you need to look at something else.

Did you ever wonder why you want something so bad but you have a hard time motivating yourself to do something about it? Maybe you don’t really want that thing. Maybe you are focusing on the wrong thing.

So if it is important to you to be your best, to do your best, and be the best of whatever it is that you are doing it is far more important to be internally motivated. The reward comes from the hard work and the accomplishment. The reward is the feeling you get from a job well done and accomplishment. Do these include riches, and nice cars? Well usually not immediately but the rewards will come. Keep working, keep achieving and you will get your rewards in the end. And it will feel so much better!

Conceive It, Achieve It, Believe It

Coach kip

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Why Achieve It? It seems simple, but it is also the most difficult. It is the culmination in your efforts over time. But why is it so hard?People are different, I have had a hard lesson, and that lesson is that people are different. Everyone is good at something, I know that. Everyone needs to work on something. I know that too. No one is perfect. It is hard to admit but it is a fact.

I am really good at the Conceive part. I am really good at the Believe part. I am terrible at the Achieve part. This may seem strange coming from someone who is trying to teach people to be successful and to be leaders, but that is my weakest part. I have to work on it constantly.

Blog posts come sperratically, but it is not because I do not want to work on CoachKip.net. I am trying to build a business online. I am trying to build too many businesses online at once. Why do I over extend myself? Because I am really good at Conceiving an idea and I am really good at Believing that that idea will work but I am terrible at doing the things that are necessary for Achievement.

Why? Achievement to me is the dirty part of the process. It is also the fun and exhilarating part of the process. Since I am a football coach I will relate it to sports.

Conceiving something is like deciding to go out for the team. A player decides that he is going to go out and begins to work out with the team.

Belief begins through practice and working out. Those workouts begin to build confidence in the players. As the season goes on and practice begins players begin to see that they can run plays better and more effectively. They see themselves getting stronger, and faster and they are making less mistakes.

Achievement is the games. This of course is the hard part. Many times teams have had great practices, they believe in themselves and their abilities. They believe in the system. They know they are going to win. Then they go into a game and get beat. What happened? Achievement. They simply did not achieve. So how can we stop this in our everyday lives? There is good news.

The sports analogy breaks down here. Typically teams only get to play each other once. In cases where teams play each other multiple times both teams adjust their plans and play again. Life is not like that. If you fail it is really not a big deal. All the most successful people in business and life have failed and most have failed more that once. It is a way of life. But in life you get a second chance, and many times third, fourth and fifth chances.

Lets say that the Dallas Cowboys and the Green Bay Packers play. Packers win in a close game. If they play again both teams will set up a new game plan and it will be a completely different game. But what if the Packers played the exact same game using the exact same players. Do you think that the Cowboys could take a few days, adjust their game plan and then beat the Packers. Absolutely. As a matter of fact no matter if the Packers had every all-star in the history of the game the Cowboys would be able to beat them. They would be able to undo all their previous mistakes, and do some things that they did not do before to ensure their success.

That is the reality of life, and that is the reality of achievement. It is not a matter of failing, it is a matter of working until you achieve success.

Achievement is the day to day grind of trying something and seeing if it works, then trying something else, until you get what works. Over time, through mentors, because of previous experience, businesses and successful people know what works and what does not. They then have less failures and more success. It is a process that everyone must go through, and it is the process of achievement.

Personally I am a bit of a perfectionist. I may be unorganized, and I may be a bit sloppy sometimes, but I have a very difficult time if things do not work out perfect. That is my downfall in achievement. I plan and practice so much and I am so organized in this manner that I have no doubt that it will work. When it does not work I have a very difficult time figuring out why it did not. This is when a mentor or a partner can come in handy. Achievement is not done alone. Achievement is done with the help of many.

Persistent consistent action and you will be successful

Achieve It

Coach Kip.

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What an interesting experiment. I had a great time doing so and it has been a complete eye opener to me. Here is what has happened.

After reading all the get rich quick, and make money now posts on the Internet I decided to see if it was real or not. I decided to see if it really was possible to make money quickly on line. So I set a goal. A big goal (at least to me). I decided to see if I could make $10,000 in about 4 months. This seems very possible if you read the Internet gurus, and the blogs about people who have done so.

I would not get rich, but it would prove that it could be done. I like money, and I thought that money would help us out a lot. But things change.

I was trying to do this while I was working two full time jobs. I am currently an Algebra I teacher in a Metro School in Nashville, TN. I was an Assistant Varsity Football coach who coached the Receivers in a Spread Offense, and the Outside Linebackers in a 3-3 Stack Defense. I also played a very significant role on Saturdays in planning for our opponent for the next week. For those of you in the know Receivers in a Spread Offense are a very key component. We threw for over 2,000 yards this season. Outside Linebackers (Bandits, Rovers, each defense has a different term) are a very important position on the defense.

I worked from 6:30am to 2:00 pm on academic related issues and from 2:30 to 6:30 on football issues. I woke up in the morning at 5:30am and went to bed at 9:30 pm.

So here is my time breakdown:

• 8 hours of sleep
• 7 ½ hours of academic time
• 4 hours of football time (7 hours on Saturday morning)
• 19 ½ hours dedicated to time that I could not work on the business. I really thought I could do some things while I was at school and my students were working on things. I forgot that I cared about my students and most of that time is taken up answering questions and solving 9th grade crisis’s.
• 4 ½ hours is all I had left to work on the business, eat dinner, try to stay fit (not working out too well), spend time with my wife, and be social.

So things change.

I recently spoke with the rest of the coaching staff and informed them that I will not be coming back next year. That alone frees up 4 hours a day and 7 hours on Saturday.

One of the best changes that happened is that I have a completely different view on what I want to accomplish. I no longer am tied to money. I no longer pray to the money god for guidance, a new house, and a brand new car. Those things were not the motivating factor in me becoming an independent business owner, and working from home. TIME! Time was the factor. In trying to do what I was doing the biggest thing I found was that I had no time.

Don’t get me wrong. I loved coaching. And I will coach again. I just plan on taking a year off to set up some income streams. I like teaching. But I do not see me going back in the classroom for a while. I am going to do some personal coaching and that will keep me connected with students, and able to still teach. I love getting on the Internet and developing businesses and business ideas. What I had a hard time doing was following through with those plans. I had a very difficult time staying focused on things. To me coming up with a plan is the easy part. Executing is not hard either. What I have a difficult time with is finishing.

Let me relate it to coaching. I love coming up with the game plan. I love coaching during the week. I love Friday nights under the lights. There is nothing better on earth. For those of you who have not been to a high school football game lately you should go next year. Just sit and enjoy it. They are great. The best part of Americana. Ok back on track.

Games are not the end point to me. The Championship is. The championship is the end of the season. Games individually are great but they are just one step closer to the end. The championship. In all my high school career, playing and coaching, I have always made the playoffs. It is great, and I am very greatfull for that. But we always got beat. Actually in all my high school career I have always lost to a team that made it to the finals.

I never got to finish a season. I never got to the end. I always was stopped. I don’t think that I am sabbatogeing myself toward my goal. I think that I desperately want to find the end. I desperately want to get to the end.

What is the end? The end for me is having a steady income stream that is passive. Something that I do not have to put a lot of time into to keep going. Something that will give me time. TIME TIME TIME! I like doing things. I do not like working. So I need to have something that will give me time.

Step back for just a minute.

My stats up until now are as follows:

9/9/2007 Begin $0.00
11/16/2007 Previous $345.17
12/7/2007 Gross $105.66
12/7/2007 Expenses ($49.92)
12/7/2007 Net $400.91

Which is pretty good considering I have done virtually no marketing other than social marketing.

If you look back at the stats, when I was primarily doing marketing I was making about $100 a week with just two products. I think that it is very plausible to make $1000 a week on ten products. But I decided that is not the direction that I wanted to go. Expenses were about ½ to ¾ of the profits. This still leaves you with a good income. But it takes a lot of time to keep up with them. It takes time to write the ads, and make sure that the keywords are still active. Google and Yahoo frequently change the price of keywords so it is a constant battle of changing keywords and bids to keep profits as high as possible. So I stopped doing that. It was too much work for to little profit.

What I have done is this:

• I have collaborated on two ebooks.
  I have updated and revised the 3-3 Stack Defense on EZ Playbook.
  I have written a book for Professor Moolah that is awaiting approval from Clickbank for marketing and sales.
• I have done a lot of back end work on Professor Moolah to get it set up for a complete learning and teaching site.
• I have in the works a complete redesign of EZ Playbook that will launch in February of 2008. This will add many interactive functions to the site and develop it into a social site for coaches, players, and fans. There is a lot of back end work being done so that the site can develop and grow in the future.
• I have done a complete custom WordPress design for http://www.trekkingaround.com and have begun the launch of the site. To do these things right it takes a lot of time.

So what is Trekking Around? It is me and my wife’s site about traveling. More specifically it is about us taking a year off and getting a boat to travel the Great Loop. A tour that will start in Nashville, TN this spring. We will travel up the Mississippi and cross over into Lake Michigan. We will go around the Great Lakes and end up in the Atlantic on the Easter Seaboard. From there we will travel down to the Bahamas or the Caribbean for Christmas and then we will either end up traveling back up to New York, or we will travel back to Nashville. That all depends on the next adventure.

As we travel we will promote Green living and run our Diesel engines on Biofuel. We are currently contacting boat manufacturers to find a live aboard that we can use in promotion and travel. We will use the boat to test the viability of Biofuel in a pleasure cruiser, and we will promote the manufacturer along our route by hosting open boat tours for people who are interested in boating, and doing so with low environmental impact.

We are far from hippies, and we are not into Greenpeace. We simply live in the environment and like it. So why not find ways that are inexpensive and low impact? We will be answering that question.

Plug plug – if you are interested in helping or sponsorship you can contact us directly at sponsor@trekkingaround.com until the site is fully up and running. Until then we hope to hear from you soon – end plug

Whew! I have done a lot. Nothing that will get me $10,000 by December 31st, but I have done a lot that will get me an income stream that will allow me to take a year to study environmentally low impact boat travel, and put my life on track for independent living in the future.

And I am Happy!

Conceive It, Believe It, Achieve It.

Coach Kip

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