Have you ever heard of or attended a Millionaire Mind Intensive seminar? I have heard about it but never had the chance to attend. I bought the introductory book. The book had an invitation to attend the seminar for free. I registered to attend this two-day intensive program, but something of high priority came up so I had to cancel. I regretted having to cancel because I knew I would get something for it that would propel me into riches. Probably I would be farther ahead on my goal than I am now.

I recently received an email from Peak Potential giving me another opportunity to attend a Millionaire Mind Intensive seminar coming in my area. I went on their website immediately and registered. It’s not a two-day intensive program – it’s a three-day intensive program. I get the impression that some serious stuff is going on at these seminars. They actual run these seminars from 9:00am to 11:00pm. On registration day the ball gets rolling at 7:30am. So I’m expecting to have lunch, dinner and supper there. (I’ll have breakfast before leaving home.)

My understanding is that by the time I leave the seminar my mind will be tuned into that of a millionaire. Although I think in that direction right now, an intensive push can only give me more staying power. Although I’ve never been to one of these seminars, from what I’ve heard and read, I believe it’s a great opportunity – and it’s free. You will only pay $100 if you fail to attend and not cancel the registration within the days specified. How will they get this $100 if you don’t attend? You have to sign up with a credit card.

The seminar that I’ll be attending will be in June 2009. I will report on this blog my firsthand impressions, what I learned and my recommendations.

Be Rich

So far I have decided on my first niche market. I have also opened a hosting account and started writing my articles for the website. Did I mention that I have my URL (web address)? Well I do. I am not playing around I have goals to reach and success to gain.

Did you set your success goal yet? Are you making the amount of money you REALLY want to. If not, you have to start thinking differently and doing things differently. Set your goals. I have opened up the permission on this blog so that you can also post. Let me know what you are doing or ask me questions if you wish. I intend this blog to be our energizer and support on this journey to places we have not gone before. I don’t want anyone reading this blog to be kicking themselves in five years when you hear about success stories and you declined to get on board five years ago. If you are not motivated read a few self-help books like Think and Grow Rich, The Science of Getting Rich, The Slight Edge and others. You can borrow them from your local library or buy them from Amazon or some other online or offline store. If you are not a big reader then borrow some CDs and DVDs from the library. Do whatever it takes.

If you have any other wealth building ideas, please share them. One very important advice I have for you is never to think that if you share you general ideas (such as trading stocks) that it will take away from your success. That is why I have no problem share my ideas. I believe that what is mine is mine and there is enough wealth for everyone. That’s how smart millionaires think. They believe that by helping others, they are helping themselves. Change your thinking and you’ll change your life.

Be Rich

If you wish to get into forex trading, lookup a website that teaches the basics of the forex market. I read from quite a number of websites. I also went on Amazon and bought some very good books that I consider to be reference books. One of the good things about Amazon is that you can look at the submitted reviews before purchasing. Lastly, there is “treasure” in the information that you can gather from free forex seminars. Yes, there is a catch with these seminars and it’s to have you buy or subscribe to something. Some of these offers are great but don’t go with the hype and don’t buy from emotion – “keep your head on”.

Your ultimate goal in the market is to make money. One of your goals must be to understand the market and be able to develop your own trading strategies and create your own style.

Now back to my trading position that I set on Friday. The last time I checked, that was Tuesday May 26, I had a gain of $55 (about 8.7% on my $630 capital). My first goal is to get to $1,000 by the first of July (this year). This means I need to increase my $630 by 58.7% in approximately one month. This is a very ambitious goal and there is the possibility that I may lose 58.7%. You may be asking why my goal is so ambitious. I am trying to make up for a late start. This $1,000 goal effort should have started from January of this year where I would turn $500 dollars into $1,000 in 6 months. If I do not reach this goal then I will have to find the difference from somewhere else and add it to the account. It is very important for me to reach my account goals to stay on track to my first million dollars in 5 years.

I have been looking at internet marketing for a long time. I have develop a number of websites but never made any money from them. I have found myself at times, to be highly motivated believing that I’m going to make a lot of money. Then I will do all the research on how to build a website including content and structure. I even added the feature where customers could buy products and services right from the website. My friends see the website and say: Wow. Some of my friends have even asked me to build websites for them for a fee. Although I had the drive and knowledge, and took action I have not made a dime. Because of this I distanced myself from website development and went on to something else.

Although I moved away from website development as a means to earn income, I still felt the urge that there was something about internet marketing that I liked. I then tried to determine what it was about internet marketing that was causing me to have this connection. Because of this urge I continued to look for a better internet marketing business. As I continued to search I found some that claim to be the system that will make me millions. I subscribe to several of them, but they just did not satisfy my thirst for success. They were just money grabber. One good thing about them was that they gave a trial period. So I tried them out, cancelled them and got back my money. Some of them are scams and just want you to subscribe and pay a monthly fee. The bad thing is that they do not really want you to learn; they just want you to learn enough so that you will continue your subscription.

After all the ups and downs in looking for a great internet marketing system I have finally found some. How do I know that they are the real thing? Because they give you access to all the required pieces that go into designing a great internet marketing business. They don’t just tell you what to do; they actually show you how to do it from beginning to end. More than that, they tell you which method drives more traffic to your website. The key word here is ‘Traffic’. This is where my problem was all this time. There’s quite a number of ways to drive traffic (visitor) to your website. It is good to know which ones have been proven to drive more traffic than others.

Another important issue about internet marketing is how do you get visitor to buy from you if you are selling something or to get your visitors to take the action you want them to take? This is what these great internet marketing systems teach you.

The internet market system that I am using has received high marks not only from me but from many internet market review websites and many home-based business review websites. It is not a money grabber. In fact right now you only pay $77 and you have lifetime membership.

I have been putting of really settling down and developing this business. But now that I have started this blog and have publicized my goal, I will be working on my internet business. If you want to get into the internet marketing business I recommend that you look at this home-based business review website. The one that I’m using is in the number one slot called Profit Lance.

So there you have it. The four areas that I’ve described to you are the areas that will get me to my first million dollars in five years. Since I have been researching for quite a number of years now and have seen the good, the bad and the ugly, I am working on a website to help others to find the great options that are available and to avoid the scams. When it’s up and running I will announce it in this blog and provide the link.

As I work towards my first million dollars I will be posting what I’m doing, including my ups and down. See you at my next post.

When I realized how tough it was to get an engineering job I started looking for something to do independent of corporate America. I realized that no one cared about how you live. Since I care about myself and my family, I need to take control.

What better place to find this independence but in the stock market. There was a book that I bought for my wife that teaches how to invest in the stock market. It teaches how to get around the fees charged by mutual funds and stock brokers to trade in a self-directed account. Since my wife did not get around to reading the book and I found interest in the market I decided to read it. It was amazing to find out that the market was not as difficult as I had thought. Since reading that book I started reading others. I did not only borrow books from the library, I bought some really good books. I also started going to free seminars. I went to many of them.

Although I started studying the market in 2006, I did not open a stock account until April 2009. I now have $1,000 in the account. I prefer to trade the forex market though, because you don’t have to choose from hundreds of pairs. In forex, I trade about 10 pairs. It’s easier and quicker for me to just look at these few pairs and if there no setup I just log out and look again the next day. The stock market is more time consuming and the rules of the market does not give you the freedom as the forex market. For example, it is just as easy to buy pairs as it is to sell pairs. Not so in the stock market.

So why do I want to trade stocks if I find it easier to trade forex. I am looking at short-term and long-term strategies. For me, forex is for short-term strategies and is more risky. My goal for the stock market is long-term strategies. While I will be trading the forex market, I will be investing in the stock market. In the forex market I will use only technical analysis. In the stock market I will use both fundamental and technical analysis. I will be in and then out of the forex market in a matter of days or weeks. In stocks, I plan to find great companies with the goal of sticking with those companies for 10 years. However, if a company starts to perform poorly I will sell and look for the next great company.

My expectation is to make at least a 100% return on the funds in my forex account per year. For the stock market, I am expecting a minimum 15% yearly return on my funds. I will be sharing with you my gains and losses in both markets. If you wish to know the strategies I’m using drop me a line in this blog. If you have never traded before, you must understanding that there is not such thing as a no-loss strategy. Trading strategies are based on high probability. Therefore you will gain and you will lose but if you have a great strategy you will win most of the time.

In my next blog I will be showing you something about internet marketing that I’m currently working on.

2. Trade in the Forex Market

What do I know about the forex market that makes me think I can win? Well, I know enough and have tested my strategy in the market and won. I learnt how the market works by reading books and attending free seminars. Initially I was studying the stock market since I knew nothing about the forex market. I found out about it during the free subscription period of a stocks magazine. There was a mini forex magazine inside the stock magazine. The forex magazine offered a free one-day seminar. So I signed up for it. Since that first seminar I started getting more offers for forex seminars and I signed up for them too. I was aware that these seminars have a catch to them – to buy into their premium forex program and pay thousands of dollars. Some of them were really appealing and if I had the money I would have bought into one them of them that cost around $5,000. But since I did not have the money a just went to all the free seminars then put the “pieces” together. I also bought a number of forex books for further enlightenment.

In 2007 I signed up for a forex demo account. They gave me $50,000 in practice money and I was able to use it to trade the market. In retrospect, to me the demo account is not like the real (live) account and was a waste of time. There is much more to trading than just the mechanics of trading. The demo account does not carry the depth of emotion and fear associated with the live account. Some of the risks you would take in a demo account would cause you to think twice in a live account.

When I ran out of patience with the demo account I decided to open a live account. I first deposited $1,000 in the account. I must admit that it did not go well. I realized that when I bought a currency pair, for some reason the pair went down instead. When I saw that I was losing, then closed the position, for some reason the pair starts to go up. If I shorted a pair it went up. If I hesitated to buy a pair, it goes up then when I eventually decide to buy, it starts to go down. I just could not understand why the market kept going the opposite directs of my positions. And yes I tried trading in the opposite direction of what I really thought I should have traded – it did not work. I saw my capital eating away on almost ever trade. My capital became uncomfortably low so I bought more books and searched the internet for help in finding out what I was doing wrong. I learnt some things and thought I was now in a better position to win. I therefore added to by capital and started trading again. By the time I gave up, I had lost $900 of my total $1,500 investment.

I had stopped trading for a few months. In the meantime I was still reading and going to free seminars. I reached a point were I could say: “I got it”. I therefore opened a new live account at another broker. I deposited $1,500 and started trading again in October 2007, and in the period of less than 8 months my account was up 80%. As the nature of trading is, you lose some you gain some, I lost some of it and I stopped trading when my return was at 68.12%. In dollars my account was at $2,521.77 by June 2008 – a gain of $1,021.77. To me, this is an excellent return on investment in 9 months. No savings account, CDs, bonds or mutual funds will every give you that – not even over 10 years. I withdrew $2,000 to pay my mortgage and stopped trading for a number of months.

In April 2009, I started to trade again. This time I started with the $521.77 that remained in the account after withdrawing the $2,000 and in less than a month I was up 20%. I would admit that trading the forex market is not easy, especially when you don’t have a mentor. I took the hard route for two reasons, 1) lack of money to pay to be trained, and 2) I did not have a mentor. There are great programs out there and there are scams out there. And these forex courses are not cheap. But you will get training plus a mentor who will show you everything you need to know.

As you can see from the foregoing information, I am very determined to learn, even if I don’t have the money. And that is the approach I am taking to make $1,000,000 in five years. In my next post I will mention how I’m going to use the stock market in my pursuit of $1M.

I mentioned in my first post that I will share with you how I plan to make the $1M in 5 years. There are a number of opportunities that I am simultaneously working on. They are as follows:

1. I will get a steady fulltime job
2. Trade in the forex market
3. Trade in the stock market
4. Develop an internet marketing business

1. Steady Fulltime Job

I mentioned earlier that I have a Master’s degree that has not been working for me these days. My degree is Electrical Engineering – Electronics and Telecommunications. It is very difficult and competitive to get a job in this field, especially at my age (46) and with my level of experience. Employers prefer to hire much younger persons with less experience so they don’t have to pay them as much as they would expect to pay me. It is still difficult to get a job evening if I lower my salary expectation.

I have tried applying for lower paying jobs and positions but having a Master’s degree seems to intimidate some people or the “prospective” boss sees me as a treat to their position. I have tried applying for positions without exposing the fact that I have an advanced degree. What I have come to realize is that, if you don’t know someone in the system your at a disadvantage. Employers prefer to hire someone they know with half the required experience than someone they don’t know whom may have the experience to move mountains.

With the foregoing experience in mind, I have decided to pursue a career in education. The schools like to boast about the number of teachers on staff that have Master’s degrees. Further, teaching has been one of my passions for decades. I have 7 years of part time experience teaching/tutoring math and engineering courses. I also have 20 years of voluntary teaching experience at the churches I’ve been a member of. What better career change could I make than teaching?

So far I have taken the certification exam and met all the other conditions for certification. I currently hold a Certificate of Eligibility to teach mathematics at the high school level. I have taught at the secondary level but most of my experience has been at the tertiary level. I am currently sending out resumes to several school districts. I am confident that I will land a math teaching position for the 2009-2010 school year.

My wife is also looking for a job. If she gets one, it will, to some extent, lighten my load to achieving my goal of $1,000,000 in five years. If she gets a job, some (if not all) of her salary will be invested. Over the years we have learnt to cut a lot of expenses and we are discipline enough to “keep the fat out”.

In my next post I will describe what I’ve done so far concerning trading in the forex market.