[nabentre] Financial Literacy

Sat May 28 06:55:05 UTC 2016

Good morning Brandon and everyone,

	What you say is very valid. If one puts their thinking cap on they
can come up with an idea for starting a business or become involved with one
of the long-time players such as investing, network marketing, and many
other opportunities. What people need to understand is that these are not
welfare programs!They're real business opportunities requiring sweat equity,
a certain amount of financial commitments and developing a new mindset. This
leads into the subject of my post.

	Too many of us have been fed a line by our parents and well-meaning
friends and family members that if we go to school, get good grades, get a
good job, and life will be good. This is far from the truth especially for
the blind. The first parts of that equasion can be achieved easily enough by
a blind person, but as many of us know the "Getting a good job" part often
proves easier said than done. It's for this reason that some of us have
chosen to become job creators instead of job seekers. This can be done by
creating a business of some kind.

	What is needed is a serious rethink of this out-dated avice. Instead
of telling people including the blind to go to school, get good grades, and
get a good job it's high time that a doctorin of financial literacy be
taught to those wanting to create additional income streams and to those who
come after us so they can avoid having to fall into the financial traps many
of us know so well. Mary and I cannot help but think of how much better off
we would have been if our parents taught us to develop an idea for a product
or a service, and create a business or service concept to fulfill that need,
invest some of the profits in other ventures and create a healthy nest egg
and multiple income streams so for example if the SSI check fails to show up
one month no problem. You would have other income streams to carry you
through while the government figures out what happened. This is exactly what
Mary and I are doing and it has already proven its weight in gold.

	Throughout our years of involvement in professional networking we
had opportunities to meet many successful entrepreneurs including champions
of financial literacy. Chief of these is Dr. Robert Kiyosaki the author of
Rich-Dad Poor-Dad and many other books on financial literacy. Robert
Kiyosaki co-authored a book with Donnald Trump. Some of these books are
available through BARD and many more are available on www.bookshare.org. You
can learn more about Robert Kiyosaki and the need for a rethink of financial
literacy in this country by visiting: www.richdad.com.

	Mary and I had the opportunity to meet and talk to Dr. Kiyosaki at
one of our networking events in 1998. He's very soft-spoken but has no
problem making his views known when addressing a crowd of over 20,000
budding entrepreneurs. We have heard him speak in person, own several audio
CDS and videos he produced, and can assure everyone that he's the real deal
and not a scammer.

	Part of the problem with blind failing in businesses is the tendency
to view such ventures as welfare programs and not real entrepreneurial
ventures. Businesses only produce if people do whatever is necessary to grow
them. We know of an individual who is preparing to get married later this
year and worried about how she'll pay for her wedding. This individual who
is blind and others we know have the attitude of someone making all of their
financial wowes vanish at the wave of the magic welfare wand. The truth is
that this individual is sitting on a goldmine and could pay for that wedding
and do a whole lot more if she would treat it like a business and make the
mine yield its gold. We have seen this over and over again in the blind
community. Mary and I are not the only ones who have observed this
phenomenon. An individual who works at our rehabilitation center observed
that many of the blind consumers he works with are quick to sign up for
every public assistance program under the sun but reject the opportunity to
develop life-time income that they have total control over and can use it to
achieve their wildest dreams. The goal of our programs for the blind should
be not just the teaching of blindness skills to enable blind consumers to
become gainfully employed but rather they should stress the importance of
creating lifetime income that will be on-going long past their working
years. This is exactly what blind entrepreneurs can do if we would seaze
opportunities that come our way and turn mountains into gold.

Peter Donahue

-----Original Message-----
From: nabentre [mailto:nabentre-bounces at nfbnet.org] On Behalf Of Brandon
Keith Biggs via nabentre
Sent: Saturday, May 28, 2016 12:25 AM
To: NAB Entrepreneurs Mailing List
Cc: Brandon Keith Biggs
Subject: Re: [nabentre] an excited question from a fellow federationist and
entrepreneur

Hello,
Why would I use a dropshipper rather than Amazon?

There are loads of jobs one can do from home, one just may need to develop a
couple skills.
1. Blogger, we talked about this, but blogging and vloging, if done well,
can be great.
2. Programming, being a programmer has so many opportunities involved with
it that I have no idea why it is not taught in grade school. It is really
easy to learn and the potential is so high.
3. Writer, you can publish books, comics or short-stories.
4. You can become anything in consulting, like with the fundraising idea.
Marketing, investing and accessibility are three options that come to my
mind, but there are thousands of other ideas.
5. If you have any talent at all in crafting, or creating kits, Etsy.com is
great.
6. Accounting, if you like reading the tax law, this is perfect for you!
There are a few accessible or partly accessible accounting programs  out
there and everyone has to do taxes.
7. Inventing, buy an arduino and invent a product people would love to buy
and get it manufactured. You can do this from home, although you need to
invite people in to test it and you may need to go out to get parts built.
8. Audio engineering. Reaper is pretty accessible and is not that expensive.
One could do something in mixing.
9. Investing, if your friends and family give you money to invest, you can
run a little fund and take a percentage of the returns. Just make sure
everyone knows what they are getting into when they give you money.
10. Reading, there are some places that pay for readers and reviewers for
books.
So there are lots of options, one just needs to be a little creative.
Thank you,

Brandon Keith Biggs <http://brandonkeithbiggs.com/>

On Fri, May 27, 2016 at 4:03 PM, Daniel Perry via nabentre <
nabentre at nfbnet.org> wrote:

> those are wonderful resources and I sincerely thank you. My passion, 
> however is not blog writing at all, I learned that real quick. I 
> actually like the idea of selling products via dropshipping, but not 
> nessisarily on Ebay. I'd like to either find a business in a box 
> that's legitimate or start my own store but I don't really have loads 
> of money to throw at this, more like probably less than 100 dollars 
> and I can't get out very easily since I don't live in a big city. The 
> reason I love my fundraising business so much is because it allows me 
> to do just that, work straight from home and they already have 
> products to sell so I don't have to do all the leg work of looking for 
> products that will sell nor do I have to work on building my own web 
> site either. So maybe if you could maybe help me find another 
> distributorship type of an opportunity that's accessible to the blind 
> that would be wonderful. Have a wonderful day and I hope this 
> additional information helps you get a much better idea of what I'm
looking for. I'll share some more ideas I have when I get more of your
feedback.
>
> --------------------------------------------------
> From: "Michael Babcock via nabentre" <nabentre at nfbnet.org>
> Sent: Friday, May 27, 2016 12:55 PM
> To: "NAB Entrepreneurs Mailing List" <nabentre at nfbnet.org>
> Cc: "Michael Babcock" <empoweringtheblind at icloud.com>
> Subject: Re: [nabentre] an excited question from a fellow 
> federationist and entrepreneur
>
> Brandon
>> Those are some amazing resources, and thanks for sharing them with me 
>> and the rest of the group. Daniel, reference this message to help you 
>> get moving! Unfortunately I think we've all had it badgered into our 
>> own head, both from public education and the media, that we only need 
>> to work on 8 to
>> 5 or 9 to 5, and we should be making money. People take this mindset 
>> to starting their own business as well, and I'm fortunately, that's A 
>> recipe for disaster.
>>
>> If you're passionate about a topic, or you're passionate about what 
>> you're trying to help people accomplish, then you'll never run out of 
>> content.
>>
>> Sent from my iPhone
>>
>> On May 27, 2016, at 9:18 AM, Brandon Keith Biggs via nabentre <
>>> nabentre at nfbnet.org> wrote:
>>>
>>> Hello Daniel,
>>> You should take some classes on entrepreneurship. Some good videos are:
>>> https://www.udacity.com/course/how-to-build-a-startup--ep245
>>> and
>>>
>>> http://24o.it/links/?uri=http://startupclass.samaltman.com/&from=Il+
>>> corso+di+startup%3F+%C3%88+online+gratis%2C+firmato+Stanford
>>>
>>>
>>> You should do some marketing research for a business idea first. If 
>>> you wish to write a blog, get out of your house and talk to people 
>>> (or just do it over skype). There are 3 steps to interviews:
>>> 1. do in depth interviews that are at least 20 minutes long, and 
>>> listen to what people's thoughts are on blogs and your subject 
>>> matter. Don't ask them right off if they would read your blog 
>>> because they will say yes. Instead ask them when they currently read 
>>> blogs, how do they find their blogs and all open questions like 
>>> this.
>>> 2. After about 6-10 interviews of your potencial users, gather 
>>> together their thoughts and create an idea of what you could do 
>>> based on their feedback. Then get a survey with rating scales, 
>>> multiple choice and check all that apply. Write questions like: How 
>>> do you find blogs? A. Google searching keywords for a problem I am
having. B. Browsing blog sites. C.
>>> Hear about it off friends on Facebook... There are numbers to make 
>>> this statistically valid, look at:
>>> http://iqsresearch.com/what-makes-a-statistically-valid-sample/
>>> But just shoot for 385 respondents.
>>> 3. After getting back your responses (don't cheet!) look at what 
>>> people said and make a prototype blog following what people said 
>>> they wanted to read. Get some of your respondents to read it and 
>>> comment on it. Look and see who is coming to your blog and who is 
>>> not coming to your blog and interview people in those two groups to 
>>> find out why. Then make changes based on their feedback.
>>>
>>> Remember though, your idea is worthless unless people want it. I 
>>> could make a square wheel and try to sell it to car makers but they 
>>> will not buy it.
>>> If I sold the wheel to artests though, they may buy it, but I will 
>>> never know unless they do buy it.
>>>
>>> Here is an example of the design process:
>>> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=taJOV-YCieI
>>>
>>> Just find what you are passionet about and find other people who are 
>>> passionet about the same things and use them as your respondents.
>>>
>>> There is only one get rich quick skeem and that is doing the work to 
>>> make your product or business grow. The only techniques are talking 
>>> to people and doing what they say.
>>> Thanks,
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> Brandon Keith Biggs <http://brandonkeithbiggs.com/>
>>>
>>> On Fri, May 27, 2016 at 7:56 AM, Daniel Perry via nabentre < 
>>> nabentre at nfbnet.org> wrote:
>>>
>>> Hello there everyone, my name is Daniel Perry and I'm from Front 
>>> Royal
>>>> Virginia and I'm also a fellow federationist as well as an 
>>>> entrepreneur. I love working completely from home and currently run 
>>>> my own fundraising business as a distributor for a fundraising 
>>>> company. However, since I love working from home, I also love to 
>>>> look for other businesses that I can maybe get into and expand my 
>>>> sources of income. Here are the businesses that I've tried and 
>>>> failed at. I've tried Ebay and that wasn't a good longterm business 
>>>> solution because I still had to rely too much on sighted help and 
>>>> I've tried internet marketing by creating my own blog from scratch 
>>>> and that just absolutely did not work. I've also been scammed by a 
>>>> couple of opportunities that were too good to be true. Ones that 
>>>> said you only had to pay a small entry fee to get in, something 
>>>> like 15-20 dollars, or in one case $198 and then once you payed 
>>>> that, you had to pay them something like
>>>> 3 grand for the coaching. So naturally I didn't do that particular 
>>>> opportunity. So that's my introduction and I'm wondering if any of 
>>>> you fine folks have any sorts of ideas of businesses that I can run 
>>>> completely from home. I'm excited to be a part of this list and I 
>>>> figured that since I'm not only a federationist but also a business 
>>>> oriented kind of guy I wanted to surround myself with other blind 
>>>> entrepreneurs. Have a wonderful day and I hope to hear from you 
>>>> soon.
>>>>
>>>> Sincerely, Daniel Perry
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