Can it be true that only half of Americans are eating the right amount of food required to maintain a healthy lifestyle?  It is no wonder that health care costs in the US are going through the roof. 

According to the report, at the current rate, obesity will cost the US $344 billion in health care costs by 2018, or the equivalent of 21% of health care spending.  Based on the projections, by that time 43% of American adults will be obese. 

The definition of obese is someone who is roughly 30 pounds over a healthy weight.  According to Kenneth Thorpe, chairman of the department of health policy and management at Emory University in Atlanta, “obesity is going to be a leading driver in rising health-care costs.”

Thorpe used Census statistics, weight data and medical expenditure information to make some astounding conclusions:

• An obese person will have an average medical bill of $8,315 by 2018
• More than half of the population in several states could be obese by 2018, including Oklahoma, Mississippi, Maryland, Kentucky, Ohio and South Dakota
• If the obesity rate continues to rise at the current rate until 2018, only Colorado will have less than 30% of the population who are obese

Maintaining a healthy diet that provides your body with right nutrients that it needs to perform at an optimum level is critical to your success.  Eating too much or not enough could have a significant negative impact in your ability to live to your full potential.   

As shown by these statistics the trends in the US are discouraging.  If we are to maintain our edge in an ever more fiercely competitive world, this is an area that needs to be addressed with upmost importance by the leaders of this nation.

People that have achieved results in their lives have a plan.  That plan usually starts with a vision.  But a vision is just that – an image in your head; a starting point.   We would encourage you to create as clear a vision of what you want as possible.  But once that vision is created,  you should not stop there.  You need to build a plan – a detailed plan that you guide you in your journey.  The plan does not necessarily need to be frozen or immutable.    In fact, most likely your plan will change, but you have to have an initial plan that you will adjust along the way.

The length of time that we recommend for your plan is 3 years.  Why?  Because most worthwhile accomplishments take that long to materialize.  Yet, this is still a length of time that is relatively short and that will motivate you to take action immediately.  There is enough stability in a 3 year period for you to stay the course with your plan, and you are more likely to follow through on a 3 year plan than if you try to create a plan that spans a longer time period.

What should you have in your 3 year plan?   Let’s start with the vision.  Here are some suggested questions in different categories that you should be asking yourself:

Financial

• What will be your net worth?
• How much income will you generate?
• How much will you save?

Health

• How much will you weigh?
• How often will you exercise?
• What habits will you change in your eating habits?

Lifestyle

• What lifestyle changes will you make?
• What hobbies will you start?
• What trips will you take?
• How are you going to have fun?

Career

• Where will you be working?
• What kind of work will you do?
• What promotions, positions, titles, and raises will you strive for?

These are just some suggestions to get you thinking but you really should create your own list based on the things that are important to you.  Once you have built your own list of questions and a vision around them, you should create some specific steps that you will take to get where you want.  Then put some key milestone dates next to each step. 

For example, let’s say that in 3 years you want to be promoted to a management position.  Here are some steps and milestones you might associate with your vision:

• Find a mentor to help improve your management skills and guide you through the process – by March 2010
• Start an MBA program at night – by June 2010
• Achieve a very positive performance review for your current position and repeat for the next three years – by January 2011
• Complete a green belt six sigma project – by June 2011
• Start having serious discussions with your manager about management opportunities – by October 2011
• Start performing management tasks even before being promoted to manager – by June 2012
• Apply for management positions at your existing company or if necessary start searching for management jobs outside  – by August 2012
• Become a manager  – by November 2012

You can also build some experimentation into your plan and you should feel free to change the specifics of how you are going to get there and the associated dates as necessary.  So, following the example above, you may decide that instead of spending precious time getting an MBA, that you would be better off spending more time at work, staying late, and finishing some critical projects that will get you good visibility within the company.

Once you have a plan in place, monitor your progress against your milestones, and make adjustments as necessary.  The most important thing in your success journey is to stay the course and follow a plan, even if the plan requires continuous adjustments.

But if you are not the entrepreneurial type, and you are not willing to taking any risks, but you are still interested in an opportunity to travel the world while performing a regular job, there is another option – working on a cruise ship.  Obviously you will not make the kind of money that was discussed in the article mentioned above, but you can still make a pretty decent living while seeing the world.

The challenge with getting a job on a cruise ship is that it is a very competitive market, and in order to get in you need to know what you are doing – the cruise line industry is one of the most competitive industries to break into.  In order to solve this problem, Neil Maxwell-Keys, an ex-crewmember and hiring specialist for the world’s leading cruise line has put together a eBook called Get a Cruise Ship Job! which provides you with everything you need to know on how to get a job on a cruise ship.

One of the fringe benefits of working on a cruise ship is that, besides visiting incredibly beautiful places, you get to meet a variety of interesting people from many parts of the world.

Make no mistake about it – working on a cruise ship requires dedication and hard work just like any other job.  You are not going to get paid to lay by the pool.  But you will get a chance to take time off and to enjoy the beauty and culture of many foreign locations.  Plus, you will be surrounded by people who are generally happy, and having a good time, which is usually a lot more fun than being stuck in a cubicle farm somewhere.

Take a look at the video below to get a taste for what working on a cruise ship could be like.  But don’t leave to chance your dream to get paid while traveling the world – go into it knowing how to get in so that you don’t get rejected when you apply, potentially further diminishing your chances of getting hired in the future.  After reading Get a Cruise Ship Job! you will be very well prepared to get a great job with a cruise line.

If you are serious about breaking into the cruise line industry get your copy of Get a Cruise Ship Job! and have fun seeing the world while getting paid at the same time.

It really does not matter what you expertise is.  When we talk about expertise, we are not necessarily talking about something that you have a degree in, or have spent many years studying.  It could be something very down-to-earth such as how to take care of kids, how to cook, how to play basketball, how to fix cars, how to do magic tricks, or whatever else you are passionate about and know something about.  You can be an expert even if you don’t feel you know everything there is to know in the subject area – all you need is to know more about it than most people.

So, how exactly do you make money from sharing the knowledge you already have?  The best way is through what is called a membership site, which is simply a web site where people pay a monthly subscription fee to learn from you and from others in the community surrounding your site.

How much money can you make from such sites?  If you do them right you can make hundreds of thousands of dollars per year.  The guy that knows best how to do this is Yaro Starak.  He has done it himself several times and has been very successful doing it – see the recent article How to Make $350K While Traveling the World.

Just this week Yaro opened for the last time this year his very popular Membership Site Mastermind program.  In this program Yaro teaches your everything you need to know on how to create your own membership site, even if you know absolutely nothing about membership sites or internet marketing.

But you need to hurry.  Membership will only be available for a few more days – the program officially closes on Friday at midnight.

We typically don’t promote these types of programs as part of our editorial content, but if you have been looking for a way to start your own home-based business, you owe to yourself to at least learn more about Yaro’s program.  Also, Yaro offers a money back guarantee on his program, so if you sign up and find out it is not for you, you can always get your money back.

Even if you decide not to sign up, at least listen to the video where he explains the program in more detail. 

Click here to access it.

However, he didn’t stop running his business during his travels. He did two membership site launches on his trip, one in Toronto, Canada and another in Athens, Greece.  In the first part of the video he shows you how he made an incredible amount of money with the launch of one of the membership sites. 

The two launches combined generated over $350,000.

In the second part of the video he makes the point that this can be done by just about anyone.  He takes you behind the scenes of two of his friends and students who are using the same techniques to launch their membership site products.  The first is Fran Kerr, who is focusing on treating acne with alternative methods.  The second is Jay Jay – a magician who teaches people illusions and tricks.

If you want to learn more about how to launch a successful membership site you can download this free report from Yaro.

On Tuesday, October 27^th Yaro is opening the doors to his new Membership Sites Mastermind program., where he teaches his students the exact same techniques he used to make $350K while traveling across the world.  But hurry, he’s only taking on students for five days, so if you want to study his course and work with him, head to this page on Tuesday to make sure you don’t miss out. 

Here’s to your online success.

The Skinny on Success demystifies success and points out the fact that success is not about luck, smarts, good looks, or even talent.   Success, as we have explained on this site so many times, is usually the result of hard work, passion and persistence. 

You will enjoy the story of Billy, an accountant who hates his job and dreams of becoming a stand-up comic, and his girlfriend, Beth, a paralegal who is interested in politics. Billy has the right idea of wanting to pursue his passion, but he initially struggles with how to leverage his area of interest.  On the topic of pursuing your passion, here is a great quote from the book, just to give you a taste for the great content you will find:

“If Jay worked as hard at his school work as he did at trying to be funny, he would do just fine.”

Jay Leno’s Fifth Grade Report Card

Part of the initial challenge with Billy was that he couldn’t accept the fact that having talent is not sufficient to achieve success.  The book has some great examples of people who are very good at what they do and make it look so natural, but in reality they got to that point by working extremely hard, not because of natural talent.  Eventually Billy finds a way to channel his interest into an activity where he is happy and successful. 

His girlfriend Beth, on the other hand, was afraid of failure.  And it wasn’t until she took the plunge and failed miserable that she started to learn the important lessons that only failure can teach you.  On the subject of failure, here is another great quote from the book:

“Success is the ability to go from failure to failure without losing enthusiasm.”

Winston Churchill

Like her boyfriend, Beth eventually finds the success she was seeking.

Well, this is the skinny on The Skinny on Success.   If I tell you more it won’t be as fun reading it.   I would highly encourage you to get a copy of this great little book which has a great story line filled with great facts, quotes, and success wisdom.  In fact, I would say that most of what you need to know about success you can learn in about 45 minutes reading The Skinny on Success.   Get your copy as soon as it is available on November 1^st.

But what may seem like a destructive force to some, can be just the right kick in the rear end to get others moving in the right direction.  Many people settle for staying in jobs that they are not happy about just because it is a safe and convenient position to be in.  But when you are forced out of your situation of relative comfort, you may feel the urge to find something different, something that you hadn’t considered before, but that now makes sense to pursue, because, as the old saying goes, necessity in the mother of invention.

If you have been unhappy in your job, and you are now in a position where you need to reinvent yourself, this may be the best chance you have to pursue something that you are passionate about, and that will significantly improve your life.  When you do something that you really enjoy, you improve your overall happiness and outlook in life, which miraculously improves your performance, leading to a higher degree of success and even higher levels of happiness.

David Kyvig, a historian at Northern Illinois University says that “When things are going well, we tend to stay with what is working.  When things don’t, we explore something new.”   And here is the real kicker:  According to Andrea Kays, author of Life’s a Bitch and Then You Change Careers: 9 Steps to Get Out of Your Funk and On to Your Future, in a surprising number of cases we’re happier “if, after the shock, anger and fear, someone is willing to see there’s an opportunity to do something different. Then they ask, ‘Why did I wait so long?’”

As reported in the USA Today, Caroline Blake, 29, of Kenilwoth, NJ, knew that she didn’t like her job as a recruiter for an IT consulting firm.  She also knew that she was passionate about animals.  As the firm started laying people off, she became fearful that she would be next.  The result was a newfound career in pet care.  She invested $10,000 in a Fetch! Pet Care franchise which involves taking care of dogs, including taking them for a walk, and keeping them overnight at her home. 

Despite of the fact that Caroline new works 7 days a week, starting as early as 6:30 am and going as late as 11:00 pm, she has been able to integrate her pet care business into her lifestyle.  Most importantly, she loves what she does, and makes a good living earning about 75% of what she earned as a consultant.  What does she think about her decision?  “The smartest thing I’ve ever done,” she says.

It is surprising what you will find out about yourself when you try something different.  Just look at the case of Jamie Titus, 36, of Dallas, TX.  She used to work as a paralegal for a mechanical engineering firm – a job that involved reading the fine print of contracts and reports all day long.  It turned out that the firm started laying people off and she was forced to take a pay cut and take on an additional workload, a situation that was not sustainable.  So she explored other alternatives.

Despite being an extrovert, Jamie did not think she would do well in sales, since she once failed to raise money for a cause she supported.  But when the opportunity knocked on her door to sell Mary Kay cosmetics out of her home, she went for it.  Now she predicts that within a year she will be making at least as much as she made as a paralegal.  How does she describe her experience?  “I was scared.  I took a huge leap of faith.  But it was the right one.”

As you can see from the examples above, taking the steps to make a significant change in your life or career can be very scary, and usually only happens when circumstances beyond your control force you into making the change.   But if you change into doing something that you enjoy or are passionate about, your entire mind and body will be on your side, significantly increasing the chances that you will be successful.

Define

The very first thing you need to do in order to be successful is define what being successful means.  There are many definitions of success, but the only one that really matters is your own.  If you don’t know what is important to you, or where you want to go, then none of this discussion really matters.

“If you don’t know where you are going, any road will get you there.”

Carroll Lewis

Don’t let the simplicity of this statement fool you.   It is probably the most important and the most often missed step required in people’s success journey.  Make sure you document you definition of success somewhere where you have easy access.  A clear definition of what you want to achieve and where you want to go will greatly increase your chances of being successful.

Plan

Think of your success journey as a project.  You first defined the goals and objectives and now you need to plan how you are going to get there.  Some people have a very clear understanding of what they need to do in order to get what they want – they just never get to it (more to come on this issue).  Others just don’t know how.  So how can you design your success plan if you don’t know the steps you need to take in order to get there? 

This is a very good question, and requires you to understand the concept of “seeing what is inside”.  Think of it this way:  Have you ever worked on a renovation project where you need to replace something that requires removing a wall (or any other object that is obstructing your view)?  You never know exactly what is behind that wall, until you take it apart and see what is inside.   Once you know what is inside, you get a much better appreciation for what you need to do next in order to get the project done.  But you really don’t have it all planned out from the very beginning.  All you know when you start is that you have to remove the wall.

A success journey is similar in many ways.  You may not know exactly everything you need to do in order to get where you want to get, and you won’t know until you “see what is inside”.  But you can plan the first step which is to get past what is keeping you from understanding what the next step should be.

Take Action

Once you have your initial plan in place, the next step is to take action.  Folks, this is where many people fail.  This is where they get stuck.  They create a grand vision and they plan out what they are going to do, but they never quite get to it.  They get busy, life gets in the way, and their plans on achieving success keep on getting shelved indefinitely.  Don’t let this happen to you.  Take action that will get you closer to your goal no matter how small it may seem.

Refine Plan

As described before, after you take action you may get the view of “what is inside” which will help you gain a much better understanding of what you need to do next.  The problem that people run into at this stage is that they lose track of their initial definition of success and they get distracted.  That is why that initial definition stage is so important, especially the documentation.

Repeat

After you refine your plan, take action again, and keep repeating this cycle.  Do a checkpoint on your definition once in a while to make sure you are focused on your desired results, and to ensure you are getting closer and closer to where you want to go.  If you are not, you need to go back to the planning stage and try something different.

Persist

Success does not happen overnight.  It may take many iterations of the plan – take action – refine plan cycle.  But if you persist, success will be inevitable.

But history insists on repeating itself.   As in many other crisis experienced in the past, the stock market tends to bounce back when you least expect it.  The market has now gained more than 50% since its March lows, and keeps on climbing higher.  For those that sold during the crisis and did not come back to the market, an opportunity to let time take care of market fluctuations has been lost.  What was simply a short-term paper loss for investors who stayed true to their investment commitments, was a real loss for those who got out in the middle of the crisis and did not come back.

The most important lesson here is that you cannot let your emotions drive your investment decisions.  Benjamin Graham, the father of Value Investing once said:

“Individuals who cannot master their emotions are ill-suited to profit from the investment process.”

A study conducted in 2008 by Dalbar, Inc. and Lipper shows that over the period of 1988-2007, the average stock fund returned 11.6% annually, while the average stock fund investor earned only 4.5%.  The difference is what is referred to as the “Investor Behavior” penalty, which in this case corresponds to 7.1%.

Why did the average stock fund investor achieve a much lower return than the average stock funds that they invest in?  The answer is simple.  Investors engaged in bad investment behaviors driven primarily by emotions of fear and greed.  They sold when the market was in trouble (and stock prices were low) and bought when the stock market was doing great (and stock prices were high), which is exactly the opposite of the most basic fundamentals of successful investing: buy low and sell high.  These investors chased the latest hot manager or asset class.  They abandoned their investment plan and lost their long-term investment perspectives.

Simply staying put would have saved these investors on average 7.1% in returns.  To put it in perspective, a 7.1% return would have allowed you to double your money in a little over 10 years.  So if you had $100,000 invested, by letting your emotions get in the way, you lost an opportunity to make an additional $100,000 over a period of 10 years.

Throughout history, the best investors in the world have understood that reaching success in the investment world requires the ability to control one’s emotions and self-destructive behavior.

Being a very successful investor is not so much about how well you know the stock market, how well you can predict the direction of the economy, or even how well you pick stocks and other investment vehicles.  The most important factor in being a very successful investor is developing the ability to control your emotions.

The most commonly used credit score in the Financial industry is known as FICO. The FICO score ranges from a low of 300 to a high of 800.  Those that are able to attain a FICO score of 750 or higher are usually eligible to obtain loans at lower rates than people with poorer credit scores.

Given the impact of the recession, millions of Americans are seeing their credit scores lowered significantly due to late bill payment, foreclosures and increased debt.  But even if you have been paying your bills on time, have not gone into foreclosure and have not increased your debt, you could still be hit with a lower credit score.  This is due to the fact that many lenders are closing credit card accounts and lowering credit limits for millions of consumers and business owners.

To give you a sense of the magnitude of the problem, it was reported in the USA Today that credit limits declined from $3.5 trillion dollars in June ’08 to $2.9 trillion in July ’09.  The number of bank accounts has dropped from 435.2 million to 356.6 million in the same time period.

The lenders justify their actions by stating that in order to reduce their risk in this difficult economy they have to cut credit card lines and close accounts.  The consequence of this action is that the percentage of available credit, which is one of the main components of the FICO score, is increasing, which makes people look riskier to lenders. 

To make things worse, more than 400 lenders have started testing or using a new version of the FICO score called FICO 08.  This new score emphasizes how much available credit consumers are using, which just exacerbates the problem.

With the housing market in shambles, many consumers are resorting to modifying their mortgages so that they can afford to stay in their homes.  The problem is that these loan modifications can cause significant damage to your credit score because, even though the amount of principal does not change and no debt is forgiven, these modifications are reported as “partial payments.”

Now more than ever, it is very important that you keep a close eye on your credit score. It is also imperative that you do everything possible to keep your current score from being lowered.  In the article Build Financial Success with a Strong Credit Score we reviewed some of the steps you could take to influence your credit score in a positive way.  Even if you have been negatively impacted by the recession and have seen you credit score take a hit, following the steps in the article will help you start rebuilding your score back to a healthy state.

By rebuilding you credit score one step at a time, you will soon enough be on your way back to financial success.