5 Ways To Increase Your Annual Income

5 Ways To Increase Your Annual Income- WWW.HAPPY4ALL.ORG

Invest in Enriching Your Life and Increasing Your Income

Increasing your annual income has many benefits- mainly, ability to afford a quality lifestyle for you and your family, and also the ability to manage unexpected money requirements.

Here are five practical ways to increase your annual income.

#1: Invest in Yourself – Add Value to Your Self Worth

Investing in yourself will give you disproportionately high return on investment- both for the amount of money invested and the time you spent.

DIY Tips to Invest in Yourself

• Leverage the power of learning. Add a new skill, learn a new language, or try something that’s been on your bucket list.
• Set aside time on a daily or weekly basis to read informative blogs, articles or books.
• Attend a workshop, webinar or training to stay updated on the latest trends.
• Explore your creative side to exercise untapped areas of your mind. This will open up different doors of perception- personally and professionally.

Invest time in taking a sabbatical – Retrospect, introspect and regain your focus

How Does This Increase My Annual Income?

Better skills, greater knowledge and wider perception, all lead to a higher level of opportunities.

#2: Invest Smart – Monetarily not Momentarily

Talking about increasing income is incomplete without considering the actual monetary aspect of investing smart.

DIY Tips to Increase Your Future Annual Income

• Start early-as early as you possibly can
• Invest for the long term
• Make the right investment choices- for long term goals (more than 5 years), invest in equities and short term (less than 5 years), invest in debt instruments.

How Does This Increase My Annual Income?

Increase your profits by investing wisely. Instill a long term perspective to evade myopic results from a short-sighted plan.

#3: Invest in a Long Term Career Path – Map Your Progression Professionally

Mapping your professional interests can help you strategically build your career path.

DIY Tips to Chart Your Career Path

• Do a SWOT analysis on your professional traits. Determine your strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats. In this way you can identify the best opportunities that can help you progress with purpose.
• Inculcate a long term vision. Do not let short term challenges come in the way of building your potential in the future.

How Does This Increase My Annual Income?

Being at the right place, at the right time with the right capabilities, tactically improves your career prospects.

#4: Invest in Rewarding Risks – Zone Out of Your Comfort Zone

Taking risks can snap you out of your comfort zone.

DIY Tips to Zone Out of Your Comfort Zone

• Take a chance to challenge yourself. Push your limits beyond the monotony of mediocre tasks. It is a bitter truth that machines will replace you eventually.
• Focus on work that allows you to build your capabilities, even if it means making a drastic change.

How Does This Increase My Annual Income?

Stepping out of your bubble automatically unlocks new possibilities

#5:  Invest in Health – Focus on Your Physical, Mental and Social Well Being

The real wealth is in the health and well being of your body, mind and social interaction. While the increase in disposable income may translate to a higher standard of living, it could also lead to increasing health issues.

DIY Tips to Enrich Your Wealth in Health

• Physical Health
  • Exercise. If not for the physical benefits, it also helps in reducing your healthcare bills.
  • Eat healthy. A home cooked meal is not only healthier but also lighter on the pocket.
• Mental Health – Many occupational lifestyle diseases are creeping into urban population. Maintain a good work-life balance to avoid mental problems such as depression, hypertension and neurological issues.
• Social Well Being – Whether you admit it or not, who you interact with socially and your lifestyle have a big impact on your personality. The social environment you choose to be influenced by will affect the way you think and the decisions you make. Choose wisely.

How Does This Increase My Annual Income?

You become the environment you live in. Make it clean, green and lean on the body, mind and wallet.

16 Mahabharata Quotes That Continue To Define Life

16 Mahabharata Quotes That Continue TIf there is any Indian epic that comes the closest to reality, it is Mahabharata. Each character with its own strengths and vices, circumstances and situations that control fate, the co-existence of love and hate in every soul - it is startling how Mahabharata understand the real world so well. Here are some words of wisdom from Mahabharata that may have been written in a time when nothing existed, but still make so much sense in the present world.

Mahabharata is one of the most interesting texts ever! Find out which Mahabharata character you resemble the most, right here.o Define Life

9 Free Business Productivity Tools For Startups

9 Free Business Productivity Tools For Startups

Starting a business can be a daunting endeavor, especially if all you have is a cool product and not enough capital. In the tech world, or in any other niche for that matter, most startuppers fail not because they have bad products but because they are unable to generate enough consumer interest in their products. 

Considering overheads and other back-office expenses, this scenario doesn’t come as a surprise. So if you’re still starting out and find yourself strapped for much needed funding to keep your startup afloat, the following free business productivity tools are worth checking out.

# 1. Bitrix24.com

If you need a collaboration tool your staff are most likely to adopt with relative ease and minimum training, take the social intranet route.

Bitrix24.com is the fastest growing social intranet that’s free for businesses with 12 employees or less. The application comes as a combination of several different work tools like CRM, project management, real-time streaming, activity planner, file sharing, to name just a few. As it is cloud-based, access can be anywhere, whether using your computer or smartphone. An upgrade to unlimited users starts at $99 per month.

# 2. GotFreeFax.com

In this era of e-mail and instant messaging, you’d think fax machines are no longer relevant. But if aLinkedIn survey as reported by Mashable is to be believed, fax machines are still in until 2017 steps in.

As you might have already guessed from the site’s name, GotFreeFax.com is an online service that allows you to send up to three pages of fax for free (maximum of two faxes per day) to any number in the United States or Canada. The site also offers premium pay-per-fax service should you need to send more.

# 3. RememberTheMilk.com

RememberTheMilk.com is an online productivity tool that assists in task and time management.Remember The Milk essentially functions as your all-in-one task manager, electronic calendar and to-do list. Aside from allowing you to share and split tasks with other people, the application can be integrated with GMail, too.

The pro account is priced at $25 for one year and comes with exclusive mobile app features and Microsoft Outlook integration.

# 4. Kolab.org

Kolab.org is an open-source group collaboration server that allows for sharing of notes, e-mail access, calendar organization, task management, address book maintenance, news aggregation, phone sync and journal integration. Kolab is secure, scalable, reliable, mobile and professional, ensuring productivity every step of the way. As a whole, the application requires some getting used to. But once you get the hang of it, the hassle can be all worth it.

# 5. WaveApps.com

Formerly WaveAccounting.com, WaveApps.com is an accounting software that’s fast, simple and easy to use, offering unlimited invoicing and expense tracking. 100% free for small businesses with nine employees or less, it’s accountant-approved and specifically designed for non-accountants. You can also securely connect your bank and PayPal accounts or other sources of data, and your transactions are automatically imported into the accounting software.

# 6. PRLog.org

To make your business presence known, one surefire route to take is through the distribution of press releases. PRLog.org is a site where you can dispense press releases for free. And if you feel you don’t have the necessary expertise to create a killer press release, the site provides instructions on how to write one, even how to embed videos where necessary.

# 7. Weebly.com

One cardinal business rule is that businesses should have their own websites to boost their market presence online. Weebly.com is a free website creator that doesn’t require website creation expertise. Until you’re ready to go for more complex and/or self-hosted sites that would require monthly or yearly payments, Weebly.com is a good alternative.

# 8. Join.me

For those meetings or web conferences on the fly, Join.me is a simple-to-use teleconferencing application that allows you to review documents and designs, train staff, do product demonstrations – basically to get everyone apprised of company updates. You can do transatlantic web conferences and presentations, too.

# 9. IFTTT.com

IFTTT.com, which is short for “if this, then that,” functions like a computer program repeatedly uttering if/then logic all day long. With IFTTT, you set up “recipes” to assist you with task automation. For a recipe to work, you have to have a channel, a trigger and an action. Examples of channels are 

Facebook

, e-mail, Evernote, LinkedIn, just to mention a few.

For instance, if you’re tagged in a photo on Facebook, you can create a recipe that would automatically download the image into Dropbox.

What other free business productivity tools can yo

10 Tips To Save Money Like Warren Buffett

10 Tips To Save Money Like Warren Buffett

Guest Post by Michael Vincent

Most people, if asked about their financial goals, would instantly say they want to be rich, or to have the financial freedom of being able to buy or pay for anything their heart desires. Saving money is rarely ever on the top of anyone’s list.

Investor Warren Buffett himself strongly believes in the value of saving, despite having billions of dollars to his name. You might want to pick up a pointer or two from one of the world’s richest men…

1. Be careful with your investments

Buffett has been quoted as saying that the first rule of investing is to “not lose money”. The billionaire has placed so much emphasis on this rule of investing, that his second rule is “not to forget rule number 1″. Do not get into debt unless you are absolutely sure that you can profit later on, he advises.

2. Do what you love

Another tip from Buffett is to do something you love. Only then can you find satisfaction from work or your job. If it’s not so easy to just pack up and quit your current job, why not make a hobby out of what you love doing? And maybe try making just a little money out of it? Pursuing your passion can bring lots of fulfillment—and that is something no amount of money can buy.

3. Don’t purchase expensive toys

Some people who successfully earn their first million dollars immediately purchase a luxury vehicle or an expensive toy. As a practitioner of frugal living, Buffett avoids luxuries such as yachts and luxury cars. For him, these expensive “toys” only cause headaches. Buffett advises investing extra cash in investments that can yield good interest rates instead.

4. Do not waste time

To the Berkshire Hathaway CEO and founder, time is as valuable as money. When doing business negotiations, Buffett advises researching and making a decision in advance. He advises against any unnecessary talk, which he likens to “thumb sucking.” If you are making a business proposition, be straightforward and name your price straightaway. Buffet says he won’t talk with anyone unless they give him a price. He also makes decisions right on the spot.

5 Evil People Whose Past May Surprise You

5 Evil People Whose Past May Surprise You

For history buffs, the fact that an aspiring artist named Adolf Hitler was, as a young man, rejected by the Vienna Academy of Fine Arts is a stark reminder of the tantalizing contingency of historical events.

A nascent megalomaniac may wear many hats before donning the service cap and shades of a despot.

But would Hitler’s dangerous ambitions have been contained, or his malevolence deflected, had he become an accomplished artist? As history reminds us time and time again, the road to evil often contains some rather surprising detours along the way. And, as the following cases show, a nascent megalomaniac may try on many — unexpected — hats before donning the service cap and shades of a despot or mass murderer.

1. Pol Pot, Parisian Student

Three decades before his anti-intellectual regime imposed a monolingual, agrarian socialism on the people of Cambodia and claimed the lives of more than 1 million people, Pol Pot was a bilingual foreign student and bon vivant living in the City of Light. In 1949, the 24-year-old future dictator earned a scholarship to study radio electronics in Paris, where, like many student activists, he enjoyed dancing and discussing politics over vin rouge in his Latin Quarter apartment. His study-abroad experience ended after he failed his course three years in a row, forcing him to return to Cambodia in 1953, the same year that the former French colony became independent.

2. Jim Jones, Human Rights Crusader

Jim Jones, the charismatic American religious leader and founder of the People’s Temple, is best known for his role in the group’s cult murder/suicide at Jonestown in 1978, including the poisoning of more than 300 children. But prior to becoming a cult leader, Jones was an avid community organizer and integrationist who was appointed director of the Indianapolis Human Rights Commission in 1961. That same year, when an ulcer-suffering Jones was mistakenly placed in the black ward of a local hospital (because his doctor was black), he refused to move, and his subsequent agitating led to the integration of the hospital.

3. Idi Amin, Heavyweight Champion

Nelson Mandela was not the only former big-name African leader to have spent a great deal of time in the ring as a young man. Just a decade before he staged a 1971 coup to seize power in Uganda, a 6-foot-4-inch, 270-pound Idi Amin was the nation’s heavyweight boxing champion for more than eight years. A former officer in the British Colonial Army before turning tyrant, Amin was also a capable rugby player, though not the sharpest tool in the scrum. Army officials observed of Amin — who would later be responsible for the deaths of up to half a million of his people — that he was “a splendid type and a good (rugby) player … but … virtually bone from the neck up, and needs things explained in words of one letter.”

4. Ayatollah Khomeini, Philosopher and Poet

For most of his adult life, Ruhollah Ayatollah Khomeini was a teacher and lecturer, primarily of Islamic mysticism and philosophy. Prior to embarking on his mission to turn Iran into an Islamic theocracy, Khomeini, influenced by Aristotle and Sufi mystics, penned at least 25 books and treatises, and even some original poems. One poem, published in an Iranian newspaper just four months after Khomeini issued a fatwā against author Salman Rushdie in 1989, begins:

I have become imprisoned, O beloved, by the mole on your lip! / I saw your ailing eyes and became ill through love.

While it appears the Ayatollah is adopting a poetic persona to express a more mystical love of God, his ardent words are not what you’d expect from your average mullah.

5. Timothy McVeigh, Decorated Veteran

Four years before the Oklahoma City bombing in 1995 that killed 168 and left hundreds more injured, terrorist Timothy McVeigh was a uniformed member of the U.S. Army participating in Operation Desert Storm. On the second day of fighting, McVeigh decapitated one Iraqi soldier and killed another, firing from more than a mile away, actions that earned him a Bronze Star. In 1997, after McVeigh was sentenced to death for his crimes, President Bill Clinton signed special legislation to prevent McVeigh from receiving the military burial and honors concomitant with his service.

The good news — and there is some — is that, according to Harvard’s Steven Pinker, in his book The Better Angels of Our Nature, recent declines in levels of human violence suggest that the correlative journey from artist, poet or scholar to mass murderer is not as achievable a career goal as it once was thanks to the growing number of social, moral and political obstacles in its path.

Still, even today, we might want to keep an eye on a former ophthalmology trainee (Bashar Assad) or a Jesuit-trained secondary school teacher (Robert Mugabe), among many others. You just never know what they may want to do when they grow up.

Read more: www.v4all.org

How to Network When You're Socially Awkward

When you’re socially awkward and your social calendar shows it, setting goals like starting a business or leading a movement might seem impossible.

How can you possibly waltz into a crowded room and leave with a dozen business connections if you can barely look a stranger in the eye? And let's not forget that oh-so-mind-numbing round of small talk passed around in rooms of strangers as they try to gauge who can help them get where they want to go in life. 

You can't figure out how to talk about anything so you stand there as quietly as possible, cramming your mouth with cheese and crackers, hoping you don't unintentionally blurt out an offensive statement.

Relax. There is nothing wrong with you. You don't have to change who you are.

Just because you can't thrill a crowd with witty banter doesn't mean you aren’t fascinating. In fact, you may be brilliant. Don't talk yourself out of trying to start your business just because you heard somewhere that an effective business leader must be a social butterfly. 

You don’t have to play by the old rules: This is the digital age. There are a plethora of ways to connect with others who will value your ideas even if you don't engage in the traditional meet and greet. Break the rules and become a digital butterfly instead.

While extroverts believe that focusing on connecting with others through digital means is just a way for you to hide behind your computer, understand that your digital persona can be an important tool for sidestepping your social limitations. 

When you create authority with your digital presence, it will speak for you even when you’re tongue-tied. Check out these four ideas:

Related: How Introverts Can Power Through Networking Events

1. Join online groups for professionals.

Do you think that just because you're the only person you know who is interested in creating life-size dolls, say, that there aren't others out there equally as fascinated by this?

Virtually any topic that you're building your business around has a thriving online community of people who are wild about doing the same thing.

Find them by searching hashtags or doing a simple web search. When you introduce yourself, you will learn things that would have taken you years to discover on your own. And the best part is you will never have to go sit outside alone in the car for 15 minutes to recover from a socially triggered anxiety attack. 

2. Create your own community.

It’s not easy to socialize when you're following the social standards set by someone else. Why not go out on a limb and create your own community that welcomes people in areas related to your field? 

Create a Meetup group, a Facebook group, a Google Plus community or even a Reddit thread so that like minds can find you.

You will be the leader so you can structure the activities and set standards for how people interact with one another. Become the creator instead of asking for permission to join and you will never be at a loss for words because you will be too busy building.

Related: Shy People Tend to Have This Coveted Leadership Skill

3. Host online webinars.

Organizing a webinar that invites leaders and shining personalities from your industry to share their knowledge is a great way to network without having to schmooze. You can streamline the delivery of word of the latest developments in your industry directly from the mouths of those developing them all without doing one breath check.

You can even invite one of the masterminds you admire to be the host of the event while you manage the back end of the project. Invite participants by using your best communication tool: email.

This communication tool was created to help everyone communicate more efficiently. Don't let anyone lead you to believe that communicating by email is a crutch when you know that this tool helps you represent yourself in the best way. 

4. Create a digital-media platform.

The very best way to stay in the loop and relevant in your industry is to create a digital-media platform. A website, blog, video channel or podcast that consistently provides value to your industry is a significantly strategic and brilliant endeavor. 

When you create a digital platform that showcases the best ideas and innovators in your industry, you will attract bright minds who will want to know and befriend you without having to meet for cocktails.

Busy entrepreneurs will make time for you because they appreciate being celebrated for their efforts. You will earn the right to stand among the best without ever wondering if you fit in. You will fit in when you learn how important it is to create a place for yourself.

urs
www.v4all.org 

Entrepreneurs Need to Stop Doing These 10 Things, Right Now

Being an entrepreneur is hard. It's really hard. There isn't a playbook, instructional manual, video or biography that can possibly provide you with enough information to make it easy.

While the difficulty is just part of the deal, there are a number of things that founders often find themselves entangled in that, without question, make it harder. Let’s take a look at a list of the things that you, as a founder, need to stop doing -- right now.

1. Lying to yourself or others about your traction

It’s awesome if you’ve had 70,000 downloads for your new app in the first three months or that you generated over $1 million last year in revenue. It’s not awesome if you only have 2,000 monthly active users or actually lost $2 million overall. These are numbers that you are hiding behind, lying both to yourself and everyone else as you shout them from the mountaintop. At some point, you’ll begin to believe them -- then you’re in serious trouble.

Related: 10 Essential Startup Expenses, and 10 You Should Avoid

2. Focusing on too many things at once

Guess what? You only have 100 percent of your time to split up between your professional activities. If you do too many different things simultaneously, you’re just splitting up your 100 percent into pieces that ultimately resemble slivers of poor performance. Instead, spend 100 percent of your time and focus on becoming excellent at one thing.

3. Working yourself to death

The concept that you need to work grueling hours to be an entrepreneur is not a rule, it’s a choice. Technology has advanced to the point where you can get inexpensive help with literally anything. If you’ve chosen not to learn to use the wealth of outsourcing and automation opportunities that would allow you to have a life and a normal night of sleep, that’s your fault and nobody else’s.

4. Following shiny objects

There’s no quicker way to drown your new enterprise than chasing too many opportunities. Yes, it’s in our nature as entrepreneurs to notice new opportunities and look for solutions to them, but you must remain focused on the task at hand. The best entrepreneurs in the world remain unshakably focused, and you must too.

5. Building terrible "lean" products

The "minimum viable product" (MVP) concept has a lot of value, in theory, but doesn’t always translate to production-level quality. So stop using the lean startup methodology as an excuse to put out crappy, underdeveloped products. You’re only wasting your own time.

6. Using the word "I"

Humility is important, particularly when your company begins to grow and bring on outside team members. There is no better way to disenfranchise them than to take credit for everything that comes out of the door. Stop being arrogant and replace “I” with “we.”

Related: 5 Questions to Ask About Your Financial Model to Add Real Value To Your Startup

7. Building companies with no revenue

If I hear one more pitch where the entrepreneur says, “we’re not worrying about revenue until X happens,” I’m going to poke my eyes out. You’re starting a business, not a hobby, and the likelihood of you building the next Snapchat is fantastically low. Instead, create something that provides users with this magical thing called “value.” If you’re lucky (or smart) people will be willing to pay for it.

8. Asking investors to sign non-disclosure agreements

If you’re doing this, you’re screaming, “I have absolutely no clue what I’m doing”, which doesn’t typically bode well for potential investment. Here’s the thing, investors are investing, not stealing ideas and building companies. On top of that, it can take quite a long time to build your brand and networks as an investor and I can assure you that if they were indeed stealing ideas, it would fly through the startup community like wildfire.

If you’ve found the secret to creating nuclear fusion and are truly worried about it, be sure to work only with known and respected investors.

9. Thinking that you're the only company in your space

When you claim to not have competition, you’re either being dishonest or ignorant. Here’s the problem: competitors aren’t always direct replicas of your business -- think Walgreens and CVS -- but can be other larger companies with potential interest in your space -- Apple or Google -- that have huge amounts of cash to throw at the problem you’re trying to solve.

10. Building photo sharing and mobile dating apps

Sorry to break your heart, but those ships have sailed. You need to stop building companies that are incrementally, or 10 percent, better than what already exists. Instead, be creative and build your business around new innovations, ideas and even industries.

urs 

www.v4all.org

'Focus on Your Passion. Nothing Else Matters.'

www.v4all.org

As founder and chief shoe giver at TOMS, a retail company with a mission of social entrepreneurship -- Blake Mycoskie launched his company eight years ago intent on giving back. The premise of TOMS was simple: For every purchased pair of shoes another pair would be donated to children in need in 60 countries all over the world.  

The spirit of this trademarked "One for One" philosophy has informed how TOMS has grown, as the company added eyewear to their repertoire and moved into other ventures.

Last year, TOMS Marketplace was launched -- a digital hub that calls attention to similarly socially-minded companies and gives customers an opportunity to shop with a cause in mind.

And this spring, TOMS got into the coffee business, directly trading with the farmers that grow their beans and giving a week of clean water to the communities that need it most for every bag sold.

We caught up with Mycoskie, an award-winning serial entrepreneur, former Amazing Race competitor and the bestselling author of Start Something That Matters, to talk about always putting the customer first and the importance of following your passion, wherever it takes you.

Related: TOMS Brings One-For-One Business Model to the Coffee Industry

Q: Knowing what you know now, what would you have done differently when you were first starting up?
A: I would have never decided to enter a business where only a handful of companies or customers can determine your fate.

Q: What do you think would have happened if you had had this knowledge then?
A: I wouldn't have tried to start a cable network [Reality Central in 2003]. I tried to start a reality TV cable network and ultimately failed, because we could not get necessary distribution on the big cable operator platforms.

Q: How do you think young entrepreneurs might benefit from this insight?
A: Even if you have the best idea in the world and tons of customers that want it, if there is a platform, channel, retailer that will get in between you and your customers, you could have a problem. If they love what you are doing, that's great, but if they don't, you have to figure out a way to get directly to the end user with your product and service. 

Related: TOMS Creates E-Commerce Hub for Socially Conscious Shoppers

Q: Besides inventing a time machine, how would you have realized this wisdom sooner?
A: I would have read more business biographies.  The most successful entrepreneurs who write them are transparent about the mistakes they have made and what you can learn from them.

Q: What are you glad you didn’t know then that you know now? Why?
A: How hard it is to start a shoe business. How hard it is to build a business when you are committed to giving something away every time you sell something in a one-for-one manner, and lastly, how many red eye flights you would have to take to save money on hotel rooms!

Q: What is your best advice for aspiring entrepreneurs?
A: Focus on your passion. Nothing else matters.