Book Excerpt

I want to thank everyone that voted on which chapter to provide an excerpt from. Entrepreneurial Magic was the winner by three votes followed closely by Killing Debt. Here is a short excerpt from the winning chapter. I will post another excerpt in a few weeks from the Killing Debt chapter. 

Keep in mind that this is just a quick thousand words or so from a chapter that is over 7000 words long.  It is not even the full section on ideas…

FROM FINANCIAL SORCERY, MAGICAL STRATEGIES TO CREATE REAL AND LASTING WEALTH…

THE IDEA AND THE MARKET

The biggest problem that people have getting a business started is generating an idea in the first place. This is a huge advantage of being a Sorcerer. When searching for an idea for a product I first make sure that I am meditating regularly. Then I very simply perform an invocation to draw an idea to me. This can be aimed at your HGA or Agathodaimon, at a personal saint or supreme power, or at a Jupiterian or Mercurial power. In my case I most often use Manjushri, but I have used Jupiter and Tiriel as well.

Once you perform the invocation and send that call out to the universe for a good and profitable idea[1], make sure to pay special attention to omens and signs. I also make sure that apart from meditation, I make time for mind to roam freely.  In meditation you are suppressing or releasing any thoughts that are not the object of the meditation: this includes inspirations and ideas that in another setting are worth exploring, thus the need for fee thought time. This tends to work best when the body is engaged in a repetitive or non-attention consuming activity. Ever wonder why that great idea always hits you when you are driving to work, doing the laundry or mowing the lawn? The body and conscious mind are distracted just enough to let the rest of the brain tap into the deeper mind and start making connections. Just be sure that you keep something with you so that you can record your ideas when they come, otherwise they fade as fast as a dream at dawn. I use Evernote, an app I have on my i-pod, android phone, laptop, and desktop computer at home for just this kind of thing. Whatever I record at with one device be it audio, text, or photo, is instantly synched to all other devices.

If you really have no idea of what you might like to do take a look at your own hobbies and interests and make a list of skills. Just in the course of your magical studies alone you have probably developed some research skills, crafting skills, organizing skills, as well as some other useful talents. See where these can be applied and monetized. What else have you done?

Another tactic is to take two or more interests and combine them. This often not only makes for something unique, but for something that is marketable to a very specific group rather than the whole world, giving you a manageable group for you to market to. For example a person in one of my Financial Magic intensives wanted to make a living as a professional astrologer, but was getting nowhere. I asked her what other interests she had and the first thing that came up was horticulture. It is hard to distinguish yourself as an astrologer, there are just too many of them marketing to the new age crowd for someone to be noticed without an angle. An ad by an astrologer in a horticulture magazine would garner more attention. Astrology can be applied to almost any pursuit, but specializing lets you stand out. Spells for Investors. Yoga for Surfers. Reiki for Runners. You get the idea.

Remember, your idea does not have to be perfect. It does not have to be sublime. It just has to be marketable and profitable. You need to know specifically who you will be marketing it to.[2] This group should have four factors:

1. It should be narrowly focused so that you can market to them efficiently.
2. It should have the desire for the service or product you provide.
3. It’s members should have an ability to pay.
4. Ideally, you should be a member of the target group yourself.

If any two of these four factors are missing, it’s probably not a good idea.

AVOID PRE-MADE SYSTEMS

A word of advice: there are a lot of scams and dead ends out there. Watch out for expensive classes on how Social Media will make you a killing, how you will become rich self-publishing your own book, how you will use system X to sell real estate or trade stocks.

Most especially watch out for Multi Level Marketing companies including Quixtar, Amway, Shaklee and other companies. It is true that these are no longer the outright scams that they were 20 years ago. Some people even manage to make a  couple hundred bucks or so extra a month but work their asses off every minute of every day and exploit all their friends and family to make it happen. Most people unfortunately lose money when they get hooked up to these companies by purchasing lots of motivational material and trainings that seldom lead to increased profits.

Apart from the money and time suck, have you ever had a friend try to sell you on one of these? It’s creepy. Their eyes glass over and they start repeating the script they were taught verbatim. They always refuse to mention the name of the company up front, and their pitch sounds defensive off the bat before you even get to ask them about it. Is that how you want to be? Besides, turning all your friendships and personal relationships into customer service relationships is a good way to lose all your friends. I won’t even get into the silly idea of collecting money off people working for you down line. Suffice to say that there are not enough people in the world for this to happen for anyone but a lucky few at the top of the pyramid.

If it sounds too good to be true, and comes to you all wrapped up in a nice neat package, my advice is avoid it. Things like that are usually designed to make someone else money!