Investing in Yourself: How to Build a Strong Financial Foundation

Investing in yourself is one of the best things you can do for your financial future. By developing your skills, education, and career, you can increase your earning potential and create more opportunities for financial success. 

Here's how to invest in yourself and build a strong financial foundation:

1. Develop Your Skills

Developing your skills is essential for increasing your earning potential and creating more opportunities for financial success. This means taking courses, attending workshops, and seeking out mentorship and guidance. By developing your skills, you can become more valuable to employers and increase your earning potential.

2. Pursue Education

Education is another important investment in yourself. Whether it's pursuing a degree or taking courses to develop new skills, education can help you increase your earning potential and create more opportunities for financial success. Consider pursuing education that aligns with your career goals and interests.

3. Build Your Network

Building your network is crucial for creating opportunities for financial success. This means networking with other professionals in your field, attending industry events, and seeking out mentorship and guidance. By building your network, you can gain valuable insights, advice, and connections that can help you achieve your financial goals.

4. Take Care of Your Health

Taking care of your health is also essential for building a strong financial foundation. Poor health can lead to missed work, medical bills, and other financial challenges. By prioritizing your health, you can reduce your risk of financial setbacks and create more opportunities for financial success.

At womenflix.org, we're committed to supporting women in their financial journeys. Our community offers a range of resources, including financial education, mentorship, and community support. Join our community today and start investing in yourself and building a strong financial foundation. 

Together, we can create a more equitable and empowered future for women. Slots are available for joining our community at womenflix.org.

Written by Yola Bastos Co-Founder of Women Flix and Founder of Beautifly Digital https://msha.ke/yolabastos/

Mindset and Emotions – How to Control Your State of Mind

If you could genuinely master your emotions take complete control over the way you felt at any given time – then that would be the ultimate technique. I’m serious. If you could do this, then you would become unstoppable in a fight. You would become relentless in the gym. And you would be able to apply yourself to a task in a way that would previously have been impossible.

I imagine that you’re probably rolling your eyes at this point. You probably think I’ve been reading too many hippy blogs. Maybe reading a little too much fluffy self-help. But I’m serious. Most people seriously underestimate the power and influence of their emotions. So, allow me to elucidate you and then demonstrate how you can get your state of mind back under control. At least to some degree.

Unlimited Strength, Perfect Focus, Incredible

Creativity and Social Skills

That’s quite a bold heading right there and you might already be shaking your head in disbelief. But hear me out.

Emotions and Strength

Want strength? Some of the most feared fighters in history were known as the Berserkers. These Norse warriors were so-called because of their ‘berserker rage’ – a mad fit of anger that they would fly into on the battlefield. In this heightened and agitated state, they would become almost invulnerable and would also be able to accomplish feats of incredible strength.

There have been more recent accounts of something similar too. Hysterical strength is a term used to describe more recent scenarios where individuals have seemingly been able to dig into an immense reserve of strength at will. This is where the stories of mothers lifting cars off of their children trapped beneath come in. Likewise, there is a story of a rock climber who managed to bench press themselves free of a huge boulder likely 200KG or more.

Think it’s just a myth? Turns out there is a solid scientific explanation for how this might be possible. Under extreme stress, it seems likely that the body produces excess amounts of testosterone, adrenaline and cortisol. These hormones increase the heart rate, focus, awareness and muscle tone and that is where the extra strength comes from.

Actually, it goes a little deeper than that even. You see, all of us have limits to our strength imposed by our minds and our biology. When you go to lift a weight, you do so by recruiting muscle fibre little bands that make up the muscle and contract in order to give us our strength. The most muscle fibre that the average person can recruit at once under normal circumstances is around 30%.

The most that a highly trained athlete can recruit is closer to 50%. So, a highly trained athlete is only capable of tapping into roughly half of their maximum strength. This is what we mean when we refer to a ‘mind-muscle connection’. Ever seen someone get electrocuted in a movie (think Jurassic Park)? As you know, the idea is that the individual will get flung across the room into the far wall.

What throws them? Their own muscle. The electricity causes all the muscles to contract at once, which creates such a jolt that the person goes absolutely flying. Imagine if you could harness that power and use it to leap up onto a roof!
The reason we can’t access so much of our strength is a) that it would likely cause us injury as we would break a muscle, pull a ligament etc. and b) that it would fatigue us.

If we were to use that much of our muscle power in a single movement, we’d have no energy left for anything else!
But under the right circumstances, being able to dip into these huge reserves of strength is incredibly useful. And adrenaline and other hormones under the right conditions allow us to tap into that power.

Studies show that yelling in the gym can actually increase adrenaline and thereby enhance muscle fibre recruitment, resulting in strength improvements! Now imagine if you could tap into even just 80% of that power at will? Simply by harnessing your emotions?

Emotions for Calm, Collected Focus

But there’s only so far that being able to leap tall buildings and punch through walls will get you. In the real world, physical strength isn’t really what matters. This then is where the ‘flow state’ comes in. A flow state is often described as a state of calm, focus, bliss. It is what happens when the world seems to slow down because you are so intently focused and engaged in what you are doing.

Have you ever opened a cupboard and seen everything fall out but move in super-fast motion to catch it? That’s a flow state. More often we hear about it in extreme sports – athletes finding their flow and being able to pull off incredible stunts at incredible speeds. Outside of physical activities, it is seen in music. When the entire band synchronizes during a jam, this is a type of flow state.

When you have a conversation with someone that lasts all night, that’s a flow state. When you’re writing a book and you write so long that you don’t even notice the time passing that is a flow state. Studies show us that executives in flow management are hugely more productive than those that aren’t. The same goes for startups.

So, what is flow? Essentially, it’s another emotion. Another mental state is triggered by the release of hormones and neurotransmitters. In this case, it is a subtle variation on the fight or flight response, a subtle variation on stress and panic. Here, you believe something is just as important as preventing yourself from getting injured, it is just as compelling as fighting for your life but it is also fun rather than scary.

You have the entire attention of your body and mind which brings about a release of excitatory hormones along with calming ones and those related to bliss such as anandamide. This actually suppresses activity in the prefrontal cortex, triggering a state known as ‘temporary hypofrontality’. This prevents us from worrying, from second-guessing or from over-thinking.

We just do. It’s the opposite of how most of us live our lives today and that’s why many of us are filled with anxiety, frozen with fear. Imagine being able to talk up to a woman/man in a bar and deliver your wittiest conversation ever. Imagine being able to talk in front of an audience with passion and conviction and enrapture them completely in what you’re saying. Imagine being able to work on the projects that matter to you for hours on end without even looking up.

No fear. No doubt. No bursts of anger or unwanted emotion. And this is when our best work is done. This is when we are happiest. Many people try and live their lives in flow as much as possible. The problem is that most of us are full of anxiety and busy with chores and things we need to do.

These limitations leave us stressed, anxious and busy and they take our minds out of the moment. Our entire body and mind cannot possibly be in-sync when we are worrying about debt, or what our boss said at the office. Entering flow means being in the moment which not only makes you happy and confident it makes you unstoppable.

Creativity

Changing your emotions can even make you more creative. The opposite of a flow state is something called the default mode network. This is a network of brain regions that spring into action when you are engaged in boring repetitious work or when you are just relaxing. This is what happens when you allow yourself to become completely at ease and let your mind wander.

Now many people give this mental state a hard time. They say that this is when your ‘inner Woody Allen’ chirps up. This is the opposite of ‘living in the moment. But in fact, this is also when your creativity kicks in. This is the state that Einstein was in when he came up with his special theory of relativity (while working in a patent office!).
This is daydreaming and that is when we come up with plans, ideas and more.

No emotion is a bad thing. The answer is just being able to tap into the right emotion at the right time. It’s about emotional control.

Social Skills
And finally, the obvious power of emotion: social skill. If you want to seem confident, then you need to stop worrying about what others think. If you want to be a leader, then you need to be able to take command, not second guess yourself and not get upset and visibly riled when things go wrong. If you want to engage others and make friends and partners, you need to be charismatic, engaging and entertaining.

All these things are based once again on having control over your emotions. But the thing is: most of us don’t have any control. Most of us sulk when we don’t have a good day and put ourselves in even more of a funk. Most of us are scared when things are wrong. When we’re stressed, we argue with our partners and avoid important work in the office. We sabotage ourselves, undermine ourselves and struggle to get things done all because we can’t control our emotions.

Taking Control

So how do you take back control over your emotions? There are multiple ways, but let’s address two important points: physiology and mindset. Physiology refers to the fact that your emotions are really an extension of how you feel. Emotions describe things like happiness, sadness, anger, fear. We think that these emotions are born from our minds but a lot of the time, that’s not the case at all.

Rather, emotions come from our bodies. Emotions come from feelings that include things like hunger, tiredness, hot, cold. The very function of your emotions is to trigger behaviours that will help you to fix the way you feel. When you haven’t eaten enough lately, your blood sugar dips. This in turn triggers a release of cortisol – the stress hormone. This tells you that something needs to change and wakes you up and in the wild, this would have encouraged you to look for food.

When you eat, your blood sugar spikes, you produce leptin and serotonin. This makes you happy and content and encourages you to sleep eventually serotonin converts to melatonin the sleep hormone. So, in other words, the way you feel is often the result of your physiology and that changes the way you think. Do you think you’re angry because you had a bad day? Possibly. More likely, you had a bad day because you’re angry.

And you’re angry because:

• You didn’t sleep


• You’re in mild pain


• You haven’t eaten enough


• You’ve eaten the wrong things

Do you get the gist? So, one way to change your emotions and to take back control is to acknowledge this. Firstly, recognize that if you’re angry, it’s probably due to physiological reasons and it will pass. At least it won’t seem so bad later.

Secondly, seek to change this. Eat something. Sleep. Take the cue. Learn to follow your own rhythms and work when you’re naturally most productive. Follow the rhythms of the day and get your circadian cycles in check.
And at the same time, look at ways you can directly control your physiology. The very best way? Breathing!

If you learn to breathe correctly (using belly breathing to fill the lower portion of the lungs, then the upper portion) and if you use slow, controlled breaths, then you will be able to lower your heart rate and calm your entire body. This will change your parasympathetic tone, taking you out of ‘fight or flight’ and into ‘rest and digest.

Try it the next time you feel overly stressed, overly competitive or worked up after an intense workout – your heart rate will slow and your mind will grow calmer. The other tool you can use is something called CBT. Now we’re looking at the psychological, self-talk aspect. CBT stands for ‘Cognitive Behavioral Therapy’ and this is a popular form of psychotherapeutic intervention used to treat phobias and other anxiety disorders.

The idea is to look at the content of your thoughts. The self-talk that you give yourself to work yourself into a panic, or to calm yourself down. If you are thinking things like “I’m worried I might fall off that ledge” then of course you are going to be scared. If you think things like “I’m grateful for my wife” then you will be less likely to feel unhappy with where you are in life.

It goes deeper than that of course. You can use CBT to challenge long-held beliefs and to break negative self-talk habits by challenging your thoughts and testing your hypotheses. This is called ‘cognitive restructuring’.
In the short term, you can use CBT techniques in order to more honestly assess your state of mind and your emotions and to then change the way you feel about a situation.

So if you were stressed that you had a deadline you couldn’t meet and it was ruining your evening, then you might use cognitive restructuring in order to assess the thoughts making you stressed and replace them with more productive ones.

For example, you might consider:

• What is the point of being stressed? Will it make matters better?


• What’s the worst-case scenario? Would it really be that bad to tell the boss you can’t finish work on time? Are they expecting too much of you anyway?


• When was the last time you did this?


• Are there other ways you could lessen the blow?


• What would you rather pay attention to right now?

Combine this with controlled breathing and bring your focus to the thing that is most useful to you right now. In the long term, you can use CBT in order to bridge the gap between your thoughts and your physiology. You see, your physiology and your emotions are designed to drive you toward desirable states: sex, food, shelter, love, success, social acceptance.

The problem is that the tasks you need to accomplish often don’t get you those things in the short term. In the long term, entering data into that spreadsheet helps you keep your job which helps you pay for food and keep your family!
But in the short term, it just means more boring paperwork.

So now you need to remind yourself why you do what you do. And you’ll do this not only with words but with visualization. Picture where you want to be. Picture the wealth you want to have, the success, the satisfaction. Then remind yourself that the things you do today are actually driving you toward the things you want. This is when your heart and mind will finally be on the same page. And that’s when anything becomes possible.

Written by Yola Bastos Co-Founder Women Flix yolabastos@womenflix.org https://linktr.ee/yolatvbastos Women Flix, Supporting Women all the way to Success! Women Flix Limited, a company limited by guarantee, was incorporated in England and Wales (company no. 13047578 ).

Mindset and Business: How to Achieve Success in Your Ventures

When we think of success, one of the images that come to mind is often one of a businessman (or woman) decked out in a suit, standing at the top of a high-rise building and looking out over the streets below.

We associate business with success in this way for a number of reasons.

Firstly, success in business often brings money and riches. Secondly, success in business suggests a certain level of skill and ability and tends to yield a higher status and importance as a result. For all these reasons, business and success go hand in hand in our minds and for many, those are the specific heights that we are aiming for.

But is business success really what you want? How can you go about getting it? And what might you unwittingly be doing wrong that could be sabotaging your own success?

In this guide, we’ll take an in-depth look at what it means to be a success in business; and how you should go about getting there.

Be Careful What You Wish For 

The first thing to remember is that you should be careful what you wish for. For many, the idea of success in business is a very romantic and idealistic one. It’s something we might spend a lot of time daydreaming about. But as is very often the case, the reality isn’t always what you might have expected. And it might not even really be the dreams that you’re having.

Let me explain.

Many of us associate success with the business. We’ve already explained this and it seems to make sense on the face of it.

But another of the reasons we hold this association in mind is that we have been trained to think this way. Over many years, we have seen images of successful people almost always wearing suits and wielding power. This is how success is depicted in the movies and in the books.

We think of the film Limitless or maybe Wolf or Wall Street (despite the fact that both these movies were really lessons against seeking too much power, too quickly). Maybe you want to make your parents proud? Maybe you plan to follow in their footsteps?

The image of success that your grandma has is linked to business as well, after all! But this can then lead to your downfall. If it means that you then chase after things that don’t really bring you joy. If it means that you become the head of a big delivery company, or of a corporate legal team. Maybe it means you become a procurement manager.

Whatever the case, you can end up taking a stuffy job and being a ‘suit’ and attempting to get rich that way. You’ll start at the bottom, put in the hard graft and the work and climb the corporate ladder. But is that really what you want? Not only are you now facing years possibly decades of working hard with very little reward, but you’re also going to be working toward something that may not be all that gratifying.

Sure, the pay is good when you’re standing in that high-rise, but do you really want all that responsibility? And do you feel all that passionately about the product or service your company is providing? The price of success is often that you end up staying late until 8pm or 10pm that you have to deal with people shouting at you down the phone and that you are responsible for millions of dollars.

All so that someone can get their boring parcel delivered on time. Or so that a dubious business can avoid a lawsuit.

Is that really your image of ‘success’? And what do you spend the money on? Expensive clothes? A car? Was it really all worth it? In many senses, this is not really a success. And not only that but if you take this route.

If you climb the corporate ladder, put in the work and do your time, then you actually won’t be as successful as you possibly could be. Think of any massively successful businessman. Richard Branson, Bill Gates, Steve Jobs, Mark Zuckerberg, Elon Musk.

How many of them started a boring job and then worked their way up? 

No: they started passion projects. They looked for things that no one knew they needed yet. They innovated. Trailblazed. They came up with completely fresh and novel ideas. And because they did that, they were able to have breakthroughs that no one could have imagined: reach heights that were truly unprecedented.

The Strategy

So, here’s the strategy. Learn to separate ‘income’ from ‘wealth’. If you read the guide on the money mindset, you’ll see that the two absolutely do not go hand in hand. Then learn to separate your status at work from your personal sense of pride and accomplishment. You know what? If you write a brilliant novel in your spare time and not one person reads it then that should still be just as rewarding.

So, I want you to take some time out. To find your passion and to follow that path. But do it on the side. And view your day job as what it is: a necessary evil to help you get by in the interim. Over time, you can turn that passion into a way to make money. Then maybe you go part-time. Then maybe you go full time. Then maybe you quit your day job.

Why Passion is Crucial for Success 

When Elon Musk created SpaceX, he was not the massively well-known name that he is today. Musk was a relatively unknown name whose mission was to encourage the private sector to venture into space. No small task. But you know what? Musk did it. And his explanation one of his explanations was that he aimed big. Many of us feel that we need to reign in our dreams and goals.

We have been led to believe that aiming too high will end in disappointment, will make us look foolish. But the reality is that aiming high is actually precisely what you need to do. Because when you aim high, you inspire others. When you have something exciting to say and when you are clearly excited about it yourself then people listen.

It’s so much more inspiring to hear someone tell you they want to go to space than it is to hear someone say they’re a hairdresser (though if that’s your passion, there’s nothing wrong with that!). If you’re reading this, then there’s a good chance you’re in the internet marketing industry. Let’s say you are for now. You might have a plan to launch a website, sell an ebook, make some money. There are two ways you go about that.

One is the cynical way. The way where your heart isn’t in it. The way that you see time and time again. This approach involves looking for the hottest new ‘niche’ in the market. Whether or not that’s a niche you’re interested in doesn’t really matter. Then you buy some content, maybe hire someone to write some, maybe pump out a little yourself by just regurgitating what you already can find online.

Then, you lace into that content as much SEO as you possibly can. You do everything you can to make the site sell. You cover it in ads. You call it something like ‘The Best Fitness Site Ever’. And you wait for the cash to roll in. But that will not work. Why? Because there’s no passion. If you have a site about animal welfare and you hire the very best writer in the world to write for it.

If you tell them to write you the latest, most exciting, newest content then you still won’t do well. Why? Because they aren’t you. They can’t speak for you. They don’t know your point of view. And they probably don’t know the topic all that well either. So, they’ll do their research. Learn it thoroughly and try to write something great. But it will be safe. Generic, boring content. People will visit the site and they’ll see that.

The site has no personality. No tone of its own. No ‘mission statement’ or purpose. There is no passion or love behind it and so no community grows behind it. The site dies. That’s why the thousands of low-quality sites never make it big. Think of the sites that do make it.

Those are sites like MOZ blog, Tim Ferriss’ Four Hour Blog, and Pat Fynn’s Smart Passive Income. The Verge. The BBC. Forbes.

These are sites that are written by passionate experts. They are sites that have unique, engaging and brilliant content. And unique, brilliant points of view that are unique to the brand. They have high production values, slick design, thriving YouTube channels.

Do you see the difference? 

Think about the sites that you read on a daily basis. I bet they are either:

A) Large teams of enthusiastic professionals

OR

B) Single, passionate individuals

None of them will be spam designed to quickly make money. None of them will be ‘overly SEO. You can’t create amazing quality unless you are passionate about the topic. You have to love doing it. You need to put everything into it. You have to want to spend your free time writing articles, answering fan-mail and tweaking the logo. It mustn’t feel like a job.

If there isn’t a topic for a website you feel that way about, then being an internet marketer isn’t for you. You need to find what you are passionate about. Your calling. That is how you become Elon Musk and not ‘tired, overworked, stressed Dad who works himself to an early grave’. Do you see the difference? You can’t fake it. You have to love it.

Presenting the Image 

But I know what you’re thinking: it’s all good and well having the dream and the vision but you also need the skill and you need that business persona. And it’s true. If you’re going to lead, inspire and get investments then you do need to learn to present yourself and you do need to learn to be taken seriously. And this is a skill that will help you in every other aspect of your life too.

So how do you go about it?

The simple place to start is with the realization that you are a brand. Your name is your own personal brand and just like any business brand, it is your job to protect that brand in a professional manner. You know how it is so important for a website to be correctly spelt, to have great design, to pay attention to even the smallest details?

It’s the same thing with you.

You need to present yourself in a way that inspires confidence and trust. You need to make sure that every interaction that other people have with you is a positive one. You need to present the face of a service that people can trust. You need to gain the confidence that you know what you’re talking about. You do this, to begin with by conducting yourself in a professional manner.

That means that you put effort and hard work into everything you do. Whether it’s that boring 9-5 that you’re just ticking over with, or whether it is a client who is very much ‘small time’ in your eyes. If you don’t give them 100% of your attention, if you rush things or if you make a silly mistake, then that is a black mark against you. If you say you are going to get a piece of work in by a certain deadline, then you make sure you do that.

You never know where amazing opportunities might come from. And you never know what one interaction might lead to. If you deal with someone in a poor manner, or you do a sub-par job, then the word might spread. If you do an excellent job, you just might get offered something. The same goes for any work that you put out with your name on it. Make sure it is of excellent quality.

Next, you need to make sure that your presentation is perfect. That means learning to communicate. Learning to present yourself in a professional manner  I highly recommend getting classes to help you with public speaking and elocution. This will help you to get your point across in a way that other people understand. It will teach you to sell yourself, to thrive in interviews and to win clients and backers.

You also need to think about the small details of your appearance. How are your nails? How is your hair? Do you have a nice suit? Are you in good physical shape? All of this has been shown in countless studies to make a difference. People want to bet on the winning horse and if you look like you can barely keep yourself together, then why would anyone believe that you’re going to be able to run a business?

Sell a product? Provide a great service? 

Again, tiny things make the difference here: things like your shoes, how polished they are, how the laces are tied. Be constantly improving yourself and investing in yourself in order to make a better impression. Meditate. Get enough sleep. Have enough vitamins and minerals. Be ready to take those opportunities when they come.

Springboarding 

And learn to see opportunities where you don’t expect them. Because it won’t always be obvious. Think of Sylvester Stallone who wanted to become a famous actor. He was turned down from all the acting jobs, so he eventually got there by writing a fantastic script for a movie. That movie was Rocky and he would only sell the script if he got the leading role.

The rest is history.

Opportunities might present themselves to you that don’t seem directly related to your goal. But adapt, learn to see the alternate routes. Because success in any area can lead to success in another. It builds confidence, it gives you connections and resources. This is called ‘springboarding’, where you use one ‘win’ to launch you to the next.

If you turn down an opportunity because it doesn’t seem to exactly match your plan, then you can end up missing out on something that could have been huge. Always be looking for that next move. Business is like a massive game of chess. And once again, this is why you always need to put your best foot forward. Making the right impression and protecting the brand opens those opportunities.

Keep your goal in mind, keep winning and keep taking that next step. Don’t let yourself become comfortable. And use the lessons from our other guides to get over your fear of risk and failure to keep taking those chances.

If you do all this, then you never know where your drive and your effort might take you. THAT is how you become a success in business.

Written by Yola Bastos Co-Founder Women Flix yolabastos@womenflix.org https://linktr.ee/yolatvbastos Women Flix, Supporting Women all the way to Success! Women Flix Limited, a company limited by guarantee, was incorporated in England and Wales (company no. 13047578 ).

A Squeeze Page

How to Use PLR Products With a Squeeze Page

If you are trying to sell a PLR product, then you will need to create a high-quality sales page that will help you to demonstrate all the good qualities of that product while encouraging your audience to make a quick impulse purchase.

But this is only one type of ëpageí youíll be using to sell your items and to build your leads. Just as important is a ësqueezeí page. This is a page that youíll use to convince people to sign up for a mailing list and it's highly important because from there, you will then be able to get them to buy from you over the course of several emails.

And in order to create a successful squeeze page, chances are youíll be using another type of PLR product ñ called a ëfree reportí or an ëincentiveí.

How it Works

The general idea is simple: by giving away a free PDF that contains information that your audience wants, you will encourage people to sign up for your mailing list. They sign up, you send the report and hopefully, they then enjoy what they've read and made a note that they will want to read more of what you have to say in future.

From there, you then provide more value through messages and eventually, you offer your real paid product that they can buy off you for full price.

How to Get it Right

What ís important though is that you word your squeeze page correctly and use the right kind of incentive. The big risk here is that you encourage people to sign up only because they want something free. From there, they then might unsubscribe or alternatively just never read another email from you.

One way to get around this is to make the incentive something relatively small and to emphasize how much better the full product is. Another tip is to make the freebie in some way incomplete so that if they enjoy that offer, theyíll then be keen to get the full thing. A good way of doing this is to make your incentive the first chapter of a larger book, or perhaps one tip of 27. Always leave them wanting more.

And finally, make sure that the emails themselves are also providing value. This way, your audience will be keen to keep opening them even after theyíve collected their free offer.

Written by Yola Bastos Co-Founder Women Flix yolabastos@womenflix.org https://linktr.ee/yolatvbastos Women Flix, Supporting Women all the way to Success! Women Flix Limited, a company limited by guarantee, incorporated in England and Wales (company no. 13047578 ).