5 STEPS FOR ACCOMPLISHING ANY GOAL here.

1. Learn to sell. In business, you’re always selling – to your prospects, investors, and employees. To be the best salesperson put yourself in the shoes of the person to whom you’re selling. Don’t sell your product. Solve their problems.

2. “Your customers can tell you the things that are broken and how they want to be made happy. Listen to them. Make them happy. But don’t rely on them to create the future road map for your product or service. That’s your job.”

3. One thing we can all control is effort. Put in the time to become an expert in whatever you’re doing. It will give you an advantage because most people don’t do this.

4. “The beauty of success, whether it’s finding the girl of your dreams, the right job or financial success, is that it doesn’t matter how many times you have failed, you only have to be right once.”  And, “then everyone can tell you how lucky you are.”

5. “As I would learn later in life, money makes you extremely handsome.”

Fall is here. The weather is changing and will find many of us engaging in more indoor activities. Every now and then, you just want to throw on an old movie that reignites that feeling you had when you first viewed it, or maybe it’s one you’ve always meant to watch but never got around to it. Well here are a few noteworthy choices where money played a part in the storyline:

1) Boiler Room – One of my personal favorite money lines comes from this movie, “Whoever says money is the root of all evil doesn’t have any.” Boiler Room is about a savvy college drop-out who runs an illegal casino from his home to become involved in an investment business that initially seems like will make him an instant millionaire until he discovers things are not always what they appear to be.

2) Brewster’s Millions – Somehow anytime I watch Brewster’s Millions, it always manages to stimulate thoughts as to what I would do if I was in an enviably similar situation as which is the case for Richard Pryor’s character who us gave $30 million dollars to spend in 30 days….fun yet not as easy as we may think.

3) Jerry Maguire is classic. I never grow tired of watching it. This is the story of a sports agent who fed up with the quality of his life decides to write a mission statement that causes him to lose it all – his job, his clients, his fiancée – and follow through on doing what he loves by his own standards, gaining way more than anyone, including himself, expected.

4) Slumdog Millionaires is one of the most brilliant movies within the last decade. It takes a look at the coming of age story of a youth from Mumbai who as a young adult becomes a contestant on ‘Who Wants To Be A Millionaire’. The answers to his questions ironically are not based on general knowledge but instead on a series of flashbacks showed from defining moments in his life. This movie displays how everything is connected and the dots in your life become clear looking backward.

5) Trading Places uses humor to delve into the concept of nature versus nurture and how we sometimes value money more than people.

6) Good Fellas is iconic. I really don’t know anyone who does not have this on their top 10 list. Loyalty, love, greed, trust, honor, and deception all play roles in this film that displays the come up and changes in making money as a team….and its consequences.

7) The Thomas Crown Affair (1999 version) is the type of story that makes you kind of wish your real life was as exciting, edgy, and well – with lots and lots of money to play with. Thomas Crown is an extremely wealthy financier who uses his special skills to become one of the richest people in the world. But he finds even after mastering such challenges, he is bored with life. After a successful heist for a Monet painting, Catherine Banning comes in and they ensue in a game of cat and mouse.

8) Count of Monte Cristo to me is a testimony to integrity, tenacity, and the type of mental, spiritual, and emotional mastery that inevitably makes billionaires.

9) Catch Me If You Can has got to be one of the best true stories ever made into a movie. It’s one of those stories that on its own forces you to remember the fact that anything is possible. No matter how you chop it up – legal or not – Frank Abegnale Jr. was beyond brilliant, outsmarted many, definitely one of the best at what he did – and at such a young age.

10) Wall Street – I mean you can’t possibly ever create this sort of list and not mention the titan of money screen gem, Wall Street. Bud Fox meets Gordon Grekko aka Mr. “Greed is good.” and “Lunch is for wimps”. Then the story takes off. Late 80’s New York where insider trading, shady business deals, women, fast cars, and a fast life play as supporting characters to these leading men.

I realize that I obviously didn’t cover them all. There are some other great ones like The Pursuit of Happyness, Shawshank Redemption, Forrest Gump, Blow, Glendary Glen Ross, The Godfather, Rocky, The Social Network, and more. So definitely please share your favorite money movie in the comment section.

If success is a journey, these 10 people reached their destination after the age of 50 reaffirming once again that it is never too late to do what you love and prosper. To see who we are referring to click here.

These 21 suggestions for success were created by H. Jackson Brown, Jr., author and adviser on how to be successful in life and have happiness.

1. Marry the right person. This one decision will determine 90% of your happiness or misery.

2. Work at something you enjoy and that’s worthy of your time and talent.

3. Give people more than they expect and do it cheerfully.

4. Become the most positive and enthusiastic person you know.

5. Be forgiving of yourself and others.

6. Be generous.

7. Have a grateful heart.

8. Persistence, persistence, persistence.

9. Discipline yourself to save money on even the most modest salary.

10. Treat everyone you meet like you want to be treated.

11. Commit yourself to constant improvement.

12. Commit yourself to quality.

13. Understand that happiness is not based on possessions, power or prestige, but on relationships with people you love and respect.

14. Be loyal.

15. Be honest.

16. Be a self-starter.

17. Be decisive even if it means you’ll sometimes be wrong.

18. Stop blaming others. Take responsibility for every area of your life.

19. Be bold and courageous. When you look back on your life, you’ll regret the things you didn’t do more than the ones you did.

20. Take good care of those you love.

21. Don’t do anything that wouldn’t make your Mom proud.

Research confirms the profound impact RELAXING has on actually making you more productive, dramatically improving your work performance. Read why here.

This success chart by Demetri Martin rings so true. Everyone seems to face unexpected obstacles and detours in their career path—those it’s-always-darkest-before-the-dawn moments.

Here’s a book that explains what this is all about – click HERE.

1. Budgets are a necessary evil.

They’re the only practical way to get a grip on your spending — and to make sure your money is being used the way you want it to be used.

2. Creating a budget generally requires three steps.

– Identify how you’re spending money now

– Evaluate your current spending and set goals that take into account your long-term financial objectives

– Track your spending to make sure it stays within those guidelines.

3. Use software to save grief.

If you use a personal-finance program such as Quicken or Microsoft Money, the built-in budget-making tools can create your budget for you.

4. Don’t drive yourself nuts.

One drawback of monitoring your spending by computer is that it encourages overzealous attention to detail. Once you determine which categories of spending can and should be cut (or expanded), concentrate on those categories and worry less about other aspects of your spending.

5. Watch out for cash leakage.

If withdrawals from the ATM machine evaporate from your pocket without apparent explanation, it’s time to keep better records. In general, if you find yourself returning to the ATM more than once a week or so, you need to examine where that cash is going.

6. Spending beyond your limits is dangerous.

But if you do, you’ve got plenty of company. Government figures show that many households with total income of $50,000 or less are spending more than they bring in. This doesn’t make you an automatic candidate for bankruptcy — but it’s definitely a sign you need to make some serious spending cuts.

7. Beware of luxuries dressed up as necessities.

If your income doesn’t cover your costs, then some of your spending is probably for luxuries — even if you’ve been considering them to be filling a real need.

8. Tithe yourself.

Aim to spend no more than 90 percent of your income. That way, you’ll have the other 10 percent left to save for your big-picture items.

9. Don’t count on windfalls.

When projecting the amount of money you can live on, don’t include dollars that you can’t be sure you’ll receive, such as year-end bonuses, tax refunds, or investment gains.

10. Beware of spending creep.

As your annual income climbs from raises, promotions, and smart investing, don’t start spending for luxuries until you’re sure that you’re staying ahead of inflation. It’s better to use those income increases as an excuse to save more.

http://money.cnn.com/magazines/moneymag/money101/lesson2/index.htm