The yard sale I had this past weekend was without the most profitable sale I’ve had for the amount of items I had to sell.  (For a detailed how-to on yard sales read my first article, Having A Successful Yard Sale) My brother-in-law pitched in some of his stuff because we are raising funds to use next year in our upcoming online trading venture.   Our goal was only about $50 because we had mostly clothes and old toys.

I started at 9 am and after the first 3 customers left empty handed, I knew I had to change or die on the vine.   So I noticed that most of my stuff was not that valuable, maybe $1 to $5 range with the exception of 3 items.  So I removed the higher priced items for sale on ebay.

As I greeted the next customer that came up I told them, “Everything’s a dollar!”    This time the customer left with an armful of stuff and I had a $20 bill.  The subsequent customers from 10 a.m. to 12 p.m. also bought a lot of stuff, but then it slowed down.

Time for another market evaluation.   I had earned $80 and still had half the stuff.   I greeted the next customer with, “Everything’s two for a dollar!”  The buying frenzy kicked in again.  One woman was raising five orphans and grabbed up the dresses.  She was so grateful that she gave me a big hug.

The afternoon dragged on and people kept coming and getting amazed that we were selling everything two for a dollar and then about 2 p.m. it just seemed to stop.   I counted my winnings.   We had made $120 and still had about one fourth of our stuff left.

After Christmas we’re planning another sale and the things that are left will be four for a dollar.   The key to having a successful yard sale is pricing things at a bargain price that will get people excited and move the merchandise at a brisk pace.

In 1519, Hernando Cortes sailed against the king’s orders in total mutiny with one goal – to defeat the Aztec empire and take the Aztec gold.   He landed on the Yucatan Peninsula with 500 men and 11 ships and immediately ordered that the ships be burned.  As a leader, Cortes knew something about the nature of men.  In tough times, they take the easiest route to escape hardship and suffering.   Now they had no choices.  It was victory or death.  Hernando Cortes knew that in the greatest fight of his life, it would take total commitment by everyone involved.   Five hundred men defeated over one million men because of total commitment.  No one in history has overcome such a huge challenge.

Fear is our greatest enemy. Fear is like a plant.  It needs fertile soil to grow in.  Self doubt and insecurity creates an ideal environment for fear.  Cortes knew that if half of his men took half of his ships and ran, the battle would be lost.  He took the pot that fear grew in and dumped out all the dirt.  They could not afford to let themselves be gripped with fear.  Fear paralyzes us and shuts down our ability to think and be creative.

Focus on one goal at a time. When you are fighting the fight of your life, you don’t need a busy social calendar.  I went through a period of several years where my first priority was keeping my son alive.  I ignored work, friendships, hobbies,  and fun to focus on the care of my son with leukemia.  All of my prayers, energy, money, and time was invested in that one goal.   It took years to undo the financial mess that resulted.   Twenty three years later I can say that I’d do it all over again.

There is no substitute for determination and commitment. We live in a culture of the uncommitted.  Everything is relevant to how we feel in the immediate context.  Several years ago my wife and I led a youth group in a small rural town with a high poverty level.  We sat in a circle of 30 teens and one by one asked them to share their dreams and goals.   One boy wanted to grow up and pick watermelons and live in a new double-wide.  Another wanted to work at the McDonalds by the interstate.   One by one, we heard dreams and goals that were stunted by an environment where no one ever expected too much from anybody.  We challenged them to dream big dreams and commit to them.

Cortes was committed.  Fight or die.  Succeed or perish.  And they all became rich beyond their wildest dreams and accomplished what others had failed to accomplish.   Burn your ships that are bound for mediocrity.  Burn your ships that settle for less than your passion and dreams.   Nothing is impossible for the committed and determined.

Opportunities are getting tougher to find.  There are reports of thousands of applicants for each advertised job position.  I saw a news report where people stood in line overnight to get a shot at a few openings in a Section 8 housing program.  Unemployment rates have gone double digit.  For many, the outlook for building a better tomorrow seems hopeless.  If you have your hopes tied to the economy,  you will be sorely disappointed.

Create your own economy. You can’t control what The Federal Reserve, The Congress, or The President does.  You can only control what you do.   Job stands for just over broke. Even if you land a job, the company will pay you just enough to keep you from quitting.  I believe that you can never realize your full potential working for other people because you are building their company, their dreams, their fortunes.

Start your own business. I have been a business owner for most of my working life.  I’m temporarily working for a company, but plan to launch a new business venture in the new year.  Once you’ve worked for yourself, you’ll never be content working for others.  It’s a level of freedom and independence that most never experience.

What do you enjoy that you are good at? True success is to rise each day to do what you love to do.  It may take a sacrifice and involve some major lifestyle changes.  Families can merge resources and living arrangements.  Assets can be liquidated.  Savings can be accessed.  Your new business may start out home-based and move to rented facilities after getting established.  Do whatever necessary to link up with your passion.

This is a great time to start a business. Commercial space has never been priced at such a bargain.  Used equipment can be bought for a song.  Because so many businesses have gone under, there will be far less competition.   And when the economy turns around, you’ll be a step ahead of the other new businesses that will come with the recovery.

Be positive and pro-active. If an obstacle comes up, ask, “What can be done?”  Don’t focus on what can’t be done.  Fear can immobilize you from taking action.  Have a can-do attitude.  Take action even if you are gripped with fear.  Joyce Meyers has a saying – Do it afraid. If you proceed in the face of fear,  fear will melt away.

Be decisive. Don’t procrastinate.  Don’t doubt yourself or your training.  Make a decision to succeed and act on it.  Stop waiting for an opportunity and create one for yourself.

The 1906 Olympic Marathon Finish Line

One of the things in short supply these days is positive minded people who see themselves as winners.  Some have lost jobs, others have lost businesses, and quite a few  have even lost the will to try again.  It’s easy to dream big dreams and have a vision for the future when things are going smoothly.  But this is when it really counts to be a positive, creative person who believes that success is not only possible, but probable.

Below are some actions that you can take to move yourself from the land of gloom and doom to being a positive, successful person.

1.  Decide To Succeed. Success is a choice, not a feeling, not circumstances, not how much money you have.  You can’t run a marathon and win by accident.  To win you must plan, train, dream, compete, sweat, hurt, and be in deliberate motion.  If you feel depressed, you have to make some positive life choices to get out of the funk.  Physical causes must be ruled out or dealt with.  Lifestyle changes must be made in the areas of diet, excercise, socialization, and spiritual matters.  Decisive action consistently executed over time will transform your life.

2.  Get Serious About Your Passion. Find that thing in life that lights you up and jump in with both feet.  Life is too short to spend just surviving, just getting by each day.  True success is waking up every day and doing the things you love (and getting paid for it).   You have more energy for something that you are passionste about, you’ll operate at a higher level of excellence, and it has been proven that you will be healthier.

3.  Restructure Your Lifestyle Around Success. There are some people that you can’t afford to be around.  They are the criticizers, the gossipers, the dream killers, and the self-centered.   All of these people will drain you and leave you empty and frustrated.  Seek out mentors that will teach and encourage you.  Seek out true friends who will walk with you through the challenges of life.  If you are in a job you hate, start planning your exit strategy today and leave as soon as is reasonable.

4.  Do The Hard Work. The hardest, most important work you will do is to set asidc time to clear you mind and think.  Bill Gates’ mother said that when Bill was a teenager she would see him staring into space and ask him what he was thinking.  He would simply reply, “Thinking.”   Einstein  would spend hours, days, months, and years thinking about the law of relativity until he finally accomplished what generations of thinkers before him could not and secured his place in history.  Every great accomplishment began with a thought.  Every empire was begun with a thought.  Set aside time to do the hard work of thinking.

Success is a decision to change the way you think about yourself, the world, and your place within it.   Some folks right now are being controlled by the economy.  Others have decided to create their own economy.  We create the world we live in.  Make a decision to succeed.

Jesus talked about a man who found a great treasure in a field and became so passionate about the worth of that treasure that he took all the resources he had and bought that field.

This is a story about passion. What is your life’s passion? What is the one thing that so drives you that if you could do without sleep, you would spend every waking moment doing that thing? Jesus had an overwhelming, driving passion to do the will of the Father and he had a deep, continuous revelation of what that will, purpose, and mission was.

I’ve heard it said recently that the distinguishing quality of all very successful people who have made their own way in life, is their intense focus on one thing. Wealthy people are not diversified, they are focused. True success in life is not a big bank account, but the privilege of getting up every day and doing that thing that we have a passion for.

We have to choose if we will focus our life investment of our love, time, energy, money on God and his purposes. God Himself desires to be our primary passion. He should be the thing we think about continuously.

Do you realize that God is thinking about you right now? You are his consuming passion. The creator of the universe became a man and went to the cross to buy you back from sin and its curse. You are His great treasure hidden in a field. He bankrupted Heaven to purchase you. Is He your passion? Is He your everything?

Several years ago, God spoke to my wife and teenage daughter in a dream….. the same dream, the same night,  about adopting a baby from China. I resisted the idea for 5 years. The Lord dealt with me in a very clear way and I got on board and we applied to the adoption agency for a baby. There were many forms to fill out, a lot of money spent, and then the day came when a photo of our future daughter came in the mail. We put it on our refrigerator with a magnet and looked at it throughout the day every day and felt so much love for a baby we had never met or touched. Heaven has a kitchen. I know this because there will be a great wedding supper there one day and Jesus is getting it ready. God has our picture on his refrigerator in Heaven. He loves us so much. May you receive a revelation of the worth of His passion and love for you. May His love impact you so deeply that you sell out everything else and go after Him. May He be your life’s investment.

In the Old Testament government of Israel, God, through Moses, decreed one of the greatest principles for national fiscal health that has ever existed – the year of jubilee. Every 7 years all debts were released and wiped clean.  Can you imagine an economy where every 7 years the entire population becomes debt-free?

First of all,  no one would lend money long-term.  Even short term debt would be rare in such a system.   Cash would be king.   The personal savings rate would be through the roof.

Would such a system work in present day America?  Would we be where we are with the housing and mortgage mess if we had scheduled jubilee years?  We’re tossing around trillions that seem to be doing no useful good.  Why not try it?   Cancel all debts.   Cancel all mortgages.   Cancel the government’s debt (they’re broke too).   I know I would wake up perkier the day after.

And if it works, let’s just make every 7 years a jubilee year.  Then we could print the message that the recession is over on the front of every major news magazine ….. and this time, it would be true.

As a connoisseur of yard sales, garage sales, estate sales, or whatever you want to call it sales, I am often frustrated with the way other folks run their sales.   My wife can run the sale and it won’t raise thirty bucks.   My average is $100 to $400, depending on what I have to sell.  Here are some keys to hosting a successful sale:

1.  Your number one goal is getting rid of everything possible. Don’t get hung up on getting top dollar for each item, but focus on volume. Many people who come are selling on ebay or at the flea market.  They can’t buy high retail and sell at retail.  My wife always comes out and yells at me about selling too cheaply.  But at the end of the day, she is amazed at the wad in my pocket.  Yard sale success is not based on how much you get for each item, but how little you have left over at the end.

2.  You have to have enough items to hold people’s attention. If you have 20 items, don’t waste your time.  Just gather it and give it to the charity thrift shop.  Go through every closet and storage area and ask yourself , “When was the last time I used this?”  Better yet, “When was the last time I saw this?”  Clutter is a source of stress.  Turn it into cash and go have a good time.

3.  Good signage is crucial. I never advertise in the newspaper, but I do have good signage.    Your signs should be in large readable letters.  Remember, people will be reading this from a car seat at quite a distance.  Not only that, they will be reading it while they are moving.  Try to get at least one sign on a busy street.  If there are turns to make, mark them clearly.   Most importantly, put your largest, nicest sign in your front yard.

4.  Pricing is everything. I’ve already alluded to this, but the reason most sales end with half their stuff not sold, is price.   Don’t wait until the final hours of the sale to drop prices.   I drop my prices continuously from the very start.  One of my most successful sales was when I had a couple of clothes tables with everything on those tables at 10 cents each.   People got on their cell phones and called all their friends and they came from everywhere.  In retailing, they call that a loss leader.   Stores will actually sell for below wholesale cost to gather a crowd to buy all the other stuff.

5.  Focus on your customers. It is frustrating to go to a sale and someone is engaged in an intense conversation with someone else either in person or on their cell phone.   I like to haggle, ask about the history of some items, ask for a group discount.  I always like to ask if the have any of the items I specialize in, and many times they go back in the house and bring it out.  Selling is not an exchange of merchandise.  Selling is an exchange of emotions, a transfer of feelings.

6.  An often forgotten old-fashioned value:  The customer is always right.

7.  Have some free items. It creates good will.   It loosens people up.  Many times the one I gave free items to will turn around and load up with the other items.

8.  My secret weapon….. When a customer enters my yard sale, I greet them in a friendly manner, saying, “Feel free to make me offers – I’ll probably say yes.”

9.  A few more pointers: Help people get items to their vehicle.   I enlist my kids (the big ones).   Also, I usually start a large sale on a Friday, but I don’t put out all my stuff.  I tell everybody who comes on Friday, “I have more stuff that I haven’t gone through.  Feel free to come back tomorrow and see all my other things.”   Many do.  On day two or sooner, take all your $1 to $5 items and put them on some tables and mark those tables: EVERYTHING ON THIS TABLE IS 25 CENTS.    A cardinal rule of yard sales is:  Don’t fall in love with anything…. it’s all junk.   JUST GET RID OF THE JUNK !

Are the elderly, the ones who made this country great, being treated with respect by our government?  I would be the first to say that the government can’t do everything.   But, they do have a  moral responsibility to do  some things and protect the weak and less advantaged.

I have worked in a service industry (real estate sales) in a county that is more than 50% populated by seniors.  Not only have I seen neglect of real needs of seniors,  I also see some alarming trends of the government preying on their vulnerability.   For example, here in Florida, the state has cut benefits to the disabled, many of whom are senior citizens.  During the same time, state taxes have been used to buy swamp land in the name of ecology and purchase large sports stadiums.

Many of the very oldest of our seniors are living on $300 per month in Social Security benefits.   And the IRS has the gall to tax their meager proceeds.  How does a person pay for housing, eat, buy clothes, see a doctor, and go to the dentist?   Sadly,  I have seen many end up homeless.  Talk to any Florida based organization that helps the homeless and ask how many senior citizens are on the street.   You’ll be amazed at what you hear.  Better yet, volunteer to help a homeless feeding program and you will see for yourself  many seniors living on the streets -  it will break your heart.  In the City of Tampa, FL alone, there are upwards of 8,000 homeless.   Sadly, many are older Americans.   Sadder still, is that many are veterans who fought to keep us free.

A factor that has been widely overlooked is the hidden and unhidden inflation in our economy.  The meager income paid to seniors is shrinking due to inflation.   Many are predicting hyper-inflation in the next few years.

Then, there is the marriage penalty that pressures seniors who would have married, to live together.  Many do so with great feelings of guilt and shame.  Seniors who live together draw more Social Security than couples who marry.  This is wrong.  Many a politician has campaigned on the promise to change it, but we’re still waiting.

One of the greatest tavesties of justice is the disappearance of retirement funds.  There has to be regulation put in place to keep retirement money safe.  When people work and save for an entire lifetime some money for their golden years, that money should be held sacred by our laws.  Those who would plunder those funds should do a life sentence.

The high gasoline prices have severely hurt many senior programs such as Meals On Wheels.  The slow economy has limited job opportunities for seniors who need extra income.  I see my own mother considering moving across the country to get lower rent.   It seems the deck is stacked against our senior population and with the exception of election years,  no one seems to be souding the alarm.   Growing tax pressures,  indifference from the state and federal governments,  a suffering economy and shrinking job market, all these things are making the golden years much less golden.

We owe a great debt to our seniors.   They fought our wars,  built our industries, raised up our institutions, and for the most part paid their own way.    We send billions across the sea to people who despise us.   We can do better than this for our own.

In India they have a social pecking order called a caste system.  The lowest people class is a group known as the untouchables.   Privileges afforded to the higher castes are not accessible to them.   We look at that here in the United States and we think how archaic that is, and  how odd it is in modern life.   We think ourselves to be more advanced,  more educated, and definitely more sophisticated.   I would propose that all of our sophistication and American pride is a smoke screen.  The reality is that we are more backward than they are.

First of all I would observe that human rights and freedom are not accessible to all.  For example, if a rich man gets accused of a felony, he would immediately call the family attorney, make bail, hire expert witnesses to tear down the prosecutor’s case, and either get a greatly reduced sentence or be aquitted altogether.  But, if a poor man was accused of a felony, he stays locked up during the trial,  he gets a free public defender.  I’ve actually observed trials where the public defender didn’t even have a conversation with the accused until minutes before the trial.  Their reputation is that they carry a heavy case load and are forced to do the bare minimum for their clients.   At least they can wave bye to you on your way to the big house.  There is not justice for all – only justice for those who can afford it.

Then there is the credit reporting system.  Once an individual has a tainted credit score, they will have very limited access to housing and to employment.  So, how can someone get ahead if he can’t access housing or get a job?  And to add to the pain of the credit damaged ones, the insurance company will jack up your insurance rates if your rating goes down.  This creates a slippery slope for those who are struggling to avoid homelessness.

My next exposure of the American caste system is our health care system.   I can remember when my wife’s uncle needed a new liver.   He was told that unless he could ante up $6000 to make a down payment on rejection drugs, he could not get on the list to get a new liver.  Uncle Bill died.

Finally there is the matter of how we deal with life.   Medical technology has advanced to the place where people are killing the handicapped before birth and calling it choice.  Already in this country the elderly routinely get overdosed on morphine as a form of mercy killing if the care givers determine that their quality of life is not worth saving.  The systematic killing of the unborn and the elderly is vigorously defended by the liberals.   One of the first presidential orders signed by President Obama was to allow our tax money to be used internationally to kill unwanted children.  Meanwhile there is a huge shortage of babies for adoption, forcing many in North America and Europe to travel to Asia to adopt a baby.   When we were in China adopting our daughter, we met couples from England, France, Spain, and Italy who were there to adopt.  When people ask me why we didn’t adopt an American baby, I reply that the liberal political system is working overtime to kill them all off.

Your value as a human being should not be determined by your checking account, your credit report, your disability, or your age.  Let’s be the civilized society that we claim to be.   That would be true progress and justice for all.

Psalm 1  (NIV)

    ¹ Blessed is the man
       who does not walk in the counsel of  the wicked

       or stand in the way of sinners
       or sit in the seat of mockers.

    ² But his delight is in the law of the LORD,
       and on his law he meditates day and night.

    ³ He is like a tree planted by streams of water,
       which yields its fruit in season
       and whose leaf does not wither.
       Whatever he does prospers.

    ⁴ Not so the wicked!
       They are like chaff
       that the wind blows away.

    ⁵ Therefore the wicked will not stand in the judgment,
       nor sinners in the assembly of the righteous.

    ⁶ For the LORD watches over the way of the righteous,
       but the way of the wicked will perish.

There are those in the religous world who have made a sacred tradition out of poverty.  Having observed poverty in nine different countries, I have not seen anything about poverty that I like.  For those who would take a vow of poverty as if poverty is some sublime state of spiritual existence, come with me to see the hungry children, millions of them dying slow deaths, and tell me what part of poverty you are the most in love with.

The glorification of poverty is akin to the pole dwellers during the time of the early church who came to believe that all that was spiritual was holy and all that was physical was evil.   So, to become more holy and close to God, they lived on elevated platforms for years at a time.   One historian tells us that people would venerate the pole dwellers and when maggots fell from their bodies, they began to worhip the maggots.   God, and all other living beings with common sense and a sense of smell knew that this was not divine.

Psalm one lays the foundation of a blessed life of prosperity that finds its source in a relationship with God:

First, divine prosperity is based on who you listen to.   The wicked, the sinners, and the mockers are always plentiful and always eager to give you an earful of what they strongly believe.   Don’t make your spiritual ears a garbage can.    Meditate on God’s word day and night.  God’s word prepares us to hear God’s voice.   As we listen to what God says to us in His written word,  his living rhema word will be easily recognized.

Secondly, to prosper you must get planted.   Get planted in a devotional habit with the Lord.   Get planted in a prayer life.   Get planted in a local church and strive to be the most devoted member in that church.   Some are so arrogant to believe they can please God and ignore the local church.   Jesus is one with His church.   The church is The Bride of Christ.   When you love Jesus, you’ll love what He loves.   Your love for God is illustrated in your relationship with the local church.   You cannot seperate Jesus from His church.   It is error to say, “I’m committed to Jesus, but I’m not committed to a local church.”   You are lying to God, people, and yourself.   It is a rampant form of self deception that is spreading through the church.  Jesus never taught anyone to be a lone ranger.

Psalm 26:8 says,  I love the house where you live, O LORD,   the place where your glory dwells.   Ephesians tells us that the church is God’s holy temple in the New Testament scheme of things.  The church is where God’s glory is.  God has one program, the one he built before he left, the church.

Growing up, I loved to watch Mutual of Omaha’s Wild Kingdom.  It is amazing to see how the animals and the ecosystem all work together just as God designed.   The lion would never jump in the middle of a herd of gazelles and start eating gazelles.   He would chase the herd causing them to fear and panic.   Then he would target a weak one and seperate it from the herd.   Once it was alone, he knew dinner was ready.   The enemy wants to get you alone so he can destroy you.

Third, to find biblical prosperity you must choose the right path.  The Lord watches over every area of the lives of those who choose the path of righteousness.   In contrast to the philosophy of this age, there are moral absolutes.  Every day we make choices.   Sometimes it will seem that you are doing everything right and God has overlooked you.  Job wrongly concluded that God had forgotten him.  Yet at the end of his life, he was blessed spiritually and financially twice as much as before.  

Choosing the right path will most often not bring immediate fullfillment.  For instance, stealing money may seem to work better than earning money.  But, in the end, the thief will meet justice and face punishment in this life and the next.  Earning money seems harder at first and much slower.  The tree planted by living water “yields its fruit in season.”   There is a season for God’s blessing of prosperity if we stay on the path of God’s righteousness. 

Jesus, God in human flesh, died and rose again so that we could be ransomed from our spiritual death brought on by sin.   Choose a personal relationship with God through His son, Jesus Christ.   Ask His forgiveness and ask Him to take over as the Lord of your life.   You will never regret your decision.   His redemption is for the entire man – body, soul, and spirit.   God is concerned about your well being in every area of your entire life.