Xenia has developed many successful businesses including an award-winning real estate agency, ALEXA Real Estate, the Life Expansion Institute, and several others. She believes that the key to financial success lies in generating multiple streams of income and creating your own global economy independent of governments, systems and market trends. Learn more about Xenia by visiting http://www.leadersandvisionaries.com.
1. How did you first get started as an entrepreneur?
My professional career began as a medical research scientist. After three years of research during my PhD years and a further three year research placement as a post doctoral research fellow in Canada specializing in the area of recombinant vaccine design, I began to explore more liberal options for my life where there was no predefined government standard to the amount of money that I could make.
Although I loved science and research and was a very successful and sought after scientist, I quickly realized that the entrepreneurs running the pharmaceutical companies who funded the research made infinitely more money than the scientists working on the research. There was no cap on the amounts of money that landed in their bank accounts, and they were in full control. Scientists, like other employees, not only had a capped income, but were at the effect of decisions made by research funding companies and relied heavily on funding resources that they had no control and no influence over. This was not the game I wanted to play in my life, I needed a bigger playing field and I needed to be at full cause in my own life.
Having started investing at around 19 years old, I already had millions in property assets in my early thirties, but after six years in a medical research laboratory, it was time for this rat to escape and create an income outside the box.
It is said that if you do not have a goal or a vision for your life, you will always work for someone who has. The way to financial independence is to get clear on what you want for your own life and to create your own vision.
For me the vision was to create an income that would not only replace my scientist income but also support some of my property assets and growth of my property portfolio. I had a break away from the research laboratory once my son was born, and while I was home and away from coordinating multiple research projects and events, I was able to focus my energy not only on my newborn son (who was less challenging then because he couldn't talk) but also towards developing business ideas that later evolved to my first business--an Adelaide based real estate agency. The agency was a natural progression using my skills and experience as a property investor, and I was able to carve out a niche market aimed at the needs of property investors and their portfolios.
The agency was developed on my laptop in the first couple of years before finally being launched as a real business. The challenge for me was that although I knew the service well and was comfortable in what I was offering, my background expertise was in medical research and not business. I had no idea how to sell my services and how to attract clients and grow my business. I booked into a government-funded small business course to learn some much-needed business skills. I quickly discovered, however, that these courses are designed to teach people how to be an employee and manage a business that was owned by someone else. They were not designed to teach someone how to be completely independent financially. That is because you cannot really teach entrepreneurship--it's an awakening and a mindset not a learnable skill.
One thing I did find more useful than a small business course was joining a network marketing or multi-level marketing company (MLM), and that was my first introduction to being an entrepreneur. Many MLM companies are independent and run by entrepreneurs with a huge vision; their sales and business growth strategies are applicable directly to the business which they apply and therefore can teach you some exceptional skills not available anywhere else. It's on the job training. I am part of an MLM team right now; however, I did not join the first MLM team for the sake of growing that business--I needed to learn the sales and marketing skills that had helped me to transition between being an academic to being an entrepreneur and business owner. I used those skills to help develop and grow my real estate agency.
2. Why are multiple streams of income so important--and what do you suggest to someone who has been relying on a single stream of income for many years and wants to start branching out?
Once upon a time, the world was slow. If our grandparents or great grandparents were business owners, they would spend 20 years developing one single business and the next 20 years running it before the kids would take over and run it. If they were not business owners, it was normal to spend 30 to 40 years working for a company with no personal or professional growth and then retire and be content with very little like a laboratory dog who has been conditioned to receiving painful electric shocks and has learned to be helpless because nothing he does can escape the pain anyway. Humans were heavy and burdened with so much unconsciousness that they were slow and emotionally damaged enough to expect low life spans and lower intelligence.
In modern times children are born at a higher consciousness than ever before; they are intelligent enough to challenge the electric shocks and the systems and fast enough to become independent without relying on it, and although we are only at the beginning of a more conscious race of people, the world definitely is faster.
A business today needs to be designed, developed and running within a year to be viable. The 40 year model is obsolete. The marketplace is a constant evolution and extinction of products and services that are transient and adapted to certain market trends, and the new entrepreneurs need to be fast enough and intelligent enough to adapt or face extinction.
Depending on one stream of income in a constantly evolving and fast economy is suicide. Even if that stream of income is reliable for now, all it takes is a small variation in the economic environment to render that stream unfit for the market conditions and push it towards extinction.
It is therefore important to have multiple streams of income and for entrepreneurs to fine tune and adapt multiple businesses or services to the market. The streams of income need to be complementary to each other so that they enhance your business and not take time away from each other. An example is adding a sales division to a property management company or offering financial services or another complimentary product to your existing clients.
For people who are employed, I would not ever recommend giving up a paid position unless you have no time to be employed because you are too busy making money somewhere else.
Success is created in your spare time.
Instead, give up watching television at night, reading newspapers and magazines, gossip sessions with friends, or going out and getting drunk. Use that time to develop yourself and start your own business in a niche area that you know a lot about. If you do not have a niche area yet, try a network marketing company; choose one with a great upline support and good sales and marketing training and get good at growing it. The skills will be transferable to any other business if you want later on, or the network marketing company can explode beyond your paid income in a very short time. Take the time to learn new skills and apply them directly to your new business and completely within your own spare time. Develop the habit of starting, and start now: this will be the beginning of adding multiple income streams.
3. What do you mean when you say that people need to create their own global economies?
Creating your own global economy means that you focus your time, energy, and resources on creating wealth within your circle of influence. Your time, energy, and resources are also directed at growing and expanding your circle of influence and your own personal and professional skills.
Most people, in contrast, focus their time and energy on things they are unable to influence or control: the government, their employer, or any other system they currently have no control over. They therefore waste time and energy blaming, criticizing, reacting, and making a fuss over something they dislike but do not have the skills to change. Most people are therefore unsuccessful in their own lives, and the more they stay unsuccessful, the less they are able to influence and change the things they don't like, and the more they spend time complaining about those things. Its a self-fulfilling prophesy.
Any endeavor to change the government has always resulted in frustration and wasted effort. Putting blame and focus on anything outside of yourself is not only taking away from your own personal power, it is also in many ways an excuse to hold onto being a victim.
Creating your own economy means focusing instead on bringing people to you and selling or enrolling people into your idea, product, or service. The internet and social media tools now allow us to have a huge global influence and surround ourselves with like-minded people that support what we are doing and what we have to offer.
Wealth is proportional to the value you can create for others. The more you focus on creating a greater and greater value and the more people you can create that value for, the greater will be your wealth. This combined with multiple streams of income, and you have your own mini global economy that grows as you grow and expand professionally and personally.
4. What is the Leaders and Visionaries conference?
The Leaders and Visionaries Conference is a full-day personal and professional training conference designed for business owners and entrepreneurs. Leaders are people who inspire others to be leaders, and visionaries are the two percent of the population who are consciously aware.
When a person is undergoing personal evolution, it's important to be surrounded by people that will validate and support your awareness and avoid the unconscious masses who can bring you down to their level to justify their own lower existence. The leaders and visionaries conference shows entrepreneurs how to live life through their higher self and not their conditioning, how to stay on track and not be derailed by the masses, and how to use their skills and personal gifts to become the flame that lights up the light of others. Inspired people go forth and help other people to become not only financially free, but leaders and visionaries in their own lives.
The Leaders and Visionaries conference is a free event, and we have an Australian tour coming up in May/June this year (2014) where I will be sharing my own visions for a more conscious existence. Free tickets are available at www.leadersandvisionaries.com.
5. Can readers see a sample of the material they'll find at your conference?
The video below is a three-hour recording from a previous Leaders and Visionaries conference.
Thanks, Xenia!
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