Being the founder of Balloon Distractions has given me the opportunity to see many parts of the USA that I might not have visited otherwise.

I flew a small airplane around Mt. Rainer when I visited our Seattle team a few years ago.

(Thanks Vince Dobson!)

One summer I swam in the Great Lakes while visiting our team in upstate New York.

I drove along the ridge of the Appalachian mountains one sunny summer afternoon while traveling from Greensboro to Wilkes Barre.

I drove 100 mph across Texas many times going from Dallas to Houston and back again.

One humid afternoon I saw a drunk guy passed out cold in the middle of Bourbon Street in New Orleans.

————————————-

Balloon Distractions started an entertainer team in Atlanta in 2005.

Over the last decade our team grew, today Atlanta is one of our largest regions. I make the 7 hour drive from Tampa to Atlanta a few times each year. The long road from Tampa to Atlanta is surrounded by peanut fields, cotton farms, and state troopers.

I’ve been visiting the Capital of the South for a long time.

The first time I worked in Atlanta was back in the late 1990’s when I was a marketing guy in the deregulated energy business. We had an office in the Buckhead area, back then I would visit Atlanta for 2 weeks at a time. I have an old photo taken at Stone Mountain with me and my daughter when she was a toddler.

Today she’s about to enter college now, the years zipped by.

Atlanta has not really changed in 20 years, there is still construction everywhere, a Mexican restaurant on every corner, and the most congested traffic in this corner of the United States.

I’ve worked primarily in the northern suburbs of the city, where the restaurants are booming, the houses are expensive, and the parking lots are filled with luxury cars.

Some parts of the south might be sleepy, but not Atlanta.

In the last few months my Life Leadership community has expanded into Atlanta, so it looks like I’m going to keep coming back here well into the future.

Deregulated energy… balloons in restaurants… and now Financial Education…

You just have to remember one thing: never try to drive through Hotlanta at rush hour!

Benjamin T. Alexander

May 2016

We started Balloon Distractions in Tampa back in September of 2003.

For 12 years we’ve been hiring outgoing people, teaching them how to twist balloons, then sending them out to restaurants.

Our entertainers earn $15 to $25 per hour.

It’s a great part time gig, and our people are free to hand out their own card, and work their own schedule.

Kinda like Uber for entertainers, without the danger of getting into a car with a serial killer… but you still have to drive to the bookings.

Our people can log on and grab bookings on their smartphone.

Today we have established teams all over the country.

We pay via direct deposit, so everything is electronic and efficient.

If you see a Craigslist ad and you’re curious about working with us take some time and go to the interview. You will be interviewed by an experienced trainer.

We had an artist in Tampa earn over $200 working just 4 hours in a restaurant last week.

It’s fun, the money is good, and you can make $$ acting goofy.

Have a great day!

Benjamin T. Alexander

There is something to be said for monthly progress.

In 2014 I had a scary amount of debt. My wife and I started to listen to the Financial Fitness program published by Life Leadership. I had to change my thinking about finances.

I was laboring under multiple mortgages, business debt, credit cards and auto loans. I decided to cut up my credit cards and started tracking each debt in a little notebook. I sold stuff I did not need and stopped eating out at restaurants.

We reduced costs in Balloon Distractions, and I went back to directly managing my team in Tampa. I also started creating an additional stream of income by building a modest Life Leadership community.

My focus for the NEXT 2 years is to go totally debt free and pay off my home here in Florida. Maybe do it even faster than that.

Most people build a Life business while they are still working a regular job, some with the goal of quitting their job to be “free” from a boss.

I don’t feel that way about Balloon Distractions. After owning and operating BD since 2003 I still enjoy sitting down and interviewing new entertainers and developing new trainers and regional leaders.

Balloon Distractions will be successful as long as children still love balloons!

In addition to reading up on finances and paying down debt I’ve also been listening and reading up on leadership.

Everyone who runs a business should study leadership, from the owner of a lemonade stand to executives in huge corporations. It wasn’t until I was 40 that I began to study leadership, so its never too late.

If your results in life are not above average you might need to upgrade your philosophy!

Have a great week!

Benjamin T. Alexander

April 2016

We can all design our lives, but we have to be intentional about it.

Exercise ::::::::::::::::

I moved from Baltimore to Florida in the summer of 2003. We bought a nice home in a development with a large community pool. I had been a swimmer as a college student, but during my 20’s I lived in New Jersey and Maryland and didn’t have access to a pool.

I still live in that same housing development in Florida, and since our pool stays open all year I’ve become a daily swimmer, even in the cooler months when the pool dips below 60 degrees. Swimming in cold water will focus your mind, try it.

For the last 2 years I’ve been walking several miles each morning (sometimes with my wife) and then swimming in the late afternoon. The afternoon swim is a great wake up call, especially when you reach that low point in your daily Circadian rhythms.

This combination of walking and swimming feels sustainable, I’d like to maintain this level of daily exercise for the rest of my life.

Learning :::::::::::::::::::::::::

I’m aware that my knowledge and leadership skills at this point are limited, so I’m investing time in personal development as well. The results that I’ve created in my current businesses are a direct reflection of my thinking up to this point in time.

In order to lead 10,000 people I have to become a better leader, a better coach, a better performer and a better human being all around.

I have to deepen my faith, and grow closer to my Creator.

I’m constantly listening to audios and reading to develop my most valuable asset; my mind. The Life Leadership material is great for this, I’m still finding new content in the system, and the leaders in LIFE are creating new content every month.

Earning ::::::::::::::::::::::::::

I have the freedom to exercise at will because I haven’t had a regular job since 2003. I’ve created passive income through 2 ventures; Balloon Distractions and Life Leadership.

There are still actions that I need to take on a weekly basis to maintain and grow both ventures, but the passive nature of my income gives me the TIME to also read and exercise more than most folks who punch a clock 40 hours a week.

Most of my daily EARNING activities revolve around developing and growing each business. I’m in the people business, and as long as the world is full of people there is no limit on the size of my team.

When you focus on building passive (or residual) income that is exactly what you will get. If you focus on trading time for income you will be stuck in the hamster wheel forever; work, sleep, eat, wash, rinse, repeat.

::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::

The roots of your results will always be firmly planted in your daily habits.

Create a regular habit of Exercising, Learning then Earning.

Try to do all three, every day.

You’ll feel great, you’ll be happier, and your finances will steadily improve.

Have a great weekend, I’m hitting the pool!

-Ben Alexander

March 19, 2016

For the past 2 years I’ve been investing in the most valuable asset I own; my mind.

Reading 20 minutes every morning, working with a mentor, and listening to audio recordings when I’m exercising or driving my car.

My thinking has evolved and sharpened, not only as a result of learning but also by permanently removing alcohol from my life. If you are under the grand delusion that regular drinking does not damage your brain take a moment to read this link:

http://pubs.niaaa.nih.gov/publications/aa63/aa63.htm

My Life Leadership business really took off once I found sobriety, this was no accident.

Today I run 2 profitable ventures, and both businesses require more thinking than any type of real physical labor.

———————

Last year my parents retired and moved from NJ to my community here in Florida, and it has been a blessing to have them back in my life, especially after many years of only seeing them once or twice a year.

When Mom and Dad joined the local Methodist church I decided to follow along, and now I’m beginning to get to know the folks in our church family as well.

Being in that church every Sunday morning, growing closer to my Creator… there is no downside to that.

When I reached a low point in my life a few years ago I had prayed a simple prayer:

“Lord, I can’t handle these burdens alone, I put myself in Your hands, lead me as you see fit, point my talents and passions in the direction of Your glory, Amen.”

I believe that I was led to Life Leadership, I needed the wisdom and positive association with the people of faith in the Life business. It’s impossible to listen to Orrin Woodward and Chris Brady CDs without fundamentally changing your perspective on wealth and success.

———————–

I’m 42 years old, and many men my age get off track.

If you are in the same season of life (and find yourself struggling) I’d encourage you to reach out to a mentor who has gone through similar trials, especially if that mentor is a good man of faith.

God has a plan for you, as He has a plan for all of us, but you have to be open to what that plan might be, and humble enough to accept it.

As it says in the Book of John:

“And the light shineth into the darkness, and the darkness did not comprehend it.”

Benjamin T. Alexander

March 2016

YOU are a miracle.

Interesting video interview of Mark Cuban at end of this online article:

http://www.entrepreneur.com/article/220342

Mark Cuban’s success is tough to duplicate, any billionaire sees the world differently than the rest of us. I’d be willing to bet that Cuban makes intuitive decisions based on a lifetime of experience, his gut-based process operates at a subconscious level.

Mark Cuban has over $2.5 billion to play with, if he invests in an idea and loses $100K this is similar to an average person accidentally misplacing a $20 bill.

When I pitched him on Shark Tank he told me to come back on the show when Balloon Distractions hits $1,000,000 per year in revenue. He probably said that because Cuban knew that my company would have to have better systems and improved structure in order to hit that revenue point.

He was right, when I met him back in 2013 Balloon Distractions had a ton of things we needed to improve.

Balloon Distractions is lean and mean now, we will be debt free in a few months, our profits per booking are excellent, and our systems have continued to improve.

PDCA: Plan, Do, Check and Adjust.

Most of all I’ve worked on myself.

I’ve been studying leadership, paying off all my debt, I went 100% SOBER, and Balloon Distractions has really started to take off after these changes.

Balloon Distractions will hit $1,000,000 in revenue, its only a matter of time.

I hope you enjoy the Mark Cuban interview, he’s an interesting guy.

Benjamin T. Alexander

A few years ago Balloon Distractions had too much debt, a fancy corporate office, multiple employees and expenses that ate up every dime of revenue.

I replaced my employees with better technology, set up state of the art systems, paid down a ton of debt and now I can run the entire enchilada from any table anywhere, all I need is an internet connection and an energy source.

As I write this post I’m typing at a corner table in a restaurant while my car is being serviced. The internet is streaming from my smartphone, my rent for this space is the price of a cup of coffee.

I can do everything I need to do for multiple streams of income just by sitting here and firing up my laptop.

You do NOT need to be tied down to a cubicle or even a physical location to earn a full time income. You can be totally free, but you have to be creative and open to new ideas.

I started Balloon Distractions in 2003, in 2014 I launched a business with Life Leadership.

With my Life Leadership business I’ve been using online video conferencing to build my team in Canada, California, Kansas City and Atlanta!

I can work from anywhere in the United States right now. In the next few years I’ll be able to seamlessly run both ventures from anywhere in the world. I could run everything from anywhere; a night market in Taipei, a café in Lima, a trattoria in Rome.

You have to wrap your brain around time zone differences, Balloon Distractions has spanned 4 time zones for the last 8 years, its not a big deal. My LIFE team will eventually span 15 different time zones, but we’ll adjust accordingly.

There is something to be said for running a SIMPLE business that does not require inventory, employees, or an actual physical building.

I occasionally have meetings for Life Leadership or Balloon Distractions in my home, but most of the growth in both businesses takes place in restaurants and coffee shops all over Tampa Bay.

Many of our business meetings are now virtual over a Zoom.us connection.

Both ventures use direct deposit for all payroll, Balloon Distractions hasn’t paid anyone via paper check for the past 10 months.

In LIFE all the business volume is generated electronically. 100% of the LIFE training can be accessed via smartphone, so the product side of that business is totally virtual as well.

If you truly want to be FREE as an entrepreneur you need to have a business that you can run from anywhere, with proven systems that move products and services with little effort on your behalf.

You need systems in place to create residual income, and the LIFE opportunity has the best systems I’ve ever seen for creating an international asset that generates income across borders in a way that is simple for the business owner.

Because of Balloon Distractions and Life Leadership I have amazing flexibility in my schedule, I can determine where I need to be and what I need to do on a weekly basis.

If you work with me to build a Life Leadership team you can enjoy that same level of freedom.

Check out the short video on this site:     http://www.LifeLeadership.com

If you want to learn more leave your contact info in the comments section and I’ll reach out to you in the next few days!

Have a Great week!

Ben Alexander

January 20, 2016

Check out what Elon Musk says (around the hour mark) in this interview on YouTube:

There have been other manmade threats to humanity, at the height the Cold War the USA and the USSR had enough nuclear weapons amassed to kill most of the humans on the planet within a few hours.

Nuclear weapons are still out there, and the USA could once again move into a nuclear standoff (China, perhaps) but this seems far less likely than the tensions that existed during the Cold War.

Elon Musk only briefly touches upon the threat of Artificial Intelligence, but he’s clearly concerned about it.

AI is getting better every day, when a machine consciousness finally becomes self-aware it could upload itself to the internet. It would be easy enough for this type of AI to reside in 100 million computers and smartphones; silently watching, waiting, and learning everything there is to learn about us.

This is interesting stuff to think about.

-Ben Alexander

January 2016

I’ve earned money dozens of different ways, from traditional jobs in restaurants and construction to wild entrepreneurial schemes that sometimes worked and sometimes flopped disastrously.

I applaud anyone who opens a business. In trying something new (and sometimes failing) you will always learn SOMETHING. I love the Orrin Woodward quote:

“Never leave the scene of a good butt-kicking without learning anything….”

There is always risk in trying anything unconventional, you can waste time and money, but at the end of the day you’ll have a more interesting story!

Here is a list of some of the wackiest things I’ve tried in the past 25 years, along with the end results. I’ve left out the all the normal jobs (like insurance agent and lifeguarding) since you probably already know what those jobs entail.

1. English Teacher in Taiwan… In 1995 I flew to Asia on a one-way plane ticket to teach English. I stayed there for almost a year, earned thousands of dollars, learned how to speak some Mandarin, and met my wife. Traveling to the other side of the world was risky, but the reward and consequences were huge.

My wife gave me two lovely daughters, if I had not gone to Taiwan my life would be very different today. I’m highly blessed to have Rachel and the girls in my life!

2. Roller Blade Instructor… This was a part-time gig in I landed in Taiwan. I worked with an Australian and we taught little kids how to rollerblade. I made a few bucks, had some fun.

3.  Nude Art Model… The art department at my university paid me $15 per hour to pose naked as a jaybird for the art students who were learning how to sketch the human form. I did this for a few months, made a few extra dollars. I was fit at the time, but people of many different body types worked in this job. There are sketches of my bare rear-end out there, somewhere in the universe.

4. Church Baritone… The Presbyterian Church in Cherry Hill paid me $50 per week to be the lead Baritone. My weekly obligation was Wednesday night choir practice and both services on Sunday morning, so I guess I was a professional singer? The pay was modest, but I got to sing some lovely music. I had this job at the same time I worked as a naked art model!

5. Term Paper Writer… When I was finishing my Economics degree I started to write term papers for other students. I had taken many different classes and honed my ability to write term papers in almost any subject. Writing term papers for other kids was my first (and only) criminal enterprise. I made a couple hundred bucks doing this, but I also risked expulsion from my University.

6. Balloon Twister… I found a job twisting balloons for restaurants with a company called Balloon Attractions. I made over $25,000 in income doing restaurant gigs and events in my first 12 months twisting balloons. I  hustled all the time, working in restaurants 5-6 nights each week, while also handling a full course load my last year in college. Of all the things I learned in my college years balloon twisting was by far the most lucrative skill in the long term.

7. Amway Business Owner… I was selling insurance in 1998 when one of my clients sponsored me into Amway. I went to several meetings, used the product, sponsored a handful of people, but never earned more than about $100 per month, if that. I never built my team consistently, so my failure in Amway was my fault, not Amway’s. I learned a ton of stuff in Amway that I used a few years later to grow Balloon Distractions.

8. Door to Door Energy Sales… It was 1999, I saw an ad in the paper for door to door deregulated energy sales. For the next 3 years I built sales teams and ran door to door crews from Philadelphia to Baltimore to Atlanta. I got the rare opportunity to knock doors in some of the sketchiest ghettos in the Northeast. My first year in door to door I made 65K, my best year I cleared 130K. The market for deregulated energy fell apart when Enron collapsed in the fall of 2001. I left door to door and took a job selling Toyotas.

9. Owner of Balloon Distractions… Starting in 2003 with a small team in Tampa I built Balloon Distractions into a national company. This has been my most successful enterprise thus far, grossing several million since the beginning. BD has been surprisingly stable over the years, my most reliable source of income. Most of the revenue went out for payroll, expenses and Uncle Sam! Balloon Distractions still generates revenue every day except for Christmas and Thanksgiving, and has done so since 2003.

10. Your Travel Biz (YTB) owner… Like most folks who join network marketing I signed up, but never did anything.

11. Stemtech Business Owner…. Same as YTB and Amway, all three were networking business models. I have no excuse for WHY I never built these, other than just being distracted by other things. Broken focus folks, it can be a problem.

12. Airbag Motorcycle Jackets… While in Taiwan back in 2008 I met an inventor who made motorcycle jackets that would inflate like an airbag (via CO2 cartridges) if you fell off your motorcycle. I brought a few jackets back to the states, but my lawyer felt that the jackets represented a huge liability risk. I never made a dime with this idea.

13. Super Sonic Sphere! This was a little light-up toy that I found in Taiwan that I thought was so cool I imported a couple hundred and tried to sell them here. I even put up a website and made some cool videos. I sold a few Super Sonic Spheres, but all in all I lost money on this deal. This is what they look like:

14. The EB-5 Program…. This is an investment program that allows foreign nationals access to green cards if they invest in the United States and create a total of 10 new jobs. I tinkered with this idea, even went to Taiwan in 2010 with my wife, but nothing ever came of this. I lost about $8,000 trying to make this idea work!

15. Author… In 2014 I wrote my first book, We Twist for Tips. I spent a few months writing the book and we sell a few downloads each month on Amazon, you can buy it here:

Small commissions from book sales are magically deposited into my bank account each month, so I’m happy about that.

16. Life Leadership Business Owner (LIFE)…. I became a customer of the LIFE personal development material in March of 2014. It saved my marriage first…

Then my wife and I used the LIFE financial fitness training to pay off about 100K in debt…

Finally, the LIFE training also led me to sobriety…. This was all before I made a profit from the business.

In October of 2014 I started to build a compensated community with the LIFE business model, in the last 14 months that business has grown quickly and is close to generating as much business volume as Balloon Distractions!

After all the other wacky things that I’ve tried I feel that my LIFE business will outrun all of them, including Balloon Distractions. The model works, it creates residual income, and the founders of LIFE are constantly improving the opportunity for anyone who gets involved today.

My income from LIFE has not caught up to my income from BD yet, but my LIFE business is profitable and growing each month.

Of all the ventures I’ve tried I feel that building a community with LIFE has a more profound purpose than merely making an income.

We are changing lives for the better, and I feel that this is a good and noble use of my time.

I’ll stay in the LIFE business until I’m an old guy, no doubt.

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If you are interested in trying your hand at entrepreneurship I would encourage you to do something with……..

(1. Great systems in which you can find…

(2. a strong mentor and also…

(3. build a residual income…

I’m glad I tried all these different things, it made my story more interesting, even when I lost money!

The risk has always been minor compared to the overall benefit to my life, the safe route is almost always the dull route as well.

-Ben Alexander

January 3, 2016

BTW, watch the video on this website if you want to evaporate your debt:

http://www.LifeLeadership.com