Many law firms understand importance of building a diverse workforce. The changing demographics within United States have signaled to firms that diversity is an important goal that will affect firm’s viability and ultimately bottom line. In response, many firms have launched diversity recruitment efforts designed to bring more women and attorneys of color into firm. The problem has been that within a few years of being hired attorneys that qualify as “diverse” leave firm in search of more inclusive, diverse and culturally competent work environments. Below are some critical reasons why attempts at creating diversity have failed.

1)Lack of Commitment at top: In order for diversity initiatives to succeed, there must be vigorous support for it at senior level of firm or organization. Partners are change agents of firm. Committees formed to address issues of diversity, recruitment, retention and cultural competence must be lead by key leaders within firm.

2)Failure to assess firm’s environment: Assessment is critical in helping to create and implement an effective diversity initiative plan. It’s critically important to understand an organization’s level of development before launching a diversity or cultural competence initiative. Firms must be prepared to assess their hiring practices, overall culture, interpersonal relationships, views about diversity and promotion practices

3)Over emphasis on recruitment and hiring: Relying on recruitment as a primary means of creating diversity will prove to be an ineffective strategy. Instead, recruitment is simply an initial step in overall process. Firms must ensure that their work environment can support a diverse staff. Next, firm-wide, culturally effective systems and practices must be implemented in order to prevent excessive attrition among women and attorney’s of color. Retention and development of a strong and diverse pool of attorneys depends upon firm’s ability to create a work environment that values and leverages difference, mentors cross culturally and consistently measures and monitors progress and development of all attorneys.

In a recent article (What is The Ultimate Lifestyle), I talked about 8 core components that define "The Ultimate Lifestyle."

The first component was income streams, and reason it was listed as #1 is because if you want to live ultimate lifestyle (as you define it), you must:

- Have total control over your time (i.e. you're your own boss, not an employee)

- Have numerous income streams flowing, with as many of them as possible being "passive" or requiring minimal time and effort from you. To truly live ultimate lifestyle, you must have income that flows whether you "show up for work" or not. These income streams are "fuel" that drives The Ultimate Lifestyle.

In this article, I'm going to discuss "Top 10" income streams you can setup. There are actually many more than 10, but we don't have we room to discuss them all here.

You may be in a position to take advantage right now of many or all of streams I discuss, or it may take some time and effort to get one or more of them flowing. There's no hurry. Creating ultimate lifestyle takes vision, time, planning and effort.

All streams I discuss may not interest you or match your preferred lifestyle, and it isn't necessary to have all of them flowing at once (or at all) to live your own ultimate lifestyle. I'm just giving you food for thought.

Here are "Top 10" best ways I've found to generate streams of income required to truly live your ultimate lifestyle:

1. Start/Run Your Own Business

We're living at a fantastic time in history if your goal is to start your own business and create passive or "low effort" income streams from it selling products or services.

With many benefits of Internet, power of direct marketing (online and offline), and large number of top- notch contractors and third party companies you can offload day-to-day "grunt work" to, today's entrepreneurial environment a dream come true if you know how to set things up to take maximum advantage of many tools and resources available.

In addition, it has never been easier to set up a strong flow of income doing something you love or you're really passionate about - no matter what it is or how "obscure" it may be. Again, Internet and direct marketing create unprecedented levels of opportunity.

Finally, there are numerous tax advantages to having your own business which enable you to put much more money in your own pocket -- if you know how to set things up and take maximum advantage of many tools and systems available.

If you want to live your ultimate lifestyle, your own business will be at core of it. It's my #1 choice for creating ultimate lifestyle.

2. Royalties

If you have a specific area of expertise and you know how to turn it into a book, audio, video or multi-media course, you can get other people to manufacture it, sell it, manage all details, and send you a royalty check for a percentage of sales. This is a great stream of passive income and one I'm currently pursuing aggressively.

You can also generate passive royalty income from inventions or other marketable ideas of various kinds.

You make less money "per piece" when you go this route, but fact that you don't have daily responsibility for managing production, sales, accounting and other details has a lot of value, and if you set it up right, products that generate royalties for you also cause people to come back into your orbit to buy and do other things that end up benefiting you in many other ways in long run.

Do you feel this is a good idea but you don't think you have expertise that could translate into a royalty stream? That *might* be true, but I can almost guarantee that you have expertise you don't know you have, you could easily create it by following a passion and/or create a potential royalty stream from knowledge you have or could get if you got some right kind help.

3. Licensing Fees

This income stream is similar to royalty stream, but has many notable differences. Licensing involves charging a fee to allow others to sell products you create (books, tapes, videos, etc.), or to use your likeness, logo or other very visible aspect of your work, business or "brand."

Licensing can also take form of allowing others to present a seminar, workshop or talk you've designed that provides many benefits to audiences receiving them. I have two friends, Charles and Will, who've licensed rights to one, two and three day seminars with their material, and they receive HUGE checks every month.

Will actually has 5000 people licensed to present his one day seminar, and tens of thousands of people are getting benefit of his work, and he's getting big checks without lifting a finger.

There are other forms of licensing, however, that don't require expertise on your part, just visibility and a "brand."

One example includes Disney who licenses their logo, likenesses of Disney characters, etc. Another example includes Harry Potter merchandise. Another example includes use of Coke or Pepsi logo.

While it's true that these examples center around huge companies, there are a variety of licensing opportunities for "little guys" like you and me if you get creative and set it up right.

4. Real Estate

I've only dabbled in real estate over years, but I'm gearing up with my wife to get very involved with Real Estate in 2004 and beyond.

Passive income streams can flow out of Real Estate in many ways, including:

Buying and then re-selling foreclosures and other "distressed" properties