Money is one of the most sensitive,
contemplative and controversial topics in the world.
Countless books,
newspapers,
blog posts,
as well as speeches on What money is?
How to make money?
How to spend it?
Who has money
and Who doesn’t?
And a bunch of content other related content.
But, despite the constant interest in the subject,
there is only one word to describe people’s usual view of money.
Although enormous amounts of research have been published on the subject,
there is still so much misinformation about money,
we might call it wrong word in finance,
that people tend to either rely on luck
or purposely ignore the whole subject.
This situation is not only meaningless,
but also a tragedy.
It is tragic because human potential will not be discovered
when people leave their lives to chance,
or worse,
gradually give up on their own dreams.
It makes no sense
because the secrets of money,
how to make it,
how to invest,
and how to spend it wisely,
are all known.
Indeed, there is an entire science of money in the world,
as do many other sciences,
such as nutrition,
anatomy,
astronomy,
chemistry,
and engineering.
Theories and practices in the science of money have been tested
and proven over and over again not just for years or decades,
but millennia.
Although new theories about money are constantly being put forth,
just as we publish many new theories about
how to cure cancer or baldness,
the industry basis as well
as the rules for testing the results will ,
immediately,
shifting new ideas from the theoretical area into one of two categories:
First, verifiable facts that Brian calls laws;
and second,
a disproved view that Brian calls a myth.
In this book,
we’ll look at both of these categories:
the laws of money,
which are proven and highly reliable rules
like you’d always believe the sun rises in the East;
and misconceptions about money.
Money myths can include unfounded notions,
but exist as rumors;
and ideas that are supposed to be true,
but are proven to be completely false, or worse,
have never been tested.
In a nutshell,
here we have a central goal
that needs to be dealt with definitively:
To end the ambiguity on the subject of money,
once and for all
and to present the fullest possible truths about money.
If you take the ideas discussed in this book
and apply them to your life and business,
you are sure to achieve financial success,
with a degree of assurance that the sun rises every day.
*********
Chapter 1: Define money
In any science,
we must interpret technical terms
to ensure that we are in agreement on the topic we are studying
and on the fundamental principles used to test everything theory around that topic.
Following this discussion,
Brian will help us define terms on the subject of money.
Some of his views may surprise you.
********
Part 1. Let’s start by defining what the science of money is,
and how people study development,
the barter process becomes very inconvenient.
People find that they can save money ever since.
See how this research work lays out many solid
and reliable rules for how money is made and made,
and disproves many speculative theories and illusions.
If you want to get to the bottom of this topic,
you should start with the first law,
the law of exchange.
This law states that money is the medium through
which people exchange goods and services.
They exchange the labor transmitted through goods
and services in exchange for the goods and services of others.
Money is a medium to exchange labor power.
Before the appearance of money,
there was only exchange.
This process took place 100,000 years ago,
when people made spearheads with flintstones,
or pots and pans,
and exchanged them for other objects
such as carpets or leather.
In barter,
people directly exchange goods
and services with each other,
without using the intermediary of money.
Later, when human civilization exchanged goods
and services with one another through an intermediary
such as gold,
silver,
coins,
shells,
or wampum coins in early America,
something was scarce and valuable.
People put out coins or something of value,
which they can exchange for chickens,
goats,
or something else.
As a result,
the entire exchange process becomes easier and more efficient.
A North American Indian coin,
made from seashells,
polished and strung on a strap.
It was the beginning of money,
and still determines the meaning of money today,
although people are still very vague about it.
The coin makes the whole exchange process more efficient.
Today, we go to work and exchange labor for money,
which we then use to buy products from other people’s labor.
Basically, money is the medium through
which we exchange our labor for the labor of others.
The first corollary is drawn from the law of exchange:
Money is a measure of the value that people assign to goods and services.
It is just something that determines the value of goods
and services that a person will spend.
Matter has no value in itself,
its value is just what someone is willing to pay to own it.
You cannot say that your product or service
is worth a certain amount of money,
unless someone else confirms it by actually paying you for it.
The value of goods and services depends on
who is willing to pay to buy them.
Therefore, all values assigned to goods or services are subjective.
This is the foundation of Austrian economic thought,
the brightest and most useful school in the world human history.
It is established based on the mindset,
feelings,
attitudes and views of the potential customer
at the time of making the purchase decision.
The second corollary is derived
from the law of exchange which states that:
Your labor is seen by others as a factor in the production process,
that is,
as a cost incurred to produce the finished product.
This corollary smashed nearly all of the economic debate
about whether people should be paid $15 an hour.
Humans are also known as economic people.
********
Part 2. Each of us tends to see our labor as something very special,
because it has a very distinct personal color.
It comes from our own body.
It is an expression for us as human beings.
It is easy to evoke emotion, indeed,
because it is our life.
So far, however,
for others,
our labor is just a fee.
As smart consumers,
or business owners,
or customers,
we all want to achieve the most but spend the least,
no matter whose labor it is.
This explains why many companies locate their production plants in China,
Taiwan, Vietnam, or Indonesia:
Because American customers don’t care where their products are made.
Customers are only interested in getting the lowest possible price.
People constantly propose solutions to use foreign labor.
Not companies,
but customers are pressuring and demanding businesses to use foreign labor,
so that goods and services can be produced at a lower cost.
Most Apple products are made in China.
Why so?
Because production costs in more developed countries are 3-4 times more expensive than manufacturing in China,
and customers in developed countries will not accept to pay that much.
They claim, indirectly,
that companies should take advantage of cheap foreign labor
so that they can get the most benefit but spend the least.
Therefore, we cannot assign a value to our own labor,
by protesting and demanding increases or the like.
Only what others are willing to pay for your labor,
in a competitive market,
determines how much you earn
and how financially you are worth.
We will discuss the 99% versus 1% problem later in the book.
A third corollary
from the law of exchange states that the amount you earn
is a measure of the value others assign
to your contributions.
In other words,
it is the customer in the market
who decides how much our contributions are worth.
It is the customers of the business we are serving
who decide how much to pay for the products
and services that we contribute to the production process.
This is also the basis for deciding how much we will be paid.
We will not be paid an amount according to their subjectivity.
How much you are paid will directly correlate with the quantity
and quality of your contribution to the production process relative
to the contributions of others,
combined with the value others attribute to your contributions.
One thing that I have shared,
is that he is competing with every other individual in his own company every day.
Many people will get really angry after hearing this;
they will protest,
“We are not competing with anyone,
we are all working together as members of a team.”
The truth is,
the person who determines your salary will determine
how much you are paid compared
to other people’s compensation.
That’s why most companies have a rule
that requires you not to discuss your salary with others,
because your salary depends on what the company thinks you deserve,
compared to others.
The fourth corollary drawn from the law of exchange shows
that money is the effect,
not the cause.
Your labor or contribution to the value of a product
or service is the cause,
and the wages, salary,
or income you receive is the effect.
If you want to increase the output,
you have to increase the input.
As Earl Nightingale shared many years ago,
the law of cause and effect is a fundamental law in every aspect of human life,
every subject of science, technology,
mathematics and money.
*******
Part 3. The fifth corollary of the law of exchange states that:
To increase the remuneration you receive,
you must increase the value of the labor you put into the production of the product.
This is a surprising statement to a lot of people,
who think they can get more,
without having to put in the extra effort.
They also think that this is very normal.
You might ask,
“If so, where will that extra money come from?”
And they said,
“From somewhere.
” If you pressure them to be more specific, they’ll say,
“Okay, the money will come from other people
who are creating more value,
who are making more money because of that.
Then they’ll pay me,
even though from the market’s point of view
I create less value,
so I don’t feel the pinch.”
This kind of subjective attitude,
that I am entitled to more money,
is utterly absurd.
But it is the reason that leads to riots,
strikes and other problems.
We can declare,
to earn more,
you have to create more value.
In terms of business,
the secret to becoming rich,
which we’ll discuss later,
is adding value.
Occasionally,
I ask people how many of them work
and earn revenue based on sales.
I asked 1,000 people,
and about 10% or 15% of them raised their hands.
The truth is,
everyone works and gets paid based on revenue.
What does this mean?
That is, everyone gets a certain percentage of the value they create.
If you are not satisfied with the percentage you receive,
create more value,
become more valuable so that your boss
or client is willing to pay you more
because they appreciate your contribution very much.
Many people make only $10 an hour,
but many others make $1,000 an hour.
I have a friend who upgraded his skills
from being a commercial lawyer
to becoming a lawyer specializing in intellectual property rights,
an area in which there was no professional at that time.
It’s an open market.
Huge corporations like Sony or Disney,
and many of the world’s leading companies were very willing
to pay him $1,000 an hour
to help them with intellectual property law matters,
for the related expenses were hundreds of millions of dollars,
and he is an expert.
He’s made himself so valuable that they’re willing to pay him whatever he wants.
He is often paid $2 million or $3 million to test contracts or joint ventures
between companies with intellectual property,
such as movie companies.
To make more money,
you have to add value;
Therefore, he must increase his knowledge capital.
As a management expert,
Peter Drucker shares that we are all knowledge workers,
so by increasing the knowledge capital to make the business better,
he will increase your own value,
then people will be willing
and eager to put money in your pocket.
Or develop your skill level so you can get more done
and better in the same amount of time.
Or you improve your work habits to be much more productive.
The highest-paid people in every society,
as in every business,
are consistently depicted as results-oriented.
They are very productive people.
I’ve worked with a lot of people,
and just taught them time management skills,
and they tripled their income in less than a year at the same job,
for the same company.
The company is willing to pay them more,
because they create more value.
Everyone works,
and receives a commensurate salary based on direct commissions.
Or you can work longer and harder.
The most successful people always work harder than many others.
In fact, statistics show that 59-60 hours of work per week
would put him in the top 20% of earners.
If you work 70 hours a week,
you’ll be in the top 5% or 10% of earners.
Today, the average worker works 40 hours a week,
but according to studies on the labor situation,
they actually only work 32 hours.
Why so? Since they have time for coffee and lunch breaks,
relax earlier and finish later.
In those 32 hours,
they waste 50% of their time chatting,
Facebook, social media,
Internet, calling friends, etc.
So people usually only really work 16 hours per week,
and generate little value.
Yet, they do not understand why they are not paid more.
One secret to success is working full time.
Start working earlier,
work harder,
leave later,
and work full time.
Don’t be distracted.
Don’t chat with your friends.
Don’t go out to lunch,
drink coffee,
read the newspaper,
or surf the Internet.
When you go to work, work.
Start working with full concentration.
You can work more creatively,
or whatever helps you increase your productivity
and get better results.
Some people produce 5 times more than others,
in the same amount of time as 8 hours a day.
Plus, all rich people work 6 days a week.
This is revealed in many studies.
It’s not hard to work 6 days a week.
If you’re doing what you love,
well done and get great results,
then you will be motivated.
And it makes him happy.
In fact, many successful people are forced to resort
to self-discipline to stop working
because they love their work so much.
One of his great responsibilities,
which we’ll talk about later,
is finding work he’s truly passionate about, motivating,
and forcing himself to take a break.
For those who are doing what they love,
time seems to stop.
They forgot to eat and drink.
They forget to rest.
They forgot to drink coffee.
They are so absorbed in their work that they force themselves
to take a break to eat and do other things.
The highest paid people in our society are those
who continuously improve in these areas
to add value to the work they are doing.
The truth is,
the money you earn is a direct reflection
of the amount of value
you create to help improve the lives
and businesses of others.
All success in life comes from serving others in some way.
If you want to make a lot of money,
serve many people,
and serve in a way that really makes a difference to them.
********
Part 4. Let’s discuss in more detail.
Let’s discuss obstacles for everyone.
In his view of adding value,
he often sees the person demanding a higher salary say,
“Look at the senior executive.
They have used to refer to an agreement
to compensate directors with a sum of money at the end of the contract,
with the provision of other profits
if they are fired earlier than the contract.
When they leave,
even if the company makes a loss.
Look at the stock market,
where there are people who take advantage of the market like a casino.
They roll the dice
and profit when the stock market fluctuates.”
Many people would say
that there are many problems in the economy,
so that increasing income is not just a matter of value exchange.
Let’s discuss some of the more vehement objections
to the idea of adding value.
How would you react to those comments?
Let me tell you a famous story about the so-called commodity Cargo cult holds
that gods will naturally bring goods to people.
Army engineering teams also arrived,
unloaded bulldozers,
built an airstrip,
and then they started delivering all the food,
clothing, everything for the battle.
When the war ended, they withdrew,
and the island of New Guinea was a mess again.
The natives around the war zones that were used as laborers
in World War II have no idea
where the wealth comes from.
They believe that wealth comes
from cargo planes.
They began to believe in the cult of goods.
They make miniature dolls and airplane models,
which they place on small altars.
They burned incense,
prayed,
worshiped them and sang songs.
They prayed for the planes
to return with their treasures inside.
The lesson from the above story is
that most people don’t really understand money,
that’s why they have such thoughts.
They believe in monstrous things.
When a person is offered a job at a Fortune 500 company,
they are offered very high salaries,
high value stock options,
and their lawyers negotiate these contracts.
I know this very well from my own experience.
They also negotiate the compensation for severance.
If something doesn’t go as expected,
if the company, after hiring him,
definitely doesn’t need him anymore,
for any reason like the market going down,
or he’s not doing his job well enough,
then the company will pay you a compensation amount.
That amount of compensation has been agreed in advance.
They said,
“Oh, these people all have golden umbrellas.”
Yes, it’s a term for them to accept the job,
and they take the job from somewhere other than
where they’ve had great work as well.
This is just a very common part of the contract.
In the field of stock investing,
you will find that the people
with the highest income work very hard to get that income.
For example, Warren Buffett,
a billionaire,
spends 80% of every day researching the stock market,
researching companies, studying transformations,
and changing to compete 80% of the time every day.
He was 84 years old.
He’s still at work,
he’s highly focused,
and he’s researching potential investment opportunities.
Warren Buffet started out with just $2,000,
and he adopted a value investing model,
a concept we’ll talk about later.
He studies the value,
intrinsic value of products, services,
management, and positioning in the industry compared
to domestic and foreign competitors.
There are many things that need to be carefully studied.
Meanwhile,
people who just have fun in the stock market are most likely
to end up insolvent,
just like professional poker players
who come to Las Vegas to make a lot of money.
They find that they will make as much money as they work,
because for the amount of money they win or lose,
they will make a few dollars an hour playing poker
for 12-14 hours.
I just left Las Vegas 2 days ago and everyone there knows this.
In the stock market,
there are people
who buy and sell stocks every day,
there are people who buy
and sell stocks in the blink of an eye,
people who are constantly entering
and exiting the market 70% of them are not sustainable.
I just got back from a meeting
with one of my clients.
He introduced me to a man
who had spent hundreds of millions of dollars starting a 50-member flash trading company.
I saw huge screens there,
brilliant mathematicians constantly buying and selling stocks,
accumulating every penny in every trade.
He invested hundreds of millions of dollars in it,
then lost it all.
At the end of that day,
everyone who was working full-time 16 hours a day lost everything
and had to go.
But fortunately, he is a billionaire,
so he can afford to lose several hundred million dollars of speculation.
The truth is, most of the people
who actually make a profit in stock investing are long-term players.
Warren Buffett bought stocks
but didn’t sell them for 50 years.
He is a value investor.
At times he would sell a portion of his holdings
in order to collect cash to buy something else
with a better yield at that time.
Today, presidents of Fortune 500 companies earn,
on average, 303 times the median employee salary in their own companies.
Interestingly, they all started off as normal,
like marathon runners,
in their careers.
When starting a business,
they are like many others.
They started working.
They are highly concentrated in their own workspace.
Some have a high level of education,
some have a medium level of education;
some achieved excellent exam results,
some did not;
some come from well-off families,
some come from poor families;
some are of Mayflower lineage,
some are new immigrants
who didn’t speak the native language at the start of their careers.
Today, they earn 303 times the salary of the average employee,
which is about 10.3 million dollars per year,
while the average person at their company makes only 52,000 dollars.
*******
Part 6. Why is there such a big difference?
They looked back all the way to find the answer,
and discovered a strategy.
It was one of the major breakthroughs in money.
That strategy says,
from the start,
they’ve been asking the question:
What skills would help me make a better contribution
at this point in my career?
They asked the boss,
and he said,
“If you were really good at marketing,
analyzing financial statements,
giving presentations,
building teams,
or negotiating,
you would actually become much more valuable in the business.”
They take it seriously as a project,
and arrange a study plan like going to school.
They find the best books to read,
the best radio shows to listen to (especially ours),
the best courses to take,
and the best things to do every day to develop this ability.
After a month, six months or a year,
they will successfully develop these skills,
as all business skills can be learned.
The magic number here is 10 hours a week.
While friends go socializing,
chasing boys and girls and all,
these guys spend an average of 2 hours a day,
5 days a week,
upgrading their skills.
It becomes as natural to them as breathing in and out.
They come home in the evening,
have dinner with their spouse and children,
and then study for 2 hours a night,
5 days a week.
I once went to India for a lecture.
I asked,
“I’m not familiar with the time zone in your country,
but how many hours are there in a week in India?”.
All laughed.
I said,
“Oh yeah, 168 hours, seven times 24 hours.”
It’s the same everywhere.
Can you effectively use 10 hours a week
to become one of the richest
and highest earning people in your field?
They replied,
“Yes, of course.”
So the real problem is not 10 hours out of 168 hours,
but will and discipline.
Every new skill obeys the law of resonance.
With each new skill,
he can use other skills available to a higher degree.
You can increase your earning potential
and your ability to contribute.
You can be more valuable,
because you can produce better results.
He becomes more and more valuable,
and people will pay him more and level him up faster.
The cumulative effect will happen like an avalanche.
After 10, 20 or 30 years,
when you’re in your 40s or 50s,
you’re earning 303 times the average of other people
who didn’t start learning from their first job.
Why are presidents at Fortune 500 companies paid so much?
Someone said,
“They just got lucky.”
But these people make decisions that
affect hundreds of millions of dollars,
sometimes billions of dollars.
For example, they may decide to enter or leave an industry,
sell one or more factories,
and the impact of this decision on net profit could be $1 billion.
And what do they get?
They get 10 million dollars.
They get a fraction of the 1% of the total economic performance
that comes from their decisions.
But in the beginning,
they worked alone,
with a small task assigned in a small private space,
along with a tiny laptop.
And now they run huge businesses,
their offices are located on the top floor
of the most luxurious office building.
Everyone has the ability to do that and things like that.
Can you tell me the story of your own journey,
from starting with a modest income to becoming a great rich man?
People often ask me,
what was my great motivation,
dream or passion
when I first started my career?
My answer is “to eat”.
What I wanted to do,
when I started my first job,
was make enough money to eat.
My first job was washing dishes.
I live in a one-room apartment,
with a stove on top, a fridge below,
a bathroom with a cheap shower,
and a bed.
That’s where I live,
and I used to live in these corners in different places
for a long time,
because I was just a manual worker
and couldn’t afford a better place to live.
I drive an old car,
I wear worn-out clothes.
I work 8-12 hours a day,
and all I think about is survival.
I’ve had a few worthwhile experiences.
As a young man,
I found myself able to take on certain neighborhood jobs
at the age of 12,
like mowing people’s lawns.
My parents, in the end,
encouraged me to buy a gasoline lawn mower.
I decided to buy.
They drove me to Sears and picked up a terrible lawn mower,
because they didn’t know anything about it.
I pushed the lawn mower around the neighborhood
and got to work.
Before long,
I was so proficient at the job that I decided to buy a better lawn mower.
I started walking around lawn mower stores.
I looked at the lawn mower there,
it still looks new even though it’s been used,
but it’s still great.
It is the type of lawn mower used to mow golf courses.
The appearance is beautiful,
and it can force the grass to fly forward,
so it leaves no streaks on the lawn.
After that, I started to mow more grass.
People started recommending me to other businesses,
because their lawn looked so beautiful eyes after I crop.
After a while,
I bought more pruners to clean the sidewalks and flower beds.
After that,
I bought a small trolley to pull this machine around the area.
By the time I was 15, I was making more money than my father,
just by pulling my little stroller around and mowing the lawn,
I used to mow the city mayor’s lawn.
I found that there is a direct link between your job,
skills and income.
Before, when he realized there was a connection
between the work he did and his income,
the better he did the job,
the more successful he became.
Some time later,
I returned and worked in factories,
mills and construction sites.
And then,
when I no longer got a physical job,
I went back to selling.
I used to sell door-to-door services,
including lawn mowing.
I used to sell soap,
I used to sell subscription services,
I also sell Christmas books.
Then I went back to my sales job,
and knocked door-to-door.
I get paid a direct commission on every product that
I successfully sell.
We often joke that he can only eat what he sells.
If you can’t sell,
you won’t have food,
this is one of the great motivators.
I realized that my income was completely dependent on my ability
to get results for people to pay me.
In seminars I hold around the world,
I ask people,
“What is your most valuable financial asset?”.
I let everyone think for a moment,
because when I first heard this question,
I didn’t know how to answer it either.
Then I realized
that my most valuable financial asset is my ability to make money.
So what is your earning potential?
It is the ability to achieve results that people will pay you for;
The most important word for success,
in life, and in business,
this is your results.
You could say the results sound pragmatic.
But the word also connotes consequences for his family.
It is the result of taking care your children,
and making them happier,
healthier,
more confident;
It is the result of building a good marriage;
It is the result of helping those around.
Those who achieve results are the most respected
and admired in all aspects of life.
Your ability to earn money is an asset,
and all assets,
such as machinery,
equipment or buildings that benefit their owners,
can increase or decrease in value.
If the ability to make money is an asset
that is increasing in value,
then that equates to him becoming more and more valuable.
There is a story in Fortune magazine about a woman
who worked for them for 46 years.
She finally decided to retire at the age of 70.
She was one of the most respected people there.
They held a big party to say goodbye to her.
They asked her why she was so valuable to a company like Fortune all these years,
to which she replied,
“Because I decided I wouldn’t go to bed at night
if I hadn’t seen it yet.
I was smarter than
when I woke up that morning.
Every day,
I learn something new that makes me better at work.”
She has interviewed CEOs,
presidents of Fortune 500 companies
and top stars in the financial sector in the world.
You can call Warren Buffett or Bill Gates
or anyone else in the main financial world,
and they’ll answer the phone,
because she’s a very respectable person.
That is her ability to make money.
Ask the average person,
“What did you do today to increase your self-worth,
increase your potential for results,
increase your ability to add more value to the world?”
Most people are shocked by this question.
Albert Einstein once said,
resonance is the greatest source of power in the universe.
Resonance means that every time you do something to improve your skill,
it resonates with other information you already have,
and sooner or later,
all of these pieces of information start to come together.
This phenomenon is known as the law of general intelligence.
And all the pieces of the intellectual information puzzle
begin to fuse together
and form a way, a plan,
or a pattern, by which you can see the opportunity
to help you build a prosperity you had never seen.
Sometimes it was just an extra piece of information
that could transform everything,
bringing all the pieces of information
he had previously gathered together.
Suddenly,
they collide,
and suddenly,
you’ll have an idea for a groundbreaking new product or service.
Look at Steve Jobs and Apple;
he came up with the idea for the iPod.
All kinds of technology in the iPod have been around for a long time
and are sold by many other companies,
with the exception of the ability to access music.
What he does is create new business models.
Today, there are a total of 55 different business models.
If the business model is not good,
his company will fall into a passive state,
lose direction, and risk bankruptcy.
Business models are changing so rapidly that at least 80% of companies,
including Fortune 500 companies,
have had to declare bankruptcy,
or still use part or all of their business model.
The new business model is all the different elements in the same new model,
and suddenly everything changes.
Google is a perfect example.
They came up with an idea for a search operation.
They linked hundreds and
then thousands of computers together,
then came up with an idea for a free search
so the community could look up information.
When people go online,
they can shop for products or services,
and Google can track,
algorithmically,
the things people are interested in
and display ads selectively.
Google has become one of the most valuable companies in the world
with an entirely new business model.
The business model that Google adopts is,
essentially,
a freelance business model.
They provided the best services in the world for free.
Your ability to make money is your most important asset,
and its value is increasing or decreasing.
Basketball coach Pat Riley once said,
you either get better,
or you get worse.
No one is unchanged.
Each new skill he develops moves him up the monetization ladder.
Each new skill meant he was worth more.
Each time he learns a new skill,
he steps up a notch,
and his earning potential increases.
If you keep going up the ladder,
your earning potential will grow.
Look at the highest earners in today’s society.
They are people who continuously practice each skill,
day after day,
week after week,
month after month.
They are constantly learning new skills.
They are more and more become more valuable.
As a result, people are willing to pour money into their pockets
and pay them millions of dollars in terms of bonuses for taking up high-level work,
and to pay out millions of dollars in severance pay
if they leave because any cause.
This is exactly why they make so much money.
The question he must ask himself is,
“What did I do today to increase my monetization,
increasing the quality and quantity of results
to benefit the person who is willing to pay me for that increase? ”
If you are so focused on producing results,
the difference it makes to your life will be extraordinary.
Tell us your own definition of money:
Let’s talk about why converting from paper money
to cryptocurrency helps us realize that
money is just a medium of exchange of value,
not an object or property.
Let’s discuss how that changes a person’s perception of money,
and how much they are willing to spend it.
Some say, money is energy
or a reflection of his life’s motivation.
Do you agree or disagree with this view,
and why?
A huge challenge for cryptocurrencies,
credit card funds,
bank deposits,
and so on is that people don’t actually process bills.
They are not aware of how much they actually spend.
Of course,
credit card products are of great interest
because it allows you to buy on credit.
Many companies launch movements that encourage people not to think about how much they spend.
It’s amazing how many people fall into bankruptcy every year
as a result of credit card debt.
The main reason for divorce among American couples,
especially among young couples in their 20s and 30s,
is money.
One of the couple decides to spend.
They say,
“Oh, it’s just a credit card.”
They ordered online,
another terrible act,
because he was completely detached from reality.
He clicked,
placed an order,
the item arrived at his door,
and a few weeks later the bill appeared.
“Who bought this?
What happen?
Oh! I don’t think carefully.
I bought it myself.”
In a collection service,
when many people find themselves in a spiral of debt,
the first thing a debt collection advisor does is help them disable their credit cards
or pool all their individual debts on one card,
set a limit so that they cannot spend more than the allowable limit in a given month.
Next, the mentor asks them to pay for everything in cash.
Most interestingly,
when he started pulling money out of his pocket:
That was the money he made.
They are your hourly wages.
And suddenly,
he understood very well how much he was spending,
and stopped altogether.
The act of pulling cash out of his pocket made him think more deeply and carefully before spending.
This is the huge challenge that people face today.
Money and time are interchangeable this way:
They can be spent or invested.
If you spend money or time,
it’s gone forever,
and you can never get it back.
If you invest it in something that can pay off in the future,
you can benefit from it in the long run.
I’ve always said that the best place to invest time
and money is where your earning potential is increased.
Warren Buffett is the most successful investor in history.
He started his career with just $2,000.
Today, his companies are worth $350 billion in total.
In particular,
his company Berkshire Hathaway is considered the third
and fourth largest company in the United States.
Last year,
he made $25 billion from his own companies.
Recently, Warren Buffett was asked, “Buffett,
you are the greatest investor in history.
In your opinion,
where is the best place to invest today?
He replied, without hesitation,
that the best place to invest today is in yourself to become more valuable.
In New York,
researchers interviewed 1,000 of the wealthiest people:
If you had $100,000 accumulated,
where would you best invest it?
All agreed to invest this money to become better
at the job that brought it to him.
If you invest that money in the stock market,
real estate or anywhere,
your investment can go up or down.
It will be controlled by hundreds of factors.
It will be influenced by supply
and demand in the market,
financial investment experts’ opinions,
competitive situation, etc.
But if you invest in yourself,
you will own 100% of this investment forever.
You will get 100% refund.
At the same time,
he can fully control
and direct the allocation of resources of time
and money to learning the skills that are most closely related
to increasing his most important results.
If you do this,
this will be the best investment of all your investments.
I will say this over and over again:
The best investments are the ones that
increase your earning potential and become more valuable.
There’s a big misunderstanding as
to why so many different professions receive only a certain amount of income,
even though they play such an important role in our society.
For example,
social workers in general,
aged care workers and teachers,
are paid relatively low wages compared to investment bankers,
lawyers, or activists.
So why do people working in such positions,
more admired by society,
receive lower wages than those in less cult industry?
One of the great economic laws of labor
is the law of supply and demand.
If a thing is in short supply,
but in great demand,
its price will increase and vice versa.
Years ago, Earl Nightingale summed up that
he would always receive an income proportional to what he did,
how well he did,
and how difficult or easy it was to find a replacement.
If he is a sports star,
he can negotiate a contract worth 100 million dollars,
because there is no one like him.
They will pay you 100 million dollars
because you can hit the target,
you can hit the ball successfully.
Look at Michael Jordan7,
the billion dollar man.
********
Part 7. If you look at other professions,
although they are doing useful work for society,
they can be easily replaced,
because there are hundreds of people.
Thousands, millions of other people can do that.
Those are low-skilled jobs that don’t require a lot of thought and brainpower.
It makes people slide,
and the biggest tragedy of downhill is that
he can only go in one direction.
Many people accept to do chores that
do not require special skills.
I witnessed a woman demanding an increase in her current wage to $15 an hour.
She is 34 years old and has seven children.
She works in a fast food restaurant.
She earns only $8 an hour
and is asking her boss to pay her $15 an hour.
Yes she is 34 years old,
and has never raised her skill level
to deserve a higher amount,
but still insists that others pay her more.
But no one was willing,
because the value of her contribution was too low.
If the value of his contribution is high,
another employer will voluntarily and immediately pay him more.
In fact, employers hire good employees by finding talent in other companies,
and then offer to pay more
if that person comes to work for them.
Up to 80% of job conversations take place like that,
with the most attractive salary.
Many people pay him more to come and work for them.
The fastest way to get a raise is to do your job really well,
to the point where your boss will pay you extra
to make sure you don’t leave where another boss will pay you more.
That’s how supply and demand work.
My company has 22 employees.
I always thought,
if you want a raise,
the only way is to do a better job.
That is, there will never be a situation
where someone comes up to me and says,
“Please, can I get a raise?
I have been here for over a year,
and have more experience.
Can I get a raise?”
No, everyone will get a raise as their value increases.
They don’t have to wait a year,
if they are really doing their job well
and generating great revenue for the company,
I will give them more money,
not only because they deserve it,
but also because they worked hard to earn it.
The amount I pay is only part of the added value they bring to my company.
I don’t want them to go elsewhere.
Please explain the difference between wealth,
financial freedom and income.
How are these concepts related?
Can a person have a high income,
but not be very rich?
Are all financially independent people rich?
That’s an interesting question.
There’s a joke that the top earners are only two months
from the risk of becoming homeless,
according to Parkinson’s law.
This law states that costs should increase in proportion to income.
That is, no matter how much you earn,
you will still spend the same as before,
or more.
The average American lives on 110% of income,
and the rest comes from credit cards, loans,
or family members, etc.
They are still stretching their spending list.
Eventually, they will run out of cash.
Today, the average American,
in retirement, has a net worth of about $41,000,
plus Social Security benefits,
after 40-50 years of living
and working in the United States,
the richest economy in human history.
Why is this number so low?
That’s because they think high income brings wealth.
However, only one type of wealth is truly meaningful.
I learned this from an immigrant who came here and he became extremely rich.
He said an important source of income,
the only thing that matters is the money that comes from your money.
It was the money that grew out of his investment.
He also said, income does not bring wealth.
The income just supports his life.
The only riches are the cashflows from other sources.
The wealthiest people I know always talk about money coming
from other sources.
In particular,
when they analyze an investment,
for which they usually spend 6 months analyzing an investment,
the question arises whether the cash flow
from this investment will significantly exceed the expenses,
investment costs and money costs?
Is the return on this investment better than the return on other investments?
You will find that the smartest of us always take great care in our investments,
to ensure that the return outweighs the cost of the investment.
In your opinion, what priority should money have in people’s lives?
If you ask entrepreneurs,
whether successful or struggling,
what money means to them,
the answer will always be:
Freedom.
Freedom is the driving force
that drives people to strive for financial success.
Money means “I am free”.
I used to joke that,
this “freedom” is equivalent to
when you go to a restaurant,
you can order anything
without looking at the price.
Everyone loves freedom.
It is one of the most important,
if not the only, of all value types.
No one complains that they have too much freedom.
Many people think that some other individuals are so liberal
that more laws should be put in place to limit it.
Namely, successful people should be taxed,
controlled,
and punished.
There are also many people who think otherwise,
who feel they are entitled to all the freedoms they want.
Barbara De Angelis asks this interesting question,
“When will you know you have enough money,
and what do you plan to do after that?”
Money represents freedom,
so we’ll look at how much money it takes to feel completely free.
I often prompt participants in my business coaching program
to identify their specific numbers.
What is your number?
You need to achieve the level of assets and cash flow,
monthly, yearly, how much can stop?
**********
Part 8. Self-made millionaires should spend a lot of time
thinking about the answer to the question:
How much money do I need to afford the lifestyle I want,
and when I do,
what will I do?
Then they focus on it,
they have to make a lot of sacrifices in the short term
to accumulate that large enough net worth,
generate income,
let them be free,
their families free,
their children that they are free.
They don’t stop working
until the tipping point is reached.
There, they can participate in many activities such as charity,
and cut back on the things they do not want.
However, in the early stages of life,
you will have to work hard,
put your heart into the goal of financial freedom,
and have to do it
when you have the most energy,
the most desire,
the most most ambitious and most opportunistic.
Who taught you the most about money?
Briefly describe each lesson,
as well as the most important lesson about money
that they taught you.
I have read many books,
articles,
and interviews about thousands of successful people over a long period of time,
millionaires, billionaires, billionaires included,
and studied some of the people
who are considered to be successful people or richest in history.
Many of them started out from scratch.
The richest man in history,
Jacob Fugger,
was originally a German banker.
He started the business with little capital.
As a brilliant businessman,
a lender with a keen eye,
an efficient user of money,
a passionate promoter of risky trading activities,
the whole philosophy of he is:
thrifty,
attentive,
cautious,
precise,
tough,
strict when it comes to money matters.
And then, he became the richest man in Europe.
The Rothschild family,
from a small family,
became the richest banking family in Europe at that time,
and later one of the wealthiest families in the Americas.
I have studied Rothschilds for many years.
You could read an entire book about John Rockefeller,
and grasp his one paramount view of thrift, thrift, and thrift.
This view is reflected in the fact that
he has reduced the price of goods,
including oil and gas, to consumers.
Many people call him a great thief capitalist.
Yes, he is a true thief capitalist.
He kicked the competition out of the business.
He controls almost the entire market oil and gas in North America.
Those were the little pieces of information he could find
when he read the book about Rockefeller.
If you want to be successful in business,
you must satisfy the needs of your customers,
quickly and simply,
at a lower price than your competitors,
and at the same time must continuously promote that.
This is one of the most useful financial lessons.
Which concept of money is the most flawed,
and how can this concept be changed?
Harvard University once concluded that the most important quality of people
who achieve financial success is long-term vision.
*******
Chapter 2: How to understand exactly money?
Before explaining the laws of money,
we need to clear up many misconceptions or misconceptions,
that contain only partial truth,
or complete lies in this subject.
If any of the above views lurk in the deep recesses of your soul,
they can tempt you toward wealth along the path of ignorance,
only to hit a dead end.
Brian calls these misconceptions money myths.
He will describe the ideas that underlie each of these myths,
then identify each one.
Let’s start by discussing the concept behind most money myths:
It’s not worth it.
See how this view violates the law of cause and effect,
and how it can cause people to waste years on the wrong path to riches,
only to end up with broken dreams and accounts,
empty bank.
There are many reasons
why some people are poor all their lives.
The Law of Belief states that everything you truly believe in will come true for you.
Many people believe in things that are completely impossible financially.
In Alice in Wonderland,
Alice tells the Mad Hat,
“You can’t believe it.
Impossible.”
The Mad Hat replied,
“No, I’ve learned to believe in at least two impossible things before breakfast.”
Countless people believe in the wrong things.
Humorist Josh Billings once said,
“It’s not a matter of what a man knows to hurt him,
but what he knows is a lie.”
This is a fatal mistake to financial success.
I want to start with the greatest law,
the law that determines everything that happens to you.
350 years ago, before Jesus,
the great philosopher Aristole gave birth to the Aristotelian principle of causality,
which we now call the law of cause and effect.
As everyone believed in gods,
miracles and luck,
he declared that without gods,
we live in an orderly universe
where everything happens for a reason;
Each effect is caused by one
or more specific causes.
If you want to get a result,
you have to understand it very clearly,
and reason to find the cause that can produce it.
So if you want to double your income,
find someone who doubles your income in the same field you work in.
Then work backwards to see how they did it.
Then you will see,
everyone who earns twice
as much as you make today,
sometimes makes only half of it.
They certainly did something special.
If you ask them a question,
they will tell you.
If you don’t know them,
read books,
newspapers,
interviews about them,
and through that,
they will tell you,
because high earners are often very generous in sharing their success stories.
If you do what successful people do,
you will get the same results,
based on the law of cause and effect.
We live in a world that follows rules,
not randomness.
Things don’t happen by luck,
nor by chance.
The law of cause and effect states
that everything happens for a reason.
There is always a reason for everything.
That is the immutable law that determines the destiny of man.
It says that everything happens for a reason,
whether we know the reason or not.
It’s a rule, and this means you have complete control over your future.
Every outcome, success or failure,
wealth or poverty,
has one or more specific causes.
Every cause or action has an effect of one kind or another,
whether we see it or not,
like it or not.
Isaac Newton, the greatest physicist in history,
called this the law of forces and reactions
(Newton’s third law).
This law states that,
in all cases,
when object A exerts a force on object B,
object B also exerts a force on object A;
these two forces have the same value,
same magnitude,
but opposite direction.
This is the law of the universe.
In other words,
if you create value,
you get value back,
forces and reactions.
If you don’t create value,
you won’t get value.
You cannot violate this law of nature.
Napoleon Hill, author of Think and Grow Rich,
says that people should not try to violate the law of nature,
nor do they expect to surpass it.
It is the main reason for success.
This law of cause and effect states that all achievements,
wealth,
happiness,
prosperity
and success are direct
or indirect consequences
of specific causes or actions.
There was never a man sitting in front of an empty fireplace,
said Earl Nightingale,
imploring,
“Give me some heat,
and I’ll put in some wood.”
Not so.
He had to put the wood in the fireplace first,
then he could get the heat.
You have to invest in it to get what you want.
It’s like a farmer saying to his field,
“Give me a crop, and I’ll plant the seed.”
The world is full of people who said,
“If they want me to work harder,
they have to pay me more.”
That can’t be,
what you do is work harder and more productively,
and then your boss,
or someone else, will pay you more.
This law also implies that,
if you clearly understand the outcome you want,
you can achieve it.
You can study other people
who have achieved a similar goal,
and by copying what others have done,
you can get similar results.
When you identify these causes
and incorporate them into your personal life and activities,
you will get the same results that hundreds of thousands,
even millions of others have received.
Interestingly, in 1900,
there were 5,000 millionaires in the world.
And when I started researching this topic in 1980,
the number was up to 1 million,
of which the majority were Americans.
By 2000, the number was 7 million.
To date, there are 10 million millionaires,
and this number is growing at 10-12% per year.
Millions of people started from scratch
and became millionaires,
by doing certain things in a certain way.
If only one person became a millionaire,
he could say it was a rare occurrence.
If two people,
he could say it was a coincidence.
But if millions and millions of people,
with different backgrounds,
limits and different constraints,
becoming a millionaire,
there certainly exist certain rules
and principles that are effectively applied by them.
I learned that life is very objective.
Life is not biased.
There is no great force in the universe
that wants you to be a great success.
Life is always neutral.
Like the god of justice with his eyes closed,
life only says that,
if you follow successful people,
you will get the same results,
and vice versa.
I didn’t feel comfortable when I first heard this.
But it is the greatest patron of success.
You can be silly,
you can be tall or short,
black or white,
educated or not, immigrant or native,
it doesn’t matter.
That’s why everyone wants to go to the US, Australia,
New Zealand, UK, Finland, countries
that have a system of business ethics standards,
because there you can start a business with two empty-handed
and achieve financial success.
Every time I visit these countries,
I often meet friends from India,
China and many parts of the world,
they are all millionaires,
they go there and start doing what successful entrepreneurs did.
The most important manifestation of the law of cause
and effect shows that thought is the cause,
and the situation is the effect.
In other words, thinking differently will produce different unique results.
His thoughts are the main creative force in his life.
You can make the whole world the way you think.
Everyone, every situation that happened in his life was created
according to his own mind.
When you change your mind,
you change your life,
sometimes in seconds.
The most important principle that contributes
to personal
or business success is this:
You become what you spend a lot of time thinking about.
This is Earl Nightingale’s strangest secret,
but it is mentioned in the Bible:
As he thinks in his heart,
so he is.
What you become depends on your thoughts or your beliefs.
The outside world is a reflection of his inner world.
So it’s not what happens to you,
but how you think about it,
that determines your feelings and reactions.
It is not the outside world that controls his circumstances or conditions,
but it is his inner world that shapes his life.
The way you think about money
and finances will strongly influence your financial situation today.
People from well-to-do families are more likely
to be financially successful,
because that’s the environment they grew up in.
That’s what they see around.
That’s what they hear,
and their worldview tells them that if you work hard
and create value, you too can succeed financially.
Here’s an important point regarding the above principle,
and tied to one of the main reasons people fail,
one of the worst vices is jealousy.
Jealousy and resentful like a twin.
They walked together,
holding hands.
If you’re jealous of other people,
you will resent them.
If he resented them,
he would want to hurt them or bring them down.
Even if you envy and resent others,
criticize and bash them,
engage in negative conversations,
talk bad about them behind their backs,
it doesn’t matter to them.
They didn’t even know he was doing it,
and frankly, they didn’t care;
However, it destroyed all his hopes
and dreams of achieving success.
So, never engage in badmouthing
or criticizing successful people.
People often say,
“Oh, they’re rich, but they’re not happy.”
I have studied the rich group very carefully,
so I can say that they are very happy.
They are very happy
because their problems are small compared
to the opportunities they have.
Therefore, respect
and admire successful people.
Let’s learn from them.
Say nice things to them.
Excited for their success.
From there,
you can create your own energy field
that will attract opportunities
and help you be like them.
It is said that his income will be equal
to the average income of the five people he spends most of his time with.
Whether this is true or not,
it is an interesting way of thinking.
Your net worth will be equal to the average net worth
of the people you associate with.
Why? That’s because he developed
with the same mindset and attitude as them.
What you really believe in,
it will come true for you.
The biggest challenge we face is self-limiting beliefs.
I believe we are limited,
in one or more ways.
For me personally,
what has been holding me back
for many years is the mistaken belief
that without a good education,
without graduating from high school
and going to college,
I will never be successful.
But then, I got kicked out of high school.
Self-doubt is a limiting belief,
and you must realize that if you overcome these limiting beliefs,
you can change your own life.
This is also what I convey to many people.
I said, “Imagine having a trust store.
You can step in and buy your belief,
and then put it into your subconscious management program.
If you could buy any trust in that store,
what would be the best trust to buy?”
The answer is,
buy the faith that says you will be successful.
Buy it and repeat to yourself,
“No matter what, I’m going to be a big hit.”
Find all traces to prove that belief.
Someone compliments you,
because you do something well.
Affirm, “Yes, I am on my way to great success.”
When you read a book
and learn how to be more successful
and how to set goals, declare,
“Yes, this is part of my plan.
I will have great success.”
That is the secret to helping him overcome all misconceptions about his limits.
In fact,
no one is better than you,
no one is smarter than you.
Whatever others have done,
you can do well.
You should not compare yourself to billionaires
or billionaires of trillions.
Compare yourself to the people you study
with who are doing a better job than you.
Recent research results show that successful people
often compare themselves.
This is the theory of social comparison,
recognized through the work of Leon Festinger at Harvard.
Many people compare themselves to successful individuals
with growth potential.
No matter what they have achieved,
they will look to the higher rungs of the ladder.
Be like the people on the higher end,
and don’t try to bring them down.
Trying to crush them doesn’t hurt them,
but destroys his chances of financial success.
So be careful in your words and thoughts,
because you will become what you think.
*******
Part 1: Let’s discuss each myth in detail # 1 is:
You can attract money and wealth by using the power of your mind,
the main idea behind the law of attraction.
Describe this idea in popular culture and explain
why it is only partially true.
The law of gravity has been around for 4,000 years.
I have begun to study very deeply the metaphysical theories of the ancient masters.
The law of attraction states that you are a living magnet
and always attract into your life people,
situations and circumstances that are compatible
with the thoughts that dominate your mind.
So when you think of something,
remember:
You will become what you think.
The law of gravitation must be considered along with other laws,
including the law of correspondence,
which states that the world outside of him is a reflection
of his inner world.
It’s like having a 360-degree mirror around you,
wherever you look,
you’ll find yourself in it,
and your thoughts,
the stream of thoughts dominating your mind,
are expressed in perfect harmony.
His life situation in three main areas:
health, friends and finances.
First, his health reflects the way he thinks about food,
nutrition,
diet,
exercise,
and so on.
The second area is his relationships:
He’s always attracted the kinds of people,
consistent with the thoughts that dominated his mind.
So, people with a really positive mindset always seem
to be surrounded by other really positive people.
Finally, is your financial situation.
You will always know what a person thinks about money
by observing what they are attracting into their life.
That’s just the beginning, but there’s much more to it.
Some books say that all you have to do is think happy things,
visualize wealth and success,
and then you will attract it.
Not so.
The Bible says,
faith without action is useless.
That is, you have to work very,
very hard to establish the impact energy field.
And establishing a permanent influential energy field
for financial success will be impossible,
if you don’t constantly do things
that are consistent and in harmony with it.
Another principle called the law of vibration is well known
in the music world.
This law is understood as follows:
Every element in the world vibrates,
like a tuning fork.
Pebbles and rocks vibrate,
some plants and animals also create vibrations.
Imagine a large room with two pianos on either side.
He walked over to the calf a piano
and then press the C flat key.
He repeats this action with the other guitar,
and the C flat will vibrate in emotional harmony with the first C flat.
A tuning fork is an easy-to-vibrate,
U-shaped metal rod that,
when tapped,
emits a single tone of a certain frequency,
often used to obtain a standard tone.
This vibration, or sympathetic resonance,
is what he sees in relationships.
The poet Kahlil Gibran wrote about it 100 years ago.
When he meets his soul mate, he says,
there will be a moment where sympathetic resonance emerges.
At that moment,
when their eyes meet,
this resonance will happen immediately,
in a few seconds.
It will happen then,
or never.
One question for people in happy marriages is:
How did you guys meet?
Both of them recall the moment
when that instant sympathetic vibration occurred.
In the crowded room,
their eyes met,
and there was a harmony
or vibration that brought them together.
They say,
when you meet the right person,
you will realize that you have just met the best friend of your life.
Just like that.
The two of you go together for a little while,
then stay together forever.
My wife and I have been married for 36 years,
and we met for a moment.
We still recall the moment our eyes met.
This is part of the law of attraction.
The opposite of the law of attraction,
which few people talk about,
is the law of repulsion.
If you take out two magnets,
and try to bring the two terminals of the same sign together
they will repel each other.
If you think negatively,
you will actually push what you want out of your life.
That’s why I tell you not to think negatively about people
who have reached financial success.
Otherwise,
he literally pushed all hope of financial success out of his life.
Some people often think negatively about money like
“The rich are the bad guys”.
Usually, such thinking comes from the person’s poverty and anger.
If you believe that,
you will never succeed financially,
because you will destroy yourself.
That’s why so many people get self-destructive after making a lot of money.
Comedian Robin Williams joked:
Cocaine is God’s way of telling him he’s making too much money.
You will often hear about a taxi driver reporting someone left a suitcase
full of money in their car.
It’s the behavior of self-destructive syndrome,
when people don’t believe they deserve the success they have.
Another important part of the law of attraction is the feeling of worth.
This is a big topic
when nearly every problem comes from people
who believe they don’t deserve the good things that happen to them.
On the surface,
they work extremely hard,
but internally they are filled with negative vibrations.
From the outside, they are working hard.
They work 16 hours a day.
Sometimes, they drink or eat too much.
They destroy their marriages and families.
They make a lot of money,
but they destroy themselves
because deep down they don’t believe they deserve it.
They fall into the law of repulsion,
which robs them of all their hard-earned achievements
and causes success to disappear from their lives.
The law of attraction is emotionalized thoughts.
It’s like a flashlight.
You can get a spotlight and claim it’s a great light source,
but it won’t light up
if you don’t plug the cord into an electrical outlet.
A thought that has no emotion.
Thought is neutral and,
essentially,
an inert substance.
Only when you multiply the power of your thoughts
by your feelings will your thoughts have power.
That’s why everything he has in life is attracted
to him according to the way he thinks.
You can change your life,
because you can change the way you think.
When you cultivate a burning desire for financial success
and think about it all the time,
you create a positive emotional energy field that attracts people,
ideas,
and opportunities into your life help him make his goal a reality.
Suppose you want to own a red sports car,
you will suddenly start seeing that car everywhere.
He saw an advertisement for a red sports car.
He saw red sports cars turning the corner two to three blocks away.
He saw red sports cars parked in the garage
and moving on the entrance to the building.
This happened because he had subconsciously told him
he was interested in the red sports car.
This is part of the law of attraction.
If he decides to go on vacation to Hawaii,
he starts seeing vacation ads there.
If he decides to lose weight,
he sees weight loss ads everywhere.
This is how his brain helps him succeed in life.
It helps him survive and thrive.
Take a look at your financial life today,
and see how it aligns with your train of thought.
Accept all the good things in life.
They were there because you drew them to you.
Look at the things you don’t like
and take full responsibility for them.
They are also there because of you,
because of some of your own distorted thoughts.
What is that distorted thinking
and what are you going to do about it?
What are you attracting or not attracting into your life?
Let’s take a simple example of self-made millionaires.
I started studying them many years ago.
I received a call asking me to teach 800 independent business owners
and distributors how to become a self-made millionaire.
I replied, of course yes.
I ended the call and realized that I was 38 years old.
Like many others,
I’ve always wanted to be a self-made millionaire
since I was a teenager,
but I’m broke,
and I’m still in debt.
At the time,
I really didn’t know much about self-made millionaires.
I have two months before doing this lecture.
So I sat down and started researching.
I started reading.
I started with The Millionaire Next Door and Selling to the Affluent,
both by Thomas Stanley.
I’ve found that self-made millionaires are people with a wealth mindset.
This mindset is a set of ways that they always think about.
If you are like them,
you will begin to set up vibrations at a very, very high level.
This vibration emanated
from him like radio waves and,
like a magnet,
began to attract all that he needed in life.
My talk at that time was very well received.
I named it the 21 Secrets of Self-Made Millionaire Success.
I was invited to speak again,
and again.
The most interesting thing happened,
within 5 years,
I became a dollar millionaire.
The more opportunities I have to impart these secrets,
the more I think about them and practice them more.
He became what he used to think.
He also became what he used to teach.
So if you start teaching these secrets to others,
you’ll learn more deeply.
He began to increase the intensity of the vibration.
If you convey them convincingly,
really feel strongly about them,
and try to excite people,
you begin to resonate at a higher level.
More and more things that attract money happen,
and more and more money flows into his life.
Most self-made millionaires are in business,
but most of them become millionaires
without even realizing it.
One year, after years of work,
the accountant told them,
“You’re worth over a million dollars now!”.
They said,
“Really?
How did that happen?”.
They are so busy working that they don’t realize it.
This also happened to me.
I sat down to fill out a bank loan application,
you have to list all your assets, you know.
I had to sum it all up and present it clearly.
I thought, “Oh my God,
I’m worth $1.1 million this year.”
I have to call my wife.
This is net worth and what banks see as value,
the net worth of homes,
company assets, savings accounts,
stocks and bonds, and so on.
The more he studied the field,
the more powerful the field of vibration was established.
The more clearly he thinks,
the more attractive he becomes than he thinks.
For example, if you want to become a millionaire,
imagine having a check for $1 million made in your name.
Just think about the check.
Just look at the check.
Just imagine that check could pay you $1 million and date it.
Read and nurture this image.
You visualize it,
each time you cultivate an image of the desired goal in your mind,
your subconscious will take it as a snapshot,
place it in your long-term subconscious program,
and continuously visualize it.
Another way is to picture yourself doing the work you want.
Many salespeople often picture the scene they sell big products,
close big deals,
be it insurance,
ships,
airplanes,
stocks,
or bonds.
They will imagine themselves interacting with a customer,
seeing the customer smiling and signing a check or contract.
Another way, which my wife and I do,
is to start picturing the house you will live in when you become rich.
Every Saturday, my wife,
Barbara,
and I would go to homes in the wealthiest neighborhoods.
We walked past expensive houses,
talking about what we wanted to see in our homes.
We chatted about buying this and that,
making stairs and backyards,
swimming pools, gyms.
In three years of using this approach,
we have moved from a rental home
to a beautiful home in a beautiful area.
Then we moved from Canada to California,
looked at 150 houses and entered this house.
We looked at each other and realized
this was the house of our dreams.
This is the home we envisioned,
wrote about,
talked about, and the price,
the terms of the deal,
everything we could afford,
they all approved.
Everything fits snugly,
and we’ve been in that house for 28 years.
It was exactly the house we envisioned.
We have written down 42 criteria we want in a perfect home.
After looking at this house,
we reviewed the list.
And miraculously,
it meets all 42 of those criteria.
Unfortunately,
in everything written about the law of attraction,
the word work doesn’t appear.
They think you can achieve some things
without doing anything,
and as we’ve discussed,
this is one of the worst myths,
the kind that claim for nothing.
It implies that we can receive more than we give.
The fact is,
you can only take out a fraction of the value you create.
You get a thin slice in a large piece of cake,
in New York parlance.
You get a certain percentage based on the value you generate.
Therefore,
you can only get out of what you put in;
Otherwise, you can’t get anything.
The notion of being unpaid and demanding
is destroying countless people in many fields around the world.
This misconception, a myth that you can receive without giving,
is turning many people into psychopaths.
They get angry at people who make a lot of money.
They demanded that
the government pressurize other people’s money
to be transferred to them,
that the money be taken from the successful people,
that the successful people be punished, etc.,
and demanded the money they received,
they neither earn nor deserve.
It is a problem that arises from the idea of wanting to receive
but not wanting to give.
As you know,
I have written and documented a lot on this subject.
In fact, every facet of the problems in the world today
is an example of expecting something for nothing.
The desire to get something without effort or price,
the desire to own something that you can’t get and don’t deserve,
is one of those ideas that destroys all hopes and dreams of a person,
and people globally.
Let’s discuss about #2 :
Rich people spend their time thinking about how to make money.
Let’s discuss why this is not true,
because the vast majority of wealthy people today spend their time
looking for ways to create value and wealth;
money is just a by-product,
not something they care about.
Productive people always add value through efficient work,
new inventions,
or new businesses,
which create equity in the form of wages,
value-added assets, etc.
So why does this still comply with the law of cause and effect?
The idea that rich people are always thinking about making money is incorrect.
The most important principle in human life is the principle of service.
Earl Nightingale once said that his reward was always commensurate
with the value of his service to others.
The question you need to ask every day is,
what can you do today to increase the value of your service to others?
Let’s go back to John Rockefeller.
He didn’t like taking risks.
He started earning $3.75 a week as a secretary at the bottom of a company.
Every week, he gives $1.75 to charity.
That’s how he started his life:
Donating half of his income to charity,
and then saving little by little and accumulating gradually.
He was always looking to serve others.
Many people used kerosene-lit lanterns of
which he was one of the first to figure out how to produce kerosene.
Later, when the internal combustion engine
and automobile appeared,
his entire focus was on serving people
by giving them the products they needed
to improve their quality of life at a low price than before.
He owns everything from the oil field,
the pump, the pipeline, the rails, the refinery,
to all the way to the gas station,
so he can keep lowering the price
without paying the middle man,
can serve more and more people at lower and lower prices.
Look at Henry Ford.
Henry Ford revolutionized the world of manufacturing.
When people work in groups,
it takes about 300 hours to make a car,
because one team does everything.
In collaboration with its engineers,
Ford developed a production line
that could produce cars in the same amount
of time but for $300 instead of $3,000.
The people who actually made the cars,
the manual laborers,
the people from the lowest class of society at the time,
could afford to buy the products they made.
Henry Ford has transformed the entire world,
and this is his greatest joy.
He almost became the richest man in the world
by bringing cars closer to everyone,
something no one had done before.
Cars were once only for the rich.
They used to be available only to people
who could spend two to three years of the average manual worker’s income.
But now, anyone can buy a car.
Later, some people came up
with the idea of paying a portion of the money upfront.
As a result,
workers have the ability
to buy a car with a small upfront payment
and pay the rest in installments over three years.
This really changed everything.
Look at Walmart today.
I really love Walmart.
I worked for them a few years ago
and once spoke at their conferences.
I organized a one-day symposium for one of their units.
During their annual convention in St. Louis,
there were 25,000 participants
and I was speaking to 2,000 managers,
when the president of Walmart walked in,
and everyone stopped.
He walked in and spoke for about five minutes.
Walmart has a very simple philosophy,
he said:
We represent people who don’t have a lot of money
and spend their days on a monthly basis alone,
who really have no excess
and can’t afford to be wrong purchase.
Our job is to help them make the best product selection
at the lowest possible price,
by leveraging our purchasing power
and unconditionally guaranteeing everything we sell,
so that no one has to worry
about the product about paying extra
for a product anywhere.
Our job is to help our customers improve their quality
and standard of living,
so they can buy more of the things they want
and need for their families.
He said so with great passion!
Everyone in the audience stood up and cheered.
That is Walmart’s philosophy:
Serve our customers.
Everything we do is aimed at bringing prices lower
and lower so our customers can buy more
and more of what they need to improve their quality of life.
Walmart, with 11,000 stores,
is the most successful retail chain in history.
Everyone there is passionate about serving others.
That’s how the rich think.
When wealthy people consider the development of a hotel,
real estate, store, stock,
or product, they always consider
how they can develop that product or service to help them.
People improve their quality of life.
That’s what they always think about.
It’s what inspires them and helps them get the rewards they deserve.
Let’s discuss #3:
You can’t achieve your personal financial goals,
let alone become rich,
if you’re just an employee.
Does this imply that the vast majority
of non-entrepreneurs have no way of becoming wealthy
or financially independent?
Tell me, through spending and savings planning,
anyone can become financially free,
even if they may have to spend more time than business owners.
Peter Lynch was the most successful investor in history.
He built the multi-billion dollar Magellan hedge fund
and retired rich.
He once said wonderfully,
“It is not a matter of timing the market,
but of staying in the market.”
If a person buys shares in a mutual fund or index fund,
they are effectively becoming the owners,
as each share represents a percentage of ownership in that company.
Ten percent of self-made millionaires have worked
for another company all their lives.
They work really hard,
get paid well,
and slowly save their money.
They take advantage of postpaid retirement benefits
such as the 401(k) private pension
or the Roth individual pension fund.
They put money in it and let it grow.
The reason people don’t retire in financial independence
is that they spend everything they earn.
Then they start to get a bit desperate,
because they don’t have much savings in their 50s;
They started trying to improve the situation
by throwing whatever money they had
or borrowed into get-rich-quick schemes,
which were bound to fail.
The only people who make money from get-rich-quick schemes
are the ones selling them.
So many people become desperate.
The fact is, a person, if he saves $100 a month and invests it in an index fund,
or well-managed mutual fund,
will find that it grows about 8-10% per year,
and if they keep their investment of $100 per month
for the whole time they work,
they will become millionaires.
The following numbers are interesting:
It is estimated that for every 100 people who start work today,
1 will become rich,
4 will be well off,
15 will be financially independent,
and another 80 will be insolvent
or still have to work until retirement age.
Why so? It’s not because they don’t make enough money.
A few years ago,
I gave a seminar about how people can become rich
if they start early enough,
work hard,
stay late, etc.
Many people gathered around me,
during the interrogation break,
and a mentally and physically challenged young man stepped forward.
He shouted, “Mr. Tracy! Mr. Tracy!”
The others fell silent.
He asked,
“Can I also become rich?”.
All eyes were on me.
He went on to say,
“I work in a group house.
And we repair furniture.
They pay us, and I save $100 a month.
If I continue like this, can I also become rich?”
I looked at these numbers the other day
and noticed that if you save $100 a month
and then invest it in a mutual fund during your working life,
it will be worth more than $1 million
when he retired at 60.
I repeated those numbers.
I said, “Yes, if you save $100 per month over the course of your career,
by the time you reach 60, you’ll be a millionaire.
You will be richer than those who are walking around,
driving around and enjoying vacation trips.
With a little advantage in life,
you will become a millionaire.”
Remember, someone who starts early enough,
saves long enough,
and doesn’t touch that money,
gets the magic of compound interest,
time in the market.
You don’t have to own a company.
You don’t even have to be a businessman,
You just need to invest in other stocks
and become a small owner holding a small part of many different companies
that are well run and managed by professionals,
and you can also achieve financial independence. main.
The next myth is the one that most people believe.
Let us talk about #4:
Most rich people live in expensive neighborhoods,
drive luxury cars,
and spend lavishly.
It was the groundbreaking research in the book The Millionaire Next Door
that shattered this myth,
showing that most of the rich live in the middle class city,
drive standard cars
and live in simple life.
So who lives in expensive places and drives luxury, new cars?
Let’s discuss the difference
between wealth and income.
How do you balance these two ways of life?
A person’s life has three periods:
the year of study,
the year of earning,
and the year of yearning.
Today, of course,
we often say the years of learning will last forever,
but the years of making money are when you work hard
and accumulate money,
and then grow that money;
There will come a time
when you reach a tipping point
where the money you invest generates a return greater than your income.
That’s where you start to slow down,
and you can gradually reduce the frequency
and the amount of work over about 5-10 years.
After that,
he just needs to manage his expenses carefully
and live comfortably for the rest of his life.
Most entrepreneurs are characterized by ambition,
in other words, they are feeling hungry,
and the reason for that hunger comes
from their low background in society.
They say that whatever he felt deprived of as a child,
would become the thing he struggled
with the most when he grew up.
It’s almost the same type of need that is missing
and has been tested in psychology.
They often feel that they are very needy,
so they are very hungry for money.
They see that starting a business,
selling and working hard is the way to make a lot of money.
The question is, when is the tipping point?
A friend of mine who works in banking told of a businessman
who went to the bank to borrow money to buy an expensive house.
My friend said,
you can always tell when a person is in trouble in business.
That’s when the business started to turn a profit
and the business owner thought he could act haphazardly.
They buy expensive cars.
They financed it through banks.
You can tell they’ll be in trouble,
because they start spending too soon.
Then, of course,
recessions,
stagnation,
and ups and downs within the industry
or within the economy take place.
The company goes down,
cash flow is cut,
and a person is unable to pay their payments.
The car company takes back the car
and the bank takes back the house.
Banks always require a minimum deposit of 20%,
so they have a very good buffer.
That friend of mine said that the time to start buying a home,
the time to start spending,
is after he’s gone through the tough times,
has reached financial independence,
and can start, invest your excess.
This reminds me of a little story about Warren Buffett.
When he returned from Columbia University to move to Omaha, Nebraska,
with his wife, he was able to buy a small house
for about $25,000 at the time,
to this day, he still lives there.
According to Forbes,
he is the third richest person in the world,
but he still lives in that tiny house,
and has no intention of moving elsewhere.
It’s not a good idea to spend your money too soon,
he said, so he has a habit of investing all the money and spending nothing.
Today, he is the most successful investor in history.
The important thing is the moment you have enough money saved up,
so that if you want to buy a house,
even though the whole world is in a very bad situation,
you still able to pay his bills,
meet his standard of living,
and provide for his family.
But if you spend it too soon,
you run the risk of an accident
and run the risk of empty-handed.
Another myth that seems to be going mainstream,
a testament to the growth of Internet gambling,
myth number 5 says the following:
You can get rich by playing the lottery
or winning the jackpot.
Brian, I know you’re excited
about this particular type of myth.
Let’s discuss why this myth is so pervasive
and how we can use the very money spent on these sure-fire methods
to become rich in scientifically proven ways prove.
The disease “wants to have
but refuses to do” is like cancer.
It tempts people in a very subtle way,
and one of those tricks is a dollar for a lottery ticket.
Struggling or trying to get what you want
without effort will destroy the human soul.
It is a progressive disease.
It began to erode his mind and body.
I just got back from Las Vegas.
I was there for 2 days,
in two casinos.
I walk past casinos many times over a considerable amount of time,
because they designed the architecture that way.
He couldn’t get into his room without going through casinos,
gambling tables,
and slot machines.
I never spend any time in Las Vegas,
because it’s against my philosophy.
It’s not a matter of money.
Smart people never gamble,
because they know it’s a fundamental mistake.
First of all, nobody wins in Las Vegas,
and if he wins, he will be photographed
and banned from many casinos.
This is not even a secret.
If you are a professional gambler and you win,
they will soon take your picture.
They could sit there,
watching hidden cameras and spying on him.
If they see you win money,
they start checking information about you at all other casinos.
They will match your photos at casinos in Atlantic City, Monte Carlo.
If he ever won money at a casino,
they all shared that information with each other.
No one wins money in Las Vegas.
They will delay the money they lost.
If he was lucky, he could prolong the time he lost all his money before he left.
But it still destroys the souls of many people.
I once read a travel article in which the author wrote,
“I went to hell and came back last week,
there’s a place called Las Vegas in the Nevada desert.”
He also said that he had seen “many poor and extremely unhappy people,
untidy,
dirty,
smoking,
riding in covered tractor-trailers,
wearing tank tops,
wandering past casinos,
watching overweight men and women gamble
and lose money on food,
toys and bicycles for their kids.”
He continued,
“And there was despair on their faces,
because they put their money in,
and lost it all.
They can’t take it back anymore.”
When he checked in at a hotel there,
they would process his entire credit card bill,
because they know a lot of customers won’t be able to pay when they leave.
Some of my friends traveled from Los Angeles
to Las Vegas in a newly purchased Cadillac,
and returned in a Greyhound bus with a suitcase;
the Cadillac and everything else was gone.
Successful people don’t gamble.
They will measure the risks that have a big impact on the final outcome.
They will choose a product or a service,
and test it on a small scale.
They choose their investments very carefully
to see how well they work.
They do thorough research to ensure that the money
they put in has a very high safe return.
Next look at the gamblers in the casinos.
Always the poor.
And the poor gamble more recklessly than the rich.
Those who have the least amount of money
to spend are those who play enough of this game.
The money they lose is money they cannot bear,
because it comes directly from the money
to feed their children.
It is money they cannot spend on food.
These people have no money to spare.
It’s not that they make $10,000 a month
and the expenses only cost $5,000,
so they have $5,000 left to spend.
In fact, they make $2,000 or $3,000 a month,
but the expenses add up to $3,500,
so they don’t have a penny to spare.
They began to despair.
I discovered that these gamblers never found themselves losing.
They almost always win. Ask a person,
“How are you in Las Vegas?”.
He will say, “I almost won a big game.
I almost won.” “But I saw you take the bus to work today.”
“Ah yes, I plugged my car back in there.
I have to go get cash.
But I almost won that time.
I will definitely win next time.”
Before breakfast,
they convince themselves to believe in something completely impossible.
They woke up and had breakfast with the idea
that they were about to get back the money
they lost the night before.
What I mean is,
stay away from the myth of “getting money for nothing”.
When I was young,
my mother told me, don’t steal.
Don’t do anything wrong.
Don’t sin. Most mothers tell us so.
I never disobeyed my mother.
I tell my children, don’t do anything deceitful.
Never commit a crime.
I always pay my taxes in full,
not missing a penny.
The Internal Revenue Service (IRS) audited my personal taxes a few years ago,
and after seven months of checking,
they came back, and said,
“Tracy people are the type of people the IRS really is prefer.
They earn high income; they pay all required taxes.
They do not have any suspicious tax evasion or deductions.
They are absolutely honest about their taxes.”
Do you know what the next words are?
“We will never test again.”
They really didn’t come to me to re-audit,
because they understood.
They looked at our professional tax returns,
and we didn’t blurt out a single penny.
We hate taxes like everyone else,
but it’s not right to try to get something we want
without putting in the effort,
and it’s not right for you to get money you didn’t make
and don’t deserve it.
That is why I am against gambling of any kind.
It will destroy the gambler’s soul.
*********
Chapter 3 Wise spent
Since we’re outlining the features of the science of money,
let’s start with something that everyone should do,
whether rich or poor, lower-class, middle-class,
or upper-class, it’s spending.
There are plenty of people who don’t save,
don’t invest,
and a few don’t borrow,
but they all spend money.
There is a saying: Reasonable spending explains wealth,
and irrational spending explains lack of money.
Let’s start by describing most people’s experience with spending,
which is usually spending on something they want
without a strategy or a plan.
Can you sketch a typical day of an average person,
even though middle-class,
who still feels no money to save and how they spend it,
such as drinking Starbucks every day, eating lunch outside?
shop, or burn money on clothes?
Compare that to someone who has a spending plan or strategy.
Let’s start with understanding the source of spending.
We are all creatures of habit,
and up to 95% of what we usually do is out of habit.
We do it often,
and we do it automatically without thinking.
When he was young,
his parents rewarded him with a sum of money.
It’s a small allowance to do or not do something.
I still remember,
my father once asked me to save 10% of that meager allowance
when I was about 5 or 6 years old.
That, to me, is a bit excessive.
I want to spend money,
and I want to spend it on candy.
So I used to take my allowance,
go with my mom to the store,
and buy candy.
What I did at a young age was
to associate making money with buying candy,
with joy, enjoyment,
and satisfaction.
This is understandable,
because spending money makes us happy.
As we grow up,
we still have that feeling.
Especially,
when we make money,
the first thing we think of is what to buy with this money?
How can I spend this money to make me happy?
And that’s why,
if you go to a tourist area,
you’ll find that place full of cheap trinkets,
along with many other things of little value.
Moreover,
the streets there were lined
with shops selling low quality knickknacks
which were considered completely useless.
They sell such things to tourists,
who roam the streets,
buying cheap trinkets
and other low-quality objects.
If you asked a person
what they would do if they won the lottery,
the first thing they would mention would be what they would buy.
You need to change the way you think about spending.
Instead of thinking,
“If I had money,
I would make myself happy by spending it,”
you should think,
“If I had money,
I would make myself happy by saving it.”
What do people usually do
when they have money?
One day, I went to a restaurant for a meal.
The restaurant was packed with people,
and this baffled me,
since it was a Wednesday night.
As it turned out,
it was payday,
so the restaurant was full of customers
who had just received their paychecks
through their bank accounts.
They go to expensive restaurants,
and spend generously.
This phenomenon stems from the relationship
between receiving money and spending it.
We think less and less when spending.
A lot of spending is arbitrary.
Countless purchases happen without a second thought.
That is why the store is designed,
very eye-catching arrangement of the items you don’t need or want,
at the checkout counter, to stimulate shopping.
What do you think is the difference
between rational and irrational spending?
For example, sensible spending is spending on things
that increase in value,
things that you can afford,
while helping you achieve wealth in the long run.
Unreasonable spending is the opposite.
Time and money can be spent or invested.
If you use it, it’s gone forever.
If you invest it,
you will get a profit from it.
Here’s what people don’t understand.
The more time he invests in improving himself
and his earning ability,
the more money he earns;
and the more it accumulates,
the more it will produce.
In the matter of money,
there is a law of conservation of money.
This law states that it is not a matter of what you can do,
but how much you keep which will determine your financial future.
If you spend it properly,
you will get a return on your investment,
you keep it,
you save it.
Unreasonable spending happens,
the money disappears forever,
and he can never get it back.
Entrepreneur Jim Rohn puts it like this,
“Do what needs to be done as quickly as possible,
so you can do what you want
for as long as you want.”
In other words,
discipline yourself to do things that seem difficult in the short term,
so you can live the life you want in the long term.
Let’s apply this concept to spending.
Accordingly, when you are young,
you should spend frugally and strategically;
Then, for the rest of your life,
you’ll be rich enough to spend
as you please.
If he doesn’t establish spending discipline at a young age,
then he will struggle with spending everything he earns
for the rest of his life.
Rich DeVos, one of Amway’s founders,
says the same thing:
You do a lot of things you don’t want to do and wake up in the morning,
work hard all day long,
study in the mornings,
evening, or upgrade your skills.
He does these things for a long time
so he can do all the things he wants to do
for the rest of his life.
Many people both want to keep the cake and also want to eat it.
They always want to have fun,
have fun and have fun.
You will hear them declare,
“Work should be fun and life should be fun too!”
Denis Waitley, writer and speaker,
makes a wonderful observation
that most people spend their lives on things that help them relax,
not things that help them achieve their goals.
Albert Grey,
a thinker who spent more than 12 years looking for the secret
to success and discovered that it is very simple.
Successful people make a habit of doing things
that unsuccessful people don’t like to do, he said.
So what don’t successful people like to do?
Well, it’s the same thing that successful people don’t like.
Successful people also don’t like getting up early,
exercising, planning the day,
working hard,
improving skills;
but they still do it because they understand that is the price of success.
If you don’t pay, if you don’t sow,
you will not reap the fruit.
If you don’t pay the price for success,
you’ll never have it.
There is a tragedy called indecision in which one intends to do something.
They are always about to do,
but they hesitate and procrastinate.
In the end, they did nothing.
We all understand that spending happens unconsciously.
So, how do you stop spending?
First, start tracking your expenses.
If you use a debt collection service,
the first thing they’ll ask you for is a complete list of expenses,
down to every penny.
You have to write.
Don’t spend, by credit card or cash,
without taking notes.
There are several apps
that are very helpful in helping you keep track of your expenses.
In fact, spending time thinking about
how much he’s spending will make him even more conscious
of how much he’s spending.
The result will often be that you don’t spend anymore.
Another thing I learned
when I started researching self-made millionaires is
that they never buy a new car.
I discussed this topic with some rich people in my lecture.
They bought a car that was two years old,
good quality,
great looking, mechanic tested,
and they drove it all the time.
These cars depreciate a lot,
so he can buy a $55,000 car for $35,000.
Let’s say you save $10,000 on a new car.
If you invest this $10,000 in real estate
or in a good index fund,
in 3-5 years,
sometimes 10 years,
you’re still driving that car,
your initial savings could add up,
double or triple.
If you start using this type of investing regularly,
you will get amazing results.
Spending so that the money develops,
investing so that the money produces,
that is the right spending.
Unreasonable spending will not return the money.
If one is serious about building wealth,
what items should one remove from their spending list?
First of all, you must have seen that there are fixed costs like rent,
car insurance, etc.
So you should live in a smaller house.
Like Warren Buffett,
he lived in a small house when he first started his career,
and he still lives there today.
If Warren can do it,
he can too.
Living in a smaller house will help him pay lower rent.
Also include Parkinson’s law:
Costs will increase with income.
Most people, as income increases,
move to larger and more expensive housing.
Because they are bigger,
they will buy more furniture,
80% of which they never touch.
Stay in a smaller place,
separate the extra money to save or invest.
Remember:
Only coins that can produce money will bring you profits.
I also had a valuable experience many years ago, in the 80’s
I was working on a real estate development project,
which was also relatively small,
when a large apartment complex was selling apartments.
You can buy a unit for $1,250,
and pay in monthly installments.
I came to see: $1,250 for a $30,000-35,000 apartment.
I don’t know much about investing,
but I was able to make $1,250,
by making a credit card advance.
I bought a small apartment,
and then I found out they rent apartments in this area for about $275 a month.
I advertised the apartment
for rent in the local paper for $250 a month,
and immediately someone came in.
It was a woman with two children.
She pays me $250 a month,
while I am paying $275-300 a month in installments.
So I lost the first 6 months;
Then I raised my rent,
and I finally broke even.
Six months later, I raised the rent to $25.
Before long,
I realized she was paying $350-375 a month in rent.
She stays there year after year.
She actually stayed there to raise her children.
They go to school and then go to college.
She stayed there for 10 years,
and I still periodically raise the rent.
In time, I made $1,250 in profit from
that apartment.
Remember:
My initial investment was only $1,250!
When she announced that her kids were all grown up
and finishing school so she was moving out,
I sold the apartment.
Looking back,
selling the house was probably one of the dumbest things I’ve ever done.
The apartment has given me 100% net profit per year,
on an initial investment of $1,250.
Get 100% profit.
What if I buy an apartment like that every year?
When he buys a house,
the bank will lend him more money to buy more apartments,
because he has shown success in this area.
That’s one of the things that Warren Buffett did.
He bought companies,
let them generate cash flow for him.
He used this cash flow to buy more companies.
Just like that, now he generates $25 billion a year.
That’s 2 billion dollars a month
that he can take advantage of along with the money from the bank.
Banks will lend you as much as you want.
If I had done that,
I would have owned the apartment building,
but I was too young to think that way.
Nobody can.
If he sees an apartment for sale, and is sure it’s clean, tidy,
and the payment agreement is successful,
he can start his own real estate empire.
It’s a great way to spend money on important things that can be profitable.
If we’re serious about building wealth,
what expenses should we consider including in our spending plan,
like continuing education,
high-quality equipment to boost productivity?
Earl Nightingale has this rule:
Invest 3% of your income in yourself by upgrading your skills.
As soon as I knew this principle,
I started practicing it,
and now I can claim that there is no limit
to how much you can spend to upgrade your skills.
Years ago, I spent thousands of dollars.
I got my MBA in management after two years at a university.
Costs thousands of dollars,
but is a great investment.
The best investment,
or the best spending,
is the money you upgrade yourself.
Spend to make yourself more valuable.
If someone comes to you with an investment and says,
“I suggest you invest this.
Looks like a good investment opportunity.
There is huge potential.”
so what? You should consider it and then say,
“No, I wouldn’t invest in it.
I think it has no future.
I don’t think it’s a successful investment,
just a waste.”
So what if it’s an investment in yourself?
Unconsciously,
people who don’t invest in themselves will always feel unworthy,
self-doubtful, and lack confidence in themselves.
They decide they don’t deserve it,
and investing in themselves is a waste of money,
because they have no future.
You can always identify people
who never intended to invest in themselves.
Many people will be shocked to hear that.
But it is true.
For it is one of the greatest discoveries of all time:
You can only tell what your beliefs are
by looking at what you do.
Especially what you freely choose.
He always chooses things that are compatible
with his innermost beliefs
and with the values he pursues.
So, if he had the choice to buy a latte or a CD,
to travel or attend a symposium,
he would always choose
what makes him happy,
relaxing activities;
at the time, he was claiming those choices were more important
than his own growth and development.
Whatever you do over and over again becomes a habit.
As soon as you get used to not investing in yourself,
it becomes unconscious.
Really, if someone came up to him and said, ”
Buy this book hardcover,
only $12,” he’d probably get angry at the person
who was suggesting he leave his comfort zone. there.
You will get angry and protest.
He will really lose sympathy with those
who suggest that he should invest in himself.
Louise Hay, author of spiritual books,
once said that humanity’s biggest problem is always feeling,
“I’m not good enough.
It’s useless to invest in myself because I’m not good enough,
and it’s useless because I don’t have a future.”
You might just say,
“I never said that.”
He didn’t say it, but he unconsciously did it.
If you were a stock, would you invest in yourself?
Do you buy yourself?
This is equally shocking.
Do you think of yourself as a growth stock?
Are you the kind of stock that even widows and orphans are willing to invest in,
because your value is always increasing?
Think about that.
Are you a growth stock?
Are you the kind of stock that makes me say,
“I’ll invest in you.
I will become rich,
because your value is increasing a lot”?
For entrepreneurs and small business owners,
what are the biggest spending mistakes they make?
Rule #1 when opening a business is cash reserve,
cash reserve,
and cash reserve.
That is, never buy
when you can rent.
Never rent long-term
when it is possible to rent short-term.
Never rent short-term when you can.
Never borrow long-term
if you can borrow short-term.
Therefore, you should never rent a long-term office,
only a short-term rental,
even if you have to move sometimes.
He buys old furniture.
I realized that second hand furniture cost only 10 cents per dollar,
and was very suitable for his situation.
Many years ago,
I was invited
to set up a distribution system
for a Japanese car line in Western Canada.
I discovered many warehouses in the second-hand area.
I bought second hand furniture,
opened offices,
subdivisions and everything.
Then the Japanese partner came from Tokyo to visit the facilities.
The manager walked in and said, “Aha! Cheap office.
Cheap furniture. I love.
Cheap office, big profit.
We love how our distributors make big profits.”
He said he often sees distributors going out all the time,
borrowing a ton of money,
renting brand new offices,
paying very high salaries to senior staff,
buying new things.
He also said most of them go bankrupt
before making enough profit.
He asserted, “Cheap office, big profit.”
I never forget this word.
This is a very important lesson many companies learned
during the dot-com bubble.
They choose a first-class office.
They buy all new luxury goods,
and then they run out of money.
What you need to do is preserve cash.
If you can avoid spending,
don’t use it.
Save money.
Borrow or rent for short term.
Ask friends to borrow if needed,
but keep cash,
because cash is as important as Oxygen to the brain.
If you have cash, you can survive.
If the money runs out,
the business will be like a ship capsized on the ocean
and immediately sink.
A business nearly 100 years old can still collapse
if it runs out of cash.
So stock up on cash.
Those are the bloody lessons I’ve learned,
from all the same mistakes I’ve made.
Brian, to sum it up, are there three principles
or secrets that shouldn’t be forgotten
when it comes to this topic of spending?
Take notes.
The most important thing is to create a financial plan for yourself,
and list it in detail.
Record costly expenses and review them.
Many companies go to the brink of bankruptcy
because they underestimate the cost of essential furniture,
essential raw materials,
essential personnel,
essential advertising;
They don’t check spending.
The expense check is one of my favorite phrases,
after the spending mistakes I make in business.
Many people make financial commitments
and decisions without enough information.
Make a detailed financial plan.
Sticking to the plan would force him to think very carefully.
Budgeting is something that many entrepreneurs hate to do,
because they are not meticulous people.
Then find someone to help you with this.
Hire accountants, who are meticulous,
to list everything you could possibly need
when running a business.
Then when you go shopping,
check,
then call your accountant,
then check again;
Make sure the cost is as low as possible.
Second, put off major expenditures for as long as possible.
If you think you need a whole new set of computers,
or something like that,
delay for a month,
maybe even two months,
because it’s not urgent.
You will find the machine dealer will do everything possible
to make you rush to buy them.
If the machines are sold on consignment,
they will receive a commission when he completes the payment.
Looking at both personal and business finances,
you’ll find that if you wait another 30 days
before making any decision,
you may not be able to make it.
We all have a tendency to think,
“Oh, what a great idea:
New car, new computer, or something new.”
But if you wait 30 days before making a decision,
you’ll be surprised how good your decision is,
and how rarely you decide to buy.
I usually plan to buy something,
and spend 30 days before doing it.
At that point, I couldn’t even remember
why I liked buying that thing so much.
So spend as much time delaying shopping as possible.
Third, seek advice from people who are experienced
or who are really careful in money matters.
I have several friends who are extremely cautious
when it comes to money.
When I ask them about certain expenses,
they come up with all sorts of great ideas.
Don’t buy this.
Don’t buy here.
It will be cheaper to buy elsewhere.
You don’t really need it.
You can borrow it here.
You can do other work there.
Those are all possible ways to delay spending until you have to.
In time, he will become rich
and the savings from these expenses will be much larger than the expenditure itself.
**********
Chapter 4: Manage debt
Another area of the science of money that the vast majority
of people have experienced is debt.
Debt is common to all income levels and all ages.
But did you know that not all debts are created equal?
Did you know the rich have a lot more debt
than the majority of the middle and lower classes?
What is the best way to get out of the debt spiral?
Let’s start with your experiences with debt
as a young man and as a wealthy business owner.
Have you ever struggled with it?
If so, how did you get out of that debt spiral;
And if not, what principles of life do you apply to stay out of debt?
When I left high school,
I didn’t graduate,
so I could only do manual work.
So I don’t have a problem with debt,
because no one lends me money.
I don’t even have a credit card.
I only have enough deposits in the bank
to cover my living expenses,
and I have to pay for everything in cash.
I have worked for many years.
I backpacked abroad,
visited 80 countries by hitchhiking,
catching buses and trucks,
stopping to work to earn enough money to continue.
Even when I started to earn more selling,
I still paid mostly in cash,
because I was working abroad at the time.
I have money in the bank,
but I’m not in debt.
Time passed, and I started a business.
I joke that when you start a business,
you will have to learn how to sell again.
I sold my house,
sold my car,
sold my furniture,
sold everything I owned,
plus all the savings I had accumulated.
I rented a small office to work in,
because when you first started your business,
unless you had a lot of money,
you always ran the risk of failure.
As a rule,
everything takes twice as long
and takes three times longer than you think;
so if you think you’ll break even in 6 months,
it could take up to 12 months.
Everything will cost more,
because of many things he did not imagine.
Even if you budget extremely well,
backing up 50-100%,
you may still be in for a shock.
In the end, I sank deep into debt.
I borrowed some money.
I have ordered services:
Printing, correspondence,
office furniture,
public services and services from many different companies;
I also think everything will be fine.
I used up all the money,
so the money goes and doesn’t come back.
Then suppliers started knocking on my office door demanding payment,
calling me,
harassing me,
all sorts of things.
Calls, bill files, constant harassment made me panic.
We don’t have a dime to buy anything.
We lived in a short-term apartment,
and I was panicking all the time,
so I had to cut back on my expenses.
When starting a business, many people borrow
from friends and relatives,
making the most of any credit card.
In my case, I had to borrow money
with a car mortgage along with all the other things.
I sat down and realized I would have
to find a way out of debt or go bankrupt.
I think if I work really hard,
I can overcome.
The first thing to do is to go to the bank.
My debt at that time was like a one-year revolving loan,
I had to pay it off.
I took out a bank loan while I had a house to live in.
At that time,
I had no home,
but I still owed the bank.
Then I read that,
if you pay your interest on time,
your loan will not be counted
as bad debt by the bank.
They won’t report bad debt,
so they won’t seize your real estate
or assets.
I went to my loan account manager,
and I said,
“Hey, I can’t pay the principal,
but I can pay interest until my business recovers,
which is probably 3-6 months.
Come on.”
He said, “As long as you pay the interest,
Brian, that’s okay,
because it’s a good loan.”
Then I went to the creditors
and negotiated,
“Hey, I owe you this money
and I can’t pay you off now,
but I’ll pay you a small amount
each month as a token of my goodwill,
and I promise to pay you back.
The contract will pay you in full in the next 6-12 months,
if you accept to accompany me.”
They all replied,
“OK, if you pay us a monthly goodwill payment,
we will be with you for a long time.”
I owe thousands of dollars,
but I’m allowed to pay $50 a month.
I went back to work, and within the next six months,
the business improved.
I was able to pay off my debt
and get everything back on track.
It’s been a terrible year
and a half for me,
so I never put myself in debt again.
That’s why I say this statement makes no sense,
“Don’t spend your money on starting a business”,
because when you start,
you will have to spend every penny that you can ask,
borrow,
and spend money on everything that you own or accumulate.
According to Forbes magazine,
80% of new businesses fail within two years.
They conclude, every new business is a race against time:
Can you turn a profit before it runs out of money?
There is a rule in business:
It takes two years to break even,
two more years to repay the money you borrowed in the first two years.
No business, according to Peter Drucker,
made a profit in the first four years.
If he was planning to do anything else, he must be crazy.
There’s also the 2-2-3 rule:
Two years to break even,
two more years to pay off debt,
and three more years to grow
and make a profit.
So it would be good if he had enough cash
to cover the first two years,
otherwise he would go bankrupt.
When I heard that,
I even said,
“That’s ridiculous,
that’s not going to happen to me.
I am different, I am superior.”
But it really took me seven years.
Everyone I talked to talked about that seven-year rule.
It costs twice as much and takes three times longer than I thought;
It took two years to break even,
two years to repay the debt, all seven years to make a profit.
When someone becomes a successful entrepreneur,
they have certainly gone through all those stages.
We just talked about the fact
that there are different types of debt,
including good debt and bad debt.
Let’s distinguish these two types of debt,
and give specific examples.
We discussed that good debt is debt that can pay for itself.
For example, if you buy a product
and then resell it,
if you invest in advertising
to entice customers to buy your product,
if you train your employees to sell more products,
if you put in the effort to meet
with partners to attract investments,
all of which have an expected return on investment.
He expects to earn more than he spends.
And bad debt is a one-time expense that doesn’t come back,
like a debt spent to buy furniture.
We had to close our main office,
because we had to restructure the business.
We opened an office twice as big
and designed it better for a digital marketing business like us.
My employees want open space, modern furniture.
In the past, I used to open a traditional office,
with traditional furniture.
I have poured tens of thousands of dollars on beautiful
and luxurious furniture.
When we didn’t need it anymore,
we asked if anyone wanted to buy it.
No one wants, even for free.
This is bad debt.
Sometimes we even have to pay shipping to get it for free.
In the end, the entire office was basically given away,
and we didn’t get a dime out of the tens of thousands of dollars worth of stuff.
It’s bad debt, with no return at all.
We all made the mistake,
like many other companies,
of ordering too much,
because he thought he was going to sell a lot,
but no, he still had to pay for it.
You have to pay in 30-60 days,
the warehouse is full of unsold products.
Many companies go bankrupt because of too much inventory.
That’s another example of bad debt.
Why did you make such a mistake?
Because you get a cheaper price
if you buy more.
But it would have been much better
if he had bought less initially,
despite paying a higher price
and making a lower profit.
At the very least,
that way you won’t have to take a lot of risk,
the cash won’t go away,
and you won’t end up with dead stock in the warehouse.
Inventory will destroy the business, it is bad debt.
If you get into this situation,
and don’t convert it into sales quickly,
it could drag your business down.
This type of bad debt is the main reason many companies go bankrupt.
Let’s talk a little bit about some forms of consumer bad debt.
We talked about credit cards with high interest rates.
So, for the convenience of your circuit,
let’s start with the form of credit cards.
Extended terms car loans allow people
to borrow huge amounts of money,
with repayment periods of 72 months or more.
Can you be more specific about these types of credit,
and how they can cause bad debt if not used properly?
The credit industry benefits from interest payments,
which can range from 18-23% or more:
There are all sorts of hidden payments, late fees, etc.
So, The only way to use credit cards properly
is to make monthly payments.
Because, credit card is the highest fee debt you can have.
It’s one of the worst types of personal debt.
Car loans with extended terms are also a type of bad debt.
Basically, you are spending too much to buy a car.
He has to repay the car loan within 36 months,
because if it takes longer,
he will have to spend too much money on the car.
Buy a car at a low price.
Don’t let the ego rule.
Whenever you’re preparing to sign your financials,
take the time to bring those documents home
to mull over and review them bit by bit.
If you don’t understand something,
ask for a full explanation,
because some documents like this written
for the purpose of confusing people,
so you may not understand the sub-clauses.
For example, with a credit card,
the document might say 0% interest for the first 6 months,
but this only happens if you pay 100% every month
or if you have a $2,000 account balance.
Read the fine print,
because you might be trapped there.
It might say 0% or 1% per month, or 12% per year,
and so on.
Also, be careful when they call you and offer special offers on credit cards,
phone subscriptions
or other programs.
These special offers over the phone often have an unacceptable cost
with 50-80% commissions for consultants.
They will try to pull you into things you don’t need like extended insurance plans,
extended car warranties,
technical equipment like computers and cell phones.
These are extremely expensive and have no value to you.
Brian, in your opinion,
how can each form of debt be handled properly?
This depends a lot on your credit rating and understanding,
but here are three suggestions.
One is debt collection.
Debt consolidation means all your debts will be consolidated into a single debt
to the debt consolidation company;
then you just owe money
and make periodic payments to that company.
Although there are many companies that offer this service,
he must be very careful
because they earn large commissions by collecting debt for him.
These companies make big profits because of that.
Almost everyone
who uses a debt collection service is in trouble.
They seem to overuse this service,
spending beyond their means.
This in turn led to another default and another collection service.
Another way, suggested by finance author Dave Ramsey,
is to make a list of all your debts
and pay off the smallest ones first.
This is a good idea,
because it gives you the mental motivation to pay off small debts
and get them off the list,
then pay the next ones and get them off the list again.
Another suggestion that I especially like is
to pay off the debt with the highest interest rate first.
Consider your credit card:
Some are charging you 18%, 23%, and even 30% fees.
Pay off the credit card debt
with the highest interest rate first.
Spend all your savings on them first.
People often advise to pay a little of each.
I just want to say, pay the minimum
for them if you want to stay in good debt.
They won’t haunt you,
as long as you still pay the minimum payments.
Once you’ve decided to get out of debt,
there’s a series of strategies you can use to get there.
One is to start saving money.
George Clason’s principle says pay yourself first
by saving at least 10% of your gross monthly income.
However, if you are in debt,
start with a smaller amount of savings, in the way below.
Assuming you are heavily in debt and want
to save as much money as possible to get out of this situation,
you also can’t save 10% every day, every month.
Start saving 1% and live off the remaining 99%.
Since humans are creatures of habit,
if possible, deduct 1% of your income at the beginning of the month.
He will still live quite comfortably with 99% of the money left.
Second month, save 2%; third month, save 3%.
Just like that, after a year,
you can push your savings rate up to 12%,
and at the same time tighten your living expenses
so much that you don’t even notice.
Keep a record of everything you spend,
and chances are you’ll find yourself wasting money on a latte.
Keeping a spending record will help you stop spending money on it.
So you save that money.
When you start saving money
and start increasing your Financial Freedom account,
something good will happen to your debts.
Your mind will change,
your attitude towards debt will also change,
and you will stop accumulating debt.
It is often advised to stop using credit cards
and pay for everything with cash.
I don’t recommend you do that.
Stopping credit cards can be pretty bad,
as carrying cash around all the time can be quite inconvenient.
I have three credit cards.
Even though I have a variety of cards,
I only use those three plus a debit card,
and pay off all my debts each month.
If you don’t, the debts will accumulate very quickly.
I learned from that,
so I absolutely don’t get into credit card debt anymore.
Another benefit of starting to save 1% a month
is that you will find yourself in debt less and less.
It may take 2-3 years,
but there will come a time when you get out of debt completely
and never get into that trouble again.
Debt makes him feel incompetent,
anxious, insecure, and negative.
See the difference between two people talking,
one has a deposit in the bank,
the other is in a spiral of debt.
People with bank deposits will look more confident,
positive, and outspoken.
And the debtor will seem a little less,
more cautious and more stoic to those with money.
Getting out of debt will transform you.
Most people who get out of debt never get into debt again.
You can do it, with just 1% savings per month.
If you practice some of the additional income-boosting strategies
we’ll discuss later,
your net worth will start to increase.
As income increases, he will save that money,
instead of spending it, and use it to pay off debt.
Brian, are you in favor of maintaining a mortgage,
rather than paying it off immediately?
Is that a good idea to speed up the checkout process?
There are a lot of different views on this.
We have a 3% mortgage on our house,
there’s nowhere you can invest money with 3% interest.
If you enjoy a low interest rate,
it is better to keep your mortgage loan,
rather than pay it off immediately,
especially in the context of the current real estate market,
where house prices are rising faster than loans,
payment you have to pay.
So it’s an investment, because it really adds value.
Another strategy is to pay off the mortgage outright
or make a supplemental payment.
Suppose, you get bonus,
sale commission,
goods,
or other cash,
you can use to pay off your mortgage.
Some say that,
if you double down on the agreed principal,
you can pay off your mortgage in half the expected time.
It’s a good strategy for many people,
as it will change their lifestyle,
although it does require people to make some sacrifices.
But it would take the 30-year mortgage down to 15 years,
and then you’d be able to own the house for free and legally.
Another big topic of public interest is college loans.
Let’s discuss college debt.
Some look like bad debt,
some look like good debt,
because he’s investing in his own future.
I’ve done extensive research on return on investment for different study programs.
STEM schools, S (Science), T (Technology),
E (Engineering) and M (Math) are the most expensive.
Tuition fees start at around $76,000 per year,
and go up to about $136,000 a year in petroleum engineering.
Many courses are quite useless,
and students who complete the course find themselves unemployed.
Last year, 54% of college students
who graduated a year ago were still unemployed,
because the program they chose was useless.
They don’t take courses
that increase monetization
or allow them to achieve
what companies are willing to pay for.
So what do they borrow money to go to school for?
It’s similar to going to Las Vegas,
if you borrow money to buy a home there,
Las Vegas home prices rose 7-8% after the recession,
it’s a good investment.
If you borrow money to try your luck at the casino,
it’s not a good investment.
People who borrow money
to take useless courses are making a bad investment,
as half of them will be in the lowest paying jobs in a few years.
Up to 80% of university students do not do the right job.
They never go back to their old industry,
because the curriculum they follow is basically just for fun.
They are the reason for them to stay in college,
hang out with friends, party, drink, and all that.
That’s the difference between good college debt and bad college debt.
It is wise for someone to take out a loan
to go to medical school or to get an engineering degree,
because they will be able to pay off that debt in two to three years.
If you don’t have a good income
because your current job pays little
because you’ve gone through a useless curriculum,
that college loan would be a very bad debt.
Some people reach the age of 30
and still can’t buy a house,
can’t get credit to buy a car,
can’t start a business,
and they can’t get a normal bank loan;
all because college debt hangs over their heads like an avalanche.
Brian, is the school we invest in that matters?
Is it better to study at an Ivy League school
or an accredited high-quality university program?
Fortunately, President Obama has required,
for the first time in history,
colleges to disclose the earnings of 1-year, 2-year, 5-year,
and 10-year graduates on a yearly basis.
specific industry.
These figures are completely public.
Colleges and universities have fought fiercely
because they do not want this data to be released.
Luckily again, if you Google it,
you’ll see some estimates of income trends for a bachelor’s from a particular school.
I read a study about this,
with the 10 best universities and the 10 worst universities,
in terms of return on investment.
For example, if you go to Harvard to study law,
finance or economics,
your chances of getting a good high paying job will be great.
Harvard is one of the best schools.
Yale is one of the worst schools in terms
of return on investment.
If you have a degree from a prestigious university,
but follow a useless program,
it won’t help you much in your quest
to find a high-paying job.
All of this information is public.
You should learn more.
They will show you which industries are paying the lowest
and which are paying the highest.
What you have to do is do thorough research
before deciding to take out a college loan.
Just like if you are going to invest in a company,
you have to make sure that the company will have high profit and turnover,
and pay the share of the investment
as soon as possible.
Do you believe in the model that Financial Freedom
and Debt Reduction expert Dave Ramsey recommends:
Pool your money down and take advantage of the Avalanche Method3
to get out of debt completely. are not?
Do you think setting a goal to get out of debt completely is a good idea?
Or will such frugality deprive you of the creativity,
and sometimes the motivation, needed to succeed on a larger scale?
The Snowball method is a debt relief strategy in which
the debtor begins to pay off the smallest debt first,
and pays the minimum on the larger debt.
When the smallest debt is paid off, proceed with the second smaller debt,
and so on gradually to the larger debt.
The ultimate requirement for success in life,
especially in business, is discipline:
Work hard and practice self-discipline.
Dave Ramsey’s method requires a great deal of self-discipline.
Discipline manifests itself in the form of delayed gratification.
Successful people are those
who are able to delay short-term gratification
in order to enjoy long-term financial stability.
Ramsey’s method requires him to be very disciplined about his finances.
Since your habits will determine your success,
if you tighten the discipline in paying and get out of debt,
be extremely strict with yourself,
you will most likely become a better businessman a lot,
make better decisions,
borrow and spend more carefully.
Self-discipline works to your advantage.
Everything that helps people develop self-discipline
and delay short-term gratification builds their character,
endurance, perseverance,
meticulousness,
and best qualities.
It would be great if you could do it that,
although it is very difficult to do.
That’s why most people can’t do it.
Dave Ramsey,
I think, is very clear and very serious.
If you’re serious, do it right.
Just like losing weight, he intends to reduce his calorie intake to 1,000 calories a day,
and must maintain this 1,000 calories per day for a year,
no exception.
According to statistics,
an adult consumes about 3,000 calories per day.
So if you take in 3,000 calories and burn 4,000,
you will lose 1,000 calories a day,
and over time the excess weight will disappear.
That would be the most amazing thing,
but he would have to be really strict with himself.
That’s what Ramsey’s method requires.
Be really strict with yourself,
develop the habit of saving,
and be careful with money.
If you practice this habit for 1-2 years,
you will stay vigilant with money related matters
for the rest of your life.
The last part of this chapter is about people
who have paid off their debt
or have successfully lost weight.
We know a lot of people who have actually lost weight,
but then gained it back.
Similarly, how do you know
when a huge unexpected expense hits you,
you can’t handle it,
and then you’re in debt again?
In your opinion,
how many months of savings in the bank is reasonable
so that extraordinary expenses do not affect business operations?
We call this rule number 3,
which includes the three pillars of Financial Freedom:
savings, insurance,
and investments.
First is saving,
you need to save up an amount equivalent to 2-6 months of income,
so if you unfortunately lose your job,
you can still maintain your current standard of living for 2-6 months.
If he did, he would feel extremely confident
when faced with the problems that arose in his world.
I’ve given this advice to countless people
who have applied it to their financial planning and have done it well.
It took them a year to save up the equivalent of two months of income,
they were extremely strict with themselves,
and then when their boss became a tyrant,
or the company cut wages and increased working hours,
they could waved his hand and said,
“It’s okay!” and feel free to leave.
They do this because they have a bank deposit,
while their colleagues have to stay there,
enduring the negative environment around them.
So, the first thing you need to do is save money equivalent to 2-6 months of income.
Six months is best, and a minimum of two.
The second thing you need to do is buy the right insurance.
This is very important.
An accountant friend of mine once said:
Get insurance for anything you can’t value,
you should get health insurance.
I recently chatted with someone
who let his health insurance expire.
To save money on skiing,
he dropped out of renewing his health insurance,
and unfortunately, he broke his back while skiing.
He lay flat on a hospital bed for six months,
continuing physical therapy for the next six months.
This incident has set back his entire life,
just because he let his health insurance expire.
You also need to buy car insurance,
both collision insurance and motor vehicle owner’s liability insurance.
You also need comprehensive home insurance.
Because if his house caught on fire,
he wouldn’t be able to fully appreciate the damage.
We went to an insurance agent and asked,
“What equipment do we need to protect our lives?”
They are all seasoned professionals.
They said, “You need to buy this insurance,
you don’t need to buy that insurance,
you need this insurance for this plan,
that need that insurance.
They did a lot of advice
and recommended different from companies
to deal with different problems,
and then we didn’t have any more financial trouble.
Make sure you buy the right insurance.
Don’t listen to people who say insurance is
just gambling that hurts yourself.
You also need to buy life insurance.
If you are the breadwinner of the family,
you need to buy insurance to take care of your family in the long run
if you are unlucky.
In addition, insurance will help you feel more secure and relaxed.
It also helps him feel stronger,
tougher and more positive knowing that he and his family are financially secure.
You will be more confident in the face of bigger risks.
To wrap up this chapter,
are there any other ideas or notions about debt that we haven’t covered?
Let me summarize our discussion about debt,
because I have been deeply in debt myself,
so I understand the psychological
and emotional effects that come with it.
Staying up all night dreading foreclosure,
parking his car two blocks away
to avoid creditor demands,
a life that was terrible,
and many times he almost fell into it.
If this happens, and if it happens to you,
resolve to get out of debt
and stay out of it.
Your life motto should be,
“I will live a life without debt to anyone.”
Then sit down, make a plan,
and make getting out of debt a top priority.
Because this is not something you can do every day;
This is what you have
to do right now.
If you’re married,
sit down with your partner
and make a complete list of all your assets
and basic expenses,
electricity,
water,
gas,
food,
everything else,
and make a detailed list each debt.
I used to say,
you will become what you think about the most.
Self-made millionaires are people just like the rest of us,
but they persisted with their “I’m going to get rich” decision,
and then they did.
You’ll never become rich
until you make that decision.
If you make that decision
and take action,
you will definitely achieve financial independence,
because there are so many opportunities
and ways for you to get there.
Researchers have calculated
how much time people
with financial problems spend
thinking about money each month.
They think about money about 24 hours a day.
They think about money,
talk about money,
complain about money,
cry about money, fight for money, argue about money,
they drive and still think about financial matters.
But, how much time do they spend sitting down,
writing,
planning,
and seriously pondering their financial destiny?
The answer is probably about an hour per month.
People usually sit down to take notes for about an hour a month.
Mostly timing bill payment.
I’ve been through that too,
where he sat down and said,
“Okay, how many credit cards are we going to pay this month,
how much are we going to pay this month’s bill?”
He distributed the money
until it was almost empty,
and then he started worrying about money again the next month.
But how are self-made millionaires?
They spend at least 10 hours per month.
They read financial magazines, financial publications;
they read the financial news;
they look at debt consolidation and investment services.
They spend 10 hours a month thinking about how to better organize their financial lives,
so they have a 1,000% advantage,
10 times more than the average person who doesn’t take the time to think.
If you’re really serious about getting out of debt,
even if you’re not a meticulous person,
make it a habit to buy books or magazines that discuss money.
Listen to programs that talk about money tape, radio, TV, online.
Let’s make this a priority:
You’ll get out of debt and never get into it for the rest of your life.
If you are determined to do so,
rewrite it as a big goal and make a plan for it,
seriously think about it,
you will be amazed at how much you can change your financial life.
***********
Chapter 5: Create income sources
Once you apply smart spending and effective debt management,
following the science of money,
you need to make sure you’re generating some solid cash flow
or incomes to invest in additional assets,
projects as well as potential financial opportunities
and live the lifestyle you’ve always wanted.
In this chapter,
Brian guides you through the proven rules
and principles you need to generate the highest returns,
whether you’re an employee,
a business owner,
or a full-time investor. time.
Let’s start with your own life experiences in generating income.
In previous chapters,
he shared the story of how he rose from hard work with little pay
to earning millions of dollars a year as an author and business owner.
What lessons have you learned about how to generate income,
helping you to support your dreams?
Everyone wants to earn a steady and high income that can afford their dreams.
People fantasize about money suddenly being delivered to their mailboxes,
as they say, as if they still had money without working.
It’s really a dream come true.
I know some of the smartest people in the world have been holding onto this fantasy for 25 years.
They always say, “This is the ideal. Is magic.
It’s a way for me to start generating a high income without working.”
In fact, the only way for you to generate a high income is to invest your time and money,
producing goods to sell for yourself,
or letting others trade them, earning royalties,
commissions, dividends, or something else.
For example, when I worked really hard to achieve success,
I started investing my income in real estate.
This option turned out to be the best investment I’ve ever made,
because property prices keep going up.
Short-term and long-term property rents continue to rise with inflation,
cost of living, and more.
You’ll find that most of the big money comes from,
first and foremost, a good business,
and then they put that money into real estate
or other investments to generate cash flow.
Brian, what do you think is the biggest misconception most people have about how to build a high income?
As we discussed,
your labor is a commodity that people usually buy for the lowest possible price,
with the highest possible quality.
Over the past few years,
I’ve done a lot of work in the following two areas.
The first area was business model reconstruction,
helping him rethink his business model.
The second area is reconstructing the personal life model,
helping him to re-evaluate his life.
Both models are revenue generating methods,
how do you make a profit for the business,
how do you generate income for yourself?
The answer is that 90% of your income is determined
by the quality of the work you do in relation to other people doing the same work.
And 90% of his business success is the result of the quality of the products he offers relative to his competitors,
who are offering similar products with similar functionality.
The biggest focus should always be on improving the quality of your product
or service as a business,
and increasing the quality of your work as an individual.
If you’re going to invest any money,
invest in the work you’re really good at.
I have mentioned this again and again in my seminars.
I’m not asking you to win an Olympic gold medal or be number one,
you are just be in the top 10% of your field,
because that’s where all the money will come your pocket.
One reason people don’t make it to the top 10% in their field is
because they’re completely in the wrong industry
and don’t have the capacity to do it in that industry.
But the main reason is that they were never determined to try to get into the 10%,
and they slipped.
They only reach a certain level of ability, and then they let themselves slide.
One of the most important studies on elite performance was conducted by Dr. K. Anders Ericsson at the University of Florida.
In it, he concludes that 7,000 to 10,000 hours of hard work,
or 5-7 years, are needed to achieve elite levels of performance.
He does research mainly on musicians,
but also on people from many other fields.
Malcolm Gladwell wrote the book Outliers,
which cites research done by Ericsson.
Fortune’s Geoffrey Colvin wrote the book Talent Is Overrated with exactly that idea,
you don’t need to start with talent,
but if you put up with hours of hard work,
you can develop themselves to the point of achieving extraordinary performance at work.
As long as the field is right for you,
you like it, you enjoy it,
and you give it your whole heart.
He got better and better.
You can’t excel in an area you don’t love and don’t devote yourself to.
Either way, Ericsson has found that the average person, in the latter 80%,
will work to develop their competence and confidence in their work,
then they stop trying and never become.
Thus, after 10 years of starting a career,
the average person, 80% of the population,
is not more productive than one year after they started working.
Only the 20% group continues to grow.
Gary Becker, the Nobel Prize winning economist,
has done a rather interesting study.
He found that the average income of people in the 80% group increased by 2-3% per year,
as long as they were employed.
This is again an increase because of the cost of living,
so they don’t grow at all.
For those in the 20%,
their income increases by an average of 11.8% per year as they continuously learn,
develop, improve their skills, and excel in their field.
So, why do some people earn so much? That’s because, they do their job very, very well.
Let me illustrate for you with some great examples.
Think of chefs running top restaurants,
like Alain Ducasse, who runs a restaurant in New York.
This is one of the most famous restaurants in the world.
It’s always full, and it’s easy to shell out $500-1,000 for a two-person dinner.
The most prestigious restaurant in the United States,
The French Laundry, is located in the Napa Valley,
which is very difficult to get to.
You’ll have to fly to Oakland or San Francisco.
You will have to drive an hour and a half to two hours.
You will have to stay at a hotel in the Napa valley to get to this restaurant.
This restaurant is of such high quality that a basic dinner is also worth $350-500, with wine included.
You have to make a reservation a year in advance,
and they will take your credit card number
and collect the full cost of the reservation.
You can’t change your mind, change dates,
or be absent without notice,
because really, people fly in from all over the world.
They stayed at a nearby hotel,
they came to this restaurant to enjoy the top-notch cooking skills of the chef who runs this restaurant.
This is a very vivid example of how if you were really,
really good at what you do,
people would pay you almost anything.
We all know, a lawyer gets a salary of 200-300 dollars an hour.
The best lawyers get $2,000-3,000 an hour, even $10,000 an hour.
Sometimes, they receive up to $100,000, $200,000,
or $1 million an hour, for handling special cases;
because if you hire this lawyer to handle your problems,
then no matter what happens,
they can save you or bring you luck.
The only way to achieve a high level of income is to do what you are doing so well that a savvy consumer,
with the mentality of wanting the most but spending the least,
is willing to pay more for the product services or your labor.
The last thing to remember is that all wealth in America began with a personal service business.
A person who becomes very,
very excellent at providing personal service.
As a result, people are willing to pay them more, hire them,
promote them, give them bigger responsibilities.
And greater responsibility comes with more money,
more money comes with more opportunities, and so on.
But it all depends on being excellent at what you’re doing.
Many employees claim that they devote a lot of time and effort to the company,
and that they should be paid more.
As a business owner, how would you respond to them?
This condition is very common.
Many people affirmatively say,
“I have 20 years of experience,”
but their bosses say,
“Honestly, you only have one year of experience repeated 20 times.”
Because, remember, the vast majority,
80% of the population or more,
just do their job well enough to not get fired,
and avoid antagonism from colleagues if they don’t do their part.
As soon as they get to that good enough level,
they slip into their comfort zone.
They have fun.
They chatted.
They go out for lunch and coffee.
They waste time.
This is one of those terrible tragedies.
People go to work,
and the first thing they do is find a gossip,
after chatting with that person,
they find another person,
and then another person to talk to.
They didn’t come in at 8:30 and started working.
They go to find someone to chat,
and then they say,
“Wow, it’s eleven o’clock,
I’ve talked to all my friends about all sorts of things on TV,
movies, family, and the news.” and so on.
Only then did they get to work,
and oh my god, it was time to eat.
They went out to lunch in droves,
and they came back after a long lunch,
again establishing relationships with friends,
chatting, chatting and chatting,
and doing a little more work,
then They go home because they don’t want to be stuck in traffic.
And then they wonder why they didn’t get promoted.
We have seen this situation countless times.
In my company,
as I said before,
if a person does his job well,
we give him a raise.
We don’t want to lose them,
because really good people are rare.
Such people are the hardest resource to get,
so once you hire them,
pay them whatever it takes to keep them,
because the value they contribute far outweighs the cost of keeping them.
In fact, the most successful companies are those that consistently hire people
to contribute more than it costs to keep them.
Because each of those newcomers actually brings net profit to the company.
That’s why companies with 100,000 employees make hundreds of millions and billions of dollars a year,
because every employee actually contributes more than it costs them.
That is the key.
When a person says “I want more money”,
the truth is they will not earn more.
During a talk,
when I said people should aim to double their income,
a guy came up to me at recess,
very condescending, arrogant, and said,
“This is probably It’s an excellent inspirational talk,
but at my company,
there’s no chance they’ll pay me twice as much.
So what you’re saying is unrealistic,
and you should have made it clear to the audience that it’s a bit exaggerated.”
I said, “OK, let me ask you a question.
Does anyone in your company make twice as much as you?”
He replied, “Ah, yes, of course.”
“Did anyone earn 3 times, 4 times or 5 times as much as you?”
“Well, yes, seniors, top managers.”
“Then,” I continued, “we can safely conclude that your company is willing to pay people three, four, or five times as much as you.
They weren’t willing to pay him that much. Why?”
He was stunned, as if I had just slapped him in the face.
Then he replied, “Maybe because I’m not very productive.” I said, “That’s it.
That’s your fault.
You are the reason why you are not paid more.”
He left and shook his head sadly.
I call this a survival bonus:
“Boss, I survived last year, so I am entitled to a raise.”
No, you can only increase your salary when you create more value.
Your contribution to that added value will determine your income increase.
No increase in value, no increase in wages.
One of the most common complaints at work
is that many people feel they are not being paid what they give.
They find that company policies, bias,
and so on prevent them from earning a salary commensurate with the value they are creating.
So, Brian, in this case,
what would you advise them to do?
It’s a question of unpaid benefits,
people think they have a right to more money,
even though they don’t do anything extra to get there.
By the 1950s, 50% of the workforce was organized into a union.
The union’s position,
the kind that persists among many teachers and government departments,
is that you’ll get a raise if you’re still alive.
Therefore, he has a concept called seniority level.
He is entitled to a higher salary.
Those who work longer will receive higher wages.
Younger people receive lower wages,
even if they work harder and are more competent.
This leads to the misconception that he should be paid more based on his years of service.
This is the mindset of people who want more without putting in more effort,
who think they should be paid more without being more productive or creating more value.
Meanwhile, in fact, in every company where workers are paid extremely well,
even if they come in after him, they contribute more and more value.
So the question is, are you contributing more value than last week, last month, and year ago?
Are you getting many achievements that people appreciate and are willing to pay for?
Are you contributing more value that, when combined with the value others create,
will help your company sell more products and services,
generate more revenue and profit?
If you don’t do that, you won’t be able to earn the extra auto-incremental income.
It’s been almost 20 years since the days of automatic pay increases,
and yet there are people who gather at the water table,
wasting time,
chatting with friends,
distracted for hours,
and complaining that they don’t get paid more.
So if you want to get paid more,
the principle is simple.
Let’s start working a little earlier.
Work a little harder.
Stay a little later.
I often tell people that the secret to success is to work full time.
This has always been the secret to success,
the truth throughout human history,
especially in the past 200 years.
When you go to work, work,
be fully devoted to the work you are doing.
Sometimes, I will ask the following question.
Imagine you got a job shaking fries, meager hourly, at McDonald’s.
Many people start their careers with a job at McDonald’s,
because that place teaches them how to work, be on time,
coordinate with people, follow the rules,
do your job well, clean your place,
This is a very good training place.
So he took a job at McDonald’s.
Do you leisurely walk into McDonald’s after your shift has started for 15-20 minutes,
hold a Starbucks cup in one hand,
hold your phone in the other, surf Facebook,
have fun with friends and then chat about work?
I did last night and my TV show,
and then spend another half hour sipping coffee
and another hour having lunch and all the same, or not?
Did you do that when you worked for McDonald’s,
for a meager hourly wage?
Absolutely not. He had to be on time and get to work.
Otherwise, you will lose your job.
After that, he worked, he got a 10-minute coffee break in the morning,
10 minutes in the afternoon,
and 30 minutes for lunch, the rest he had to actually work during his entire shift,
from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m.
Everyone knows that; he had to do so with a meager hourly wage job.
So, if you are a higher paid person and work in an office environment,
is it more important?
You will receive a salary much higher than that meager hourly wage.
What if he went to work, brought a Starbucks cup,
arrived late, chatted with co-workers, hung out,
read the newspaper, checked his email,
and did nothing?
The readers will probably be quite stunned,
because they see a part of themselves in it.
They will say, “I didn’t make it through working at McDonald’s,
but I’m still doing well at my current job,
and I wonder why I never get my job done.
I wonder why I haven’t gotten a raise for the past three years.
I wonder why my career isn’t growing.”
All because you don’t actually work.
Very true. I can’t imagine people won’t get fired for being 15 minutes late every day.
Indeed, but we often think of the office world differently.
Let’s discuss the science of how to generate income for business owners.
This is a serious problem,
as many startups do not run very successfully,
and survive for several years because of low cash flow.
What should a new business owner expect in terms of income generation in the first year
or two of operations?
Do you encourage potential entrepreneurs to only start a business
when they have a year or two of income in the bank?
Why yes or why not?
These two questions concern cash flow and bank reserves.
Everything depends on the sale.
IBM was in severe economic trouble between 1989 and 1991.
The company’s stock price fell 80%.
They have to discuss closing the company.
This was a serious problem,
because in the 1980s,
IBM was the most admired company in the world.
High profits, great leadership,
excellent technology, great customer service,
famous in all major magazines – Fortune,
Forbes, Business Week.
However, only 2-3 years later,
it fell a terrible blow.
The company fired its current president,
and promoted Lou Gerstner
who knew nothing about computers to the new chairman.
He stated, “I don’t know how to turn on a computer,
but I understand the business.”
He started his career with McKinsey & Company,
one of the best and largest management consulting firms in the world.
If they receive the assignment,
they will sit together and discuss.
They found the problem, and the solution to the problem.
They always find a solution that works,
that’s why they get paid so much.
After six months and about $3 million in consulting fees,
they sat down with senior managers at IBM and said,
“We’ve found your problem. Sales are too low.”
The entire management team rolled their eyes and replied,
“We know. That’s why our stock price is down – low revenue, low profit.”
Again they asked for a solution to the low sales problem.
The consultants replied,
“That is high turnover.”
This answer is interesting,
because Dun & Bradstreet has studied the case of tens of thousands of companies
that have failed over the years,
and found that he can temporarily ignore the excuses technology,
capitalization, energy competition all due to low sales.
IBM asked McKinsey & Company for a solution.
The solution is simple, they say,
“We’ve looked at how your employees spend their time
and how you manage your business, and found that,
with the same management mechanism as before,
they’re mostly just work as an accountant.”
Since management were previously accountants,
they always thought that accounting was the most important function in the business.
As a result, instead of going out and calling customers,
salespeople spend 75% of their time filling out forms.
If they make a phone call, they’ll have to fill out a five-page sales form.
Then the sales manager had to spend all of their time reviewing the salesperson’s forms,
and no one spoke to the customer.
The consultants say,
“Our suggestion is to change the way we spend our time.
People should spend no more than 25% of their time in the office,
and more than 75% of their time meeting with clients.
Sales managers should spend 75% of their time talking to customers, not salespeople.”
So they started the 75% rule.
They all went out to meet and talk to customers,
and the whole company situation turned around.
In just one year, from a loss of $1.5 billion,
the company made a profit of $1.6 billion.
Stock prices increase.
Today, IBM stock remains one of the best in the world.
The 75% rule is now applied by many large corporations in the world,
after the miraculous change of IBM.
Quite simply, ask your sales team to spend 75% of their time on sales.
If you’re a small business, ask business owners to spend 75% of their time interacting with customers.
I want to emphasize that low sales leads to business problems,
and high sales leads to business success.
As to how much you should save,
how much, and how much you use, the answer is always:
How much can you sell? Recently,
in a study of small and medium-sized business owners,
analysts asked them about the importance of sales and marketing,
the new generation of customers, to their businesses.
They all replied,
“Oh, most important of all, it’s sales and marketing.
It is like blood and oxygen that nourish the brain.
We would die without it.”
“So how much time do you spend, as a business owner
and senior decision-maker, on sales and marketing?”
“Every time, all day.
That’s all I think about in the morning, noon, afternoon, evening.”
The analysts went on to ask,
“We come in with a time and observation metric,
with notebooks and stopwatches,
to see how you spend your time on a daily,
weekly basis like that how is it okay?”
“Oh, of course, no problem.”
Then the analysts came in,
and after a month, they came up with the results:
Business owners typically spend 11% of their time on sales and marketing.
All other activities include checking email,
social media, chatting with employees, having lunch,
meeting with management,
and so on.
That’s why they still struggle with difficulties.
If you yourself spend 11% of your time on sales,
your employees will tend to spend less time on sales,
because you become the company’s standard,
and everyone follow him.
I give this advice to a lot of people.
They returned, and marveled at the change.
Their business, which was already struggling,
suddenly turned into a high-revenue and high-margin business,
because they started spending their days selling products.
I said, “What time do you guys do the paperwork,
is it before 8 a.m. and after 6 p.m.?”
The rule is, do not deal with administrative matters when you can meet the customer.
When he can meet customers,
all he needs to do is find them.
What is the main reason many companies fail?
One is that they are not actively selling.
There is always an excuse,
or they tell them to try to run ads,
both offline and online,
cyberspace has up to 36 million people running online ads to sell.
They think, “I just need to post some ads on the Internet,
and I will make a lot of money.”
No, in most cases you will need to interact directly with the customer.
People don’t buy products and services.
They buy people, individuals trade for themselves,
and people buy because they like
and trust those individuals more than other similar product or service providers.
So you have to focus on this.
The second reason companies fail is because no one wants to buy the company’s products.
Forbes magazine just completed a study
and found that 80-90% of business failures happen
because no one wants to buy the product in the first place.
The product salesperson thought it was a good product.
They also think that people should buy it.
Many times, they themselves do not use the product,
no one in the company uses it,
but they still think the product is good for everyone.
I often ask, how many people in your company only use your company’s products?
It’s amazing – up to 50-70% of the company’s employees use a competitor’s product.
They don’t use the products they sell.
And as a result, when they make an offer,
they don’t show enthusiasm.
If you use a product and you think it’s amazing,
you’ll be able to talk about it with confidence and enthusiasm;
If not, you can’t do it.
After all, the main reason is still weak sales,
and the second reason is that people don’t want the company’s product or service,
and they will quickly show it to you.
In economics, we say every customer has 3 choices.
They can buy your product.
They can buy products from your competitors.
Or they don’t buy anything.
And what you need to do is interact directly with the customer.
Is there any research that shows a specific percentage
that the owner should receive from the company as an employee’s salary?
How much income should entrepreneurs expect?
There is no exact answer to this question.
It also depends on how successful the business is.
If the business is generating a high level of profit,
you can get extra income;
If not, you can’t get anything.
When I first started out, I had no salary for the first 2 years.
All I was able to do was generate enough income to keep the business going,
as I said before,
I had to sell my house and car,
and borrow money from everyone I knew.
Then I moved the company from Canada to the United States,
and started all over again,
recruiting a team of 20 people.
Again, I couldn’t get any paychecks for 2 years.
I have to earn income from many other sources such as royalties,
writing books, radio shows, and all sorts of other things.
I also had to borrow money to keep the business going,
until I started turning a profit.
The fact that he does not receive a salary from his own business is very normal and common.
Basically, in the first few years of starting a business,
you will have to struggle with a lot of difficulties.
But let me tell you something very interesting.
Magazine Inc. studied the 500 fastest growing companies each year,
and in their latest review,
they looked at the founders of these companies.
The fastest growing company among them grew 4,200 times within 3 years.
That is 42,000%.
Many companies grow 50-100x, which is impressive.
Most companies are already happy with 10-20% growth.
The team discovered two things in common with the founders of these thriving companies.
First, they all started the company
because they love the product and are really excited
to use it for themselves and their families.
Second, they find out that other people love the product as much as they do.
The 42,000% growth company has developed an early education program
for elementary school children that, combined with an iPad,
helps the kids get the best grades;
this is really a great idea.
Other parents across the country exclaim, “I want it too.
I want my children to go to 1st, 2nd,
and 3rd grades with lots of perfect marks.
That way, they will be ready for life.
They also hope to get a lot of perfect points.”
Parents rushed to the company for the product.
As a result, the company grew 42,000%,
and they started the company
because they really wanted to help the kids.
So when people say,
“I want to start a business”;
I would answer,
“Make sure you provide a product
or service that you also want for yourself,
your family, your mother, your father,
and your best friends,
because I believe it’s so good that it will really make a difference in their lives.”
That is the starting point.
This doesn’t mean you’ll be successful, but without it,
according to many studies,
you’ll most likely never be fully committed to the business.
He would play golf on Fridays,
relax, hang out with friends,
take advantage of everything he could get,
borrow, and squeeze until the company went bankrupt.
These are the two main reasons companies go bankrupt in the first few years,
because no one wants to buy the product,
and because they don’t actively sell it.
Finally, for investors,
what is the best strategy you know to generate a steady
and strong stream of income from investments?
The most important thing you need to understand is that,
when buying an investment,
you are playing a gamble with the knowledge
and experience of the person selling it.
I’m believing it will increase in value.
Sellers don’t think so, or worse,
they think it will drop.
That’s why stock trading is a win-lose game.
The seller believes it has reached its maximum value,
and the buyer hopes it will increase in value.
In the real estate sector, income-generating real estate
and commercial real estate are among the best financing platforms.
But commercial real estate is not always a guarantee of success.
I have two friends who are full-time commercial real estate professionals,
with 10 and 20 years of experience.
They develop, own and operate commercial office buildings,
industrial buildings, hotels, etc. worth millions of dollars.
Both went bankrupt when the market crashed,
because they had mortgages.
Their mortgage was dependent on a long-term lease,
but the client went bankrupt because of the economic downturn.
They don’t have enough money to pay for the building.
Banks and mortgage companies took the property back,
and both went bankrupt.
They have to sell the house and everything.
They had to move to a rental apartment with their family
and had to wander the streets to earn a living,
even though they were once millionaires.
Therefore, you should understand
that there are always bankruptcies in the commercial real estate sector.
As you probably know,
up to 30% of shopping centers in the US are in bankruptcy,
or about to go bankrupt,
because online shopping has become so easy.
You no longer need to drive across town, find parking,
go to the store,
only to discover they don’t have the right size,
color, or what you’re looking for.
Now, he just needs to go online,
click a few times, and get the exact size, shape,
color at a discounted price
and have it delivered to his door the next day.
Currently, 30% of shopping centers are bankrupt and converted into bowling alleys, gyms,
or public service places ;
The shelves and products in the store have been replaced by registration desks.
The best investment is the one that gives you steady,
consistent, and consistently positive cash flow.
In some of the investments I’ve been in,
people actually sold you an investment that didn’t generate cash flow.
He bought it at breakeven price.
It earns you nothing.
He also has to pay.
You have to pay off the mortgage.
All he did was break even,
since the property only generated enough money to pay off the mortgage.
Why? Because next year,
you can raise your rent a little bit,
and next year, you can raise it a little bit more,
like in my apartment example.
I have actually purchased real estate properties that cost me monthly service fees;
but, I already have someone agreeing to rent,
and I just need to increase the rent gradually.
So today, I continue to participate in multi-million dollar investments,
which at first glance seem to break even,
but are good projects, projects in the growing sector,
and reliable.
If you maintain this investment, then after the first 1-2 years,
you will make a small profit in the third or fourth year.
Sometimes, it takes about 7 years to actually get the cash flow
that can make up for the tough years.
This is very common in the commercial real estate sector.
Summarize the key points of the principle of income
and receiving income as an investor or an employee.
First of all, creating a source of income is always risky,
because everyone wants an income.
Everyone wants a high income.
Everyone wants a stable income.
A good friend of mine said in an MBA class,
the 3 factors that you will have to deal with throughout your career
and determine everything that happens to you are competition,
competition and competition.
Everyone wants to have a fulfilling life.
Everyone wants to have a good income.
Everyone wants a steady cash flow.
Everyone wants to have a profit and a well-off lifestyle.
So everything you do,
there’s always hundreds of thousands,
millions of people competing with you for that same piece of finite cash flow.
That’s why, as Warren Buffett says,
the best investment he can make is in index funds.
Like I said, Buffett spends 80% of his time researching investments.
Carlos Slim, one of the richest people in the world,
spends 80% of his time researching his investments.
Those were the people he had to deal with.
Indeed, he is up against talented people with decades of experience,
who have great knowledge
and know the smartest people in the world;
Yet, 25-30% of the time,
they still make mistakes.
Therefore, the best thing of all,
if you’re going to invest,
is to invest with professionals,
seasoned people with proven investment track record,
who share the same investment risks, like him.
The best investment I’ve ever made is working with people with my interests,
who don’t have anything if I don’t earn money.
We make a profit at the same rate and speed.
Those are the best investments.
In the “Money Myths” section,
we discussed how most rich people don’t focus on making money;
they focus on building prosperity.
This is a big difference,
because when we look at money as a science,
we will naturally see that money is a necessity but only a medium of exchange of value,
a by-product of our effective action.
In this chapter,
Brian will make this distinction clear.
He will discuss how entrepreneurs, inventors, authors
and other creative professionals have become the highest paid people on the planet
through creativity and innovation.
In this chapter, we’re going to delve deeper into the science of money.
We can call it the graduate group level.
Earlier chapters have covered ideas that, if applied,
will pave the way to financial security and a life of financial freedom.
But if you want greater prosperity,
which the press often calls the world’s wealthiest 1%,
you must think bigger by adding or creating new value.
Let’s talk about the difference between the competitive mindset,
which thinks you have to compete with others to achieve success,
and the creative mindset,
which thinks you have to create more value and Brand new item.
In addition, please explain why,
creative thinking generates a much better and safer income.
Both a competitive mindset and a creative mindset are important.
As I said earlier, we live in a very creative world where everyone wants a better standard of living.
This explains all that is going on in the United States and Canada, in China, Taiwan,
Vietnam and Indonesia,
countries that are producing goods at a much lower cost than we are.
This is because they are acting on behalf of American customers,
who want to pay the least but get the most benefit.
IBM used to be a giant in the world in the field of personal computers (PCs).
They set a goal of owning 50% market share in 5 years;
they achieved their goal in just 2 years.
Today, IBM has sold 100% of its PC business to Lenovo in China,
and China makes all IBM brand PCs,
along with PCs for the rest of the world,
because they can do out high quality PC at a much lower price than ours.
Competition, competition and competition,
the never-ending loop.
Some people make it into the wealthiest 1% in the world,
or 0.01%, even 0.001%,
but this percentage is very rare, 99 people have 1 person,
because it takes so many factors combined with together.
Most people don’t get rich quick,
and get rich by starting a single product business.
I have studied this problem for many years.
He started with a product,
and made that product a success.
It was a series of stages that he needed to go through.
Let’s say, you want to start a business,
you want to be financially successful, and eventually,
you want to get rich and retire.
This wish is very good,
reasonable and really possible.
The first thing you need to do is ask yourself,
what will my product be?
Clearly define your product in terms of the value it conveys.
Transmission value,
what difference does your product make to the lives of your customers?
Two key factors for business success,
according to Jim Collins,
author of Good to Great (bBok title: From Good to Great)
is that he must first have a product or service of significant value for customers.
It has to make a difference,
It has to mean something,
It has to be something that people need,
want, and care about.
If your product is not very important to customers,
the only way you can sell it is by relying on clever advertising and discounts.
But if your product is really important to people,
you can offer a higher price, and people will pay more.
The second factor is, it has to be different and out-standing.
It must clearly show that people will prefer it over similar products currently on the market.
Apple’s iPhone is a perfect example.
When the iPhone launched, the leading products were Blackberry,
with a 49% share of the global market, and Nokia,
with a 49% share of the global mobile phone market.
These two companies both treat the iPhone as a toy.
But Apple realized that if he could combine all the disparate activities
that people want including sending pictures,
texting, paying online, using apps and the like,
it photography and recording functions,
you can create something that no one has ever created.
The giants of the industry, Blackberry and Nokia, treat it like a toy,
saying it is only suitable for teenagers,
no one really wants it; and there’s always a market for an old-fashioned,
good, and durable phone.
Five years later, they went bankrupt.
I asked my audience,
“Let’s talk about some of the things that matter.
Have you ever driven past a few blocks or been halfway to work,
and realized you forgot your phone at home?”
And I asked 1,000 people, and they all nodded.
I continued, “So what do you guys do?” Everyone replied, “Go home.”
That’s what plays an important role in everyone’s life.
It’s so important that if you forget it,
you’ll come back to get it.
You have to have a product that makes sense,
a product that makes a difference in people’s lives.
The value conveyed always entails questions like,
what does your product do that people are willing to pay for it?
What problem does your product solve,
and is so urgent that many people pay you to own it?
What benefit does your product bring,
that is so important that many people are willing to sacrifice to own it?
What goals does it help them achieve?
What troubles does it dispel?
It’s amazing the number of bland products and services on the market.
They all failed to answer these questions,
and as a result, they always failed.
When you have an idea for a product,
the second thing you need to do is test it.
Today, we find that the best way to test is to test with customers.
You ask the question, who will be the ideal person with my product?
Who will buy it earliest and pay the most for it?
Then go and meet at least one person in this group of customers,
and have an open conversation with them.
This is the revolution happening in today’s marketing industry.
In the old days, companies assembled new products
and then suddenly announced to create surprises,
like the premiere of a blockbuster movie.
Now, the more and more companies come to potential customers and say,
“I think this product will be very helpful in helping you
improve the quality of your life or the quality of your work.
How do you feel?”
They will give you feedback,
“I like this, I don’t like that; and I like this,
I don’t like that;
if you offer more of these, less of those…”
Then go back and tweak the product.
It’s similar to when he invents a new recipe,
he lets his family taste it and asks,
“What do you think?”
“Too salty, too hot, too sweet or too much of something.”
He went back, tweaking the recipe
until everyone found it to be truly amazing.
At that moment, he knew he had succeeded.
That’s what’s happening in marketing today,
and it’s called customer co-creation.
When you come up with a product idea a
nd wonder how it can improve a customer’s life or work,
meet potential customers and work closely with them,
until the customer accepts the product,
“Wow, that’s a great product,
and I’ll pay you now to have it as soon as you’re done with it.”
The only thing that really matters is the financial transaction:
People pay you.
It’s not enough that they praise the product,
they have to actually pay him to be the first to use the product.
Think of Apple’s product launches into the market,
people lining the streets three days
before the sale and eating and sleeping there,
asking acquaintances to supply
and reserve seats so they can take a shower.
I ask entrepreneurs
, “How many customers do that
when your company releases a new product?”
They just laughed and said,
“No one, never.”
So, first, he had to test the product to make sure there was a market for it.
Then distribute with limited issue and calculate how much you can price.
He then began introducing
and distributing the product line to the public for the first time,
and developed a business model that would allow him
to bring the maximum number of products
or services to the largest number of customers,
at the most affordable prices best,
in the shortest time.
Then replicate that process and repeat.
It’s the basic way people start a successful business.
If you are lucky,
you will find some revolutionary product or service,
then you will move to a higher level
where you make a huge amount of money.
Bill Gates’ Microsoft software is revolutionary,
and has become popular around the world.
Interestingly, Bill Gates did not create this software.
He bought it from its developer, and improved it impressively.
He decided to allow all developers in the world
to use its open source code and develop software based on Microsoft’s platform.
Steve Jobs and Bill Gates both started their businesses in the early 1980s,
and Steve Jobs decided to maximize the profits made
by not allowing outside software developers to build,
and monopolize that software.
Within 10 years,
Bill Gates owned 90% of the market,
and Apple’s market share dropped to 2%,
although many people say Apple computers are superior quality,
easier to use, more user-friendly, nicer, etc.
But their business model is not good.
When they released the iPhone in 2006, they said
“We’re going to develop apps.” Accordingly,
Apple developed a few applications,
but ultimately had to allow many others to participate in the design
and development of them.
They admit that they don’t have enough resources to develop so many apps.
Steve Jobs opposed this decision for a long time.
In the end, he accepted the extension to other app developers.
It was one of the greatest business decisions in history.
It has generated hundreds of millions and billions of dollars.
It made Apple the richest company in the world,
making their stock value unbelievable.
Now, they have $200 billion after taxes in the bank.
It all stemmed from a dramatic shift in the business model:
Expansion. Bill Gates became the richest man in the world,
because he did in the first place.
Sometimes, choosing a product or service and incorporating a unique marketing approach
It will help turn your business around.
Entrepreneur Ray Kroc got the idea
when he saw the McDonald brothers and their hamburger stand in San Bernardino.
He sold milkshake machines,
and their company bought more and more milkshake machines.
Then he went to them, and was overwhelmed.
They had production lines for hamburgers,
fries and high quality malt vinegar.
“What a great idea,” he said.
They took the traditional hamburger stuff and built it into a machine.”
Many people came to line up.
Vehicles come from everywhere, and they make a fortune.
He went to the brothers and said,
“Do you want to do business with me?”
They said, “Sure.”
“So we’re going to open a business and share ownership,
and then I’ll move your entire system to my headquarters in Des Plaines,
Illinois, and scale it up.”
Kroc wanted to expand,
and he went back to the McDonald brothers.
He said he wanted to expand,
but had to borrow more money,
and had to take out a mortgage.
They say, “No, no, no” – they don’t want to do any of those things.
They were just two nice guys in San Bernardio, a farming community.
He replied,
“Then I will buy your business model, brand, and idea.”
They sold it all to him at a very cheap price.
The rest has been written in history.
Successful business,
Ray Kroc became one of the richest people.
There is a very interesting point here.
People say they want to franchise their brand.
I hear a lot of entrepreneurs say that.
It takes approximately 7-8 years to sell your first franchise.
And it took seven or eight years to standardize your business to the point
where it turned into a profitable machine that worked exactly like a Swiss watch,
and then you just had to open the door
and it would make a profit on its own. for you all day.
Next, to prove he had a system,
he simply started with another store and replicated it.
He opened a second business,
and ran them in exactly the same way,
he made them identical,
following standard procedure,
to see if the business system was a bioengineering machine.
If they become identical money generators,
you’ll know you’ve made it, achieve something.
Then, he opened a third and fourth business.
But most people don’t do this until year eight,
because it takes seven years we said, seven year cycles
before you get rid of all the flaws in the system.
Only then will he be able to scale.
When Bill Gates got into trouble with Microsoft,
he still licensed the software to IBM’s personal computers.
But then Microsoft ran into financial trouble, when the recession hit.
Gates went to IBM and said,
“Hey, instead of paying royalties every time
you install Microsoft software on your personal computer,
why don’t you just pay me $350,000 straight,
and I’ll sell it to you?” They said,
“No, we don’t buy and sell software ownership,
thank you very much,
we are not interested in buying Microsoft for $350,000.”
Can you imagine that?
So he was forced to steer the company through financial difficulties, and he did.
Today, Microsoft can buy
and sell IBM fairly quickly and easily
without much impact on the numbers on their financial statements.
I’ve always wondered why the genius leaders at IBM made that decision.
It was a disaster indeed.
Now, we all look at Bill Gates and say,
“Oh, the richest man in the world!”.
He couldn’t have been that rich.
Ray Kroc bet everything like that.
Peter Drucker said,
“Wherever you see a successful business,
there are a few people who have taken a big opportunity and won.”
Self-made billionaires are all start-ups with nothing.
They say that the first quality is hard work and discipline.
The second quality is continuous learning,
which we see in Warren Buffett.
The third quality is willingness to take risks:
At a certain point, they are willing to risk it all.
That’s how he got into the 0.001% wealthiest in the world.
There is no such thing as not betting everything and still becoming a billionaire.
Of the many who bet it all,
the majority lost everything,
and had to start all over again.
We are talking about the richest 1% compared to the rest of the 99%.
They all start out the same,
with the same natural capacity,
no ability to earn money, no money,
good or bad education or no education, etc.
So how to get in? group of 1% of the richest people?
I found that the difference was not in the top 1%, but in the top 3%.
Those who are in the group of the richest 3% in the world all have specific
and clearly written goals and plans;
They are like architects designing a beautiful building
and constantly refining the blueprints.
They work on those goals and plans,
and then make it into the wealthiest 3% on the planet.
As you know from many studies,
these people earn 10 times more than the average person,
they have a much better life,
because they clearly write down their goals and plans.
So the story here is not 1% vs 99%, but 3% vs 97%.
This was studied at the American Management Association.
They found that successful people don’t get smarter,
don’t have higher IQs,
don’t graduate with better grades,
don’t go to better colleges.
They just do some things differently,
and one of them is writing down their goals and plans.
When caught early in their entrepreneurial career,
they wrote a very clear business plan,
then made a list of criteria to find a product or service that would help them achieve that goal.
Getting really rich is rare,
but you can greatly increase your odds of success
by careful planning and thinking it through.
Don’t waste money.
Think carefully,
invest the time and effort to thoroughly research the business
before you put your money in,
and make a commitment not to give up halfway.
The most common way people apply
to this activity is the systems entrepreneur, as Michael Gerber.
The person following this approach will focus on working system-wide
to be able to scale up and create greater value,
as opposed to the traditional entrepreneur
who only works on his skills in the business organization.
Let’s discuss the differences between these two types of entrepreneurs.
First, very few business products can be franchised.
Because such a product must have a market;
must be something people buy over and over again;
There must be something that stands out from all other similar products.
There must be a lot to talk about.
Second, for the business to become successful,
as we said, it takes seven years,
you have to work in that business machine and put your heart into it.
People who work as a top-down manager rather than directly involved in business operations
It has never built a successful business career.
Those who listen to their advice have never built a successful business.
I have a good friend who likes to work
as a top-down manager rather than being directly involved in the business.
He said,
“I followed that lying advice, until I went bankrupt.
After that,
I went back to being directly involved in the business.”
I also have another good friend who teaches business administration.
I had a chance to talk to him,
and he said that every successful business owner works for the business.
No exception.
He continued,
“Look at Bill Gates,
he is probably the most successful business owner in human history.
He always put his heart into the business as a chief architect.
He devotes all his energy to his work.
He transferred day-to-day management
and supervisory duties to the chief executive officer and chief operating officer,
but he was always present and directly involved in the business.
Since the age of 12,
he has always worked wholeheartedly for the business.”
I also have a friend who works in the field of management consulting
and has studied business for more than 12 years.
He has studied hundreds of businesses,
trying to find one quality that makes a business successful,
and that, according to him,
is direct management.
He wrote a book about it.
These business owners go around supervising,
like a doctor looking after a patient.
They take the patient’s pulse, look at the patient’s eyes, mouth,
and facial expressions, and measure the patient’s blood pressure readings.
Doctors are always attentive to their patients.
Starting a business is very similar to an emergency situation.
If you go to the emergency room,
you will find doctors and nurses on duty.
They are always ready to intervene in bad situations
and take care of patients because this is an extremely important time.
I once read on the wall of a hospital that, for a stroke,
the first 30 minutes determines if the person can survive
or walk or think or whatever;
Therefore, you must act quickly.
When symptoms of a stroke are detected,
act like this immediately,
and quickly take them to such a location.
It’s like opening a business.
When he started his business,
that was the red flag moment.
Every day is an exciting day,
as it can either strengthen or destroy his business.
A string of bad days with no cash flow,
no profit,
no revenue,
he felt sunk.
He must be directly involved in the business to ensure it becomes successful.
Anyone who says he can’t do it has never been successful in business.
Because you will understand,
if you want to succeed,
you have to put your heart into it.
You can increase your chances of success,
but you can never be sure.
When we talk about wealth creation,
we’re talking about a different mindset than we often hear from the media.
The media assumes
that there is only one fixed wealth pie
that we all have to contend with,
this is called intellectual poverty.
Meanwhile, the science of money teaches us
that wealth is not obtained through competition,
wealth is created,
this is a rich intellectual thought.
Let us discuss the difference between these two types of wisdom.
Great question.
In all of human history,
the only way to transfer wealth was by robbery.
People owned the lands they plundered,
including dukes,
barons,
earls,
kings, etc.
The people had to pay a tax rent based on 10% to 20% of the harvest to the landowner.
Then these people sold the food they got.
It is their main source of income.
And from there, the tax system today was born.
The baron will live in a magnificent castle and live a lavish life.
They would walk swaggeringly with splendid ornaments,
and the common people would suffer and give 10-20% of all they earned.
It is from here that appear Robin Hood and other heroes,
and countless European myths.
As we mentioned, most wars are plundering.
It is the act of stealing, grabbing,
taking over and taking everything it can.
Ayn Rand talked about the rise of capitalism in the late 17th century,
early 1800s,
and especially after the end of the Napoleonic Wars in 1815.
She said,
for the first time in human history,
Commonly used monetization phrases.
Making money means that you pool resources, materials, labor,
and machines, and then you can actually create wealth that didn’t exist.
Over the course of 100 years,
America has outperformed the rest of the world in terms of real earning power.
In America, you can make money with nothing.
You can grow and harvest from that land.
He used human labor,
cutting trees,
heating steel or weaving cloth.
You make machines.
He created wealth from raw materials and labor.
A good friend of mine,
now one of the richest people in the world,
has written a book.
He calls the material welfare of humanity the equivalent of money or time regulators.
Basically, he says that people’s material well-being comes from tools,
which take a lot of money to develop,
multiplied by labor over time.
To this day,
this has not changed.
Today, creating a job in retail costs $100,000,
and creating a job in the petrochemical industry costs $500,000.
To create a job in each industry always requires a corresponding amount of investment.
That money must be invested by someone who is just saving it, not spending it.
Capitalism is really “thriftism”:
Wherever savings are high,
large amounts of capital are available to invest in new business opportunities
and activities that create prosperity,
jobs as well as future potential.
Creating prosperity means finding new ways to serve others.
You are looking for ways to improve the lives and work of others
in such a way that they will be willing and eager
to pay you for your product or service.
At the same time, you will have to compete,
because others want the same customers,
and because they want to create prosperity
and enjoy the same standard of living.
Abundant wisdom states that the opportunities are limitless,
because people have innumerable desires.
This is one of the most important principles that I have become aware of.
As long as people’s wants are not met, their problems are not solved,
and their needs are not taken care of,
there will always be opportunities for a minority to unleash their creativity.
What often stops people from creating wealth is the level of risk they take.
Let’s discuss the level of risk to take to achieve supreme and outstanding success,
as in the case of Mark Zuckerberg,
Warren Buffett, or Sara Blakely – founder of Spanx.
Is it worth taking that level of risk?
Can people with modest aspirations still create great value?
Let’s take three examples.
First, Mark Zuckerberg came up with the idea,
in his dorm room,
about connecting the boys and girls at Harvard University
by putting their profiles on the website.
If you see someone at school,
you can go home and look at their profile.
They call it Facebook.
Everyone can go and see each person in Harvard.
Really a great idea.
More and more people are doing so,
and more and more people are embracing Facebook.
They don’t make money from the idea;
it’s just a project of the geeks computer enthusiast.
Before long, everyone at Harvard joined the project,
because if you want to integrate into the community,
if you want people to know you and what you are interested in,
you will have to go to this website.
People started sharing messages with each other.
The project was so successful at Harvard that a few people from Yale said,
“Can you make a Facebook for Yale?”
They replied, “Sure!” Then they applied the same technology to create another Facebook.
Then they realized many people who weren’t in college liked this, too.
The project suddenly exploded.
Everyone wants to communicate and communicate online with others,
share their stories and pictures and so on.
At first, it looked very primitive,
and how fortunate they were to have developed a kind of viral technology.
Currently, there are 1.2 billion users of it.
And the number of people using Facebook is increasing.
It became a phenomenon,
It is an unexpected opportunity,
because before Facebook,
there were many other social networking sites,
such as Myspace,
but it has disappeared.
Warren Buffett once took a course at Columbia by Ben Graham,
the father of value investing.
He said he had to delve into the fundamentals of a company,
to see if its products or services really create value for customers.
They call this the act of creating value and capturing value.
The act of creating value has to do with the customer,
because the product enhances the customer’s quality of life,
and the amount of value created outweighs the amount they pay to buy the product.
And value capture is the act of capturing a piece of the value you create for others.
Graham taught the investment philosophy of looking at businesses on the basis of their underlying merits
and how they create greater amounts of value,
better or different from the competition.
At the same time, he asked the following questions:
Who is the company comprised of?
Are they good managers?
Are they sharp-minded new product developers?
Are they ambitious and always find ways to improve the product?
Capital always requires a combination of many factors to create value.
Warren Buffett grew up in a nice family.
His father settled in Washington,
and when Warren was about 14 years old,
they didn’t have much money,
so he took the morning paper delivery job.
He was paid 1 cent for each newspaper he delivered.
He was very careful with his money,
and his parents paid all of his personal expenses.
Over the next two years,
he delivered 200,000 news papers;
His daily schedule is to get up at 4 a.m.,
deliver newspapers,
go home,
and then go to school.
He saved $2,000,
graduated from Columbia University,
and started a business with that money.
He followed Ben Graham’s idea:
Invest in companies that have value,
offer products and services that many people like and want,
are valued above competitors’ products,
and This company makes a profit for you.
He then takes these profits and continues to allocate them to buying other companies
that are also selling products
or services that many people want,
and they continue to generate profits for him.
Then he took that larger profit and repeated the process.
Just like that,
he became the most successful investor in the history of the world.
His investment model is very simple.
Buffett, by accidently taking a course with his mentor Ben Graham,
formed the basic foundations for him as a young man.
It gave him a basic idea of how to invest,
and he never deviated from that idea.
In the US in particular and the world in general,
there are many so-called Buffett-style billionaires.
They were doctors, lawyers, salespeople,
business owners in Omaha,
and they all knew Warren.
That he was a handsome young man, in his 20s,
started investing with a $2,000 capital,
and did quite well.
So they said,
“Warren, can you invest my money?”
“Certainly,” he said.
He had never heard of these people,
but some of them are worth 5-6 billion dollars,
because they stood by Warren when he was a young man specializing in investing money.
And Sara Blakely,
the founder of Spanx.
She has the same concern that many other women have:
They all want to look bright and beautiful.
She looked around and saw that, there were many types of underwear for women,
but at that time,
no one used the kind of stretch technology that makes underwear more durable.
No one does this. And so,
Sara Blakely started with Spanx.
They have many different product lines,
and she came up with some great ideas.
She has developed and produced her own clothing patterns.
Then she had to run from store to store to make a consignment deal with them.
Eventually, more people started buying them,
and her business took off.
From the very beginning,
she worked very hard to get people to accept the product.
As it turned out,
it was the right product for everyone and was launched at the right time.
She is a smart businessman.
She has talented designers,
but still designs every product by herself.
The company grew very fast,
because there were so many people who loved it,
and she owned a product of great quality.
Today, Spanx is at the forefront of lingerie products.
It is considered the highest quality product.
The story above is similar to the story of Apple’s iPhone.
Many people accept to pay for the iPhone higher than the product lines of Samsung or some other phone lines,
because the iPhone is considered a high-end product in the market.
There is always a huge market for premium products.
What key takeaways should people take from the discussion about building prosperity?
The most important principle of all pertains to continuous improvement.
Have you heard of the CANEI formula,
or the work of continuous and endless improvement?
The greatest enemy of success,
in finance or anything else, is complacency,
the temptation of the comfort zone.
Many companies enter the market with a great product.
The product was praised by the market,
they sold in huge numbers, and then competitors jumped in.
Here’s the economic principle:
Wherever there is potential for higher-than-average profits,
competitors will appear with similar lines of products or services
in order to capture a share of the increased profits.
Many years ago, I wrote an essay on this problem
and it was published in all the newspapers with the title “The only solution to high prices is high prices”.
Many people always complain when the price increases.
Don’t worry,
because competitors will rush to jump into the market and create more product lines.
And the supply will become redundant,
then the price will drop.
They will be in big trouble because many companies will try to sell off the excess.
So, if the price is higher,
competitors will jump in faster and faster,
they will produce more and more,
and the final price will be lower and lower.
However, continuous and endless improvement is
why some companies and individuals are so successful.
With each passing day,
somehow,
I am getting better and better.
I learn more and more.
I would never go to bed at night if I didn’t feel wiser than when I woke up that morning.
Successful individuals always improve their skills.
I just received a message from a business partner of mine
who had just left the city for three days to attend a high-level seminar on the topic of digital marketing,
a topic we are dealing with successful business.
He was very excited.
Some of the smartest people in the country will share digital marketing practices
for increasing response rates, closes, and repeat purchases.
He always takes such courses
and has built one of the most successful digital marketing businesses in the country.
No miracles exist.
Only continuous and endless improvement is the reason
why many companies are getting better and better
and bringing their products to market faster,
with better quality,
cheaper price, easy to use. more, and more convenient.
If you keep moving forward and constantly look for ways to help you improve,
you will achieve a successful career like Spanx,
Facebook or Microsoft.
You will be able to do things that no one has ever seen.
It is the result of bravely pioneering,
taking risks,
trying to push your limits,
and always looking for ways to be better,
better,
and better.
At some point,
everything needs to be done and all that remains is hope,
if he is really lucky,
he will make a breakthrough.
That’s how many people rise from hardship and become billionaires.
********
Chapter 7: Increase prosperity
Once you reach a certain level of financial success,
you’ll want to find ways to invest your money so that you can multiply it,
while keeping busy working to become more successful in your chosen career.
But as we have seen, some people make the mistake of being too reckless in their investments,
because they don’t have all the information they need, are too greedy,
or are too busy to pay attention to where they are investing
as well as investment methods.
In this chapter,
Brian will show you how to increase your wealth with proven effectiveness
by many people over a long period of time.
Some people oppose the idea of wealth-enhancing science,
especially when there is no guaranteed return on any investment.
However, Brian will show you,
it is wrong to assume that, in investing,
there are no proven principles.
Ignorance of these things can cost you a fortune.
One of your main goals in life should be to be financially independent.
He had to move towards a time
when he had enough money to never have to worry about money again.
The good news is, today, financial independence is easier to achieve than ever.
Like I said,
by the time I started my career,
there were 1 million millionaires and several billionaires.
And today,
there are 10 million millionaires and 2,000 billionaires.
The number of billionaires is growing at 40-50 new billionaires every year,
which is a staggering amount of money.
A thousand million dollars born from round zero!
Your goal should be to fully participate in the golden age of mankind.
Money has its own energy,
and is mainly attracted to those who value it.
Money tends to flow toward those
who can most effectively use it to produce goods and services of value;
towards those who can invest it to create jobs
and productive opportunities for others.
At the same time, money leaves the hands of those
who use it or spend it inefficiently.
His job is to make the most money he can honestly,
and use it to improve the quality of life for himself and those he cares about.
Let’s talk about some money rules.
The first is the law of cause and effect,
which states that everything happens for a reason.
There is always a cause for every effect.
This is the unchanging law of human destiny.
This law says that we live in a world governed by laws,
not everything happens by chance.
Everything happens for a reason,
whether we know what the reason is or not.
Every result, success or failure,
wealth or poverty,
has one or more specific causes.
Every cause or action has an effect of one kind or another,
regardless of whether we can see it or love it.
This law further asserts that all achievements,
all wealth, happiness, prosperity,
or success are direct and indirect effects or results of specific causes or actions.
It mean,
If you clearly understand the effect or result you want,
you can achieve it.
You can study and learn from people who have achieved similar goals to yours,
and by following their example,
you can get similar results.
The law of cause and effect can be applied just as much in the realm of money
as in any other field.
This law states that financial success is an outcome.
Indeed, it stems from certain causes.
When you identify these causes and implement them in your life and activities,
you will get the same results that hundreds of thousands,
even millions of others have received.
You have the ability to get whatever money you really want,
if you follow what others have done
before you to achieve the same results.
Otherwise, you won’t be able to achieve that result.
Only that.
Your ultimate financial goal should be to accumulate capital
until your investment returns you more money than you earn from your job.
This is his basic goal in life.
If you set this goal and work continuously for it,
the sooner you will achieve it.
The next rule is the law of investment.
This rule says,
do your due diligence before you invest.
This is one of the most important laws of money.
You should spend time researching a particular investment,
a period of time at least equal to the amount of time it takes you
to earn the money put into that investment.
Don’t be in a hurry to leave the money you have in your hand.
He worked too hard to earn it,
and it took too long to accumulate it.
Investigate and scrutinize every aspect of your investment
before you make any commitments.
Request a complete and detailed disclosure of the investment.
Please request truthful, accurate and complete information.
If you are in doubt or worried,
then it is better to keep the money in the bank
or in a currency trading account than to risk losing it.
The first consequence of the law of investing is that it is very easy to lose money.
Making money in a competitive market is hard,
but losing it is one of the easiest things he can do.
There is a Japanese proverb that says,
making money is like digging in the ground with your hands,
but losing money is like pouring water on the sand.
The second consequence of the investment rule comes from self-made billionaire Marvin Davis,
he was interviewed in Forbes magazine about his own rules of making money.
He says he has a simple rule:
Don’t lose money.
He calls this rule number one.
If there is a risk of loss,
don’t get involved in the first place, he said.
This rule is so important that you should write it down
and put it where you can see it.
Read it over and over.
Think of money as if it were part of your life.
He has to trade hours,
weeks,
and even years to earn a certain amount of money that can be saved or invested.
That amount of time is irreplaceable.
It was a precious part that was lost forever in his life.
If all he could do was keep the money rather than lose it,
then that alone would guarantee his financial security.
Never lose money.
The third corollary of the law of investing states that,
if you think you can afford to lose a little,
you will end up losing a lot.
It’s strange to have people who feel they have enough money to take the risk of losing a little.
Remember the proverb:
The fool and his money will soon part.
Another sentence is this,
when an experienced person meets a person with money,
the person with the money will gain experience
and the person with experience will receive money.
So always ask yourself, what if you lose 100% of your investment?
Can you handle it? If you can’t, don’t invest.
The fourth corollary of the affirmative investment rule is
to invest only with professionals with proven personal investment achievements.
His goal is to invest only with people who have a good track record of money,
that way, his risk will be significantly reduced.
Again, don’t lose money.
If you feel tempted, refer back to this rule and firmly stick to what you have.
Only invest in what you fully understand and believe in.
Only seek investment advice from financially successful people
and apply that advice when investing.
The next rule is the law of compound interest.
This rule says that investing carefully
and letting your money grow with compound interest will make you rich.
Compound interest is considered one of the greatest things in human and economic history.
Albert Einstein considered it the most powerful force in our society,
if not in the entire universe.
When you let money accumulate at compound interest for long enough,
it will add up to a level you can’t even imagine.
You can use the rule of 72 to determine the time it takes for your money
to double at any rate of interest.
You just need to divide 72 by the interest rate.
For example,
if you get an 8% return on your investment,
when you divide 72 by 8, you get 9.
That is, it takes 9 years for you to double your money at an 8% interest rate.
It is estimated that a dollar invested at 3% interest
from the time of Jesus would be worth half the total amount of money in the world today.
If that money were to grow and double and double and so on,
it would be worth billions or trillions of dollars today.
The first corollary of this rule shows that the secret
to compound interest is to put your money aside and not touch it.
Once you start accumulating money and the money starts to grow,
you must not touch it or spend it for any reason.
Otherwise, you will lose the power of compound interest,
and even if you spend a small amount today,
you will lose a huge amount tomorrow.
If you start early enough, invest consistently,
don’t take any money out of your mutual fund,
and believe in the magic of compound interest, you’ll get rich.
The average person, with an average income,
who invests $100 per month from age 21 to age 65 with a compound interest rate of 10% during that time,
will retire with a net worth of 1,118 .000 dollars.
Start with a monthly recurring investment account,
and commit to investing a fixed amount for the next 5, 10, or 20 years.
Please choose a company with a mutual fund system
and a set of investment instruments.
Let your money work continuously month after month and year after year.
The next law of money is the law of accumulation.
This law states that all great financial achievements are the accumulation of hundreds of small efforts
and sacrifices that no one sees or appreciates.
Achieving financial independence requires countless small efforts on his part.
To begin the accumulation process,
he must be disciplined and persistent.
You have to accumulate for a long,
very long time.
At first,
you will find very little change or difference happening,
but gradually,
your efforts will begin to bear fruit.
He will begin to outperform his peers.
Your financial situation will improve and your debts will disappear.
Your bank account balance will increase and your life will improve.
The first corollary of the law of accumulation says,
as you gradually accumulate savings,
you will develop a drive that propels you toward your financial goals more quickly.
It is difficult to start a program of financial accumulation,
but if you do,
you will find it easier and easier to accumulate.
The principle of motivation is one of the great secrets of human success.
This principle affirms that you need huge amounts of energy to get started,
overcome the stagnation and apprehension of financial accumulation,
but then, to keep moving forward,
you will need a bit more energy.
The second corollary of the law of accumulation shows that looking at the whole is difficult,
but the details are easy.
When you start thinking about saving 10-20% of your income,
you’ll immediately come up with all sorts of excuses why it’s impossible.
For example, if you are deeply in debt,
you will have to spend every penny to pay off the debt.
However, if you are stuck in the above situation,
there is a solution for you.
Start saving 1% of your income in a special account that you will never touch.
Start putting every odd penny into the big jar every night when you get home.
When the tank is full,
take it to the bank
and deposit the money into a savings account.
Whenever you get excess money from the sale of something an old debt paid off
or an unexpected bonus,
instead of spending it,
put it in your special account.
These small sums will start to add up at a rate that will surprise you.
When you’re comfortable with saving 1%,
go up to 2%,
then 3%, 4%, 5%, and so on.
Within a year, you will find yourself out of debt and saving 10-15%,
even 20% of your income without affecting your personal lifestyle.
The next law of money is the law of attraction,
that is,
as you save and accumulate more and more,
the more money you will attract into your life.
The law of magnetism,
or the law of attraction,
has been the primary cause of prosperity throughout human history.
This law explains most of the success as well as failure in all areas of life,
especially in the financial field.
Money goes where it is loved and respected.
The more positive emotions you associate with your money,
the more chances you will have of attracting it to get more money.
The first corollary of the law of attraction,
in the area of money,
is that a sense of prosperity attracts money in the same way a magnet attracts iron filings.
This is why it’s so important to start accumulating money
no matter what is your situation?
Put a few small coins in the piggy bank.
Start saving even a small amount.
That money, attracted by emotions like longing and hope,
would begin to attract more money to him,
at a speed he could not have imagined.
The second corollary of this rule says that it takes money to make money.
As you start accumulating money,
you will begin to attract more money
and more money-making opportunities into your life.
This is why it’s so important to start saving even a small amount.
You will be amazed at what begins to happen.
Take time every day,
every week,
and every month to reflect on your finances
and figure out how to use your finances smarter.
As mentioned, self-made millionaires think about financial accumulation 10 times more than the poor.
Each week, they spend time thinking about how much money they have,
how to use it, ways to earn more,
and better ways to invest.
If you spend more and more time carefully considering your financial situation,
you will make more and more better financial decisions
and you will have to brainstorm with more and more money.
The more you think about savings and investments,
the more money you attract into your life.
Another law is the law of acceleration.
This law says that the faster you get to financial freedom,
the faster it will move towards you.
The more money he accumulates
and the more achievements he achieves,
the faster and faster money
and success will move towards him from many directions.
People who achieve financial success today have worked extremely hard,
for many years,
before landing their first real opportunity;
and then,
more and more opportunities from all directions poured into them.
The biggest problem they face is choosing
and organizing the opportunities that seem to be coming their way from everywhere.
The same will happen to you.
Watch Silicon Valley companies as they invest millions,
tens of millions, even hundreds of millions of dollars.
They invest in companies like Facebook, Google or Apple,
and they make hundreds of millions and billions of dollars.
And now, opportunities come to them like rivers pouring in from all directions
to invest in places that will bring them hundreds of millions of dollars.
Peter Lynch, former manager of Fidelity Magellan,
one of the most successful mutual funds in history,
says that the best investments he’s ever made take a long time to pay off.
He often buys shares of companies that have not increased in value for many years.
Then it started to increase in price and increased in value 10-20 times.
This long-term stock investment strategy,
or Warren Buffett’s,
eventually made him one of the most successful and highest-paid managers in America.
This strategy is reminiscent of the rules of the stock market.
The value of a stock today is equal to the total expected cash flow of that stock discounted to today.
What does this mean?
That is, the stock he is holding represents part of the ownership of the company.
It grants stockholders the right to enjoy all the benefits and risks of ownership,
including profits, losses, gains,
and losses stock price,
decline in value,
good or bad management,
and rise and fall in demand for the products
or services the company produces or sells.
When you buy shares,
you are the owner of everything that happens in that company.
When you buy stock,
you are investing a certain amount of money in the company and betting
that the return will exceed the amount of money you can make from secured investments
such as bonds or market funds. currency.
Buying stocks is also a form of gambling,
because the future of the company
and the value of the stock cannot be predicted.
They are influenced by a multitude of market forces such as sales,
competition,
technological changes,
interest rates,
management quality,
world events, weather and many more.
The first consequence of the stock market law is:
Cows make money,
bears also make money,
only pigs are slaughtered.
That is, active investors make money when the market is up.
Conservative and short sellers make money when the market is falling.
But greedy people trying to beat the market almost always lose money.
More than 70% of today’s day-to-day or flashy stock traders,
those who enter and exit the market arbitrarily and arbitrarily, lose.
Many of them lost everything.
As a second consequence,
long-term stock investing is the best way to achieve long-term financial security.
The value of stocks traded on the US stock market has increased
by an average of 11% over the past 80 years.
As a result,
someone who starts investing $100 a month in a mutual fund that
grows at an average of 10% per year,
from around age 20,
will retire with a total net worth of more than $1 million.
The third corollary is that averaging the dollar value in the long run will make you rich.
That is, the timing of buying
or selling in the market does not make much sense.
For him or anyone else,
it’s almost impossible to constantly buy stocks
when prices are low and sell when prices are high.
It is always better if you buy shares of a good and stable company,
sell valuable and appreciated products and services,
and then hold these stocks for the long term.
This is called value investing,
and it has made many people rich through the stock market.
The fourth corollary states that the stock market is regulated and made by experts.
In other words, each purchase of a stock corresponds to each sale of that stock by another person.
Stock buyers bet that the stock will increase in price.
The seller of the stock bets that the stock will fall in price.
Every purchase and sale of such securities is a one-for-one,
in which people bet their own wisdom
and judgment against the wisdom and judgment of others.
Most of them are professionals,
with decades of experience working 50-60 hours per week.
In other words, your safest course of action is
to invest in an index fund that represents all stocks
in which the index and the index fund both rise or fall depending on the trend.
The most common type of index fund is the Standard & Poor’s 500 Stock Index.
This fund has consistently outperformed 80% of professionally managed mutual funds over the years.
The next investment law is the law of real estate.
This law states that the value of a property is its ability to generate cash flows in the future.
The value of any real estate is determined by the stream of income
that can be generated from that property
when it is developed to its most useful and productive point from now to the future.
A property may have spiritual value to its owner,
but its real dollar value is directly related to its ability to generate future cash flows.
There are millions of acres of land that don’t have any value,
such as the desert,
because it’s unlikely to generate future cash flows.
Nor can it be developed to generate income streams,
provide shelter,
or meet any specific human need.
There are large areas in many megacities
but property values are going down.
Like Detroit,
a place that once grew, developed,
and then ceased and likely won’t be the same again.
Every day,
people put their homes
and properties up for sale for less than they bought them for,
or lose them to creditors,
because these assets have reduced their ability to generate cash flow,
lease ability, and gradually losing value.
The first corollary of the law of real estate is that you make money
when you buy and you turn that profit into cash when you sell it.
This is very important.
Buying a property at the right price and terms will allow you to sell it at a profit.
Many people think they will make money when they sell real estate,
no matter how and for what price.
This is holding the light to run in front of the car.
The more careful consideration and preparation you put into buying that property,
the more likely you are to make a profitable real estate transaction.
The second consequence of the law of real estate,
or the three secrets of choosing real estate, is location, location, and location.
Every property is unique, and there is only one such property on earth.
Choosing a property in a good location will have a lot more impact on its ability
to generate cash flows in the future than most other decisions you make.
The third corollary of the law of real estate says
that the value of real estate depends mainly on regional economic activity,
the number of jobs and wages.
This plays a very important role
when you choose to invest in a neighborhood or a community.
In general,
the value of real estate triples the rate of population growth
and doubles the rate of inflation.
When he buys property in a fast-growing community,
he is almost guaranteed an above-average value increase.
For example, today in Santa Clara and around Silicon Valley,
because of the unbelievable boom in jobs and high-tech industries,
high paying businesses,
real estate values have increased 5-fold 10 times more than a few years ago.
The most important factor affecting the value of real estate in any area
is the speed at which new business is created and the economic growth in the area.
Let’s decide to buy a property for investment purposes.
The only way to learn about real estate investing is
to actually become a property owner
and apply his knowledge and skills to increase the value of that property.
Once upon a time, there was a man named Bernard Baruch,
who started out as a stock market broker,
fulfilling orders to buy and sell orders from stockbrokers in the early 20th century.
While most When his friends were all having fun,
he asked the people to whom he provided the buy and sell orders
why they made that purchase decision.
Over time,
he developed an intuition for a good stock investment,
and he started investing $1 a week.
In a few years,
he became one of the richest men in America,
advised six presidents,
and wrote books.
At the end of his life,
he summarized the experience into 10 rules of successful investing.
I will end this chapter by introducing them to you.
Rule #1: Don’t speculate, unless it’s your full-time job.
Remember, each of your decisions is a bet against the decisions of another individual
who is also studying the stock market for 45-60 hours a week,
as I mentioned.
Rule #2: Beware of any insider information or investment advice.
The easiest way to lose money on the stock market is to act on the advice of people
who really don’t know what they’re talking about, like taxi drivers,
liquor dealers, barbers and even close colleagues.
Rule #3: Before buying stock, learn everything you can about the company,
its management and competitors,
its earnings stream,
and growth prospects.
Be patient and disciplined,
objective,
and non-emotional.
As we said earlier,
take the time to do your due diligence before you invest.
Rule #4: Don’t try to buy at the bottom and sell at the top.
This is impossible, the only exception being scammers.
When buying a stock, decide at what price you will sell it,
and when you hit that threshold, don’t be greedy.
With the trading capabilities of today’s programs and computers,
he can set a price to sell a stock so that it is automatically activated
when a set price is reached.
You will never fail to make a profit.
Rule #5: Learn to deal with losses quickly.
Don’t expect yourself to be right all the time.
If you make a mistake and find the stock is falling,
sell it and cut your loss as quickly as possible.
Rule #6: Don’t buy too many different securities.
Better yet, come up with just a few trackable investments.
Diversification reduces risk,
but also eliminates any chance of big gains if one of these stocks increases in value quickly.
This is a rule for those planning to trade in the stock market,
not for the masses,
who are generally advised to buy an index fund and hold it.
Rule #7: Review all investments periodically to see
if changes are taking place that affect their prospects.
Apply point of origin thinking.
Always ask the question when new information comes in,
“If I hadn’t bought this stock or investment,
and I knew what I know now, would I buy it now?”
If the answer is no, your solution is to sell 3 Zero-based thinking
is a decision-making process based on imagining yourself back in time
before a particular decision,
and comfortably making those decisions with your understanding of
the situation in current consequences of the decision.
Rule #8: Research your tax category to see when it’s best to sell.
Pay attention to capital gains taxes on your transactions.
Remember the only thing you should care about is the amount after taxes.
Calculating when to trade in the stock market
to generate capital surpluses and deficits is a skill you need to master.
Rule #9: Always keep a portion of your capital as cash reserves.
Never invest all your money.
If you keep a cash buffer,
you will always be able to take advantage of unexpected opportunities.
The UK should also have an emergency reserve that acts as a buffer,
regardless of the market situation.
Rule #10: Don’t try to invest in many different areas at once.
Stick with the area in which you know the most.
Warren Buffett advises the same.
He never invests in stocks of companies that are primarily internet-based, he said, ”
Because I don’t understand them
or don’t know what they’re worth.”
And he never lost money,
while everyone else lost a fortune when the dot-com bubble burst.
Often, the most successful investors are those
who choose a particular industry and focus on it
to understand the companies in that industry.
Pick an industry that interests you, then focus on it.
Remember, the secret to success in investing is
to do thorough research before investing.
Invest carefully.
Gather all the information you need.
If you plan to be an active investor,
you should always keep an eye on your money.
If you’re not planning on becoming an active investor,
the best thing you can do is buy an index fund that has low management costs
and is likely to grow as the market moves.
He could put it aside and sleep soundly without ever having to worry.
*********
Chapter 8 Conserve prosperity
Once you achieve financial success and a steady level of prosperity,
your work is not over.
The science of money requires you to use a variety of ways to protect your assets
so that you don’t lose quickly what it took you years to build.
Think of this method as the pyramids of Egypt.
You want your financial structure to be so strong that no financial storm,
whether personal or national, can destroy it.
This chapter will walk you through the steps needed to build your own financial pyramid.
Start with your own loss experiences in life,
be it losing important clients,
being sued in business,
or being hit hard by the stock market.
What lessons have you learned from these experiences?
And how do they convince you that it’s important to properly plan to protect your wealth?
I have spent most of my life achieving financial independence.
After that, people are prone to knowledge delusion syndrome.
This syndrome is very common
and is the main reason why many people go astray in life.
We spend most of our lives developing our personal abilities and skills,
building businesses and accumulating wealth.
Then we can make a series of mistakes.
The worst of them is knowledge delusion syndrome.
We make a lot of money by being very excellent in our area of expertise.
We think, “I am so good that if I can apply these knowledge,
abilities, skills, confidence to some other area,
I will be able to do just as well in that area.”
When the real estate market boomed again in the 2000s,
someone came up to me and said,
“The opportunity to build storage sheds in these fast-growing communities is huge,
they will bring the cash flow is very high,
the value is skyrocketing and all is well.”
I said, “Sure, why not? It sounds good.”
He has some good connections,
does a lot of work and even prepares a financial proposal.
It sounded interesting,
so I got into investing.
A little bit initially,
then more and more,
until I invested about 20 million dollars in storage sheds.
This is not all of my money,
but it does represent most of the investments I have made.
But as it turned out,
he had never done it before,
and the numbers he predicted to me were wrong.
They ignore interest,
ignore a bunch of basic expenses that
I don’t realize because that’s not my area of expertise.
In the end,
I finished the storage house,
sold at a heavy loss and lost a lot of money.
My favorite phrase in the preservation of prosperity is thorough investigation.
That is, carefully investigate every specific detail in an investment.
Double check,
get expert reviews,
talk to accountants,
bankers,
and talk to industry peers.
Go around and meet everyone you work with and gather outside opinions.
If I had done it even a little,
I will save myself,
not only save time,
but also avoid losing a large amount of money that
I have accumulated all this time.
If you want to maintain and preserve your prosperity,
be very careful about what you intend to do with the money you have earned.
It is best to invest with professionals.
I once spoke to a wealth management professional.
He works for families with a combined net worth of $25 million or more.
They turn over all their investments to him and his company,
and he takes care of everything in their financial lives.
And, of course,
he was interested in investing as well.
Because he and his company are so smart,
generating a return on investment of 10-20% per year,
and his clients are getting richer and richer,
because he and his company can always afford to pay the bills,
their profits as committed.
Usually, he charges a total management fee of 1% of the investment amount.
If the amount invested or the investment increases,
this 1% is calculated on all investments.
He and his company generate very high profits,
which an ordinary person cannot do.
The average person must understand that the simplest thing to do with money is to lose it.
If you are going to accumulate money, at some point in your life,
say at the age of 50, you have to realize this again.
He can take a lot of risks when he is young,
he can be really hard working and very aggressive,
but in his 50s he starts to be more cautious and meticulous.
Remember one rule:
Don’t lose money.
If you see the slightest risk of losing money, stop and say,
“Wait a minute, can I afford to lose all this money?”
If the answer is no,
don’t invest.
Do you think that if you become more and more successful and wealthy,
you will become more and more susceptible to lawsuits, failed business deals, etc.?
Why?
One problem Americans have today is,
we have too many lawyers
and too little work for them to do.
So there are many lawyers who try to create work by suing many people.
I call them the most deceitful, trashy,
and lowly attorneys.
So they have a principle that,
if you have money,
you will be sued.
A fairly wealthy friend of mine,
said, “If you had the money,
you’d be sued four times.”
He just took a deep breath,
then realized that,
if he got into trouble,
these guys would come after him to help him with a commission.
I also discovered that:
If someone sues you,
you have to defend yourself.
Even though it costs $75,000-100,000,
but if some lawyer sues you,
you have to defend yourself by hiring another lawyer,
or else they will make a summary judgment against you,
scouring until the end when proven guilty.
If he wanted to fight,
he had to go through the process of taking testimony,
hiring a lawyer,
filing witness subpoenas,
and questioning witnesses.
If you do not do any of the above,
you will not be fully protected.
A person can sue you by paying a fee of $250.
I have a lot of experience with people suing me just because they could.
The basis that accuses me is completely fake.
But those lawyers are hungry
I discovered the identity of such a lawyer.
He has a standard claim form.
In it, the guy is under the plaintiff’s name,
and his name will be at the top of the page,
and the guy’s name will be at the bottom of the page,
and he files that charge in the court for a fee 250 dollars.
And now he has to hire a private lawyer to defend himself.
I learned an interesting lesson from a very successful person a few years ago.
He said,
“Put all your assets in a family trust,
and design it so that it belongs to your family,
but you have full control over it.”
You need to put your money where no one can touch it.
When someone sues you,
the first thing those lawyers will do is see how much money you have.
If they see your money in a family trust,
they will walk away,
because they know they can’t access it.
It’s important that you protect yourself,
put your assets into a family trust.
Your lawyers and accountants can tell you exactly what to do.
There are many tools to protect yourself and your family.
Let’s discuss some of those tools.
The first is insurance.
What kind of insurance should people buy?
What guidelines should they follow when purchasing that type of insurance?
For example, life insurance.
Research has shown that, for most people,
term insurance is generally better than whole life insurance.
Share more about car insurance,
home insurance,
and disability insurance.
Nowadays, because of people’s longer life expectancy,
it is recommended to buy long-term care insurance.
Do you agree with this point of view?
I believe that during your employment,
you should buy life insurance.
You should have term insurance,
which buys the maximum amount of coverage with the lowest premium you can afford.
You should not buy whole life insurance
or any kind of cumulative insurance,
because they are mandatory savings.
Most of the money in the first 3-5 years he paid under the commitment
of the life insurance policy was taken
to pay commissions to the agent.
Today, most people use the term “buy on the future and invest on the difference”.
That is, you can get a better return if you buy term insurance
and put whatever else you’re about to pay into an index fund.
Your return will be a much larger number.
But you should buy enough insurance
to protect your family if anything happens to you.
A good friend of mine, a great insurance agent,
said that the purpose of life insurance is to secure his dreams.
If his dream is for his wife to be fully supported
and his children to go to school,
he should buy enough insurance just in case if something happens to him.
He calculates how much money he will use to support his wife for the rest of her life
if something goes wrong with him.
Most men do,
but my friend said that,
during his lifetime,
his mission was to get to the point where he didn’t need life insurance anymore,
because there he had accumulated enough that she
He got that protection.
Once you achieve financial success and a steady level of prosperity,
your work is not over.
The science of money requires you to use a variety of ways
to protect your assets so that you don’t lose quickly what it took you years to build.
Think of this method as the pyramids of Egypt.
You want your financial structure to be so strong that no financial storm,
whether personal or national,
can destroy it.
This chapter will walk you through the steps needed
to build your own financial pyramid.
Start with your own loss experiences in life,
be it losing important clients,
being sued in business,
or being hit hard by the stock market.
What lessons have you learned from these experiences?
And how do they convince you that it’s important
to properly plan to protect your wealth?
I have spent most of my life achieving financial independence.
After that, people are prone to knowledge delusion syndrome.
This syndrome is very common
and is the main reason why many people go astray in life.
We spend most of our lives developing our personal abilities and skills,
building businesses and accumulating wealth.
Then we can make a series of mistakes.
The worst of them is knowledge delusion syndrome.
We make a lot of money by being very excellent in our area of expertise.
We think, “I am so good that if I can apply these knowledge,
abilities, skills, confidence to some other area,
I will be able to do just as well in that area.”
When the real estate market boomed again in the 2000s,
someone came up to me and said,
“The opportunity to build storage sheds in these fast-growing communities is huge,
they will bring
The cash flow is very high,
the value is skyrocketing and all is well.”
I said, “Sure, why not? It sounds good.”
He has some good connections,
does a lot of work and even prepares a financial proposal.
It sounded interesting,
so I got into investing.
A little bit initially,
then more and more,
until I invested about 20 million dollars in storage sheds.
This is not all of my money,
but it does represent most of the investments I have made.
But as it turned out,
he had never done it before,
and the numbers he predicted to me were wrong.
They ignore interest,
ignore a bunch of basic expenses that I don’t realize
because that’s not my area of expertise.
In the end, I finished the storage house,
sold at a heavy loss and lost a lot of money.
My favorite phrase in the preservation of prosperity is thorough investigation.
That is, carefully investigate every specific detail in an investment.
Double check,
get expert reviews,
talk to accountants,
bankers, and talk to industry peers.
Go around and meet everyone you work with and gather outside opinions.
If I had done it even for a little while,
I would have saved myself,
not only saving time,
but also avoiding the loss of a large sum of money that
I had accumulated all this time.
If you want to maintain and preserve your prosperity,
be very careful about what you intend to do with the money you have earned.
It is best to invest with professionals.
I once spoke to a wealth management professional.
He works for families with a combined net worth of $25 million or more.
They turn over all their investments to him and his company,
and he takes care of everything in their financial lives.
And, of course,
he was interested in investing as well.
Because he and his company are so smart,
generating a return on investment of 10-20% per year,
and his clients are getting richer and richer,
because he and his company can always afford
to pay the bill of their profits as committed.
Usually, he charges a total management fee of 1% of the investment amount.
If the amount invested or the investment increases,
this 1% is calculated on all investments.
He and his company generate very high profits,
which an ordinary person cannot do.
The average person must understand
that the simplest thing to do with money is to lose it.
If you are going to accumulate money,
at some point in your life,
say at the age of 50,
you have to realize this again.
He can take a lot of risks when he is young,
he can be really hard working and very aggressive,
but in his 50s he starts to be more cautious and meticulous.
Remember one rule:
Don’t lose money.
If you see the slightest risk of losing money, stop and say,
“Wait a minute,
can I afford to lose all this money?”
If the answer is no,
don’t invest.
Do you think that the more successful and wealthy you become,
the more likely you will become the target of lawsuits,
transactions, and lawsuits?
And we want the financial situation to be simplified.
We went to the LegalZoom website and downloaded a minimalist probate form.
We filled it out and gave printed copies to the accountant and oldest child,
very simple,
clean,
clear and uncomplicated.
And now we want to be more specific.
We meet with real estate attorneys for guidance
in dealing with complex issues as real estate laws are constantly changing.
The government could jump in and take more than 50% of his total net worth.
They could grab it before any division of the property takes place,
unless you make arguments against them.
You should find a lawyer who is aware of the monthly changes and fluctuations,
with the most up-to-date information to protect yourself against potential taxes.
You wouldn’t want your inheritance to destroy your family.
It is said that nothing divides families more than the division of inheritance.
I have witnessed this,
when children were very harmonious
until the parents died and left a sum of money,
and that money had to be divided.
The kids,
now in their 30s,
40s,
or 50s,
jostle for inheritance like dogs over meat.
It destroys the whole family.
What parents can do is think very carefully about this.
Before she passed away,
my mother counted all the possessions she owned,
every piece of furniture,
jewelry,
porcelain,
artwork,
and calculated its value.
She then divided it among her four children.
She chose my third brother,
a respected lawyer,
to be the executor of her will.
When my mother passed away,
we sat together and followed her will.
Everything is divided,
from assets in the form of papers
or assets in the form of tangible physical objects.
After that,
each adult child can exchange assets with the other.
There was no argument
or disunity for the rest of our lives,
because my mother was very thoughtful.
She did not want her children to argue about this or that.
And that’s the very important thing you have to do as a parent.
You should start doing this at age 60 or 65.
You should protect your family by making sure
that everything you accumulate is carefully distributed.
Another,
hot topic,
is the proverbs.
When you reach the age of 65 or 70,
you should start giving a testament to your children,
your kids won’t like it,
they don’t want to think about your death.
But he should open up and say,
“We’re not going to be here forever,
so if something happens to either mom or dad,
or both, here are a few things you can consider.”
Be open-minded because it’s just a very normal and natural topic in life.
Then, without even needing a will, they can say,
“When my parents die,
can I receive this or that?”
As it turned out,
it was the daughter who saw what was really important to her,
the boy who wanted something else,
and the youngest who wanted something else.
These things will help him feel secure
and at ease knowing that he has provided for them.
For workers,
perhaps the most important thing is to secure a source of income.
The best thing an employee can do to ensure a stable and solid income?
And if it doesn’t,
what can they do to keep it from ruining their financial lives?
I don’t know how a worker who has lost his job can save himself
from losing his source of income,
except by starting to save money early
and having a reserve equivalent to an income of approx 2-6 months salary.
No insurance policy,
no company policy,
no choice but to take personal responsibility and say,
“If something goes wrong,
if I lose my ability to work for a while,
I have to have a pension for myself,
for as long as possible.”
One type of disability insurance you can get is unemployment insurance.
You might suggest,
“I need X thousand dollars a month.”
You can purchase an insurance policy corresponding to that amount in case you lose your job.
However, this insurance policy is not valid for 6-12 months.
They don’t charge you back that money.
It wasn’t until he was disabled or unable to work or something
for a long time that they started paying him those things.
Statistically, they know that he will probably be healthy
and go back to work before the time of payment.
*********
Chapter 10 GOLDEN RULES FOR A PROFESSIONAL ECONOMY
We are coming to an end,
I think it would be helpful
if you could summarize the golden rules for a prosperous economy.
Can you share with us?
Yes. I have drawn these economic laws after many years of research.
In the field of mathematics,
by understanding certain principles,
mathematicians can solve many problems
that are complex and impossible for ordinary people.
In the field of mechanics,
thanks to a number of proven principles,
skilled engineers can repair cars or planes using certain methods,
processes and tools that are impossible for the average person.
In the field of economics,
understanding some of the laws that explain human behavior
is essential for entrepreneurs.
The first is the law of scarcity.
This is the basic law of economics.
It states that economic goods have value
because their supply is less than the quantity demanded.
In other words,
there is not enough for everyone.
There can never be enough houses for all,
enough cars for all,
enough diamond rings
or luxury watches
or designer clothes for all.
Scarcity gives value to everything.
The idea that there should be redundancy,
that everyone can have all they want,
is nonsense.
Because, scarcity always exists.
From an economic point of view,
you have to constantly choose between so many different options,
because you can’t have everything you want.
Only children squirm and scream,
“I want this, I want that.”
In fact, he always had to choose,
because his ability to buy goods was always limited.
And also because goods were scarce,
trade was always needed.
This is the great law of economics,
the law that governs all societies:
You cannot give everything to everyone under all conditions.
Because there is never enough.
Second is the law of supply and demand.
This law states that the price of a good
or service is proportional to the available supply relative
to the demand at the time of purchase.
For example,
the salary of a fast food employee,
the value of his labor as a commodity,
is determined by the number of people willing
to work at the fast food restaurant for the minimum wage.
In fact, because these people have no other skills,
they are willing to compete
for the job alongside millions of other people out there.
If someone says,
“I won’t work for less than $15 an hour,”
they will be replaced in five minutes,
by the long list of people waiting
to take the job at the offered wage. $7.75-8 an hour.
This is the result of supply and demand.
There is no objective price.
The price always depends on how many people want the thing
and how much they are willing to pay.
This law of supply and demand determines all prices,
all profits,
all wages,
growth,
decline,
costs,
losses,
and the success or failure of every business.
Export companies also face the same situation.
It’s always a matter of supply and demand.
Successful entrepreneurs are constantly working
to increase demand for what they are selling,
so that they have the product prices can be increased.
All activities such as advertising, marketing,
and trade promotion aim to increase consumer demand.
Another principle is that entrepreneurs are constantly looking for ways to provide better,
cheaper,
faster or more convenient lines of products and services,
thereby increasing demand for them.
That is a basic rule.
The law of scarcity states that everything is scarce;
and the law of supply
and demand explains that price is determined
by how much people want to buy it.
As we’ve said,
the biggest reason companies go bankrupt is that no one wants
to buy the product at the price they set.
The law of substitution in economics states that certain goods
and services can be substituted for each other
when the supply-demand ratio for them changes.
I will give you an example as follows.
When beef is too expensive,
people replace it with chicken.
When gas prices are too high,
people buy smaller cars.
When labor costs are too high,
companies automate and replace workers with machines.
It is always a matter of costs and benefits.
If I can afford this machine by saving that paycheck,
I can make more money in the long run,
and that’s a good investment.
Customers always have three choices in the market:
They can buy the product or service offered for sale;
or they can buy it from your competitor’s company;
Or they don’t buy anything.
Whenever he entered the business market,
his customers always had three choices:
Buy from him, buy from his competitors,
or buy nothing at all.
This is the rule of substitution.
The Law of Connectivity is another great economic law.
It states that different products
and services are connected in a positive or negative way,
and affect each other’s prices directly or indirectly.
For example, when the price of an item goes up,
it usually causes the price of some related item to go up as well.
The increase in food prices leads to an increase in restaurant prices.
That’s why they say that now in San Diego you can’t order top-notch beef ribs
at the most prestigious restaurants,
because the price of beef has gone up
because of the price of corn.
The price of premium beef ribs has skyrocketed
to the point where it can no longer be added to restaurant menus.
Then, why can’t he eat prime beef ribs anymore?
Because there is always a price connection between related goods.
When the price of one good goes up,
it causes the demand for some other commodity to fall.
As the price of food in a restaurant increases,
the number of people going to the restaurant to dine may decrease.
Or you could have an indirect connection like this:
The number of people going to the fast food restaurant could increase
if prices at the fancy restaurant increased.
Everything is interconnected,
so price connectivity can affect the cost of other products.
If people stop going to the restaurant to dine,
the restaurant can buy fewer ingredients from the supplier,
thus creating a knock-on effect.
If a business sells fewer products,
it cuts raw materials,
cuts employees again,
connectivity emerges.
There is a story about a guy who has just ordered a painting from an artist,
because his business is doing well.
He went to a restaurant and sat down.
There was a poster cut out of a newspaper and stuck on the wall,
saying that hard times were approaching.
The economy is about to crash.
We will fall into recession,
stagnation and unemployment.
He stared at it and thought,
“Oh my,
I haven’t even thought about this.
I poured all my money into the painting.”
Then he called the artist and canceled the order for the painting.
This artist had previously called for a house painter,
because she thought she was going to get some money from the sale.
So now, she cancels painting the house.
Next, the painter called the car dealership,
because he had just taken on a house painting job
and was planning to buy a new car.
Just like that,
the whole economy is affected.
Then, a few days later,
the guy came back to the restaurant
and looked at the poster again.
He got closer and discovered that the poster had been cut out
and framed 25 years ago.
The problem is, one miscommunication can lead to a connection
that produces such a negative effect.
That’s also why when it comes out that unemployment is on the rise,
the stock market drops.
People sell off their shares,
get their money back,
and store it where they think it’s safe.
Then came the statement,
“The unemployment isn’t that bad,”
and all the stocks rushed back up.
The entire stock market is affected by the published news.
The next law is the boundary law.
It shows all economic decisions,
and therefore all prices and costs,
as determined by the final purchasing decision made.
This is very important.
The amount the final customer pays for
the last available item determines the price
of the entire supply.
Suppose you sell donuts,
and a very hungry customer
who wants donuts more than anything else pays $1 per piece
because he desperately wants it.
But he couldn’t sell donuts for $1 each,
because only a few people would pay that amount.
He had to sell donuts at a much lower price
to get more and more customers.
And if you offer it at a low enough price and still make a profit,
you’ll sell more.
Let’s say he lowers the price to $0.25-0.5 a cake.
Anyone can buy it as long as you still make a profit on the last sale.
The Marginal Principle states that it is not
what the most loyal customers are willing to pay,
but how the end customer,
who has a clear,
thoughtful,
and cautious mind,
will accept to pay price for everything he offered for sale.
Always the end customer,
the one who buys the product on your own or elsewhere,
sets the selling price.
If I could buy this product elsewhere for $0.25
and you offered it for $0.26,
I would buy it there.
Therefore, the market equilibrium price is the price at
which all customers have their needs satisfied
and all sellers sell their products and services.
If you go to outdoor markets,
you will see people selling their products.
Their goal is to sell out the merchandise at the end of the day,
so that the end customer buys the final product from the last stall,
and then everyone can go home.
Everything is for sale.
That is the market equilibrium price.
What you should do is set a price equal
to the market equilibrium price for the first customer of the day,
so that at the end of the day he sells out of stock.
The law of marginality is important to all pricing activities.
Next is the law of diminishing returns,
which is very important both personally and in business.
It shows how the profit,
reward,
or profit from economic activity will decrease over time.
It implies that he usually makes a high profit
from the first product or service he sells.
However,
the cost of producing the product or service increases,
and later on he earns less profit on the product or service itself,
because the costs are already much higher.
There are many activities in which he participates of diminishing value.
The more you do those things,
the less value they bring to your customers.
Then we have the law of increasing returns.
The profitability of a certain product,
service or activity can increase the more you produce or supply it.
This is the reason for the success of mass producers.
In the retail sector,
for example,
Walmart,
increases profits because they buy more and more products,
and the number of products reaches hundreds of thousands, millions,
and is spread across 11,000 distribution stores.
Their prices are so low that they become the first choice
for millions of customers every day.
Today, knowledge is the real source of competitive advantage.
As you produce an intellectual product,
your creative activity becomes more and more efficient
with each additional unit.
Accordingly, the cost he produces will be less per product,
thereby increasing the profit he earns per unit of product he sells.
The next law is the law of secondary consequences.
It states that every action has both primary and secondary consequences.
For everything you do,
there will be many other things that happen as a result,
and for many things you don’t do,
there will also be some consequence.
According to many economists, such as Bastiet and Hazlitt,
the primary effect is always positive.
One said,
“I’m going to drop out of school,
get a job,
buy a car, and get a girlfriend.”
The primary consequence in this statement is positive.
He has grown into a great man,
bought a car,
and has a girlfriend.
So what is the secondary consequence here?
It is lack of formal education,
low-level jobs,
high risk of lifelong unemployment and lack of skills.
In the end, he became poor.
This is one of the problems of the world today:
Too many people engage in activities that
It have only serious secondary consequences.
The economist Milton Friedman also says that the ability
to accurately consider possible secondary consequences is a key element of excellent thinking.
It’s not the primary consequence,
which is always useful.
He ate a box of cakes.
He saw someone else eating Krispy Kreme.
The primary consequence here is a feeling of appetite,
but the secondary consequence is that he feels sluggish.
You won’t sleep well.
If you constantly eat cake,
you will be overweight.
Your stomach will bulge.
You’ll have to buy bigger clothes,
and so on.
Thus, the secondary consequences of being perceived
as good can be enormous, even terrible.
The next law is the law of unintended consequences.
The end consequences of many actions are far worse than doing nothing.
Sometimes an action is taken to make a profit,
but in fact causes a loss.
This is a big risk in business.
We can put all our money into one investment,
and end up going bankrupt
or losing everything;
This consequence is much worse
than the case of not participating in the investment.
Unintended consequences always occur
when any action depends on whether it violates the principle of personal purpose,
the kind of unpaid thought that still demands Santa’s benefits.
The next law, the law of choice,
states that every human action is a choice among many alternatives,
and that choice is always based on the individual’s dominant values at the moment.
His true values are always reflected in his actions.
You can always determine what a person thinks, believes,
and is worth by observing what they do,
not what they say,
wish or hope for.
If there are two types of donuts on the table,
he will always choose the one he prefers.
If he had two people to marry,
he would choose the one he treasured the most.
Likewise,
when you have two choices of cars to buy,
two things to do,
or two courses to sign up for.
Through your actions,
you will always prove what is most valuable and important to you.
This was a real shock to me,
because it ultimately explains why people say one thing and do another,
and then justify the action or assume it doesn’t matter.
They would say that,
and he thought, “Wait.
It’s not an excuse,
it’s actually what you do that shows who you are,
so every action you take
or refuse contains a choice
and a statement of your values and beliefs your trust.”
When I understood this,
I really understood the world.
The next rule is the rule of exclusionary alternatives.
This law says that no matter what you choose to do,
you are at the same time eliminating all other options.
Each choice implies a rejection of all other options,
at least for the time being,
especially in this business environment.
When you have a choice,
you have scarcity and limited supply.
When he has a choice,
he always chooses what is most important to him,
while rejecting every other possible option.
When he marries one person,
he rejects all the other people in the world that he could marry.
Every choice he makes declares to himself and
to others what he truly believes in and values.
The near-final law,
which underlies the entire Austrian school of economics,
is the law of subjective value.
The value of everything is subjective.
It’s determined by what someone is willing to pay for it,
and this explains inequality
and why people’s incomes are always low and so on.
You can’t say your job,
how much is it worth.
His work is worth what others are willing
to pay him in a free economy
when they can choose from so many others.
Here’s the real shock:
Any attempt to get above-market wages involves pressure from governments,
laws, penalties,
fines,
and everything else.
We have suffered the great crisis
that took place in the period 2008-2009.
That’s because the federal government has passed laws that force banks
to lend to people who don’t have credit,
because politicians hope those people will vote for them in elections.
This event began under President Jimmy Carter,
expanded under President Bill Clinton,
and continued under President George W. Bush.
Many people have actually been given money to buy houses.
They can buy a house with a deposit of 3% of the house value,
receive a bonus of 3% of the value of the house when they move in.
Banks financed people who couldn’t afford to buy tens of thousands,
hundreds of thousands,
even millions of houses,
and then it all collapsed.
A loan like this is okay 100% government support.
They say the houses themselves have value,
even though that value is only created
by giving people money to buy them.
All prices set by individuals
or organizations are estimates of how much people are willing
to pay to consume the entire supply they produce.
This makes us realize that all sales
or service provision at a reduced price is just the supplier’s admission
that the asking price is too high.
They guessed wrong.
Only the person invited to pay for a product
or service can determine how much the product or service is worth.
And in a free society,
as Milton Friedman once said,
every choice is a free choice.
We choose because we feel we will get better results.
If the government intervenes,
it will destroy the opportunity for freedom of choice.
The Law of Maximization,
the ultimate law that explains all economic activity,
states that each person seeks to maximize his
or her position through each action
in order to obtain the most for the least cost.
This law is also known as the principle of personal purpose.
It says that people are greedy,
lazy,
hasty,
ambitious,
selfish,
ignorant and frivolous,
and they are constantly fighting for survival,
safety,
comfort,
leisure,
love,
respect and fulfillment.
This principle also shows
that people are sure to find the fastest
and easiest way to get what they want right now
and with little regard for secondary consequences.
All economic activity is built around these principles.
All economic consequences can be explained
by reference to these laws,
which show that people always strive to get the most
for the least amount of money,
without much care to secondary
or unintended consequences;
and that it is vain to expect people not to act
according to their own ends.
That’s like hoping people change their eye color
or don’t breathe and stay healthy.
An example is social grants,
which are used to help the less fortunate in society as a primary consequence.
But when there is too much welfare money
for a long time,
the secondary consequence is that
people will depend on the government.
They have no self-respect,
no ability to work,
no skills.
Their income is so low.
They have no hope for themselves,
for the future or for their children.
If everyone takes advantage of this government program
and nobody works,
the whole society will collapse tomorrow.
The only reason this won’t happen is
that we’re hoping
that enough people don’t take advantage of these schemes,
don’t make profit,
aren’t looking for the quickest
and easiest way to get what they want regardless,
secondary consequences.
That’s what I mean about economics.
There are many more rules,
but the point is,
as I said,
there’s no such thing as a free lunch.
If you seriously apply them
to all government policies and activities,
you must apply them in the private sector as well,
governance will be completely different,
better for all of us,
and for the better for our future.
Finally, Brian,
let’s end by discussing the effect that a good life,
a life that follows the rules introduced in this show,
can have as a legacy for generations to come.
No matter how many problems there are,
the Greeks have a saying,
remember that there are times like this that happen all the time;
and no matter how many problems we have right now,
this moment is still the best time in human history to keep living.
There’s a lot going on in the political and economic world
that we have no control over.
All we need to do is focus on what we can control.
Throughout human history,
success has come from people
who are adept at what they do,
and then they create a product
or service that is so good that many others have always chosen
to buy it between countless similar products and services.
These people make a very good life and save their money.
As I said,
capitalism is frugality.
They save money,
investing in resources so that they continue
to generate money for them in the long run.
Eventually,
over the course of his life,
he will reach a point
where the return on his investments is more than he is making.
At that point,
you can,
if you want,
gradually stop working,
do it differently,
or work elsewhere.
Some people quit their current jobs
and became missionaries and worked abroad.
Your mission is to take 100% responsibility for your financial life,
and at the same time understand
that it is completely under your control,
and no matter what situation you are in today,
you can still pay.
Get rid of debt, save money,
build a financial fortress, invest money
to create an income stream,
and achieve financial independence
for yourself and your family.
Sometimes, this achievement will come faster than you think
if you start doing it now.
