Chapter Eight
GETTING STARTED
There is gold everywhere.
Most people are not
trained to see it.
It really is easy to find great
deals.
It’s
just like riding a bike. After a little wobbling, it’s a piece of cake.
The problem is that our financial genius lies asleep, waiting to be
called upon.
If you don’t, make up your own.
Your financial genius is smart enough to develop its own list.
The reason is that they have not
taken the time to develop their financial genius.
I offer you the following 10
steps as a process to develop your God-given powers, powers over which only you
have control.
1.
Find
a reason greater than reality: the power of spirit
2.
Make
daily choices: the power of choice
3.
Choose friends carefully: the power of association
4.
Master
a formula and then learn a new one: the power of learning quickly
5.
Pay
yourself first: the power of self-discipline
6.
Pay your brokers well: the power of good advice
7.
Be
an Indian giver: the power of getting something for nothing
8.
Use
assets to buy luxuries: the power of focus
9.
Choose
heroes: the power of myth
10.
Teach
and you shall receive: the power of giving
Find a reason greater than
reality: the power of spirit
When I asked her what fueled her
super-human ambition and
sacrifice, she simply said, “I do
it for myself and the people I love. It’s
love that gets me over the
hurdles and sacrifices.”
Those are my deep-seated
emotional reasons. What are yours? If they are
not strong enough, then the reality of the road ahead may be greater than your
reasons.
but it was the deep emotional
reasons that kept me standing up
and going forward.
I’ve learned that, without a strong reason or purpose, anything in life is hard.
IF YOU DO NOT HAVE A STRONG REASON,
THERE IS NO SENSE READING FURTHER. IT WILL SOUND LIKE TOO MUCH WORK.
Make daily choices: the power of
choice
Choice
is the main reason people want to live in a free country.
We want the power to choose.
Financially, with every dollar we
get in our hands, we hold the power to choose our future: to be rich, poor, or
middle class. Our spending habits reflect who we are.
My best friend, Mike, had an
asset column handed to him, but he still had to
choose to learn to keep it.
Many rich families lose their assets in the next generation simply
because there was no one trained to be a good steward over their assets.
I just choose to be rich, and I make that choice every day.
Invest first in education. In reality, the only real asset you have is your mind, the most powerful
tool we have dominion over.
Each of us has the choice of what we put in our brain once we’re old enough.
You can watch TV, read golf magazines, or go to ceramics class or a class on
financial planning. You choose. Most people simply buy investments rather than first
investing in learning about investing.
I love CDs and audio books. The
reason: I can easily review what
I just heard. I was listening to
an investor say something I completely
disagreed with. Instead of
becoming arrogant and critical, I simply listened to that five-minute stretch
at least 20 times, maybe more. But
suddenly, by keeping my mind
open, I understood why he said what he
said. It was like magic. I felt
like I had a window into the mind of one of
the greatest investors of our
time. I gained tremendous insight into the
vast resources of his education
and experience.
The net result: I still have the old
way I used to think, and I now have a new way of looking at the same problem or
situation. I have two ways to analyze a problem or trend, and that is
priceless.
The only way I can access
their vast mental power is to be humble enough to read or listen to what they
have to say.
Arrogant or critical people
are often people with low self-esteem who are afraid of taking risks.
If you have read this far,
arrogance is not one of your problems.
Arrogant people rarely read or
listen to experts. Why should they?
They are the center of the
universe.
In this case, their so-called intelligence
combined with arrogance equals ignorance.
Listening is more important
than talking.
They argue instead of asking
questions.
Choose friends carefully: the power of association
They often think it rude or
unintellectual. So I also learn from my friends who struggle financially. I
find out what not to do.
I would say that one of the
hardest things about wealth-building is
to be true to yourself and to be
willing to not go along with the crowd.
Wise investors buy an investment
when it’s not
popular. They know their profits
are made when they buy, not when
they sell.
The reason you want to have rich
friends is because that is where the money is made.
I’m not saying do it illegally,
but the sooner you know, the better your chances are for
profits with minimal risk.
That is what
friends are for. And that is financial intelligence.
Master a formula and then
learn a new one: the power of learning quickly
In
order to make bread, every baker follows a recipe, even if it’s only held in
their head. The same is true for making money.
I say, “You become what you
study.” In other words, be careful what you learn, because your mind is so
powerful that you become what you put in your head. If you’re tired of what
you’re doing, or you’re not making enough, it’s simply a case of changing the
formula via which you make money.
Working hard for money is an
old formula born in the day of cavemen.
Pay
yourself first: the power of self-discipline
If you cannot get control of
yourself, do not try to get rich. It
makes no sense to invest, make
money, and blow it. It is the lack of
self-discipline that causes most
lottery winners to go broke soon after
winning millions. It is the lack
of self-discipline that causes people who
get a raise to immediately go out
and buy a new car or take a cruise.
I would venture to say that personal
self-discipline is the number-one delineating factor between the rich, the
poor, and the middle class.
Simply put, people who have low
self-esteem and low tolerance for financial pressure can never be rich.
Pay your brokers well: the power of good advice
And
the more money they make, the more money I make.
Information is priceless. A good broker should provide you with information, as well as take the
time to educate you.
Just
be fair, and most of them will be fair to you.
The real skill is to manage and
reward the people who are smarter than you in some technical area.
Be an Indian giver: the power of
getting something for nothing
True, I have lost money on many
occasions, but I only play with money I
can afford to lose.
So wise investors must look at
more than ROI. They look at the assets they get for free once they
get their money back. That is financial intelligence.
Use assets to buy
luxuries: the power of focus
Remember, the
easy road often becomes hard, and the hard road often becomes easy.
Choose heroes: the
power of myth
I pretended I was a famous
baseball player. It’s one of the most
powerful ways we learn, and we often lose that as adults. We lose our heroes.
Copying or emulating heroes is true power
learning.
By having heroes, we tap into a
tremendous source of raw genius.
Teach and you shall
receive: the power of giving
“If
you want something, you first need to give,”
And when it comes to money,
love, happiness, sales, and contacts, all one needs to remember is to give
first.
It is true that your
world is only a mirror of you.
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