The Kind of People for You

I picked up a book yesterday written back in 2003 by an old friend. The book has a one-word title: Goals! The subtitle is “How to Get Everything You Want—Faster Than You Ever Thought Possible.” I’ve always felt it a privilege to call its author, Brian Tracy, a friend. He’s not only a warm, friendly person, but he’s also smart and wise. His advice in Goals! is fantastic. I read it back in 2005, and I have reaped huge rewards from following his wonderful and sage advice.

When I picked up the book up yesterday, I took a quick look at the handwritten notes and quotes I pulled that I had scribbled in the front blank pages of the book (with the page number references, of course!) I found myself immediately pulled back into the book to my favorite parts and what I thought was Brian’s best advice and ideas. Thoughts like: “Character is the ability to follow through on a resolution after the enthusiasm with which the resolution was made has passed,” found on page 263.

But what Brian wrote about the concept that gives a person a huge advantage to be successful that really influenced me was written under the subhead, “Get Around the Right People.” Brian goes on to say that we should “make it a point to associate with the kind of people that you like, admire, respect, and want to be like sometime in the future. Associate with the kind of people that you look up to and would be proud to introduce to your friends and associates. The choice of a positive, goal-oriented reference group can do more to supercharge your career than any other factor.”

When I set my goal to be a millionaire, one of the first things I did was to set in motion a plan to meet and get to know wealthy people. On that list were two billionaires who didn’t know me from Adam but who, with persistence and a plan, I was able to meet and get to know as well as get advice and financial formulas from them. My very first “adviser”, and a man who became a good friend, was a multimillionaire by the name of Larry Rosenberg. The two billionaires were Ray Kroc, founder of McDonald’s, and Curt Carlson, founder of the TGIF restaurant chain. Later I was fortunate enough to connect with businessman Paul J. Meyer, who built a half-billion-dollar fortune starting from zero. He shared many ideas and formulas for achieving success at a quick pace.

In the margins of Brian Tracy’s book, I found this note his words inspired me to write: “In order for me to be able to associate with the right kind of people, I must work hard on myself to be that likable and right kind of person. When I think about it I know that for me and most people, we would all much rather do business with people who we really like and we tend to shun people that are unfriendly, grouchy or that are too argumentative. I don’t even like to play tennis with people I don’t like, even if I beat them.” So the bottom line here is to meet the “right” kind of people you must work on yourself to become that same “right” kind of person.

 

The Story of a Millionaire Goal

Last week I posted the front page story that was written about me and my plight when I was a poor 21 year old and how that wonderful couple Phil and Addie DiBenedetto took me into their house and let me sleep in their basement even though they had just met me.  This all happened when I was working construction in Rockford Illinois back in 1965.  I was very lucky to meet the DiBenedettos not only because they gave me a place to stay and feed me for free as well but maybe even more importantly, they seemed to really believe in me.
Re-reading that article reminded me that even as a very young man I had set my sights on becoming a millionaire.  I must admit that I had a tough time staying focused on that huge million dollar number when I was physically working myself to the bone at a measly $4.50 an hour. I do remember that I tried very hard to make every single day count by continuing to search, in what little spare time I had, for the “million dollar secret”.

I don’t think the DiBenedettos, even though they believed in me, ever really thought I could reach the “millionaire status or level”.  In fact years later as quoted in the newspaper story when they visited me in Denver, Phil and Addie said they “still remember Haroldsen and his wife lived in a broken down house. Finally, the young man ended up in Salt Lake City, where he was eventually fired from his job and on his way to making his first million.”

I loved the next part of the newspaper story. “When Addie and Phil visited Haroldsen for the first time in Salt Lake City, they had no idea he had fulfilled his dream of becoming a wealthy man.” In fact they were even worried that I couldn’t afford the long distance calls that I had been making to them prior to their arrival.  The best part was how blown away they both were when I drove them through the gate and into the long driveway of my home. It wasn’t a huge mansion but it was close, with over three tree-lined acres surrounding it.  They were so very proud of me and I had always been so very grateful to them for their willingness to reach out and help a young man who needed a place to stay but even more so for their very kind, loving and friendly support of his dream.

Those 5,840 days (16 years) between my meeting the DiBenedettos and the publishing of that article, were used to search out and discover the financial formula that can lift an ordinary person from being a meager wage earner to being a millionaire and, yes, even a multi-millionaire.  What is the secret?

Well, first it’s setting your mind firmly on your goal and never giving up on your objective and then working your tail off–or I should say, working your brain off since physical work and an hourly wage will never get you to the big numbers.  Hitting millions and multi millions is done by using financial leverage and people leverage. If you are not sure what that is, you should go back and read some of my earlier blogs that address that specifically and in detail. The secrets are all here:

http://ignitemylifenow.com/2013/01/11/the-power-of-leverage-and-compounding/

http://ignitemylifenow.com/2014/06/14/the-final-step-to-wealth/

http://ignitemylifenow.com/2014/07/25/the-simple-wealth-formula/

http://ignitemylifenow.com/2014/11/07/leverage-to-lift-your-profits/

 

The Difference Every Day Makes

One day doesn’t seem like very much time and if we get a lot of good stuff done or we do nothing but watch TV all day it may not seem to make much difference in our world let alone the rest of the world.  Hey, it’s only one day. No big deal. I’ve got lots and lots of days ahead of me—like maybe 50 or 100 thousand more of those days before being blasted off this planet. But those single goof-off days can add up quickly and none of us have near as many days as we might figure to accomplish what we want, especially if we set our eyes and minds on big and lofty goals.

Yesterday as I was driving home from a great doubles tennis match I did some quick figuring in my head and was somewhat shocked at the number of days I had left in my life or I should I say the lack of number of days. Even if I made it to age 100 my remaining number of days, with me being almost 71, was only a little over 10,000, and that was IF I make it to age 100!

Even if you are only a mere 25 years of age, that still only gives you just over 27,000 days to age 100.  Now to some people that might seem like a lot of days but to me it’s a pretty small number, therefore I am inclined to think that to waste even one day is a very serious matter, unless of course you don’t have any big and lofty plans and goals.

The good news however, is that I am totally convinced from my experience in life that if you are keenly aware of your hours and days as you experience those days of your life then you will be much more likely to not only set good, worthwhile and important goals but you will be many times more likely to reach those goals.  And because we all have a limited number of days–whether it’s 10, 20 or 27,000–we need to put strict time deadlines on those goals, because if we do that then we are much less likely to waste those precious days and more likely to reach your goals.

Recently I came across an article about me that appeared on the front page of the Sunday Register Star of Rockford, Illinois and I was quite stunned at some of the things they quoted me as saying way back on November 1^st of 1981.

I was only 37 back when the paper ran the story entitled “He Quit Bragging after his First Million”.  As I re-read the story that they wrote about me, I must admit that I was a bit surprised that in talking about my beginnings as a construction worker 16 years earlier, there in Rockford, making only $4.50 an hour, that I had already set my sights on becoming a millionaire.  Plus, even at the young age of 21, I was acutely aware of this thing called “time”.

I had figured that even working as hard as I was, making just $4.50 an hour would only bring me a mere $9360 in a year and even after 50 years, I would only have made $468,000. Of course, when I considered that I would have to spend money to live, I quickly figured out that there had to be some formula or secret to becoming a millionaire because just working an hourly job wasn’t going to do it. I was to find out later, using each precious day to look for the answer, that there was, in fact, a formula to making millions and one that doesn’t require a person to invent Facebook or Amazon or some hi-tech computer program.

If I hadn’t realized how critically important each and every day was and how few days are in a person’s life, I’m pretty sure I wouldn’t have spent my days searching for the “financial formula”.  So please never forget the great and precious value of a single day in your life and use it accordingly.

Next week I want to share more of the newspaper article and more specifics of the “financial formula”.

 

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ALMOST 5 MILLION

I got a bit of a shock via an email I received last week. It came from “Fitbit”. It was a summary report of my fitness for the year 2014. It said, “Whoa, take a look back at everything you accomplished in 2014!” And I did.

The shocker was my Fitbit recorded me taking 4,980,169 steps in just one year. That’s 2,341 miles. The message went on to say, “You might not have noticed when you were running errands, chasing the bus or hitting the gym after a long day, but every single step you took added up to something big. Something really big. It’s a year to be proud of and we’re pumped to be a part of it.”

I would have never guessed a year ago, when my wife gave me this little tiny thing called a Fitbit that I ever could or would take almost 5 million steps in a single year!

I wrote about my Fitbit in a blog early in 2014 saying that when we take time to measure and keep track of most anything, we tend to get better at whatever we are measuring. This is because we are competing against ourselves and we can see our progress. We just want to do better or do more today than we did yesterday and with those records to keep reminding us, we then are driven to continue improving each day after that.

After getting the summary report from Fitbit I am certainly even more motivated to continue improving my fitness and have challenged myself to do much better in 2015. In fact my goal is now 7 million steps for this year.

As all of us begin this new year, I want to push and challenge you to start measuring whatever it is that you want improve upon. It could be your wealth, your health, your donations of time and or money to others or anything you would like to be doing more of or be better at. Start today to keep track and I promise that ‘keeping track’ will to keep you ‘on track’ and you will get better and better at whatever you are measuring.

Lesson from the Life of Billy Crystal

I want to continue discussing the theme we had last week on writing your thoughts, ideas and life into a journal. I have strong and passionate feelings about this process of making a record of your life, about having the ability to read over all those ups and downs and the lessons we learn along the way.

This past week, I read about the fascinating life and thoughts of Billy Crystal in his incredible autobiography Still Foolin’ ‘Em. He wrote the book when he was turning 65 and it’s really a great read. It’s packed full of very funny stuff but I was quite a bit more impressed by his deep thoughts and feelings on everything from his family including his wonderful wife, kids and grand-kids plus the big impact his father, mother and grandmother had on him, to his numerous famous friends and not so famous friends and business associates.  I’ll tell you, if you read his book you will quickly grow to love and admire this man. He inspires you and gives you some great insights into the human mind and behavior.

He and his famous friends certainly lived the philosophy of “feel the fear and do it anyway”. That is something we all need to remind ourselves to believe in and practice. I think most of us look at famous and really successful people and think that they don’t have great fears like us but nothing could be further from the truth. Everyone has fears, but the key to success and a great life is to plow right through those fears and “do it anyway”.

The other great lesson I learned from Billy Crystal, or I should say I re-learned and reminded myself to do more of, was the huge value of people networking. I was astounded at how many friends and business contacts Billy had. Even though Billy is super talented I don’t believe he would have soared nearly as high as he did without his people networking. I’m talking hundreds of incredibly influential people he got to know who helped him on his path to such tremendous success. And did he ever soar! His success was not only as a stand-up comedian but as an actor in all those wonderful movies, TV shows and even on the Broadway stage. He made us laugh which is so very good for our minds and souls plus he gave us so many hours of movie and TV entertainment. Now through his book, he is giving even more.

I certainly don’t think Billy is even close to being finished as he approaches his 67th birthday on March 14^th of this year. The biggest lesson I think we should take away from Mr. Billy Chrystal is that all of us need to record our life, our activities and, most importantly, our thinking. This can be not only helpful to ourselves when we re-read what our thoughts were at different stages of our lives but also that your autobiography will be equally helpful to others. So keep making those journal entries and leave a legacy for your family, friends and everyone to enjoy as well as learning some great lessons from your own life.

The Rug Merchant of Tangiers

Today I’d like to add a footnote to last week’s blog on the theme of negotiation.  Many years ago I took a group of investors to Tangiers in Northern Africa, both for fun and for a seminar I was to put on for them. And what a seminar it was! The best part, however, was a lesson that was learned from a rug merchant in Tangier’s.

While on this trip we all took a tour. The talkative guides took us through the narrow, winding back streets, through the open markets with their pungent odors and all kinds of interesting and colorful people.  Then, after half an hour’s stop at the Kasbah, we finally ended up at a rug merchant’s large second-floor shop.

Even though I was paying for this tour, no one had bothered to tell me where we’d end up. It was there in the next hour or so that the big lesson was learned by all of us, a lesson in the art of negotiating.  We were all hot and tired but sitting comfortably on mounds of beautiful Oriental rugs. Our gracious host began telling the group about the uniqueness of his rugs then his troupe of articulate salespeople went on to sell their captive audience on the quality of the rugs.

Interestingly enough, they also explained the custom of haggling over price.  They would be offended if we were to accept their first price without some sporty bargaining. Priming the crowed into a jovial joking mood, the merchant asked someone to make an offer on a rug he said was for sale at $4500 dollars. One of the guys in my group offered $500 dollars. After a lot of back and forth the rug was sold for $1200 dollars. The buyer had been assured that its value was over $2000 dollars. I found out later that the buyer had it appraised in the USA for a mere $600 dollars.  Oops! There was lesson learned there for certain, a lesson that happens to be about one of the oldest tricks in the old negotiating handbook. That is, you start with a very high price to give the illusion of a bargain when the price is dramatically cut.

I’ve used this method many times on both the buyer’s side and when selling a property and you probably have too. You can read more about the rug merchant and related negotiation techniques in my book How to Wake Up the Financial Genius Inside You.

 

 

Using a little Jaw Jaw

I am in the process of updating 4 of the 8 books I’ve written, which has been a fascinating and mind opening task.  First of all, it’s quite a stunning experience to read your own words that were written many years ago and then to come across something that you find to be very profound. I found myself saying “Wow, this is a pretty good money making method and is quite inspiring stuff. Did I write this?” then I’m thinking,   “I can’t believe I wrote this. Where did this come from?” However, I must admit some of what I wrote also brings on thoughts like “Ugh! This is kind of simple minded and even stupid. I’ve got to change this!”

While updating and re-writing some of my book The Courage to be Rich, I was struck particularly hard by what I wrote about the huge power of negotiating and the incredible financial rewards that come just from smart and calculated discussions.  Yes, just by using your head and your words you can make huge financial returns on your money! Winston Churchill said “Jaw Jaw is better than war war” and I will add that, Jaw Jaw alone can make you 100% in returns on an investment too!

With good negotiations you can take a mere 5% discount combined with another 5% in earnings and come up with a 100% return on your money. Sound impossible? Not at all. I have done it myself a few times and others I know have done it. It’s in the numbers.

For example let’s say you found a very attractive piece of real estate and the seller was very motivated to sell it. With good negotiating skills you could convince him to sell the property for just 5% lower than its fair market value and maybe even a little beyond that and then you buy it with just 10% down. Now, using another round of skilled negotiations, you convince a buyer to pay 5% more than the property’s fair market value by making the property sound better than it may appear to be. Of course, fixing it nicely helps too. Then, guess what? You’ve just scored a 100% return on your money; you invested 10% then saved 5% on the buy and made 5% on the sale of it for a 10% profit, or 100% of what you put down on it!

If you get tripped up at the point where I say you are only investing 10% on the property, that’s not hard to do either. Further negotiations can convince the seller to carry the mortgage or you can use a bank for the mortgage and a signature loan so in total you have 90% financing.

Go ahead and run your own numbers on any size property with those percentages and you’ll always come out with that huge fat return of 100% on your money by just using your brain and your words to convince people of what great deal you make them. These are just some of the gems you can find in my books which are available online on places like Amazon and on my website.

Speaking of Determination

I just happened to pick up a little book today and it opened to a page that had this quote “some people succeed because they are destined to, but most people succeed because they are determined.” That was Elmer Towns Minute Motivators for Leaders by Stan Toler.  Great quote, a great truth and a great thing to think and about and do something about. Determination–what a great word and a great human attribute. That’s if you use it.

When I think about my own successes, whether they have been in my tennis tournaments and matches, or attaining great health or great wealth, I can clearly see the greatest common denominator for each one of my successes has been this great thing called determination.

But how does one boost or improve his or her level of determination? Researchers in human behavior studies have observed that most people can get a BIG BOOST in their own determination abilities and in their own self-control just by merely reading about or observing in other people’s examples; people who have expended a great amount of self-control or determination in various parts of their lives.  Just to know of those studies should motivate us to hang out with the kind of people that exert large amount of determination or at least we should seek out and read stories of people that use a ton of self-control and determination.

Personally I never seem to tire of observing and or reading those kinds of stories. They truly drove me to success, especially when I was in my 20’s, 30’s and 40’s. When I was younger it motivated me in sports. Later on it was all about making more money and, wow, did those people that I hung out with and the stories or others who made millions and billions push me to do more and more, and bigger and bigger.

Now at my age the people and the stories in the health and fitness department motivate me to stay the course of great health and try to do even better every day.  These stories lift me up and inspire me and even seem to give me more and more energy to do more with my life and do more to help other people with their lives.  If you really want to push and motivate yourself to levels beyond what you ever thought possible, try changing your thinking and convince yourself that your life is on the line, because in some ways our lives are on the line regardless of what we set out to do.  I’ll talk more about that next week. In the meantime, seek out stories and people who are all about determination and see if that doesn’t get you motivated to do more.

Money Can Buy Novelty

It’s too bad that much of the time money, especially having a ton of it, gets a bad rap. The negative view of money probably started a very long time ago, maybe even before the Christian bible made the comment that “the love of money is the root of all evil.” I do believe that tons of money can ruin some people’s lives, especially if they come into that money overnight and not by their own hard work over many years. But let me talk about one super wonderful thing that money can do for you, especially if you are wise enough to do the right things with that money.

It seems that way too many people think that the best thing to do with lots of money is to go out and buy a lot of stuff, especially fancy and high status goods. But that stuff can quickly become worn out and/or very boring. Consider the following as an alternative and one that can, and will, jump start and excite your brain as well as lasting a very long time.

This is all about giving your brain a huge dopamine boost through experiencing new and novel things. You see, the human brain craves novelty, and money makes it so much easier to give yourself novel experiences. Gregory Berns in his book Satisfaction says, “Novel experiences are the surest route to satisfaction.”

As I write these words my wife and I are on a flight to the French Rivera. Just minutes ago we had lift off and as we did, believe me my brain got a big dose of dopamine and that’s just the beginning. We’ll be staying in Cannes at the Carlton Intercontinental Hotel and then later in another 5 star hotel in Nice. Then we’ll drive to the Italian town of San Remo to meet an old Swiss friend, Reto Moro, who I met 30 years ago on a tennis court in the south of Germany. We are visiting places, some of which are totally new to me or, in other words, ‘novel’.

Castles, old churches, new restaurants and all that I will see will pump my brain with dopamine. As you probably know dopamine is the natural brain chemical that makes you feel so very satisfied. I just love it. For years I didn’t have a clue about this thing called dopamine that was making me feel so good, but I certainly knew that I got a huge charge and brain boost by my visits to new places, so much so I came up with my bucket list of trying to visit every country in the world. I currently have hit 84 countries and my wife tells me that since I am now 70 years old I better pick up the pace—there are, at present, 196 countries in the world!

I guess I could have spent my money on fancy new cars and other expensive stuff but I’m pretty sure the novelty of a new car wouldn’t last very long. Traveling to new places has given me great memories that will last for many, many years, especially since I can easily re-stimulate my brain chemicals with so many pictures and videos!

The bottom line is, it’s true that money can’t necessarily buy happiness, but it can open up so many possibilities and make it easier to obtain more novel experiences. It gives one more time to carefully and creatively design, plan and carry out a wide range of novel experiences. So now I hope I have given you another good reason to push yourself to earn, save and invest your earnings.

 

The Magic 10%

Last week I wrote about the basic and beginning key to great wealth for those of us who start out with nothing, like I did. That key is ‘savings’. A couple days after I posted last week’s blog I saw a great summary on ways to save money in the USA Weekend Publication. Its suggestions included things like buying a used car rather than a new car, always shop for better bargains, set spending goals and budgets, refinance your house at today’s lower interest rates and more. These are things I’ve always preached. It comes down to buying only what you need vs. what you want and mistake for things you need.

It might be easier to put away that savings if you take a look at the huge potential in that 10% you are putting aside. I know it seems simple to put aside 10% but for most people it’s not that easy. In my book The Next Step to Waking Up the Financial Genius Inside You I talk about how to save that 10%. Many years ago when I was making a starvation wage of $600 dollars a month, I was faithfully saving $60 dollars each and every month and then when I got a $40 dollar raise I decided to add the entire raise to the $60 dollars–so I was saving $100 dollars out of $640 or 15.6% of my monthly income. Yes it hurt sometimes because I had to go without things I wanted, but was it ever worth it in the long run.

You would do all of this if you truly wanted to be very wealthy rather than just being like everyone else who lives paycheck to paycheck. But now let me reveal to you a little fact that may entice you, shock you, and motivate you to do the ‘savings thing’.

Back when I wrote the third chapter entitled “Action Two, Saving the Magic 10 Percent” I had a friend who was paying a 10% tithing to his church and when I pointed out to him what he was really giving up he was shocked to the core. Please don’t get me wrong. I am not against charity but the thing is, if you want to be independently wealthy, you must pay yourself first. What I told him was that If you start at age 25 saving 10% of your wage, and assuming you only make $30,000 dollars a year and (get this … you stop saving at age 30) you will have over 7 million dollars when you hit age 70! And believe me, that big 70 comes much faster than you think!

Granted those numbers all depend on you investing your savings with an annual compounded return of 15% but wait before you jump to conclusions and think 15% is unrealistic and can’t be done, because it can. If you work harder and find the right deals you could even push that rate of return up to 20% which would be an astounding 47 million dollars by age 70. Amazing, isn’t it? Next week I will show you exactly how to do that. I’ve gone over this before but its well worth repeating.

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