Great Lessons in Good Times and Bad

 

This week I was privileged to award 3 scholarships to graduating seniors from Cottonwood High School in Utah. I do it every year in the name of my daughter Kristin, who suddenly died of an eating disorder called bulimia when she was a sophomore at that school. It happened many years ago and anyone who has ever lost a child knows that you never get over it but, given enough time and thought, you learn to deal with it. And with more thought and the passage of time you may even learn a lesson or two.

So in my presentation to the 3 scholarship winners and to 100 plus other graduation seniors that were being honored for various achievements I gave what I think is crucial advice for a teenager and quite frankly I think good advice for all of us including myself. I said, first of all, “Let me tell you that if anyone ever tells you that they have a “perfect life”, I’m here to tell you that they are big fat lairs, or they just haven’t lived long enough yet”. Yes, I got a good laugh out of that line but it’s more than a funny line–it’s pretty darn true.

My second bit of advice that followed my first comment, was that the key to a successful and productive life is not what happens to you , especially if it’s bad stuff, but how you react to the things that happen to you and what you learn from it and then what you do from that point on.

Some people would say to me, “So what the hell did you learn from the tragedy of losing your 16 year old daughter?” Well, first I learned to accept what had happened, even though it took me a couple of years, by telling myself that although I can give up on life and give up on being a father to my other children, that I could just sit around and feel sorry for my daughter and myself for the rest of my life, it wouldn’t bring my Kristin back. I realized how stupid and selfish that would be and I wouldn’t be helping anyone. In fact, I’d be hurting a lot of people, especially my kids.

The second lesson I learned was about caring. I became so much more considerate of other people, even strangers, when I learned of their losses. Prior to my loss I was pretty callous and mainly only thought about myself. For too many of us it takes tragedy to bring us around to understanding the pain other people go through.

From the many comments I got from those graduating seniors, I think at least some of my advice sunk in and I sincerely hope they will still remember that advice when life kicks them in the face and they want to give up and feel sorry for themselves. We all need to burn into our brains that life is not easy, not for anyone (except maybe it seems that way for the big fat liars!) We need to keep getting up when life kicks us in the face and forge on. We also need to look for the lessons that are there for us, from both the good times and the bad times too!

 

Great Insights from the Best Teacher

Have you started writing in your own journal yet? If you haven’t, I’m going to try to persuade you to start doing it. Why? Because of the many, many benefits you’ll get not just at the time you write them out, but also down the road. This will be especially true if you write more about how you are feeling and what is quietly running through your brain from day to day.

In addition to writing your thoughts down, you will also want to record what you are doing including those steps you are taking to reach your goals. By writing out your thoughts and feelings as well as your goal items, you will no doubt find, as I have, that the biggest benefits come later when you re-read and revisit those thoughts that were running through your brain at different points of your life. You really can experience some major breakthroughs and some life changing and life enhancing discoveries just by looking back and seeing where you were and what you were doing at various times in your past.

I’ve been keeping my “thought journals” since I was 19 years old. I will admit that as I go back and read some of my thoughts and reasoning it’s down-right hilarious, but I’ve been shocked more than once that some of my recorded thoughts as a young 19 year old are rather profound. It’s so interesting to me to actually learn from myself, from my own words, concepts and thoughts that I had long ago forgotten. Many of us try to learn more about ourselves and want more insights into our minds and our lives. With more insights into our minds we can make big improvements to our lives. And who doesn’t want to be happier, healthier and wealthier? Well, that is what journaling can help you with.

Now as we begin a new year I think it would be the perfect time to start your own “thought journal”. If you are already journaling your journey and recording your thoughts and feelings, keep it up. And maybe now it would be good to take some time and re-read some old entries and see what you can learn from yourself. You may even come across some old goals that you logged but forgot about and it will make you realize that it’s time to hit the reset button on those goals.

I just re-read some of my thoughts and thinking from early 2012 and they certainly got me jump started for this new year. Maybe the best teacher you will ever have is actually you! But you do need to pay close attention to yourself and to you inner thinking and be sure to capture and record those thoughts and feelings. Then you will be able to revisit in order to learn and discover great insights from you, one of your greatest teachers, at a later time.

The Final Step to Wealth

We’ve spent the last few weeks building up to this last step in building your wealth—getting on the fast track using leverage.  Yes, I’m talking about leveraging properties including using bank loans but to really supercharge and speed up the process even faster, you will want to use financial partners.

To do this, you just need a few people looking to invest in a safe, reliable project that will give them a regular and consistent return. Get them to collectively fund a down payment of 20% or more on the property you want to purchase and promise a reasonable return–say a 10% APR, an amount that is definitely higher than the best CD can offer. You should also put in some of your own money to makes the investors feel more secure seeing your confidence in the investment’s potential by also putting your money at risk.

Then when you sell or rent those properties, get the best return possible and get the money back to your investors with a higher than expected rate of return. When they see that you not only lived up to but exceeded their return expectations, you will have created an enthusiastic group of investors for future projects as well as getting wonderful word of mouth that could bring even more money flocking to you.

If you have read the revised edition of my first book, now named The Next Step in Waking up the Financial Genius Inside You, then you probably read Dell Loy Hansen’s letter in the Pre-Foreword thanking me for writing the book which he read when he was flat broke and in college. Dell gives me and my book great credit for giving him the financial formula and path to his great fortune. He followed pretty much everything I suggested in the book and his success was supercharged and sped up big time. He simply brought on some very well healed partners and took really great care of them with good, consistent returns on their money.

He now owns more than a billion dollars’ worth of properties and recently paid around 85 million cash for the Salt Lake professional soccer team “Real Salt Lake” RSL.  I love his P.S. of his letter where he says “Thank you a million, or more appropriately “Thanks a Billion”.  So if you or if my young man seeking advice and a formula want to jump on the super-fast track, go find some wealthy partners and be sure to take good care of them–under promise their rate of return on their investment and then over deliver.

 

Practice, Practice, Practice

If you want to super charge and shorten your path to big success, you will need to apply the forth rule I talked about—leveraging your success through other people’s money.  But before you attempt to bring partners into you financial plan you had better get out there and do some small deals so you will know how they work and so if you make some mistakes it’ll be with your own small deals and not with a partner’s money. Think of this as your practice phase.

This kind of phase will allow you to better judge what it will take to make a viable deal. What sounds easy to you on paper is usually such a different thing when you get out there and do it. I can tell you all about my own experiences but until you actually start making deals yourself, what I tell you will really only be theoretical to you. It’s going through all those steps—the  tiny ones as well as the big ones—that will really drive home the lessons I am telling you about here.

And doing some deals with your own money will give you a chance to build a portfolio of investments which you can bring to potential partners. Investing in your own projects with your own money also shows that you have full faith in what you are doing, enough to risk your own funds. This will add to the confidence people will have in you and will make it easier to convince them to invest with you.

The other thing in this phase to remember is that you will make some mistakes. It doesn’t mean this kind of investing isn’t for you, it just means you’re learning. And at least you will be learning and risking just your own dime.

So set yourself up to start making deals. Put money aside to make those first couple of investments. It’s that first big step that will make everything else you have to do that much easier.

The Success That Comes with Mentoring

Last week I started telling you the story of a young man who asked me for some financial advice. His questions and what I had to tell him was too good not to share.  Supercharging your goals is something we can all benefit from.

As I mentioned last week, you must first firmly set your financial goals and then write them down with a time dead line. After that, you can super charge and speed up your attainment of those goals by following these few easy tips:

1. Go out and find a mentor–Mentors are a must!

2. Get your feet wet and get some experience on a few small financial deals.

3. Go out and make yourself the best calling card possible.

4. Use the “Partner Path” to supercharge and speed toward your goal.

Anyone who has followed my blog over the years knows that I became so financially successful by wisely using leverage to buy real estate. I started with small houses, duplexes and small apartment buildings—usually ones that needed to be fixed up—then I rented them out and or sold them. Look at these numbers and the return on investment and you can see just how a person can make a fortune in a short time by using ten to one leverage and selling property for, let’s say, 10% higher price than the price paid for it. This can give a 40 or 50% return on your money or even more … because of leverage.

So, with this as the basic game plan I advised the young man to follow the tips I just gave him.

1. Find a Mentor: A mentor should be someone that has done what you want to do and has been successful at it. I encouraged this young man to meet with his mentor frequently and to pick his or her brain as often as he could.  He was already doing that with me but with how much I travel he was going to need at least a back-up mentor.

Now, how do you find a mentor and more importantly how can you get them to agree to be the mentor? Well, my advice is to use the Onassis model or method.  The Onassis method, as I call it, follows what Aristotle Onassis, did many years ago when starting out to meet the perfect contact so he could import cigarettes from Greece to South America where he lived then.  This is the method I used to meet the billionaire founder of McDonalds, .

When Onassis was a very young man–long before he made his fortune- he wanted to meet a top guy in the cigarette business that could help launch him into his first business deal of importing cigarettes. So basically Onassis just pestered the guy–he simply stood out in front of his office every morning then by the guys gate at night–not saying anything but just looking like he needed help-finally after about 2 weeks the very influential cigarette executive stopped and said to Onassis. “Who are you and what do you want?” From that simple approach Onassis took a giant leap forward into that business, because this top exec told him to go see the main buyer and use his name as a reference.

From that simple strategy, Onassis began his road to become a billionaire.  I used a similar but easier tactic to meet with Ray Kroc,  the billionaire founder of McDonalds. I called his office almost daily asking his secretary for an appointment and after many, many phone calls she said that Ray would meet with me but for only 10 minutes. I flew to San Diego and met with Ray Kroc walking out of his office 2 hours later. Hey, what can I say?  I just asked him to tell me why and how he became such a great success in life and business and as it turned out he loved talking about himself. Who doesn’t?

There are three more items you will want to implement in order to be super successful but let’s save those for next week. In the meantime, think about who you would want as a mentor. Who is doing what you want to do in a very successful way? And what would it take to get a hold of that person and have them mentor you?

Learning From My Journey

Recently I met a young man who had some very big, big dreams for the future. I was quite impressed and fascinated by what he told me he was going to do with his life and, yes, I could easily see myself in him. Well, I had to go back 40 plus years in time to see myself in him but even back then, I too had huge dreams of success. As I listened to him, many sweet memories came back. Those years were such fun and exciting times. I gained both fame and fortune (even though the fame only lasted the traditional 15 minutes but it was great!)

This young man wanted me to give him some advice and help on a plan and formula that may have worked for me and might work for him. So basically I told him my road to riches story, about how I started with nothing but eventually found my fortune, far exceeding my wildest dreams. Back then my dream was to be a millionaire but I ended up with ‘multi’ in front of the word millionaire.

However, being a millionaire wasn’t my first goal. I had initially dreamed of being a NBA basketball star. I had led my American High School team from Ankara, Turkey to a come-from-behind finals victory in the Olympic stadium in Rome. I was on top of the mountain then and thought I could do anything but when I got to Utah State University on a scholarship and found myself sitting on the bench I realized I needed to alter my goals a bit. I went on to tell this young man that I quickly changed my thinking from basketball and broads to books on goal setting and fortune building. I became fixated on making a million dollars and wrote the goal down with a drop dead date—my 30th birthday. And I not only met that goal, I beat it.

So my advice to this kid was this–set a big goal or goals, write those goals down and then be sure to put a time deadline on those goals. I added that it’s also better to set goals around things that you love, like to do, and know you have some talent in.

The next thing I told him was about  the habit I had formed when I was only 19 years old, the habit of keeping a journal of my life and more importantly of my inner most thoughts, or as my dear friend of 50 plus years from my basketball days in Ankara says, “Journal your Journey”. I told this young man that those many journal entries over the years lead me to write a book that not only enhanced my own life but also pushed me to do more. That book gave me virtually instant fame and even added to my fortune. I was so blessed and lucky to eventually sell more than 2 million copies of my first book How to Wake Up the Financial Genius Inside You and that was just the beginning.

I will tell you next week, exactly what I told this young man to do. I’ll explain the ways to super charge and speed up one’s success path and even why he or you or most everyone who really wants to make a big impact on this thing called “human existence” should write a book. And, no, you don’t even have to have a literary agent or a publisher. Have you ever wanted to end up on the front page of the Wall Street Journal or be on the Today Show? Well, I did both and what I talk about next week can help you get there as well.

VEM for Great Sleep and a Great Day

Last week I showed you a great way to get past the worrying that keeps you from falling asleep or wakes you up in the middle of the night. But that trick I taught you is not the only thing you can do to get a great night’s sleep and have a great next day. I’ve also found a Very Effective Method (VEM) that not only helps my sleep but gets me ‘jump started’ the next morning on my to do list and  sets a very positive mood and outlook for the day.  And if I don’t use my so called VEM my mornings can be, and usually are, super negative downers. On those days, it takes me hours to lift my mental attitude.

My VEM process begins shortly after lights out. That’s when I review in my mind (or perhaps on paper before lights out) what I want to accomplish the next day.  Next, and more importantly, I start telling myself I’m going to sleep long and deep or I say similar positive affirmations (PA’s) that give my brain that message. Plus–and this is key–I tell myself I am going to wake up in a very, very positive and upbeat mood  and it’s going to be a beautiful and uplifting morning.  You can choose the positive words that you think fit you and your situation but the important thing is to repeat the words over and over in your head so your inner brain really gets the message loud and clear.

As any of my readers that have followed me very long know, I am a huge believer in PA’s. I learned about PA’s many years ago from my near billionaire friend and mentor Paul J. Meyer and what I learned from him helped me in so many ways that I am indebted to him for the rest of my life.  Like many things we learn, I slowly dropped the use of PA’s over time. But then Susan Jeffer’s book Feel the Fear and Do it Anyway reminded me of the great power of sending positive messages to the subconscious mind.  And, wow …what a difference that made. As I outlined in an older blog post, I used several PA’s to help  with my tennis game and, as quick as that, raised my tennis playing  level big time without any extra practice even!

Bottom line is,  I am definitely a “true believer” in the great power of  PA’s–they really do work and they will work for you on just about any part of your  life from sleep improvement to mental moods to, yes, even your tennis  game.

 

How to Teach to Help Others and Yourself

Last week I talked about the epiphany I had as I was doing my daily walk (a day I put in 10 miles of walking!)  As you may remember my breakthrough epiphany was that when we start teaching and preaching helpful ideas and  life enhancing goals with  other people , our very own progress and development is inevitably pushed faster toward achieving the very goals the ideas support.  It’s a pretty neat deal–as we help others we help ourselves!

At the end of last week’s blog I promised I would give you ideas to “jump start” your preaching and teaching plans. It isn’t necessary that you be a teaching type or that you have experience in helping to lead others toward achieving goals. You simply need the desire to help and see others succeed.

So here you go. Read these, follow the suggested steps and see what happens! When you’ve seen the effect you can have on other’s progress as well as your own, expand your influence to compound your success and the positive changes you’ve helped make in other people’s lives.

1. Pick a part of your life you want to greatly improve upon.

2. Write it down.

3. Make a list of comments and talking points that will help you present the benefits of the particular goal that you are going to share with relatives, friends and maybe even strangers.

4. Make a list of those relatives, friends, business associates and acquaintances you’d like to help. The best place to start is with your spouse or partner, so you may want to put them on the top of your list.

5. Now go out there and start teaching and preaching. It doesn’t matter how you do it. It could be face to face, by phone, or through email or texting. The only real rule is to share what you know with openness and caring. Understand that some people won’t be ready for the ideas you have to share. Don’t push it on them; just let them know you’re there to help when they are ready.

6. When you feel you have had significant experience and success, you can also teach more broadly through a blog, guest posting on other people’s blogs and websites or volunteering through mentoring programs for kids, college students, small businesses or whatever matches the kind of knowledge you have to share.

Improve From Your Own Teachings

As I was doing my daily walk, I was struck big time by a profound thought! The thought has huge life enhancing potential for everyone on the planet. It has already been changing and helping my life because I have been using it for a long time only I have never really identified it enough to put into words until now.

I’m going to share this with you but, please, think deeply and intently about this and then put it into practice. See if it doesn’t profoundly enhance any part of your life that you choose to drastically improve. Whether you want to get in super great shape or become a much better parent or partner, or even make a few million dollars, you can do it if you follow these ideas.

Any goal, habit, human quality or desire that I start preaching, teaching or pontificating about automatically and almost without effort pushes me to do more of it myself. Those spoken and written pontifications are like a truth drug for my mind which pushes me to do what I have encouraged and taught others to do.  I am totally convinced it will and does work that way for everyone.

If you have been reading my past blogs you might remember me setting some pretty tough and overly ambitious work out, weight loss, and healthy eating goals for myself as I count down to my big 70th birthday.  As of the blog posting this week, I am only 4 days away from 70. As I look back on the last 86 days I’ve been doing this, I must say that not one day has passed without my mind fixating on those self-promises and the advice I gave to myself as well as to all my readers. I can now see that it’s been my inner brain keeping me on track rather silently and automatically.

I guess you could say that my brain pushed me to remain “true to myself” and to my readers.  You see, if you teach and preach to others what they could and should do for self-improvement, or just about any subject, your inner self gives you the message that you must live up to what you put out there.  We all know the saying “practice what you preach” and our inner most brain and soul does not want us to be a hypocrite, therefore our subconscious pushes us to be true to our words.  I am pretty darn convinced that is how we automatically become better at whatever subject, goal or life enhancing ideal we talk about and teach to others.

I challenge you to start teaching a preaching something that you want to improve in your life (be sure to write down you goals and objectives so you can stay on track) and then in a few months take a look back and see what it has done for you and how it has improved other people’s lives.

Next week I will give you a few great ideas to “jump start” your preaching and teaching plan.  Get ready to make things happen!

Feed Your Subconcious Powerful Positive Words

I’ve been thinking about my mentor and good friend Paul J Meyer (1928-2009) a bit this week. I have an entire chapter about Paul on page 173 of my book How to Ignite Your Passion for Living. He was just that influential to me and to many other people. Probably the most important thing I learned from him was the life changing power of “positive affirmations”. Like other great things that I thought I learned, at some point I stopped practicing and fell out of the habit of using affirmations in my everyday life. But I’m making a great effort to change that.

Paul believed that affirmations could work miracles in just about everything we do. And I believe it too. You know the adage that if you say something enough times, you’ll believe it? Well, since your inner self is always listening to what you say and what you think, repeating positive statements about something as if it already happened will have you believing it and acting on that belief. And if it’s not already true, it will be soon enough!

I find it astounding that the mere uttering of certain words and phrases can change our lives. But it can and it does. The only real hurdle to having the power of positive words work for you is committing to practicing it. It’s the same as keeping in physical shape by exercising. You have to keep doing it your whole life if you want to stay in shape and reap the benefits. This is a lesson I’m relearning now. I certainly hope I don’t forget this great lesson and keep feeding my subconscious lots of positive words for every part of my life.

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