The Power of Unchangeable Deadlines

Here I am sitting in the Los Angeles on the way to Kauai. I know poor us, right? But what a day! Got up early to bury a rattle snake, fix a broken sprinkler pipe, negotiate the multi-million dollar sale of a property that I’ve been wanting to sell off, pick up the paperwork, write emails to the office and others, do a last check on the swimming pool motor, double check to make sure we have enough gas to make it to the airport, get packed for our trip, etcetera, etcetera, etcetera.  It was quite a morning but so much better than the day before with all the stress and worry about the tight schedule we had today.  But why had I been so stressed?

Well, it’s simple. Before we have a big day planned, whether it’s a trip, a big event or a similar massive change from what we usually do, most of us are filled with stress over the great unknown outcome of all we have to do. When we get going on all the tasks that need to be done, then the stress starts to go away because we are so involved with the ‘doing’.  What’s so amazing to me is that most of us humans can and do get so focused and determined to get these time sensitive and necessary jobs done that we can and do manage to get tons more done than on a normal day. We can amaze ourselves at the efficiency and effectiveness with which we get things done.

I am pretty sure you have, in the past, experienced the same thing as I did these last two days.  I’m so impressed how efficient I can become if I have absolute deadlines that I have to meet. You know, like an airline departure time that won’t wait for me.

I guess we can say that one of the great powers of goal setting is in its time limits. In this case, it’s time limits that are set by others, time frames that can’t and won’t be changed for us.  And that’s probably a good thing.  The problem we have when we set goals for ourselves, whether they are physical, family, health or wealth goals, is that we can cop out and change those goals along the way.  If we can somehow set those goals in real, immovable ways, kind of like an airline flight

Think about that and see if you can come up with a plan or a method that might create for you a deadline that you won’t think about changing or that really is absolutely unchangeable so you can’t even begin to think about not hitting your goal! What would do that for you?

 

The Magic of Nature and the Human Connection

I’ve been hiking up Millcreek Canyon ever since it turned so very hot here in Salt Lake City. It’s been 100 plus degrees on many days.  And let me tell you, the Millcreek Canyon hike is something to behold and as a big plus the trail I take has a wonderful canopy of trees blocking the sun for probably 80% of the hike. There is something magical about the great outdoors and for me it’s even more magical in the mountains or on the beach.  I don’t know what it is but I’m sure scientist have an explanation for what nature does to our brains that lifts and jump starts our spirits to a much higher level.  If you don’t believe me, the next time you are a bit down in the dumps, just take a walk outside, preferably in the mountains, on the beach, or at least out in the country side, and see if you don’t find your mood changed.

For me there is an extra boost to my mind, mood and spirit when I hike trails where others are hiking.  As I’ve talked about before, I love to drop $2 dollar bills on the trail when I see a father or mother hiking with small children–ideally in that 6 to 10 age range.  If you give a 3 year old a $2 dollar bill they don’t know what it is and usually drop it in a short time. They need to be old enough to understand what they’ve found.

My normal routine is to say to the parents as they are approaching, “Hey, have you taught your kids to pick up paper or litter when they see it on the ground?” and then I drop the money and keep walking and I hear the kids shouting out in delight and almost always the kids also scream out a big “Thank you!” Wow. Does that ever warm my heart! The kids love it but I think I love it more and get more out of it than they do.

I also love to meet people when I am out on my usual 2 or 3 hour hikes and that also lifts my spirits.  I have some standard lines that I use over and over because they usually work to start a short conversation or a quick exchange of pleasantries.  For instance, as I am approaching couples, whether young or old, with the guy in front and the gal behind, I say to the guy as I pass, “Hey, don’t look now but there is a beautiful lady following you.” That always brings big smiles and an exchange of upbeat comments.  They love it and so do I.

With these few words and small gestures, spirits are lifted. Plus it sometimes leads both parties to stop and have a short upbeat chat.  Yesterday I used one of my other standard lines when I’m on a particularly steep part of the hike and passing people.  I simply ask “Hey, how much further to the 7-11?” It usually brings a big laugh but yesterday it also lead to a conversation and a big coincidence.

After saying this to two ladies who laughed at my comment, I noted the younger woman had a French accent so I asked her where she was from. After telling me she lived a couple hundred kilometers north of Paris, I told her we love Paris and France and have a very, very good friend from Normandy by the name of Franchoise and she is married to the skiing legend Stein Eriksen. When I mentioned this, the older lady said “Hey, I know who you are, Mark Haroldsen, the author. And I know Franchoise. Her son plays tennis with my son.” So again that brief encounter lifted our spirits with a nice conversation and a fun coincidence and we all walked away with smiles on our faces.

The bottom line here is that I think all of us should get out in nature more and go out of our way to meet other human beings.  It’s a win-win and as I preach this to you, believe me, I am preaching it to myself to do more of that!

 

 

 

What We Can Discover in Other People’s Worlds

I don’t know about you but I absolutely love to travel, especially to foreign countries and places I’ve never ventured into before. It excites my mind and does good things for me physically as well. Psychologists have told us for years that the human brain craves and thrives on novelty and also that a brain that gets excited can many times coax or persuade the body to maintain or even create better health. It sure seems to do that for me!

My wife and I just got back yesterday from Europe. Even though I have visited the Netherlands a few times before this last trip, this visit still stimulated my mind and body quite a bit. I am sure part of that was that I’d never taken the high speed train from Paris to Amsterdam and viewed that marvelous scenery. We also stayed in an old and quaint yet very different hotel right on one of Amsterdam’s famous canals.

A few days later my wife and I again took the train but to a city I’d never visited before. Just outside the city of ‘s-Hertogenbosch (commonly known as Den Bosch) we were privileged to watch from our nice fourth row seats a great tennis tournament played on grass as a warm up tournament for the renowned Wimbledon tournament. Interacting and getting to know a few of the wonderfully friendly Dutch people was tremendously fun as well as interesting and mind expanding. I even learned that the Dutch are, on average, the tallest people on the planet.

I’ve thought many times how different the world would probably be if virtually everyone could travel and visit dozens of different countries and cultures. I can’t help but believe that if this were to happen and we all took the time to really study and get to know and understand other people, we would grow to be so much more accepting and sympathetic. It would, no doubt, greatly diminish and maybe even halt the huge conflicts and wars of the world.

Just think about how you try to help one of your kids or friends that are having problems. Most of us try to understand the causes of those problems and the more we discover, the sympathetic we are and the more we can help out. Getting to know and understand other cultures makes it more likely that we will be able to accept, and when needed, help these others people that previously we may have thought were rather strange. Next time you travel to a new place you might want to keep that in mind and see what you might discover.

 

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!

 

The Powers of Two

So how do you make your world bigger and really live ‘large’? Probably the very biggest key to living large is through other people. Unfortunately there is a big misconception when it comes to seeing other people that seem to be living very large and have achieved super success. When we see someone who has come up with a great new invention, a super creative piece of artwork or, for that matter, a new and very successful business, most people think it came from a single person’s mind who has been working alone and has had a mental breakthrough. I certainly used to believe and think that, but if you and I take a closer look, we’ll see that it just ain’t so.

Recently I heard Joshua Shenk on NPR radio talking about some very famous people and world changing technological breakthroughs along with great works of art all of which came not from one brilliant person working alone but from 2 or more people joining their brains and forces to come up with heretofore unheard of successes. Shenk has written a book called Powers of Two and what a great book it is! He talks about great people like Paul McCartney, Steve Jobs, George Lucas and Vincent Van Gogh along with a number of others. It turns out that the key to their super success was hooking up with another person and the power of what those 2 brains could come up with equaled genius and huge breakthroughs.

Those breakthroughs Joshua talks about may never have happened if those people had not met the right person at the right time. For Paul McCartney the breakthrough came when he met and worked with John Lennon which later spawned the Beatles. For Steve Jobs it was hooking up with Steve Wozniak when one was a teenager and the other was only 20 years old. And for filmmaker George Lucas, it was his wife Marcia Lucas who was his secret weapon. Lastly, there’s a very good chance that you and I would probably never have known the name Vincent Van Gogh if it were not for a guy named Theo, Vincent’s brother.

The author goes on to make an undeniable case that most great and important breakthroughs that we think came from one genius working alone came from the ‘Powers of Two’. Later Joshua Shenk talks about how critical it is for you and I to go out and find our “tribe” and to hook up with others that we truly connect with. Sometimes it’s people like ourselves and sometimes people that are very different from us but they hit certain of our hot buttons that lift us to a much higher level and push us to fulfill our great potential. Next week I’ll talk about ways to find our “tribe”, those people that we really connect with and where to go to hook up with those than can help us create and benefit from the ‘Powers of Two’.

 

How to Live to be 142!

You no doubt have heard the rumor that all of us humans will die someday. Of course, I don’t believe every rumor I hear and this one sucks. I just don’t want to believe it! So maybe I’ll call for a huge boycott. You know, get a bunch of us older people together with big signs saying “We are boycotting death!” or “We refuse to die!” or “Death sucks and we won’t participate!” Well, it’s a nice thought but it probably won’t work. Oh yes, if we did it in front of a TV station they might put us on the news so everyone could get a big laugh out of it, but I don’t think that will help us avoid death or even prolong our lives by much.

However, there are things we can do to postpone the inevitable and live longer, stronger and in great health. In fact, there are some researchers that are “inching toward the seemingly impossible: a cure for aging,” according to the February 23, 2015 Time Magazine article. Maybe you saw that issue. On the cover was a picture of a cute baby with the headline “This Baby could Live to be 142 Years Old”. That headline certainly grabbed my attention and yes, I read every word of the several stories covering what the researchers have discovered and what we can do right now to postpone our own demise.

The main story was about “Mouse UT2598″ and the discovery of a compound called Rapamycin which seems to dramatically slow aging, at least in certain cells. If this compound works for humans it could increase lifespan to around 142 years. The research going on at the Jackson Laboratory and the University of Texas Health Science Center in San Antonio, is in its early stages and researchers don’t recommend that humans start popping Rapamycin pills just yet says David Harrison because there are some down sides they have discovered at this point in their research. But the good news for me at age 71 is that they have seen that, “Rapamycin is also neat because it works even when you start quite late in life”.

So if this compound isn’t for humans just yet what can we do about it now? The obvious answer, at least to me, is to do everything in my power to stay healthy, in hopes that science figures out how humans can safely take Rapamycin. And the most effective and proven ways to do that is by eating the best foods which, according to the researchers in the Time magazine article include fish, fruits, veggies and extra virgin olive oil as well as calorie restriction, periodic fasting and consistent exercise with maybe a bit of yoga and meditation.

Do all that and you will have a significantly better chance to live longer and maybe hang in there until they perfect Rapamycin for humans. If doing all those things that you can do and should do sounds like a tough challenge, then listen to the words of William James. What he said many years ago has helped me to better my life when I could see that I needed to make changes and knew that it was going to be a big challenge. “If you change your mind, you can change your life”. I have that burned into my brain and hope you do the same.

 

 

 

Sweet Sweat Equity

When I first learned, from my mentor and friend Larry Rosenberg, how I could actually make a 50%, 60%, 70% and even 100% return on my money, I was blown away because I knew exactly what those kind of returns could do to a small amount of money over time. And believe me back then, a small amount of money was all I had.

I remember vividly the first dirt bag property I bought.  It was a little house that was ugly on the outside and a mess on the inside. But this little ugly and messy house didn’t really need anything more than a major clean up, new carpet and a fresh coat of paint inside and out. The problem was I used almost all of my cash for the down payment.  So, I knew I couldn’t afford what contractors wanted to charge for the work and the materials that were needed to turn this dirt bag property into a beautiful cottage.

So what did that leave me? Sure, I probably could have borrowed enough to cover the contractor’s bids from relatives, friends or a bank but that would cut into my overall profits on the deal. So what did I do?  I just rolled up my sleeves and went to work.  Yes, it was some dirty, hard work but wow did it ever pay off!

I’m not a professional painter and I really didn’t have experience laying carpet but I quickly figured it out.  I can’t say that it was fun but when the project was done and I looked at that dolled up house it gave me quite a bit of satisfaction and a huge a sense of accomplishment.  But I also must say that my satisfaction soared to new heights when I sold the doll house for a big fat return on my investment and that, my friends, is what your own sweat efforts, or ‘sweat equity’, is all about. Wow. Can it ever pay some very handsome returns! And don’t ever forget how those returns of 50, 60 and even 100% can turn a small amount of money into millions over time.

I will admit that a bit later in my investing career, as things were speeding up, I finally got to the point when I figured that my time spent doing all that physical work was robbing me of time that could be much better spent with much larger rewards.  What I mean is that I realized at that point I could make more money by spending more time finding good deals and getting others to do the physical work, than doing the work myself. I could put in more time to make more offers, negotiate more deals and do the paper work needed to figure out what deals to buy and how to finance them. I traded sweat effort for brain effort.

This mental part really is also sweat equity. It’s actually the brain sweat that will give you the biggest returns on your money.  Both physical and mental sweat equity are critical and necessary and you can do both. You need to get to the right point in your growth so you can delegate the physical jobs to speed up your efforts and really grow those returns!

 

 

 

 

 

The Discipline Hurdle

If you truly want to be wealthy then it’s virtually a must for us average humans to do it through wise investing. But you might say, “Hey, what about the person who doesn’t have any money to invest, even in the smallest property?”  So the question becomes, how can you begin without a dime to your name?  Well, you build a nest egg. Of course, that begs the question, how do you get that beginning nest egg to start your investment program?

Most of us know that the traditional way to build a nest egg is through savings.  For many people that’s a big fat “ouch!” When you take a close look at the average American family, you see that the rate of savings has been in a steady downtrend the last few years.  When someone is asked why they don’t have any savings they usually respond with something like “I can’t afford to put any money aside. I barely break even. By the end of the month, nothing is left over.”

The people that say this are usually the same ones that, even after they get a raise, nothing changes. They are forever stuck at breaking even at the end of the month or, worse, going into debt.

So what’s the real problem here?  In a word it’s usually discipline, or more accurately, the lack of discipline.  When you are saying to yourself, “I just had to buy that new coat (or dress, suit, latest and greatest cell phone, computer, new car, etc.)”, or “We’ve been scrimping so long we deserve to treat ourselves to a very nice night out on the town or a vacation,” you are also saying that you’ll never be wealthy and are likely to be a ‘wage slave’ your entire life.

In order to be able to start an investment program, you must be tough on yourself and fully realize there is a huge difference in what you ‘need’ verses what you ‘want’. Once you have arrived at the point of understanding that, then you may well be on your way to great riches and maybe even wealth beyond your wildest dreams. That is what happened to me.  Unfortunately I can’t remember who or what book taught me the big difference between need and want, but once I learned that lesson and applied the needed discipline, I was able to save thousands of dollars in one year and that launched my investment program.

Of course, once you’ve built up that “nest egg” you must be wise and put it to work with great care.  When I began my investments, I was in a big hurry so I used a lot of OPM (Other People’s Money) as well as sweat equity which propelled my return on investment by leaps and bounds. I’ll talk more about just what worked for me in next week’s blog but in the meantime, consider the fact that your biggest hurdle to the wealth and financial security you are craving is one less vacation a year, one less shopping spree a month, one less night eating out each week and one less fancy coffee each day. When you think about it, that really isn’t too much to ask of yourself. Not for the chance to make a fortune.

After 37 years the same FINANCIAL FORMULA STILL WORKS

I was going through a bunch of old documents, notes, and papers the other day and came across the very first article ever written about me in the local newspaper.  The headline read “So Here’s How to Go About Making that First Million”. That was in the Salt Lake Tribune clear back on January 18, 1978

They quoted me as saying “…the best way to get rich with someone else’s money is through loans–mortgage and real estate loans.”

Now we fast forward 37 years and guess what?, That old method of getting rich, for most people, is still the best and most reliable way to make your first or second or fifth million. I did however get a big kick out of reading my example and some of the numbers of how you make a 100% return on a simple investment, such as a small house.  It was the small numbers that made me smile.  I had been quoted as saying:

“If you have $5,000 to put down on a $50,000 house and you borrow the other $45,000 to purchase the house, you can compound your investment by 100% if that house increases in value by $5,000 over one year”.

Most casual readers would quickly say or think, “Wait a minute, where can you find a house that you can buy for 50k?  They don’t exist anymore.” If you say that, of course you are right about finding a 50k house but that doesn’t mean the same formula used back then won’t work today.

That financial formula for great wealth is still the same today, but you do need to add something–simply a zero to each of the dollar numbers.  It’s the ratios that give you the 100% return on your money.  You are right if you are thinking that 10% increase in value won’t just happen by itself though. That is unless you are really lucky and we have 10% inflation in one year. But don’t count on that. However, you might be able to buy a house at a real bargain price then make cosmetic improvements which costs money and or your time and efforts but that may well increase the value by 10%.  Of course with the additional money you put to fix it, it may reduce your overall return to 50% or 75%.  But still, those kinds of returns will almost certainly make you a million or multi-millions over time.

Go ahead and google “compound table calculator” and see how quickly 50% or 75% returns increases $5,000 dollars into a million dollars! You may be shocked; especially what it turns into in 15 or 20 years.

 

 

 

 

The One ‘Dead’ Thing That Makes You LIVE More LIFE!

Most of us when we hear the word “dead” we automatically think it’s something real bad, and many if not most of the time it is just that. But there is one use of the word “dead” when applied to your life that can and does add much more ‘life to living’; that is when it’s linked with the word ‘line’, as in the word ‘deadline’.

The origin of the word deadline is very interesting. It came about during the civil war when prisoners were surrounded by barriers or sometimes just simple lines drawn in the dirt. If a prisoner crossed over these, the guards we under orders to shoot them dead! These boundaries were called deadlines.

Now deadlines are used to make the world a more organized and efficient place. They force us to push ourselves a little bit harder to do more and be more. Think about this: If none of us ever died then we probably  would not even have a clue why anyone would want to set time limits or deadlines on themselves, since time would not be much of a consideration or may not even seem to exist, at least when wanting to get things done.  Why? Because we’d never run out of it.

But, of course we all have a limited amount of this thing we call time (remember, the average person lives less than 30,000 days or 720,000 hours) so it’s important to use it wisely and efficiently. Deadlines help us do just that.

Think what the world would be without deadlines. What if we didn’t have deadlines for any or all of the following?

1. Time to start or finish work.
2. Time for school to start or end.
3. Response time on business deals or real estate offers to sell, buy or close a deal.
4. Court deadlines for filing document.
5. Departure or arrival times for airlines, trains or buses.
6. Times or dates by which we want to accomplish goals that we’ve set for ourselves.

So my message for this week, and really a message for a productive and more satisfying life, is this—Always set goals for yourself and be sure to set those deadlines as well so as to push yourself to use your time wisely and more efficiently.   But don’t shoot yourself if you step over the ‘deadline’ a bit. Just re-boot and try again.

 

 

 

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