80% in America Are At or Near Poverty – Here’s Why

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In a 2013 survey conducted by the Associated Press they found that 80% of America’s adults struggled with joblessness, poverty, near-poverty or reliance on welfare for at least parts of their lives. Of that 80%, 49.7 million of Americans are living below the poverty line. According to the Tax Foundation, rich taxpayers in America are defined as making more than $394,000. According to a 2013 study by BMO Private Bank 67% of these high-net-worth Americans were self-made millionaires and only 8 percent inherited their wealth. According to my data, 76% of the wealthy were self-made, which is not far off from the BMO study. So the question is – what are these self-made millionaires doing differently from everyone else? [Read more…]

Bad Luck Follows Poor Choices

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Life rewards you with good luck when you make good choices and punishes you with bad luck when you make bad choices. It is a universal law: bad choices – bad luck, good choices – good luck. Every decision you make builds the foundation of the life you live. If you make prudent choices you build a foundation of success in life. If you make imprudent choices you build a foundation of struggle. You need to make a habit of making good choices.

Everyone makes poor decisions every now and then. The key is to learn from the bad decisions you make and not repeat them. When you continue to repeat making the same bad decision it’s no longer a mistake, it’s a conscious choice, a way of life.

Finding Your Life’s Purpose

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When you find your life’s purpose, that thing you were meant to do, born to do, you know it. There is no doubt. You are 100% certain. If you have any doubts about whether you are pursuing a career that is your life’s purpose, you are not. Doubts are life’s way of informing you that you haven’t found your main purpose in life.

So how do you find your main purpose? Your main purpose is revealed any time you try something new and right out of the gate that new thing comes easy. Being a quick study at something or a natural at something is just life’s way of informing you that you have some unique talent. It then becomes your job to perfect that talent. When you find your unique talent, your main purpose, and pursue it for the rest of your life, the rewards are financial and emotional. You will make more money because you will want to engage in your main purpose 24/7. The more you repetitively practice any skill, the better you get and the more expert you become. The world rewards experts with higher compensation because true expertise is a rare and valuable resource.

We all have innate talents but most of us never unearth our unique talents. We get stuck in jobs that we don’t like, that make us unhappy and our paychecks or net profit reflects that. The key to finding a main purpose, a hidden talent, that can become your life’s profession is to engage in new skill-based activities. Explore various professions full time while you’re young for at most two months until you find something that comes easy. If you’re not young, your time is limited to mornings, nights and weekends. Finding your main purpose on a part-time basis will take you longer. It may take as long as six months for each new activity. If the new activity does not come easy and is actually harder for you than others, move on. You don’t have an innate talent for it. Keep experimenting with new, skill-based activities until you stumble upon something that comes easy to you. When you find your main purpose in life everything about your life will change. Happy hunting.

One Outstanding Leadership Trait Three of America’s Greatest Presidents All Shared

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George Washington

With men and officers being shot down in every direction, George Washington rode forward to take charge of the collapsing lines at the Battle of Monongahela. While riding along the ranks looking to calm his men, Washington had two horses shot out from under him and four bullet holes shot through his coat. [Read more…]

Boredom is Life’s Wake Up Call

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Most average people are bored to death of their job. Boredom for most is a daily occurrence. But boredom is not necessarily a bad thing. It’s your brain’s way of telling you that “we’re not doing what we should be doing in life”. It’s a wake up call that what you’re doing is not challenging enough and not creative enough.

Our brain loves creativity. It craves to solve problems. It’s hard wired for creativity and problem solving. When you are not being creative or solving problems, the brain lets you know by sending you the boredom signal. In two studies on boredom (Creativity Research Center: http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/10400419.2014.901073#preview and Journal of Experimental Social Psychology: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0022103113002205http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0022103113002205) it was determined that being bored is a brain trigger intended to nudge you into doing something creative and challenging.

If you were lucky enough to spend time picking the brains of self-made millionaires, you’d find out that they just don’t get bored. They are constantly moving and thinking and planning and pivoting. They’re too busy overcoming obstacles, too busy coming up with creative solutions and too busy doing what they like or love to do. If you’re bored it’s because you’re not doing what you were intended to do in life, which is to be creative, to pursue challenging goals, to overcome obstacles and to push your individual envelope as much as you can. When you’re not living up to your potential, your brain lets you know – with a yawn.

Are You Raising Your Child to Succeed or Fail in Life? Four Areas Where Parents Are Failing Their Kids

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Charles Koch is a multi-billionaire. Charles and his brother David took over their father’s business and transformed it into the largest privately held company in the world. He was recently asked in a Time Magazine interview about what he attributes his enormous success in life to. Charles responded that if it were not for his parents he would have been a menace and a burden on society. [Read more…]

The Act of Knowledge

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One of the many habits of the self-made millionaires in my study was daily learning. Some of the millionaires learned by doing and others learned by reading and then applied that knowledge to their job, business, or in some side revenue stream they were investing their time and money in and trying to grow. The key here is putting knowledge to use. Knowledge without action is eventually forgotten and of little use. Many of those millionaires engaged in certain extracurricular activities that helped them maintain or grow their knowledge. Some of those activities included: teaching, writing (articles, blogs, books, etc.), speaking engagements, webinars, seminars, podcasts, etc.  Teaching others knowledge that you have helps commit that knowledge to working memory, making you more effective and making access to that knowledge more efficient. When you know more than your competition, you add value to yourself. This translates into more clients, customers, promotions and ultimately more money. Increasing your working knowledge sets you apart from your competition. Clients, customers and employers don’t fire the best. They do everything to retain them.

 

 

Become a Disruptor

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All self-made millionaires have one thing in common – they are all disruptors. They disrupt their industry, disrupt the status quo and disrupt society. They cause individuals to alter their behavior and thinking.

Disruptors change the way each industry does business. They are all around you:

  • Donald Trump is disrupting the political establishment.
  • Elon Musk is disrupting three industries (rocket, automobile and solar energy).
  • Steve Jobs also disrupted three industries (computer, music and the movie industry).
  • Jeff Bezos is another disrupting numerous industries (traditional book publishing industry, book seller industry and the retail industry).

Most self-made millionaire disruptors fly below the radar and you’ve probably never heard of them. But they are out there disrupting their industry locally. I know a few of them intimately thanks to my research on the daily habits of the rich.

If you want to change your life financially, become a disruptor. Disruptors pursue some big dream as their main purpose in life. They change the world we live in for the better and make millions when they succeed. Who and what are you disrupting? Find a worthwhile dream to pursue that will disrupt a local industry and pursue it as your main purpose in life. It takes time to succeed but when you do, it will change your life and those around you for the better.

 

 

The Risk/Optimism Seesaw

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I was putting the final touches on my latest book yesterday. The editor wanted me to include some citations regarding some of the statistics I referenced in the book. One of those statistics related to optimism. The stat was:

70% of the people you run into in life are pessimistic and only 30% are optimistic.

There are a lot of variables that go into the self-made millionaire stew. Optimism is one of the most important variables. So too is a high tolerance for risk, which is only possible when you believe in yourself. The risk I’m talking about is calculated risk. This is very different from reckless risk, the type of risk most failures in life take. Optimism and calculated risk are joined at the hip. Your tolerance for risk will only be as great as your level of optimism. High risk tolerance requires high optimism. Low risk tolerance is caused by low optimism, also known as pessimism. Risk, however, can push you to the limit. When things are not going well, this risk can cause enormous stress. The only thing to make that risk tolerable is optimism. It’s like a seesaw. The level of your optimism balances out the level of calculated risk you are willing to take.

Elon Musk is perhaps the best modern day example of someone who was willing to take enormous calculated risk, putting everything he had on the line. His over the top optimism made that possible. He used it to inspire everyone he came into contact with. The investors, employees, the government, even NASA took risks others would find intolerable. And boy did they all need that over the top optimism. At the end of 2008, Musk and all of his companies were on the verge of outright bankruptcy. His Falcon 1 rocket had failed to reach orbit for the third time in early August, 2008. He had gone through most of his $223 million plus he had gone through most of the hundreds of millions venture capitalists and the government had invested in SpaceX and Tesla. Everything hinged on that fourth flight in September, 28 2008. If it too failed, it was over. Only it didn’t fail. The first privately built rocket made orbit. Musk was able to cobble together enough money to get them through the end of December, 2008. On December 28, 2008 NASA awarded SpaceX with a $1.6 billion contract.

The rest, as they say is history. Today, Musk is estimated to be worth $10 billion. His companies are changing the world. What saved the day for Musk was optimism. He, and the people he surrounded himself with, were infected by his optimism. They were all willing to devote their lives and their money to his cause. Musk made them believe they could change the world. the greater your optimism, the greater your tolerance for risk. Those with the most optimism are willing to take the most risk. High optimism, when combined with a high tolerance for risk, is what turns ordinary people into millionaires and even billionaires.

 

 

The Pursuit of Any Worthy Dream Must Become Your Main Purpose in Life

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Dreams come with baggage. They take time and effort. Sometimes the effort feels like an endless investment. It would be so much easier if there was a light at the end of the tunnel. The light of certainty. Unfortunately, there is no certainty when you are pursuing a dream.

In my research, I found that self-made millionaires were not the brave and confident heroes written about in so many books. They worried about the outcome of all of their efforts and were concerned about all of the money they poured into their dreams. They doubted themselves. But what makes them unique is that, despite so many mistakes, failures and unmet expectations, they kept pursuing their dreams. They just did not quit, despite the anguish.

When they realized success, it was not something that washed over them in one singular event. It was more or less an evolution. Success is only perceived in hindsight. It is typically not something that becomes self evident. There are set backs, which create doubts. Then turning points, followed by major advances which inspire confidence. Then more set backs, and more doubts, then more turning points and then more confidence. Dreams do not come easy. It’s not a linear climb up some ladder. It’s more like climbing monkey bars. Sometimes you feel like you are moving one bar backwards, sometimes you feel you’re moving one bar sideways, other times it feels like you are not moving at all and every now and then you find yourself moving two or three bars upwards.

Because of this inherent uncertainty and the emotional ups and downs, the pursuit of your dream must be for all of the right reasons. Money alone is not a good enough reason. You must see your dream as that thing you will do, irrespective of any financial gain, for the rest of your life. It must become your main purpose in life.