Archives for February 2017

You have passion. You have talent. But do you have passion for the thing you are talented at? If the answer is yes, I can almost guarantee that you will live a life filled with enormous success and happiness.

Unfortunately, for the vast majority of people, their passion and their talent are divorced from one another. Too many people have a passion for something they are not very good at and too many have innate talents at doing things they have zero passion for. And that’s too bad.

Yes you can become rich and successful if you spend your entire life honing your talents. And yes you can become happy if you spend your entire life engaged in activities you are passionate about.

But in order to be successful and happy, you need both. When you marry your passion with your talent, work becomes play. At the intersection of passion and talent is success and happiness.

When I decided to write my first book Rich Habits I literally had only one to two hours every morning available to me. I was running a CPA firm and had just started my financial planning practice. Plus I had three youngish kids.

One of the many things I uncovered in my Rich Habits research on self-made millionaires was that 65% had started their successful businesses on the side, while still working full-time. I decided to take a page out of their book when I wrote Rich Habits.

The only available time, for me, was in the early mornings, including Saturdays and Sundays. So, every single day for six months I got up between 4-5 am and wrote for one to two hours, did 30 minutes on my StairMaster and then headed off to work. Rich Habits would go on to become a #1 Amazon Bestseller and provided me with the morning routine template I would use for all of my subequent books. As it turns out, I’m not the only entrepreneur who built their business on a part-time basis. Many very well-known millionaires squeezed in their passion in the early morning hours:

Brian Koppelman

Koppelman is a screenwriter, novelist, director and producer. He is the co-creator and co-producer of the huge hit Billions. He also was the producer for the Illusionist, one of my favorite movies, and the co-writer of Rounders and Ocean’s Thirteen. Koppelman co-wrote Rounders with a bartender friend of his in the early mornings. He and his friend spent two hours every morning writing that screenplay before they both headed off to butter their bread.

Khaled Hosseini

Hosseini wrote The Kite Runner in the early mornings before he went off to his full-time job as a doctor. His book was so successful, Hosseini was able to retire from medicine to write full-time.

John Grisham

Grisham, author of numerous blockbuster books, wrote The Firm and A Time to Kill, in the early mornings before heading off to work as an attorney. The Firm initially failed as a book. Grisham stored over a thousand copies of The Firm in the trunk of his car. he eventually threw them into a dumpster. His agent suggested he write another book. So, while still working full-time as an attorney, Grisham wrote A Time to Kill. Instead of pitching the manuscript to traditional publishers, the agent sent it off to someone he knew in Hollywood. They loved the story and decided to turn it into a movie. The Hollywood executives asked the agent if Grisham had any other books. The agent sent them The Firm. When word got out that Tom Cruise signed on to the movie, The Firm quickly sold millions of copies.

Joy Gendusa

Gendusa, CEO and founder of Postcard Mania, started her business on the side, while working full-time. Postcard Mania now employs more than 200 employees and brings in more than $40 million a year in revenue

Wally Amos

You’ve probably had a Famous Amos chocolate chip cookie at some point in your life. Amos is the founder of those Famous Amos cookies. It started out as a hobby. Amos was a full-time talent agent for the William Morris Agency. In 1967, Amos left William Morris and moved to Los Angeles, where he struggled to set up his own personal management company. Burdened with the debt of his failing business, Amos began to take comfort in baking chocolate chip cookies. Using a modified recipe of his Aunt Della, he opened his first Famous Amos cookie store on Sunset Boulevard in Los Angeles in 1975. Within months, Amos had opened two more West Coast franchises, and the New York-based Bloomingdale’s department store began selling the his Famous Amos chocolate chip cookies, turning him into a household name.

There’s no set formula for becoming successful. Every self-made millionaire is different. But I can tell you from my research that success leaves clues. One of the clues I found was consistency. All self-made millionaires go at it every day. They are consistent and persistent. Even just one to two hours a day can turn your dream into a successful business if you develop a daily routine and stick to that routine, day in and day out.

There are two you’s. There’s the Today You and there’s the Tomorrow You. The Today You is your enemy. The Tomorrow You is your greatest ally.

Today You

• The Today You requires immediate gratification
• The Today You is focused on the here and now
• The Today You seeks pleasure
• The Today You takes shortcuts, such as gambling, to get what they want
• The Today You wants money and things now. They use credit cards and debt
• The Today You prefers relaxation over exertion
• The Today You likes to party
• The Today You wants to sleep in
• The Today You does not want to exercise
• The Today You does not want to eat healthy
• The Today You does not want to read to learn
• The Today You does not want to work long hours
• The Today You likes to spend money now
• The Today You has no dreams or goals
• The Today You has bad habits

Tomorrow You

• The Tomorrow You requires delayed gratification
• The Tomorrow You is focused on the future
• The Tomorrow You forgoes pleasure
• The Tomorrow You invests in themselves today for future rewards
• The Tomorrow You avoids going into debt
• The Tomorrow You eats right every day
• The Tomorrow You exercises every day
• The Tomorrow You works long hours in the pursuit of their dreams and goals
• The Tomorrow You has good habits

There is a war raging inside each one of us between the Today You and the Tomorrow You. You get to decide who wins that war. For most, the Today You wins most of the time. But for a few, the Tomorrow You wins most of the time.

The Today you will make your poor, unhealthy, unhappy and unfulfilled. The Tomorrow You will make you rich, healthy, happy and fulfilled.

In November 2016, the journal BMC Public Heath, published a study conducted in Finland over an eleven year period.  The study included 2,267 men and women. 121 of those men and women, who were identified as more pessimistic than the rest of the group, had died of coronary heart disease during the study’s eleven-year period.

The study concluded that pessimists were less inclined to healthy lifestyles and that optimists were more inclined towards healthier lifestyles. The study also found that pessimism impairs your immune system, while optimism, boosts your immune system.

So, in an effort to extend your life, I’d like to share some strategies to help boost optimism:

• Every day express gratitude for three things that went right yesterday. Gratitude is the gateway to optimism, so expressing gratitude every day acts like a force field, pushing pessimism to the side.
• Volunteer for some noble cause a few hours every week. I have a treasure trove of studies that indicate volunteering fosters a positive mental outlook by releasing oxytocin, a feel good hormone.
• Eat more vegetables. We have two brains – the one in our head and our Enteric Nervous System (ENS). The ENS is a complex system of about 100 million nerves found in the lining of the gut (small and large intestines). Inside this system are trillions of bacteria and other microorganisms. By eating more vegetables (and also berries, nuts, seeds, olive oil, beans, cauliflower and yogurt), you are feeding your gut with good bacteria. There are many Gut-Brain studies which show that healthy eating reduces the effects of stress, depression and pessimism by increasing the number of good bacteria inside the gut.
• Exercise aerobically, 20 – 30 minutes every day. Aerobic exercise increases the release of endorphins, another feel good hormone. Aerobic exercise also reduces stress. Stress is the gateway to negativity and pessimism.
• Stop Multitasking. Multitasking taxes the brain. According to a University London study, multitasking impairs brain function by sapping the brain of energy (glucose) and this has a particularly negative effect on the emotional center of the brain (amygdala).
• Express love and compassion. This results in the release of oxytocin, a feel good hormone.

Michael Jordan is a famed basketball legend. To this day he is considered the common standard of comparison used by basketball pundits around the world. His name has entered the lexicon of everyday language: “He or she is the Michael Jordan of neurosurgery,” or ” he or she is the Michael Jordan of accountants,” or “he or she is the Michael Jordan of teachers.”

As a freshman at Laney High School, Michael Jordan was cut from their High School basketball team. For most, that would have been the end of the story. But for Michael Jordan, being cut from the team only spurred him on to become a better basketball player. He used that failure, being cut from the team, as a motivator, not as a deterrent.

The vast majority, when they fail at something, put their tail between their legs and move on to something else. Great achievers, however, use failure as a motivator. Failure inspires and motivates high achievers to improve and better themselves.

In order to achieve at the highest levels you must get comfortable with being uncomfortable. Failure and mistakes are very uncomfortable experiences. Those who excel in life are able to channel the negative emotions they experience in defeat as a catalyst to spur them on. Instead of accepting defeat, high achievers double down and work harder to prove to the world they are not failures. They use revenge to prove those who rejected them wrong. Revenge can be a great motivator.

“I was an overnight success all right, but 30 years is a long, long night” – Ray Kroc

One of the self-made millionaires in my study owned and operated a number of retail clothing and faux jewelry stores.  There were parts of her business she loved, such as creating new product lines or talking to customers. But that only accounted for about 20% of her time. The other 80% was grinding it out stuff – managing retail staff, accounting for income and expenses, or paying bills. She hated the grind part of her business.

In order to get her through her day, she told me that she had a mantra she kept repeating to herself for fifteen years, while she was growing her business. “I’m just one break away.”

She had a dream that one day she would catch a big break which would change her life. What that one big break was, she didn’t know. She said she just had this deep down gut feeling that if she kept working hard and was smart about running her business, one day she would get lucky and catch a big break.

Eventually that big break came along when a large competitor decided to buy her business. It was a life-changing event. Her ship did come in, after being out to sea for fifteen years.

I heard many similar stories from the self-made millionaires I interviewed. Sixty-one percent were business owners. All grinding it out day after day, year after year. All hoping that one day their hard work, financial investment and persistence would pay off with some big break. They were part of my study because their big break did come along. They kept grinding it out until they got lucky.

As an author of five books now, I can tell you I know exactly how those self-made millionaires felt. Eighty percent of the author business is a grind. Every day I have to do certain things I don’t necessarily like, such as pitching the media or editing a book or an article. I don’t like pitching the media because 99.99999999998% of the time they ignore me. And I hate editing my own writing because, well, it’s grunt work. I have to look for typos, figure out if a comma is needed or analyze my sentence structure so that I don’t come off sounding like Rocky Balboa. I just hate the grind, the 80% of the business.

But, I love that 20% – the writing. So, like the self-made millionaires in my study, I grind it out every day in order to do what I love. And like that retail self-millionaire who got lucky, I keep telling myself every day, “I’m just one break away.”