Does Your Team Have the Four Essential Types? by Adam Bryant

Excerpts from an interview with Paul Maritz, president and C.E.O. of the software firm VMware, conducted and condensed by Adam Bryant...

Q. What are some other leadership lessons?

A. One of the things I’ve learned over the years is that there is no such thing as a perfect leader. If you look at successful groups, inevitably there’s an amalgam of personalities that really enable the group to function at a high level.

Q. And what are they?

A. At the risk of oversimplifying, I think that in any great leadership team, you find at least four personalities, and you never find all four of those personalities in a single person.

You need to have somebody who is a strategist or visionary, who sets the goals for where the organization needs to go.

You need to have somebody who is the classic manager — somebody who takes care of the organization, in terms of making sure that everybody knows what they need to do and making sure that tasks are broken up into manageable actions and how they’re going to be measured.

You need a champion for the customer, because you are trying to translate your product into something that customers are going to pay for. So it’s important to have somebody who empathizes and understands how customers will see it. I’ve seen many endeavors fail because people weren’t able to connect the strategy to the way the customers would see the issue.

Then, lastly, you need the enforcer. You need somebody who says: “We’ve stared at this issue long enough. We’re not going to stare at it anymore. We’re going to do something about it. We’re going to make a decision. We’re going to deal with whatever conflict we have.”

You very rarely find more than two of those personalities in one person. I’ve never seen it. And really great teams are where you have a group of people who provide those functions and who respect each other and, equally importantly, both know who they are and who they are not. Often, I’ve seen people get into trouble when they think they’re the strategist and they’re not, or they think they’re the decision maker and they’re not.

You need a degree of humility and self-awareness. Really great teams have team members who know who they are and who they’re not, and they know when to get out of the way and let the other team members make their contribution.

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Zappos CEO Tony Hsieh Happy Making $36,000 A Year Working For Amazon

One of the most striking Internet success stories in recent years is Zappos, the $1+ billion e-commerce business which was bought last year by Amazon.

But, as is often the case, the Zappos empire was not created overnight. Ten years ago, the online retailer known for selling shoes was actually desperate for sales. It wasn’t until a young Tony Hsieh came aboard in 1999 -- as a business consultant and investor -- did that all begin to change.

Hsieh’s unorthodox approach to company culture turned Zappos not only into a very lucrative business, but one beloved by customers and employees alike. He was named CEO in 2000 and attributes Zappos’ success to sticking by the company’s core values, which were designed to make employees happy.

“Our number one priority at Zappos is company culture. Our belief is that if we get the culture right most of the other stuff like delivering great customer service or building a long-term enduring brand for the company will happen naturally on its own,” says Hsieh who is also the author of a new book “Delivering Happiness: A Path to Profits, Passion and Purpose.”

Hsieh, 36, has stayed CEO of Zappos, despite making a salary that one would normally associate with an entry-level customer-service rep--$36,000 a year. Hsieh has been so successful as an entrepreneur that money no longer motivates him. What does, he says, is continuing to develop the company and culture that the Zappos team built over the past decade. And, so far, Amazon has allowed him to do that.

He must be on to something: Fortune magazine named Zappos #15 on its annual ranking of “Best Companies to Work For” at the beginning of the year.

Born for business

Hsieh, a first-generation Taiwanese-American, was only in his mid-20s when he joined the Zappos team. He may have been fresh out of college, but he certainly was no stranger to creating and cultivating multi-million dollar businesses.

From a very young age, he had the entrepreneurial instinct. At just nine years old, he had started his very first business – a worm farm. A few years later came his mail-order make-your-own button company. Then while studying computer science at Harvard he started making his peers what every college student demanded more than anything: pizza.

His first “real” company

Shortly after college in 1996 at the age of 24, Hsieh co-founded LinkExchange a website development business from the comfort of his own basement. Two years later Microsoft paid him $265 million – yes, nine figures – for his creation.

Of course Hsieh needed another challenge and to feed his insatiable entrepreneurial appetite. That challenge would be Zappos. His goal was to make the company – at the time fighting for financial stability - the largest online shoe retailer.

Zappos named him CEO and he did what he set out to do. Hsieh grew the company that had nearly non-existent sales when he started, to over $1 billion in sales today.

His guiding principle: Happiness. When you enjoy what you do and where you work, great things will happen.

“We have 10 core values at Zappos. We try to do is hire people whose personal values match their corporate values,” says Hsieh while also stressing the importance not hiding or holding back who you are outside of the office. “It is about being yourself in the office because we found that when true friendships are formed, that is when creativity really blossoms (in our employees) and great ideas come out, which is what has driven our growth.”

The company will not hire anyone who does fit within their corporate culture.

“One our values is to be humble, and that is the one that trips us up most during the hiring process. There are a lot of smart people out there that are also egotistical and for us it is not a question, we just won’t hire them,” says Hsieh.

In the same vein, the company will fire employees who do not live up to those standards.

Often, when growing companies are acquired by much-larger ones, such cultures are destroyed, as the acquirer seeks to wring out the "synergies" used by financial folks to justify the acquisition.

But that's not so in this case, Hsieh says.

Before Amazon and Zappos agreed to their deal, Amazon signed a document saying it would let Zappos continue to do its own thing. And Hsieh says Amazon has honored that commitment.

Basically, the only thing that has changed, Hsieh says, is that Zappos has swapped its old board of directors for a new one--at Amazon. Zappos still runs its own show, and that has enabled it to maintain the culture that it so carefully cultivated in its years as an independent company.

How To Make $1 Million In Your Small Business by Richard Wilson

There are hundreds of thousands of small business owners within the U.S. and millions around the world; they form a vibrant core to many national economies. However, a large portion of small businesses do not survive. According to the U.S. Small Business Administration, only about 31% of small businesses survive for at least seven years - never mind making it big.

Almost every small business would like to grow its revenues, but most are only working with teams of a few employees. While some marketing and growth tactics that work well for large corporations can be applied to small businesses, many cannot, and growing a new business from scratch is even more unique.

Read on to find out how to grow a small business and bring it to the big leagues.

1. Become a Thought Leader in Your Industry

Start a blog, give speeches, write articles or publish a book on your niche area of business. Become the expert that people seek out when they need a solution. If you market yourself enough you will be receiving warm phone calls from individuals wanting to buy from you instead of potentially cold calling on individuals who have no interest in your business. (For further reading, check out Small Business: It’s All About Relationships.)

This is the least expensive suggestion on how to grow your business - there are many places where you can start a blog for free. Invest one hour a day in learning about your market and writing about what you learn and within one year, you will have potential customers and joint venture partnerships approaching you. This strategy works for all types of niches, including dog training, hedge fund investing, copywriting, fundraising and physical therapy. Every niche has an online audience looking to learn more about the subject. Start feeding them with valuable content and they will start feeding your business with leads and marketing opportunities. This tip is provided first because this alone has helped hundreds of businesses grow to more than $1 million a year in revenue.

2. Create Passive Income Streams

Subscription-based models and membership programs sell a customer once and earn a profit every month as long as you keep those customers happy. An example of this is a website information portal selling a service provider directory listing. The website charges $99 a month and receives that payment every single month of the year as long as the website remains popular and relevant. Passive income models could incorporate a low monthly fee for on-demand customer service or maintenance, subscription access to exclusive coaching or a newsletter with interviews, book reviews and market analysis on your industry.

3. "Up Sell" Your Current Customers.

If you have a customer who loves your product, perhaps he or she would like a premium version of that same product, or a second one for a coworker or a family member. One of the easiest ways to quickly grow your business is to earn additional sales through your current customers.

4. Over-Deliver to Every Customer Whenever Possible

Word of mouth is the most powerful marketing tool that you can employ. Many large corporations spend millions of dollars on marketing only to pay their customer service personnel minimum wage. This is their area of vulnerability - your small business can create more personal relationships and provide better delivery and customer service than most of the large players in the industry.

5. Conduct a Best Practices Analysis

Analyze your top five competitors; everything from their websites, customer service, to product lines and prices. Take notes and write down 10 new ideas you could use from each of these competitors. If you do this once a year, not only will you keep up with your competitors as they innovate and evolve, but you will leapfrog over them as many others will not do this hard work, and the combination of new ideas will lead to new creative solutions for your customers.

6. Stay Focused

Your business is an investment; changing your environment by spending time with other motivated individuals can help you keep focused. Become a student of positive psychology, and clear your office and desk of distractions. If you get up early and start each day by studying your industry, your competitors and your top-level goals, you will work more efficiently and gain an edge on your competition.

7. Sell Your Products and Services Internationally

Choose one to three target markets outside of where you are currently operating and identify would-be competitors there. What do they charge? What products do they offer? Call or email these companies as time permits, and introduce yourself. Tell them you are doing research, as many will be happy to lend some advice or tips. In a worst-case scenario, you will find that there is no way to expand abroad, but you will probably come across another product idea or customer acquisition strategy by completing the research and seeing what the industry is like within other regions of the world.

8. $1 Million Is an Intimidating Number

Work toward $1 million a year in revenue backwards. If you want your business to earn $1 million a year, that means you must make $83,333 a month, or $20,833 a week, or $4,166 per business day. That is a lot of money to earn every business day, but what new products or services could you add now that could possibly earn that much within one to two years? Think in terms of leverage, developing systems and residual passive income streams. Every minute of time you spend should be seen as an investment.

9. Acquire Businesses

Who are your competitors? How are they doing business-wise? Are they about to retire? Most businesses sell for two to five times their annual earnings or profits, and many parties who are interested in selling end up simply closing shop after not finding an interested buyer. Many times, you may be able to pick up a business that, when combined with a business you already own, could pay for itself within 12-18 months. This is one of the most expensive but quickest ways of reaching $1 million a year in sales.

10. Experiment

Many business owners find that it is only through listening to customers and/or trying to offer a dozen business services or products that they finally find one that really resonates with their target market and takes off in terms of sales. Each experiment that you try will teach you something about your business and customers. Many of the largest, most successful companies have market-tested thousands of products to develop their portfolios of one- to two-dozen existing product offerings. Hard work creates luck and if you experiment long enough, you will find something that sticks.

Conclusion

This list is not exhaustive, but it should help create some momentum and spur creative thinking on how to grow your business. While it is true that some of these tips may be applied more readily to some businesses than others, those that appear most foreign to your industry could be most valuable as it is less likely that one of your competitors has used them.

Inspiration Is Not Action by Stuart Tan

In a recent seminar, someone came up to me and told me how inspired she was about the event, and that she was impressed at how she could stay awake compared with other seminars she had attended where other trainers were not as compelling.

You have to realize how awkward it must have been for me. On the one hand, this lady has learnt something, but she hasn’t really learnt much. The only measure for success in her life is that she doesn’t fall asleep in the classroom. While I honestly feel flattered, I think that the trainer has far less bearing on the success of a student.

If you analyze the situation properly, a trainer spends between 2-4 days in an average person’s life in a year. That leaves about 361 days for a person to be totally alone by oneself. That’s time spent at 98.9% away from the trainer. Sure, the trainer may have good qualities you would like to model, but the trainer is never in charge of your everyday living.

After running a training program, I find that the best thing people can do is to keep focusing on their goals and be more aware of their direction in life. This requires not just a seminar, but a range of other things such as:

•Life Builder Groups. To learn more about LBGs, you’ll need to attend our Patterns Of Excellence program, where we show you how the power of teams can make a difference in your everyday life. LBGs are great to build and maintain a culture as an organization. Without a structure, LBGs are likely to fail, relying only on dogma and personality to run the show. It’s important to build a culture of commitment and organize this properly so that it is a culture for life.

•Coaching. Contrary to what a lot of people think, coaching does not help you achieve a goal. You have got to achieve the goal yourself. Coaching is a way to open yourself up to resourcefulness in the achievement of your goals. It is also a way to remain accountable to your results. Probably the hardest question to ask is if you are honest with yourself while undergoing coaching. A lot of the time, ego forms a barrier and a good coach is able to break those down and confront the real issue.

This allows you to focus on what direction you want to take. No matter how inspired you feel after a seminar, you really need to use this to take action on the things you want to achieve.

ACTion Planning

You would agree with me when I say that our emotions drive a lot of our actions. The question is where do those emotions come from? See, if you are motivated, it probably means that you have a significant set of needs and desires. You want to look good? That will drive a set of actions. You got hungry? Same thing.

It’s not really rocket science, but I think action planning requires much more than just setting a goal. It means you need to align your needs and emotions toward the attainment of short-term and long-term goals.

Step #1: Create a vision of the future.

You need to be able to project and see into the future, dreaming up your ideal situation.

Step #2: Identify the reasons why you would like to be able to do this.

The “why” is very important. In most cases, you should ask several “whys” to reach depth of the reason. Let’s say you want to buy a new house. Of course the most simple reason for it is to have a roof over your head. But why do you want that? Maybe a deeper reason is that you want to provide a safe and secure environment for your children and family to grow closer. Now that might be a deep enough reason to drive you.

Step #3: Create Daily Rituals

Did you know that having lots of choices creates a lack of action? That’s the main reason why it is important to cut down everything to one choice if that is a must for you. Instead of taking two or three things at the same time, cut out all bridges that allow you to go elsewhere. Make sure you finish them and complete your cycle and turn it into a ritual every single day. If it’s exercise, do it every day like a ritual, just like breakfast, lunch and dinner (unfortunately some people don’t even do these as a ritual).

Step #4: Make it as natural as you can.

When you do something often and create a habitual cycle, it’s going to make you more focused on what you need to do because you took that for granted. Unfortunately, many people believe in waiting for the feeling to do something. You can’t afford the luxury of that time. You have got to do it as though it were a part and parcel of your everyday life, that if you don’t do it, you will feel extremely uneasy. Make it a “you” thing.

Step #5: Keep track of your successes while propelling yourself to the future.

All successes eventually become a thing of the past. However, you can use this to solidify the belief that you can get things done. Collect your trophies not for display, but for encouragement. If you’ve done it before, you know you can do it again. Then, focus on what you have to do next.

Dreaming Big For God by Yong Yung Shin

Owner of Mount Hermon Christian Books & Gifts, Victoria Violet Yeo’s life is a powerful testimony of God’s faithfulness.

When her husband passed away in 1985, Victoria Violet Yeo was catapulted into the daunting position of family breadwinner, with a baby daughter to support. An opportune job offer at a Christian bookstore, however, led her down a path of blessings—not just for herself but many others.

Spurred to start her own business so that she would have the flexibility to look after her daughter Andrea, Yeo founded Mount Zion Christian Books & Gifts Centre in 1986. It was anything but easy-going, being a highly niche industry which was already populated with big players. After two years, Yeo was ready to throw in the towel.

“I remember crying out to God, ‘Lord, if it is really You who has called me to this bookstore and gift ministry, I need to hear from You’,” she says. She also feared that closing down her business would be a negative testimony to her family members who were unbelievers. The coming Sunday morning at church, the speaker unexpectedly gave an altar call for those facing business problems. Yeo ran forward with tears streaming down her face. On the way home, with her daughter in her arms, she heard a voice saying to her, “Read and meditate on Psalms 1 day and night—from now on I will bless you.’ That word has sustained me till today.”

The next day at work, an American couple Yeo had never met walked into her store and said to her, “Daughter, God has heard you. Meditate on Psalms 1—the Lord is going to bless you.”

True enough, her business prospered. When the shop relocated to Raffles Place, business boomed, expanding to five branches in 15 years.

At that time, Yeo was also actively serving as a leader at a local church and making frequent mission trips to Indonesia to minister to a church called Elim Kairos Church, in the mountainous area of Berstagi. During her trips there, she experienced many demonic attacks while staying at a run-down visitors’ inn. She dreamed about building a proper facility, and in 1998, with the financial abundance she enjoyed from her business, Yeo bought a piece of land and built the Mount Hermon Mission Centre, a 90-minute drive from Medan airport.

Besides accommodating traveling pastors and mission workers, and serving as a rental facility for international seminars and retreats, the center also doubled up as a venue of worship and service for Elim Kairos Church. Through the use of the center, the church was able to grow its membership to 700, and it has since moved into its own building.

But life took a turn in 2001 for Yeo. She decided to sell her Mount Zion business in order to relocate to the USA with her daughter who was pursuing her university degree there.

For the seven years that they were in America, Yeo faced a great number of setbacks: she was cheated of a large sum of money while trying to set up and run another Christian bookstore called Mount Hermon, her daughter was rebelling against her, the expiry of her visa was looming up, and financial pressure was climbing. But God delivered her from trouble after trouble. Through a miraculous chain of events, she was granted the green card (the United States Permanent Resident Card) after just three years of being in the United States (the minimum is five years’ residency). Her daughter returned to her, and even her USD14,000 tuition debt was paid for by a “Good Samaritan” at the 11th hour.

But Yeo says the real turning point came in 2008, when mother and daughter attended an event in which senior pastor Kong Hee was preaching. Moved by the message, they decided that it was time to return to their roots in Singapore.

Yeo made the decision to drive her business Mount Hermon at YMCA Lodge at Fort Canning Road. “Though it is not a prominent location, the Lord has sustained us and saw us through the business, as the YWCA housed many church seminars and retreats.”

She adds, “I really thank Pastor Kong for speaking about the importance of having dreams at the beginning of this year. My dream is to be able to open up more Mount Hermon branches—that would support 30 missionary workers by allowing them to work part-time at the shop and take months off to do mission work overseas.” Currently the business has four mission workers on its staff, and Yeo is opening a second branch at West Coast Plaza.

Yeo’s heart for missions brought her back to Berstagi a few times this year. Just last month, she was asked to speak to a group of kindergarten teachers. As she ended her sharing, she discovered that among her audience was the Berstagi Head of the Ministry of Education. “He said to me afterward, ‘Victoria, thank you for your message. Please come again.’” The next day, she was invited to give an impromptu speech at the SMA Negeri 1 Berastagia, the top Junior High school in the area.

“I quickly got my daughter to send me some of Pastor Kong’s sermons on dreams, and after my 10-minute sharing in front of 800 students, the Principal came up to me and said that he had never seen the students so lively. He said, ‘Please help us raise the standard of our school. You can even paint the school walls whatever color you want.’” It was then that Yeo was reminded of a dream she had three years ago, of the Lord giving her seven schools.

Now, Yeo is hoping to gather aid, resources and manpower to help revamp the school facilities and give its curriculum a boost. “Looking back now, I can see that the Lord intended for Mount Zion to be a source of provision for me and my daughter during trying times, but with Mount Hermon, I dream that God will use it to be a blessing to many nations in time to come.”

Mount Hermon Christian Books & Gifts
6 Fort Canning Road #01-01, YWCA Lodge
Singapore 179494
www.mounthermon.com.sg

5 Secrets of Self-Made Millionaires by Kristyn Kusek Lewis

They’re just like you. But with lots of money.

When you think “millionaire,” what image comes to mind? For many of us, it’s a flashy Wall Street banker type who flies a private jet, collects cars and lives the kind of decadent lifestyle that would make Donald Trump proud.

But many modern millionaires live in middle-class neighborhoods, work full-time and shop in discount stores like the rest of us. What motivates them isn’t material possessions but the choices that money can bring: “For the rich, it’s not about getting more stuff. It’s about having the freedom to make almost any decision you want,” says T. Harv Eker, author of Secrets of the Millionaire Mind. Wealth means you can send your child to any school or quit a job you don’t like.
According to the Spectrem Wealth Study, an annual survey of America’s wealthy, there are more people living the good life than ever before—the number of millionaires nearly doubled in the last decade. And the rich are getting richer. To make it onto the Forbes 400 list of the richest Americans, a mere billionaire no longer makes the cut. This year you needed a net worth of at least $1.3 billion.

If more people are getting richer than ever, why shouldn’t you be one of them? Here, five people who have at least a million dollars in liquid assets share the secrets that helped them get there.

1. Set your sights on where you’re going
Twenty years ago, Jeff Harris hardly seemed on the road to wealth. He was a college dropout who struggled to support his wife, DeAnn, and three kids, working as a grocery store clerk and at a junkyard where he melted scrap metal alongside convicts. “At times we were so broke that we washed our clothes in the bathtub because we couldn’t afford the Laundromat.” Now he’s a 49-year-old investment advisor and multimillionaire in York, South Carolina.

There was one big reason Jeff pulled ahead of the pack: He always knew he’d be rich. The reality is that 80 percent of Americans worth at least $5 million grew up in middle-class or lesser households, just like Jeff.

Wanting to be wealthy is a crucial first step. Says Eker, “The biggest obstacle to wealth is fear. People are afraid to think big, but if you think small, you’ll only achieve small things.”

It all started for Jeff when he met a stockbroker at a Christmas party. “Talking to him, it felt like discovering fire,” he says. “I started reading books about investing during my breaks at the grocery store, and I began putting $25 a month in a mutual fund.” Next he taught a class at a local community college on investing. His students became his first clients, which led to his investment practice. “There were lots of struggles,” says Jeff, “but what got me through it was believing with all my heart that I would succeed.”

2. Educate yourself
When Steve Maxwell graduated from college, he had an engineering degree and a high-tech job—but he couldn’t balance his checkbook. “I took one finance class in college but dropped it to go on a ski trip,” says the 45-year-old father of three, who lives in Windsor, Colorado. “I actually had to go to my bank and ask them to teach me how to read my statement.”

One of the biggest obstacles to making money is not understanding it: Thousands of us avoid investing because we just don’t get it. But to make money, you must be financially literate. “It bothered me that I didn’t understand this stuff,” says Steve, “so I read books and magazines about money management and investing, and I asked every financial whiz I knew to explain things to me.”

He and his wife started applying the lessons: They made a point to live below their means. They never bought on impulse, always negotiated better deals (on their cars, cable bills, furniture) and stayed in their home long after they could afford a more expensive one. They also put 20 percent of their annual salary into investments.

Within ten years, they were millionaires, and people were coming to Steve for advice. “Someone would say, ‘I need to refinance my house—what should I do?’ A lot of times, I wouldn’t know the answer, but I’d go find it and learn something in the process,” he says.

In 2003, Steve quit his job to become part owner of a company that holds personal finance seminars for employees of corporations like Wal-Mart. He also started going to real estate investment seminars, and it’s paid off: He now owns $30 million worth of investment properties, including apartment complexes, a shopping mall and a quarry.

“I was an engineer who never thought this life was possible, but all it truly takes is a little self-education,” says Steve. “You can do anything once you understand the basics.”

3. Passion pays off
In 1995, Jill Blashack Strahan and her husband were barely making ends meet. Like so many of us, Jill was eager to discover her purpose, so she splurged on a session with a life coach. “When I told her my goal was to make $30,000 a year, she said I was setting the bar too low. I needed to focus on my passion, not on the paycheck.”

Jill, who lives with her son in Alexandria, Minnesota, owned a gift basket company and earned just $15,000 a year. She noticed when she let potential buyers taste the food items, the baskets sold like crazy. Jill thought, Why not sell the food directly to customers in a fun setting?

With $6,000 in savings, a bank loan and a friend’s investment, Jill started packaging gourmet foods in a backyard shed and selling them at taste-testing parties. It wasn’t easy. “I remember sitting outside one day, thinking we were three months behind on our house payment, I had two employees I couldn’t pay, and I ought to get a real job. But then I thought, No, this is your dream. Recommit and get to work.”

She stuck with it, even after her husband died three years later. “I live by the law of abundance, meaning that even when there are challenges in life, I look for the win-win,” she says.

The positive attitude worked: Jill’s backyard company, Tastefully Simple, is now a direct-sales business, with $120 million in sales last year. And Jill was named one of the top 25 female business owners in North America by Fast Company magazine.

According to research by Thomas J. Stanley, author of The Millionaire Mind, over 80 percent of millionaires say they never would have been successful if their vocation wasn’t something they cared about.

4. Grow your money
Most of us know the never-ending cycle of living paycheck to paycheck. “The fastest way to get out of that pattern is to make extra money for the specific purpose of reinvesting in yourself,” says Loral Langemeier, author of The Millionaire Maker. In other words, earmark some money for the sole purpose of investing it in a place where it will grow dramatically—like a business or real estate.

There are endless ways to make extra money for investing—you just have to be willing to do the work. “Everyone has a marketable skill,” says Langemeier. “When I started out, I had a tutoring business, seeing clients in the morning before work and on my lunch break.”

A little moonlighting cash really can grow into a million. Twenty-five years ago, Rick Sikorski dreamed of owning a personal training business. “I rented a tiny studio where I charged $15 an hour,” he says. When money started trickling in, he squirreled it away instead of spending it, putting it all back into the business. Rick’s 400-square-foot studio is now Fitness Together, a franchise based in Highlands Ranch, Colorado, with more than 360 locations worldwide. And he’s worth over $40 million.

When extra money rolls in, it’s easy to think, Now I can buy that new TV. But if you want to get rich, you need to pay yourself first, by putting money where it will work hard for you—whether that’s in your retirement fund, a side business or investments like real estate.

5. No guts, no glory
Last summer, Dave Lindahl footed the bill for 18 relatives at a fancy mansion in the Adirondacks. One night, his dad looked out at the scenery and joked, “I can’t believe we used to call you the black sheep!”

At 29, Dave was broke, living in a small apartment near Boston and wondering what to do after ten years in a local rock band. “I looked around and thought, If I don’t do something, I’ll be stuck here forever.”

He started a landscape company, buying his equipment on credit. When business literally froze over that winter, a banker friend asked if he’d like to renovate a foreclosed home. “I’m a terrible carpenter, but I needed the money, so I went to some free seminars at Home Depot and figured it out as I went,” he says.

After a few more renovations, it occurred to him: Why not buy the homes and sell them for profit? He took a risk and bought his first property. Using the proceeds, he bought another, and another. Twelve years later, he owns apartment buildings, worth $143 million, in eight states.

The Biggest Secret? Stop spending.
Every millionaire we spoke to has one thing in common: Not a single one spends needlessly. Real estate investor Dave Lindahl drives a Ford Explorer and says his middle-class neighbors would be shocked to learn how much he’s worth. Fitness mogul Rick Sikorski can’t fathom why anyone would buy bottled water. Steve Maxwell, the finance teacher, looked at a $1.5 million home but decided to buy one for half the price because “a house with double the cost wouldn’t give me double the enjoyment.”

Zig Ziglar Will See You At the Top! by Jeff Widmer

In late 1991 I drove to Philadelphia to see a tag-team match of motivational speakers, Zig Ziglar and Brian Tracy. From a scrappy optimist selling cookware to a household name in sales, Zig was the dean of motivators, in the same league as Dr. Norman Vincent Peale when it came to applying spiritual principles to business. And for people interested in building a positive attitude as well as a career, Tracy wasn’t far behind.

I was excited because I’d landed an interview with both Ziglar and Tracy just before their appearances. At the time I was writing a nationally syndicated column for newspapers owned by the publisher of The Wall Street Journal. I’d listened to recordings Ziglar had made about the sales process and marveled at his mix of confidence, self-deprecation and home-spun truisms. He never lectured; he illustrated. And those stories, drawn from a poor childhood in the South, brought comfort as well as knowledge to the listener.

For those who aren’t immediately familiar with the human potential movement, Ziglar inspires people in and out of sales because he’s living proof that hard work and a tough attitude deliver results. The tenth of twelve children, he was born in Alabama and raised in Mississippi by his mother after his father died. In 1944 Ziglar met his wife, Jean, a woman he affectionately calls The Redhead. In 1970 he went into the business of motivational speaking full-time. Some time after that he founded the training company Ziglar, Inc., near Plano, Texas.

He has written twenty-nine books on personal growth, leadership, sales, faith, family and success, including See You at the Top, Raising Positive Kids in a Negative World and Secrets of Closing the Sale. Ten of those titles have hit the best-seller lists.

Despite my appreciation of his work, I had one small problem with the interview. As a journalist, I felt slightly uncomfortable when Zig would close his programs with “I’ll see you at the top.” It sounded more like a tagline designed by marketers than a sincere wish from a very sincere man. But I felt certain we’d find dozens of positive things to discuss.

As luck would have it, I left the newspaper group before writing the columns on Ziglar and Tracy. Nineteen years later, in reviewing the transcription of the tapes, I found the questions I’d asked weren’t very inspiring but the responses were. Over a bowl of spaghetti and meatballs in his hotel room, Zig talked about everything from U.S. history to the influence of television to Biblical values with a passion that belied his good-old-boy image.

When it was time for him to take the stage, he walked me to the door, shook my hand with a firm grip and delivered a line that sent chills down my spine. Looking me straight in the eyes he said, “And I’ll see you at the top.”

I believe him.

JW: You were born in Alabama in 1926 and raised in Yazoo City. Your mother came out one day after you had sown seeds in the garden and made you do the whole thing over again.

ZZ: Yeah. Hoeing the beans. We had milk cows and a big garden right there in town.

JW: You got a lot of fundamental values from your mom.

ZZ: Very much so.

JW: I imagine it was a pretty Spartan existence.

ZZ: We never thought of ourselves as poor because nobody else had anything either. If you had a roof over your head and something to eat and something to wear, you were rich.

JW: I’m reminded of a continuing theme in your work, that if you help enough people get what they want, you too will get what you want.

ZZ: That comes as a result of the old principles that my mother raised us on, which were Biblical principles—you do what’s right, you tell the truth, you work hard, you treat other people like you want to be treated, your word is your bond. That whole scenario was played many, many times to us when we were children.

JW: You used to sell cookware door to door. That strikes me as being a very difficult way to earn a living, but I sense you learned some valuable lessons, such as how to deal with rejection and adversity.

ZZ: There were two or three things, had I known this from the very beginning, that would have made it a lot easier, so I’m teaching people this now, which makes it easier for them. You have to understand that when people say “no” that’s not a personal rejection, it’s a business refusal. I try to remove the personal feeling from it. I have a close friend who is really my mentor, a brilliant man; his name is Fred Smith, and he’s a retired business executive, served on the board of Mobil Oil. He taught salespeople that when that happens, you treat it as an experiment and not an experience.

JW: You don’t extrapolate and say, “Everybody’s that way.”

ZZ: Oh gracious no. In other words, I don’t feel that person was rude to me but was part of an experiment.

JW: And this is a way of detaching yourself.

ZZ: That’s correct. That’s correct. And your image is intact and you go and make the next call.

JW: Did you ever have a worst day in your life?

ZZ: I’ve gotten into some awfully close scrapes financially and I relate to being extremely broke, wondering how I’m going to pay my rent, how I’m going to make my car payment, how we’re going to eat. When my oldest daughter was born [in 1948], the hospital bill was $64, and we didn’t have $64.

JW: What were you doing at the time?

ZZ: Selling cookware. I had to go out and make two sales to get enough money to get my wife and daughter out of the hospital. That’s pressure selling.

JW: And how about your best day?

ZZ: I still vividly remember the most exciting day as a salesman. I was in the cookware business. We were living in Columbia, South Carolina. We were extremely broke, very much in debt. On this particular night I had eight couples at a demonstration and I sold all eight of them. The total was $1,995 and all of the sales were for cash with the exception of one $200 sale. So when I got home that evening we set it down on the bed and counted that money about seventeen times and stacked it every different way you can stack money and just laughed and cut up and had a good time. We were going to be able to pay some bills that badly needed paying.

JW: You talk about being dirt poor, going meal to meal. What were you saying to yourself during those times?

ZZ: I wasn’t really saying a whole lot to myself. You’ve got to understand that I’d been raised that when you make a commitment and accept a responsibility, you never consider escaping that responsibility. I had a wife, I had a family; they were my responsibility. So everything was geared first to survival and then to providing the family the other things that all families need.

JW: You’ve met the material definition of success. But what’s your personal definition of success?

ZZ: Our company’s mission statement is to be the difference-maker in enough lives to make a positive difference in America and the world. Now that sounds pretty grandiose but we’ve been very fortunate in that we have been able to reach an awful lot of people and we’re developing a couple of significant new programs that we believe will enable us to expedite that.

JW: Can you talk a little about those programs?

ZZ: You can trace every problem in our society, whether it’s crime or drugs or the dissolution of the family or our national debt . . . you can trace all of them directly to a lack of leadership in this country.

JW: Government or business leadership?

ZZ: Everybody in leadership. Leadership in the family, that’s the beginning point. Leadership in the schools, leadership in our government, leadership in the media. I think we have to go back to the ‘70s to move ahead in the ‘90s.

JW: The 1970s?

ZZ: I’m talking about the 1770s. If you get your history book out, you’ll read that three million Americans in 1776 produced George Washington, John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Franklin, Alexander Hamilton, James Monroe, etc., etc., etc. According to the Thomas Jefferson Research Institute, over ninety percent of all the educational thrust then was of a religious or a moral nature. Now those people were not religious. But what they did was they taught Biblical principles. By 1951 the percentage was so small you couldn’t measure it. We’ve taken God completely out of every facet of what we do, and we’re paying for it.
The average 18-year-old American watches 17,000 hours of television. He’s listened to 11,000 hours of music, watched 2,000 hours of MTV and the movies. That’s 30,000 hours. Now in 30,000 hours you can finish kindergarten, grade school, middle school, high school, college, medical school and serve an internship. I’m not opposed to us having some relaxation and entertainment—I’m going to play golf tomorrow. But in 30,000 hours we’ve taught our kids to play not to work. We have to go back to teaching our kids that there is a direct relationship between effort and reward. Society is our major problem but it really goes right back to the home.

JW: I’d like to talk a little about why it is so important that we have goals.

ZZ: Every human being I’ve ever talked to that has set and followed goals tells me that they absolutely work.

JW: When you were selling cookware and things didn’t look as nice as they do now, did you have goals?

ZZ: You betcha. My goal primarily was to make four demonstrations a day. That was one. Another would be to be the number-one salesman in our group that week.

JW: What does goal-setting give a person?

ZZ: It gives them a sense of direction.

JW: I’m looking at the time and know you’re going to have to scoot soon. . . . If you could have dinner with anybody in the world, who would it be?

ZZ: Obviously I’d pick that redheaded wife of mine.

Life is What You Make It: Find Your Own Path to Fulfillment, by Peter Buffett

Warren won't be the only Buffett putting on a show this weekend at the annual Berkshire Hathaway shareholders meeting in Omaha.

Peter, his youngest son and an accomplished musician and devoted campaigner against violence targeting women, will perform “Life Is What You Make It: A Concert and Conversation with Peter Buffett,” tomorrow, Friday April 30 at 7:30 PM CT in the Witherspoon Auditorium of Omaha's Joslyn Art Museum.

Ticket benefit the Kent Bellows Studio and Center for Visual Arts, and are available online.

The title of Peter's performance is also the title of his just-released book, Life is What You Make It: Find Your Own Path to Fulfillment.

With the permission of the publisher, here is an excerpt from the book, in which Peter explains why he has no regrets about his decision years ago to sell inherited Berkshire Hathaway stock that would be worth $72 million today:


One of my father's often-quoted tenets is that a parent, if he has the means to do so, should give his children "enough to do anything, but not enough to do nothing." A head start is fine; a free pass is often a crippling disservice. When I turned 19, I received my inheritance—proceeds from the sale of a farm, which my father converted into Berkshire Hathaway stock. At the time I received them, the shares were worth roughly $90,000. It was understood that I should expect nothing more.

So—what to do with the money? I was a student at Stanford University; there were no strings attached. Fortunately, I'd had the advantage of seeing my older siblings burn through most of their cash; I didn't want to follow down that path. At the other extreme, I might have done absolutely nothing with that stock—just left it in an account and forgotten about it. If I'd picked that option, my shares would now be worth around $72 million. But I didn't make that choice, and I don't regret it for a second. People think I'm either lying or crazy when I say this, but it happens to be true, because I used my nest egg to buy something more valuable than money: I used it to buy time.

My inheritance came to me around the time I was finally committing to the pursuit of a career in music. As a pragmatic Midwesterner with a very limited nest egg, I knew that I would have to find a way to turn my creative impulses into a livelihood. But how did one do that? How would I find an audience, or clients, or a way to sell what I'd written and produced? I didn't have a clue, but it was becoming clear to me that I wasn't going to figure it out by staying in a university.

I decided to leave Stanford and use my inheritance to buy the time it would take to figure out if I could make a go of it in music.

With help from my father, I worked out a budget that would allow me to conserve my capital as long as possible. I moved to San Francisco, where I lived very frugally—small apartment, funky car. My sole extravagance was in expanding my recording equipment. I played the piano, wrote tunes, experimented with electronic sounds. Then I put a classified ad in the San Francisco Chronicle, offering to record all comers in my studio.

And I waited until a very important bit of good luck tracked me down one day in 1981, as I stood at a San Francisco curbside washing my crummy old car. A neighbor with whom I'd had nothing more than a nodding acquaintance happened by and asked what I did for a living. When I told him I was a struggling composer, he suggested I get in touch with his son-in-law, an animator who was always in need of music. I followed up, and the son-in-law did have work for me. He'd been commissioned to create 10-second "intersticials"—quick ads meant to flash a logo and establish a brand ID for a newly conceived cable channel.

I took the work. And the cable channel more than launched; it rocketed to the moon. It was called MTV. Soon many TV outlets wanted to look and sound like MTV. I no longer had to take on unpaid work.

My inheritance was relatively modest, but it was more than most young people receive to get a start in life. Having that money was a privilege, a gift I had not earned. If I'd faced the necessity of making a living from day one, I would not have been able to follow the path I chose.

Would my father have helped me get started if I'd chosen a career on Wall Street? I'm sure he would have. Would he have given me a job at Berkshire Hathaway if I'd asked for one? I suppose so. But in either of those cases, the onus would have been on me to demonstrate that I felt a true vocation for those fields, rather than simply taking the course of least resistance. My father would not have served as an enabler of my taking the easy way out. That would not have been an exercise of privilege, but of diminishment.

The Ant Philosophy by Jim Rohn

Over the years, I’ve been teaching kids about a simple but powerful concept: the Ant Philosophy. I think everybody should study ants. They have an amazing four-part philosophy.

Here is the first part: Ants never quit. That’s a good philosophy. If they’re headed somewhere and you try to stop them, they’ll look for another way. They’ll climb over. They’ll climb under. They’ll climb around. They keep looking for another way. What a neat philosophy—to never quit looking for a way to get where you’re supposed to go.

Second, ants think winter all summer. That’s an important perspective. You can’t be so naive as to think summer will last forever. So ants gather their winter food in the middle of summer.

An ancient story says, “Don’t build your house on the sand in the summer.” Why do we need that advice? Because it is important to think ahead. In the summer, you’ve got to think storm. You’ve got to think rocks as you enjoy the sand and sun.

The third part of the Ant Philosophy is that ants think summer all winter. That is so important. During the winter, ants remind themselves, “This won’t last long; we’ll soon be out of here.” And the first warm day, the ants are out. If it turns cold again, they’ll dive back down, but then they come out the first warm day. They can’t wait to get out.

And here’s the last part of the ant philosophy. How much will an ant gather during the summer to prepare for the winter? All he possibly can. What an incredible philosophy, the “all-you-possibly-can” philosophy.

Wow, what a great philosophy to have—the ant philosophy. Never give up, look ahead, stay positive and do all you can.

We Need Two School Systems by Robert Kiyosaki

Education in America could use a big dose of innovation. How about one public school system for employees, and another for entrepreneurs?

In the summer of 1932, presidential candidate Franklin Delano Roosevelt promised, "I pledge you, I pledge myself, to a new deal for the American people."

Today, it is time not for a "New Deal," but a "New Mission."

America's schools need to take a page from the businesses that have been created by entrepreneurs over the past decades. Henry Ford, Bill Gates, Steve Jobs, Sergey Brin and Larry Page have all given us the road map, but the path toward entrepreneurship is often the road less traveled America's schools.

The U.S. unemployment rate is currently 9.7% in what many call a "jobless recovery." So what should we do? The problem and the solution can be found in America's educational system and its current mantra: "Go to school and get good grades, so you can get a good high-paying job." In simpler terms that means, "Go to school to become a good employee." But there are too many employees, which is why we have an unemployment problem. Today, kids just out of school aren't finding jobs. At the same time, many of their parents are going back to school for retraining. But they're not finding jobs, either.

The idea of a high-paying job for life is truly an American dream — but no longer a reality. With low-priced labor and lower-priced, higher-performance technology, high-paying American jobs will be disappearing at greater speed as they move overseas.

Two-track system

America's education system needs an injection of innovation — which is just what entrepreneurs do. We need two different public school programs: one for employees and one for entrepreneurs.
The way to train entrepreneurs is almost exactly the opposite of the methods used to train employees. Another common thread about Ford, Gates and Jobs is that they all dropped out of school. This is not to say education is not important, but training entrepreneurs is different from training people to be employees. It is much like the difference between traditional education and the military academy model.

Many of the lessons I drew upon to write my book, Rich Dad, come from the U.S. military academy system.

In 1965, I left a sleepy sugar plantation town of Hilo, Hawaii, and journeyed to Kings Point, N.Y., to attend the U.S. Merchant Marine Academy. With four years at the academy and six years as a Marine Corps pilot, including two trips to Vietnam, I gained many of the real-life skills and character traits I count on today as an entrepreneur.

Success in the military is a great bellwether signaling achievement in business. For example, the Israeli Defense Forces are a breeding ground for education and entrepreneurs, where many serve in units specializing in military technology. At the beginning of 2009, the 63 Israeli companies listed on the Nasdaq, many led by former IDF members, outnumbered those of any other foreign country, according to the book Start-up Nation by Dan Senor and Saul Singer. There are simple lessons here for America's gridlocked education system.

If I were running America's schools system, I would create the U.S. Business Academy for Entrepreneurs, modeled after our federal military academies. Admissions would be via congressional appointment along with nominations from community business leaders. The entrance exams would be rigorous; the curriculum would be very different from traditional colleges.

On first day at any of the five federal military academies, each student is required to memorize the academy's mission. In the military, mission is more important than life. After leaving the Marine Corps and starting my own business, I found many executives with MBA degrees focused only on money. Money was their only mission. If they could cut expenses by firing employees, so be it. This was unconscionable at the academy and the Marine Corps. As military officers, our mission was to serve our country and bring our troops home alive. It was drummed into our souls that our mission was more important than our lives.

The mission of the U.S. Academy for Entrepreneurs would be to create sustainable, well-paying jobs for employees by aggressive growth of the business. Too many executives are trained to grow the business through mergers and acquisitions, using massive amounts of debt. Though this might make shareholders happy, in most cases it rips the soul out of the business, loading it with debt while putting the jobs of employees at risk.

Creating real jobs

If corporate executives cannot grow a business organically, they will often repurchase their shares to make it look as if the share price is going up — again to keep shareholders happy and the CEO employed. This is business manipulation, and not the true mission of a sustainable business. The lesson learned is, a loyal employee is not as important as money.

The U.S. Business Academy for Entrepreneurs would have only real entrepreneurs as teachers. I would ask that they work for only $1 a year (think of the great entrepreneurial CEOs who have turned around their businesses doing the same). You see, if they were real entrepreneurs, they would not need the money. They would teach for the same reason the students are there: the mission to create entrepreneurs who create sustainable jobs for the country.

Whether you agree with me or not, I hope it's clear that we need to create more entrepreneurs — since only entrepreneurs can create real jobs.

We need to pledge ourselves to this New Mission: job creation by those who are true job creators

Fix on Your Vision, Then Plot Your Course by Bob Proctor

One summer, I had a wedding to attend in Gatlinburg, Tennessee. I had a few days to spare, and my wife and I enjoy each other’s company, so I suggested to Linda that we drive instead of fly. She readily agreed and started collecting the maps we’d need for the trip. As we plotted the course, we would be driving from Toronto to Detroit, Detroit to Cincinnati, Cincinnati to Lexington, Lexington to Louisville and then into Gatlinburg.

We were plotting the vision, you see, to get us from Point A to Point B.

When we got in the car to begin the trip, which city was I thinking of? Detroit. I had to get to Detroit first; if I missed Detroit, there’d be a good chance we wouldn’t find our way to the wedding at all.

Detroit was first on my list—that was my GOAL. After Detroit was accomplished, Cincinnati became my goal, and so on… all the way to my final destination—Gatlinburg, Tennessee.
I’ve had people come up and tell me that they’ve given up on their big dreams because they never seemed to get closer, no matter what they envisioned or tried. The error they’re making is that they’re looking for their Gatlinburg while they’re still sitting in the driveway in Toronto. In many instances, they’re writing their Gatlinburg goal on a Goal Card I’ve given them, or they’re writing it in a journal somewhere. This is all well and good, but if you’re not also plotting your course to get from where you are to where you want to be… if you’re not figuring out the first goal is Detroit, then following that plotline forward in progressive order, you’re going to end up in Montreal instead.

You’ve GOT to plot the course. Figure out what you need to do between here and there and make those your goals. Once you have the course plotted, though, there are three very distinct rules of thumb I want you to remember.

First, just because you’ve plotted the course doesn’t mean you can put your whole plan on autopilot. When pilots reach cruising altitude they’ll quite often put the plane on autopilot and let years of genius physics and calculus computations steer the plane toward its destination. But even with autopilot, you’ve got to manually get the plane in the air and manually land it. And even with autopilot, you’ve got to keep an eye on your instruments and pay attention to possible curveballs Mother Nature might toss your way.

You cannot rely on autopilot to get you where you want to go. You have to be personally involved and focused on the process.

Second, don’t get so carried away with the details of plotting the action steps within your vision that you don’t ever get out of your driveway. You know what I’m talking about—you see people around you do it all the time. They get so caught up in planning and charting and graphing their future that they never BEGIN it. This is fear in disguise—that’s all it is. Your plan doesn’t have to be perfect. Get the foundational elements in place and get moving.

Third, don’t be so intent on motoring to Detroit that you miss the scenery along the way. You’re on purpose… you’re on your way… enjoy the journey, for heaven’s sake. After all, that’s what you’re doing this for, isn’t it?

Five Rules for Entrepreneurship by Brian Tracy

Entrepreneurship is the art of finding profitable solutions to problems. Every successful entrepreneur or business person has been able to identify a problem and come up with a solution to it before someone else did. Here are the five rules for success.

1. Find a Need and Fill It

Human needs and wants are unlimited. Therefore, the opportunities for entrepreneurship and financial success are unlimited as well. The only constraint on the business opportunities available to you are the limits you place on your own imagination.

2. Find a Problem and Solve It

Wherever there is a widespread and unsolved customer problem, there is an opportunity for you to start and build a successful business. Once upon a time, before photocopies, the only way to type multiple copies of a letter was with carbon paper places between sheets of stationary. But a single mistake would require the typist to go through and erase the mistakes on every single copy. This was enormously clumsy and time consuming. Then a secretary working for small company in Minneapolis began mixing flour with nail varnish in order to white out the mistake she was making in her typing. Soon, people in other offices began asking for it. The demand became so great that she quit her job and began working full-time manufacturing what she called “Liquid Paper.” A few years later, the Gillette Corporation came along and bought her out for $47 million cash.

3. Unlimited Opportunities

There are problems everywhere. Your job is to find one of these problems and solve it better than it has been solved in the past. Find a problem that everyone has and see if you can't come up with a solution for it. Find a way to supply a product or service better, cheaper, faster, or easier. Use your imagination.

4. Focus on the Customer

The key to success in business is to focus on the customer. Become obsessed with your customer. Become fixated on your customer's wants, needs, and desires. Think of your customer all the time. Think of what your customer is willing to pay for. Think about your customer's problems. See yourself as if you were working for your customer.

5. Bootstrap Your Way to Success

Once you have come up with a problem or idea, resolve to invest your time, talent, and energy instead of your money to get started. Most great personal fortunes in the United States were started with an idea and with the sale of personal services. Most great fortunes were started by people with no money, resources, or backing. They were started by individuals who came up with an idea and who then put their whole heart into producing a product or service that someone else would buy.

Action Exercise

Look for business opportunities everywhere, develop, an entrepreneurial mind-set, and continually be open and curious about the needs not satisfied and problems not solved. One idea is all you need to make your first million.

The Paradox of Purpose, by Rebecca Fine

[Note from Rebecca: As we continue our tenth anniversary "flashbacks" to favorite articles from the first ten years of The SOGR NETwork and The Certain Way, our article today comes from 2003 and is based on a talk I gave in Olympia, Washington that year. Because it was a half-hour talk, the article is longer than usual, yet it was one of the most popular ever and I think you'll
find it enjoyable and really USEFUL, too. Let me know!]

Through this wondrous thing called the internet, I get to "talk"
with and work with people all over the planet, and whenever I ask
them what it is they truly desire to be, do, and have -- their
heart's deepest desires -- two things come up frequently:

* Most people say they want to be of service.

* An awful lot of them also say that beyond
some vague notion of that, they just really
don't know what they TRULY, deeply desire.

Well, way back in the 1800s, the American author and humorist
Mark Twain said, "I can show anyone how to get what they want. The
only trouble is I can't find anyone who can tell me what they
want."

I know what he means!

So it's a pretty safe bet that there are quite a few people
reading this right now who are in that camp. Maybe YOU, to a
greater or lesser extent. And if you don't know what it is you
REALLY desire to do, chances are you're not DOING it.

Consider this possibility, please: If you don't know -- can't
articulate clearly and specifically what it is you really want to
be, do, and have; what lights your fire; what it is you'd love to
spend your time doing if you could be doing absolutely ANYTHING --
then it's because you don't really know ...

... who you are.

And if you're not living with real JOY, if you're consistently
unhappy with any part of your life, it's because you are (perhaps
unconsciously) denying the full expression of your true, higher
self.

Because you don't KNOW your true self too well anymore. You've
lost touch, little by little.

Sounds a little grim, doesn't it?

But actually it's wonderful how this works, because when you DO
go within and begin to get reacquainted with your true self,
rediscover what you love to do and begin doing it -- really just
getting out of its way and releasing it -- then you will be
NATURALLY fulfilling your life's purpose, giving the unique gift
you came here to give, and being of service to the entire world.

Now while Mr. Wattles doesn't go into any detail about your
unique life purpose, he does cover the subject in various ways.

* He tells us that we don't have to waste our
time in jobs we don't like, and that, in
fact, we SHOULD not.

* He pounds away at the notion that each of us
has within us the necessary talent to do
whatever it is we would absolutely LOVE to do.

* He also notes that it doesn't take a lot of
energy or will power to keep your mind fixed
on something that really grabs you -- but
that it's VERY difficult to stay focused
positively on what you DON'T really want.

* And he gives a lot of ink to the Law of
Increase which shows us that every being is
either growing or dying, either moving onward
and upward, or falling back and stagnating.

A contemporary of Mr. Wattles, Charles Fillmore -- who wrote the
book, PROSPERITY, and co-founded the Unity movement -- called that
last one the Principle of Infinite Expansion, and he defined it as
"the principle of never-ceasing growth and development of God's
perfect idea that is firmly fixed in all Creation."

Now, whether you use the name "God" or any other to refer to the
Power that creates, regulates, sustains, and animates the universe
doesn't really matter. (Our friend Wally calls it God, the
Universe, the Formless, the Infinite, Supreme Intelligence, and
others.)

What IS important is that this perfect idea is in ALL creation.
Including you and me. God's perfect idea is already IN you, ready
to grow, develop and burst forth.

Your life purpose.

And the way that perfect idea makes itself known is through your
natural gifts and talents, through the things you LOVE to do. I'm
not talking about learned skills, but inborn gifts. (Although you
may get coaching or training to enhance those gifts.)

You know -- the things that you're naturally good at, the
activities that lift you up and carry you along so that it almost
seems effortless at times. The things you'd often rather do than
eat or sleep. The activities that bring you more than just
momentary pleasure -- they fill you with real joy and peace.

And that can be absolutely ANYTHING. It's different for everyone.

But so many of us lose touch with that joy as the years go by. We
"settle down," we fall into a routine, we grow up and give up our
dreams. Sometimes we get talked out of them or shamed out of them
or worse. Sometimes we just decide to be what people call sensible
or practical or responsible. Sometimes we don't even notice
they've slipped away.

We think we have to hold down a particular job even if we hate
it, even if it's killing us. We do it for the money ... the
so-called security ... the prestige ... to "keep up with the
Joneses" ... because we're afraid not to ... because that's "just
the way it is" ... because "a man's gotta do what a man's gotta
do" ... because we don't really think we can do any better ...
endless reasons.

And they all seem so, well, so REASONABLE.

I know a woman named Sue who is a social worker. She's been a
social worker for 12 years and she has hated every minute of it.
But she won't even consider doing anything else even though it's
making her sick -- quite literally. The stress causes her constant
pain and she's undergone several surgeries with long, excruciating
recoveries.

But Sue doesn't see the connection. She just sees that she's got
12 years already invested and, as she puts it, "only eight years
to go" til she gets her pension.

Now I don't know about you, my friend, but to me the word "only"
just doesn't go with "eight years!" Especially in a situation like
that, serving a self-imposed sentence of eight more years at hard,
soul-killing labor.

Sue's absolutely miserable -- and not just the 40 hours a week
she's at work, but all the time she's going to and from work, all
the time she's getting ready for work, all the time she's THINKING
about her work.

And the really sad thing is that by doing what she hates instead
of uncovering what she loves and doing that, she's not just
cheating herself, but cheating everyone involved -- and in fact,
cheating the whole world of her real gifts.

But she's got all her REASONS.

And she believes her reward -- financially and otherwise -- lies
on the other side of those long, stifling eight years.

What do YOU think?

Will Sue's life somehow be miraculously
transformed from misery to lasting joy after
eight more years of same old, same old?

Shakespeare wrote, "Go to your bosom. Knock there and ask your
heart what it doth know." And one of the oldest and most profound
pieces of advice we have from the ancients is the simple phrase,
"Know thyself."

My friend, if you're not joyful in the life you lead NOW, it may
be time to back up and start there: Know thyself. Otherwise, the
gift you came here to give -- to yourself and to all of us -- may
be lost in transit.

Once you go within and rediscover the unique inborn talents and
gifts that fill you with joy and satisfaction when you DO them,
the next step is to say yes to them. That's saying yes to your own
nature and to God's perfect idea within you. Those talents and
gifts are there for a PURPOSE!

And the way you say yes is to DO them, to take action.

There's a balance between doing the inner work -- the
contemplation, prayer, meditation, the listening for that still
small voice, or however you approach it -- and then moving into
action. The early 20th century evangelist Billy Sunday used to
urge his listeners to pray, and then he'd add, "And when you get
off your knees, hustle!"

Our Mr. Wattles insists that "you must not rely upon thought
alone, paying no attention to personal action. That is the rock
upon which many otherwise scientific thinkers meet shipwreck --
the failure to connect thought with personal action."

Taking action is how you GIVE your gift and live a life of true
service to yourself and others. And that doesn't mean that your
life's work has to be something that seems grand and noble. The
real key to being of service and living your purpose is simply to
do what you LOVE to do -- whatever it may be.

Painting, scientific research, cooking,
running a business, teaching, woodworking,
fishing, caring for children or those who are
ill or animals, making music, selling, keeping
an office running smoothly, growing or cooking
or serving food, dancing, programming, writing,
gardening, making things, moving things,
fixing things, -- any- and everything. You
name it!

The possibilities are as infinite as we are.

I want to show you more about how this works and to do that I
need to tell you another story about someone else, this time
someone you've probably heard of.

Buckminster Fuller was one of greatest inventors and thinkers of
the 20th century. Some thought him a genius, some a crackpot, and
some thought he was both (not an unusual way the world describes
people who follow their hearts).

But in his early years he was rather wild and directionless, a
party animal that marriage and family hadn't tamed.

One day he went off to a football game, leaving behind his wife
and six-year-old daughter, Alexandra, who was seriously ill. He
promised Alexandra he'd be back soon and would bring her a
souvenir from the game.

But, as usual, he didn't keep his promise. He didn't come home
for three days.

When he finally arrived, he found that she had taken a turn for
the worse. As he gently gathered her into his arms, Alexandra
smiled up at him and asked, "Daddy, did you bring my prize?" Then,
while his own heart ached with the pain of disappointing her, her
tiny heart stopped.

Fuller went off by himself and, deep in despair, decided to
commit suicide.

But something happened.

He had a realization, heard an inner voice that said, "You have
no right to take your life. It isn't yours to end. It has a
purpose, and so far you have not yet done what you came here to
do."

For Buckminster Fuller, this was the big tap
on the shoulder, the huge wake-up call he
needed. And he finally paid attention and set
about doing what was his to do.

He wanted to know the rules by which God had set up the universe.
Through his explorations, he came to believe that the plan was for
all people to live in abundance and that we all simply needed to
do what we each came here to do for that to become reality.

Over the course of his 88 very full years in search of those
rules, he came up with what he called Generalized Principles, some
of those rules he was seeking to understand. The one I want to
share with you now, as briefly as I can, is called PRECESSION.

Rather than attempting a scientific explanation, let me just give
you a couple of simple examples.

First, if you drop a pebble into a pond, what happens?

The stone sinks -- there's motion in one direction: Down. Then,
ripples spread out on the water's surface at right angles from
that direction. So the one original action causes the MAIN effect
and a SIDE effect.

Here's another example that shows why BOTH effects are so
important.

The honeybee has a job, or you could call it a mission: Gather
nectar to make honey. And the honeybee is more than merely good
(talented) at it. Gathering nectar is its very nature.

So every day the honeybee wakes up and does what comes naturally.
It goes into motion, takes action: Flower. Nectar. Hive. Repeat.

Honey is the MAIN effect of that motion or action in that
direction.

But something else is happening!

As the bee travels from flower to flower, he cross-pollinates the
blossoms.

So while the bee is going in one direction, going about his
business of making honey, another action is happening off at right
angles to that line of motion: cross-pollination.

Now gathering nectar is good, honey is good. We all enjoy it. And
that's the bee's job, or mission.

But without that side effect of cross-pollination none of us
would be here to enjoy the honey because cross-pollination is
essential to supporting life on this planet.

So here we have this little honeybee just going along, doing what
comes naturally, what it was put here to do, and all along ...

... its TRUE PURPOSE is happening as a SIDE EFFECT!

If the honeybee has a purpose, my friend, so do you.

If the bee fulfills its purpose by simply doing what comes
naturally ... well, you see where this is going, don't you?

Fulfilling YOUR life's purpose is a side
effect of pursuing a goal or vision that is
NATURAL to YOU. It may seem paradoxical but
you may never actually know what your true
PURPOSE is.

You just need, first, to know what you love
to do -- what's YOUR nature, your natural
gift -- and then, to DO IT.

Precession requires MOTION, or in our Science of Getting Rich
terms, ACTION. No motion, no side effect. Thought, contemplation,
all the forms of going within are necessary to uncover the vision
of what we desire to be, do, and have -- but so's the "hustle."

The INSPIRED action that springs with enthusiasm from the
contemplation of that "clear mental image."

Otherwise, the true purpose is never fulfilled.

The wonderful thing is that the ACTION -- inspired action -- is
where all the FUN is!

Bucky Fuller believed the primary goal for each of us should not
primarily be going after all those things we mentioned before --
money, approval, security, and so on -- but to do something we
love and feel passionate about. His idea was that each of us could
ADD VALUE and somehow improve the quality of life for the earth
and its creatures.

The real profit, as he saw it and as I believe Mr. Wattles tells
us, comes from being true to our higher selves. For Wally,
becoming REALLY rich "includes everything else" and the way to go
about it, he says, is to do what you love. Know what you love to
do and do it, and all the rest happens precessionally, as a side
effect.

Including prosperity. Including purpose.

Fuller also noticed that no plant or animal has to work for a
living. They just do what they're meant to do and the Universe
provides for them. (A fellow named Jesus noticed that, too, by the
way!) They just live and grow -- never-ceasing growth and
development, fulfilling God's perfect idea in them.

Now, of course, honeybees, plants, and animals don't get
sidetracked from their natural missions like we do. They don't
have the faculty of CHOICE (so they can't make "wrong" ones).

But we DO have a choice.

For us, the "never-ceasing cycle of growth and development"
requires first the "Know thyself" part and THEN the action part.
Then, it's a matter of step and repeat. If we choose to.

What are you doing right now, my friend? Whatever it is you are
giving your time to, realize that you are giving your LIFE to it.
If it brings you into touch with your joy, congratulations! How
wonderful! You are living your purpose!

If that's not your experience up 'til now, perhaps this gem of
advice from the new "Harry Potter" movie will shine some light:

"It's not just your talents that make you who
you are, Harry. It's your CHOICES."

Finding Intrinsic, Lasting Motivation to Succeed by Denis Waitley

For the high achiever, it's natural to seek out challenging goals because he or she has an inner, intrinsic drive to succeed. And success doesn't mean pet rocks, get-rich-quick schemes, lotto jackpots or chain letters. High achievers are looking not to receive, but to contribute, to give. They're looking for problems that are personally satisfying to solve. Bill Gates, Oprah Winfrey and Warren Buffett, three of the wealthiest individuals in the world, eagerly go to work every day to face the challenge of solving a new and bigger problem. All could be playing Backgammon on a tropical island or two rounds of golf per day.

Since the accomplishment of a difficult task means more to the high achiever than any external motivation, it means that motivation will remain strong throughout his or her career. Think of how much stronger and more permanent such a motivation is compared to one that is extrinsic.
Suppose you choose a particular career because of the money. What happens when there's more money in doing something else? You're likely to abandon one path as soon as another possibility opens up, and eventually you'll find yourself wondering what you're really doing… maybe even who you really are.

Since there is no inner drive to stay on any particular path, the journey will be arduous, and motivation will tend to weaken whenever the external reward seems remote or out of sight. This is especially true with individuals who want a home business with high rewards and minimal risk. Some people spend their entire lives wandering from one field to another, always looking for an easier way to find that pot of gold, never achieving a significant goal worthy of their inner potential.

I've met many people who fit this description. If they're in sales, they move from company to company, from industry to industry, for one product or service to another. They are very hard to keep on your hand held electronic address book or in your directory of contacts because they are always either coming or going or starting another new business of their own. When that doesn't work, they get involved in sketchy enterprises, especially start-up-companies offering big, easy rewards, such as a wonder diet company where you can lose all the weight you want by eating anything you want and swallowing one amazing pill a day. They go from one Roman candle to another, from one "exciting opportunity" to another disappointment.

The problem is, money alone does not stimulate intrinsic motivation and therefore is a means, not an end. Money is like fuel for your car. It is not the destination. It is not the journey. It is only part of the transportation system. Make your "why" grab you by your very soul. You'll never be disappointed for very long. And you'll stay committed regardless of "stock market gyrations" or setbacks.

This week, find your unique "why" and pursue it with passion!

Commuters' University: On-The-Road Learning, by Marv Dumon

According to the U.S. Census Bureau, about nine out of 10 workers drive to work. An additional 5% of workers take public transportation, and about 2.5% walk. Of those that drive, about three out of four drive alone. The Census Bureau also estimated the average commute per worker (in 2005) at 24 minutes, which translates to about 100 hours of work-related commuting per year.

The Costs of Driving

Those 100 hours of driving to work (and "fighting" traffic) represent more than two weeks of vacation. Given worsening traffic conditions in major metropolitan areas, commute times appear to become exacerbated over the years.

Using a commuter calculator, based on a 10-mile (one-way) drive every weekday, if gas is at $2.30 per gallon and at an 86-cent per mile driver's direct cost (maintenance, parking) the driver can expect to pay an annual driving cost of nearly $6,700.

In terms of opportunity costs, drivers can spend 100 hours of unproductive time if they are not careful of how they manage their commute. Assuming an hourly rate of $25, those 100 hours represent $2,500 in potential lost productivity per year. Over a 10-year period, that translates to $25,000 in potential lost productivity. (To learn more, see our Economics Tutorial.)

Granted, we could use somewhat more conservative numbers as drivers these days use their cellphones in order to conduct a variety of transactions and conversations. Still, the costs add up. Direct costs and opportunity costs amount to several thousand dollars per year. Therefore, it behooves business professionals to attend "Commuters' University" in order to extract benefit without committing any additional time to the learning process.

Using Commute Time to Earn a "Virtual Degree"

Business, accounting and finance professionals can use their commute time in order to enhance their skills. Workers can listen to a variety of business, leadership and management audiobooks that can improve work performance, while investors can learn certain insights by listening to finance, economics and investing audiobooks. (For more, see You Don't Know Jack Welch.)

Benefits:

1. Commuters can "read" several dozen books in their field per year, without committing additional time to do it. Assuming 100 hours of commute per year, and further assuming 5 hours as the average length of an audiobook, it's possible to absorb 20 additional books annually. Most would agree that a professional within a certain function (say finance), who has read 200 books (which is essentially a small library) in his or her field, is a qualified expert in his or her chosen profession.

2. Leveraging the expertise and business wisdom of the likes of Jack Welch, Donald Trump and other business gurus can lead to much higher performance at work within a short period. New insights and knowledge can lead not only to improved professional decisions, but potentially higher quality decision-making in one's personal life.

3. Elevated knowledge can not only bring tangible benefits (salary increases, bonuses, promotions, esteem from colleagues), but can also serve to prevent disadvantages in the workplace, heartache and hard lessons. Peers and colleagues who have significantly less commuting time, who listen to audiobooks, or who take public transportation and can access wireless signals for their laptops (and therefore, do work) can enjoy productivity advantages over passive commuters.

Most U.S. universities require 50 classes in order to earn a bachelor's degree. Assuming each college course requires students to read four books over an entire semester, a commuter who listens to 200 audiobooks over a 10-year period will have taken in roughly the same amount of material and knowledge equivalent to a bachelor's degree - without committing additional time. Would it be reasonable to assume that a worker who periodically "earns degrees" would have more salary increases, promotions, and recognition over the course of an entire career? Promotions and additional exposure can provide a variety of other opportunities to graduates of "Commuters University."

Conclusion

Business professionals can go beyond work-related commuting pro-activity. Professionals can listen to business audiobooks while undergoing a variety of activities including personal commutes, fitness routines at the gym, doing the laundry or washing dishes, which can add that much more knowledge base and enhancement to one's career.

Life is Art by Jim Rohn

In my years teaching people to be successful, I have seen that basically people break their lives down into two major parts: Wealth-building and the rest of their lives. Having done a lot of reflection on these two topics - wealth and life - I am coming to some new conclusions about how to perceive the two.

Until recently I thought that there was a significant difference in how we should tackle the two areas. In fact, I thought that the two topics should be addressed in almost opposite fashion.
You see, wealth-building is just math. While life -- Life is art.

Think back with me to high school. Most of us were required to take math and most of us probably took art as well.

Now, think about your final exams in the two areas. Your math paper was graded on hard facts:

Ten times ten is always one-hundred
Thirty divided by three is always ten
Seven plus seven is always fourteen
Fifty minus twenty-five is always twenty-five

There is always just one answer in math. The answers are hard fact, set in stone. Math is a science. It is formulaic. You can know the outcome before it happens, every time.

But what about your final art project? Art is much more subjective. "Beauty," they say, "is in the eye of the beholder." There is no one right answer.

Think of the different styles of the famous artists:

Renoir. Monet. Picasso. Rockwell. Warhol.

Different people find different styles beautiful, and that is what makes art, art.

So how does this fit with wealth-building and life? Wealth-building is like math:

If you add $1000 to your retirement account each month and gain seven percent interest over twenty years, you can know now how much you will have then. It is math. If you buy a rental property for $200,000 now and it increases in value by three percent a year, you know exactly how much you will be able to sell it for in ten years. The beauty of math is in the knowing. You can work the system, set it on auto-pilot and the math does the work for you, and you know the outcome.

But life? Life is art. And that is the beauty of life. You do not know how it is going to turn out. Life, like art, is always changing. Different people provide different colors. When you make a mistake, you can go back, erase it or even paint right over it. You can change the scenery. Life, like art, is ever evolving, and what looks good to one person is of no interest to another. And that is what makes life beautiful.

Another lesson I think we can draw is that in life we should do our math, of course, but life isn't made up of just wealth-building. Wealth-building should serve our ability to live our lives. Jesus, the master teacher, said that our lives are not made up of the abundance of our possessions. He didn't mean that possessions aren't good, just that wealth isn't what life is all about.

So let me ask you: Are you spending more time on your math or your art? Do your math.

Everybody should do their very best at their wealth-building plan so they can take care of themselves and their families.

But life is about the art. What does your canvas look like? What kind of picture are you painting? What kind of pot are you creating? What kind of statue are you sculpting? Take your time, make bold strokes, use brilliant colors, and make of your life the most beautiful masterpiece that you can.

In other words, do your math so you can focus on your art.

To Your Success,Jim Rohn

Productivity and Attitude by Zig Ziglar

I'm the only one who does anything around here! Several years ago I was on a late-night television show in New York City. For some strange reason, they wanted me in the studio that afternoon at 4:30. I walked in and was stunned by the small size of the reception area. It contained a couch for three, a chair for one and a sink, refrigerator and coffee maker.

As I sat down a woman walked in, shook her head and said, "Nobody makes any coffee except me!" She got busy and started a fresh pot of coffee. A few minutes later a guy walked in and, following the same procedure said, "I can't believe it! This place would be a pig-pen if it weren't for me! I'm the only person who ever does any clean-up," and he cleaned up the small area. Still later another woman walked in and complained, "Nobody ever puts anything up but me," and she proceeded to put things away.

Interestingly enough, all three of those people sincerely felt they were the only ones who ever did anything. Each one did their own private halo-adjustment as they went through the process of "making up, putting up and cleaning up."

Question: Is that the way it is in your company, where "nobody does anything," but everybody thinks they're the only one who actually works? Thought: If that is true and you are the only one who does anything, think of the incredible advantage that gives you. Not only do you have job security, but the opportunity door is wide open for your move to the top. However, if you have a chip on your shoulder, if you honestly feel that you do everything and you share that feeling with others, your bad attitude negates your good work. So, stay busy, keep working, smile about it and your good attitude about "doing everything" will catch up with you. Think about it and I'll SEE YOU AT THE TOP!

After Office Hours by Kenneth Goh

Many years back, I attended a seminar by Brian Tracy and I learnt an important concept about success.

The concept is "Your achievement depends on what you do after the office hours".Let me show you how this concept changed my life.

When I first started working, I was one of the most hard-working employees in my office. While most people work until 6-7pm, I usually worked until 8-9pm. I did well in my job, but I saw no future. At that time, I was spending most of my after-office hours "working".

Then I discovered a field of study called success philosophy and I became addicted to it. During that stage of my life, I spent most of my after-office hours reading self help books, until the day when I finally realized that success is inevitable.

When I started my offline business, I spent the office hours running the business. I spent my after-office hours reading about other businesses, including internet marketing. I also spent many nights learning how to build and promote websites.

Now that I'm full time in internet marketing, I spend the office hours running my online businesses and my after-office hours developing new online businesses.

The point is...We spend most of our office hours on day-to-day operation. The only time when we can do things that will have major impact in our future is after-office hours.

However, most people spend their after-office hours watching TV programmes, playing games etc. I have many friends who have the thinking that "office-hour is for work, after-office-hour is for relaxation". I can't say they are wrong. But what I know is, if I were to adopt such a mentality, I will not be where I'm today.

How about you? What do you do after your office-hour?

To your success,
Kenneth Koh