What is Spiritual Materialism?

You'll notice that I advocate a philosophy around here that I like to call "Spiritual Materialism." Spiritual Materialism is a philosophy that holds man to be a combination of spiritual and material factors. These factors are only conflict when the principles behind them are improperly understood. When properly understood and combined, they lead to a general state of happiness within one's life.

Spiritual Materialism understands reality in terms of individuals. Groups are simply collections of individuals who are usually working to achieve a particular end. Personal values must be understood in relation to one's own rights as an individual.

The first and primary right is the Right to Life. You have a right to live. In being conceived, you had a right to be born. Your right to live is based solely on the fact that you exist. As funny as it might sound, in order to accept your rights, you must accept that you exist - "I think, therefore I am." You wouldn't be reading this blog if you didn't exist.

From your right to life follows your right to secure your right to life. From this follows many other rights - a right to property, a right to self defense, a right to free speech, a right to be secure in your person, etc. You have these rights by nature - no government has bestowed them upon you. Likewise, in recognizing your own rights, you must acknowledge that others have the same rights. To deny natural rights to others is ultimately to deny that they belong to you as well.

What follows proceeds from my post A Defense of Capitalism. Your rights necessitate the existence of laws, which in turn necessitates the existence of government to make, enforce, and judge according to those laws. There's no legitimate means by which a government can violate the rights of some citizens to give "extra" rights to others. Governments don't have a right to take extra amounts of tax from certain citizens whom are wealth off to pay for social programs that are beyond the scopes of those governments. Social betterment proceeds from individual efforts, not government social programs.

When we look at ourselves as individuals, we find two principles at work - the spiritual and the material. The spiritual is that which is inside of us. It's what we think, what we feel, what we desire to create. It exists at our innermost core. The material, on the other hand, is the outer world around us, that context in which we interact with other individuals. It's literally matter. Where the two meet forms our waking lives, where we have a chance to manifest the spiritual into the material, through which we create. All which is created is a manifestation of the spiritual into the material, bestowing a spiritual nature upon material things. A great painting, for example, was the product of one's inner spirit manifested onto a material canvas. When men create, they bestow a spiritual quality into that which is, by nature, material.

This spirituality is best understood in the traditional sign of the sun, which is a circle with a dot in the middle of it. If you take a pencil and compass, place the needle on a fixed dot, and proceed to rotate the compass, you create a circle. The dot is its spirit, its essence, while the circle is its manifestation. Whether you are a theist or an atheist, you most certainly have that inner core from which all that you do manifests. This is spirit - it is your essence.

The proper manifestation of your spirit into the material world makes your spirit stronger, through bettering your material wealth. If you create something of value, you will make money, which in turn will allow you to live well physically. If you manage your wealth well, you will be able to create a better life for yourself and give yourself both the times and means to create far more. Your spirit and your material self play off of each other to determine you as a person. There is much esoteric meaning behind this interplay. I won't divulge that here. It's safe simply to say that this is all worth meditating on. Outer reality and inner reality merge to create YOU.

The wealth enhancement aspects of this blog exist to encourage you to seek the progress of which I speak. The political aspects are but a means to examine the world and safeguard that which you create. The spiritual and philosophical postings are meant to encourage you to seek the spiritual aspects of the material life around you, that you might be more fruitful.

Why Socialism Always Fails

Socialism. It's created some of the worst tyrannies known to the history of man. The USSR. North Korea. China. Cuba. Vietnam. Hundreds of millions of human beings dead, all in the name of an ideology which claims to value the common man.

When one points this out to liberals, they invariably whine that socialism in itself is a good idea and that the governments in question weren't/aren't not socialist. Such is an example of what's known as the "No True Scotsman" Fallacy. The individuals who founded the governments in questions believed in socialist principles in every way. I actually believe that they meant well and were honest in their overall intentions. Unfortunately, the path to hell is paved with good intentions.

Lenin was an honest man. Stalin was probably an honest man. Mao and Ho Chi Mihn were probably honest men. They believed in what they were preaching. The fact of the matter is that what they preached simply didn't and couldn't ever work. The totalitarianism found in traditionally socialist societies was the direct result of trying to address the problems that arose as a direct result of socialism.

Socialism is borne out of egalitarianism. It strives to make everyone equal. The fundamental problem is that everyone isn't equal -- some of us are better than others. Some people are willing to put in serious effort while others play. It's the old fable of the ant and the grasshopper.

Individuals with the drive to get things done are somewhat rare. Given the option, most people would prefer to kick back and relax. It's individuals who get things done who motivate those people to actually make something of themselves. When everyone is made equal and the fruits of motivated labor are simply given to those that don't work, stagnancy will inevitably set in.

Socialism prevents people from having that hustling drive. There is no benefit in doing so; your reward is exactly the same as the person who doesn't hustle. More importantly, however, those with hustle aren't permitted to leverage the talents of those who don't hustle. You wind up with those whom are willing to work supporting those who don't want to work. It doesn't work.

A purely socialist society attaches no benefit to leveraging other people. Sure, your talents enable more to be accomplished within a certain period of time, but you're not compensated for this. Instead, you're expected to accept it as your reward that you simply fulfilled your social duty. That doesn't mesh with human nature. The result is that individuals with the talent for leveraging others do not apply that talent. There's simply no reward for doing so.

Thus nothing gets done. Now, you have to understand that the socialist revolutionaries, whatever you might believe about them, had hustle. They had beliefs. They risked themselves as leaders of men who organized themselves around those beliefs. Where others talked, they acted. They applied the concepts of leverage in order to use the talents of others to bring the greatest successes. Their biggest mistake was that they were wrong.

That's where totalitarianism arose. Socialist policies completely ruined the societies in which they were applied. In order to salvage things, socialist leaders applied far more leverage than should ever be applied by any human being. It's not a surprise that they did -- they had no competition that could stop them in any meaningful manner. So they leveraged their people, expecting out of them more talent than they could ever hope to display given the circumstances. The people who were supposed to benefit most from the revolutions suffered the hardest.

This is why socialism always fails wherever it is tried and why, in revolutionary societies, it leads to totalitarian dictatorship. When policies do not work and the alternative is dire suffering, people sometimes impose the harshest measures to get the results they see as necessary. Some men are better at this than others -- revolutions build men who can hustle and apply leverage better than anything else. Give them an awful situation where there situation is ruined beyond all belief, however, and they will go overboard trying to fix the situation.

Going the Extra Mile

A friend of mine impressed me today.

This friend of mine is an avid fan of Disney. In particular, he loves Walt Disney World, so much so that he hopes to build a long term career there. Against the recommendations of some of his friends and family, he applied last year for the Disney College Program as a custodian. This guy is very intelligent and probably could have picked his jobs a bit more wisely but he ran with it.

Long story short, he got the job. He loved working there but circumstances in his personal life coupled with not being quite fit for custodial work led to his going home early. He was a bit distraught as it was still a place he wanted to build a career.

Some people give up on their dreams. My friend chose to pursue it again. This time he has reapplied to work for Disney in a job for which he feels great enthusiasm: "Attractions" (basically, the people who operate the rides). Good deal.

Now, most people would be content to reapply and leave it at that. Some go an extra step and call/email to confirm their interest in the position. He did that too. But a few days ago he did something which displayed excellent hustle and surprised me a bit, to say the least.

He created a website.

His website is called I Want To Work At Disney. He even took the time and extra money to register the name www.iwanttoworkatdisney.com! It's still a work in progress, of course, and he says he's constantly working to refine it, but I'm impressed that he's made the effort in the first place.

The winnings in life go to those who are willing to go the extra mile in life and put in extra effort where others are content to rest. I'll keep you updated regarding how he does.

Reflections of a Freemason

As some of you more conspiratorial-minded readers might have surmised, I am a Freemason. I'm very proud of that fact -- the Masonic brotherhood is one of the greatest organizations I have had the honor of belonging to.

Many people have peculiar ideas about Freemasonry. At its heart, it's a benevolent fraternity mostly composed of men of high principles. It is not a secret society, nor is it a conspiracy of men who secretly run the world from behind the scenes. We don't represent a hidden agenda or any such nonsense. We are merely a group of guys devoted to living out the principles of brotherhood amongst ourselves who strive to apply the lessons we learn in doing so to society around us.

We have men from all walks in life. We're not all saints, nor do we claim to be.

There are requirements for becoming a Freemason. You must be a man. You must be at least 18 years of age. You must believe in deity. It is expected that you be a man of good character. You must also be willing to ask to join -- we don't recruit. Perhaps most importantly of all, you must desire to join out of a positive opinion of the institution itself and not for the purposes of personal gain. Freemasonry is not for everyone.

Freemasonry is an effective organization. Masonic lodges and our appendant organizations (such as the Shriners) provide on average a million dollars a day to charitable causes. We provide support to numerous causes throughout society.

Part of the reason that Freemasonry is so effective is that it is an effective network. While many outsiders would consider our rituals and customs to be strange, what they do is create a unifying culture within this network -- a shared sense of identity among our members. Through this unified culture we build bonds of trust between each other. We become acquainted with the talents of those brethren with whom we meet in our lodges and during our travels.

This network contributes to our success, both as an institution and in our personal lives.

I've stated plainly in the past that you can't get ahead of life on your own. You need other people. There are various ways of meeting people, but the best ways involve being part of a network together. You can join an existing network or create your own -- it doesn't matter. In being part of a network, you have the skills of others at your fingertips -- both directly and indirectly.

Masons are traditionally accused of playing favoritism with other Masons. That's not a conspiracy. Whose talents are you more likely to tap into for a future project or venture -- some one you just met or someone you know, trust, and whose talents are readily apparent to you? The first is a gamble. The second involves a calculated risk. Gambles can cost you big. Calculated risks are what lead to success.

My point here isn't to convince you to become a Mason. Only you can decide whether that's the right course for you. What I'm saying is that it's to your benefit to belong to a network of individuals of some sort, whether it's something you have to join or whether it's something you create yourself. This goes far beyond financial well being. Sometimes it's useful just to have a group for emotional support that you can fall back on when times get tough. It doesn't matter if it's the Masons, the Rotary, the Elks, your local Church, your school chess club, or Alcoholics Anonymous -- networks of every sort will get you ahead in life.

How to Make More Money

Time is money. The saying is old and clichéd and yet few things in life are as true. How often do you stop to think about the value of your own time?

Most people's time is worth very little. This is reflected by the fact that they do not make money for that time. If you take a moment to examine the reasons as to why this is so, the answer becomes apparent -- they spend most of their time doing things that are pretty much worthless. Their activities are not producing any value.

Before I get started, I want to make it clear that there's absolutely nothing wrong with relaxing or doing stuff that's fun. Such is absolutely key to a healthy and well-balanced life. There's no point in striving to become wealthy if not for the aim of enjoying the "finer things" in life! If you don't take the time to relax and enjoy your life you'll burn out.

With that in mind, however, it's important to keep in mind that time spent watching television or doing the countless other mundane things people do during the course of a day is time where you're not providing value. After passing that point where your basic relaxation needs have been met, your time is being wasted. No value is being created and you're not developing a talent that might provide value in the future.

A failure to understand the concept I'm about to explain is why most people stagnate in life.

The two driving factors for determining prices in a capitalist economy are the law of supply and the law of demand. Increased supply drives prices down and increased demand drives prices up. The area of the graph (it's not a single point due to there being a variety of factors involved) where these two forces meet is where price is determined.

Many people overlook that these fundamental laws play a role in determining the price of their own time. You have twenty four hours in a day. If you are smart, you're spending seven or eight of those hours sleeping. You can't be your best without being well rested. You also devote some of your time to eating. The rest is composed of the various other things you do during the course of a day.

So, in terms of your personal amount of time, supply is fixed at twenty four hours. You can't change that. The only meaningful way to increase your value, then, is to increase demand.

The demand that is attached to your time is directly connected to your ability to get things done within that 24 hours. Note that I intentionally did not say "your ability to do things." There are key differences between doing things and getting things done. Doing things doesn't mean that what you are doing will get done. Getting things done doesn't necessarily mean that you did them yourself. That distinction is what most people do not understand when it comes to the value of their time.

People don't pay you for the sheer amount of personal effort you put into a task. If that were the case, you could get rich digging holes and filling them back up for sixteen hours a day. No, what people value is your ability to get a job done in an effective manner. The more more you can do and the more effective you are at your tasks, the more they will value your services. To harp on a theme I've been covering as of late, you increase your effectiveness and the amount you do by hustling your own talents and by leveraging the talents of others.

Part of this involves looking for opportunities to do more. You can do this during your own free time or while you are at work, around your place of employment. Find tasks that people need done and offer to take care of them. It's best to start in areas that involves your own talents so that you can do them personally but sometimes you'll find yourself set to tasks which you can delegate to others. Turn people's problems into tasks, tasks into projects, projects into jobs, and jobs into money and indispensability. Find ways to use your talents and the talents of those around you to accomplish your goals. If you've used the talents of your co-workers, be sure to give credit where credit is due. That's leadership.

You will begin to establish value in the minds of people around you when you can demonstrate that you are able to get effective and refined results to the tasks at which you're set. Keep diligent records of everything you accomplish -- doing so will serve you well when it comes time to negotiate new wages or salaries. Demand for your time will increase dramatically in the wake of results and the price of your time will increase accordingly.

Hustling lets you use your twenty four hours more efficiently. Leveraging exponentially increases the amount of hours you set to a task without actually effecting your personal supply. When you are capable of hustling and leveraging work that would take a regular person fifteen hours into one hour's time, your time becomes worth fifteen times that of the regular person.

Your successful executives and business leaders are leveraging hundreds and thousands of individuals during their normal work hours. They leverage effective individuals who in turn leverage skilled individuals below them, in a chain that goes from the Vice President of Marketing to the mail room clerk. They get hundreds and thousands of hours of results out of a single hour of their time and thus they make that much more -- everything that is done produces a necessary result. They certainly don't work harder or physically do more but they do get more done with what they have. They are paid, in fact, for hustling the skill of leveraging people.

If you want to make more money, learn to maximize the results you can produce within a twenty four hour period of time. Look for ways to expand your role. Develop a unique skill and learn to do it better than anyone else. Find ways to tap into the talents and efforts of others to accomplish the tasks which you can't or won't do. Don't be content to let your free time go to waste when you can focus on learning and applying these skills.

The journey towards making more money is long and hard. You only get out of it what you put in. The results, however, will outstrip any and all of the hurdles you've met with along the way.

Concepts in Success: Glenn Beck

Glenn Beck. The man is a polarizing figure, to say the very least. Love him or hate him, one cannot deny that he is a very successful man. I believe that success seekers can learn a lot by both studying and applying some of the methods he has used in his own life.

Glenn Beck represents a wonderful dual application of both principles I had mentioned yesterday: hustling and leverage. His success is the product of an optimal synergy between the two that has propelled him to heights of which most can only dream.

To repeat what I stated in The Art of Leverage, hustling in the sense I mean it is not criminal and has nothing to do with scamming the people around oneself. Instead, it is the quality of putting unimaginable amounts of time and effort into developing a skill so that you are better than nearly 100% of other people. While others relax and spend most of their time engaging in all sorts of mindless diversions, you study, practice, and hone your skill. It's hard work. The end result is the ability to apply the talent you have developed to tasks as if it is simply natural to you.

You don't have to be born with a talent to be successful. You just have to enjoy doing it enough so that you're willing to devote inordinate amounts of your time doing it. This is one of the primary reasons why, in a previous post, I recommended doing what you love as the key to never working again.

Glenn Beck spent years upon years developing his abilities to speak and to connect with audiences. These are not easy talents to develop as most people do not enjoy embarrassing themselves in front of groups of people. One of the greatest benefits to the particular skill set that Glenn Beck has developed is that it has enabled him to develop a brand around himself. Branding is another part of what separates the successful from the ordinary. We'll cover that concept another time.

Imagine for a moment that Glenn Beck, armed only with his highly honed speaking abilities, operated solely on his own. During the course of a day he would have to research, plan out, and write both a radio show and a television broadcast. He would then have to perform both. Meanwhile, he would be responsible for writing and managing his news site The Blaze as well as several others. On top of that, he would have to sit down every evening to put in several hours of work on the various books he releases every year in between calls from companies seeking endorsements for their products. Let's be realistic here -- there aren't enough hours in a day to operate like this! He has the same 24 as the rest of us!

What Mr. Beck does, then, is leverage the talents and time of others towards these ends. He has people who hustled to become good at research to do his research, people who hustled to be good at production to produce his shows, and people who hustled to become good at writing to script his shows. He has extremely capable people managing his personal brand and overseeing every aspect of his business. He most likely has individuals that ghostwrite his books. It's more than likely that he compensates everyone within his organization quite well, as skilled talent tends to come at a premium. All he really provides is the skill and brand that hinges it all together.

There's nothing wrong with this. It's how the world works. Everything must be flawless in its presentation when you want to break through to the upper pinnacles of success. Everything must be checked, double-checked, refined, and perfected before others can see it. Solitary individuals haven't the time nor capacity to present such perfection, which is why they fail. Successful people know to develop a skill that makes them indispensable to an organization. They then set about to find the means to use that skill so that they might leverage others into doing the other tasks they need done. You can do this around any skill so long as it has value and so long as you are able to build a brand around it.

Master the concepts of hustling and leverage and you will go as far as your dreams will take you.

The Art of Leverage

I'm going to tell you a little secret. Pay close attention; this secret is vital to your success.

You can't get wealthy without other people.

Let's face it. None of us lives in a vacuum. We live in societies and are defined by the relationships we build with others. Sure, you could go out and live in the woods all by yourself, not depending upon a single soul. Are you taking any supplies with you? No, that's cheating -- most of those supplies were only made possible by others. Even if you grow your own food and sow your own clothes, the tools you used in doing so were provided by other people.

The fact is that we depend upon others to survive and even the most capable of mountain men would fail were he to accept the challenge of living entirely independently in the woods without help from nary a soul. Mere survival is absolutely dependent on social cooperation of some sort. Why is it, then, that people believe that they can become wealthy and successful entirely on their own?

Leverage. Leverage is one of the main tools that set the winners apart from the losers. Leverage is the ability to use the people around you and their resources to further your goals. I'm not, of course, talking about taking advantage of people. That'll only get you so far and you'll meet with failure long before you meet with success. Instead, you must learn the art of making mutually beneficial arrangements where both sides profit in the end.

Why bother with mundane tasks which you hate to do, aren't good at, and just eat up your time? Find ways to outsource such activities to others who are better at them and more efficient than you. Make it well worth their time. Do you lack the resources to pay them in money? Pay them in trade of services. Even better, build up the value of your own services by taking the time to develop your skills and allow others to leverage your talents towards their goals. Far from there being any shame in that, it is actually how you become successful in the first place! No one in the history of humanity has ever become wealthy or successful without offering some sort of service of a value highly perceived by the society around them. The more you have to offer, the more you will receive.

Leveraging utilizes networks. When you use the services of a person to complete a project, what you are actually tapping into is that person's network. When others use your services, they are tapping into yours. If you want to utilize an effective leveraging system, learn to recognize those that know how to leverage the talents of others in their own efforts. The cumulative effect on your own success will be exponential.

Leveraging others to take care of less-important activities which eat up your time frees you up to perfect your particular skill set. The other part of success is knowing how to hustle when it comes to the activities which you don't leverage. When I say hustle, by the way, I'm not talking about anything illegal -- this article at The Art of Manliness sums it up best -- The World Belongs to Those Who Hustle.

Hustle when it comes to what you're good at. Leverage individuals who have hustle and know how to leverage when it comes to things you're not good at. The abilities to leverage and hustle are what set successful individuals apart from those who are simply ordinary.

A Defense of Capitalism

I'd like to take some time today to talk about a subject close and dear to my heart. It's an oft-maligned subject that often finds itself under attack by political demagogues of all stripes. Those with power often hate it because it enables others to gain power through their own efforts without help from those same elites. I am, of course, talking about Capitalism.

Capitalism. The word evokes different thoughts to different people. Some view Capitalism as akin to fascism, where corporations own and run the government through a concentration of wealth in the hands of stockholders. Others, such as myself, take a far more benign view, seeing it as a system of opportunity that rewards the diligent and punishes the incompetent.

Capitalism itself is a very simple concept. The core concept involved in a capitalist system is the freedom of property. Property should be owned by those whom have the means to acquire it. When one owns property, it's theirs - governments have no right to tell individuals how they should or should not use the property that belongs to them.

Capitalism assumes certain fundamental rights of individuals. One cannot truly own property without having other rights. Individuals have a right to their property. They have a right to their own lives, as one cannot truly own property if one can be deprived of one’s life at a whim. In the right to dispose of one’s property as one sees fit, one has a fundamental right to free speech to protect it. One also has a right to protect one’s property through physical means, if such be necessary. And so forth.

Laws exist to protect these rights, which is where the concept of government comes into play. A government in a truly capitalistic nation exists solely to protect the rights of its citizens, from both domestic and foreign threats. In order for a government to protect the rights of the people it must first represent them, which is why representative governments always arise where capitalism is found. Capitalism, then, is a matter of letting individuals do as they will within a definite framework of laws.

Capitalism is total market freedom within a context of laws. Without those laws, total market freedom would be impossible, as rights would be impossible. The alternative to market freedom is market control. Market control can be seen in many economic systems, including feudalism, mercantilism, imperialism, socialism, fascism, and communism. All of these systems, when tried in the past, have hampered economic progress.

There are many reasons for this. First off, economic controls imply a sort of omniscience in those that control the economy. Greater amounts of control imply greater levels of knowledge pertaining to a variety of particulars. For example, when the government runs a nation's industries, its ability to regulate those industries effectively depends largely on its knowledge of those industries' finer points. The government has to calculate the amount of raw resources the industry will need to create the output of goods required. It has to understand the costs present in a particular location and correlate them to output. It has to understand workers’ issues. It has to understand levels of consumer demand. It has to understand these and a multitude of other variables if it can even hope to operate in an efficient manner.

When this type of system is extended to an entire economy, the level of knowledge required by the government to properly plan everything to perfection approaches infinity. This was the case in the former Soviet Union and played a large role in its collapse back in the early ‘90s. The system was inefficient by nature. These inefficiencies were combined with waste which resulted from the needs of the massive bureaucracy required to administer the government - bureaucrats don’t produce anything but forms, and those tend to be useless.
The same is largely true for countries with less regulation than the Soviet Union. Insofar as those nations are less regulated, their economies operate much more smoothly, to be certain. Unfortunately, ultimate growth potential is hampered by the control which their governments exercise over their economies. Workers might have more vacations and shorter work days than what is found in the US, but economic growth in those countries simply cannot compete. China, with one of the fastest growing economies in the world, is growing economic strength in light of its relaxation of regulations and in spite of communism.

Where capitalism is implemented, economies prosper, while where socialism is implemented, economies falter and fail. This is not due to some “capitalist conspiracy; rather, it's the nature of economics itself.

Capitalism rewards the capable while punishing the incompetent, much like nature. It's a natural system of economics in the most pure sense. Capitalism allows for ANYONE to succeed, if only they have the intelligence, ability, and drive to do so. A capitalist society has no laws saying you cannot find investors, start your own business, and make your own fortune. On the contrary, capitalism encourages you to do so.

I’m going to let you in on a secret. Those of us whom are “wealthy capitalists” don’t want to keep you down. We don’t want to see you impoverished and enslaved. We know that systems with control are far less efficient that systems based on freedom. We WANT you to succeed and do something with yourself. Today’s factory worker could be tomorrow’s great inventor who makes factory workers totally obsolete and increases production ten fold. We want that individual to be successful. It has nothing to do with wanting to put millions of factory workers out of the job. Rather, it's because we know far more can be manufactured so that our goods are available to a greater number of people. We’d be more than thrilled if the individuals whom constitute “society” would pick themselves up and make something of their lives. Great intelligent individuals benefit everyone.

We don’t want 95% of the world’s wealth concentrated in our hands. We’d be more than satisfied with half a percent if it kept us living the lives we were born to lead. Unfortunately, the masses don’t seem to agree - they insist on living lives where they ignore their financial health and expect us to pick up the pieces.

Has it ever occurred to you that the reason less than 1% of the world’s population possesses 95% of the world’s wealth isn’t because the system is rigged against the masses, but is rather because the masses refuse to do anything worthwhile with themselves?

One Secret Behind Ramit Sethi's Success

Yesterday I came across a blog post from a couple years back. It's an evaluation of how Ramit Sethi successfully built up a faithful following several years before releasing his book. It covers many of the principles he used, all of which are worth studying.

The dirty little secret behind Ramit Sethi's book launch

I've said it before. If you want to be a success you absolutely must learn to market yourself. Watch what successful people do and how they build that success. Learn to establish value in the minds of others. Don't merely emulate them -- study them and try to understand the principles they've utilized!

And don't think it's easy. It's not! It takes hours upon hours upon hours to perfect a skill and pull it off naturally. That applies as much to selling yourself as it does to anything else.

The secret, however, is that once you can sell yourself you can sell anything. Not only that, but once your value has been firmly established in the minds of others, you can pretty much ask whatever price you want.

Just remember, be ethical -- God is infinitely just and will always punish those that abuse their talents. Sometimes it happens in this life and sometimes it happens in the next but justice is never avoided.

Never Want to Work Again? Then Do What You Love.

The topic of today centers around some of the most important advice you'll ever receive. It seems so simple yet most people never give it even a second’s thought.

Find a way to make a living doing something you love.

Now, before we get started, I'm going to tell you what not to do. Don’t go out and quit your job today. Many of the immediate concerns that hold you back from pursuing your passion are legitimate and valid. You have responsibilities to which you must attend. You probably have mortgage or rent payments. You probably have a family. You probably need to ensure that there's food on the table. You most likely have debts to pay off.

No, I’m asking you to take a look at your free time. Everyone has hobbies and other activities they enjoy doing. I am sure you're no different.

Now take a look at these activities in your life. They certainly aren’t chores, as you choose to do them because they involve what you enjoy. If it's an activity you especially enjoy, you're probably quite skilled at it from spending lots of time practicing.

Think about it for a moment. What's stopping you from making money doing what you love? You’re good at it and you enjoy what you do. Is it an activity you’d be willing to devote a lot more time towards if only you had the means to do so? If you answered yes, you’ve just taken the first step towards becoming an entrepreneur.

In the day and age of computers and the Internet, anyone can make money off of their hobby. If you produce tangible items, it's never been easier to market your goods. If your hobby is of a less tangible nature, blog about it or find ways to teach others how to do it. There are tons of possibilities and you're only limited by your imagination.

Start small. Don’t enter the market with the impression that you’re going to revolutionize your niche - that’s not likely. Do what you do because you enjoy it. The money is secondary in the beginning. You’re not going to make enough money to quit your job any time soon. What you'll do, however, will set a cornerstone for your financial future.

Before you start, though, make sure you develop at least a rudimentary business plan. Write down your goals and the methods by which you wish to market yourself. Set several exit strategies for when you want out. Set a broad plan for how you’d like to expand as your business becomes increasingly successful. Setting a plan now and sticking to it will ensure far fewer headaches down the road than might otherwise be the case.

Remember, you’re probably not going to become wealthy off of your start up. Don’t make the mistake of setting that as your goal. You will eventually reach a point where you simply are not going to be able to increase the income you make from your business. That’s okay - when that time comes, you'll be prepared because you will have set an exit strategy.

The goal, then, is to create a business you love that will most likely produce more income (and thus more cash flow) than the work you're doing now. As your business expands, your positive cash flow will increase and you’ll find yourself networking with like-minded individuals. From that point forward, you can begin investing your time and resources into other projects which, if chosen wisely, should increase your cash flow even more.

Your life of wealth is in its embryonic stage. There is little point in trying to run when you're not yet even in a position to crawl. It's the successes and developments that you make now which will define the way in which your financial life will mature.

Cash Flow: The Bloodline of Financial Wealth

Today I would like to take the time to examine another fundamental of wealth building: cash flow.

What is cash flow? Few concepts are more important to fully understand than this one. It doesn't matter what great idea you might have to build your wealth. If you don’t understand the basic principles behind cash flow you're doomed for failure.

You find a way to pull in a six figure income over the course of the year and still find yourself scrapping along broke. Income, taken by itself, isn't cash flow! A high income with improper cash flow management is perhaps the most dangerous way to live and is a surefire ticket to bankruptcy.

Don’t understand? Well, that’s why I’m here to explain it to you.

It is a little known fact that most winners of the lottery end up worse off than when they started. Having several million dollars in the bank does not make you rich. When people win the lottery, the first thing they usually go out and do is spend their lucky win on LIABILITIES.

A liability, in accounting terms, is anything that ends up sucking money from your bank account without an offsetting cash return. A good example of this is a fancy car. A fancy car is nice to own and might even raise your personal happiness level, but it's ultimately a liability. You have to pay high insurance premiums to keep it covered and maintenance can cost you a bundle. The car will lose value over time due to depreciation (wear and tear accumulated over time). Now, if you've got a proper cash flow for this type of luxury, all is fine, but if your money is simply sitting in a bank you will be amazed at how quickly even a car will gobble up the funds in your account. The same holds true for a nice house, a nice TV, and all the other little luxuries you might find yourself drawn to once you have some money.

People who win the lottery usually end up trying to live the lifestyle they equate with such a strong bank account and are usually shocked to find that, as little as a year later, they have nothing left. In the end, their money itself was a liability, as it only led to negative cash flow!

That's a rule to take to heart. Money in the hands of a person with no understanding of finance is ultimately a liability. Such a person can have all the money in the world and will still end up broke.

Taking this concept to heart, we can proceed to define what wealth really is. Wealth is not the possession of a certain value in property, but rather the amount of positive cash flow over a certain period of time. A person who brings in $200,000 a year and spends $195,000 in expenses is far worse off than a person who brings in $60,000 but limits their overall expenses to $20,000.

Cash flow, then, is the amount of income one draws from one’s assets minus the expenses that person pays due to their liabilities. That’s really all there is to it. The trick, then, is to find a way to maximize asset income while minimizing liability expenses. Most people screw this up, which is why they don’t go anywhere over the course of 20 years.

An expensive home is a liability. Yes, some will mistakenly label it as an asset - after all, isn’t a home ultimately an investment? After you've gained enough equity (ownership) of the home, can’t you sell it or mortgage it for money later on? Sure. Such an approach, however, misses the mark on numerous points which I’ll cover in a later posting. The key to remember is that an expensive home is going to take far more money out of your wallet over the course of the next year than it will ever hope to bring in. For our purposes, that makes owning an expensive home a major liability for the goal of wealth building. The money you're spending on your house, if allowed to grow as positive cash flow, could be used to acquire actual assets that will increase your cash flow. Having done this, housing costs won’t take a major bite out of what you bring in every year down the line.

There are only two ways to increase your cash flow - you can increase your income through investments in assets or you can decrease your expenses by getting rid of your liabilities. There is no way around this. You cannot become wealthy unless you are constantly doing either (or preferably, both) of these things.

Now, I’m not saying that you have to avoid liabilities - far from it! There is next to no point to becoming wealthy if you aren’t allowed to live a life that reflects it! The often overlooked key, however, is that you must take every effort to ensure that the expenses from your liabilities do not measurably cut into the wealth produced by your cash flow. A person who's found a way to create a $10,000,000 positive cash flow every year can afford to live in a multi-million dollar home. A person whose bottom line cash flow shows several thousand dollars probably should reconsider, even if it's within their means.

Your assignment today, then, taking into consideration all the great stuff you dreamed in from the last posting, is to examine where you are in your life today. What contributes income to you at the end of the year? What cuts into your cash flow that you can do without? Don’t think in overall money value - think in terms of what makes you money and what takes money out of your pocket.

It's absolutely essential that you train yourself to think in these terms if you're ever going to build the fortune that's rightfully yours.

The Road to Riches is Paved by Your Mind

America is truly the golden land of opportunity. For over two centuries, men and women have been immigrating to this great land seeking to make names for themselves. American history is full of stories about those whom, through hard work and patience, paved their own way from rags to riches.

You and I both know that you're looking for the same thing. Everyone wants to make money. It's desirable to have the means to both look after yourself and your loved ones. Unfortunately, not everyone is born with the knowledge necessary to get ahead in life. That's where I come in, along with this blog.

I'm here to help you. But I can’t promise you this success. The fruits of prosperity never come in an instant. The labor put forth to produce those fruits is entirely in your own hands. All I can do is motivate you with my own knowledge and experience and perhaps give you some of the great tips that have led to my own personal success.

Creating wealth is much like constructing a building. There has to be a basic structure but what's primarily important is the foundation that you lay. The foundation to building wealth is the development of your own personal outlook on the world around you.

I’m sure you've heard that before from other motivational writers and speakers. It's very true. The only limit upon the wealth you can earn lies within what you choose to believe about the reality around you.

You must decide at the outset the answer to a question that is purely a matter of choice. Which do we live in -- a Malthusian world of limited wealth or a world of abundant prosperity?

I wouldn't dare answer that question for you. I've got my own answer to that question which defines my own reality, but it'd simply be out of place for me to define your paradigm for you. All I'll say is that if wealth is limited and money making opportunities are both risky and few and far between, then your ability to prosper and make your fortune is severely hampered. If you believe in a world of limited wealth, I can't help you. That wealth is obviously spoken for. I guess some of us just lucked out in the wealth game and the rest are doomed to scraping together their existence from our table scraps.

In such a scenario, there just isn’t much material with which to build your foundation and you might be better off sticking to your boring 9 - 5 job, whatever it may be. There is no shame in that.

If, however, you are willing to live in a reality of ample prosperity, where opportunities exist wherever you are willing to make them, then there is hope! The next step for you is a very big one. It'll sound very hokey, but it's quite necessary for a wide variety of reasons.

Just do it and don’t ask questions… don’t even entertain questions for a second.

Close your eyes and imagine the wealth you desire. Imagine yourself living in the house of your dreams, sitting on the couch of your dreams watching TV on the big plasma TV screen of your dreams. Your son or daughter calls - they need you to pick them up from school. You walk out to your garage, in which sits the car of your dreams. You pull out into the driveway, stopping for a second to appreciate your beautiful yard… as you pull out into the road, the mechanical gate shuts behind you.

You get the idea.

You have to imagine the wealth you desire, but that’s only the first half of this step. The second half is that you must force yourself to realize that this wealth already belongs to you! It's yours, even as you read this blog entry! The trick is that you must accept that all you have imagined really belongs to you. It might not be in your possession right at this very minute, but you have to open your eyes and see that it's truly yours!

God WANTS for you to have your hearts desire. The catch, however, is that it can't simply drop these things in your lap. Due to some hidden clause in the Contract of Life, you have to be both willing and able to receive what God wants to give you. I’m not going to get into details, but it’s not as simple as God inspiring some wealthy stranger to write you a check for several million at random… the intricacies of THAT occurring are far too complex.

Instead, what's required is that you help things along. Your goal, in making wealth, is to find ways to enable God to funnel your wealth to you. This isn’t about getting rich - it’s about enabling the world to give you that which is rightfully yours.

If you take that to heart, this blog will certainly be an aid to you in your journey. If it is simply beyond the bounds of what you are willing to accept as your reality, however, then perhaps that reality is just not for you.

Rich Dad, Poor Dad: My Thoughts on Robert Kiyosaki

For the better part of ten years, Robert Kiyosaki has been at the top of the "wealth creation" industry. Starting with the publication of his book Rich Dad, Poor Dad, he and his associates have built themselves a terrific wealth-creation machine which rakes in millions of dollars every year. Some, however, have accused the man of being a scam, a glorified con-artist who has built a fortune off the backs of gullible individuals. A few of you readers have asked for my take on his books and what he does.

I first came into contact with Kiyosaki's writings back around 2002 while looking for reading material in an airport bookstore. There I had come across his book Retire Young, Retire Rich. Although I personally had no need for such a book, I found the implications of the title to be intriguing and decided that it might make for decent reading while traveling cross-country.

There are aspects of what Kiyosaki does that I quite like and there are aspects which I find a bit distasteful.

The primary focus of Kiyosaki's work is to change the way people look at money. He does this in a way that is written in language that is accessible to just about anyone. More to the point, he helps foster a belief in people that wealth creation is possible regardless of one's station in life if one is simply willing to evaluate the way in which one views the world. As anyone whom regularly reads this blog will readily point out, I believe that this is the single most important step in the process. It's a small step, mind you, and it won't take you far if you don't follow up with additional steps, but the journey of a thousand miles must begin with one step.

I also believe that the ways in which Kiyosaki gets his readers to think about their finances is important. When you have a little of something, like money, you don't have to think about it much. You can leave it in a bank account when you're not using it and pretty much live from paycheck to paycheck. If you want to be wealthy, however, you absolutely must learn to organize your money. You have to keep track of how you spend it, where you put it, and how those places you put it are using it. Kiyosaki is right on the money when he speaks about the need for relying on other people to manage your affairs. While you certainly have to do it all yourself in the very beginning, after a certain point it'll become too much and if you're not careful you will fail. You only have 24 hours in a day. If you're going to devote most of it to learning about and managing your money resources something is going to give. You will fall somewhere else in your life. Hard. Effective individuals know how to delegate certain roles to others so that they can focus their time on offering their primary skill set to others still.

I admit to believing that Kiyosaki's story about having a "Rich Dad" is a fable of sorts not rooted anywhere in reality. While I find him to be extremely bitter, overcritical, and small minded in the broad majority of what he writes, John T. Reed raises valid issues with certain major inconsistencies in Kiyosaki's story. I think Reed's analysis is worth reading, albeit with a heavy dosage of salt. He makes mountains over little matters that he nitpicks and he rightfully comes across as unnecessarily petty and mean. He acts as though he's proven Kiyosaki to be a scam and a con-artist when he's done nothing of the sort.

The fact is that whether "Rich Dad" was real is irrelevant. The lessons are valid. "Rich Dad" serves a two-fold purpose. First, he provides a useful literary device for making information accessible. Second, and more to the point, he makes for a wonderful marketing tool.

My primary complaint about Kiyosaki is that he tells his readers that they can make money in real estate while he minimizes mentioning the fact that he himself makes his money in marketing. I would not say that he avoids this entirely; he does point out in one of his books that he is a "bestselling" author and not necessarily a "best writing" one. He mentions his extensive background in sales and that sales knowledge is essential if you want to be rich. You will note that he does not spend much time actually teaching sales techniques to you through his books, though. This is primarily because he cannot risk his readers figuring out that these are the very techniques he's using on them!

The best information Kiyosaki has to offer is gathered by actually studying the way he presents his materials. The psychology he utilizes. The packaging. The endearing charm. The way he creates needs in your own mind and then offers to sell you solutions. Most of the books aren't about teaching you about real estate or financial planning but rather about establishing the value of himself and his products in your mind. He want to hook you in to sell you more stuff. There is nothing wrong with that; it is, in fact, how you get rich. Study it.

It's that technique which enables him to sell $10k seminars and offer consultations for which he charges thousands upon thousands of dollars. When value is effectively and firmly established in someone's mind, they will pay it. A good salesman will convince a person that it's worth taking certain risks to pay such amounts under the guise that, "The price tag is high but it confirms your commitment!"

I don't do seminars or consultations. I don't particularly enjoy speaking to crowds of people and 99.9% of people out there couldn't pay me enough to make it worth my time to do a personal consultation. I don't even put that on the table. With that said, establish enough value about yourself in the minds of other people and they'll be willing to pay exorbitant amounts of money to learn from you. That's the value of a proper education in marketing principles.

I do find it distasteful, however, when individuals take advantage of desperate people whom are trying to find their way through financial ruts. If you want to help such people, help them for free or for a portion of their profits down the road. If you're going to charge huge chunks of money for your services, make sure that your clientèle has the sort of disposable income to afford such a thing. I don't get the sense that Kiyosaki and the people around him operate according to that particular code of ethics. It's for this reason that my recommendation of Kiyosaki's works is mild at best.

Go to the library and read his books for free. Study the methods he uses rather than the methods he suggests. If you don't have the money, don't get sucked into paying $10k - $45k for seminars on the premise that it's an investment and that you'll reap what you sow tenfold. You won't. You'll gather useful information in such seminars, to be sure, but it's information you could have gotten at a far lower cost. Meanwhile, you will have blown money you could have actually put towards real investments with real returns. If you are going to take the leap of faith and plop down that sort of money to hear someone talk at you for several hours, is it really that much further of a leap to jump in and do the things you already know he is going to tell you to do?

Determine Your Value in Life

In one of my posts yesterday I spoke about the importance of creating wealth within your inner world as a prerequisite for manifesting wealth in the world around you. I'd like to expand upon the importance of that concept for you today.

We spend much of our lives being programmed by the society around us. Society programs us to believe that we amount to very little and that we're worth what it decides to give us. That doesn't tend to be very much. We are further trained to believe that there isn't much we can do to rectify this. We just have to accept it as our lot in life. When we have no job, we beg for what we can get and we eagerly accept whatever they throw our way to prove our worth.

Yesterday I spoke of the principle of "As Within, So Without." The thing about principles such as this is that, depending on the circumstances, the inverse can be true instead. If you don't take the time to form your inner world and develop a true sense of your own will, the principle at play within your life will be "As Without, So Within." You can see the effects of this everywhere you look. People are constantly defined by the circumstances of the world around them. It forms their sense of whom they are. Most insidiously, it forms them in such a way that they're powerless. The society around them defines the value of their life and they merely accept it, along with whatever price tag comes attached.

When you take the time to change your thinking and to shape your inner world you fundamentally change this dynamic. How much would you like to be making right now? Choose a number, higher than your current salary. Keep it realistic so that your mind will have no trouble accepting it. Congratulations, you've just changed your value! Now justify it. Sit down and list all of the reasons as to why you're worth this new value. It might be hard at first but whatever you do don't talk yourself out of believing it. List your education, your concrete accomplishments, and your various proven talents. Keep it worded in positive language -- write about what you are and not about what you're not. Make every statement an "I" statement. "I graduated from high school at the top of my class." "I have a doctorate in chemical engineering." "I was responsible for designing the new office mailing system that improved efficiency by 10% last year." Include even the small accomplishments that you don't think are worth much on their own -- taken together, they'll turn out to be substantial! At the top of this list, write, "I am worth $[insert your new value here]."

Now keep this list in a safe place where you'll see it every day. Read it out loud, once when you get up and once when you go to bed, every day. Read it more than once if you have the time. Embed the new amount and the reasons for the new amount deep within in your head.

When it comes time to ask for a raise or to negotiate a salary for a new job, keep this number that you have set in mind and do not settle for anything less. Make sure to do your homework before going in. Look at your list and determine the ways in which the qualities you listed apply to the job in question. "I graduated from high school at the top of my class" might not mean much twenty years after the fact, but it does translate into you being a motivated hard-worker who can meet deadlines and memorize loads of useless information! Tailor your list beforehand and, when you're asked to justify your new value to your employer or potential employer, name off the items. Don't beg for the new amount -- sell yourself like a polished marketer. Explain the reasons as to why you've assigned this particular value to your services. Convince your employer that this is really what you're worth.

If you want to be in the driver's seat of your life, it all starts in your head. Set a value in your head. Justify that new value with the facts. Assert that value in the world around you so that it is set in the heads of others. Look for ways to offer the service of your talents when opportunities arise, both around work and outside of work. When you start to think and act in this manner you'll find yourself on a road towards greater success than you had previously imagined.