Mindset
David Bach Is An Idiot
Feb 20th
Well, maybe not EXACTLY an idiot. But, one of his key pieces of “personal finance” advice is just stupid. At least for most people.
David Bach is the author of a series of personal finance books like “The Automatic Millionaire” and “Start Late Finish Rich”.
I’m not quite sure why these books have caught on since they don’t seem to be much different from the same basic information you’d find in any personal finance book. It’s the same message you’ve heard before: save 10% of your income for a long time and you’ll get rich.
Bach puts a modern spin on this advice by appealing to the Starbucks crowd by calling it “The Latte Factor”. Basically, his point is that — if you skip the $5 latte every day — that’s $150 a month you can save. And, invested at 10% interest (yeah, right) then you can wind up with a million dollars in 40 years.
There are two problems with this formula as I see it:
- This is great advice for a 20-year old. But, the largest demographic in America are baby-boomers who are already in their 40s and they’re trying to figure out to solve their financial dilemna. They don’t have 40 years to save up. They want a solution now.
And the second problem is… - It’s the same old “deferred living” formula that requires you to hoard like a miser for the most productive years of your life….so that by the time you get to the end of your career, you’ve got some money but you’ve missed out on all the lattes!
David Bach isn’t really an idiot. He’s just immersed in the 1950s fairy tale about how saving money for retirement is the best way to create wealth. And it’s not.
Go make your money now. Make so much money that you can drink 5 lattes a day just for spite, if you want.
The solution to creating an abundant life for you and your family isn’t deferred living. Or working your ass off for 40 years. The solution to creating an abundant life is to make sure that you’re engaged in a business that will pay you handsomely for your efforts…and which will allow you to enjoy all the sunsets, cruises, vacations, family time and lattes you can stand WHILE you’re doing it.
Seriously. Read that again. And then read it a third-time.
If you’ve got the sense to understand the words I’m typing, you have the ability to earn AT LEAST $20,000.00 PER MONTH. At least. I kid you not.
That’s what’s possible for you. But it will never happen as long as you’re in the mindset of “skipping lattes” and “turning off the cable” so you can save enough money to save an extra $6 a week.
Start focusing on wealth…and abundance…and prosperity. And you can create as much as you want….AND drink all the lattes you want.
Life is a choice. Choose well.
Tony Rush
Carrots, iMacs and the Idiots On The News
Feb 19th
Hardly a day (hour?) goes by when you don’t run across someone online, in-person or on the TV who’s talking about how tough it is to make money in this economy.
And it seems the culprits are the usual suspects: the talking heads on TV. People who get paid — not to think — but to read.
Let me give you a tip: don’t buy into the rhetoric of the media. If you pay attention to them, they’ll have you thinking that there’s no money and that no one has anything to spend.
Which is complete BS. In fact, consider just a few random thoughts from the last couple of weeks…
- I just flew to and from Los Angeles first-class and it was completely full. People who paid nearly twice the ticket price for the privilege of being treated better than cattle, to have a wider seat and to get drinks and snacks without begging.
- I was in the Apple store last week and it was wall-to-wall people. All of them buying or looking to buy iPods, iPhones, iMacs, laptops, software, headphones or computer monitors.
- I recently talked with a 13-year-old kid who made $24,000 in four days by marketing on the internet. (I kid you not. His dad is freaked.) Evidently he didn’t buy into the doom-and-gloom.
- A quick glance at the Clickbank directory shows that there are thousands of dollars being spent every day on products that anyone here is smart enough to put together
- If there’s a Whole Foods near you, go there in the evening and see if you can count the number of people who go out of their way to come to that store to buy stuff that costs way more than a less-healthy version at Wal-Mart.
- There’s a guy in NYC who’s making a fairly good income by selling GARBAGE as art. Don’t ask. But, know this: if you want an acrylic cube full of stuff that he’s picked up after a Yankees game or after the NY Eve party in Times Square, it’ll cost you $100.
And the list goes on and on.
Now, obviously there really are economic issues right now and it’s not my point to try to say there’s not.
But anyone who’s been paying attention for the last 20 years knows that the news isn’t about journalism any more…it’s about editorializing, speculating and giving opinions.
And there’s a big difference in factually reporting economic problems (which is true) and
telling the public that no one wants to spend any moeny (which is NOT true).
Heck, have you noticed that some of the most famous “news commentators” are actually comedians? (Jon Stewart, Bill Maher, etc.)
Here’s the FACT:
No matter WHAT the economy is doing, there’s always a group at the bottom end of the market who knows exactly how many pennies a carrot costs. They have a “give me a penny off” discount philosopy and they invest most of their mental energy into thinking about ways to “save” money….not in way os thinking about “increasing their income”.
It’s difficult to make it financially working in that kind of market. Further, those people are usually extremely negative and have a tendency to bring you down by constantly focusing on what something is NOT rather than on focusing on what something IS. (Some of you will understand what I’m saying).
On the other end of the market are people who want quality and beauty and efficiency and positivity and value. And they’re willing to pay for it. They don’t care how many pennies a carrot cost. They just want to make sure they’re grown organically in a special greenhouse where a gardener comes in and sings opera to them every two hours. And they don’t give a damn what it costs. They just want the carrots.
Not only is that the kind of person you want to market to…but that’s also the person you want to spend your time with. Not so that you can be extravagant with money (although there’s nothing wrong with that, either)….but because you rise above all the gray, dull, negative energy of people who spend all their time worrying about whether they’re getting ripped off for a nickel.
At the end of the day, this economy is about the same thing it was about 3, 5, 10, 20, 50 and 100 years ago: opportunity mixed with difficulty. It’s simply money moving from one group of people to another. The trick is to find out where the money is going and get in front of it.
And stop watching the news. It’ll rot your brain. It’s full of people who make less than $100,000 per year to read words on a screen and to pretend they have a clue what they’re talking about.
Screw ‘em. Go make some money and forget anything you’ve ever heard them say.
People afford what they CHOOSE to afford. And when you spend your time offering great products and opportunities to people who are focused on expansion (not shrinking), then making money is a piece of cake.
A Millionaire’s Handwritten Note
Feb 13th
I passed this around to a private mastermind group and the response has been overwhelming.
It’s a handwritten note that was written by a multi-millionaire on airplane. In it, he shares a perspective that is so refreshing and exciting that you can’t help but shift your own thinking.
In fact, you will discover SEVERAL key differences between the way wealthy people think….and the way the masses think.
It was taken offline for a week due to bandwidth issues but — for a limited time — it’s back up. You can download it here. (Note: report is in PDF format)
How To Succeed FAST. Really.
Feb 6th
I get asked alot, “Tony, if you had to pick ONE thing that would allow me to create accelerated, positive results in my life…what would it be. ”
I confess it’s hard to pick just one principle. But, if I had to…this would be it. And it’s probably not something you’ve heard before. I hope you enjoy hearing about it. Feel free to post your comments and experiences! — TR
Shifting From Employee To Entrepreneur Mindset
Feb 5th
One of the biggest challenges I see in the home business industry is that people often don’t make the transition from “thinking like an employee” to “thinking like a business owner”.
This shows up in a lot of ways but here’s one example that might be of assistance to someone today.
FACT: There is only one of you. And you only have 24 hours a day. Basic math tells us that there’s only so much that you can do yourself.
So, part of becoming wealthy means identifying the areas of your business that make you the MOST money…and spend most of your working time on those areas.
To do this, you need to decide what your time is worth. Do you feel that you’re worth $100 an hour? $50 an hour? $10 an hour?
The truth is that your time is far more valuable than you can imagine. But let’s start with your present time-value with a simple exercise:
1. Take your annual income
2. Divide it by 52 to get your weekly income
3. Divide it by 40 to get an hourly income
Let’s assume that you discovered that your time is presently worth $50 an hour.
Now, let’s say that you need a new website developed. So, you say to yourself, “Let me see….I’ve got Adobe Photoshop so I can figure out how to do the graphics. And I think there’s a copy of Microsoft Frontpage on my computer. So I’ll go through the basic tutorials and figure this out. What are these layers they keep talking about? What do they mean by closing my tags?” By the time you have it all figured out, you’ve spent 8 hours making a very basic website.
Eight hours.
A whole day.
At your present rate of $50 an hour, you just spent $400 to work on something that you’re not very good at. And it was also a job that you could’ve outsourced for less than $150 to someone who IS good at making websites, is a professional at it, and who could get it done in a fraction of the time.
You see how this works? If you want your business to produce $100,000 per year….you have to make sure that you don’t spend your “work” time engaged in something that adds less than $50 of value to the company.
(Note: these figures are fictitious. Remember what I said above. Your time is worth far more than you imagine. Becoming more valuable — from a business standpoint — is easier than you imagine.)
So, part of making the shift from employee-mindset to entrepreneur-mindset is in realizing that you can’t AFFORD to do it all yourself.
What are the most profitable things you can do in your business?
What are the least profitable things that you do in your business?
Identify those factors, outsource as much of the low-profit items as you can….and you’ll have more time and freedom to spend more time on the things that DO get your better results. And a lot of free “play time” as well!