***Wealth and Success: Your Individual Path There

Wealth and Success: Your Individual Path There

Be very aware that making wealth and keeping wealth are not the same thing. People who are successes are doing both. This is like the difference between marrying Mr. Right, and marrying Mr. Right with the right relationship for you. Half a loaf is better than none, but...

First, how not to.

Want to succeed at something—anything? Study how others who did did it. How they really did it, not how they lead folks to believe they did it. Scions of wealth do not confess all to the public; it is not their nature, and some of the 'how' is the sort of not-quite-kosher stuff one does not admit to in public.

Next, disregard the gurus who created their wealth by telling others how to collect the same money you are paying them; they belong to be televangelists anyway. Also disregard illegal means to wealth, unless you know you are cut out to do those things and get away with them. You wouldn't be reading this if you were there.

Lastly and most importantly: Lose your sense of entitlement. God was not born to make you rich and happy; you were. And it is your definition of 'rich' that applies.

How you 'get rich'

All right, you don't do these things. Instead, objectively analyze and examine yourself: Examine your circumstances; examine your life, examine your talents and weaknesses as regards your goal; examine the people around you as to how they will be a boon or hindrance. (For example: If you can't do bookkeeping yourself, realize that finding a trustworthy bean counter is going to make you or break you at some point.) Take into account your energy level and how persistent you really are.

Minutely examine all these things first because this is about YOU having wealth, not someone else. Your path may be very different. And that is what you are looking for: a path, a plan, for you to get from wherever you are now and whoever you are now to who you want to be and where you want to be. Maybe selling life insurance for a leading company is something you were born to do. Maybe being a Porsche mechanic will bring you more success and money than any stockbroker dreams of.

Make sure the plan you are making leads to a life you actually want to live. It's best to hatch more than one plan, but choose one at a time to do. Most people who end up wealthy tried a few things before they 'got it right.'

Finally, here is the key point: Find something you do, hopefully that you like to do, that is useful to other people, and find a way to connect with those people in such a way they PAY you. It is really that simple. This is the Art of the Deal. The Art of the Deal is the way ALL the very wealthy dudes and dudesses I know of got rich. Consider successful people like Mary Kay. She made a discovery she knew women would pay money for, she developed the product, and she hatched a very good marketing plan involving girlfriends sharing with one another. Her company survived the demise of the original product and her own demise.

Lack of greed, lack of fear, persistence and 'showing up on time' are all character traits that increase your chances of getting wherever you would like to be and staying there. Being respected and/or liked by your fellow man will also benefit you.

The nut is being useful to other people and making them be useful to you in a mutually rewarding exchange.

Making money in investments

Making money in investments is not best done by handing your money to someone who is going to take his off the top and promise you a profit. You can't eat promises. Paying attention to your daily life and investing only when you get an idea works for me. Here are some examples from my life:

**A friend was a Mary Kay consultant. She had a monthly pamphlet for that. In the front was a calendar with red, green and yellow days. Red, the factory was on triple shift, 24 hours a day. Green, double shift. Yellow, normal. Mary Kay was a stock company. Mary Kay sold for cash to consultants who had buying quotas. Mary Kay had no debt. This is a no-brainer. The more red days, the better the stock does, and the money goes directly to the value of the stock. Those were the good old days! I became a consultant just to get the pamphlet.

**In 1971 I think it was, Fortune magazine said Toyota---as much as it hated to--was going to raise the price of its vehicles, that it was selling at a loss, 50% because the price of gold, on which Japanese money was based, was increasing that much relative to the dollar. Then I noticed in the newspaper ads that Toyotas' prices had doubled instead. I told a friend who inherited a hundred thousand dollars to buy gold with all of it, hold it until it quit soaring, and sell then: That gold WOULD soar. It was at either $50 an ounce or $85 an ounce when I told her that. It went straight to 500, paused and went to 800. (No, she didn't listen to me.) My reasoning was that Toyota was well-informed, that it was sure gold would rise.

**Next, I was court reporting a medical deposition. My client was an astute man that doctors would inevitably ask at some point "Are you a doctor?" He asked the witness doctor for the Xrays. The doctor handed him white cardboard. "What is this?" my client asked the doctor. The doctor bragged about his new equipment, how it used less rays and made more of an image. He said every hospital would have a full body one that cost over a million dollars, and that his, a head-only CAT scanner, was a hundred thousand or so. Many doctors would have those, he said.

Having court reported Hospital Containment Board meetings, I knew the government paid for these things, and that hospitals across the street from one another would be provided the same expensive equipment. I RAN to find out who made these things, and sold much of my stock to buy this new unknown company's. (Whenever my broker gave me my 'Miranda Rights' about how I was taking a terrible risk, I always knew I would be making money. Needless to say, Matrix soared and soared, until it became private.)

**I am NOT saying I am an investment genius, but I have more stories like this. Today, living in the wilderness away from the urban flow of information, my best guess is that everyone is saying 'My next computer will be a Mac if I can afford it,' so I would look into Apple stock. (This is not advice, now!)