Rich Man Common Sense

We were talking about following a risk-free approach to getting rich in a few steps that are real. These are all going to happen to you on the way to ‘Rich-Dom’. If you haven’t read the previous post, here you go — A Step-by- Step Approach to Get Rich without Risk- 1.

Moving on:

Step 4: Focus, no matter what happens: S&*^ might happen. Clients might be difficult to find; customers don’t pay up on time; government takes too long to get your permission cleared for shipping; your retail store might be gutted; your creditors might harass you to pay back; sales might not happen; employees walk-out on you; your family won’t understand; friends might not need you now because you just can’t afford those fancy cocktail parties — Doesn’t matter. Just keep at it.

Step 5: Quit and celebrate, when it is time: Actually, there is no good time or bad time to do this. It will just happen and you will know it. But when it does, do make sure that you quit on a good note; say bye-bye to your boss, your buddies and everyone else you were associated with. Ideally, your part-time business should be at a stage wherein you would at least make as much as you left back there when you left that job.

Step 6: It is now your Business, baby: You are now on your own. You won’t be pampered anymore and you don’t have a Job profile. There are no paid leaves and no hot vacation packages. There are no perks and certainly no cubicles. You will do more than what is seemingly possible to be done by one person; you will wear all hats — from the CEO to the Janitor. You will be alone, fighting the big bad wolf.

Step 7: Build systems: If you haven’t read this book called ‘E-myth Revisited” by Michael. E. Gerber, stop reading this here and go get that book. NOW. Every function in your business has to be systematized. There should be a standard procedure to everything that is done within your company and then all of that has to be documented. It is should all be made so easy that even monkeys can run your business, if you let them.

Time to soak all of this in and then embrace yourself for a few last steps to ‘get there’ along with some superb tips to keep in mind while you follow this blueprint.

I found this cool write-up on Forbes.com the other day and it does make for a great reading. Read it up, soak it all in and learn what you can from these very young trend-setters who defy all odds and figure out ways to make a million dollars while we were busy contemplating our career paths in dead-end career corridors.

Read it here

Let’s try to get used to the fact that “Cash” is going to be the only thing on your mind for a long time to come. Don’t even tell me that you don’t intend to get rich. If you do, you might have to kindly stop reading this. I would have love to say mushy things like “ love is important” but we know what the reality is — even the loved ones will love you more or less depending on your net-worth. What? You don’t believe me? Why don’t you go ask? Don’t leave comments saying that you think otherwise — I am not in a mood to listen to stuff that looks & sounds good in movies and fairy tales.

Now that it is so important we better get to a firm understanding of the steps you need to take if you are a ‘poor’ guy shooting for big dreams. You do have another option if you felt that you don’t or can’t do any of the steps mined up below — get back to some corporate a**-licking.

Step 1: Don’t quit that job yet, but prepare to kill your self by working harder than ever: You don’t really have to quit your job and jump at a business opportunity. Like many stalwarts have already mentioned — the alternative of being able to start a part-time business is the best possible thing you could do to start tasting some extra income. However, you will see that you’d end up working much harder than ever and you are going to be pulled away form your 9 to 5 routine. Good bye lazy bum!

Step 2: keep working feverishly and see to it that your part time business makes more than you thought it would: You will see that you will be torn to shreds by the kind of hours you will be putting in. But then, you will start liking it. The smell of the sweat of all the hard work on your skin will make it all look worthwhile. When the dollars start rolling in, it should pep you up. You will then know that your future beckons you with a golden palm pushing you where you ought to go. Remember, you haven’t quit your job yet. So there is nothing you have to cry about yet !

Step 3: Ignore the S&^% you need to keep up with: Ah, here’s the thing where you will be tested as you were a surrogate rat stuck with a bunch of moron scientists. People will start talking now. They will say things like “Money is everything for you?”, ‘you got to be ashamed of yourself! How could you be so greedy?” Your family might say stuff like “You don’t make time for us anymore”, “Do we need all that money?” — What can I say? You just need to have the knack to cut it all out. Develop some kind of divine cruising system that can help you navigate all of these emotional tantrums people throw at you. On top of all this, you will begin to have self-doubts each time you fail to get that deal; make that sale; see that your income is no more constant like it used to be. Don’t ask me what you have to do — just keep up with all this. Everyone who treads on this path will have to go through it. Perhaps, this bit about perseverance on an earlier post should help you.

We will Continue the rest of the steps in another post. Meanwhile, Immerse yourself in these realities that will hit you. be prepared for the slogging ; mud-slinging; dirty- dancing and clever-thinking that you need to do in the future.

Also, think about what you are really good at — not what you really like a lot ( forget electronics, DVDs and books — you ain’t going to do business with these, even though you love them)

Now that we got your attention, we’ll talk some sense. First, you’ll have to work; else you won’t see the dough. However, Becoming rich isn’t some rocket science and all it takes to make it big is to plan properly. Now, since is planning is boring and calls for a protocol, most people don’t bother doing it and hence end up regretting later. If you are happy being what most people are, you don’t even have to read further. Thank you. But If you do want to do something about your life later on and ensure a smooth, easy and lazy life and making it big; you should pay heed to the following:

Learn Compounding Interest: The key to being wealthy is to make let money wear the workman’s clothes and do all the hard work, everyday (including weekends) and forever until you instruct it not to. But just like you would have to ascertain and screen employees before you let them work for you, you’d want to do that to your financial instruments too. The parameter you would want to look for — as to the viability of each of these available financial instruments — is Compounding Interest. If you don’t know what that is, get back to research mode and lap it all up.

Start saving and start early: When you are young and loaded bereft of all responsibilities — that ought to be the right time to begin planning the long journey of your financial planning. Don’t let anyone tell you that these are times to bask in glory and roll on the floor without a care in the world and that you are too young for it.

Ensure that your investments reflect your risk appetite: As a thumb rule, the younger you are, the more you should be exposing yourself to risky investments – like equity, for instance. Your ability to stomach the risk would be much higher when you are young and you have your age to back you up. But then, do reshuffle your portfolio to something like 50% into equities and then 50% into debt markets or safer instruments when you approach middle-age, and as you move on towards retirement, perhaps it is time to move most of your investments into debt markets and safe instruments.

Add Insurance – both life and non-life: Now, people might just forget this vital part of your financial planning. At all stages in your life, do see to it that you have a life cover so that you can provide for your family if you were to kick the bucket and while you are living, it makes sense to pick up a health policy for yourself and your family to cover for those medical emergencies. You don’t want to end up digging out cash from your savings when these things happen to you, do you? The younger you are, the lesser premium you would pay. Insurance, however, is not a profit making instrument — it is rather an instrument which can be used to prevent your losses due to unforeseen circumstances.

Keep at it: Life takes unexpected twists and there might be days when you’d feel that you might not be in a condition to continue investing –that won’t cut the ice. No matter what happens, you got to continue investing. Just keep at it and stretch yourself as far as you can. The rewards will hang for you to pounce on only if you make a disciplined, sustained and almost religious effort.

If you come this far and look back, you can’t help but smile at the wads of cash waiting for you.

“One of the commonest mistakes and one of the costliest is thinking that success is due to some genius, some magic – something or other which we do not possess. Success is generally due to holding on, and failure to letting go. You decide to learn a language, study music, take a course of reading, train yourself physically. Will it be success or failure? It depends upon how much pluck and perseverance that word “decide” contains. The decision that nothing can overrule, the grip that nothing can detach will bring success. Remember the Chinese proverb, “With time and patience, the mulberry leaf becomes satin.” Maltbie Davenport Babcock

I was just talking to a friend of mine in India who runs a company called Success Key – a training and development institute that is extremely strong on Aptitude Skills, Skills Testing and other such areas. We were on the subject of making money and he tells me a story of a company called Meritrac - a skills assessment company and has more clients than any company I can think of. It is almost a monopoly in its niche and that awes me.

While on the subject, he told me about its rather remarkable story – Three young graduates left their corporate jobs and started this company with nothing but fire in their stomach and loads of confidence. It was a rather tumultuous climb for at least 8 months until there came a time when they didn’t even have money to pay their 12 odd employees. What would most people do? Quit like chickens have given up on their flying (Did you know that the longest flight time of a chicken was about 13 seconds?). Sorry about the meaningless meandering.

Now, the employees were told about the abysmal situation and that they had the choice to either leave the company or hang on to share the profits when they come in ( The founders had no doubt that it would work!) . Some of them quit. Some of them stayed back. Today the company grows at the rate of 100% every year; has over 500 employees; rakes in millions as profits and is success re-defined.

Bottom line: Perseverance pays. If you doubt it, you go take a hike.

Here’s a thing about money — It doesn’t have a mind of its own. It doesn’t know whom to be with and whom not to be with. It couldn’t care less if you wanted to be in the place of all the self-made billionaires and splurge their wealth nor would it care if you choose not to be careful with it. It is a piece of paper that manifests itself into an obsession with people. So what is the starting point of all riches? Read the rest of this entry »

Everyday we hear people say that they are in the process of training their boss. WTF craziness is that! You are training your boss?!! If you have to “train your boss”, then why don’t you have the job yourself? When you train your boss, you are effectively teaching someone else who gets paid more how to tell you what to do. Take a minute and let that marinate.

You are teaching someone *how* to tell you what to do.

Training your boss (supervisor, manager, etc), means that you were overlooked for a position you qualified for. Now, it’s different if your boss just needs to see how things are done where you work because they’ve come in with 120 years of experience, this kind of “training” is more like showing them the ropes. The gripes we hear constantly aren’t this kind of training at all.

The complaints we hear are from people that are honestly showing their bosses how to do a particular job. Now, unless you didn’t apply for the position for personal reasons, you have a piss poor work performance, or you’ve called in dead one time too many, there is no reason why you should be tasked to teach someone how to be your superior.

It’s even worse if you never knew that the position was open, if someone told you not to apply, or if you applied and they told you you didn’t qualify. Look up the word GRIEVANCE in Webster, because you clearly have a case.

So, if you woke up this morning to go in to a job where you are training your boss, QUIT. Why? Because with your current job, you’ll be a rat forever.

I was snooping around and asking all kinds of questions to all those people “Who need to know me” for no particular reason but just that I seem to have a lot more freedom and time on my hands; be in a position to attend any cousin’s wedding and have all the time to watch a movie and still make my money. What did I ask them? Well, the fairly ubiquitous “How are you doing?” – The Answer goes “Life sucks, man!” I ask why — this is what I bet my life on — “My job is shit. I hate my boss. I hate my job and I hate myself”.

I came across this blog on “20 Bulls**t jobs” on Stanley Bing, featured by the CNN money website and one read through it made me a believer all the more on the advantages of leveraging your skills and competence for yourself and not for a lousy boss who takes all the credit for your sorry butt’s hard work and then leaves you with a little paycheck that won’t impress a hungry squirrel (even if you placed the world’s biggest, juiciest nut on that paycheck to seduce it)

I could never understand one about most of you out there — just how one earth could you compromise on something as vital as life? Career? The work that you choose to do has to be hauled on your being, for a good 45 years of your working life — you call that a career– and you choose to do something that would barely you fetch even a smile, forget the millions of dollars you have been dreaming while smoking put and gulping beers. In case you forgot, all that dreaming and working your a** off made someone else rich. Makes you happy? My dearest, all-too-generous sweetie pie?

If your job isn’t preparing your for a better job, or bring you in the kind of money that you can live your dreams with, then quit, but don’t complain. Get an attitude over-haul, buddy! Life is too precious to waste time on jobs that don’t mean a damned thing to you.

Appalling though it might seem, of all the reasons that can justify why the rich are rich, it is certainly not about them being superior to any of the others in any way. If you actually opened up the can of reasons and spilled them out on the floor, you would just place the palm of your hand on your wide-gaping mouth and just play dumb. The reasons are very few and are mind-numbingly too common place for you to have missed — but most still do.

1. Action – the thrust factor: You knew it? Ah, you didn’t do much about it, did you? Most of us you out there like this – think, get excited, wake up and do the routine. However, the rich get rich because they do something scores of people fail to do – take productive action. The ability to get out there and just do it, unmindful of what is going to happen. A quick response to their highly charged thoughts without a care about the possible ramifications is what sets them apart. How many times have you thought of starting your own business? About wanting to be on your own? About taking that trip to some exotic place far away from wherever you are sweating it out right now? And then what happened? Nothing buddy! Your dream just got busted because it is time to resume whatever you were doing.
2. The surprising & rare, willingness to learn: I called it – rare and surprising! That’s because it isn’t common. This ability is a game winner. The differentiator from the potentially successful to the average Joe who firmly believes he is just that – the average Joe. Isn’t the willingness to learn a trait we ought to have picked up from school? Hell, no! It is something very simple, yet very profound. It was meant to have been gifted to the humans but most seem to have lost it with the fading excitement of Human Evolution. This winner defining element is absent in most of you and hence you don’t make it to the big league. Look at the profiles of the filthy rich and you will know immediately why they are whatever they are! They kicked their egos aside and got around to the dirty work.
3. Read: I don’t mean read -while- going -to- bed variety – I mean the inquisitive, unquenchable thirst to lap up every worthwhile book out there. Again, pick up any one of those self-made billionaires; you will realize that they are all well read — even the college drop-outs. Don’t ask me what to read. Just develop the mentality and prepare to sink into the reading room — it will happen. Read the rest of this entry »