Dream Toolbox

Welcome to the Dream Toolbox, a series of short podcasts that are designed to open windows of economic opportunity that most people don’t know even exist and to provide a set of skill based tools that can lead almost anyone from a low-income existence to wealth and financial abundance.

Let’s talk some more about belief systems because they control everything else that is in the Dream Toolbox. Belief in yourself and believing in your dream is a strange thing. With it, there is almost nothing you cannot achieve; without it, nothing will happen.

Our belief systems determine where we will end up in life. I am not talking about religious faith, although that can be a huge help if it is strong. I am talking about those fundamental things we believe about ourselves.

I promised to give you another personal example of why beliefs matter.

How do you begin to change your belief system to redefine what you believe is possible?

If your dream has anything to do with financial success, you need to learn somethingabout what I call “the Entrepreneurial Mind.”

No one would think of building a house without tools and materials, hammers, nails, lumber, etc. So what tools do you need for financial success? Over a lifetime, there may be many, but if you start with these two, all the rest can be mastered as needed. What are they?

Let’s talk about Skills as investment assets.1. No wealthy person I know depends on a paycheck to live the life they live. They own assets, stocks, real estate, businesses that work for them while they sleep or play. 2. A quality investment can last a lifetime, and beyond. A job is only as good as yesterday’s paycheck.

If you don’t have a goal, how are you going to achieve it?

A problem is only a problem if you fail to see it as the opportunity it really is.

There is a much abused saying, “Fake it until you make it.” But behind that glib phrase is a powerful truth.

Let’s talk about Money. We can’t talk about the tools of success without talking about it. Most everyone thinks they know what “Money” is. And most everyone is wrong!

You have no doubt heard it said, “Money can’t buy happiness.” And that is true. I know many unhappy millionaires. But I know many more unhappy folks whose lack of enough money to feel safe in their daily lives creates its own unhappiness.

Everywhere you turn today, you hear people lamenting the income gap between the top 10% of earners and the bottom 50%, or below.Those people are half right. There is a big difference between those who earn the most and those who just barely get by. But, as we will discuss in detail later, it is not a gap but a pyramid, something else much easier to manage. The reality is that anyone who learns the skills they need and develops the mindset of the wealthy and not the poor can create wealth and never have to work again.

Thinking of corporations as some kind of enemy and failing to understand how theyreally work is a recipe for the failure of dreams.

What does that mean? Think about any sports contest. Whether it is baseball,football, or any other competition, there is only one winner. Second place isonly the first loser. But financial success is not like that. Think about AppleComputer, the most valuable company in the world as I am writing this. Oneof the reasons that Apple is so successful is that it has created platforms forapps on which independent developers can produce and distribute apps thatcan make their creators very wealthy very fast.But consider this: everytime one of those app developers creates a successfulapp, Apple computer gets richer. But this is the important distinction. Appledoes not get rich by making the app producer poorer. It gets rich by makingthe app producer richer. This is the exact opposite of a zero sum game. It is agame in which success by one party increases the success and wealth of theother. That is how business in a free society works at its best.

First of all, everyone who is not blind to reality knows that in the United States (and most of the world), it is extremely helpful to be a white male instead of black or Hispanic or Asian, or a female. I would be lying if I did not say that in the United States today, it is a great advantage to be born white—and also an advantage to be born rich. But there is a huge difference between and advantage and a privilege.

Believe it or not, one of the biggest obstacles to achieving financial freedom and an abundant and successful life can be summed up in three words: FEAR OF FAILURE. Notice that I did not say, Failure. I said Fear of Failure. In reaching any goal worth having there will be failures along the way—often many of them. No, it is the Fear of Failure that dooms most people to lives of frustration, living far below their potential.The reasons are actually quite simple. Fear of Failure does several things, all of them bad.1. It persuades us never to try, or2. It makes us give up on ourselves or our dream at the first major barrier,3. It paralyzes us at exactly the times when bold action is needed.4. And, it undermines the inner belief of “I can do that” that we have talked about already and are starting to build.But to deal with the fear of failure, we first have to look the possibility of failure in the eye. Every time I start on a new project that I think has any risk of failure, I do something that most of us find very uncomfortable. It is not comfortable for me either, but I have learned that doing it is one of the best predictors and guarantors of success I know. What is that something?Before I ever take action, I ask myself these questions:1. “What is the worst thing that could happen if I try this?”2. “Can I survive if the worst thing goes wrong?” I’m not thinking about the kind of physical survival that could happen in a war or natural disaster I mean can I survive it economically and can the relationships that I cherish survive it.3. If the worst happens can I do more than just survive the failure; can I rebuild my dream and try again?My experience has been that in almost all cases, even the worst case situation can be overcome, but looking at the risks squarely, in the beginning, takes the fear out of the equation.Fear of Failure is the biggest cause of actual failure, usually because of one basic reason: Fear of failure causes us to give less than our best. It is human nature to build in an excuse, “I could have succeeded but I didn’t have the chance to give it my full attention.” Whatever that excuse is, banish it from the beginning. It is a little scary to put all your hopes and dreams into a project, but anything less almost guarantees failure. There is a saying, “Don’t put all your eggs in one basket.” Mark Twain turned that around into a saying that is much better when you are talking about committing to a project. His phrase was, “Put all your eggs in one basket: and watch that basket.”The lesson from all this is very simple: Look the risk of failure squarely in the eye and decide if you can deal with that risk if it happens. If so, commit completely and make sure that failure doesn’t actually happen.Every successful business I have ever created has had one or more “near-death experiences” in which failure was possible. But because I had faced those possibilities in advance and was committed to success in spite of those risks, I managed in almost every case to turn potential failure into success. Out of 11 businesses I founded, one did fail, but the failure was of the business. It was not my failure and I went on to more successes. You can too.

Welcome back to Dream Toolbox.  We have talked a lot about changing core belief systems, visualizing your dream and making it real in your mind, as well as creating useful waypoints to make sure you stay on track.  There will be more to say about each of these as we go along.  They are the critical pieces in making any dream come true.But now it is time to talk about more mundane things.   The first of which is just getting started.  For most people, dreams remain just that—dreams—and are never realized because of a critical missing piece:  those who had the dreams simply never took the first practical steps to make them a reality.  So let’s talk about those steps.1.  Take a hard, realistic look at where you are in life and where you want to go. If you have no money and perhaps belong to a minority race or have any of many other obstacles in your way, don’t pretend those obstacles are not real.  Instead, start thinking about what you will have to change about you, your surroundings, your education, or your lifestyle to turn those obstacles into stepping-stones to success. I know that I have said that those kinds of obstacles do not define you or prohibit you from achieving success.  But, and this is a big “but”, if you don’t address them realistically, they can block your success.  I’ll give you a trivial, but illustrative example.  I had a business partner a few years ago who was an incredibly talented black man.  I noticed that when we went to business meetings, he was inevitably the best-dressed person in the room and then when we traveled together he always carried a travel iron and pressed his clothes before each new day.  I asked him why, and his answer was simple and insightful.  He said, “Although I am confident of my ability, I know that in any meeting I may encounter those who expect me as a black man to be less capable.  Being always the best-dressed person in the room helps to keep that issue off the table and requires very little effort on my part.”  I asked if he resented having always to be just a little bit better than his competitors.  His answer was wise and accurate.  He said, “Everyone has obstacles to overcome.  Mine just happens to be skin color, but the things I do to make sure that is not a barrier to success can also give me a better chance of success even if my skin color would never have mattered in any particular meeting. So, by solving one problem, I have created extra opportunities.  Why should I resent that?”2.  Prepare to succeed.  Begin by doing the things we have already discussed and whatever else you have determined need to be done for success.  Above all, remember the words of John Wooden, perhaps the most successful basketball coach of all time, who said, “Failing to prepare is preparing to fail.”  3.  Finally, just start.  That sounds simple, but when any of us faces the uncertain future and the risks that are involved in trying to make a dream that matters to us come true, it is very easy to say, “I’ll start first thing tomorrow.”  Procrastination is the greatest thief in the world; it steals our lives, one day at a time.  Whatever your age or circumstance, you have the power right now to begin reshaping your life for success.  Just begin—now.

In life, lots of things go wrong for every one of us.  What matters is not the event, but what we do with it.  Suppose, for example, someone you trusted steals from you and causes you real harm.  You have several choices:1) You can blame the person who cheated you and always believe that, if not for that betrayal, you would have had wonderful success; 2) You can blame yourself and believe that, but for your foolish trust, you would have had wonderful success;3) You can take responsibility for what happened, evaluate what damage control needs to be done, what steps need to be taken to prevent a similar event in the future, and then move forward.The first two alternatives focus on blame and the harm that someone has caused.  But blame creates weakness where what is needed is strength.  It does so because blame implies a victim—in this case, you. Responsibility, however, is very different. It simply recognizes that everything has a cause and sometimes that cause is something we did or didn’t do.  Sometimes it is just an external event like fire or flood. But even then, there may have been something we could have done or avoided doing that would have kept the fire or flood from harming us.Taking responsibility doesn’t mean you are a victim.  It just means that you look at what happened and make decisions for the future.  Could I have foreseen what happened and prevented it?  If so, how can I avoid that mistake in the future and how can I solve the problems the mistake has caused?Sometimes, you will realize that you made the very best decision you could have made with the available facts and that choice was just wrong. In that case, looking to blame yourself is not helpful.  There is an old saying to the effect that once a cat has been burned by sitting on a hot stove, it will never sit on a stove again.  But a wiser cat might instead just make the distinction between a hot stove that could burn it and a warm one that offers warmth and comfort.If the decision was trusting someone who betrayed you, one choice would be to blame that person and avoid ever being vulnerable to that again by just doing the job yourself next time. A better choice would be to acknowledge that you were the one who made the choice to trust someone who betrayed your trust.  But instead of never trusting again and trying to do everything on your own,  a better alternative is to try to learn how to prevent the person you trust from doing serious damage if you are wrong.   Former President Reagan had a saying in negotiating treaties with potentially hostile governments: “Trust, but verify.”  All it really means is to give trust where needed to get a result but build in some protections if the trust is misplaced.The message in all this is, except perhaps in a court of law, blame is a useless pursuit because it just makes you into a victim.  Responsibility, however, gives you power because it reaffirms that, ultimately, you and only you can decide what meaning to give to an event. You own it, so you can fix the problem, takes steps to prevent it from recurring in the future, and learn from it how to recognize and avoid different future, but similar risks.Let me give you a very personal example.  Some time ago I was diagnosed with what is almost always a fatal and fast moving cancer.  I was told that an immediate, but dangerous surgery might save my life, but would involve a long and difficult recovery.  I was also told that some less drastic actions might also solve the problem, but only if the cancer diagnosis was wrong and that by the time I learned if the diagnosis was right or wrong, it might be too late.  Knowing that the chance that what I had was not cancer was only about 5%, I elected surgery.I was incredibly lucky.  Mine was one of the 5% of similar tumors that was not cancer.  Great news!  Except that I lost a year of my life to recovery.  I had two choices: 1) look back and bemoan the fact that I had made the wrong choice, 2) see if there was anything I could learn from the decision process I had used; then just move on with life.  I chose #2 and am today happy and productive again instead of unhappy and probably not nearly as productive. Responsibility trumps blame every time.

I have noticed that most people when they meet or hear about someone who has been highly successful think to themselves, “Wow, how lucky he (or she) must have been to be where they are.”The reality is that, although there is an element of luck in every success, there are many people who somehow manage to be “lucky” a lot more than most of the rest of us.  There is a reason for that and it is summed up in this frequently quoted statement: Let’s talk about good luck first.  When we exclude such things a winning a lottery or inheriting a fortune from a long-lost relative, almost all luck is a matter of recognizing and acting on something that others do not see as an opportunity.A dear friend recently told me the story of her parents. They were immigrants who lived in a Midwestern city, had worked hard all their lives, and lived a prosperous middle class life.  But they had not reached financial freedom because they still needed to work every day to keep the revenue coming in.  One day, my friend recalls, they commented over dinner how cheap land was in the United States where one could buy land around the city they lived in for $100 per acre.  Although they were not rich, they could easily have bought quite a few acres of that land that would, in time have made them wealthy and secured their children’s future.  Instead, they just noticed it, but did nothing.  In their case, that failure to act was primarily a function of the culture from which they came in which such investments were not common because ownership of property was not protected well by the law—one of the great benefits of living in the United States.  But how many native born Americans read the same newspaper article, but failed to take the action that would, today, have made them wealthy and financially secure. But they did nothing.Why not?  I submit to you that the reason was a function of two things:Failing to prepare their minds to look around them on a daily basis for opportunities that others were simply not seeing or were ignoring; andA fear of taking a risk that might lead to a loss instead of a profit.We’ll talk about fear of risk shortly, but let me give you another example of the difference between looking at the world with entrepreneurial eyes or failing to do so. I read recently about an entrepreneur who made his first fortune many years ago when about 25% of the paper currency in the United States was backed by silver.  Recognizing that silver was also used in industry and might in the future be worth more than the currency, he began buying paper currency that was convertible into silver and, when silver prices grew beyond the value of the currency, he converted the currency to silver and, I am told, ended up making over $100 million dollars.  Why didn’t everyone else do the same?  It was printed right on the currency, “Silver payable to the bearer on demand.”  He saw that as an opportunity.  Most of the rest of us just noticed it and did nothing.  I was one of those who did nothing and had to make my fortune another way.  Buy why? I, like so many others, had not yet developed the habit of looking at the everyday world around me as the candy store of opportunities I now know that it is.  None of us will recognize all the opportunities, but failing to prepare our minds to see those opportunities is preparing to fail.However, I later did notice that there was a lot of interest in using some things called “stem cells” as a potential way to treat diabetes.  This time, I recognized the importance of what I was hearing and remembered that I know a scientist who was one of the leading cell biologists in the world and was looking for a new job or project.  A few years later I was CEO of a public biotech company worth over $100 million dollars.  Not all of that was mine.  We had many investors, but it started because my partner and I saw something most everyone else was ignoring and took some risk to test our theory. It all starts with preparation of the mind to see opportunity where others see either nothing unusual or see problems instead of opportunities.