Tag: opportunities

Getting your money to work for you

We “wanted to have our money work for us, rather than spend our lives physically working for money.” – Robert Kiyosaki in Cashflow Quadrant

When you are an employee working for someone or a corporation, you have the least amount of freedom. You are told how much vacation you get, what benefits you may or may not have, how many hours to work, and how to do your job.

When you are self-employed, you own your job. You have a little more freedom with the choices you make, but if you stop working (if you go on vacation, get sick, etc), the money stops coming in.

When you are a business owner, you have systems and processes in place so employees can continue working without you being present. You are still working, but rather than being the bottleneck where how much production or revenue is created depends on you and your time constraints, you could literally leave for a month or more and come back to a still-functioning business. Or, as Michael Gerber says in The E-Myth, instead of working in your business, you are working on your business. Instead of focusing on the day-to-day tasks, you’re focusing on big picture goals to move your business/company forward. Do you think Jeff Bezos packages the items you ordered on Amazon and ships it to you (the employee) or does he focus on new acquisitions to grow his business?

Lastly, you can be an investor. A professional investor gets their money to work for them, providing passive income. The greater amount of income your investments make, the longer you can afford to not work if you don’t want to. The money is working in your place. Eventually, if you can get your income from investments to cover all of your expenses, you technically won’t have to work another day in your life (barring something catastrophic happening to your investment).

Over the next couple of days, I plan to lay out my background for where I’ve been, where I am now, and what my goals are for the future (regarding obtaining financial freedom). I encourage you to comment in the section below to share any information about yourself, your plans, or what you think of my plans.

The key to excellence, greatness, and success

Consistent, hard work gains success.
“Consistent, hard work gains success.” – Dwayne Johnson

There is a quote attributed to Aristotle that says, “We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, therefore, is not an act, but a habit.”

Excellence, success, greatness…these are things to strive for, but you don’t achieve any of them with a single action. They come with consistent action towards your goals. Set goals, review them daily, and decide what are the most important actions you need to take today to bring you a little (or a lot) closer to your goals. What habits do you need to have in place?

A lot of us (myself included) get caught up with wanting to learn more. Learning is great. Gaining more knowledge is great. But it won’t get you anywhere near success if you don’t apply that knowledge and turn it into action. Don’t confuse reading with taking action towards your goals…yes, it could give you a good foundation. It can help you avoid making the same mistakes that others have made, but often we lie to ourselves saying that we are preparing to take action, when really we’re procrastinating.

Take consistent action everyday. Live purposely. Act intentionally. Success, excellence, and greatness will come if you are consistent with your actions, but if you’re not, you’ll miss the opportunity when it’s here.

Take a shot, take a chance

You miss 100% of the shots you don’t take.
“You miss 100% of the shots you don’t take.” – Wayne Gretzky

“You miss 100% of the shots you don’t take.” – Wayne Gretzky

This quote isn’t just about hockey, or basketball, or any other sport for that matter This quote is a metaphor for life. If you want something more for yourself or your family, you have to take a shot at it. You might miss. It might be embarrassing. But if you don’t take the shot, and you “play it safe,” eventually you’ll realize that playing it safe wasn’t so safe after all.

Reading vs experiencing

Reading about something is not the same as experiencing it. A lot can be learned from reading, so this is not trying to discredit reading at all. But being a part of something/experiencing it is completely different than looking at it from the outside-in.

For example, I can read about D-Day, but I will never know what a soldier experienced during that battle. Or I can read about Yellowstone National Park is, but I can only imagine what it’s like to see it in person.

Read often and read broadly. It’s nice to have a good knowledge base of many subjects. But be humble enough to know that just because you’ve read about something doesn’t mean that you truly understand it. Go experience things as often as you can. When it comes to trying something new or going somewhere you’ve never been before, say yes. Because there is no substitute for experience.