Getting Rich Your Own Way

Getting Rich Your Own Way
by Brian Tracy
John Wiley & Sons © 2004
284 pages

• The odds that you will become financially successful are one in 19. Go for it.
• Wealthy people possess prosperity consciousness, that is, they have perspectives and habits that help make them rich.
• Developing that prosperity consciousness is the fi rst step to financial independence.
• Becoming rich depends on shaping the right habits and taking the correct steps over and over again. It is no accident.
• People who attain excellence (and money) have a “result orientation.” That is, they focus on behavior that gets the outcome they desire, and they don’t get distracted.
• Choose one of the fi ve specifi c, time-proven paths to getting rich: entrepreneur ship, working your way up, investing well, becoming a professional or being a salesperson.
• A good work ethic and good work habits are essential ingredients to prosperity.
• Anyone who saves $100 a month from age 21 to age 65, and invests the money to earn 10% interest, will be worth more than $1 million upon retirement.
• Guard your integrity and become a person others can trust.
• Become a “no limits” person. Don’t listen to those who tell you what you cannot do.

Follow the five proven ways to become wealthy. They are:

1. Become an entrepreneur – Economic history suggests this is the number one path to new found riches in America. For the past 200 years, 74% of all self-made millionaires in the U.S. have owned their own businesses.
2. Work your way up – With the advent of stock options, it is also possible to work your way to wealth. About one in 10 of the millionaires in the U.S. worked for large corporations for many years. They worked hard, were promoted, earned stock options, participated in profi t sharing plans and held onto that money to become millionaires. The Seattle area, for example, is famous for its Microsoft millionaires who went to work in the 1970s and 1980s as secretaries and programmers. They became millionaires through stock options.
3. Become a professional – Education pays. Ten percent of U.S. millionaires are professionals with advanced degrees, such as dentists, doctors, lawyers, architects and engineers, whose services are in demand and who charge well for what they do.
4. Enter the sales profession – Some 5% of U.S. millionaires, one in 20, got that way by being top salespeople and sales consultants. Great salespeople may never have started a business, but they know how to sell a product or service and they get paid handsomely for doing it. Here the 80/20 rule proves true: the top 20% of salespeople earn 80% of the money.
5. Invest well – Some millionaires invested well in the stock market, created an invention or authored some creative product or service.

To learn to get rich, become a “no-limit person.” That is, you must decide that no external factor, nothing outside yourself, can prevent you from accomplishing your goals. Stop putting limits on yourself and do not allow others to place limits on you either.

Learn from the Best

You have two ways, and only two ways, to learn how to become wealthy. You can make your own mistakes and learn from them. Or, you can learn from the mistakes of others. The latter is, by far, preferable to the former.

One of the best techniques is to simply seek out successful people and follow their behavior as a model. According to a Gallup Organization poll of 1,500 men and women registered in Who’s Who In America, the top individuals in any field possess five qualities:

1. Uncommon common sense – The respondents had the ability to learn from their experiences and not repeat their mistakes. They determined what worked and what didn’t, and pursued what worked.

2. Intelligence – This is more than IQ, or what grades you received in school. Some of those polled didn’t do particularly well in college, if they graduated at all. Many successful entrepreneurs display the same traits of impatient curiosity exhibited by children with attention deficit disorder. The two key forms of intelligence needed to succeed in life are social intelligence, which is the ability to get along well with a large variety of people, and entrepreneurial intelligence, defined as the ability to see opportunities for profi t that others might miss. These two forms of intelligence are not covered by standard IQ tests, and are rarely tested in school. Perhaps intelligence is best revealed by the behavior it exhibits. Intelligence is as intelligence does.

3. Job excellence – Successful people do their jobs well. They are expert at what they do and become recognized as top performers. Above average performance isn’t enough; you must achieve excellence. If you dedicate yourself to pursuing excellence, after seven years of putting your whole heart into it, you will be in the top 1-2% of your field, and you will earn 20 to 30 times more than those performing at average levels.

4. Self reliance – Top performers consider themselves the primary motivating, creative force in their own lives. In their minds, they are responsible for their own success. Thus, they refuse to make excuses or blame others. If you’re a top producer, you think of yourself as the leading actor on the stage of your life.

5. Result orientation – People who have attained excellence focus continually on getting results. They are single-minded, intent on doing what it takes to get the job done.

If you find people who exhibit these qualities and model your behavior after theirs, before long, the odds are you’ll be on your way to a prosperous future. Other suggestions that will put you on the fast track to riches include:

• Find a good job – And then work hard on doing the job well. If that advice sounds simplistic, consider that 10% of self-made millionaires in the U.S. have worked all their lives for their companies. They became very wealthy by becoming very good at what they did.
• Do what you love to do – Successful people virtually always love what they do for a living. Ask yourself if you could only do one thing all day long, what would it be?
• Determine your core competencies – What jobs or tasks do you do really well? Answer that question, and then organize your life around those endeavors.
• Live with passion – Make a total commitment to be excellent. Getting Rich Your Own Way ©
• Be a good student – Commit to lifelong learning.
• Save your money – Always save 10% of what you earn.
• Boost others – Make yourself critical to other people’s success.
• Be diligent – Work harder than everyone else.
• Use your time effi ciently – Don’t do anything that takes you away from your work. Don’t drink coffee, read irrelevant e-mails or visit with your pals at the water cooler.
• Expand your workday – Try starting an hour earlier or working through lunch.
• Accept total responsibility for your results – Tell yourself, “I am responsible.”
• Examine your priorities – Check with your boss to make sure your priorities match what you are expected to accomplish.
• Take over tasks from your boss – Learn what your boss dislikes doing and then do it better.
• Refuse to be satisfi ed – Always ask for more. Ask for more responsibility from your boss and for more productivity from those working under you.
• Develop specialized knowledge – In the information economy, knowledge is power.
• Learn to do things faster – Become known as the one others rely on to do a job fast.
• Network continually – Being a successful manager means getting promoted, and often that depends on whom you know. Consider joining a professional association, Dale Carnegie or Toastmasters. Being able to think and speak on your feet is a big plus.
• Refuse to let fear hold you back – Don’t let worries or fears get in your way.
• Determine your job’s critical aspects – Every job has crucial responsibilities. Identify those areas and focus on being excellent in accomplishing them.
• Determine where you are weakest – Commit to improving any lagging skills.
• Develop excellent work habits – Maximize your productivity. Become more effi cient.
• Nurture a power base – Build power in your company and your community. Establish personal power in relationships, expert power due to job knowledge and abilities, and position power from rank and title. Make the most of your status in these areas.
• Guard your integrity – Trust is the basis for all relationships; be the one others trust.
• Focus on the future – Where you came from doesn’t matter as much as where you are headed. Become a results-oriented, future-oriented person.
• Start where you are – Don’t pine over what you are not. Instead, focus on what you are and make yourself better.
• Develop prosperity consciousness – Write and rewrite your goals, and believe in your future prosperity.
• Become a no-limit person – It is just as diffi cult to remain poor as it is to make the necessary sacrifi ces to become successful and wealthy. Working harder at the beginning will pay off handsomely later.

Your success is 100% up to you. Start the process, continue and never give up. Believe that the streets you walk daily really are paved with golden opportunities. You only have to open your eyes and see them. Always remember that you can get rich.