by graphics Team | Mar 2, 2019 | Podcasts
If you want to make six or seven figures a year, what would you rather have: assets or income?
Now, before you answer that question, you need to understand what assets are. Robert Kiyosaki explains assets in his book, Rich Dad, Poor Dad. However, many people have misunderstood his message.
Let’s take a closer look at assets and income one step at a time. If your income is low six figures, then you could have 100% of that coming from income. But if you’re making above six figures, then part of it must come from leverage, not just work. So what is leverage?
Defining Leverage
Leverage means you’re making some money from systems, staff, real estate and other assets.
In other words, you’re using other people’s money, time, computer systems, etc, to make more money. For example, you could borrow money from the bank and use the loan to make some investments.
The money you make after paying off the loan is the result of your investment after using money leverage. So if we go back to the first question, you need more than income to make more than six figures.
And if you want to make seven figures a year, at least 30% must come from leverage. So if you want to make a solid seven figures, you need about 60% coming from leverage. So how can you increase your leverage?
The Rich Dad, Poor Dad Message
This is the part that people get confused. You can increase your leverage with assets, but people are unclear about what assets are. Rich people acquire assets while the poor and middle class acquire liabilities that they think are assets.
People read the book and think the Rich Dad Poor Dad message is telling them to buy real estate. That’s not true. Kiyosaki is telling us to acquire assets, not liabilities.
Liabilities will lose money, like buying a car. You don’t make more money after selling your car. However, assets will make you money, like buying investments. Entrepreneurs will take it a step further and create assets.
Assets can include many things.
Defining Assets
Your customers, intellectual property, territory, investments, and key connections are your assets. You can also leverage other people’s money, resources, customers and connections. Those are assets too. But your brand reputation is key.
Brand reputation is like personal branding, like your name. Do you think my company name is worth more, or my name is worth more? You probably don’t even know the name of my company. But you know my name, Dan Lok. So my name is an asset that will become more valuable as time goes on.
Ten years from now, my signature is going to be worth a lot. If I want to borrow money from the bank, my signature will be worth something.
So, as you can see, operating as a millionaire is different than operating as a billionaire. The more income you want to have, the more assets you need to acquire.
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by graphics Team | Mar 1, 2019 | Podcasts
How seriously do you take your education?
If the answer is “very seriously,” then the next question is, “How quickly do you want to get where you want to go?” And even if you’re just thinking of dabbling in some extra learning, it’s still a good idea to think about your future.
Now, how quickly you reach your goals is up to you. There are three ways that you could learn what you need to know to become successful faster.
Learn From Yourself
The first way is learning from yourself, what I call the School of Hard Knocks. You’re learning from your own mistakes as you figure things out. It’s good sometimes to learn from your mistakes because often those lessons stick. However, there is a price to being your own teacher.
They say, “If you think education is expensive, try ignorance.” And that’s the cost of learning from yourself. Each mistake costs you a lot of time and money. Especially if you end up making the same mistake over and over. What you need is a shorter journey from lesson given to lesson learned.
Learn From Peers
So what’s the less difficult path? It would be learning from your peers, the people around you, your family, your friends, your colleagues.
A big disadvantage is, if you ask your friend to teach you to dance and you’re both terrible dancers, what are the chances you’re going to learn some suave moves by the end of the month?
Chances are, they have a similar lifestyle to you. The same income level. And that’s the problem.
If there’s only a tiny bit of difference between you, how can you teach each other? How can your friend, who is making $60,000, teach you how to make a $200,000 income if they haven’t done it before?
Just like the dance lessons, they don’t know how to teach you, or they teach you the wrong thing. It is the same with behaviors, habits, and beliefs. If your parents, your friends, or your colleagues are at the same level of success as you, chances are, they can’t teach you how to climb higher.
Learn From A Mentor
The third and most powerful way to learn is from a mentor who’s been there, done that, and continues to do it. This mentor isn’t at the same level of success as you. No. This mentor is infinitely, infinitely more wiser and experienced than you.
If you’re making $60,000 a year, you want to learn from someone who is making $10 or $50 million a year. Why?
Because their level of thinking is so much higher. They can pull you up to a whole new level. When I was in my 20s and making a few thousand dollars a month as a copywriter, my mentor told me not to write a sales letter unless it was going to make a million a year. Minimum.
He expanded my horizon with that new price point.
So don’t learn from yourself unless you don’t mind wasting time. Don’t learn from your friends unless you want to learn what you probably already know. Learn from a mentor who you respect, who is right now already where you want to be in your dreams.
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by graphics Team | Feb 27, 2019 | Podcasts
Imagine if you jumped 100 years into the future and the entire world looked exactly the same as today. How would that make you feel?
You’re not likely to feel comfortable with the time freeze. Everyone wants changes in their life, but for changes to happen, they need to learn this one thing first….
And that is in life the only thing that’s constant is change.
Learn That Change Is Constant
Remember Blockbuster? It was a huge store chain that rented out video games and DVD movies. And do you know that at one point Blockbuster actually had an opportunity to acquire Netflix for $50 million?
Only $50 million. But because the CEO lacked the vision and he lacked the ability to change, what happened? They didn’t take action. Blockbuster went bankrupt when it lost over $1.1 billion in 2010. And where is Netflix today?
Netflix now has a market cap of over $150 billion. We even have a saying, “Netflix and chill.” It has become a household brand and the founder and CEO of Netflix is now a billionaire.
Make Changes By Anticipating
I remember when I was working for my first mentor, Alan, when I was in my early 20s. At the time Alan was marketing the business using the good old fax machine. You could send a lot of these faxes out there to market your products and services. Back then, it was extremely profitable because it was cheap to do.
We were making a ton of money. Then suddenly one day the government said you can’t spam people with faxes anymore. That immediately killed that revenue stream, but it started another one.
We did outbound telemarketing, cold calling to bring in business. And that worked really well until the government said they were introducing a Do Not Call List, and you couldn’t call those people anymore. So as a business owner, you have to anticipate change. How do you do it?
One of the most powerful questions you can ask yourself is, What can go wrong next? What will happen if I ______? What would happen if you lost your job or if you lost your most important client? You don’t want to be overly optimistic when times are good.
You don’t want to be over confident. Similarly, when times are bad you don’t want to be overly pessimistic. Tough times don’t last, but tough people do.
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by graphics Team | Feb 26, 2019 | Podcasts
Dr. Ivan Misner is called the “Father of Modern Networking” by CNN and one of the “Top Networking Experts” by Forbes. He’s also the Founder & Chief Visionary Officer of BNI, the world’s largest business networking organization that has generated 9.1 million referrals and $13.1 billion dollars’ worth of business for its members.
In this episode, Ivan shares valuable insights into how business owners could be networking more effectively. He reveals the big mistake that many business owners are making at networking events, and the strengths of relational versus transactional networking.
In addition to his advice on farming relationships, Ivan discusses his new book, Who Is In Your Room? The room is a metaphor for all the relationships with all the people you let into your life. If everyone you invited into your life stays there forever, what would you do?
He shares actionable steps on how to build connections with the people you meet.
Ivan is a New York Times Bestselling author who has written 23 books, including Who’s in Your Room? and he has been featured in the L.A. Times, Wall Street Journal, and New York Times, as well as numerous TV and radio shows including CNN, the BBC and The Today Show on NBC.
He and his wife Elisabeth are now “empty nesters” with three adult children and in his spare time he is also an amateur magician and a black belt in karate.
In this episode, you will learn:
- 5:01 Why many business owners misunderstand the networking and referral process
- 10:52 The differences between how men and women network
- 16:44 Letting the right people in your life if you must fit them all into one room
- 19:42 The different levels of connection in your life, from acquaintances to friends
- 21:50 How the BNI networking structure creates referrals
- 27:45 How BNI saved a moving and storage business after the recession
- 38:40 The role of the BNI Charitable Foundation for children and education
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by graphics Team | Feb 25, 2019 | Podcasts
As high achievers, we all ask ourselves how can we get more done? How do we increase our output so we achieve 10x more than our peers?
Today I’m going to teach you something much more profound, more esoteric than what I usually teach. It will impact how you can 10x what you achieve in your careers. But most of you won’t understand this lesson the first time I teach it.
To do that, I’ll show you how to accomplish without accomplishing. That probably doesn’t make sense to you right now, so let me explain with an analogy.
If you watch Enter the Dragon, there was a scene when Bruce Lee was challenged by another martial artist. That martial artist asked him, “So, what’s your style?” And Bruce Lee said, “Well, my style is the art of fighting without fighting.” The opponent was baffled. What did Bruce Lee mean?
I believe when it comes to accomplishment and productivity, we go through four stages in life.
Life Happens To Me
The first stage is called, “Life happens to me,” when things happen for no reason. You’re not in control and don’t have the power to change your circumstances. You start at this stage.
Early on in my career, I was complaining about all kinds of scenarios. I didn’t like how cheap my customers were, why the government taxed me so much and why the economy was so bad. Everything was about me, me, me, me. I didn’t like the lack of control. No one does.
Later on, I realized that I had the power to change. That I could take responsibility. That evolved to stage two.
Life Happens By Me
At this stage, I realized I could change things because I was in control. If something didn’t work, I could change it, and I could do whatever it takes to get a challenge done. And that’s the same for everyone. You can make anything happen. But there’s one problem.
You get exhausted. If you’re an entrepreneur, if you’re in business, if you’re building your career, you know exactly what I’m talking about. You can take the long hours, but only to a certain point before they burn you out and you evolve to stage three.
Life Happens Through Me
This is the stage of flow. What does that mean?
It means that at this stage, you’re accomplishing, but you’re not attached to what’s happening.
Sometimes, the journey is meant to take that long because you’re meant to go through it. You’re meant to take some time. So, how can you let that go and say, “Yes, I know I’m going in the right direction, yet I’m not attached”? It’s easy to say; it’s not easy to do.
Life As Me
When you reach that realization, that’s when you reach the final stage of “Life as me.” You see everything as one. You see you are part of life and part of life is you as well. That’s more the enlightened stage. So how can you get to this stage?
People go through life, wanting to get more and more done. But when you get to stage four, you don’t have goals. I don’t have goals.
I have objectives and milestones I want to accomplish, but I actually don’t have a goal. It’s contrary to what most people and gurus talk about.
You get to this stage when you think life is now more about being. You’re operating in the state of flow, so things happen when they happen. That’s how you achieve 10x more than your peers, by accomplishing without accomplishing.
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