Well, we are going to learn some things today. You’re going to be challenged and we’re going to have fun. If you’re not having fun, then let’s check in and find out why. But we are going to have a good time with this. You’re going to be challenged. You truly are. As Marcy said, we’ve had the privilege of teaching this around the country and it’s always … there’s no greater joy than to be watching somebody’s face when all of a sudden they get it. Or they get upset. And that might happen to some of you, too, when they start to realize how it’s worked and how long that they didn’t have a clue. It’s amazing how many people actually get upset about what they’re finding out.
See, what we found out as we traveled around the country is that it’s not what you know about money that’s the problem. It’s what you think you know that just isn’t so that’s the problem.
See, there’s a lot of ways that money works, and the vast majority of the money information you have in how money works is actually in how did it works for you inside the system and how it helps the system work. It’s not necessarily everything that you need to know about money for your own benefit or for your own wealth creation, and there’s some tools out there that were created and then put kind of out of reach for us. We’re going to look at some of that in a couple of minutes.
We’re going to move along quickly. If you have a question, write it down. We’re going to have some question and answer time. Hopefully, I’ll have an answer for you by the time we get there. But that’ll be a good opportunity. Because we are filming today, if you do have a question, they’re going to bring you a microphone. So, just raise your hand up, they’ll bring it to you, so we can make sure that that gets recorded for everybody’s edification.
As I said, as we’re traveling, we’re finding out the one consistent story everywhere we go, a mess of people feel like they’re on a financial hamster wheel, that they just got to keep churning it out, churning it out, churning it out.
Now, the reality is is when I was growing up, my parents gave me a great gift. They told me I could have or be or do anything I wanted if I was willing to work hard enough. Well, there’s a double-edged sword to that. The other side is is there’s a limit to how hard you can work, how long and how fast. That inherently gave me a belief that meant there was a limit to how much I could do.
There came a point in my own life when I reached this place where I just had this realization that I have a great life and I have good, successful businesses, and it’s all working the way that I hoped and dreamed it would. But how long can I keep this up?
AT A CERTAIN POINT, YOU REALIZE THAT YOU’RE ALREADY TIRED AND YOU REALIZE THAT YOU GOT A LOT OF YEARS LEFT ON THIS EARTH, BUT YOU HAVE A LOT LESS THAN YOU USED TO HAVE. THAT’S A TRUTH, TOO.
As I sat there thinking about it, I just … It was really triggered for me in 2007, ’08, ’09, and ’10 when the economy took one of the most recessionary periods that we’ve had certainly in my lifetime. Maybe not in Hazel’s but in my lifetime, it was the worst one we had. Hazel and I had a chance to talk yesterday and she was telling me about going through the Great Depression and knows what that really looks like and the things that she brought out of that as lessons. As I sat there, I’m just having these realizations and realizing I’m not sure in order to get where I got to go that I’m going to be able really keep churning it out that long.
It wasn’t shortly after that that I was with a group of men, all contractors. I come from a mechanical contracting background. Ran, worked in, and started and sold, and then did mergers and acquisitions in the corporate side of the mechanical world. I met with these contractors and we met quite often. The conversation went to where it always seems to go, especially when we were talking about this bad economy. This economy was messing with everybody equally, no matter what they had done, right or wrong.
The old saying is is that the incoming tide raises all ships. But there’s another truth to that, is an outgoing tide lowers all ships. Okay, now we of course want to survive that. We were very fortunate that our companies all survived. All of these contractors were running multimillion dollar companies and all of them survived it, but all of us were affected equally, even though we hadn’t done anything in our businesses to warrant that.
One of the gentlemen made a statement that always came up, and it’s about all those rich people. You know, how they steal and rob and cheat in order to have everything they have because they seem to always be making money. Well, I got to be honest. That night, I had enough. I remember standing up and speaking specifically to one of the gentlemen that was very [voicetress 00:04:56] to the whole group, and I just simply said, “You know what? I don’t care what they’re doing. But if it’s legal, moral, and ethical, I’m going to figure out what it is, and I’m going to do it, too. I’m going to quit complaining about what they have and figure out how they’re getting it because we know that the rest of us are all playing on the same playing field and we’re all ending up with the same results, and yet they have a different set of results. So, something has to be going on there.”
That started me on a journey to figure out how the elite wealthy actually think and use moneydifferently than we do. Now, I don’t mean wealthy people or people with a lot of money. I mean elite wealthy. When I mean elite, I mean those people that have moneyin this generation, and the next generation has that much plus more, and the next generation that plus more. They literally have money flowing through generations. It’s not just in their hand for a short period of time while they’re on this earth.
