Bruce’s Wealth Blog

This year I resolve not to make a New Year’s resolution.  Of course, if I am as successful with that resolution as I have been in the past with other resolutions, then clearly I will make a New Year’s resolution.  In fact, you may have noticed that I already broke the resolution by making the resolution to begin with.  Don’t worry the rest of this post will not be as convoluted as the first paragraph.  I have resolved to keep this simple!  (oops!) 

The New Year is a very opportune time to take inventory of the past year, even the past several years, and to set goals and plans for the future.  When I say that, one of the first things that may come to your mind is how much money you want to make this year.  That isn’t a big shock since you are reading, “Bruce’s Wealth Blog.”  Wealth means money right?  Well, not necessarily.  To me, wealth means a particular lifestyle.  Quite honestly, the definition of wealth has changed for me over the last several years.  To explain this change, I need to be a little sexist and write specifically for the guys here, although there are some ladies who may also be just as guilty as I was.

When I started investing, it was about the money.  I was the man.  I had to provide for my family.  And, of course, the best way to do that was to sacrifice myself and my time to make sure my family had money.  To ensure we had the “things” that we thought we needed.  I wanted my wife and my daughter to have everything they wanted.  I worked long hard hours to provide those important things for them.  They didn’t see me much, but we had money.  It didn’t take me long to experience money intoxication.  I started looking at enterprises that were wildly profitable but morally questionable.  These enterprises had the winning combination of booze, sex, and rock and roll.  (I will go into more detail about these enterprises in my ministry blog in the coming weeks).  With these enterprises, I could have all the money, and the power it brought with it, as I wanted.  My family and I would never want for anything.

DISCLAIMER:  I am about to make some generalizations about wives and children. Your particular model may vary.

I was so blindly intoxicated by money and power that I didn’t see what my wife and daughter really wanted.  Sure, it was nice to have nice things, but what my wife really wanted was to cuddle up with me on the couch watching TV, talking, reading, or doing nothing at all.  My daughter was happier cutting up an empty box with me and playing in it with me than she was with the toy that came in the box.  As a rule, women and children would rather be broke and spend quality and fun time with their family provider than to have lots of money and things but little or no time with their “provider.”  Being the provider means providing them with security.  Security means a secure relationship and has nothing to do with money.

We are told that money problems are the number one cause of divorce in our society today.  The truth is that it is not the lack of money that causes the arguments that lead to divorce.  It is normally the arguments that arise because the husband feels like he is less of a man because he isn’t bringing in enough money, so he goes out to get more and practically abandons his family in doing so.  The result is normally that his family still doesn’t have enough money, and they don’t have the bond of a close relationship because they don’t see him either.  They argue, separate, divorce, and blame it on money.

While my situation with my family really was not a lack of money, it was very similar because of the fact that I was so driven to continue making more of it that I lost sight of what was really important.  After all, having money is better than not having money and having a lot of money is better than simply having some money.  More is better right?  My intoxication with money and my willingness to compromise my morals to get into enterprises that catered to a seamy part of our society cost me nearly everything, including my wife and my daughter.  I can tell you from personal experience that chasing after money can cost you all of your money, your family, and even your life and your soul.

So when you take inventory of the past year and start making resolutions for 2009, I urge you to think in terms of what is really important.  Is it the money, or is it the lifestyle?  What do you really need? What does your family really want from you?  What will improve the quality of life for you and your family?  Discuss it with your family.  You may be surprised at the answers.  And, finally, if you haven’t already done so, take Bruce’s Challenge.  It too will help you with your priorities.

I wish you a very prosperous New Year.  May 2009 exceed your dreams.  May you live the lifestyle that makes you and your family happy.  May 2009 be the year that transforms your future.

Bruce..

I was speaking to a dear friend of mine the other day and she made a comment that I thought was important to discuss.  She is a business owner.  As a business owner you are by definition a leader.  Even if you have no employees, you are a leader.  The purpose of your business is to earn a profit by providing a service or product to customers or clients.  Those customers or clients look to you as the business owner to provide them with what they need.  Therefore, as the provider you are a leader.

The comment she made was, "Leaders don’t make mistakes."  As I thought more and more about this comment, I realized that her view is probably held by the majority of other people in the world.  This should go down as one of the biggest urban myths of our time.  The truth is actually the opposite of what is perceived.  Leaders actually make more mistakes than anyone else.  What separates leaders from everyone else is in this regard is that their risk tolerance is also greater than non-leaders.

A leader absolutely must be a decision maker.  If the leader is not willing to make decisions, his company will stagnate and eventually collapse.  Actually, choosing not to make a decision is just as much a decision as making the decision, but we will not get into that here.  Leaders are charged with making decisions others don’t want to make.  How many times have you gone into a business only to be told that the employee cannot make that decision, that only a manager can and the manager is out of town on business?  Let’s face it, most people don’t like making decisions even though we make thousands of decisions every day.  Some people experience great anxiety when they are faced with making a decision.  They get that terrified deer in the headlights look every time they are faced with a decision.  The anxiety we all feel when faced with a decision comes from our fear of being wrong.  What if we make the wrong decision?

Bruce’s Decision Rule:

"You will make bad or wrong decisions in your life."

This is just a fact.  Leaders understand this fact and are willing to tolerate the risk of being in a position to make decisions.  The only reason we don’t know they make mistakes is because they are making timely decisions to correct the mistakes they make.  As an employee you will probably never see the mistakes a leader makes.  Even if a leader personally comes to you and apologizes to you because they made a mistake, you will go about your day and will at the end of the day still make the statement that leaders don’t make mistakes.  Since leaders are making more decisions, they make more mistakes.

There is one more point I have to make before I close this post out.  If you are afraid to start your business because you are afraid you will make a mistake, let me leave you with these thoughts.  First, you will make mistakes.  You are not perfect, no one is.  Regardless of how much information you have, how educated you are, or how smart you are, you will make mistakes.  No amount of information will keep you from making mistakes.  The second is that your choice not to start your business because of your fear of making mistakes is a mistake in and of itself.

Bruce..

I was called today from someone to inform me that a friend of mine, Jim Booth, had died.  Jim had gone through quite a bit in his 61 years here.  He attended life’s seminars more than once.  While I had met Jim several times prior, I started really getting to know him when he attended my first class on being a foreclosure consultant in Maryland.  It was long before my Inner Circle days, so it cost him $795 to take the class.  He didn’t have it, so he borrowed it from someone else.  To the knowledge he got from the class, he added his determination, and his effort.  In his first year, he went from not having $795 to earning over $135,000.00. 

Jim had a strong sense of right and wrong.  More than once I would get an irate call from him asking what he should do about a rogue investor who was breaking the law and harming a homeowner.  The reason Jim did so well that year is because he didn’t make it about the money.  It was about two things.  The first was turning his life around.  Not only did this mean changing his financial position, but it also meant building relationships and doing something he felt good about.  The second came from another job he had where he was involved in taking houses away from people in foreclosure.  He told me on more than one occasion how awful that experience was.  So, the second thing that this was about was in his own way righting the wrongs he felt were committed when people lost their houses to foreclosure.  His reasons for doing so well were much more than money.  It was about the dash.

When you look at a tombstone, you see the name of the person buried there, when he was born, a dash, and then when he died.  You see, the name is not what is important.  The date of birth is not important.  And, neither is the date of death.  The only important part of the tombstone is the dash.  What did the person do between the day he was born and the day he died?  You can’t take your mc mansion with you when you die.  You can’t take a fat bank account with you when you die.  None of the "things" you treasured so much will go with you.  None of the physical earthly reasons why you started your business on your journey to great riches will go with you when you die.  The reason is because none of that stuff is yours.  It  has only been placed in your care for a very short time.  What does go with you when you die is the love you created during the dash.

There is nothing wrong with having great earthly wealth.  But, what you do with it is important.  Great earthly wealth has been placed in your care for a reason.  So do you want the big house or do you want to cure cancer?  Do you want to buy the eighty-thousand dollar car or do you want to feed a village for a year?  Do you want to charge people thousands of dollars and simply teach them how to attract money or do you want to charge a small fee and teach people how to have true meaning in their lives while they become wealthy?  Do you want to make money the core consideration in your dealings with others, or do you want to build loyalty and trust by offering loyalty to them?  You will be surprised how much wealthier you become when you take your focus off the money and put your focus on the dash.

What do you want your dash to look like?  You had better make a decision fast and make it happen now.  Our time is short and we have no promise of tomorrow.

There is a cool video about the dash.  You can view it here.

Jim – Rest in peace my friend.  You will be missed.

Bruce..

I spoke to someone who is under a lot of stress today.  She is a business owner who I have a lot of respect for.  The conversation reminded me that when we think about starting a business we have visions of spending months in Tahiti lying on a beach with a drink in our hand that comes with its own little umbrella to shade it from the hot sun.  We don’t think about the work, time, effort, sweat, and sometimes even blood it takes to get there.  But the truth is that everything has a cost.  And, freedom, even financial freedom, does not come free.  The conversation also reminded me that I had endured similar struggles.

For me, the stress really started pounding me when I started adding other things to my business. It was really difficult to stay focused on one thing because I kept switching hats. One minute I was negotiating a short sale, the next minute I was an educator, the next minute I was a social worker, and then I was a landlord. I was doing the work of about 5 to 7 people. What really made me mad was that none of those 5 to 7 people were doing their job well. As a result, my business was spinning out of control. I was at a point where I didn’t even want to get out of bed.

After you start a business and start achieving some level of success you eventually learn that you have your arms around a beast of a business. It is bigger than you ever thought it would be.   It is starts to take on a life of its own, and you are trying to control it.   It is stressful and it is scary.   What adds to the stress and the fear is the fact that you are afraid others might find out how out of control your business really is.  You become paranoid about changes that occur in your business relationships.  You end up thinking even your close associates are out to get you and that there is no loyalty anymore.

If you haven’t experienced this yet, you will.  I did and most everyone I know who has started a business of any kind has.  So here are some things I have learned that may or may not help you. Please let me know if anything rings true here.

1. You need a “Sabbath.” It does not have to be a religious Sabbath. But the idea is that your life needs to be cyclical and part of that cycle is rest. You sleep part of the day, then you are awake part of the day, then you are asleep, etc. To have one day out of seven where you refuse to involve yourself in any form of business is crucial. It doesn’t even have to be on a Sunday. You can pick any day you want, but when you pick it commit to keeping it the same day and don’t ever let anything intrude under any circumstances. You would be surprised how critical rest is. When I was writing software or involved in solving hardware or software problems, it was often in the middle of the night when I came up with the solution. That was because I let my brain rest.

2. Identify the things you can control and control them. Let go of the stuff you cannot control. We spend too much time and energy on the stuff we have no control over. You can control the content of the stuff you send out. You cannot control the content of the stuff people receive, or how they interpret what you send out. You can control your behavior toward others but you cannot control their behavior toward you.  Often we spend so much time trying to control the things we cannot control that we lose control of the things we can.  It is best just to control the things you have power over.

3. Accountability is good if it is used correctly. Accountability should never be used to affix blame. Blame is never relevant.   Blame takes the focus off solving the real problem.  I have watched companies spend weeks investigating a problem so they could assess blame while the problem went unresolved.  It is better to focus on the solution and stop wasting so much effort on blame and retribution.  Accountability is different.  We think about, “holding someone accountable,” as being synonymous with, “if it breaks it is his fault.”  But again, that is not accountability.  Accountability is a combination of responsibility and communicating results.  Accountability should be used to understand what is going on with your business so you can anticipate the future. Used correctly accountability will allow stakeholders to anticipate and allocate resources on the next phase of the project or to start a new project.   The challenge is to introduce that accountability without taking you precious time away that are needed to complete the project. Business owners have a responsibility to know what is going on.   That should not be confused with micro managing.  A simple reporting mechanism should be enough.   But I have to admit, while I believe accountability is important, I find it difficult to hold myself accountable. I think that is normal with entrepreneurs. I think we all find it difficult to keep ourselves accountable. But our businesses depend on it.

4. Focus is critical. We can only focus on one thing at a time. It is important that we don’t dilute ourselves too much by following the next shiny object. That is where I have made major mistakes in my business and why I have run into the financial difficulties in the past.   As a result of those costly mistakes I retooled my business and adjusted my mission to one that is clearer today.

5. Taking a page from Jim Collins, I have to say it is critical to get the right people on the right bus and in the right seats, and to get the wrong people off the bus. This is tough because we don’t want to fire good people. But good people aren’t any good if they are not in the right seats.  It also means firing a client.  That is right, sometimes the client is in the wrong seat or even on the wrong bus.  When we recognize that we need to fire them.  Even more difficult is when the business owner learns that it is he who is in the wrong seat or on the wrong bus.  Sometimes that means the business owner needs to get off the bus completely and let someone else drive.

6. Change is sometimes good. Change for the sake of change is often not good. But, change is inevitable. If your business is flexible and adaptable to change like the amoeba, then your business will thrive in many different economic environments. If your business is not flexible and adaptable to change it will become extinct like the dinosaur. Be the amoeba.

You may be able to relate to some or all of these things.  If you do, you are not alone.  I would not be writing about them if I had not attended life’s seminars on the subject.  You have a choice.  You can think you are different and that these things will not happen to you.  If that is the case, then chances are that you will be sitting in one of life’s seminars learning that these things will indeed happen to you.  Or you can learn from my experience in the seminar of life.  The only thing I can guarantee is that attending life’s seminar will be more expensive.

Take care and happy investing!

Bruce..