فصل 3 بخش 4

CHAPTER 3.4

SPEED IT UP: 2. EARN MORE AND INVEST THE DIFFERENCE

Try not to become a man of success, but rather try to become a man of value.

—ALBERT EINSTEIN

Okay, let’s kick into second gear. If saving is one way to speed up your plan, there is an even faster way that literally has no limits—if you unleash your creativity and focus, and become obsessed with finding a way to do more for others than anyone else. That’s how you earn more and shift into the fast lane to freedom.

DRIVING A TRUCK TO FINANCIAL FREEDOM?

When I was growing up, my mother had a great plan for me. She wanted me to become a truck driver. She had seen these ads on television, over and over, for Truckmaster truck driving education school. She told me that with a little training, I could qualify as a truck driver and make up to $24,000 a year. Wow, $24,000! That was twice what my dad was earning as a parking attendant in downtown LA. She thought that this would provide a great future for me. She worked into her sales pitch that I’d have the freedom to be on the open road and drive. It actually appealed to me on a certain level: the idea that I could just turn on my music and go—kind of a cool thought for a 14-year-old kid who wasn’t even driving yet. I’d have the opportunity to get up and go instead of being stuck in an underground parking garage for 30-plus years.

But after all of the misery I had witnessed, all of the shame associated with four different fathers, of never having enough money for clothing or food, I realized I could never drive a truck long enough or far enough to allow me to escape the pain of that situation. In my head, I decided that there was no way in my lifetime I would have a family that would suffer this way. On top of that, I wanted to use my mind and my heart. I wanted to get in the game of life at a different level.

I looked around and wondered how other people’s lives could be so vastly different from my own. Why were we struggling constantly to make ends meet, to stay ahead of the bill collector—choosing between canned beans or spaghetti with ketchup because we couldn’t afford tomato sauce? And yet, in the same city, not far from us, kids I went to high school with were taking fancy vacations and studying on picture-perfect college campuses—living a life well beyond my wildest dreams—a life so obviously different from the one we would ever experience. What did they know that we didn’t know? What were they doing differently from my father and mother?

I became obsessed. How was it possible that someone could earn twice as much money in the same amount of time? Three times as much? Ten times as much? It seemed crazy! From my perspective, it was an unsolvable riddle.

INVEST IN YOURSELF

I was working as a janitor, and I needed extra money. A man my parents knew, and whom my father had called a “loser,” had become quite successful in a short period of time, at least in financial terms. He was buying, fixing, and flipping real estate in Southern California and needed a kid on the weekend to help him move furniture. That chance encounter, that fateful weekend of working my tail off, led to an opening that would change my life forever. His name was Jim Hannah. He took notice of my hustle and drive. When I had a moment, I asked him, “How did you turn your life around? How did you become so successful?” “I did it,” he said, “by going to a seminar by a man named Jim Rohn.” “What’s a seminar?” I asked. “It’s a place where a man takes ten or twenty years of his life and all he’s learned and he condenses it into a few hours so that you can compress years of learning into days,” he answered. Wow, that sounded pretty awesome. “How much does it cost?” “Thirty-five dollars,” he told me. What!? I was making $40 a week as a part-time janitor while going to high school. “Can you get me in?” I asked. “Sure!” he said. “But I won’t—because you wouldn’t value it if you didn’t pay for it.” I stood there, disheartened. How could I ever afford $35 for three hours with this expert? “Well, if you don’t think you’re worth the investment, don’t make it,” he finally shrugged. I struggled and struggled with that one—but ultimately decided to go for it. It turned out to be one of the most important investments of my life. I took a week’s pay and went to a seminar where I met Jim Rohn—the man who became my life’s first mentor.

I sat in an Irvine, California, hotel ballroom listening to Jim, riveted. This silver-haired man literally echoed the questions that had been burning in my mind. He, too, had grown up poor, wondering, even though his father was a good man, why his father struggled so hard only to suffer while others around him prospered. And then, suddenly, he answered the question I had been asking myself literally for years.

“What’s the secret to economic success? The key,” he said, “is to understand how to become more valuable in the marketplace.

“To have more, you simply have to become more.

“Don’t wish it was easier; wish you were better.

“For things to change, you have to change.

“For things to get better, you have to get better!

“We get paid for bringing value to the marketplace. It takes time . . . but we don’t get paid for time, we get paid for value. America is unique. It’s a ladder to climb. It starts down here, at what? About $2.30 an hour. What was the top income last year? The guy who runs Disney—$52 million! Would a company pay somebody $52 million a year? The answer is: of course! If you help a company make a billion dollars, would they pay you $52 million? Of course! It’s chicken feed! It’s not that much money.

“Is it really possible to become that valuable? The answer is: of course!” And then he let me in on the ultimate secret. “How do you truly become more valuable? Learn to work harder on yourself than you do on your job.

“So can you personally become twice as valuable and make twice as much money in the same time? Is it possible to become ten times as valuable and make ten times as much money in the same time? Is that possible? Of course!” And then he paused and looked directly in my eyes and said, “All you have to do to earn more money in the same amount of time is simply become more valuable.” And there it was! There was my answer. Once I got that, it turned my life around. That clarity, that simplicity, the wisdom of those words—they hit me like a 100-pound brick. Those are the exact words I’ve heard Jim Rohn speak probably a hundred times. I have carried them in my heart every day since, including the day that I spoke at his funeral in 2009.

That man, that seminar, that day—what Jim Rohn did was put me back in control of my own future. He made me stop focusing on what was outside of my control—my past, the poverty, other people’s expectations, the state of the economy—and taught me to focus instead on what I could control. I could improve myself; I could find a way to serve, a way to do more, a way to become better, a way to add value to the marketplace. I became obsessed with finding ways to do more for others than anyone else was doing, in less time. That began a never-ending process that continues to this day! At its most basic level, it provided a pathway to progress that continues to drive and lead every single decision I make and action I take.

In the Bible, there is a simple tenet that says there’s nothing wrong with wanting to be great.9 If you wish to become great, learn to become the servant of many. If you can find a way to serve many people, you can earn more. Find a way to serve millions of people, you can earn millions. It’s the law of added value.

And if the gospel of Warren Buffett is more your thing than biblical verse, the Oracle of Omaha is famous for saying that the most powerful investment he ever made in his life, and that anyone can make, is an investment in himself. He talks about investing in personal development books, in educating himself, and how a Dale Carnegie course completely changed his life. Buffett once told me this story himself when we were on the Today show together. I laughed and asked him to keep telling that story. “It’s good for business,” I said, grinning.

I took Jim Rohn’s message to heart and became obsessed—I would never stop growing, never stop giving, never stop trying to expand my influence or my capacity to give and do good. And as a result, over the years, I’ve become more valuable in the marketplace. To the point that I’m extremely fortunate enough today that finances are no longer an issue in my life. I’m not unique. Anyone can do the same—if you let go of your stories about the past, and break through your stories about the present and its limits. Problems are always available, but so is opportunity.

What does the American income ladder look like today? My bet is Jim Rohn couldn’t have imagined that in 2013, the low end of the ladder would be $7.25 an hour ($15,080 annually) and that the high-end earner of the year would be Appaloosa Management founder and hedge fund leader David Tepper, who earned $3.5 billion in personal income. How could any human being make even $1 billion a year, much less $3.5 billion? Why such an incredibly low income for some people and such a high-income opportunity for others? The answer is the marketplace puts very little value on being a cashier at McDonald’s ($7.77 an hour) because it requires a skill that can be learned in a few hours by almost anyone. However, successfully expanding people’s financial returns in a significant way is a much more rare and valued set of skills. When most Americans are getting less than 33 basis points (a third of 1%) annually as a return on their money from the bank, David Tepper delivered a 42% return for his investors in the same time! How valuable were his contributions to their economic lives? If he got them a 1% return, he would have been 300% more valuable. A 42% return means he added 12,627% more economic value to their lives!

So how about you? What are you going to do to add more value to the marketplace? How are you going to ensure abundance rather than struggle? If we’re going to make a radical shift and take you from where you are today to where you want be—to financial freedom—then this path is the most powerful one I know to get you there.

Now, before you start your rallying cry of objections, let me just say: I know that things are different today. I know it’s a challenging time for the economy. I know we’ve lost two million jobs since 2008, and the ones that are coming back are mostly service or low-paying jobs. And yes, I realize that incomes have been stagnant since the 1990s.

Guess what interest rates and unemployment looked like in 1978, when I started my career? Within two years, interest rates had skyrocketed! My first investment, a fourplex in Long Beach, California, had an 18% mortgage. Can you imagine interest rates at 18% today to buy a home? We’d have a revolt on the White House lawn. But history is circular—always has been, always will be. Yes, incomes are stagnant, if you don’t find a way to geometrically add more value. But if you find a way to add value, incomes move in one direction, and that’s always up.

During the Great Recession, 8.8 million jobs were lost. In 2008, 2.3 million jobs were lost in that year alone! Unemployment peaked at 10%. But remember, that 10% unemployment rate is an average. Some portions of the population had unemployment levels over 25%, but for those making $100,000 per year or more, what would you guess was their unemployment rate? The answer: close to 1%! The lesson? If you truly develop skills that are needed in the current marketplace—if you constantly improve and become more valuable—someone will employ you or you’ll employ yourself, regardless of the economy. And if you employ yourself, your raise becomes effective when you are!

Even today, it’s a totally different story in Silicon Valley, where jobs are for the taking. Technology companies can’t fill their openings fast enough; they can’t find enough qualified people. Jobs are out there, but you and I need to retool our skill sets—retool ourselves—so that we become valuable in the new marketplace. I can promise you this: most of those “old jobs” aren’t coming back.

Let’s look at history. In the 1860s, 80% of Americans were farmers. Today 2% of the US population work in farming and agriculture, and we feed the entire world. New technology disrupted everything—suddenly one farmer could do the work of 500. Many people struggled, many lost their jobs. For those who didn’t adapt, the industrial revolution was an incredibly painful time. But that very same technology that brought along steam power and machine tools, which displaced people in the short term, made the quality of life of everyone around them exponentially better and provided more jobs at a higher level of income.

Today’s new technologies are causing massive disruption once again. Oxford researchers say that almost half of America’s occupations are at risk of becoming automated (translation: replaced) within the next 20 years! You and I have to retool to a different level. I promise you, 150 years ago, no one could have fathomed a day when there would be jobs called social media marketer, stem cell scientist, and robotics engineer. No one could imagine that an electrician or a plumber would make $150,000 a year, or that a factory worker could learn how to use a computer to automate a machine and earn $100,000 in the process. But just because people couldn’t imagine it, didn’t mean it wouldn’t happen.

I meet people everyday who tell me the job market is frozen, or they’ve been laid off and fear they’ll never find work again. But I’m here to tell you it’s not the market, it’s you. You can increase your earnings potential—anyone can. You can add value to the marketplace. You can learn new skills, you can master your own mind-set, you can grow and change and develop, and you can find the job and economic opportunity that you need and deserve.

But if your job is going to be obsolete in the next five or ten years, it’s time to think about making a pivot and trying something new. A pivot is what Silicon Valley calls it when you go from one business to another, usually after a colossal failure.

If you’re reading this book right now, you’re a person who looks for answers, for solutions, for a better way. There are hundreds of ways you can retool your skill set. You can do it by going after a college education, a trade education, or self-education. You can earn $100,000 to millions a year, and not by just going and spending a boatload of money on a four-year college degree (that can put you $100,000 or more in debt). Millions of jobs are available in this country, but there is also a major skills gap. According to Mike Rowe, host of Discovery Channel’s Dirty Jobs, there are about 3.5 million jobs available right now, and only 10% of them require a four-year degree. That means that the other 90% of them require something else: training, skill, or a willingness to get dirty, perhaps, but mostly a willingness to learn a new and useful trade. According to Rowe, “That’s always been for sale, but it’s kind of fallen out of [our country’s] narrative.” Retooling is both exciting and scary. Exciting because of the opportunity to learn, grow, create, and change. Exciting once you realize “I’m valuable; I have a contribution to make; I’m worth more.” Scary because you think, “How am I going to do this?” Remember Jim Rohn’s words: “For things to change, you have to change. For things to get better, you have to get better.” Retool or be the fool. Get rid of your story of limitation and shift into high gear.

People often say to me, “Tony, that’s great if you have your own business or you work in a company where it’s growing. But what if you’re in a traditionally low-paying job, and you love what you do? What if you’re a teacher, what then?” Let’s step outside our own limiting thinking, and let me give you a perfect example of a schoolteacher who used to struggle, but because of his passion and his desire to help more students, he found a way to add more value and earn more than most teachers ever dream about. The real limitation in our earnings is never our job—it’s our creativity, our focus, and our contribution.

CREATIVITY, CONTRIBUTION, AND THE KOREAN ROCK STAR

If you ever had a third-grade teacher who inspired you to try something new, or an eighth-grade teacher who believed in your own child beyond measure, you know the power of a single role model in the life of a child. Our teachers are one of our greatest yet most underappreciated and underpaid assets. So what do you do if you’re a teacher, or you have a similar job where your upside potential seems to be limited? As a teacher, how can one think about adding value to more than just 30 students in the classroom? Is there a way you might be able to add value to hundreds of students, thousands of students, even millions?

There are plenty of schoolteachers who think, “I’ll never make enough money doing what I love.” There is broad agreement that we as society don’t value teachers in the way that we should. But as we now know, that limiting belief holds people back. Kim Ki-hoon is a teacher in South Korea who refused to buy into that story.

Unlike most teachers, Kim Ki-hoon is known as a “rock star” in South Korea. Kim is one of the most successful teachers in his country. How did he become so successful? He worked harder on himself, on his ability to teach, than he did on his job.

Sixty years ago, according to the Wall Street Journal, the majority of South Koreans were illiterate. The country realized it needed to take massive and dramatic action. Today teachers there are constantly encouraged to study, to innovate, to teach the same class in a new way every day. They’re taught to learn from one another, mentor one another—find the best techniques to add more value. The result? Today 15-year-olds in South Korea rank second in reading, and with a 93% graduation rate—compared with just 77% in the United States.

Ki-hoon took that model and ran with it. He put enormous time into finding the best teachers, studying their patterns, learning how to create breakthroughs. He found a way to help his students learn faster, better, smarter—and not just his students but also students all across the country. Why focus on just helping 30 students? he thought, Why not help as many as I can? With the advent of technology, he realized he could put his classes online and make his passion for teaching and learning available to everyone.

Today Ki-hoon works about 60 hours a week, but only three hours of those are for giving lectures. The other 57 hours are spent researching, innovating, developing curriculum, and responding to students. “The harder I work, the more I make,” he says. And he works hardest to become better for the people he serves. Ki-hoon records his classes on video, and circulates them on the internet, where students log on at the rate of $4 an hour. How does he know it works? How does he know he’s adding more value than anyone else? The marketplace always tells you your true worth or value. Guess how many people buy his classes? Last year, his annual earnings topped $4 million! The more value Ki-hoon offers via online classes and tutorials, the more students sign up. And, it follows, more students means more money—in this case, a lot more.

A teacher earning $4 million. How does that compare to the best schoolteacher you know? Ki-hoon’s story shatters the belief that our profession limits us. He’s part of the 1% not because he’s lucky, not because he was in the right place at the right time, not because he chose a lucrative profession. No, Ki-hoon is a wealthy man, part of the 1%, because he has never stopped learning, never stopped growing, never stopped investing in himself.

THE ULTIMATE MULTITASKER

But what if you’re not an entrepreneur? What if you have absolutely no interest in hanging up your own shingle? What if you work in corporate America or even for a small business? Can you still figure out a way to add more value and increase your earning potential? Let me tell you about a young woman. Daniela worked in a marketing department doing art design and didn’t see any clear path toward moving up in her company. She was extremely talented, but more importantly, she was hungry. She was constantly looking to do more and give more; it was just her nature. And so she often helped her colleagues with visual arts. And then she wanted to learn about marketing, so she started studying marketing and offered to help. And then, of course, she realized she didn’t really know anything about social media—but the opportunities there seemed huge, so she decided to educate herself on social media as well.

After a few years, Daniela was doing many of the jobs of her coworkers. And they forgot that she was offering a gift, and they started to take her for granted. A new pattern emerged where, at five o’clock, when jobs with key deadlines were still not done, she worked alone at her desk as her associates slipped out the door. She didn’t want to stay late, but she wasn’t going to let the company and their clients down. When it was clear her colleagues were actually taking advantage of her drive and ambition, she reached her limit. “I’m doing three people’s jobs plus my own!” But instead of getting angry, Daniela decided it was an opportunity.

What did she do? Daniela approached her CEO and laid it on the line: “Right now I’m doing the work of four people. I’ve gone to courses, I’ve learned and taught myself about visual arts, marketing, and social media. I’m not here to throw anybody under the bus, but I can save you fifty percent of your marketing cost right now and eliminate three people by taking on their jobs myself. And I’ll do a better job, too. I don’t need you to trust me on this: let me prove myself to you. Let them keep doing their jobs for six months, and I’ll do my assignments and theirs, so you’ll have two different examples to pick from. You decide what’s best.” All Daniela asked was that if she did a better job, after six months, her boss would give her more responsibility and double her pay. And guess what? She did it: she proved herself on the visual art and marketing fronts, with great copywriting and a successful social media campaign. Daniela showed that not only could she handle the extra work, but also she could run circles around the competition—she could outperform them all. She added enough value that the company realized it could pay one person twice as much money, and still cut its costs in half. The marketplace had spoken.

Happiness is not in the mere possession of money; it lies in the joy of achievement, in the thrill of creative effort.

—FRANKLIN D. ROOSEVELT

OPPORTUNITY IS EVERYWHERE

How are you going to add more value to the world? How are you going to contribute more, earn more, and increase your impact? There are hundreds, if not thousands, of stories of average individuals who saw a problem, looked at things just a little bit differently, and went on to transform entire industries or create entirely new markets. They weren’t entrepreneurs; they were just people like you and me, people who wouldn’t settle. In the world we live in today, no industry or product is immune: the intersection of all things digital—the internet, social media, and technology—the interconnectedness of every person and everything on earth. That means that even the biggest companies and the most mature or stable businesses are ripe for disruption. Enter Nick Woodman.

RIDING THE WAVE

Who would have predicted that Kodak, the corporate titan that dominated the world of photography in the 20th century, would be caught flatfooted when digital imaging came on the scene? Kodak invented digital photography. And yet after 124 years in business, the company filed for bankruptcy in 2012—a move that had a disastrous ripple effect on the economy in and around Rochester, New York, where over 50,000 jobs were lost.

But those same massive technological and cultural changes that killed Kodak provided a huge opportunity for a California surfer named Nick Woodman. Woodman was obsessed with surfing. His absolute love of and devotion to the sport, along with his drive and his hunger, enabled him to find a way to add value.

Chances are you’ve never heard of Woodman, but he had the brilliant idea to strap a waterproof camera to his wrist while riding the waves. All Woodman set out to do was find a way to enjoy his surfing after it happened. With digital photography coming out, he started to tinker with cameras to see if he could make them more waterproof and capture better-quality video. And as technology changed, he continued to tinker. And tinker. He ended up inventing the GoPro, a tiny, broadcast-quality, clip-on-and-take-anywhere digital camera.

This cool little device is now on the head of every extreme sports person in the world. Whether you’re riding a bike, paddling through rapids, snowboarding, or catching the waves, the GoPro allows you to capture the magic of your adrenaline rush and share it with everyone you love. Woodman’s timing couldn’t have been better: he began marketing the GoPro just as people started uploading their videos to YouTube and Facebook. He created a product he wanted to use and figured he couldn’t be the only guy needing one. Woodman figured out how to add value to millions of lives by making the new technology convenient, fun, and affordable. Ultimately, Woodman got in front of a trend. That trend was actively sharing digitally whatever was there. One of the key secrets if you really want to become wealthy: get in front of a trend. Today the surfer from San Diego, California, is worth over $1 billion.

A NEW “CATEGORY” IS BORN

Back in 2010, Matt Lauer invited me to join him for a special roundtable discussion about where the economy was headed. I was joining Warren Buffett and the world’s youngest female self-made billionaire: a woman named Sara Blakely. Any opportunity to discuss the economy with Warren Buffett was a huge privilege, but what I didn’t bank on was being totally blown away by Sara’s story.

Blakely didn’t disrupt an industry so much as create an entirely new one. A former Walt Disney World employee, Sara was getting ready for a party when she realized she didn’t have the right underwear for a pair of fitted white pants. Rather than go commando, she decided to take matters into her own hands. Armed with nothing more than a pair of scissors and a whole lot of sass, she cut the feet off her control-top pantyhose, and, voila, a new industry was born.

Of course, it didn’t happen overnight, and it didn’t happen easily. Sara shared with me that one of the most important secrets to her success was that from an early age, her father actually encouraged her to “fail!” But he defined failure not as failure to achieve a result . . . but failure to try. Around the dinner table, he would ask if she had failed today, and he was truly excited if she had—because he knew that meant she was on the path to success. “Tony, it just took away my fear of trying,” she told me.

Down and out in a dead-end office-products sales job, Blakely invested all the money she had in the world, $5,000, and set out to create body wear that would work for her. “I must have heard ‘no’ a thousand times,” she said. But she didn’t listen. In addition to the $5,000 she invested, she saved $3,000 (which she didn’t have) on legal fees by writing her own patent from a textbook.

Ultimately, the company she founded, Spanx, created an entirely new category of products called “shapewear” and has inspired a cultlike following among women worldwide. According to my wife, put on a pair to pull in all your “its and bits,” and you’ll take three inches off your waistline immediately.

With Oprah Winfrey’s blessing, Spanx turned from a small business into a worldwide sensation. Today Spanx is worth over a billion dollars, and the brand now includes over 200 products that help women look and feel great. Ever the optimist, Sara tried to work her magic on me: she tried to get me to wear a pair of her new Spanx for men when we were together on the Today show. I thanked her and mentioned gently that perhaps she didn’t understand the male market as well as the female market. But I remain inspired by her example. In the end, Spanx for men has also taken off—no thanks to me. Today Blakely owns 100% of her company, has zero debt, and has never taken on outside investment. In 2012 Time magazine named her one of its “100 Most Influential People in the World.” Like Nick Woodman, she saw a need and moved to fill it. She refused to be limited by her own story and found a way to add value.

You can too! You don’t have to start a billion-dollar company, disrupt an entire category, or make $4 million as a teacher online. You don’t even have to take on four jobs at once. But if these people are capable of doing that, couldn’t you find a way to make an extra $500 or $1,000 a month? Or maybe even an extra $20,000, $50,000, or even $100,000 or more a year? Couldn’t you figure out how to unleash your own creativity, contribution, and focus to add more value to the marketplace and put that money in your Freedom Fund? You can. The time to begin is now. . . .

Find a way to earn or save an extra $500 per month, or $6,000 a year. If it is invested at an 8% return over 40 years, it is worth $1.5 million—remember our pizza example. If you find a way to earn $1,000 per month, or $12,000 a year, that’s worth $3 million in your nest egg. If you find a way to earn $3,000 per month, or $36,000 a year, that’s worth $9 million in your nest egg. What’s the lesson? Go add value, earn more, and invest your earnings, and you can create any level of financial freedom you truly desire.