Keys to Success

Respect the money and become indifferent towards it.

What does respecting the money means. It comes down to a number of things and they are all connected. But probably one of the most important things is actually the way people view money. There are two main problems. The first major problem is people not really understanding the function of money. Why money exists. If you don't understand why money exists and its real function you tend to have no respect for it. The second major problem has to do with emotion towards money. Having some sort of emotional barrier towards money itself. For example, let's take the function of money and the purpose of why it actually exists. We are always told things like "money is the root of all evil", "money doesn't make you happy", "The more money you have the more problem you are going to have".

Let's think about this for a minute. Let's imagine a world that didn't have any money in it at all. Money obviously has a function. Look up "double coincidence of wants". It's really important to understand the function of money and pretty well known by the people who understand the money. Our modern society and everything we are used to consuming has come about because of the function of money. Society would not be possible without the money. It makes society works. It exists to solve the double coincidence of wants. People don't get this idea easily. If you understand it you will start to respect it more. The alternative is barter economy. We are lead to believe most of the time that wanting money is a bad thing. People blur the line between wanting to do better for yourself and your family and bad greed of acquiring money by harming or abusing other people and money is the medium. One is a positive thing, there is nothing wrong with wanting to do good for you and your family. The other type of greed is obviously not good its negative greed where you are harming other people to become wealthy, you don't have to do that. If you understand the function of money and respect it, you will realize that money is not the root of all evil. Its greed is the root of all evil in a negative sense when you are harming other people.

Imagine your life in a world without money in it. Everything in it, everything you consume these days is a function of the monetary system that's built up over 1000's of year and we have come from the barter economy to where we are now. Without it society literally would not function. So start to understand and respect money and its function.

Let's take enterprise for an example. There are only two inputs in the enterprise capital and labor. Money itself is a commodity like labor. They both have prices. Capital has a price and labor has a price. Capital has a price of interest. For labor, it's the price that labor is willing to work for. There is a labor market. For any enterprise, there is two input capital and labor. Like labor capital markets are absolutely necessary. Society would not function without capital markets because capital is a commodity and has a price and it needs to be transacted. It allocates resources as optimally as possible because there is demand and supply capital and demand and supply for labor. When you understand the function of money and capital markets you understand that its necessary for them to exist for society to function. In all circumstances in history when capital has been locked out of the market and left, there has been widespread depression. Money makes society works.

These days its very popular to have this view of the world that the system is broken and doesn't work. Well, it does work and society continues to function. There is no better alternative. It's not perfect but there are no better alternatives.

The second problem is people have emotional barriers towards money. For example, what do you think about a 10 dollar note, a 100 dollar note and a briefcase of 1 million dollars? Different level emotions right? What do you think of the 10 dollar note thinks of you? Nothing; It can't think. It a piece of paper with 10 written of it. It's a commodity. It doesn't think. It's a commodity that is used to exchange for goods and services to satisfy wants and needs. That's all it is. The problem with most people is they think all the problem with the money exist with them and not with the money. The money doesn't think anything of you. Weather is 10, 100 or 1 million dollars, it doesn't matter. There is no difference expect monetary value. The key is to be indifferent toward money at the same time be respectful towards it. How can you actually be respectful of money and be at the same time indifferent? It's kind of contradictory. But in this context, it's not. Because respect in this context is simply having awareness. Its having awareness of what money actually is and being indifferent when you look at it when you see more and more of it. That's the key to starting on the road to becoming successful.

Rent to own - Define assets and liabilities properly.

We have talked about the function of money and about emotional aspects towards money. One thing people really get wrong is mixing up what an asset is and what a liability is. Money has a price, in debt market its interest and in equity market its stake in the company. Debt an equity are very different. When you are paying interest you do it on a schedule. You have a liability to be on time for making payments. There are two kinds of debts. Debt that has been taken by a company and taken by an individual. When you take debt for your company the business has the exposure to debt, not you personally. Its a liability but a different kind. Inside a company when you take debt the company is "limited liability (LLC)" therefore you as a person do not have the exposure the company does. Now when you take on debt personally you are taking on the risk on to you. You are signing up for the scheduled payments and that is different than when you do it through the company. For example, mortgages are the biggest liability you will take in your life. For the bank that's an asset. It's much more preferable to buy the asset in cash because you could end up paying 2-3 time the value of the property that you want to purchase if you are doing it on a mortgage. No wealthy people in the world have liabilities. They stick to the principle that they don't want to take on liabilities they want to own assets. It's much more preferable to buy it for a cash. People feel like they have no choice. They borrow money to finance the lifestyle they can't afford for cash and pay it over for say 25 years. Most people don't realize this but they do have an alternative. They can rent. People think that renting is a liability and they group it in the same basket as debt. It's not debt, it's not a liability because if you rent you have no risk you can walk out the next month you have freedom. Freedom is an asset. That's what wealthy people understand. People who don't understand money mix up money and liability. Taking a mortgage is not an asset its a major liability. It puts you in a trap. The owner of that debt is receiving a scheduled payment paid you. You end up hamster wheeled in this trap.

When you look at all the debt's and liability for people and not for companies it's all about mortgages, credit card, borrowing money for the car. It's all the mistakes that people make. They don't think freedom is an asset. So one of the biggest principles is to buy everything for cash if you can because owing it now is better than to own it in the future. If you were renting for a period you didn't have any liability during that period you had an asset and that was freedom. It's absolutely essential and the principle that everybody should be sticking to otherwise you will get trapped on the hamster wheel. The debt infrastructure is not designed to benefit you its designed to benefit the owner of the infrastructure. You actually have to create your own infrastructure and have no liabilities to become successful.

Build and Own your own infrastructure.

It might sound obvious but what you actually have to do is save and you have to build your asset base. It's very easy for anyone to get a job somewhere and start accumulating liabilities based on that salary. Best way to do build your infrastructure is to build up your own business. Work for yourself. It can still be done if you are working for a corporation but its more difficult. You just gotta live well within your means and you gotta have no liabilities. Liabilities like mortgages, overdraft facilities, credit card, taking a loan to buy cars. Even if you have to rent. You gotta be prepared to do that. There are a million ways to make a million dollars. You can start off small and build. You don't have to have thousands of dollars to start your business. You have to build your asset base. You are building your own pension. If you look at pension industry what's become really apparent in last 5 to 10 years is that the generation previously who started on the pension infrastructure in the 70's and throughout the period following that have failed. Those people are not able to retire properly. If they can't do that it means that the pension solution has not met. These people can't retire because the pension is not sufficient for today's standard of living. Pension infrastructure has failed in the western world. So If you wanna be wealthy, you wanna be building your own pension not outsourcing it but insourcing your own pension. So learning how to do things properly. Another infrastructure is insurance. It's a classic example where its essential a fear pitch. The insurance company literally hire people, top class mathematicians to create models to ensure that they never pay out. And If they ever payout its a tiny percentage of overall policy. The best way to create your own insurance is to build your own infrastructure so you become wealthy. So insurance is another infrastructure as well as pension that isn't necessarily built for your own benefit. The other one is whole private debt market. For example credit report companies, think about how absurd they are. They score you on your ability to borrow and the higher your score the more you can borrow. So the higher you score and the more compliant you are when it comes to liabilities the bigger liability you can take on. It's complete insanity. If you want to start on your road to success and build your asset base and build your infrastructure these are all the things you have to avoid. You have to literally do the opposite of what everybody tells you to do.

So going back to the point understand the function of money, respect it, be indifferent towards it to become wealthy. This can only be achieved when you understand how the system works and you don't necessarily want to operate within it you want to own it. You have to build your asset base, and in that period you should have no liabilities. It's difficult to begin with but it get's easier over time because the key to this is to generate passive income and cash flow. You should be making money while you sleep. It becomes exponential. It starts off difficult but it becomes easier over the period. As the old saying goes It takes 20 years to become an overnight success. You just gotta stick with it. Build your own infrastructure. It's the only way to go.

Go traveling. Get Perspective. Get your Dream Life.

When you travel you get a perspective of other countries, economies and economic infrastructure and society. When you build your own infrastructure what happens is you get freedom of time, you get the freedom to work on your own agenda, you get freedom of schedule. Freedom is the most valuable asset you will ever own. Building your own infrastructure gives you that and traveling allows you to appreciate that. Not traveling like a vacation or holidays for 1 or 2 weeks but real travel like on the road or disappearing for a year traveling the world and seeing what it has to offer. You don't really appreciate freedom until you got no plan and until your traveling on your own schedule. You don't have your perspective until you do that. How do you know what you like and enjoy and what you really want until you have seen what's on offer. You don't have all the information. That's what traveling does for you. It also gives you the freedom to choose the life that you want. If you know what's out there you can choose it. You will realize what freedom really is and what perfect life you want for your self. Once you appreciate freedom and once you realize what your perfect life is the best thing you can actually do is go back to where you are from and save and build and pay for cash the life that you want. That is really powerful. And if you don't like where you are and what's happening any moment of time in your country you can just get on a plane and leave. Traveling as early as possible in your life makes you appreciate freedom. When you understand that you know what you are building towards, what's at the end of the road and that brings total clarity. That is why traveling is so important.

Know that risk is subjective not two dimensional.

When it comes down to risk people tend to look at it incorrectly. They look at risk in the two-dimensional traditional sense. Their belief is the more risk I take the more potential reward or loss I can have. In reality, the risk is actually subjective to your own personal situation. Let's assume you have a job for $50,000 a year and you believe that having that job is safe and there is no risk. But let's move on one step forward. Let's say for example you wanna quit your job. If you wanna quit your job with no risk you line up another job beforehand and you agree on a high salary with another employer and you move on to the other job by quitting your current job. Let's assume you don't have any other job lined up then what's the likelihood of you earning $50,000 a year in the future. When you look at this and you calculate downside vs upside its pretty obvious. Let's calculate the downside first. What can you possibly earn that's less than $50,000. You can earn at minimum 0. So your downside is $50,000 but the real downside is very small. In reality, you are going to earn somewhere around 50 or just less than that. But what about the upside. Your upside is all the money in the world. Even if you have a very very small percentage change of earning infinity or all the money in the world you are still earning more than $50,000. So your downside is very small and your upside is huge. The person who takes the 50k job tends to anchor themselves to that number and if you are anchoring yourself to that number to take on liabilities that this number can pay for that situation is riskier. And that's why risk is subjective and not fully two dimensional in the real world. Because its subjective to your own personal situation. So in that scenario, you feel like you are not taking the risk but you are because you are taking in lot's of liabilities and therefore you can't actually assess risk objectively. The problem with risk in the real world is most people don't look at it objectively. So in this job example we very objectively calculated downside vs upside but if you have any liabilities you can't. You can't look at it with clarity. Thus freedom is the number one asset you can possibly have. Freedom allows you to be objective when you are assessing risk. Because you will look at everything clarity, with very simple downside vs upside. The ideal situation to work towards is not having personal liabilities and assessing risk in terms of business by essentially trying to work towards business risk where you have got very limited downside but huge upside. Simply repeating this can make you wealthy.

The first thing you should do is step outside yourself and assess your current situation. If you have lots of liabilities you need to work towards freedom. It is difficult to do but its something that just has to be done otherwise you will always going to remain in a situation where you cannot assess risk objectively. So step outside yourself and get the clarity. Work towards it and then try to position yourself in scenarios all the time where you have very limited downside and business risk but huge upside. If you understand that risk is subjective you can then take the next steps in working towards being objective, calculating downside vs upside correctly and repeating it. If you do that well you will become wealthy.

Seek out alternative education.

Why don't people already know about this? The answer to this question is that the step to becoming successful is not taught in the traditional education system. This simply is not in the curriculum of the traditional education system. When you think about teachers school and university look at infrastructure they are part of. It is pretty obvious that teachers during your entire childhood are really the spokesperson of the infrastructure they are already part of so they are obviously going to be protective of it. They are going to champion the traditional education system. They will always give you the debilitating message which is opposite of principle or requirements to become successful. You have to look at it objectively, it obvious that teacher themselves in the traditional education system has a conflict of interest. The ultimate example of this is your parents. Your parents have always been part of the infrastructure. They came through the traditional education system and your parents are protective of you. Because of that, they are going to make sure that you do the right thing or what they think is the right thing. For example, taking a job and its safe. Your parents also have a conflict of interest and that is emotion and with them being protective of you that's driven by emotion. When you ask your parents for advice for what they think of is the right financial decision or right career choice they will default to the answer that setting up your own business is risky or I wouldn't do this if I were you.

So ultimately it comes down to conflict of interest in why people not knowing this stuff. What you actually gotta do is seek out alternative education and mentors, successful people that do not have a conflict of interest. If you manage to do that then you set yourself in a situation where your education begins when you leave school or university.

Because outside is the real world. You have to seek out the alternative education. You have to seek out the mentors that don't have a conflict of interest.

Learn to value time properly.

When you working for the labor market you actually are working for nothing if at the end of every month if your salary is paying out the living expenses and liabilities. You are essentially swapping your time for free. That's the end result of coming through the traditional system. For most people when they put their card at the end of the month there is nothing or negative value. Most of those people have a title in their business cards given to them by corporate. But that means nothing. The most important business card is the one you put in the atm. It is baffling how people have legitimized working for nothing in their minds.

Valuing your time is one of the most important things. Learn to value your time. That is a major and important factor of going on the road to success.

Ditch the smartphone.

The smartphone is the perfect illustration of how people don't value their time generally. People spent most of the time on meaningless distraction which adds absolutely nothing in value. The smartphone is a huge distraction. Think about what people do on the smartphone. Most of the time they are seeing the messages or posts from the people they don't really know. It's not good for business and it's not good socially also. What's the real cost of having a smartphone? Let's say for example you value your time at $25 per hour and you spend 2 hours a day on your smartphone. What does that cost you per year? That's costing you $18250 per year. But what if you cost your time at $1000 per hour?That will cost you $730000. That's the real cost of having a smartphone. The causality works the other way around. I am not saying when you get rich ditch the smartphone. It works the other way around. You have to ditch the smartphone, to begin with in order to value your time correctly and get rich. That comes later. Some people may say if you are in the financial markets how it's even possible to know what's going on without having a smartphone. If you understand the financial market you will know that the news coming from the mainstream media will never make you money. It is responsive to what's already happened in the past.

So ditch the smartphone as an experiment for 1 month. It will feel weird in the beginning but it will massively improve your life. You can't even imagine how efficient you will become. It will always be inefficient with a smartphone.

Mainstream media is useless. Don't consume it.

Mainstream media is useless if your objective is freedom and success. What you really need to have is objectivity, clarity, and independence of thought in order to put yourself on the road to success. Mainstream media is useless because it has an agenda. The agenda is the agenda itself. For example, CCTV in China which is the state-sponsored tv station is exactly the same as BBC in UK and Fox News in the USA and they all same as North Korean state television. They all have an agenda and the agenda is the agenda itself. The causality of objectivity of putting yourself on the road to success starts off with a recognition and understanding that this exist, allowing yourself not to be brainwashed and having the independence of thought and clarity. So you can look at things in an objective manner. Just because its available doesn't mean its good for you. Media can now be consumed in formats and bite-size pieces that personally tailored to your objectives. 99

% of all newspaper tv and online media is useless. Its all about ratings. Its all for advertisement revenue. Its a business, and its designed to make you keep coming back for more and more and it's not necessarily good for you. You have to recognize that, stay objective and don't consume it. Only consume what adds value to your own life and your objectives. If your objective is freedom and success value your time. Don't waste your time consuming all of this stuff. Don't even allow yourself to exposed to it and consume what adds value to your objective and your life.

It very easy to consume all of this stuff and sucked into the agenda. You have to become very disciplined not to expose yourself to it and consume what's good for you.

Choose role model that suits your objective.

Mainstream media in modern age glorifies celebrities and these self-proclaimed celebrities end up by default becoming young people role models. Modern celebrity is not famous for anything. They are just famous for being celebrities. They don't have anything concrete.

They are essentially disposable commodities for the wider media agenda, which is ratings.

The problem is for every celebrity that is famous there are another 9 thousand failed celebrities who never end up becoming famous. For other ones who do get some success or exposure, they are disposed of by the media. So celebrities should not be role models. They are basically jesters or clowns, their purpose is to entertain. Tomorrow they will be disposed of.

The principle you should stick to in picking role model is to pick role models which are tangible and suite your objective. Role models that have long-lasting success and track record in what you want to do that suite your objective. As long as you stick to this principle you will be fine. If you aspire success you should get role models who had long-lasting success.