MONEY Master the Game: 7 Simple Steps to Financial Freedom (41 page)

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?