Hi everybody. I'm Jim Rohn.
What a pleasure it is for me to come and visit with you for just
a few minutes here today, tell you briefly a little bit about
my story and share some ideas that might be beneficial.
I've lectured in some high school classrooms in California
and Arizona and some universities and colleges,
Pepperdine University, San Diego State, Arizona State University,
and so I've had a chance to talk to kids that are interested in
themselves and interested in their future.
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Interested in America, interested in what they can do
with their lives and listening to stories that might be
beneficial. And I don't have a chance to,
you know, visit all of the schools and universities around
the world. So this is a great chance for me
by video to have a chance to tell you my story.
Just briefly, let me tell you my story.
I grew up in Idaho farm country. My father still lives on the old
homestead where I grew up, southwestern Idaho.
He'll be 91 his next birthday, and I'm very proud of him.
I went to high school. I graduated.
I went to college one year. Halfway through my second year,
I decided I was smart enough, so I quit.
One of my major mistakes, I should have stayed in school,
but I thought, you know, heck, I'm smart enough to get a job.
And back then I thought, you know, that was it.
If you're smart enough to get a job, what else would you need?
Found out later a big mistake. But anyway, I quit school at age
19, went to work a little while later, persuaded a beautiful
young lady to marry me with a lot of fancy promises, and
fortunately for me, we got married a little while later.
I started my family, and I'm out there working hard, doing the
best I thought I could. But year by year, I kept falling
a little further behind, you know, buying a little more than
I could conveniently pay for on time.
And the creditors are finally starting to call saying, hey,
you told us the check was in the mail.
I'm not feeling at all good about that.
About age 25. I've got pennies in my pocket.
I've got nothing in the bank. And way behind on my big mouth
promises to my family and wondering what could I do to
make my life better. I was willing to work hard.
That was not my problem. But I just wasn't making the
progress I wanted to make. And then good fortune came my
way. Sometimes it's difficult to
describe good fortune, why something remarkable happens to
you at a particular time. One of my friends says, well,
hey, things don't just happen. Things happen just.
And maybe that's it. I don't know.
But my good fortune was I had a chance to meet a very wealthy
man. His name was Mr. Shoaf.
Mr. Earl Shoaf, a friend of mine, had gone to work for him
and he started telling me about this man.
He said you got to meet this man, He's rich, but he's easy to
talk to and he's got a remarkable philosophy of life.
And he kept going on and I thought, well, I've got to meet
this man. So shortly after that I had a
chance to meet this Mr. Shoaf, and I was impressed.
He was rich, he was easy to talk to.
Within a few minutes I was dazzled.
And I said to myself, I would give anything.
If I could be like that, rich and easy to talk to, what would
it take? And then I thought if I could
just get around somebody like him, and if he would teach me
and coach me, I would do it all. And that was my good fortune.
A few months later, this wealthy man, Mr. Shoaf, hired me and
gave me a job, and I went to work for him.
And I spent the next five years in his employ.
And then unfortunately, at age 49, he died.
But I got to spend five years with this remarkable man, his
last five years of his life and the first five years of my new
life. And my dream came true.
During that five year period, this man took the time to teach
me and coach me. He taught me the books to read.
He taught me the disciplines and he taught me the skills, and he
taught me the changes to make in my language and personality.
And the things he shared with me during that five years change my
whole life, change my income, change my bank account, change
my future. I've never been the same.
By the time I was 31 years old, I was a millionaire.
So he taught me economics as well.
So how lucky can you get to meet the right person at the right
time who takes the time to share with you ideas that can change
your life? A lot of rich people, right,
don't take the time, but he did, and he also had the ability.
Some people want to share their experiences, but they don't
quite know how to say it. But he had it all, and he used
language that I could understand, and those ideas
greatly affected my life. I wish he was still alive today.
If he was, I'd be calling him today one more time, thanking
him for the time he spent with me, sharing his life and his
experiences that so dramatically affected my life.
Then how I really came to be invited to speak to you today,
30 plus years ago I was living in Beverly Hills, CA and a
friend of mine one day said, Jim you've got to come and tell your
story to my service club. You belong to the Rotary Club.
And he said I know your story, Idaho farm boy makes it to
Beverly Hills. But he said I know my club
members would love to hear your story.
Would you come and and at our breakfast meeting and tell your
story. And I said OK.
So I arranged a little talk, went and shared my story that
morning. And guess what?
They liked it. And my phone rang.
Another club called and said, would you come and tell us that
story? My phone rings, another club
calls, said we've heard about your story, we have a luncheon
meeting. Would you come Share your story?
First thing I know I'm spending a little piece of my time giving
these breakfast talks and luncheon talks.
And then one day a man who heard my talk about three times said,
would you come and talk to my management and salespeople?
He said I've got this little company going and to see if you.
He said if you would spend some time talking with my management
and sales people, I'd be happy to pay you.
And I thought, wow, wouldn't that be something?
Tell my story and my experiences and get paid.
He said I'd be happy to. Little did I know that was the
beginning of a whole new brand new adventure for me in sharing
my story and speeches and talks and seminars and lectures.
And now this business become one of my most flourishing
enterprises, takes me around the world.
I went to many countries just this year, had my largest
audience early this year in Spain, 12,000 people, 10
different languages being translated at the same time.
The whole audience with the earphones on.
It's interesting when you lecture with the multi
languages, you know when you hit the punch line, you know the
Spanish laugh 1st and then the French get it and then finally
the Italians get it and last the Germans finally get it and then
I say hey, the Germans finally got it.
I guess we can continue. You know some languages take
long longer to translate than other languages.
But what an exciting adventure for me.
I was in Israel this year. I lectured in France.
My first trip to Prague, Czechoslovakia, Lisbon, Portugal
last year. I was in London lecturing.
Happened to be there the same night Pavarotti was singing in
London. So a big dilemma for the people
in London. Shall we go see Jim Rohn or
shall we go listen to Pavarotti? Well, I must admit he had more
people than I did, like 150,000 more.
He did a free concert in Hyde Park and they expected 1/4 of a
million, but only 150,000 showed up because it rained and they
all got soaked from Prince Charles on down.
But they sat in the rain and listened to Pavarotti.
I would have been happy that evening, right?
To cancel my seminar and go sit in the rain and listen to
Pavarotti. Anyway, he and I have agreed now
not to appear in the same city on the same day anymore.
Not really. But how exciting for me to be
able to travel all around the world and share my story.
And then especially to have this chance today to come and visit
with you. And when I get a chance to speak
at a, at a high school class or a university class, I'm always
excited about it. I'm limited in time.
So I wanted to use this way to come and share my story with you
and some ideas that might be helpful in your career for the
future in your now busy life as a student.
And then wherever you find yourself in the years to come,
some of the things I'm going to share with you, I want you to
remember for a long, long time because the ideas I want to
translate for you drastically affected my life.
And if I can share now and affect your life and you write
me a letter or tell me in person someday.
Mr. Owen, I listened to your video and I watched it
carefully. And sure enough, some of the
ideas that you shared greatly affected me.
And here's what's happened to my bank account.
Here's what happened to me in school.
Here's what's happening to my future that'll give me great,
great satisfaction. So the man who shared with me
ideas that changed my life, I want to share with you three of
those basic subjects. When I met him, I was 25 years
old. And when I first got acquainted
with him, I used a lot of excuses as to why I wasn't doing
well. And he said, well, tell me a
little bit about your story. And I told him, you know, I was
behind on my bills, had pennies in my pocket and nothing in the
bank. But I was embarrassed about
being behind on my big mouth promises to my family.
And then he gave me one little simple phrase that really
forever changed my life. And here's what he said.
Mr. Owen, if you want the future to change for you, you've got to
change. And he said if you don't change,
the next six years of your life is going to be just like the
last six. You'll still be behind on your
bills. You'll still be behind on your
promises. But then he gave it to me in the
form of a promise when I was 25 years old.
I've remembered it all these years and I've shared this
promise now with probably over 3 million people in the last 30
plus years and it's going to be valid for you.
So listen carefully to this promise.
My teacher said to me, young man, if you will change,
everything will change for you. If you will get better,
everything will get better for you.
What a clear message that was for me.
He said if you'll change your philosophy, if you'll change
your habits, if you'll refine your thinking, if you'll change
and accept some new disciplines, if you'll turn the corner where
you've been in the past, go for a new life of the future.
He said all kinds of remarkable things will happen for you if
you will change. Before I met Mr. Schoof, I used
to cross my fingers and say I sure hope things will change.
I was hoping the government would change and the tax
structure would change and that my boss would change and pay me
more money. I was hoping that, you know,
economics would change and prices would come down, and I
was hoping that circumstances would get better.
And then I discovered from my teacher that those things are
going to continue the same. In fact, all of those things
that happened to us is kind of like the wind that blows, and
the wind blows on us all. In fact, in America, especially
the last 6 1/2 thousand years of recorded history, we've got
probably the most favorable wind that's ever blown.
Economics and circumstances, living in a free country,
democracy and freedom, an excellent economy.
Sure, we struggle at times, but compared to the rest of the
world in the last 6 1/2 thousand years, we've got the best wind
ever. But if you just let the wind
blow, I'm telling you, it won't take you where you want to go.
All of us must use this wind to take us to the dreams we've got,
to the equities we want, to the money we want, to the income we
want, and to all the things we want our life to have.
This is where we want to go, and we've got a good wind.
But we must not leave our future just to the wind, just to the
economy, just to the structure of the way things are happening
today. Here's what we must learn to do,
and that is set a good sail. And if you'll learn to set a
good sail, and that's what my teacher taught me in those early
days, he said, Mr. Owen, the wind is going to blow, however
it's going to blow. Politics are going to be
politics, and the economy is going to be the economy.
And however it turns out, that's the way it's going to be.
What you must learn to do is not to wish for a better wind.
That's naive. The key is to wish for the
wisdom and the skills and the learning so that you can set a
better sail. And so that's what I did at age
25. I went to work not on the
economy. I went to work not on the
community. I didn't go to work to try to
change the government. I didn't go to work to try to
change my boss or the company. I didn't go to work to try to
change circumstances. I went to work to try to change
myself. And I picked up that promise my
teacher shared with me that if I would change, my income would
change. If I would change, my bank
account would change. If I would change, my future
would change. And sure enough, his promise
came true for me. The first six years of my
economic life, I wound up broke those pennies in my pocket,
nothing in the bank behind on my promises.
The second six years of my economic life, I wound up rich.
But interestingly enough, the second six years of my economic
life, the government was about the same and the economy was
about the same. You know, the companies were
about the same. What they paid was the same.
Circumstances around me were the same.
You know, my negative relatives were the same, but I was not the
same. That's how my life changed and
that's how things started working for me, changing my life
all those years ago. So that's what I wanted to share
with you to begin with, this beginning of what Mr. Schoaf
shared with me, that if I wanted my life to change, this was what
I was going to have to do. And so he broke it down into 3
subjects that really made an impact on my life, and I want to
share those with you. The first subject he called
personal development, and the second subject he called setting
goals. And the third was how to become
financially independent. And I'd like to give you just a
few clues from those three major subjects that that so
dramatically affected my life. And let's get started.
The first one is personal development.
Now, in illustrating personal development, Mr. Shelf, my
teacher started with money. You know, money's not the only
place to start in talking personal development, but it's
where he started. So let me share the thoughts he
shared with me back then. Let me share them with you.
Here's the best lesson I can give you on economics.
It's very simple. We get paid for bringing value
to the marketplace. That's about as simple as I can
put economics. We get paid for bringing value
to the marketplace. Now, it takes time to bring
value to the marketplace. However, we do not get paid for
time, so we cross that out mistakenly.
The man says I'm making about $20.00 for an hour.
Not true. If that was true, you could just
stay home, right? And have him send your money.
So that's not true. We don't get paid for time, we
get paid for value brought to the marketplace.
Now, since that's true, here's one of the key questions of my
talk to you today. Is it possible to become twice
as valuable to the marketplace and make twice as much money in
the same time? Is that possible?
The answer is yes. Could you become three times as
valuable as you might be right now to the marketplace and make
three times as much money in the same time?
And the answer is yes, 5 * 10 times.
Of course, America is unique. It's a ladder decline.
It starts down here, let's say at $5.00 an hour, and it keeps
going up. Top income last year, $80
million. The guy who runs Coca-Cola, now
that's a heck of a ladder. That's why everybody wants to
come here, right? The boat people are not headed
for Vietnam. People haven't plotted in scheme
for 50 years saying if I could just get to Poland, everything
would be OK. Not true.
Everybody wants to come to America.
And the reason is because we've got the best wind ever blowing
in our favor. We've got the best economic
opportunity anybody's had in 6 1/2 thousand years, and all you
have to do is understand it and take advantage of it.
Now there's some key questions to ask here.
Why would the marketplace pay someone only $5.00 an hour?
Very simple answer. They're not very valuable to the
marketplace. Now we must underline to the
marketplace this person might be a very valuable brother, yes.
Member of the family, Valuable, yes.
Valuable member of the church, of course.
Valuable citizen of the country? Yes.
Valuable in the sight of God. No doubt we're all of equal
value in the sight of God. But if you're not very valuable
to the marketplace, you don't get much money.
You say, well, it shouldn't be that way.
Well, then you've got to start your own country.
You know, this one's been in process for 200 years, and this
is the best we've been able to come up with so far.
But here's the key. You don't have to stay here now.
There was a big debate in Congress last year that this $5
was not enough. Should be 6, should be 6, should
be 6. But we don't need legislation. 6
is already on this ladder. The next step up, you know, if
you work for McDonald's, they'll pay you $5.00 an hour to take
out the trash. If you whistle while you take
out the trash, they'll pay you $6.00 an hour.
So we don't need that legislation.
You need just need to take lessons on how to whistle.
Have a good attitude now as you begin to climb this ladder.
Why would the marketplace pay some people $50.00 an hour?
Answer. Evidently they must be more
valuable to the marketplace. 10 times more valuable.
And is that possible for someone to be 10 times more valuable and
earn $50.00 an hour instead of five?
And the answer is yes, that's what America is all about.
Now, why would the marketplace pay some people $500.00 an hour?
Evidently, this person must be much more valuable to the
marketplace. That's what's important to
understand to the marketplace. And would the marketplace pay
one person $80 million for one year's work?
And the answer is, of course, if you helped a company make a
billion dollars, would they pay you 80 million?
I'm telling you it is possible. And that's why America is so
exciting. That's why this financial ladder
is so exciting. It's possible for all of this to
come true for all of you, no matter where you start as a
student in school, just getting started out there in the
workplace, this is all possible for you now.
Mr. Schoof gave me the clue on how to climb this ladder as high
as I wanted to climb. Now we're talking primarily
economics here. There's a lot of other ways to
become valuable to your family, valuable to your friends,
valuable to the community, valuable to the team, right,
valuable to the to the team effort, valuable to the concert.
But here's what he said to me. In climbing this ladder
economically, all you have to do is work harder on yourself than
you do on your job. Once I heard that, it made sense
to me. I kept hoping that everything
else would change around me, found out that if I went to work
on myself, worked on my skills, worked on my language, if I
became better than I was each year, if I grew in skills and
language and vocabulary and competence, then I would become
attractive to the marketplace. Not very long ago, a company
called me and said, Mr. Owen, we're expanding internationally.
We'd like to have a bit of your expertise to help us.
Would you give us a bit of your time?
We'll add some millions to your fortune.
And I said, OK. And I thought later, isn't that
interesting? They would call me.
Then my second thought was, of course they'd call me.
Who else would they call? I can get the job done now.
What a contrast for me. Farm boy from Idaho, raised in
obscurity, Parents of modest means broke when I was 25.
How come I would get a telephone call and someone offer me a lot
of money to help them in expanding around the world?
Simple answer. Evidently something happened to
me between age 25 and where I am today.
And I can tell you where it all started from my teacher, Mr.
Schoof, who said to me, we don't have to change what's going on
out there. That's the wind that's blowing.
All we have to do is change what's going on in here.
And now there's several ways to do that on personal development,
and let me give you those ways. Here's the first one.
We must learn from personal experience.
Pretty simple. Learn from what happens to you.
Take a look back over the last few months.
Did you make some mistakes? How could you correct those for
the future? Take a look back over the last
year. Have you done it right or done
it wrong? Let's correct it for the next
year. Learn from your personal
experience. Mr. Schauff asked me when I
first met him. He said, Mr. Owen, how are you
doing? You've been out there now six
years, and I said, I'm not doing very well.
He said, I suggest you not do that anymore.
What a simple, swift analysis to my situation.
He said, if you keep doing it, the next six years will be like
the last six. You don't want that to happen.
Let's make the changes. So learn from your personal
experience. Now here's #2 why I came to
share this video experience with you today, and that I call it
OPE. Other people's experiences.
That's me, other people, that's your teacher, other people,
that's your friends and colleagues.
Other people, the people you meet that can pass along to you
their experiences, what's happened to them, the mistakes
they made, how they corrected them, how they change their
health and change their bank account and change their income
and change their future. That's it.
Other people. Now there's two kinds of people
to learn from. 1 is failures. It's too bad failures don't give
seminars, right? That would be valuable.
Bring your notebook. Have them tell you how they lost
it all and threw it all away, threw their health away and
threw their friendships away. And if things didn't work out
well, that would be valuable. But now, then we must also learn
from positive people that have done well.
They've got the health. And so we asked them, how did
you become so healthy? They've got the skills.
So we asked them, how did you become this skillful?
They've got the income. So we asked them, how did you
get here in such a short period of time?
So now here's what's important. In personal development, in
learning from other people, we learn, number one, by
observation. We learn what we see.
We watch people that are successful in what they do.
In sports, we watch their disciplines.
In business, we watch their disciplines by observation, what
we can see. The reason I created this video
is something that you could see someone's experiences translated
for you. Second, we learn by what we
hear. I've got some of my lectures on
cassette tape, so you know you can take them with you wherever
you go and learn by listening. Turn your car into a mobile
classroom and listen. And then listen to the sermon on
Sunday morning. Listen to the lectures, listen
to the teacher, listen to someone who's got something good
to say. And then #3 is vitally important
on personal development. And that is, read all the books,
all the books you can possibly read in your lifetime.
Mr. Schoof got me started on my library.
I've got one of the better libraries.
Haven't read everything in it, but I feel smarter just walking
in it by library. At least I was smart enough to
buy it. Now I got to be smart enough to
read it. Then, of course I got to be
smart enough to decide what's valuable and then do it.
But this one is very important. Become a good reader.
Some books that helped change my life, Mr. Schoaf recommended, of
course, the Bible, and my parents made sure I was a pretty
good scholar by the time I was 18.
That's been so beneficial for me, drawing from those
illustrations, reading about those stories, people who made
it and people who didn't make it, and what the difference was.
And then other books that helped to really change my life, one
called Think and Grow Rich by Napoleon Hill, and then a book
that helped me become financially independent by the
time I was 31. And that book is called The
Richest Man in Babylon by George Claeson.
And I'm going to share a little bit of that book with you when I
get to financial independence today, our third subject.
But I started reading the books, attending the classes, making
sure that I got in front of people that had something good
to say. And then I started keeping a
journal. One of the major things my
teacher taught me was to keep a journal.
He said, don't trust your memory.
If you hear something good, just make a little note and write it
down. Now, at first I took, you know,
notes on pieces of paper and torn off corners and backs of
old envelopes. And it didn't serve me well, you
know, thrown in a drawer. Then I learned to keep a
journal, a bound copy of all my notes.
So I would suggest you do the same things that impress you, a
poem that impresses you. When you attend a class, some of
the ideas that impressed you, jot them down.
You read something in a magazine, right?
Some ideas, Take those out, put them in your journal.
Keep a good journal the rest of your life.
This will serve you well. My journals make up a
significant portion of my own library.
And if you saw my library and saw my journals, I'd tell you
what you'd have to say. This is the library and these
are the journals of a very serious student.
No wonder Mr. Roan is invited to lecture and speak on his
experiences around the world. So I want the same thing to
happen to you, value captured, that you can resort to later.
Go back over it and review it and let it become valuable to
you. So that's my first subject,
personal development. Work harder on yourself than you
do on your job. Develop the skills, learn the
lessons, take the classes, absorb all that is being taught
to you these days. And then later on, of course,
you can sort it out what's valuable to you and how to
refine it for your business and for your life and for your
future. But the main thing is to get it
and start this process of personal change, personal
development. And let me say it one more time,
if you will change, everything will change for you.
You'll never be the same. You'll keep growing As you look
back on a few months, look back on a few years.
You won't believe the progress you can make economically, your
relationship with your family, your friends, and whether you're
in sports or economics or whatever.
I'm telling you that whole process of committing yourself
for personal change, personal value, can really make your life
unique and worthwhile.