So let's talk about setting goals.
Mr. Schuff gave me some tips on setting goals that changed my
life forever and I want to share those with you.
We need to take a look into the future.
There are four things to consider in terms of attitude. 1
is how you feed the past. Best advice I can give you on
that is treat the past as a school.
Let it teach you the mistakes you've made, the things that
went wrong, the things that didn't work.
Don't use the past as a burden to carry and don't use the past
as a club to beat yourself to death.
Past losses, past failures, past mistakes.
But let the past be a school. Tough school.
Maybe we've all been through some tough stuff.
So if you feel good about the past, draw from it for
experience and let it teach you. Then next is how you feel about
the future. We've got to have the future
well designed. The future is called the
Promise, and here's what we teach in our leadership series.
The promise of the future can be an awesome force for your own
future. The Promise of the future
Designing the future There's two ways to face the future.
One is with apprehension and the other is with anticipation.
I promise you in my travels around the world, most people
face the future with apprehension and here's why they
don't have it well designed. They've sort of left that up to
someone else to fix. But here's the best way to face
the future with anticipation. And you can you can face the
future with anticipation if the future is clear, if the future
is well designed. And I would like to have you
consider some thoughts with me that help me to really change my
future by giving it some thought and some consideration.
And here it is in setting goals. It's very simple.
Number one, decide what you want.
You just take a little time. You sit down and say, what do I
want? What kind of skills do I want?
What kind of income do I want for the future?
What would I like? Where would I like to go?
Places I'd like to visit, habits I'd like to acquire, skills I'd
like to have. You just take a little time to
think about what you want. Economics, friendships, people
you'd like to meet, places you'd like to go.
You just take some time and then I suggest when you've thought
about what you want for the future, make a list.
Just jot it all down. It's a really a very simple
process. And then here's #3 keep all the
old lists. I'm telling you, this served me
so well, keeping my old list of goals.
I look back now, 1020 years ago at goals I set, lists I made,
and I smile now because here's what I thought was so important,
you know, 20 years ago now, some of those things aren't even on
my list. I've got a new list.
I've grown, I've changed, I've matured.
But I give you that advice. Decide what you want #2 write it
down #3 keep the old lists. And then here's #4 when you get
something that's on one of these lists, check it off.
Part of the fun of having a list is checking it off.
And then if you can, add some drama to checking it off.
See, that's what really helps. I set a goal to go to Spain
many, many years ago. And when I finally made my first
trip to Spain, I had that journal with me that had that
list in it. And while I had my journal on my
lap waiting for the wheels to touchdown in Madrid, I waited
until the wheels touched the runway and I checked it off.
Just adding a little drama. So part of the fun of having a
list is checking it off. Now here's what's important
about the lists and designing your future.
If the future gets clear, the price gets easier because you
got to remember, for every promise, there's a price to pay.
Everybody's got to pay the price.
Everybody's got to do the deal. Everybody's got to do the
disciplines. Everybody has to pay.
But here's what I've discovered. If the promise is clear and
powerful, the price is easy to pay.
The price is some classes. The price is a few books.
The price is a few disciplines. The price is finding something
that'll make your life better, make you grow, make you change,
make you develop. So the first part of the key is
to design the promise. Then what is the price to pay?
I'm telling you, the price will be easy.
Anybody in my audience can pay. No matter where you are, where
you come from. Color doesn't matter, religion
doesn't matter, where you grew up doesn't matter, circumstances
don't matter. I'm telling you, if you'll make
the promise of the future clear for yourself.
The things you want, the places you want to go, the things you
want to have, the person you want to become, the skills you
want, the homes you want, the future you want, the friends you
want, all of the values of life that you could possibly want.
If you'll make that clear, make those lists and be serious about
it. I promise you, it's an easy
price to pay. Anybody can pay it.
And the best advice I can give you is if I can do it, you can
do it. Farm boy from Idaho, raised in
obscurity. I changed my life, turned it
upside down, turned it all around, found economics, found
future, found promise. And if I can do it, you can do
it. So start setting your goals and
see if you can't get a better excitement going for the things
you want to accomplish for the future.
Now, here's my third subject, and that's called financial
independence. Oh by the way, before I get to
financial independence, let me cover one more .1 of the major
reasons for setting goals is for what they make of you in
achieving them. My teacher advised me when I
first got started at age 25. He said, Jim, why don't you set
a goal to become a millionaire? He said it's got a nice ring to
it, you know enough zeros to impress your accountant.
And he said I'm here to help you.
You're only 25 years old, you've been to one year of college,
you've got a beautiful family, every reason to do it.
Why don't you set a goal to become a millionaire?
And he said here's why. And I thought he doesn't need to
teach me. Why wouldn't it be nice to have
$1,000,000? He said no, then you'll miss it.
He said here's why. For what it will make of you to
achieve it. I'm telling you, that statement
changed my life. Set the kind of goals that will
make something of you to achieve them, he said.
Now, once you become a millionaire, what's important is
not the money. I thought that's kind of strange
teaching. He said, honest, it isn't
important. He said.
You could just give the money away.
Now, I did better than that. I lost it all.
By the time I was 31, I was a millionaire.
By the time I was 33, I was broke.
And I'll tell you a little bit about that story later.
But when I lost all my money, guess what?
I found out Mr. Schoof was right.
What was valuable was not the money.
What was valuable was what I became to earn the money, the
skills I had, the knowledge I had about the marketplace, the
values that I had going for me. They were more valuable than the
money. And here's an important
statement to remember. It's not what you get that makes
you valuable, it's what you become.
So part of the key here is to set the kind of goals that will
make something of you. Don't set them too low so that
you don't have to grow and you don't have to read and you don't
have to try and you don't have to stretch.
Don't set them too low and then don't sell out.
Don't go for something that's going to cost you your virtue or
cost you your values or sell out your principles.
There's a good middle Rd. here to follow.
Goals that will inspire. Goals that'll help you grow,
change, develop and become better than you are.
OK, now let's talk about financial independence, How to
become rich by 4035 if you're extra bright, much sooner.
If you find an opportunity like I did, let me show you how I did
it. Financial independence.
I like the phrase financial independence.
Some people are a little bit concerned about using the word
becoming rich or becoming wealthy, and I can understand
that. I struggled a little bit with
this. Is it OK to go for becoming
rich, go for becoming wealthy? And maybe that's a bit too
strong the word or strong the term.
So here's what I've come up with that I think is comfortable for
me and that is how to become financially independent.
I think it's every person's heritage here, especially in
America, to become financially independent.
Now, let me give you my definition of financial
independence. Financial independence is the
ability to live from the income of your own personal resources.
Financial independence. Now it depends on how you want
to live. If you need two, $3000 a month.
If you need 45000A month. If you need 10,000 a month, Some
people may need, you know, 100,000 a month, but whatever
you would need to live and you could earn that living from the
income of your own personal resources.
That's what I call financial freedom, financial independence.
And let me show you how to acquire it.
If you start at age 15, between ages 15 and 35 is 20 years.
And in my personal opinion, based on my own studies and my
own experience, 20 years and my opinion is enough time to become
financially independent. If you're not, you don't live in
the wrong country. Probably what's happened is you
have the wrong plan and it's easy to be a nice person with
the wrong plan. I found that when I was 25 years
old. I was broke at age 25 and I was
a nice guy. You would have liked me, but I'm
telling you, my plans up until then, especially my financial
plan, left me broke. I totally changed it the next
six years and I became financially independent.
So I know what I'm talking about.
It is possible in a reasonable amount of time, 15 to 35,
whatever, 20 years time, enough time, you can do it in a much
shorter period of time like I did if you want to, but this is
a reasonable enough time. But here's number one.
First of all, you got to have the right philosophy.
Philosophy is our ability to gather knowledge and sort
through it and decide what's valuable to develop.
A philosophy about life, a philosophy about our health, a
philosophy about our family relationships, a philosophy
about economics. And if you develop the right
philosophy, that's what helps to set this sail so that in six
years it takes you where you want to go instead of winding up
like I did that first six years of my economics.
Broke, no money, empty bank account, the right philosophy.
Now, let me give you a couple of philosophies to consider.
Here's the first one. It's called the philosophy of
the poor, and here it is. Poor people usually spend their
money and invest what's left. That's the philosophy of the
poor. Now here's the philosophy of the
rich. Rich people invest their money
and spend what's left. And here's the startling answer.
It really doesn't matter what the amount is.
What's most important is not the amount.
What's really important is the philosophy.
So I would ask you to adopt this philosophy of spending after you
have invested. Invest first, then spend.
And I've got a little formula that I'm going to share with you
now. What should a child do with a
dollar? I mean, there's a lot of debate
going on, I'm sure, across the country on what a child should
do with the dollar. Here's one opinion.
It's only a child and it's only a dollar.
What difference does it make? Well, in my opinion, it makes
all the difference in the world. A person's economic future
starts with a child with a dollar.
Somebody says, oh, no, you're only young once, let him spend
it all. Well, when would you hope that
would stop? Somebody says well wait till
he's 50 and broke like me and you know, and then he'll learn.
Well, no, we don't want to wait that long.
If I would have known earlier than age 25, I would have
changed in high school. If I if they would have had
classes called wealth 1, Wealth 2, I'd have taken both classes.
I would not have waited until age 25 S the earlier the better.
So what should a child do with a dollar?
Here's the simple premise to begin with.
Don't spend it all. And if a child wants to spend
the whole dollar, you got to say, hey, don't spend it all,
you know, don't spend it all. They'll say, why not?
It's my dollar, I earned it. You say I know you earned it,
but don't spend it all. They'll still say, why not say
let me show you why not? So you put them in your car,
take them to the other side of town and show them where people
live that spend the whole dollar.
Just drive them around. Kids learn best by visual.
Just drive around and say, would you like to live here?
Kid says no, Would you like to live like these people live?
Kid says no, no, then you can't spend the whole dollar.
So kids will get the message. So, you know, take them to the
other side of town and show them around unless you already live
there and then just show them around anyway.
Don't spend the whole dollar. Now, let me give you my best
view of what to do with the dollar.
And I promise you, if you started at age 15, now, if
you're over 15, right, you've still got plenty of time.
You've still got 20 years. You know, if you're 30, you've
still got 20 years. I mean, you know, you've still
got plenty of time to start. What I'm about to share with
you, what to do with a dollar. Here's my first bit of advice.
Never spend more than $0.70. Never spend more than $0.70.
Now you got to pick some number, and the number you pick is going
to be determined by your philosophy.
It's going to be determined by what you've been taught or your
experience teaching yourself. When I first met my teacher, Mr.
Shoaf, I was at about 110% of each dollar.
You know, I'm down at budget finance Hawking my furniture in
my car one more time. And then I learned a whole
better formula for financial independence.
Number one, don't spend more than $0.70.
Now kids say to me, well OK, what do I do with the other
$0.30? And here's what I teach them.
$0.10 for charity. Charity or church for helping
people that can't help themselves, $0.10 to support
worthy projects. Projects that you feel good
about. $0.10 out of every dollar.
It's called being generous with part of what you've taken out of
society. Now in my opinion, nothing
teaches us character better than generosity.
No class, no teacher, no book teaches generosity, teaches
character better than generosity.
And the best time to start is when the amounts are small.
And I know if kids learn these lessons well, they'll give a
dime out of a dollar, help people that can't help
themselves, support worthy projects.
Or if you belong to a church, they teach tithe peace of.
That's very important now because when the amounts get
larger, sometimes it's a little more difficult, you know, giving
100,000 out of 1,000,000. Someone says, oh, if I had a
million, I'd give 100,000. I'm not sure that's a lot of
money. So the time to start is when the
amounts are small, $0.10 out of the dollar.
OK, next $0.10 I call active capital.
Active capital means do something to make a profit.
Active capital, set aside a portion of your income.
Wages are OK, but I'm telling you, wages will make you a
living, Profits will make you a fortune.
So set aside part of your income as capital called active
capital. Any kind of project you can
possibly think of, you can possibly come up with.
I'm going to write a new book, I think for kids.
I think the title is going to be, of course, kids should pay
taxes. It's kind of an interesting
title. In California kids do pay taxes.
When a child walks into 711, buy something that costs the dollar.
The proprietor says give me 7 more pennies and the child says
hey what's these 7 pennies for? The proprietor says that's the
taxes. Kid says well hey I'm only 8
years old. Proprietor says congratulations,
you're my youngest taxpayer, give me the money.
So in California where I live, kids do pay taxes.
Big question is should they? And my book will answer that
question. Of course kids should pay taxes.
Nothing is for free. If you want to ride your bicycle
on the sidewalk instead of in the mud, you got to pay the
seven pennies. Nothing is free, so we all have
to pay. So $0.10 out of your living, out
of the money you earn, set aside for capital.
Capital to try your best to show a profit.
And in my books, it's going to be all kinds of ways kids can
make money, right? Two bicycles, one to ride and
one to rent. I mean, you know, it doesn't
take long to figure out some enterprise that'll start making
a profit. Then you must jot this down if
you're taking notes. Profits are better than wages. 1
You can't usually start wages until you're about 161516, but
you can make a profit long before you're eligible to start
earning wages. And then there's no limit to
profits. And they can, they can double
and triple and quadruple. You know, there's no limit.
It's incredible how fast profits can grow.
So profits are better than wages.
Wages make you a living, Profits make you a fortune.
Now the 3rd $0.10 is vitally important.
I call it passive capital. Capital, you let somebody else
use a financial institution, stocks and bonds, mutual funds,
whatever, Let someone else use it.
You furnish the money, they use it to make a profit, but they
pay you for the use of it called interest.
And here's one of the things that'll make you financially
independent fairly quickly, and that's called compound interest.
And this is how you get it, Letting someone else use a
portion of your money, your substance, they show the profit,
they pay you interest. And this passive capital, I'm
telling you over a sustained period of time, if you'll
develop this little 10/10/10 and 70, especially starting at age
15, I'm telling you by the time you're 35, you will be
financially independent. You'll have the ability to live
from the income of your own resources.
And then one more point on passive capital.
There's a Bible philosophy, I'm an amateur on the Bible, but
there's a Bible philosophy that teaches the borrower is servant
to the lender. And if you want to be in a
powerful position as you grow older, finally when you become
mature, maybe have your own business, things have worked out
for you for the future, the position you always want to be
in is the power position, and that's called the lender.
The lender is the power position.
So if kids learn early enough and then you ask them what
they'd like to be when they grow up, I'm telling you, once they
understand, they'll say, well, one of the things I want to be
is one of those lenders. That's the power position, not
the spender. No, you'll be pitied the rest of
your life if you just become a spender.
You got to become a lender. And I think this is the one.
Formulas to follow, $0.10 out of every dollar.
Let someone else use it. Be the lender power position,
then try to show a profit. Can't we teach our children how
to take a dollar? Search the neighborhood, find a
broken wagon, pay a dollar for it, bring it home.
You know, clean it up, sand it until it's clean, paint it red
till it shines. Straighten out the wheels till
they're true. Take it back to the
neighborhood. Sell it for $5.
Anybody can do that now. Does the child deserve $4.00
profit? And the answer is yes.
Society now has a mended wagon, and that's what America's all
about. Finding something, touching it,
making it better, making a profit, taking part of your
resources, helping people who can't help themselves.
Let someone else use it to make a profit.
Some projects require more capital than one person has.
Exciting and then let them pay you for the use of it.
Capital in the hands of the kids, capital in the hands of
the people, enterprises that make a profit, enterprises that
grow. It's the hope of our future.
So that little simple formula, I hope will help you.
Now, one more key on financial independence and that is
attitude. Attitude.
Here's number one. I used to say I hate to pay my
bills. My teacher straightened me out
on that. He said, let's see, Mr. Owen,
what you hate to do is pay $100 on an account and reduce your
liabilities and increase your assets.
I said, well, no, not if you look at it that way.
He said, well, it all depends on how you look at it.
So wouldn't you love to pay your bills, reduce your liabilities,
increase your assets? You've got to have that kind of
attitude. I found out the same attitude
about taxes. I used to say I hate to pay my
taxes. And Mr. Scholl said, well,
that's one way to live. But don't you understand, taxes
is how we care and feed the goose that lays the golden eggs.
Wouldn't you want to do your share?
Someone says yes, but the goose eats too much.
Probably true, but hey, we all eat too much.
We all need to go on a diet. Better a fat goose than no
goose. So I finally became a happy
taxpayer. Now I think taxes are too high.
So I'm working to get taxes lowered for our economic future,
but then whatever they turn out to be, I gladly pay and do my
part because that's what makes the whole system run, each of us
doing our part. Now.
I want these three subjects to be valuable for you.
I want them to have meaning for you.
I want you someday to be financially independent.
I want you to have the personal development so that you feel
good about yourself. And now I'd like to leave you
with these four questions called questions to ponder.
These questions were valuable for me and I want to make them
valuable for you. Here's the first one.
Why We all ask why we should work this hard?
Why take that many classes? Why go to school that many
years? You know, why take the notes?
Why read the books? Why work that hard?
Why put yourself through the push ups and the disciplines?
Why? Good question.
Why? Best answer to why, I think is
the second question. Why not?
Why not see how many books you can read, how many classes you
can take, how many skills you can develop?
Why not see how valuable you can become to the marketplace and to
your friends and to your family? Why not see what you can make of
yourself? Why not see how far you can go,
how much you can see, how much you can earn, how much you can
share? Why not?
That's the heritage all of us have in America especially, is
to see what we can make out of our lives now that we've been
given this extraordinary opportunity.
Now my third question, I'd love to ask you in person, but since
I can't do it in person, I want to ask it of all of you, but I
want you to take it personally. And my third question is, why
not you? Why not you with good self
esteem? Why not you starting to change
and setting goals? Why not you starting to make
progress toward financial independence?
If I can do it, you can do it. I wished I had a lot more
testimonials here today besides mine.
A whole steady stream that would come by and tell you their
story. Someone who started with nothing
finally run a big enterprise. A mother who was on welfare.
Now she owns her own business. In addition to my story, I wish
I had a lot more. And if all of them told their
story, guess how they would probably wind up their story?
They'd probably say, just like me, why not you?
If we can read, you can read. If we can change, you can
change. If we can figure it out, you can
figure it out. If we can turn it around, you
can turn it around. There isn't anything you can't
accomplish. That's what those testimonials
would say. And so I want to say it to you
personally. Why not you?
You, you've got the brains, you've got the the stamina,
you've got the vitality, you've got the interest, you've got
your life ahead of you. You've got the future.
You can do it. If anybody can do it, you can do
it. If one of us can do it, hey, we
all can do it. And now here's my last question.
Why not? Now?
This is a good time. What a good time to set your
goals, work on yourself, work on your skills.
What a good time to get it together.
What a good time to start this process.
Personal development, growing, changing, developing, having a
good plan for your money and for your life and for your future.
Why not now? Then?
I wish you the best. I want all that I've gotten to
be yours and much, much more. God bless.
Goodbye.