Archive for How to make a Million Dollars – Series
Purity rings for girls
Posted by: | CommentsThe question of religious conviction, or the symbols that represent these convictions, made the news in the UK recently. A sixteen year old girl took her fight for her right to wear a ‘purity ring’ to the High Court. Her school has determined that her chastity ring was jewelry and therefore under the normal school rules, not allowed. Her ring represented her wow to abstain from sex. One would imagine she would abstain until marriage. It doesn’t actually state in the newspaper report when the deadline of her abstinence would expire.
To some extent this young girl has some justification in making her request. There are other forms of apparel that are allowed, which show off religious allegiance. Of these a more obvious one is the head gear worn by muslim girls and women. These scarves are permitted in schools in the UK. What would one then say is the difference between a narrow ring, and a full-on head covering. If she were to wear a head scarf as an image of her wow, would that be allowed then?
One of her arguments has been that there have been several young girls at her school who have fallen pregnant and have had babies. She feels this ring represents a movement which could protect girls from unwanted pregnancy. The symbol, she feels, would assist girls in reminding them of the promise they have made, and possibly also act as a warning to young men that the girl would not wish to participate in sex. As one can imagine, the girl’s parents are fairly supportive.
Many years ago I taught at a Girls’ High School. At the end of the final year saw everybody having to write national examinations. Every year we had to set up a special room to accommodate the pregnant girls. The reason we separated them was because the rest of the girls would be more concerned with the well-being of these few expectant mothers, than with writing their examinations. One year, the girl who was to be awarded the top academic prize was pregnant. The issue of falling pregnant was therefore not in any way related to intelligence or the lack thereof.
What was even more amazing was the fact that during the time I was teaching, the school regularly received visits by female nurses who would spend several hours with the senior girls explaining the basic principles of ‘the facts of live’. With other words, it was explained in fairly explicit detail as to what sex was and what consequences unprotected sex could have. Besides this, birth control was part of these sessions. There was no excuse for these girls to fall pregnant. And yet they did, on average four of them, annually.
If knowledge and the intelligence to apply that knowledge, do not make any difference, one would roll ones eyes and say, what would work. Of course most people would not agree with me, when I say that a solution would be to put all girls onto birth control. They would be asking what sort of promiscuous behaviour would be encouraged then. That is a valid point if one still attaches morals to sex.
If one were then not to go the birth control route, what would work then. Instilling in young people some fervent belief that not having sex is a morally acceptable behaviour and in fact would lead to a virtuous existence and entrance into heaven in the after life. The Catholic church certainly supports this, and other faiths such as islam have similar beliefs. However, modern society does not truly support religious beliefs such as these. Society in the western developed world, does not frown on sexual activity and it is fairly common practice to have several sexual partners during ones life.
There is therefore a conflict between what the religion might dictate and what the norm is. Only a small number of people will buy into the religious mores and not being tempted to have sex. The gap, and this is where the true problem lies, is not being met by society though. If there is no support of a moral code towards sex, then society has to introduce strong support for birth control measures. What is in fact happening, is that young people are left to determine these issues for themselves. They watch TV, movies, DVDs, adult behaviour around them and they see adults readily involved in sex.
At the same time we are trying to bring up young people to have their own opinions, make their own decisions, be independent with other words. We tell them, don’t do as I do, do as I tell you to. Young people are no longer prepared to listen to that. They want honesty and some kind of ethical standards that they can follow. They are not interested in following guidelines set down by adults, which adults themselves are not prepared to abide by. I think young people, better than adults, are able to recognise double standards, and they are certainly not going to buy into them.
How to make a Million Dollars – Step Eight
Posted by: | CommentsExpect pain as you will have to suffer. You will not make a Million Dollars without hurting. And sometimes it can be a fair amount of pain. Unless you win the lotto, it takes some time to get to that coveted Million Dollars, or a successful business or whatever the goal is. The problem is that we live in an age where instant gratification is a way of life.
While you build up the cash, the business, make a name for yourself, train to win championships as a sports person and any other number of efforts that contribute to the success of a Million Dollars in your account, you generally don’t earn a decent living. This is very painful.
I have come across people who worked really hard building their business but couldn’t actually cope with the idea that all that hard work was not bringing in a big salary. If you worked that hard for a company, you probably would get a really awesome pay package.
Sometimes it can take a few years to build up the business so that you can afford to pay yourself a really good wage. While you are suffering through this, your friends are earning good money and enjoying their holidays, new cars and beautifully furnished homes. They often also ensure that you understand how well they are doing and what you are missing.
I maintain that the reason such a large number of businesses don’t make it past the critical three years is that the owners are just not able to live with the pain that the effort requires. Constant worry about cash flow and whether salaries and the rent can be paid, are not easy to live with. Add to that the fact, that you can’t afford to live well, and often have to resort to baked beans and toast to keep yourself going, and one can easily see why people give up.
Sometimes they are forced to close their business down because they couldn’t resist paying themselves big salaries. After all it is what they deserve, isn’t it. How often do you see these young entrepreneurs flitting around in their fancy 4×4’s living in grand homes, and the business is running on huge borrowings to maintain the life style. However, the business hasn’t brought in sufficient profit to warrant paying out a large salary as yet. It is just a matter of time before the whole pack of cards falls down.
Talking about pain, have a look at Madonna and her road to success. When she first moved to New York in 1978, initially to become a dancer, she lived in squalor, working low-paying jobs including a stint at Dunkin’ Donuts. She only started making some money after five years, earning $5 000 per song in 1982 when she signed a singles deal with Sire Recrods. Now she is considered to be worth $325 million and the highest earning female singer. She also holds the record for the top-grossing concert tour by a female artist.
The no pain, no gain principle is also particularly relevant in the sport arena where athletes literally suffer pain through their hard training schedules. For years, while they build their skills and reputation they earn very little money, are constantly traveling, find it difficult to maintain personal relationships due to their nomadic lifestyle and have the threat of injury an ever present worry.
As much as sports people present a great example of the painful part of getting to the top and earning their Million Dollars, everybody suffers pain of some sort while working their way towards their goals. Its the pain that people shy away from. They are often happy to put in the hard work, be passionate, prepared to take on set backs and believe in themselves and other great attributes. But the pain of being broke, not being able to enjoy the luxuries in life, driving in a wreck of a car, envying friends of their successes and many more experiences, is what stops people from reaching their target of a Million Dollars.
How to make a Million Dollars – Step Seven
Posted by: | CommentsPreviously I have discussed five steps towards making a Million Dollars. These were passion, hard work, perseverance, the ability to cope with failure and still continue and belief in yourself and that you could do it and finally defnining your goals. The next one I would recommend would be focus. Sure this is similar to a few of the others, but not quite.
Many people start off with a vision of that Million Dollars. And they are passionate and hardworking and they will try many new things to get to that goal. There lies the problem. Trying many new things. They bounce around, putting effort and passion into this idea, for about a week, then they put the same effort and passion into another idea the next week. I have seen many people do this. They are doing this even at home, or in relationships, or in starting a new hobby, in fact in many areas of their life.
I suppose it stems from the fact that we live in such an instant gratification society that we are not prepared to work at something for a long period of time. We might spend a year, or maybe just a few months on trying this particular business venture.
But if you look at some of the people who have made it big, they didn’t do this overnight. Even Bill Gates spent many years hiking DOS, around the operating system before his Windows System, trying to sell it. The Google boys didn’t do it overnight and as for Amazon, they spent years before they posted their first profit. The years before that involved many instances of groveling for more funds to keep the company afloat.
When you decide you want to make a lot of money then you have to stay focused. Decide on what you are passionate about, put some mega hard work into it, stay on track with your perseverance and don’t allow set backs to stop you. But over and above all of this, keep your focus on the one thing that you are passionate about and that will ultimately make you your money.
I am sure there are many people who look at their bank account, read some inspiring report on how Madonna made her millions, or Paul Getty drilled for oil, or Richard Branson took a chance on music and many more stories. So they are like kids in a toy store, trying out different get rich quick schemes. They might dabble in property because somebody has written about that. Or they might try their luck on the stock exchange. Or lo and behold, there is the internet where scores of people are making huge money in a few days. Now that’s where I should be.
Every time you change focus, you lose some momentum, and often you even lose some of your invested money. Keep your focus. Don’t expect to make money overnight. For that buy a lotto ticket. Oh that one didn’t work for you either? Neither for me. Get your mind around what you are passionate about and focus on that one thing.
Don’t get caught by quick fix solutions. They don’t work. Anybody who tells you it worked for them, they are lying. They are making up success stories to impress their audience. You need to know better. There is no such thing. Keep your focus. Remember those Karate Kid movies? My kids loved them. And I loved watching them with the two of them. And focus was the main principle behind those, slightly unlikely – but then its Hollywood isn’t it – stories. The principle of the story stood though, Hollywood or not.
How to make a Million Dollars – Step Six
Posted by: | CommentsIn the past few articles on this topic I have mentioned five things that contribute towards achieving ones goal, in this instance making that first Million Dollars. Of course this goal can be something else such as losing weight, winning a championship, recovering from a serious injury and many more. It depends on what you are looking for. The first five steps discussed passion, hard work, perseverance, the ability to cope with failure and to believe in oneself.
The next important step would be to define our goals exactly, peg a delivery date and keep that goal in mind at all times. We tend to, and I include myself in this, drift through life. When we are in high powered executive positions at companies, we map out the strategy for the company. We plan the path the company is going to be taking over the next year, and even up to five years. What do we do for our lives? Do we ever plan past the basic things such as find a home, get married, have a child and maybe think about the school the kid is going to need to go to.
We just drift through life. And mostly our goals tend to have the same kind of vague identity around them. We do not attach the same meticulous planning to our life’s goals as we do to business for instance. Somehow, it’s almost as if our achievements are not as important. Sure, we plan our next holiday. But even those plans are often at the mercy of what lastminute.com or expedia is able to offer.
How many of us actually plan and plot our career? Do we look at our career path and determine what is required to move forward, or do we react when we are offered a better position or somebody headhunts us from a competing company. Do we plan our first property ownership or do we just go with the flow and when the situation arises we kind of drift into property ownership.
Regrettably, that is exactly what we tend to do. We muddle along and our planning does not go further than holidays or the next week-end’s activities with our friends. Identify your goals. Seriously. This is really important. Sitting there and thinking that you would like to have a Million Dollars in your account is going to get you nowhere. Well it will probably get you to buy a ticket at the Lotto outlet. That requires no planning. You just drift into the shop and colour in a few numbers, or you can even get a lucky dip ticket. That means you don’t even need to think about numbers. You let the machine determine your fate. Wow.
Even if you don’t believe in getting that Million Dollars or whatever other secret dream you have. Just actually putting together a strategy for you life, could possibly boost your achievements, create satisfaction when you achieve those goals. It would improve you life just through that. However, if you do wish to have that Million Dollars in your bank account, you seriously need to plan, and determine the steps you are going to take to achieve that balance in your bank account.
There is no invisible magic that is going to just put a Million Dollars into your account. You know this. But you still try and find an easy way to get it. Which is why you and I read all sorts of stuff on the internet which confirms to us we can just sit back and it will happen. Well hello. Not really. These are just con-artists who give you a free e-book and hope you will be sucker enough to buy the upgrade. It’s not going to work You will be $10 poorer, but you will not have a Million Dollars in your account.
And no it’s not going to just manifest in your account. You will need passion, hard work, perseverance etc to make that Million Dollars. You know it. You just don’t want to admit it because it requires stepping out of your comfort zone and working at all the elements that I have mentioned so far. So what is it going to be? A constant moan about how bad life is, or a huge effort into planning your goals and going for them? I’m going to try the second one. Want to join me?
How to make a Million Dollars – Step Five
Posted by: | CommentsThe previous steps towards that Million Dollars, that I have written about are passion, hard work, perseverance and the ability to cope with failure and still continue. My next one would be that you have got to believe that you will achieve it. In this instance it is a Million Dollars, but it could be something different such as completing a marathon, losing 10kg of weight, making a marriage work, with other words any number of different goals would require the same steps.
Would perseverance not fall under believing in oneself and one’s achievement? After all perseverance indicates belief in the positive outcome. I would still make a distinction between the two. People can happily persevere in working at a goal. But they might actually not believe they will ever get there. They are kind of going through the motions.
Many people will pause at this stage and remember failed projects which they had vehemently believed in at the time. Yet they didn’t make it. Those years that they studied and still didn’t get the degree, or worked long hours at their business many months hardly drawing a salary. And still the business bumbled along for a few years and in the end they gave up and sold up, closed down and went to work for a boss. All those were strong dreams that didn’t happen for them.
But I believe that what distinguishes the person with reaching their dream and those that just grab at it in mid-air, is the absolute, cast-iron, set in concrete belief that they can achieve their goal. Call it obsessional belief. There is not one crack of disbelief. In all honesty, ask yourself, when you gave up that dream to be a concert pianist, athlete, business owner how strong had you actually believed in yourself. Was it all consuming? Not a flicker of doubt?
Listening to Classic FM I heard an interview with Lang Lang, the world renowned Chinese concert pianist who is creating waves and picking up awards with his supreme technical skills and interpretative playing. He said that during his years of tuition he once had a teacher who just took a dislike to him and told him that he should give up the piano because he was no good, and would never be any good.
Lang Lang gave up the piano for six months, not knowing what else to do as his entire life had been focused on becoming a pianist. Then a college invited him to play for a special event. He initially refused saying that he was no good at it. But they insisted and pleaded with him. Finally he thought, why not, after all this is what he truly wanted to do. And he played for them. He never looked back. Now almost ten years later, he is an award winning pianist. Even now he has some detractors and is called Bang Bang by some critics who maintain that his playing style is vulgar and lacks sensitivity. This does not deter him however, and he continues to perform and record with top orchestras and conductors.
Are you going to get criticism if you have fought your way to the top with hard work, determination, absolute self-belief, having suffered many set-backs but kept your passion going. Of course you are. You will be criticised by the people who gave up on their passion, and who now envy you for your achievements thinking that you must have cheated to get where you are now. After all if they couldn’t manage it, then surely nobody else can without doing something underhand, or having excessive help and luck in reaching their goal. Don’t you believe it. People make their luck happen. You can do it too. You gotta believe!
How to make a Million Dollars – Step Four
Posted by: | CommentsSo far, in previous articles on how to make a Million Dollars, I have written about passion being essential, hard work definitely has to be part of the action and perseverance being the third step necessary in a quest for making real money. The next one to be added to this, would be the ability to cope with failure. Winston Churchill said that success consisted of going from failure to failure without loss of enthusiasm. That’s what I am talking about.
The best examples of going from failure to failure without giving up, are in the scientific exploration area. Scientists spend much time, in some instances, years experimenting in order to find the answers they are looking for. As an example, the story of the Wright brothers and how they worked on their first flying machine, is the story of failure after failure until success.
Another great example is the history of Google. Google began as a research project in January 1996 by two Ph.D students. With continuous funding required and raised, during the following years, the company developed its search engine, as well as its advertising format. It was only in August 2004 when the company was offered to the public that it’s true market value was revealed and the founders were rewarded for their passion, hard work, perseverance and ability to continue even through failures.
In the field of sport, Tiger Woods rates as one of the outstanding sportsmen the world has seen. During his professional playing years there have been several years where he lost ranking and did not win major tournaments. However, he always worked hard to regain his position. What is probably not that well known either is that he was legally blind without contract lenses or glasses until 1999 when he underwent the LASIK procedure. He has also won many tournaments against all odds, through sheer determination and effort.
In your own life you would have experienced these failures and successes. And your successes would have depended on whether you would have been able to continue through your failures. This could have been just completing a puzzle, building something with your Lego blocks as a child, or later finding you had talent and ability in athletics for instance and working on your talent until you won the championship race. On the path to that, there would have been many failures which could have either stopped you from continuing, or encouraged you to put in even more effort.
Our lives as adults are very similar, although we do tend to allow failures to determine our efforts more than when we were youngsters. As one gets older, the consideration that we could actually fail, many times prohibits us from even starting. This often affects whether we strive for some achievements in our life, or whether we sell out to mediocrity and vegetate through life.
If you feel that you are just drifting through life right now, and that you know inside yourself that there is something better out there, that you yourself were meant to do more, feel more fulfilled within your life, strive towards challenges, earn that first Million Dollars, no matter your age, then you might want to consider getting yourself some help by finding yourself a personal coach to help you through the first stages of your development.
How to make a Million Dollars – Step Three
Posted by: | CommentsIf you have been following this series on How to make a Million Dollars, you will have come across Step One as being passion and Step Two as hard work. And at the time I wrote those I could not decide which one should be number one as they are both equally important. Hard work with no passion, and passion with no hard work is not going to get you that coveted Million Dollars into your bank account.
What then is Step Three. For me Step Three is perseverance. There are many examples of passion, hard work and perseverance and one of my favourites is the story of Michelangelo and the painting of the Sistine Chapel which took four years of back breaking labour. Imagine lying on your back on a wobbly scaffold with hot candle wax dripping on you intermittently while you are painting. The result is of course extraordinary. And I saw it before it was cleaned up!
A further example of people manifesting passion, hard work and perseverance is for instance Lance Armstrong, the cyclist. What a come-back from cancer, to go on to win the Tour de France seven times. Oprah Winfrey is another who took a fair time to put together her passion, hard work and perseverance. She started her broadcasting career ten years before she finally had her own show The Oprah Winfrey Show in 1986. And she has become a legend since then. What about Ronald Reagan who persevered after loosing the presidential race in 1976, and ended up becoming a much loved and successful president of the States, winning re-election.
Then there is the story of Steve Jobs and Apple Computers. He and his partner Woz started Apple in Steve’s parent’s garage when he was 20 years old. They worked hard and it took 10 years for them to start becoming successful, and then he got fired at 30 from the company which he had started. It took a while for him to recover from that set back, but then he started Pixar, and most of us know the wonderful movies such as Toy Story that production studio has produced since then. Then he started NeXT which ironically was bought by Apple, and Steve Jobs ended up back at the helm of his old company. That is called passion, hard work and perseverance.
I’m sure you have a success story to tell, that you have experienced or observed. And these three components are present each time. Passion for the subject whether it’s computers, stamp collection, answering the phone or making cookies. A huge amount of hard work to make the computer company, stamp collector, receptionist or baker get off the ground and make it and perseverance to steer that enterprise through its hard times, set-backs, mistakes and achievements.
You have patiently read this far. And how do you feel now? Do you think you are still with the program? Can you see yourself making that first million dollar? That is always the hardest to do. Additional million dollars tend to follow a lot easier. Most of us have all the enthusiasm in the world to get going immediately on the task we set ourselves. But we tend not to get too far because old habits stop us from moving from our very comfortable, but unsuccessful path. All of the above makes sense, doesn’t it? And you have known this all along, but you have laboured on in your own little way not wanting to leave and take the plunge. With help you can do it. Find yourself a good personal coach or a close friend who can help you with your quest.
How to make a Million Dollars – Step Two
Posted by: | CommentsStill believing in having a million dollars wander into your bank account with no work involved and it just happens because you imagine it every day? So it has been working for you then? Not really, I would imagine. That is not to say that putting positive thoughts out there, drawing your dream house, spending time every day seeing that money come into your account, won’t also help. It will definitely help. It will help especially when you have been working really hard at what you are passionate about and you are still living in your studio apartment, eating baked beans on toast every night. That’s when your positive thinking is the most necessary.
If imagining your bank account full of Million Dollars, isn’t step two, then what is it? Step two is hard work. That’s it. In fact step one, being passionate about something, and hard work could swap places. Or maybe they should both be number one. Hard work without passion will not make you millions of dollars, and passion without hard work will also not do it. Being passionate about something without working at that passion purely means that you are day dreaming. When I was learning to play the piano as a young person, I used to imagine myself playing Beethoven in a concert. But I only practiced a couple of hours a week, and that’s because I had to. Although I was passionate about music, loved it and saw myself do well at it, I just never really put the required hard work into it. The wonderful musicians you hear at concert performances whether in the orchestra or as soloists, work at their craft the same hours you work for a boss. They practice seven to ten hours a day. Those amazing skills are not imagined into their lives. They have worked at them. Sure, there are certainly some young people that seem to be able to pick up a skill such as playing the piano or violin easier than others. But they still work extremely hard to acquire the dexterity required.
That all sounds really logical. But you will say to yourself, having read so far, that you work really hard and that you are fairly passionate about what you do. You love your job as a receptionist, book-keeper, manager etc, but it hasn’t actually provided you with much of a return. You can barely afford the rent, never mind treat yourself to that new coat you saw at the shop. Why isn’t it working for you, you ask yourself. It’s not working because just liking something and just working your prerequisite hours of 7 per day, is not going to do the trick. None of the millionaires out there who made their money, did that. They thought, obsessed about, puzzled through new ideas, tried new things, if not at the office then at home, and literally worked on their passion 24/7. They did not put in work at their job for seven hours a day. They put in ten hours a day seven days a week. When they were not at work, they would read and learn and get more knowledgeable on their subject so that they would shine at what they were doing. They were the first ones to do extra time at the job if required and if the opportunity presented itself.
But, you say to yourself, I am a receptionist, book-keeper, road sweeper or whatever other position you could be holding, and no matter how amazing my service could be, I don’t think I would get further. Then ask yourself this question. Are you passionate about what you are doing? Does dealing with the clients really make you feel passionate about customer service, are you ecstatic when the books balance at the end of the month, do you love leaving behind a clean street. Or are all of these just things you have to do in order to earn that salary pay cheque at the end of the month? If the answer is, what a stupid question how could one get enthusiastic about answering the phone, then you are not doing something you are passionate about. The person who is passionate about answering the phone, is the one who started an academy to teach people how to answer the phone enthusiastically and has made a million through that. Would you believe that to be possible? It sure is.
If you are ready and willing to make a Million Dollars, then you would need to decide on what makes you passionate, and once you have determined this, then put a huge amount of hard work towards that passion. You will have spent some time before in your life thinking really hard what you would like to do, and you have come up with nothing that excited you. If that describes your life pattern, then why not get some help. It’s pointless trying to battle along, not finding what you are looking for, and giving up again, as in the past.
How to make a Million Dollars – Step One
Posted by: | CommentsIf you are like most of us, looking at wealthy people with some envy and wishing you had the same ‘luck’ in making money it is quite a thought to wonder whether you could actually make a million Dollars yourself. It seems so remote and unreal. Not something that you believe could happen to you. The good news is that it is most assuredly possible for you to make a million Dollars. The bad news is that you will not make a million Dollars by sitting on the beach imagining one million Dollars stacked up in your bank account and believing that no other effort is required.
You need to get your passion back. This is your first step that you should take into that new wealth state that you wish for yourself. This first step is to find that passion again that you had when you were a kid. That passion that got you to play a computer game until you got to the top level, the guitar cords you picked until you could play the latest hit song and your finger tips were raw, the butterflies you collected, the Barbie doll clothes and accessories that you were fanatical about and many many more. Think back to when you were so passionate that nothing could stop you, from whatever you were trying to do Those passionate moments were times when you thought nothing could stop you from achieving your goals.
As a kid myself, I used to read passionately. I could read fairly well before I started school, so school just added some extra skills. And then the quest for stories was all consuming. I would read under my blanket with a torch. In later years I used to think that it killed my eyesight as I had to get spectacles from an early age. On the other hand my father was short sighted, so I think it was something I inherited rather than did to myself. To this day, I read through the night if needs be, when I start on a good book.
The first step in your process is to find the thing that makes you passionate now. This can be something like talking to people or helping people. One person who has made a success of talking to people, is Oprah Winfrey and this against some heavy odds stacked against her, another example is Parkinson. Then there is Nelson Mandela who was determined to help his people towards equality and democracy. He spent 27 years in prison on an island, but still never gave up on his passion. There are many examples of successful people whose passions have allowed them to overcome obstacles and pursue their dreams and be successful in their chosen field.
You can do it too. But how to start is of course a huge question. We tend to be stuck in our every day lives, uninspired at work, so-so in our relationships, the dog the only close friend. Alright, maybe not that bad, but it is still difficult to get ourselves out of this mind set. And sometimes it doesn’t seem to be even possible, the drudgery of every day life keeping us back and with no energy left to start something new. That’s when you should get yourself help. You would if you had a really bad flu or a broken leg, wouldn’t you. So why not get assistance to reclaim the life you should be enjoying. You are worth spending time, money and energy on.
How to make a Million Dollars in one Month
Posted by: | CommentsI bet I am going to get the attention of many many readers with that headline. The disappointing news is that unless you win the lotterry or have some other very very fortunate occurrence in your life, you are not going to make a million Dollars in one month.
We all want to be millionaires. We want to lead the life of the rich and famous. And we are convinced that they had that money fall into their laps, appear in their bank accounts one day, were really lucky in their deals, were at the right spot at the right time and any other bizarre kind of acquisition process one can think of. If you are Paris Hilton, then yes it did. However, if you look at the source of her money, it is certain that the original Conrad Hilton worked very hard for his money. Because that is what most millionaires have had to do. This includes the Bill Gates, Steve Jobs, John D Rockefeller, Andrew Carnegie, Oprah Winfrey or JK Rowling’s of this world, who have often been through hardships before their sheer determination and hard work paid off. Sometimes, they even had to endure going bankrupt in their quest for wealth, such as Conrad Hilton who lost his hotels during the Depression before buying them back again as soon as he could.
So you want to make a million Dollars in a month, starting from zero, otherwise you wouldn’t be reading this article. Bury that thought. It isn’t going to happen to 99% of us. The question is though, taking away the one month time and extending that into a longer time period, of whatever length you would be comfortable with, would it be possible. Of course.
There are many reasons why the millionaires and billionaires have made it happen for themselves. In the next few posts I will examine some of these attributes, habits and obsessions that I think have made it possible for these people to earn the millions that they have. In this first article I am going to look at the one personality trait that I think would be the most important one to have in order to succeed. As with all personality traits, these are not ones necessarily that one is only born with. They can be developed by anybody. Besides this, any number of other people could determine that my first choice is not correct, unlikely to be the one and other general objections. With other words this is a personal opinion. I am sure there are many people who have other opinions on this, and I would love to hear them.
The most important characteristic for financial or other success is passion. It could be called obsession as well of course, or tunnel vision, one track mind, stubbornness and more. It really depends on how one looks at this personality trait whether one calls it passion or obsession. I am certain if one were to study the people who have managed to acquire their millions in their life time, that this one particular character trait would be found in all or most of them.
For an example, reading some background on JK Rowling, who is said to be just behind Oprah Winfrey in terms of wealth, world wide, in the entertainment field. Her first Harry Potter book was submitted to twelve publishing houses, all of which rejected it. A year later she finally was given the go ahead by a small publisher with an advance of £1500.00. And the advice from the publisher was that she should get herself a job since she had little chance of making a living writing children’s books. The first Harry Potter book had a print run of 1000, of which 500 were sent to libraries. In a report by the BBC it is stated that 12 million copies are to be printed just for the United States market for the launch in July 2007. How many of us would have given up when we were told that we would never make it, the advice by a publisher who would probably have known his market?
If you want to make a million dollars, discover that something that makes you really really passionate. It’s there. You’ve just allowed life and all its ups and downs to burry it. Put some real and passionate effort into that exercise. It doesn’t matter what it is. Just as an aside, I think just being passionate about having lots of money isn’t the same! If that were so, I would be a billionaire by now. And if you are not interested in making a million Dollars, don’t beat yourself up either. Hope you have fun reading the posts anyway. Let me know how you go!