A Summary Of The Self Made Wealth Course by Eben Pagan

The things that you need to do to create wealth for yourself in your life are counterintuitive.

Principles of Self Made Wealth

We are wired for a time that do doesn’t exist anymore. The concept of “Wealth” is a brand new invention, evolutionarily speaking. Another recent invention is planning for a long-term future.
We are not naturally wired to deal very well with money. We have an unhealthy emotional relationship with money. We have bad cultural and societal programming when it comes to money.
The Money isn’t the wealth; it is just the medium we use to exchange the value of one asset to another. Money isn’t real, so we screw up when we try to get it and use it.
We have poor habits with money. We use cash unconsciously. We make spending decisions at the moment. Using the money, costs you money.
Wealthy people buy and invest in assets; poor people invest in liabilities. Wealthy people invest in assets. Wealthy people invest in knowledge. Wealthy people invest in relationships. Money is not an asset. Money is not the wealth.
Borrowing money is the ultimate trap.The modern indentured servant program is not the way to create wealth

Becoming a Financial Adult

FIAT Currency: Currency or money that is not backed by anything. Invented by a criminal named John Law.

DEBT: We went from using debt as a tool to now basing our whole financial system on it. Debt does not serve us.

CONSUMERISM: Ideas such as “Buy things to express yourself, get attention, make yourself feel good”, but it does not work.

ENTITLEMENT: The modern business model is now a job. The old paradigm of an entitlement of job for life, pension and retirement is no longer. We will have to turn ourselves into someone valuable that other will seek out. On average most people spend more money per year than they make. This is unsustainable. We have become a wants to be based culture. We buy things, so people think we are cool, whereas we used to only buy things we needed to sustain us. We have been behaving like spoiled financial teenagers, and it is time to become fiscal adults.

Spending vs. Investing

When you spend money, you are buying liabilities, things that have no long-term value.
When you invest in something, you are taking your money and trading it for something that has lots of intrinsic values and goes up over time.

Assets vs. Liabilities

An asset is something that has intrinsic value, over time its values also grow, and it will throw off cash flow and other value.
A liability does not have intrinsic value and will go down over time and can consume more of your money time and energy.

How to invest your money is usually counter-intuitive, the obvious thing is to spend.

Needs vs. Wants

You will have an intuitive compass to know if something is a Need or a Want.

If you want to build real wealth, then you must first make a switch to buying things based on wants to needs.

WEALTH MANTRA: I invest in only what I need.

Creating a wealth game that you can win:

“The story of how we arrived at our current picture of the universe is the story of understanding how we see” – Stephen Hawking
“The human brain sees thing that are most familiar to it” – Gregory Burns (Book: Iconoclast)
Our mental model of reality is our reality.
It’s not your fault that you were never taught how to handle money, to think about money or to have financial literacy on how to build wealth over time BUT it is 100 percent your responsibility how what I know about money and wealth and how I behave around money and wealth.
It is not my fault I was not taught the way things work, but it is my responsibility to work it out now.
Creating Wealth: You are creating new value and its assets that are creating value and its long term.
It is harder to keep wealth than it is to make it. Once you come up with a system to create wealth, you then need to come up with a system to keep it.
Using money prevents us from understanding money. Because we are using money every day, it prevents us from seeing its true, complete nature.
The game of using “money as the value” is fixed against us, and we cannot win if we do not understand this.

Create your reality:

Money: Is money a cause or an effect? Most people see money as a cause (I need money before I can cause anything to happen), wealthy people see it as an effect or as a side effect of creating value.
Wealthy people do not have the paradigm of running a scam for your ship to come in, and then sitting on the beach and doing nothing the rest of your life. They want to work continually to increase the value because it is something they enjoy.
Get rich quick schemes never get anyone rich.
In modern times, the best investment is in education, skills and relationships. Knowledge is the new currency.
The more “stuff” you own, the less success you can enjoy. Because the more management hassle you have.
The more contributions I make to the world and other people the more I will be personally satisfied.
The more I say no, the more successful I become. Don’t spread yourself too thin, instead focus like a laser beam. It is also good to build your personal boundary.
We do not live in a world of scarce resources, because of innovation and creation of value we live in a world of abundance. Get into the creation of value rather than extract value.
Wealthy people are not trying to impress everyone.
Don’t look down on what you have. Look for what you have and be appreciative and grateful. This will free up allot of energy to focus on creating your reality and creating value for others.
We can create success for ourselves, and anyone can do it through the power of the mastermind group.

Taking control of your self-image and seeing yourself as a creator of wealth:

Identification: When humans identify with an idea or a concept we actually at a level in our minds cannot tell the difference anymore between the ideas and ourselves. If we identify with a group or ideology, we begin to identify at a very deep level that our self and the group or ideology are the very same thing. This is also true for physical items like a car. People will see an idea and themselves as the same thing.
Looking at things in a frozen or static way robs our minds of a chance to involve.
NLP – Denomilization : Is where you take a process of taking a freezing of something “this is the way it is” to something flowing “this is the way is is evolving”.
Avoid saying things like “I am” or “it is”.
We can change our story. We can change our mythology. We can construct a self-image that can continuously evolve over time.
New “Money Maps”:
We live in a world of unlimited, abundant resources, all we have to do is to learn to create value for other people.
We live in a world and a universe of unlimited opportunity.
I will be a constantly evolving creator of value. I can change my beliefs and self-image and will use that power to create value for others.
Do what you know is right.
I will be a creator of value.
What does the other person think is valuable so I can bring it to them.
A flowing creating evolving creator of value.

The beliefs of wealth, using your mind to change your mind:

Money isn’t wealth. Money can be turned into wealth and wealth can be turned into money.
Modern Miracle: We can change our beliefs.
The first type of goal: Achievement orientated goal that is external. e.g. I want to make a million dollars, or I want to buy this car.
Another type of goal: Mastery goal. e.g. learning how to do something or mastering a particular skill.
Focus less on achievement goals and concentrate more on mastery goals.
The first skill we want to master is the skill of creating value for others in all situations. Once you have mastered this, you can then figure out how to turn that into wealth.
The concept of failure is imaginary.
The notions of “Problem” and “Failure” are two of the most limiting concepts that we humans have created.
You can eliminate any failure or problem in your life by learning from it.
“Problems” and “Failures” are just things that people made up.
Another level to think of money at is currency. It is a tool that allows us to make transactions very quickly.
Another level to think of Money at is capital.
Money is a tool. It is something you use to create value in the world.
As a general principle in life what you focus on expands. But when you focus on money it doesn’t expand, if you want money to grow you must concentrate on creating value for others.

The psychology of wealth prevention, how our emotions prevent us from becoming wealthy and what to do about it :

Crowd Psychology : Negative emotions inside one person directs them in a certain way but negative emotions inside a hole group of people affects the individual at a much deeper level.
My body and emotions are using my mind to get what they want.
We are all constantly in the middle of self-deception all the time, but this keeps us from going crazy if we where to perceive everything simultaneously we would not be able to handle it. But it can go too far.
“Humans have an infinite capacity for self-deception” – Tony Schwartz
“Self-deception covers its own tracks” – Daniel Goleman
Confabulation : People make up story’s about what happened always. My emotions will not only drive me to do irrational things
When you do something that is counter productive your mind will make up a reason as to why that happened and you will confabulate a whole story about why you are not responsible but this is just the self-deception that the mind uses to keep you safe and healthy gone wrong. We need to start noticing this and be aware of this mechanism and if we start noting it we can become more free of it and start using it to weave more positive story’s and about how we learned from experience.
We are making decisions at an unconscious level all the time. We make decisions unconsciously, it then lets out conscious mind know.
This decision making process is largely driven by our emotions which are driven by our programs.
Most of the decisions we make are made unconsciously, then filtered up to our conscious mind and then we have the illusion that we are making the decision because we confabulate a story.
Secondary Pay Off: It is possible that the reason I do not have the financial success I would like is because of the secondary payoff of keeping myself poor.
The Story: Gets people to feel sorry for us, gets us pity, gets us to make excuses for not succeeding, Think the donkey from Winnie the Pooh, he gets allot of attention from complaining.
Not having to endure disapproval, ridicule and shame: If you start becoming more successful the people around you will start thinking “Whoa that’s weird” and will often criticise and disapprove.
What’s the payoff I am getting from keeping myself unsuccessful financially?
When humans are in the presence of an influencing factor, we automatically respond without having to think about it.
One of the weapons of influence is Reciprocity: “the old give and take”, if someone does something nice for us then we feel we have to do something nice for them. Even if it is not “equal”.
Authority: If we are in the presence of someone in authority we will automatically do what they say as they are the authority. (See Stanly Milgram experiments).
In western society the things that we are “triggered by” to spend our money on are created by other people and made up by large organisations after figuring out all these influence mechanisms to get humans to do what they want.
How do I control my emotions so that they affect my conscious mind, so I make the decisions that I want to make, so I do what I want to do automatically?
The justice mechanism will get in the way of financial success as to give away massive value you will have to do things that are unfair to yourself.

Fear, the ultimate emotional block to creating wealth:

If you spend most of your life living in fear, you are going to find it very difficult to have any lasting wealth in your life.
“You miss 100% of the shots you don’t take in life” – Wayne Gretsky
“I’ve missed over 9000 shots in my career, I’ve lost 300 games and on 26 occasions I have been entrusted to take the winning shot for my team and I have missed, I have failed over and over in life, and that’s why I have succeeded” – Michael Jordan
To create big success in life, you have to overcome your fear and go for it.
What is fear? Emotions are kind of like channels that we put our mind and body on, if you are under the influence of one emotion, then it changes how you see the world, interpret it and react. How you would understand an event would be entirely different depending if you were in a state of ecstatic joy or fear.
The fear mechanism in biologically natural, but maybe in the modern age it is working at the wrong times, and what was meant to be the ultimate protector is now the ultimate prison.
Fear is expected to be brief.
Fear is meant to be a servant of intuition.
If you are feeling fear in your life, it is almost certain evidence that that thing you are feeling isn’t happening. When an emergency happens you are looking to escape, running, dealing with the moment, you are not feeling fear.
Simple binary model, higher self and lower self. We know when we are in our higher self when we are positive and know everything is going to be okay. When you are in your lower self, you are suffering fear and pessimism. When you are in your lower self you should not be making any important decisions, do not communicate anything important and do not take any significant actions. When you are in your higher self that is when you need to make important decisions, that is when you need to take decisive actions. When you are in your lower self, realise it, acknowledge it , don’t judge it and don’t act on fear.
Whenever you feel yourself going into your lower self, notice it, and then make it your top priority to get back to your higher self.
If you put apes in a zoo, they become lethargic, depressed and stop acting like themselves. We have voluntarily put ourselves in the human zoo.
It is now rare for humans to experience fear naturally, so we often look for an opportunity to feel fear e.g. scary movie’s, extreme sports, etc.
We have to wake up to the reality that we are allowing fear to dominate our lives and allowing anxiety to exist at a low level.
The general news is one of the most destructive forces we humans have invented. Nearly all news storeys are negative where in reality almost all experiences we will have are positive. It irrationally skews the perception of reality to that of negative experiences. It is not an accurate representation of reality. It gives excuses not to act, to feel like victims, etc.
Negative Gossip creates a feedback loop of negative emotions, fear and anxiety.
What is worry? Negative emotions combined with mental planning scenario about the future. When you are in a negative emotion and think about the future, you will think of a negative future. This will paint a negative future and put us into more fear.
The general news, gossip and worry all put us into fear. If we can eliminate these from our life, we can pull ourselves up into our higher self and start seeing the world in a more positive way.
The two side of fear: The most common concern in the modern world is the fear of failure. Another kind of fear is the fear of success.
If you become a success financially, what are some of the things that will happen that you fear? You must address these and notice them when they come up. Accept yourself, acknowledge it then make the decision. Take the responsibility, push through to success.
One type of financial fear is the fear of loss; another kind is one that prevents us from doing things for creating wealth.
Humans are bad investors. The amateur investor will hold onto a stock when it goes down because we are afraid of loss. Conversely when a stock starts to rise we sell it because we begin to make a bit of profit, and we sell it because we fear to lose that benefit. A professional investor does the opposite, if it starts to go down they sell the stock, if it begins to go up they hold onto it cause they know it could be one of the few that goes way up.
We do not want to have our fear stop us from doing something that creates value.
When something goes wrong when it is an absolute emergency it is very very very rare and even when it does happen it can typically wait an hour or two.
You have to overcome fear and the justice mechanism. You should not be afraid to give away your best ideas. You will never have enough time to implement all your many great ideas.
Don’t be afraid that you can’t create value. You can ALWAYS create more value.

Fear Deprogramming Steps:

Don’t watch, read or pay attention to the general news.
No more negative gossip. Build relationships with people that do not have the need to talk negatively about people in idle conversation. Cultivate relationships that speak positively of others be wary of people that speak negatively of others.
Eliminate worry over finances. Stop worrying about finances and go create some value in the world. You are not going to make good decisions when you are worrying; you are not going to raise your self-esteem by worrying. Go create value and immediately do whatever it takes to get back to your higher self.

The difference between wealth and happiness and how to create both:

Why do we want wealth?
There is an enormous difference between wanting to get away from being poor and creating value and wealth.
The nature of happiness:
Happy is an emotion, the feeling that you get when something fortunate happens; it is real and possible but also temporary.
Happiness is the long term sense of being happy. But it is not physically possible to have long-term happiness. Because Happy is an emotion, and all emotions are temporary. So if you are chasing happiness, you will get very frustrated, as a human you just cannot experience one emotion all the time.
What we can have that is even better than happiness is fulfilment, and underlying feeling of success, it will still be punctuated by positive and negative emotions, but fulfilment the aim.
One of the keys to satisfaction is to realise it is not a temporary emotion. It is a combination of how you see the world, yourself and situations. Working on a process of improving yourself, achieving the “Flow state”, self-reliance, realising everything in the world will be OK.
The road to fulfilment is not through happiness or wealth.
To get to that real feeling of peace and satisfaction with life, you can’t get there through money, wealth, or emotions of feeling happy. If you try, it will keep you distracted and frustrated for a long time, and you will never get there.
One way to move towards fulfilment is to reduce and minimise our suffering as much as possible.
The difference between pain and suffering: Suffering is woven into life, is is a part of life. Pain is also a part of life and is woven into life. You cannot avoid pain in this world, it is part of life, but suffering is something else entirely.
The road to bliss involves detachment. Everything in this world is temporary, getting attached to things will lead to pain.
Pain x Resistance = Suffering
Pain is a part of life, but suffering is optional.
Reducing your created suffering is possibly the most powerful thing you can do to usher in fulfilment and satisfaction.
It is even possible for humans to create suffering from pain over things that have not even happened !!! Just relax, accept and flow with the events that happen! DO does not experience suffering in advance of pain. Be water!
Most of us prevent real fulfilment in our lives because we are creating massive suffering.
What humans have been forgetting lately in our modern culture, is that joy is built by doing things that are completely in contrary to consumerism. To create fulfilment we have to look at our natural gifts, form strong social bonds, improve ourselves from the inside, taking care of and teaching children, getting into shape,learning art and contributing to other people’s lives.
The consumerist lifestyle doesn’t work. You were born with everything you need to be fulfilled; you do not need to buy it.
If you bring a more peaceful, joyful and satisfied person to life, it will be easier to create wealth.
The paradox of choice: Two types of decision when buying something, Maximising and Satisficing
Maximising: looking at every possible option, weighing up all the variables and looking at what the best choice would be and making the purchase.
Satisfying: Looking at what you want to get out of something, looking at the options and choosing something that meets our needs and are satisfied with it.
If you want to experience, allot of emotional pain and be unsatisfied then be a maximiser. Maximising is the road to dissatisfaction in life.
If you want to create more satisfaction, then develop the habit of satisficing. Find something that is a good fit for you, make choices based on your needs and not making sure that you universally get the best possible option out of every single thing available.
The Gap: We get an idea of what we think we would like , be it how much wealth, the perfect body, relationships, something that might not even be possible and then compare ourselves to it and then feel upset because we do not meet our unrealistic ideals.
The flip side of this is looking back to where we started and then looking at how much progress we have made. This will build self-esteem and self-worth and paves the way to more positive emotions.
How to get money, wealth and long-term satisfaction and fulfilment: The best way to get all of these things is to align your wealth goal with creating a better reality for other people and creating a better world in general.
You as an individual are just a tiny piece of the big picture, of the wealth equation.
The planet and our species will punish the attempt to get, control or consume all the resources from one’s good or power.
Align your vision for creating wealth and creating wealth for yourself with creating wealth for others and creating wealth for the world and creating a better world.
What is your vision for a better world?
The formula for creating fulfilment while creating wealth is aligning your vision for how the world can be better, generate wealth for the world, creating wealth for other people around you then creating wealth for yourself.
Once you align all these things and get clear on all of these then you drastically increase the chances of yourself becoming wealthy dramatically, you are contributing, your wealth becomes wealth for the world, your individual creation of wealth literally becomes a better future. That will give you an unyielding motivation.

Inner wealth creation and how inner wealth creates outer wealth:

“Every public victory is preceded by a private victory” – Stephen Covey
“It is crucial to learn how to accumulate wealth and assets over time” – Napoleon Hill
“Your external world is really like a printout of what you have going on in the inside” – Harv Ecker
“Thoughts are things” – Napoleon Hill
“We become what we think about” – The Strangest Secret
Integrity: A critical factor when it comes to creative value and wealth in your life.
Integrity is the alignment of your thoughts, your words and your actions.
“It takes 20 years to build a reputation and 5 minutes to destroy it” – Warren Buffet
Financial Integrity: The wise use of value, money and assets over an extended period of time. The consistent creation of value over an extended period. A financial strategy that you commit to and stay the course on over a long period of time.
Receiving: The ability to be right here in the present moment as someone else is contributing something to your life. It’s the capacity to be present and fully receive without needing to explain, deflect it, make a joke about it, minimise it, push it aside or think now I owe you one. To stand in the present moment and completely receive the gift someone is giving you.
When you are not receiving then, you, are taking something away from the person who is trying to give to you.
What stops us from receiving? A feeling of deserving and a feeling like we do not have permission.
Deserving: Will feel like we don’t deserve this
Daily Affirmations: I give me permission to receive fully any gifts or contributions that are offered to me. I deserve all of the gifts and all the things that are contributed to my life, and, I receive them entirely.
The ability to receive teaches us the lesson of contribution. When we are receiving, it gives us the opportunity to contribute.
Start receiving thanks, truly start receiving when people say thanks. When you say “Your Welcome,” mean it genuinely, from the heart and heartfelt.
6 Success Emotions: if you can create these and combine them at any time you need them they will make you an unstoppable force.
Desire: Desire is an emotion you can cultivate and build inside of yourself. Wealth creation is a long term game, it requires persistence and desire is something that will help you stay in the game. “Burning desire for riches is critical if you want to create wealth” – Napoleon Hill. Focus on what it is you want to create, keep focusing on it and imagine it as if it was true. Every day you get up in the morning imagine the outcome you want, imagine it happening right now then going out into the world and making it happen, also before you go to sleep.
Responsibility: Most people walk through life not taking responsibility for what happens around them, always projecting the blame outside themselves, this is called the victim mindset. The better way is to take responsibility for everything that happens in your life. Say “I am responsible!”. The way to get this mature adult emotion of trust, say “I am responsible!”.
Commitment: “99% is hard as hell, but, 100% is easy”. If we are 99% committed, then there is always 1% of doubt in the background, but when we go to 100% commitment then the answer is always easy if we question if we are going to do it or not. Saying “I am going to figure this out, I am going to get this done.” say the words to yourself “I am going to figure this out, I am going to do whatever it takes.”.
Optimism: People who are consistent winners can manufacture their optimism. How do you create your optimism? Look at the future scenario you are looking to build, then look at all the challenges you are currently facing, then look at the challenges you are facing and re-see them as the causes for you getting to your future scenario. See the challenges you face as the reasons for your success.
Gratitude: Gratitude is appreciation. Start appreciating how wonderful I have it. Understand my position in life.
Faith: When you know your truth and, it is also the right thing for the world. It is something that only you can know. Only I can be the only one to have this knowing experience. Faith is built over time; its is something that is cultivated and developed over a long time. The more you find your truth, seek to understand and look for a better reality in the future and the more you know that you will grow and survive in the world. Having faith in your desire to create value that this is the path to lead you to your promise land.
By combining these six emotions, you will be unstoppable.
Quick Mindset: If I show up trying to “get something” from people generally they will brush me off, but if I am interested in helping their inner reality, to make them happier, give them more confidence, make them less confused you will be able to make incredible amounts of value.

Outer Game: Stopping self-sabotage, why habits are the key to creating long-term financial success:

Get rid of any ideas of “Get rich quick” schemes, generate wealth over time. “No matter how far down the wrong road you have gone, turn back” – Turkish proverb Top wealth prevention habits that work well:

Buying with credit cards or with debt.
Buying new cars.
Car payments.
Buying is rapidly depreciating assets.
Buying liabilities.
Impulse spending.
Fear based credit card accumulation.

Switch from a mindset of ” I’ll believe it when I see it “to “I’ll see it when I believe it”. Then turning to a reality of I am going to create it!
“Trust, but verify” – Ronald Reagan. Believe that you will create wealth for yourself, and then check that you are doing the things to create it.
Ask yourself the question how do I keep myself on track for 10, 20, 30 years.
We have to behave the way we want to believe and then get around others who behave the way we want to think so that they influence us.
When we have awareness what we need to do is take that focus to put things in place to create habits and rituals, so we do the new behaviours every single day.
The biggest habit of wealth prevention is the habit of “Instant Gratification”. For instance “The goose and the golden eggs”, if you can delay gratification you will achieve more.
Life is hard if you live it the easy way and easy if you live it the hard way! Impulse control!
When the instance comes up when we feel we “need” to buy something, just experience it and don’ resist and don’t turn it into suffering. But don’t buy things on impulse, only buy things you plan to buy. On minor purchases wait at least 7 – 10 days, major purchases wait 30 days, really major purchases wait at least 3 – 6 months.
Avoid debt like the plague. Pretend debt is the black plague.
The more wealth you want to create in the future the more you need to accept and actualize the concept that you can survive on much less. In fact, you can thrive on much less.
Most of the things you think you need to buy you simply don’t need. Do not indulge your impulses on a whim.
Think about what happens if someone who eats junk food every day. They become unfit and unhealthy.
Habits that keep up poor: Buying consumables and rapidly depreciating assets. Consumable: Something you buy then uses and all the value has disappeared. Rapidly depreciating assets: New TV’s, anything that loses value quickly. Liabilities: something that will cost you more and more money over time, maintenance, upkeep, storage, etc.
Not only will you lose money on these things, but the real loss is that you did not put the money into a valuable asset.
Stop with the debt logic, looking at things in terms of monthly payments, something on sale / half price so you have to buy it now, if you use debt logic and think in monthly payments or thinking that you will pay it off later you have become deluded, it is purchasing insanity.
Always keep you monthly overhead down low and minimise as much as possible, ALWAYS.
Creating wealth is about creating habits e.g. keeping little amount of cash and credit cards around, not looking at online shops with credit card in hand and spending money on things you don’t need, pre choosing and selection of what you will eat how you will entertain yourself.
Fear and greed typically drive credit card accumulation. Impulse drives credit card use. Stop thinking in monthly payments. Stop retail therapy, celebrating by spending, stop debt logic.
Build positive habits!

Create Massive Value:

Stop Sabotaging – Create Massive Value – Accumulate Personal Assets – Accumulate those assets and turn them into long-term wealth.
Create value – Accumulate Assets – Build Wealth
Value – Assets – Wealth
The more you do this over time, the better you get at all three of these then they will all improve exponentially.
What is Value? One way to look at it is something that is 100% external, that only exists in others, so we have only created value if another person thinks it’s valuable.
What product or service can I create that will take away someone’s fear, anxiety or pain or will create happiness, joy or pleasure. Or something that they could buy or own that could do one of these things.
How to create knowledge or systems to help people get what they want and avoid what they don’t want?
There are assets, appreciating assets and even assets that through off an income stream.
Wealth is a balanced portfolio of several different assets, and we have allocated our assets into many different platforms that are rock solid and stable.
Focus not on where you are “sick” financially, concentrate on reaching your financial potential. Keep your sights set on reaching your wealth potential that will be way bigger than average.
How high is high? How far can I go? Always ask how you can create the most significant amount of value you possibly can. Do not focus on what you will get back in return, always concentrate on creating the maximum value you can in any situation.
There is a difference between “taking” unconsciously as part of the animal survival process and consciously “taking” as a way of life. Deliberately “taking” as a part of life will prevent you from creating value and overcoming your justice mechanism.
Move first from the “taking” paradigm to the “trading” model and then finally move to the level of just contributing value.
What helps you evolve is to see the problems at each level, for instance, to move from the “taking” paradigm you have to see how that mindset poisons you and how it is keeping you poor. The problems with the “trading” paradigm is that it is very inefficient always to make sure that everything is fair, it is a great energy waster, it prevents collaboration, it pits you against other people.
Find your gifts, find your talents and contribute, get on that path for life.
Forget about “How do I make money”, they are focused on themselves, the short term, survival, security, on getting, on taking. The wealthy person asks “how do i create value?” focusing on others and their needs, how do i create value and long-term value for them, then how do i take that value I get back turn it into assets and wealth.
Creation: Making or manifesting something that is new in some respect. Value is a process
I great question to always ask yourself is “What is a value?” and “what is value for other people?”.
What is the process of really creating value? What is the process of evaluating?
Entrepreneur: someone who creates value.
Intrapreneur: Being an entrepreneur inside a company structure.
Realise that you need to create at least ten times the value that you expect to be paid.
If you do not get paid, then you have learnt a lesson that is worth more than the money.
Expect to create ten times the amount of value for the money you expect.
Understand, get inside the heads, heart, emotions, hands and body’s of other people and create value from that space. Create value while you are thinking like the other person.
A common mistake is just to think what I like, what I want and then tell people you should like this. Make sure you understand what people want, get feedback of what people want get aligned with what they want and only then create value.
Also, Wealth and Assets only have value because other people appreciate them, so this is all about thinking from the other person perspective.
Profound lesson: The ultimate business skill and the ultimate value creation ability is compassion.
Compassion: Being pro-active with your empathy, being pro-active in seeking to understand what it’s like be another person then trying to alleviate suffering or create joy in their life. This is a skill that has to be learned and cultivated over your life.
Practice being pro-active with your empathy.
The distinction between value and veneer, the veneering of reality, we are now veneering everything, food, relationships, health. Cupcakes are like food veneer, a food-like substance that tastes good but has zero nutritional value. Think about what the media does with relationships, what society is doing with sex and sexuality, it is turning it into pornography which is the veneer and superficial part, emotions are now being gained by taking drugs that are the superficial way of achieving feelings without having to do any work, learning’s or personal growth that leads to getting to that feeling.
How did this happen? Our genetic wiring is tuned to the superficial as each of these aspects of life because the external parts used to mean there was some nutrition or meaning or reproduction.
If you don’t create real value, just veneer, people will find out, and you won’t be able to create long-term wealth. If you create stable products that build relationships with customers, then you will be able to build wealth. Do not confuse veneer with value.
To create we first must imitate, and then assimilate then we can finally innovate.
Imitate – Assimilate – Innovate
First we imitate what other people do, then we absorb and learn how people do it, then we can innovate and tweak and add things ourselves.
To create you must first stand on the shoulders of giants. Study the masters, see if you can understand it and assimilate it and only then go and try and create.
Learning to create value and creating value must be practised for years and decades.
Start noticing the emotion, physical and intellectual responses when you have value created for you or when you receive value.
Invest at least 20 – 30 percent of all your income in creating value for yourself. e.g. eating healthy, gym membership, relationship, do beautiful things for your relationship, education.
Create REAL value for others. The primary contexts in life where we create value and get value back in return that we turn into assets and wealth. For most it is a job, others it is starting your own business and for some it is investing. Pick the one that makes the most sense for you. If it is a job, learn your job and your company and ask what it would take to create massive value in that company. If it is your own company determine what it will take to create value in your industry. If you are going to invest become the genius investor in that area and know everything about it. Become masters of the domain of value creation we are in.
The personal value tipping point: When you go from trying to find places where you can find value to when you have people coming to you asking if you can create value for them. Finally, we become in demand where you have a line of people wanting you to work for them. You will start off trying to look for a job and get to people contacting you asking for you to create value for them.
Why do people not reach their personal value tipping point? You have to become an expert in something, this will take at the very least 5 – 10 years.
One of the tragedies of modern life is the extinguishing of apprentices and now instead of wanting to master something people want an instant quick fix.
Look at this as you becoming a craftsperson, striving to become a master, you will reach your personal value tipping point.
Our entire civilisation is going through a massive shift, we are going from valuing physical things to valuing intangible things, we are starting to value knowledge, joy and happiness. We all must learn to master knowledge, learning and teaching, learn and teach systems and skills. You have to keep educating yourself.
There are a few types of value creation that you need to do and need to master, but you will not get paid directly. These are Teaching, Coaching, Mentoring and “Fusion” / Fusing other people together.
We need to learn to teach information. When you learn something teach it to someone else as soon as possible, learn to explain things, use metaphors, etc.
We need to get to coach. Help someone develop some part of themselves, keep them on track.
We need to learn to mentor. Helping someone actualize who they are, to find their gifts and talents and develop them.
We need to learn “Fusion”. This is taking people and introducing them. Connect people on a daily basis, fuse them together and help them work together.
Look at other programs on how to do these particular skills.

Accumulating Personal Assets:

“The first requisite for success is the ability to apply your physical and mental energies to one problem incessantly without growing weary” – Thomas Jefferson If you want to build the security, the ability to help others and the power you have with wealth and avoid all the problems that come without having wealth then you need to build the assets to achieve it. Saying someone “Is rich but cheap” is like saying “Someone did an excellent job quitting their alcohol addiction, but they are boring because they won’t drink when we go out”. It is an incredible self-deception, it is like saying someone is incredibly accomplished yet not accomplished at all. We will have to go through incredible challenges to discipline ourselves. So if you see someone rich, but acting cheap, realise that is why they got to where they are, they have figured out how to overcome the temptation to spend money wildly. Spending is a behaviour that has to be managed; it is an addiction for most people that they do unconsciously. If you see someone who has overcome it blesses them! Assets (From Wikipedia): Assets are things of value that can be readily converted into cash. Ebens take: Assets are things that have real, sustainable, actual value. Wealthy people do not often want to convert things into cash because it loses value, you have to pay tax, pay the slippage fee. Wealthy people will often trade assets. The rich, the wealthy, they buy assets that have real sustainable value. The poor, they buy liabilities. The middle class buy liabilities thinking that they are buying assets. A quick tour of the history of money: FIAT currency, it essentially a currency that is not backed by anything, not gold or land, we just printed a bunch of it and trusted each other. The Roman coin “Denarius” was a silver coin that over time the actual amount of silver kept reducing. Now that money is paper this problem is worse, cause all they have to do is print more money. Alan Greenspan has said that FIAT currency is essentially robbing people of their wealth. Isn’t it odd that you give up your time to only be reimbursed a piece of paper or a number in your bank account? “It is well enough that people of the nation understand our monetary and banking system for if they did I believe there would be a revolution before tomorrow morning” – Henry Ford In the 1700’s in France I guy called “John Law” created paper FIAT currency in the West. It turns out that John law was a criminal that used the scheme of printing paper money to his advantage, note that he invented the term “Millionaire”, he also said that “Money is not wealth” – John Law. He was essentially a great criminal mind. Frances currency eventually collapsed as most FIAT currency’s do, but everyone kind of adopted his system. In America, the Federal Reserve is neither federal nor a reserve, it is a private institution created by bankers. When the federal reserve creates the money they lend it to America; then the country has to pay interest on the money that they borrowed. The same people that own the federal reserve or created it own most of the banks, the banks then lend money out to the people. The system is mainly designed to filter up the value from the lower levels of the economy to the higher levels. Inflation is defined as the dilution of the money system. Banks create money themselves, it’s called “The Fractional Reserve system”, which means they only have to keep a fraction of the money that they owe in reserve. The ration is about 90%, so they can take $10 and lend out $90. This can even multiply as they can take that $90 and give that to another bank who can then lend out $900 based on that. Companies can do the same thing as FIAT currency and just issue more stock, split shares, etc.

So this is obviously a system that very savvy, powerful humans created and perfected over thousands of years with really their needs as the driving force behind this system. So don’t blindly trust that money or stock is value. There are power players that are using this system to their advantage, and if you want to play you have to learn the rules and play the way the winners play. To get control of money and use it as a tool, you have to depersonalise it. “Objectifying your demons robs them of their ability to control you” – Ken Wilbur A victim makes their oppressor into their god. If you identify with money, or any object or any form of value then you are controlled by it. But if you depersonalise it, see it as a tool and as a means to an end then you take control of it. In negotiation one of the most important strategies is to always be ready to walk away from any deal, “negotiate with one hand on the door”, so that you never seem needy or seem like you want something too much. It is the same thing with money, assets or wealth, you can’t get too excited if you gain some money or assets or lose them. You have to depersonalise it. You have to depersonalise money so you can get rid of most of it to turn it into assets and then you can depersonalise assets so you can distribute your value or wealth among your assets in a way that’s logical that has the highest chance of sustaining over a extended period.

Two Types of Assets

Inner assets: Skills, Experience and Knowledge External Assets: Soft assets (Intellectual property, brand image, trademarks) Hard assets (Real estate) You must learn how to think like a wealth builder. You must learn how to work on the process and systems of creating wealth and not just in them. This is objectifying things so you can control it. Work on your business not just in your business, if you solve a problem you don’t just solve it again and again, you create a system for solving it and teach it to other people. You can’t solve a problem on the same level of thinking that created it – Einstein The shift you have to make is from someone going to Vegas to game to becoming the casino. You have to depersonalise money, move above it, dis-identify with it, someone who sits outside it and uses the tools and has mastery over its elements. You earn gross, and you spend net. Any business has overheads, a company doing $1million of abusiness may only be profiting 100 thousand. As a general rule of thumb inside any company, you have to make 5 – 10 times the sales that you expect to profit. This is where a job is good, as they will just give you your wage.

A good way to see this in your personal life is say you get paid $5000 a month, how much of that do you actually get a month, taxes are taken out, rent is taken out, etc. So this is earning gross and spending net. But humans like to think about earning gross and spending gross. When making purchasing decisions, we think about the gross we are earning and not the net. So earn gross and spend net. Most of us get paid in money, turn that money into an asset as soon as possible. Don’t spend it, don’t go buy a liability. Poor people never learn this strategy, poor people think the money is the asset. Money needs to be turned into real assets. While everyone trusts it and while we can readily convert it into assets, and then let’s do that. Put the money into assets that have real value, appreciate and put off cash flow. The wealthy keep their value in assets. Tangible real world assets: Real Estate: There are booms and busts. So if you are going to invest in this learn about it, learn the market, learn the trends and become an expert. Stock: There are booms and busts. So if you are going to invest in this learn about it, learn the market, learn the trends and become an expert. Precious Metals (Gold, Silver and Platinum): Money has been made out of these things for thousands of years, they have a lot of utility value. Collectables: Especially luxury collectables, stamps, cars, coins but remember they only have value as long as other people think they are valuable.

Financial Instrument: A bond, a mortgage. But again they are financial, they are money, so you only want to get into this if you understand them. A Business: Ebens favourite, one of the reasons he likes it is because he is in charge of the growth. With a business instead of taking money out, and paying tax, you can reinvest that money in your business you can write it off. You can end up paying a lot fewer taxes. The rule of thumb is to follow Warren Buffet and only invest in what you understand. The big mistake people make taking their money and giving it to some “investment expert” and not understanding the process. Warren Buffet would never give his money to someone and say “You figure it out”. He invests in a lot of furniture stores, Gillette razors, coca cola, things that he understands. Warren Buffet is reported to read 8 hours a day, and, his goal is to make one sound investment decision per year. Get the money, depersonalise it, use it as a tool, turn it into assets, understand the classes of assets, know and become an expert in 1 or more of these types of assets.

“The appreciating and cash flowing asset” – This is where you want to become an expert. IF you are investing in real estate, look for one that will appreciate. If you are looking at stock get one that pays dividends and grows. Same with business, one that produces and earns cash. Invest in assets that grow and cash flow! Soft assets: you as an individual are your best asset. Your Relationships, three key types of asset relationships. Network – All the people you know. “The strong power of weak ties”, “Its not you know it’s who you know” you don’t necessarily need to know them well.

Build a network! Mastermind – The small group of people that you meet with on a regular basis that are looking to grow wealth and assets over time. These are the people you share your growth plans and aspirations with.

Mentors – The super genius who will pull you up a level, help you see the flaws in you communication and other parts of your life and will also help you understand your talents and help you be the best you can be. You need to attract and cultivate these relationships.

Reputation – Your reputation is critical maintain. You want it as someone who keeps their word, someone who show up on time, someone who does what they say, someone who promises small and delivers large, someone who can is counted on. Your time, effort, energy and attention – Most of us don’t control these, but it is all you have got.

Cultivate the ability to focus on one thing for an extended period. It is harder to see the ability of soft assets, with hard assets you can know what you have got, but with soft assets think of compounding interest charts and visuals in mind, with exponential growth and remember that when you are accumulating soft assets. Some of these soft inner assets can be built through investment. Expertise can be constructed through the investment of education and experience.

Education can be gained through reading, seminars, programs and experience is what you learn from actually doing something, the best way to get experience is doing something with a master. You can also pay people for advice. Invest at least 10% of whatever you earn on expertise. Your expertise is really all you got, if you don’t have it you can’t size up an investment opportunity, you can’t attract people to your mastermind, you will not give off the appearance of value.

From now on the only types of people you will interact with is “Superstars”. When you start interacting, you will notice some people get it, and some people don’t. Surround yourself with only the people that get it. A “Superstar” is only the top 1%. This can also be applied to a company. You can find a superstar company with superstar people working inside of it. The only network with superstars, if you are in business only hire superstars. Talk to people and ask them what their aspirations are and only put them on your system. Superstars know and worth with other stars, but you have to ask them. Superstars get the whole value exchange thing, if you create value for them, they will create value for you. So what do you have to do to attract superstars? YOU HAVE TO BECOME A SUPERSTAR.

You have to have integrity, you have to become a driver, deliver results, make and meet commitments to other people, show people you are willing to take risk, take personal responsibility and not make excuses. As people become more and more successful in life they are looking for referrals. They are more looking for people they trust, they are unlikely to use the phone books, so as someone that creates fusion with others, your priority when you meet a superstar is to introduce them to someone else who can synergies and create value with them. On average you should be introducing at least one person to another person per day. The best way to create fusions is you connect people with something special, you connect them through something where their realities are the same, so if you are connecting someone who is looking for a job and someone who owns a business, don’t just tell one about the other in reference to the job and business. Connect them on the basis of something special as they have the same tastes in music. If you develop this skill, it will pay off exponentially over time.

Build Long Term Wealth:

Meditation for this session: Money follows the action. The value follows the action. Assets support action. Wealth follows the action.
Wealth exists on three different levels, the physical, emotional and mental level.
What is wealth in the ultimate sense? One way to look at it is freedom, freedom to be who we want to be, freedom to do what we want, freedom to help people.
“Wealth consciousness”: Think that money is abundant, it’s easy to get and safe for you.
“There is a lot more money than their is deals” – More people are looking to invest. Wealth and money are abundant. There are so many people out there, so much richness, so much money that it is all in abundance.
We must pursue excellence and hone our craft and become the best we possibly can with our gifts.
We live in the most abundant time in the history of the world. All we need to do is go out there and create massive value, and then once the money and worth start flowing to us, we convert that to assets and wealth.
Build the relationships and go deep and go long term.
New Frames:
Building wealth is a project just like any other.
Most people cannot do it because they cannot overcome their inner animal, their need for instant gratification, the ability to stick to it and persist

Wealthy people realise that all you need to do is do the same things to build wealth every single day. The bottom line is to build wealth as a project in your life.

This is very possibleit too.
1 in 50 people is a millionaire, and you can do it to.
Wealth building is a project.
We have to dehypnotize ourselves if we want to build wealth long term.
The mainstream media holds up the exceptions, not the rules.
We have to wake up and realise the fantasy that is put on TV is not the reality for us.
We have to choose an area of wealth building we understand and know more and more over decades.
Wealth creation isn’t taught, it is learned.
If you want to create wealth you have to become personally fascinated with it. You have to get enamored with it; you have to get intrigued with it.
You have to go out and figure out how it works.
You have to become personally committed and do a study of your whole life of wealth creation.
When the student is ready, the knowledge will appear.
The most important word in your investment vocabulary is “NO”.
There is far more investment opportunity than you can ever take advantage.
The time you are going to waste on an “OK / pretty good” investment opportunity is worth more than you will make on the investment itself.
Learn to say no, become very selective.
The distinction between ownership and control.
Wealthy people would usually rather manage a resource or asset than own it
Wealthy people are not attached to any one particular thing in their life.
Everything on the planet is temporary, and you can’t really “own” anything as you will not be forever.
None of this material stuff belongs to anyone in a sense, we are just here to steward it, we are more here to find your niche, create value for others, then channel some of the resulting value that flows back to you where it might do you and some others some good while trying not to take it all for yourself it will do you good.
If you attach yourself to something, then it can own you and control you rather than you controlling it.
Manage Risk.
One of the biggest problems would be wealth creators face they just can’t take the risk. They play it safe.
The mindset that it is important to get when you want to take intelligent risk is that risk is something to be managed.
Risk is inherent in life, every minute you are alive you are risking death from many different things, but we have learned with most things to not be afraid of them because the chances are small. The same mindset is valuable when accumulating assets as you will need to take some risk.
Do not be afraid of risk, manage it.
For you to succeed you may have to do it in secret.
If you know failure minded people and people that resent wealth and resent success, then you may have to create wealth in secret.
You may have to do it separately and not share with other people what you are doing.
Sometimes you will have to do consciously things that will alienate other. This is tough emotionally and intellectually. But as you start becoming more and more successful people are going to resent you because they have their issue with success.
The obstacles that I will face as I start accumulating assets each one of them, the key that opens up the lock, is a new skill. The answer is always a new skill.
Anytime you have a challenge the answer is a new skill.
Any time you face a roadblock or challenge or obstacle all you have to do is learn a new skill, pick up a book, learn the skill required.
The key to this is as you add these new wealth building skills they make each other exponentially more powerful.
Make the decision to use your super powers.
If you want to learn how to behave like a mature human being who has flipped on their super powers then use what might be one of the most potent forces anyone has which is the decision to follow healthy rules in your life.
Make a healthy decision about a whole class of things we will do in the future.
Set rules like, learn about investing 1 hour a day over time.
Set a rule to create value, multiple times than we expect to be paid.
Master the first thing, then master the second thing, and then the third thing, keep mastering areas in life.
Master many spheres of life then combine them.
It is the synthesis of this that turns you into a very powerful adult human being
Master your personal health first, learn about ideal size meals, eat highly nutritious. Learn about exercise, your immune system. Get your health together.
Master relationships with other human beings, learn how to be a great friend. Read the emotional intelligence, social intelligence, how to win friends and influence people.
Work on getting your personal health and fitness, relationships and money. These synergies and multiply each other and create a “you” that is much more powerful.
Investing is like farming
When it comes to investments and building wealth and assets your “seed” to plant is a combination of your knowledge, mind, attention, effort, money, assets and relationships.
Take good care of your seeds and plant them ahead of time of your harvest. You need to learn to eat from the harvest, not from the seed.
If you are going to plan to be wealthy, you need to prepare the harvest later. You need to take all the assets you have now and plant them, so they grow over the long term.

Four real approaches to long-term wealth building:

Career based wealth building: Earn a modest income, live debt free, invest in relatively low-risk market average investments and look to create wealth for retirement. Good if you have a lot of stability in your job. The trick is to stay out of debt and to invest at least 10 – 20 percent ideally more for the long term and put it into market average funds.
Lifestyle based wealth building: Someone who likes to fix up investment properties, but they live in the properties they are fixing up, then sell them. A lifestyle or place where you can live inside the place you are creating wealth.
The investment-based wealth building approach: You can become a certified investor. They put all their time, energy and training by learning how to invest in other things. They create their value by taking their resources and investing it in things other people are doing. A great example of this is Warren Buffet.
The business based wealth building model: You start a business, reinvest some or most of the profits into the business to grow it over time, and then the business becomes the asset. You are not just building the company for a stream of income, but so it is a product that you can eventually sell.
Some people do combinations of the above, but whichever one makes sense to you go deep, develop expertise, become someone who can create value like nobody else in that area so your attention becomes a very highly value commodity so that the experts look to you. Anybody can do it you have to realise that this is long term.
Whatever are you go into you have to look at long term trends? Choose the right horse to ride. Work with people who are going to be successful. Go to work for a company that is already very successful. GO to work in an industry that has good long term prospects. Make it easier for yourself to move forward.
Look to Internet marketing. Bet on the stars, follow the trends, follow things that are already going to be successful.
Learn how to do something that wealthy people enjoy doing, e.g. charity work, golf, whatever just get into something they enjoy so you can get around them in a social atmosphere.
Your greatest asset you can have is you. Refine your expertise, improve your personality or communication. Improve your communication so you can get your point across better than anyone else.
Temptation: temptation, impulses and short-term firing of neurology are things that will take us off the path to success. See the Greek metaphor and tale of the sirens. In life, we need to figure out how to lash ourselves to the ship, so we are not called to the siren song of junk food, using credit, using drugs, instant gratification behaviour, etc.
If you are going to create wealth long term, most of us are not strong enough to do it without lashing ourselves to the ship. We have to set up our lives so that we don’t have the temptation to turn the value we create into liabilities or waste it, so our lives naturally make success inevitable.
We know our inner chimpanzee wants to go out and eat that thing right now and spend that money. Deal with temptation. Set your life up so you can overcome it and avoid it. SO you can win the wealth building game in the long run.

Summary:

Stay away from debt and debt thinking.
Remember that wealth comes not from getting money, but from creating value, then converting the value into assets then accumulating assets that grow in value and throw off value and money until ultimately you have wealth.
Keeping your value in money reduces the value, money has a hole in its bucket. Turn the money you get into assets and wealth.
Overcome your negative emotions around money wealth, business and rich people.
Go deep into the area where there is a huge demand.
Develop your expertise and go deep, expect to spend at least ten years. Persist. Most people will experience their biggest breakthrough right after a failure.
Get around experts, get around people that have created wealth, get around people who are trying to do what you are attempting to do. Absorb and model these people.
Pay your dues in life, don’t let your justice mechanism get in the way.
Keep seeking the edge of your comfort zone, keep pushing your own boundary’s, keep experiencing novel things and evolving past your beliefs. When in doubt of what to do next go and create massive value every single day Create physical value, emotional value, mental value, tangible value, spiritual value. Focus on creating value for those that are the most successful already.
Focus on developing yourself into a polished, professional communicator. Focus on becoming someone that can express what is on their mind.
Follow and develop long-term trends to creating wealth. Remember that creating wealth is first an inner game and then an outer game.

You must develop the expertise to both create value, turn that into assets then accumulate and grow those assets into wealth that is ultimately a lifelong exercise.