This was passed out to all in attendance at the first Rich Woman seminar held here in Hawaii by Kim Kiyosaki. Kim is a wonderful inspiration – she has built up her own real estate empire, is the beloved wife of Robert, and is really really nice, and rich!

Here it is:

On Commitment

“Until one is committed, there is hesitancy, the chance to draw back. Always ineffectiveness.

Concerning all acts of initiative (and creation) there is one elementary truth, the ignorance of which kills countless ideas and splendid plans; that the moment one defiantly commits oneself, then providence moves too.

All sorts of things occur that would never otherwise have occurred.

A whole stream of events issues from the decision, raising in one’s favor all manner of unforeseen incidents and meetings and material assistance which no man could have dreamt would come his way.

I have learned a deep respect for one of Goethe’s couplets – “Whatever you can do or dream you can, begin it. Boldness has genius, power, and magic in it.”

– W.H. Murray, “The Story of Everest”

Do I hear an Amen to that?! Amen!

I just listened to a CD on “Your Personal Profile for Wealth – Revealed,” a Raymond Aaron interview with Roger Hamilton. It was about learning what you do best – here’s a link to his test. It will cost you $100, so check out his videos and site before you decide.

The interview was also about making money in order to give. Wonderful concept. This isn’t about giving all your personal belongings away and entering the welfare system or scraping along with the bare minimum. It is about acquiring wealth not for the sake of acquiring wealth, but for the sake of being able to give (as well as live comfortably).

I believe that most people are generous at heart, but feel unable to share or give because they don’t have enough for themselves or are struggling to make ends meet.

But what if you could? What if you could have enough, what if you could do what you want, what if you could make your goals become reality?

Actually, you can. They key is to figure out what you need to do in order to get to that point, and then do it.

Although most of the Wealth Builder CD was about making business decisions based on giving (which is in itself a great way of thinking), those 5 little words – But what if you could – resonated with me. It brings to mind the wonderful song “I Believe I Can Fly”. I believe I can touch the sky….

What if you could? It is up to you no matter what your circumstances. The smallness of your life is puny compared to the vastness of the universe. Tap into the universe, believe in yourself, commit to your goals, and you will be like The Little Engine That Could.

Namaste, Praise the Lord, Shalom, and all other good stuff. Go out there and fly!

Aunty really likes getting daily mentor minutes from Raymond Aaron and from time to time likes to share them with good friends.  Here’s a great one:

http://monthlymentor.com/1MM/WisdomFromAnthonyRobbins.html

What does INDEPENDENCE mean to you?  First thing that pops into Aunty’s mind is a scene from the movie “Independence Day” as Will Smith walks away from his burning jet plane after pulverizing an alien, then shrugs with a cocky lilt to his step.  Heeeee yah!

Next to pop into mind is financial freedom.

What is financial freedom to you?  What if money were no object because you had enough to do whatever it is you want to do – what would you do?

Aunty would make art, play in the garden, and create without having to cook, clean, or be bogged down with chores and responsibilities – except for eating and shopping.

How to get financial freedom?  Many, many, many ways.  All you need to do is to find the way or ways that will do it for you.

2 weeks ago (seems like eons), Aunty posted about NeriumAD and how excited she was – in tempo with the Pointer Sisters.  The excitement is still there – Aunty truly believes this is the ride to independence, with investing as the end game.  Sweet chickens!

No matter what you decide is your ride, a CD enclosed in the Nerium training materials entitled “Building Your Network Marketing Business” by Jim Rohn was SO full of wisdom and great stuff, Aunty just wants to share an insight with you.

Okay, no gagging or bailing out – because this is good stuff.

Profits are better than wages.  This is the single most important and simple law of financial freedom, period.  For Jim, this was a revelation (for Aunty too!)

Jim worked full time in his job, and then started part time in a business (in his case it was network marketing) to make a profit.  His goal was to make as much in profit as he did in wages.  This he achieved in  less than 6 months.  His second goal was to make twice as much in his part time profit venture as he did in wages.  This he did in less than a year.  It was a no-brainer after awhile to quit his job.

Wages make you a living, which is fine.  Profits make you a fortune, which is super and finer.

How would it feel to get up in the morning and realize that you are starting off a new day to make your fortune versus realizing that you are starting off your day to go to work?

Aunty wishes each of you a fortunate and wonderful Independence Day and Life.  Have a cigar (gag gag, cough cough) or kick some alien butt.

Namaste,

Aunty

Aunty is so thrilled to have one of Kung Fu Girl’s awesome posts here.  Aunty “met” her while cruising on the internet looking for real & good financial advice and wisdom, and I now consider her a dear friend, sight unseen as yet.  Please welcome and enjoy my new young friend with one of her latest posts, and get a taste of her delightful expertise and spot on analysis.  Take it away, KFG!

Here at Kung Fu Finance I endeavor to expose the truth of how wealth-building really works (and how falling prey to hype such as “buy this ONE stock and make 300% in 6 months!” really doesn’t work).

Today is one such occasion, and I would like to expose a dirty little secret of wealth-building…

A few weeks ago I talked about the #1 predictor to your future wealth (your wealth chest or net investible income, commonly referred to as your “savings”) and I specifically discussed why I dislike the word “savings” so much when it’s used to describe that magic and important number — because it focuses on only half of the equation:

What you produce – what you consume = Savings “your wealth chest”
or
Earning – Spending = Savings “your wealth chest”

Now don’t get me wrong—saving is an important part of building wealth. If you spend away every cent you earn, you will quickly find yourself flat broke, or worse, deep in debt (believe me, I’ve been there!).

Learning to “save”, therefore (which really means “not spend”) is a crucial part of basic money management— many famous Hollywood stars have earned millions upon millions of dollars but have still declared bankruptcy because they couldn’t master that skill and instead spent every cent they took in:

Ergo, saving (“the art of not spending”) is very important.

And a million and one websites and resources attempt to show you “how to save”, or more accurately “how to not spend too much money” on the things and experiences you desire (believe me, I’ve perused them all in my pre-accredited-investor life…but more on that in a moment!).

These range from coupon sites to wholesale-membership-type companies like Costco or Sam’s Club to daily deal websites or “Groupons”…there are sites for specific types of people who want to get the best deal on “stuff” (FrugalMom, FrugalDad, MoneySavingMama, etc…) and sites that profess to get you the best deal on money (“zero interest for 6 months!”).

And yes, this “not spending” (e.g. being frugal and “saving”) is vitally important in learning to build wealth and grow your wealth chest.

But, if you look at the inputs to the equation, you can see that spending (or its inverse, “not spending”, so commonly referred to as “saving”) is only half of the equation…it’s only one of the inputs:

Earning – Spending = “your wealth chest”

And this is my beef with calling the net result “savings”, because by calling that magic number “savings”, as is so commonly done around the world, we neglect the other equally important half of the input to the equation:

What you produce (Your “Earnings”)

And I think you’ll agree with me that earning is a pretty important piece of the puzzle!

In fact, it is one of the ways I was able to go from being $10,000 in debt to a bonafide “accredited investor” in under ten years. (I know, it’s not 6 months like the sexy-yet-hype-y hot stock tip I mentioned earlier, but it’s real, and will work for you if you let it!).

This is one of the dirty little secrets of the wealth-building industry (and sadly it’s just one…there are many other dirty little secrets, too): if your spending remains constant, then the more you earn, the more potential you have to build your wealth.

(Duh. It sounds so obvious, right?)

But before you click to close this email and unsubscribe thinking, “I KNEW it! Kung Fu Girl just made millions of dollars per year at some job or business to get out of debt and become wealthy and I’ll never be able to do that!” please hear me out…

That is not the case at all and in fact for several of those years I earned just barely above the poverty line—Kung Fu Guy and I started a business in 2000 called “IdeaWave Systems” and our JOINT revenue our first year was a whopping $50,000 ($25,000 each).

(Now, depending on where you live, this may sound like a decent amount of money…but I assure you, in San Francisco it was NOT. It was barely above the poverty line, which was $27,682 for a single person in 2009 according to the Center for Community Economic Development).

We struggled that first year. (And the next).

We were MASTER cheapskates and could have written the book on “not spending” (saving)—rinsing out plastic baggies and reusing them so we didn’t have to buy more, clipping coupons and eating primarily vegetarian as our grocery budget didn’t allow for steak or salmon or chicken (heck, we barely ate hamburger!), and oh yes, we lived in the ghetto—on 8th and Minna St. affectionately known as “SOMA” (South of Market) which at the time was NOT trendy and cool, not even “up and coming”…just slummy.

We were awakened nightly by riotous street people fighting over abandoned shopping carts and neighbors screaming out of their windows, “Shut up down there!” and the street people shouting back, “No YOU shut up!”. We slept with earplugs and wondered why our parents never came to visit.

We got an A+ in “not spending” that first year…but at most a D- in earning (and that’s being generous). We had so many new skills to learn—as first-time business owners and former engineers we knew how to “do” the work (luckily quite well), but had no idea how to “get” the work.

Marketing? Sales? Not a clue…

It took three long years of consistent execution and under-promising / over-delivering until we built up enough word-of-mouth recommendations to overcome our abysmal lack of marketing and sales expertise, allowing us to finally surpass our pre-business income. Whew.

Though those years were difficult, they were an amazing learning experience.

For in those years, we learned the essence of earning, that crucial second half of the magical wealth equation that is so overlooked by most of society (and all of Wall St.):

Earning = Creating Value for Other People

Because if you hold your spending constant (say you’ve already cut it to the bone and are rinsing out ZipLoc baggies like yours truly…) then the only way to increase your magic number, your wealth chest, is to earn more money.

And the more money you can put into your wealth chest, the more money you will have to invest. It’s that simple (but again, not easy by any means!).

So how on earth do you do that?

This is one of those things that is simple in principle, but extremely difficult in practice…(otherwise we would all be making millions of dollars per year!).

We learned quickly in our business…we earned more money by solving more and more customers’ problems. The more problems we solved, the more value we created for our customers. And the more value we created, the more they paid us.

This is the only true way to earn more money—to create value for other people.

To be clear, customers didn’t care if we made our solutions “fancy” or used the latest slick new programming language or structure to complete their project.

They had one care and one care only—did it solve their problem (for the agreed-upon price that we quoted them)? If it did, and we finished it on time, we had happy customers who were then more than happy to hire us again and tell all of their friends and contacts how wonderful we were, thus giving us that elusive word of mouth marketing.

This is true whether you have a job or a business. In your job, you are working to solve your employer’s problems, and in your business, you are working to solve your customers’ problems.

I wish there was more ink (news, media, etc.) devoted to “how to earn more money” and “how to solve problems” (entrepreneurialism) than there is devoted to “how not to spend money” and “how to be frugal”. While both are important, your earning potential is UNLIMITED, while your “not spending” potential is limited by your basic necessities of life. You have much more opportunity to earn more money than you do to “not spend” money, and yet most people spend hours upon hours clipping coupons and perusing daily deal sites instead of brainstorming how to earn more money and solve people’s problems.

So there you have it…just one more dirty little secret of wealth building!

I encourage you to spend some time this week thinking about how you can earn more money to add to your growing wealth chest! You have so much unique value to share with the world (and be rewarded for!).

To your financial success,

— Kung Fu Girl

Aunty’s note:  Wasn’t that awesome!   Kung Fu Girl has the gift of breaking down complex financial jargon into stuff even a cave aunty can understand!

Mark Ford (fka Michael Masterson) is a wonderful writer who might have a shady past, or not.  I don’t know and I really don’t care because his articles are usually excellent.  His latest one is about fear.

I do think fear holds us back in order to keep us safe.  However, many times it holds us back from going forward.

Aunty invests.  Is it scary?  You betcha.  But I would do it again and again because it is what will bring us wealth in the long term and when Uncle and I are old(er) and grey(er) we will look back and pat ourselves on the back.

Anywho, here is “Making Friends with Your Financial Fears.”  Read, enjoy, conquer.

I know – sounds like the name of a movie star – that 007 actor Roger something.

Roger Hamilton is a life guru.  Very wealthy, very wise, very spot on.  Would love for him to be our son-in-law.

Anywho, thanks to Raymond Aaron’s subscription, I have access to this really great interview on 8 ways to create wealth.  Download to listen or read, and grow:  Roger Hamilton interview. I usually download, import into iTunes, and then burn it on a CD so I can listen in the car or at my leisure.

It IS worth listening to, please leave a comment below on what you think of it.

Craig Ballantine took over the reins of Early to Rise from Michael Masterson.  I thought that there was no way anyone could fill the void – but I am so pleasantly surprised to find that Craig is as good and sometimes even better at sharing and mentoring.

Here is a link to a video Craig has just made about achieving your goals.  It starts off the same as most goal setting advice – write down your 10 year goal – be specific – i.e. own 20 cash flow properties and be retired with all expenses paid for with the rental income, living in Waimanalo close or on the beach in a decent 3 bedroom house with separate cottage, have a little condo in town to spend time in Honolulu.  (That is Aunty’s goal and I am sharing it for the first time!)

Then, instead of breaking it down into 1 year, 2 year, 5 year goals, he said to forget about that, and instead, do a 90 day plan – identify your #1 priority for the next 3 months that will bring you closer to your 10 year goal, make that your 90 day goal, and focus on doing the things you need to do to achieve it. Aunty’s 90 day goal/plan is to get our house, office, papers in order. I have been putting out the little fires of clutter forever, and now it is time to really get it all organized. On almost all of my to do lists, “clean this” or “clear this” or “find this” has been a constant and a problem which limits my ability to do the things I really need to do to get financially fit and fulfill my big goals.

So simple, so do-able.  Check out the video of Craig’s complete presentation.  It isn’t too long, and it is just right!

Here are some notes I took while listening to Robert and Kim Kiyosaki, along with some of their advisers at a “Boardroom Meeting” earlier this year.  He paints a grim picture, but he does (IMO) have a finger on the pulse.

Cash is trash.  Savers are losers.  The economy is in the worse condition ever, and it is global.

Old methods don’t work anymore – so you have to ask yourself what will work.  Because of this crisis we are in, people are forced to look at creative ways instead of doing the same thing they have always done.

There will always be an economy, not matter what kind of economy, opportunities are still there, i.e. real estate deals because people want to get out of their homes and situation for much less than they paid.

Worse possible scenario is not a depression (we are in a recession and chaos right now).  Robert believes we will bypass depression and have a monetary collapse w/ 5 years of rioting.  Unfixable by government decrees (reference book, “Collapse”.)  The governments are controlled and run by the biggest corporations in the world and thus corrupt.

The good news is after the collapse, then the real economy emerges (real values of assets, real estate, etc.)   Jim Rogers of the Quantum Fund (with George Soros) said the let the system take hold, and it will come apart, will be terrible (horrible for some), but then it all becomes real again.

Estonia, 20 years ago, took a different approach from the old mother Russia, took paycuts across the board, made a balanced budget and started a country that was fiscally responsible.  Peru was going through hyper inflation, head of finance stopped propping up the government and said “God help us” and let it ride.   Now, they are in far better shape than before.

Individually make a decision if you are a US citizen or a global citizen.

In the USA, 15% don’t pay taxes (military, government workers).
We are a country that pays people who do not produce.   Unions are killing us because everyone expects to get more money as they do less.   Unions are anti-competition. Capitalism is you do more for less, Communism is you do less and get  more.  We have the mentality that the government will take care of us.  Politicians are getting government welfare.

Technology is the mode that is the tool for the greatest new ideas in today’s world.
Money of the world = gold, silver, oil.  Utah has allowed gold and silver to be currency – done like a debit card.

Oil at $82/barrel today, with rioting, Sudan, Libya, oil can get into the hands of Al Queda, can rise.  Countries are falling into the hands of people that hate the US.
Drawback with oil is liquidity.

Conservative is doing what you are comfortable with.  Creativity manages risk in a different way.

Wall Street and financial experts have done a good job of convincing people that they are should not take charge of their own finances and leave it to the “experts”.  Too much risk when you do not have control of your money.

Advantage of silver and gold is they are very liquid – can sell right away.  But have high tax rate when you sell it – 28% tax rate.  Currently $40 silver in US is selling for $40 Euros in Europe.
Make good decisions to protect your own.  Looking back, easy to see it was the time to buy gold and silver at $275 and $17 respectively.

Wayne Palmer, Robert Kiyosaki’s right hand man has a website – OldGloryMint.com.  He offers  1/10th oz silver dime $5.  MLM opportunity.

As screwed up as America is, Robert still invests in America, until the taxes or laws get too harsh on rich.

Investing in the US is the fastest way to get a green card.  Set up LLCs, investing in real estate and businesses.

Real estate gives great tax break, can provide liquidity with lines of credit.

If things do collapse in your country, where do you go?  Must think globally.  Will need oil, housing, food, gold.

Change your context how you think about money.  Status quo will not come back.

Treat your business as a business – set up your company properly.  Do tax planning on global basis.

How can I do things differently, What can I do, what can I produce.  Economy is moving so fast right now.  Average person is financially retarded, has lack of knowledge = fear = wants guarantees.  Want to abdicate responsibility, must become absolutely independent and capable of making your own decisions.

40% tax rate is bellweather.  Currently at 35%.

Gap between white and black families is 20 times.  Gap between rich and poor larger. Upper 1% makes 20% (before was 8%).

Be vigilent be attuned, be global, favorable to producers avoid non producers.

Be realistic. these are precarious times.  Time frame is short (1 year?)  Still haven’t seen inflation yet except in gold, silver, oil.  Instead, we see size flation (decrease in size or amount) by about 20%  Because of China we have low inflation.  Our factories are now gone.  (The US’ economy boomed after WW2 from 1944 because US had the factories that could supply the world.)

Have to create your own jobs, investments, always something you can do as an individual.

Preparation allows you to handle fear.  Entrepreneur is French word = enter in and take control.
Can’t change conditions, can’t change government.  As individuals take accountability.  Stop blaming others, stop watching wasteful television, use your time to educate and learn what next step, start thinking different and doing things different.  Remain optimistic.  This too shall pass, and it can pass to our own benefit.

Our economy will not come back, it has moved on.  Food going through the roof – farmers are old, land expensive, work is hard, not much profit.

In times of turmoil, choose your teachers wisely.  Most people have bureaucratic mindset with job security, steady paycheck, benefits, no risk.  Move into the world of entrepreneurship.