Control over Your Excuses

A few years ago, I was speaking to a group of about a hundred people about investing. They were between the ages of twenty-five and thirty-five; bright, well dressed, most had college degrees and good jobs. For a group that seemed to have everything going for them, they whined about whatever I had to say. For example, when I said, “I usually look at a hundred properties before actually acquiring one,” immediately a young woman raised her hand and said, “A hundred properties? Who has time for that? Besides, I think I'm too old to begin investing in real estate.”

Letting that comment go, I continued with my discussion on financing a property. I explained that I sometimes used a larger down payment just to keep my debt-to-equity ratios in line. Immediately a hand went up and this time a young man said, “But what if you don't have any money for a down payment? I still have student loans to pay off.”

Before I could say anything, another young man stood up and said, “Real estate won't work for me. I have credit problems.”

With that I stopped the class. “Look,” I said. “I know this was advertised to be a talk on investing in real estate. But before I go on, I want to offer you a lesson far more important than making money with real estate. I'm going to share with you a very important lesson from rich dad.”

With that I turned and wrote on my flip chart the question, What do you want to be when you grow up? Turning to the group I then asked, “How many of you have ever been asked this question?”

“I wanted to be a medical doctor,” said one of the women. “And I became one.”

“My dad wanted me to go into business with him but after college I opened my own business,” said a young man.

“Okay,” I replied. “Now when rich dad asked his son, Mike, and me that question he was not talking about what professions we wanted to become when we grew up. He was asking us if we wanted to grow up to become more honest or less honest. More reliable, or less reliable. Have more integrity or less integrity. That was what he wanted to find out when he asked that question.”

There was a long silent pause. Finally someone asked, “You mean hon esty and integrity really are important in investing?”

“Well I can't speak for everyone, but to me they are,” I replied. “But I am not just talking about investing. I am asking if honesty, reliability, and integrity are important to you.”

“Then let me pass on a lesson from rich dad,” I responded. “A lesson far more important than investing, but a lesson that will make you a better in vestor nonetheless.”

Turning to my flip chart I wrote in quotes, “Excuses are lies you tell yourself.”

Putting my marker down, I turned back to the group and paused awhile. I wanted to let the words on the flip chart sink in. Finally I began again, say ing, “Today I heard people saying, ‘I don't have time,' ‘I don't have money,' ‘My credit is bad.' Are those lies or truths?”

“Well I don't have the money,” shouted the young man who had used that excuse. “That's a fact. That's not a lie.”

“And who has time to look at a hundred stupid properties?” said the young woman who had said she had no time. “Do you know how busy I am? I have a business to run and kids to feed. When I say I don't have time, I don't have time. I'm busy. I'm not lying.”

“My student loans are a mile high,” said the young man who mentioned his debt problem. “That too is a fact, not a lie.”

“All right, rich dad's lesson on growing up is about to begin,” I said, smiling. “Rich dad told me years ago that if I wanted to grow up to be an honest person, I had to become more and more honest. . . . not stay the

same. In other words, I had to be tougher on myself by being more honest with myself. For example, when I personally use the excuse ‘I have no time' a more honest and truthful statement would be that ‘I am not willing to make the time.' ”

“So instead of making an excuse you become more honest with your self?” asked one of the participants.

“Exactly,” I said. “Years ago rich dad taught his son and me that all ex cuses are lies.”

Upon hearing that, the young man sat back in his seat and said quietly, “I get what you're saying. So growing up means not using the facts of our lives as excuses for our lives. If we do that we become more honest.”

“You're getting it,” I replied. “In sports a person might say that the ref eree calls the game tighter. That means the referee is demanding a higher standard of play from the players. What rich dad was saying is that as you grow up, call your own game tighter. Be more honest with yourself. Raise the standards on yourself. If you don't, your life stays the same.”

“But what about me? I am busy. I really don't have any time—especially to go looking at a hundred properties.”

I noticed she had dropped the excuse about being too old. Since she didn't bring it up, I wasn't going to either. “Then just be honest about it,” I said. “Just say, ‘I'm not going to make the time.' ”

“So all you are saying is stop whining, complaining, and acting like babies.” “That's a great way of saying it,” I said. “Grow up and stop acting like babies. Every time you make an excuse, you're acting like a baby.” “Well, not everyone is rich like you with all the free time and money in the world,” said someone from a back row.

Smiling, I said, “I would not have the free time and money if I had let ex cuses be truths instead of lies. I too started without any money. I too had mountains of debt, nearly a million dollars. And I too am busy.”

“And you would still have those problems if you had used those prob lems as excuses,” said the woman with no time. “I get what you are saying. Excuses hold us back . . . no one else.”

“That's correct,” I said. “Rich dad often said excuses are the words com ing from the loser in you.”

“So by being more honest with your excuses, that honesty allowed the winner in you to take over,” said the woman with no time. “If you are truth-ful with your excuses, then the loser shuts up and the winner can be heard.”

“Exactly,” I said. “And the more the winner in you speaks, the more you grow up. But first, you need to be willing to call your game tighter and raise your own standards.”

“Great question,” I said with a big smile. “The winner in you is now talking.”

“Sure. Instead of complaining to me that you have no time and letting the loser in you speak to you, the winner in you is asking me how I found the time. If the loser speaks you learn nothing, but if the winner speaks you might learn something.”

“So that is how you find the money even when you have no money,” said the man with no money.

“You got it,” I said. “Look, we all have the same amount of time. We all have twenty-four hours in a day. A winner just finds ways of making better use of that time and a loser lets not having enough time be the excuse for not getting things done. Rarely have I ever invested in a piece of property when I had enough money. And I often have credit problems because I al-ways want to borrow as much as possible when I find a great real estate investment.”

“So how do you find the time to look at a hundred properties?” asked the woman with no time.

“Another good question,” I replied with a smile. “I estimated that I look at approximately three hundred to five hundred properties a year. I may not buy anything that year . . . yet I still look. Sometimes looking at a property may be simply looking only at the sales flyer the real estate agent puts out on the property. The analysis might take less than five minutes of my time. Sometimes I will spend three months chasing one deal and then have it fall apart. So time is relative. The point is, I am always looking. For example, regardless if I am in New York, Sydney, Paris, Singapore, or Athens, I always stop and look at properties. Regardless of how busy I am, I always look. I'm always looking for a good deal to put into my assets column. I'm looking at the same time I'm running my businesses, investing in stocks and stock options, and leading a normal life.”

“No. In fact rarely do I buy. But it costs you nothing to look. Just as it costs you no money to walk into a department store and look around, it costs you no money to look at property, businesses, or stocks.”

“Oh, I go shopping all the time when I'm on business trips. Especially be tween appointments,” said the woman without any time. “You and I just shop in different places.”

“So how do you find the money when you find a deal . . . especially when you do not have any money?” asked the man without money. “Well that is where right-brained creativity comes in. Not having money after finding a great investment is how I gained most of my financial education. You'd be surprised how intelligent you become when you must use your creative mind to solve financial problems. Solving financial problems or challenges increases your financial intelligence. I have money today simply because I did not let not having money be an excuse. Even though I had no time, I still looked at property, even if it was only for a few minutes. Every time I looked at a property, even if only from a sales information sheet, I would analyze the deal, working on how I could turn this piece of real estate into an asset that put money in my pocket. That is what made me rich . . . money did not make me rich . . . investing time when I had no time and investing money when I had very little money is what made me rich.” “So excuses don't make you rich. Excuses keep you poor,” said the young woman in the front row.

“Well said,” I replied with a great big smile. The class had gotten a lesson far more important than how to invest in real estate. I could tell that most of them got the lesson about the importance of growing up to be more honest . . . by being more truthful with themselves.

In a previous chapter, I wrote about the lower, middle, and higher mind. Excuses generally come from the lower mind. With a little financial education of the middle mind, and a little dedication, the higher mind can develop. After looking at and analyzing thousands of properties, the process is much easier because I have all three minds working rather than just one or two.

Finding a good deal is almost a psychic experience. Many times, I have in tuitively known without much research that a certain property was a great deal. Something just goes off inside me and I become like a bloodhound on the trail. But this sixth sense would not have been developed if I had allowed my excuses to run my life.

The same is true with developing a sixth sense about people. Operating outside the chicken coop, I have met characters with all sorts of deals. I have done business with some less than honest characters, not because I knew they were less than honest but because I simply lacked enough real-world ex-perience. I was not able to tell the con artists from the more honest people.

Today, my sixth sense from my higher mind plays a very important role in detecting the phonies, liars, con men, flakes, and others who operate out side the boundaries of the chicken coop. I am still not always right, but I learn from my mistakes and get better each time. I believe that without rich dad's lesson on growing up to be more honest, I might have easily become one of those phony con men, operating outside the coop.

One of the reasons my real dad lost all his savings in his ice cream franchise was not because of the franchise, but because of the people he went into business with. His partners were not crooks. But his partners were all schoolteachers just like my dad, teachers without much real-world business experience. None had much financial training to the middle brain and none had much real-world business experience. When the business started going bad, instead of admitting they knew nothing, the group began making excuses and then they began blaming each other for the problems. Once that happened, the business fell apart and my dad lost everything. They went into the ice cream shop business as adults and wound up acting like a bunch of kids. So bad things can happen to good people, especially if they are not willing to face their own truths and call their own game tighter.

After the ice cream franchise, and swearing on a stack of Bibles that he would not do business with schoolteachers again, my dad entered into two more outside-the-coop business ventures, this time with people he thought were businesspeople. Again the same things happened. The businesses did not perform as expected, sales dropped, money was lost, and again adults began behaving like children.

Now, the same things have happened to me and I have behaved in the same way, sometimes even worse. Many times, things did not go as expected on several real estate deals, or on my first two major business ventures; and more recently in the stock and options market. Each time things went bad, I too found myself acting like a kid. If not for my rich dad's advice on not mak ing excuses or blaming someone else . . . as well as being more truthful and growing up, I think I would still be a kid.

Unfortunately, my father did not have a person like my rich dad to talk to each time a business venture went bad. Instead of being more truthful to himself, he sank deeper into his lower mind, becoming angrier with his expartners, harder on himself, and less confident about his future. After the third business failure, he gave up. In my opinion, he retreated to his lower mind and stayed there. To me, that is the price of not having the proper education for the middle mind and allowing the wisdom of the higher mind to develop.

Fortunately for me, rich dad taught me about my lower, middle, and higher minds. He reminded me to return to my higher mind and begin to assess what things my middle mind could learn from these experiences. Instead of blaming others or being hard on myself, he asked me to search for deeper truths and more meaningful insights into me so I could find out more about me.

Please allow me a little repetition. Rich dad started my investing career at the age of nine, simply by playing Monopoly. I purchased my first property in my mid-twenties. My first failure in real estate came at age twenty-six. I started my first real business at twenty-seven, the nylon and Velcro wallet business. That business and the business that followed went bust. My third business and most of my subsequent businesses have done very well. I started my options trading education, after I was financially stable in 1994, at the age of forty-seven. I have made a lot of money but I have also lost almost as much money. The point is, each time I failed I did retreat into my lower mind . . . the place where fight or flight occurs. I too acted like a kid and sometimes a baby. But after I got through with my thumb-sucking treat, it was my rich dad's lesson on not making excuses, not blaming, being more honest with myself, and then seeking more information and education that pulled me out of my funk and allowed the wisdom of my higher mind to de-velop. Without that guidance, I do not know where I would be today. Without that guidance, I doubt if I would have grown up, a process I am still actively involved in.

The point is, too many people give up too early. If they are disappointed, lose a few dollars, or have their feelings hurt, most people retreat back to the world of the lower mind. I believe this is one of the primary reasons why so few people attain great wealth, even in the richest country in the world. I also believe it is the reason why so many people choose security over freedom.

I learned two very important lessons from this process. The first thing is that once I developed some real-life experience, it was easier for me to remain calm even if things were not going my way. For example, in real estate or business, if things were going bad, I could remain calm because the emotion from my higher mind would kick in, and that emotion is love . . . the love of the game. Today, regardless of what is happening in business or real estate, winning or losing, I remain happy because I have learned to love the game and love comes from the higher mind.

The second thing I learned was that when I find myself thrashing around in my lower mind, ready to fight or run, I remember the rule that silence is golden. Instead of lashing out and saying something I will regret later, I do my best (I don't always succeed in this one) to remain silent and ask my higher mind to think of a higher thought. If my higher mind does kick in, I am then able to find a better way of saying the same thing, without all the blame, anger, or self-justification.

At the academy, in flight school, and in the real world of business and in vesting, one of the most important of lessons for me to learn was to remain calm, think from my higher mind, and focus on the mission, regardless of what was happening with the ship.

If you want to be the captain of your ark, then the buck and the excuses all stop with you.

A couple of years ago, Chuck and Denise took a trip to visit Denise's sister in California. She had started a part-time furniture business out of her home that was fairly profitable. Denise and Chuck recognized the potential of creating a large company around a similar business model and decided to go for it.

Chuck and Denise had been playing the CASHFLOW 101 board game for several years and had read all of the Rich Dad books. They credit the Rich Dad education as having enabled them to recognize the business opportunity for their furniture business as well as giving them the courage to take action. Through building a successful business, they have truly learned the difference between an S and a B business owner as described in Rich Dad's

CASHFLOW Quadrant. They are now able to leave their business and it still makes money, a true B business. They have even started branching out into new states through joint ventures to create more assets instead of trying to do everything themselves.

Ironically Chuck and Denise used to judge their success on the number and quality of the doodads they owned. By understanding the Rich Dad defi-nition of assets, they have now focused on buying, or building, assets and not liabilities or doodads. If they want doodads, they first buy assets that will gen-erate the cash flow to pay for the doodads. After they pay for the doodad they still own the asset, generating additional cash flow each month. This was a big distinction for them and helped them set their own investment rules.

They have taken an idea, a business opportunity, and built a very suc cessful multimillion-dollar business in just a couple of years. They have taken control of their financial ark and are filling it with assets.