Category Archives: Financial

Want to be Rich Like Warren Buffett?

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A few years back I had the good fortune to be invited by Berkshire-Hathaway, Warren Buffett’s holding company, to it’s annual shareholders’ meeting.  When  Buffett first purchased the company, its stock was trading at $12 to $18 a share.  At this writing, it’s reached $100,000 a share and climbing making Buffett the richest man in the world.  When someone at the meeting asked him, “What do you attribute your success to?”  Buffett responded with a story.

He said that when Bobby Fisher the American chess player, was playing chess against a Russian player, a big debate ensued about whether a human being could beat a computer at chess.  All the  articles coming out on the question were saying that a human being would never be able to beat a computer because a computer could think through every infinitesimal possibility and choose the best move to win the game.

But what they found was just the opposite – a human being could not only tie the computer, but could sometimes even beat it through a process of what Buffett called “selective grouping.”  Selective grouping is the internal process by which humans can automatically discount 90 percent of possibilities without ever having to consider them fully, so that they can focus their attention on the remaining 10 percent of possible moves that would make the greatest strategic impact.

“If you want to know what makes our overwhelming success,” Buffett responded, “It’s been selective grouping.  It’s what we FOCUS on.  And equally important, it’s what we choose not to focus on.” The process of choosing what to focus on is occurring in your brain every second of every day.  And it is determining what you experience in life and what you don’t experience.  It’s a great lesson to apply to time management.  It also speaks volumes about focus as one of the most important factors in producing results, since you cannot experience that which you don’t put your attention on. To Buffett’s second point, you must always seriously consider the “opportunity cost” of choosing to focus on things that take your focus away from building the wealth that you truly deserve.

You must carefully evaluate every investment decision of time and resources, and never be afraid to re-assess situations and ask yourself the question “Knowing what I now know, would I still get involved in what I’m doing?”  If the answer is a resounding “NO.”  Have the courage and intelligence to step away from these wastes of time, energy, and resources and use your time in the highest and most effective way possible, in relation to your ultimate goals.

 

How to Survive and Thrive in Turbulent Times

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Is it the BEST time to launch your own business?

According to the New York Times there were 85, 000 jobs lost during the month of December in the U.S. alone.

There have actually been over 3 million jobs lost in the U.S.  SINCE the stimulus package that was meant to turn things around.

Many people are finding themselves jobless and in a “forced mid-life crisis,”  where they have to re-consider their entire life’s path.  Equally important: they need to make cash now.  However, contrary to popular belief, the recession is not the only problem.

In a “flat world” of globalization we are moving more and more in the direction of downsizing and outsourcing.  With the interconnectivity we have today as a result of the internet, we now find that there are people across the globe who can do work for a fraction of the cost of yourself (if you have been an employee) and a fraction of the cost of your employees (if you have been an employer).  If this hasn’t effected you personally it’s effected someone you know or someone you love.  Increasingly, people are finding themselves out of work, and the competition’s getting tougher.

Many people understand that the days of working for one company for life, and waiting for the promise of retirement is largely an illusion in the newly emerging marketplace.  So in response to this rapidly changing world, we have more people than ever before looking to launch their own businesses so that they can take their destinies into their own hands, BUT the statistics of business failure are staggering, with 80% of businesses failing within the first 5 years.

There is a myth that traditional education prepares us for life.  But what traditional education teaches us to do is to show up on time, sit down, shut up and do what we are told.  We are taught to get a job, work for a paycheck and one day look to retire.  Traditional education is broken.

My newly released book, which has already hit the Wallstreet Journal Bestsellers list, Instant Wealth – Wake Up Rich!  – Discover the Secret of the New Entrepreneurial Mind solves these problems.  Today I own a company that has sold well over $60,000,000 of our products and services globally.  I travel the world and live an amazing adventurous life.  But it hasn’t always been that way.   Only 9 years ago, I was living in a ghetto, rationing myself to two dollars a day for food.  When I had to move I called the Salvation Army to donate my furniture, but when they showed up they said that it wasn’t even “good enough for the poor.” The Salvation Army refused to take the furniture!

The frustrating part was that I had done every personal development course I could find and I read hundreds of books on how to make my life work, from Tony Robbins, to Dale Carnegie, to NLP to Napoleon Hill I had done it ALL but for some reason I wasn’t able to apply all of that GREAT information in MY life.

And then I found the secret that turned everything around.   I embraced a New Entrepreneurial Mind, and I rapidly assimilated concepts from the richest entrepreneurs in the world.  I expound upon these concepts in Instant Wealth – Wake Up Rich!, but I want to give you 7 solid tips that YOU can use RIGHT NOW so that you too can survive and thrive in turbulent times!

1)  Begin With The End In Mind

You’ve got to find “a game” that you love.  If you don’t love what you do you will never stick with it to be truly financially successful.  Find your true north immediately; especially in times of crisis.

2) Create a Snowball Effect In Your Life

Warren Buffett the richest man in the world says that life is “like a snowball, what you need is a really long hill and some really wet snow.”  When you are playing a game that you love it allows you to go the distance and orchestrate “tipping points” in your life, where the floodgates fly wide open and you are rewarded tremendously; if you’re working intelligently.

3) Become an Investor

Realize that there are 3 things you can do with your time.  You can waste it, sell it or invest it.  Wasting your time could be, perhaps, sitting around worrying about your problems, or distracting yourself from the issues.  Selling your time could equate to taking a job for money.  If you take a job whether you sell your time for $10 an hour or $10,000 an hour you are STILL selling your time which is finite. Investing your time is using your time in a way where you become the person who could make your every dream come true.  So never work for what you make, work for WHO you become.  Then you are a wise investor.

4) Become the BEST

Research indicates that it takes about 10,000 hours which equates to 20 hours a week for 10 years to become an expert at something.  When you are the best in the world at what you do, there will always be a market for you.  So get started today!

5)  Use Your Time Efficiently

Continue to ask yourself the question “What is the highest and most effective use of my time RIGHT NOW in relation to my end goal.”

6)  Set Goals That Are Outside of Your Comfort Zone

One of the quickest ways to change your life is to set goals that stretch you.  This may take courage.  But remember, courage is not the absence of fear.  Courage is the realization that there is something more important than the fear.  In this case, your dreams and your financial destiny!

7)  Have Transformational Conversations

If you don’t know what to do or how to do it, have ferocious curiosity, seek out the people who do know what and how, and ask them, “How would you do this?”  “How would you raise the money to launch a business?”  “How would you write a business plan.”  “How would you find the team.” “How can I make a transitionary step where I can both make income immediately but invest my time by learning the skills I need for the future simultaneously?”  These types of conversations and the ensuing actions can transform not just your future, but the future for generations to come.

Wishing You Prosperity and Success!

Chris Howard

Ceo and Founder

The Academy of Wealth and Achievement

Achieving Your Every Dream

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Recently I wrote a blog post and there were some responses that went back and forth. Natasha Reddy added a nice comment about how she had recently seen a video with Will Smith where everything that he said sounded so much like the things that I teach. I watched the video thanks to Natasha, and am so glad that I did.

Is Will Smith really who you think he is?

So Check out this sick video with Will Smith on how to Achieve Your Every Dream!

One Size Fits All

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Just because something works for someone else doesn’t mean it will work for you. Or it may work eventually, but not right away. What’s really important is that you remain invincible as you test options to succeed and that you learn from the options that don’t work..
Richard Branson, for example, has been a great role model for me. I learned as much as possible about how he ran his businesses, so that I could find ways to expand my own companies. Modeling others and adopting the strategies of other successful entrepreneurs is a great way to achieve your own success in your business.
When I learned how Branson had run some of the Virgin companies out of residential homes, I decided to run my first company out of my home. This worked really well for a while. But before long I had so many employees coming in and out that the neighbors complained and the zoning people came in and said I had to leave the area — and they were right. It was disheartening at the time and I was forced to ask myself some stressful questions, like where would I go, and how I would bounce back? Working out of homes might have worked for Virgin in the United Kingdom, but I realized I couldn’t use this strategy in my own environment. Still, I had to keep my spirit high!
Other strategies Virgin used also didn’t work for me. For example, Virgin is now in the business of branded venture capital. In other words, the company gives a piece of a branded Virgin business to someone who is authorized to run it. This exemplifies how much Richard Branson reinforces entrepreneurial zeal in those he trusts. He leaves those people alone for the most part and lets them run the business within the guidelines of the Virgin brand. I thought that I would extend my own brand in the same way. Since I was already speaking to audiences around the world, I thought I could take my brand and lend it to other products.
I did that with a couple of businesses, which were branded under the name “Christopher Howard.” But because I was spending 90 percent of my time on the road teaching, it was really difficult to manage the people who were running the various businesses when they varied too much from what we knew worked for us. When some managers had their own ideas of the way things should be done, conflicts sometimes developed regarding the overall vision. When a number of businesses weren’t becoming profitable, managers were coming back to me and asking for more money. The businesses became a black hole for both funds and energy. At the same time, many other ventures were in our core businesses were doing so well that it made more sense to expand what was already working.
That was so much easier for us than the strategy of branded companies that weren’t being run well by their managers and took energy that could be better used elsewhere. Emotions became high in these situations and that is typically when intelligence becomes low. So the key is to maintain the inner peace and resolve. I can’t say that I was perfect, but I certainly learned more and more about the importance of this concept through these events.

One of the great benefits of studying hugely successful people is seeing how many times they failed along the way. It’s always useful to look at the timeline between when somebody started, when they actually hit millionaire status, and ultimately billionaire status. That really puts things into perspective. For example, Richard Branson launched his first business when he was 16, but he didn’t hit millionaire status until 9 or 10 years later. You can say to yourself, “Okay, that gives me some perspective in regard to pacing myself: I don’t have to be successful in the first year of doing business.”

Their example serves as your pace car. You can ask yourself, where should I be at this point in the process? There are people who have launched their businesses and their dreams at all different ages. You might look at Branson’s story and think, “Gee, he was wildly successful because he made a million dollars by the age of 26.” On the other hand, you might think, “Even Branson needed ten years to become a millionaire.” Both are true. The main thing is, he arrived at his intended destination. You can do it too!