If I'm So Smart Why Ain't I Rich?

Yesterday afternoon I again stopped to visit  the Great Lakes Academy of Fine Art here in Duluth, which is currently having its first annual Student/Instructor Art Exhibition, in which a totally impressive body of work is being displayed. At one point I was listening to a conversation that circled around the question of why some artist's work increases in value or declines in value. What gives a person's work significance? Why is this painting, which two years ago could be purchased for $5,000 now worth $150,000?

The discussion shifted to musicians, but could have encompassed engineers, mathematicians, novelists and other fields of endeavor. The highways of life are littered with people who pursued fame instead of their passions. The latter will find that their excellence at honing their gifts will likely enable them to provide for their families and grant them a deep satisfaction. If, however, they nurture a secret resentment because someone else got hold of a ticket to fame and fortune, they will become susceptible to a root of bitterness that infects their souls and steals the happiness and contentment that ought to have been their.

The Book of Ecclesiastes, one of the "Wisdom Books" of the Old Testament, has a verse that years ago became a favorite of mine. I once did a drawing of a runner to illustrate this passage, Ecclesiastes 9:11.

The race is not to the swift,
Nor the battle to the strong,
Nor bread to the wise,
Nor riches to men of understanding,
Nor favor to men of skill;
But time and chance happen to them all.

Line, shape, form, perspective and light.

There are so many images packed into this little gem of a verse, with a hundred applications. It's an axiom of American Dream literature, beginning with Horatio Alger stories, Dale Carnegie, Napoleon Hill's Think And Grow Rich and all the modern spin-offs of this ilk, that riches are guaranteed in America to anyone and everyone who simply works hard and believes in themselves. The downside here, if you buy into the possibility thinkers' rhetoric, is that if you are not rich then the problem is you. If you don't win the battle, win the job, catch the golden ring, then you are no good. Or that God is not with you. Maybe God is even against you. This verse clearly indicates that that kind of thinking is all crap. Winning or losing says nothing about your worth.

Some of the most influential people are ordinary people who through years of quiet personal sacrifice enriched others. They didn't have to do what they did, could have simply kept to themselves. Instead they turned outward, and almost unintentionally touched so many lives. I'm thinking very specifically of two people here, John Bushey and Dr. Robert Powless.

As Rumi said, "Let the beauty of what you love be what you do."

All this to say that when I visited the Great Lakes Academy of Art this weekend, I got the impression that Jeffrey Larson, the school's founder, was one of these kinds of people. As I spoke with the students who have been part of this new school, it became apparent that lives were being touched, shaped, inspired and becoming serious and intentional.

Meantime, life goes on all around you. Engage it generously.

T&GRPPC

Last night we met at the Green Mill in Duluth... a farewell meeting of sorts, as Rod Johnson was moving South to the Twin Cities. We called ourselves the M5, which was code for the Five Million Dollar Men, what we believed we were worth to the companies we worked for. It was an interesting group that met every two or three weeks for seven years and then occasionally since that time.

Rod and I conceived the idea for the group over lunch in the Library, a restaurant on Tower Avenue in Superior. We'd each read Napolean Hill's Think & Grow Rich, and were both taken up with the idea in chapter nine of a Mastermind Group. The Mastermind Group concept is essentially based on the idea that when a group gets together with its various perspectives on a problem, ideas emerge that no individual would have conceived in isolation.

In affirming that we each liked the key point of the chapter, he blurted out, "Well, why don't we do it?" Thus we invited three others, and gave birth to the group. At the time we had no idea how this first step would impact all facets of our lives.

At one point we called ourselves a "portable board of directors." What professional has not had a wish for objective counsel outside oneself and outside the political environs of one's business or corporation? For most of the years we called ourselves the M5, but in the beginning, at our first meeting on January 24, 1997, we were the T&GRPPC. We all knew what the T&GR meant, but none of us in last night's dinner together could remember what the PPC stood for. We got a good laugh from that, too.

What follows is the Proposed First Meeting Agenda that Rod assembled, follow by some ground rules. The rules proved durable, as have the friendships. Dean now owns the company he worked for, John is president of a company in the energy field, Rod has several major projects in the works and I haven't done too bad myself either.

T&GRPPC

Proposed First Meeting Agenda

January 24, 1997

1) Introductions (rod to lead)

~ Meeting Guidelines
~ Review Think & Grow Rich Workbook issues

2) In the box

3) Skills Identification
~ Skill Area

~ Experience

4) Review what each person could benefit from the group

~ Ongoing

~ Project

~ Other??

5) Where to from here??

~ Do we want to meet?

~ How often?

~ Where/when/format/other??

Ground Rules

* Leave titles at the door

* What is said will stay in the room

* Everybody participates

* Taking risks is encouraged

* Humor is acceptable - (as long as it is identified as such)

* Time-out means stop

We also developed rules for the admission of others into the group. As it turned out, we never did add anyone and eventually lost one, but even these discussions as regards membership proved insightful. In the beginning we avoid religion, politics and some personal topics. Over time, there were no boundaries as mutual respect and trust developed and deepened.

Perhaps you're seeking a professional team of advisors who can help you gain clarity about your self and your career. This blog entry is intended to strongly encourage you to take the first step... you'll never know where it can lead till you make a move.

The One Minute Millionaire

Yesterday, I posted an article I had written about Mark Victor Hansen called Chicken Soup for the Ripped Off Person's Soul. There are some who might say my comments are mean spirited. I would like to believe the piece was written to promote understanding. One of the reasons scam artists are successful is that we are naive about their techniques, they smile a lot and we by nature desire to be trusting rather than perpetually wary.

By another name, wariness is a gift. It's called discernment. Let's not be gullible. Jesus said be wise as serpents but innocent as doves.

In an effort to substantiate my take on Hansen, and the book he was promoting/hawking that day in 2002, I have copied a review from Amazon.com about The One Minute Millionaire.

98 of 111 people found the following review helpful:
Worst Get Rich Book Ever, May 6, 2005
By
D. Logan

Let me summarize their get super-easy get rich "ideas"

1. Just invent something that everyone will buy!

2. Just write a best selling book!

3. Just spam a hundred thousand people selling a product, like an e-book that cost you nothing to make, but your time, and sell it for $1,000, and you'll get your million! They repeatedly use 1% spam response rates, though it's more like .0037% spam rates, I already know their solution, SPAM MORE! If you haven't got any spam from "Richard G Allen &/Or the one minute millionaire, you will!!!

4. Just look through the newspaper and find foreclosures on some unsuspecting little old lady, and be nice to her and help her get kicked out of her house, and you swoop in and take it, and all it's equity, paint it and sell it for twice as much!

5. Invent a toy that every kid wants, like Tickle-Me-Elmo!

6. Look for run-down houses that are worth millions and millions of dollars and haven't sold for a long long time, and ask obscenely low prices, and they'll take it, because agents have to, and since the owners are rich and don't care about money....

These are just some of the ideas that I remember from this awful book. The spam one makes me furious, they are ENCOURAGING SPAMMING!!! The other ideas are so stupid, write a best seller, invent something that every American home needs, well FREAKIN DUH! It VERY soon becomes apparent that the authors are just looking to make THEMSELVES RICH, with a catchy title, and some VERY OLD, VERY TIRED, VERY WORN OUT - OVERDONE Ideas. Like that foreclosure thing. That's older than I am. sheesh. This book has nothing creative, attempts to teach unethical and unrealistic ways of "getting rich" which they focus on spam as the way to get rich in the "one minute" time frame. Like any idiot is going to drop a grand from a spam they got 10 seconds ago. I did read this whole book, just looking for any kind of redeeming factor. None. This book is great for a laugh, and to inspire fury against the authors. I don't usually every write reviews, but this one... inspired me with disgust! This book is an entire waste of time, and I can't believe they must have had good marketers that this book is in the library, etc. I think this is the worst "get rich" book I have ever read.

All the real self help/get rich type books ALL go back to Napoleon Hill. Think and Grow Rich is his best seller. If you are looking for the "secret", start there. Read everything he has, and then read everything his disciples have written (Tony Robbins, Jim Rohn, Zig Ziglar, Dale Carnegie, Earl Nightengale, & Other stuff by Robert Kiyosaki & Thomas J. Stanley PhD, William D. Danko, and you will then have the correct foundation for success. Hey if you've read these and agree with me, yet feel I am missing a few good gems, please email me! I'm always looking for some more good stuff.

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