Ideas on how to become rich - Some Great Ideas by Jack Welch

Ideas on how to become rich - Some Great Ideas by Jack Welch

I have been busy with my Economics examinations and have not had much time to blog, but I received a very nice email from someone who had some interesting tips and ideas on wealth and money making, because she read a book by Jack Welch. Thus my post for today is "Some Great Ideas by Jack Welch" on how to become rich and successful. A short introduction to Jack Welch in case you aren't sure who he is or in case you wish to have a reminder:

John Francis Jack Welch was former Chairman and CEO of General Electric and is incredibly rich and wealthy, having successfully managed GE from 1981 to 2001. He is known for his uncanny business acumen and his wise business strategies that have done very well.

Here is the contribution by Sally, and here is what she wrote to me (edited):

Some great ideas by Jack Welch

"I am in SIM reading this book by Jack Welch and these are some of the tips which I thought I would like to share with you:

a) invest in people
people matter in our lives, value good friends and people

b) dominate your market or get out
This is like what you said to me and sounds exactly like the advice you gave to me! This is a good idea.

c) never sit still - we have to be relentless and restless because sitting on our butts, we cannot achieve anything great.... and the ship can only sail when it leaves the port of safety. This is a good idea as well!

d) one should also think service - according to Welch, one should also know how to provide good service and in particular better service, better than someone else... because people remember your service after the product is gone and waned.

e) forget the past and move on to the future -- what is gone is gone, the most important thing is to harness energy for the future because that is where we can embrace the new and look forward to new things and new money making opportunities and ideas.

f) learn and lead - life is about learning everyday, and life is also about leadership. We should learn new things every day and learn how to be leaders!

g) no bull - do not bullshit , be honest and straightforward - this is typical Jack Welch!

h) kill bureaucracy

i) stick around - be persevering and persistent, for money making opportunities and new ideas are always around the corner, and finally

j) manage the corner store - look out for things that seem insignificant and keep track of what is going on... I realise that I have to make sure that I am keeping abreast of what is going on around me. That's all I have to share regarding Jack Welch and his great ideas.

All these tips from Jack Welch of GE"

Thanks to Sally for her invaluable contribution to my ideas on how to become rich site! Thanks for reading and more important posts here on finance, investment and money making ideas to come soon. Thanks and cheers!

Ideas on how to become rich

Case study: Anthony Robbins, part 2

Case study: Anthony Robbins, part 2

This is my last post in my case study series for now. In future case studies, I may research and write about Bill Gates and other millionaires and billionaires, and I even intend to write an article on how to become a billionaire, based on my research here on my ideas site.

This article is about the psychological side to what Anthony Robbins talks about and how we can adapt his ideas and what he does to our use, which is making money and becoming rich.

The key difference between quotes by people like Warren Buffett and quotes by Anthony Robbins is that Anthony Robbins' quotes are mainly psychological and mainly rhetoric meant for motivation and self motivation purposes. Warren Buffett quotations, on the other hand, have some use in terms of what they teach in terms of logic, in terms of real ideas on how to make money, and in terms of real principles of finance and principles of how to make money on the stock market, as well as the occasional quip here and there. Therefore, the only real use for Anthony Robbins for our purposes for making money is to see what he does and to answer the question if what he does is replicable for us or not.

That is not to say that Anthony Robbins' psychological motivation and the good words that he has are not useful; they are - it's just that between such words and the quotes from a wise man who invests in the stock market, you would probably want to choose the man who knows how to make money.

I have already written some of the psychological and motivational quotes from Anthony Robbins in my earlier post, and here are some more famous quotes from Anthony Robbins that have inspired me psychologically. Bear in mind that these are good pieces of advice in their own right, but we shall not focus on them; we shall just read them then go on to analyse what he does in terms of how he makes his money and how we can learn to become rich.

Setting goals is the first step in turning the invisible into the visible.

Most people fail in life because they major in minor things.

Once you have mastered time, you will understand how true it is that most people overestimate what they can accomplish in a year -- and underestimate what they can achieve in a decade!

Most people have no idea of the giant capacity we can immediately command when we focus all of our resources on mastering a single area of our lives.

It's in your moments of decision that your destiny is shaped.

Quality questions create a quality life. Successful people ask better questions, and as a result, they get better answers.

Whatever happens, take responsibility.

Your life changes the moment you make a new, congruent, and committed decision.

Beliefs have the power to create and the power to destroy. Human beings have the awesome ability to take any experience of their lives and create a meaning that disempowers them or one that can literally save their lives.

Having dealt with the psychological part, the next question is what tangible lessons can we learn from Anthony Robbins? This site is all about ideas on how to become rich and ideas on making money, after all. How can he teach us to make money and become rich?

1. Motivational seminars are low cost events that can have the potential to make a lot of money. Yet it seems that you need to be already recognised or have the potential to be recognised, before this is a good option for you to make your money from this kind of thing. You will also need skills and abilities to convince people to come to your seminars and to listen to what you have to say, and above all, feel that their money has been well spent on your advice and motivational ideas.

2. Writing books on motivation may turn out to be a more important and better way of making money, because this one does not require you to be recognised first, if you are a good writer and you can find a good and reputable publisher. Yet it also seems to me that if you want to become rich doing this, you may need to write many books and ultimately you face the same dilemma that you need to be famous in order to make more money. That is, you can make some money from writing motivational books. But the real money in it is not from writing motivational books and being unrecognised, but rather in writing motivational books then becoming very recognised and then from there branching out into motivational talks and other such stuff. Then, and only then, will future books earn you a lot of income. Therefore, the fame factor still comes into play when writing books to make money.

3. NLP. This is actually a very controversial field, and I even have written entire articles about it elsewhere. It plays almost no role in our study because we are now ignoring the psychological part of making money and looking into how we can actually, tangibly, make money and become rich using Anthony Robbins' ideas.

4. Acting. Above all, Anthony Robbins is a performer and an actor. He can make money doing this but this might not be a good idea for most of us and the majority of us will never be famous actors or performers. Yet this does not rule out the fact that one or two of you readers may become famous actors or performers or even famous TV personalities. Anthony Robbins is basically teaching us to leverage on our strengths to make money.

In conclusion, here are the aspects of money making that really matter - the ideas on how to become rich that we have extracted from Anthony Robbins' ideas:

1. Motivational seminars are low cost events that have the potential to make a money. Yet you need to be already recognised or have the potential to be recognised.

2. Writing books on motivation may turn out to be a more important and better way of making money, because this one does not require you to be recognised first, if you are a good writer and you can find a good and reputable publisher. Yet it also seems to me that if you want to become rich doing this, you may need to write many books and ultimately you face the same dilemma that you need to be famous in order to make more money. Therefore, the fame factor still comes into play when writing books to make money.

3. NLP. This is actually a very controversial field, and I even have written entire articles about it elsewhere.

4. Acting. Above all, Anthony Robbins is a performer and an actor. Anthony Robbins is basically teaching us to leverage on our strengths to make money.

Thanks for reading and there will be more finance articles coming in future posts here on my site on Ideas on how to become rich. Recently in Sep and Oct 2008, with economic conditions worldwide becoming bad, with subprime in the USA and a crisis of confidence in banking worldwide, there is an even more pressing need to be financially educated and wise with money and investments, so I will try my best to educate, share ideas, teach and suggest. Stay tuned for more here on my great site! Thank you.

Ideas on how to become rich!

Case Study: Anthony Robbins, part 1

Case Study: Anthony Robbins, part 1

Welcome to my case study on Anthony Robbins and how to make money and become rich by studying what he does. Some of my friends have asked me why is it I haven't written anything about Bill Gates, Larry Ellison and the other more famous/ "common"/ established billionaires, who have definitely got skills in making money, but have instead chosen to focus on several other people instead. Well, here's a couple of justifications before I write on Anthony Robbins and how he makes his money.

Firstly, I am definitely going to write about Bill Gates and other billionaires, and indeed I am going to attempt to write an article here on my Ideas on How to Become Rich site on "How to become a billionaire", but that will be in another post. That will be an epic post, and it will be good, trust me!

Secondly, these people I have chosen for my case studies are all special in their own way. Warren Buffett is a billionaire, but he is quite unlike other billionaires. He makes money in a special and unique way that should be analysed and read seriously, and I have done that. If you have learnt anything and taken away some knowledge and absorbed some materials for your own good, then that's great and I have achieved some measure of financial education. Trump is also a billionaire, and his area is in real estate, as well as other fields in which he makes money and we can learn from those fields. Kiyosaki is someone who is not that rich but has made it, and he makes money in a manner different from the other two while espousing quite unique views (true or not, depends on which of my analyses you believe - the pro Kiyosaki, or the anti-Kiyosaki).

So having said that, this will be the last post in this series of case studies, and I will resume the series later. I will be writing about financial topics, finance and other financial matters and of course the theme is still on how to become rich and how to make money.

Without further ado: Anthony Robbins, part 1

Anthony Robbins is not that famous worldwide, and he is not as rich as Bill Gates or Warren Buffett, but he is quite recognised in his field and he makes a lot of money doing the following:

writing about self motivation and self actualisation, speaking about the same topic, and acting.

Basically, Anthony Robbins makes his money from motivational seminars and motivational books. And he makes a lot of money.

I first came across when I read his famous book called Awaken the Giant Within. Basically he is a famous person because of his emphasis on NLP, but there has been a huge debate whether or not he has made the field his own and incorporated his own thinking and ideas into the field, but that is not of our concern. We are only concerned about what he says about making money and becoming rich, and we are also concerned about how he makes his money and how we can learn from his example. What can we learn about money from his ideas, as well as from his actual actions?

The key point is that he has become very rich writing and speaking about motivation to lots of people, and basically he is a life coach, life trainer, personal coach, motivational speaker, or even less charitably, a spin doctor. I will talk a bit about Anthony Robbins here first, and in the next post I will give my analysis. Right now, this is what you need to know about Anthony Robbins and his ideas:

Anthony Robbins believes that you need to condition yourself to thinking big and thinking rich, and by doing so you will become rich. For instance, he has a personal programme to coach people called Personal Power that argues that people can be conditioned into becoming positive thinkers, and that your life can be changed by yourself.

Here are some of the famous quotes that I managed to find:

How am I going to live today in order to create the tomorrow I'm committed to?

Using the power of decision gives you the capacity to get past any excuse to change any and every part of your life in an instant.

If you want to be successful, find someone who has achieved the results you want and copy what they do and you'll achieve the same results.

Most people have no idea of the giant capacity we can immediately command when we focus all of our resources on mastering a single area of our lives.

Remember, a real decision is measured by the fact that you've taken new action. If there's no action, you haven't truly decided.

The higher your energy level, the more efficient your body... The more efficient your body, the better you feel and the more you will use your talent to produce outstanding results.

The truth is that we can learn to condition our minds, bodies, and emotions to link pain or pleasure to whatever we choose. By changing what we link pain and pleasure to, we will instantly change our behaviors.

One can see immediately to answer the question on how to become rich, Anthony Robbins goes for action, conditioning and positive thinking. These are the key ideas for him on how to become rich and make money: by changing your psychological attitude and your perspectives. The question you must ask is that do action, conditioning and positive thinking play an important role in making money or are they part of a larger framework?

In my next post on Anthony Robbins, where I analyse what he has spoken about, I will deal with the psychological part on how to become rich that Anthony Robbins has suggested, and I will also deal with learning and adopting his ideas for our use.

Cheers and thanks for reading!

Ideas on how to get rich!

Case study: Robert Kiyosaki, part 3

Case study: Robert Kiyosaki, part 3

This is the third and last instalment on my research into Robert Kiyosaki's ideas and sayings on how to become rich. I will be using Kiyosaki as a case study to learn ideas on how to become rich by considering what he actually does to make money. In the previous two posts, I analysed what he teaches and preaches to people on how to make money, as well as the controversies surrounding his thinking and writings. In this post I will analyse what he actually does to make money and ask the central question whether we can take him as a case study to make money.

Firstly, just to recap, these are the materials that I have researched and talked about in the previous two posts on Robert Kiyosaki:

These are the key central money and financial ideas from Rich Dad Poor Dad as well as other books written by Robert Kiyosaki:

1. financial independence comes about from investing, real estate, owning businesses, and the use of finance protection methods and mechanisms

2. do not be an employee, but be someone who controls the means of production
3. formal education is not the correct education in the knowledge based economy

4. we can earn money using passive income and active income, not just active income alone

5. The Cashflow Quadrant idea according to Robert Kiyosaki - ESBI:
Employees work for others
Selfemployed owners are their own boss earning money
Big business owner with a system of making money
Investor who spends money to earn money

6. Financial literacy is important.

In addition, I also covered why these cannot be believed as ideas on how to become rich, as there are several controversies surrounding Robert Kiyosaki's methods on how to make money and his ideas about finance, money, education, and the like.

These controversies and counter reasons, in my own personal opinion, were:

1. that there are no details and no particulars, only generalities.

2. there is no way of differentiating between fact and fiction in Robert Kiyosaki's writing, and so that might pose a problem.

3. Kiyosaki is very repetitive, and although in my first post on Robert Kiyosaki I wrote on his book Rich Dad, it turns out that many consider his other books very similar to that one - and Robert Kiyosaki has only a very few and limited ideas on how to make money

4. Robert Kiyosaki makes his money writing books, giving seminars, selling board games, and is known to do MLM. These may make him a lot of money, but are these skills replicable and do they help his readers in their quest to learn how to make money and how to be financially literate? Perhaps not.

5. There is no one who can sum up what Robert Kiyosaki says and teaches properly, accurately and in a succinct manner because what he writes is so vague, that everyone reading it has a different perspective and a different opinion on what was written. This is unlike Warren Buffett, because what Buffett has written and talked about has come from Benjamin Graham's analyses and there have been many documented sources.

Now the question is, can we use this statement in my research to learn ideas on how to become rich? "Robert Kiyosaki makes his money writing books, giving seminars, selling board games, and is known to do MLM." It seems only fair that we work from this premise, since this is what he actually does to make his money. Here is the analysis:

Writing Books to become rich

This is a good way of making money, if you can write, if people like to read your writing, if you have good ideas, if you can express yourself fluently, if you can cook something up that people want... there are many factors involved. It is only a good way of making money if you are able to have all the factors come together in your favour. Robert Kiyosaki should not be the role model in this sense, because you would be better of emulating JR Rowling or other famous authors or novelists.

However, if you do ultimately intend to write financial books and make money this way, the catch is that you would have to be famous for making money first before you can write books on how to make money. That is to say, with the probably rare exception of Rich Dad, Poor Dad, other financial books' authors were rich and famous before they wrote those books. Trump, Buffett, Lynch and other such authors for example.

What Kiyosaki has done is rather rare, so I would say that it is harder to make money this way. By comparison, other authors who are creative make a lot of money by writing fantasy, stories, and in the case of Dan Brown, even nonsensical stuff that criticises established society also makes him famous, and even movies can come out of his stories. Therefore, if you intend to use Kiyosaki's idea of writing books to make money - try to write novels, as that is more lucrative; unless of course, you can pull off what he has done - to make money out of writing financial advice.

Giving Seminars - in particular, motivational seminars

One might be inclined to say that this is not a good way of making money, but according to my research, this is one of the best ways of becoming rich if you are so inclined. In fact, Anthony Robbins is going to be the subject of my next case study on how to become rich by looking at some rich people.

Motivational seminars did rather well for Kiyosaki, and also did rather well for Tony Robbins, so that is worth one entire post for Robbins and how he made his money speaking motivational stuff to millions worldwide, and how we can learn from what he has done.

Selling board games (in particular board games that make money)

This is a good one. Kiyosaki has also cunningly written his books in such a way that there is the sales aspect of his board games inside. What I mean is that, while he writes about financial literacy and other motivational aspects, he also puts advertisements of his games into his writing, and some of his books are designed around the sale of his board games. That is, some of his writing is no more than mere sales pitches for the real product - his own games.

We can learn the idea of developing board games or for that matter, modern times you see, online games or online board games because that might be a very good idea on how to make money. Selling these games and promoting their use would be very good, and such games, if popular could make you a winner. This goes beyond Kiyosaki now - Monopoly, Hotel, and other such games come to mind, because these help people learn about finance while playing games, and you can make money selling the complements to the games as well as the substitutes. Couple this with some business seminars and the idea is complete. I adopted all these key ideas from reading about Kiyosaki's life and methods on how to make money - running a business seminar, while using and selling your board games, seems to be a very good winner. Might be worth a try!

MLM - not going to be discussed here, but in future posts, analyses and research will be devoted to this topic specially

MLM (or the famous or even infamous Multi Level Marketing) is one big, complex thing that will be dealt with in another series, not right now.

That's the end of the Kiyosaki case study, and hope you learnt some stuff out of it! In the next post, the final case study in my case study series, before I resume other financial articles. I will be dealing with Anthony Robbins and his methods on how to make money - motivational seminars. Do stay tuned, thank you very much and cheers!

Do stick to my site here and you can find here all sorts of materials on the righthand sidebar on investment, technical analysis, fundamental analysis, financial instruments ranging from forex to money market funds, CDs and FDs, as well as quotes from rich men, and case studies and much much more.

Ideas on how to get rich!

Case Study: Robert Kiyosaki, part 2

Case Study: Robert Kiyosaki, part 2

This post is the second part of my Robert Kiyosaki case study on ideas on how to become rich by making a lot of money through various means. In this post, I will now show criticisms and controversies surrounding Robert Kiyosaki and his ideas on making money. Unlike Donald Trump and Warren Buffett, who are also featured on other posts here on my money making ideas blog, Robert Kiyosaki has been strongly attacked by John Reed and there are controversies surrounding Robert Kiyosaki's methods on making money and his various ideas, as well as factual inconsistencies in what Robert Kiyosaki has writtten.

One thing is for sure though - and I say this tongue in cheek - that this is surely one very good way of making a lot of money:

write books and develop board games on financial education and how to make money

(I got this idea directly from Robert Kiyosaki himself, because that is how he makes his money. Since Buffett makes money from investment, and Trump makes money from books, real estate and TV shows, we can learn from Robert Kiyosaki in terms of what he ACTUALLY does, not just what he preaches and teaches. In a certain monetary sense, there is a way of making money - by emulating and copying closely what rich men do, although sometimes there are indeed things that rich men can do that we cannot do. Therefore, copying Robert Kiyosaki's ideas on how to make money by extrapolating the need to write books on financial education might be a good, money-making idea after all.)

Now on to the main part of my topic on Robert Kiyosaki:

Controversies

1. The main problem with Robert Kiyosaki's ideas and teachings on how to make money is that there are no details and no particulars, only generalities. For instance, even my ideas on money making site here where I issue ideas, discuss investment, discuss forex and the like has details on various methods of making money. I have explained technical analysis and fundamental analysis and even taught for free proper ways to read annual reports, and much more. Yet, Robert Kiyosaki has not done that - he has merely made his financial education book Rich Dad Poor Dad a form of story telling.

2. There is no way of differentiating between fact and fiction in Robert Kiyosaki's writing, and so that might pose a problem. This means that the Rich Dad and the Poor Dad could be - either metaphorical, in which case Robert Kiyosaki has no claim to learning real ideas on how to become rich; or real, in which Robert Kiyosaki is unable to reveal or does not want to reveal who these two people are.

3. Robert Kiyosaki is very repetitive, and although in my first post on Robert Kiyosaki I wrote on his book Rich Dad, it turns out that many consider his other books very similar to that one - and Robert Kiyosaki has only a very few and limited ideas on how to make money. All of them, apocryphal and anecdoctal, actually.

4. Robert Kiyosaki makes his money writing books, giving seminars, selling board games, and is known to do MLM. These may make him a lot of money, but are these skills replicable? This means, while Robert Kiyosaki teaches a lot of stuff on how to make money, he never practises any of them; while Robert Kiyosaki makes his money selling books, giving seminars, selling games and doing MLM, he does not tell us how he makes his money; the only thing we can learn are from OUTSIDE of his books and therefore, why should one even buy or read his books or boardgames, when we are actually learning by observing what he does in real life? This is quite unlike Buffett and Trump, who have detailed what they do and how they do it in books and publications. This means that Robert Kiyosaki does not practise what he preaches. This also means that Robert Kiyosaki makes his money through methods that he does not preach explicitly.

5. This last point is related to the rest - but it is the most important and key point. There is no one who can sum up what Robert Kiyosaki says and teaches properly because what he writes is so vague, that everyone reading it has a different perspective and a different opinion on what was written. This has been heavily documented - no one can actually say for sure and categorically state what Robert Kiyosaki has taught regarding money, making money, investment, ideas on making money and ideas on how to evade taxes and the like. Therefore, since Robert Kiyosaki's writing is so ambiguous such that no one can summarise properly what he says and no one else can verify what he has written, there is no reason for us to trust what he says. This is unlike Buffett, again, because what Buffett has written and talked about has come from Benjamin Graham's analyses and there have been many documented sources and independent sources that verify what has been said. This verification and un-ambiguity and clarity and sharpness are all missing from Robert Kiyosaki's books and writings. He seems to be more, therefore, of a motivational writer than a real financial educator.

With all these critcisms in mind, do remember that I am still a fan of Robert Kiyosaki in some ways - his writing is indeed motivational, and there are good things that we can extract and learn from his personal life and from what he writes. Nonetheless, we should take what he has to say with a major pinch of salt due to the criticisms mentioned above.

More to come in future posts on Robert Kiyosaki and what other lessons on money making, investment and financial education that we can possibly learn from him. My idea is that - we can get ideas on how to become rich and make money by observing, learning and extrapolating from rich men who have already become rich. Stay tuned for more, and thank you very much for staying with me and reading. Cheers!

Ideas on how to get rich!

Case Study: Robert Kiyosaki, part 1

Case Study: Robert Kiyosaki, part 1

I have done case studies on the rich and famous such as Warren Buffett and Donald Trump, who are of course undeniably rich and famous, but for various reasons - one for shares and stock investments, and the other for real estate, books, merchandise and even a famous TV show.

I think this new case study will take some time to complete and will be of interest to many people - Robert Kiyosaki and his ideas on making money and how to become rich.

I have been a fan of Robert Kiyosaki for a long time, but I have also realised that many of his teachings have been proven controversial and that many others have also written bad things against him. My site here is all about Ideas on how to Become Rich, and hence will take a long hard look at Robert Kiyosaki and his ideas on how to make money and become rich. I used to think that Robert Kiyosaki was totally great and that all that he said was wise, but is that truly the case? Are all his ideas on making money and how the rich get richer correct, or is there something fundamentally wrong with what he says? I provide the research and the analysis and evaluations, and you can make up your mind. Do join me here as I analyse Robert Kiyosaki and his ideas on how to become rich!

Robert Kiyosaki has many ideas on how to become rich, so I will take a book by book approach, similar to what I have done with Donald Trump's books and outlook.

The first book in my analysis today is Rich Dad, Poor Dad.

Needless to say, Robert Kiyosaki's Rich Dad, Poor Dad book is the most famous one of his series of money making books. Here are the key ideas according to my research:

1. financial independence comes about from investing, real estate, owning businesses, and the use of finance protection methods and mechanisms (Wikipedia)

2. do not be an employee, but be someone who controls the means of production (Wikipedia and Seah)

3. formal education is not the correct education in the knowledge based economy (Seah)

4. we can earn money using passive income and active income, not just active income alone (Seah, Wikipedia)

5. The Cashflow Quadrant idea according to Robert Kiyosaki - ESBI, where

Employees work for others
Self employed owners are their own boss earning money
Big business owner with a system for making money
Investor who spends money to earn money

6. Financial literacy is important (Seah).

The question is, although these seem to be commonsense and very valuable ideas on how to make money and become rich, are they valid? Do they make sense? Robert Kiyosaki would have us believe so, and indeed they may make sense and make us rich in the process. Yet others have said no.

I will now show why I think these are valid, leaving criticisms for later:

1. investment, real estate and businesses do indeed make money, so Robert Kiyosaki got those points correct

2. being an employee is not necessarily bad, but Robert Kiyosaki may have a good point - that it is harder to become rich being an employee, and the idea is that it's better not to be an employee rather than "employee = no good"

3. the third point isn't very good - education is always a good thing, because education can help you make money, keep money, become more money minded, as well as help you in social skills, networking, improving your intelligence, curiosity and basically helping you in life, so that's not true where he says that education is an industrial age idea etc...

4. passive income is a good idea - although he does not say how to do it - and many other books and speakers have advocated gaining more passive income (or, the key idea is to make money work for you)

5. his games seem to be rather educational - and may have financial literacy and financial education value (in stark irony and contrast to what he said on education, or formal education)

6. yes, he is right that financial education is key and very important in this world today.

More to come on criticisms of Robert Kiyosaki, Robert Kiyosaki's money making ideas in his other books with all his ideas and wisdom on money, and much much more, here on my money making site full of ideas on how to make money. You have been reading the Robert Kiyosaki case study series on ideas on how to make money. Thanks and cheers!

Ideas on how to get rich!

Case Study: Donald Trump, part 2

Case Study: Donald Trump, part 2

I am going to partly review the Art of the Deal by Donald Trump, and also partly going to write about Donald Trump's ideas and thoughts on making money. From the outset, I should tell you that there are certain things that I need to say: one is that most of Donald Trump's ideas on how to become rich have been covered in the last post here on my site, in my

Case Study: Donald Trump, part 1

where I dealt with How to Get Rich, his book full of ideas on how to make money. The second thing is that Donald Trump believes in many things, so here is where a critical and thinking mind is best - we cannot believe everything he says, especially where he says that intuition and instincts can make you rich. That one can be proven to be false, but that is the basis of an entire article. Other things that he says cannot be taken at face value like avoiding handshakes (that is his own personal opinion - and does not contribute to the ideas on making money), his unique hairstyle in the past (come on, that's quite nice to look at but it is not essential to our central theme of making money and becoming rich, and certainly his hairdo and his peculiar habits are not the subject of discussion - only his money making skills are). This brings me to my third point - we must think and mull about what we read and cannot take them simplistically, as application and additional thinking are both required. That said, here are more ideas on becoming rich and making a lot of money from Donald Trump:

Some quotes from Donald Trump and Money Making Ideas from Donald Trump

“I like things big. I always have. To me, it’s very simple: if you’re going to be thinking anyway, you might as well think big.”

This is a good idea - thinking big allows you to see what you can do and what you can reach, and motivates you to make money, so this is one of the good ideas that I would like to share with you.

“It’s been said that I believe in the power of positive thinking. In fact, I believe in the power of negative thinking. I happen to be very conservative in business. I always go into the deal anticipating the worst. If you plan for the worst – if you can live with the worst – the good will always take care of itself.”

Planning is also a very key concept to making money and becoming rich, so anticipation, planning, scenario planning and thinking ahead are all key to success.

"You can have the most wonderful product in the world, but if people don’t know about it, it’s not going to be worth much.”

This is also a very key idea - and emphasises marketing and advertising. After all, without people knowing about an excellent product, it might as well not be excellent at all - since no one knows and no one will buy. This is an excellent money making concept.

Borrowing ideas from many articles and other research that I did online, I find that Donald Trump approaches business very straightforwardly. The key idea is that the art of business can be reduced to the formula of buy low and sell high. For instance, "Much as I like the [Beverly Hill's Hotel] I'm interested in it only if I can get it for a much better price than they're now asking". Donald Trump will walk away from a good piece of property if the numbers don't match up to what he expects them to be. Trump makes a point of surrounding himself with the best talent when making these hard decisions when it comes to making money. In fact, he attributes much of his success in making those correct decisions, of buying low and selling high, to surrounding himself with the best talent available, thus forming his winning team. For example: "I'm just looking to hire the best talent, wherever I can find it [and] I have a very simple rule when it comes to management: hire the best people from your competitors, pay them more than they were earning and give them bonuses and incentives based on their performance. That's how you build a first-class operation". Simply put, there exists no room for second best.

Furthermore, there exists another more intangible component of Trump's success that underscores the need for of a heightened self confidence and personal pride, for instance, according to Donald Trump, "I hate lawsuits and depositions, but the fact is that if you're right, you've got to take a stand, or people will walk all over you” and “You have to be very rough and very tough with most contractors or they'll take the shirt right of your back". These show that Donald Trump has the self confidence to take a stand and make a proper deal, and that people cannot walk all over him. There are many things we can indeed learn from Donald Trump.

Donald Trump wrote several books on making money and how to become rich and successful like himself:

Trump: How to Get Rich

Trump: The Way to the Top

Trump: Surviving at the Top

Trump: The Art of the Deal

The America We Deserve

Trump: The Art of Survival

Honestly, most of them are repetitive and carry the same few ideas, but the key thing is that most of them stress success, confidence, thinking and planning, guts and advertising/ marketing and showmanship. In the final analysis, in Donald Trump's world, that's what makes you the money - that's what makes you rich.

More to come on my Ideas on How to Become Rich blog on case studies of rich men and their money making strategies that allowed them to become rich and successful. Cheers!

Ideas on how to get rich!

Case Study: Donald Trump, part 1

Case Study: Donald Trump, part 1

Here, on my ideas on how to become rich site, I will now talk about Donald Trump. Donald Trump is a billionaire who made most of his money in buildings, construction, casinos, and who can forget the TV series - The Apprentice. Donald Trump is the focus of this post in my case studies on the rich and famous and how they make money. Some people may not like him and indeed there are some who might be unhappy with Trump as a role model, but I think that he is great and he is definitely an expert in making money in real estate.

I first came across Donald Trump when reading Forbes, because he is one of the richest men on earth and certainly a big name in the real estate industry. I read about how his father was actually a rather successful builder, but a rather small time construction person, because even though Donald Trump's father was a good man who worked hard, he never earned billions of dollars. Basically, Donald Trump managed to do that.

Writing a case study on Donald Trump for my ideas site turned out to be easy, relatively speaking, because Donald Trump has written many books on how to become rich and how to make money. He once said that people ask bakers how to bake bread....and so it is wise to ask a billionaire how to make money.

Without further ado, today's case study is on Donald Trump and in particular, his book

How to Get Rich.

Aptly titled, isn't it? And this is a very fitting subject for my ideas site on how to become rich, so much so that one could possibly say that this book was written for me to conduct my research. I will not be lifting materials from his book but rather analysing and then summarising what I see to be the key points and key learning points on how to become rich.

According to Donald Trump there are many key ideas to becoming rich, and they are:

you have to be a general

you have to stay focused on the important parts

you need to maintain your momentum

you need a great assistant

you need to take responsibility

you need to speak clearly and properly

you need to ask yourself "Is there anyone who can do this job better and cheaper than I can?"

you need to have a very good idea

you have to have talent

you have to consistently learn and improve and upgrade

you need to think big and live large

you need to be tenacious

you need to brand yourself and you have to toot your horn

you need to be optimistic, yet you need to be prepared for the worst

you need to know public speaking skills

you need to pay attention to the details

you need a positive attitude

you need to do your homework

you need to dress well

you need to invest simply and effectively

you need to have negotiation skills (- sounds familiar? You will be able to find such materials around my site here, so do use the right sidebar.)

Immediately one can see that Donald Trump's basic message has two key elements, according to my research - one is common sense, and the other is marketing/ branding/ advertising, depending on how you look at it.

You can examine the key ideas I learnt from his book.

These are all common sense ideas on how to make money and how to become successful at a job or in business, and some of the key ideas in those words are known to business students or Economics students:

you have to be a general

you have to stay focused on the important parts

you need to maintain your momentum

you need a great assistant

you need to take responsibility

you need to speak clearly and properly

you need to ask yourself "Is there anyone who can do this job better and cheaper than I can?"

you need to have a very good idea

you have to have talent

you have to consistently learn and improve and upgrade

you need to be tenacious

you need to brand yourself

you need to be optimistic, yet you need to be prepared for the worst

you need to know public speaking skills

you need to pay attention to the details

you need a positive attitude

you need to do your homework

you need to dress well

you need to invest simply and effectively

you need to have negotiation skills

These are all ideas related to marketing/ branding/ advertising:

you need to speak clearly and properly

you need to think big and live large

you need to brand yourself and you have to toot your horn

you need to know public speaking skills

you need to pay attention to the details

you need to dress well

Hence, Donald Trump's personality can be seen in the way that he works and makes his money. He has a lot of common sense. He also has a lot of marketing and branding power, as can be seen from the TV series and the beauty paegeants that he organises and hosts. Clearly, Donald Trump is proof that his money making system works - it is about applying solid common sense to making money, with a no nonsense approach with a clear mind, as well as branding, marketing and advertising oneself and one's organisation. If it works for him, then these skills and thoughts may be worth trying out and may be worth considering seriously.

More to come on Donald Trump in the next post, here on my ideas site, on ideas on how to make money by looking at successful billionaires and successful businessmen, and their methods on how to become rich.

Ideas on how to get rich!

Case Study: Warren Buffett, part 2

Case Study: Warren Buffett, part 2

Simply put, here is the distilled wisdom of making money on the stock market in long term investment:

See stocks as businesses

Many people buy stocks and see them as pieces of paper that give dividends or capital appreciation. Yes, that is actually what stocks are, but to make money in the stock market, Warren Buffett suggests a different approach. Why not see stocks as businesses, or part of businesses instead?

Every stock certificate is linked to a company, and there are many considerations in fundamental analysis that can show you the various parts of a company. Stocks are indeed linked to businesses, and the prices of the pieces of paper stem from the businesses. If you believe this paradigm, then the stocks yield money when the businesses are healthy.

I would say: is there a market for the good? Is the company doing well now? Is the company under good management, or are the people in control known for not being trustworthy? Simply put: see the stocks as linked to businesses, and apply fundamental analysis. Warren Buffett reads a lot of annual reports a year and therefore he makes a lot of money when the decisions turn out right, based on fundamental analysis.

Use market fluctuations to your own personal advantage to make money in the stock market

Warren Buffett and Ben Graham often talk about Mr Market. This is an allegory.

A man called Mr Market turns up every day and quotes prices to you. He is basically a price quoter and does nothing but quote prices to you, and you are the one who must decide whether to buy or to sell. Market fluctuations therefore help you if you can sell to Mr Market when he quotes high prices and buy from him when he quotes low prices. It is that simple. Mr Market is occasionally optimistic and occasionally pessimistic, but as long as you buy and sell at the right prices, there is no need to worry because you will make money. Why? Simply because you are able to profit from folly and profit from market fluctuations, and you did not join them.

The importance of margin of safety and not cutting things close

Another metaphor here is wise: Warren Buffett once mentioned a bridge and suggested that you do not drive heavy trucks over a bridge meant for heavy loads, but rather, you drive small trucks that are light over a bridge that can bear more load. This is the idea of margin of safety.

Another way of looking at it would be: it's better to buy a dollar for 40 cents than it is to buy a dollar for 70 cents. You don't cut things close. This enables you to make money from the difference.

What do we learn from the bridge metaphor and from the dollar analogy? We learn the value approach. Just as we do not want to fall over a precipice by driving a heavy truck over a bridge, and just as we want to make money by buying dollars cheap, we should do the same for stock investments. Do not cut things close.

Use your common sense - or Warren Buffett's common sense

Last but not least, use common sense.

This may prove harder than the more technical aspects of value investment, like margin of safety and fundamental analysis, and the other elements of Warren Buffett's system that I mentioned already. The reason is that this needs to develop via experience. Diversification may not be a good idea if you know what you are doing, but if you don't know, then diversification might save you. That kind of common sense is sometimes counterintuitive and may take some time to acquire.

In addition, Warren Buffett does not always make the right decisions - and in some cases he even lost money. For that he has a good joke, and one we can learn from:

There are two rules of investment. The first is never lose money. And the second rule is, never forget the first!

More to come on other case studies and other rich men here on my ideas site on how to make money and how to become rich. Cheers!


NOTE/ DISCLAIMER/ SMALL MESSAGE: This is an ideas on how to become rich blog and should cover every possible idea on how to make money and how to become rich, not just in the financial market or in the stock market. Yet there is a focus on the stock market, among other financial devices and financial markets. At the same time, I write a lot about Warren Buffett and will continue to do so because he is one of the best investors in the world and the ideas that he preaches and practises have been proven to beat the market.

Not everyone will agree with what Warren Buffett teaches and what I write. This is true, natural and only to be expected - after all, opinions and ideas always differ. At the very least, you learn from me one major idea on how to get rich, and in the way and manner of your choosing - you can choose someone who is very rich and then make a mentor of him, learning his skills and ideas and concepts that have enabled him to make money, be it in investment, in a job, or in banking, or in real estate and the like. That means that if Warren Buffett and value investing is not your cup of tea and these don't interest you, the other case studies here on my ideas site might help you. Cheers!

Ideas on how to get rich!

Case Study: Warren Buffett, part 1

Case Study: Warren Buffett, part 1

A cursory glance at Ideas on How to Become Rich will reveal that I am a fan of Warren Buffett and that this author personally thinks that Warren Buffett is one of the greatest investors in the stock market on earth, and that Warren Buffett's money making techniques are the best. Well, that's because it's true, and besides, as I've already said before, this site explores ideas on how to make money and become rich, and Warren Buffett has used value investing to make intelligent investment decisions that have made him the richest man in the world, correct as at 2008, according to Forbes.

There are a few points to note in this introduction to the greatest investor:

What Warren Buffett does to make money has been documented.

What Warren Buffett does to make money can be learnt and reproduced, because he himself learnt the key ideas from a man called Benjamin Graham.

What Warren Buffett does to make money is nothing spectacular and can be summarised in a few key terms and concepts, which then need to be applied.

In summary, the key concepts that Warren Buffett employ are all basic tenets of value investing which depend on fundamental analysis: see stocks as businesses; use market fluctuations to your advantage; always have a margin of safety; use your common sense.

Value investing and fundamental analysis have been covered in great depth here on my money making site, but here is a short summary for revision and for clarity: value investing is an investment paradigm that looks at intrinsic value of a company, and concomitantly its stock. Value investing is closely related to fundamental analysis, which is analysing a stock by looking closely at its values and fundamentals, such as the price-earnings ratios, the assets that the company owns, the debts that it owes, and other fundamental aspects of the company that one should know if one puts money into it. In simple summary - value investing is about value, and fundamental analysis is analysis by looking at a company's fundamentals.

Warren Buffett is my investment hero because he is able to use his skills and techniques that Benjamin Graham espoused to make a lot of money on the stock market. The secret has been out for years and yet few have been able to make full use or take advantage of what Warren Buffett and Benjamin Graham have said and taught, strangely.

So, for absolute beginners to Ideas on How to Become Rich, who exactly is Warren Buffett?

Warren Buffett is an American investor and philanthropist. He started out in investment when he was very young, and was always very entrepreneurial. One day he studied under Benjamin Graham in university and learnt the key skills of investment, and then later did indeed work for Graham in his investment partnership company. However, Warren Buffett found that although he agreed with the intellectual concepts and ideas that Graham taught him, he did not agree with how Graham ran his company and felt that Graham missed out on a lot of winners precisely because of his narrow definition of margin of safety.

Using the concept of margin of safety and other key skills he learnt from Graham, Warren Buffett then set up his own partnership, and the rest, as is commonly said, is history. Warren Buffett went on to become one of the world's best investors and then became one of the world's richest, and then finally Warren Buffett became the world's richest man. Warren Buffett currently runs Berkshire Hathaway and is involved in investment and charity at the moment, as he had given some billions away to Bill Gates, who is also a noted philanthropist. This basically sums up Warren Buffett for people who do not know who he is.

Here are some Warren Buffett quotes here on Ideas on How to Become Rich, to see how the Sage of Omaha/ the Oracle of Omaha gives his investment wisdom in clear, lucid and vivid analogies and stories. Click here for Warren Buffett quotes and investment sayings.

In addition, click here to find out more about the investment paradigm of fundamental analysis and how it differs from technical analysis. Do remember to read up here on this site, and do please enjoy your research into these two important, key concepts here.

More detailed analysis of these to come, here on this series on Warren Buffett:
see stocks as businesses; use market fluctuations to your investment advantage; always have a margin of safety; and use your common sense when it comes to investment. All these key ideas and important concepts will be dealt with in the next post on Warren Buffett, as they are all important ideas on investment and important ideas on how to become rich. Stay tuned!