Saturday, November 1, 2008

Proliferate Sacrifice

Proliferate Sacrifice

Sacrifice should be the first thing you think of when you wake up in the morning. I mean it. I don't mean one of the first things, I mean THE very first thing you think of when you wake up each morning. The first thought when you open your eyes should be how am I going to sacrifice today. What? I know you think I'm nuts, but the truth is you should ask yourself this question if you want to be successful in anything you do. What am I going to sacrifice today in order to be successful? If you want to accumulate wealth, run a business, make money, run marathons, win spelling bee's, whatever it is you want to accomplish you will first need to know what IT will take, what sacrifice you need to make, in order to reach your goals. Why sacrifice? Well because you need to give something else up first in order to make time to do whatever it is you need to do to accomplish your goals. If you don't sacrifice something in exchange for doing what you need to do each day to accomplish your goals then you won't accomplish anything or you will never get anything done. Sacrifice and succeed or don't and you'll remain broke, stupid, and spoiled its your choice.

When it boils right down to it you will see that I am right, its rather simple. Unless you know what you are going to sacrifice each day to do the things you must do to accomplish your goals then you risk not moving in the direction you must move in order to accomplish these goals. It is critical in achieving success that you commit to sacrifice or you will remain broke, stupid, and spoiled. You see once you commit to sacrifice you will be ready to fiscally, physically and psychologically handle any kind of sacrifice. And creating real wealth my friends takes lots and lots of sacrifice. If you need to go to work then you are going to sacrifice time, time you could be doing something else. Self employed people don't sacrifice time, in fact, they choose to go to work. This fact is never talked about by financial guru's or media types. If you hear about self employed peoples work hours its usually that they HAVE TO work more than anyone else because of their work load, but the reality is these business folks haven't learned the skills to delegate or contract out some of their work load. Trust me when I tell you you can find someone to do anything you need to do, outside of making critically business decisions or creative type of work, on a contract hire basis. It takes time and effort to find the right people but once you do they can elevate your work load. Besides the economic benefits of owning a business, one of the biggest advantages of being self employed is owning the right to choose to work more, or less, to meet your goals. There is much talk about in the media about the privilege of working less if you are self employed but not much attention is given to the fact that you can choose to work more. I didn't pay much attention to this fact until a friend made me aware of this privilege.

A couple of years ago my friend Dave his wife, my wife and I were all sitting around watching our boys play a baseball game on their travel baseball team. This game was on a Sunday morning (yes we missed church that day) and after the game I invited his family to go to lunch with our family. His wife gave me a funny look, but said she would love to go to lunch with us and then looked at her husband, and this friend said something that made me realize something I hadn't paid much attention to before, he said "I really appreciate your offer, I think that would be fun, but I don't think we can make it today, I GET to go to work today". This guy is a very wealthy guy, he is a centi-millionaire he doesn't need to work on Sunday afternoon but he GET's to go into the office on Sunday and he is excited about it. Man, now that's sacrifice, but the irony here is that its not sacrifice to him. He would rather GET to go to the office than go to lunch on a Sunday afternoon. Now to be fare this guy is pretty intense and may be wound up a little tighter than most but I personally GET what he means about having the choice to sacrifice the way he needs to in order to accomplish his goals. So you don't want to work on Sunday? No problem, but don't complain about not being able to create wealth. This is a perfect example of making the right choice, the choice of sacrifice, in order to reach your goals. After this encounter I committed myself to working on Sundays. I didn't go into the office as my friend did mainly because my office is 40 miles from home and his is 2 miles from his home but I did start reading voraciously on Sundays and bringing home more work so I could get it done on a down business day.

When I first began my trek towards wealth my wife and I made a commitment day in and day out to do the right thing and sacrifice so we could start to save money. And as we saved and made more these monies were invested. First in a savings account followed by stock market investments, and then in real estate. These investments did well and we saved more money and used some of this money to start a business, expand the business, and then start other businesses. I was able to earn my way to multi millionaire status by drawing a line in the sand and sacrificing things for financial gain. These sacrifices were lifestyle choices. I chose to work on Saturdays rather than relax at home. I chose to send my money to my etrade account as apposed to spending it on fun. I chose to drive my cars for 10 years rather than drive a new model car. I chose to read magazines, books and financial statements of potential investment companies on Sundays and any other free time I had during the week. So why am I presently broke and spoiled, because of business failures. And to my mind just as important because of lifestyle choices I made after I had made money. Lifestyle choices which helped me to squander my money.

I know some of the choices I made after I was wealthy caused some of my present pain, but the majority of this pain was a result of a business failure. I made very good decisions for many years in order to get wealthy. My current personal financial plan is to go back to the basics and walk my talk by making the sacrifices needed to achieve my goals. If you too are looking to create wealth I suggest you look seriously at making THE sacrifice on a daily basis to do the right things and choose to sacrifice whatever it is which is holding you back from becoming wealthy.

To your health, wealth and happiness




The information contained in this site consist of a series of articles and are the sole opinion of the Baron Von Savings. The Baron is not a professional money manager, tax expert, accountant, attorney, or stock broker. You should consult with an appropriate professional before making decisions concerning your finances.

1 comment:

  1. I appreciate all of the information that you have shared. Thank you for the hard work!
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