Wealth creation secret: Idea, Iteration, Improvement

While reading the book Innovation, by Curtis Carlson, a question popped in my head: why are most employees poor?

Even if you make a good salary and it increases steadily over the years, you might actually lose because your time is becoming more valuable (for example, you might get married, have kids, establish a family, etc.). So although the work is more or less the same as you progress in your career, once you have a family and children to take care of, the opportunity cost becomes much greater.

Not surprisingly, many people decline a promotion to higher management, since it involves more time AWAY from the family.

Yet, employees are incapable of quitting the corporate "rat race."

Carlson's book gave me a clue as to why employees are not getting richer. That is, they are not able to create enough customer value or wealth to be able to become independent from corporate employers.

For some reason, the minute an employee quits a job (or is fired), he/she becomes worthless. I don't mean worthless as a human being -- because every person has infinite worth -- but worthless in the sense of "not being able to independently create value."

Before I go further, let me mention that the sequence "idea, iteration, improvement" is a powerful innovation technique that has made many business people exceedingly rich.

Carlson talks about that sequence in more detail, but what it means is that first, you've got to have an idea of a product or service.

Next, you have to iterate, that is, create a physical manifestation of that idea. That manifestation should then be placed IN THE HANDS of a customer.

Finally, by observing how the customer reacts to that prototype product or service, you can engage in a process of continuous improvement.

Now back to the predicament of employees, who are unable to independently create value.

Why can't they create more value and wealth, in order to break free from the corporate employment system?

The reason is that they are not taught the innovation process I just described above (idea, iteration, improvement).

Most people cannot define innovation, and even among people who have an idea of what innovation is, they don't have a system for consistently producing new product or service ideas.

Note: Google has such a system. They encourage employees to spend 20% of their time working on personal projects they enjoy and find interesting. Wow, what an innovative culture!

Innovation (that is, generating ideas, formulating and creating physical iterations, and continuously/systematically improving the new products or services) is the KEY to getting richer.

Innovation is the key to prosperity whether you are an employee, a free agent or an entrepreneur.

However, each phase (idea, iteration, improvement) requires a lot of knowledge and the mastery of the relevant techniques or work methods.

Powerful book on innovation

I highly recommend the book Innovation, by Curtis Carlson, which provides a powerful framework for creating customer value. Required reading, I think, for anyone who wants to better serve their employer or clients and, in the process, ensure their own financial well-being.

Goeffrey Moore, author of Dealing with Darwin: How Great Companies Innovate at Every Phase of Their Evolution, says:

"... they lay out a thoughtful, practical methodology for managing innovation projects through to successful outcomes. Sure, in that one percent inspiration there may be the occasional moment of mystery, but for those of us operating in the ninety-nine percent perspiration part of the field, it’s terrific to finally get a great user’s manual.”

I've been a long-time disciple -- since the early 90s -- of Edward de Bono's techniques, but I think this book provides the structured business framework that is missing in Dr. de Bono's work (some 60 books).

I highly recommend this book because I find that today, there is a lot of charlatans appearing on TV and elsewhere, promising financial freedom and get-rich schemes that are unfounded, undemonstrated and, from a rational point of view, absolutely ridiculous.

Carlson's book, on the other hand, spells out clearly what a person can do to create customer value and, as an inevitable result, begin to increase his/her income.

The process is not easy, and it will take some time to master. But it will be an enjoyable journey for those who are seriously interested in fully tapping their brainpower to fulfill a real, important customer need out there. These serious, hard-working and diligent people will find that as a matter of natural justice, the more they master and apply innovation techniques, the more dramatically their own bank account will grow.

Success secrets on YouTube

I thought I'd share with you a presentation I created on YouTube HERE.

How millionaires think

Just wanted to share with you a mind map I created a while ago, on how millionaires think. Find it HERE.

Self-control precedes financial control

The excellent article HERE reinforces what I often tell workshop participants, that there are two kinds of people.

The first kind invests in themselves. They continually learn, read, try new stuff, and stick to it until they succeed. They invest in self-development.

The second kind invests in "how they look." They invest their hard-earned money into appearances (clothes, cars, furniture, etc.) so that they look good to friends and strangers. They haven't spent time nor money into developing their talent, so to hide this fact, they buy material things that, hopefully, will "convince" other people that they "made it" and are successful. This second group of people, often deceived by marketing messages that emphasize lifestyle and image over substance, invest in self-delusion.

Whether a person chooses to invest his/her money into self-development or self-delusion, is nobody's business, of course. We all have the right to spend our money the way we want to.

However, we can choose any action we want, but we cannot choose the consequences of any action we take.

In the end, society is very much a mental game: it is YOUR mind against the (highly trained and often brilliant) minds of marketers and salespeople out there.

If you lose that mental battle, and often, people do lose on a daily basis, then you lose the financial battle and won't likely become financially free in this life.

However, people who resist the urge to consume more and more, and who consciously decide to invest in themselves (books, training, coaching, courses, seminars, etc.) always end up in a strong financial position and fully in control of their lives.

A best-seller is a bet-seller

Every best-seller, no matter how good the book or the author is, is just a bet-seller.

In other words, a non-fiction book is basically trying to sell you a bet. It's trying to convince you that the idea it contains will make you rich or happy or powerful, etc. IF you "invest" your money and your time into that idea.

It's very much like gambling. Except that in normal Las Vegas-style gambling, the odds are the same no matter who the gambler is.

In the case of a book, the odds of success depends on the prior knowledge of the reader, her experience, her discipline, her ability to adopt the idea and adapt it to her own situation, etc.

This is why I believe that reading a book will not make an impact in your life unless and until you have thought SO MUCH about the book's ideas, that you completely master what the author is trying to say.

That's the difference between knowledge and understanding. After reading a book like Rich Dad Poor Dad, you might have knowledge that other people do not have. But it only becomes understanding if and only if you have used the knowledge in real-life situations.

So the saying "knowledge is power" is not exactly accurate. It is one's understanding which gives one power.

One good way to test your understanding is to try to "teach" your knowledge to someone else.

The more you increase your understanding of a best-selling book, the greater the odds that you will apply its knowledge correctly in order to make a difference in your life.

A best-seller is a bet-seller

Every best-seller, no matter how good the book or the author is, is just a bet-seller.

In other words, a non-fiction book is basically trying to sell you a bet. It's trying to convince you that the idea it contains will make you rich or happy or powerful, etc. IF you "invest" your money and your time into that idea.

It's very much like gambling. Except that in normal Las Vegas-style gambling, the odds are the same no matter who the gambler is.

In the case of a book, the odds of success depends on the prior knowledge of the reader, her experience, her discipline, her ability to adopt the idea and adapt it to her own situation, etc.

This is why I believe that reading a book will not make an impact in your life unless and until you have thought SO MUCH about the book's ideas, that you completely master what the author is trying to say.

That's the difference between knowledge and understanding. After reading a book like Rich Dad Poor Dad, you might have knowledge that other people do not have. But it only becomes understanding if and only if you have used the knowledge in real-life situations.

So the saying "knowledge is power" is not exactly accurate. It is one's understanding which gives one power.

One good way to test your understanding is to try to "teach" your knowledge to someone else.

The more you increase your understanding of a best-selling book, the greater the odds that you will apply its knowledge correctly in order to make a difference in your life.

A best-seller is a bet-seller

Every best-seller, no matter how good the book or the author is, is just a bet-seller.

In other words, a non-fiction book is basically trying to sell you a bet. It's trying to convince you that the idea it contains will make you rich or happy or powerful, etc. IF you "invest" your money and your time into that idea.

It's very much like gambling. Except that in normal Las Vegas-style gambling, the odds are the same no matter who the gambler is.

In the case of a book, the odds of success depends on the prior knowledge of the reader, her experience, her discipline, her ability to adopt the idea and adapt it to her own situation, etc.

This is why I believe that reading a book will not make an impact in your life unless and until you have thought SO MUCH about the book's ideas, that you completely master what the author is trying to say.

That's the difference between knowledge and understanding. After reading a book like Rich Dad Poor Dad, you might have knowledge that other people do not have. But it only becomes understanding if and only if you have used the knowledge in real-life situations.

So the saying "knowledge is power" is not exactly accurate. It is one's understanding which gives one power.

One good way to test your understanding is to try to "teach" your knowledge to someone else.

The more you increase your understanding of a best-selling book, the greater the odds that you will apply its knowledge correctly in order to make a difference in your life.

A best-seller is a bet-seller

Every best-seller, no matter how good the book or the author is, is just a bet-seller.

In other words, a non-fiction book is basically trying to sell you a bet. It's trying to convince you that the idea it contains will make you rich or happy or powerful, etc. IF you "invest" your money and your time into that idea.

It's very much like gambling. Except that in normal Las Vegas-style gambling, the odds are the same no matter who the gambler is.

In the case of a book, the odds of success depends on the prior knowledge of the reader, her experience, her discipline, her ability to adopt the idea and adapt it to her own situation, etc.

This is why I believe that reading a book will not make an impact in your life unless and until you have thought SO MUCH about the book's ideas, that you completely master what the author is trying to say.

That's the difference between knowledge and understanding. After reading a book like Rich Dad Poor Dad, you might have knowledge that other people do not have. But it only becomes understanding if and only if you have used the knowledge in real-life situations.

So the saying "knowledge is power" is not exactly accurate. It is one's understanding which gives one power.

One good way to test your understanding is to try to "teach" your knowledge to someone else.

The more you increase your understanding of a best-selling book, the greater the odds that you will apply its knowledge correctly in order to make a difference in your life.

Kiyosaki's master ideas

I've read all of Kiyosaki's books (often, more than once!). Here's a video that presents succinctly his ideas: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hp2o8Vnd9HM

Do you choose the past or the future?

One of the main weaknesses of mankind is the average man's familiarity with the word 'impossible.' - Napoleon Hill

---

Before I turned 18 -- that is, before I became an adult in the legal sense --, I had already had 4 standing ovations. Two for academic excellence, and two for winning two literary awards (in 1986 and 1987).

I'm not mentioning this to brag because I know quite well I have severe deficiencies that came as a natural result of focusing too much on academics.

I'm mentioning this because strangely enough, I don't have the same conception of "impossible" that most people have.

So what happens is that in my life, I've tried things or pursued challenges that most people usually consider as "patently impossible." They probably secretly think I'm crazy!

People often say I'm an idealist, and unfortunately, they don't mean it as a compliment!

It is only recently that I discovered something that had eluded me all these years. I was reading a biography of John F. Kennedy, and the author described him as "an idealist without illusions."

I thought to myself, "What a powerful combination of words! This is the success secret I've been searching for!"

You see, I was an idealist WITH illusions. (Note: partly as a result of this realization, I slowly developed the framework for the BMW workshop to help first-time entrepreneurs FACE the reality of their performance --- details at www.businessmodelworkout.blogspot.com).

You might consider in which category you fall into:

1. You are an idealist WITH illusions (about yourself, society, the world, etc.)
2. You are a realist who has no illusions, but you have no ideal (something perfect and beautiful that you strive to attain or achieve)
3. You are an idealist without illusions (you have a clear vision of what you want in life ultimately, AND you have no illusions about the obstacles, fears, resistance, etc. that you have to face and overcome in order to realize your vision)

While thinking about all this, I suddenly remembered something that a Texan billionaire once said: "To achieve success, you have to clearly answer two questions: What exactly is it that you want? And are you willing to pay the price to get it?"

The first question, of course, refers to your vision of the ideal life. The second question has to do with your willingness to face reality, so that you can slowly get rid of all your illusions.

Indeed, I think the "price" to pay is not necessarily time or money. It is, rather, a chunk of yourself, a part of your biographical history.

If you are like most people, you are emotionally attached to your past. But I think we all come to a point where we have to choose either the past or the future.

People who choose the past over the future, will tend to repeat what they've always done before. As the saying goes, "Better the devil we know than the one we don't."

People who choose the future -- and there are very few of those people -- have made the courageous decision to let go of their past. They still respect their past, but they've learned the lessons they needed to learn, and have moved on. They are also moving toward an ideal future they have envisioned in their mind and heart, while being fully aware of their strengths, weaknesses and the obstacles to overcome on the way there.

How can friends and family help you achieve financial freedom?

Statistically speaking, very few people have the courage to start their own business. This means that your friends and family will most likely not understand why you would go into business, when getting a job is so much easier.

This is a problem encountered by many first-time entrepreneurs, and it's easy to get angry sometimes and resent friends and relatives.

This is one of the reasons I created the BMW workshop (www.businessmodelworkout.blogspot.com), which helps people to rationalize their business model and test it. As a result, they can show friends and relatives their key numbers and, hopefully, get more support from them.

If you're lucky, you might have highly supportive relatives who encourage you and support you. However, they might not be able to help you business-wise, since they may not have the business training or experience.

This is okay. In fact, it may even be an opportunity for you to share your newly gained knowledge about business and entrepreneurship with them.

From my research and experience as a coach to first-time entrepreneurs, I'm beginning to believe that business knowledge will become increasingly valuable in the new economy. Whether a person chooses to make a living as an employee, a free agent or an entrepreneur, business knowledge will be an important success factor.

So by sharing your increasing business knowledge with friends and family, you not only enrich them intellectually and perhaps economically (if they decide one day to launch a business), but you also enable them to provide you with valuable feedback based on sound business knowledge. Everybody wins!

The Dad who made me rich vs the Dad who made me poor

1;23

Robert Kiyosaki's best-seller Rich Dad Poor Dad could just as well have been titled The Dad who enriched me vs the Dad who impoverished me.

Of course, that title is a bit offensive and has an accusative tone. However, the reality and the truth is the same: one Dad enlightened Kiyosaki financially, opening his intellectual horizons and thereby helping him achieve financial freedom, while the other Dad failed to teach him the valuable financial principles that would set him free as a human being living in society.

To put it more starkly, one Dad failed to teach him how to fight for his freedom, and if it wasn't for his other Dad, who taught him how to think big and strategically and to behave in a financially responsible manner, Kiyosaki would have remained an "economic prisoner" for the rest of his life. He might not even have met his wife Kim, who decided at age 14 to realize her own financial freedom.

I know some readers might react strongly to this posting. This is because we tend to think that our parents, our relatives and our friends have our interests at heart. But the truth is, they cannot help you if they cannot help themselves. If they are NOT on their way to financial freedom, the best they can do is try to comfort you as you struggle in the corporate rat race. Typical advice will sound like this: "Don't work so hard, take some vacation. Start a new hobby. Meet new people."

This is why I say that sometimes, the most dangerous people in your life might be your parents, your siblings and your friends. If their thinking is wrong, you will inevitably adopt the wrong thinking and it WILL jeopardize all your efforts to achieve financial freedom.

I say "dangerous" in the sense that if you do not explicitly examine the thinking and assumptions of your parents, relatives and friends, you might unconsciously adopt their thinking habits and fall into the trap that has been set all along by capitalists, who only want obedient, stable and docile employees.

I say "dangerous" in the sense that they may rob you of a fortune, of an incredible life where you can do anything you want, because you no longer have to worry about money.

Your friends and family may be hurting your bank account

How would you feel if you realized, one day, that a friend of yours or a relative of yours stole millions of dollars from you?

You would get mad, of course. You would be angry and upset, and would curse the friendship or the familial tie that caused you to lose a fortune.

The truth, of course, is that friends and family have caused so many people to lose a fortune, but equally true is the fact that most people, who have been "cheated" of their fortune and financial freedom have NEVER realized this fact.

The point of this posting is not to turn you against your friends or family: they care about you and have your best interests at heart. However, this doesn't change the fact that their very thinking, if they are employees who are just working for a paycheck, is corrupting your thinking.

Their thinking is clouding your thinking, and as a result, you are content to do like the masses of people: get up early every day, go to work to enrich an anonymous shareholder or business owner, then go back home to watch mediocre TV shows, and finally get into your pajamas for some rest before you repeat this infernal cycle till the end of your life.

Once again, my point is not to turn you against your family and friends. It's just that they have not been educated economically, don't know about business, and thus will constantly encourage you to "get a job," and then work hard to save money, enjoy some vacation, etc. Basically, they are saying that you are not unique enough or special enough or intelligent enough to own your own business.

As for me, I'm telling people quite the opposite: if you have a brain, you deserve to have a business. If you have a business, you should have at least one million dollars in your bank account.

Employees, on the other hand, are not really encouraged to use their brain. Even if they were encouraged to use their brain to create more customer value or more shareholder value, why would they do it? Their salary remains the same, so what is the incentive?

Here's a solid finding from entrepreneurship research done in Canada: people knew an entrepreneur in their circle of acquaintances are twice as likely to launch their own business.

So until you find an entrepreneur with whom you can talk about financial freedom, try to not hang around so much with people who only live from paycheck to paycheck, or people who only seek security in life without taking any risk.

Like author Tim Sanders says in his book Love is the killer app, these people may be funny, but they are not money.

If financial freedom is something you seriously pursue, then it is a good idea to seriously seek people who are financially literate and who know about business. Business people are natural investors and natural producers: they don't blindly consume either their time or their resources. They always think strategically. Every minute counts. They don't waste their time, and they certainly won't waste yours.

How to make money from Payloadz

2:11

Here's something you might not know about how to make money from Payloadz: Sell a PDF document cheaply while offering a free phone consulting session.

Indeed, it is difficult to sell a PDF document as a standalone product, unless you're a great writer and your content is original. Most likely, the case is neither. Therefore, people will not want to pay for information when SO MUCH information is available for free on the Internet.

What people will pay for is "information + instruction." The phone consulting session takes care of the instruction part, where you apply the information to the client's specific situation or just answer questions she may have.

This is great for you as a digital goods seller also because you get to connect to the client, and can therefore sell to him more stuff in the future.

The idea of selling information + instruction is not mine, I got it from Perry Barlow and Esther Dyson. They say that it is the application of knowledge and information that creates value, NOT information or knowledge per se.

I think they're totally right. Especially with Internet telephony (Skype, etc.), it becomes easier than ever to connect with anyone in any country, and offer them the opportunity to learn from you.

It is just a matter of time before Payloadz develops a telephony service, like eBay, where buyers can connect in real-time and voice-to-voice with sellers.

The more you give, the more you will receive

This is hard to believe, and I'm not smart enough to know exactly how it works, but let me assure you that this Cosmic Rule really, really works: "The more you give, the more you will receive."

I remember the beginning of 2005, my sister Zoonie and I launched Share & Learn, a knowledge-sharing company. In our business plan, we wrote that the strategy was to give, give, give, give, give, give, give, give, give, give, give, give, give, give, give, give, give, give, give, give, give, give, give, give, give, give, give, give, give, give, give, give, give, give, give, give, give, give, give, give, give, give, give, give, give, give, give, give, give, give, give, give, give, give, give, give, give, give, give, give, give, give, give, give, give, give, give, give, give, give, give, give, give, give, give, give, give, give, give, give, give, give, give, give, give, give, give, give, give, give, give, give, give everything we got to people.

Then, after a few workshops, we "stumbled" across a major innovation: the Ideal Career workshop, which to me seems like it came to us straight from Heaven.

Next, a few months later, another innovation "fell from Heaven": the BMW workshop (www.businessmodelworkout.blogspot.com).

I wish I could tell you that I had a smart innovation process that enabled me to create the BMW workshop, but in fact, it was one coincidence after another, which led to the creation of that powerful workshop.

Here's the most "rational" explanation I can come up with: in our heart of hearts, Zoonie and I ruly and sincerely wanted to help people and do everything we could, and in the course of expressing that magical intent, we somehow opened in ourselves a source through which cosmic energy and imagination poured themselves into our consciousness.

In short, the more you give, the more you will receive.

Same story with my idea of starting this blog. So far, I've written over 450 postings and so many people have written to thank me. One gentleman kindly mentioned he went on vacation and spent the first three days reading all my postings (which he had printed out and neatly packaged into a bound booklet).

All I wanted to do was share the knowledge I've gained from reading books. Yet, I've gained SO MUCH from writing this blog! So many ideas came to my mind mysteriously, out of nowhere!

I think that when we decide to help other human beings, somehow, maybe God sees our good intention and so, to encourage us, He sends us gifts from Heaven: ideas, encounters, coincidences, etc. Well, I'm still hoping God would send me a winning lottery ticket! :-P

After all, if you were a parent and you saw your child do something out of his/her good heart, wouldn't you want to give him/her a reward?

In the end, I think that perhaps the greatest success secret is this: Love is the ultimate and infinite force in the universe. When we unleash it by giving stuff to other people, to help them or improve their lives, then Love begins to work for us.

Maybe this is what author Wayne Dyer meant when he wrote: "Wealth is not something we acquire, but something we tune into."

Technoleverage

Here's the list of free applications (from the Web) that I recommend to my clients in the Technoleverage 101 seminar.

1. Freemind (mind mapping software)
2. Blogger
3. Talkittypeit
4. Odeo
5. Geocities (part of Yahoo)
6. Flickr (part of Yahoo)
7. Audacity
8. YouTube
9. DropLoad
10. w.bloggar
11. ABChat
12. Linkedin
13. Yahoo
14. Gmail
15. Myway
16. Vidshot
17. Screenshot
18. Tracksy
19. Openoffice.org
20. Feedblitz
21. Gliffy
22. Writely
23. NumSum
24. Payloadz
25. Paypal

Technoleverage, that is, using technologies strategically to achieve the results you want, is not a new idea. Back in the mid 90s, IBM CEO Lou Gertsner was saying that "leadership in the industry is not about the creation of new technology, but the application of new technology."

Note: I had a hell of a good time working at IBM in 1995, when Big Blue did the spectacular turnaround from a company with annual losses of $8.1 billion to annual gains, one year later, of $3 billion.

All the above applications are freely available from the Web, except for TalkItTypeIt, which is a speech dictation software (you just speak into a microphone and the software types every single word you say into a Word document or any application you are using).

I'll write in more detail about these apps in future postings.

Path to financial freedom

I created a draft map showing the path to financial freedom HERE.