Trust and rely on what people are ALREADY doing and enjoying

There's one thing I learned from being in business all these years, and that's to trust and rely on what people are ALREADY doing, NOT on what I want them to do or on the new behavior I would like them to adopt.

In marketing, it's called "trend capitalization" in that you try to see the major changes occuring in society, culture, technology, etc. and then try to capitalize on those systemic changes.

In other words, when it comes to capturing markets, it is better to "ride the horse in the direction it's already going." It's much easier to make money that way, and it's less inconvenient for customers since they don't have to change their habits or behavior.

Royal Bank of Canada, for instance, has over 100 banking specialists and investment advisors who actually go to people's homes to explain and offer their services. Don't have time to go to the bank? No problem, we'll come to you!

Another example is Linkedin and Yahoo! Answers. There are tons and tons of people who ask questions on those sites. Thousands of people!

They become leads (potential clients) for me, and I offer them various products and services. Indeed, why try to influence people who are NOT looking for answers and solutions? Why not go to online discussion forums where people ARE seeking answers and solutions, and then make them an offer?

The Invisible Stairway to Wealth

... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... Buy a private island
... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... Franchise your business system
... ... ... ... ... ... ... Convince investors to invest in your business
... ... ... ... ... ... Execute the business plan and refine it
... ... ... ... ... Create a business plan
... ... ... ... Create one product or service, sell it to several customers
... ... ... Learn creativity techniques (Edward de Bono's, etc.)
... ... Learn and master basic business concepts (marketing, sales, etc.)
... Write down clear goals, practice achieving those goals
Develop self-discipline, work ethic, perseverance

Do you want to become ultra-rich? Financially free?

Well, this is your lucky day. I was inspired so I created the above "invisible stairway to wealth."

I call it "invisible" because most people, even university-educated folks, do not see it.

It's not easy to see, because you can only see it with your mind's eye. And your mind's eye has to be trained properly to be able to see that invisible stairway.

Yet, there IS a stairway that leads to wealth and financial freedom and everything you've always dreamed of having and being in this life!

"Stairway" means it's a step by step method for getting to the top. It's a systematic approach to building wealth for yourself and loved ones.

You can climb up the stairs as fast as you want, but you CANNOT skip a step.

You see, this is where most people make a mistake: they try to look for shortcuts.

For instance, they neglect their business education, or they neglect to develop creativity techniques, or they fail to write down their goals.

They think that some magical system, on the Internet or developed by a company or best-selling author, will save them from having to do the hard work of studying business, developing their creativity, setting and achieving goals and developing self-discipline.

Such people dream in technicolor. They are still childish in thought for they refuse to face their own reality and shortcomings and knowledge gaps.

On the other hand, I know people who have gone systematically through the stairway to wealth and have reached the top. Just by talking to them, I immediately get the feeling that their minds are extremely sharp and that their superbly refined intellect leaves nothing to chance.

Of course, they did not get to be such smart and rich people by watching TV or spending their time mindlessly without considering the return on each minute spent every single day. Every minute counts for them, and they extract maximum value and productivity from every 60 seconds they have.

Their mind operates with the precision of Swiss clockwork. They got to be that way through years and years of exercising self-control every day, until they achieved self-mastery and are able to command with great confidence their mental faculties and put them to work for them to create value and wealth.

If you have met such exceptional people, you are lucky. If not, it's possible for you to become one of them by studying the above stairway to wealth so you fully understand the systematic (yet secret) mechanism behind every great success.

Quality of life depends on quality of information

Your life cannot be better than the information you're getting on a regular basis.

The information you're getting daily comes from friends, TV news, magazines, books (non-fiction), etc.

Quality of information is important and even critical to effective decision-making, which is why the multimillionaire financier Gordon Gekko says, upon meeting the eager up-and-coming Bud Fox: "Nice to meet you, hope you're intelligent."

But how can we evaluate the quality of the information we're getting from various sources?

One way is to categorize the agenda of the information source. It can be:

- Positive
- Negative
- Neutral

Someone with a positive agenda is a person who truly, genuinely cares about your success in life as well as your happiness. Your parents, for instance.

Someone with a negative agenda is a person who truly, genuinely cares about THEIR own interest and success, so they will try to convince you to do something you normally would not do (such as spending money on products or services you don't really need).

Someone with a neutral agenda doesn't care either way, he/she just wants to convey the facts. Scientists and researchers, for example. Of course, if their research is sponsored by a multinational, then you have to be careful about the bias since the researcher will only present evidence or findings that are approved by the corporate sponsor.

Most people might assume that their friends or siblings have a positive agenda, but it might not be the case at all. Jealousy, envy, the drive to impose one's values and lifestyle, etc. will turn some folks into narrow-minded people who will try, often with great subtlety and skill, to influence you to do things you really do not want to do.

Many people also mistakenly believe that the news they're getting from TV networks and newspapers is "good information."

However, to qualify as good information, it must be factual AND relevant. The news about the war in IRAQ, or anything else happening that might be sensationalistic, may be factual, but they are rarely RELEVANT to your goals in life.

In the end, I agree totally with Tim Sanders, former Chief Solutions Officer at Yahoo!, when he wrote in his book Love is the killer app, that the only reliable source of information is books.

Of course, not all books are of the same quality. But the foundational ones written by Edward de Bono (creativity), Peter Drucker (management), Michael Porter (strategy), etc. are worth reading and rereading.

The whole point of capitalism is to help you to WIN

Someone asked a question on Linkedin about the new economy, and I felt compelled to submit my opinion on the key challenge for working people. The question appears below my answer.

ANSWER

I think that no matter what new worlds are opened up by technology or globalization or new ways of working adopted by a critical mass of people, the essential question for one's career and financial success is not:

Where we work
With whom we work
When we work
etc.

But "Are we capable, using the new technologies, opportunities, ways of working, etc. to build capital?"

If people still think like "employees" who put in the time to get cash in return, then they will remain "losers" in the capitalistic system, which rewards capital design and concentration.

I don't mean "losers" in any offensive sense, because I know people are working hard. But the point of capitalism is to get to capital as fast as possible, and then let capital work for you.

Therefore, I submit that the key challenge for working people is to find out how to stop being "working people," and become capital designers and accumulators.

Hernando de Soto (The Mystery of Capital), James Davidson (the Sovereign Individual), Edward de Bono, Ferriss (the four hour work week), Robert Kiyosaki (Rich Dad Poor Dad), etc. are authors who have been empowering me to think like a capitalist, and not like an employee.

QUESTION

How small is our world, really?

I can't recall a time when globalisation and the "shrinking" of the world wasn't a popular subject for pundits of the appropriate persuasion. They all sounded wise (and still do) and each time I saw an example of the genre I nodded over my breakfast cereal in tacit agreement while contemplating what the rush hour traffic to my decidely local office would be like that morning.

The thing is, time has marched on, and the pundits where obviously right - the world has gotten progressively smaller. Increasingly the work in which I'm involved has come to have more and more global players and most of my conference calls now seem to need to be scheduled to work around multiple time zones.

That said, when I look for a new job I still expect to travel to a local office with perhaps the odd work from home day with most of my activities focusing on my own timezone or one or two to either side.

So my question is, when each of us go looking for the next job should we continue to look to the local help wanted ads giving special attention to those offering their own parking spaces or has the world shrunk to a point that each of us can now realistically turn that spare bedroom into a home office, become noctural and apply for jobs that would have us working as virtual team members with people we never see and who, all to frequently, speak our language as a distant second?

It strikes me that we're on the cusp of something interesting here and I'm really interested to hear about other peoples experiences and thoughts. How small is our world really?

The answer is: POWER

Someone interestingly posted the above "question" on Linkedin Answers, challenging people to come up with a creative question that would lead to that answer.

My question is:

What is the one thing that's key to the great life and that everybody is looking for, consciously or subconsciously, while being driven, deceived or manipulated to look for it in the wrong places or to believe they will never get it, by people who already have it?

Power, indeed, is the very currency of the elite.

The secret of power, in fact, is to keep power secret.

The most infinite and fungible source of power is knowledge (the other two sources being brute force and money or capital).

To gain knowledge, especially the secret kind, you need to either read a lot of books (and totally master their content -- for example, if you can teach the content of a book, you probably master it) or connect with a lot of smart people to learn from.

Take Roger Federer, for instance. He dominates the game of tennis like mad. Yet, he doesn't stop there. He forges friendships with champions in other sports too, in order to access secrets of the best in the world (like Tiger Woods).

Fear is the greatest enemy in life

Whatever you're trying to achieve in life, fear will probably be your single greatest enemy or obstacle.

As I explained to a Linkedin user below, fear should be seen as "an army of mini-fears." The key is to select the easiest fears to defeat, so as to build self-confidence and momentum, eventually allowing you to overcome bigger fears.

Fear is not necessarily bad (unless you find yourself in front of a tiger that just came out of a bush and hasn't eaten in three days!).

Fear is simply an indication that you are on the edge of your comfort zone, and therefore have the unique opportunity to grow (if you decide to fight your ground) or shrink (if you choose to avoid battle and retreat).

So fear is rarely the problem. It's how you react to fear. Will you choose "fight" or "flight"?

This is why preparation and training are so critical to success. If you are well trained and have practiced a great deal, then you won't fear much. Knowledge is like a weapon. You use it to fight against fear. But if you don't have knowledge in your head (because you haven't read many books or haven't gone to seminars and workshops), then you can't use knowledge as a weapon to defend yourself against fears. Flight, then, would be the only option.

===

Question: Is fear popular?

Great question! Fear is the mind-killer, as Muad Ib says in the novel Dune.

To me, fear is just the absence of thought or knowledge. Marie Curie said it best: “Nothing in life is to be feared, it is only to be understood. Now is the time to understand more, so that we may fear less.”

Einstein also said something similar: "The most incomprehensible thing about the world is that it is comprehensible." I teach and coach entrepreneurs, and one thing I often notice is their fear. They take it to be an emotional obstacle when in fact, it is simply an intellectual challenge. The presence of fear is simply the absence of knowledge.

Fear is like a huge dragon. It will not bother to attack any person directly, instead it will send little mini-fears. So the trick, I think, is for humans to face the little fears and overcome them, one by one, and then move on to bigger fears. An army of fears CAN be defeated, but it would be suicidal to go against one's biggest fear.

Rather, a strategic sequence of carefully selecting which fears to face and overcome first, will lead to increasing self-confidence, therefore increasing self-empowerment, so that one can eventually face bigger fears.

Seek principles and frameworks in books

A smart blogger wrote:

"It is my practice, when reading a business book, to ask, “what would be left of this book if I took all the anecdotes out?” The answer is an assessment of the conceptual framework and model of the book. For this book, the answer is “nothing.”

He was reviewing the business book Blue Ocean, but his strategy can in fact be applied to evaluating ANY source of information.

I've been using his strategy unconsciously in the past few years, as I've speed read hundreds of non-fiction books. Indeed, I've been ferociously looking for robust and practical frameworks in books (as opposed to anecdotes, stories, examples, facts, statistics, etc.).

Frameworks tend to reveal important principles. And principles, as Aristotle wrote, are much more important than tools or techniques or tactics, since with the mastery of principles, you can create your own tools, techniques or tactics. But without mastering principles, you are forever at the mercy of people selling tools, techniques and tactics.

Some of the authors who do provide strong, robust and practical frameworks are:

1. Peter Senge (The Fifth Discipline)
2. Edwards Deming
3. Edward de Bono
4. Shoshana Zuboff
5. Brian Tracy
6. Anthony Robbins (especially in Awaken the Giant Within)
7. Tom Peters (he provides insights into mega-trends in today's economy)
8. Thomas Friedman (The World is Flat)
9. James Martin (the Cybercorp Revolution)

Note: the blogger mentioned above writes here: www.ribbonfarm.com

Wealth comes from exposition, not position

A position is a job. You make money by doing something.

An exposition, on the other hand, is a capability. You make money by teaching something.

Here are some definitions of "exposition":

A large-scale public exhibition or show, as of art or manufactured products: an exposition of 19th-century paintings; an automobile exposition.

The act of expounding, setting forth, or explaining: the exposition of a point of view.

Writing or speech primarily intended to convey information or to explain.

www.mayitpleasethecourt.com and www.stevepavlina.com are examples of (highly profitable) expositions.

My point is that sooner or later, people who are serious about creating wealth for themselves will have to learn to use the Internet to "expose" themselves. I don't mean indecent exposure, but the decent exposure of your professional reasoning and the output from that reasoning.

Facebook, Linkedin, and all the other social networking sites are good, but at one point, people will ask themselves: "Why am I connected to you? What valuable knowledge are you sharing with me?"

People may be too polite to say so bluntly, but they are too smart not to ask that question.

Oscal Wilde once said: "I value my friends for their good looks, and my enemies for their intelligence."

In fact, as human beings, we usually value friends because we feel "safe" with them. There is a certain trust, meaning that we know with a certain level of confidence that our friends will not hurt us.

However, this does not mean friends will profit us. There is a big difference between mutual trust and mutual benefit.

My dentist may be beneficial to me, but I might not consider him a friend.

In other words, one should keep one's friends, but also proactively seek new allies. A network of allies can help you reach your goals faster and sooner.

Alliances, unlike friendships, can be built much faster. It all depends on how transparent you are about your goals, your needs, and your ability to be useful (tactically or strategically) to your allies.

This is why an exposition mindset is so crucial to success in the Internet economy. You've got to be able to explain clearly and rationally what it is that you know, and how it can be put to profitable use by your allies.

People who just focus on doing their job every day (that is, they focus on position) without investing in learning about exposition (explaining what they do and what they know, via a blog or podcast or any kind of publicly accessible writing) are making a strategic mistake, because without exposition, you cannot easily multiply alliances.

Without alliances, you are competing alone against other people who have powerful alliances around them to support their growth and to help them achieve their goals.

How valuable is your knowledge?

A friend alerted me to the existence of Ether.com. It's a good site to visit to better understand what is going on in today's economy.

Ether.com basically allows people to consult you on a topic you master. But before they can reach you by phone, they have to pay by credit card the rate that you ask for. For instance, you can charge people $15 to talk to you for 15 minutes.

My opinion is that people won't pay for knowledge, but they might pay for specific knowhow in order to achieve specific results. Indeed, the money won't lie in knowledge, but in knowing HOW to use knowledge.

Coaches have known this for a long time. Although they are not responsible for their clients' results, they often contribute more to achieving objectives than consultants (who often just write reports without being bothered or concerned with implementation details).

But let's get back to you.

Here's a blunt question to ask yourself: "Would anybody pay you $5 to talk to you for 60 minutes?"

The real question, of course, is: "What do you know that is so valuable that another person would pay you to get that knowledge?"

If your answer is "nothing", don't be depressed. Most people indeed don't have knowledge that another person would pay for. If they did, they would be writing books or they would have become consultants a long time ago.

And it's not exactly people's fault: we are educated and trained to be employees, that is, "doers." Not thinkers and certainly not consultants who are able to diagnose other people's problems and come up with relevant, feasible and affordable solutions.

However, if you want to become rich and happy in the new economy, you have to change your mindset from "doer" to "teacher".

The main reason is very simple: as long as you are paid to do something, then your earnings will ALWAYS be restricted to how much time you have every day.

But if you are paid to teach something, then you can use so many media platforms (Web, email, DVD, book, podcast, etc.) to transfer valuable knowledge to people.

Negotiate with society or you will lose

This video presentation (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4hVscA3W7gI) introduces the idea that every individual HAS sovereign power over his/her own life. Therefore, it is up to him/her to negotiate a good social contract with society (or the elite and ruling class).

The book The Sovereign Individual, by Davidson and Rees-Mogg, provides more details on the economically sovereign individual and the current transformation of our world into a sociopolitical context that favors the emergence of such individuals.

One key message I got from reading the book is that individuals can be incredibly empowered by technologies, the most powerful of which is the Internet.

However, technology is only a tool. Knowledge is the real power. Self-knowledge and knowledge of how things work in society (social psychology, business, economics, politics, etc.).

After a person has gathered the key knowledge, which are not taught in any one book or any one course, he/she then has enough power to negotiate confidently with society.

For example, having more knowledge gives you the ability to create more options, and then you can choose the best option. My career strategy, throughout the 90s, has always been to generate at least two job offers so I could choose the best one.

I will write more about negotiation techniques and tactics, but the point here is that without power, you can't negotiate effectively with society. You would have to take whatever is handed to you (by your boss, your employing organization, your peers, even your friends).

Power is the basis of freedom, but the way to power can only be through knowledge.

The elite and the ruling class knows and understands that knowledge (including ideas) is power. This is why Stalin, one of the more ruthless dictators of the 20th century, said: "We would not allow our enemies to have weapons. Why would we allow them to have ideas?" As a result, he created a ministry of information and a secret police that controlled what information people have access to.

Same thing in Latin American countries where a new dictator has risen to power. His first order is to send a death squad to universities in order to "revise" the history books and install a new curriculum, enabling them to control the minds of current and future generations.

In the West, we may think that we have democracy and freedom of thought. However, this may not be true.

In dictatorships, information is controlled and highly regimented. In our "democracy", it's the reverse: there is too much information, especially with the Internet and the proliferation of media platforms (cell phones, Blackberry, websites, podcasting, etc.). As a result, people do get the information but it's mostly information that has low value, is inaccurate, or grossly irrelevant to a person's goals (assuming people do have clear goals, which is actually not the case at all - about only one person in 20 has clear written goals.).

To learn more about how you can craft your own system for gathering high-value intelligence -- keeping in mind that intelligence is "actionable information" -- read the book The Intelligence Edge by George Friedman. It's usually available at university libraries. You can also buy a copy online.

My point is simply that to get the best out of life, you have to negotiate with society. To negotiate effectively, you have to be in a position of power. To be in a position of power, you must have knowledge. To have knowledge and continually increase it, you have to stop the incoming flow of low-value information into your life (from mass magazines, TV, Internet, etc.) and create new channels (like this blog) where valuable, strategic and insightful knowledge can come to you.

Audio bank of knowledge

In the previous post, I argued in favor of creating a "career knowledge bank" in order to rapidly and effortlessly grow one's marketable knowledge.

In fact, you can also create an "audio" bank of knowledge by using a sound editing software like Audacity (http://audacity.sourceforge.net)

Speaking into a microphone is often easier for people than writing a blog. Using Audacity, you can easily edit your recordings. For instance, you can insert a comment anywhere or delete any segment where you felt you did not share valuable knowledge. Or maybe there's a segment where you captured valuable knowledge, but the formulation could be improved for clarity.

In my case, I use both a foldable portable keyboard and Palm pilot, as well as an MP3 recorder to record my ideas and thoughts as I walk on the street or in a park. My MP3 recorder is as small as my index finger so I can carry it conveniently anywhere I go.

Blog as career knowledge base enabling compound growth

In the previous post, I mentioned the idea of a "career knowledge base."

This knowledge base -- that is, an explicit collection of one's career-related knowledge -- is important for the compounding effect to kick in.

In other words, if your career knowledge lies in your head, there won't be compounding growth. In fact, over time, you begin to lose knowledge because human memory cannot be as good or as precise as a computer file, a blog or a printed document.

One major reason for the compounding growth of your knowledge, IF you document it in the form of a blog for instance, is that it allows others -- potentially millions of people -- to browse and use your knowledge.

Then, through interactions and discussions with those readers, you can begin not only to grow your knowledge in quantity, but also in quality.

Because of this compounding effect, those who write a blog to capture their knowledge will increase their knowledge exponentially while those who do not maintain a blog will fall further and further behind in the career game.

This is an important point so let me repeat it in unequivocal terms: people who maintain a career blog will win exponentially, due to the compounding growth of their valuable knowledge, while those who do not maintain a blog will lose exponentially.

Take this blog, for instance. I have now 623 posts. This knowledge base allows me to effortlessly create more posts and more quickly too! How is that possible?

Well, this blog is like a knowledge bank account. Every day, for the last 2 years, I "deposited" a little amount of knowledge, and the compounding effect just kicked in. Just as in any savings bank account where the compound interest will yield more money faster as the amount of capital increases, any blog will yield more posts and insights as the knowledge base increases.

In plain English, it means that the more you write, the easier it will be to write. That is, the easier it will be to generate new knowledge which, in turn, increaeses your standing as a professional or expert in your field.

The most difficult step, of course, is to write your very first post. But the good news is, it gets easier and easier after that.

Ultimately, the success secret is that one must treat knowledge like as if it were money. This means capturing knowledge in the form of a "bank" (i.e. blog) so that others can use that money/knowledge.

Just as it makes sense to put your money in the bank so that others can borrow it and give you interest, it makes sense to share your knowledge via a blog so that you get a return on it.

The most unprofitable place to keep your knowledge is in your head, because then, not only can't people use your knowledge, but you will never know how good your knowledge is.

By sharing your knowledge, you can find out fairly easily from clients and employers WHICH knowledge is valuable to them so you can keep developing that kind of knowledge.

Wealth comes from compounding organization

The more you organize, the wealthier you will get.

After all, they say that "organized, even crime pays."

Of course, I'm not suggesting that you engage in crime! But I'm submitting that a mindset that focuses continually on organizing -- information, resources, connections, prospects, opportunities, etc. -- will help you to reach wealth faster, sooner and more reliably.

By the way, you will notice that few people become wealthy through a "career" for the simple reason that they don't have a way to organize their career information. The resume, deemed by most people to be a key career instrument, is in fact just a reflection of where your career has been.

Careerists who do become wealthy have developed the habit of proactively, consciously and continually organize their career information, whether it's through technical articles they write (to organize their marketable knowledge), connections they acquire (through Linkedin, for instance, or through going to meetings and association events) or new knowledge they absorb (through reading books and magazines).

By "compounding organization," I mean that the structures or processes that you use to organize your career information will tend to accelerate the rate at which you acquire and absorb new information and knowledge. In other words, you should set up your career knowledge base like a bank, so that a cerating compounding effect kicks in and allows you to increase, exponentially, the quantity of your knowledge.

Of course, to increase compoundingly the quality of your knowledge requires a mechanism or metaphor that's different from that of "compound interest." We will examine that aspect later.

Are you accumulating capital or misery?

Karl Marx wrote in Das Kapital that there are two kinds of people: the first kind accumulates capital, the second kind accumulates... misery.

He blames the capitalist or ruling class for imposing misery on workers, and it's possible he may have been right in the 19th century.

But today, talent is more mobile than ever. Workers cannot be said to be exploited by any one employer. They can easily resign and find another job.

However, they won't likely achieve financial freedom UNLESS they learn more about capitalism and the rules of the game.

If you want to know more about capitalism, I recommend a little book titled The Mystery of Capital, by Hernando de Soto. Former U.S. President Bill Clinton calls him the smartest economist alive.

As usual, about 5% of the subscribers of this blog will check out the book. Those are the people who will have an edge in all business competitions because they will have secret knowledge of what capitalism is all about.

Unfortunately, people who don't understand what capitalism is all about, will be forced to accumulate miseries their entire lives.

This is why I'm grateful for Marx's blunt categorization: you're either busy accumulating capital, or you're busy accumulating miseries. By miseries, I mean stress, lack of appreciation from the employer, inflexible working conditions, more responsibilities at work without additional resources or staff, more work without extra compensation, etc.

Note: Feel free to ask me questions about the book after you've read it.

Financial freedom warfare

Many authors offer the promise of "financial freedom", such as Robert Kiyosaki, Randy Gage, Donald Trump, etc. and certainly, their ideas are good. Their books are selling because people are desperate for financial freedom. Or rather, people want a way out of the rat race. They want freedom from "forced labour."

My approach is different. I offer ideas for achieving financial freedom, but also a rigorous, systematic method for achieving it. As a career and business coach, I'm responsible for helping clients achieve tangible results.

The first thing I tell clients who are seeking financial freedom is: "Expect to wage the biggest and most violent war in your life. The struggle toward financial freedom will totally transform you. If you do not feel you are being totally transformed by the process, then you are NOT really on the path to financial freedom."

There's no "duplicatable" system, there's no "the work has been done for you" kind of sweet talk, there's no promise of "you won't have to sell anything."

The truth is that to become financially free, you have to earn it. You have to wage battle upon battle to improve yourself. You have to face the truths that most people would rather ignore about their own strengths and weaknesses. (Yes, people do ignore their own strengths because they would rather avoid the responsibility of having to grow and develop them to worldclass levels).

The truth is that financial freedom is only for the elite. Sure, the masses will buy books and audiotapes and all kinds of "home study" instructional materials. But they simply won't have the willpower to go through the hard self-discipline to make it happen.

Success (in this case, financial freedom) is not a matter of how much you know or how much you've read or how many seminars you've attended. It's not even a matter of how smart you are. There are tons and tons of university-educated professionals who will toil away their entire lives to build someone else's fortune.

Rather, success is a matter of willpower.

And willpower is instantly palpable. I meet people and within a few minutes, I know the extent of their willpower.

Since reality obeys superior willpower, it is in your interest to ONLY network and work with people who have invincible willpower. They will bring you farther in life than the majority of people who, apparently, don't have enough willpower to put down their goals.

The ultimate test of willpower is to find out what the other person has already achieved in life. Nothing requires pristine and clear willpower than achievement.

Of course, if you hang around people who have lots of achievements, you might feel like a loser if you haven't achieved much. But don't think so. You have to be a loser before you can be a winner.

You can pick up a great many habits and high standards from high achievers, so try to network and work with them as much as you can.

This saying is appropriate: "If you want to learn how to become an eagle, you should not hang around with the ducks."

Society is very unintelligent. Beware!

Society -- both the social space we work and interact in, as well as mass institutions such as corporate employers, advertising and government agencies -- is either very unintelligent or very uninterested.

UNINTELLIGENT

Society (the social space) is very unintelligent because it doesn't contain knowledge. Most of what we see and hear, in the course of a normal day, consists of images, impressions, ads, TV commercials, etc. These messages are not only very unintelligent, but they contain misleading information as well.

UNINTERESTED

The other aspect of society (mass institutions such as corporate employers, government, mass advertisers, schools, etc.) might be intelligent as social systems, but they are largely uninterested in your personal goals or aspirations. In fact, you are treated not as a person but as a number or entity to be processed as efficiently as possible.

What about friends and family? Most of us would agree that they are interested in our success. I'm assuming here that your friends and family KNOW what your career goal is, or what your personal goals in life are. This assumption might not be true. You have to check it for yourself. Just ask friends or relatives if they know what your goals are.

Assuming that they DO know what you are trying to achieve, your friends and family might not be technically intelligent enough to help you attain your goals. By "technically intelligent," I mean they might not have the expertise or professional experience you need to realize your goals.

Maybe this is why there is growing popularity with coaches. CBS yesterday reported on this trend: people hire coaches for helping them to realize their goals. There are coaches in personal appearance and fashion; career coaches; business coaches; life coaches.

The thing about good coaches is that they are both interested in your success, and technically intelligent enough to help you.

My point is that whether it's through coaches, consultants, trainers, books, workshops, courses, etc. a person should proactively seek out as many sources of intelligence and knowledge as possible. Furthermore, he/she should realize, as explained above, that society is filled with non-intelligence, deception and outright lies.

As someone trained in marketing as well as journalism, I'm very acquainted with the techniques and tools that the elite uses to craft compelling stories or irresistible offers so as to hook people's attention or get them to spend.

Anyone who is serious about success and financial independence has to be very, very wary of all the messages coming from the cultural and news media. In fact, it is best to ignore them altogether.

Here's a quick test to see where you are on the success spectrum:

On the left end, we have a person who's consuming mass media (magazines, TV shows, newscasts, etc.); in the middle, we have a person who only reads non-fiction books; on the right end, we have a person who writes blogs (including podcasts) or books or articles.

The key to financial independence is to move slowly from left to right -- that is, from passive consumer to active producer.

Wealth only comes to those who create and produce. To be able to do this, you almost have to violently extract yourself from popular culture and from -- watch out, this might hurt -- friends or groups of people who have low standards or who don't believe in having goals in life.

If wealth comes to those who create and produce value, then what comes to people who consume? Debt.

A never-ending spiral of debt that forces those people to keep a job they hate, so they can pay for things they own but don't actually need.

Excuse me, I'm just literate

Mark Twain said that there's no difference between a literate person who doesn't read books and an illiterate person. It's so true.

Many of my (very good) friends say I'm very smart. I always kindly respond that they should repeat that at least once a week since it's excellent for my self-esteem.

But seriously, I'm not smarter than the average person. I'm just literate!

When I pick up a book (non-fiction), I'm very aware that the author has put his best thinking into writing the book. Sometimes, 5 or 10 years of professional research went into writing the book.

On top of that, many authors hire a ghost writer or editor to polish the text so that reading the book becomes a very pleasant experience.

Best of all, most of the powerful and knowledge-packed books can be found in any good library, meaning you get the benefit of a smart person's knowledge and research for FREE!

This is why I don't understand why people sit at home in front of the TV set to watch mediocre programming (except for PBS, of course).

Sure, in the old days when things were simple and one could rely on job security, watching TV was not so bad.

But today, things are very, very complex. Everything is accelerating very fast. People who don't read books to improve their skills and stay updated on trends and technologies, will soon find that they have fallen behind.

A career used to be simple: you graduate from college or university, you apply for a good job at a big corporation and work hard, and you could expect the employer to keep you at least for 20 years. Marriage was a simple matter of getting someone to say yes. Health was simply a matter of eating fruits and vegetables regularly (and don't forget your peas!). Raising kids was simply a matter of feeding and clothing them. Dating was also simpler.

Today, there's speed dating. I don't know what THAT is all about. How can I possibly convey who I am in five minutes? I went to a speed dating event last week and, just to be on the safe side, I brought along a crisp copy of my resume so that after five minutes, the girl can at least bring home an accurate description of who I really am and what I'm capable of doing in terms of providing satisfactory services.

I'm just kidding, I never went to such events. (Please!)

My point is that life today is so complex.

Some people might say, "There's too much information out there!" Yet that is NOT the real problem.

In other words, the problem is not that what you know is more and more a smaller and smaller proportion of all the available knowledge in society.

No, the real problem is that what you know stays the same while what you SHOULD know (in order to do a good job and manage your career and/or business properly) is increasing really, really fast.

I will write about some solutions to this problem later.

VoiceThread

Voicethread.com is a free service enabling you to create a series of photos and add your lovely voice as a comment to each picture.

I just tried it and it's fairly easy to use.

It's different from slidecasts at Slideshare.net in that you don't have to upload an entire PowerPoint presentation. Instead, you can batch upload a series of photos, and then use your voice to comment on each photo.

If you're an entrepreneur or a free agent, this is a good way to create a "voice-enabled" brochure. Voice adds a unique human element that text simply cannot convey, so this might complement your website or blog.