Sunday, December 30, 2007

The secret to financial freedom

"Entrepreneurship" is a big word that tends to either impress people or intimidate them. Depending on the attitude or the mood of a person on a given day, entrepreneurship can mean different things, such as "building a fortune" or "taking a lot of risk" or "creating a revolutionary product" and so forth.

The fact is, entrepreneurship is above all a choice. And the choice is very clear: choose freedom or choose non-freedom.

Obviously, everybody in their right mind would choose freedom. For instance, if a person -- any person -- were asked: "Would you choose a life where you could do anything Monday to Friday without having to answer to anyone (except the person you see in the mirror), or would you rather choose a life where you have to show up, five days a week, at a specific location and do what they tell you to do?"

The above two options are clearly stated and the right choice is rather obvious. Then why is it that the majority of people are working for somebody else? Why is it that the majority of mankind is forced, at least five days a week, to show up at the manufacturing plant or the office in order to work hard and enrich someone else?

The answer is a secret that nobody told you. It's a secret fully understood and thoroughly mastered by the elite for centuries, yet this secret is neither taught at any university nor explicitly explained in any book.

Here's the secret: Rich people choose JOY, poor people choose JOB.

Rich people choose to do what they "want" to do, not what they "have" to do or "should" do.

When you focus on doing what brings you joy, you naturally become a creator. When you focus on doing what you "have to do" or "should do," you naturally become a worker employed by someone else.

It is not this "someone else" who deprives you of your freedom; it is you who give up your freedom to seek joy and create!

Once you affirm your freedom and decide to seek joy, you will naturally become a creator of solutions. And you will own the solutions you create, so that you can sell them to thousands of people who will then reward you financially.

This is precisely how smart people become financially independent. They use the power of their mind and imagination to create new solutions that did not exist before.

People who give up their freedom and work for an employer do not achieve financial freedom, because they never create anything new. They are hired to execute routines and procedures developed by the business owners.

People who achieve financial freedom have succeeded in shifting their mindset from being a mere "human resource" (which is how employers treat them) to becoming "resourceful humans" capable of continually creating new value all the time.

This new value, in the form of a product or service, belongs to the creators according to human laws governing countries where democracy and capitalism are protected. For instance, the laws concerning copyright, trademarks, patents, intellectual property, etc. protect the financial security of creators.

In short, financial freedom is for those who decide to create a product. It is not for those who seek a job.

The choice is very simple: create and you will become rich, work and you will stay poor.

Once you've created a product that you legally own, you can sell it to thousands of people and make lots of money while creating a lot of happiness. Even better news: these customers will help you to constantly improve your product!

The alternative is to get a job, which you can never own and where you cannot create any new product. Even if you do create a new product within a corporate setting, all rights and royalties will belong to the employer forever.

Some people make the mistake of choosing a job and then staying with it until they are 65 years old. They do not realize that an employee is not in a position to create new solutions, for there is little freedom in any workplace and without freedom, creation is not possible.

Ultimately, all humans have a major choice to make: either we decide to control our lives by exercising our freedom to create, or we decide -- often unconsciously -- to give up our freedom and be controlled by others five days a week.