ANÁLISIS DEL DIAGRAMA DE PARETO ENERO 2004 – JULIO 2004

If you are a bricklayer, be the best bricklayer in town. If you are a smart bricklayer, get other people to lay the bricks for you in many towns.

Nancy was a young, single mother. She had gotten pregnant as a teenager and, at her mother’s insistence, married the child’s father only to have him leave her a few months later. She was intelligent and had planned on going to college after finishing high school, but something always got in the way of that dream.

Nancy was struggling to pay her rent. She was living on her own and had a full-time waitressing job. But every month it got harder to pay her bills. Desperate to avoid eviction, she made an appointment to talk with the manager of her apartment building.

Roxanne politely listened to Nancy’s hardship story, but was unmoved. She had managed apartments for over thirty-four years, and every story was the same:

someone couldn’t pay rent and wanted to make it the building owner’s problem.

“You’ve got to pay the rent or get out,” Roxanne stated.

The severity of the situation was too much for Nancy. The calm resolve that she displayed at the start of their meeting turned to panic as grim images of her future flashed through her mind. The thought of living on the streets and losing her daughter to the child protection authorities made her cry uncontrollably.

“I don’t have…” she started, but the words were lost in her sobs.

“I don’t have anywhere to go,” she finally managed.

Roxanne attempted to remain unsympathetic, but the genuine emotional pain of this young woman brought down her defenses. She reached for the box of tissue on her desk and handed it to Nancy.

“Look,” she began, “I don’t know what you are willing to do to make some extra money, but I need some part-time help cleaning vacant apartments. If you want the work, it’s yours. But if you screw up, I’m going to fire you and then evict you. If this works out, you can pay me the rent after you get your first check.”

Nancy agreed to take the job, and, within two weeks, she had enough money for rent. A few months passed, and she settled into a routine of working long hours at two jobs while still handling the responsibilities of raising her daughter on her own. She yearned for her free time on the weekends and dreaded Mondays.

She was making ends meet and keeping her daughter happy. That was all that mattered.

Roxanne soon approached Nancy and asked her to work on the weekends

renting apartments for her. Roxanne told Nancy that she believed this would be a good opportunity to learn about property management as a career. Nancy had developed a lot of respect for Roxanne over the last few months and didn’t want to disappoint her. Nancy agreed and found herself saddled with a third job.

With three jobs, Nancy became a scheduling whiz. Bills were easily paid, and she only had time for what was important in her life. Within three months, Nancy was making more money renting apartments on the weekend than she made cleaning them during the week. Working three jobs and raising a child on her own was difficult, though. So Nancy soon approached Roxanne to see if she could give up her cleaning job.

“I’ll do you one better,” Roxanne said. “I just moved my full-time rental agent to the assistant manager position. His old job is yours if you want it. Besides, you can make the same money working this new job as you can with the other three combined.”

Nancy began working with Roxanne daily. With years of experience in property management, Roxanne was a wealth of information and Nancy soaked it up like a sponge. With Roxanne’s encouragement, she enrolled in property management classes at a community college and with the local apartment association. Each day, Nancy got better at her job. It wasn’t long before she was promoted to assistant manager and received another pay raise.

A few years passed and Nancy got an opportunity to become a manager at another apartment community within the same company. With this new job came another raise and more responsibility. By this time, she had earned a degree in property management and was very capable of doing the job.

After five years, Nancy grew restless with her current level of success. She began to wonder if there was something else beyond the standard 9-to-5 grind.

She had come a long way from near homelessness, but was no longer satisfied and felt trapped by the same old routine. Nancy knew there had to be

something more to life. She was determined to find a path leading to an even better future.

Nancy gave herself a five month goal to find something new. She continued to educate herself by participating in property management workshops, reading, and staying involved with her local apartment association. It was at one of these association meetings that a new opportunity emerged. She met a real estate investor who was having trouble renting apartments at one of his larger properties, which was costing him a lot of money. Nancy offered to help this

man for free because she wanted the experience, but he insisted on paying her in some fashion.

For the next few months, Nancy worked in her spare time to train the investor’s staff and rent his vacant apartments. Once she was finished, the investor

handed her a $10,000 check for her consulting work. In that moment, she found the inspiration she needed to start her own company. Nancy’s positive beliefs, desire, and hard work paid off again with another new opportunity. She was now in complete control of her financial future.

The Third Financial Law of Prosperity

The Third Financial Law of Prosperity is Make More Money. Create multiple sources of income to help accelerate the wealth-creation process. 80% of the money that you make from these other sources of income must be saved for future investment. The remaining 20% can be used for other lifestyle expenses.

Multiple sources of income can take years off the time required to reach your long-term financial goal. For some, additional income will be earned from working extra jobs and other similar endeavors. For others, it comes from starting a new successful business. Increase your ability to make money by using your time wisely, learning new skills, and exploring new opportunities.

Your ultimate goal is to create a sustainable income without the need for your physical labor and any significant ongoing investment of your personal time. To accomplish this, however, you must be an efficient manager of your personal resources.

Summary of the Ten Financial Laws

Laws Action

1. You Must Believe Manage your beliefs, intelligently develop a plan, and take purposeful action.

2. Save for The Future Save 10% of your primary income for future investment.

3. Make More Money Create multiple sources of income and save 80%

of this extra money for future investment.

Get Into the Fast Lane

The infamous American bank robber, Willie Sutton, had it right when he said,

“Go where the money is and go there often!” I’m not advocating bank robbery, but merely pointing out that some things pay better than others.

It doesn’t matter what is going on around you. Somebody, somewhere is making buckets of money. You must find the people who are making lots of money, and learn to do what they do. Copy them. Study their habits, read their

publications, and research the industries in which they are involved. Try your best to meet them and, if you can, become friends. If you do get to meet with them, make sure you are prepared and ask lots of questions, including:

1) If you had to do it all over again, where would you start?

2) What words of advice would you give to someone wanting to duplicate your success?

3) What’s the best way to make money in today’s business environment?

4) What were some of your biggest mistakes that delayed your success?

There are many roads to riches. Talk to the travelers who have already paved their roads with gold, because the successes of others can be duplicated and improved on. By learning successful moneymaking strategies from other people, you can take years off your journey to become financially independent. Learn how to make money without having to “reinvent the wheel” or waste valuable resources on trial and error. Like a modern highway, the road to riches has more than one lane, so shift gears and get into the moneymaking fast lane!

Time Is A Limited Resource

People will spend more time to entertain and distract themselves than they would ever consider using to become financially independent. It takes a

significant time commitment and level of maturity to be rich. This is more than most people are willing to give. How someone spends their time affects whether or not they will become rich.

Do you find yourself talking on the phone, texting, emailing, surfing the

Internet, and playing video games when you should be doing other things? I’m not going to begrudge someone for distracting themselves when they could be working toward their financial freedom. After all, our society needs its share of financially poor laborers if it’s to function properly! People who willingly trade their opportunity to become financially independent for a distraction are the

“Rather Be’s” of the world—you know—“I’d rather be doing this” or “I’d rather be doing that.”

Time is a limited resource. I understand that the dog needs to be walked, you have to spend time with family, you’ve got plans for the weekend, your friends need face time, you’ve got to squeeze in a round of golf, and you need some personal time. We all have responsibilities and pleasures that occupy our time.

If, however, you intend to be rich, you must learn there’s a time and place for everything, and everything you do must be done smartly.

The passage of time can be a threat to the achievement of your financial independence. Be judicious and guarded with your time because it’s the most precious resource you have. Time is the currency of self-improvement and must be spent wisely. Spend more time educating yourself and developing multiple sources of income, and spend less time on things that trap you in your current lifestyle.

Why invest hours of your day watching television and playing on the Internet, when you can put your “time currency” into research, interviewing successful people, and learning how to go from flat broke to financially independent? The time you take away from the things you would rather be doing and give to the things you should be doing to be rich, is a sacrifice you must make to reach your financial goal. Your time is the most precious resource you have. Spend it wisely.

Time is the currency of self-improvement.

Knowledge That’s Richly Rewarded

Your brain is your greatest wealth creation asset. You must fill it with

information that will help you to achieve your goals. If you want to make money, you must develop and foster skills that are highly rewarded by society. Learn to specialize.

A college education is an important part of this process, but not critical if you are committed to self-education. Statistically speaking, college graduates make more money, thanks, in part, to their demonstrated ability to set and achieve long-term goals. This doesn’t mean you should go to school, collect a plethora of degrees, and burden yourself with mountains of debt on the mistaken belief that multiple degrees will automatically make you rich. Education without purpose can be a cleverly disguised distraction from the achievement of your long-term financial goal. And let’s face it—some college degrees have more value to society than others.

Knowledge alone is no guarantee you will be rich. Look no further than your typical school teacher and you will discover some of the most educated people in this world are nowhere close to becoming financially independent. Teachers

are not richly rewarded by society for the job they do, so they must pursue riches outside of the classroom if it’s important to them. Some teachers do get rich, and they will tell you that knowledge was only a part of that process.

Knowledge by itself is not power. It’s possibility. The power to become rich is hidden within knowledge and can only be extracted when it’s combined with intelligence and purposeful action. You must learn and then successfully accomplish an endeavor that has a high value to society if you want to make lots of money. Possessing a richly rewarded skill is the most common way, but not the only way, to create your financial independence.

Whatever you decide to do, the learning process never stops. Successful people constantly educate themselves. They read books, take classes, read trade and financial publications, do research, attend seminars, listen to audio books, learn from other successful people, and explore new ideas. You must

continually fill your brain with useful knowledge as well and apply it to society’s problems in a meaningful way.

Your best tool for creating riches is the grey matter between your ears. Again, a college degree is not a prerequisite for financial independence. Bill Gates didn’t have a college degree before he founded Microsoft and went on to become one of the richest men in the world. But he was highly educated and possessed

specialized knowledge. If you want to make an abundance of money, you must become educated in something that’s financially rewarding and then take purposeful action.

Knowledge by itself is not power. It’s possibility.

Two Ways to Make Money

There are only two ways to make money in this world: with your brain or your brawn. There’s an immense difference between these two methods, because one can be scaled while the other cannot. One has virtually unlimited income

potential, while the other is limited by personal involvement and time. The single most important factor in determining which category a money-making opportunity falls into is your involvement.

If you work somewhere that requires you to be present, you are working by brawn. This means you are the critical element to the economic equation that determines your income. And without your participation at some level, money won’t be received. Maybe you own the company, are salaried, get paid hourly, receive a commission, or are an independent contractor. The one fatal flaw to your business model is you. There’s just one you and only a certain number of hours in a workday, which limits the things that can be accomplished. To get better results, you push these limits by working harder and longer, but there are still only 24 hours in a day. “BRAWN-work” has limitations that will drain you both physically and emotionally, and could end up killing you. The total number of hours you can work in a day is an absolute boundary to your productivity and, therefore, limits the amount of money you can make.

Alternatively, if you have investments and a business that makes money but requires little or none of your time to manage, you are working with your brain.

Like BRAWN-work, the acid test for “BRAIN-work” is the extent of your

involvement. Can you walk away from whatever you are doing for a few months and not experience a significant drop in income? If so, this is a good indicator

you are working with your brain. People engaged in BRAIN-work have removed themselves as the critical part of their money-making system. They work

because they want to, not because they have to. True BRAIN-work is neither physically nor emotionally draining.

BRAIN-work eliminates the boundaries on scale, allowing you to automate and grow. For instance, after Ray Kroc bought McDonald’s from the McDonald brothers, he did not stand around cooking hamburgers for hungry customers all day long. He perfected his Fast Food Business Model, and then he grew, or scaled, his business from a handful of locations to over 32,000 restaurants worldwide.

BRAIN-work and BRAWN-work are the only two ways to make money. The money that can be made with BRAWN-work is limited by your personal involvement and time. BRAIN-work has no such limits and can be scaled.

Intelligently scaling your system of moneymaking to massive proportions is the difference between making a million dollars and a billion dollars. If you want to be rich—and I mean roll-around-in-your-own-private-vault rich—you need to work using your brain and then scale up your successful moneymaking system.

The BRAIN-work Challenge

True BRAIN-work eludes most people, even though the rewards are well worth the efforts required to create it. BRAIN-work is defined as a system of making money that requires little or no ongoing involvement from you. It is a virtual cash machine. It can make you money while you sleep. There are many ways to create BRAIN-work; it can be as simple as having a series of passive

investments, a traditional business others manage for you, or an automated Internet business that works for you around the clock.

Remember that one product, idea, or design you have rolling around in your head? You know, the one that always makes you think, “This would be a great idea if….” Now, imagine sharing your idea with people in every corner of the planet and then getting paid for it. Can you afford to pass on that prospect?

Everyone has an expertise or a moneymaking idea about something. What could you do to make money utilizing BRAIN-work?

I challenge you to develop a BRAIN-work system of making money. If you

already have a BRAIN-work system of making money, create another. The key to developing any successful business is to discover a need, void, or want in the marketplace and then use your talents to satisfy it. Maybe you can invent something useful, improve on an existing product, create a new process for doing something, or sell a critical service. Is there something you do and know about in your current BRAWN-work job that can be changed to BRAIN-work?

There are thousands of things that you could do, but “I don’t know” isn’t one of them. If you approach this challenge with an open mind and take intelligent

There are thousands of things that you could do, but “I don’t know” isn’t one of them. If you approach this challenge with an open mind and take intelligent