Friday, May 16, 2008

The Letter

We Should All Be Wealthy

Why should we have to wait until retirement, after the best years of life have passed, to experience freedom? Freedom is our most basic human birthright, yet we deny ourselves of it when instead of choosing to live our lives, we choose to simply survive.

We’ve been told our whole lives we must have a good job with benefits and retirement. We are told we should go to college so that we can get one of these jobs and have a career. If this seems like a good idea, just look where it has gotten us – it has gotten us - into never-ending debt, constant stress, and enslavement to the workforce.

Too many of us spend our day counting down the minutes, just waiting for it to be over. How often do we catch ourselves saying something like “"only 2 more hours until we get off," or “"why can’t it be Friday”?" We should enjoy life, and appreciate every moment of the day, not wish it away. Clearly something is wrong here...

What’s wrong is that we have been fooled into thinking we must give away our time, and sacrifice our desires, just to have the money to survive. Of course, we all need money to support ourselves and our families, but we shouldn’t trade our time for it. All we have is time, and it should be our most valuable resource.

The wealthy understand this. They don’t trade their time for money; they earn money from those who do. Every time something is bought at the store, the rich get richer. Every time a phone bill is paid, the rich get richer. Every time someone goes to a movie, eats at a restaurant, or drinks a soda, the rich get richer.

Every dollar we have ends up in the hands of the rich, and they make all of this money from us while on a cruise ship in the Bahamas, or on a golf course in Europe. They don’t have to trade their time for money, because we are all too willing to give them more than they could ever need.

It’s time we take a note from the wealthy. They would never teach their children that they need a "“good education"” so that they can get a "“good job"” with benefits and retirement. Instead, they teach their children how to become wealthy by allowing their assets to work for them. They want their kids to work smart so they don’t have to work hard.

If we could free ourselves from the societal notions systematically drilled into us from birth, we could live wealthy and free. The wealthy know that most universities don’t care so much about educating people, as they care about producing employees for major corporations. Instead of expanding minds, they teach us to conform to their idea of society, which is designed to make most of us struggle with endless debt so the rich can get richer.

Right out of college, graduates step into a job and begin their professional career. They begin a 40-year journey where they will be overworked and underpaid. They are most likely to be buried in debt with their dreams crushed, stressed beyond limit, while corporations build incredible wealth from their efforts. At the top of these corporations are the wealthy few, who get to live the high life at the expense of millions of others.

If colleges really care about the individual success of their students, why aren’t we trained to be wealthy, so we may live a life of freedom? They want us working for the rich, not for ourselves.

They would have us believe that we must have a job to make money, but they know better than anyone that a job is the worst way to make money. They know that J.O.B. means Just Over Broke.

Having a job implies that we work for someone else. Every employee should know that all of his hard work is going toward building someone else’s wealth. The employee gets just enough money to sustain himself but need more, so that he will continue working and making money for the rich.

So this begs the question, why should we go deep into debt to put ourselves through years of stress at a university, learning information we couldn’t care less about, just to receive a certificate of enslavement to the workforce, and a death sentence to the life we wish to live?

Wealth is built in many ways, but a job is not one of them. There is a difference between being rich and being wealthy. The rich have money, but the wealthy have time, money, health and happiness.

The rich and the wealthy have differing views of success. The rich measure success by fortune and fame, but the wealthy measure success by happiness and quality of life.

Celebrities and superstars may be rich, but look at Hollywood; how many do you think are wealthy? Every morning there are new stories of drug abuse, domestic disputes, and arrests coming out of Hollywood. Too many value money and fame above all else, and sacrifice their very happiness for it.

With a job we must trade our time for money. That’s why a job may make you rich, but it can never make you wealthy. Doctors, lawyers and other professions make great money, but they still have linear income; they trade their time for money.

Thank God for the people who choose to dedicate their lives to these important professions, but the wealthy are few among them. The wealthy place too much of a premium on their time and health to commit 40+ hours a week to a job and the stress that comes with it.

The wealthy have a different mindset. They understand that happiness - feeling good - is most important, and that time, money and health are simply tools for this purpose.

Most of us don't realize the true value of time and money. This misunderstanding has led millions of us hopelessly into debt. Even many doctors and lawyers, making six or seven figures a year, find themselves in debt when they should have enough wealth to last a lifetime.

Most of us consider money to be the most valuable resource in the world. Simple survival requires it. Anyone without money will quickly go hungry and homeless, while all luxuries are available to anyone with money.

We love money, and more specifically, we love spending money. Cars, boats, nice clothes, luxurious vacations, and big screen TVs are just some of the great things money can buy. For many of us, this is our concept of money – as a tool for acquiring things. That’s all well and good, but it’s just the beginning of the real power of money.

The wealthy know that the true value of money lies in its ability to multiply itself. This is best explained by example...

Suppose a savvy individual buys shovels, sledgehammers, ladders, crowbars and more to fill out his tool shed. More than the tools themselves, what he really wants is to rent the tools out for a fee. Before long, the tools pay themselves off, and he not only has an essentially free tool shed, he has an extra line of income, which he receives without trading any of his time.

The best thing about money is its ability to turn an expense into an asset. By understanding the true value of money, he turned the expense of a tool shed into the asset of a rental business. That’s how the rich make their money... They let their money, not their time, make it for them.

"Time is money." This little phrase sums up the popular concept of time, as does the phrase, "“another day another dollar."” But time is much more than that. Time is all we have. It’s all we are born with, and it’s all that will matter on our deathbeds.

Time is a measure of life, and life is meant to be experienced and enjoyed. Instead of living out our dreams, most of us resort to trading our time for money, and end up with little of either.

The true value of time is seen when we experience and enjoy it. Some of us enjoy our jobs or going to school, but for those who don’t, jobs and school are distractions keeping us from what we should be doing - experiencing life.

At the end of life, it doesn’t matter how much money we had, what car we drove, or what we did, all that matters is that we enjoy the experience and share it with others.

If we aren’t experiencing our lives and enjoying our time, then how much money we have is irrelevant. What good is money without the time to enjoy it? We rob ourselves of our most valuable gift when we trade our time for money.

Along with time and money, the wealthy place great value on their physical, mental and emotional health. Above all, the wealthy value happiness, and health is a big part of that.

Health requires exercise, nourishment and rest, all of which require time. With a job, who has time for the gym? A healthy breakfast is the most important meal of the day, but most of us are in a hurry in the morning, so we skip breakfast or eat something quick and unhealthy. Lunch hours are also hurried, so fast food is the usual choice.

Few get enough sleep. Sleep allows the body to relax and repair itself, but most of us don’t get enough sleep so we struggle to function throughout the day, like a machine in need of repair. And the stress that comes with a job causes health problems on many levels, and accelerates aging. Sickness, anxiety and depression are just a few of the problems caused by stress.

The wealthy make health a priority. They make a point to minimize stress, and they reserve time to exercise regularly, eat healthy meals, and get plenty of sleep. All of this is nearly impossible when we trade our time for money.

The wealthy go about it differently. Instead of trading their time for money, they build their wealth by leverage and residual income... That is, the wealthy earn money by the efforts of others, and they continue getting paid for work done long ago.

Leverage is multiplying your efforts by the efforts of others.

Take a retail store for example. The owner hires a manager and staff to operate the store. As long as everything is running smoothly, the owner has no need to be present. That’s because the owner has the leverage of an entire staff of people working for him. Even though he isn’t working, he is earning money from the work of dozens of people.

Residual Income is earning continual pay for a 1-time effort.

Take a cell phone company for instance. Every cell phone requires a service subscription, which comes with a monthly bill. By selling a phone, cell phone companies make profit not just from the phone they sold, but also from the subscription fee they receive every month. They end up getting paid repeatedly off a single transaction.

The wealthy don't work; they have assets that work for them. They earn continual pay from the restaurants, gas stations, apartment complexes, companies and other profitable businesses they own.

Our goal should be to own a profitable asset stable enough to live on for a lifetime, that way we could spend our time experiencing our lives instead of working for someone else. But buying or starting most businesses costs hundreds of thousands of dollars or more, and the success rate is small, so starting a business is just too great of risk for most to take, and many can’t consider owning a business to be an option.

Multi-Level Marketing was once thought to be the answer. Multi-Level Marketing (MLM) made it possible to build leverage and residual income from home. Representatives would work from home, marketing products and earning a percentage of each sale. They would also recruit new representatives to do the same, and they earned a percentage of each sale made by their sponsored representatives too.

Leverage could be built exponentially as representatives sponsored new representatives, who themselves sponsored new representatives. Representatives would sponsor 3 people, and each of them would sponsor 3 people, and each of them would sponsor 3 people, and so on.

At first a representative would have the leverage of just 1 person - himself. After sponsoring 3 people, he would have the leverage of 4 people - 3 plus himself. Then those 3 people would sponsor 3 themselves, adding 9 more people. Those 9 would sponsor 3, adding 27 more people. As the process continues 27 would turn into 81, then 243, then 729, etc.

Representatives could gain the leverage of thousands of people by sponsoring just 3 themselves, if everyone sponsored 3 people. In this way they built wealth through leverage; they not only earned a percentage of each sale they made, they earned a percentage of each sale made by thousands of people on their team.

Residual income could be built by making sales on monthly services. By making sales on things like cell phone plans, satellite service, or any other recurring service, representatives would be compensated not just once, but every month. And they earned residual income from every sale made by their team, so increased leverage would result in increased residual income - the larger the team, the more money to be made.

In theory, MLM is the perfect business, but in truth it is no wonder the industry carries a meager 5% success rate. Beyond the current image problem of MLM, there is the problem of finding customers. Who wants to have to hit their friends and family up for sales, and for that matter, who wants their friends or family pressuring them to buy something from them?

Then there is the problem of keeping an inventory, taking orders, distributing products, collecting fees, and training new recruits. And there is the problem of finding people who can not only sell, but also recruit and duplicate the process. In order to make much money, there must be many successful people on the team, and with a low 5% standard success rate, very few manage to build enough leverage to create wealth.

In recent years the Internet has allowed companies to fix some of these problems. Now orders are taken over the Internet, so there is no need for delivery or collection, and new plans allow people to be their own customer, eliminating the need to hassle friends and family for sales.

MLM has been simplified to the point it should now be easy for anyone to use it to become wealthy, but the industry is still riddled with failure. That's because they have yet to address their 2 biggest problems, their methods and motives.

In MLM representatives build leverage not by how productive they are, but by how productive their team is. The problem here is that no matter how good of recruiter one is, if the rest of his team doesn’t recruit well he won’t build much leverage. It takes an extraordinary person to be a good recruiter, and he has no way of passing his ability on to his team.

The problem stems from trying to recruit people in the first place. We don’t want our friends and family trying to sell business opportunities to us. We are naturally skeptical and have been conditioned to believe we have no other choice but to work for the rest of our lives.

Though MLM promises the opportunity to build wealth, few have actually attained it because most have had the wrong outlook on the business. People have always gotten involved in MLM to try to get rich, but they overlook their more important opportunity to make a real difference in the lives of everyone around them.

MLM would be the perfect business if people were just informed rather than recruited. The general perception of recruiting, whether true or not, is that it is done for selfish reasons. Rather than feeling like they are being given an opportunity to establish wealth, people generally feel they are being taken advantage of.

But sharing valuable information is like giving a gift, and that’s what MLM should be about – giving to others, not taking from them. Being recruited makes us feel like we are being asked a favor, but being informed allows us to see that the favor is mutual.

When we are given this information, how we choose to use it is up to us, but we should at least see that we don’t have to let a job consume our lives if we don’t want it to. We can choose to experience and enjoy life rather than merely survive, and we all deserve to know this information so that we can use it to make our best decisions.

Informing has other distinct advantages over recruiting. Unlike a person’s ability to recruit, information can be copied and used by anyone. Few people can recruit, but anyone can pass along information.

And while every pitch takes time and effort, information allows the same message to be shared repeatedly without effort. In the time it would take to deliver a single recruiting pitch, a dozen copies of information could be given out.

Informing also allows people to build much more efficient and profitable businesses than does recruiting. Leverage is built through duplication, as representatives sponsor representatives who sponsor representatives, and so forth. But 95% of people in MLM fail to duplicate the process using the recruiting method, so it is difficult to build much leverage this way.

On the other hand information is duplicable and anybody can use it. This makes for much greater leverage, which results in much greater profits.

The idea is to use leverage to build an asset, and to use efficiency to make the most money, in the least time, with the least amount of effort. MLM is naturally designed to build leverage, and this letter is designed to maximize efficiency through duplication.

We would simply share this letter with others, and allow the letter to walk everyone through the steps automatically. As new representatives join, the letter directs them to duplicate the process, building their business, your business, and everyone’s business all at the same time.

This information can lead to wealth, but it is important to note that with wealth comes responsibility. While this letter is designed to supply information on wealth, and to provide the means to turn that information into wealth, the most important purpose for this letter is to spread a message.

Tonight, 1 out of 5 children in the U.S. will not have a meal to eat. With all the wealth in this country, that’s ridiculous. Nobody should ever go hungry, but too many of the rich think it more important to own a dozen cars than to make sure we all at least have a meal to eat.

Remember, there is a difference between being rich and being wealthy. The rich value money, while the wealthy value time, money, health and happiness. Most of us contribute to society by working, but the wealthy value their time too much to give back to society in that way. Instead they use their wealth to make much more beneficial contributions to society, and they still get to keep plenty of time, money, health and happiness for themselves.

The wealthy person understands not just the economy, but also the economy of the universe. He knows that you reap what you sew. He relishes the opportunity to give of himself because he loves his fellow man and because he knows he will be rewarded ten-fold.

He values money, but he recognizes that money is a tool for happiness, nothing more, and he won’t let greed compromise his wealth. He sees the world and the injustices around him, and realizes his wealth makes him responsible to do something about it.

Unfortunately, the rich hoard most of the wealth in this country. In the United States, the top 10% of people control 70% of the wealth, while the 70% majority controls less than 15%. This disparity is the reason why most have debt, and why 1 out of 5 children go without a meal at night.

A properly built MLM organization can have tens of thousands of wealthy people, or more. Imagine the kind of difference these people could make if they all put just a tenth of their wealth toward fixing the injustices we see around us. Surely every child could at least have a meal every night.

We are of course free to do what we will with our money, but as this letter is copied and spread, and fortunes are made, it is hoped it finds its way into the hands of plenty who will embrace the opportunity to use their wealth to make a real difference in the world.

Now, imagine waking up rested each morning instead of being dragged out of bed by an alarm clock. Imagine the biggest decision of the day being between going to the beach, playing a round of golf, doing something new, or just relaxing. Imagine traveling the world and seeing the sites of Europe, the African wildlife, and the Australian outback.

Imagine having time to dedicate to hobbies and interests, learning new things, and to health. Imagine living in abundance with the house, car and everything else you want, and imagine getting to spread all of this to friends and family. Imagine a world where wealth has purpose, and some of the injustices around us become things of the past.

If we take what we want, and we want what's good, we can have it all.

Anyone who would rather have wealth than debt and would rather spread wealth to others than let the rich have it all should visit www.fhtmdvd.com and watch the 20-minute video. The video shows how to make the most money in the least time with the least amount of effort, using this system.

After viewing the video, we would simply hand out, mail or email copies of this letter to friends and family, sign up those who want to participate, and watch them build their wealth and ours as they duplicate the process.

Pretty simple, isn't it?

Remember, this letter is written for the benefit of everyone who reads it, whether action is taken or not, so it should be shared with as many people as possible. Church members, co-workers, classmates, teammates, club members, family, friends and the Internet are all good choices, along with anyone else who would appreciate the opportunity to become wealthy.

Many who receive this letter may not take action on it, and that’s fine. We all have our reasons for the decisions we make, and we should be encouraged to make our decisions as we see fit. For some, results may be immediate, and for others they may not be, but if we share this letter with plenty of people we should have no problem finding 3 or 4 eager to do as this letter says and become wealthy by spreading wealth to others.

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