Posted by Amir Lehrer on February 11, 2008
Since the creation and popularity of the internet, the world has transitioned into the “Information Age”. Today, the most valuable asset is information because it is something that stays with you forever. Money can come and go but as long as you have the information that got you your money in the first place, you can always make it back. That is why so many rich people are able to go broke and then make more money that they had before. Most rich people have had ups and downs but always end up getting back on top. The opposite goes for lottery winners who make their money through pure chance. Lottery winners do not have the information to stay rich or to become rich again once they use up their winnings. Most lottery winners go back to their original financial position within a few years because they don’t have the information to hold onto their money.
Today, people want everything right now. They are constantly looking for cheaper, faster and better. The old school attitude of pay first and then get results does not work anymore. Companies now have to give away tons of information for free just to get people to sign up for their service or buy their product. A great example is Zecco.com. They have free and cheap stock trades which are cheaper than anyone else that I know of in the industry. Even with their incredibly low prices, they still have an entire community built into their site with all kinds of information for the trader to be as educated as possible. People from all over the world ask and answer questions through their forum. Zecco.com needs this just to get people to sign up for their service and to spread the word to get more people to subscribe.
To get ahead today, all you need is information and for the first time in history, this information is free and so easy to access. There are websites on every subject you can think of. There are even websites that teach you step by step how to do anything you want to do from starting a business to planting a flower.
Take advantage of the free information and get lucky!
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Posted by Amir Lehrer on February 8, 2008
When I was in grade school, I remember being absolutely petrified of raising my hand and speaking up in class. I didn’t like to ask questions because I wasn’t sure of the reaction that I would get. I would think, “Maybe I’m stupid since I don’t understand what the person is saying”. When I was involved in a conversation, just like Joey from Friends, when I didn’t understand something that was said, I would just nod as if I understood. I was always afraid of using words that I wasn’t 100% sure were used correctly.
As the years went by, I felt myself falling behind more and more and each time I had a question, I held it in because if I would have looked stupid in 1st grade, image how stupid I would look if I don’t know that information by the 5th grade. It just kept on getting worse. As time went on I was hurting myself more and more by being embarrassed to ask a simple question.
Looking back I can see that if I had just asked the questions I had when they first came up, I would not have fallen behind. Knowledge is like building a skyscraper. You can build it up as high as you want but you need a solid foundation and you have to build each level, one at a time. You can’t start out on top and work your way down.
Many people have this problem and just keep falling behind, whether it is in school, current events, technology or anything else. The way we learn is by asking questions.
One of my favorite stories about asking questions is Thomas A. Edison. He was an extremely curious child and would ask questions to anyone who would listen and even some who wouldn’t. People around him got frustrated because he asked so many questions. It was this curiosity and drive that led Thomas to his many inventions such as the telegraph and the light bulb.
Today we are luckier than ever to have the World Wide Web with sites like www.dictionary.com and www.wikipedia.org that put a world of knowledge into our hands. Even with the internet, asking questions will still help us get ahead. The internet is just an extra resource that puts us today over people 20 years ago.
We are in the information age now and information is king. The more you know, the better off you are. So go ahead and start asking questions, because the most successful people are the people that don’t care about looking stupid and ask the questions.
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Posted by Amir Lehrer on February 7, 2008
I wrote a couple times about how I am tracking my finances and that they are all pretty much automatic since all my accounts are linked to each other. I have to say, it gives me a great amount of joy to check up on all of my accounts once a month and see them working. It puts a smile on my face to see my savings grow each month and my debt shrink away. The problem is that this past month I had to incur a few additional expenses that I don’t usually have and that are not budgeted for. I do have some wiggle room in my budget but most of that wiggle money ends up in my savings.
I hid from my fears
I have become attuned to all of my expenses and I can feel when I am spending more than I should. This month, that feeling went into overdrive. Because of this feeling, I did what many people do when they are in a situation that they don’t like, I hid. I was afraid to check my accounts as I do each month because I was scared to see the truth. I felt that it was better not to see the damage. Rich Dad, Robert Kiyosaki calls this financial cancer. You can treat a sickness if it is diagnosed but not if you hide from the doctor.
I got depressed
On top of being afraid of checking on what “I still have left”, (exaggeration, I didn’t overspend that much but it’s depressing when you are working on something so hard and you end up going backwards a bit) I got a little depressed and started spending more than I usually do on other thing such as eating out more or some entertainment.
Later in the month, I realized that I was overspending on eating out and entertainment and I got even more depressed which made me want to check my accounts even less.
I faced my fears
I forced myself to look at myself from the outside and I realized that I was heading for a financial landslide. I realized that the only reason my savings was growing was because I was monitoring it regularly. When I wasn’t monitoring it, I wasn’t saving anything and I was even losing some months.
I finally took a look at my finances, filled in my financial statements and realized it was not so bad. My net worth went down a little but it was not even close to what could have happened if I continued to hide from my finances. I still have many years to accrue wealth and the more I work on it, the better. Hiding from my fears and finances only hurt me.
This can be applied to anything in life, health, finances and even your social life. If you face your fears, you are in a much better place to conquer them and get ahead. If you run from them, you will end up in a terrible landslide that becomes harder and harder to get out of.
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Posted by Amir Lehrer on February 6, 2008
I have come to the realization that there comes a point in everybody’s life that they say “I am happy with where I am” and they just stop moving forward. The last two articles I wrote were about keeping up with change, this article is about continuing to change.
A little while ago I was speaking with a relative of mine who is in his eighties. This relative has never used the internet, he has a credit card but has never used it himself and is still stuck doing things the way he did them when he was younger. When I ask him if he wants to try something new such as learn to use the internet, his answer is that he has lived his life so far without it and he doesn’t need it. Sometimes he says “I’m too old to learn new things”. This man is retired and happy so I don’t push too hard to get him to do things he doesn’t want to do.
Everyone has their “stopping point” in life. A simple example is when it comes to school, some people stop after high school, some after college, some after a Masters degree and some people after a PHD or further. At a certain point each person says, “ok, I’ve had enough” and they are done with their schooling (except for the few people who are in school for life). On another level, you can apply this to anything. Everybody has their “stopping point” when it comes to information, technology, history and even religion. These are all categories that are never ending and no one will every know everything.
People see that these things are never ending so at a certain point they decide to stop or slow down. They get comfortable with the level that they have achieved and decide that they will live the rest of their life at that level. Some people reach a certain financial position and decide never to work again by retiring. There are certain things that it is ok for a person to decide that they have enough and stop but there are many other things that will prevent them from getting lucky.
If a person has enough money to do whatever he wants for the rest of his life, it is ok to stop and retire. If a person is running a business and decides that he has had enough with changing technology, and he decides to stop, he will be missing out on some vital luckortunity and could potentially lose his business.
In Life, it is okay to stop at a certain point but when you do stop, you must make an educated decision and make sure that if you want to get lucky, it will not decrease your luckortunity.
All of these categories in life are like climbing an escalator the wrong way. You can climb as much as you want but if you stop, you will start going backwards. This is especially true with technology. You can be at the top of your field but if you stop adapting to the changes in technology, it won’t be long before you drop.
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Posted by Amir Lehrer on February 5, 2008
Yesterday I wrote an article about keeping up with change and not relying on what your father did before you or his father before that. I feel very strongly so I am going to write another post or two on the subject.
In the last article I wrote about how people mismanage their businesses by running them the same way as they did years before. The problem gets even worse. These same companies hire bright young people out of college who have been trained to work in today’s market and then try and teach them their old systems. For the new employees to get along, they have to unlearn what they already know and then learn outdated systems that the company uses. This takes the company’s advantage of the new hires and turns it into an even bigger disadvantage. The company loses out and in the long run, the new employees lose out because they are not getting any modern experience that they can use in a new job down the line.
I belong to a community center that has been run by one woman who was the administrator for close to 30 years. She just retired and the community center now has a new administrator who is a little more advanced in technology but for years, the place was run like an organization out of the mid 1900’s. Every bill, invoice, membership letter, newsletter were sent out individually, and typed up on a type writer. Membership dues requests were sent out in alphabetical order. People with a last name starting with a “Z” might not get their bill until 15 months later.
In addition to how slow the office work got done, they did not have a website and did not accept electronic payments. Checks would have to be dropped off during office hours. This alone cost the community centers thousands of dollars since it was so hard for anyone to pay the bills that they did receive.
I am not writing this article to complain about the community center that I belong to but rather to express that there are hundreds or even thousands of organizations and businesses out there that are losing out because they didn’t keep up with the times.
Some people might think that it costs money to keep up with technology but I am saying it costs more not to keep up. Think about the costs for the above community center:
Buy a computer $500
Buy Quickbooks $130
Accept credit card payments $100
Total $730
If they invest $730 in a new system, they could be making thousands of dollars from bills that people will pay online. They will also make money in interest by getting payments on time. I think that it would pay itself off fairly quickly.
Once again, this is just an example of how companies and organizations are falling behind the times and losing out. Time is the most valuable asset in the world. It only makes sense to do everything that you can to save time.
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Posted by Amir Lehrer on February 4, 2008
Have you ever heard someone say something to the effect of “it’s worked for me this long, it will continue to work” or “my father did this, my grandfather did this, his father did this and so on”? In life there are many things that if you want to accomplish, you just have to find someone successful and follow whatever they did. There are also many things in life that worked at one point in time but no longer work or at least not as well.
An example of the first is if you want to be successful in something such as real estate, you can find someone who is already successful and follow exactly what he did. If you do this, you have a good chance of being successful as well. An example of the second is someone who runs a business like it ran 50 years ago when his father or grandfather opened it. Today, everything needs to be computerized to stay organized and quick so that you can compete in the tough business world. 50 years ago, everything was hand written and filed. If you continue that today, you will not be able to keep up with your competition. You also may need to get a web presence so that you can compete with the global market instead of just the immediate area where your business is located.
Imagine a family who had a farm and made their living from that farm for 10 generations. For the last 10 generations, it might have worked really well and their family would have been very well off but now that we are in the information age, farming and many other fields do not do so well anymore. The owner of the farm might need to sell the farm and find something else to do. Unfortunately many people have the attitude that they have been doing it for so long that they don’t have to change. These are the unlucky people who are left behind.
In today’s day in age, to be lucky and successful, we must keep up with new technology, fads, trends, products and services. If we don’t know everything that is available, it is likely that we will miss out on great luckortunity. Successful and lucky people read and learn as much as they possibly can on their subject from books to magazines to going to regular conferences and trade shows. In the Information age, things change really quickly and if you are not on board, you are losing out.
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