The title of this chapter is “Do You Have What It Takes?”. For the most part, the chapter discussed about how the top 2% of the people in the world all share a similar trait and how you can’t see life in a fairy tale way, so to speak. Trump is pretty blunt on how it’s tough in the real world as people are going to cheat and steal from you and that you have to be prepared to fight back. He then devised this little quiz that you could take to see if you fit the mentality of a person who has the right attitude to succeed in his view.

For the most part, the best answers with his system seemed to be a fairly straight forward way of thinking from a business point of view anyways. There were two questions that caught my attention though. One of them asks “What is your attitude towards people?” with one of the choices being “I believe people are generally good and would never lie, cheat, or steal from me”. That caught my attention because this year there is a situation where I thought there would be an exception to that and so I did put my guard down by a lot more than normal. Sure enough, it did happen eventually in a big way and fortunately I did not get knocked down cold over it while being prepared to fight back.

The other point talked about marriages and the use of a prenuptial agreement. Obviously with Trump’s personal experiences, he would consider that as the right/smart thing to do. I’m guessing this one would probably generate the most controversy as I’m sure there are a lot of people who would say something along the lines of you shouldn’t even get married if you can’t trust the other. Touchy subject for a lot of people though. Afterwards, Zanker throws in his bit about how one needs to be persistent in order to succeed.

Overall, I was surprised at how blunt the message was in this chapter in terms of the possibility of getting hurt is large and how you have to develop the plan/attitude to be able to rise from the occasion. It wasn’t done in a negative way but rather from a realistic point of view which I thought was great.

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So I decided that I am going to start reading the book “Think Big and Kick Ass In Business and Life” that I received back when I attended that learning annex event as you all may recall. It’s been awhile since I blogged about a book too, so I figured the timing is appropriate.

The authors of the book are Donald Trump and Bill Zanker who is the founder of The Learning Annex. Not really sure what to expect personally, but as usual learning from other people’s experiences can be a great way to help you achieve more.

The Introduction mostly focused on Zanker and how he built the Learning Annex from a measly $5000 in funds. After meeting and acquiring Donald Trump’s services while incorporating his way of thinking, he mentions that his business has been booming ever since.

The interesting detail for me was how Zanker mentioned that at first he couldn’t get through Trump’s secretary as his pitch to get Trump to speak at his event for one day was $10,000 which was immediately disregarded. He then mentioned how he remembered a saying from Tony Robbins on how if one wants to make it big in life that you have to push yourself beyond your limitations to a point of extreme adrenaline. As a result, he went crazy and told Trump’s secretary that he would offer Trump one million dollars to speak at an event for a day. Evidently, Trump responded to him personally in regards to that afterwards and the rest is history.

I guess that answers one of my questions before where I was wondering how much Trump got paid to speak at those events. That’s definitely a very interesting example of risk taking in life too.

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When I first decided to read Why We Want You To Be Rich, as mentioned it was more out of curiosity and wanting to try something new as I don’t normally read books about getting rich as in my opinion it’s all about taking action and reading a hundred books about making money won’t necessarily be the answer to one’s financial woes. Since a lot of people asked me about these types of things I figured why not? It was an interesting experience too having to blog about each chapter right after reading it. I guess the bottom line in reading a book like this that everyone is wondering is whether or not one can really learn how to become rich by reading the book.

My initial thoughts before reading the book was that it was going to basically contain information on the various things that Robert Kiyosaki and Donald Trump have done to become wealthy and the types of opportunities that you can take advantage of today. In a more skeptical view, I was also prepared to read a book that contained a lot of indirect advertisements for both of their company and services.

Very early into the book, it became apparent that the direction of the book wasn’t intended to tell people what to do to become rich, but rather why you would want to be financially independent without the aid of say money from the government. There were many interesting stories and perspectives in regards to the issues around us and for myself I found a lot of the perspectives on what they feel makes a person successful to be true.

While reading through the book, it was kind of disappointing that it felt like the entire book was basically written by Robert Kiyosaki with Donald Trump basically agreeing with his points and then throwing in his own comments. While I never read Kiyosaki’s Rich Dad Poor Dad books, it also felt like a lot of the details in this book were modified information taken from that book as he would frequently cross reference to it. Honestly too, a lot of the main points of the book such as the importance of financial literacy seems like it could have been done with maybe only ten chapters as it consistently seemed like points were simply being reiterated.

For the most part, I didn’t really learn anything new in terms of what to do and how you should think when it comes to business and money. The ironic thing is because of that it made me enjoy the book more than I normally would have compared to if I was someone who was struggling to get by financially. The reason for this is that a lot of the points they say hits close to home for me as it’s true in terms of the type of mentality and commitment one needs to have in order to be successful. It’s kind of like saying if you were involved in a relationship with someone that turned out to be a complete mismatch, watching a show about something similar will probably be more entertaining for you as you can personally relate to what’s happening and being said.

I would say the book is definitely not so much about what to do in regards to specific advice and direction to make things happen for yourself, but rather it is more like a motivational book that tries to convince you on why it is better for you to take control of your own life. I personally see this book with three different perspectives depending on one’s experience and personality:

1) Established Entrepreneur – This book is a reminder on the basic principles and foundation on what needs to be done to be successful. You have probably experienced most of what is said in the book and so the information is simply re-worded and re-told based around someone else’s experience in what is most likely a different industry than what you are in. At the same time, it can be interesting and entertaining to read about how other’s think when it comes to business and the economy.

2) Person Wanting To Find Specific Ways To Get Rich – There is a lot of content but very little substance on actual ways to get you started in becoming financially independent. There is a constant barrage of advertisements about Robert Kiyosaki’s business and in the end it seems like the only thing you can do is read more books about the subject matter. After continuously reading reiterated points on why it is bad to be poor and how successful the two authors are, you will probably leave with a negative view of the book and will probably conclude to something along the lines of the only reason they wrote the book was ultimately to make themselves richer.

3) A Complete Newbie – Reading the book will probably open your mind on a lot of topics such as learning how to leverage your time and money. The book feels like a decent starter in terms of warming up your way of thinking to help prepare you in learning more on how to be successful in business and financial management. While the advice in the book can sound very cliché, nonetheless it holds true in regards to what successful people do.

Overall, I found the book to be entertaining while being able to learn different ways of interpreting similar beliefs when it comes to business and finance. In some ways, the fact that I didn’t really learn anything new made me feel a little cheated as I know that I don’t know everything there is to know about business and money. I always like to learn new things and it would have been great to walk out with at least one new point that I could incorporate into my lifestyle. I did have fun blogging about it though and I’m still kind of amazed that I was actually able to do it everyday until I finished it despite having a lot of other things to do as well. The funny thing too was that I actually blogged about a lot of the points addressed in the book which makes me wonder if I should find someone to write a book with too to hopefully help inspire people. That would be fun I think. But, that will be for another time maybe.

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Leaders Are Teachers

This looks like the final chapter of the book. Robert mostly talks about the traits of a leader and how the intent of the book was to help inspire you to become one. In his view, being a leader is like being a role model where people look up to you and how as a leader people would be inspired to move forward despite having fear and uncertainties. He then also talks about the mentality of a leader and how you have to throw old bad habits away. For example, if you want to be an entrepreneur then the employee in you must die and he also used his personal weight loss accomplishment as an example on how if he wanted to be thin he knew the fat and lazy person in him must go.

Robert then mentions about how leaders have a vision and can successfully get people who couldn’t see it before to do so. In the end, he talks about how his rich dad was able to teach him a lot which gave him a vision of his future while at the same time it was entirely up to him in regards to how his future would mold out. That is essentially his idea of a great leader and basically a great leader can teach people to see.

Donald Trump basically summarizes how he hopes that the book has provided one enough insight and guidelines to start taking action in life and how both Robert and himself hopes that they have empowered you to succeed.

My personal quick thought about a leader is kind of the same where basically it’s someone who has the ability to make the people around him/her better. I’ve met a lot of hard working and successful people in various industries and professions, but finding people who can truly inspire and lead others to be the best is a rare find. It looks like that is it too for the book. I’ll wrap up my thoughts about the book and all tomorrow.

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Why Do You Recommend Starting Your Own Business?

Looks like this is the second last chapter in the book which means it is coming to an end soon. For Robert’s view, he mainly expresses how being a business owner provides him with the ability to control his own future and how being an entrepreneur allows him to experience new things everyday. To learn to become an entrepreneur, he recommends finding a network marketing company with a great training program to join as it is one of the least expensive ways to learn the ropes of running your own business and to commit to it for at least 5 years. For people who have more money and are prepared to take a bigger plunge, he suggests looking into purchasing a franchise as you will be trained on how to run a business. He does mention that this is a very expensive route though such as how a McDonald’s franchise requires you to have at least one million dollars.

When one starts a business, being persistent is the key to success and to help keep you on track Robert Kiyosaki emphasizes the benefits on having a personal coach or mentor. Of course, he then plugs in his company and how it offers these types of services. He brings up a past point on how people that want more security receive less freedom which works the other way around as well. Overall, he recommends starting a business as it provides you with the freedom to control your own life.

Donald Trump begins by immediately mentioning how not everyone is fit to be an entrepreneur and there are many times that he has told this to people who he felt didn’t have what it takes to be one as he would feel personally responsible if he encouraged someone to do so and then learned that they ended up failing. In general, his main point in recommending one to become a business owner is that while it requires a lot of work, with it comes with vast rewards. Not just from a financial view, but he talks about how it is a great feeling knowing that you built something and watching it grow as it represents yourself as well.

For me, I guess the best thing about being an entrepreneur is like they say you have control over your future. Now when you say this to people they think control only in the sense that basically people like it because you set your own hours and so fourth. Instead, it’s the accountability as well where I personally hate it when people whine or make excuses such as their job is boring, they don’t make enough money, etc. Being an entrepreneur means that if you ever complain about something, just look in the mirror as you have no one to blame but yourself. Of course, it is definitely not for everyone.

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