I was reading various literatures today about some different perspectives on what it takes to become successful financially when it comes to a business life. One theme that was a common one was where to be successful you need the support of friends and family. Then, there is the other view where if you want to be successful you have to get rid of friends and family members from your business life as that usually creates conflict. So pretty polar opposite views.

I personally think the key balance is to never go with or trust any business decisions based solely on the fact that the person is a friend or a family member. Rather, base it solely as if the person is a stranger where you are focused on the end result while assessing the risks to see if it would work out.

Many people learn this the hard way of course and sometimes you just need to experience it yourself to truly grasp that notion.

Kind of a neat topic this was that I heard of today. Essentially there were two polar opposites of the way one views finances and success in life where the debate revolved around what one has to show for their successes financially. In one corner you have the person that doesn’t have any debt such as outstanding credit card balances. In the other corner you have typical guy that has thousands of dollars in debt but at the same time seems to own a lot.

Now in the debt man’s way of life he has everything one would normally expect while using credit to buy various goodies. In the other person’s side he is more cautious where he doesn’t buy what he can’t pay off immediately and therefore saves a lot of his money and only buys when he feels when he really needs it. In fact, he is still using the home that was purchased by his parents and so technically it is not his.

Now visibly if you look at it the debt guy looks way more successful in life. He has his own house, a lot of high end electronics, etc. Whereas the other person seems like he has nothing in one of those “Still living in the parent’s basement” type of scenario. The main distinction is that his bank account is way bigger than the other person’s.

That made me think. The first was I personally don’t think you can judge financial success necessarily by what you have. Example, a large business that owns a gigantic office while swimming in thousands of dollars in debt doesn’t necessarily mean it is better than the guy who is in his little home office while still using things like a rotary phone. In those specific case it comes down to who is more profitable

Although, which direction is more sensible? Like with the debt example, the guy with the big office can continue to live the big image life with all the fixings until say the bank says “No more”. Or, you can be the debt free guy that just keeps strolling along while never really getting those bigger things that most people would relate success with.

If you think about it, there is a possibility too where with the guy who was running mostly off credit could just begin selling off all of his assets which can possibly put him in the same position as the debt free guy if he wants to get out of that cycle. The main difficulty I’d say is maintaining the lifestyle since he is more used to the lavish one and most likely wouldn’t last as a result. At the same time, you can argue that the debt free guy could always just convert to that lavish lifestyle mode too by racking up his credit. Was an interesting debate about financial direction in life I thought with no real one size fits all answer to it.

I was reading an article recently about a person who was unfortunately going to be getting the pink slip and as a result he had to look for a new job and desperately asked others for help. The person’s financial situation wasn’t exactly good either with no savings or any kind of a back up.

In searching for new work, it was amazing that he seemed to be so darn picky and demanding what his new job would have to be like. There were tons of people too who were giving him advice and offers as to where to work. Unfortunately, he kept shooting them all down with an attitude that he was too good for it.

While it’s one thing to have a lot of confidence and respect for yourself to want the best, I was just thinking how in those types of situations you should try to seriously consider every offer that comes your way. This holds true for a self-employment situation as well I’d say. An over exaggerated example would be someone struggling and throwing away thousand dollar contracts as he believes that he should only work on million dollar contracts.

If you find yourself starting from scratch every bit helps. At the same time, you have to think of it more than just a financial point of view too. Those opportunities could easily lead to something better once you establish yourself. You gotta start somewhere.