| 100 Golden Rule |
| Constantly
strive to increase order and discipline in your life. Discipline usually means doing the opposite of what you feel like doing. Cherish time, your most valuable resource. You can never make up time you lose. Do the most productive thing possible at every given moment. Think carefully before making any offers, commitments or promises, no matter how seemingly trivial. These are all contracts and must be honoured. These also include self-resolutions. Strive to be exceptional in all important endeavours, by doing more than is expected of you. Give your best. Be willing to pay the price. Expect half-hearted results, or less from half-hearted efforts. Develop an attitude of gratitude. Always show gratitude when earned, monetarily when possible. Produce for wealth creation and accumulation. Invest profits for wealth preservation and growth. Be a producer first and foremost, and save a minimum of 20% of all earnings. Pay yourself first. Cut all ties with dishonest, negative or lazy people. Learn from the giants. A little caution avoids great regrets. Hope for the best, and prepare for the worst. Keep fully insured physically and materially, and keep hedged emotionally. Insurance is not for sale when you need it. Learn the other side's needs; offer as little information as possible; never underestimate your opposition, and never show weakness when negotiating. Never enter into nor invest in a business without a solid, well- researched and well thought-out written business plan. Execute the plan with passion and precision. Success comes quickly to those who develop great powers of intense sustained concentration. The first rule is to get involved by asking focused questions. Protect your downside. The upside will take care of itself. Cut your losses short, and let your profits run. This takes tremendous discipline. The primary purpose of business is to create and keep customers. Marketing and innovation produce results. All other business functions are costs. If it's not proprietary, it won't work. Pay only on performance. Competence starts with guaranteeing your work. Life operates in reverse action to entropy. Therefor the universe is hostile to life. Progress is a continued effort to swim against the stream. Focus first on doing the right things, and second on doing things right, by paying strict attention to details. Use leverage with ideas. The ability to generalise is the key to intellectual leverage, work, money, time and people. To maximise profits, replicate yourself. Earning potentials become geometric rather than linear. Rationalisations are generally convenient evasions of reality, and are used as excuses for dishonest behaviour and/or laziness. Always have lofty, explicit goals and focus on them intensely. Assume the attitude that if you don't reach your goals, you will literally die! This type of survival mindset, no matter how briefly used, forces you to use your time effectively, and illuminates new ways of getting things done. The value of any service you have to offer diminishes rapidly once it's provided. Protect your compensation before performing. You can usually determine a person's character by the company he keeps. Enthusiasm covers many deficiencies, and will make others want to associate with you. Working for someone else gives you little or no chance to make a fortune. By owning your own business, you only have to become good to become wealthy. Religiously nourish your body with proper nutrition, exercise and rest. Don't be afraid to say `no.' Keep an active mind, and continue to grow intellectually. You either grow or regress. Nothing stands still. Never be undercapitalised when starting a new venture. Socialism appeals to psychological and intellectual weaklings. Take full control of, and responsibility for, your conscious mind and all aspects of your life. Do not depend on others. Being incompetent or dependent in any part of your life or business, opens you up to manipulation and mysticism (laziness and evading reality). If there is not a conscious struggle to be honest in difficult situations, you are probably being dishonest. Characters aren't usually tested until things aren't going well or until stakes are high. Don't compromise if you are right. Hold your ground, show no fear, ask for what you want, and the opposition will usually agree. If the situation is not right in the long term, walk away from it. Maintain a long term outlook in all endeavours. Never be pressured into making an immediate investment decision. Invest only after strict and complete due diligence. Always have one more project than you can comfortably handle. Keep your overhead to a minimum. Rely more on brains, wit and talent; and less on money. Put no limits on your imagination. That which is most satisfying is that which is earned. Anything received free of charge is seldom valued. You can't get something for/ from nothing. The price is too high. By adhering to a strong honest philosophy, you will remain guiltless, blameless and independent and maintain control over your life. Without a sound philosophy, your life will eventually crumble. It takes almost the same amount of time and energy to manage tiny projects or businesses as it does to manage massive ones, and the massive ones carry with them proportional rewards. There is no such thing as `just a little theft,' or `just a little dishonesty.' Expect to receive the treatment you administer, and welcome it. Take full responsibility for your actions or lack of action. He who errs must pay. This is an easy concept to grasp from the recipient's end. An hour of effective creative thinking can be worth a month of hard work. Get in the habit of regular, precise, hard disciplined and integrated thinking. Out-think, out-innovate and out-hustle the competition, and vividly visualise yourself as winning before entering into every deal or competitive situation. Maintain a blood-smelling, fighter pilot life- or-death attitude when any deals get near to a close. First impressions are lasting impressions. Put your best foot forward. The right thing is usually not the easy thing to do. You may sacrifice popularity for rightness, but you will sacrifice self- esteem for wrongness. Lead by example. Have strict and total respect for other people's property. Try to understand others' frames of reference, needs and desires in all dealings. Determine what is honest, fair and rational, and act accordingly. Long-term success is built on credibility and on establishing enduring relationships with quality people, based on mutually earned trust. Don't be preoccupied with things over which you have no control. If it can't be observed, it's not true. Never act on blind faith. Don't enter into a business relationship with anyone unknown to you without being furnished with references dating back at least 10 years. If he doesn't have good enduring relationships, stay away. Enjoy life. Treat it as an adventure. Care about the outcome, but not too much. Things are seldom as bleak as they seem when they are going wrong, or as good as they seem when they are going well. The best way to get started is to get started. Do it now, and work every project to its conclusion with single-minded concentration. You can get any job done through the sheer force of will, when combined with uncompromising integrity and competence. Strong leadership is the key. You have to play it where it lies. The foundation of achievement is intense desire. The world's highest achievers have the highest levels of dissatisfaction. Those with the lowest levels are the failures. Integrate every aspect of your life, (body, mind, spirit, relationships, business) and each within itself. Never be deceptive when trying to achieve a personal gain. Short- changing others results in loss of self-esteem. If your purpose of life is security, you will be a failure. Security is the lowest form of happiness. Never enter into a form of contract unless all parties benefit. But, no partnership is ever 50/50. There will always be inequities. Review the basics of your profession at least once per year. Negative thinking results in the destruction of property. It is anti- property, therefore anti-capitalism and anti-life. Check all representations on which you rely made by everyone. High self-esteem can only come from moral productivity and achievement. There are an infinite number of new opportunities. Actively seek them out, and position yourself to recognise and take advantage of them. There is no such thing as a good idea unless it is utilised. To maximise profits, learn to identify universal problems, solutions and trends. Identifying and solving problems is the essence of profit generation. To maximise opportunities, seek and master the complicated. The major solutions you find will be surprisingly simple, and the competition is minimal. Always have opinions. Nothing wins more often than superior preparation. Patience is profitable. Achievement comes from the sum of consistent small efforts, repeated daily. Persistence is a sure path to success. Never, ever, ever give up. When you don't know, don't bluff; ask. You will compliment and learn. Always try to increase the size of the pie, rather than just your portion. Rewards are rare without risks, but take only carefully calculated risks. Make sure the odds are on your side. The `how' you get it is more important that the `what.' Be explicit and semantically precise in all communications, agreements and dealings. Summarise and write down important discussions; and make sure all sides agree. Putting agreements in writing avoids misunderstandings. Memories are fallible, and death is inevitable; so far. Be productive rather than reactive. Attack life. Don't believe it's true or right just because it's conventional. Stretch your imagination on every deal and look for an unconventional creative opportunity in every mistake or problem. Enjoy your vocation, or find one that you do enjoy; one that excites you the most. Nobody gets old by surprise. It's hard to learn and talk at the same time. Fill your life with positive expectations. Demand the best. Attitude and desire contribute to 80% of your success. Anyone can learn the physical mechanics. The key to mastering time is to arrange your daily activities into compartments; telephone calls, meetings, etc.; and move on to each compartment precisely when the current one's time has lapsed, or when its work is completed; whichever comes first. Get your most dreaded compartment's task out of the way before doing anything else in that compartment. The source of lasting happiness can never come from outside yourself through consuming values; but only from within yourself by producing values. An avoided problem will not go away, but usually gets worse. Anticipate and eliminate problems; or meet them head-on at the outset. For each action you take, ask yourself if you would be embarrassed if it were published. When someone makes a big issue about his honesty, he is probably dishonest. Put the magic power of compound interest to work with every available dollar. The best investment you will ever make is your steady increase of knowledge. Invest in yourself. Thirty minutes of study per day will eventually make you an expert in any subject; but only if you apply that knowledge. But, study alone is no substitute for experience; the gradual process of learning from, and not repeating your mistakes. Education is always painfully slow. It takes a lifetime of effort to build a good reputation, but only a moment of stupidity to destroy it. You are exactly what you believe and think about all day long. Whenever something sounds too good to be true, you can bet it is. Refuse to be swayed by emotion when it conflicts with reason. Anxiety is usually caused by lack of control, organisation, preparation and action. The first rule of sharpening your mind is to be an alert and sensitive observer. Constantly pay attention. Observation is the genesis of all knowledge and progress; and is the first step of every thinking person's tool: the Scientific Method. It takes a wise person to learn from his own mistakes; and a genius to learn and profit from the mistakes and experiences of others. The purpose of life is to delay, avoid and eventually reverse death. |