Three Ways to Get Rich: L.A.D.

I always look forward to my lunches with Ray Bard because he teaches me valuable things. He doesn’t intend to teach me things; it just happens.

Our short lunches last 3 hours. Our record is 6 ½.

Ray is my publisher.

During our most recent lunch, Ray said – and I’m inclined to agree with him – there are only three sources of wealth: Luck, Accident, and Desire.

1. If you inherited the money, married the money, won the lottery, bought the right stock at the right time, or went to work for the right company and were given a pile of stock options, you were lucky. I don’t say that to make you feel bad, but we really shouldn’t pretend that you can teach someone else how to do it. Picking the right stock or going to work for the right start-up seems like an easy thing to do in hindsight, but it’s not so easy using foresight.
2. If you’re an artist, a writer, or an inventor who got rich, you were probably never really in it for the money. You got rich by accident. Am I right? You always knew money was a possibility, but you chose to do what you do because you love it. It scratches your itch. It makes you happy. It makes you feel alive. So again, if we’re being honest, your advice about how to get rich would probably sound like this, “Be good at what you do. Study, experiment, refine your craft. Follow your instincts. Trust your gut. Be true to yourself. Break the rules. Blah, blah, blah.” I can say this because what little I’ve acquired has come to me in exactly this way. And that advice you just read – including the blah, blah, blah – is exactly what I tell people when they ask me how to “get to the next level, financially.” I tell them this because they would be disappointed if I told them the truth. I am a writer because I love to write and I am embarrassingly self-indulgent.
3. But nearly all my wealthy friends got rich intentionally. It was their lifelong desire. They could easily teach you how to get rich, too, but only if you have sufficient patience, discipline, and desire.

Getting rich is exactly like losing weight; it rarely happens by accident.

How to lose weight isn’t a secret; you’ve got to consume less calories than you burn. Tens of millions of Americans desire to lose weight and they believe they have the patience and the discipline and the desire to lose weight. But the only ones who lose weight and keep it off do so when the pain of staying the same becomes greater than the pain of doing what they already know they need to do.

How to get rich isn’t a secret; you’ve got to do things other people are unwilling to do. You’ve got to swallow your pride, restrain your spending, make hard choices, say no to yourself, get back up when you’re knocked down, and learn from your mistakes rather than defend them. But most important of all, you’ve got to patiently, relentlessly, obsessively keep your eye on the prize.

Are you beginning to understand what I said about patience, discipline and desire?