You are your most valuable asset. Your life, your potential, and your possibilities are the most
precious things you have. Thus your great goal in life should be to fulfill that potential and become
everything you are capable of becoming.
Your ability to learn, grow, and fulfill your potential is unlimited. Today, people are graduating
from high school and college in their seventies, learning new subjects and developing new
capabilities. Your ability to learn and remember can continue throughout your life if you keep your
brain alive, alert, and functioning at its best.
Your most precious financial asset is your earning ability . Your ability to work is your primary
source of cash throughout your life. You could lose your home, your car, your bank account, and
everything you own, but as long as you have your earning ability, you can earn it all back—and more
—in the months and years ahead.
Your Biggest Investment
Most people don’t realize this. They take their earning ability for granted. But it has taken you your
entire life to develop your earning ability. Every bit of education, experience, and hard work that you
have invested in learning your craft and developing your skills has gone into building this asset.
Your earning ability is very much like a muscle. It can increase in strength and power year by year
as the result of regular exercise. Likewise, the opposite is true, too: If left alone or ignored, your
earning ability, like your muscles, can become weaker or even decline because you have simply
failed to upgrade it continually.
In other words, your earning ability can be either an appreciating or a depreciating asset.
An appreciating asset is something that grows in value and cash flow every year as the result of continual
investment and improvement. A depreciating asset, on the other hand, is something that loses value
over time and finally reaches the point at which it is “written off,” being of little or no further value.
The choice is yours as to whether your earning ability is increasing or decreasing month by month and
year by year.
You Are the President
See yourself as the president of your own “Personal Services Corporation.” Imagine that you were
going to take your company public on the stock market. Would you recommend your company as a
growth stock, continually increasing its value and earning ability each year?
Or would you describe your company as one that has leveled off in the market place, that is not
really going anywhere in terms of increased value and income? Would you recommend stock in “You,
Inc.” as an excellent investment? Why or why not?
What Got You Here Won’t Get You Any Further
Some people are actually losing value each year, declining in earning ability, because they are not
continually upgrading their knowledge and skills. They don’t realize that whatever knowledge and
skill they have today is rapidly becoming obsolete. It is being replaced by new knowledge and skills
that, if you don’t have them and someone else does, you will be in danger of being overtaken by your
Join the Top 20 Percent
The top 20 percent of people in our
society earn and control 80 percent of the assets. According to Forbes, Fortune, Business Week, the
Wall Street Journal, and the IRS, by many estimates the top 1 percent of Americans control as much
as 33 percent of the assets.
The most interesting discovery in income inequality is that most millionaires, multimillionaires,
and billionaires in America are first generation. They started with little or nothing and earned all
their money by themselves in one lifetime.
In America, there is a high level of income mobility, which means you are able to move from the
lower levels of income to the upper levels. Almost everyone who is in the top 20 percent today
started in the bottom 20 percent. From that point, they began to do something different with their time
and their lives, and as a result, they put themselves squarely onto the upward escalator of financial
success.
The Keys to the Twenty-First Century
Knowledge and skill are the keys to the twenty-first century. Becoming the best person you can
possibly be and moving to the top of your field require the application of self-discipline throughout
your life. Mental fitness is like physical fitness: If you want to achieve either, you must work at it all
your life.
You can never let up. You must be continually learning and growing—every day, week, and
month—throughout your career (and in other areas of your life) if you’re going to join the top 20
percent and stay there. To earn more, you must learn more.
Abraham Lincoln once wrote, “The fact that some have become wealthy is proof that others may do
it as well.”
What others have done, you can do as well—if you learn how. Everyone who is at the top was
once at the bottom. Many people who come from average or poor families with average incomes or
who grow up in average circumstances have gone on to become some of the most prominent people in
their fields. And what hundreds of thousands and even millions of other people have done, you can do
as well. The philosopher Bertrand Russell once wrote that “the very best proof that something can be
done is that someone else has already done it.”
Ordinary into Extraordinary
Very often, you see people who don’t seem to be as intelligent or as talented as you are who are
nonetheless accomplishing remarkable things with their lives. There is nothing that will make you
angrier than to see someone who seems to be dumber than you doing better than you. How can this
be?
The answer is simple: At a certain point in their lives, they realized that the key to success was
personal and professional growth. It was a dedication to lifelong learning.
The good news is that almost every important skill is learnable. Every business skill is learnable.
Everyone who is proficient in any area of business was at one time completely ignorant in that area.
Every sales skill is learnable. Every top salesperson was once a beginning salesperson and unable to
make a call or close a sale. All moneymaking skills are learnable as well. Almost every wealthy
person was once poor. You can learn anything you need to learn to achieve any goal you can set for
yourself
Make a Decision
The starting point of your moving upward and onward toward becoming one of the most competent,
most respected, and highest paid people in your field is simple: Make a decision!
It is said that every major change in your life comes about when your mind collides with a new
idea, and you then make a decision to do something different. You make a decision to complete your
education, upgrade your skills, or get into a good college. You make a decision to start a new
business. You make a decision to take a particular job or start a particular career. You make a
decision to invest your money in a particular way. And, especially, you make a decision to be the best
in your field.
Many people say that they would like to be happy, healthy, thin, and rich. wishing and hoping are not enough. You have to make a firm, unequivocal decision that
you are going to pay any price and go any distance in order to achieve the goals you have set for
yourself. You have to make that decision and then burn your mental bridges behind you. From that
minute on, you resolve to continue working on yourself and your craft until you reach the top 20
percent—or beyond.
