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I’ve been doing a lot of research lately, talking to people, setting things up. I’ve noticed there are many smart people who are broke. I noticed this lady posted that she had an IQ of 159. I believe that’s genius level. But she said these words, “I’m poor.” I started thinking to myself that I don’t consider myself a genius, but I’m not poor. I started to think about this and I started to connect some dots.
There is this person on Facebook who has a business and they talk about all the money they make. They were offering to train people. Some people were laughing at them because every time they would ask a question, they’d say, “I’ll tell you for $5000.”
This person has put out at times that they were broke or their business wasn’t doing as well as one would assume. I started thinking about it. There are a lot of smart people out there who are failing. It made me examine why they are failing. Then that made me wonder whether they were really smart. As I thought about it, I started to push back on traditional definitions of how we determine whether someone is smart.
As a trainer, I am always curious about why one student does much better than another student. I read that 70% of people born poor, die poor. Now, why is that?
I think your most important information is what you learn from the time you are born until you are 10. I think that shapes so much. That explains that 70% number. Either that 70% of kids weren’t allowed to fail as a kid or they got too much harsh upbringing. From birth to ten years old, you should get a lot of support and a lot of encouragement. That’s going to cast the dye for your future.
Dysfunctional environments change things. I’ve got a client right now that if she had grown up in a better household, she would be a billionaire right now. I’m not joking. She is a millionaire.
Tribalism is another reason people remain poor. Some people say if you want more out of life then you are greedy. They say you should be happy. You’ll hear people say that family is the most important thing.
Do you think that if Bill Gates ran home for every family emergency that he would have led Microsoft to where it is today? Steve Jobs was a known asshole in that regard. You can become a world leader without family. But you can’t become successful if you have a jacked-up family that monopolizes your time.
That’s very controversial and that’s part of the tribalism impact. For poor people, family is all they have. You’re taught you should put family ahead of money-making activities. But, here’s the rub. What is one of the main reasons that families implode? Lack of money is the answer. But, you’re taught that money is bad.
Many people were born to fail. If you buy a course and you work hard and you still fail, you just didn’t get the tools that will make you successful. There’s a lot of stuff you just didn’t get. It’s very interesting.
Now, let’s talk about how to overcome that stuff. If you have no entrepreneurs in your family, stop talking to your family about your business. Don’t bring it up. You need to keep the money and business conversations out of your family talks, because they’re not going to understand you. You’ll be talking about buying a building and they’ll be talking about a job promotion. Since what you did seems more significant, you will have issues.
A lot of times when you’re dating someone, your security is their security. You have to keep them out of it. They start to try and help you manage the risk. They come up with all of these solutions that are steeped in fear and uncertainty so they can get back to being comfortable.
That’s one thing I learned a long time ago. I kept anyone I was dating out of the business. I wouldn’t hire them or have them do anything. Most people I’ve dated have no clue about the intricacies of business.
When you start a business, you think you are the only one there. That’s not true. Your mom is walking into it with you. Your family, your society and your religion are also there with you.
Now if you can take a test that says you are a genius and do well on it, but you can’t do well in the real world, then you may not be that smart. Now. Let’s go back to Steve Jobs, Bill Gates and Zuckerberg. All of these guys were academically smart. But, they’re also incredibly clever. Now who do we call clever? They are people who can get results. These are folks who can problem-solve on the spot and get results.
While it is nice from a social standpoint to be a genius, it is better to be clever. Let me give you an example. During my retirement, in the early days of the storage auction craze, I didn’t really work that much. This went on for a few years. I got a little bored, so I started playing around with stuff. I started running experiments.
One of them was the Craigslist marketing thing. I took that and I played around with it for three months. I figured out how to write copy. Copywriting is writing designed to get a specific result. If you write copy and get desired results, that’s good copy. I started getting gains. That came from being clever. Clever is about action.
Can someone go from abject poverty and become super rich? Yes. It happens. Is that the norm? Fuck no. Environment is the biggest predictor of success. Someone going from brutal poverty to the middle class is a very long journey. Here’s the thing. There are so many ways they can get there and then pop back out.
If you are the most successful person in your family, there is an unspoken expectation that you will use your money to help everyone in the family. If you do not, you are called selfish and that there is something wrong with you. That’s another reason folks with money don’t say shit.
People who are really smart emotionally can literally rule the world. That’s just something that is not taught. There’s just so much that goes into that.
If you have emotional intelligence, you’re clever and have some discipline, you can make a lot of money.
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