How To Escape Poverty - 'Is Your Thinking Keeping You Poor?' - Professional Speaker Douglas Kruger

well ladies and gentlemen good afternoon to you what an absolute pleasure to be here quick question who here owns a Ferrari seriously not a single one a couple of weeks ago I saw something that you don't see every single day it was an accident between a Ferrari and a VW Golf by the time that I arrived the VW Golf was on one side of the road and it was a little shorter than it was meant to be originally and on the other side of the road was this what used to be a six foot three gleaming red Ferrari but was now a four foot two slightly more crunchy Ferrari and you drive past that and you think to yourself that's a really bad day for some wealthy individual and it's not something you see every day so I pulled my car over I put a little fit a comment on Facebook and I said let's have a moment of silence for the mighty fallen never again to go from nought to a hundred in six point three or three point six seconds and the reaction that I got from some of my friends on Facebook was interesting people said they didn't say things like what a shame what a pity our what a loss they said serves him right and the hatred just kept on coming one comment after another how can he drive a car like that in a country like this our roads are wrong for it he was probably drunk one person stopped just short of accusing him of being a child molester and it was fascinating to me just to see the level of hatred aimed at this Ferrari driver now here's the interesting bit about it the only information that I put on Facebook was there has been an accident between a golf and a Ferrari that's it we don't know who was wrong we don't know if it was the golf driver who made the mistake we don't know if a dog didn't run across the road and caused this thing but what was interesting is it showed up a belief system that most of us don't even know we have it's a bias against the rich it's fascinating now in a room like this we are all studying and working toward building careers building futures becoming high net-worth individuals let me ask you a question do you reckon you can become a high net worth individual at the same time as hating wealthy people it's a self-limiting belief and it actually gets in the way but what's fascinating is that the kind of thinking that is handed down to us from generation to generation is invisible it was once beautiful wasn't it and I'm not the only person who's actually seen this in motion anybody here watch Top Gear yes yeah absolutely Top Gear fans join me for a moment here the rest of you can just go to sleep Jeremy Clarkson says in the United States you watch a person drive by in a Bentley and the reaction is one day I'll be in one of those and he says it's different in Britain he says in Britain you watch a guy drive past in the Bentley and you say one day I'll have him out of that that's a bit more sinister isn't it a little bit darker and it's really interesting because particularly in South Africa we have spent decades trying to unravel a belief system about racism that's been handed down from generation to generation but we are not aware of other beliefs that are handed down to us particularly beliefs about wealthy people and here we all are chasing these goals and chasing these lives while at the same time feeling uncomfortable about talking about money or talking about wealthy people as though they are obviously evil they come from the devil let's take a look at how this thinking is created how its generated how its handed down from generation to generation and how it can stop you from achieving your goals the point is to unravel it get it out of our minds X I sit be rid of it be free of it so that we can actually chase the goals that we have in life and become all God intended us to be in my family if you go back two generations to my grandmother she used to work at an English manor house in Manchester is anyone here ever watched the show on TV quite a quite amateur show called Downton Abbey anyone seen it no okay the basic idea is you've got two sets of people you've got the higher class folks who own this Abbey they're kind of semi royalty in the in the United Kingdom then you've got the people downstairs who run everything they do the cooking they do the sweeping the cleaning it's the the staff my grandmother was part of the manor house but she was not the people upstairs she was the people downstairs she was one of the maid servants who helped to keep this manor house clean and if you have to see pictures of the way that they dressed at the time it was the full old-style regalia she had the little apron and the little maids outfit and the little feather duster and it's everything we think of a slightly kinky today but of course at the time it was nothing like that this was a woman who worked incredibly hard from dusk till dawn this was a woman whose back was sawed more often than not this was a woman who if you ever met her and put your hands on her hands you'd find nothing but calluses and most importantly this was a woman who had no voice in the face of authority because the thinking back then for both the lower classes and for women was keep quiet don't make waves be a cog in the system we don't want to know that you exist we just want to see that your job gets done and this is the kind of thinking that is then handed down from generation to generation and what's interesting is that when my dad came along my grandmother was looking for the best advice she could possibly give to him about work and wealth and how to make your way in the world she went rummaging around in her mind and she came up with this Jim and it was the advice she gave to my dad she said my son get a trade that way you will never starve to death who here has heard some variation of that advice yeah yeah a lot of us have heard things down those lines there's nothing wrong with getting a trade you can become a plumber and you can become very wealthy as a plumber but listen to the second half of that sentence did she say so that you can become all god intends you to be is it so that you can let your light shine so that you can become wealthy so that you can achieve goals no it's so that you never starve to death the thinking comes from a place of desperation and that's the thinking that's handed down generation to generation and the weird part is it's completely invisible to us we hear this advice and we think it's right and we think it's normal now I'm not picking on my grandmother she was doing the best she could with the ideas that she had without perhaps knowing how much damage it can do to future generations take a look at the building you see behind me there that is an Industrial Revolution era factory it's about a hundred maybe 120 years ago what other building that we have today looks very similar to that factory out loud what do you think hospitals what else schools schools yeah schools and here's an interesting one r-run according to the Industrial Revolution age of thinking picture this for a second you drop your kids off at school or you as a child or dropped off at school and you line up in neat lines and the foreman I mean the teacher blows the whistle or rings the bell and in your neat lines you go to your workstation and you sit down you sit down at your little workstation and you work for a number of hours and then the foreman I mean the teacher blows the whistle rings the bell and you take out your little lunch box and you can have some food then the whistle goes again you go back into your work station you sit down it is run according to an industrial revolution era Factory why because we are training human beings to be cogs in a system and we're still doing it hey now I'm not picking on schools here the point is not to say that schools are badly run the point is just to say we have thinking that is invisible to us we are trained to thought and we are culture alized to act in certain ways that no longer make sense in the modern economy the old world thinking says become a cog in a system fit in don't make waves and if you're a perfect cog you'll get you a little bit of money at the end of the day and you can go home that thinking will keep you poor so what are some of the alternatives well that's what I'd like to look at with you here today I like to call that style of thinking the wheelbarrow way it basically goes like this it's like the parents get hold of their child the young son the young daughter they say my son my daughter you are young and strong you must go out into the world and earn coins here's how you do it pick up your wheelbarrow load it full of bricks and for every hour that you push your wheelbarrow you will get one coin if you want a second coin you have to push your wheelbarrow for a second hour now we think like that we go the only way to earn coins is to work for a set number of hours so let me go and get a job and be dead on a boss now you work your set number of hours every day you push your wheelbarrow for your set number of hours and a horrible thing starts to happen you start to realize that you can't quite afford the car you're not quite breaking even with the kids and their education and the debit orders and the bonds and so on so what do you do you go back to the thinking that was handed down to you and you say if I'm not getting enough coins what do I have to do I have to push a second wheelbarrow in the evenings to get more coins that kind of thinking keeps families in generational cycles of poverty if you take nothing else away from today this is the one principle that is the most important do not tie your earning to the number of hours you work you've got to separate those two and I'll show you how today but so long as we think a number of hours equals a number of coins we are in financial trouble because as a human being you only have so many hours in the day the wealthy person's epiphany the way of breaking out of this idea is this dump the bricks in your wheelbarrow get rid of them load your wheelbarrow up with gold in other words for every hour that you push that wheelbarrow you need to raise the value of your work earn more coins per hour not work more hours in order to get more coins so that make sense okay of course that raises some interesting questions are how the heck do you do that there are definitely ways of doing it what are some of the things that our families teach us about work and about wealth and about how economies work and once again it's not to say that they are trying to do damage in our lives they are doing the best they can with the thinking handed down to them but the world has changed what are some of the things that they teach us work hard there's nothing wrong with working hard I believe in working hard but the goal is actually to make money not to work hard and there is a very big difference there in certain companies people think you are fantastic if you are working hard not necessarily if you are being effective so what they do is people make a show of the number of hours that they work how they work over weekend how they part of every meeting they're not necessarily getting stuff done but they're showing that they're working hard yeah that's the difference the next thing is play it safe play it safe wealthy people take risks all the time the middle classes and poor folks take no risks at all in fact I heard a phrase the other day that's just been resonating in my mind that says the middle classes are paralyzed by doubt they are secure to the point of paralysis they do not take risks and of course the thinking handed down there is get a safe job and let someone else take care of you be like everyone else here's an obvious thing that has to be said if you be like everyone else you're gonna earn like everyone else if you choose the safe route in life you are choosing to earn less than you potentially could so today let's talk about the idea of recession versus abundance you've probably heard I mean it's all over the world news and it's in every newspaper every blog everywhere you go the recession that we've been talking about that kicked in in 2008 what's interesting about recessions is not what's going on in the world what's going on in your Innerspace up here there are for example speakers in my industry who have decided that there is a recession and have earned a heck of a lot less as a result then there are other speakers was a gibe particular guy in the states named randy gage who said in 2008 the world issued an invitation to go into recession and I politely declined and he says he's had his best year ever every single year since then because what happens is when we are told that there is a recession we stop acting in ways that generate money because we believe that people aren't buying we haven't discovered a recession we have bought into the concept of a recession there are certain companies who have had their best years ever since right the way through this recession because they simply don't believe in it today I'd like to share with you a tip eight ideas eight ways of overhauling your thinking that have to do with work and wealth and my promise to you is that they are going to be uncomfortable I hear to make people feel good but this stuff is massively important it's important because we are still being taught the ways to work that are outdated the world changes but we're still practicing the old ways if you do do the Twitter thing you're more than welcome to tweet about it as you go along I see a couple of people grabbing their phones when you see the eight yeah if you want to connect with me on Twitter use at Douglas Kruger yeah you can say this guy is talking a load of rubbish or this is a valuable idea whatever but I warn you I'm going to close the doors and check every tweet before I let you out I will find you epiphany number one resenting the wealthy says more about us than it does about the wealthy there's a phrase that my family always used to use and when I was young we struggled really really badly with poverty we had some incredibly rough winters one that I remember we went through the whole of July with our power cut off we had our local church bringing food baskets to our house and I lived in a pretty decent neighborhood and we were the odd ones out so it's quite rough to go through that sort of thing and to have someone else feeding your family when your own parents can't it was a difficult time to go through but what's most interesting to me now looking back on that time period is the kind of language that my family used around the dinner table has your family ever used a phrase like how the other half live when they talk about rich people yeah you know what it's like it's like rich people are a different species the way that I'd like you to look at the difference between where you are and wealth is I want you to look at it as a curve because if it is a curve you can move along that curve you can go from where you are now to your goals but if you buy into that thinking that says rich people are just a different species then instead of a curve there's just a chasm there's a hole there is an absolute void between where you are and where you to be and if you don't believe that it's possible to move along that transition you don't act in ways that start to move you there the first the starting point in becoming a high net worth individual is the belief that it is possible that a wealthy person is not a different species they're just further along on a continuum they have more education about what brings in money and how to achieve goals than what you currently have and that's okay because that represents hope that means you can learn these things you can do them resenting the wealthy says more about us than it does about the wealthy we often think about wealthy people as they're obviously evil they're obviously corrupt they obviously stepped on people's faces to get where they are now Forbes magazine paints a different picture of that they take the highest-earning individuals on the planet and they look at how much they give the stats bear out that wealthy people give more per capita than anyone else we're not just talking about more money because they actually have more we're talking about more per individual in percentage form the idea that wealth people are wealthy people are obviously stingy obviously evil is not borne out by statistics yeah of course there's obviously the odd jerk you will meet the odd horrible rich person they're out there certainly in their numbers but by and large it is not a valid rule that's number one number two there are three things that money is not money is not the root of all evil that's not what the verse says what does the verse say the love of money and it also doesn't say is the root of all evil it says something down the lines of is the root of many kinds of evil now think about what that belief would do to Christian families people of faith if it becomes a locked-in belief and it's handed down generation to generation money is the root of all evil okay so if I chase it there's something wrong with me you can't hold that belief and become wealthy the two do not work together and that's one of those things that we need to check out it's a misquote of the original verse and it's damaging it does a lot of harm particularly to people of faith money is the first thing money is not the root of all evil the second thing money is not embarrassing could you be rich with a straight face time to face that question because you are on a career trajectory that can potentially make you very wealthy could you handle it what kind of human being would you be once you get there yeah wealth simply makes you an amplified version of yourself so what are you if you're a horrible person a rich version of you is going to be a horrible person who's able to do more if you're a good person who likes to help others a rich version of you will be an amplified version of that their money is not embarrassing and if we are embarrassed by money it changes a number of things around the dinner table as a family we won't talk about it no no the middle classes like to talk about how hard we're working but we never talked about how to earn money or how to lose money all of the rules of money you get into the home of wealthy people and that's what they talk to their children about because they think it's important money is not embarrassing we must talk about it and number three you'll see that little pool on the screen their money is not finite it is not finite it is not a limited resource if I take some over here there's less for you money doesn't work that way I have a friend who studied to be a doctor she actually qualified no in fact forgive me I got that one wrong she is a qualified lawyer passed her bar exam and what she then did because she was married to a guy who is quite wealthy she said I'm not going to practice law because if I practice law I get a salary and that means slightly less money for other people folks the thinking is wrong she has the world's best intentions there but what she's actually doing is failing to contribute a little bit to the total amount of money available work doesn't take money out of a system it adds it to it the more people we have running their own businesses the more people we have selling the more people we have doing stuff the more there is for all bring your skill to this country bring your talent earn money for yourself the more you have the more there is in totality it's also very interesting because in different countries they think about the finite nature of money in different ways Korea about 10 20 years ago they decided that they wanted to do economic upliftment for the majority of their people so what did they do they took a look at America and they said I reckon we contact we can take on their car industry and we can take on their IT industry have you ever heard of Samsung yeah have you ever heard of any of the Korean car brands yeah Hyundai and what's the other one Kia and they are absolutely conquering the world right now because what they've decided to do is to grow now other countries around the world and in fact South Africa is a prime example we go oh there's a finite amount of money so if we want to make some people rich what are we going to do if we're going to take from others rather than growing the entire pool bring your skill grow the country we need entrepreneurs we often talk about how much we need jobs you can't falsely create a job my next question to you is why the heck would you want a job you can't get wealthy in a job but that's what we're taught as middle-class people we're taught be like everyone else get a good safe job ok we'll talk about that one in just a moment as well number three represent yourself represent yourself there's a fantastic book and when I'm king of the world I'm going to make it mandatory reading for everyone it's called outliers by Malcolm Gladwell anyone here read that yeah I highly recommended Malcolm Gladwell outliers he talks about the difference between people who fail and succeed in anything and he talks about how in wealthy families they teach their children something very different to what is taught in middle class and poorer families and it's just how to interact with Authority the middle classes and poorer people are taught to fear Authority and it's industrial revolution thinking you've got to fear the guy who runs the factory because he owns your life yeah and it goes like this let's take a practical example they do this one in the book he says you're taking your child to the dentist the middle-class family will teach the child that the dentist is God he has studied for eight years and he knows everything there is to know you as the child must shut up sit down keep quiet and even if it hurts don't cry just wait for it to be over do whatever he tells you to do now in wealthy families they approach the exact same situation completely differently driving to the dentist's office they tell the child the dentist is your friend he has studied for eight years so that he can serve you properly how's that Hey the dentist is a resource that you can use if you have any questions about your mouth about your teeth about anything that you want to know there you must ask the dentist because it's his job to help you now take that kind of thinking that's a simple example going to the dentist take that kind of thinking and amplify it over the next 20 years which of those two kids is going to do well in life you've got one who's taught to fear Authority shut up keep your voice down don't make waves and the other one who's taught the world is there for you to utilize it's all resources you can use it to your own ends imagine the difference that that would make represent yourself and we need to teach our children to represent themselves as well we have been conned into an industrial revolution myth that says authorities in charge and knows best you must shut up and do what you're told you must be a cog in a system and as long as you are doing your job perfectly and not making waves you'll be fine that thinking is a hundred years outdated we cannot teach it any longer number three number four inspired ideas this is one of my favorites as you go about building your career there are the things that you need to do on a day to day basis that slowly gradually move you up that curve toward wealth and if you keep doing them slowly and consistently and gradually every single day ultimately your life is going to improve and you must do those things however from time to time we get that one inspired idea that crazy thought that thing that pops into our heads are we go what if and it's those ideas which in one go can add an extra zero to your income you must have them you must act on them I'll give you a simple practical example in 2006 I had a book published on public speaking and it went through a traditional publisher in Cape Town it went into the bookstores and sold for about a hundred and fifty R and a book of which I got a trans 75 that's how much the author actually gets still I was really chuffed to have this book published and it's a bit of credibility for me as a speaker and it did bring in some money now one of my professional speaker friends said Doug don't do it that way the next time you write a book publish it yourself you pay for the printing you pay for everything and sure it's a bit of money up front but after that you can sell the book at a complete profit and I had this inspired idea I thought wait a minute what if you took that one step further what if you got somebody else to pay for the book so I literally walked in the front door of one of my biggest clients old mutual fair Bain Capital and I spoke to one of the directors and I said how do you feel about giving me a hundred and fifty thousand Rand two minutes later after he'd said yes we were discussing his next yachting holiday I took the chance I tried and it worked he paid for a thousand copies of two separate books and I've been selling them ever since no money down every book that I sell is pure profit margin hey you're starting to see how like thinking differently means different levels of income you can get a salary at the end of the month or you can do things for yourself and generate your own income with inspired ideas now that's just a small one but that brought in firstly it meant I didn't have to pay a hundred and fifty thousand rand and then beyond that it meant something like three four four five hundred thousand rands worth of book sales over the years and that's just one small thing that made a massive impact on my life but I had to represent myself I had to have the idea I had to walk through the door and just have the gumption to try to ask to not be a cog in a system that just does its function perfectly to be a human being with a face and a voice and thoughts creative ideas and an opinion and that can change the scale of your income that's number four number five number five is an abstract idea leaving the ranks of the poor may mean leaving the ranks of the poor that makes sense get will in a moment a while ago I was driving past a particularly poor area it was one of these places where on the side of the road you see these dogs with the sort of ribs sticking out and I mean it's all dust and poverty and hardship and you know I look at that sort of thing in it it saddens me that human beings still have to live under conditions like that here you think about it as a species we're at the level where we're each of us I mean how many people around the room are holding personal computers in their own hands in the form of an own or an iPad or whatever the case might be we have that kind of technology we send satellites out into space we are able to take a photograph of Earth from millions of miles away and then send it back through the void and look at that picture we have astonishing levels of achievement and yet we still have families who don't have enough to eat every day that's awful now dry I happen to be on my way to a conference where I was speaking about an entrepreneurial idea how to make money and I thought to myself just a mental exercise if I was stripped of all of the stuff that I use every day the suit the car the equipment the bits and pieces there the toys if I was stripped of all of that and just left with my knowledge my wits and my education and put into this scenario living in abject poverty could I get back out could I get back out and back to my own life what do you think and could you yeah okay most of the people around this room are kind of saying yes now that's an interesting thought let's take that thought one step further if I had to take a high net worth individual someone who does Drive the Ferrari the Lamborghini someone with their own private helicopter with their own business whatever the case might be and I transplanted them into your life do you think they would be able to get back out if we say yes to that then what we're saying is the gap between where you are and where that person is is up here and then a horrifying thought but at the same time it represents hope because it means it can be done it means that the thought is out there the ideas are out there the knowledge the education is available it can be done leaving the ranks of the poor however may mean leaving the ranks of the poor my thought process went like this I thought maybe I'd start up a small company something that doesn't doesn't require a lot of startup capital maybe a little store maybe I'd get other people to work for me and then I kind of stopped enough so I thought to myself that's not what I do the first thing I do is to physically leave and go somewhere else why because often in situations like that the thinking is depressed and it's not it's not to point fingers or to point blame I mean I've been in a family that has gone through extreme poverty but when you've had generations of poverty it's almost impossible to believe it's possible the thinking becomes depressed there's a speaker in the States these days who has an interesting concept and I believe it he says you are likely to be about as wealthy and about as successful as the average of the five people closest to you think about that for a second who are your closest five it's likely to be probably something like mom dad best friend boss teacher something down those lines chances are it's those people how wealthy are they I'm sorry to ask the question but apparently those stats bear out because what happens is we get involved in an ecosystem of thinking and we all affect one another with our level of aspiration a level of ideas our thinking about work and wealth and we all Everage each other out there's something you can do about this one you don't have to dump your mom okay you don't have to dump the best friend anything down those lines what it is saying is we do need to associate with highly successful individuals we need to expose ourselves to that kind of thinking unless we do we are not going to lift ourselves up but the thinking is out there and quite often people are quite willing to be mentors friends to share answers share ideas sometimes they're not it's always worth asking worth the approach you are likely to be about as wealthy or about as successful as the average of the five people closest to you here's an uncomfortable question is your state's thinking keeping you put can you think of one policy just one then we have in this country that tries to help people but actually promotes poverty anyone social grants yeah think about it this way around what a great idea you've got a young mom who falls pregnant has a couple of kids she's on her own she has no way of earning an income so what we do we give us some money brilliant idea except then of course the opposite happens you have a young woman who goes you know what I'd like some money some money so I'm going to become a young mom in order to get it there is that likely to help them to become incredibly prosperous no is your state's thinking keeping you poor number six your positioning determines your pay scale it is not the quality of your work that determines your income you can be the best in the world at a certain thing and be out earned by someone who is not the best in the world your positioning determines your pay scale let's put this in very simple terms if you're the celebrity of your industry you're going to out-earn the non celebrity of your industry even if that guy's better at it than you let's take for example anyone here watch the cooking show with Nigella Lawson seen her on TV yeah yeah absolutely Nigella Lawson do you reckon she is one of the top five chefs in the world no I don't think so do you think she's in the top hundred mmm I don't think so do you reckon she's in the top thousand I don't think so so why is she out earning all of them because she's Nigella Lawson I'll give you another example if an unknown speaker comes and stands in front of you that person can put in an invoice fourth X number of zeros at the end of an hour of speaking Richard Branson walks into the room and chats with you for five minutes they will add three more zeros to his fee it's not because he worked harder and it's not because he's a better speaker it's because he's Richard Branson you need to be the icon the expert the celebrity the big name in your industry now here's where most people get it wrong they say knowledge is everything knowledge is important but you also have to bring personality that's what Nigella Lawson is doing she is able to speak well in front of a camera she's pretty she's seductive yeah now this is all the stuff that we are never taught as important we are taught what's important is be a cog in a system don't make waves function perfectly get your job done imagine if Nigella Lawson did that she'd be poor all she'd ever do is cook in the kitchen maybe earn like five bucks once in a while yeah but because she brings humanity to it she brings to it things that cannot be done by a computer that cannot be done by a system anything that can be systematized computerised commoditized is unvalued all we're still teaching our kids to study IT that's a low income future because there's like two billion other people studying IT and most of it will be done by the computer itself like tomorrow that's how fast it's moving there's at one of those talks on Ted the inspirational talks website where a guy says and this is quite interesting he says the economy of tomorrow will not be ruled by people who have doctorates or who have studied IT or anything technical the economy of tomorrow will be ruled by people who did bas and know how to think creatively because the computer can't do that it's the people who bring their personality their humanity you become an icon in their industry so it's not just about how good you are technically at what you do it's about being the human being to face the voice the one we see in the media in magazines hear on the radio are you an icon that way you earn more number seven this one's more for companies but it's useful to us as well don't fixate on the bottom line what most companies tend to do is when they think about their finances they put 80 percent of their energy into saving what they have and 20 percent of their energy into earning more we need to reverse that saving of course is important yes you can save yourself rich if you've got like 150 years to live what's more important is actually generating more income picture a clan of people now I want you to just use your imaginations here let's go back thousands of years in time we're sitting at the outskirts of our cave we are a plan and we're facing winter winter is like recession winter is trying winter is deadly to us and our economy is made up of Buffalo we eat them to survive we wear their coats in order to survive this horrific winter the hunters have been out into the field and good news they came back with three Buffalo but three Buffalo is not quite enough for our entire clan to make it through the winter we technically need more now the thinking in the clan splits in two we get the hunters and we get the bean-counter in the cave and the bean-counter says what we have to do is take those three Buffalo and conserve them preserve them make them last save them so that we get through the winter the hunters see it differently they say no no give us one of the Buffalo to eat and using that strength we will go back out into the field and we will get more Buffalo so that we can make it through the winter all big organizations have this split between the bean-counter and the Buffalo and sometimes it destroys entire companies yeah my belief system says this it doesn't matter how well you save your Buffalo if you don't have enough Buffalo saving effectively is only going to mean you'll starve to death slower you need more Buffalo in the system in other words you need to put 20 percent of your energy into saving your money and 80 percent of your energy into generating more money that's the way we need to think saving is important but it's not all important middle-class thinking says the most important thing to do is save sure if you're going to live for 150 years brilliant idea number eight Randy gage the u.s. speaker recently wrote a book called risky is the new safe the alternative applies safe is the new risky we've been taught for generations to play it safe you get a job and don't make waves I contend that that is the most dangerous thing that you can possibly do because you are taking all of your eggs and putting them in one basket you are taking your life your future your career your spouse your children your medical aids your debit orders your entire life putting them into one basket and handing them to a person whose first concern is not your welfare that sounds pretty dangerous to me also 6070 years ago people did go and get a job and work for 4050 years and retire safely does that happen anymore heck no it's just not the reality most companies these days if you've got a job you have 31 days of safety that's it now let's look at this differently people say being an entrepreneur is risky being your own boss is risky well Forbes magazine says the only people who are wealthy are their own bosses okay the next thing is if you as an entrepreneur try 10 big crazy inspired ideas and eight of them fail you've got two of them working now you go out there and you try another ten big crazy inspired ideas and again eight of them fail two of them work now you're up to four things that are bringing in income you go out there ten big things eight fail two more you're up to six different things that are bringing in income for myself as a speaker I now have multiple income streams I speak I train I sell books I sell DVDs I do media appearances multiple streams of income much much safer risky is the new safe safe is the new risky and the more we buy into the old Industrial Revolution era idea that having a boss take care of us is safe the greater the danger we put our own lives in risky is the new safe safe is the new risky I believe that risk aversion is one of the things that paralyzes most of the people in the middle class your average high net worth individual has been bankrupt three times how scary is the idea of going bankrupt to you yeah to them it's a matter of course they've tried big crazy things they've tried building up businesses and they've uh Turley utterly failed but to them it's only part of the process and they do something interesting and I'd like to invite you to do this they give themselves permission to fail folks today at this early stage in your career make that commitment to yourself do yourself a favor give yourself permission to fail it's okay it's only a bit of embarrassment so any bit of skin off the knees it's only picking yourself up and trying again they think differently in California to what we think here the guy here started and started up a business and failed banks won't touch him with a bargepole in California the banks and the financier seek out the people who have tried and failed before because they reckon that person has learnt valuable lessons along the way give yourself permission to fail here's a revolutionary thought give other people permission to laugh at you and mock you for trying let that be okay say I know my family's not going to understand I know my friends are going to laugh at me they're going to tell me this is crazy you should play it safe and get a job give them permission to think that way give them permission to laugh at you give yourself permission to try and fail you need the space you need the leeway be kind to yourself my final parting thought for today is just this you are not separated from your goals by a number of years you are separated from your goals by a number of actions and that's completely different years years are an abstract concept that's like saying 1020 years from now I'll be wealthy it's not up to years it's up to you and your actions that puts the ball back in your hand that gives you control that gives you the power you are not separated from your goals by a number of years you're separated from your goals by a number of actions the word is as a man thinks so is he so ladies and gentlemen know to think for may god bless you and may you prosper

Channel: Douglas Kruger

Views: 2,638,706

Rating: 4.8510108 out of 5

Keywords: Douglas Kruger, professional speaker, motivational speaker, inspirational speaker, conference speaker, innovation, wealth, prosperity, success, mindsets, South Africa, entrepreneur, be your own boss, wealth mindset, become rich, differences between rich and poor, think rich, become wealthy, escape poverty, become a millionaire, think like the rich, get rich, https://www.youtube.com/user/DouglasKruger1

Id: _ruRiTeX1jE

Length: 44min 56sec (2696 seconds)

Published: Thu Oct 22 2015