The most money goes to those who
‘deserve‘ and ‘earn‘ the most money. 

This is the quintessential essence of financial success, and if you are not prepared to understand and accept this very simple fact, then you may be doomed for living a life of mediocrity, and I must say, a life which is insipid and lacking in color, spirit and vitality.

So, how do you become someone who deserves the most money?

Well, the ‘keyword’ in the above statement is EARN.

You see, before you can deserve something you must first earn something.

Coincidentally, this rule-of-attraction applies to everything in life, whether it be money, respect, friendship, love, everything must be earned before it is deserved.

My concern, for this writing, is the earning and deserving of money, because with money, you can be completely free to pursue all of your other personal interests, which quite frankly, I believe, add the most value to our lives.

So, how do you earn the most money?

Well, by simply being the BEST at whatever it is that you do.

Whether you are a waitress, bartender, mechanic, or salesperson, regardless of what you are doing now to earn a living, if you work towards being the BEST at whatever it is that you do, I can almost guarantee you, that the most financial reward will materialize right in front of you, because this is the natural order of how business, and life, works:

• If you are a waitress, memorize the menu and cultivate a cheerful and positive personality toward your guests
• If you are a bartender, prepare to talk intelligently and playfully about current events, sports, and other interesting topics to your patrons
• If you are a mechanic, learn how to break down technical jargon into plain English for your customers by using analogies if possible
• If you are a salesperson, learn everything you can about human behavior because your success is not totally dependent solely on the product that you represent

The point you should take away from this writing, is to master your ability to deliver excellent-top-notch-service to your clientele, because if you can satisfy the people that you serve you will be recognized and inevitably attract the most money in your profession.

Our lives are not like Rocky Balboa, though his character in the movie, ‘Rocky’, resulted as a tremendous success, and though I firmly believe that these twists-of-fate do occur, they are mostly a one-in-a-million-chance.

Though a twist-of-fate is a one-in-a-million-chance, it is still better odds than winning the lottery, however, to be honest, you are better off to increase the odds of financial success in your own life, by becoming the BEST at whatever it is that you do for a living.

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Please, DO NOT take this as an insult, but in my experience, when talking to most people about money, I find that most people get agitated, and begin to feel uncomfortable, when engaging in a discussion about money, especially when the discussion revolves around their own money.

I believe there are three salient reasons for this:

• First, most people do not have much money to speak of
• Second, most people do not know how to make more money
• Third, most people do not believe in making more money

Well, I am here to tell you that if you do not believe in making more money, then you will never know how to make more money, and you will never have more money than you have today, which is to say, you might not be able to create a life of Security and Freedom for yourself and your family.

Most people correlate the making of more money with greed, selfishness, materialism, an insatiable desire for power.

Well let me say this, if you live in America, you have a blessing that the rest of the world does not have the privilege to enjoy, and that blessing is the blessing of Freedom, to be the most that you can be, to rise to the highest levels of your own personal self.

Now, fortunately, or unfortunately, on this earth, MONEY is the object that will deliver the Freedom and Security for you and your family to live a life that is free from stress and rich in comfort, on this earth.

MONEY is the object that will afford you the wherewithal to help those you wish to help, whether it be your immediate family, relatives, close friends or select charities.

In my youth, I dreamed of having money so that I could lavish myself with the finest of luxuries.

Then, as I gained years, and wisdom, I realized that material things alone fulfilled nothing of real value within me.

I realized that my Creator instilled within me the powers to think, to learn, to analyze and to design and create a life that permits me the abilities to help others.

Our Creator has instilled these powers in all of us, and it is incumbent for each and every one of us to engage and cultivate our own God-given powers for our own purpose.

Money is NOT the root of all evil, but only the love and the want for money alone can make people stray towards the evil that money can deliver.

Engage your senses for Right and Wrong and steer your compass down the righteous path and you will arrive at a place of your selection that will fulfill every one of your unspoiled desires.

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It makes me angry… so very angry… when someone decides, on their own, to take their own life.

How dare they, decide for themselves, to kill that which is not their own.

How selfish does one have to be, to kill themselves, without any thought or consideration to the devastation that they will certainly leave in their wake, in the hearts of those that they leave behind?

Our lives are not our own.

Our lives are a compilation of all the people we meet along the way, and, of the experiences we go through, with those whom we are so fortunate enough to share some time with.

We all create relationships, good and bad, with a countless number of people, every single day of our lives.

We all have Mothers and Fathers, some of us have Brothers and Sisters, Aunts and Uncles, Nieces and Nephews, Sons and Daughters, and FRIENDS…, we all have FRIENDS.

Most all of these people, are not ready to say ‘Good-Bye’…, ever!

What a horrible thing for someone to do… to take their own life… to kill themselves!

Only to leave so many of us with questions, questions that demand answers!

Questions like, ‘Was I not worth living for?’ ‘Was your family not worth saving your life?’ ‘Were your friends not worth you living anymore?’

Now your dead…, and I…, I am still here!

What am I supposed to do now?! What are WE supposed to do now?!

YOU SELFISH BASTARD!!!

How can I give you my sorrow, how can I give you my compassion… when all you have given me is unbelievable pain and heartache?

If I were to give you my sorrow, if I were to give you my compassion, if I were to unleash all of my pain that you created inside of me because of your selfish act, then those around me just might interpret my expression of deep emotion towards you, in a very bad way.

Maybe, someone around me with a weak-mind, might just say to themselves, ‘Look at that guy over there. Look at him cry. Look at him hurt. Maybe, if I were to take MY OWN LIFE, maybe then, my life would be celebrated, and maybe then, tears would fall for me too, by those who say they love me!’

People get so mixed up in their heads.

Some of those weak-minds that get left behind begin to say, ‘Why do YOU get to go… and I have to stay?! Maybe I should join you, and then, then, I will be free of of my pain too!’

No… no… NO!!!

I am not that stupid. I am not that selfish. I could never do what you did, to the people that I love, to the people that love me.

Suicide is evil. It is an answer to your problems that cannot be fixed. You cannot take it back. Once you’re gone, you’re gone.

Life is given to us all, by our Creator, through our Mothers and our Fathers.

Cherish your life, if not for yourself, then for those who gave you life, for those who brought you into this world, and for those…, for those who love you, simply because you are alive.

God Bless!

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I can tell you this, as for me, it will be as long as it takes for me to hit the DELETE button on my keyboard.

Remember this hard and solid truth… Honesty and Integrity are the Pillars of TRUST.

TRUST is something that you must earn from those you wish to have relations with, by having your words match your deeds.

To say it another way: SAY WHAT YOU MEAN AND MEAN WHAT YOU SAY.

It takes some time to establish oneself as a person of integrity and one who is honest, but it only takes a blink of an eye to shatter the trust that you might establish between you and others.

Sure, you can try to rebuild the trust that others once had in you and you just might very well succeed, but it will never again, be the same kind of unbreakable trust it once was, regardless of what is said to your face.

People give their trust freely to people that they believe in.

When one violates this TRUST, it violates everything in a human being.

The funny of it all, it is not very hard to sustain the trust that others willingly give you.

Just tell the truth, stay true to yourself and to those that you associate with.

If you are not sure about how you should approach a certain situation, seek out appropriate wise counsel. If you make a mistake, own up to it.

The Good Book says, ‘The truth shall set you free.’

This does not necessarily mean that you will absolutely be forgiven, no sir, this means that you will receive your just reward or just punishment, but after you receive either, you are free to move forward with your life, not having to hide from anyone or anything, with your honesty and integrity completely in tact… these are words, that you can TRUST.

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Seeing his name appear on my phone screen, I gave him my usual greeting, ‘What’s goin’ on BIG MONEY?!’

Vincent is no where near ‘BIG MONEY’. He’s lucky if he has two wooden nickels to rub together, but he likes to pretend he is this ‘BIG MOB GUY’, so I indulge him.

His usual response to me is ‘F-U’ or ‘eat-me’ or something along those lines.

His favorite movie is Good Fellas’ and his favorite part in the movie is when Joe Pesci’s character unleashes a brutal beat-down on this guy at the bar for insulting his best friend played by Robert De Niro.

Vincent is MY Joe Pesci.

Anyway, I like giving him some jazz whenever he calls.

The call came about 3 o’clock on a hazy Sunday afternoon. Vincent was not illuminating his usual jovial pitch. In fact, he sounded like his dog had just died.

So I asked him, ‘What’s the matter with you man, you sound like your dog died.’

He said, ‘Not quite…, my step-father is in the hospital. They think he might last until Friday, if he’s lucky.’

I’m like, ‘Wow, sorry man.’

‘Eighty-eight years old, suffering from Alzheimer’s for the past two years, they knew it was coming’, he said, ‘but it still hurts having to finally here those words, ‘Friday, if he’s lucky.’

Vincent, now 58 years old, made a lot of money when he was younger, and not too long ago, he still earned a good bit of cash.

He just never believed that he would have any such need for something so ‘trivial’ as money, because, in his mind, he never believed in getting old, he would always be able to work and make more money if he ever needed more money.

Then again, he truly believed that if the time ever came where he was in some kind of financial dilemma, there would be someone there to rescue him, which someone somewhere always did, including me.

Whenever Vincent found himself in some kind of financial bind, I would always say to him, ‘Man, you need to get your sh*t together. You need to plan for the future.’

Vincent would always say, ‘I’m not worried. I’m like a cat, I always land on all fours.’

Well, today, Vincent called me, and I missed his call.

He left a message… ‘My sister just called. Pappy died at 10:58 this morning. Damn. Later.’

That’s all that was said.

When someone dies, especially when it is someone close to you or someone that you know, it should always give you pause.

Stop for a moment and take a good deep hard look at your own life and ask yourself, ‘Where am I in my life? What have I done with my life? What am I going to do with the rest of my life? Am I doing all that I can to make the people I care about happy?’

So many more questions, that only you can answer for yourself.

We all have a limited time on this earth…, for how long?, No one man knows.

What we all know for a fact is this, we are all going to die and when we are gone… we’re gone.

Here’s my advice…, everyday that you wake up, live as though it is the beginning of the rest of your life, because it is, and then decide, what will you do today to design the best life that you can?

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Now, let me be clear, my older brother did not have a flourishing Body and Paint Shop on some high traveled commercial road.

He did ‘side-jobs’ in the back-yard of our Grandmother’s house.

Further, my brother did not take me ‘under his wing’ to teach me the trade out of some sense of good-will or compassion.

No sir, no time for good-will or compassion.

The reason he taught me the trade was because the family needed to eat and pay the bills to keep the lights on in the house.

After I learned and sharpened my auto body repair skills, I began to realize that my efforts were making my brother MORE MONEY.

Though it is true that I had dropped out of high school, I instinctively knew, that he knew, that if he did not start paying me some real money, I would eventually take what he had diligently taught me and go to work for someone else.

I found out, later on, that this was simply the way business works.

So he decided to pay me, but he would not pay me an hourly wage or a salary. My brother decided to pay me on a commission-base-only.

I had no clue what ‘commission-base-only’ really meant. All I knew was that if I fixed something I would get paid, and I knew I could fix stuff.

Commission-Base-Only is a pretty simple concept: You DO NOT get paid unless you produce results. The more results you produce, the more you get paid.

For example, I fix a damaged door, I get $20 dollars, I fix a busted fender, I get $30 dollars, I wet-sand and prepare an entire car to paint, I get $100 dollars, and so on.

After a few weeks, I realized I was getting paid $300 to $500 in weekly commissions! Now for a teen, THAT was a ton of cash! I LOVED getting paid on commission.

Ever since then, I did not give a damn about the minimum wage and I never cared to get paid hourly and if I was offered a salary I always managed to negotiate some kind of commission or bonus structure.

Later, as I got older and I applied for jobs, I would negotiate my paycheck to be equal to what I produced, because I had enough sense to know that what I produced would earn me more money than any salary or hourly rate any company would have to offer, and I had enough confidence in my ability, my skills and my knowledge to get the job done.

After a while, I learned about bonuses, incentives and company perks and I would negotiate for these benefits as well.

You see, if you agree to, or LOCK-YOURSELF into, a salary or an hourly-wage, you leave yourself ‘zero-room’ to grow financially.

Better to agree on a set-salary or hourly-wage with the condition that if you prove yourself to be worthy in two or three months, you and your boss will meet again to evaluate and re-negotiate a more suitable rate of pay comparable to your skills.

If you are the type of person that believes in your abilities and have confidence in producing results, then a commission-base-pay structure is where you can receive tremendous financial returns for your efforts!

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When I talked to my friend prior to moving to Florida, she said I would have no problem finding employment in my field of work and she was right.

It was July 01, 1987, a Wednesday, when I arrived in Fort Lauderdale Florida.

On Thursday, I went out and applied for a job with the top three credit and collection agencies in the area.

By Friday morning, every one of them called me back and offered me a job.

I selected what I believed was the best opportunity and was at my desk the following Monday ready to go to work.

Within a couple of months I had a good feel for the office environment and for what I believed the management expected from the rank-and-file.

I felt I was ready for my BIG MONEY MOVE.

Yup, after a couple of months I was arrogant and ignorant enough to believe that I was deserving of an increase in pay.

Problem was, I was presenting my need for a raise to my boss, using all the wrong reasons… my reasons.

I wanted to afford a bigger place to live, I wanted to drive a better car, I wanted nicer clothes to wear and overall, I just wanted to afford a better lifestyle.

All of these reasons were perfectly good reasons to justify my raise… to me, however, these reasons were of no interest or concern to my boss.

My boss could not have cared less if I lived in a cardboard box under a bridge on I-75.

If I drove a car, called a cab, or rode a horse to work, she did not care, as long as I arrived to work on time and did my job.

If I wore a potato sack to work, well, that made no difference to her, as long as I wore a tie.

My boss, your boss, all bosses I would suspect, could care less about your required living conditions or your living desires, regardless of what your boss may tell you to your face.

What a true boss is concerned with is company profits and how to deploy company assets and resources to increase company profits.

YOU, like it or not, are a designated asset, whether you are a good asset or a bad asset is completely within your power.

No matter what field of business you are in, all businesses, in a capitalistic society, are concerned with the bottom line, (that means PROFITS and LOSSES).

If you KNOW THIS, then you can begin to set your-self apart from all the rest of the dead-weight that all businesses in America employ.

By doing so, you will not have to be concerned with asking your boss for a raise, rather, your boss will automatically seek to pay you what you are worth by determining your value as an asset to the company.

Your first priority is to determine how much money you need to earn so that you and your family can live  a comfortable lifestyle.

Once you KNOW YOUR NUMBER, your next priority is to request a meeting with your boss, or the person who is authorized to increase your pay, and ask this person directly, ‘What is it that I need to do to earn $(your number here) per month with this company?’

Your boss will readily give you the answer you are looking for.

Take what your boss outlines for you and go back out there and fulfill those requirements.

After 60 to 90 days, self-evaluate your performance.

If you honestly believe that you have met all the requirements, then, and only then, request to meet with your boss once again.

If you have mastered and executed what your boss has outlined, you might realize your raise without having to ask for it.

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As babies, we have no choice but to rely on those chosen by our Creator, to raise us, to teach us, to guide us, to discipline us and prepare us for whatever life will certainly bring our way.

We listen, we learn and we execute our conduct based on what we see, hear and experience in our natural environment.

As we grow and as we are able to feed ourselves and do for ourselves, those that have been chosen to raise us, inevitably, release us to make our own decisions and choices.

There will be thousands of people you will encounter as you take your own personal journey through your own life.

Many of these people will have absolutely no care nor concern about what you do to yourself, what others may do to you, whether you eat, whether you live, whether you die.

Then there will be a few people who, unbeknownst to you, will select you and will show some interest in you for their own purposes and you must be keenly alert as to whether those purposes are to help you or to harm you.

Then, there will be those people that you will select on your own to help you, guide you and teach you the things that you will want and need to learn, so that you can progress and grow spiritually, morally, mentally, physically and financially in your own life.

These people you select will become your mentors for the things that you will choose to learn.

Your chosen mentors will teach you things that you cannot learn in any formal educational environment because, what you will learn from your chosen mentors, are things which are not based on theory, but rather based on their own real-life experiences and their own actual physical trials and errors.

It should be said that not all mentors are the same.

Some mentors will have achieved their level of success by following and executing principles with honesty and integrity, while others may have implemented strategies that cheat and deceive.

Therefore, you must be very careful to choose mentors who have a record of real and credible success.

Though it may appear that both ‘integrity and honesty’ may deliver equal levels of success as ‘cheating and deceiving’, only one is built on a foundation that will prove to be strong and solid, while the other, on a foundation that may certainly crack and falter, at some point.

FAIR WARNING: It will be completely and totally up to you, and you alone, to choose your own mentors.

If you choose wisely you will reap a bounty of rewards. If you choose badly, you most certainly may face heavy consequences… if you get caught.

Your call, your choice, your life.

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The people that surrounded me, when I was young, were wise about life, but they were not educated on how to create a strong and solid financial foundation.

‘You’re never going to make big money’, ‘Money is the root of all evil’, ‘Money is nothing but trouble’, ‘Be thankful for what you have’, were the messages I heard all the time.

Something about these messages somehow felt uncomfortable to me.

As I got older, I knew there had to be something more to my life than getting up in the morning, going to work, punching a clock and going home at the end of the day, only to wake up the next day to do it all over again, day after day.

When I talked to my friends about what I was thinking, they would say things to me like, ‘stop chasing stupid dreams’, ‘be happy you have a job’ and ‘being rich is not meant for people like ‘us’ they would say.

I knew my friends meant well, but I refused to listen.

Then, one day, I met the cook at the restaurant where I was working as a busboy, and he exposed me to a new way of thinking.

Without realizing it at the time, I was learning.

Wayne was his name, and he was not intentionally teaching me anything.

I just listened to what he had to say, to me and to others, and the way he talked and the way he carried himself, well, this was an ‘education’ to me.

Wayne would say things like, ‘I don’t work hard for my money, I make my money work hard for me’, and ‘It’s not how much money you make, but what you do with the money you make’.

Something somewhere inside of me said, You gotta make friends with this guy.

At the time, Wayne was the smartest guy I knew and every time we talked he would expose me to a new idea.

Again, totally unintentional, I just listened to what he had to say.

My friends that I grew up with never talked about saving money, because there was never any money left over to save and forget about any discussion on investing money.

Most people I knew growing up worked very hard to earn a paycheck and it was a struggle to make ends meet for most.

Some people that I knew relied on food stamps or welfare and believed money was only for the greedy.

I could not wait to get back to my job at the restaurant where I could hear more about what Wayne had to say.

I was only seventeen and Wayne was closer to thirty.

He would tell me stories about the poor neighborhood where he grew up as a kid, about the drunks in the streets and the drug dealers at every corner.

(I definitely could relate)

He told me how he had to make a conscience effort to change his thinking and how he forced himself to believe that he would make it out of that cold and dark place.

He would get pumped up and motivated to tap into the power inside him and imagine and believe that he would achieve success and prosperity.

As a kid, he remembered someone telling him, if you believe – then you will achieve.

I listened intently as he spoke with such finesse, which gave power to his words, and as a consequence, I began to change my way of thinking and I started to believe that I too could achieve a high level of wealth and success.

At seventeen, I did not know what to do with all this information, but I knew I had to do something.

My message here is this… if you have a desire to achieve wealth, success and prosperity, it will be necessary that you purposely harness your thoughts and begin to believe that you will achieve.

Begin to LEARN the skills that attract wealth, develop a PLAN to earn wealth, and execute a STRATEGY to grow wealth.

Regardless of your status in your life at this moment, creating wealth is a choice, and it begins with how you THINK and what you BELIEVE.

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Whether it is ‘Buying’ or ‘Owning’, I am here to tell you that both answers are wrong.

The reason?… if you are BUYING your house and you lose your source of income, like your job, and you miss a few payments, the lender will most certainly foreclose on your home-loan and you will LOSE YOUR HOUSE!

If you OWN your house, now honestly, do you really ever OWN your house?

No!, because, if you do not pay your taxes, you will most certainly, again, risk LOSING YOUR HOUSE.

If your house is part of a Home Owners Association, depending on how much the HOA restricts your ability to remodel your home, make room additions, where to plant a tree, or fly the American Flag, among other restrictions, you might as well be renting.

Therefore, BUYING or OWNING a house can really be somewhat of a burden and much less of a Dream.

This does NOT mean that you should never aspire
to BUY or OWN your own house!

However, you must be clear about what the TRUE American Dream in America really is.

America is about FREEDOM, and the only way to achieve TRUE AMERICAN FREEDOM is to earn LOTS AND LOTS OF MONEY!

Enough MONEY to buy your own house, CASH!

Enough MONEY to buy your own car, CASH!

Enough MONEY to buy a new wardrobe every six months, CASH!

Enough MONEY to raise your children with, CASH!

Enough MONEY to take vacations, CASH!

Enough MONEY to live your life as you so choose, CASH!

AND enough money to pay your taxes, every year… CASH!

Achieving the TRUE American Dream is NOT easy.

It involves personal commitment, the willingness to learn, the desire to add value to yourself, and the confidence to execute specific plans to earn MONEY.

The only way to make LOTS OF MONEY is to multiply your earning potential.

MONEY is not about greed.

MONEY, in America, is all about PERSONAL FINANCIAL FREEDOM and SECURITY.

MONEY affords anyone the ability to care-for and lift-up those that they care about, such as their Spouse, their Children, their Family and their closest of Friends.

MONEY is the path towards the TRUE American Dream… PERSONAL FINANCIAL FREEDOM and SECURITY!

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