Financial Independence

Shortly after I met my mentor he asked me, "Mr. Rohn, how much money have you saved and invested over the last six years?" And I said, "None." He then asked, "Who sold you on that plan?"

It is better to be a lender than a spender.

To become financially independent you must turn part of your income into capital; turn capital into enterprise; turn enterprise into profit; turn profit into investment; and turn investment into financial independence.

Financial independence is the ability to live from the income of your own personal resources.

If you depend on your company to take care of your retirement, your future income will be divided by five. Take care of it yourself, and you can multiply your future income by five.

I remember saying to my mentor, "If I had more money, I would have a better plan." He quickly responded, "I would suggest that if you had a better plan, you would have more money." You see, it's not the amount that counts; it's the plan that counts.

If you were to show me your current financial plan, would I get so excited by it that I would go across the country and lecture on it? If the answer is no, then here's my question: "Why not"? Why wouldn't you have a superior financial plan that is taking you to the places you want to go?

I used to say, "Things cost too much." Then my teacher straightened me out on that by saying, "The problem isn't that things cost too much. The problem is that you can't afford it." That's when I finally understood that the problem wasn't "it"—the problem was "me."

The Bible says that it is hard for a rich man to enter into the kingdom of heaven. It doesn't say that it is impossible!

How to Ask Smart Questions

After I realized that the most underrated skill is asking good questions, I realized that I am not very good at it. I don’t ask for help enough because I don’t know what question to ask. And also, I worry the question will be bad and then the person won’t want to help me again. So I started forcing myself to ask for help. Like, I put myself on a schedule. And the result was not so much that I got good help (I did) but what I really got was good at asking questions. Because I thought so much about it. Here are things I’ve been noticing about what makes a person good at asking questions: 1. Surround yourself with people who make you curious. The first time we had a bonfire at the farm I was dating the farmer and he was winning over my boys with tree climbing and hot-dog roasting. I was concerned about fire safety, but I knew it was hopeless when I realized that the number-one rule I learned about building fires – put them out before you go to bed – does not apply on the farm. He just lets it burn out itself. Here’s something I like about the farmer. He asks questions. When we were dating, and I had a fireplace in my house, he said he’d build a fire. But it turned out he had no idea how to make a small fire. You have to light kindling and then get the little sticks to catch, and then little logs, and the farmer lost interest after about three minutes. I think this is what draws us to each other, though: We learn stuff we didn’t even know we needed to learn. It’s so hard to learn when you don’t know the right question to ask. Being around each other gives us the chance to learn stuff we’d never seek to learn. Like building fires. It also gives us practice figuring out what question to ask. 2. Learn rules for asking questions. Each industry has rules. Each circle of friends has rules. I think a reason I love work so much is that it’s all about rules. And there is no industry more full of rules than the venture capital industry. It has to be because it’s a matching system between two wildly different types of people: crazy, rule-breaking risk-taking entrepreneurs, and risk-averse, by-the-book, right-out-of-Wharton venture capitalists. But the VCs are most valuable to startup founders when the founders are learning from the VCs. So there’s a lot of rule teaching going on. One of my favorite recent examples of this is how to ask for time from a busy person. Mark Suster, who is a VC, warns that you should never ask a busy person to lunch, because it’s too big of a time commitment. He has great examples of terrible ways to ask for time and also good ways, like, “grab a quick coffee” which is not so clearly defined, but clearly short in duration. 3. Get your timing right. When my step-mom was in and out of the hospital getting chemotherapy, I learned a lot about how to deal with doctors. When it comes to cancer, once you pick a doctor, most people advise that you stay with that doctor. And then get to know the doctor well. Because ongoing quality of life depends, in part, on being able to ask good question of that doctor – asking what is happening, how things are going, and what is likely to come next. These are difficult questions for most people because this is an area where the vocabulary is new, and everything feels like a biology test you need to study harder for. The best advice I got for asking questions was to not worry about asking too many questions, and instead focus on asking them in a good way for the doctor—ask in the morning, when doctors make their rounds. Leave questions at the nurse’s station, and then the doctor can pick up the question when they are starting their day. If you make it easier to answer your questions, you will get more attentive responses. 4. Your questions get better with more information. The best questions are ones that come after a bunch of questions. The first question is never the real question. I saw this in action with my sons. When we visited the Baha'i Temple in Illinois. The first question was: “Can we play tag?” And they stepped on every step and jumped every railing and then asked if there's an area for kids. The next question was “Do Baha'i people celebrate Christmas or Chanukkah?” By the end, my older son asked me, “Do you think that the B’hai people would mind that we're Jewish?” I liked that I could see his questions getting sharper and sharper as he figured out what really matters to him about the visit to the temple. I thought to myself that I need to be the type of person who asks a series of questions rather than just one. I need to trust that questions are more interesting than answers, and people will not get annoyed as long as each question reflects a little more understanding on my part. 5. Be true to your passion. Asking good questions means risking that the answer is totally obvious. That’s the scary part of asking a question. Here are tips for asking good questions in life, and here are tips for asking good questions in interviews. But here’s something I’ve learned. If you ask a question about something you are passionate about and totally engaged in, the question will be good. Case in point: there are no stupid questions when you are asking a doctor about cancer treatment for a close relative. But there are a lot of stupid questions from people who use the act of asking a question as a substitute for passion and engagement. Other people cannot do the work for you to make you care. When you genuinely care about a topic and have done honest investigation in that vein, trust that your question will be engaging to other people. Passion is always interesting.

Wipro Technologies wat to keep employees

Every four months they conduct an employee survey where all our employees provide inputs on the health of the workplace. This survey enables them to identify how strongly the person feels about the organization, and how strong is the person's clarity of his/her existence in the organization. It also enables them to see the person's own ability to identify with the vision of the organization, and whether he thinks the organization listens to what he has to say. He also reveals whether he feels that his supervisor takes interest in his/her development, has he/she received any word of praise from the boss for a good job done and so on. This proves to be an eye opener for the managers as well. They have the HR review in the planning cycle, which is a rigorousc process involving everyone, right upto the head of the organization. They do succession planning for individuals wherein they identify the best talents - the top ten people. They also identify their bottom ten people, who are asked to pull up their socks and improve, failing which they will have to leave. They carry out this exercise every quarter and this enables them to be well informed about their people asset. They have a program, which is known as "wings within'- an internal job posting system. This works well, as their people can apply for jobs in other departments and they do not have to inform their supervisors about it. If selected they can move out and nobody can stop them. This gives people the feeling that they are not buttonholed into a particular type of job. Their CEO Mr.Azim Premji spends 3 to 4 hours with every new group of employees, briefing them about their promises, values and beliefs. This article I read in City HR website.

BIRLA 3M

They encourage Two-way communication. They have something called "Between Us". Once in six months, the MD and the HR head go to all the branch offices. The MD talks about the business and request the people's involvement in fulfilling the organization's dreams. HR head talks about the new HR policies and then there is an open discussion. Employees can express themselves on whatever issues they have with regard to work. If there are sensitive issues, which they don't want to discuss openly, they can write and give those without their names. The question is read, and the answer given. The paper on which the question is written, is destroyed then and there, to make sure that nobody tries to trace the handwriting of the person or in anyway recognize him/her.

How to write a book

Books gives the best knowledge in the world. to know about anything we read or refer books. Is it necessary to, have some knowledge to write a book? Yes. but some people find it easy to write a book. But for me, it was very difficult to write a blog. When i thought about writing something in a blog.i thought it is easy. but when i sat and writing something in a blog.i found that very difficult. after that i started referring some blog threw Google search. and i read books,after that i started writing. "it takes so much time to write a book" this is what people say. But the truth is, we can write more than 100 books in a year. it is just matter of time and knowledge you have it with you. My personal opinion about writing a book is, start write a diary daily which gives you the best experience of being an author. then take your time and after 3 months read your own diary as a reader not an author. so you find some mistakes. avoid it. then start writing your own book. but remember that, writing a book is an Art. don't write a book. that i have to write."Read 100 percentage, only 10 percentage you can reproduce as a book."