Have you ever wondered how Bill Bonner, a man who grew up tobacco farming in the Maryland countryside, built a global publishing empire that reaches millions of readers in more than 140 countries around the world?
Or how Doug Casey got his mountain home in Aspen, Colorado; ranch in Uruguay; beachside villa in Nicaragua; wine and golf resort at the foot of the Andes; and luxury apartment in Buenos Aires?
Maybe you’re curious how Jeff Clark went from being a shoe salesman to managing investments for big-name actors and athletes, and ultimately making more than enough to retire from the money-management game at the age of 42?
Or how Teeka Tiwari, a man who immigrated to the U.S. with barely $100 in his pocket, built a fortune on Wall Street… lost it all… then bounced back even stronger than before?
Well, you’re in luck…
In today’s special holiday edition of The Daily Cut, we’re giving editor Chris Lowe a well-earned break so we can bring you the answers to one of the most important questions we could think to ask our Legacy Research experts…
What’s the biggest reason for your success?
Presented in alphabetical order by first name, here are all 12 of your Legacy Research experts…
Success? Get to work at 7 a.m. Stay until 7 p.m. Do that for 40 years. And… get lucky.
Reasons for success: I think it was Louis Pasteur who said chance favors the prepared mind.
You never know where or when your opportunities are going to come. You just try to recognize them and have the courage to take them even at the risk of failure.
Success is a crapshoot anyway. You make a quality effort and realize the rest is chance.
Dangerous question!
I suspect most successful people couldn’t actually tell you why they made it. For many, success is being in the right place at the right time… and having the basic intelligence to realize it.
But people will always rationalize it, like “I succeeded because I worked hard,” or “I believed in Jesus,” or “I wore green pants.” In actual fact, lots of people do those same things and never hit it big.
Now, let me tell you exactly why I succeeded…
I think it was Sun Tzu who said, “Conquer yourself, then conquer the world.”
I spend a lot of time looking at my own mind. Until you do that, there’s very little point trying to work on externals. Side benefit: It also increases your happiness and peace of mind.
No cosmic breakthroughs here. But I can’t narrow it down to just two things. Nor should anybody.
I try to observe (most of) the Boy Scout virtues, and be trustworthy, loyal, helpful, friendly, courteous, kind, cheerful, thrifty, brave, and clean. I left out obedient, which is only really a virtue for young children, and reverent, which can be a virtue but often has undesirable baggage.
In addition, I adhere to the Roman dictum of mens sana in corpore sano (“a healthy mind in a healthy body”).
Last, but not least, I try to gain all the knowledge I can, in every way. Reading is the quickest and easiest way.
If someone isn’t successful it’s probably because they fall down in several – or all – of the above.
The ability to communicate effectively is the most important contributing factor to my success. This means being able to connect emotionally with the recipient of my communication. Whether in an essay, TV interview, or a face-to-face meeting, this has been absolutely essential.
If someone asked me how to impart this on a younger person, it might help to know where I developed it. Also, if the child in question is an introvert, it might be better to focus on another skill they seem more suited for.
In my case, being around adults in adult settings as a young child set me on this course. For instance, my father hauled me around the High Point furniture market in a navy blazer and penny loafers when I was fairly young. He’d prep me with dos and don’ts before big meetings with the top brass of companies like Broyhill, Serta mattresses, La-Z-Boy, etc…
When I got my chance to speak, I wanted it to count. I didn’t want to waste time telling these gentlemen about dinosaurs or Mickey Mouse. I wanted to grab their attention with something interesting. I knew they’d visit my dad’s furniture store in the coming months. If I saw them, I’d reference our prior conversation.
In the words of Michael Jordan: “I’ve failed over and over and over again… That is why I succeed.”
I succeed because I’m great at failing. The most profound learning and growth come through pain. Saying and trying the unpopular are recipes for failure. Risk and loss are seen as failures.
I’ve written music for TV and ballets, conducted at Lincoln Center, connected the world’s biggest CEOs by video, and ran a derivatives trading desk in New York and Europe, and I’m a successful entrepreneur. These experiences came because of an open mind; I was not afraid to fail.
Fail to succeed.
There are two simple reasons: grit and humility.
I always volunteered for new projects and difficult tasks, even when it was outside of my area of responsibility. I also made an effort to find problems or opportunities to improve no matter where I worked and propose practical solutions to fix them. Then I focused on execution. I did the work, all without ever asking for a promotion or more pay.
The mistake that so many make is that they first ask for a promotion, additional pay, and an increase in responsibility. For those that want to advance their careers, this is completely the opposite of what should be done.
I would always take on additional responsibility, do the hard work, and deliver value to whatever project I was working on. That mentality always led to promotions, increased compensation, and new and exciting opportunities.
Doing this takes grit. It requires doing the work without a guarantee of receiving something in return. But I can guarantee, for those that make a consistent habit of doing so, that the reward will come.
Humility is not only a secret to financial success and advancing our careers, it is also a secret for our own personal success, character, and happiness.
One of the most common things that I have seen amongst professionals is that when they make a change from one job to another, they expect to be recognized to the same degree as they were in the previous position.
They assume that people who don’t know them should recognize them for their previous accomplishments. They don’t believe that they need to prove themselves again. This kind of attitude is often referred to as resting on your laurels, and it’s a terrible mistake.
Whenever I transitioned from one job to another job or from one company to another company or from one industry to another industry, I always told myself that I had to start from scratch. I had to build trust and credibility in my new environment right from the beginning. In order to do that, I had to have humility.
I needed to start from scratch. And, in fact, that’s exactly what I’ve done since I became an investment research analyst back in the summer of 2015.
I had to prove that I was good at what I was doing, not just say that I was good at what I was doing. And not only did I have to prove it to my subscribers, I actually had to prove it to my colleagues as well. That took a whole lot of humility.
I love my job. I’ve loved every job I’ve ever had – from my first job of selling shoes at a store in a mall, to selling attic insulation door-to-door, to my current job trying to help people make money in the markets.
No matter what you do, whether it’s your dream job or just something you have to do for a while in order to pay the rent, you have to find something you love about it. And let that “love” shape your attitude.
The world responds well to positive people, whether they’re the CEO of a major corporation or just someone grinding out a living cleaning porta-potties.
This is going to sound hippy-ish, but success is attracted to love. So, if you want to be successful, then find something to love about your job. Eventually, success will find you.
The No. 1 factor to becoming successful is to think for yourself. If you then have the guts to believe in yourself and act on your own conclusions, the sky is the limit.
I’ve dropped out of school. I’ve never seen a university from the inside. And I’ve never held a conventional job. I have forged my own path, and look where it led me: to a life of abundance.
The world is my oyster. Most people only dream of a life like mine… because they follow conventional advice. They are followers, not leaders. Consumers, not creators. They live in the Matrix. Here’s the red pill: Think for yourself.
Be willing to do things that would make most people – including your close friends and family – think you are crazy for even considering.
This, of course, applies to a contrarian style of investing that I wholeheartedly believe in. It’s responsible for some of my biggest wins, including numerous triple-digit gains from places like Cyprus after its financial collapse, Ukraine after a civil conflict broke out, and Zimbabwe, not to mention a 12,600% gain from a blockchain play during the earlier days of crypto, when relatively few were putting money into it.
My time in Beirut, Lebanon, and the Middle East was also crucial to my success (more on that here).
Success is different for everybody, so please understand this is what success means to me.
For me, success involves attaining both financial freedom (which I measure as having a passive income that is twice my annual fixed expenses) and emotional success (which I measure as feeling like a giver in life instead of a taker).
The fastest way I have found to achieve both types of success simultaneously is to create value for others.
One way I put that idea to work as a teenager on Wall Street was to help rich people get even richer.
Now, as a newsletter writer, my entire focus is on how I can help my subscribers massively grow their wealth without putting their current financial health and lifestyle at risk. Every decision I make revolves around this core mission of providing value to my subscribers.
Whenever I find myself mentally adrift, it’s usually because I am too focused on what I want rather than on what I can give. When I switch the internal conversation from “How can I add value to me?” to “How can I add value to the people around me?,” not only does my wealth increase (as a byproduct of adding value to others’), but my sense of well-being (feeling like a giver, not a taker) increases as well.
Success? HAHAHA. Ask me again in 30 years.
For now, I’m working on getting my priorities straight and on COMMITMENT.
The ability to commit/be loyal/stick to something is underrated, I feel, but I’m realizing it’s behind so many of life’s greatest creations. Compounding interest… compounding dividends… compounding a marriage… compounding wisdom… becoming an expert…
Talent gets all the accolades, but perhaps commitment and loyalty are life’s real heroes?
James again… I hope you enjoyed reading these insights from our Legacy experts as much as I enjoyed gathering them.
Be sure to tune in tomorrow for the second part of my mass interview… It’s a must-read.
I asked everyone for their 2020 predictions… and received some answers I never could have imagined.
Regards,
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James Wells
Director
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