The world is an amazing place and if you help other people, you will likely be rewarded for the value you create. My father had this attitude from childhood.
When I used to be 10 years old, my dad would get up early in the morning, pick up a stack of newspapers, and sell them on the streets of Charleston, West Virginia. When he ran out of papers to sell, he would take out his shoe shine box to shine his shoes for money. Always looking for the next opportunity, he read in a comic book about how Cloverine Salve could help soothe cracked and dry skin. So he began selling it to miners to guard their hands. He made sure to trace down the miners on Fridays, right after they received their checks and before that they had time to spend all of it at the bar. Before my father became a teenager, he was a three-time entrepreneur. This attitude and work ethic accompanied him until maturity, when he founded his own financial consulting company.
Since my father was passionate about the American dream, which was serving others, helping them invest and plan for the future, it was natural for me to follow in his footsteps. While other kids my age read comics, I read books like by Napoleon Hill. I used to be 12 years old when my father handed me this book and said, “Mark, you’ll be able to learn anything you would like by reading this book. Find someone who has already achieved the results you would like in life and study their way of considering and behaving. As you read, let go of your excuses and judgments about the strategies described in the book. Do what you are told, because take it from me – most individuals won’t do it. It’s very easy for your inner voice to let you know that it would never work or that it worked for them but cannot work for you. You live in a wonderful country that offers you the opportunity to build anything you would like in life if you are willing to work hard enough and create value for others.
He told me to re-read this book every yr if I wanted to satisfy my dreams. That’s exactly what I did. I also made sure to get to work. Every summer I pushed the lawn mower down the street. If I saw someone’s lawn was overgrown, I might knock on their door and offer to mow it. When it snowed in the winter and all the other children grabbed their sleds, I grabbed a shovel and knocked on the door. Sometimes I got paid. Another time I worked for hot chocolate and cookies. Forget about money. The biggest satisfaction got here from the feeling of pride and self-confidence resulting from a job well done.
My parents helped me understand that onerous work is a virtue that brings great rewards. This is what the American dream is all about. You cannot experience “fulfillment” in freedom, achievement, and love if you never experience the advantages of labor. And if you’ll be able to improve the lives of others and help them succeed through your labor, it would be exponentially more rewarding. This won’t ever be understood by those that have the veil of victimhood.
Ideas are powerful and I’m grateful that my father instilled in me the screen of the American Dream at a very young age. “America is not perfect,” he kept telling me. “But it’s the best country on earth.” If I hadn’t had that screen at a young age and believed that America was a great country where I could create anything I wanted, a book like it would not appeal to me. If I believed like my grandfather, I might imagine this book was garbage. Instead, I read it and was delighted. It helped shape my vision of making freedom and prosperity for myself and others.
This screen of the American Dream laid the foundation for the actions I might take later in life – actions that others who didn’t have this screen were unwilling to take because they didn’t imagine in the ideals and principles of the American Dream. So my obsession with learning continued as I grew up. Before I got to varsity, I devoured every economics, accounting, and finance book I could get my hands on. I stuffed my schedule with business courses. I already felt that it took greater than just an understanding of funds to achieve success and lead a powerful and extraordinary life. This would mean examining human nature and the workings of the mind. The world gave the impression to be stuffed with people with a wealth of data and intellect who weren’t delivering the success I expected. Achieving an extraordinary life meant greater than an analytical approach to business, so I used to be determined to search out out exactly what it entailed.
So every summer while I used to be in college, I worked for my father. He made it clear from the starting that he wasn’t going at hand me anything and that a full-time job for him was not guaranteed. He said, “If you work hard and go to college and get a degree, you can work in my office. If you do a good job, I’ll keep you. If not, I will fire you immediately.” There were no free rides, but that was also a part of the American dream. You must take responsibility for your success. You have to earn it.
There was no higher person to learn from than my father. My dad, a technically inclined guy, spent a lot of time educating himself on financial planning. This is what made him such a phenomenal teacher. And I used to be a sponge, absorbing every word of the instructions. I learned about financial planning, insurance, real estate transactions, partnerships, mutual funds, annuities, and all the financial products we had in the Eighties. I learned tips on how to solicit, promote, and sell to clients. By the time I graduated with a degree in accounting and finance in 1986, I already had a life and medical insurance license, a fire and accident license, and a stockbroker’s license.
While my father focused more on the estate planning and tax side of the business, I used to be fascinated by the investing side and quickly focused on it. I spotted that I desired to be an entrepreneur, not only someone with a well-paid job that I could not escape. I desired to create a company that may grow and prosper even in my absence, like Walt Disney, Henry Ford and Thomas Edison before me. I believed I could do this as a financial planner by helping people invest their money and maximize their returns. Helping others achieve financial freedom so they will live extraordinary lives has change into my American dream.
