Its pretty easy for people who have attained great heights to turn around to  the rest of us and offer advice as simple as “work hard”. But for those of us on the path, that advice is useless when we are faced with barriers that threaten to end our journey. As a teacher, a Sergeant of Marines, a personal trainer, and a mentor, I have seen a lot of good men and women fail to achieve their goals after being halted by one or more of these barriers. On your path to world domination, its important that you be made aware of these so that when you encounter them for the first time, you can recognize them for what they are. The 4 barriers to success are:

• Boredom
• Ignorance
• Isolation
• Surrender

Boredom

Success requires repetition and hard work. Its making the same cold calls to the same potential customers day after day, or standing on the same corner selling mixtapes every single day. Its going through the same physical fitness routines, performing the same speeches, doing the same profit and loss analysis, working on the same project at the same time every single day. The reward for constantly doing what works over and over again is achievement. Unfortunately, most people have a short attention span, and will go to the gym expecting to see instant results, or make calls expecting instant sales, or attempt to complete entire books and projects in one sitting. When the results they expect arent there after several work sessions, they become bored and conjure up some new idea, a new business, a new project to work on. The actual result is a resume of unfinished projects and half-attempted goals. Success will always be one new idea away for the man and woman that is easily bored.

Willful Ignorance

Willful ignorance describes a person who knows that they dont have sufficient knowledge, but tries to B.S. their way through it. A good example is the stock market. Everybody has an opinion on what a good stock pick would be, but none of them know how to read a company prospectus, or how to conduct a proper technical analysis of stock charts. Rather than taking the time to become competent, these people remain willfully ignorant. When you are first starting out in business, there are volumes of information that you will need to absorb and apply if you hope to be successful. If you decide you want to get in shape, theres alot you will need to learn about body mechanics, nutrition, and biological function (nothing makes me cringe like seeing a guy in the gym who has no idea what hes doing – he’s an injury waiting to happen).You should want to arm yourself with all the information you will need to do whatever it is that you choose to do. By choosing to remain ignorant you are choosing to fail.

Isolation

In Robert Greene’s landmark book, The 48 Laws of Power, he writes

“The world is dangerous and enemies are everywhere – everyone has to protect themselves. A fortress seems the safest. But isolation exposes you to more dangers than it protects you from – it cuts you off from valuable information, it makes you conspicuous and an easy target. Better to circulate among people, find allies, and mingle.”

I have written about both the dangers of isolation as well as the importance of networking time and again, and still there are people who would say “Why should I network?” or “I can do this on my own”. My answer is that nothing worth doing can be done alone. The one-man company is extraordinarily rare, and even one man companies need accountants, suppliers, and professional support.  Theres no such thing as a self made athlete, entrepreneur, politician, or professional. More often than not, success is predicated upon having a capable team and a strong network. The strength of the wolf is the pack, and the strength of the pack is the wolf. Lone wolves are dead wolves.

Surrender

“Endurance is one of the most difficult disciplines, but it is to the one who endures that the final victory comes.” – Buddha

Giving up before reaching the finish line is one of the most common barriers to success.

There is a famous story written in the last century called Three Feet from Gold about  a prospector who gave up looking for gold after a good deal of time searching, only to later discover that he was just three feet away. The implications of the story are just as relevant today as they where last century.  So many people give up on their dreams and desires when they are literally three feet from the finish line. Imagine running a marathon only to give up in the last few feet. If you saw such a thing happen in front of you odds are you would ask, “Why doesn’t he just crawl the rest of the way?” But the fact is that this happens every day – people who are literally at the very edge of achieving their goals surrender.

These are barriers that everyone pursuing anything worthwhile will face. Now that you are able to recognize these barriers to your success, you can start to develop strategies for blasting through these barriers. In my Block Standard post, Blasting Through Barriers to Success, I give you some very specific ways to overcome boredom, willful ignorance, isolation, and surrender while you are on your path to world domination.

Popularity: 3% [?]

Awhile ago I talked about investing in future technology, and I also gave you some very specific knowledge to help you better understand the market.

In my quest to develop a strategy that I could use to reliably pick stocks and make money, I stumbled across products that promised “instant return with no knowledge”. All you had to do was buy their stock picking software and buy when the little light says buy, sell when the little light says sell. Examples include TIPs, Stock Assault (that claimed 100% Automated Artificial Intelligence Stock Picking Software
produces returns in excess of +1,300% annually), and FXDD FOREX Trading Software.

None of them worked as well as advertised, and required a substantial investment of both time and money (Stock Assault costed $57 and lost me about $2k!).

But there’s one stock picking tool that has never let me down: Investors Business Daily.

Investors Business Daily is published every day and covers international business, finance, and the global economy. Founder William J. O’Neil created the paper to “offer information not available in The Wall Street Journal and other publications” for “investors and business executives who did not have time for two and three section papers each day.” The beauty of this publication is the fact that they assign stocks a letter grade and percentage (like 87% out of 100%) of all the criteria that I talked about in Welcome to Wall Street, Part 1. This makes it easy to pick out the stocks that are most likely to show some price appreciation.

Specifically, O’Neil created a set of 7 factors that identify potential performers called CAN SLIM

The CAN SLIM System

• C stands for Current Earnings. Per share, current earnings should be up to 25%. Additionally, if earnings are accelerating in recent quarters, this is a positive prognostic sign.
• A stands for Annual earnings, which should be up 25% or more in each of the last three years. Annual returns on equity should be 17% or more
• N stands for New product or service, which refers to the idea that a company should have a new basic idea that fuels the earnings growth seen in the first two parts of the mnemonic. This product is what allows the stock to emerge from a proper chart pattern of its past earnings to allow it to continue to grow and achieve a new high for pricing. A notable example of this is Apple Computer’s iPod.
• S stands for Supply and demand. An index of a stock’s demand can be seen by the trading volume of the stock, particularly during price increases.
• L stands for Leader or laggard? O’Neil suggests buying “the leading leading stock in a leading industry”. This somewhat qualitative measurement can be more objectively measured by the Relative Price Strength Rating (RPSR) of the stock, an index designed to measure the price of stock over the past 12 months in comparison to the rest of the market based on the S&P 500 or the TSE 300 over a set period of time.
• I stands for Institutional sponsorship, which refers to the ownership of the stock by mutual funds, particularly in recent quarters. A quantitative measure here is the Accumulation/Distribution Rating, which is a gauge of mutual fund activity in a particular stock.
• M stands for Market indexes, particularly the Dow Jones, S&P 500, and NASDAQ. During the time of investment, O’Neil prefers investing during times of definite uptrends of these three indices, as three out of four stocks tend to follow the general market pattern.

I can confidently endorse the CAN SLIM system because I have consistently made money using the system. I was able to buy Wal-Mart in August of 2001 at $49.65 and sold it in March the following year at $61.85 (no, I don’t have great memory, but I do keep great financial records!). I was able to buy PrePaid Legal stock in 2004 at $25 and sold 34 shares in June of 2007 at $64.99 (Giving me a $5,000 payday).

Granted, you will have to educate yourself on the specifics of both technical and fundamental analysis, so O’Neil has published a few books to break the complexities down into easy to understand (and easy to practice) advice. The two I would recommend that I have read and used are 24 Essential Lessons for Investment Success and How to Make Money in Stocks: A Winning System in Good Times and Bad. These 2 books, coupled with reading IBD daily (or at a minimum the Friday edition) has made me more money than any online trading software scam or advice from news personalities.

If youre wondering where to find Investors Business Daily, you can find out here. If you havent started investing yet, there really is no excuse. If you hope to achieve wealth, you need to be in the market. After all, most of the people on the Forbes list are there solely because of their holdings in the market. Learn from those who have done it.

Popularity: 2% [?]

An Ongoing Debate

“A traditional college degree, be it from a classroom or an online extension program run by an accredited university, is not all that it was once cracked up to be.

No longer can a general degree catapult a graduate into a higher class in society based on the intrinsic value of the degree itself. Likewise, the sheer number of degrees being churned out has diluted their worth to the point where they hold little more value than the high school diploma of yesteryear. Many jobs for which graduates will attempt to enter upon graduation may not even exist at the time in which they enroll.” – Taken from Technorati

A while ago, one of my homies asked me to do an article on the subject of whether college was really worth it or not. This has been an ongoing debate that has only gained fuel with the rapid devaluation of many 529 College Savings Plans, shrinking wages, and slow job markets for grads. As both a degree holder and an entrepreneur, I would have to answer both yes and no.

Yes and No

The fact of the matter is that if you hope to succeed working for somebody else, a college degree is essential. Most companies use a degree as a filter when deciding who to interview and ultimately hire. Additionally, the contacts that you get within a company during an internship could mean the difference between a smooth transition into familiar territory and an uncertain employment future. And surveys have shown that the higher your level of attainment as it relates to education, the more money you earn. Its important to know that these figures apply to employees, not entrepreneurs.

On the other hand, if your goal is to be self-employed, there is nothing that you cant learn about running a successful enterprise from bloggers and websites, or from the hundreds of thousands of books available at Amazon. You dont need college.

Dont get me wrong, Im a firm believer in the importance of knowledge and educating oneself. However, I also believe that a great many college students would do better to invest the money they pump into academic institutions, or use that money to start a small business. Time and time again we have seen proof of the fact that a college degree is not a precursor to success when it comes to being an entrepreneur:

Herbalist Djehuty Maat-Ra runs a multi-million dollar herbal company on the west coast. He built his operation from the ground up without a college degree

$ Sir Richard Branson left school when he was only 16. Ironically, his first successful business was publishing a magazine called Student

$ Of course, we all know that Bill Gates never graduated. Im sick of talking about him and hearing about him, so Im not going to make this post a Bill Gates love-fest

$ In high school, Ralph Lauren was known to sell neckties to his fellow students. In his yearbook, he stated that he wanted to be a millionaire. He studied business for two years at Baruch College but never graduated.

$ Michael Dell started a computer company called PCs Limited while attending the University of Texas at Austin. It became successful enough that Dell dropped out of school to operate it

For a detailed list of very successful college dropouts, check out the College Dropouts Hall of Fame.

If you Must Go

I don’t think that college per se is a scam. I do, however, think that the price of college is a scam. Colleges, like all consumer products, are divided by price point. There are the low end products (community colleges), the brand name middle priced products (State Colleges), and the high end luxury brands (Private Colleges and Ivy Leagues). The problem here is that students are paying for the same information at state colleges that they would get in community colleges. Even worse, the loans that are given to these students are just as bad as the sub-prime loans given out during the housing bubble and could mean financial Armageddon for these students once they graduate. Heres what Kathy Kristof of Forbes Magazine wrote on the topic in her article The Great College Hoax:

Mindy Babbitt entered Davenport University in her mid-20s to study accounting. Unable to cover the costs with her previous earnings as a cosmetologist, she took out a $35,000 student loan at 9% interest, figuring her postgraduate income would cover the cost.

Instead, the entry-level job her bachelor’s degree got her barely covered living expenses. Babbitt deferred loan repayments and was then laid off for a time. Now 41 and living in Plainwell, Mich., she is earning $41,000 a year, or about $10,000 more than the average high school graduate makes. But since she graduated, Babbitt’s student loan balance has more than doubled, to $87,000, and she despairs she’ll never pay it off.

“Unless I win the lottery or get a job paying a lot more, my student debts are going to follow me to the grave,” she says.

Considering the fact that you wont land a cushy, high-paying corner office job the day, year, or decade after you graduate coupled with the massive amounts of debt that you will leave school carrying leads me to give you the following advice: Dont shell out for State or high profile colleges. Attending a community college for two years and transferring to a four-year college or university could save you a bundle in tuition costs ($30,000 or more, according to the MSN Money article, College for Half Price). You can also save hundreds upon hundreds of dollars by CLEP-ing out of courses (the CLEP program lets you study material and then take your final exam instead of actually going through the course. If you already know Marketing, you can save a lot of time and money by just CLEP-ing and moving on).

Once you are in the work force, companies will sometimes reimburse you for pursuing higher education, so get hired first, then worry about that MBA (The only MBA Im interested in getting is a MASSIVE BANK ACCOUNT! But that’s just me).

So to answer the question posed by this post: Is college really worth it? The answer is ‘yes’ if you want to work in someone elses company and no, if you want to run your own. And if you must go to college, save money and time by starting out at community college, CLEP-ing subjects, and scraping up grants and scholarships to save money while avoiding student loans.

The Wrap Up

Its important that you decide which path is right for you. Being an entrepreneur is difficult to say the least. You will have to work around the clock, sacrifice time and energy, find out all the answers on your own, and learn to live on an unstable income. Sometimes, it will feel like you are flying by the seat of your pants. If all that isnt enough to dissuade you, as an entrepreneur you will statistically make less early on than your college graduated counterparts. But for all the risk involved there is massive reward, and over time you are statistically more likely to become very rich as an entrepreneur versus as an employee.

On the other hand, as an employee you enjoy a set schedule, set pay, set benefits, and a routine life. Your destiny within your company is not in your hands, however, and there is little chance you will be any more successful than the man at the desk next to you. There is nothing wrong with choosing either path as long as you know yourself.

Popularity: 14% [?]

Throughout the ordeal that I went through that landed me behind bars, I experienced self doubt to a degree that I had never experienced. After all, I was a United States Marine, the physical embodiment of discipline and honor. Some of the thoughts that coursed through my mind while I sat in the county jail were:

How, after all my training and accomplishments, could I have landed in jail?
Was it all a sham?
What monster inside of me reared its ugly head and destroyed my life?
How did it come to this?
Who am I really?

Once I was released, this self doubt crept into everything I did. People felt uneasy around me because I was uneasy with myself. I accepted low paying jobs, doubting my ability to do any better. I accepted a filthy pay by the week sleeping room since I doubted I could live any better. In short, the swagger that I walked with when I was a Marine was gone; I had lost my mojo.

The Evolution of Self Doubt

Most people first experience self doubt when it comes to the opposite sex. To curb this self doubt, young adults will dress a certain way, act a certain way, and do certain things (like having sex with multiple partners. Men and women whose only pursuit is sexual validation in any form usually have deep self doubts). When these individuals enter the work force, their self doubt either increases or decreases depending on their position and accomplishments. If these individuals come out of college, land a great job, and fit in with their careers then their self doubt is quieted. If these individuals land a mediocre job with slow or no advancement, self doubts begin to arise. “Is this the best I can do?” As they progress in life, regret piles up. They lose their youthful figures, have kids, settle into BS jobs, and start to stagnate. In some cases, they run into tragedy (like I did) and find themselves having to start over. Statements such as “I should have done this better”, “Where did all my time go?” and “I used to have this or that, I used to be on top of my game” become commonplace. Dreams dim. Self doubt destroys life.

If you will notice, self doubt begins with ones internal dialogue.This self talk sabotages future progress and prevents them from taking bold steps into the right direction. Self doubt is the result of questioning oneself and ones abilities. That’s why in books like Think and Grow Rich and Unlimited Power, the writers stress the importance of getting your mind right. If you havent gotten and read these books yet, you really are doing yourself a disservice.

The Opposite of Self Doubt

The opposite of self doubt is self confidence.

self-confidence. A, noun. 1, assurance, self-assurance, confidence, authority, sureness. freedom from doubt; belief in yourself and your abilities- Webster’s Dictionary

Self Confidence is something that is programmed within all of us by our parents, skill sets that we have developed, our victories, and challenges that we have overcome. There are also ways to build and reclaim the self confidence that you have lost over time. It can be as simple for you as it was for me with the following three steps:

Acknowledge past successes

Every Marine is taught to create a wall dedicated to their personal accomplishments. Awards, trophies, tokens of appreciation, battle trophies, and pictures of their travels provide a physical memory of every reason they have to be proud of themselves. Sometimes you might feel like you haven’t accomplished anything, and during those times having a “me wall” gives you a reason to press forward. Have you ever been to an accomplished professionals office and not seen a wall full of their degrees and accreditation? If you have no awards to fill your wall with then stop playing Halo, stop kicking it on the corner, and make some things happen. Not for the sake of collecting awards, but for the sake of creating success in your life.

Surround yourself with positive, challenging people

Positive people can have a massive impact on you and your self image. When I first seriously dedicated myself to getting big and hitting the gym, I would work out with people that were at or below my level of strength and ability. But if you want to accomplish anything, you need to work with people who already have what you want and get on their level. I found the biggest guy in the gym, asked him to take me under his wing, and the result was gains in weight and strength that I didnt think were possible for my size. Positive individuals like my training partner will challenge you physically and mentally when you need it most. Thats another reason why its so important I have talked alot about the importance of networking and assembling teams of people that will help you accomplish your goals in previous posts. Teams are powerful, thats the reason Alcoholics Anonymous and similar treatment programs are so effective – they leverage powerful and positive team dynamics.

Watch your Thoughts

Thoughts are things – Napoleon Hill’s Think and Grow Rich: The Landmark Bestseller–Now Revised and Updated for the 21st Century

Really start to pay attention to how you speak to yourself, and how you visualize things. Do you automatically assume the worst? Or do you visualize and prepare for your best performance? Self Doubt is thought driven. Therefore, to defeat the thoughts that produce self doubt, counter them with thoughts that produce self confidence. Instead of imagining defeat, imagine victory and the end result that you desire. Instead of letting your mind get away with saying things like “I cant do this because…” counter with “I can do this because…” Another technique that Olympic athlete’s use is to visualize what could go wrong and then visualize how to correct the error in mid-stride.

Self Doubt and self confidence are practices that become traits. If you practice confidence, you will embody it naturally over a period of time, and the money and success you seek will come. Dont let your self doubt sabotage your life. Go forth confidently and victoriously. Otherwise, all the money in the world wont help you.

Popularity: 10% [?]