The Parable of the Pipeline (from Burke
Hedges)
PART II. Your
Pipelies are your Lifelines
LESSON
THREE
The Power of
the Pipeline
“But Pablo was not easily discouraged. He
patiently explained the pipeline plan to this best friend.
Pablo would work part of the day carrying buckets and then part of the
day and weekends building his pipeline. He knew it would be hard work digging
the ditch in the rocky soil. Because he was paid by the bucket, he knew his
income would drop at first. He also new it would take a year, possibly two,
before his pipeline would start to pay big dividends. But Pablo believed in his
dream, and he went to work.”(From the Parable of the Pipeline)
This is the tale of two polar
opposites – a big-time baseball player and a small town elementary school
teacher.
They couldn’t be more
different – one was a young man and one was an elderly woman. One was paid
millions a year and the other never earned more than $10,000. One lived his life
in the spotlight. The other lived her life in a small town in
But these were only small
differences compared to the personal and financial choices each made. You see,
one of the people you’re going to read about built pipelines and retired a
multimillionaire. The other stayed a bucket carrier and, as I write this, is
teetering on the brink of bankruptcy.
The stories are about two very
different people, but that’s not what’s important. What’s important is the
choices they made and the lessons you can learn from those choices. After you
hear these two tales, it should be crystal clear why building pipelines is the
only way to create true security and true financial freedom.
The Ballad of the Ball
Player
Let’s begin with the tale of
the famous baseball player. Over the years, this talented athlete has made some
bad choices, both personally and financially.
His personal choices have led
to a broken marriage, alcohol abuse, and drug addiction. That’s bad enough.
But his financial choices have been just as bad, for he’s also broke. I’m
sure you’ve heard of this athlete. He’s been in the spotlight for almost 20
years now.
His name is Darryl Strawberry.
His story is a cautionary tale for what you should NOT do in order to achieve
financial freedom.
Darryl Strawberry has been
playing professional baseball for almost half his life. The 38-year-old
outfielder broke into the major leagues when he was still a teenager and was
immediately hailed as the “next Ted Williams.”
Strawberry has made a fortune
during his career – somewhere between $2 and $5 million a year. And that’s
just from playing baseball. Add another couple of million a year from
endorsements, personal appearances, speeches, and autograph signings, and he’s
earned $50 to $100 million before his 40th birthday.
Strawberries Don’t Field
Forever
A guy making that kind of money
has to be set for life, right?
Wrong.
According to a local newspaper
report, “Strawberry has no income or savings to support his current wife,
Charisse, and their three children…”
$100 million and not a thing to
show for it.
What happened?
He spend it.
Expensive houses. Expensive
cars. Expensive lawyers to defend his run-ins with the law. Expensive divorce.
Expensive drug and alcohol rehabilitation clinics.
As I write this, Strawberry has
been suspended from playing baseball. Which means he has no income coming in.
The only thing still coming in are the bills. And they come in day after day,
months after month, as steady as the rain in a monsoon.
How to become the
Millionaire Next Door
The second tale has much
different ending. It’s the tale of a small town teacher named Margaret
O’Donnell, and it proves that you don’t have to carry big buckets in order
to build big pipelines.
Ms. O’Donnell taught school
for more that 50 years. When she retired in her 70’s, she was making around
$8,500 a year. When she died at age 100, she left almost $2 million to 10
different charities, including her church, schools she attended and a boy scout
troop.
How could a woman earning less
than $10,000 a year accumulate a small fortune? Simple. She built a long-term
investment pipeline by making regular monthly investments in quality stocks and
allowing them to compound over the time.
“Margaret enjoyed stocks,”
said her broker, Bob Wolanske. “The first time I met her, she threw three
papers on my desk and said, “What should I do with these dogs?,” referring
to some stocks that weren’t doing well.”
Over the next 20 years,
Margaret’s portfolio bloomed to include a collection of blue chip stocks,
tax-exempt bonds, and utility stocks that she held until her death. She rarely
touched any of her investments, enabling her retirement pipeline to grow year
after year after year.
Small Sacrifices, Big
Results
Now, in case you’re thinking
that Margaret was one of those penny-pinching spinsters who clipped coupons and
saved used tea bags, you’d be wrong. She ate out often with friends. Drove a
late-model Buick. And frequently flew to
She didn’t deny herself the
pleasures of life. But she also showed discipline and restraint in her spending.
And she saved and invested each and every month, even in retirement.
You see, Margaret was the
classic example of long-term pipeline builder. She started saving and investing
in her early 20s. And she continued right up until her death at age 100 (as
you’ll learn in the coming chapters, pipelines grow bigger and bigger over
time).
Like Pablo, pipeline builders
may not have much to show for their efforts during the first few days or even
years. But consistent, disciplined efforts over time can transform small
contributions into huge dividends.
Pipelines Keep Pumping After
Buckets Run Dry
Now do you understand what I
mean when I talk about the power of the pipeline? Darryl Strawberry has carried
a huge bucket for years. And what does he have to show for it today? Nothing but
boxes of cancelled checks!
Strawberry has had 20 years to
build pipelines. If the dad taken just 10% of his earnings and put the money to
work by building an investment pipeline in the stock market, he could’ve had a
lifeline worth between $20 million and $ 100 million by now.
But he didn’t.
Strawberry assumed his big
bucket would never dry up. Wrong assumption. Buckets don’t automatically
replenish themselves, no matter how big they are. That’s because the bucket
carrier has to lug the bucket to get it refilled.
When he stops lugging –
either through retirement… or illness… or injury… or burnout – the
bucket starts drying up.
Pipelines, on the other hand,
keep pumping profits long after buckets run dry. That rule holds true for big
bucket carriers, just as it does for small bucket carriers. As I said, it’s
not the size of the bucket that counts. People with big buckets tend to be big
spenders. The key to financial freedom is to adopt a pipeline building mentality
– and then to put your pipeline plan into action!
The Smaller the Bucket, the
Bigger the Need for a Pipeline
Earning a lot of money
doesn’t guarantees financial independence. Only pipelines can do that. If you
don’t adopt a pipeline strategy, your bucket will eventually dry up!
I tell you the story of Darryl
Strawberry to exaggerate a point – namely, if a bucket
as big of Darryl Strawberry’s can dry up, what about your?
Think about it. Strawberry
lived from paycheck to paycheck.
What about you?
Strawberry acted as if his
bucket-carrying days would never end.
What about you?
Strawberry foolishly spent
money and wasted time when he could have been using it wisely to build a
lifeline.
What about you?
Sure, Strawberry made some bad
choices that cost him a lot of money. But his worst financial choice was his
failure to build pipelines. That’s unforgivable! What was he thinking?
Margaret O’Donnell, on the
other hand, had the wisdom to build pipelines while she was still carrying
buckets. When her bucket-carrying days came to an end, her pipelines kept
pumping and the cash kept flowing.
It’s Your Turn to Choose
Now I ask you, which financial
situation would you rather be in – Darryl Strawberry’s? or Margaret
O’Donnell’s? If the answer is Margaret O’Donnell, then you need to start
building your pipelines right away!
Pipelines are lifelines because
they’re self-sustaining. They may need priming form time to time. And repairs.
Perhaps even rebuilding. But pipelines can keep pumping profits year after year.
Both Darryl Strawberry and
Margaret O’Donnell had a choice. Darryl Strawberry chose buckets. Margaret
O’Donnell chose pipelines.
They made their choices.
Now it’s your turn to choose.
LESSON FOUR
Leverage: The
Power Behind the Pipeline
Once
the pipeline was complete, Pablo didn’t have to carry buckets anymore. The
water flowed whether he worked or not. It flowed while he ate. It flowed while
he slept. If flowed on the weekends while he played. The more the water flowed
into the village, the more the money flowed into Pablo’s pockets! (From the
Parable of the Pipeline)
Leverage is an awesome concept
– a civilization-alerting concept.
Let me explain.
In 1440, a young German
entrepreneur named Johannes Gutenberg converted a wine press into the world’s
first commercial printing press. He printed 180 copies of the Gutenberg Bible
and sold them all within few days.
Gutenberg’s printing press
was an immediate success. Within decades, printing presses had sprung up all
over
Books by Bucket Carriers vs.
Publishing by Pipeline Builders
The Gutenberg press shattered
the books-by-bucket-carriers paradigm. Prior to Gutenberg, book were hand copied
by scribes and monks. On hand-written book could take years to produce and were
so expensive that only royalty could afford them.
Gutenberg changed all that.
With the printing press, the printer set the movable type once…and then could
easily produce thousands of exact copies. The printing press leveraged the
printer’s time and money, thereby dramatically increasing productivity.
In the books-by-bucket-carriers
model, there’s a one-to-one ration between efforts and results. One hour’s
effort produces one hour’s result. If it took one scribe one day to hand copy
one page, then it would have taken him 100 days to turn out 100 pages.
Enter the printing press –the
pipeline-building mode. Let’s say it took a 16th century printer
one day to set the type for one page, so that by the end of the day, he would
have produced just one printer’s proof copy.
But look what happened in day
two: The printer came into work and pressed 100 copies! In other words, a
printer could produce in two days what it would have taken the scribe 100 days
to produce. That’s the power of leverage!
In the pipeline-building model,
the ration between effort and result is no longer 1:1. When we use leverage, the
effort remains the same, but the result can be 100 times grater… 1,000 times
greater…or even million of times greater!
Two Kinds of Leverage: Time
and Money
The root word for leverage –
lever- comes from an old French word meaning “to make lighter,” which is an
apt description of the power of leverage. By employing a lever, a big load can
be made so light that a child could easily move it.
When we apply the principle of
leverage to time and money, the same thing happens – the results are
compounded.
For example, in the case of
leveraging time, on hour’s effort can result in 100 hours of production. One
week’s work can result in one year’s production.
In the case of leveraging
money, each dollar invested over time can compound until it grows to many times
the initial investment.
Classic Examples of Leverage
The printing press is an
example of how people can leverage their time, money, and efforts. Leverage
shatters the equation of one unit of time for one unit of money. Leverage allows
people to work smarter, not harder, and it’s the power behind every pipeline.
Leveraging Time: hiring
employees is a classic example of how people can leverage their time. Let’s
say you want to open a restaurant. It would
be impossible for you to act as the
host…waiter…chef…dishwasher…and bookkeeper and still run a profitable
business. You can only be in one place at a time, so you hire people to perform
certain tasks.
If you pay your 10-person staff
an average of $ 10 per hour, you’re paying out $ 100 an hour in wages. If your
restaurant takes an average of 1,000 per hour in revenue, the difference after
expenses goes into your pocket.
Leveraging Money: A classic
example of leveraging money is investing in the stock market. No doubt you’ve
heard of Warren Buffett. He’s a living legend
on Wall Street and the second or third richest man in the world. He built
his fortune the old-fashioned way – he leveraged other people’s money and
made himself and his investors rich in the process.
How rich? Check this out. If
you had invested $ 10,000 in Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway stock back in 1965
and left it there to grow year after year, by 1998 your investment would have
been worth – hang on to your hat - $ 51 million! Wow! How would you like to
own that pipeline?!!
Thirty-five years ago, one
share of Berkshire Hathaway stock cost only $ 19. By the end of 1998, that
single share was worth about $ 70,000. Which means that you could have leveraged
a $ 300 investment in 1965 into $ 1 million today! Unbelievable!
Now do you understand the power
of leverage? Berkshire Hathaway stock is living proof that with leverage, the
results are disproportionate to the effort.!
Think about it – how much
effort would it have taken to accumulate $300 back in 1965? Two or three days’
work… maybe a week’s work at the most. Just imagine – once the $ 300 was
invested, you wouldn’t have to do any more work because your pipeline was
already built. The only other work you’d have to do is check the stock prices
in the newspaper every now and then.
Ask yourself – wouldn’t it
be great if you could turn $300 into $1 million without having to lift a finger?
Can you see how the wise use of
leverage can multiply a little money or a little time a thousand times over?
Doesn’t it make sense to find
a mechanism whereby you could leverage $1 into $100?... or one hour into 100
hours?
Wouldn’t it be great to do
the work once and let leverage do the rest!
Folks, if you’d like to enjoy
the benefits of leverage, then you need to do what pipeline builders such as
Pablo and Warren Buffett did – find a mechanism to leverage your time and
money today…and enjoy a big reward
tomorrow!
LESSON FIVE
Money
Leverage: The
Legend has it that one of the
ancient emperors of
“I am honored, Your
Highness,” the inventor muttered humbly. “My whish is that you grant me one
grain of rice.”
“Just one grain of rice?”
the startled emperor asked.
“Well, just one grain for the
first square of the chessboard,” the inventor said. “Then doubling to tow
grains for the second square… four grains for the third square…and so on
until the single grain has been doubled for the entire chess board. That is my
simple wish.”
The emperor was well pleased.
“I have been given such a wonderful game at such a cheap price,” he thought
himself. “My ancestors have smiled upon me today.”
“It is done!” the emperor
cried. “Bring out the chess board and let everyone here witness our
agreement.”
The court gathered around the
chess board. A kitchen servant produced a one pound bag of rice and handed it to
the inventor, who smiled as he opened the bag.
“I suggest you return to the
kitchen for a larger bag,” the inventor said to the servant. The court laughed
loudly, mistaking his comment for sarcasm. Then the inventor began placing the
grains of rice on the board, doubling the number of grains as he went: 1, 2, 4,
8, 16, 64,128.
The onlookers laughed and
nudged each other as the first row of eight squares was filled…1, 2, 4, 8, 16,
64, 128 grains of rice. But the giggles soon gave way to gasps by the middle of
the second row, for small piles of rice soon doubled to small big bags of
rice…which doubled to medium-sized bags of rice…which doubled to big bags of
rice.
256,512, 1K,2K,
4K,8K,16K,32K…
By the end of the second row,
the emperor knew he had made a huge mistake. The grains owed to the inventor
totaled 32,768 – and there were 48 squares remaining!
The emperor stopped the game
and called in the land’s wisest mathematicians. They tossed the beads of their
abacuses and made hasty markings on the slate boards. After much fussing, the
mathematicians reached an unanimous conclusion:
A grain of rice doubled for
every square on the 64-square chess board would calculate to 18 million trillion
grains of rice – a quantity equal to all the rice in the world multiplied by
10!
The emperor halted the
demonstration and made the inventor an offer he couldn’t refuse – if the
emperor were released from his word, the inventor would receive a country estate
with hundreds of acres of fertile rice fields. The inventor gladly accepted.
Everyone toasted the inventor and congratulated him on his wisdom and
cleverness. And he happily retired to his estate, enjoying many, many years in
splendid comfort.
The Doubling Concept: Eight
Wonder of the World
The story of the emperor and
the inventor teaches us the power of the doubling concept. This concept has been
around since the fist bank paid the first wealthy merchant interest on a
deposit, so it’s time-tested and proven.
The inventor and the
emperor’s mathematicians may have been the first people to recognize the power
of the duplication, but they certainly weren’t the last. Centuries later
another famous mathematician named Albert Einstein recognized the awesome power
of duplication, or “compounding,” as it’s sometimes referred to, calling
it “the eight wonder of the world.”
The doubling concept has become
such a cornerstone of wealth creation that I call it “the Palm Beach
Pipeline,” named after the ritzy city in
The rich people in
Palm Beach Pipelines are fueled
by the doubling concept, which means the lucky heirs can enjoy fabulous
lifestyle…while they get richer in the process! That’s what I call having
your cake and eating it, too.
The Rule of 72: The Rule of
the Rich
To better understand how rich
people get richer, let’s take a look at “the Rule of 72,” a mind-boggling
wealth-building concept that the world’s top investment brokers teach their
rich clients. The Rule of 72 is a simple formula for calculating how many years
it would take for an investor to double. Here’s the way it works.
Doubling Concept or Rule of
72
Determine the annual
interest rate on your investment
Divide the interest rate
into 72
The result is the number of
years it takes for your investment to double
For example, let’s say an
heiress invest $100,000 in a stock that pays an annual return of 10% per
year(sic). Here’s the Rule of 72 in action:
Step 1: $100,000 original
investment
Step
Step 3: 72 divided by 10 =
7.2 years
Payoff: $100,000 would
become $200,000 in 7.2 years
If the heiress didn’t spend
the profits or her principle, the original investment of $100,000 would double
to $200,000 in 7.2 years…to $400,000 in 14.4 years…to $800,000 in 21.6
years…in 1.6 million in 28.8 years…and so and on. As you can see, the longer
the money is allowed to compound, the bigger the size of the pipeline.
By leveraging the power of
compounding, people who inherit million-dollar fortunes can live like royalty
and still leave an even bigger fortune for their children!
The magic of compounding is the
reason that thousands of heirs named Kennedy…DuPont…Firestone…Ford…Rockefeller…and
Getty can continue to live a life of luxury without their fortunes drying up. In
effect, their bucket never runs dry because the pipeline keeps pumping year
after year, for decades, or in the case of the Rothschild heirs in
Kids and Money
Fortunately, pipelines built by
leveraging money aren’t reserved just for rich people. Average people can take
advantage of the doubling concept, too, as we learned from the story about
Margaret O’Donnell, a low-paid-school teacher who amassed several million
dollars by leveraging her money in the stock market.
So, how do average people
leverage their money to create a long-term pipeline?
The best to answer that is to
tell you about a powerful little book called Kids and Money by Michael J. Searls. Actually, the book could be
titled People and Money, because the
principles outlined by Searls apply to young and old alike.
Searls, a former power broker
an Wall Street and father of four, recommended a simple system to teach kids to
manage their money more responsibly.
He suggests that parents get
three plastic jars and label jar one “Spend & give,” jar two “save,”
and jar three “invest.” When parents give their children their allowance for
the week, they divide the money equally into the three jars.
The “spend and give” jar is
for immediate spending – bubble gum, baseball cards, etc. It’s also money to
be used for tithing and charity.
The “save” jar is for
spending on bigger ticket items, such a new CD or video game.
The “invest” jar differs
from the first two in that it’s not for spending. Ever. Searles call this jar
“…the most important component, because if we don’t have something to put
away for a rainy day, the threat of debt will always hover above our heads,”
Adults who are serious about
building long-term investment pipelines need to start managing their money
according to a three-jar system. But instead of putting their money into jars,
they should put it into bank and brokerage accounts.
Pay Yourself First!
The key to leveraging your
money like rich people do is to “pay yourself fist” by making regular
monthly contributions into investment accounts – and leaving the money to
compound!
The best way to fund your
investment pipeline is to take some money out of your income bucket each month
and deposit it into your pipelines.
How Average People Become
Millionaires
Too bad we weren’t able to
choose rich parents – then we wouldn’t have to worry about “forced savings
plans” and automatic payroll deductions.
But the truth is, the vast
majority of millionaires in this country (
How? By using the “three jar
system” – instead of spending every dime they make, they put aside a big
chunk of their income in the “invest” jar, and let it compound year after
year.
Typically, millionaires save
15% to 20% of their gross income and invest it wisely in asset-building
pipelines, such as stocks, bonds, closely-held business, rental property,
commercial real state, pension funds, and the like.
That’s why most millionaires
don’t hit the million-dollar mark until they’re in their 50s or 60s – it
can take decades before compounding really kicks into high gear. Ten thousand
dollars at 10% doubles to $20,000 after seven years…but in 50 years it will
double seven times, which calculates to
almost $1.3 million!
Power of Compounding
Year 1
$10,000
Year 7
20 K
Year 14 40 K
Year 21 80
K
Year 28 160 K
Year 35 320
K
Year 42 640
K
Year 49 1.3
M
If You Don’t Have the
Money, What Do You Have to Leverage?
Wouldn’t it be great to be a
millionaire?
You can, you know. And you
don’t have to win the lottery to do it.
The Millionaire’s Club used
to be a very exclusive club. You had to be born into the right family. Go to the
right schools.
That’s not the case anymore.
Today, average people can join the Millionaire’s Club, too. It’s open to
anyone with the discipline to invest a regular portion of their income and let
it compound over time.
But let’s face it – not
everyone has the patience to spend 40 or 50 years building their retirement
pipeline. And not everyone has the money to build a Palm Beach Pipeline
overnight.
Wouldn’t it be great if there
were a 5-year pipeline plan whereby average people could create ongoing residual
income without having to invest a small fortune?
Well, there is a 5-year
pipeline plan available. Best of all, you don’t need lots of money to build
this pipeline. Because instead of leveraging your money…you leverage your
time!
LESSON SIX
Time Leverage:
The People’s Pipeline
“While
Bruno lay in his hammock on evenings and weekends, Pablo kept digging his
pipeline. The fist months Pablo didn’t have much to show for his efforts. The
work was hard – even harder that Bruno’s because Pablo was working evenings
and weekends, too.
But
Pablo kept reminding himself that tomorrow’s dreams are built on today’s
sacrifices. Day by day he dug, an inch at a time. .”(From the Parable of the
Pipeline)
There’s an old Appalachian
expression that sums up the difference between money leverage and time leverage.
It goes like this:
There
are two ways to get the top of a giant oak tree. You can sit on an acorn and
wait. Or you can climb it.
When people leverage their
money over decades, they’re choosing to sit on an acorn and wait. I call this
the “50-Year Pipeline Plan.” This is what compounding is all about –
waiting patiently while your money doubles again and again over the years.
There’s no question that the
50-Year Pipeline Plan works. Remember how Margaret O’Donnell’s pipeline
transformed her from a underpaid teacher to a multi-millionaire?!!!
Like Margaret O’Donnell,
I’m also a big believer in building long-term pipelines. Over the years,
I’ve leveraged a portion of my income to build “Palm Beach Pipelines” in
everything from pension funds…to stock market accounts…to IRAs…to real
estate. It’s called diversification. It’s called building lifelines.
But I’m also a big believer
in climbing oak trees!
I call climbing oak trees the
“5-Year Pipeline Plan.” It accomplishes the same goal as the 50-Year
Pipeline Plan – financial independence and security. But
only takes 10% of the time!
That’s why I’ve spent time,
money, and effort in building several fat-growing business. Instead of having to
wait 50 years to get to the top of the tree, I can build a business that gets me
in two to five years.
Time Levels the Playing
Fields
The beauty of time leverage is
that we’ve all been given the same amount of time. Which means time levels the
playing fields between rich people and average income earners. Whether you’re
Donald Trump…or Donald the dump truck driver… everyone has been given the
same amount of time each day.
That’s why I call time
leverage the “People’s Pipeline.” Time is available in equal amounts to
everyone, whether they’re reach or poor…man or woman…black or
white…college educated or high school dropout…young or old. You can’t say
that about money, now can you?
Think of it this way.
Wouldn’t it be great if you and everyone else could start every single day
with $1,440 in your personal bank account? The money would be yours and yours
alone and no one could tell you what to do with it. You could spend it…invest
it…brow it…burn it…give it away…leverage it…or waste it, knowing that
the next morning, you’d wake up with another $1,440 in your account. If
everyone could start off every day with $1,4440, it would be a better, more fair
world, wouldn’t it?
But as we’re well aware,
that’s not the case. When it comes to money, life isn’t fair. Some people
are born with a silver spoon in their mouths. Some with a plastic spoon. Some
with nothing but their own thumb. Fair? Maybe not. But as the song says,
“That’s Life.”
We don’t all start every day
with $1,440 in our bank account –that’s for sure. As for time – that’s a
different matter. We DO all start every
day with 1,440 minutes in our time account. (24 hours a day times 60 minutes
an hour).
Since we all get the same
amount of time, the difference between people who live paycheck to paycheck and
people who are financially free is how they use their daily allotment of 1,440
minutes!
You’ve Got More Time Than
You Think
Some people put off building
their pipelines because “tight now is a bad time for me.” Guess what –
right now is a bad time for everybody! We’re all stressed. We’re all busy.
We’re all putting out fires and dealing with unexpected emergencies. There’s
a word for these bad times.
It’s called life!
Some people waste their lives
waiting for the “perfect time” to do x,y,or z. Well, they’ll die waiting
because there’s no such a thing as a perfect time. If someone told you he’d
give you $1 million if you’d sit in a corner and knit for two hours,
wouldn’t you?
It wouldn’t matter if your
son broke his arm on the playground or your car wouldn’t start after work.
Rather that forfeit $1 million, you’d find the time to knit for two hours,
perfect time or no perfect time. Humorist Art Buchwald put it this way:
“Whether it’s the best of the times or the worst of times, it’s the only
time we got.”
Sadly, most people take time
for granted, especially small amounts of time. We’ve been conditioned to
measure time in days and weeks and years, instead of minutes and hours. We work
9 to 5, Monday through Friday. We plan our lives according to a monthly
calendar. We celebrate our birthday and anniversaries once a year.
But the amazing thing about
time is how a few minutes here and there every day can add up to huge chunks on
time! For example, did you know how much total time the average persons spend
eating during their lifetimes? Would you guess a year? Two years? The answer is
six years! Isn’t that amazing? Here are some other short daily tasks that add
up to huge blocks of time:
6 years
eating
5 years
waiting in line
4 years
cleaning house
3 years
preparing meals
2 years
trying to return phone calls
1 year
searching for misplaced items
8 months
opening junk mail
6 months
sitting at red lights
By my tally, that’s close to
22 years out of your lifetime! Which goes to prove that 15 minutes here…half
an hour there…two hours there…can add up to huge blocks of time!
A Few Hours Can Turn into a
Few Months
Just think for a moment what we
could accomplish in our lives if we used a couple hours each evening and on the
weekends to do something purposeful, like building a pipeline. If you set aside
two hours each workday – let’s say one in the morning before work and one in
the evening – and three more hours on both Saturday and Sunday, you could add
16 hours of productive time a week to your schedule!
Sixteen hours a week over 50
weeks a year comes to 800 extra hours a year…which calculates to 100
eight-hour days…or three months and 10 days of extra eight-hour workdays each
year! And all you had to do was set aside a couple of hours a day to get three
extra months of productive time each year. Amazing isn’t it?
Time is Money
Now, I’m going to let you in
on a little secret – using free time productively is one of the keys to why
successful people have more, do more, and get more in life! Do you think Bill
Gates comes home at
I don’t think so…
A recent article in the Wall
Street Journal states that the top 10% of earners in
Not only do the top 10%-ers
work longer – they work smarter! In other words, they don’t trade their time
for dollars. You won’t walk into a convenience store and see Michael Jordan
behind the counter selling customers lottery tickets and quarts of beer.
Successful people in every line of work value their time, and they seek every
opportunity to leverage their time!
Waste Not, Want Not
People often ask me why they
should take the time and effort to build pipelines when things are going so well
right at the moment. They tell me they deserve to relax after a hard day at the
office. They reward themselves by leaning back in the La-Z-Boy recliner and
watching TV until bedtime.
“Life is good,” they tell
me. “Got a good job. Got a few bucks in the bank. Kids are doing well in
school. No need to rock the boat.”
That’s when I tell them that
there’s no better time to build your pipeline than when things are going
great. Why? Because when the tide turns, it may be too late!
Then I tell then this old joke:
a man was on the 30th floor of a fancy hotel overlooking
“How you doing?” he asked
the falling man.
“Fine – so far,” came
the reply.
The point is that there are
lots of bucket carriers in this world who are doing fine – so far. But they can’t stay en a free-fall forever. As long as
people trade time for dollars, there’s no safety net in their lives. Why?
Because when they can’t put in the time due to illness… or injury…or
layoffs, their paychecks will stops.
For bucket carriers, no
paycheck means no security!
The Fable of the Ant and the
Grasshopper
As I write this, consumer
confidence in high. Unemployment is low. Incomes are rising. Home sales are at
record highs. Car sales are booming. Lots of people are fine –so
far.
But we can’t fall into the
trap of mistaking “so far” for “forever”. Everybody knows that life goes
in cycles. So does the economy. Right now the business cycle is nearing its
zenith. Your personal life cycle may be at an all-time high, too.
But what goes up, must come
down. And when people start coming down, some of them ae going to crash into
some hard realities: Layoffs. Career changes. Credit card debt. Medical
emergencies, Nursing home care for elderly parents.
Smart people understand that
the best time to feather their nest is while business is booming. Smart people
erect safety nets before a recession starts, not during! That’s why I tell
people that today is the best time to build their pipelines, not when economy
hits the skids.
It’s like the fable of the
ant and the grasshopper. The ant was a pipeline builder. He spent part of his
summer days storing away grain for the coming winter. He enjoyed the summer,
too. But he had the wisdom to spend some of his time building his pipeline.
The grasshopper on the other
hand, was a bucket carrier. He spent all of his money as soon as he got it and
wasted all of his time playing in the sunshine. He ignored the coming winter.
When the cold winter came, he had no pipeline in place. And he starved to death.
Pay Me Now…Or Pay Me
Later!
Do you remember the famous
advertising slogan, “Pay me now…or pay
me later?” The same goes for building pipelines. You can “pay a little
now” by investing some of your time and money to build your pipeline
today…or you can “pay a lot later” by struggling to survive on a small
Social Security check when you’re in your 60s and 70s.
Just think – if your
pipelines are in place, instead of having to pay later…you’ll get paid later!
What a concept!
Time Leverage: The
People’s Pipeline
Remember –time levels the
playing field!
We all DO NOT have the same
amount of money to leverage.
But we DO have the same amount
of time!
By leveraging some of your
leisure time wisely, you can built a pipeline that will continue to pay for
years
We’re lucky to be living in
an age when virtually anyone can leverage their time to build pipelines. That
hasn’t always been the case.
At the turn of the 20th
century, only the very rich had the luxury of leveraging their time. In 1890,
the vast majority of people worked 10 hours a day as laborers. They were too
busy trying to stay alive to think about leverage.
But today more people have more
free time than ever before in history. And time is the great equalizer! Time
enables the little guy to get 48 hours a day while poor people get 12. They both
get equal amounts of time -24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 365 days a year.
The greatest Time-Leverage
Tool in History
Today pipelines are no longer
the province of the rich. Anyone with a little time…and a lot of drive… can
leverage their time to build a “people’s pipeline” in two to five years
that will flow for years –or even decades!
In fact, we have right at our
fingertips the grates time-leveraging tool in the history of the world! This
time-leveraging tool has created more millionaires in less time that any other
single invention in history.
I call this amazing tool the
“e-pipeline,” and is the ultimate tool for time leverage. You probably know
the e-pipeline by a different name –a name that is clashed across newspaper
headlines and TV screens 24 hours a day.
That name?
The internet.
(End of Part two)