I’M BEGGING YOU, DON’T LET LIFE PASS YOU BY.
I am sharing my story with you because I never thought I was smart enough to do anything of great worth. I thought my talents were with social skills and sports but academics were not my thing.Therefore, I would never amount to much.
When thinking about professions I knew I was never going to get that job that required someone be really “smart”. Thus, never have a great paying job.
I hated math. Some people could sit and listen and learn really fast. I had to listen again and again before it made sense. So I was that guy that would always have to raise his hand because I didn’t understand even though everyone else was ready to move on. Man it sucks having to be that guy…but yeah, that was me.
P.S ( formal apology for anyone that ever took math with me)
I hated math so much that one time in high school I was taking a math test and after looking at the questions and trying to answer a few of them I just took my pencil and wrote “ I give up” and turned in my paper.
In addition to math, I also hated reading. I hated it with a fiery passion. I hated it so much that I even had a hard time committing myself to read the cliffs notes. I avoided it at all costs.
Long story short, I managed to make it through high school and was even able to pass my exit interview to graduate.
Fast forward 8 years and I have just graduated college. My family from Alaska comes to visit and we all go out to eat. We are all sitting down and a guy comes up and asks what the occasion was? I told him I had just graduated college. He congratulated me and you could tell that he was a successful man. I thought man, what a cool guy, I asked him If he had a business card that I could have so we could connect someday. He was like “yeah, here you go”. A week or so later we connected on LinkedIn and I told him that we could get together sometime for lunch. He agreed that would be great. 6 or 7 months later he contacted me out of the blue and asked me to go out to lunch with him. I agreed and we went out to lunch together.
We go out to eat together and he asks me what I want out of life. I told him that I suppose I just wanted to live comfortably and to be able to have fun with my family.
He asked me what living comfortably meant?
“Well I suppose I wanted to be able to go on vacation and live life on my own terms.” He told me that he could help me get that.
I was immediately intrigued.
He reached out to me again and asked if he could come over and share something with me and my wife about how we can enjoy financial freedom. I figured hey, why not? So we invited him over.
He showed up and we had some banter going back and forth for a little while but after we sat down he took a piece of paper and started to draw a little hut and then a river on the other side of the paper.
He explained to me that a man lives in this village and that he needs to get water for his family. How do you suppose he gets the water?
“Uh, he has to take a bucket to the water and bring it back?”
“Exactly” he answered
He said that is exactly what you’re doing with your life. Time = money, you work 8 hours and earn 8 hours worth of pay. You don’t work, you don’t earn money.
( Time frozen: I was saying to myself “Crap…your right!”)
He then started to draw a pipe that went from the river to the hut.
He then asked me “what if you could create a way to get the water from the river directly to the hut so that you don’t have to walk to the river anymore?”
I said “ Man, that would be awesome!”
I paused for a moment as I realized how much sense this actually makes. I realized that I would be bound by my job for the rest of my life unless I could create a way to create passive income. He went on to tell me about what he was doing to create that passive income. While I was not particularly interested in what he was doing, I was deeply impacted by the principles he taught me.
I started to look at my life and realized that I was going to be that man in the village that has to run to get water day after day in order to provide for my family. If I am going to have the life that I want, something needs to change.
It was at that point that I started to think about how I can create that pipeline and I started to think about different businesses that I could do. Which lead me to my venture into entrepreneurship.
(The principles to create passive income so that you don’t have to walk to get the water in order to provide for your family are taught in Rich Dad Poor Dad. This does not mean you need to become an entrepreneur in order to live life on your own terms. This is just my story and how I decided to attack my problems)
When I started to tell everyone about the ideas I had and what I was working on people started to tell me about how likely it was that I would fail. Not in a mean way, but just to make sure I wasn’t hurt if it happens.
The competitor in me thought “hey I got this…” I started thinking about what I was getting myself into and started to analyze the situation. I thought about the difference between people that succeed and people that fail. What were the differences?
As I pondered this in my mind I knew there were some people out there that I guarantee could start any business and succeed. If that was true, then I needed to become like them.
I realized it all came down to knowledge and execution. Plain and simple. I knew that they simply knew how to win at the game of life and if I could learn what they know that I could win too.
This was when it all started to change for me.
I knew that the best way to learn about the secrets of success was to read those horrible things called books.
Warren Buffet who’s net worth is $65 Billion attributes most of his earning to a book he read when he was younger. It inspired him take control and be smart with his money.
He says that “ The most important investment you can make is in yourself”
When I read that I knew that I needed to invest in myself. I am my own best asset. I knew that if I was going to make this work I was going to need to buckle down and start reading.
As I started reading I started experiencing some serious changes in my life.
I started to feel more confident, I felt happier, and more excited about the future. I was becoming a better husband and father. I was starting to see life with more color and time started to become much more valuable to me then it had ever been before.
My wife could not believe the changes she was seeing in my life. Everything I have experienced and learned since I started on this journey is what I am so passionate about sharing. I don’t believe there was anybody on the planet that hated learning and reading more than I did. I figure if I can learn to not only like reading, but to love it, and love learning and growing then certainly I should be able to help others do the same.
Words can hardly describe how much my life has changed since I started investing in myself and I started to dream big, set goals, and work towards achieving them.
The change that I have not only felt but that I have seen is why I am sharing my story and wanting to talk with others. I want to make sure everyone knows how much potential each individual has and that the only limitations we have in life are the limitations we put on ourselves.
My goal is to help inspire as many people as I can by helping them to see life differently as I have come to.
Josh Kartchner — Click here to join my mailing list where I send tips and tricks on improving the way we learn!
