How many good money making hours do we all get if we live a long healthy life? 
Let’s do the math
260 working days in a year
8 hours per day 
2,080 hours per year
Let’s say 50 years 104,000 total
Let’s turn 104,000 hours into single dollar bills at the age of 20
You get to spend those 104,000 single dollar bills on the best things you can find…and you can’t come back for more…
                                                  
Most people spend those dollars giving them to their boss in return for pennies, most people at the age of 70 have no hours left and not much to show for those hours.

But what if you spent a portion of those hour dollars on assets that throw off cash, and when that cash stacks up you buy more assets…but…there is a big BUT…but most of us are not 20 anymore maybe we are more like 40 or 50 or 60

Why can’t we accomplish a 50 year goal in 10 years or 6 years?

Probably your belief system, we all have (that little voice inside our heads) that tells us to “be realistic”, becoming self aware is the first step to financial freedom. When you are aware of your thoughts and feelings, you then are able to adjust your actions. So let’s dig in to this

1. You have a Thought, The thought might be “maybe Mike is right, maybe I should start thinking seriously about one day retiring”

2. Then you have a Feeling, the feeling might be uncomfortableness. Uncomfortable about making a big change or the feeling might be excitement about possibly actually enjoying retirement, a feeling of joy that you are finally going to do something serious about this!

3. Action, what actions do you take now that you had a thought, then you had a feeling, now you take a certain action. If you were uncomfortable you would just go do something else and forget the notion of retirement as silly or stupid or unrealistic, you might say “I’m too far in debt to even think about investing or retirement” or you had a feeling of joy and excitement, “now it’s time to take the next step”, you start to look for potential mentors that will first help you set a goal and then implement a plan to achieve that goal. You go out and buy books on the subject, you get prepared, you start to pay yourself first The Book Secrets of the Millionaire Mind by T Harv Eker is a great place to start, I think that book should be read by everyone mandatory read.

This all boils down to your Awareness of the process, first a thought then a feeling and then finally an action, this is always how it works whether you were aware of it or not, but now that I have made you are aware you can alter the results, and we are always looking to alter our results. We all want to Be more- Do more- Have more!! Don’t we?

You can get the thought, but now you can study the feeling that you are experiencing and you get to challenge where that feeling came from…hmmm now we are getting somewhere. 
If we monitor the feeling we are experiencing we can figure out if that feeling is serving us in a positive or negative way, and we then can act in a manner that serves us. We are now in control of our lives, instead of just reacting to a thought, we can respond to a thought that will serve us in a positive way. Our brain acts like a defense mechanism always trying to keep us safe and comfortable, it does not like change and it does everything possible to avoid change at all cost, but if you want different results you must change simple as that.

I had a student/ friend of mine tell me a few years back he said “man am I glad I did what I did 5 years ago” at the time he was buying large junior loans from me and sticking them in a drawer waiting for CA and CO property values to come back! Ha! Future self was congratulating past self for making the right moves…

What are you doing today that will make your future self happy?

So if you are 60 and you have 20,800 working hours left you can do quite a lot of things during that time, you just need to learn the right things to do, where do you start, start by paying yourself first, just like a 401k at a job, first line on the paystub is withdrawal of 401k boom right off the top automatically. If you are self employed you must have the discipline to take 10 or 20% and stash it manually every time you earn.

While you are on this journey you should be devouring books, books, books, and more books! Cheapest way to gain knowledge and get advice from people that may have passed on or just not able to mentor you personally, you can get it through their books.

Once you have a nice chunk saved up you spend it on an investment that will pay you back ASAP. You should start by investing in your education,what’s the fastest way to learn, get someone to guide you in your investing business strategies, find a mentor that has experience, that will work with you personally, Warren Buffet said, “it’s GOOD to learn from YOUR mistakes, it’s BETTER to learn from OTHERS  mistakes”
  
This all seems so simple but why are 80% of the population never going to be able to retire? 
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Why are so many sticking their head in the sand and kicking the can down the road, they might say “ohhh retirement? I’ll worry about that when the time comes” 
The time is now my friend the time was when you were 20 to plant that tree, the next best time is now!
I hope you enjoyed this article, please reply with your comments and suggestions!​

I get this question all the time and it’s a good one

“what books are you reading right now and what books should I be reading right now”

I guess there are no wrong answers here because no matter what level you are at you will get something out of every book

Let’s say you are an expert note investor and you get a beginners newbie book on note investing, being an expert will allow you to fly through the content until you hit that ah-ha moment where you find the gem or gems you were digging for.

My friend Gordon wrote an awesome book with a ridiculous title on note investing you might want to look at.

Let’s say you are a newbie investor and buy an advanced investing book, you then will read this book possibly very very slowly to get every bit of content learned before you move on to the next chapter.
See it doesn’t matter what level you are at to purchase this or that book, you can’t go wrong, even the most horribly written books will still benefit you, somewhere in that book will be the gem!

I have been investing in notes since forever it feels like but am still learning by getting my hands on as much information as possible.

I still am learning adopting adapting new things to my business by studying new material, both on the topic and indirectly off topic trying to interweave 2 different business into one.

So what does that mean…I may be studying photography and find a connection of using a camera to help market my note investing education because I am getting together with my successful students and I want to have an awesome group photo.

Many of you know I was into machining/ manufacturing in my previous life and I naturally transitioned my computer programming skills into the note business which in turn allowed me to hold conference calls on note investing hence the name NoteConference and here we are today which morphed into powerful webinars which helped me grow my network, which helped me start brokering notes out to my group which led one thing to another