"Do You Have What It Takes To Be Elite?"

Have You Got What It Takes to Be Rich?

Get over the notion that the rich have special powers, and look for what really drives their success. Chances are, you've got it in you too.


(MONEY Magazine) – American business lore is filled with tales of dynamic visionaries taking insane risks in pursuit of a distant dream--and then striking it rich. But get past the Texas wildcatters, railroad barons and Steve Jobs, and the heroes of the American dream begin to look more life-size, like the regular (but wealthy) folks profiled in the preceding story, "Road Trip to Riches." They look more, in fact, like you.

Are the rich smart? Sure. Ambitious? Yep. Blessed with gifts bestowed upon only a chosen few? Nah. "The people who get rich really want success," says Stephen Goldbart, a psychologist in Kentfield, Calif. who works with wealthy clients. "But where does that drive come from? I don't have a single answer."

There's nothing predetermined about getting rich, or so we'll assume until scientists identify the rich gene. Even people who end up wealthy often find themselves at a loss to explain why. "People pay me a whole bunch of money to make speeches," says author and management consultant Patrick Lencioni, who charges $45,000 to stand at a podium and does so about 35 times a year. He has also sold approximately a million copies of his five management books. "This is all foreign to me," he says.

No doubt he, and you, can get used to being rich. But before that, you have to start believing that you can make it big--and clear your cranium of all those myths about what you have to be like to do so. The rich may be different from you and me, to borrow from F. Scott Fitzgerald. But they didn't start out that way.

MYTH NO. 1 You've Got to Have Incredible Charisma

• Everyone believes a modern-day leader has to generate a few sparks. "You can't pull together resources and people if you don't have the capacity for making other people want to contribute," says Paul Reynolds, a management professor at Florida International University in Miami. Perhaps no business leader epitomized that notion more than Herb Kelleher, the chain-smoking, hard-drinking co-founder of no-frills Southwest Airlines, who revolutionized his industry, charmed the unions and inspired his thousands of employees by (among other things) impersonating Elvis and donning an Easter Bunny suit.

REALITY: It's not about charming people; it's about evaluating them. In Southwest's case, witness that the Dallas airline hasn't lost any altitude without the boss, who retired as CEO in 2001. It's on track to log profit growth of at least 15% this year. "Charisma was never the key to Herb Kelleher's success," says Bill Payne, entrepreneur-in-residence at Kansas City's Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation, which promotes entrepreneurship. "He surrounded himself with an exceptional team."

To do that yourself, you need to assess people's skills in a calculating way. Business leaders "may be social misfits themselves, but they know how to size people up," says Bill Heiden, a Lyme, Conn. financial adviser to business owners. "They have the ability to extract the value from other people."

In fact, management guru Jim Collins argues that charisma can be a liability. The force-of-nature leader appeals to employees who need a hero--so when the chief exits, no one can measure up. Even Reynolds, who thinks charisma does help snare talent, agrees that "to be effective, a person has to have something to offer beyond personality."

MYTH NO. 2 You Must Be Able to See into the Future

• What George H.W. Bush called "the vision thing" does indeed exist. Think about Gordon Moore, the Intel co-founder who predicted in 1965 that chip processing power would double every two years. Or Bill Gates. Or the Amazing Kreskin, who claims only to be a "mentalist" but could probably do more. Get the vision thing wrong, and you're dead. The only thing foretold by minicomputer magnate Ken Olsen's famous 1977 pronouncement, "There is no reason anyone would want a computer in their home," was the decline of his company, Digital Equipment.

REALITY: Plenty of visionaries were and are firmly rooted in the present. Did Henry Ford invent the car? (Hint: No.) Did Sam Walton invent discounting? (See earlier hint.) In each case, they took what existed, saw the potential in figuring out how to make it better, and then slaved away on the details.

Tom Kinnear, executive director of the Zell-Lurie Institute for Entrepreneurial Studies at the University of Michigan, refers to this pattern of action as "telescoping." Successful builders of businesses, whether they're on their own or in a corporate setting, can see the big picture well enough, but they succeed by mastering the little things. "They pay attention to the smallest details, so they can answer any questions," says Kinnear. "They want to be sure they're getting it right."

Amy Domini didn't invent the mutual fund, but 15 years ago she saw an opportunity to mass-market socially responsible funds that appealed to investors who felt they couldn't put money into businesses they found morally objectionable. Today, Domini Social Investments manages nearly $2 billion in assets.

Once she launched the business, Domini says, she quickly developed "an intense interest in minutiae." Sure she fretted over the details of structuring a product for big institutions. That seems sensible. But she also analyzed the thickness of the firm's brochure paper and looked at thousands of samples of exotic fabrics to find a combination that could muffle the sound in her company's New York City headquarters. "To build something, you have to fall in love with it," says Domini, 56. "Otherwise you might as well be a corporate cog."

MYTH NO. 3 You've Got to Stick to Your Guns, No Matter What

• "The concept is interesting and well formed, but in order to earn better than a C, the idea must be feasible," a college professor supposedly wrote in response to a student's term paper outlining the need for a reliable overnight delivery service. But Fred Smith ignored those discouraging words. "I thought this was a revolutionary idea.... I wasn't intimidated," said the fellow who founded FedEx in 1973. Kelleher, of Southwest Airlines, has been known to bray, "If it's conventional, it ain't wisdom, and if it's wisdom, it ain't conventional." After all, has anybody ever done anything innovative by consulting a focus group?

REALITY: Yes, actually. If you're intent on creating value--from either a giant company's command center or your guest bedroom at home--you carefully evaluate and absorb feedback. True, successful people don't change their minds easily, says the Kauffman Foundation's Payne. But they are strategically flexible when they have to be. In 1984, FedEx launched Zap-Mail, a high-speed fax service. But then cheap fax machines started popping up. "At that juncture," Smith once told an interviewer, "we knew we had to change."

When Sergio Zyman was chief marketing officer at Coca-Cola, he learned that sometimes things don't work out as planned. Remember New Coke? Years later, when he was on his own, Zyman raised $12 million to sell business-planning software. But he soon understood that the market was murmuring bad things about the product. "We had to kill it," he says. By the time he told his backers, he had concocted a plan for turning the Zyman Group into a consulting firm. Last year the Atlanta company raked in $65 million in sales. "You need to have enough conviction," says Zyman, "to know that you can find the right answer, even if you don't know it right away."

MYTH NO. 4 You Need to Take Big Risks

• When Viacom chief Sumner Redstone was trying to console investors after what looked like a career-crushing acquisition--the pickup of Blockbuster in 1994--he insisted, "Success isn't built on success; success is built on failure." He held on, and his big risk paid off. And Ray Kroc was down to his last two good customers as a milkshake-mixer salesman; once he saw the operations of those customers, who happened to be two brothers named McDonald, his career turned golden.

REALITY: The world offers plenty of options for those looking to live recklessly: Join a hedge fund, take up heli-skiing, make plans with somebody you've just met in a sudoku chat room. But if you're out to make a big score, you'll want to control risk any way you can. "If you know your skills, you can manage the parameters of the risk," says Kinnear.

"Invest in what you know" served as the mantra of former Fidelity fund manager Peter Lynch. And Warren Buffett has become the world's greatest investor by buying companies whose businesses he says he can understand. They have avoided the wealth-draining trap, says Reynolds, of thinking that their expertise in one area is easily transferable to another. Remember Trump Airlines? Probably not. "Successful people can forget how much they knew about a niche before they got rich in it," Reynolds notes. Redstone and Kroc, in fact, knew what they were getting into.

Now 28, Geoff Cook was 19 when he started EssayEdge, an online service that helped students with their college applications. "Editing seemed like a natural thing for me to do," he says. "I'm a good writer." The cost of starting up: a whopping $600 to cover computer servers and bank fees. Five years later he sold the business (which had grown to include ResumeEdge) to Thomson Corp. for a figure of around $10 million. In early 2005 he left his well-paid post at Thomson to follow his $250,000 investment in MyYearbook, a social-networking start-up targeted toward high schoolers. His brother and sister, both teenagers, had come up with the idea. Cook studied MySpace and Facebook, concluding that there was room for a niche player aimed squarely at teens. Having raised $1.1 million earlier this year, he's hoping to add another $6 million in funding before 2006 is out. "We've got what we need to compete, which is ideas for cool features," says Cook, who is based in New Hope, Pa. "This is either a $100 million idea or it's worthless. Either way, I know this isn't the only shot I'll have. It's just the shot I'm taking now."

MYTH NO. 5 You Need a Burning Desire to Get Rich

• "How much money is enough?" a reporter once asked John D. Rockefeller at a time when the oil tycoon was the richest man on earth. His quick reply? "Just a little bit more." To be sure, there are plenty of rich people whose sole motivation throughout their working lives was to be rich. And everyone who works hard in business wants to make money. "Certainly people who get rich want to be financially rewarded and expect to be," says psychologist Goldbart, who co-directs the Money, Meaning and Choices Institute.

REALITY: But, Goldbart adds, there's more to it than that. "Money isn't the only value they see in what they are doing," he says. "These are people who love to build." Adds Bill Dueease, co-founder of a life-coaching service in Fort Myers, Fla: "Rich people didn't get there by chasing money. They got there by chasing their passion."

So when Vu "Bill" Nguyen talks about how much he loves making it, he's not referring to all those greenbacks he's got. "I always want to make a wonderful product that people love," says the 35-year-old Nguyen, who has been part of seven tech-oriented start-ups, three of which he founded. He launched his latest venture, La La Media, last year.

The Palo Alto company operates a website where users can swap music CDs for $1. His heftiest payday to date came in 2000, when a company he'd co-founded called Onebox, a service for consolidating voice and electronic messages, was acquired for roughly $850 million. Nguyen earned more than $10 million on that deal.

He's used that windfall to underwrite a collection of 10 cars; he's also splurged on hiring brand-name bands, such as Fountains of Wayne, for his private functions. The rest? It goes into "bland muni bonds," he says. "I don't want any heartache from it." Leaving his investments in bonds lets him concentrate on his next endeavor. "I am maniacal about the product. I almost completely don't think about the other stuff."

That includes other people, he admits, and that character flaw has gotten him fired in the past. But he takes solace in the following: "I'm the living example of what your high school guidance counselor told you. Figure out what you love, and do that. It's an approach that has made me ridiculously lucky." And rich too.

Can You Handle Being Rich?

Once you've made it, how will you adjust to residing on Easy Street? Not easily, warns Thayer Willis. "People can get really obnoxious," says Willis, a wealth counselor and an heiress whose father co-founded Georgia-Pacific. Here's her prescription for a rich life.

Stay humble.

You made it. They didn't. You must be better than them, right? Feel that way and you'll end up alone with your riches. The best way to avoid arrogance is to have a strong value system--often it's grounded in religious or spiritual practice.

Angels really do exist & they will guide us if we seek for it

You are safe! You are being cradled in this Angel's arms in this moment and no power is greater than the power of love that surrounds you right now!

This Angel comes to you know to bring you a deep inner sense of security and protection. No matter where you are or what you are doing, this Angel serves to remind you that you are being sheltered and looked after by the love of Heaven. It can be so easy for us humans to believe that there are powers of evil that are stronger than the power of the Love of the Universe and all the Angels. We seem to see so much evil in our world day after day and many of us have wondered why a Loving Spirit or God would allow such pain and suffering to exist. Yet we must also remember that we live in a world of Free Will, this is one of the most precious gifts we have been given, and because of this, we all have the choice to live and experience what ever we choose without interference from the Higher Realms. Some people do choose to see only the negativity in the world and their focus upon that attracts more negativity to them. Others choose to look for the seed of good that exists in each and every individual on the planet. This too attracts to them what they expect to experience. For most of us, it is a blend of seeing both the good and bad, or in higher terms, the Alpha and the Omega. We live in a world of polarities and this Angel has come to remind you that both good and evil are really the same side of the same coin. For in all good is the seed of its opposite just as in all that is bad, there is the seed of good. Yet this Angel has also appeared to bring you a message; focus on what is good in your life and more good shall follow!

This Angel also comes to remind you that no matter what is happening in your life or where you go, Divine Protection exists in you as you and all around you if you will but call upon it. Not only are you protected anytime you call upon this Angel or any aspect of the Universe for help, but you too may be a source of protection for another. You may never know what good you have spread in the world simply by going about your day to day life but consider this; perhaps because you choose to walk down a certain street one day, it kept another from becoming the victim of a mugging because your presence was enough to scare the potential mugger off. Because you choose to show kindness one day to someone who was in a bad mood, they did not go home and take it out on their spouse or child. Because you allowed an irate driver into your lane as you were driving to work, another driver did not have to experience road rage several miles down the road. Your very presence in this world can help tip the balance towards greater light and positive energy on the planet. It is your free will choices that make this possible and this Angel serves to remind you and all others that it is our own choices that determine whether all of humanity experiences love and safety in the world or hatred and negativity.

It may be that right now in this moment you yourself are feeling afraid of a current challenge in your life or perhaps you are afraid of something that may happen in the future. Take a deep breath, sit back in your chair and close your eyes. Call upon the Angel of Protection right now and begin to feel its loving energy filling you, mind, body and soul. Open your heart and allow its radiance to move into your heart chakra and then feel that energy radiating back out into the world. By doing this, you are lifting your energy up into a much higher level of vibration and thus anything that could be harmful to you is being dissolved right now for on the higher planes, it cannot exist! At the same time, you too are being an Angel of Protection for all others who are wanting to tune into the love that you are now radiating forth. Each time that you begin to worry or feel afraid, tune again into this Angel's energy and feel the sense of peace and love that it brings moving through you. There is a wonderful quotation that this Angel wants us all to hear. "Fear knocked at the door. Love answered it, and there was no one there".

This Angel also works strongly through intuition. You may have made the decision to eat at a certain cafe one day only to find yourself feeling the need to eat lunch at your desk or eat somewhere else. Later on, you hear that several people became ill from tainted food from the cafe you originally had in mind. Or on your way to work one morning you decide to take a different route, thus missing being involved in a terrible accident that occurred on your normal route. I find this Angel to be quite active when driving/riding in cars. Very often I have felt this Angel directing my attention to another driver who is distracted or had obviously been drinking. Each time I was able to warn the person driving or take defensive action while I was behind the wheel that prevented an accident. Protection comes through intuition in other ways as well! More than once has this Angel alerted me not to purchase something because I could find it at a lower price elsewhere or it wasn't really what I needed at the time and something better was just ahead. This Angel will look after any aspect of our lives that may need protection, including our finances! Or perhaps you are struggling to find the right words to say to a dear friend or your spouse or child and you are afraid that by saying the wrong thing, that it will damage your relationship with this person. This Angel has come to let you know that this too falls under its guidance and protection, that it will guide you with the right words to say when the time is right. So many problems in life could be avoided all together if we would all learn to heed and act upon our intuitive guidance! Could this really be the message this Angel has for you today?

Each of us on the planet today has access to this Angel's love and guidance. Each of us has the choice to focus on what we desire to see in the world today. Each of us can choose to tune into this Angel's energy at any moment and thus dissolve that much more of fear, negativity, pain and suffering. We have the choice right now to choose Divine Protection no matter what we may be facing in our lives! We have the choice right now to believe with all of our heart's and soul's that no matter what, we are safe, we are divinely guided and we are so very loved! There is no Universal Law that states that any of us must suffer for any reason. We came to this planet to love, to experience joy, to be free to choose what ever we may desire in order to grow and become more fully awakened souls on planet earth. It is only our beliefs that evil and suffering must exist that make it so. Yet even in what appears to be the greatest of evils that humankind has ever known, there is also the Divine seed of love and hope. When we choose to look for that seed, we can protect it, nurture it, water it and watch it grow. When we look for that Divine seed we alter the course of events for all of life. All of us move that much closer to experiencing and recognizing that we are all the Divine in human form we begin to attract more of that which is positive and joyful in life thus making it easier for all others to do the same. Do you understand now why this Angel is praying with all its might that you will hear the messages it has for you today? For it is not just for you alone that you are seeking protection at this time. It is for all of life that exists on this planet. When you can accept that this Angel's protection is always with you, when you really allow it in, when you feel it down to the very core of your being, then you have become this Angel.

What to watch for with this Angel's presence:

Even when you are feeling fear, you may suddenly feel a strong sense of peace and upliftment. This is this Angel coming to you in response to your need.

You may find that other people begin coming to you for support and protection. It is important that even as you are extending what support you can, that you also affirm to these people that they too have this power within them and that this Angel is always with them as it is with you.

Potentially negative situations dissolve before they even manifest around you. An individual that you feel may bear you ill will as you are walking to your car suddenly turns and walks the other way. A car accident in the making suddenly and inexplicably doesn't happen. Or you feel a strong urge to take another route to your intended destination, only to find later that this guidance kept you from being harmed in some way.

Your intuition becomes much stronger and you find yourself tuning in more often to ask for guidance on what activities would serve you and others best each day rather than automatically forging ahead with a set routine.

Events that seem negative or difficult on the surface somehow resolve themselves in your favour and for the good of all others as well.

Other ways to work with the energy of this Angel is to reflect upon the ways in which you radiate your own Divine energy and presence into the world more fully at this time. Are you spending more of your time smiling at others, helping them to feel good about themselves and thus safer in the world because of your loving acceptance of them or are you frowning and complaining all the while? Do you stop for a moment to appreciate the beauty and splendour of this world and thus help others appreciate and desire to protect Mother Earth even more strongly? Are you yourself recycling, driving less or driving a more fuel efficient vehicle, or purchasing products from companies that are ethical and humane? There are so many ways that each of us can be Angels of Protection for others! And as we do unto others, so too shall it be done unto us.

9 Tips in Life that Lead to Happiness

Are you truly happy? Do you even know what it means to be happy and what it takes to achieve happiness? These are important questions for anyone who is seeking happiness to ask themselves. I live my life to maintain my own happiness while trying my best to not cause unhappiness to anyone else. If you want to be happy you need to understand that you can be happy and that you should be happy. Many people make the mistake of believing that they don’t deserve happiness and accept their unhappy state as their destiny. The truth of the matter is that happiness, like anything else in life, needs to be nurtured. The following are a few tips that I follow to create happiness in my life.


Understand what it is that will make you happy. Everyone has unique requirements for attaining happiness and what makes one person happy may be very different from what makes someone else happy. Revel in your individuality and do not worry about whether or not your desires are comparable to those of your peers.
Make a plan for attaining goals that you believe will make you happy. Your mood will very likely increase as your pursue your goal because you will feel better about yourself for going after something you value.
Surround yourself with happy people. It is easy to begin to think negatively when you are surrounded by people who think that way. Conversely, if you are around people who are happy their emotional state will be infectious.
When something goes wrong try to figure out a solution instead of wallowing in self pity. Truly happy people don’t allow set backs to affect their mood because they know that with a little thought they can turn the circumstances back to their favor.
Spend a few minutes each day thinking about the things that make you happy. These few minutes will give you the opportunity to focus on the positive things in your life and will lead you to continued happiness.
It’s also important to take some time each day to do something nice for yourself. Whether you treat yourself to lunch, take a long, relaxing bath or simply spend a few extra minutes on your appearance you will be subconsciously putting yourself in a better mood.
Finding the humor in situations can also lead to happiness. While there are times that require you to be serious, when it is appropriate, find a way to make light of a situation that would otherwise make you unhappy.
Maintaining your health is another way to achieve happiness. Being overweight or not eating nutritious foods can have a negative effect on your mood. Additionally, exercise has been known to release endorphins that give you a feeling of happiness.
Finally, it is important to understand that you deserve happiness. Those who believe that they are not worthy of happiness may subconsciously sabotage their efforts to achieve happiness. If necessary, tell yourself each day that you deserve to be happy and remind yourself what steps you will take to achieve the happiness you desire.

Happiness is hard to define but most people are aware of whether they are happy or not. Many people believe that happiness is a form of luck and that some people are destined to be happy while others are destined to be unhappy. I try to incorporate the tips above into my life and have had great success in achieving happiness. The tips in this article are small but meaningful steps that you can take each day to lead you to true happiness.