Bleeding Edge

Yesterday I spoke with the son of a friend of mine who wanted a bit of a career advise on how to get into the world of Technology StartUps, early stage Science based enterprises, and wealth creating Companies — in short he wanted advise about all those cool and amazing Innovative companies that I start, and that I finance, as my day job.

He seems to me that my new friend wants to learn, and be part of a Great Startup, in order to He truly make a bunch of money and become RICH. Ben is a smart kid of a wealthy man, and of course he wants to get more meaning in his life, and validate the purpose of why the good God has put him on this earth for — but he really wants to become stinking rich. His trade today, is in observing startup companies that seek to create wealth and a long term viable investment through their equity. But this smart man’s good job of the future involves making a great deal of money… And he knows that StartUps are the only way today for a young man who wants to attain extraordinary wealth through the Capitalist tools of Enterprise building…

So we took to talking in earnest, while watching the rain fall, with some amazing Opera music playing in the background, and some more Arias from Yanni, all the while sipping some strong and spicy Kona coffee with cayenne laced honey, and almond milk. It was a rather interesting and fiery concoction, growing hair inside of me — this being the first time I ever tasted cayenne pepper infused honey sweetening my espresso and putting rocket fuel of “red heat” into my latte. It surely made for an interesting conversation no less, but you would admit that there is a first time for everything, and this was it for me. I admit, we have an Innovation here because Cayenne Coffee Au Lait is truly a new brand of coffee. And we can even invest on this for Starbucks killer coffee that is far more tasty and potentially profitable, than the more plebeian “Hipster Latte” which is even far better than the bulletproof variety of coffee that is done with salt and butter, and is all the rage in LA right now.

Now am stating here for the record, that the Seattle hipsters are a far better breed than the LA hipsters any day of the week. And if anyone wants to take me on for a competition, I will assemble the best Seattle hipsters and beat the crap out of the LA hipsters any day of the week. Any takers for this competition, from the SoCal hipsterdom of the LA-La land and Hollywood metrosexual hips — please call my people to arrange lunch and talk. OK ?

But getting back to the real conversation about my friend’s desire to be a StartUpper of note with a good company, needs to progress here.

So this dude is a real hacker, because not only he pulls a smooth espresso shot, but he also makes designs on the foam of the latte, and he also has mechanical skills and strong hands that understand engines and tools. As an example, right now, he rebuilds his own automobile, and he still takes the time to make this amazing cafe-latte, that is admittedly much better than any espresso from the usual baristas in town. Ben enjoys the additional benefit of a really cool espresso specialist machine, that is made from a Startup in Seattle’s newly hipsterized White Center neighborhood, that was traditionally the Sinaloa Cartel gangland home turf, and the place to find the purest drugs in town — but now that marijuana is legal in Washington state, this Hispanic ghetto is getting gentrified politely yet surely too.

And this one act of progress, is another of the the many unintended benefits of legalization, for Seattle and Washington state in general – except that the general productivity of the population has been taking a serious hit. But the benefit is still there for those willing to work hard with their clear and pure unadulterated brains: They don’t have much competition with all the stoners being generally stupid and lazy and soon out of any career competition, and even out of work, living in the basements of their parents as Hillary Clinton kindly described all the Bernie Sanders supporters, and the slackers who didn’t trust her enough to vote for her; maybe because she stole the Elections. The funny thing is that the “Witch that stole Christmas” claims that she cannot trust the people whose Christmas gifts She stole…

Now please tell me — where is the Karma in that one?

Enough is enough. That’s it…

I am calling the Dalai Lama.

End of story.

And I am also calling Julian Assange, to complain How come He hasn’t been able to put the witch out of business yet… with all the revelations of the crime laced email proof of her malfeasance and her notorious criminal activities that can put even the original El Chappo the drug lord to shame.

Anyway back in White Center there is this little company that makes these awesome espresso machines in Seattle, and they make them to order individually ,and not in some kind of assembly line, so they are handcrafted and they are named “The Slayer” in some dark roast reference, to the Zombie movies, or to the metal thrash band of head bangers, that the “Slayer” Meisters watch, after they get coffeed out, or listen too while they are building these amazing machines.  Needless to say but these “Slayer” espresso pulling machines have New Technology drastically different than anything you see at Starbucks or at the best Italian coffee machine factories. Because this StartUp Innovation culture once again produced the best machines for espresso lovers, and for true baristas who care for quality over industrialization. So if you are a purist and if you can afford them, the “Slayers” are the best custom made espresso machines for the purists and the hipsters of the deep Seattle coffee scene. And by extension for anyone else out there in the wide world of coffee drinkers, that is the whole of the wide world web — this little thing we call the Internet.

But I digress here — because we are supposed to be talking about Money & Power… and about How can a young man attain all that.

Right?

I like starting simple.

Simple is king here with me, and thus from my perspective we ought to remember that in a Darwinian and in a Constitutional form: “All People are Created Equal” but are not equal at all, when it comes to performance, to the gifts they have, and to the particular skillsets that they employ for the betterment of their lives.

And of course people are compensated unequally too. Because they create different types of value. Of course we all use money as a measure of success and as a yardstick of how useful we are to Society, but in the usual human scene where “Monkey See Monkey Do” world of people who think that the accumulation of money is their Life’s mission — true intelligence about Money goes out the window. Yes, money makes the world go round, but money also distinguishes one person form another. And one is left to wonder sometimes why some kids – with all the privileges they’re born with – never grow up to be Masters of their Destiny, or to become Millionaires and Billionaires who set out to change the world, but instead they become slackers and miscreants blaming parents and society for the future they wasted.

And if you think that you don’t belong in that tiny minority born with a silver set of twelve spoons up your ass — let me remind you that if you have electricity, and have Internet, and you have the language and the reading comprehension skills, so you can read this article here, and if you live in Peace, and you are an inhabitant of a city in the developed part of the world, and if you have a roof over your head, food on the table, and a family to call your own — You are already a Billionaire.

Let this sink in for a moment. Meditate upon this. Think about it. Because by the standards of the rest of the World — you are a member of that tiny minority, the 1% of the 1% the blessed ones amongst the Human Citizens of this earth.

So be Grateful, and please don’t forget to say a prayer every once in a while for the remaining 99.99% of the people of this earth, that are not so lucky as you are.

Yet we see so many people here who are ungrateful and are depressed.

Why?

And why is it that so many young people fail to discover meaning for their lives?

Maybe they need some Love, but so we all. All we need is Love. Isn’t that how it goes?

Love is All.

Then why so many young people, no matter how hard they try, they fail to understand the value of gratefulness for all they have — while others coming from a much more humble background always look up and say THANK YOU, and they get wherever they are going, against all odds, and then go on to achieve greatness?

Is there a secret?

Maybe they are unloved or loveless.

Still Love is the secret. Love what You do and learn to love what it is that You have to do.

That is the secret. But what is the secret that leads us to wealth ?

Most people will say that the easiest way to become a billionaire is to be born a millionaire. But still, even if you have a few million to begin with, or if you’re starting from scratch, I think there are a few important and difficult to get at keys, that you must hit hard, in order to succeed.

Studying STEM education as a kid helps a lot because you expose yourself to rigorous science thinking and analytical skills. So for those that succeed, methinks that if you’re good at math, science, or computer programming, you already have a leg up. A lot of the current crop of billionaires have made it in Tech and Science startups, or in the Medical fields of Biotechnology, and Telecommunications because they liked Maths & Sciences. Still some made their wealth in the financial and in the hedge fund world, which also still gets governed through math, science, analysis, understanding of the way the world works, synthesis, theoretical physical and statistical and mathematical modeling, and computer science.

In addition, You also need to know when to take risks, and when to turn away. Every billionaire out there has risked everything — sometimes more than once. You also need to figure out what you’re really good at — whether it’s art, writing, coding, whatever and hone that skill. Once you identify your skill, the one thing you do better than anyone else, you need to figure out how to best monetize it. Pretty much everything on earth can be turned into cash, as long as you are the best in the world at it. Believe in yourself, but always have an escape plan; if something isn’t working quit. There’s no shame in quitting something that isn’t working out.

That’s pretty much the big picture…

But if you are alone thinking about this right now and you have No Idea what kind of Company to start, or where to turn to begin your journey towards wealth and power — you need look no further than the end of your fingertips and let them do the walking to find your niche in this World.

Let your fingers use the computer keyboard and stroke those keys that will take you to the American Angels and there You shall find the Goodness You seek right here:  www.AmericanAngels.net

Go ahead and download the American Angels App and start on your path to Happiness, Glory, and Wealth, but not necessarily in that order. Invest your capital and your skills with one of the hundreds of companies there and see if there is a fit for you. And if you want to work for a Cool StartUp like “The Slayer” after you make an investment, you can follow up with a personal introduction. We do that too…

But you’ve got to try this thing out, because you’ve got to try new things if you want to succeed and make a shitload of money.

Some time ago a great man named Samuel Langhorne Clemens, better known by his pen name Mark Twain, was an American writer, entrepreneur, publisher, and homespun philosopher, and from the wealth of his experience he said, that in order to succeed you’ve got to know your business. And if you want to know business you need to know simple arithmetic and double entry accounting. Still in business, you’ve got to be strategic and understand the simplest management skill of all. Know the veracity of People you enter into deals with, or you work with. This is because a person can lie with the numbers but the numbers don’t lie, at least according to Mr Clemens.

And this guy Sam Clemens was really the first one to say that “the Rich are different than you and I” something that much later the other writer Scott Fitzgerald wrote about too:

But why did the writer Scott Fitzgerald put these words in the mouth of his character in the Great Gatsby?

So it’s good to remember that the Rich are different than you, because truly today the wealthiest of the super rich, have and control, most of the money in this world including above 90% of this Nation’s wealth, and internationally across the globe. That’s why they are called “the Super-Rich” as being different than the rest of the social classes.

And whether they are the 1%, or the 1% of the 1%, or the 000000.1% of the people that control the money treasure house of this world — the little bit they control of our common destiny is all up to the people, up to fortune, and certainly up to decisiveness of action.

That is why we need to learn How to take control of our Destiny and not leave everything up to them, or to blind faith in their correct judgement, or up to the jurisprudence of this small class of individuals… Because we need to ask some serious questions of ourselves, in order to learn of what changes we can bring into the system so as to make it more equitable and fair for the whole lot of our species.

But let’s start first by asking some important and leading questions.

First off: So why is this particular class of people so wealthy that it comprises the tiny class of the Super Rich and Super Powerful individuals?

And perhaps most importantly, how do they really think and act differently from the great majority of people with identical levels of education and smarts?

Hanging out and working with many members of the class of the “super rich,” I have observed enough of it, and have collected some useful intelligence that is crazy enough to need to be shared.

So today, I’d like to share with you some thoughts which I believe you’ll find in a few instances quite surprising.

By the way, by “super-rich” I am talking here about the entrepreneurs who risk all of their own capital, or what they can muster from their grubstake, their lifesavings, their credit cards, their family and friends — to build a company that fills an underserved niche in the market, provides a needed service, or develops a new technology.

Yet today, people like Bill Gates, Warren Buffett, Larry Page, Sergey Brin, Michael Dell, Carlos Slim Helu, Jeff Bezos, and many others, who have provided value to the world and have been richly rewarded for their efforts, are seen as an anomaly, and not the norm of just deserts and rewards given to the strivers amongst us. I aim to dispel that myth.

And to caution you — I am not speaking of the hired hands, the hedgies [hedge fund managers] those arrogant bastards that are falsely claiming to be the “Masters of the Universe” types, who are otherwise just the errand boys of the Super-Rich and those who are shuffling papers around for a living…

I am talking about the real doers, the movers, and shakers, of our world — the people who are busy building Great Companies for the common good and for their personal enrichment. Isn’t Capitalism great? .

So here are the basics:

People like bill Gates and Warren Buffet know that it is always incumbent on equity position to find & maintain the Key to Extraordinary Wealth. Over 90% of the super-successful and Uber-Wealthy people, say this is true, versus fewer than half of the masses. More importantly, 80 percent of such people say they already have an equity stake in their work. Just 10 percent of the middle-class have an equity position of any kind, and the vast majority (70 percent) say they’re not even trying to get one.

The filthy rich know that their wealth creation has got nothing to do with Passion. Conventional wisdom suggests that “if you do what you love, the money will follow.” That is not the case for the “super rich” who always look for the opportunity in business, whether they like it or not.

They know that their success and their wealth has got nothing to do with Saving Money. The middle-class believes you can “cut back on little luxuries” to create wealth, even while middle-class incomes continue dropping. The “Super Rich” suggest that earning more, not saving more, leads to true wealth.

The super rich always knew that being successful has got nothing to do with being a First Mover but by imitating successful products. In the beginning of the PC revolution, Seattle was the land of innovation and Kildall was its king. As the creator of the first computer operating system, he was the one IBM called when they decided to enter the PC market. Unfortunately, while Kildall missed deadlines because he wanted to debut the most innovative operating code of the time, Bill Gates offered IBM a paltry, second-rate product. Gates got the gig and Kildall got forgotten by history.

The wealthy leaders know that it is all in the “execution” not in the idea. There is a dime a dozen ideas out there but only a few people who can execute ruthlessly and flawlessly on their ideas. Getting wealthy usually means you’ve taken an ordinary idea and executed it exceptionally well. That’s what 9 in 10 of the “super rich” believe. Most other people, though, think that wealth requires a big, new idea. Unfortunately for them, big ideas are rare and risky. Too many people are waiting on the sidelines for the perfect big idea to come along, while the most successful people have jumped in the game, and busily honed their skills at execution.

They are always looking to gain an advantage. About 90% of the “super rich” say they are always trying to grab an edge, compared with just about 40% of the middle-class. Gaining even small advantages in a series of deals can have a cumulative effect on your wealth, but since most people aren’t even looking for one, they’re that much more likely to end up on the disadvantaged side of every deal.

They surely are smart enough to understand people’s motivations. If you’re dependent on other talented employees, you’d best know what makes those talented people tick. That’s the belief of about 70% of the “super rich”, compared with fewer than 20% of the middle-class. Their willingness and desire to really get to know and understand their business associates is a sure marker of success–and one that most people don’t have.

The smart rich are not afraid to hire smarter people. Exceptional execution requires focusing on the two or three things the “super rich” do very well. So they get their work done by building teams with complementary capabilities. Surveys show that most people, though, would rather learn to do tasks they’re bad at than get others to do them. The “super rich” know that you get to the top because of your strengths, not your weaknesses.

The uber-wealthy know how and when to say NO if the deal is not right. The “super rich” know that bad deals, like bad marriages, can be painful–and costly. So if the deal on the table isn’t right, 71% say they have no problem cutting bait and moving on. Only about 22% of the middle-class say the same. Most people are willing to take their chances on deals that don’t seem right from the start, even though it’s less risky to walk away.

The Super Rich learn from their setbacks and failures what they are good at. The “super rich” have, on average, more failures than members of the middle-class. But they use those failures to help them succeed on the next attempt. Just 17% of the middle-class say they learn from their failures in this way, which is really a shame. Everything worth trying contains an element of risk, after all. If you fall on your face, you might as well learn from the experience to help you succeed on your next try.

Now that you know the basics — go ahead, make a killing, and never look back.

My partners at and I review around 3,000 transactions a year. We take an interest in 10% of that…

I am frankly flabbergasted by the number of time-wasting bullshit artists – who really think that by just connecting with us through social media or on Skype, sending us an Email or plainly calling us out of the blue – will get our full attention in jumping on the business bandwagon.

Well folks, I can tell you that we have learnt a lot over the years about what works and what doesn’t in the deal making world.

Let me share with you some priceless tips if you ever want to be considered a serious player in the high stakes world of trading and finance and transactional business with us.

Be Yourself: Oprah Winfrey once stated, “I had no idea that being your authentic self could make me as rich as I’ve become. If I had, I’d have done it a lot earlier.” Professionals, especially of an older generation, tend to have a tough time with authenticity and transparency in the workplace. People, especially men, tend to have a tough time being vulnerable, especially with people they don’t know well. Many also aren’t sure how much to reveal online, or at work, or to people they’ve just met. But, hard as these choices may be, authenticity, transparency, and vulnerability all breed trust and this is very important to us because when we trust you, we’ll do anything for you. So open up and take a chance, and you’ll be rewarded. Stay secretive and bear the consequences.

It is always personal. If you haven’t figured this out yet, you will never close a deal and you are wasting your time and ours chasing rainbows. I strongly believe that no matter what technological miracles are conceived, people do business with people. The greatest deals in the world are sealed by a simple handshake. No smart and savvy dealmaker picks up deals from technology based platforms or some Internet portal where the emphasis is placed upon being able to view extensive multiple listings of ‘deals’ or by Email… Only in your dreams. The human connection is critical to the process as it brings efficiency and integrity to the dialogue. We are no number in the vast array of funding and trading sources. So next time you want to share a transaction with us, please make sure you get to know me or one of my partners then we could talk business. This is how we at Blackhawk Partners operate.

Pull your act together. The world is full of highly opportunistic transactions. I cannot believe the number of transactions that are Emailed to us every day with nothing more than some lengthy attachments and a name without an address. Get your act together folks. Just Emailing us transactions will get you nowhere. If you don’t have control of the transaction, you may just be one of thousands ‘shopping the deal around.’ This wastes everyone’s time and will destroy any credibility that you may have had. Bottom Line: If we are not speaking with the principal himself, we insist on a full written mandate / NDA/ NC certified by the principal’s lawyer and we must have an agreed process of disclosure / distribution that is logged on both sides. Unless you have complete control of the process, don’t even waste any minute on us. Focusing on a small number of deals where you have control and deep knowledge is much more likely to achieve completion than spraying the world with unfiltered garbage.

Know what we want. I am equally amazed by the number of joker brokers who approach us on a daily basis telling us what to do and how smart and connected they are. Well … just to set the record straight folks, we don’t want to be told what to do and are not really interested in knowing that. We want to do what we want to do and your job is to make it happen within our rules. To make it even clearer, what we really want from you is for you to be on our side. You may see issues where you are not the expert, but helping us to address those issues by introducing others will bring you closer to us. If you can do that we could go a long way together. If not, let’s part ways with no hard feelings. So please be creative and do yourself a big favor next time you solicit us; stop the name dropping and the attitude cause we gather “intel” like no one and it will not take us more than one week to know everything one needs to know about yourself since the day you were born.

It is always all about returns on investment. When banker-wankers talk to us about ‘wealth preservation’ we read it as an admission that they are unable to make us money. If it’s not double digit returns, and in some case 10X and even 100X — we are not interested.

And if you think we are not making double digit returns, year after year, after year and even better in the lean years of recession and market capital destruction — we invite you to wake up.

We are awake — that’s why we do it.

We meditate numbers, and spit out value before others even have the time to place a call to the professional evaluators, appraisers, and corporate shills. SO our offers are always respected, and our deal terms are sweet.

So now is your turn.

Please do let me know, what it is that you can do.

Yours,

Dr Pano Churchill

PS:

Now that you know how we do our job, and how we find great Founders who lead the best StartUp companies, and then we go ahead and link them with the best Angels, and VC Investors, in order to accelerate their growth, and create and close deals for Exits, M&A, and cIPOs in order to create wealth — let’s see what you are capable of.

Enjoy the rest of the day and please feel free to share your thoughts.

But if you want the details of how to become filthy rich — keep on reading here bellow, because Thanks to Ben I put some thought into this matter and now You get to read it too and take advantage by picking my brain for building your wealth and for your personal enrichment:

First thing is to make yourself aware of the full range of life’s options.

Take the mystery out of the steps it takes. The world abounds with opportunity to lead whatever life you want, but you have to demystify, demystify, demystify to be able to discern myth from fact, and make the right decision based on real information not what other people perceive reality to be.

And if you want to develop sharp minds, go to find your StartUp job in places where You are going to interact with real sharp minds, and with the real movers and shakers who have ample means at their disposal. Find the best StartUp job possible. Pitch yourself like no one else, if you want the Founders of that Cool Startup like “Slayer” to take you seriously because they know a thing or two from pitching for Investment in their companies.

Try to play your hand at both corporate and entrepreneurial outfits… From the most entrepreneurial tech companies in Silicon Alley, and Silicon Valley, to internships in SoDo, or on Capitol Hill, and/or on Wall Street, and the High Street.

Start early and have more than one StartUp job at the same time to increase the odds for a successful Exit, and a bundle of wealth through Stock Options vesting, for you.

Go out and ask to find the best mentor there is.

Find your domain expertise and go deep into it. As an example look at Bill Gates who and Paul Allen, who began programming on the best computers available at least a few hours a day every day beginning around 12 and 14 years old, respectively. By the time Bill Gates went to Harvard, he was already one of the top programmers in the world and that allowed him the springboard to start Microsoft as the fastest and smartest programmer of his time with the venerable Paul Allen alongside of him. Zuckerberg has a similar story. Bezos has a similar story. Elon Musk has a similar story, and so can you get a similar story. Find what you are really really keen on and go get it.

Warren Buffett began his business with newspaper delivery routes, and vending machine servicing, when he was just big enough to ride a bike. Because his dad was a senator, Buffett also had the luxury of the Library of Congress, where he read almost every great investing book in print. By the time he got to be 30 years old, he had about 20 years of business chops under his belt.

Try NOT being successful with that kind of experience. Carlos Slim’s dad started him out running the family’s businesses around 14 years old. Eventually, he took over. By the time he was 30, he was already a multi-millionaire because he’d been hip deep in the action for 15 years. Same basic story for Ron Perelman… same thing for a lot of the new Chinese billionaires… same thing for Mark Cuban, and for me and many others.

Yet it is well worth remembering that in addition to having a great and deep domain expertise, almost all of these people had great mentors. For Buffett it was Ben Graham. For Perelman and Slim, it was their dads. Am sure You know who is the best Mentor for you… As for me I mentor young CEOs and Founders each and every day of the week including the Weekends as I did with my friend Ben here that prompted me to write this and in turn mentor you too.

Teach yourself to either love your work or change it altogether for something You can love. After you get rich you can coast some for a little bit, but don’t just coach now for security and time wasting… Getting rich takes work and the time to accelerate and that takes a bit of a runway to achieve lift off. Keep in mind that You will need to excel at physical work and have stamina, but You will especially need to excel at mental work and be both flexible and tough.

Learn how to love people. The only way you get rich is by serving the real needs of others. You must have an affinity for others. My house is famous for all the people who come trooping through. My friends are welcome at any time without prior arrangement. Make sure though they understand that they are not above or below anyone else. So when I had the homeless guy in the same dinner table with Bill Gates — everyone frowned except Bill…

Practice generosity. Those to whom a lot has been given — a lost is expected from. You  must be able to give much of your wealth to others via the Church or via your own ways of Philanthropy. Cultivate your Human Potential and that of all others, because the money you give people is nothing compared with the time you give them. The only real wealth is the time you have, and whenever you have a chance to use your time well for others, do it and do it fully. Giving money without time can be a way of creating distance.

Get out of the Matrix, because the mental shadow against Startups and against Enterprise is still that rational people do not become entrepreneurs. It is a difficult and highly uncertain thing. Building a StartUp is like climbing to the top of the highest building in town, and climbing the parapet and jumping off, and while you are airborne — on the way down, you built an airplane and try to successfully fly off, Without the benefit of flying lessons. Try this and if you fly off successfully, then you have to learn how to fight in the front lines. CEOs are combat officers, and as such they are constantly making critical decisions based on very little information, or on heavily obfuscated data, and partial information. When one has to take steps without being able to see if there is support there, that person must taste failure time and again and be even inspired by it.

An entrepreneur must be armed with a variety of rationalizations for continuing on despite doubt, buffeting, adverse opinion. Every successful new business gores someone’s ox, and those people react in nasty ways. The faces you see each day are now depending on you to make payroll. Entrepreneurs must be superhuman to deal with the tragedies they themselves can be the authors of. Trick is, you can’t teach that mental nexus if you have not lived it yourself. If you haven’t, then apprentice them to someone who has.

See life’s worst side. It is a fact that the world is full of assholes and swindlers and you will need a radar for it, and further you need to suffer the consequences so that you develop an arsenal of techniques for dealing with it. You need to be superb judge of character. You can’t teach good behavior by isolating from bad behavior. Let’s see it all. Insulating your self from reality will only make you naive and stupid. After all, being rich sometimes means being unpopular. A lot. Before you are rich, people will call you stupid and unrealistic. While you are climbing, people will say you won’t make it. Even after you are rich, people will still hate you because you are rich.

Show them it rolls right off your back.

Learn from the mistakes you have made and use your failure to reach your goals. Without knowing anything about you I feel secure in saying that your first ( and biggest mistake) is setting a goal of the accumulation of wealth instead of pursuing some higher purpose or passion. As I said earlier, if you love what you do you will never work a day in your life. The love of money for money’s sake is a perversion. It’s not money , it’s what you can do with money that’s important.

Learn numeracy and practice accuracy. Anyone who can’t do math in his head on the fly is going to have a difficult time being an entrepreneur and putting deals together. Schools don’t teach this; it’s a special, long-term effort.

Go get a grubstake. No grubstake. No billionaires. You can’t be a capitalist without capital and the willingness to put it all at risk. The sooner you know this, the better. And your grubstake will be worth everything.

You ALWAYS have to be raising the bar. Why? Well when you have money, you have a power that is arguably one of the most powerful in human history, at least on a secular level. The money is NOT the goal, the STUFF that money gets you, is the goal. (and it’s not all about you too… think influence in charity work and community impact). The purpose of life USED to be – work to pay bills, to work some more, to pay those bills and panic when an unexpected expense comes up. That is GONE. If you are of good character, your focus turns to helping others. You see someone starving, or see a catastrophe in a faraway land and you CAN and DO help them. That is POWER.

Correlating highly with successful entrepreneurs is unfulfilled teen years. Basically, those who are dialed in by 18 stay comfortably dialed in. Another high correlation is Fs. Entrepreneurs are highly results-oriented and have little patience with those as process-oriented as teachers. Let them see it all.

Without being repetitive, find ways to recognize opportunities and pitch them. Nobody ever got rich working for a living. Trading your time for money is a loser’s game. I always played VC to my kids. They could ask for any amount of money they wanted as long as I know the plan, the purpose and the alternatives…. And if you are going to help them get job jobs, make it in sales – because they won’t get far without the power to persuade, and it’s another thing they won’t learn in school.

Being Worthy. Finally, the most important thing is you must be worthy. No backing comes to those who lack abundant evident character. I have found the best way to fine-tune morality is to put it entirely on me. Each time a moral decision is called for, it’s time to “Search my heart”. You have to build your life around what is important to you. The only way I can help you is to tell you how I screwed up sometimes. But the sooner you learn to get in touch with your own feelings of what is right and what is wrong, the better.

Bottom Line: There is only one path to getting wealthy: exploit opportunity. The whole purpose of what I’ve stated above is to equip your self with the tools to spot and build on an opportunity to add value to the world.

How will you know you’re on the right track? The vast majority of people you meet are inert. One in ten or twelve has scalar energy – they liven up the event. One in a thousand or so has vector energy–the ability to channel effort to a purpose and pull others in their wake. The only way a human being begins to become a vector force is to Find and Embrace His or Her Passion, and that can be a bit quirky.

You should be getting glimpses of that talent to pursue purpose with passion all along, but it doesn’t mature until adult years. It is such a rare thing that schools are not at all equipped to teach it. Even the best MBA programs teach you how to go to work for that guy rather than be that guy, so you’ve got to make your own way. Be the steam roller of Change. And when you’ve made it you got plenty to give back to the community, because the more you give — the more you’ve got to give… Yep that’s right. Because somehow the more you give — the more is given to you and then the more you can give away yourself.

So, if you can pull it off, you will not only have enriched your Self, and your Life, but you will have enriched the world. And it’s all yours for the taking… Just remember that in Seattle where both Starbucks and Slayer as well as hundreds of other coffee related Startups got their start — you can get into any number of Startups by investing through the American Angels in one of the great many companies doing amazing and crazy things.

Right now Ganza and Crisper startups are the big thing, and they are so hot that they are untouchable. But we have plenty of those too…

After all is said and done, money is simply a tool. It has to be put to work to accomplish something, and there is no better thing to accomplish than spreading the Love.

So put some Love into your system, and give Love to all those around you, and then watch as amazing things start to unfold for you and all others concerned.

So join with the American Angels and get started in Wealth creation or in becoming the filthy Rich version of your better self.

http://www.americanangels.net  + http://www.meetup.com/AmericanAngels/

Do you think what I am thinking?