The Stock Market Cash Flow. Andy Tanner

We started catching up and I asked what he was doing these days, and lo and behold, he was a real estate investor. Now, if I hadn’t changed my focus from finding property to finding people, that might not have even registered. But it did. He started talking, and my brain went…Bing! I started peppering him with questions. He was doing a couple deals a week buying residential properties, and had been in the business for about three years. From that I figured out three things: 1) if he’d been doing it that long, he must be more familiar with it than me, because he couldn’t take on that much debt and survive without knowing what he was doing, 2) he had to have a money source other than a bank because no way could he finance stuff that quickly through traditional routes, and 3) he had to have a way to find these deals because I’d looked at dozens of houses and I hadn’t bought one yet. So I knew he knew more than I did.

      I was bold. I said, “Look, man, I’d really like to come to your office and just watch what you do.”

      He was kind of polite and changed the subject, but I just kept at him. I explained that I’d been trying to do real estate and was getting nowhere. I said, “Look, Greg, I just want to see, when you pick up the phone, I’m just curious who you call. Because I have a phone but I don’t know who to call. And when you get in your car and drive somewhere, I want to see who an investor goes to see. Because I have a car but I have no idea who to go see. I just want to see what it is you do.”

      But I wasn’t looking for a free ride. I didn’t just want (or expect) to get all of his knowledge for free. In fact I paid him about $10,000 for teaching me how his system worked.

      Now, Greg, he was organized. He had systems and criteria for analyzing a deal I had never thought of. But more than that, the day my wife and I came in, he said, “You’re going to do a deal this week.” He had a private lender who didn’t care who I was as long as I could bring him a good deal. That was the first key. His investor cared about the deal, not me or my credit. This was definitely not a bank.

      With Greg’s guidance, my wife and I found a good deal, got it in a foreclosure auction, refinanced it with a bank, and found a renter. We did it all with Greg standing beside us and showing us the way. There was no fog with Greg by our side. It all made perfect sense.

      With Greg’s help, my wife and I learned that investing has a lot to do with measuring an opportunity against certain criteria, and then matching it with a technique to harvest the cash flow. With his help, we had our very first income-producing asset! I shudder to think how long it would’ve taken me to learn any of that on my own.

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      Today I still work with mentors of all kinds. I have mentors to help with learning paper assets. I have mentors for business. I have mentors for health and wellness.

      There Are No Money Problems

      As a final thought to this chapter on the importance of becoming a great student, I want to offer you a vital truth: money comes from financial education. You don’t need to accept this right away, but you may someday come to realize that there are no true money problems—only education deficits. A lack of money is always secondary. It is never the primary problem.

      As an investor, you’ll find that education goals are vital because education is precisely where money comes from.

      Like most people, I used to find myself falling into the trap of thinking that I had a money problem. I can think of times when I wanted to buy something big that would take more money than I had. In this type of situation, it is easy to think that a lack of money is the problem.

      Equally dangerous is the old cliché, “It takes money to make money.” This is a complete myth that needlessly stops many people from achieving their money goals. Money does not come from money; it comes from financial education.

      Look again to some of our examples of financial success: Warren Buffett, Donald Trump, and Robert Kiyosaki. What if these men were stripped of all their money and assets today? What if they had to start over again with nothing? Would they remain poor or would they achieve success again? Of course they would find success. It’s ridiculous to think they wouldn’t. Their power comes from their education. The secret to their strength is their financial education. Their success comes from what they know, not from what they have.

      Let’s go back to the list of lifestyle goals people commonly list:

       • I want to quit my job.

       • I want to own a house on the beach.

       • I want to own an exotic car.

       • I want to travel the world.

       • I want to be financially free.

       • I want to help and serve others.

      In my workshops, I ask my students: “Why don’t you have these things already?”

      No matter where in the world I ask this question, the answer is always the same, “Because I don’t have enough money.”

      Never once, in any country, have I ever had a person reply, “Because I lack financial education.”

      When I speak with people who are struggling financially they usually see themselves as lacking money. None of them see the problem as a lack of financial education—at least not at first. Once we realize that financial education is where money comes from, we can change things.

      This is great news because if a lack of money was really the problem that would be a pretty big obstacle. I don’t have a Parable of the Money Tree for you!

      While you can’t choose to have people, governments, or employers give you more money, you can choose to get educated. You can choose to be a serious student and learn more about money. People who become obsessed with money wind up in a very different place than people who become dedicated to transforming themselves. Remember that education is transformation.

      The Parable of the Orange Tree

      When I was a child my grandma used to peel oranges for me. Whenever I smell citrus I think of her. She told me how oranges were full of vitamin C and how they’d make me healthy and help me grow big and strong. When I teach with Robert and the rest of the Rich Dad Advisor team we often use analogies to illustrate financial terms. My grandma and her oranges helped me understand derivatives.

      Simply stated, vitamin C is a “derivative” of an orange.

      If you want vitamin C every day, you’ll probably become a hunter of oranges. But you’ll quickly become frustrated at having to work so hard every day to find another bit of vitamin C for yourself. You will spend your time, talent, and energy seeking oranges. Some days you might find an orange, and some days you might not. You will likely live in scarcity.

      A wiser solution might be to think about derivatives. Yes, vitamin C comes from the orange. But where does the orange come from? Of course, oranges come from orange trees. Instead of focusing on orange hunting, focus on growing your own orange tree. Find out the best seeds to get, the best soil to plant in—everything you’ll need to ensure the most oranges from your tree. Now you have a plan for abundance. It’s true that you might have to wait a season or two, but by focusing on the tree you will soon have more oranges than you can ever consume by yourself. In fact, your problem will be figuring out how to give your excess harvest away. You will live in abundance.

      I like to also think of money as a derivative. Our lifestyle goals will depend on money, but where does the money come from? Just as oranges come from orange trees and a good harvest comes from learning about growing oranges, money comes from financial education. So you can take your current amount of time, your current amount of talent, and your current amount of ability and simply shift your focus.

      Instead of focusing on money you can focus on learning where money comes from. Instead of focusing on the orange, you focus on the orange