“A VOICE FROM AMERICA”
By Ernie D. Delfin
THE ENLIGHTENED
MILLIONAIRE
“If a free society cannot help the many who
are poor,
it cannot
save the few who are rich.”
--- John F. Kennedy
I had
the fortune to have personally met and briefly talked to Mark Victor Hansen and Robert G. Allen, two
well-known authors in America, as I was
one of many who attended their respective
seminars in the early 80’s that they have been separately conducting in California the last 20 plus
years. They even autographed their first
books that I bought then. Recently they co-authored a new book enticingly
titled “The One Minute Millionaire --
The Enlightened Way to Wealth.”
Curiousity prompted me to buy a copy, which I was able to read in a day while on a brief
vacation in the beautiful island of Maui last week. Today’s column will be some kind of a book review imbedded with my own personal observation
or business inputs to this
ever-interesting topic of wealth and its creation.
The book
has a remarkably inspiring anecdote that somewhat reaffirmed my philosophy that unless wealth was
inherited or won in a Super Lotto,
money (or success) in most cases must always be paid upfront and
in full. That’s the
hefty price of success that the vast majority of people in the world are not willing to pay. The “One Minute Millionaire” tells
the story of Le Van Vu who hardly spoke any English when he arrived in America but always
friendly and through smiles and sign language was the daily supplier of
doughnuts to John McCormack & Company.
(Le Van Vu became a “mentor” of
John McCormack how to become a
millionaire the enlightened way)
During his first months in America from Vietnam via the Philippines, Le
and his wife worked in a bakery and at
night they listened to audiotapes to
learn English. To save most of their meager salary, they slept on sacks full of
sawdust on the floor in the back of the bakery.
Some flashback: In North
Vietnam, The Van Hu families were already
very wealthy but his father was
murdered, so the family moved to South Vietnam where he went to school and eventually
became a lawyer. Having the DNA, grit,
intelligence and work ethic of his father, Le prospered only to be captured and
imprisoned for three years in one of his visits to North Vietnam. He was able
to escape back to South Vietnam after killing five Communist soldiers but the
South Vietnamese government had suspected him as a
planted spy from the North so he was arrested and put to prison once again.
After serving
time in prison Le got out and started a fishing company which eventually became the largest cannery in
South Vietnam. Then came the Vietnam
War. When the US government decided to leave the country, Le and his wife made their boldest and most
serious life-changing decision to leave Vietnam. With his hoarded
gold loaded in one of his fishing
vessels, which he exchanged (in the Asian culture or terminology this is called
“bribery”) for his passage out of Vietnam
and he and wife found themselves
in a refugee camp in the Philippines before they finally reached their destination in America.
Having left
behind everything that he worked so hard, he became so distraught that he
attempted to jump into the ocean and end
all his miseries. But as fate had it, his loving wife comforted and
inspired him to just give themselves one
more chance in America, the bastion of
freedom and land of opportunity. Who
ever doubt that behind a successful man
is a wonderful woman?
In Vietnam,
family takes care of family and Le and his wife found themselves working for a
cousin’s bakery in Greenspoint Mall, and
now they are multi-millionaires!
How? They saved all their take
home pay: Le $175 a week and his wife $125,
by forgoing an apartment of their own with all the concomitant costs like utilities, telephone,
car or commuting expenses. Le’s
cousin promised to sell them the bakery once they can come up
with $30,000 down payment, and he would
finance the $90,000 balance. With
this new dream of becoming a business
owner again in America, they saw
another ray of hope that motivated them
to replicate their previous
business successes in Vietnam.
Here is
what they did: Even with a $300 weekly net salary they decided to continue living in the back
room of the bakery. For two years they managed to keep themselves clean by taking sponge baths in the mall’s
restrooms. Their diet consisted
primarily of bakery stuffs and they
sacrificed much and lived with
extreme frugality. But in two years, they were able to save the $30,000.00 for their down payment to buy the
bakery. A happy ending?
Not
quite! Now, saddled with a note of $90,000 they decided
to continue living in the bakery back room for another year to forgo paying for
a house mortgage or apartment rent and all concurrent costs of living far from
their business. After only three
years, the promissory note is fully paid from their profits of the bakery coupled with their extremely high savings rate! (For my
readers in the Philippines, in
America some cars, that all depreciate
unlike real estate or a bakery business,
are financed even up to
5 to 10 years depending upon the
make and model.)
Messrs.
Hansen and Allen then pose this question
to their readers: “Do you think Mr. Le Van Vu is a millionaire today? The authors’
last sentence in the last chapter says
“We are happy to tell you, many times over!”
* * * *
The One Minute Millionaire is
a book that is unusually creative and revolutionary as it
has two books in one: the left (even
numbered) pages are for non-fiction
people like me and the right pages are
fiction based on an imaginary
heroine named Michelle, deliberately
done to address two kinds of learners, the left-brained people and the
right-brained people. The authors who
are mega-selling authors in their own rights (Mr. Hansen is best known for the
Chicken Soup for the Soul with more than
80 million copies in print Mr. Allen’s
book on Nothing Down that sold over
l.2 million and his others books,
Creating Wealth, Multiple Streams of Income have all been major New York
Times bestsellers) combined their
talents and experiences to come up with one of the best books on Wealth I’ve read.
They have included very good, often
colorful, anecdotes about wealth and
how it is earned, invested and utilized
for the enhancement of the human world.
By the way, Mr. Allen’s life had
an early turning point when he, by sheer
accident, (although some spiritual
people tell me that in the dictionary of God, there are really no accidents) he briefly worked for the patriarch of one of
the wealthiest families in the Philippines, Don Lopez of Meralco and the ABS-CBN
conglomerates when the Lopezes were in exile in San Francisco during the Marcos
dictatorship. At tender age of l9, the young Allen was able to see how
the really wealthy lived and prospered which left indelible mark in his mind
that propelled and inspired him to
become a multi-millionaire in his own right also. The early beginning of Mr. Hansen in
businesses, however, did not result in
phenomenal success but was forced into bankruptcy. But that did not deter him to keep on going
until he found his way to the top and became a multi-millionaire the
enlightened way. Their individual and spectacular successes can be
an inspiration to any reader of their books.
Check their website at: www.oneminutemillionaire.com Both authors are not the greatest
speakers in my book (their audio or video tapes are available in
the USA) but there is plenty of
substance and proven principles that go
with their presentations and in the pages of their many best-selling books.
The book is written in an easy
format that can be understood by even a high school drop out. It is designed to
teach and share how to create wealth even though you have little or nothing to
start with, using the power of leverage
to build wealth rapidly, overcoming your fears so you can take reasonable risks
and use their “one minute” habits to build wealth over the long term. Somewhat,
it is a good sequel of the “Rich
Dad, Poor Dad” book by Robert Kiyoshi and Sharon Lechter, CPA, that I
also wrote a “review” but my Philippine
STAR editors changed the title of that column as “Rich Family, Poor Family” a couple of years. Same column
also appeared in my “The Metamorphosis” column in the
Asian Journal, a San Diego,
Calif. based weekly. Another excellent
book that is at par with One Minute Millionaire is “Millionaires Next Door” scholarly researched
and written by Profs. Danko and Stanley.
* * * *
Without appearing or sounding condescending, the authors very adroitly expounded that
indeed “there is more to life than money” and give you enough reasons why they
wanted the readers to become enlightened
millionaires. They believe that an Enlightened Millionaire will have great
ABUNDANCE that bear good fruits such as: greater innovation,
charity, tithing, expansion, new opportunities and challenges for others and
even lower prices. The opposite is THE
Mentality of Scarcity (that also spawn the “talangka” or crab mentality which most Filipino readers
would understand). The twin for abundance is ALTRUISM that can give rise to nobility, fulfillment,
joy, happiness, honesty, and
selflessness. Its enemy is Greed that
often is more visible in the lives of our society, because often altruism,
although is always a Good News, does
not sell the newspaper well compared to the bad or ugly news. The authors have a dream and believe that if
they can help 1,000,000 millionaires who willingly and gratefully gave l0% to
charity and/or tithing to be used by churches and foundations to
help others, then the world will
become a better place for our children
and their children. (As a Philippine
born national, my prayer is that hopefully their vision can also include the
Philippines!)
The chapter on
Tithing can also be profound eye
opener for many readers. It describes
that the Enlightened Millionaire is a
giver because giving is the highest form of manifestation of one’s true
self. It is an action based on faith.
Why is this? The authors answered:
“Because giving expands money. How? Just as water exists in three forms
– ice, liquid and vapor --- we find it
useful to think that money exists in three dimensions: the frozen state
(material) the liquid state (mental) and the ethereal or spiritual state. If you give money from an attitude of
gratitude and abundance, it thrusts you from the material state into ethereal
or spiritual dimension” Sir John Marks
Templeton, founder of the successful Templeton Funds once said that “Tithing gives the greatest return on your investment.
” The authors concluded that if we go behind the scenes of
most great fortunes, you’ll find a common pattern --- the more they gave, the
more they got! ( UNFORTUNATELY AND
SAD TO NOTE THAT
MANY, INCLUDING THIS WRITER, DO NOT SEE THAT IN OUR PHILIPPINE SOCIETY
THE LAST 20-40 YEARS! IT SEEMS THAT
RIZAL’S OBSERVATION ABOUT “THE REIGN OF GREED” STILL EXISTS TODAY! Can somebody please prove me wrong?)
The last chapter is the best
argument I have ever read why people must come out of the closet and must learn
to be comfortable with the idea of prosperity.
They quoted Russell H. Conwell (the founder of Temple University in
Philadelphia) which was written over a
hundred years ago, whenever he delivered his famous “Acres of Diamond” speech (for the full text, the reader can visit:
www.temple.edu/about/temples_founder/acres_text.html.
“ I say that you ought to be rich,
and it is your duty to get rich. How
many of my pious brethren say to me, “Do you, a Christian minister, spend your
time going up and down the country advising young people to get rich, to get
money” Yes I do of course”
They say, “Isn’t that awful! Why
don’t you preach the gospel instead of preaching about man’s making money?”
Because to make money HONESTLY is to preach the gospel. That is the REASON. The
men who get rich may be the most honest men in the community. “Oh,”
but say some young man here tonight, “I have been told all my life that
if a person has money he is very dishonest and dishonorable and mean and
contemptible.: My friends, that is the
reason why you have none because you have that ideas of people. The foundation of your faith is altogether
false. Let me say here clearly… ninety-eight out of one hundred of the rich men
(and women) of American are honest. That
is why they are rich. That is why they are trusted with money. That is why they
carry on great enterprises and find plenty of people to work with them.
Say another young man, “ I hear
sometimes of men that get millions of dollars dishonestly. “Yes, of course you
do, and so do I. But they are so rare a thing in fact that the newspapers talk
about them all the time as a matter of news until you get the idea that all the other rich men
got rich dishonestly.
My friend, you.. drive me .. out into the suburbs of
Philadelphia and introduce me to the people who own their homes around this
great city, those beautiful homes with gardens and flowers , those magnificent
homes so lovely in their art, and I will introduce you to the very best people
in character as well as in enterprise in our city… They who own their homes are
made more honorable and honest and pure, and true and economical and careful by
owning them.
We preach against covetousness…
in the pulpit… and use the term… “filthy rich” so extremely that Christians get
the idea that … it is wicked for any man to have money. Money is power, and you8 ought to be
reasonably ambitious to have it. You ought because you do more good with it
that you could do without it. Money
printed your Bibles, money builds your churches, money sends your missionaries,
and money pays your preachers and their help. … I say, then, young man, you
ought to have money. If you can honestly attain into riches… it is your… godly
duty to do so. It is an awful mistake of these pious people to think that you must be awfully
poor in order to be pious!”
** * *
After reading The One
Minute Millionaire…the Enlightened Way to Wealth LEFT pages that logically summarized chapter-by-chapter
ideas and necessary paradigm shifts to become an enlightened millionaire, I am
recommending this book (without any commission!) You will read and learn about topics or
principlesa like the Millionaire’s AHAS,
Leverage, Mentors, TEAM (Together Everybody Accomplishes Miracles) ,
Networks, Infinite Networks, Skills and Tools,
SYSTEM (Save Your Self Time Energy
Money) Real Estate
Principles, Business and your own “Acres of Diamond”.
From a scale one to ten, this writer gives “The One Minute
Millionaire” a nine! Buy
and read and reread it, and who knows it
might also help you to become an
Enlightened Millionaire!
---- 3 0 –
E-mail
writer at: ernie.delfin@gmail..com or drbannatiran@yahoo.com
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