I felt sweat trickle down the back of my neck…

I was up against a hard deadline. It was fast approaching four o’clock in the afternoon on a Wednesday in 2013. I had a huge decision to make…

The children would be home from school soon… And if I didn’t pick the right sandwich filling, there would be hell to pay.

After a hard-charging, 24-year career in finance, my biggest decision of the day was choosing between strawberry or grape jelly PB&Js for my children’s after-school snack.

Two years earlier, I had sold one of my companies. Now I was trying my hand as a “house dad.”

But after two years of helping make macaroni necklaces and afternoon sandwiches… I was quickly reaching my limit of domestic “bliss.”

In short, it was time to find my next big project.

As luck would have it, I was contacted at the time by an individual named Tom Dyson… who had heard of me through a mutual friend.

Tom – along with multimillionaire and New York Times best-selling author Mark Ford – ran a business called Palm Beach Research Group.

They convinced me to join their team. And they eventually became my mentors.

I learned a lot about the newsletter business from Tom. But it was Mark’s ideas that really changed the way I thought about creating wealth.

You see, Mark is one of the biggest thinkers on wealth-building I know. When it comes to sharing his knowledge, I’ve found him to be most generous with his wisdom. I will tell you here and now… Mark Ford has done more for me than I can ever repay.

The knowledge he shared through his wealth-building essays and books has thoroughly changed my life. I credit Mark with getting me off the investment “merry-go-round,” where my wealth would boom and bust every few years.

He taught me to be relentless with self-examination so I wouldn’t fall into the haze of lazy complacency.

Mark has built dozens of businesses from scratch… creating millions of dollars of wealth in the process. He knows more about building wealth than just about anyone. He’s not just a mentor. He’s a “wealth coach.”

How to Make Your Dream a Reality

One of the most important lessons I learned from Mark is that – for most people – getting rich is a “dream.” The problem is that dreams are too close to fantasy and too far removed from reality.

You see, Mark told me what makes a dream “real” is when you turn it into something specific… A goal. He told me that goals should be specific, actionable, and time-oriented.

For the past seven years, I’ve been following that advice… And I can tell you it has transformed my life.

I possess more wealth now than at any other time in my life. And I live a life today that is directly tied to my values.

Today, I can say I’m living my dreams: from where I live… to the work I do… to the wealth I’ve created… and to the relationships I’ve made with the people I care about.

I won’t tell you it wasn’t challenging… because it was. But I will tell you your dreams are attainable.

Today, I’ll share Mark’s three principles for achieving your dream… and how I’ve used them to live my dream life.

Three Principles to Create Wealth

  • First, if you want to build your wealth and live your dream life: You need money.

If you spend every penny you make, there’s no way you can reach your financial dreams. When I started on the path to my dream life, I found that no matter how much I earned, I spent it all.

Mark taught me I didn’t have a money problem… I had a spending problem.

He told me if I wanted to be rich, I had to drastically lower my expenses and save more while improving the quality of my life right now by making better decisions.

He showed me I didn’t need the most expensive, most exclusive, most up-to-date thing.

He had me focus on buying quality items that could last 20 years or more. He showed me the true cost of spending by having me figure out the real cost of what I was buying.

For instance, he showed me how to save hundreds of thousands of dollars by buying a reliable car and keeping it for 15 years rather than changing it every three years.

So my first rule for getting rich is to start living well below your means. You want to save over 60% of your monthly income. I know that sounds nuts… but it’s doable.

The thing to remember is you won’t live at this low level forever. It’s temporary while you build your wealth.

For me, I had to have some tough conversations with my children and their mother. I made considerable changes in our lifestyle, from downsizing our cars to chopping up credit cards and embracing staycations.

  • Second, Mark told me to look for outside-the-box ideas to create additional income.

For instance, you can focus on increasing your ability to earn more money by having a side hustle… improving your work ethic… and learning new work skills.

I did all three.

I ran two consulting businesses on the side while writing two financial newsletters.

I also dabbled in flipping Lego sets. Which may sound weird… But according to a study from Moscow University, Lego sets have outperformed gold and stocks since 1987.

I ended up making $5,000 from flipping Legos, which I eventually parlayed into more than $2,000,000 by getting into crypto in early 2016.

I brought more focus to delivering even higher quality to my work. I threw out the idea of doing work that was just “good enough.” And embraced the idea of making sure my work was excellent.

The difference between doing “good enough” work and “excellent” work led to a night-and-day improvement in my skills… which directly led to me making more money.

Along with focusing on excellence, I started a daily program of skill improvement designed to improve my writing, thinking, and self-image.

Along with these changes, I stopped watching Netflix, sports, and movies, and stopped playing video games. I ceased reading fiction for pleasure and focused on reading books that would improve my work skills and overall mindset.

When I did watch anything, it was interviews with successful people that shared their mindsets, habits, and experiences of how they were able to climb the economic ladder.

Watching these interviews helped me learn how to be my own coach and how to reshape the tone and content of my internal dialogue.

Most importantly, I learned I had to surround myself with winners. I had to remake my social network so that I was around people already living the life I wanted to lead.

And so I embarked upon this massive journey of change. Again, it wasn’t easy because each of these little changes didn’t do much by themselves.

But over time, they started to compound. Within a year of making these changes, I had an explosion of money coming into my life.

And because of Mark’s teachings, I wasn’t spending it all on a bunch of nonsense.

Instead, I put the next part of Mark’s wealth plan into place. I started putting 95% of my money into conservative, income-producing investments and strategies.

I used the other 5% to speculate in asymmetric investments like bitcoin, Ethereum, pre-IPOs, and high-flying tech stocks. Many of those investments ended up making me a fortune… without putting my current lifestyle at risk.

I was finally off the boom-and-bust wealth rollercoaster.

  • Lastly, Mark told me I needed to step out of my comfort zone and reimagine my ideal dream life. He had me get clear on what my dream was. He taught me I didn’t have to buy into anyone else’s dream.

You don’t have to, either.

I want you to get crystal clear on what you want. What do you really want from this life?

I’m not asking you what you will settle for. I want to know what YOU want. Unhook your brain from a lifetime of conditioning that tells you what you SHOULD want… and find out what YOU want.

You don’t have to tell anyone else (my recommendation is to keep it to yourself). But you should write it down. Once written down, ask yourself, “If I could achieve this… how would I do it?”

It’s OK if you don’t know the answer yet. Just the action of opening your mind to accept a life radically different from the one you currently live will begin to move your life more in the direction of where you want it to go.

I didn’t know how to answer this question when I asked it of myself. And so what I did every morning was sit at my desk and write out my ideal life. At the time, I was in an unhappy marriage in rural Pennsylvania.

Each morning I would write about the life I wanted. I wrote about the home I lived in, the view of the ocean from my balcony, and the sound of the ocean in the background.

I wrote about my workday, the people I interacted with, the type of romantic relationship I wanted, and the wealth I wanted.

I did this EVERY morning for months.

Within two years… I had converted every one of those dreams into reality.

The key takeaway is it’s not good enough to write your goals and dreams down once and then forget about them.

You have to keep your goals and dreams in front of you every single day. That’s your north star that guides your daily actions forward along the path YOU have carved out for yourself.

Remember, it’s your life. You are either helping bring about the life you want, or you are helping bring about the life somebody else wants for you.

The Greatest Gift: Giving to Others

I owe a debt of gratitude to Mark Ford for changing my life. And I repay it by spreading his ideas and teachings through my writing.

It bears repeating…

I want you to have the freedom that comes from getting clear on what you want… and taking the actions to get it. That’s why I urge you to take some free time this holiday season to really think about your life.

Ask yourself, what do you really want? And what do I need to change to get from where I am to where I want to be? Put a plan together and start taking action that is in the direction of the life you want.

As you go through this self-examination, it’s easy to beat yourself up for past errors. I want you to do something different instead. I want you to embrace your mistakes with the same kindness and understanding you would extend to a small child.

We all make mistakes. That’s just the human condition. None of us are above that. The key to not repeating mistakes is to treat yourself with kindness when you do make a mistake…

Learn from it. Write the lesson down in a notebook and change your actions.

As you do this, little by little, the life you want will start to take shape around you.

So, this holiday, I ask that you love yourself enough to forgive yourself. I’m not suggesting you live in denial of your mistakes. Far from it. I want you to embrace and face all of who you are with real honesty and no judgment.

If you can do that, you can create the kind of change in your habits that will bring about the lifestyle you have always wanted.

Let the Game Come to You!

Big T