Three Things That Motivate Everyone

There are three emotions that motivate everyone: Love, Fear and Self-Interest

Love & Fear

I never worked harder than in during 2006 – 2010. My #1 Goal in life was that I would be able to afford to get all three of my children through college.

During 2006, out of love and fear, I started my financial planning business, while running my CPA firm full-time.

My CPA firm took 30-80 hours a week, depending on the time of year and what projects we were working on. But I didn’t care. I needed to make more money and I was willing to add another 20 hours a week in building my financial planning business.

Beginning in 2006, I worked long days, weekends, day after day, year after year.

In mid-2007, that hard work paid off.

I closed on some very big financial planning cases and the timing could not have been better, as my oldest was beginning college in the fall of 2007. Thanks to my financial planning earnings, I was able to afford to pay for my son’s freshman and sophomore years.

The supplemental financial planning income also helped me to get my two youngest through college.

In all, I spent nearly $350,000 in order to get my kids through college. I would have never been able to do that, without the financial planning income.

Love – I loved my children and would work egregious hours to make money so I could afford college. And I did.

Fear – Fear of not being able to afford college for my kids, and having to saddle them with enormous amounts of student loan debt, also motivated me to work harder. I feared failing as a parent, in what I considered, one of my most important duties – helping them get through college.

Self-Interest

When I wrote my first book, Rich Habits, in 2010, I believed my Rich Habits research was so unique and proprietary that it would eventually make me a very successful bestselling author. I have had some great success with my books and all of them have become bestsellers in many countries.

Self-interest drove me to write each one of my books.

In my opinion, Love was the #1 motivator for me, followed very closely by Fear. Self-interest, at least for me, was a distant third place, in terms of motivation. But, it is still a very powerful motivator, as I have been at this author business since 2010 and have no intention of stopping.