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And let's get started. The first one is personal development. Now, in illustrating personal development, Mr. Shelf, my teacher started with money. You know, money's not the only place to start in talking personal development. But it's where he started. So let me share the thoughts he shared with me back then. Let me share them with you. Here's the best lesson I can give you on economics. It's very simple. We get paid for bringing value to the marketplace. That's about as simple as I can put economics. We get paid for bringing value to the marketplace. Now, it takes time to bring value to the marketplace. However, we do not get paid for time. So we cross that out mistakenly. The man says, I'm making about $20 for an hour. Not true. If that was true, you could just stay home, right? And have them send your money. So that's not true. We don't get paid for time. We get paid for value brought to the marketplace. Now, since that's true, here's one of the key questions of my talk to you today. Is it possible to become twice as valuable to the marketplace and make twice as much money in the same time? Is that possible? The answer is yes. Could you become three times as valuable as you might be right now to the marketplace and make three times as much money in the same time? And the answer is yes. 5 times? 10 times? Of course, America is unique. It's a ladder decline. It starts down here, let's say, at $5 an hour. And it keeps going up. Top income last year, $80 million. The guy who runs Coca Cola. Now, that's a heck of a ladder. That's why everybody wants to come here, right? The boat people are not headed for Vietnam. People haven't plotted and schemed for 50 years, saying, if I could just get to Poland, everything would be okay. Not true. Everybody wants to come to America. And the reason is because we've got the best wind ever blowing in our favor. We've got the best economic opportunity anybody's had in six and a half thousand years. And all you have to do is understand it and take advantage of it. Now, there's some key questions to ask here. Why would the marketplace pay someone only $5 an hour? Very simple answer. They're not very valuable to the marketplace. Now, we must underline to the marketplace. This person might be a very valuable brother. Yes. Member of the family. Valuable. Yes. Valuable member of the church. Of course. Valuable. Citizen of the country. Yes. Valuable in the sight of God. No doubt. We're all of equal value in the sight of God. But if you're not very valuable to the marketplace, you don't get much money. You say, well, it shouldn't be that way. Well, then you got to start your own country. You know, this one's been in process for 200 years. And this is the best we've been able to come up with so far. But here's the key. You don't have to stay here. Now, there was a big debate in Congress last year that this $5 was not enough. Should be 6. Should be 6. Should be six. But we don't need legislation. Six is already on this ladder. The next step up, you know, if you work for McDonald's, they'll pay you $5 an hour to take out the trash. If you whistle while you take out the trash, they'll pay you $6 an hour. So we don't need that legislation. You need. Just need to take lessons on how to whistle, have a good attitude. Now, as you begin to climb this ladder, why would the marketplace pay some people $50 an hour? Answer. Evidently, they must be more valuable to the marketplace, ten times more valuable. And is that possible for someone to be 10 times more valuable and earn $50 an hour instead of 5? And the answer is yes. That's what America is all about. Now, why would the marketplace pay some people $500 an hour? Evidently, this person must be much more valuable to the marketplace. That's what's important to understand, to the marketplace. And would the marketplace pay one person $80 million for one year's work? And the answer is, of course, if you helped a company make a billion dollars, would they pay you 80 million? I'm telling you, it is possible. And that's why America is so exciting. That's why this financial ladder is so exciting. It's possible for all of this to come true for all of you, no matter where you start. As a student in school, just getting started out there in the workplace, this is all possible for you. Now, Mr. Shoaff gave me the clue on how to climb this ladder as high as I wanted to climb. Now, we're talking primarily economics here. There's a lot of other ways to become valuable to your family, valuable to your friends, valuable to the community, valuable to the team. Right? Valuable to the. To the team effort, valuable to the concert. But here's what he said to me. In climbing this ladder economically, all you have to do is work harder on yourself than you do on your job. Once I heard that, it made sense to me. I kept hoping that everything else would change around Me found out that if I went to work on myself, worked on my skills, worked on my language, if I became better than I was each year, if I grew in skills and language and vocabulary and competence, then I would become attractive to the marketplace. Not very long ago, a company called me and said, Mr. Own, we're expanding internationally. We'd like to have a bit of your expertise to help us. Would you give us a bit of your time? We'll add some millions to your fortune. And I said, okay. And I thought, later, isn't that interesting? They would call me then. My second thought was, of course they'd call me. Who else would they call? I can get the job done. Now. What a contrast for me. Farm boy from Idaho, raised in obscurity, parents of modest means, broke when I was 25. How come I would get a telephone call and someone offer me a lot of money to help them in expanding around the world? Simple answer. Evidently, something happened to me between age 25 and where I am today. And I can tell you where it all started from my teacher, Mr. Shelf, who said to me, we don't have to change what's going on out there. That's the wind that's blowing. All we have to do is change what's going on in here. And now. There's several ways to do that. Personal development. And let me give you those ways. Here's the first one. We must learn from personal experience. Pretty simple. Learn from what happens to you. Take a look back over the last few months. Did you make some mistakes? How could you correct those for the future? Take a look back over the last year. Have you done it right or done it wrong? Let's correct it for the next year. Learn from your personal experience. Mr. Shoaff asked me when I first met him. He said, Mr. Own, how are you doing? You've been out there now six years. And I said, I'm not doing very well. He said, I suggest you not do that anymore. What a simple, swift analysis to my situation. He said, if you keep doing it, the next six years will be like the last six. You don't want that to happen. Let's make the changes. So learn from your personal experience. Now here's number two, why I came to share this video experience with you today. And that I call it ope Other people's experiences. That's me. Other people. That's your teacher. Other people. That's your friends and colleagues. Other people. The people you meet that can pass along to you their experiences. What's happened to them. The Mistakes they made, how they corrected them, how they change their health and change their bank account and change their income and change their future. That's it. Other people. Now, there's two kinds of people to learn from. One is failures. It's too bad failures don't give seminars, right? That would be valuable. Bring your notebook. Have them tell you how they lost it all and threw it all away, threw their health away and threw their friendships away and things didn't work out well. That would be valuable. But now then, we must also learn from positive people that have done well. They've got the health. And so we asked them, how did you become so healthy? They've got the skills. So we asked them, how did you become this skillful? They've got the income. So we ask them, how did you get here in such a short period of time? So now here's what's important in personal development, in learning from other people. We learn, number one, by observation. We learn what we see. We watch people that are successful in what they do in sports, we watch their disciplines. In business, we watch their disciplines by observation, what we can see. The reason I created this video is something that you could see someone's experiences translated for you. Second, we learn by what we hear. I've got some of my lectures on cassette tape. So you know, you can take them with you wherever you go and learn by listening. Turn your car into a mobile classroom and listen. And then listen to the Sermon on Sunday Morning, listen to the lectures, listen to the teacher. Listen to someone who's got something good to say. And then number three is vitally important on personal development. And that is read all the books, all the books you can possibly read in your lifetime. Mr. Shelf got me started on my library. I've got one of the better libraries. Haven't read everything in it, but I feel smarter just walking in it. My library, at least I was smart enough to buy it. Now I got to be smart enough to read it. Then, of course, I got to be smart enough to decide what's valuable and then do it. But this one is very important. Become a good reader. Some books that helped change my life. Mr. Shelf recommended, of course, the Bible. And my parents made sure I was a pretty good scholar by the time I was 18. That's been so beneficial for me. Drawing from those illustrations, reading about those stories, people who made it and people who didn't make it and what the difference was. And then other books that helped to really change my life. One called Think and Grow Rich by Napoleon Hill. And Then a book that helped me become financially independent by the time I was 31. And that book is called the Richest man in Babylon by George Clayson. And I'm going to share a little bit of that book with you when I get to Financial Independence today, our third subject. But I started reading the books, attending the classes, making sure that I got in front of people that had something good to say. And then I started keeping a journal. One of the major things my teacher taught me was to keep a journal. He said, don't trust your memory. If you hear something good, just make a little note and write it down. Now, at first I took, you know, notes on pieces of paper and torn off corners and backs of old envelopes. And it didn't serve me well, you know, thrown in a drawer. Then I learned to keep a journal, a bound copy of all my notes. So I would suggest you do the same things that impress you. A poem that impresses you. When you attend a class, some of the ideas that impressed you, jot them down. You read something in a magazine, right? Some ideas. Take those out, put them in your journal. Keep a good journal the rest of your life. This will serve you well. My journals make up a significant portion of my own library. And if you saw my library and saw my journals, I tell you what you'd have to say. This is the library. And these are the journals of a very serious student. No wonder Mr. Rohn is invited to lecture and speak on his experiences around the world. So I want the same thing to happen to you, value captured that you can resort to later. Go back over it and review it and let it become valuable to you. So that's my first subject, personal development. Work harder on yourself than you do on your job. Develop the skills, learn the lessons, take the classes, absorb all that is being taught to you these days. And then later on, of course, you can sort it out, what's valuable to you and how to refine it for your business and for your life and for your future. But the main thing is to get it and start this process of personal change, personal development. And let me say it one more time. If you will change, everything will change for you. You'll never be the same. You'll keep growing. As you look back on a few months, look back on a few years, you won't believe the progress you can make economically. Your relationship with your family, your friends, and whether you're in sports or economics or whatever. I'm telling you, that whole process of committing yourself for personal change, personal value, can really make your life unique and worthwhile. Now, let's cover the second subject on setting goals. Mr. Shelf gave me some tips on setting goals that changed my life forever, and I want to share those with you.