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Introduction to Workshop

So great to be here with you. I'm really excited, truthfully nervous because I have been working on this for six months and my dream today with CreativeLive is to create a course for all of you at home that takes all my work, really 23 years of my life experience and distills it to you in a day. I believe that the single biggest problem we have in this country is that we don't teach kids about money in school. And, so as I go through the challenges that many of you are facing, and we'll talk about this here in a second, I honestly believe that if we just taught what I'm teaching today in school, we'd all do better. 'Cause when you know better, you do better. But, it's not taught in school and so candidly, we're able to be taken advantage of by just about everybody financially. And, my goal today is to fix that. Over to the left here, everybody here in the studio audience you can see my dear Noosa Mau, say hello. Noosa is the most talented graphic artist genius I have ever known. She's ...

worked with me for nearly 20 years. She brings my creative mind to life so that it makes it even easier. And, she will be doing an artistic rendering of the entire day and distilling what I teach. She's helped me help millions of people. So, I send blessings to you right now so thank you. So, here we go. This class that I'm about to go through right now is based on two books. It's based on The Automatic Millionaire and it's based on Start Late, Finish Rich. And, I just re-released The Automatic Millionaire. This book came out over a decade ago. And, so many of you who have read it, it's changed your life and you would email me and you would Facebook me and you'd say, "Hello, the book's 10 years old, when are you updating it?" And, the truth is that everything's changed. Technology has made becoming an automatic millionaire, starting late and finishing rich easier than it's ever been, even easier than it was when I wrote this book. So, what I thought I would do is actually read the introduction to this book and then we're gonna dive into this class. 'Cause the introduction is really the set up to this class. So, here it goes. What if I told you that in just an hour or two, I could share with you a system that would slowly but surely transform you into a millionaire? What if I told you it was a proven system, proven? That you could set it up in just an hour or two. That would require no budget. I'll even repeat those words, no budget. A lot of you at home are happy that I'm saying this right now. No discipline, not a lot of time, less than $10 a day. That it could be done over the phone, 'cause now everything can be done over the phone, online, and from the comfort of your own home. You don't have to go walking into a bank or a brokerage firm to do anything I'm gonna teach you today. Literally, you can do everything from your phone, your iPad, it's just incredible. Lot of what I'm gonna teach you today you can do it, it used to take an hour, now you can do it in 10 minutes. I can't even get over how fast things can be done now. What if I told you that the system is called The Automatic Millionaire and if you spent just an hour or two with me, you could become one? What if I told you it was so easy, so easy, in fact, that if you set it up, you'd never have to spend more than 10 minutes a month monitoring it? First of all, would I have your attention? Yes? And, you would you spend an hour or two with me? I could spend four weeks with you, but the beauty of what I'm gonna teach you today is a comprehensive system to fix your financial life for life in a couple hours. Now, I have to say something up front. What I just read, I wrote this and I knew when I wrote it that it sounds too good to be true, okay? And, I actually launched this book on Oprah. And, Oprah turned to me in the first part of the show. The show opened up and she turned to me and she said, "Come on, seriously? "Are you trying to tell me that if I'm living "paycheck to paycheck, that if I'm struggling, "if I'm in debt, are you trying to say that everybody "out there whose just literally just getting by "that it's possible for them to become a millionaire "and finish rich?" Now, you know what my answer was? What do you think my answer was? You guys are all like, "Of course." You're just trying to give me what I wanna hear. (audience laughing) I said, well first of all no. First of all, you have to want it. You have to want it, right now. Here's the thing, all of you here, you want it or you wouldn't be here. All of you tuning in right now at home. Like you're busy and for whatever reason you decided to take today. I don't know if you're doing this at work and you're just kinda hiding somewhere, but or you took the day off. And, so I know that you want it. I also know that you feel like you're starting late. 'Cause this class is designed to help you self-identify, right? Like if you don't think you're starting late, theN you're not here. Something inside of you said, "This is me. "I feel I'm starting late, but I have hope." So, to be here you, one, believe that you can do better. That's why you're here. You know that you've got a challenge that you need to fix. And, you have hope that there's a way to do it. My goal today is to take that hope that's already inside of you and give you the structure and the techniques that are proven to build wealth over your lifetime. So, with that, you know, I turned to Oprah and I said, look, you gotta want it, but here's what I can tell you. At the time I'd spent nine years as a financial advisor at Morgan Stanley. I said I saw the secret. I got to see it first hand. I'm not some journalist that just reads articles and then rewrites articles and talks about the stuff from theory. I got to see nine years as a financial advisor, having grown up also in this business, what really works. And, at the time we had over 100, we had hundreds of clients that were self-made millionaires. And, the common theme was they had all become millionaires on ordinary incomes. And, they had done one key thing. And, you should just write this word down and I'm gonna come back to it over and over and over again. The common thing they did is they made their financial life automatic, automatic. In fact, I'm gonna make the audience here say that. Everybody go along with me for a second. Automatic. Automatic. Yes! Why does it need to be automatic? Because here's the truth, you're busy. You have busy lives. We're all busy, busy, busy. We're busier than we've ever been. And, if you have to have time and discipline to have a financial plan, you will fail. And, I've seen it time and time again. People are like, this is the year. This is the year I'm gonna spend less. This is the year I'm gonna save more. And people do it for three weeks, okay? Automatic plans work. So, with that, let me go through the mission of the class and go through exactly what we'll teach. I wanna inspire you with the slide that you can't see. (audience laughing) I wanna inspire you to live and finish rich. Not just finish rich but live rich. Because what I fundamentally believe is this, you don't actually have to be rich to live rich. So, I'm gonna talk about techniques today to build your financial life. But, I'm gonna talk about the heart today and your values. Because what I know for a fact is it's not just money that determines how good you feel in life. So, we're gonna look at your values and what's most important to you. We're also gonna go through very specific strategies on how you live and finish rich. And, at the end of today's program, we're gonna go into your values. I will cover how to build a retirement account, how to build a security account, how to build a dream account, and how to build wealth on as little as $5 a day. How many of you can start with $5 a day? Be honest. Okay, good. Sometimes people don't raise their hands to that one. You at home, $5 a day? I need $5 a day to get started. Although really, some cases now it's a dollar a day. I'm gonna through the number one millionaire habit that changes everything. That habit by the way, I'll just give you the sneak peek, it's called automatic. I'm gonna talk about why budgets don't work. So, a lot of couples I know are gonna watch this today. You're a couple, I know. Put your hands up 'cause we have at least one couple in the studio audience. How couples usually work, you'll see. Watch this. Which one of you dragged the person here? You dragged him. Because there's always a dragor and a dragee. (audience laughing) So, congratulations, thanks for being dragged here. If you're a couple, most couples, one person wants a budget and the other person doesn't. And, I'll talk about why that is and how you overcome that. The secret to having a retirement and dream accounts, security account, gonna make that part real simple. How to become rich faster if you're a freelancer. Lots of you who are watching today are freelancers. We live in a freelance economy right now. You are self-employed, we are free agents. I'm self-employed. I've been running my own business for well over a decade, since 2001. That's a different world. And the most unfortunate thing with freelancers, I see a lot of freelancers making actually pretty good money but they're not keeping any of it. I also see the challenges of how your incomes go up and down, it's not consistent, right? 'Cause you'll make money and then you don't make money. It's not like being an employee so we'll talk about that. How to organize your financial life fast. So, I'm gonna do everything today from give you old-school techniques like paper. And we gave you guys, you'll see this later, but we gave you guys a handout. I'm gonna walk you through old style like hey this is how you can do it with paper. I'm gonna walk you through new style. Here's all the tech, here's all the apps, here's what I use. But, you'll be able to get your financial life organized very easily today. Not today, but after the seminar's over you'll go and do it. How to put your financial life on autopilot so that you don't have to worry. How to protect your family with wills and life insurance. So, I wanna make sure that if you are married, if you have kids, you are protected with wills and life insurance. Dry subject. I'm gonna actually make it fun and interesting but I will definitely kick you in the butt today to go and get that done 'cause I know you need to get it done and I know most of you haven't. We're gonna do this over five hours with 11 specific steps. And, what we're gonna do is use a couple tools. We're gonna use, I gave you what's called the Finishrich Quickstart System. Everybody in here you've all been given printouts. But, those of you at home, where's my camera to the home people. This is your handout right here. You should have been able to download it. If you haven't, download it, print it. I'm gonna refer to this throughout our workshop. Okay, so let's start right now. Oh, this is one more really cool thing and then we'll start in a second. I'm gonna go through The Automatic Millionaire Blueprint. This is, it took me 20 years to simplify to this map. This map is a tool that I'm gonna walk you through in less than 15 minutes very early on today. I think it's actually it's our first session. And, you'll just see visually... Are you all right? Our cameraman over here just burned himself. (audience laughing) You okay? I got shocked. We have a hot camera, oh you got shocked. (audience laughing) You all right? See, it's live. This stuff's really happening. Pan over so the people can see him everybody make sure he's okay. All right, so we're gonna go through this blueprint. This blueprint is so simple that when you see it part of you are gonna be like, "Oh, oh that's it. "Okay, I can go and work with that." That's why I'm gonna go through it in the very beginning of the class. I have a question for you. I call this the Finishrich clarity question. The question is this. I want you to zoom in to this year. 'Cause a lot of what I'm gonna talk about, we're gonna go out decades: 10, 20, 30, 40 years. The challenge sometimes when you go out decades is it's so far out you can't see it, and you don't believe it's possible. So let's talk about this year. Let's just zoom in for a second. If we were getting here together one year from today, what is the one thing that has to happen in your life for you to feel that you have made this year great financial progress? I want you to ask yourself that question. You may not even have the answer right now. But, I want you to ask the question. Because my goal today is to give you that one idea, the one idea that can help you towards that one goal. Money can be overwhelming. Actually let me say this again. Money is overwhelming. It's not that it can be overwhelming, it is overwhelming until you actually know the system. I hope by the end of today it's not overwhelming for you. But, here's the thing. I'm gonna go through 11 steps. You only need one step to change your life. You only need one action to change your life financially. Throughout today I'm gonna be going, go do this. My goal with this class is specific action. I don't know which action you'll take. Some of you I hope you'll take more than one action. But, I want you to be asking yourself all day long, what's the one idea I got today? So that when you leave here, you don't leave at the end of the day and go, "Oh my God, "there's 25 things I need to do." There may be 25 things you need to do, but the most important thing is that you leave here at the end of the day with one. 'Cause if you take one idea and you use it, this day was worthwhile and it can change your life. I told you this is about two books. This is the second book, Start Late, Finish Rich which you said this really helped you. How many of you feel like you're starting late? Show of hands. Okay, and you know what's interesting is this is a young audience. Right, like you're shaking your head. You look young to me. (audience laughing) How this book came to be is actually interesting, is that I was doing my first book signing for The Automatic Millionaire and I always take questions at the end of my book signing. I was in Barnes and Noble. And, I was here in New York and a woman raised her hand. She was in her 30s. I didn't know how old she was but she raised her hand and she's like, "David, you haven't written the book "that I need." And, I go well what do you need? And, she goes, "I read Smart Women Finish Rich, "I read Smart Couples Finish Rich, "I'm gonna buy The Automatic Millionaire today, "but you haven't written the book I need." I go what do you need? She goes, "I need Start Late, Finish Rich." And, everybody in the room cracked up. And, they all went like this. And, I looked at her and I'm like, well how old are you? And, she's like well I'm in my 30s. She wouldn't give me her exact age. And, I said well tell me why you feel like you're starting late. She said, "Trust me, I'm starting late, David." She didn't really wanna talk about it. She's like, "Just trust me, I am." And that's as far as she would go. And, I said okay, I got it. She's like, "I just need to know how to catch up." She's like, "I'm really behind." And, as I did the book signing that night, it was a big audience that day, every single person, every single person who bought the book was like, "I need that book," and started to tell me why they were late. It kinda gives me chills thinking about it because at the end of the book signing, my publisher was with me. And, I'll never forget my publicist looked at me and was like, "That's probably your next book." And, so I started really digging into this issue of what does it mean to feel like you're starting late? Like, what does it feel like? And, I started talking to my readers 'cause that's how I learned so much. And, what I kept hearing was this overwhelming sense of fear, of anxiety, of just like being scared. But, there's just this incredible sense of anxiety. And, they go through the reasons and then the recession made it worse, by the way. But, when I started hearing all the stories, I then started doing research. So, the research that I kept coming up with was research that candidly I didn't believe. So, I was skeptical that so many Americans, for instance, were living paycheck to paycheck. The research was like 70% of Americans were living paycheck to paycheck. So, I didn't believe the research and I was afraid to put stats in a book that I couldn't prove personally, so I actually hired Temple University to run my own survey. And, the survey's in this older book. And, they came back and I couldn't believe the statistics all matched. They came back that 70% of Americans were living paycheck to paycheck, that three out of 10 Americans had less than $1,000. This was my survey. What are the new surveys? Federal Reserve, lotta talk about this survey this year. That's actually why I updated The Automatic Millionaire book. In fact, it's why I'm teaching this class. Federal Reserve came out and said 47% of Americans, based on their research, cannot get their hands on $400 in case of emergency. 47% of Americans. I went to the bank last night to get money to show this, 'cause I don't usually carry money like this. This is $400, you guys. So, one in two Americans in case of emergency right now can't get their hands on this. We have to fix this. We have to fix this. And, if this is you, we're gonna fix this today. Because this doesn't work in this country. Now, there's an opposite of this. The opposite is a whole lot of people have gotten really wealthy. Like, since the Great Recession, we're richer as a country than we've ever been. Automatic Millionaire book first edition, 50 trillion in wealth in this country. Right now, 90 trillion. First edition, I think we had six million millionaires. Then it dipped after the recession. We have over 10 million documented millionaires in this country excluding their homes. You add in home equity values and the numbers are anywhere from 15 to 25 million Americans are millionaires. There's a whole segment of people in this country that are richer than they've ever been. Stock market's at an all-time high. Real estate market's at an all-time high. So, not everybody in this country is suffering. And, a whole lot of people, a whole lot, in fact, more than not, did it on an ordinary income. So, I wanna introduce you to the woman that inspired me to do all of this 'cause she did it on ordinary income and that woman's my Grandma Rose Bach. And I wanted to give her story right now because you talk about one idea? My grandmother at 30 had one idea. The idea that she had on her 30th birthday was that she was tired of being poor. My grandmother did not have a college education. My grandfather did not have a college education. They had lower middle class jobs, okay? They were not making a lot of money. They were renting. They were living paycheck to paycheck. At 30, her idea was she wanted a better life. She had no idea how to do it. But, she decided at 30 that she wanted to go out and change things. So, her story that led to this book, that led to me teaching my first class for women and money, her story at 30 was that she started saving $1 a week. Now, that was a lot of money back then. She had to make all kinds of changes in her life. She worked at Gimbels Department Store. She sold wigs and she brown bagged her lunch and she took money from my grandfather also so that dollar was the combination of the two of them. And, at the end of the week, she would take the money and she'd save it. And, over the years she saved the money and she went to a brokerage firm to invest that money and the first brokerage firm she went to, they actually said to her to come back with her husband. Can you imagine? Some of you women are like, "No way!" Yes! And she's like, my grandmother's very feisty and she's like, "Excuse me, sir. "There are four brokerage firms on this street "and if you don't want my money, I'm going next door." And, they were like, "Sit right down, ma'am." And, she opened that account and she started investing. And, when I went to write the book, she had, she'd had at the time almost a million dollar net worth in stocks. And, I said Grandma, you know, like which of these stocks did you buy? And, she said, "Oh I can't even remember." Which did you buy the first year? She's like, "I don't even remember." She said, "I bought five stocks. "Here's what I remember. "All five stocks went to zero." At the end of the year my grandmother lost every single thing that she invested. She had been teased for a year from her friends being called cheap. She's 31 and she's still broke. Why am I starting with this story? Because this is real world. And, so I said, Grandma, at 31 what did you do? She's like, "I'm still broke, I'm still living "paycheck to paycheck, I wasn't gonna give up, "I just knew I needed better strategies." So, she's like, "I started taking classes. "I started reading books and I started looking for mentors. "And, I started getting financial advice "from people who had already done it "because I was getting financial advice "from people who were either selling it "or didn't have any money." Don't do that. So, she went out and learned over her lifetime over her lifetime she became wealthy, and she became a millionaire. And, she passed lessons onto my father, to myself, my sister, and she changed, those lessons changed the entire family. And, then I went out and now I've gone on and taught it. So, she was starting late at 30 so she thought. And, again, it wasn't like at 35 she's all of a sudden rich. What happened is she did it over her lifetime. So, I'm gonna teach you how to build wealth over your lifetime with a timeless, true, honest approach. What you're not gonna get here today, I'm 25 minutes in, if you came here for the get rich quick scheme, you guys, you can click off. 'Cause I don't have it. I don't have a fast lane, a fast track. You can do this and place a tiny little ad on Facebook and you too can get rich overnight just like me. I don't have that. I don't actually know a single person personally who's done that. Everybody I know who's built wealth over their lifetime, they've worked really, really hard and they did a couple fundamental, simple things and over their lifetime they became wealthy. That's how I know most people. I know there are exceptions but that's the program I got for you.