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Love, Legacies and Life Lessons

By: John Dealey

Several years ago, a friend of mine, who for purposes of this story we'll call Milton, expanded his business into Europe.

He also moved to a 3rd continent and expanded his US operations to a 100,000 sq. foot building. But he begin from one room in his house more than 18 years ago.

At the time, Milton was a printing salesman. It was a pretty good job working for a pretty good company with a pretty good boss. All in all, he had a pretty good life.

As sometimes happens, Milton begin to look to the future and specifically the future of his children.

Education for Excellence

He wanted to be able to give them something, though at the beginning, he wasn't sure what kind of gift would really mean something.

Finally he decided that the gift, or legacy if you will, he wanted to leave to his children was to give them a more formal education than he had gotten. He wanted to be able to provide and pay for all college expenses for each of his children.

Now, this desire came about over a period of time and was really a MasterMind primarily between Milton and himself.

Forewarned is Forearmed

One day, however, Milton had a very disturbing thought: "Three of my children are all going to be in college at the same time!"

Oh my! This was not going to work at all; an impending crisis loomed. Milton could never pay for that with his current earnings. He didn't see how he could get a big enough pay increase or to sell enough to cover all those college expenses.

To be prepared is half the victory!

This troubled him for several days. At first there seemed to be no answer, but he refused to give up - this dream was too important to him.

He read, he studied, he MasterMinded and brainstormed and asked other people for their thoughts and ideas.

Over time he collected many ideas from various sources but discarded each one as they came because it did not work, was too hard, or for various other reasons.

What you think about, you bring about.

Milton became discouraged. He felt there was no way out. But after a while Milton began to get angry with himself for thinking in these defeatist terms.

He made a conscious change in his thinking. He rededicated himself to a successful outcome and decided again that there must be a solution, even if after all his efforts he had not come across it yet.

Milton made a commitment to success and knew he would find it!

Visualize success!

He thought and thought and began adding additional solutions. Of these, the best one seemed to be this: he would keep his pretty good job and at the same time develop a little business on the side and save all the profits from this job to fund his dream. Milton would then have enough money to pay for all those college expenses a few years down the road.

Plan your work and work your plan.

He created a plan to become a customer to his current employer. He would take specific orders, buy the printing from his employer then sell it back to his new customers to pay for his kids' college.

In thinking of how he might approach his boss however he decided that a slightly oblique approach might work best.

Milton went to his boss, told him of his situation with his children and college and asked his boss if he wanted to give Milton a raise. He paused to let his boss think about that for a moment.

a Win-Win solution!

Then he said "I could also start a business on the side and buy printing from you for a few of my specialty customers." He laid out his idea in detail.

His boss agreed that it was a fine idea and gave his approval.

So Milton started his little "business for his kids college expenses" in his garage.

It was complete success. So much so that the new business soon outgrew Milton's garage and took over a room in his home.

After a short while, his new enterprise had taken over part of every room in his home. He had to move his rapidly growing business to a regular business location.

Expanding Dreams Fill the Vacuum

As college expenses were now assured and his various children began moving through all those wonderful experiences, Milton's dreams began to grow.

It didn't seem anymore that just paying for their college education would be enough. He wanted to give them more.

He began to create a second legacy for his children. He wanted that each of his children, after their graduation from college, come to work for him and he would teach each of them to be a "good employee" in this fabulous land of opportunity called America.

Legacies of Love

From here, the legacies - originally a gift for his children - began to grow as fast as his business and expand to include all those he loved.

Milton joined a formal master-mind group made up of other business owners with firms from $400 million down to as small as $2 million in annual revenues, called MasterMind Advisory Council #2.

With the help and guidance of this group, it wasn't long before the third legacy, his beloved wife's dream of retiring early from the business they have founded and "going to the house" was also achieved.

Life Lessons in Success

The next two legacies were natural extensions of having his children be "good employees". For those children who were interested in business, Milton wanted them to be able to handle more responsibility, in essence an entire division of the company he had founded. This fourth legacy happened, too.

MasterMind Advisory Councils

Then he wanted to impart more authority, experience and wisdom on those children so he increased the size of the divisions they were handling, giving each their own budget and authority exceeding the magical $1,000,000 mark.

He also helped each get involved in their own MasterMind Advisory Council Groups, which he believed was of the utmost importance. This legacy came to pass as well.

Future Generations

In time and after consulting and MasterMinding with his Advisory Council #2 and others advisors, Milton decided to do some more planning, this time looking at future generations, beyond even his own children.

He hired some very fine financial planners and over time his children and very key employees were given stock in the privately owned company. This was legacy number six.

Planning for Success the MasterMind way

Now about this time someone who wanted to buy his company approached him. But Milton was so happy with what had been achieved that he quickly declined the generous offer and wouldn't even consider it.

During one of the MasterMind Advisory Council meetings, he let them know about the offer. Some of the members mentioned that maybe there were some other viewpoints Milton might want to consider.

Planning is very important when somebody wants to buy illiquid assets and opportunities for sale and subsequent events such as this do not come along often.

MasterMind Research Project

Milton was not convinced but in the past had found such great wisdom in these fellow business owners that he set himself on the path of a MasterMind Research Project.

He held over 40 successive master-mind/ brainstorming phone interviews with people who had been in similar situations or advisers to people who had been.

He was shocked at the results of these interviews and it began to dramatically broaden and change his opinion of his own decision to not sell his company.

Connections

About this same time as profits and sales were up, they began planning for a "ranch house" on several hundred acres which they had purchased a few years back, somewhat on a lark, but also somewhat on a dream of a connection place for their descendants many generations into the future. This was to be legacy number 7.

Ah - Ha !

His business expanded to Europe then to Asia and still more offers came in, most of which didn't work or undervalued his company too much.

But then 2-3 very serious offers arrived about the same time and after several MasterMind sessions Milton suddenly had a major ah-ha realization.

He has at least 10-15 more years of productive working life and if during those years they remained as they had been, he would be blocking or limiting his children's future. All of a sudden he became more interested in what a sale might look like.

Finally to get out of his children's way, he sold his company for over $30m cash. This from a $5,000 initial investment which was actually a loan taken out against an old automobile.

Whatever the mind of man
can conceive
and believe,
it can achieve.

- Napoleon Hill, author, educator and statesman

Napoleon Hill is also credited with coining the phrase 'Master Mind' which he defines as: "coordination of knowledge and effort in a spirit of harmony, between two or more people, for the attainment of a definite purpose."

In his book, Think and Grow Rich, he teaches how MasterMind groups can significantly multiply an individual's brain power and continually motivate and expand positive emotions for each of the participants.

This powerful process is still in use today with life-changing results for many. What is great about this marvelous thing called MasterMind is that anyone can learn to harness this abundant natural force and use it to improve their world!

Article Source: http://innerselfhelp.com

This article was written by John Dealey, Jerome Salyers and Daniel Oostenbrink. If you would like to learn more about Mastermind principles and get a free subscription to the Mastermind Tips Ezine visit www.moneytoyou.org

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