Many have asked me why I do
what I do. This post is my
response.......
I grew up in a modest, but neat
home the youngest of nine children. (All of them were girls except
seven of us.) Dad worked incredibly hard to provide the necessities
of life. He had his own business, was a county commissioner and held
several demanding and high profile jobs at our church. Mom worked
probably harder at home cooking, cleaning, washing clothes, being a PTA mom as
well as serving in various capacities at our church. Both of them
were truly amazing people who knew how to make a dollar stretch as far as
possible.
You see, both Mom and Dad were
teenagers during the great depression. On Halloween day 1933, when
my Dad was 15, he climbed into the back of the truck with the family cow to
move from the small city of Arimo, Idaho to Pocatello so that Grandpa could
look for work. Grandpa and Grandma had homesteaded two 160 acre
plots. Their house was on skids so they could pull the house from
one homestead to the other allowing them to live the required 6 month minimum
to maintain both pieces of land. Grandpa had also started the small
town store and had a grain elevator which he used to engage in buying grain
from local farmers and then loading a train car to sell it to buyers in the
East.
Sometime during the summer of
1933, Grandpa and Grandma went into Logan, Utah and withdrew a substantial
amount money in cash. They quietly returned to Arimo, promptly went down
to the dirt basement and buried the money. For the next few days Grandma lived
in fear. She had nightmares of someone breaking into the house,
harming the children and stealing the money. Finally at her
insistence, the two of them retrieved the money and took the long ride to
Pocatello, Idaho. There they interviewed a number of different bank
presidents/managers. One particular president prevailed in
convincing them his bank was sound and in no danger of going out of business as
so many did that year. They deposited the money and returned home feeling
confident, especially Grandma.
I am sure you know what happens
next in my story. Yup, not long, supposedly two weeks later, the
bank went bust and Grandma and Grandpa lost all that money which led to them
losing essentially everything; their store, their land, their grain elevator -
all lost.
I grew up with this story of
Grandma and Grandpa being told and retold. I guess the main point I
take from the lesson is: being self-reliant and in control of your
money is best. My Dad, on the other hand seems to have taken
from his experience the idea that paying cash was the best way to
go. If you have no debt on something, no one or no bank can
foreclose and take it away from you. Dad did not distrust banks, but then again
he did not trust them all that much either. I was taught to do
without material things and save up until you could pay for something with
cash. Oh, the many fun luxuries I saw friends have that I did
not. Often though, but the time I had saved enough to get whatever
it was, my tastes had changes and I no longer wanted it.
Another key lesson I gleaned
growing up was: the banks make the most money. My Dad is
a veteran of World War II. When he came home to his three year old
son and wife, Grandpa wanted the 5 brothers who had all served in the military
to stay together and work together. (A story for another day.) As
time passed however, the brothers all started doing their own thing, except my
Dad and his identical twin who started a lumber company. They were
inseparable. At one point several years later, my Dad was on
the roof of one of his three 6-plexes they were building when my Mom came to
visit. She was 9 months pregnant. She called up to Dad and
asked; "Are you coming to the hospital? This baby (yours truly) is
coming and I cannot wait any longer." When I was about 4 those
three apartment buildings were sold. Dad and his brother carried the
paper; in other words they financed the purchase, acting as the banker. For the
next 30+ years, Dad received a check each month. The total
payments were a lot more than the purchase price of the apartments; he made quite
a bit of money on interest as well. For decades we siblings always wanted to
know how to make money like Dad.
The third lesson is best
describe by Mark Twain: "Don't let your schooling get in the way
of your education." In other words, you can never stop learning.
I got a little lost from this for a while. You see, my Dad regretted
that he did not take full advantage of the GI Bill upon returning from
war. He had a 3 year old after all and needed to get to
work. He wished he would have gone to college, so Dad really encouraged us
kids to do well in school and to get a university
eduction. Why? So we could get a good job and be
successful. Most of us graduated from college. I took it
to the extreme and got a Ph.D. in Chemistry. My major professor often
asked me a question that has stuck with me ever since: "If we are so
smart, why aren't we rich." I decided to do post-doctoral work
at the California Institute of Technology - Caltech to the those "in the
know." When I finished there I was ready to conquer the world
and be on my way to fame and fortune.
My first job was in the San
Francisco Bay area with a venture capital funded start-up
company. Remember "bio-tech bay?" I was in the
middle of it. We (my wife and two sons by then) purchased a modest
house and entered what I call indentured servitude. My mortgage payment
seemed huge. As time went on, another son was born, and I started to
realize that even though I was making a good salary, things were not as good
financially as I wanted. Nor were they close to what I had
envisioned for myself. It wasn't for lack of effort either, I was
the most aggressive of anyone at my work in the percentage of my salary that I
was putting aside into the 401(k). I had a co-worker, who had also
been at Caltech, with whom I used to talk about things. He knew of
my impatience in wealth building and suggested I read the book "Rich
Dad Poor Dad."
What an eye opener that book
was for me! Here I was, Dr. Henderson in professional circles, all
highly educated and such, but I had let my schooling get in the way of my
education. According to the book, I was Poor Dad. To make
things seem worse for me, my Dad was Rich Dad and I had failed to learn his
lessons about life and wealth. He had done it right, by design or default,
it doesn't matter. Here I had spent all this time in school getting
degrees and publishing papers, presenting my work on multiple continents and
even having patents issued on my work. Was it all a waste of time? I
don't think so, as the experience was valuable, but as far a building wealth
goes, the fact remained I was Poor Dad. I was guilty of doing what Mark Twain
warned against.
That book was only the
beginning. I became a voracious reader of financial
books. I consider a Ph.D. degree nothing more than a certification
that I know how to learn, and I was confident that I could learn the
best way to build wealth. I was determined to prove my professor
wrong - I was smart and I was going to be rich.
In the middle of all this
reading I learned another lesson: it is better to have your capital
returned than a return on your capital. Living near the
epicenter of the dot com craze in 2000 I watched the beginning of the bubble
burst. Don't misunderstand, I knew my share of several 20 something
employees of dot com companies that sold their stock options when their company
went public, took the cash and promptly walked into the nearest Porsche
dealership and wrote out a personal check for a new car. For me, the
recession and stock market crash in late 1999 and early 2000 was an eye opener.
I saw some hard earned and harder saved money just disappear into thin air.
Luckily, I found a different job, and moved out the area, allowing us to be
able to sell our house for a handsome profit before real estate took a hit in
the Bay area.
My new job was a good job and I
excelled at what I did. I helped build the company and brought in
millions of dollars in sales as a result of creativity, management skills and
work ethic. For a while though, I allowed myself to be strong armed by the
company owners. Conditions at the company were unsafe and
unhealthy. If OSHA had shown up at our facility, we would have been
shut down for safety violations, but pleas from employees were ignored. Two
good people were even physically hurt rather seriously and still not much
changed. Several others left so emotionally drained and robbed of life it was
tragic. Despite the great work happening in the department I oversaw,
there were decisions made by the owner management that were unethical and
dishonest. This conflict haunted me, did the fact that I was still
Poor Dad, just at another high paying job making someone else
wealthy.
Looking back, part of the pain
came from my ignoring the lesson of Grandpa and Grandma - I was not self
reliant, I was not in control. The pain of the
conflict grew to a point that I actually had a doctor tell me I was going to
die unless I changed things in my life to relieve some of the stress.
I need to back up here and tell
you what was going on while I was at this company. Because I had forgotten the
lesson of Grandpa and Grandma I went through a period of time where I was
discouraged. I began to believe the American Dream was
dead. Yes, I thought there was no way I could provide for my
children at the level my Dad had provided for me. And then, my world
all changed when I saw an advertisement about how to become your own
banker. Memories of what my Dad had done as a banker with his
apartments flooded in.
As I learned about several
financial concepts, I was challenged to rethink my ideas about how money
works. Because I am a good learner and was motivated to find a
better way, I was able to unlearn some downright crazy financial myths and
relearn sound and lasting truths.
One of those myths was that
paying cash is the best way to acquire things I wanted and
needed. Given what I grew up with, this was a n extremely difficult
concept to unlearn. But my upbringing also planted the seed of learning a
better way. Remember the apartment complexes Dad built and
sold? He owned the debt on the properties - he acted like the
banker. I have since learned the best way to acquire the things of
life is to finance them with your own resources, using debt as a tool to create
wealth, not as a shackle of servitude. The difference between the
two is who owns the debt. As I (painfully) relearned a better way,
my optimism grew and my faith in the American Dream returned.
Because of this new knowledge I
started to be happier and more excited about life. My whole outlook changed
from a perspective of scarcity to a perspective of abundance. I wanted everyone
I knew and cared about to know what I had learned. I started right
away to help people part time.
Ok, back to the doctor telling
me to change things. Despite all the positive things happening for me on the
financial side of life, my work situation was still so poor it was literally
killing me. Well, I took the doctor's advice and made a
change. I decided the best way to help the world was to share with
them the message of hope I had found. When people look at the world through a
lens of abundance, they are able to be better people - better citizens,
neighbours, church members, family members, and friends.
And so it goes; my story
continues from that point. I love helping people help
themselves. I love teaching people how they can be financially self
sufficient. I help them to make money like banks do. In addition,
they are confident that they will have all they want and need it life.
A huge bonus to all this is the
ever-growing circle of friends I have. When someone goes through
"an awakening" from things I share with them I become a trusted
family friend. They want to introduce me to their family and their
close friends. I really like being a benefit to others. I
like being someone who others come to for advice. I am making the
world a better place by what I do - one person at a time. What a
blessed life.
