HOW I MADE A QUARTER MILLION DOLLAR$ FROM THE TRUNK OF MY CAR
Real-Life Lessons on Making Money, Entrepreneurship & Success
By James “Bird” Guess
Copyright © 2009 BlacBird Investments LLC. All Rights Reserved.
First Smashwords Edition: January 2012
$chool of Money & Wealth
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Table of Contents
Introduction: Becoming the American Dream
Chapter 1: Ambitions of a Hustler
Chapter 2: Discipline, Diligence, Determination
Chapter 3: Being Smart vs. Being Intelligent
Chapter 4: Shh! I Have a Money Secret
Chapter 5: From Employee to Entrepreneur
Chapter 6: The Sum of All Financial Fears
Chapter 7: From the Rat Race to the Wealth Race
Chapter 8: Being Wealthy vs. Being Rich
Chapter 9: Great 8 Money & Wealth Lessons
Chapter 10: GOD’s Financial Favorites
Chapter 11: The Makings of a Millionaire
Millionaires Who Started From the Trunk of their Car, Dorm Room or Garage
Maybe You Will be a Millionaire
Declaration of Financial Independence: You Inc
Dedication
This book is dedicated to the financially poor, yet ambitious individuals who with determination and opportunity are destined for financial freedom and independence!
Acknowledgments
GOD!
“But remember the LORD your God, for it is he who gives you the ability to produce wealth, and so confirms his covenant, which he swore to your forefathers, as it is today.”
—Deuteronomy 8:18
Special Thanks
Shashea L. Adams, Kendria Taylor, Maurice “Reese” Lewis, Chad Taylor, The Executive Capital Assembly of Dallas, Inc.
Introduction
Although all men and women are created equal in “The Game of Money & Wealth,” they are not born equal. Most people financially begin life where their parents ended. Wealth and knowledge are transferred from adults to children, who eventually inherit the family estate, shack, or debts.
Unfortunately, we are not taught how to prosper in the wealthiest country in the world, instead we are taught only how to become one of the poorest players—the Employee. It is critical that you understand the rules, players, winners and losers. You must also develop a financially intelligent mentality to make certain that you have a chance at winning in the “Game of Money & Wealth.”
In this book, you will discover every financial and business secret, strategy, and innovation I have learned from being a broke employee to street savvy entrepreneur, and millionaire in the making. Unfortunately, I had no one to teach me the basics to the game of making money and accumulating wealth. It was only through my relentless desire and pursuit of Wealth, and fear of poverty that made me veer off the path to middle class and led me toward the path of the millionaire class.
From the time I was homeless to making hundreds of thousands of dollars and losing hundreds of thousands, I continue to overcome, rise, achieve, attain and pursue my greatness. Although my net worth fluctuates year to year, my self worth only elevates and every time I lose and learn, I actually breakeven. Being able to start out broke, from scratch and nothing and become something represents the essence of the “American Dream.”
I am the “American Dream,” because I consistently came from nothing and became something. Now you can take everything from me—my money, my credit, my house, and even my car, and I will have it all back within three to five years because of what I know, the mentality I have acquired, and the person I have become.
Chapter 1
Ambitions of a Hustler
“Life isn’t about finding yourself. Life’s about creating yourself.”
—George Bernard Shaw
On May 19, 2002, I graduated from Austin College in Sherman, Texas, and received two diplomas—one from the college and one from the streets of life. You must understand that five years earlier, my mother threw my clothes into trash bags and set them outside the garage door. As she turned her back on me she said something I would never forget, “you will need me, before I need you.” As I gathered my belongings and tossed them into the back of my Ford Probe, I promised myself that I would never need anyone again for emotional or financial support. I had simultaneously turned my back on my mother and the entire world.
As I sat in the car, my thought process worked like a perfect product of public school education—a multiple-choice question. If you are homeless, where do you go? The available answers were: a) homeless shelter, b) friends, c) other family.
Since I had no other family and thought of myself as too good to stay in a shelter, I drove to a high school friend’s apartment. When I walked in, there was alcohol and drug paraphernalia everywhere and multiple people snorting short lines of cocaine off broken mirrors. I asked my friend whose name was Junior where I could crash in his efficiency style apartment. He said I could have the spot on the floor by the bathroom. It was a long way from a soft bed in the suburbs, but nonetheless, was a roof over my head for the time being.
It was 2 a.m. and the party was still going strong. I learned how to sleep by controlling my mind to focus on one piece of sound—the loud music, and I eventually fell asleep.
The next morning I got up to get ready for work at the local car wash. I loved working there because it provided me with multiple sources of income. My primary source of income was simply my paycheck earned for the number of hours I worked. The secondary source was the money and products I collected from under the seats, ashtrays, and glove compartments of the customers’ cars.
My goal was to make an extra $50 a day, simply from my secondary source. But before I knew it, greed began to multiply inside my mind, and like the old saying goes—“pigs get fat, but hogs get slaughtered.” One day I was vacuuming a new Ford F-150 and found a small book underneath the seat. I pulled it out and a credit card dropped from it. My eyes blinked dollar signs, as I stuffed the book with the card between my belt and waist.
Once business slowed down and there were no other cars to wash, I went to the bathroom and examined my new found goods. I pulled the credit card out of the book and it was a Platinum Visa. I knew the window of opportunity was only 24-48 hours before the customer realized the card was lost and reported it.
During lunch breaks, I would go to Wal-Mart and use the credit card to purchase food and other essentials, along with items that could easily be liquidated in the streets. The items with the highest profit margins were video consoles, televisions, CD players and other electronics. Lucky for me, Wal-Mart never asked for identification, especially if you were willing to split the profits with a selectively recruited employee.
Another reason I liked Wal-Mart was because more than likely the customer lived in the neighborhood and shopped at the local store, so any new purchases would look normal to the credit card company. But after purchasing over $1,000 in products, it was time to cut up the card and trash it, because I knew the credit card company would eventually red flag it for “irregular purchase activity” sooner or later.
For my own sanity, I usually waited a week before capitalizing off the next customer. This time it was a soccer mom who left her checkbook stuffed between the seats. Before I took anything from a customer, I would always quickly evaluate their intelligence. If their car was extremely clean, it meant they were organized and would notice immediately if they lost something. So my window of opportunity was shorter and more risky. But if their car was dirty or they had lots of kids, I knew their minds were either unorganized or very occupied and it would take them a few days longer before they realized something was missing. Also, I operated with an added layer of protection from the car wash policy because there was a large sign posted that read “Not Responsible for Lost or Stolen Articles Left Inside Car.” I treated this like my license to capitalize off customers.
As the soccer mom went inside accompanied by her four kids to pay for her car wash, I could tell she was intelligent by her vocabulary and style of dress. So I chose the “small leak” strategy instead. This tactic involved taking a small amount that could create a large impact. I learned this strategy from Willie, The Wealthiest Man in the Hood, who always said, “It was a small leak that sank the great Titanic.” Instead of taking the entire checkbook like most people would do, I simply took two checks toward the back of the checkbook. I knew this would be successful because soccer moms always write checks and balance them month after month.
By the time she notices, it will be a month later and if the charges were from a familiar place like a grocery store, she would probably not question the charges as much, and simply think she made a mistake in balancing her checkbook. Furthermore, since she had a nice size family to manage, she would probably not have enough time and energy to investigate the charges. I had the discipline to make sure the two checks were used at the same grocery store and this would cover my food and household expenses for the next two months.
When I tried to use the second check, an alert came up! The store employee said it was reported lost or stolen and requested that I speak to the store manager. I made it appear as if I were in a hurry and decided to casually walk out, while she paged the manager. After getting in my car, I saw the manager coming outside looking for me so I “zigzagged” through the parking lot in the opposite direction. I thought I got away clean, but little did I know I would be in for a rude awakening.
A few days later, I saw a man who I initially assumed to be a customer talking to my manager. Then I noticed my manager signaling for me as they both walked toward my direction. My manager introduced that man as Detective Thomas, and said he wanted to talk with me. We went into my manager’s office and that is when he informed me that the grocery store manager had written down my license plate number when he saw me leaving the grocery store. I played dumb and said, “I shopped at the grocery store, but had never written any bad checks.”
He suggested that I do an “interview” at the police station so they could clear my name, which I later discovered was just an opportunity for him to get me to confess. After obtaining my photo, I learned that he later took the picture to the grocery store employee who identified me as the man who tried to pass the stolen check. That was all they really needed after I gave a “stupid statement” corroborating their evidence.
Not to mention, Detective Thomas said they would not attempt to charge me for other area forgery crimes if I plead guilty. I had to use my savings to retain a lawyer who negotiated the felony forgery charges to deferred adjudication probation for three years. I remember the judge asking me why I had committed these crimes. My response was that I feared poverty and failure. He then told me that I better get in school fast or more than likely he would see me again and not be so lenient. I feared the entire criminal justice system, and my plan was to do exactly what the judge recommended—I got in school quick!
During that summer, I packed up and left Junior’s to attend Collin County Community College. As I finished loading up the car with my personal possessions, a book fell out of my backpack onto the ground. It was the same book I had taken along with the Platinum Visa credit card. The title of the book was Think & Grow Rich by Napoleon Hill. At first, I immediately thought of trashing the book and my entire criminal past. But out of all the things I decided to take with me to the local community college, this book was one of them.
Chapter 2
Discipline, Diligence, Determination
“A formal education will make you a living, but a self-education will make you a fortune”
—Jim Rohn
When I first started to read Think & Grow Rich, I was instantly mesmerized by how the book was written, how the ideas were formulated, and the way Napoleon Hill expressed how to obtain the secret of success and wealth accumulation. Here was a man who spent twenty years of his life interviewing hundreds of the wealthiest and most powerful men in Capitalist America. When Napoleon Hill interviewed Andrew Carnegie, the steel tycoon, Carnegie requested that Hill write a book describing his formula for wealth and success, and deliver that formula to the world of ordinary men and women, who otherwise might go through life as failures.
Although I went to college for four years and received a formal education, the most valuable lessons I have ever learned came from experiencing the real world and applying the lessons I learned from books. “Street smarts” plus “book smarts” means you are twice as smart as the average person—another lesson from Willie, The Wealthiest Man in the Hood. I always referred to myself as a hustler, but my definition of a hustler was an individual who relentlessly pursued his passion and realized success when he turned his passion into profit. College was a “cakewalk.” All you had to do was memorize the vocabulary and the concepts, which were either in the overpriced textbook or in the professor’s notes.
I was not the smartest student, but I stayed in the library longer than anyone, studying, reading, writing, and most importantly, reciting the concepts and explaining them to myself. When you can adequately explain an idea or concept to yourself or another person in your own words, then you understand it and are ready to move on.
Once I mastered my classes and grades, I began reading for personal enrichment in my spare time. Some of my best reading (and sleep) was on the city bus at 5 am every morning on my way to school. I was fascinated with the history of money, economics, business and finance.
Although I did not have a television or any furniture in my 400 square feet apartment, I had business, finance, psychology and economics books stacked waist high. I would try to determine how the wealthiest individuals in the world became multi-millionaires and even billionaires.
From Oprah Winfrey, Bill Gates and Warren Buffet, to Bob Johnson, Henry Ford and Russell Simmons, I was determined to pattern myself after each one of them taking some small habit or characteristic, and implementing it into my own life. My philosophy was that if you study and mimic the best long enough, you will become one of the best soon enough.
Unfortunately, ambition and determination cannot be taught in school, it is something that has to be inside you. The good news is that a spark of ambition exists in each and every person, but it is up to that individual to discover what dreams will fuel that spark into a flame, and what passion will fuel the flame into a fire, and what plan will fan that fire into a roaring blaze of success.
Discipline is probably the single most important habit and behavior a person must possess to become wealthy and successful. Discipline is simply a set of personal rules to guide and control your behavior. For years, financial advisors and personal finance educators have pleaded with people to do two things; stick to a budget and save money. This philosophy of budgets and saving has obvious flaws, evident by the fact that 60% of Americans do not keep a budget, and for the past 10 years Americans have only saved 2% of their disposable income.
According to an annual survey by Franklin Covey, every year the number one New Year's resolution is usually to get out of debt, save money, or lose weight. But less than 15% of the people who make those resolutions ever succeed. About 35% break them before the end of January. Why? The average person does not have discipline, instead they prefer to live in the “right now.” There are two reasons why people are not wealthy and successful, either they don’t know how to become successful and accumulate wealth, or they do know, but fail to apply what they know to their daily life!