Gill Fielding - Wealth Company

Success or failure?

I have been reading some stuff lately about, and by,  Anita Roddick – who founded the Body Shop and she has some interesting things to say about starting a business that have made me think.

Anita has taken a different approach to business than most people and my overall impression when reading what she writes is that she isn’t afraid of passion and emotion – and that is odd in a time when everybody seems to seek compromise and neutrality - she makes you feel like losing your rag and screaming your head off sometimes is OK.

Anita is fond of ‘soundbites’ and she puts these up around her business; one struck a chord: “We were searching for employees and people showed up”, and this echoes my own feeling that we often feel that we need extra-ordinary people to do the extra-ordinary things that our businesses need – but extra-ordinary people don’t exist. I have only ever met ordinary people – even the rich and famous people I have met have just been ordinary.

So we need to understand and believe that what we need is ordinary people doing extra-ordinary things because of the business and system in place – and then we can stop treating our people like employees, which often means treating people badly. Then we concentrate on what really matters which is the business and its system.

Reading matter?

People are always asking me what I read and to recommend books to them, and I find this difficult. I have an attention span of a gnat and I am a book ‘dipper’ flitting from book to book and I generally have several books on the go at any one time. But I can recommend this – read anyway!

I make a point of noting down the title of any book that other people in my circle are reading and then I click onto Amazon and buy it – and then when you go to log out Amazon tells you the titles of other similar books – and I generally buy those as well (all of that is tax deductible). This means that I have a constant stream of incoming resources which may, or may not, attract me. In general though there is always something to learn from anything I look at and if I just get one thing from a book then it has been worth while.

It is more important to be constantly open to learning and development that it is to be religiously following a predefined path, and I often say that I still don’t know what I am going to do when I grow up. Ray Kroc also used to say that as long as he was ‘green and growing’ that was fine – because the alternative was stagnation and death.

As they say the mind is like a parachute – it only works when it’s open – but if you insist on having some of my recent reading titles here goes: anything by David Bach, but specifically – Start Late, Finish Rich: T Harv Eker – Secrets of the Millionaire Mind: Rob Parsons – the Money Secret: anything by Robert Alan, but specifically – Multiple Streams of Income.

In return if any of you read a good book – let me know the details on gill.fielding@wealthcompany.com.

Happy reading!

The greyhound

Several people have asked me about the greyhound we bought our daughter Emma for her birthday – and basically she (the dog, not Emma) is a racer, kept in kennels and we have done a fabulous financial deal (too long to go into here) where she is effectively paid for and we get a free racing puppy at the end. We also have the potential upside of her winnings – which look promising as she has won all her trial races to date.

In addition to her costs being covered, we also get free entrance to the local track as owners – where we can go as a family and have fun.

So I was explaining this deal in detail to my dearest friend Nicola (Cairncross) and she laughed at the thought that everything we do in our house has a financial implication and kick back. So in this case, we get something for nothing at the end of the day plus we get a free hobby for a couple of years to enjoy as a family, and Nicola made me realise that I have always done this ‘combining’ in my life, which has resulted in more money.

When I first started out my working life I had a normal day job, but in the evenings I always worked in pubs, or leisure clubs – because that way I got my social life for free. People bought me drinks; somebody would always take me out for a meal afterwards; I had plenty of friends – and the pub or club normally paid for my taxi home. By living like that for a year – basically having the time of my life – I managed to save my entire years salary from the day job – which I put down as a substantial deposit on my first house when I was 19.

I realise now that many things have contributed to my financial well being during my life – but this life+money combining has always served me well. Sadly most people don’t do this because they have a negative feeling about money which means that they deliberately separate off their financial life from everything else – so that they ‘feel’ better.

Its one of those chicken and egg situations: they separate off their money, so it then becomes alien and so they don’t make money because finances are alien – shame.

Wot no bills!

I must confess to feeling a bit down in the dumps today because I haven’t had a bill to pay all week.

As part of my getting focussed drive – see Mondays Gem – everything has been paid, all invoices have been filed and all bank accounts reconciled. All my income and expenditure sheets are up to date, so there’s no analysis to do – and I’ve paid as many things in advance as I had information for.

So what do I do now? Well firstly I am waiting eagerly for the post in case a bill arrives – which I can then savour and relish and pay with glee, but if one doesn’t arrive I will just have to hold out for another day.

I am getting withdrawal symptoms.

Am I mad? I don’t know but I realise that I have always enjoyed every financial transaction I do; I’ve always got huge satisfaction from paying bills and reconciling bank accounts – I absolutely LOVE anything to do with money and how it works, and I’ve always been that way.

I believe so innately in the sea of abundance that every outflow is just as vital to my life as every inflow – it doesn’t matter where the flow is going – as long as there is flow.

I am not sure if many of you share this belief but I know that it has been a major contributing factor to my creation of wealth – and if you don’t have any sense of this ‘passion for payment’ then can I suggest that you try to manufacture it in some way for yourself – just fake it till you make it. I wish you luck with that because it is important.

In the meantime I’m looking forward with hope that there will be a bill to pay tomorrow.

Have a great weekend

Thursday's thoughts

1. One local London builder reckons he needs to take on 20,000 extra staff to cope with the development needed in London for the Olympics.

2. Yorkshire Building Society have developed a new product for divorced people – their Freshstart mortgage allows for a six month interest free period while you get yourself sorted and also counts maintenance payments as income – which few providers do. It’s a great initiative and sadly in great demand.

3. Colin Jackson – the Olympic hurdler has a thing about time – unsurprising really when you consider how his life has been dominated by the odd second or so. But he has a Cartier diamond watch that he bought in 1994 for £25,000 plus enough watches to wear a different one every day for a couple of months!

Market Marvel

Now I don’t normally write about the stock market two days in a row – I must be having a stock market kind of week, but there was a very interesting article in the Sunday Times last week about a man called Rudolf-Riad Younes.

This guy has returned 15% on his investments every year for the last 10 years – which in the very long term isn’t that much higher than the running average – but in the relatively short term period of the last 10 years is hugely successful.

So I was interested to read how he does it (because then I can copy his system!), and I was pleasantly surprised that he takes the Scales of Abundance approach.

Any of you who have heard me tell the Scales of Abundance stories will know that I believe that wealth creation is a matter of the belief we have in ourselves to be wealthy balanced with the ability, or knowledge needed, to create that wealth. Rudolf expresses it as the balance of the two halves of his brain – the left for creativity and the right for logic.   

He says that in order to be successful he has developed the skills of natural survival – being the understanding in the external; the environment (or the market) combined with the knowledge of the internal; oneself (or belief).

What a fantastic bloke!

Stock market moves

When you watch the stock market with interest as I do it is easy to spot trends and movements because it operates on a simple rule – which is it HATES uncertainty! So it seems that it doesn’t matter whether news is good or bad – as long as it’s certain.

Take last week – which was a roller coaster week for the UK.

On Wednesday the successful Olympic bid was announced and the stock market shot through the 5,200 barrier for the first time since March 2002 – that was the good news.

And then on Thursday morning the terrible news – the London bombs – and the stock market immediate fell back about 150 points in a few hours – during the time of uncertainty. During Thursday we didn’t really know the extent of the problem, but by the end of the day some semblance of control had returned – we thought by then that we knew the extent of the problem and the stock market obliged and bounced back to its opening position.

Then on Friday the market moved up again to close at 5,232 – up 71 on the week.

So first the good Olympic news – the market climbed; then the uncertain few hours - the market plummeted: and then the confirmed bad news – and the market climbed even higher.

And looking through history this is always the case – after even big disasters like Pearl Harbour – the stock markets rose – so the only thing that really shakes the market is uncertainty – and by its very nature – it is uncertain so we can do nothing to predict it.

But just by knowing that we can protect ourselves accordingly with certain tactics – such as automatic stops. In the case of last week you would have been stopped out early on Thursday morning – unnecessarily as it turned out – and you would have had to buy back into all your stocks again on Friday - but isn’t it better to be safe than sorry?

Get Focussed!

Wow – did I have a great time yesterday! It started badly: the kids all finished school on Friday, the sense of summer holiday overwhelm had started to kick in: I was hot and bothered, and then the Sunday nanny arrived (you remember her, she comes on Sundays at 5 so that I can do a bit of office preparation for the week ahead, while she washes hair, does homework, finds the missing shoe etc)

Anyway, when the Sunday nanny arrived I sloped off into my office and just sat there wondering how on earth I was going to get through the next 8 weeks of looking after my wealth motorway with the children in the house. Now I suppose I should get something clear – my children are not devils, they are ordinary kids, and we do have child care in place, and weeks booked at summer camp, and drama school and so on – so its not that they are around me all the time, but its just that they are around some of the time and that disrupts me. I find when they are in and out – and even if they are in another part of the house, I don’t concentrate so well. Also, I never know when I am going to be distracted enough to leave what I am doing and join in with their activities.

So the summer holidays are a distracting time, and my challenge is that I never really know each day how much time I am going to have available for my work. So I sat there last night and thought that I had to plan my work in order of importance so that if I only get an hour I know I’m working on the critical stuff first.

So I started one single lever arch file – called focus, and in it I put the 4 or 5 things that HAVE to get done whatever. I then re-filed everything else, cleared my desk, threw out loads of old paperwork and allowed myself just three ‘in trays’ being: personal have to, work have to, and gem resources.

So on Friday I had everything to do and today I only have 4 things. The thought of time pressure forced me into re-evaluating my outstanding work into stuff that matters and stuff that doesn’t.

What a lesson to be reminded of and now I feel great, and in control and able to cope.  It also made me realise how much time I spend just ‘fiddling and doing’ on stuff that seems urgent but frankly isn’t that important.

All simple lessons about planning, prioritising and control that we all know and understand but sometimes we have to have a little domestic crisis to drive the learning a little deeper!

Schools out!

NB This is an advance warning of a disruption in service!

My eldest daughter finished school last week as she had finished her GCSEs and my two little ones finish school at 12 noon today – eek! This means I now have to go into mother mode for 8 weeks until the little darlings are returned safely (and with huge relief) to the sanity of the school day in September.

So although this might lead to a slight disruption in this Gems service – as my system is to write these immediately after I wave goodbye to them in the mornings – thankfully, it wont lead to a disruption in my wealth creation programme.

This is because I have deliberately planned my wealth creation system around the fact that I want to go into tick over mode from time to time, and many of my investments can be, and are, managed by others when necessary. So whatever you do don’t use the summer as an excuse to defer your wealth making – compounding will be working against you every day of the summer just the same – so make sure that you’re getting something working IN your favour whilst you have fun.

And me, well I’m off to the cinema this afternoon, and our annual trip to Centre Parcs is looming – pass my shorts, I’m going into summer shut down!

Have a great weekend.

Thursday thoughts

Some funny numbers that caught my eye this week:

1. The average shortfall on the average endowment policy in this country is £5,000, which is a huge shame as most people would not have understood why they had this policy in place – but sadly they sure as heck now understand that they have to find the difference! If you think you were mis-sold one of these policies contact the Financial Services Ombudsman on 0845 080 1800.

2. We spend huge amounts of money on buying clothes and accessories for our babies and the total wardrobe value of our under ones in this country is estimated to be £446 million – don’t tell Emma but she was born in July 1989 which must have been quite hot because I remember that as a baby all she ever ‘wore’ was a nappy plus a (clean) tea towel over her head to keep her shaded.

3. The government’s costs of running the tax credit system have risen from £36.1 million in 1999/2000 to £403 million in 2003/4, and apparently this has highlighted some huge inefficiencies. So for example over 65 million letters were sent out in two years informing people of the tax credit opportunity when only 6 million qualify for the relief, meaning nearly 60 million letters and postage costs were unnecessarily incurred.

What the Inland Revenue lack I often feel is a massive dose of common sense – because clearly if somebody just thought that type of thing through properly it wouldn’t happen, but sadly it seems that many people, when becoming an employee of the government, just seem to turn their brain off.