Paul Ferraresi

“Nothing in this world can take the place of persistence. Talent will not; nothing is more common than unsuccessful people with talent. Genius will not; unrewarded genius is almost a proverb. Education will not; the world is full of educated derelicts. Persistence and determination alone are omnipotent. The slogan ‘press on’ has solved and always will solve the problems of the human race.” — Calvin Coolidge

I have worked with many successful people; people who have achieved the kinds of lives they have dreamed about. I have also worked with many people who are not anywhere near where they want to be in life. Many times those who are not successful resent those who are and believe that somehow success was handed to those who have achieved much.

What I have found however is that actually the reverse is true. Those who have achieved much have worked much HARDER than those who are not successful. You wouldn’t believe the stories of struggle that I hear from those who now appear to be on “top of the heap.” Yes, they are successful, but no, it wasn’t handed to them! And I find that most of the unsuccessful people who come to me actually haven’t been tenacious at all. I find that with many of the people I speak to who complain about their lack of success simply have not persevered and have not been tenacious. When I ask them questions I usually get excuses. Yes, there are exceptions on both sides, but I find this to be almost universally true.

If you are one who finds yourself dreaming of a better life, or looking at someone who “has it made,” I would ask you to take a long, deep look inward and at your life to find whether or not you have actually been tenacious in pursuit of your dreams. How long have you gone for it? Many people who achieve much go for YEARS before they achieve what their hearts long for? How hard have you gone for it? Most people who achieve much have given up much. They have sacrificed much. They strive valiantly for what it is that resides deep in their dreams. They just plain ol’ work hard!

So what are the principles of tenacity? What do you need to know in order to take your turn at the tenacious? Here are some thoughts to start your fire and get you going!

1. Sometimes you just have to outlast the others.

“Success seems to be largely a matter of hanging on after others have let go.” — William Feather

I have found that many people start on their dreams but most never finish. Then those who stop resent those who make it. The truth is that most people who become successful have simply mastered the art of keeping on keeping on! I myself can remember early on in my career when I would get discouraged and I literally said to myself, “One more week. Just give it one more week.” Quite frankly, this is what got me through a couple of years of my work early on. I hung on as others let go.

It is easy to get disheartened. Ask those who have achieved success if they ever got disheartened and you will find some of the most amazing stories you have ever heard. Give it a try: Go to the most successful person you know and ask them if they ever thought about quitting. Ask them how they kept on going. You will be amazed at what you hear.

2. Sometimes you just have to hold on at the end.

“When you get to the end of your rope, tie a knot and hang on.” — Franklin Roosevelt

I wonder how many people have quit just as they would have begun their entrance into success? Sure there are many who quit at the first sign of hard work, but what about those who, after the tenth time of trial then give up, just as fate would have seen them go through one last hurdle and then into the promised land? How many people were on their last hurdle and decided not to jump? How many people had just one more mountain pass to go? Or just one more river to cross?

Of course we will never know, but certainly some of the people who quit are doing so on what would have been their last trial, right?

So what does this mean for you? For me it means I do not quit because I would hate to find out later that all I needed was just one last effort and I would have achieved my goal. What if it isn’t my last trial? That’s okay because as long as I keep going, eventually I will get to my last trial, I will overcome it, and I will enter the Winner’s Circle.

3. Sometimes the most beautiful results come from dull things under pressure.

“Diamonds are nothing more than chunks of coal that stuck to their jobs.” — Malcolm Forbes

If coal wasn’t an inanimate object it would certainly scream, “Stop! I want out!” But that coal, when facing incredible pressure, is turned into one of earth’s most precious possessions. Ugly, dirty old coal is transformed into beautiful diamonds.

Instead of looking at pressure and trials as the reason to quit, get tenacious and see them as the very thing that will make your life the beautiful thing that you desire it to be. See it as your opportunity to learn, to grow, and to be transformed. See these trials as the very things that will enable you to have the life that you dream of!

Trials will surely come. Life will get hard. You will want to quit.

Then you will have a choice: Will you give up? Or will you take your turn at tenacious. The choice you make will determine much of the rest of your life.

My advice? Take your turn at tenacious. You will become stronger and you will end up living the life you dream of!

The segment of the American public that has been oversold and underserved can be defined as the mass affluent. This group has unique characteristics. Do you fit the profile of this group?

The mass affluent are people who:
• Save more than they spend.
• Seek to invest for the future.
• Worry about funding their children’s college education, but in most cases won’t impoverish themselves because they can cover costs through savings strategies, loans or personal income. In addition, many are not opposed to their children paying some part of their education costs.
• Worry about how they will replace their paychecks when retirement approaches, but in most cases will need to be encouraged to spend more money in retirement.
• Desire to leave a legacy to their children, not to charity.
• In retirement, seek to spend between $4,000 and $10,000 per month.
• Will have between $500,000 and $1.5 million in investable assets upon retirement.
• Would never consider calling themselves high-net-worth investors or millionaires.

Consider the following research: Russ Allen Prince and Associates just published a book entitled The Middle Class Millionaire, based on surveying middle-class Americans with investable assets between $1 and $10 million.

The mass-affluent community seeks advice on a wide array of planning issues. While they generally have investable dollars, they also want to explore how their money will affect their lives. However, many of the financial relationships they maintain are built on investment strategies, performance comparisons, technical analyses and tactical repositioning. These people feel the planning element of the relationship is missing, yet they struggle to articulate it, since their current advisor calls the existing narrow relationship financial planning.

Too many of these people visit our office with stories of how they felt like small fish in a big pond. They felt an initial sense of security aligning with a big-name firm, but when it came to having their financial planning needs addressed, the relationship would fall short.

The mass affluent seem to be stuck in a world where they want financial planning advice, yet what they buy is primarily investment advice.

Reprinted with permission from Oversold and Underserved: A Financial Planner’s Guidebok for Effectively Serving the Mass Affluent, by Marc Freedman. 2008. Denver: FPA Press

Over my lifetime, I have been “blessed” with many adverse situations. Yes, blessed, because in each situation I learned valuable lessons that molded me into who I am today. My parents were great mentors who encouraged me to “never give up.” I studied and watched the “successful” people that came across their life, and, I found one common thread…they never quit.

Well, there was a great poem, written long ago, on the subject of not quitting. I am sure you are familiar with it. Here is a short video of the poem…I think you will find it rewarding.

Russ Prince and Lewis Schiff, authors of The Middle Class Millionaire, purport to have uncovered the rise of new class of wealth that is changing the face of America: These 8.4 million households [with $1 million to $10 million in net wealth] make up a new generation of millionaires who began to emerge from the middle class in the late twentieth century. As their wealth has grown, so have both the cost of maintaining their lifestyles and their need for products and services that make their lives run smoothly. This group is helping to bring about momentous changes throughout American society.
Tom Stanley, author of The Millionaire Next Door showed his millionaires were almost retro middle-class, even for the ‘80s. They owned and operated small business-dry cleaners, gas stations, or cement companies. They stayed married to their wives, drove non-descript station wagons into the ground, bought their clothes more often off the shelf than off the rack, and went to church. They worked hard, sent their kids to college, avoided debt, and saved their money. In a word, they were the total opposites of the 1980’s high-flying executives-overspending, conspicuously consuming individuals.
But a funny thing happened over the past 20 years. The Reagan/Bush/Clinton/Bush economic boom (undeterred by the bond and stock market corrections of ’87, the recession of ’92, or the dot.com crash of 2000), fueled by the low interest rates, low taxes, and almost non-existent inflation has, among other things, replaced Tom Stanley’s retro millionaires with a new generation of small business owners who are, if anything, more driven to attain success, far more socially liberal, and cutting-edge consumers of the first order. Prince and Schiff’s book is a study of what it takes to get into that class today.
The authors identify four characteristics that dramatically separate today’s middle-class millionaires from their less successful classmates:
Hard work. While nine out of 10 of respondents to Prince and Schiff’s survey believe that “anyone can become a millionaire if he or she works hard enough,” the average middle-class head of household works 41 hours a week while the average middle-class millionaire puts in 70 hours. The millionaire is also five times more likely to be “always available” via e-mail (76% vs. 16%), four times more likely to work nights (52% vs. 12%), and three times more likely to be in the office or store on weekends (67% vs. 21%).
Networking. Although most middle-class millionaires dislike the smarmy connotations of the term, 62% of them believe knowing many, many people is very important to achieving financial success (vs. 43%), and they are three times as likely to cite networking as a way to connect with people they can turn to for information (83% vs. 29%).
Never giving up. Nine out of 10 of all middle-class survey respondents admitted to having “made a major career or business decision that has a very bad outcome,” but middle-class millionaires averaged 3.1 such incidents vs. 1.6 for the rest of the middle-class. More importantly, the millionaires were five times more likely to follow up a bad business outcome by trying again in the same field, rather than changing fields or focusing on other projects (77% vs. 14%).
Going where the money is. Eighty percent of middle-class millionaires either own their own business or are in professional partnerships. In fact, two out of three of them (65%) consider an ownership stake to be “very important” to financial success, vs. just 28% of other folks in the middle class. That pretty much says it all.

At times, in every day, we all come across events that make us want to quit. Events transpire around us each day of which we have NO control.

Our attitude toward these events determine the outcome. If you have a negative attitude then things will probably come out bad for you. If you have a strong positive attitude then, in most cases things come up “roses.”

I have been blessed and gifted with wonderful coaches in my sporting career and mentors in every aspect of my life. My parents instilled in me a stone wall discipline to never quit…to keep going.

I want to share a clip from a great movie “Facing The Giants.” Maybe you have seen the movie. Nonetheless I have a section that portrays the theme that your abilities are way beyond what you think they are. In everything that you do each day many people are watching you, as you are an inspirational teacher to them, and most of the time you do not even know it. So keep on… Keeping on.

For those of you that played football you will remember the “death crawl” drill (I hated it). Well it is portrayed here and I encourage you to watch it again and again. So if you are having a tough day… think about this clip and… don’t quit!

See you on the beaches of the world.