Chapter 11 / The Formula for Riches / The Difference Between Rich and Poor / by Dr. Hannes Dreyer.
Chapter?11.
Don’t?Take?any?Risks.
A?Step?by?Step?Instruction?on?how?to?become?a?Multimillionaire?in?less?than?10?Years?Starting?with?ZERO.
Now that you know it is possible to limit your risk and get phenomenal growth on your investment by taking the responsibility to manage risk down and grow up over a period of time, the question is often...
“I believe that you can do it but how can I do it myself?”
Here is one of the strategies you can apply;?The Formula For Riches.
This is really it. The reading is over for now, and here we begin with the actual process of creating wealth. So at this point, you must decide whether you truly want to create wealth, or whether you are not ready just yet.
The reason I say this is that this strategy really works, it can be followed by anyone, and as long as you adhere to the principles of The Formula For Riches, you will not go wrong. Some of my students, once they see how simple it is to apply The Formula For Riches, will tell me that it is too simple – it will never work. This is just another excuse. It’s simple, yes. I’ve said so before.
So – if you’re committed – then, no more excuses! Let’s go!
Your?Intention.
Your commitment: the intention or the ($) in The Formula For Riches. This is your goal – what you want to achieve.
You absolutely must make sure that on a scale of 1 – 10 the desirability of your goal is a ten out of ten or 100%. Unless you have 100% desirability you can forget the goal of becoming as rich as you want to be.
Set your goal according to the method I gave you. Determine the end point date. This is extremely important. Without a PowerGoal? with an endpoint date, it will not be possible to achieve your goal.
The mistake most people make is to make it impossible for themselves to achieve their own goals and this normally happens because they are greedy. They have no experience but want to make millions within the next year.
Although it is not impossible once you know how to do it, it may be impossible for you at this stage. And impatience is one of the Wealth Creator’s enemies. A drive for success is an asset, but so is patience.
The difficulty ratio of your goal should be 100% as well. It must seem almost impossible but deep down you must know that if you give it 100% of yourself you will be able to make it.
Also, allow yourself enough time to reach your goal – but not too much time. It is no good giving you say 40 years to make a million dollars. Normally ten years is more than enough to build several million dollars. At the same time, for most people one year will be too short, simply because you will need to apply several exponential factors which you will first have to learn.
Everyone is different, but from personal experience, I would say it takes on average two to three years for the “average” student to internalize the process. Once internalized all you have to do is to manage The Formula For Riches.
Some students will take a bit longer. Mostly because their resisters are so deeply ingrained that they are their own worst enemies. The most powerful affirmation you can repeat every day and every moment is:
“I?accept?myself”
This affirmation may not seem like much but most people do not accept themselves just the way they are. They try to live up to other people’s expectations and in the process do themselves in.
My students also say to me “But Hannes, accepting myself has nothing to do with money!” How wrong they are. It is only by accepting themselves that they can move forward.
Few people do that. They live either in the past – guilt or regrets. Or they live in the future – worry and fantasy.
They are so busy trying to please others by trying to live up to other people’s expectations that they cannot live in the here and now.
Unless you truly accept yourself as a wonderful human being, you will not experience a life of abundance.
Remember I said you must take responsibility. Well, it starts with taking responsibility for your own life and that is what you will be doing when you truly accept yourself. Riches start with yourself and the right mindset.
Unless you accept yourself you will not love yourself. If you do not love yourself you will never give yourself the “right” to become a Wealth Creator and to experience life in abundance – which includes spiritual and material riches.
Once you accept yourself it will also be easier to accept others. By accepting yourself you will love not only yourself but also others.
The next step then will be to make a commitment to yourself not to break The Formula For Riches. (Note: you will break this formula unless you accept and love yourself!)
I am going to make it easy for you. Do not make it difficult for yourself by trying to over-commit yourself, no matter how desperate your current situation may seem. Do not force yourself to start with this journey unless you truly have a surplus.
It must be a surplus. If you are going to need that money before the endpoint date and you think it won’t hurt to take some of it out before your deadline, I can tell you now it is not going to work. You cannot play Robin Hood with your finances. You cannot rob your future and give it to yourself today.
This is like being in credit to your own future, and credit is what kills most people financially. Yet this is what most people are doing when they withdraw money from their investments in order to buy something.
Most of the time you will find people need to please themselves or others because they do not truly accept themselves. Don’t fall into this trap.
The moment you commit yourself to applying The Formula For Riches you are not allowed to touch any money, business, or investment, that is part of The Formula For Riches until you meet your intention on or before the date you set yourself.
You cannot break this rule.
Sometimes it may seem impossible, because you may be in dire straits – and believe me, you are going to be tested on this one!
I have seen how quickly a person will make excuses. For example, they will justify it by saying “I will only take $10,000 from my “investment” to buy this and then I will give it back within a year”. If you think of the money as belonging to The Formula For Riches then you must see this as stealing, and it is. You are stealing your own future. You cannot do that. Remember it is not your money. Your function is to be a steward of that money.
The day your surplus equals your intention (goal) is the day you can unlock the money from the formula and take it for yourself.
An interesting thing often happens on that day. By now, people who get this far have disciplined themselves not to “steal”, and they are used to living without the surplus, and they find they can carry on for longer. As a result, most people will not withdraw the money, and instead, they will set a new, higher intention or goal. (Please let me know what decision you make on that day!)
Where?does?the?Surplus?come?from?
We start off with a surplus (or create it).
This can be a lump sum or a monthly amount. It is actually unimportant.
So where can you get a surplus? People normally overlook the most obvious places. I come from a financial planning background. I found that in at least seventy percent or more of cases, the surplus was hidden within your budget or the way that you allocate your money. By having a look at financial restructuring or your budget allocation the chances are great that you will find a surplus.
So let’s look at some practical examples.
Life insurance: can you get the same life cover for a better premium? Let’s say you are spending $200 per month on policies and you shop around and discover that you can get the same cover with the same benefits for $195 per month – you have discovered a $5 surplus each month.
I hear you say: “But that is only $5 per month, it will never make me rich” ... I promise you that if you apply The Formula For Riches the way that you have learned, you will find that $5 is a lot more than you need.
Short-term insurance: shop around; the chances are great to get the same benefits for less money.
Look at your investments. Are you currently getting less than 12% growth on your projected value? If so perhaps you should reconsider this option or what about lowering the premium (the investment) by 10%?
Let me show you what I mean. Let’s say you are saving $100 per month for 10 years at 10% compounded interest per annum. The projected maturity value will be $20,484.50. If you lower the investment to $90 per month the maturity value will be $18,436.05. The difference will be $2,048.45.
This immediately gives you a surplus of $10 per month. If you invest the $10 yourself by applying The Formula For Riches you need only get 10% growth to be in the same position you have been before at the maturity date.
But what will happen if you apply The Formula For Riches and you get 200% growth?
Let’s look at another example. Are you paying interest? Let’s say you have a bond of $100,000 at 5% per year and you are paying the bond over 20 years - your repayments will be $659.96 per month.
What if you can get a .25% better interest rate? The premiums will be $632.65 - an improvement (surplus) of $27.31.
Another way to get a surplus is to extend the term to 25 years. The monthly payments of $100,000 at 5% over 25 years will be $584.59 or a monthly saving of $75.37.
Please note that if you follow the last example, although you will save $75.37 per month on your cash flow, you will be paying a lot more interest over the full term.
?So you cannot take the $75.37 and increase your standard of living with it. You must apply The Formula For Riches and get excellent growth which more than covers the extra interest over the extended period. For instance...
If you get 5% growth on your investment you will be in the same position as before and the bond will be paid in 20 years instead of 25 years.
Just to make things interesting...
... if you can apply The Formula For Riches and get 25% growth on average over the 20-year term, you will have $506,390.69 in the investment.
... If you can learn to get 35% you will have $2,561,059.92.
Occasionally someone will tell me they tried it all and they cannot find a surplus in their budget. That may be true but perhaps they are living above their means. Decide what asset or assets you must sell to lower your standard of living – and then do it. Those assets are weighing you down.
Maybe you do not need that $250,000 property right now. Perhaps you can even find a better place to stay for $210,000. The difference in repayment will give you access to a “surplus” cash flow.
Or what about your car? Is it possible to find a way to save on gas?
The most overlooked place (and the one most people in the category will try to overlook) is indulgence. Do you smoke? What about eating out or perhaps drinking too much? If you are serious about becoming financially rich, you cannot afford to waste money – especially in the beginning when you are still building your financial empire.
Let’s say you can save fifty cents a day by cutting out some of the things I mentioned. That will give you a surplus of about $15 per month. Again this may not seem like a fortune, but if you apply The Formula For Riches and get 45% compounded growth on your $15 per month investment, how much money will you have in 25 years time (without the need to save another dime)? You will have more than?25?million?dollars.
Worth doing, don’t you think?
You can also look at items that you have not used (or touched) in the last year. Let’s face it, if you have not worn a piece of jewellery for more than a year, you do not really need it. Sell it.
Use the money that you get for it as the beginning of your Universal Formula For Riches investment strategy. If you follow this strategy you will be able to buy as many fine pieces of jewellery or clothes as your heart desires in a couple of years’ time – from that one little sacrifice, you made when you decided to let go of something that you do not need or use.
Normally this is the test to see if you are serious about becoming rich or if you are just talking. Unless you are prepared to sacrifice time and effort – and sometimes are even willing to give up some pleasure and luxury, you will not become rich. There are no shortcuts.
But what if you?really?do not have?any?way to get to a surplus, what then?
You are in luck because you see although we must have a surplus to start The Formula For Riches it does not even mean that we must have the surplus. We can create a surplus.
Using?Nature?to?Help?you?Create?a?Surplus.
You do not need any money to make money. You need the desire to become rich. The way will present itself if the desire is strong enough.
I will give you one or two ways you can use (to start the process) – and I hope this gets you thinking about more.
So let’s say you are serious and you have the intention of making at least $5,000,000 within the next 10 years and in the process taking no or very little risk.
What will be the next step?
You simply follow The Formula For Riches and apply the principles.
Look at growth. Nature is the perfect example that God does not work in a limited manner. He creates everything in total abundance.
Clivias.
For this exercise, I am going to take a clivia plant. Clivias are beautiful shade-loving plants with dark green strap-like leaves which produce magnificent orange or yellow flowers in the spring. They come from South Africa and have become popular and sought after by garden lovers all over the world.
The reason I am using the Clivia for this example is that as I write this, they are flowering in my garden. And because they are sought-after garden plants, they can be sold for quite high prices. Another reason I am going to use this example is that they are beautiful. And it does help to love what you do!
However, you can take almost any plant to start your financial road to riches.
Last year I walked through my garden admiring some Clivia plants which were in full bloom.
I saw some ripe seeds and harvested about 120 seeds. I looked at the seeds, and marveled at how nature created such bounty – the potential for so many extra plants to spring from just one “mother”.
Yet in reality, many are eaten by pests or do not germinate because the conditions are not perfect. My mind starts racing. What would happen if I could speed up nature’s process of growth (accelerate (nm) by increasing the number of seeds produced by pollinating the flowers myself – I wonder what would happen?
As I looked at these magnificent flowers I thought, “What would happen if I take the responsibility (Re) and applied The Formula For Riches by spending time and effort (nm) by doing the pollination myself? In other words, I eliminate the risk (Ri) of the pollen not reaching the stigma. By taking the responsibility (Re)?”
You see, The Formula For Riches is in operation right in front of our eyes but we do not see it simply because we are not trained to see the obvious.
I did some research (applied time and effort - nm) and found out that if I was prepared to do the pollinating myself and also to follow some other principles to make sure I maximized the number of seeds I got (maximized growth - G) – although that this would take some time and effort (nm) – I would get good results.
In other words, I found that I needed to take responsibility (Re).
So nature provides the Clivia with huge potential to reproduce and if I managed the risk down (Ri) and the growth up (G) by applying time and effort (nm) and taking responsibility (Re), I could get the most out of that potential.
The risks, in this case, are a harsh environment that stops most seeds from germinating and growing to maturity. Of the few plants in nature that do germinate, very few plants will grow until they can produce flowers of their own.
It takes about four to five years to produce the first set of flowers and in nature, there are many risks such as drought, famine, and fire to name but a few.
The risk is also that not all flowers get pollinated. So if I controlled the pollination by doing it myself, and if I controlled the environment by making sure each seed had a good chance of germinating and growing, then I could increase the natural growth rate of the Clivia. As the risk (Ri) goes down, the growth (G) goes up. All because I take responsibility (Re) and apply time and effort (nm).
So in nature, very few seeds will make it simply because of risk. And if we can manage that risk down, we get better growth.
So how do you eliminate risk or lower the risk (Ri)? Easy! You simply optimize the growing conditions. The moment you plant these plants in your garden their chances of survival go up because if you pay for a plant you will look after it, water it, and feed it, you will also make sure that the plant grows in the right climate and soil pH levels.
You will also make sure it does not get sick and you will remove pests. All of the things will decrease the risk and in doing so you increase the chances for survival.
The plant will help the process because it will produce flowers, and the more flowers there are the bigger the chance of survival.
Now, what if you can eliminate risk, and apply The Formula For Riches? What if you take the responsibility to lower the risk and increase the growth? And what does this have to do with riches? Just follow me and see where I am going with this.
I used my biology knowledge and without spending too much time and effort did some pollinating. I applied the first law – invest in myself - because if I did not know how to do it (the pollination process) and so I would not even attempt to do it until I had found out.
I took a little more responsibility and made sure that I did not crossbreed them. In other words, I used the pollen of the yellow Clivias to pollinate yellow Clivias and so on.
I read up a little, phoned a clued-up friend, and found out how you plant Clivia seeds. I applied my limited knowledge, made sure I followed the recipe (the processor system my friend gave me) and to my amazement, within a month I saw new seedlings germinating!
I applied a little TLC every week and about four months ago I planted 120 new plants out into my garden. In my garden, I have an irrigation system so I was able to forget about the plants until the next time they flowered – the same time the next year.
That was last week Saturday.
The Clivias are blooming again.
This time I was in for a surprise. The work I had put in a year ago is paying off with a handsome crop of seeds.
I collected 858 seeds this year.
Now just because I took the responsibility and did not depend on nature I increased the yield or crop by more than 600% (858 – 120 = 738 / 120 *100%) = 615%.
I hope you see where we are going. By applying a little effort and time (nm) I decrease the risk (Ri) that the plants will not get pollinated (that is why I got 600% more seeds) and increase the growth (G) from 120 seeds to 858 seeds from the same plants (mother stock) in my garden.
This was quite a confidence booster so I immediately started pollinating again. This time I put a lot more time and effort into it compared to last year. (Your confidence grows as you see results and that accelerates your progress.)
This year I invested in myself. I studied up a lot more and I feel confident that now I know at least the basics. I also consulted some Clivia experts and I assume next year I will harvest more than 1000 seeds from the same plants.
The confidence that I can do it is there and I can see that if I have a plan (which I do have simply because I want to show you how simple it is to apply The Formula For Riches) then my growth (G) will continue to climb, as long as I do not sell any Clivias in the meantime (this is where patience comes in!).
Now let’s make some assumptions:
The mother stock stays the same – I do not remove any plants - and it will produce 1000 seedlings from next year onwards.
Let’s further assume it takes four years for the plant to start producing seeds.
I harvested 143 seeds from one plant this year – that is my record, so apparently, with a little bit of TEM$ (Time, Effort, Mindset, and $0) I can get an average of 50 seeds from each plant.
In four years’ time, I will have the original mother plants producing 1000 plants (seedlings).
Plus the 120 plants I planted this year times 50 = 6000 plants.
If we make the assumption over 10 years it will look as follows...
Explanation of year 6 row 3 = 42 900, the 858 seedlings in year two (column 2, row 1) are now four years old and will produce at least 50 seeds each (858 * 50 = 42 900).
If we can take this model you will see in 10 years you will have the following plants or seedlings:
Let’s?put?Value?to?it!
The cultivars which I have at the moment are selling at between US$ 50 and US$175 a plant. They are only sold when they are in flower therefore they must be about four years old.
If we take the average per plant at $2 then (future value) the value =?$7,607,956.00.
Assumption.
I have made several assumptions. The biggest assumptions at this stage are...
1. I assume you will have the right mindset and will do whatever it takes (this will include investing in yourself and finding out whatever you need to know about Clivias or whatever investment you want to invest in).
2. If you can make more than $11 million dollars within ten years starting with ZERO risk why would a person not learn all there is to know about a subject or investment? And this?is just one example.
3. I also assume you do know enough about plants (and Clivias or any other investment) or that you can learn what you need to know relatively easily so that you will be able to apply The Formula For Riches.
4. I assume 50 seeds per plant on average. As I said the record this year per plant was 143 seeds.
You can increase the average per plant and by applying The Formula For Riches, you should get at least 100 seeds per plant.
With proper, pollination, feeding, and care (which means applying more responsibility (Re), and more time (n) because it will take a lot longer to pollinate or care for 100,000 plants than for 10, and more effort (m) – it will take some serious effort to pollinate and care for 1,000,000).
5. You do not run into the ceiling of complexity.
You will only get to this point after some years have passed, giving you plenty of time to learn what you need to know, as well as to set up your irrigation, etc. In other words, you have more than enough time to learn all you need to know about the ceiling of complexity and how to overcome it.
A good place to start if you want to learn more about how to apply The Formula For Riches is to join my Wealth Creators Mentoring Course?. You can find out more if you go to
So let’s see how you can apply The Formula For Riches:
$?=?Intention?or?Goal.
You have the intention and are willing to put in the time, effort, and responsibility to do whatever it is going to take to become rich. You must invest in yourself and find out everything you can about Clivias (or whatever investment you choose).
S?=?Surplus.
You can create a surplus and this is the first thing you should concentrate on.
The smaller the original surplus you will invest the smaller the risk is going to be. If you can start an investment by using a zero surplus it simply means you have eliminated the risk 100%!
If something costs you $0 and it does not work what was the risk? The risk was?zero. If it cost me $100 to start the investment the risk on the $100 will be 100%.
Finding?the?Seeds?for?Growth?(Surplus).
What if you do not have Clivias or any other plant for that matter?
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Simply ask someone to harvest the seeds of their plants.
I have been interested in plants and their growth potential for some time. When I started off, I would knock on people’s doors when I saw that their palm tree seeds were ripe. I would tell them that I was learning how to grow seeds and that I would harvest their seeds, plant them, care for them and then give them a portion of the seedlings I produced. Most people weren’t going to do anything with their seeds anyway so they were quite happy with the deal.
Other places to find seeds: public parks and gardens; and simply asking other gardeners – mostly you will find they are happy to share their passion with someone else.
If you make a deal, be sure to honor that deal. If you said you will give the first 100 plants or 50% of the seedlings to the person who gave you the seeds, then it is your responsibility to make sure they get what you promised them.
In this way, it is possible to collect hundreds or thousands of different seeds, even if you do not own any plants yourself.
Ri?=?Risk
There?are?two?kinds?of?risk.
The?first?risk?is?ignorance.
The first and most dangerous kind of risk is ignorance. The way to overcome it is to apply the first law and that is to invest in yourself in other words find out how it works.
How do you learn?
You can get some value from formal education such as school, college, or university, but you do not have to rely on them. Education can be found in a far broader spectrum of places.
At school, I took biology and one of the subjects was plants. So although at that stage I could not see the value of the subject (and I nearly flunked the subject) I do know the basics of how you can propagate a plant. I am sure you do too.
All you need to start with is some basic information about how to grow plants, how they grow, what pollination is, and how it works.
Nowadays you can get a lot of added information from the Internet. See what happens when you Google “pollination”!
Pollination?is?about?Growth?–?that’s?why?it?is?Key.
In order to get more Clivia seeds, I need to pollinate the Clivias (or I must leave the job to nature but then I break the Formula For Riches because I do not take the responsibility to lower the risk and increase the growth).
When I do not take responsibility I do not get great results. Look at the difference between the growth you get on your investment with a financial institution (no responsibility) compared with what you can easily get if you stick to the formula (full responsibility)! The difference is not trivial – it is the difference between being rich or staying where you are.
So?what?is?Pollination?
It is the transfer of pollen from the anthers of a flower to the stigma of the same flower or of another flower.
What are the anthers and stigma? Here is a quick lesson from the Internet.
Flower Parts.
Flowers are seed factories. The shape and appearance of flowers may vary, but some parts are common to all. The parts that interest us are the male part, called the stamen, and the female part, called the pistil.
The stamen consists of anthers and filaments. The anthers carry the pollen. These are generally yellow in colour.
The pistil has three parts: stigma, style, and ovary. The stigma is the sticky surface at the top of the pistil; it traps and holds the pollen. Pollen that lands on the stigma go down via the style to the ovary which contains the ovules.
Flowers can have either all male parts or all female parts (e.g. cycads, melons, cucumbers), or a combination (roses, lilies, dandelions, clivias).
If you are a Wealth Creator this little system spells?money. If someone wants to buy something that we can produce or get for free we are in the pound (or dollar, or euro, or yen or rand) seats – as I’m sure you will agree!
So now that you have a basic overview of what a plant is, let’s go back to pollination.
Pollination is a prerequisite for fertilization.
Fertilization allows the flower to develop seeds, in other words, if I want to produce plants to sell I first need to produce seeds. If I can get the seeds for free it means I can get the plants for free. This means my risk (Ri) is zero.
Some flowers will develop seeds as a result of self-pollination, when pollen and pistil are from the same plant, often (but not always) from the same flower. Other plants require cross-pollination: the pollen must come from a different plant.
I have found the best results with Clivias come when you use cross-pollination, but some of the experts tell me it does not really make a difference.
How does the pollen get to the pistil?
Most plants need help moving pollen from one flower to the pistil of another. This job is done by a pollinator. What is a pollinator?
The pollinator is normally an animal or insect which moves pollen from the anthers to the stigmas of flowers, thus affecting pollination. Creatures that are known to be good pollinators of flowers include bees, butterflies, hummingbirds, moths, some flies, some wasps, and even nectar-feeding bats.
Wind moves the pollen for some plants such as grasses (including corn).
As far as I know in the natural state Clivias depend on wind pollination.
Obviously, if you compare wind pollination with bee pollination, it is a very hit-and-miss business. Unlike a bee that helpfully (but unknowingly) carries the pollen directly from one flower to another, the wind could blow pollen anywhere in a 360 degrees range. If the pistil does not happen to be downwind of the pollen then it goes to waste.
Where there is waste there is an opportunity. This is where I can step in and make the process more effective by applying time and effort (nm).
In other words, by applying the Formula For Riches I take control. I become the pollinator.
The?Economy?of?the?Plant.
And unlike a natural pollinator such as a bee, the plant does not have to incentivize me to do its pollinating by luring me with sweet-scented nectar. There is no price for it to pay when I do the work!
Plants are prepared to “pay” for pollination because the movement of pollen allows them to reproduce by setting seeds. However, natural pollinators don't know or care that the plant benefits from their movements.
Their motivation for putting in the time and effort is to get nectar and/or pollen from flowers to meet their energy requirements and to produce offspring. In the economy of nature, the pollinators provide an important service to flowering plants, while the plants pay with food for the pollinators and their offspring.
Aside from this, seeing as we’re talking about the economy of the plant, do you know why nectar exists? It is there as a cheaper alternative to the expensive resource of pollen. The plant would rather “pay” the pollinator in nectar because it is not much more than sugar and water, whereas pollen is expensive for the plant to produce.
Now as a pollinator, because I know the benefits (financially) I will make sure that I do the best possible job. My reward will not be the nectar or pollen but the beauty and the money which I will get from the offspring – in other words, the growth (G) of new plants.
Make?Educating?yourself?Fun?and?Interesting.
I have read a number of books on plants over the last couple of years. The more you read and study the more interesting it becomes.
The?Lesson?of?the?Cycads.
There are two ways you can learn. The best way is to go to the experts and ask them to show you how they do it. You will normally learn more than you expect. The experts are usually more than happy to find someone who shares their interests and they cannot wait to help you. They will go out of their way to help you - I was even given many valuable plants (or seedlings) for free.
The second way is simply to do it yourself by trial and error. Personally, based on experience, I try to avoid this method as far as possible. It can be very costly. It is far better to consult an expert or get a mentor or to pay someone who knows what they are doing and then learns from them.
For example, I also grow Cycads, which are rare and sought-after plants, very ancient, and reproduce by means of cones very much the way pine trees do. But they look more like palm trees. Unlike Clivias, each plant is either a male or a female.
When I started growing Cycads I had two female “Encephalartos?Transvenosus”?plants in my garden, each with three seed cones. Each seed cone has about four hundred seeds.
This sounds good - but I was not going to successfully grow seeds without access to a male plant. This, for a Cycad, can be quite a major problem. For example, there is a Cycad in the Durban Botanical Garden which is classified as technically extinct because while there is a healthy, vigorous specimen right there, large as life, nobody has been able to find one of the other sex.
So clearly if you want to grow Cycads, pollination is a big issue.
Because I did not know how to proceed, I looked around for an expert who knew how to pollinate?E.?Transvenosus?plants. This process led me to someone who was prepared to help me.
I made a deal with him. He supplied the pollen and he did the pollination. My job was to ask questions and learn and then I did some pollination myself under his watchful eyes.
A?female?Encephalartos?Cycad?with?cones.
He took me through the whole process, and a couple of months later he showed me how to harvest and how to clean and plant the seeds.
Within a year there were more than two thousand seedlings (small plants).
He then showed me how to transplant the seedlings into plastic bags. He told me what soil mixture to use and how often to water, etc. Without this knowledge, I could have made a lot of mistakes and lost a lot of seedlings.
When the time was right I honoured my commitment and gave him his 50% share of the seedlings – more than a thousand of them. I kept the rest. But what I gained in giving him a thousand plants was worth more than gold to me. I had the knowledge – and I knew how to apply that knowledge.
Some people would think I was crazy to give away a thousand plants. But the way I see it, I gained a thousand plants for free?plus?I gained applied knowledge. If he had not helped me I would have had no seeds and therefore no seedlings and therefore no growth! I got all this risk-free! There is an important lesson here. Many people don’t ‘get it. But it is integral to how I work my partnerships.
Because of that exercise, I have more than 10 000 cycads today.
Now, why is applied knowledge so important? The moment that I know how to pollinate?Encephalartos?Transvenosus?I basically know how to pollinate all the?Encephalartos?species, and there are more than 45 African species, some of which are worth a fortune.
This leads me to the accelerator principle.
How?can?you?Apply?the?Accelerator?Principle?
I also grow palm trees. I started seven years ago, simply because they were in my garden. Today I have more than 20 000.
Because I love plants and I saw how easy it is to grow palm trees, I applied the accelerator principle and started pollinating the cycads which were on my premises as I explained earlier.
Today I have more than 10,000 cycads.
I then applied the principle to the Amaryllis, starting with the six plants in my garden, and today I have more than 5000 plants and seedlings.
And then I applied the principle to the Clivias.
What?were?my?Risks?
The first one is ignorance and as explained I dealt with that right from the start.
The second risk is the risk of losing capital. What capital? Remember the seeds were all free, so there was no capital to lose. This means that the whole thing has been risk-free beyond some time and effort on my part.
Looking at it in terms of the formula – my surplus was the free seeds on the plants in my own garden. So the financial cost was nothing.
If the “cost” was nothing it simply means the financial risk was zero because I used no money to start the investment. Because I adhere to the Formula For Riches I do not consider the growth of the investment as mine. It belongs to the “investment”.
The investment will not become mine until the monetary value is equal to the intention (the goal I set myself - $.)
Where?it?all?Began.
You will have gathered that I have an extensive garden. This is because I live on a smallholding. When I bought the smallholding I said to my wife that I would make more in ten years out of the smallholding than what it cost to buy. Today – eight years later - the total value of the plants on the smallholding is four times what I paid for the property.
The best part is that I have no intention of selling any of the plants – I started with nothing, I was prepared to put in time and effort (which I enjoy) and I do not need the money, so I do not have to break the Formula for Riches. Thus the value of my investment is going to continue to grow and grow.
Other?Risks.
Not putting in TEM($) (time, effort, the right mindset or attitude, and whatever money is genuinely required – not much)
Growth.
I like any investment where there is more than one factor that will influence the growth which I will get.
When we look at plants there are several. Let’s discuss some of these:
Germination?Growth.
I find that this gives you the highest growth in monetary terms. It is possible to get seeds for free. If any of those seeds germinate and you get a plant your growth is infinite and your risk is zero.
There are three ways to get seeds: firstly you can produce them in your garden in which case the growth you get is infinite; secondly, you can get it from a friend’s garden and if you do not have to pay for it, then the growth is infinite.
Thirdly you can buy seeds. If you buy seeds I suggest you never pay more than 10% of the market value of a seedling. Say for example you can buy a year-old plant for $1 then the seed should not cost you more than 10 cents. You will find with some species such as Clivias the germination rate is almost 100%.
With other species, the germination rate can be as low as 10% or even less. You must take this into consideration.
Now let’s say you buy 100 seeds for $10 and 50% germinate, this means you will have 50 seedlings. Let’s assume a seedling's fair market value is $10 then the value of the plants is $50. The growth within the first year is 400%.
400% Versus infinite growth, now you can understand why the trick is to get the risk down by getting the seeds for free.
The?Second?type?of?Growth?– is?the?Plant’s?Natural?Growth.
Under the same climate and growth factors, a two-year-old plant is bigger and therefore more expensive than a one-year-old plant. So this type of growth depends on maintenance on your part – care, attention, watering, fertilizing (time and effort) ... and the passage of time.
The?Third?type Growth?–?Inflation?Index.
Because of inflation, the price of a plant tends to go up. But do take care – there are exceptions. As with everything else in life, the moment the masses find out about how simple it is to make money this way and they all start to follow you, you could find that four years from now the Clivia market is flooded and prices drop.
This is at the point when your first plants start to flower and suddenly you find there is no market anymore.
Then everyone is disappointed by the lower prices, and most new people drop out of the market, and then you’re back to a situation where you can make money again. Sounds like property, don’t you think?
Be aware of the effect of crowd thinking. This is why Wealth Creators go against popular opinion. Should a situation like this arise, a Wealth Creator might choose a lesser-known plant or select several different types of plants in order to avoid the problem. There are thousands of other plant species available.
The fourth?type?of?Growth?-?Abundance?Growth.
I love this one! One Clivia plant can produce more than 200 seeds, depending on the species and the circumstances. If you look at the?Clivia?Miniata?for example, you will find that the flowers are borne in an umbel supported by a peduncle which clears the leaves, and the umbels can have in excess of 40 florets, although 20 are more usual.
The seeds are carried in berries which can contain up to 20 seeds, although less than 10 is the norm. It is therefore possible to get 40* 20 = 800 seeds from one plant.
This is an exponential growth factor. Even more fascinating is the fact that it can do so year after year after year. In fact the older the plant gets the more flowers it produces – the only issue is time.
Re?=?Responsibility.
Your responsibility is first to determine and calculate the risk and growth potential on the investment (or business) for which you wish to apply the Formula for Riches.
Then it is your responsibility to manage the risk down and the growing up. The only way you can do this is by asking the three questions.
The answer to all three must be “yes!”
How can you minimize the financial risk? Firstly by using a surplus, to begin with, and secondly by making sure the surplus (investment) is as small as possible – preferably nothing.
If you get the seeds for free, by harvesting them yourself or getting them from a friend, then your financial input and risk are zero.
What if nothing works out the way you thought it would? The only reason would be that you did not do your homework or were not willing to put in the time and effort (nm). It is no good to get the seeds, plant them and then never water them for example.
However let’s just say that for whatever reason, you do not get the growth you were expecting. If nothing grows then your financial risk has been limited to zero. What you’ve lost has been time and effort and even that is not a loss because now you have the experience. You now know what will not work.
Now let’s assume it costs you nothing to get the first 100 seedlings and you sell those seedlings a year later for $0.15 per seedling. What was the growth in your surplus?
It cost you nothing and you made $15. This means you have infinite growth in your investment.
If you want $150 all you have to do is to use the (nm) portion and do it on a scale that is ten times bigger. What if you want to make $1500? It’s the same story, only another ten times bigger.
What I want you to understand is that you do not have to put in more money; what it is going to take in the beginning is more time and effort with the right mindset.
To understand this you have to break your habit of thinking that you need to pour money into an investment. Remember this serves only the financial institutions and other people who want to make money out of you.
If you want to become really picky you may say but what about the cost of the water?
Let’s say the waterworks out at $1 for the year and you sell the 100 plants for $15, your growth on the surplus will be 1400% ($15 - $1 = $14 / $1 *100)
How can you eliminate this risk?
Next time it rains you take all the buckets you can find and fill them with free rainwater. So the risk should at all times be zero.
You manage the risk down by applying logic. It is always so much simpler than you think. To understand this you need to break another habit – thinking that making money is very complicated and best left to the experts.
Nm?=?Time?and?Effort.
You have to put in the time in the beginning - there is no other way.
You have to put in the effort in the beginning - there is no other way.
After this, it gets easier and easier. But it does take an application, most particularly in the early stages.
Now?if?this?is?so?easy?why?is?everybody?not?rich?
There is one answer to the question ... they break the Formula for Riches.
There are numerous ways to do this. Let’s look at a few of the common mistakes people make...
They break the $ = intention part. They do not know what they want – or they do not want it desperately enough. In other words, they do not have the intention, and/or the intensity of the intention is lacking.
They think they need money to make money, instead of creating the surplus (S) first. If you create a surplus it does not cost you a cent.
They separate the growth from the risk because they do not want to take the responsibility (Re) to manage the risk (Ri) down and the growth (G) up. Typically they will do this by giving their money to a financial institution or an expert.
They are not prepared to put in the time and effort (nm) to invest in themselves first, as well as in learning about the investment.
They take shortcuts or they do not apply technology. They try to do everything themselves and hit the ceiling of complexity and end up working too hard again.
How?can?you?overcome?the?ceiling?of?complexity?
In the beginning, you will not have a problem. You can do all of the work yourself.
You do not need any sophisticated equipment.
How do you know that you are at this stage? If you are doing it all by yourself and you are enjoying the process, then you know.
But you also need to know that there will come a time when you will need to apply systems. It is best to prepare for this in advance. Because it takes time to put systems into place. If you only start when you are already overloaded the chances are your business is going to suffer in the meantime.
From year six you may start finding it difficult to keep up with the growth. You will also find that in order to maintain the growth there may be pressure on your cash flow. This is where many promising businesses start going wrong because they get into debt at this point. Make sure you plan ahead to avoid this.
The way to handle the ceiling of complexity is to learn all you need to know about the effectiveness factor m = PT q.
Luckily you should have about four years before you run into the ceiling of complexity. In the meantime, learn as much as you can and perhaps subscribe to my Wealth Creators Mentors? in order course to see how I handle the ceiling of complexity.
For more information on the Formula for Riches