Executive Summary

• Learning how to become rich requires ‘unlearning’ what we’re taught in school
• Clarifying the path forward
• Recommended reading for getting started on the journey
• Why investing in your continuing education is so critical at this juncture

If you have not yet read Part 1: The One True Thing, available free to all readers, please click here to read it first.

The good news in our civilization is that there’s no reason at all for you to remain parked in whatever slot you’ve been assigned or fallen into.  You can break free and either move up — or even out of — the pyramid.

But first you have to understand the beliefs that keep you where you are.

As I write this I’m on the Real Estate Radio Guys annual Summit At Sea event (March 14-24), surrounded by very successful entrepreneurs and investors.

Two key themes of the conference are (1) learning how to be a successful real estate investor, and (2) unlearning all the unhelpful crap you were taught throughout your upbringing.

Learning the right things and unlearning the wrong things.  Education and beliefs.

One of the more delightfully blunt faculty speakers at this event is Robert Kiyosaki (of Rich Dad, Poor Dad fame) who keeps drilling home the point that the education system is not designed to help you achieve financial freedom. Rather, it’s designed to slot you into the most heavily-taxed layer of the pyramid, and then keep you there.

The “employee” slot, no matter how well-compensated, is heavily taxed.  As soon as you break out of a poverty-level paycheck you quickly escalate towards an overall combined rate of taxation of about 40%.

But that’s not the worst slot from a tax standpoint.  That belongs to small business owners, hands down.

If you work really hard, become super successful, perhaps by becoming a doctor, accountant or a lawyer and own your own small enterprise, you’re presumably doing something that society really values, right?

If that’s the case, then why do you suppose that the government punishes small business owners the hardest via taxes?

If you own your own small business or practice, congratulations!, you are now taxed at about 60% (due to the addition of self-paid SS and other employment taxes).