© Elliot Essman 2005. All rights reserved.

These pages contain the complete 2005 revised text of Building Yourself, public speaking trainer Elliot Essman's guide to living the successful life.

Elliot Essman Public Speaking Training
Building Yourself Table of Contents
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• A journey of a thousand miles must begin with a single step. Lao‑tzu (604–531 B.C.)

Your steady growth philosophy also calls for you not touching the money—ever. That doesn't mean that you really never spend the money. It means that in your head, you get a thrill from saving rather than spending. The money will then be there for an emergency or retirement. (The successful person never retires, of course.) If you need money to finance a business venture or something else new in your life, you should be able to and still leave most of your nest egg intact to grow for you.

With your steady growth philosophy, you'll be able to become an active investor. You'll be able to diversify. Follow­ing your research, you'll invest in a number of different industries. You'll spread out over several different investment vehicles: stocks, bonds, mutual funds, real estate. More important, you'll have the flexibility to invest at different levels of risk. Once your portfolio is large enough, you should have a small portion of it in diversified, high‑risk, specula­tive investments. Sure you'll have some setbacks, but your more conservative investments will absorb them. In the long run, which is what counts, you'll maximize your returns.

The thinking person's investment strategy is rich with avenues. You can grow with them all and find mental stimula­tion. Wouldn't it be wonderful to have the freedom to risk money on a speculative basis knowing that you have a sound financial base? That's a distinct possibility if you shoot for steady growth—calmly. As we'll see in this chapter's final section, the steady growth concept calls for controlling some of our negative tendencies: the quick fix solution. Once you do that you're well‑rounded indeed.