2014-08-12 Why Average Sucks…

You are listening to the Empower Network Inner Circle, the best way to get your daily audio training, which is one of the eight core commitments here with Empower Network. I have the pleasure of introducing the spiky-haired Asian man who crossed 100K in a month and one of your million-dollar ring earners in Empower Network. Training you today, Lawrence Tam. You can be anything you want to be, anything. You want to be an astronaut?

You want to be a teacher? You want to be a race car driver? You want to be an engineer? You want to be a parent? Anything you want.

Do you remember your student counselors or maybe your parents or maybe even your best friends encouraging you or maybe your older sibling, your brother and sister, telling you, if you put your mind to it, you can do anything you want to do? See, that's the kind of thinking that makes it happen. That's the magic. It just seems like nowadays there's too many situations, too many families, too many societies, too many – just the way it's set up, we're meant to not exceed our expectations or aim for the stars anymore. It seems like a lot of us are just settling for average.

Why average? Average is actually horrible. Who wants an average job? Who wants an average income? Who wants an average marriage?

Who wants an average body? Why would anyone want average? But it's funny how people judge themselves in wanting to be average as that is their target. Averages are a great way to look at some type of data to be better than average and that's the goal. Hey, my name is Lawrence Tam.

I am your host for the Inner Circle Calls and I want to take you on a journey on why average and shooting for average is just the worst way to explode your business and excel yourself to the next level. To get to the next level is not from knowing what the average is. It's knowing how to beat the average and aim for the top five, top 1%. So check this out. I was an engineer and the average friend that I had in middle school and high school did not graduate high school.

They just didn't graduate. They did other stuff. It just turns out that like the more I look around, I'm actually not average to be able to graduate through just the school system alone. I mean just the peer pressure of all my friends is not even graduating. Some ended up in jail, some just didn't want to study at all and not to say they're not successful today.

I mean they all do a variety of different things. But from my knowledge, I think of all the people I grew up with and everyone I've worked with and in college, I believe I'm the highest achiever financially in terms of career and not to say because I'm special. I just believe in not being average. A lot of that came down to finding what average really is and how awful it is. I mean because if you've made more money, you can help more people.

If you've made more money, you can be more influential in helping a bigger cause than yourself. You can help more people just by having more money. It's a chain reaction. So I was pulling some data and good old trusty Google, I looked up the average American income. Now this isn't the average per se.

This is the median, which is a little different. But when you have a large data set, it's pretty dang close. The median income in 2012 for an American household, household, now these days there's actually dual incomes in a household more so than a single income these days. This is from the Census Bureau. That's kind of crazy.

So the average household makes $51,000. Well, I mean if you look at averages, yeah, I mean the average household has more than one person working and I was making that straight out of college, right? Now depending on where you listen to this on the world, I mean $50,000 might be fantastic. But average is horrible. Why?

Because you're designed to be so much more. You're destined to be so much more, so much more than average. And so what I would like you to take a look at is not looking at average rankings or ratings or any type of data you look at, not to be something that you shoot for but something as a benchmark, something you should always be better than. Now if you do that, what happens to your business? It goes up.

You no longer compete with people who are in the average. See when you do an average, that average person includes high achievers and low achievers, underachievers, basically people who just want to sit on the couch, watch TV all day and do nothing. That's the person you compete with. I mean if you talked about that average person, how fast they run the mile, well the average person can run a mile versus a person who runs miles, who runs a mile. You would take someone who would never finish.

I mean think about that. Do you want to compete in a field and make that your goal when there's people who can't even finish? When I say finish, that means meeting their goal. And if you just ask the question, do you think people are meeting their goals financially? Something I started looking into and good old Google helped me find one.

Mechanical engineers earns an average of $63,810 which is actually pretty good. That's about right. So for me, when I retired from engineering at the age of 33 with over a decade under my belt, I was making more than that. I mean before taxes, that's nothing really. But looking at that, I was like wow, okay so the average.

Now one of the benefits of why I got paid so much more was the fact that I'm in Houston which has a lot of oil and gas and in that industry, they pay a lot better. There's a higher demand. So a lot of it is market conditions. But then looking at this, it's like even – maybe you're an engineer right now. I know there's a couple of mechanical engineers who listen to the Inner Circle.

I mean think about it. Do you want to be average? Why is average a dangerous game to play if that's your goal? I mean being average means you basically lower your standards because I mean let's just be real. Average is horrible.

Exceptional is great. Why not raise your standards, aim higher, shoot for the stars and you end up in the sky? You know what I mean? The average person in the United States over the age of 25, 88 percent of them have a high school diploma, 31 percent have a bachelor's degree. So if you had a room of 10 adults over 25, about three of them would have a bachelor's degree.

Now, would that mean those three people would be smarter, more educated and make more money? No, not necessarily. For me, the whole education thing and yes, I have my kids going to college even though I am an entrepreneur, I want them to be able to experience college life plus be able to be put through the rigors of learning. I think to me that is the biggest thing I learned from engineering school is the fact that we all knew once we got out of college, they would train us on the job. But we just needed to know the fundamentals, right?

But schooling, what it prepared us for was the grind. It prepared us for cramming. It prepared us for studying and regurgitating. I hear some people who have an issue with school because of the regurgitation of information. You know what?

Some people need that. I mean, think about it this way. We have these trainings called the Inner Circle. We have some trainings called the 15K Formula and someone will go through that and we will talk about maybe leads or conversions or syndication of a blog and they will ask the question, how is that done when it's in the product they just watched? So in their case, regurgitation was an issue because they couldn't regurgitate it, right?

They couldn't explain effectively what they just saw. But the ability to cram information, the ability to learn very, very quickly, that is the key. And to be able to apply it, that's where the money is made. And so education is more so not a defining factor of how much you make. I know there's some statistics that show if you have a college degree, you make more money but we're entrepreneurs.

I mean, a lot of my Inner Circles teach how to make money on a home business as a side gig, like just how I did it. And you can totally do it from the things we teach you and just focusing on not being average but being exceptional. Now here's one from NASDAQ. NASDAQ had an article, Americans have relatively poor net worth, net wealth I mean, net wealth. Okay, this is pretty sad.

Over 65% of American adults have a net worth under $100,000. Now if that doesn't ring a bell because there's no way I have less than $100,000 or it rings a bell as in, oh no, that's me, it needs to change, put the things in action. Put down, watch the television, sit down and think about what you're going to do with your net worth. What are you going to do with it? What are you going to do with it?

Put the things in action. Put down, watch the television so much, pick up a book, listen to an inner circle audio while you're jogging or doing dishes and then when it's time for your two to three hours, build your business. Whatever your business is, build your business and build it with like, just build it with urgency. But then maybe it's an American thing because on NASDAQ also said in Australia over 65% of all Americans, I'm sorry, in Australia over 65% of all adults have a net worth exceeding $100,000. So maybe it's a culture thing.

Maybe it's a lazy factor. Who knows what that is? But it seems like Australians, the majority of them have over $100,000 when Americans have less than $100,000. Why is that? Let's not be average because the average American does not have a high net worth.

So instead of being a benefit to society, they're sucking on society. They're basically drained. They're a drain on society, being addition, not a subtraction. This is from census.gov, the average sales price of a new home in the United States. Now why am I saying this?

Not that you have – so you can buy a bigger house or you need to or keep up with the Joneses. What I'm saying is if you can develop a way where you're making more money, you're contributing more and you're growing yourself as a business, you then have options and your options should always exceed what the average person is doing because the average person includes the person who sits at home and does nothing, the slackers, the people who complain all day, the minimum wage earners. It includes all those people. So you should always, always shoot for exceptional, not average. So in 1980, the average home cost $76,000.

1990, it cost $149,000. It doubled. Inflation is kicking in. Prices are going up. In the year 2000, $207,000.

It just went up like $50,000. Now from 2000 to 2010, the average home that's being sold that's new is $272,000, $270,000. So remember I said average is not something to shoot for. It's something to benchmark against. So you should be better than.

Can you right now effectively say you can buy a home, new home worth more than $272,000 if what you're saying is it's impossible? I don't make enough money. We can change that now. Now if you can, fantastic, you're better than average. It's not that great of a deal.

It's more of a wow, I can't. Now you need to make some changes so that you can. But if you can, fantastic, you're on your way to really expanding and growing because you should never be below average. You should never be below average, right? This is mainly to make sure you become an overachiever, not an underachiever.

Don't be always slacking. Be the strongest link, not the weakest link, right? The average car in August that was new was sold for $31,000. The $31,000 for a brand new car, the average American is paying for this. The two things that come to my head is number one, that's a lot of money for an average American who has less than $100,000 in their retirement fund, their net worth, right?

Their net worth is less than $100,000 but they just bought a car for $31,000. That to me is just insane. You know what I mean? It's like what? The second thing that's telling me is wow, maybe I'm just really cheap.

$31,000 for a new car is a lot of money. Now my car is worth more than that but I make more than the average person, right? It's just kind of interesting to think that not that you need to spend more than $31,000 for a brand new car but just knowing that the average American is spending $31,000 on a brand new car, you need to have options to be better then because if you're being better then, then you are being – you are then an addition to society. You can help more people because you have more resources. Not that you have to but that you can and that's the ability of having options, right?

All right, last one, USA Today, retirement. This one actually got me kind of sad. A retirement, a third have less than $1,000 put away for their retirement. That's shocking. That is straight shocking.

About 36% of workers have less than $1,000 in savings and investments that could be used for retirement. Now this is not counting the primary residence or defined benefits plan such as traditional pensions but less than $1,000 in savings? That is – something is wrong. If that's you, today is the day you make a change. I'm calling it out.

You need to make a change. Be better with your money. Be financially smart with your income and grow it. Even if you work a minimum wage job, you can work a part-time job, work a part-time business just like I have. Get the understanding that if you really want something bad enough, you'll get it.

But if you're in a situation where 36% of workers have less than $1,000, that's an issue. That's an issue because if you retire, let's say you're 70 and you have no money, who's going to take care of you? The government? That's not cool. You're supposed to give to society, not take from it.

Add to it. Be a positive, not a negative. And then it also said 60% of workers have less than $25,000. Sixty percent of workers have less than $25,000. Now what does this mean for you?

What this means is if this is you, it's time for a change. If this is not you, you're still not out of the clear, but let's just say you're on your way. The cool thing about Empower, the cool thing about what we do in the Inner Circle is we're training you to be the best person you can possibly be, the best role model for generations to come, the best parent showing your kids how to manage money. Do you really want to show your kids how to squander money and not be able to stretch your funds? I mean it's not how much money you make, it's how much you keep.

So maybe there's something wrong with how you spend money and this is like one of the most important topics you can ever research. Maybe it's your association with money that's the real issue. Like I had a guy on Facebook tell me, everyone who's making money and all these rich people, all these rich guys making a ton of money in their businesses, they don't care about people. They only care about themselves. This person makes a blanket generalization about rich people, people who have more wealth than he does.

Now rich is relative. It's all relative. But in his eyes, a rich person is basically evil. What is funny is he's also wanting to build a business, a different business. What happens when he becomes rich?

When this internal being dislikes rich people, do you think he will stay rich? In my opinion, I think if I was a gambling man, I'm not. My bet will go, because the way his body is set up, that he's already voicing, believing, feeling that rich people are basically evil, that they don't help the poor people or people who are in need, by the time he becomes rich, he's going to hate them too. In other words, he's going to hate the people who are in need, and he's going to hate the from maybe I don't have what I have now and what I need now to something I want more, why don't you be when I become rich, not when, but when I am, say in 2015 or the next year, when you physically reach your goal, maybe have goals to help those who were in your situation. But to have a future dislike for a position that you're trying to go for, do you think your mind, your body, and your soul wants you to reach that goal?

No. The self-defense mechanism is going to prevent you from becoming what you hate most, right? It's going to kick in. So a lot of it is the association with money and the ability to not be average. Let's get away from average.

And the average income disclosure, that is actually not for you. The average income disclosure that we have at Empower or any other business is actually for the average person who wants an average life. I would like to encourage you not to be average, but to be exceptional, to exceed past what you possibly thought was possible. I am shocked that I graduated college. It was that hard.

And then there's other people I graduated with were like, wow, high school was harder than college. And I'm like, oh my goodness, I couldn't only imagine what you did in high school if college was hard for you at Texas. So the idea is this. Let's shoot for exceptional because all of us are relative to our own history, our own relative difficulty of what we've been through. We need to raise the bar internally so that we can teach our clients, our customers, our kids, the future generations, that we can become better by not being average, but by being exceptional.

See, the average, shooting for the average will keep you down competing with the B team. Basically with the team that isn't growing, is just coasting. That's average. But being exceptional, being a one percenter in your industry, being a five percenter in your business, in your company, that's where you want to be. You want to be the top earner, not because they were, but because you saw what they've done and you've seen that it's possible.

It doesn't matter if one out of a hundred people could do it. All you need to know is if that one person is doing something that you can duplicate, you do it. That's the beauty of internet marketing. We have something called ad copy. You basically mimic the type of marketing that they're doing and some of the things that we do in Empower and how we teach marketing.

So the goal, the end goal, is to always grow. Never be okay with being stagnant and being average because average doesn't pay well, doesn't have a happy childhood because average is just okay. We all want exceptional. We all want the best. Hey, thank you for listening for the Inner Circle.

Stay tuned for new Inner Circles and by all means, listen to the archived Inner Circles. My name is Lawrence Tam. I appreciate you. See you on the next Inner Circle.