The Way to Wealth…

By Benjamin Franklin, Commentary by Jeffrey Reeves

Having laid the groundwork for continuing his verbal treatise, Father Abraham translates the premises he’s postulated into a series of calls to action.

“Let us, then, up and be doing, and doing to the purpose;

These simplest of words carry profound meaning when it comes to you building your wealth. During the last thirty-five years Americans have lost track of the basic truth that working hard and following conventional wisdom – doing what everyone else does with their money just because that’s the way everyone else is doing – just isn’t enough. You need to invest your activity and decisions with meaning. You need to be ‘doing to the purpose.’

What purpose? Every successful personal economy has four essential goals: to be debt free, to develop an income stream that requires neither work nor active management, to have plenty of cash at hand when confronting life’s surprisingly unsurprising surprises, and, perhaps most importantly, to pay forward a legacy of both money and the secret wisdom about the way to wealth so future generations aren’t burdened with property they don’t own and investments they don’t control.

Father Abraham has other admonitions about how to travel the way to wealth.

“so by diligence shall we do more with less perplexity.

Diligence on the way to wealth means persevering with attention and care at building your personal economy. Diligence makes life simpler and less perplexing. That lets you get more done in less time and with less stress. Life is only a struggle for those who struggle with living.

Dr Benjamin Franklin’s Father Abraham has more insights…

“Sloth makes all things difficult, but industry all easy;

Motivational speakers, authors and coaches get paid millions of dollars every year to tell you the simple compelling truths that Americans have embraced for over 250 years and that Dr Benjamin Franklin’s Father Abraham popularized in the final installment of Poor Richard’s Almanac in 1758.

It’s no surprise that Dr Benjamin Franklin has become such an iconic person in history and folklore. He practiced what Father Abraham preached. He worked diligently at a wide range of tasks and became one of the wisest, most accomplished and most beloved men in history because of it…and he made it look easy.

Let’s consider a few more of Father Abraham’s ideas.

“and He that riseth late must trot all day, and shall scarce overtake his business at night; while Laziness travels so slowly, that Poverty soon overtakes him. Drive thy business, let not that drive thee;

I know a man that claims to be a ‘night person.’ He stays up late, sleeps late, gets to the office late, then works late. His family suffers, his health suffers, his business suffers, he complains about being overwhelmed on a regular basis. This man reads motivational books, attends seminars, studies Dr Benjamin Franklin’s works, yet he refuses to consider the possibility that his sleeping and work habits have anything to do with his everyday challenges.

Is this laziness? I don’t judge it, but Father Abraham implies as much and predicts the natural consequence – poverty. In America we may measure such a man as a success. He has a nice home in a nice neighborhood, drives a nice car and so on.

The hidden reality, however, is that he could be a better parent, a better spouse, a better provider, and of greater service to his clients. His income, his charitable giving, his health, life and peace of mind could all improve if he would put his business in perspective and give up the failed idea that he is a ‘night person.’

Father Abraham ends this discussion of “Do or do not…there is no try” with perhaps the most commonly quoted aphorism from Poor Richard’s Almanac;

“and Early to bed, and early to rise, makes a man healthy, wealthy, and wise, as Poor Richard says.

Bill Newman was one of the founders of the human potential movement and one of my mentors. He taught me by example that this approach to time and life management worked well.

I had hired Bill to conduct his PACE seminar for a group of my employees. I invited him to stay with my family for the two nights he would be in town. When he retired the first evening it was quite early and I asked him when he’d like me to awaken him. He said he would awaken at 5:30 and I need not worry. He did. He did so without the aid of an alarm. Bill had become so accustomed to rising early that doing so was automatic for him. I’m betting the same was true for Dr Benjamin Franklin and for thousands of other successful people for centuries and millennia.

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