Ponder on this

The other day I watched a documentary about Larry Page and Sergey Brin--the founders of Google. Both came from a family of academics; both were raised by parents whose passion was "to teach." Money was never their goal first, teaching was. And so when Larry and Sergey came up with the idea of creating a search engine, their question was not how can we make the most money, but how can we make it better for people to search for information. Needless to say, both are now billionaires.

And this morning I was listening to this radio program where a man was talking about his father. The father immigrated from Greece, he worked hard and reward came for his hard work. By the world's standard, he is successful...all 4 kids finished college, he paid off his residence and a vacation home and took lavish vacations with the family. The son telling the story is an accountant and he now runs the family business. And he runs it tightly, very tightly. Every penny has to be accounted for and he is obsessed with making money. Money became his focus and his family came way down the line. The father had to sit him down: "Son, when I came to this country, I had only the pants on my body, deduct the cost of the pants and everything we have is profit."

I have always made this a running principle in my life: I never make money the motivating factor for me to do things or not do things. And I try to remember what Zig Ziglar says: "You can have everything you want in life, if you will just help enough other people get what they want." Ponder on this philosophy, then start applying it in your life and I dare you to prove me wrong.