How to Stop Being a No-Getter and Start Being a Go-Getter

From the desk of Elijah aka The Realist
Location: Greenville, South Carolina
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I recently read an article that said 70% of the American workers were “checked out” during their working day. 

7 out of every 10 American workers actively hate their job and inactively spend their working day zoned out.

Joe Average may think to himself “wow, how unfortunate that these people can’t enjoy their jobs”.

Winner Wolf thinks “what a bunch of slack jawed idiots, wasting their time for money. Instead of zoning out these people could spend their time at ‘work’ working on a real passion project”.

But they won’t and they never will because these type of people are called “no-getters”. They are the opposite of “go-getters”.

No-getters hate their jobs and do nothing about it except play online games and gossip.

Though inactive at their job, no-getters are actively envious, jealous and resentful of go-getters because go-getters go get what they want.

No-getters stay in jobs they hate, go-getters don’t.

You’ll know a no-getter by the words they use and by their willingness to trade or give away their time for nonsense.

Some of their favorite words include “luck, wish, lottery, silver spoon, never, can’t” etc and some of their favorite time sucking activities include 9-5 jobs and standing in line for the newest phone.

They can’t fathom building anything of value and that’s why they are zonked out zombies wasting away in cubicles for a dream that never was and never will be (retiring rich).

I’m going to tell you bluntly how you can stop being a no-getter and start being a go-getter.

Step #1 Stop trading your time for money

If you are paid salary or hourly you are paid for your time.

If you are paid for your time you put a self-imposed limit on how much money you can make. 

You’ve only got 24 hours in a day, how many of those hours can you work? 16? Tops.

If you’re a Chinaman working as a slave maybe you can push it to 18 hours per day, 7 days per week but that’s the limit of human endurance.

Working for time limits your earning capability, not to mention robs you of the most important asset you will ever have.

Time is the most important thing you will ever have and if you trade your time for money you aren’t an entrepreneur, you’re a salary man. 

Even if you’re Joe Plumber and your truck says “Joe’s Plumbing” you may be working for yourself but you’re still trading your time for money. How many places can you be at one time? The answer is one place at any one time.

Time is the most important thing you own, give it to yourself, don’t give it to anyone else.

Certainly, don’t trade 5 of your days for 2 “free” days and don’t give 50 of your weeks in exchange for 2 “free” weeks. Those 2 weekend days and those 2 weeks holiday per year cost you your life, you just didn’t realize it at the time.

Be greedy with your time. Never trade it for pennies.

You’ll never be rich trading your time for a paycheck but more importantly you will never, ever be free.

You get maybe two weeks per year vacation time but the entrepreneur gets 52 weeks per year vacation time.

It doesn’t matter where I am in the world, I make money.

It doesn’t matter if I’m sleeping or awake, if Santa is watching or not, I make money ’round the clock. 

It doesn’t matter if I’m in Thailand, Texas, Tanzania or Timbuktu, money comes in.

Joe the Plumber is on call and makes money when he goes out to fix a little old ladies broken sink, Johnny office worker gets paid his 40 hour salary and that’s it, even if he works super-duper hard and comes in early and stays late.

The entrepreneur doesn’t trade his time for money. If you want to be an entrepreneur you have to stop giving away your most precious asset. Working more isn’t the answer, working better is.

When you stop giving away your time you have the ability to focus on making more money than any average Joe working an average job for an average wage for a chance of retiring as an average man with an average retirement income.

Step #2 Ignore the naysayers

Most people aren’t go-getters so how do you convince no-getters of your plans?

How do you convince mom and dad and uncle Joe you are going to be an entrepreneur and not a walking zombie?

It’s none of their business, that’s how.

Your life only belongs to someone else when you are a) an employee or b) underage.

Your plans are for you and YOU alone.

You can share parts of them on a need-to-know basis, but never give away your strategy.

It’s nobody’s damn business and if you require approval, you don’t have the balls to be an entrepreneur. 

Approval is for dogs. If you want approval then be a good boy, get a good education, and get a good job with the rest of the good boys and spend your next 50 years wondering “what could have been”.

If you want to be an ass-kicker then start kicking some ass and do it every single day and stop worrying about approval.

If I needed approval, I’d still be making slave wages and getting drunk every weekend. I’d still be lamenting how big of a bite mommy government takes from my paycheck. I’d still be stuck.

Step #3 Ignore the hard times

As an entrepreneur you’ll have a new friend that maybe you didn’t have before, and his name is anxiety.

Waiting to make money can make you very anxious. Many times, you don’t know when or if you’ll make ANY money.

You’ve heard that “get rich quick” is a scam and is all fake but you probably have heard it from other office zombies.

The reality is that as an entrepreneur you make big money in windfalls. You do not get rich slow and steady, you get rich by making one or several big deals that make you get rich quick.

But what are you doing before that time? Working and worrying, probably.

If you take the plunge and decide your fate is yours to make you will likely face some lean times before you “get rich quick”.

I’ve been so poor that when I made $700 it seemed like a fortune. I’ve been so poor that as a grown man I made $15,000.00 one year. That’s fifteen thousand pre-tax dollars.

How did I get through such a harsh existence?

I didn’t even think about it. It didn’t even occur to me that they were hard times.

They’ll ask you after you become successful how you made it through such hard times and you’ll reply “well, I didn’t even realize they were hard times. I was so focused on my project that I just did what I had to do and didn’t worry about all the times I ate tuna and oatmeal“.

Endure and ignore.

That’s how you get through the hard times and “get rich quick”, and it just doesn’t matter what anyone else thinks about your strategy.

Step #4 Stop consuming and start producing

No-getters are consumers and that’s all they are. Work and consume, debt, work, consume, debt, work, consume, die.

Go-getters are producers, they produce what the no-getters consume.

The in-betweeners are the wannabe’s who follow get rich quick schemes.

You absolutely can get rich quick when you produce something valuable for a good number of people.

The reason get rich quick schemes don’t work is because they don’t provide any value to anyone, they are tools for the impatient to try to acquire wealth.

The type of people that follow get rich quick schemes never stick to one thing and they never try to provide value, they jump ship at the first sign of hardship and move on to the next scheme. Rinse and repeat.

The in-betweeners are followers, they aren’t leaders, and they aren’t producers. To make REAL money, make a REAL product that actually makes a REAL difference to someone.

And for heaven’s sake don’t spend all your money on nonsense like the newest phones and gadgets and hip clothes.

You’ll never get rich saving your money, that’s a get rich slow scam, but you WILL need capital for your ventures, and you WILL need a monetary padding in case of hard times.

You can buy all that cool, hip stuff when you’re loaded.

Step #5 Stop begging and start learning

“I want to be my own boss and make my own rules, please tell me what to do and how to do it“.

Yeah right.

There isn’t a blueprint for wealth and freedom but there are blueprints (plural).

So you learn from everywhere, you take from this one and that one and you learn. Take what you need and discard the rest.

No one piece of work is going to make everyone who reads it rich, but you can learn from Book A and Book B and Book C.

It’s very important to read every industry specific book, article, blog post, and forum you can find.

You’ll need to be an expert in your industry. It is also great motivation to read business books and autobiographies of the successful and “out of the ordinary” business books like The Millionaire Fastlane.

The last job I had I was there for two months. It’s not a lie to say I spent each day of my two months on the clock reading about my new business venture.

Unethical? I don’t care.

Unlike the zonked-out zombie no-getters who mentally check out, I checked in to a different sort of work each and every day, all day.

Because I learned and studied so much, I doubled my salary income less than 30 days after quitting my job and I was never again forced to trade my time for money.

Because of that decision to learn each and every day (I never stopped learning) I can now write to you from anywhere in the world.

Right now, I’m in Greenville. South Carolina. I could spend a week or a year here and it wouldn’t make any difference to my paycheck.

I just spent my birthday here on an isolated and empty beach, just me and my special little lady. We had a BBQ right on the beach and rode the motorbike all along the empty beach for miles.

I paid for it all from this very website. I started Fraud and Liars to be able to enjoy location freedom.

I started working on the web 7 years ago, I started making a real income 2.5 years ago. You do the math.

Endure and ignore, provide value, stay disciplined, and SUCCESS will soon follow.

All those macho military sayings, the ones that no-getters like to mock, are true and they are some of the best pieces of advice of all time. 

Carpe Diem, lest you be 65 years old and realizing what a mistake you made by trading your precious time for a piece of shit post tax paycheck.

The real secret to success?

Start 5 years ago, start yesterday, start today and don’t ever stop.

Seize the day.

Until next time.

Your man,

-Elijah aka The Realist