 Hello everybody and welcome to the Bruce Wagner Show. Today we have a most amazing guest. She is a best-selling author, speaker, lecturer, entrepreneur, so many things. She's even produced games, all sorts of things. So her name is Sharon Lecter. Welcome Sharon. Thank you. Delighted to be with you Bruce. Yes. So I have been a fan of yours since the Rich Dad Poor Dad, Robert Kiyosaki, and you wrote Rich Dad Poor Dad, the original. And you've been involved in many other books and projects since then. So how many books have you published? Seventeen adult books. Before Rich Dad I had actually started and built a company, the talking book industry for kids, the books with the sound strips down the side. Before Rich Dad Poor Dad? Yes. That was back in the late eighties, the inventor of the talking book and I were friends and I joined his company and helped him grow that to the international powerhouse. It was a time when bookstores were very quiet places with little ladies behind. So I said, I had the first disruptive technology. Yes. We've disrupted bookstores. Boy, now bookstores are disappearing. It's becoming e-books and things. It's kind of sad. Whether they're talking more, I guess that's a good thing. They're interactive and multimedia and they're on iPads. Yes. The whole world's changing. They're closing Barnes and Noble at Columbus Circle. It's already closed, actually. It's kind of a sad thing to see. The record stores and the bookstores are next. Who knows what's... I think movie theaters are going to become some other kind of virtual reality centers and stuff. So you've always had an affinity for education and especially kids education. Absolutely. And part of it is because my own children and my grandchildren now. I've had the blessing to be able to combine my passion as a parent with my profession in publishing. So with talking books and then we moved to Arizona back in 91 and in 92, my oldest son went off to college and he got into credit card debt. And I was pretty upset at him but also at myself because I thought I had taught him about money. So it was in 92 when I really dedicated my professional career to financial education and financial literacy for young people, for families, and really focusing on entrepreneurship and helping people get their companies on the right path. Okay. And you've written so many different books in the Rich Dad Pordead series and then even after that. How many books after that? Well, we did 10... I've done 15 books in the Rich Dad series. So we started with Rich Dad Pordead which actually was written as a brochure for the board game. You may not know that. The book was written as a brochure. Yeah, we never expected it. We never expected it to take off and become a franchise. It's a huge thing, right? And we thought our brand was going to be cash flow because of the game and our company name was cash flow technologies. But the world told us, no, no, no, your brand is Rich Dad. So we started and literally 15 books later. I left the organization in 2007 and that's when the Napoleon Hill Foundation reached out to me and said, we need your help because with the downturn in the market at the end of 2007, the words of Napoleon Hill and Think and Grow Rich were really instrumental in helping us get out of the Great Depression so many years ago. Many successful companies today were started during the Great Depression. And so they said, we really need to get this more front and center. And that's when they came to me and asked me to step into a project called Three Feet from Gold, which we released in 2009. Okay, this is Three Feet from Gold. Yeah, that's the first one. And it really takes the principles of Think and Grow Rich of perseverance and staying the course. And we talked to 35 of today's top leaders about not just their success stories, but about how they got through the difficult times. You know, we've all we've all been in those valleys and they persevered and were able to keep going. There was last few, few steps to turn potential failure into great success because you were telling me earlier in the in the green room that the the title tell us where the title comes from. Yes, Three Feet from Gold actually comes from a story in the first chapter of Think and Grow Rich. And it's about a young man named R. U. Darby who went out West with his uncle to discover gold. And they were all excited. They got their mind. They bought their equipment. They dug and they got some top quality gold. So excited they went and they got more money, more equipment, kept digging all of a sudden they ran out. And they kept digging more dirt, more dirt, no gold. And so they got frustrated through their hands up and went back. He sold their mine and the equipment to the town junk man. Now the junk man had been living there 20 years waiting for his opportunity studying gold. He knew all the right people. He knew the gold engineers. He goes out to the to the mine. And the engineer says, really quite simple. R. U. Darby and his uncle just went right through the the vein of gold. You go back to where they start and go back three other way go three feet from that and you'll discover it. And so the junk man discovered the largest discovery of gold of his age of that time. R. U. Darby was back east and was he upset? Yes. Yes. But he also said I will never allow this to happen to me again. He went on to build a huge insurance company. And he started teaching the principle of perseverance and never giving up. And that element is so so important today with our economy. So many of us have seen the ups and downs and that roller coaster continues today. And so that was the essence of working with the foundation to bring these words back out to the forefront today. Because there are many people that are under 4045 that don't had never heard of Napoleon Hill. Right. Yeah, and it's timeless ideas. The the perseverance and there's lessons in that for everybody. The Darby went back and didn't have the perseverance and also for the the town junk man because he just waited perseverantly for his for the right time for the opportunity. Boom. The opportunity to present it itself. And he had the right team. He had the right mastermind. Yeah. You know so many of us we've been taught through school that we have to do everything on our own. You have to work alone. Yes. And entrepreneurs become very lonely. Right. And if you want to be successful, you need to expand your horizon, have a mastermind, have advisors who can help speed your way to success. Absolutely. And have the right team around you. This person may be strong where you're weak. And that's what you want for nobody makes it alone. Everything is a team sport. Right. Absolutely. You have to have your experts. And really, one of the one of the most important things is to know what you don't know, right? To know what you're, you know, what you're, because everybody has their area of brilliance, but very few people have more than one. And most people feel like they can't ask for help because it's a sign of weakness. And they're afraid of criticism, which brings me to the latest book because right as we're about to release three feet from gold, the foundation called me and said, Sharon, we've just discovered a manuscript that Napoleon Hill wrote the year after publishing Thinking Grow Rich. He intended it to be the sequel and it was hidden away for 73 years. That's the, that's this, your new one, Outwitting the Devil, right? And this is, so this is a transcript that was written as the sequel by Napoleon Hill to Thinking Grow Rich and it was buried away by his family? Yes. Why is that? His wife was working for the Methodist Church at the time. And the, and the title Outwitting the Devil in the book itself, the last half of it is an interrogation of the devil and Napoleon Hill says you can decide, you the reader can decide if you think I was talking to the real devil or an imaginary devil. Yeah. Doesn't matter if you get value from what the content says, but his wife was terrified. And in fact, in the book when you read it, there's a section, of course, this was typed on a manual typewriter during the time of Hitler and Mussolini, but in this Q and A with the devil, he says, you know, Mr. Devil, aren't you afraid? I'm going to give away all your secrets and you're going to lose control of all these souls. And the devil says, and he wrote this in 1938. No, I'm not worried at all because you're going to be too afraid to publish a manuscript. It's pretty wild when you say, in essence, that's exactly what happened. It was put away in a closet and it didn't come out, but it's, there was no accident here because what's happened today, so many people are crippled in fear and the essence of the book is that the devil uses fear. Fear paralyzes us. It makes us sit on the sideline. And so instead of having fear paralyze us, we need to allow it to motivate us. And it talks about the fear of poverty, which of course is very prevalent today, but also the fear of criticism. And what's happened today, so many people are afraid to look bad, just look silly, afraid to ask for help. Right. And yet, Napoleon Hill himself said there's, you know, the mastermind principle comes from Napoleon Hill. And so you need to ask for help. Find those advisors that can help speed you on your way. Find those people that can, you add to your team that have strengths where your weaknesses are. Right. And that's truly the pathway to success is business is a team sport. Absolutely. And I've heard, I've heard it said, people have said that there are only two real emotions and that's love and fear. And they're, they're, they're sort of opposites or mutually exclusive. You can't be having both at the same time in the same matter anyway. So it's interesting. So yeah, you can, you can take it literally, or you can take it figuratively, or that the devil is the fear that we have, however you want to perceive it. But it's, I noticed that you have testimonials here from Harvey McKay, who wrote Swim with the Sharks without being eaten alive, and Steve Forbes from Editor-in-Chief of Forbes magazine, of course, and Michael Beckwith, who is an amazing, he was in The Secret and is an amazing spiritual leader. So you've got, it sounds like you've got fans from all different sectors, right? Business, self-help, finance, and spiritual community as well. And it's so important because today we're all being battled by fear from every direction, whether it be financial or spiritual or terrorism. You know, the fear is pervasive. And what this book does, it gives you seven steps to try and get rid of the fear in your life and ways to outwith the devil. And it's such an cohesive picture of how you can turn your life around, because so many of us we allow ourselves to be insulated. And when we're fearful, we kind of close down. And this gives you that opportunity to give you that hand up to get you out of that fearful situation and things that you can do to really set a goal for yourself and achieve and get past the fear in your life. Great. And so, so exciting. I haven't read it, but I can't wait to read it. So this seems like a good time. We need to take a break really quick to thank our sponsors. Obviously, we wouldn't be here without our sponsors. We are most grateful to Mt. Gox. Mt. Gox, and this is something that I was explaining to you earlier, Sharon, about Bitcoin, which is a whole interesting phenomenon. It's electronic digital currency. It's kind of, they're calling it the money of the future. They're calling it the most exciting technology since the invention of the internet itself. Well, there's a company called Mt. Gox, m-t-g-o-x.com, which happens to be the number one online exchange site. So it's a really convenient place and way to buy Bitcoin or sell Bitcoin online without leaving, you know, comfort of your own home. So if you own a, you know, a diner in Brooklyn and you accept Bitcoin, you need to convert that into dollars for your produce order for the week. You will need to use an online exchange like Mt. Gox to convert your Bitcoins to US dollars, for example. If somebody wants to invest in Bitcoin, they would be doing the opposite. They'll be buying Bitcoin for dollars. So this is kind of like a, almost like a matching dating service. It's a market online. It's automated 24-7 and actually Mt. Gox is the 90% market share at least. So they are sort of the standard. So when we talk about the value of Bitcoin, we just look at the Mt. Gox last price. So Mt. Gox is a sponsor and phenomenal company and we thank them very, very much for sponsoring our show. So check out Mt. Gox, m-t-g-o-x.com and you set up an account. It's free and brilliant service. And the Thank You Economy, which is a book by Gary Vaynerchuk. And it is a book actually about what we're talking about. It's about businesses large and small actually using social media. He talks about how to, he's a best-selling author, New York Times best-selling author as well. This is his new book. And he talks about how to use social media in this new age of the internet effectively. Because I always say the vast, 99% of people doing, you know, social media marketing are doing it wrong. Basically it's just spam and it's annoying to people. But he talks about how to really bring an old fashion feeling of direct customer service and hand-holding to your customer. Even if you're a huge corporation, you can actually engage customers one by one and give them personalized customer service using these tools of social media. And that's what it's about. Like he calls it Thank You Economy, which is really about thanking the customer for being a customer. So it's Thank You Economy Book.com. So check that out. Thank You Economy and Gary Vaynerchuk. Okay, so I have a question now. The three feet from gold, which is Thinking Grow Rich. Now is that an actual, is it actually Thinking Grow Rich reprinted or is it commentary about Thinking Grow Rich? It's actually a whole new book and it's a parable in itself where the Thinking Grow Rich is the brand name of a new series of books. So for instance I'm going to do a Thinking Grow Rich for women by women talking about women and their thought processes and how they follow the principles of Thinking Grow Rich. I'm also going to be doing a Thinking Grow Rich for children. So that's actually the brand name of a new series of books. And three feet from gold is actually a unique written novel basically that we did talking to many of today's thought leaders. And we set it in a parable format so that you follow a young man through who has gotten from the entitlement age and he's kind of a, you know, he likes to spend money that he doesn't have and he goes through this journey of having a mentor that helps him get back on the right track. And the mentor introduces him to some of his friends. Much like what Hill did when Andrew Carnegie introduced him to all the rich men of his time back in the early 1900s. And that's really where the power of Thinking Grow Rich comes from because it wasn't one man's philosophy. It's not Napoleon Hill's philosophy. He interviewed hundreds and thousands of people that were successful and thousands of people that considered themselves failures. And so it was a life study. He studied for over 20 years. He was really a researcher. Yes. And so Thinking Grow Rich is actually a synthesis of success of all of these people. That's why it's so powerful. Yeah. Timeless. Just as out waiting the devil is the same synthesis of what helped people back. Because that's the power. All of both of these books were written as a result of his lifetime of study. Okay. And the Three Feet from Gold, so it's an original novel. Right. It's based on the principles of Thinking Grow Rich. Right. But it's a completely new original novel. Right. And what we did was we took the principles of perseverance and never giving up. And we went out and talked to many of today's leaders. Okay. We talked to the founder, you know, the greater Velcro, FedEx, Chick-fil-A restaurants. So you might not recognize the names of the people we talked to, but you would recognize their brands in the world today. Sure. About how they are still utilizing these principles in today's market. Wow. So we wanted to show the relevance of the of the information to what's happening in the world today. How did you find those people? Like were they, I mean, did you already know that they were using these principles or did they contact you or how did that work? In a myriad of ways. We looked to those folks that communicate with the foundation who have created success and say, I love Napoleon Hill. Oh, they're already there. So, you know, there was already knew that they were, there was already a relationship. Yeah. And we wanted to make sure the people we highlighted really exhibited the elements that we want to people to see as a result of Think and Grow Rich. And so some of them we actually reached out to to say, you know, did you have influence from Think and Grow Rich? So, right. Various different ways. But outwitting the devil is is actually the original transcript that I mean, what do you call it? The manuscript was the original by Napoleon Hill to Think and Grow Rich. And you annotated it? Yes. What I did was I didn't change the manuscript. I did do some precision editing because he can sometimes be a little wordy. But it's his actual writing and then I add sections and it's in a different font. So you can so you can ignore my comments if you choose. If you're a purist you can just read his his manuscript and ignore my comments or as you go through the book you can read. And what I did was I would compare what was happening in 1938 when he wrote it to what's happening today because there are so many similarities. Yeah. We had high unemployment back then, high unemployment today. There we were at war back then or certainly at war today. And the economy of course was in the toilet then and the economy is certainly there today. So there's so many parallels and the thought process of moving from an entitlement mentality to an empowerment mentality was a very big issue for him. He also talked about the need to not have dictatorial education but to have experiential education instead of pounding facts into our kids through memorization. Now this was 1938. I was going to say so ahead of his time. It could be 2038. So yes, so relevant today. Yeah. He also at the time talked about the bad side of cigarettes. Now this was at a time before we knew cigarettes were bad for you 1938. We were so giving them away free to our troops everybody's and he talked about the devil says that he uses cigarettes to derail young people at a young age to get them addicted to nicotine so that they would drift and that was one of the big concepts in the book that I love. He talks about drifters versus non-drifters. And a drifter is someone who's easily swayed. They go with the flow. They don't have a mind of their own. They don't have an ultimate goal. Like sheep we kind of think of them as sheep that just easily manipulated by marketing and trends. Right and the devil loves them because he can mess their lives up and then he compares the non-drifter and the non-drifter is somebody who knows where they want to go. They have their goal and they yes we have setbacks along the way but when you know where you want to go you can recalibrate your path. And so he says you know a non-drifter he you know when a man he says a man who uses his own mind escapes my web. And so it's that's part of it and we think about different times in our life when maybe we were kind of going with the flow. Oh yeah. All of us. Last Tuesday now. Yes exactly and there's one section of the book about procrastination and it's like darn busted because he said you know procrastination is drifting and I said yeah but that's my excuse. I said I always work better under pressure but yes oh no. You say that too. Yeah laziness laziness plus indifference equals procrastination. I guess if the shoe fits you know. Yes we're all guilty. And the the term the devil I can see where that's kind of a loaded term but it doesn't matter whether you like personally I don't believe in the devil but you can still look at it even metaphysically it's still the same because if you like metaphysically I would think of the devil as being your your ego your you know fear. That inner voice. Yeah that exactly even so however you look at it whether you look at it literally or or metaphysically or whatever it's still equally applicable. Well when I tell people I say you know we've all seen the cartoons with the angel on one shoulder and the devil on the other. So I said the next time somebody's in your face and giving you a hard time just smile and go like this you know because you'll know you get rid of the it's negativity and we have so much negativity around us and one of the ways to out with the devil or out with the negativity in your life is paying attention to your environment. Right. You know if you think about going to a funeral you're down you feel you know how depressed the room is versus going to a party where they're dancing and that's it's so important because so many of us the cocktail conversation is about bad health there is the or about the economy or somebody losing their house or losing their job you know it's like I came out for this exactly versus what's positive. That's so so important people don't pay enough attention to that the people that you hang around the the energy that people are giving off you to be really aware of that and it just it's going to either bring you down or bring you up and it influences your your thoughts for the next 24 hours 48 hours or whatever of what you do and it's so important to keep a to keep that positive energy and stay away from that negative stuff that's just drawing you down people complaining no matter what it is I mean there there are obviously they're legitimate complaints and things like that there's a time and place you take it you process it you file it away it's okay now I'm going to do what I have to do about that and file it in the drawer you move on and stay positive right and you turn those negatives into opportunities you see a way you know the most successful businesses do one of two things they solve a problem or serve a need and so we've got a lot of problems today we've got a lot of needs I mean last night I was speaking to a group of under 30 CEOs and one of the most common questions I had was what happens when your family isn't supportive and that's that's more often than not the case yeah because your family knows you so well and you start doing something different in your life you start wanting to go out instead of being going to the corporate job you want to be an entrepreneur the first thing that happens is mom and dad goes oh no no you don't your family says oh that's crazy you know you shouldn't do that and so you instantly feel pulled back you know the analogy of there's a one crab in a box crawls right out two crabs in the box neither one gets out and so people are naturally resistance to change and you can't change your family but you have to recognize that that's their attitude and I'm not going to allow myself to be sucked in and so you limit the time you spend with your family when you're in this build-up mode and you increase the time that you spend with your friends that are on the same path and you go to the networking groups and you find that mastermind group that supports you and where you want to go so that you're adding that positive energy and encouragement because once you start seeing some success all of a sudden your family is going to be yeah they're right more friends than ever I don't know how that would work exactly it's true there's a saying I don't a paraphrase I get it completely wrong but something about you can't be a prophet in your own village and that's kind of what it is the people that are closest to you are the most critical and one of the often and one of the things that I always think of it as a curse word it's like the worst thing you someone can say to me is these words be realistic because what they're really saying it's a polite way of saying oh you're not good enough you're never going to succeed and it's just it's it's that pulling you down you're a dreamer yeah that's good realistic you're just little brucee from the block or whatever you know I know you from way back and you you've never you've never been a super success before so you're not going to be now you know that kind of thinking that be realistic and it's their own fear that's speaking it's their own fear of criticism their own fear of change their own fear of failure they're exactly they are projecting it on you and you have a choice nope receiving that exactly or rejecting that talk to the hand right yes yes this yeah yeah yeah nope brush it off okay bye bye we'll talk later once I'm successful that's right exactly prove them wrong some people actually take that energy and and fuel this like I want to like I'll show you I call it the I'll show you feeling motivation yeah and that's what fear can either paralyze you or it can motivate you yeah and when we talk about passion one of the things in three three feet from goal we came up with a personal success equation which was common among all the people that we talked to and that's taking your passion and when I talk to people about passion we've all heard do what you love love what you do right well passion can also come from anger and so for instance my life's work is because I'm angry that we don't teach money in school we don't teach people about entrepreneurship so my passion is from anger and so you combine your passion with your talent so my talent I'm a CPA and I have a background in publishing and so I combine my passion with my talent but that's not enough you have to find that right association and that's the people that you surround yourself with or you collaborate with another company that can help speed you to market right and so that association is so important and then of course taking the right action you know we've all seen the movie the secret in the book and it's great talks about the law pop you know positive attraction well that actually was originated by Napoleon Hill in 1919 he really originated the law of attraction but he also said you have to do something you have to take action right you know we've all been given a great mind and two arms and two legs we're supposed to actually do something go the as he said go the extra mile but then and we were almost ready to go to print with that formula power you know that your passion plus your talent times the right association taking the right action and why I said no there's still something missing and the piece was faith and that's what helps get you through the negativity faith in yourself right and faith in what you're doing and the faith that you are going to succeed right and that's a common formula that every one of the people that we highlighted in three feet from gold and and the basic underpinning formula in all of Napoleon Hill's work is the fact that you have the ability to be successful it doesn't take money to make money it takes the passion and the talent the right association taking the right action and having faith in yourself right and if you have a if there's a spiritual component to it one of the things that to me I think of the easiest way to have that faith you have to have a couple things when you have to feel worthy of success because if you feel that you don't deserve the success then you will never get it no matter what that's just a deal breaker you have to feel like you're worthy that you have to love yourself effective first of all love yourself enough to feel that you are worthy of it right and then you also one of the things that I don't I don't know where I got this idea but I think about is if you if you feel like what you're doing it's kind of sort of has a moral or ethical or spiritual aspect to it if you feel like what you're doing is good basically it's ordained by a higher power by God or whatever that what you're doing is actually good then you I feel like I can't fail if what I'm doing is actually good is really helping people like our mission statement at only one TV is to help as many people as possible and we mean masses of people billions of people all over the planet in the most profound ways possible that's our mission corporate mission statement right and so I really believe that if I really feel that way then spiritually I feel I can't fail I can't fail it's impossible so if you think that way that's that's your faith you're talking about yes and it's mission driven as opposed to profit driven right and that's where so much of it is you know when you see successful companies you know are they they can be successful for short term if they're profit driven right but that's called what I call are you selling or are you serving and the issue is if you set just sell as a transaction right I can I can make a quick I can convince you to buy my book as a transaction right but I want to serve you so that I want a relationship right so you instead of having a transaction with your customers create a relationship with your customers and the money will come yeah but if you're if you're if your vision and your mission is aligned in service then you have a long-term success you may continue to come if you have a relationship right if you make a fast buck then yeah you can you can cheat people you can just do anything unethical and make you can have a lot of sick financial success but very short lived right wow so how have have you I know that you have developed lots of products because I remember the cash flow game and then cash flow for kids we actually and I actually used to have a this thing we started at unity called prosperity groups that we did this we created this whole thing and this was part of our little curriculum in our groups that we did was playing we had a game night where we play cash flow and all that now I understand you have some new products also that are targeted for teenagers yes I'm so excited about this and because not so much because we won one awards which I'll share with you but because the teens love them I left the Richard organization in 2007 and my passion was to create products that really would give young people the chance to become their own boss and become masters of money instead of slaves to money and it was really almost a download of the stuff that was in my brain and we started with an entrepreneurial kit and it's this biz kit we just within the last two weeks learn that we are we received the 2011 mom's gold choice award for this product and so it's a real it makes me very happy but what makes me even happier is when a young person actually uses it and generates and makes a business for themselves and it's really a fun yes a really fun four color product and it shows the various aspects of building a business and then at the end of each section they fill out a little piece of this one little question they answer the questions and when they're done going through the process they you pull out those pages and they have their own business plan and so even adults get a little intimidated when you say oh me too I've never I've never written a business plan I think so I've had adults use this product yeah I've had that actually I'll pretend I'm a kid yeah and so it walks you through the process and it allows them to become powerful because when a young person knows that they can make their own money that's the gift of a lifetime yeah that's exciting instead of thinking you have to get a job and be taken care of by an employer or taken care of by the government you learn that you can take care of yourself create a job yeah exactly and the self-esteem goes up yeah and the confidence goes up that little you're not worthy goes and starts going away because they realize that they can take care of themselves and that's what's so important but when I did this product I also started thinking that you know young people like to they like games of course they like the internet but when I started I actually created this product which is called Thrive Time Proteins and it's a board game and the sweet spot is ages 10 to 20 because it talks to young people about where they are at that stage of their life and it's done with humor and the beauty of it is we teach them that the choices they make will either drive them to success to thriving or dive them into debt we don't talk down to them it's a lot of fun a lot of humor in it but they they learn that it's just as important how they spend their time as how they spend their money and we've kept it very cost affordable it's $29 so my my goal is to make a difference not to make a profit and the kids that play it absolutely love it we won the same mom golds choice award on this product a year ago 2010 wow but the better award is when the kids play it and they just they they get engaged they like it the conversations they have around the table they go why aren't they teaching me this in school I need this information this relates to who I am and what I am and it talks about getting good grades so you can get a decent college scholarship so many people today are just heavy burdened with large school loans and school debt they they're getting out of college with $100,000 in school loans and no job and that's this going to cripple this generation unless we teach them how to be independent and again how to be a master of their money instead of a slave to their money how does the game handle that if you're it deals with student loans right is it is it detrimental in the game if you if you take student loans every every every decision you make you either get a positive thrive score or a negative thrive score and so in here there are certain elements of the fact that you qualify for a scholarship well that's a positive okay and then you may have an opportunity for your parents to help support you through school that's a positive and taking a school loan can be a positive if it's for the right reason and it can be a negative if it's for the wrong reason and so we deal with that we talk about your first car a car can be a negative if you go get the hot hot hot sports car it's a negative if your parents support you and you can get a decrease in your car insurance because you have good grades there's also cards that say you've done too many text messages extra hundred bucks well I think that's probably happened to a few kids this age and talks about one one card is your your boss realizes you've been giving away free food to your friends for a year he should fire you but instead he reduces your pay and makes you clean the toilets so again it's humorous there's you know and then the kids they have a great time talking about things that truly have happened in their lives there's one my personal favorite is you go to a great party at a friend's house their parents are out of town cops come you get a four hundred dollar ticket well I don't have to say on the card that there was underage drinking the kids fill all that in around the table but again it makes them experience things I often say we need to allow our teenagers to stub their toe while they're still at home yeah so they don't break their leg when they go out into the real world and so by doing this they have those experiences and they have the opportunity to think about the consequences without actually realizing the consequences and that's the beauty of what Thrive Time for Teens does it really allows them to start thinking about life choices in a safe environment with play money instead of real money it's a game yeah but the lessons they learn they can take easily take to the real world right have you had any interest from schools or educators and and using some of some of these games and books and things yeah I'm very excited we are going to be doing we're starting a plan in Arizona which we intend to take nationwide where we're doing a Thrive Time challenge throughout high schools in the state of Arizona starting in January and it will culminate in April which is financial literacy month so at the end of April we'll be doing a final competition of kids around the state for Thrive Time and the winner will get a scholarship so oh great so important and it's so important for the parents too this is a great way what happens is parents are afraid to talk to their kids about money because they're afraid their kids are going to realize that they themselves don't know everything you know that's the case they may have their own financial problems and so by by using the Thrive Time for teens game it's a safe tool it's a buffer parents got to learn too it takes the it takes the emotion out of it and so this the parent does learn along with the kid but it's also a safe way to talk to your young person about money to give them the tools they need without making it so personal right I mean blood and money sometimes is a very difficult thing to to mix because the emotional side of both money is emotional family is emotional put them together sometimes you have explosions yeah exactly and so I can imagine it's for parents it's like uh like like helping your kid with your with their homework and you have no idea what they're doing like um immigrant parents trying to help their kid with their homework and they don't even English isn't even their first language or whatever new math all those things that parents have experienced so this is an excellent tool to teach both at the same time and make it a game make it fun well part of the problem and what that I talk about this as well is I mean if you imagine the old science fair project where you can go in and you can see which projects mom and dad helped with the most right right and so mom and dad think aren't we great parents we helped our child get an A right well and you think the child is going to say my have great parents they help me well the child may actually be thinking they don't think I can do it on my own right exactly they don't learn self-confidence and then next time the kid's going to say what the you know what let mom and dad do it and so by helping you're actually disabling your child right I've done it with my own kids I've seen it I see it all over the place and in today's environment so many of us want to put our kids in bubbles so that they bounce they don't realize that they don't understand they never face failure treat them like they're helpless and then they become helpless they grow up helpless right couldn't have said it better exactly that is that's the issue we have so many with so many young people today I was thinking about you know giving giving too much to anybody when you know they're they're not going to use it wisely or whatever the case may be you giving a gift or money or something to people and depending on the circumstance can be I always thought of as enabling but you're right it's actually a better way to say it is disabling because it really is it's disabling them from doing what they really need to do themselves and you know really sometimes you just have to feel a pain or the desire or whatever to change your what your your behavior your choice your laziness or whatever it is and a lot of parents say well how do I get started and I said just you know that you can start really with a little goal and I talk about little wins when you know where your big goal is that's fine but set little goals and allow your child to achieve a little goal and celebrate because then all of a sudden the self-esteem goes up then they can set another little goal and achieve it and so it's like okay you start and all of a sudden you wake up and you're really close to your big goal you're so wise you know that I just saw this documentary on Ted I don't know if you've ever heard of Ted Talks Ted.com it's my it's like the only television I watch it's so cool I just saw this documentary on Ted.com about video games and that there's a science to these video game development companies that they use and that's exactly what they talk about they have a whole structure of this the idea of little goals and little achievements and whole all sorts of things that they've been able to actually match up to our the evolution of our brain of how we work and how we grow and how we learn really interesting stuff maybe you could explore getting some of these products made into video games that would be cool Yes, yes I would love that that would be super cool we're looking if you're a video game developer contact Sharon SharonLichter.com is your website, right? Yes, it is you can see it there now where's where's the best place that they can they can pick up these these books and these products the books are available on Amazon.com or Barnes and Noble.com you can also go we have a special website called OutwittingTheDevil.com Oh, okay and OutwittingTheDevil.com there's actually a secret chapter that was in the original manuscript that didn't make it into the final book and it's Napoleon Hill having a conversation with his invisible counselors his mastermind and these are great people from history that he brought together and it's a very it's like it's own little short story and so I made that available for free that's OutwittingTheDevil.com OutwittingTheDevil.com and you can also order the book through that website it takes you to Amazon and Barnes and Noble so great great well thank you so much Sharon it's been such a pleasure finally to meet you I'm just like you know one of your biggest fans it's my honor thank you so much and I appreciate the opportunity sure thank you see you guys tomorrow take care ciao