Mr Peter Johnson

When I was a child and people asked what I wanted to be when I grew up, I always said a property tycoon or a wealthy businessman.

When I got to high school I could not find either of them in the careers guide. I could not find a pathway to rock star, movie star, inventor or investor either. Priest was in there. You could make a career out of renouncing money, but not out of making it. Everything you can do in life to build serious wealth had no defined pathway, and everything in that book was a job that paid you money instead of teaching you how money is made. That told me I would not find my way to wealth by picking anything my classmates picked, so I started my own education.

There was a problem. I could not read. By Year 10 I still could not read a page of a book aloud and have anyone understand what I said. I once asked a mate why there was computer parking at the train station. He laughed, and it was years before I found out it was commuter parking. I failed Year 10 English, and no wonder, because I did not understand the written word at all. But I knew that wealthy people write books, and that what is in those books cannot be got from a business degree.

The first book I read after school was Think and Grow Rich. I forced myself through one page every night for the year it took me to finish it: thirty minutes to read the page and thirty minutes to look up the words. I still cannot read aloud very well, but I am very good at remembering what I have read. When you spend that long on a page, you make sure you keep it.

My first business was a small success. I marketed pizza stores and lifted sales 300 per cent in twelve weeks at no cost to the owners, until a bigger company copied my promotion word for word, artwork and all. They changed three words and one part of the offer, and their version failed at every store they ran it in. I learned early how much a few words matter to an offer, and I learned that the game has rules whether or not you have been taught them.

From then on I put two hundred dollars a week of my turnover into my education: books, read slowly and chosen carefully, and seminars, at least two free ones a week and the paid ones when I could. If I did not have the money for a seminar I sold something or put it on the card, because I knew I had to get the information fast. I made myself a promise to do at least one thing out of every book, like it or not.

At 23 nothing big had happened yet. I had read the books but something was missing, so I paid one of the best financial planners in Brisbane to come and talk to me. The first thing he asked was when I wanted to retire. I said 25. It had been my goal since I was 18. He told me it could not be done in two years and did not bill me for the advice. Not long after, a seminar showed me the last piece of the puzzle, which was how to borrow money, and I bought my first house. Then my second at 24, my third six months later, and my fourth at 25. A rising tide floats all boats: my business became the largest in its industry by volume of work and my share portfolio was earning as well. At 25 I retired, not from life, but from working for money.

I was used to being the youngest person in the room. When I retired I was the only person in the room. My wife and I went around the world and halfway around it again on a cruise ship, and found that nobody our age does that. We were the only people in the nightclub after ten. That is when I decided more young people needed to know this, because why wait until you are old to enjoy your life?

I started in business at 18, and in the thirty-odd years since I have owned and run businesses of different kinds, in different industries and in different parts of the cycle. Life rains on everyone's parade at some point, and it has rained on mine. What those years taught me is the real point of this book. If you come into money through an inheritance, a good job or plain luck but you do not understand money, then when it goes it is very hard to get back. If you understand how money is made, you can make it back whatever the cycle does. That is the difference between having money and having wealth, and it is why I would rather teach you to understand the game than hand you a plan that suited me.

I wrote this book for my children and the heirs I have not met yet, so they could learn directly from me. Now it is yours as well. If it helps you, I would like to hear about it. I am always up for a conversation about the things that make people happier, healthier and wealthier.

Peter Johnson

Australia