Farrah Gray - Get Real, Get Rich: Conquer the 7 Lies Blocking You from Success

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In loving memory and with supreme gratitude to my sister, Greek Gray: Her luminous and exquisite example inspires us all to realize our infinite potential in every moment

Truth can be stranger than fiction.

Get Real, Get Rich

Everybody wants to go to heaven but nobody wants to die. Everybody wants success but not everyone is willing to do what it takes to get there.

Whenever I repeat those two sentences in front of an audience, the response is very similar. I sense a collective silence as people think about what those statements mean, quickly realizing how true they really are. You may have recognized the first statement; its heard in many song lyrics, and no one knows who originally authored it. The second one is my own, and I dont intend to intimidate you by it. But its true; no one becomes successful out of luck or through an easy 1-2-3 set of steps. Lets get one thing straight: If it were that easy, then virtually everyone would be rich and you probably would not be reading this. (Or maybe you are successful already, and your friends would say youve made it. Congratulations. You know as well as I know that the lessons never stop. We are all students of life until the lights go out on us.)

I want to help you become a better, richer person regardless of how well or how poor you are currently living. This book is about maximizing your talents and dreams so you can transform your life into a winning game. That may sound like an overpromising declaration to make, but bear with me. I believe that part of my callingpart of the reason I was put on this Earthwas to make other people successful. But its not always easy. Sometimes I feel like Im on one side of the table and my audience is on the other. I hate watching a room full of frustration as people ponder their lives and seek a drinking fountain that promises wealth and achievement. I wish I could roll in that fountain and let people pour themselves a magical cup. But what fun would that be? Its gratifying and exhilarating to go after your dreams and work at them day in and day outincluding the setbacks that reboot our systems from time to time and compel us to stop, self-examine, and reevaluate.

So I write this with a goal of becoming your motivator and teacher; I want you to feel like youve got me sitting by your side as you navigate whats potentially holding you back from getting all you want out of life. And please try to keep me on the same plane as you are on. Dont regard me as someone above yousomeone whos out of your league because you look at me as rich in some distorted, literal definition of the word. If you really know me, then you know that Id rather be rich in spirit than rich in monetary value. I just happen to have both at a young age. How? If a voice inside you said because Farrahs a lucky guy, then this book is definitely for you. Im going to dispel the erroneous connection we make with success and chance. With success and connections. With success and IQ. And even with success and money.

Before we go too deep, I want to be clear on the difference between being rich and being wealthy. Those words are thrown around in the same circles, but they are not the same. When someone says he is rich, what immediately comes to mind? Probably a big bank account with millions of dollars sitting in it. On the other hand, when someone says he is wealthy, does that word trigger a slightly different picture? Do you think about not only cash in the bank, but also homes, stocks, bonds, income properties, and so on? In other words, assets. Rich has a very in-the-moment and short-lived feeling to it. People get rich hitting the jackpot in Vegas or winning the lottery. Wealthy, on the other hand, equates with long-term success and a state of well-being that accompanies happiness and stability. Its the true combo of affluence and influenceconcepts youll learn about in this book. That said, Im going to continue to use the word rich, because I want to guide you to a place where you adopt an entirely new meaning to this word.

By now you should have a clue that this isnt a get-rich-quick book, but I will be giving you tips that have worked for me on my journey to financial freedom. This is about getting real about what lies or myths youve come to believe and that continue to blind you from seeing that path to prosperity. Which is why you have to get real before you can get rich. If you still dont understand what I mean by the word rich, dont panic. You will by the end of this book. Theres a high volume of gimmicky get-rich propaganda out there, so you have to move past that myth to see the real truth behind what it means to be rich. In my world, to be rich is to be more than wealthyit entails having a financial, emotional, and spiritual sense of security. You can be rich whether youre making $20,000 a year or $2 million a year.

I got to where I am today by starting with one simple act that we all have the ability to perform. Do you know what that was? I made the decision to be prosperous in all facets of my life, and Im happy to report that Im living my dream. Thats all it tooka decision. Well, okay, so there are some other things to know and do, all of which Ill be sharing with you. But it starts with a commitment to yourself. Im confident that you can at least do that! And, since youve picked up this book, Ill give you credit for making half of that decision. The other half will happen soon, if it hasnt already.

I know what it has taken for me on my journey, and if you read my first book, Reallionaire, youre already familiar with my story. I grew up in the projects of Chicagos South Side with my brothers and sister. Given the statistics that said Id probably be dead or in jail before I reached adulthood, you could say I was born to lose. Mother worked double, sometimes triple jobs to make ends meet. By the time I was six, I had decided it was time to help my family achieve a better standard of living. Thats when I resolved to do whatever it took to beat the odds and win. No, I wasnt struck by lightning, and no one put a computer chip in my brain one night to make me successful. If anything, I had: 1) an acute awareness of my surroundings, and 2) the drive to change them. Ive gotten used to people saying its unusual to have such an awareness and ambition at a tender age, but it doesnt make a difference. See if you can take age out of the equation; I dont care (and neither should you) whether youre six or sixty-six. You can change at any ageand continue to do so. I believe we should follow our intuition and heart because they truly know where we want to be in life. We all are born with both heart and intuition.

I went door to door selling homemade body lotion and book-ends I crafted from hand-painted rocks. By the age of seven I carried a business card that read 21ST CENTURY CEO, and I was hell-bent on seeing that dream come true. I latched on to a mentor and at age eight cofounded my first business, called the Urban Neighborhood Economic Enterprise Club (UNEEC). This was the forerunner of New Early Entrepreneur Wonders (NE2W), which later became the flagship organization I opened on Wall Street. By then I was fourteen and I had made history as the youngest person to have an office on the Street. NE2W enlisted, educated, and engaged at-risk youth by creating and developing legal ways for them to acquire additional income.