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Phil Town
Getting Rich and Staying Rich
Does the business reflect your values, do you
understand it enough to want to own the whole thing? You want to think like a business owner, not a stock investor, and be proud of what you own. Look at areas where your passion, talent, and money intersect: What do you love? What are you really good at? Where do you spend your money? You’ll be surprised at how much you already know about businesses that provide a good product or service.
He isn’t your typical Wall Street guy. An ex-Green Beret and former river guide, Phil Town is a self made millionaire several times over and America’s most widely sought-after speaker on investing. In his new book, RULE #1, he describes the Rule #1 personal financial strategy in detail so that anyone, even first-time investors, can get—and stay—rich.
Phil Town is the classic Everyman, albeit one whose education and resources were more limited than most. An average high school student, he completed college on his fourth try. Of his early working years, he says he “mostly got dirty for a living,” taking on jobs such as digging ditches and pumping gas. Town spent four years in
the Army, two of them as a Green Beret. He returned from the Vietnam War and found a job in the States as a river guide.
Drifting through California, Utah, and Idaho, he subsisted at poverty level, combining his wages from the guiding season and unemployment. He wore black leathers, sported a goatee, lived in a tepee in the woods near Flagstaff, Arizona, and “drove around in a really loud black Harley Davidson.”
In the early ‘80’s, Town’s life changed radically. He was guiding trustees from the educational program Outward Bound down the nastiest rapid on the Grand Canyon’s Colorado River, when his split-second decisions saved a
boatload of people from a whitewater disaster. A grateful and financially-astute client returned the favor by guiding Town into serious, successful investing using the first rule
of investing as ascribed to by Warren Buffett: Don’t lose money. Within five years, Town had built a borrowed $1,000 into $1 million. His fortunes improved radically, and rapidly, from then on.
Phil Town appears regularly on the same dais as Rudy Giuliani, Jimmy Carter, and Tommy Franks as part of the “Get Motivated” touring success seminar. He speaks to more than 500,000 people annually about Rule #1.
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