Larry Weidel recounts the story of Art Williams, who began as a low-paid football coach in the early 1970s and supplemented income with side jobs (selling Christmas trees, refereeing at $3/game, lifeguarding). Needing more income, Williams entered the buy-term-and-invest-the-difference business and set a concrete first financial goal: accumulate $300,000 so a 10% return (within a long-term mutual-fund context he cites ~12% historical average) would produce about $30,000 a year, roughly his then income, making him financially independent. Weidel emphasizes starting with a specific, adjustable goal and the accelerating effect of compound interest; Williams later grew net worth to over $2 billion.
Questions this video answers
About $25,000–$30,000 per year.
$300,000.
They used a 10% income assumption (speaker noted a 50–60 year mutual-fund average of about 12%).
$3 per game.
Over $2 billion.
It's important to know that the goal you start with is not the one you're going to necessarily end with, but it's important that you get started. So let's just talk about the goal the billionaire started with. This story is the story of art Williams of A.O. williams fame. And you can read about him on Wikipedia. But anyway, when Art started, he was a football coach. So you got to start where you start. You can't start where you're not at and wishing and hoping it's not going to change. And he was a football coach. His father had been a football coach. He loved being a football coach. Trouble is, no money. He had a wife, Angela, they had the two kids and Angela was involved with the cheerleaders and booster clubs. And Art was coach of the year in football, but no money. They were back, they were back in the 70s and they were making something like, you know, 25, 26,000 per year. And you know, he needed, you know, he needed more income. Art was forced to supplement his income. And he was selling tree, you know, Christmas trees. A bunch of the coaches, he would get together with a bunch of the coaches and they'd go by up to North Carolina with a truck and buy a bunch of Christmas trees and stay out in the cold weather for three weeks and the evenings and weekends selling trees so they can make a few extra bucks to have Christmas for their kids. He would run up and down the basketball court doing refereeing basketball games. And believe it or not now this is the early 70s. He would get, no, this is like, yeah, around 70. He would get three, three dollars per game. He would do three games a night and he would get nine dollars. Now he would have preferred not to do that, but he had to do something. So if you do that two or three times a week, you do that four weeks in a month, you know, you come up with 100, 150 extra bucks. It all adds up. And he need to do something. In the summer he was lifeguard at the pool. And there are people doing these kind of things today to get by. And this is the real world. Because you can't hoping and praying is not going to change your situation overnight without some work, some focused work. And here is where he was. So he gets started in a new business. He gets a chance to go out and get involved in the buy term and invest the difference business. Replacing overpriced, high priced, obscenely overpriced whole life policies with term and mutual funds. And of course it is wildly popular. But he was right in the beginning stages of that. So what was his first goal? Now I've kind of given away the punchline. How did this turn out for art? Pretty darn well over the years. But this is in the beginning. What was his first goal? Well, you start and do things based off the framework of what you know at that time. But the great thing about your goal is that you can adjust it. So the thing is, he said, you know, if I'm making around 30,000 a year, that's what it takes for me to survive on. And so if I'm starting this new business, I'm going to try and become financially independent. His first goal of financial independence. He said, I'm making 30 a year. So if I had accumulated a pile of money of $300,000. Now again at the time, I'm not making any promises or what, I'm telling you the facts. At that time, There was a 50 year, maybe 60 year track record of the average stock mutual fund averaging 12% a year. And of course there had been wars and depressions and this, that and the other going on too, just like we have now. Today you're not getting 12% of your money in mutual funds average, of course, but you know, he's looking at the long term average. And he had planned to leave his. Put his money in there and leave. So he said, if I have this, he said, I think I could reasonably. Now this is art me, I'm not applying this to today. I'm just saying this is his goal. He said, if I have that and I can get 10% and I'm looking at a track record of 50, 60 years, of 12%, if I can get 10%, guess what that comes out to? That comes out to 30,000 a year interest. So if I can just. So when he started out in his own business, he said, if I can just save what I make and race towards, as soon as I get to $300,000, I never have to work for anybody else the rest of my life. See, having this goal, having it written down on a piece of paper, putting it in his pocket, having it where as his account started to build and this started to get less and less, it kept him focused, it gave him a unique energy. Now of course, he reached that and many others and he adjusted it upwards because. But he said, Larry, it's a funny. As he was telling me about this, he says it's a funny thing when you start out, he said, your money grows very small because there's nothing else in there. But once you have some in there, what you have in there starts to compound, plus you keep adding more in there, and it starts to compound very fast. So in the beginning, it might look like it's going slow, but he said the longer you go, the faster it grows. And where it may seem like it's going to take you forever to put 30,000 in that, if you get compound interest along with that, as you go from year after year, that's going to add to the total, and you're going to get. You're going to find you don't have to put the whole $300,000 in. You don't have to earn the whole 300,000. Your compound interest is going to make up a lot of the difference. And so he said this, seeing this happen gave me a special energy, a special focus, but also a special confidence because I knew I was on track to get where I wanted to go. And I knew that once I reached that goal, I would never have to work for anybody else the rest of my life. I'd be financially independent. Eventually, his net worth climbed up to over $2 billion. And so obviously, his goals and everything changed. But here's where. Here's where it started right there. So if you're thinking about yourself, the main thing is get your first goal. Get specific, get something. Because you might find that that's just the beginning for you, too. But if you never start, you never have a chance. So that's the first goal the billionaire started with.
