For the last two decades I have sworn off the publishing process. I run a dozen companies and a nonprofit. I have four children, an amazing wife, and a mission I love and live. To say my life is full would be an understatement. Last year, on average, I was on a plane once every four days, traveling to 15-plus countries. Both my previous books, Unlimited Power and Awaken the Giant Within, were international bestsellers, and they were enormously gratifying—but I haven’t felt compelled to write again until now.
The truth is, I love live events. I love the total-immersion experience of an arena packed with people, music, emotion, energy, and sometimes even the tension of total pin-drop silence.
I love the immediacy and flexibility of communicating with 5,000–10,000 people at a time: going deep, full-on (hands-on!), and keeping their attention for 50 hours a weekend—in an age when most people won’t sit through a three-hour movie someone spent $300 million to make.
When people are with me in a live event, they don’t just think or hear a message, they feel it, and what’s more, they transform. My body language, my voice, and the collective human reaction and interaction are essential to my style of teaching. So, I confess, when I sit down to write words on a page I feel like there’s a gag in my mouth and one hand tied behind my back. There’s just nothing that compares to clipping on a microphone and walking into a sea of human emotion.
So what made me change my mind and write Money: Master the Game?
The 2008 financial crisis caused tremendous pain and made us reevaluate what’s most important in our lives—things that have nothing to do with money. It made me remember the days when I was sleeping in my car, homeless and searching for a way to change my life. A time when I educated and fortified myself with the greatest tool on earth—books. Books were my ticket out of a world of pain, a world with no compelling future. As a teenager, I read more than 700 books—on psychology, history, philosophy, physiology. I wanted to know about anything that could immediately change the quality of my life or anyone else’s.
This time, I wanted to write something that went beyond psychology and achievement, and I wanted to make a lasting change. I’m driven by impact, and unlike the spoken word, the written word is immortal.
When I began this book, people told me I was crazy. Many colleagues and even friends cautioned against attempting to bring the complex world of finance to a wide audience—in print! My publisher begged me to write about something, anything, else. But I recommitted to the power of books, and their unequalled ability to make answers available to anyone.
That permanence is why I write.
