We have released the first eight chapters of our new members-only book, “The MasterPlan. Next Level,” available exclusively through the Strategy Control Room (Advanced Level).

“Build an investment portfolio that supports your unique goals and purpose in life.”

Our entire life is a race to put in place the financial foundation for our retirement. It may not seem this way at times, but if we think of the decisions we make from the time we are teenagers, for most of us, it’s about wealth building and sustaining that wealth. We try to make that journey enjoyable with friends, family, and experiences, but we have a clear goal in mind to be financially secure.

Some of us may not be as talented at achieving this goal. We often give up in frustration. We usually kick it to the future, hoping our children or grandchildren will handle it. However, someone at some time will need to confront this problem. I know how it feels. I had to take control of my wealth planning because, as you will likely discover for yourself, in my experience, the wealth management industry does not make you wealthy. It finds already wealthy people and charges them a fee.

In chapter eight, we explore:
– Important retirement planning exercise (page 112)
– Listing the costs associated with retirement, including some costs most people fail to think about (page 115)
– Our entire life is a race to achieve this (page 117)
– A wealth model (page 117)
– Another definition of retirement planning (page 118)
– Can you retire happy? (page 118)
– The first big calculation error many people make when they calculate how much money they need for retirement (page 119)
– The second big calculation error many people make when they calculate how much money they need for retirement (page 119)
– The third big calculation error many people make when they calculate how much money they need for retirement (page 120)
– MasterPlan Life’s Purpose Wealth Model™ (page 121)
– MasterPlan™ Pentad (page 123)
– Four options you have within The MasterPlan Life Business Model™ (page 125)
– The lowest taxed life business model (page 126)
– Four levels to building the wealth model (page 128)

“Invest in the most important asset in your portfolio.”

When I work with a client and show them a revised list of their assets, with assets at the top as the most valuable, they often have a bemused look on their faces. As far as I am aware, we are not trained anywhere in the world, not by any book on investing, not by any investment advisor, not by any wealth management firm, not by any fiduciary, to think of the most important assets we have as an investment.

In chapter seven, we explore:

– Creating a reasonably accurate view of your portfolio of assets (page 89)
– Calculating the total value of your asset portfolio (page 89)
– Investing in your most important asset (page 91)
– A story of my greatest investments (page 92)
– Taking earnings and diversifying into other asset classes (page 93)
– The only asset class in which you have nearly total control (page 93)
– Two primary reasons people are usually unwilling to make investments in their most important asset class (page 94)
– Which of my investments had a much higher ROI versus an investment in my MBA (page 95)
– A scary adjustment that happens with age that is keeping people stuck in their careers (page 95)
– A magic phrase I tell myself when I notice I start regretting something or blaming myself (page 96)
– Your Apex asset (page 97)
– Your second crucial asset class that most people don’t realize they need to treat as an asset class or invest in (page 97)
– A new way to think about relationships with your spouse (page 100)
– Questions you need to ask your spouse before it is too late (page 101)
– Keeping score of your spouse’s needs and if those are being met (page 102)
– The third crucial asset class that people usually do not consider as an asset class and in which many do not invest sufficiently or strategically (page 102)
– Instilling values in your children (page 105)
– Identifying relationships that drive your wealth, taking a rough estimate of their worth in dollars, and developing a plan to invest in them by treating them as an asset class (page 108)
– Four types of relationships (page 108)
– Redoing your list of assets and increasing the value of each investment (page 110)

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“Asking uncomfortable questions leads to enduring personal and professional growth.”

In the sixth chapter, we explore key questions you need to ask yourself as you are putting together your MasterPlan. We covered some crucial areas including:

– What many successful clients struggle with behind closed doors (page 81)
– The key components of the MasterPlan (page 83)
– A core set of questions that must be answered as part of developing your MasterPlan (page 84)
– The most important question you need to ask about your marriage (page 84)
– You can build the best MasterPlan in the world, but the answer to this one question will determine if you will be able to implement it or not (page 85)
– Why do some people always end up at the top even if you place them in a new city with no money and ask them to rebuild their life from scratch, and some people always end up at the bottom even if you give them a million dollars and the most enjoyable well-paid job (page 86)
– A question that will help you put a stop to people crossing all kinds of boundaries with you (page 86)
– The central challenge you face as you are building and implementing your MasterPlan (page 87)

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“Owning, operating, and managing the asset in which you invest creates long-term value.”

In the fifth chapter, we explained why we changed how we make investments. If you are familiar with the Building an Electric Car Start-Up program on StrategyTraining.com, in this chapter, we share with you behind-the-scenes details of how we managed to get a 20 million dollar loan from the Chinese government, how we uncovered a critical piece of information during due diligence that the owner of the acquisition target was not aware of, and how things unfolded from there. We also share all key lessons learned so you can apply them to your own opportunities.

– How we positioned Richard to build the level of trust and level of proximity that resulted in a 20 million dollar government loan for our start-up (page 65)
– Immediate mistakes Richard made after receiving the loan (page 66)
– A radical new strategy to build the electric car start-up (page 68)
– Our journey of looking for a third-generation boutique automobile design and production company (page 71)
– An innovative new business model that would allow us to start an electric car company without the need to be road-certified (page 72)
– Managing in-fighting between the families of the acquisition target (page 73)
– Material changes that forced us to lower the offer (page 74)
– Finding a document through due diligence that made the acquisition significantly more attractive (page 75)
– Covid-19 and Richard becoming fatigued and shocked by the attention to detail required just to get the deal to completion (page 76)
– A piece of information no one in the family knew about that would have completely changed the purchase price (page 77)
– Why I am only interested in investments where I am the primary owner, operator, and manager of the assets (page 79)

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“Operating in the toughest markets will force you to become a more effective person.”

In chapter four of the MasterPlan Next Level, we cover how people will discriminate against you if you are different. It may be based on your gender, your appearance, your place of birth or your accent.

Don’t let them bring you down.

Take my experience, for instance.

• My bestselling book, The Strategy Journal, which is a prescribed textbook in universities, once received a scathing Amazon review where my gender was mentioned six times. Why was my gender so important in measuring the quality of my work?
• I have been told I have a very strong accent and should stop speaking English.
• When I was in consulting, I was once at a meeting where a superior said that if she hears someone speaking English with an accent, she doesn’t listen to them at all. This was a person who would be present at my performance evaluation. Fortunately, she had little influence after all, and I got a “Leads within Peers” rating and was promoted at each performance evaluation.
• When I ran my piano tutoring company, a client once asked me to cover myself with a blanket since my figure was distracting him.
• In every corporate job I ever had, I knew that I would make more money and get more opportunities if I was male and if I wasn’t an immigrant.
• Even now, running StrategyTraining.com, I constantly deal with female and immigrant discounts, where my value and value of the work my company produces, which is second to none, is underappreciated due to these attributes.

But there are also advantages to being the kind of person that people discriminate against. For example:

• Movie stars often say that it makes them sad that they never know if people like them for them or because they are famous and rich. People who get discriminated against all the time don’t have this problem. You can more easily filter out people that you should not be wasting your time on. They rear their ugly head because they immediately undervalue you and don’t think you are anyone important, so they don’t have to try to pretend to like you.

The bottom line is we have to play the cards we were dealt, and overtime improve our position. But we have to start with what we have.

It’s important to be thicker-skinned. The good thing is that facing continuous discrimination makes you stronger and sharpens your ability to select people worth associating with.

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“You have this shot to have a big life. Take it.”

Chapter Three: Canada

In this chapter, I share my personal journey of leaving South Africa, a land of opportunities but also a place from which you would be lucky to get out alive, to start anew in Canada. Despite the significant momentum I had gained in my life, the escalating violence and crime in South Africa made it imperative for me to seek a safer environment. Just in the last year of living in South Africa I had multiple break ins in my apartment complex, despite it being guard gated electric fence protected complex.

The transition was brutal. I had to abandon everything I had worked for and start from scratch in a new country, going back to becoming a “nobody” again.

I had to save every dollar. Once, I walked to an interview, a few subway stops each way. I was wearing high heels to look professional. I saved on subway fare (which I think was 2.5 Canadian dollars both ways). But when I came home, my feet were bleeding. And when you are an immigrant you often can’t just go and work in Starbucks to make ends meet while you are finding your feet. You often don’t have any right to work. So the money you brought into the country is what you have until you can gain the right to work.

Despite completing my MBA at what is considered to be the top business school in Canada, finding a job in Canada was close to impossible. My work experience in South Africa was not recognized, and my lack of permanent residency status prohibited almost all employers from hiring me.

Many employers, though, behaved unprofessionally and still took me through rounds of interviews, even though I stated from the start I didn’t have permanent residence yet. I noticed during many interviews people looked at me like at a zoo animal. They just had to meet me based on my background, knowing full well they do not sponsor candidates and, therefore, would not be able to hire me. Even their questions were more like they were interviewing me for a podcast versus evaluating if there was a fit for a role they were recruiting for.

Why do I share all of this with you in Chapter 3?

Because I know you may be facing some challenges right now. As you are developing your MasterPlan, you may have the temptation to aim small.

Don’t.

You have this shot to have a big life.

Take it.

Most people out there are not trying to be extraordinary. If you are, you are already in rare company.

It’s not that hard to succeed. You just need to care more than most, be more focused than most, and be more demanding of yourself than most. Do for your superiors what others will not, and they will want to keep you around, keep you happy, and mentor you.

Take a look at any senior executive or a self-made successful business owner. They got there because they cared more than most. It’s that simple.

So don’t limit your MasterPlan to average life. Build the MasterPlan for yourself that you would look back at when you are 95 and think, “I don’t even know how I made it this far.”

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“The MasterPlan. Next Level” updates and refines the concepts from the original program. It’s a significant update on the program.

• Fresh and more impactful examples
• Four robust exercises designed to baseline your life and set a new standard for personal evaluation
• This iteration acts as a pivotal bridge to the more advanced concepts explored in The MasterPlan Advanced
• Concepts are introduced via experiences from my life, and explained with case studies from clients

Each stage of the MasterPlan series is intentionally designed to build on the last, ensuring a seamless and powerful enhancement of your capabilities to develop and implement a grand MasterPlan for your career and life.

The MasterPlan Universe:

“The MasterPlan. Next Level” is a crucial expansion that builds upon The MasterPlan program and integrates aspects from The MasterPlan Advanced. For those navigating through our comprehensive MasterPlan content, we recommend the following progression:

• The MasterPlan (Insider and Legacy)
• Implementing the MasterPlan (Insider and Legacy)
• A Midlife Strategy Update (Legacy)
• “The MasterPlan. Next Level” (Strategy Control Room. Advanced)
• The MasterPlan Advanced (Insider and Legacy)
• The MasterPlan Acceleration (Executive coaching program with personalized guidance from Michael and myself)

Engaging with any of these programs individually offers significant benefits, but collectively, they encompass the entire MasterPlan universe.

HOW TO FIND THE MASTERPLAN NEXT LEVEL (79 PAGES):

1. Log in to The Strategy Control Room, Advanced Level, membership area.
2. Click on the 3 dots in the upper-right corner.

2. Click on the “STRATEGY MANUALS” button.

3. Select “The MasterPlan. Next Level.”

If you are The Strategy Control Room, Advanced Level, member, here is the direct link to this particular update.

If you joined an Advanced Level of the Strategy Control Room today, you would find the most powerful strategy, problem-solving, consulting, and results-oriented leadership reading library in the world. The resources include:

• Michael’s explanation slides for selected programs on StrategyTraining.com
• 11 full engagements
• Change Management Influence & Persuasion Center of Excellence
• Detailed Business Case Methodology Center of Excellence
• Encyclopedia of Strategy Analyses Center of Excellence
• One-Week Immersion: Consulting Onboarding / Consulting Mastery Center of Excellence
• 31 proposals
• Flipcharts
• Layout guides
• 17 strategy and problem-solving books which we do not make available anywhere else
• 3 brand new strategy and problem-solving books just released and not available anywhere else
• 11 book drafts never before available and not available anywhere else
• Case interview materials for Felix, Rafik, Samantha, and Sanjeev, case interview exhibits, case interview solutions
• The evolution of corporate strategy
• The business case toolkit
• Implementation and operation toolkit
• Corporate strategy toolkit
• Strategy maps
• And more

Enroll as a Strategy Control Room Member

And if you are not yet an Insider or Legacy member and want to gain access to video and audio programs from The MasterPlan universe, in addition to other advanced programs, we invite you to explore membership options (scroll down). Take this opportunity to invest in yourself and your future. The MasterPlan can be transformative, but it’s up to you to take action. Remember, my team and I are here to support you every step of the way. If you have any questions or need further assistance, please don’t hesitate to reach out to us at [email protected].

We look forward to continuing this journey with you, breaking old cycles, and creating new legacies.

P.S. To get access to The MasterPlan. Next Level, enroll as a Strategy Control Room (Advanced Level) member. Go here (see a list of all the documents loaded in the Strategy Control Room and Strategy Control Room Advanced Level):

https://www.strategytraining.com/pages/scr