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Home>Service> Awardees of Fervent Global Love of Lives Award> 17th Fervent Global Love of Lives Award 2014> Jim Rogers, USA—Godfather of Life and Investment
 [Taking Risks in Life Is Successful Investment.]

When you find one thing you're interested in, do not let your age hold you back. Just do it. The fastest way to succeed is to do what you love to do, and then go all out.
—Jim Rogers
 
The best investment: taking risks, nurturing people, and helping people
The international investment legend Jim Rogers is also known as the Wall Street’s golden boy and Wall Street’s Indiana Jones. His two daughters were born in his sixties. They are his latest adventure and his greatest investment.  

Rogers not only sees the global trends ahead of others, but he also reflects and shares his father’s philosophy of family education with others frequently. He was born in a middle class family in the central area of the United States, but the post-war economic downturn put the whole town’s economy in difficulty, resulting in Rogers’ interest in wealth building since childhood. Rogers started picking up empty bottles at the age of five and selling peanuts and juice at the age of six. His father had always encouraged him to take risks and had a dream to travel the world with him. By setting an example through words and action, Rogers’ father taught him to be responsible for himself and made him the kind of person who dared to think reversely and take risks. 
 
Four can be better than ten—a miracle
Lee Hee-Ah was born with serious deformity. She has only two fingers on each hand, no shanks and no feet. She is only 103 centimeters tall, and suffers from intellectual and learning disability.

Accompanied by her mother all the time, Lee Hee-Ah played the piano 10 hours a day as a kind of rehabilitation. She tried hard and never gave up. After countless hours of practice, her skills improved by leaps and bounds. The music played with her four fingers was so touching that she was awarded many prizes, the most remarkable being the one awarded by the president of South Korea. At the same time, she graduated from college as the best student of the year.
 
Sponsoring 50,000 people across six continents  
From 1990 to 1992, Rogers traveled over 160,000 km across six continents on a motorcycle. Between 1999 and 2001, Rogers did a world record journey through 116 countries, covering 245,000 km with his then-fiancé (now-wife), Paige Parker, in a custom-made Mercedes. Their epic journey still keeps them on the list of the Guinness Book of World Records.

What’s truly amazing is that Rogers has been donating money secretly to help more than 50,000 poor children gain access to education in central and South America and Africa.
 
Investing in life is the best investment.
Taking risks, nurturing people, and helping people are the best investment for Rogers. He is known as the godfather of life and investment for being a visionary leader who thinks reversely and invests in life, and builds his success on his failure. More importantly, he’s been devoted to secret charities. The Chou Ta-kuan Cultural and Educational Foundation selected Rogers as one of the winners of the 17th Global Fervent for Love of Lives Medal in 2014 out of all the 2,239 candidates.
 
Taking risks in life and knowing the boundaries
Rogers was born in Alabama on October 19, 1942. He started his first business at the age of five by picking up empty bottles that fans left behind at baseball games and by selling peanuts and juice at baseball games at the age of six. After graduating from high school, he studied history in Yale University and was offered a four-year scholarship. Rogers then acquired a second BA degree in Philosophy, Politics and Economics from the University of Oxford.

When he was 22, Rogers got his first job on Wall Street. In 1970, Rogers started working with the financial crocodile George Soros. They then founded the world-renowned Quantum Fund together. In less than ten years time, Rogers made a massive fortune that he decided to take an early retirement at the age of 37. Since then, he has been a guest professor of finance at the Columbia Business School and a moderator of WCBS’s show. Rogers is still active as a trend investor, and has realized his dream of traveling the world. 

At the age of 56, Rogers launched the Rogers International Commodity Index (RICI). He became a father at the age of 60 and then moved to Singapore. He kept telling people that there was no one that he’d rather have dinner with than his daughters–little Happy and Baby Bee–and his wife. He just had no desire to do anything else with any other people. 
 
A successful investment starts with what you love to do.
Rogers likes to tell people, “Do what you love to do.” When you find one thing you're interested in, do not let your age hold you back. Just do it. 
 
Rogers started his first business when he was only six years old, an age that most people would find too early to start a business. As a matter of fact, your age has nothing to do with what you want to accomplish. For Rogers, he would just rather pick up empty bottles left behind by baseball fans after a game to make money than spend time having fun with other kids at the playground.
 
When Rogers was six years old, he used the money he borrowed from his father to buy a cart to sell coke and peanuts at Little League Baseball games. He made a small profit after the games. Five years later, he not only repaid his father but also had a saving of a hundred dollar in the bank. 
 
When you find one thing you're interested in, do not let your age hold you back. Just do it. 
 
What should you do to be successful? Rogers came up with a very simple answer: do what you love to do.
 
He succeeded in investing because investing was what he loved to do. If you like to cook, you should go ahead and open a restaurant. If you are good at dancing, just go ahead and learn how to dance. The fastest way to success is to do what you love to do, and go all out. Rogers has always been interested in knowing what was going on in the world and understanding the reason behind all these events. When he started working on Wall Street, he learned that people would actually pay for what he knew. For example, the revolution in Chile would cause the copper price to rise. 
 
As long as he is able to afford basic living expenses, Rogers is more than happy to take some time out to study these things without any return. People who do what they love to do for a living are always eager to go to work every morning because they don’t consider themselves working but enjoying their work.
 
If you choose to devote into an area you honestly don’t care, there’s no hope for success.
 
If you love and care about what you do, you are inclined to do it well. 
 
Investing is like living. The key to success or failure lies within the smallest details. Relevant or not, you should always pay attention to the details. Don’t slack off on the search and verification of every piece of information you have as long as it is relevant to your investment decision. You should always look for answers to what makes you restless. The reason why most people can’t succeed is that they only pay attention to the information that they have come across without going further into the detail.
 
There’s no such thing as “I’m well prepared!”
When Rogers was in Yale, someone in his class asked him how much time he spent on preparing for the exams. While the friend who asked this question thought that five hours of preparation should’ve been enough, Rogers just couldn’t answer how much time he had spent because he was always studying. Coming from a small town in Alabama, he was already overwhelmed by being able to go to Yale. As most other people in his class received a solid education in well-known high schools, the only way for Rogers to do better in class was to study even harder than his classmates. There was never such thing as “I’m well-prepared” for Rogers. Every successful investment he made was the result of comprehensive information collection and careful data analysis. 
 
If you devote your energy in an area that you don’t know well, you will never succeed. If you bet your money on things you do not understand, it is not called investing but gambling.
 
During his trip in Namibia, he bought a diamond for Paige. The store owner told him that the diamond was worth of 70,000 US dollar, so he haggled and got a bargain of 500 US dollars. Paige told him that he was ripped off after a glance at it. In Tanzania, he showed the diamond to a diamond merchant, who then laughed out loud and told him that it was not a diamond but a marvel ball. Rogers knew how much diamonds were worth, but that was all he knew. He couldn’t tell if they were real or not, so he was ripped off. He kept telling people to only invest on things they knew, but he himself got served by the “diamond.” 
 
If you really want to succeed, you have to know what you are doing. If you can’t tell a real diamond from a fake one, you are bound to end up like Rogers: getting a marvel ball. Looking back on the experience, Rogers is glad that this expensive marvel ball wasn’t a real diamond. It reminds him to stay away from things that he’s not familiar with. This was truly a lesson learned at a real bargain.
 
Dare to take the risk and take the road less traveled by
Rogers always says that no one succeeds by following other people!
 
Outstanding people do things differently. You need enthusiasm and courage to do things that others are not willing or dare not to do. Success always comes to those who dare to take the risk and take the road less traveled by. 
 
There comes a time in your life when you need to make important decisions about your job, family, life, where you live, or how you invest your money. At this point, many people will be willing to offer you advice. Just remember these words: your life is your own, not others. 
 
Their advice may be right at times. Looking at it from hindsight, however, their advice is almost always useless. You have to do your own research. Acquire as many as possible the skills to face these challenges so that you can determine the validity of the information you have and make an informed decision.
 
You are born with the power to choose the best interest of the best decisions. Under most circumstances, you make better decisions and take the right action if you think for yourselves instead of following others’ decisions against your own will.
 
In the past, Rogers has made a number of important investment decisions on the advice of others instead of following his heart. Strangely, every time such investments have failed and caused him great loss.  As a result, he learned to take action based on his own decision without the influence from others. Until over his thirties, he finally realized that this was the best way of investment. He also learned that the reason why he was successful was because he had followed this principle without thinking if it were too late to make such decisions.
 
The indicator of success appears when people make fun of your idea.
When he was little, Rogers read an article about the swimmer Donna de Varona. She was a good swimmer but not the best when she first started out as a swimmer, but she ended up taking home two gold medals in the Olympic games. What was the story behind this? She told the reporters, ““I always used to watch the other swimmers, but then I learned to ignore them and swim my own races.” 
 
If everyone is mocking your idea, it could be the indicator of success.
If people around you discourage you from doing something or even mock you for having that thought, you can perhaps take it as the indicator of success. This is very important. You must understand that it takes courage to do things differently from others. The truth is, the world has almost never seen anyone succeed by following what other people do.  
 
If you take a closer look at the successful people in different areas, be they musicians, artists, or whatever professionals, they do not copy other people to reach success. Have you ever seen anyone reach success by doing the same thing as what others do?
 
Take HP as an example. HP stands out from other companies because they do things differently. You need enthusiasm and courage to do things that others are not willing or dare not to do. Success always comes to those who dare to take the risk and take the road less traveled by. This is why HP has become a company that matters. HP has never been afraid to leap for success, even if such attempt may lead to the bad sales or failure of certain products. They are always trying new possibilities.
 
Rogers encourages everyone to pursue their own ideals and aspirations with courage like this.
 
Be yourself and live your life to the fullest.
The twelve letters that Rogers wrote to her baby daughters are the 12 keys in life. These letters not only showed his love for his daughters and the concise summary of his adventurous life, but also his successful investments. 
1. Do not let others do your thinking for you.
If everyone mocks your idea, it could well be the indicator of success!
If people around you discourage you from doing something or even mock you for having that thought, you can perhaps take it as the indicator of success. The truth is, the world has almost never seen anyone succeed by following what other people do.
2. Focus on what you like.
How can you succeed? The answer is simple. Do what you love to do. When you set out to do one thing, you don’t necessarily have a vivid picture of the future. As long as you keep up your enthusiasm and make efforts in the work you truly love, you will definitely reach that dream. 
3. Common sense is not so common.
Many people simply take in what others tell them. If you really want to succeed, you must never ever easily believe what others say. Examine and verify it with your own eyes. “If everyone is thinking alike, then no one is thinking.” 
4. Let the world be a part of your perspective.
After you have explored the world, those knowledge and experiences enable you to succeed in different ways. The first step towards becoming the citizen of the world is to open your heart and never reject people who look different from you at first glance.
5. Learn philosophy and learn to think.
“We all must think independently and not rely on other people.” This is the lesson I draw from my past experiences. Although I’m your father, I can’t think or make decisions for you. You need to set your own goals, imagine your own future, and find your way.
6. Learn history.
Imagine that there’s a four-dimensional image of the world. Different perspectives in history are pieces of the puzzle. Before you can put all the pieces in the right place, you need to collect all the pieces and study them. This is why I encourage you to study history first before you set out to see the world.
7. This is the era of China. Learn Chinese!
The best advice I can give to everyone is: let your children and grandchildren learn Chinese. In their generation, Chinese and English will be the two most important languages in the world. The 21 century belongs to China. This development is taking place at this moment, right in front of your eyes. 
8. Know who you truly are.
Of course, you need to understand what’s going on around you, the world and history. But, more importantly, you need to understand as an individual who you are. Understanding your weaknesses and acknowledging your mistakes will help you avert crisis when it comes. As your father, I want you to stay true to yourself.
9. Recognize change and embrace it.
If you want to know what may happen in the future, you must first understand the changes that are taking place in the world at this moment. The world is constantly changing. Those who are not willing to recognize and accept the changes will be left out by time, and people who benefit from the changes are those who can see them and embrace them. 
10. Look to the future.
Turn your eyes to the future. Do not dwell on what is doomed to be out-of-date, no matter how much time, efforts, and money you have invested in. Place your bets on what you know is going to last. People who see the future are those who are able to accumulate wealth.
11. Pay attention to what everybody else neglects
If you are looking for the opportunity to succeed, be quick to start a new thing that no one else has ever tried before. Whenever you feel like you are capable of anything, stop for a while. Don’t do anything. Just sit down and relax. Overcome the big-headedness that’s gotten into you.
12. Lady Luck smiles on those who continue their efforts
After you take your first step towards your dream, you should give it all out. This is your work. If you want to succeed, you can never neglect the fact that you need preparations. If you devote yourself to things you don’t know well, you will never accomplish anything. Study hard. The more you learn, the more you know how little you understand.