True wealth is about a lot more than just growing your
net worth.
Yes, it’s true that financial independence is all about
money, but living a wealthy life isn’t. This distinction is critical.
We’ve all seen rich people who are miserable, and poor people
who are happy.
Research even shows the relationship between money and happiness is small.
Below are the key ten principles that will help you
achieve true wealth — both financially and personally.
1st Wealth Building Principle: Get Deeply Motivated
Money is a shallow motivator — too shallow to drive you deep
enough to achieve success.
The problem is financial wealth is an external goal with
benefits limited to the world outside of you. Money buys things, but money
doesn’t buy happiness. It can build you a prettier prison, but it can’t get you out of prison.
The inherent limits of external goals (fancy houses,
cars, and big bank accounts) similarly limit how motivated you will be
when pursuing them.
To succeed in building wealth, you want to be driven by
internal goals deeper than just the external trappings of wealth.
You want a cause that will bring transformation to your
life and drive you deep enough to overcome all the obstacles that stand between
you and financial freedom.
Internally-driven goals that might focus your attention
long enough to succeed include the following:
1. Freedom: Break loose from the
shackles of daily labor so that you have more time to grow, create, and live
to your fullest potential.
2. Charity: The more you have
the more you can give. Charitable foundations created by wealthy families often
provide the financial muscle to empower great social and environmental causes.
3. Growth: When you have
financial freedom, you also have more time to pursue personal freedom. The
wealth in your external world becomes a mirror to the wealth in your internal
world. The principles that lead to financial wealth can also lead to true
wealth by affecting other areas of your life.
4. Leadership: Grow your own wealth
ethically and joyfully so that you can lead by example for friends and family
to rise above the bonds of financial mediocrity and follow in your footsteps.
The reason deeper causes are essential is because
building wealth isn’t easy.
You will encounter many problems that must be overcome along your
journey to financial freedom. You will pay a price to reach your goal.
To stay the course long enough to succeed, you must be
motivated by a commitment that runs deeper than just the lifestyle that money
can buy. This step-by-step course to financial freedom
can help you find you’re “why” to propel you toward your goal.
2nd Wealth Building Principle: Give More Value than You Take
Adding value to the world by giving more than you receive
makes everyone better off. That’s how you build true wealth. You improve
others lives by improving your own.
Sure, history is replete with people who have amassed
financial empires by exploiting others or the environment, but taking value can
never lead to happiness or fulfillment.
Exploitation may bring riches, but giving value brings
happiness and fulfillment as well as riches — and that’s true
wealth.
By giving more value than you receive, success becomes a
measure of how much you’ve given. The wealthier you become, the more you are
giving to others.It’s a rewarding way to live
3rd Wealth Building Principle: Live With 100% Integrity
Never do or say anything that wouldn’t make your Mother
and Father proud.
Don’t cause harm, encroach on others property, violate
moral law, or damage the environment. Don’t lie, insult, or cheat in pursuit of financial wealth.
Heck, don’t even stretch the truth. It just isn’t worth
it.
The rule is simple: if it doesn’t feel right then it
probably isn’t. If you don’t feel comfortable telling your spouse, children,
and parents what you are doing, then you probably shouldn’t do it.
Never choose expediency over integrity because no amount
of financial wealth can replace a good night’s sleep, a clear conscience, and a
peaceful mind.
4th Wealth Building Principle: Be Courageous
Humans are social animals which makes us cautious to
venture independently. Yet, wealth doesn’t come from following the crowd. It
results from doing what others won’t so you can have what others never will.
Wealth results from doing what others won't so you
can have what others never will.
It takes courage to be a self-starter and be self-responsible. It takes courage
to walk new paths and develop new skills. It takes courage to stand out from
the crowd. It takes courage to put out the extra effort when others don’t.
In short, it takes courage to build wealth.
It may be true that the nail that stands up is the nail
that gets hammered down, but it’s equally true that the nail that never got
driven is the nail that didn’t fulfill its purpose.
Live with courage so you can live fully and experience
true wealth.
5th Wealth Building Principle: Be Disciplined
Wealth is the cumulative result of many little things
added together and compounded over a lifetime. That means your daily habits will make or break your success.
Saving, investing, reinvesting, and growing your
financial and business intelligence are all essential wealth building habits that require persistent and
consistent effort.
In other words, wealth building requires discipline.
Without discipline, you risk falling prey to the number one wealth killer: procrastination.
You must begin the right habits today without delay. It takes discipline to
overcome procrastination by starting today and persisting tomorrow.
There is no substitute for action. Anything less is
just an excuse.
6th Wealth Building Principle: Avoid Conspicuous Consumption
The illusory carrot for building wealth is the attraction
of a “more, better,
different” lifestyle.
This myth is perpetuated by brokerage ads filled with
sailboats, European vacations, and perfectly manicured golf resorts. The
problem is consumerism causes your limited resources to be directed toward
lifestyle and away from building wealth.
They are competing demands for the same scarce resources
– and only one can win the battle.
“Seek freedom and become captive of your desires, seek
discipline and find your liberty.”
The reality is wealth is a form of delayed gratification. Wealth builders
live modestly by spending less than they can afford (in money, time, and
energy), so they can invest the difference for greater value in the future.
They understand happiness doesn’t result from the
material trappings of wealth, because that would only keep them from fulfilling
the deeper cause that drives them to success.
Every day you make a choice between consumption today or wealth for tomorrow.
The only way to embrace delayed gratification as the most
fulfilling alternative without any sense of sacrifice is to have a motivating
cause deeper than your desire for lifestyle. If lifestyle is your cause, then
consumption becomes the priority — making wealth eternally elusive.
7th Wealth Building Principle: Build Supportive Environments
If building wealth was easy, then more people would achieve it.
Yet, few succeed in their pursuit of financial freedom even though anyone can put together a reasonable plan to become wealthy.
The difference is consistent, persistent, focused action.
Life provides an endless stream of distractions to sidetrack your plans for wealth.
The solution is to create a support system that keeps you
focused, on track, and literally draws you toward wealth.
Your family environment, relationships, work environment,
financial habits, daily rituals, and more must be proactively designed to
literally pull you toward wealth by supporting and reinforcing your plans.
You must structure your life to support a wealthy
outcome. It’s the path of least resistance.
Financial Mentor’s coaching and educational products can help you re-design your life to achieve financial
freedom. You can either direct your daily life to achieve your
goals, or you can passively allow your days to be filled with alternatives.
You either get the results you choose, or you get the results
that are given to you. Which path will you follow?
8th Wealth Building Principle: Apply Leverage to Build Wealth
Leverage is the essential success principle that builds wealth. You won’t get
wealthy by trading time for money, and you can’t do it all yourself.
Building wealth requires you to work smarter rather than harder
by applying the following principles of leverage:
1. Financial
Leverage: Other people’s money so that you’re not limited by your own pocketbook.
2. Time Leverage: Other people’s time
so that you’re not limited to 24 hours in a day.
3. Systems and
Technology Leverage: Other people’s systems and technology so that you can
get more done with less effort.
4. Marketing
Leverage: Other people’s magazines, newsletters, radio shows, and databases so
that you can communicate to millions with no more effort than is required to
communicate one-on-one.
5. Network
Leverage: Other people’s resources and connections so that you can expand beyond
your own.
6. Knowledge
Leverage: Other people’s talents, expertise, and experience so that you can
utilize greater knowledge than you will ever possess.
Leverage allows you to build more wealth than you could ever achieve alone by utilizing
resources that extend beyond your own. It allows you to grow wealth
without being restricted by your personal limitations.
Leverage is the principle that separates those who
successfully attain wealth from those who don’t. It’s just that simple.
If you aren’t using leverage, then you’re working harder
than you should to earn less than you deserve — and that isn’t going to make
you wealthy.
9th Wealth Building Principle: Treat Your Wealth like a Business (Because It Is)
You wouldn’t build a business without a business plan.
Why should building wealth be any different?
Design your wealth plan based on proven business principles that lead to
success. These principles include competitive advantage, leverage,
accurate record keeping, and accountability– just to name a few.
Run your money like a business, because that’s exactly
what it is: a personal financial management business.
Additionally, your personalized wealth building plan
should take into account your unique skills, interests, and resources while
incorporating the Ten Commandments to Wealth, successful investment principles, and
much more.
When complete, your wealth plan will be tailor-fitted to your unique
life situation, while honoring the proven success principles that
no wealth plan is complete without.
Run your money like the business it is. Anything less
will slow your journey to wealth.
10th Wealth Building Principle: Steward Your Wealth
“If a man is proud of his wealth, he should not be
praised until it is known how he employs it.” – Socrates
Wealth is your servant, and you are a servant to your
wealth. Money is little more than a tool that comes with a responsibility to
use it wisely.
The rich man is a fool who dies without arranging his
affairs to assure that his wealth does good during his lifetime and after his
passing.
Through your legacy of wealth, you have the opportunity to
bless yourself and your family’s life now and in the future. And you can go
beyond that by expanding the circle to include the lives of all who follow you.
As a successful wealth builder, you’ll be in the unique
position to organize charities that can do great social good. The fact that you
can’t take it with you means wealth is a gift to be given.
Always understand that wealth isn’t something you
possess, but a flow which has found a temporary parking place under your
stewardship.
Eventually this stewardship will move to others as all
things must pass (including you). The wealth builder’s solemn responsibility is to use this temporarily gifted power wisely
so that it creates maximum benefit for all those who are touched by what you
created in your lifetime.
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