Before I was financially comfortable, I used to hear wealthy people say that it was my Money Mindset that was keeping me broke. I also used to think that it was easy for them to say that, they were rich! In other words, I thought what they were saying was pure bullshit!
Financial success must be right around the corner, right?
As the years went by, I went through my 20’s, 30’s and into my early 40’s still believing that my Money Mindset had nothing to do with the fact that I hadn’t achieved the financial position that I thought I would always obtain.
Like all of us, I had financial aspirations. I started out in my career envisioning that I would be financially successful to the point that once I got into my 50’s I’d be able to retire at any time.
I’d be able to have the things that I wanted, within reason, and would never want for things that money could buy. For the most part, I was just like most people in the western world.
Yet, I still hadn’t achieved what I thought was my financial destiny. Interestingly enough, at the age of 45 I still thought that the financial ‘gurus’ who were telling me that it was my Money Mindset that was keeping me back were all full of bullshit.
The Epiphany. It finally dawned on Me
Then something very interesting happened. One day after I had a meeting with a businessman that I counseled, I sat at my desk in my office looking out my window as this individual left my office and worked his way over to a brand-new luxury automobile. It wasn’t the fact that he had money per se, it was the fact that he had created the financial life that he always dreamed he would have.
In fact, he and I were about the same age and I had literally provided him with consulting expertise and services as he grew his fortune over the years. In one of those moments when time seems to stop I reflected upon this and found this to be the most profound thought that I had ever had; How could the person that I was consulting…the person that I was literally pouring my expertise and knowledge into…have reached his financial goals with that same expertise and knowledge that I provided him, YET I hadn’t reached MY financial goals, which were a LOT more meager, with that same expertise and knowledge?
As time felt like it was still standing still within that moment, I realized that WHAT these financial gurus had been saying all along wasn’t bullshit at all. In fact, many of the things that they were saying WERE the actual components of the mindset blueprint that I would need to develop for myself in order to reach my financial goals.
A Money Mindset change
And that’s exactly what happened. The minute I changed my Money Mindset I was able to put myself on a completely different financial trajectory.
By the time that I turned 50 I was essentially financial independent…and no I didn’t invent anything, become a rapper or turn into a professional athlete!
As someone who absolutely believes that their Money Mindset creates the financial blueprint that our thoughts and actions will follow, here’s 5 thoughts that were keeping me broke:
1. I thought it was how hard you work and how smart you are BUT it’s about value and leverage
When I was young, I was led to believe that the people who were the smartest and those who worked the hardest would enjoy the greatest financial rewards. I knew that doctors were smart, worked hard and seemed to be financially set so my theory of being the smartest and working the hardest had to be an absolute law of how personal finance worked.
However, it would not be long into my career where I would run into clients that I surmised were of average intelligence and weren’t even putting in the amount of hours that I was but they were much more financially successful than ANY doctor that I knew. In fact, they were the wealthiest individuals that I had ever met.
How could this be? I then realized it isn’t about being the smartest or working the hardest, it is more about having a skill, product or expertise of high value that a specific group of people in the market place need and creating a system that you can leverage by having other people (employees) execute it on your behalf. Most of my wealthiest clients were housing developers and entrepreneurs and not my doctors, lawyers and high paid W2 individuals.
2. I thought trading hours for dollars for someone else was the only way to make a living
What held me back for most of my career was that I thought trading my hours for an hourly wage was the ONLY way to make money. Although I obviously knew of people who owned their own businesses when I was young, I bought into the thought that I too could be equally financially successful at that same level if I simply continued to work at my particular craft for someone else.
That sounds completely sensible when you’re younger but if I had ONLY done the math I would have seen that I would have maxed out all my large salary increases in roughly 10 years and would have been relegated to slight cost of living adjustments after that. Therefore, no matter how hard I worked I would essentially be maxed out for what I could make for money in that particular career in my early 30’s.
3. Although vocation is important, what’s more important is what you could be selling within that vocation to others
If you don’t have a business or something of high value that you are selling on your own, being paid more for each hour that you work for someone else is going to be crucial for your financial success. That’s just how this works.
However, what I found particularly interesting in my own situation was that there were specific things that I did for my employer that I knew were incredibly valuable out in the marketplace.
In fact, it was these things and the specific skills that allowed me to do them that if I bundled up as a service and concentrated on delivering them in the marketplace would be worth hundreds of dollars per hour.
Yet, while I worked for my employer delivering these same exact skills and services to individuals would only get me compensated at the same level that I always got compensated at.
You may have already heard about the school teacher who barely made $30,000 a year that then took her expertise creating lesson plans and created a multi-million dollar business selling those lesson plans to other teachers.
She was already doing the exact SAME thing for her employer each and every day but was being compensated at what her employer thought that talent was worth. However, when she focused solely on that one skill, bundled it and started to sell it to others that had the same need for that skill, she became financially successful.
4. I didn’t put enough stock in the fact that having a Side Hustle is key to financial independence
There’s a couple of self-limiting thoughts here tied up into one. First, as identified above I thought the only way to become successful was trading hours for dollars for someone else. This self-limiting thought kept my ability to become financially successful squarely within a 9 to 5, Monday through Friday box which was controlled by someone else who set the value on my worth.
Secondly, I undervalued the concept that if you choose to have a regular job you have to consider it only as the means to cover your basic living costs, health insurance and other benefits. What you need to strongly consider and take advantage of, is that any dollars from your job in excess of your living costs, health insurance and benefits, be put into income producing assets of some sorts.
In addition, you also have to commit to always have a side hustle outside of your 9 to 5 that can generate some cash flow. Any cash flow derived from this side hustle then goes directly into income generating assets in order to double down on building wealth.
5. I didn’t have the right wealth plan or wealth strategies
Frankly, it wasn’t that I didn’t have the right plan or strategies, I didn’t have a plan or strategies at all! Looking back on it, my only plan was to go to college, “get a good job” and work hard at my profession until I become financially successful. Sound familiar to anyone?
The problem is that plan would have been decreasingly viable for anyone who was starting their career in the late 80’s and early 90’s but it has become less than viable for people who started out within the past decade.
Conclusion
The good news is that in future posts we’re going to be talking A LOT about a wealth plan and the corresponding strategies to get you to financial independence!
In the next few posts, I will share with you the other thoughts that kept me broke for far too long. I’ll also offer some insight as to how I overcame them.
More importantly, in a later post I’ll lay out the wealth plan and strategy that I followed which helped me completely rewire my Money Mindset.
