The Attitudes of the Wealthy Series: 7 - 9

As you know, one of the most important keys to creating wealth is the right attitude. That is why I decided to share with you in a series of articles the Attitudes of the Wealthy. This is the third article of that series.

Attitudes of the Wealthy #7: The Wealthy Use a Team

One of the things I say over and over again is that “Wealth is a team sport, not a solo sport.” If you look at the wealthiest people in this country, whether past or present, they did not create massive wealth by themselves. The concept of the self made millionaire is a fantasy. People who say they are a self-made millionaire are both deluding themselves, and full of themselves.

Every successful company has at least a visionary and an execution master. Steve Jobs did not design or make Apple computers. Howard Hughes did not build the Spruce Goose or any of his companies or casinos by himself. J. Paul Getty did not become a billionaire by himself. One of the quotes in his book is that he would rather have 1% of the efforts of 100 people than 100% of his own efforts.

When you create your team, it should contain people with different skill sets. If you, your partner and all the other founders of a company are great sales people, it will likely fail. There needs to be a balance of skills from sales to design, or implementation to accounting.

In my real estate business we had one person who found the properties and had the imagination on how to remodel it. I had the management skills and oversaw the remodelling work. Also, I found, screened, and took care of the tenants. Our assistant took care of all of the bookkeeping, rent reconciliation and payments. We had subcontractors that were skilled and performed the physical work. As a team we built a multi-million dollar business.

Look at how you are building your business. Who are the people on your team? Do you have a coach, an accountant, an attorney and a banker? Who supports you with your marketing and technology?

If you want to have a conversation about how you should structure your business, please reach out to me at wealthonanyincome.com and I will support you.

Attitudes of the Wealthy #8: Operate Based on Your Values

In almost any event where I am the speaker, when I talk about how to overcome the thoughts or feelings that block most people from achieving their goals, I ask the following question, “How many of you think thoughts are powerful?”
And the majority of the audience will raise their hands in agreement.

Then I go into a story about how weak and ineffective thoughts are in motivating you to take action that will move you toward your goals, whatever they are. And it does not matter if it about getting out of debt, quitting smoking, or improving a relationship.

The story goes like this; I had a thought many years ago that I wanted to lose weight and that jogging would be a good idea. I set my alarm for 5 AM the next morning and when it rang to wake me, I thought, “It’s cold, it’s dark, I’m tired. I’ll do this on another day.”

Because I was not used to waking up at 5 AM, other thoughts and feelings came up and blocked me from taking the actions that I thought would be good for me. Guess what? Those other thoughts and feelings were far more powerful than the original thought about jogging.

So, what do I do now? Or more importantly, what would you do now? Well, knowing one of my core values is integrity, I put myself in a situation where I would have to start jogging.
I went to my neighbor Ron, because I knew he went jogging in the morning. I asked him if I could go jogging with him the next morning and he said, “Sure, just meet me in front of the house at 6 AM.”

I replied, “Thank you. I will see you tomorrow morning.” I did not have to say, “I promise I will be here tomorrow morning at 6 AM.” Since one of my values is integrity, I have still given Ron my word that I would show up the next morning.

Now when the alarm goes off the next morning, and I don’t feel like getting up, I will still get up because honoring my word is more important than the feelings that come up that would have me go back to sleep.

We all operate from our thoughts, our feelings or our values. But if you are not in touch with your values, then you will be run by your thoughts and feelings instead. The wealthy are in touch with their values and that is what they lean on when thoughts or feelings that would block them show up.

If you would like a copy of the values exercise I have in my book, please send me an email and ask for it, and I will email it to you.

Attitudes of the Wealthy #9: Net worth or pay check?

Finally, we will cover how the wealthy focus on building their net worth more than how large their pay check is.
If you have read anything about me you know I started over from broke at age 50, and now the net worth of my wife and me puts us in the top 1% of Americans. And as a reminder, 100% of the profits from my wealth training, speaking, books or workshops are donated to charity.

The point is I did not earn a lot of money working, but that did not prevent me from creating a large net worth. To earn a living I provided business coaching primarily to accounting and financial planning firms because that was my background.

At the time when I was 50, I was earning about $5000 per month, which would have been around 1998. My highest income-earning year ever was $102,000 in the early 1990s. It was not the hundreds of thousands of dollars that people think is needed to become a millionaire.

By paying myself first, just like I coach my clients to do, I saved up about $18,000, which I had in several stocks selected from the index of the Dow Jones. Around 2001 an opportunity came along to buy a tri-plex (three unit apartment building) in a nice part of Los Angeles for about $360,000. The down payment needed was $72,000, but I only had $18,000.

You may have heard me say it before; wealth is a team sport, not a solo sport. My wife contributed $18,000 and the Realtor that found the property provided another $36,000 and purchased half of the property with us. We cleaned it up and as people moved out we re-rented the units for higher market rents. Six years later we sold it for a $520,000 profit.

That means my $18,000 investment grew to $130,000 in just six years. That’s about a 39% compounded annual rate of return. That was far better than I was earning when I had my money in the stock market. And even though I was working seven days a week I was very pleased.

During that six-year period I borrowed more money to make the down payments on more apartment buildings with my wife and the Realtor. By about year eight we had 50 apartment units we owned and managed. We bought when prices were about $120,000 per unit and cleaned them up. By the time we were selling and doing tax deferred exchanges we were getting over $250,000 per unit.

While my income from coaching other business owners was never more than about $5000 per month, I was making millions of dollars from real estate investments. My net worth grew from my investments, not from having a large pay check.

Maybe a good title for a book would be Wealth On Any Income.

What do you think?

To your prosperity,

Rennie