Money making is an art and a science to be mastered by those who want real freedom. Money gives you options. It might not be everything but its the only thing.
Jeff Benzos, the founder of amazon has a net worth of $ 177 billion. And then there is you. You are probably working a job right now. One that you got from the degree that you studied for. You probably don’t have much in savings.
Your living expenses seem ridiculously high. You feel as though you are not paid enough. You have credit card debt that needs to be taken care of.
Maybe you are a student. Studying for a degree that you hope can land you a job that you hope can bring in some good money. Probably, you don’t have any savings but a pesky student debt hanging above your head. Wealth, getting rich, that all seems like a distance dream.
How Did They Do It?
You ask yourself. Seeing all those millionaires and billionaires especially the self-made ones. Those who had no access to old money. It baffles you and makes you angry. You ask yourself so many questions.
Maybe they got lucky or cheated their way to wealth. Money is evil. Maybe am not smart enough. I’m just unlucky. Those dreams you had of buying that mansion, your favorite Sports Utility Vehicle, paying off your mortgage, traveling around the world – they’ll forever remain that way. Just dreams – nothing more nothing less.
Then you come to the harsh reality that it’s a rigged game. Its been a rigged game from the start. And you are on the loosing side of it.
But what if told you that you were WRONG. What if there was a way of getting there? An actual equation to wealth. A science behind the way money works. What if you didn’t have to abandon those dreams of paying off your parents’ mortgage or travelling around the world?
The Other Side of The Coin
By the end of this article, you’ll be able to understand that there is a side of the coin that you are not being shown.
The road is tough; its filled with struggle,lots of ups and downs. You will have to swallow some difficult truths that even the school system and the society haven’t told you yet.
Just to be clear, many will not make it to the end of this road. But for those who will do, at the end of that road lies the freedom of never having to worry about money again.
The Lies That You’ve Been Fed
What do you really think about money? Is it something you work for? Is it earned or is it inherited? Is it the root cause of all evil? Are you desperate to have more of it? Have you been chasing it for most of your life?
The truth is that your perception of money has been influenced by your upbringing and your immediate environment.
If you were born into a family that didn’t have much money while growing up. Then you are more inclined to believe that you too will not grow up to have much money.
Perhaps you went on the complete opposite end and decided to make as much money as you can so that you’ll never to be in that position again.
The fact that your school didn’t teach you much about this subject doesn’t help things. And because of this most of you are going to have false beliefs about money. You need to change how you’ve been seeing money your whole life.
Those who don’t understand the science of money, have always depicted money as evil. Question is, have you bought into that stereotype?
A recent report released by wealth X shows that of the world’s ultra-wealthy, those that had a net worth of US $ 30 million of more, 68% were self-made.
And it seems like every other study backs up this report. You can list a few of them (Self-made Billionaires):
- Warren Buffet – Net worth $ 72.9 Billion (CEO of Berkshire Hathaway)
- Howard Schultz – Net worth $ 3.5 Billion (previous CEO of Starbucks)
- Oprah Winfrey – Net worth $2.6 Billion (Media Executive, Presenter Producer)
- Jeff Benzos – Net worth $117.3 Billion (CEO Amazon)
- Elon Musk – Net worth $30 Billion (CEO at Space X, Tesla)
- Sara Blakely – Net worth $1 Billion (CEO Spanx)
The Truth
What is it that these people know that you don’t know?
The truth is that your equation is all wrong. The equation that: Money = Salary earned from a job
This is why universities are churning out graduates who end up working as job seekers before they actually get employed. The prospect of getting a job becomes the sole purpose of your education. This explains the high rates of unemployment worldwide
What’s Wrong With That, You Ask?
We all have the most precious resource. The most important of all and once its gone, there’s no way of getting it back. That resource is time.
The standard of how much money you earn is dependent on the amount of time that you put into that job. Time is money. The goal should be increasing the amount you earn per minute as opposed to increasing the time taken to do the same task.
If you earn $20/hour and worked 40 hours/week, it will take you nearly 24 years to reach $ 1,000,000. That is without subtracting any taxes or any other expenses that you’ll incur over 24 years. Let’s not forget that the inflation rate will reduce the value of the $ 1,000,000.
Confidently, we can conclude that on a salary of $20/hour, you can only be a millionaire at old age by living frugally. And most of that precious resource called time has slipped through your fingers. You’ve traded all that time for money and the amount isn’t substantial.
So again, you wonder that there are self-made billionaires at younger ages, barely 50 years old.
What makes them different? And the truth is, they have a better equation than you. They have a way of understanding money that you haven’t quite grasped yet.
Stop Chasing Money
In a capitalist society, the rules of the game are as follows:
You are paid in proportion to the perceived value that you have. And the people that perceive your value are the market. The consumers of the economy. The market is you, your friends, family, neighbors and country.
People complain that football players are overpaid. But for players to be paid millions there has to be a market for the football industry. People have to see the value in football, in the first place for them to want to spend money on matches and merchandise.
And if the market has high demand for football, guess what happens to the players who are at the top of their game?
They are paid generously for it The money comes from the huge football market.
Its Not About How Hard You Work
The cleaner that is sweating and tiring himself out every day, is paid far less than the accountant sitting behind a desk.
Why? Because the market perceives the value of what the cleaner does to be far less than the accountant. As harsh as it may sound, the cleaner can be replaced by anybody.
It isn’t difficult to learn how to do his job and therefore the market will not pay him more than the accountant. The guy who spent all his years studying numbers. The employee who saved his company thousands on their taxes.
But being employed isn’t the right equation to wealth. Unless one is a thief or corrupt.
So, how can we increase our perceived value? What is it about people like Elon Musk or Jeff Benzos that make their perceived value so high?
Solve Problems
If you want money, solve problems. Take a second to digest this statement. You’ll realize that just about all money runs from this basic premise. If it solves a problem, then money will be thrown at it.
If it’s a million-dollar problem then the solution will make you a million. A billion-dollar problem will make you billions.
Think about all the problems that a simple website like amazon solves. The hassle of going to a store, the hassle of having to wait for weeks for a delivery, cheaper prices and so on. Not to mention the companies that amazon owns and the problems that those companies solve.
Jeff Benzos helped solve a billion-dollar problem and was rewarded favorably for doing so.
If you have been chasing money, then you’ve been doing it all wrong.
It sounds almost paradoxical but if you want money, it isn’t money that you should be looking for. You should be looking for problems. And more importantly solutions to those problems.
Once you’ve found that solution, make a business around it.
Old Thinking Patterns
Avoid going back to the old thinking patterns. Don’t chase money. Always start with the problem. Listen to the market around you.
What are people saying they don’t like?
What are people saying they wish existed?
What are people saying frustrates them?
What do people think is incredibly inconvenient?
Is that a problem you think you can solve? And more so, is it a problem that is worth solving?
A Problem Worth Solving
The final step of this equation to wealth is finding a scalable solution to the problem. Your solution needs to affect a magnitude of people.
Starting a restaurant? That’s not scalable. You are constrained to the local area and the footfall of that area.
But a franchise? Now that’s more scalable. Is your solution a piece of software? Then that means that once that software has been built, you can scale it infinitely online without needing to worry about things like production or shipping cost. This is because its all done virtually.
Good luck finding infinite scale with the job. But be careful. Does your solution require your time to generate the money?
Let’s say that you are a yoga teacher that charges $ 100/hour. Congratulations, you’ve only made yourself another job disguised as a business – limited scalability.
There is only a certain amount of lessons that you can feasibly do in one day. Therefore, your income is time bound and limited in scale.
But if you create an online Yoga class that runs 24/7 with lessons that you only had to create ones. Now that’s scalable – unlimited scalability. Your market can access your products anytime anywhere without you having to be there.
Scaling your solution is critical here. Do not get lost on this point.
Automation
Automation also plays an important role. Systems and processes will keep your business running like a smooth machine if implemented properly.
If there is something in your business that you can outsource to somebody else or hire an employee to do it for you, assuming it makes financial sense – then do it.
Tasking yourself with everything is a bad thing. As much as you might think that you are the best, there is someone out there that can do a better job than you.
Once you have found a solution, it’s your job to make sure that that solution can be accessed by everyone in your market.
Its not about your ego or your passion. The market doesn’t care about your passions and egoism.
The Reward
There are two likely parts that you are going to face at this point. You either continue with your business or cash in and sell it. Call it business acquisition – the moment someone buys the solution that spent years building a business around.
This is Instagram being acquired by Facebook for $ 1 Billion, PayPal being sold to eBay for $1.5 Billion of which $165 Million went to Elon Musk pocket and the countless other liquidation events that have happened all over the world.
That is the point where the effort that you spent building your company comes to fruition. And if you choose to continue running your business, there’s a multitude of reasons for doing that.
Maybe you love the company that you built and you want to stick with your baby.
Maybe you think you can add more value to the company and sell it down the line for more than its currently worth.
Perhaps that business runs passively in the background. So, you don’t have to do much to keep its wheels turning
Or maybe it’s a combination of these three things. Either way, you did it!
You solved a problem that the market wanted solely and it rewarded you generously for doing so.
And so now I ask you, what was it all for anyway?
Your Money Your Life
For most of you it was never about the money. Money is just a piece of paper. A number on an ATM screen. Its value is only backed by our belief in its value.
From the very start, this was never about the money.
Paying off the mortgage, buying your dream car, travelling around the world, never having to worry about your financial situation is the freedom that you were looking for.
Your destination wasn’t anything monetary related. It was a feeling, a sensation, the ability to do what you want, whenever you want it without ever worrying about the affordability.
The Most Important Lesson
The most important lesson from this article was never about the nature of money. It was about the one valuable resource that we all have. The one resource that we will never ever be able to reclaim back. That is time.
Are you giving much of your time to a job that probably you don’t like, worth it? Is your life settled on working, coming home, watching the TV, sleeping, waking up the next day and repeating the same routine until you retire?
How many more hours of your life do you let slip through your fingers just because of this pattern?
Or perhaps you are fine with that reality. Perhaps you have no other choice but to follow that path for the time being.
And if that’s the case, there is nothing to worry about. The most you got from this article is a little entertainment and may be a change on perspective.
But there are all those of you who understand the other side. Those of you that have the desire to never need to worry about money again.
And so, I feel the need to remind you, stop chasing money, chase problems and find solutions.
Let solving problems be your meaningful struggle in life.