Success and Wealth Strategies
Success is a series of accomplished events measured by wealth, influence, and positive impact on society. Here, “success” can mean numerous things but the main definition is that something has been accomplished or achieved. People define success in different ways and it means different things to different people. Success to a father and husband may mean supporting his family with everyday needs. Success to a musician may mean getting his first sound track completed. The diverse measurement of success varies depending on the person who chooses in their own way how to define what success is. In this book, success is defined as stated earlier, which is the completion of an event that leads to wealth, influence, and positive impact on society. Overall, the abundance of wealth, influence, and positive social change advances the culture of our world and lays a foundation for others to build on or get ideas from. The amazing part about success is that anyone can achieve it but must unlock their inner talents and gifts to do so. A multimillionaire said, plus statistics show, that there are five people who make up millionaires. First, the majority is business owners, second is CEOs and executives, third is professionals like engineers, doctors, lawyers, etc., fourth are sales people, and lastly is the smallest percentage like people who gain inheritances and lottery winners. The good news is that skills to become wealthy are learnable. The number one recommended way to achieve wealth is to become a business owner and learn at all cost how to run a business. Next, you use profits from business to make investments that produce cash flow that exceed your total expenses.
Case studies show many wealthy people do not showcase their wealth but rather live simple and sometimes in secret. The first step to becoming wealthy is to learn how to build wealth. The most revolutionary way to build wealth is to take skills you already have or to gain skills and use them and charge people for services or from a product you have made. To build wealth, you must get out of the corporate mind-set of just always working for someone else. However, for those not interested in entrepreneurial aspirations there are still options to acquire wealth. Some people are not wealthy because they do not know how to become wealthy and have wrong perceptions of how to build wealth. When beginning your journey to wealth creation the core of becoming wealthy is financial education and in another form is basically knowledge and action.
Martize’s Wealth-Building Technique:
You may find similar recommendation offered by the well-known financial advisor Dave Ramsey, and I give him full credit for the technique. However, I have modified his method for a simpler approach to build wealth.
This technique assumes you live with a partner.
1. With two incomes, live off one income and pay debt down with the other then begin investing
Wealth and Prosperity Secrets:
Daily Routine of the common wealthy and more prosperous people:
The book, The Millionaire Fastlane, author MJ DeMarco shows five ways to earn large amounts of money quicker than average. Those five are the following: rental systems, software systems, content systems, distribution systems, and human resource systems. Briefly, I’ll explain them so that you can choose the best option for yourself. Rentals are money-generating activities that empower you to earn money from others renting your assets. The common example is real estate. If you rent out a home, apartment, or commercial real estate, your clients will pay you rent each month regardless of how you spend your time. Software systems accumulate money with code and often done over the Internet. This could be anything from financial software to an iPhone application. Content systems are the term used for selling information. Selling information could mean you run a newspaper or a magazine. It could also mean that you're an author or a blogger. Distribution systems are ways of delivering products and services to large populations. Some people desire to create the product or information while others desire to get it out to the world. A human resource system simply is having employees running the company for you.
As a person ventures into the journey of becoming wealthy it is important to mimic the practices of wealthy people. There are ways that the wealthy allocate their money that helps them build more wealth and sustain it. Tom Ferry, an expert money management professional explains the money patterns of three different groups which are the 80%, 15%, and 5% of the American population. The majority of people, around 80% of Americans, make money and it goes to their personal accounts, which in this manner has the highest tax rate on it. This is a quick sketch of the 80%:
Check
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Personal account(s)
The 15% group of Americans their money pattern is as the following:
Checks
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Home Account← Business Account(s) → Tax Account
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Business Expenses
The 5% and the wealthiest money patterns are as the following:
Checks
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Investment Account← Business Account(s) → Tax Account
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Business Expenses
Investment Account continued from the pattern above:
Investment Account is distributed to all of the below sections
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529 Account; Cash Account; Home expenses; Retirement; Market; Real Estate
So what does wealth look like? The goal is to produce income-generating assets that are more than your expenses. Wealthy people talk and behave in the manner of establishing and increasing their cash flow. What this means is wealthy people or people on the journey to wealth use their money to create or acquire instruments that produce passive income such as but not limited to real estate, personal business, stocks, bonds, mutual funds, and private investments. These financial instruments produce more money for the investor. When the person gets to a point, in monthly terms, where he or she is bringing in large amounts of passive income that exceeds their monthly expenses this is wealth. Another view but in the exact same manner wealth is when a person can stop working, while still have cash flow coming in, often from assets, that are enough to cover their expenses and have plenty more left over, that is wealth.
The objective of creating wealth is to put your money into investment opportunities that make you more money and yield returns on your investments. Success can lead to wealth and often is the result of many failures in life. Another critical part of how to gain wealth is to understand the different categories of cash flow. Robert Kiyosaki, a financial expert and millionaire, mentions the people that make up the world of business which are the employee, small business owner, big business owner, and investor. So I remember this by the acronym “ESBI”. The objective is to move from employee to big business and investor. The United States dollar is losing value while the cost of living keeps rising. Therefore it makes no since to save money and do nothing with it.
Compound interest through Paper Assets
Case Study: From McKinley Carter Company
Two young medical doctors in massive debt decide to make a change I their financial lives. They desired to start best financial practices like managing debt, setting money aside in retirement, and saving for children’s future education. The hard part is for them they didn’t know where to start. It was recommended to them they see an advisor so they did. With the advisor’s help they created a practical financial plan that they even began to understand more about wealth management. A part of their financial plan was to invest in mutual funds. They continued to stay on track and are more confident in their ability to plan and succeed in their finances. The point is that regardless of whether you meet with an advisor or not having a financial plan is better then none at all. These are high salary earners but anyone can still invest in mutual funds or any paper assets right from where they are.
If you don’t know what compounding interest is then read up on it because a billionaire once said that to understand compounding you can harness its power and those who don’t will pay it. In one sentence, compounding interest is “interest on interest” so the sum grows faster compared to simple interest.
Invest in Real Estate
Note that to succeed your business plan must be solid and intelligently carried out. Remember to include in your business plan your annual expense so that you know how many properties to obtain that generates income that covers your expenses.
People have been able to stop work simply because they knew their annual expenses was $15,000 so having 5 properties, a purchase each year, while each property generates $7,000 per year with a total of $35,000 after total expenses covers their total expenses. If you subtract expenses, $15,000, from profits from the 5 properties $35,000 there is a $20,000 cash amount left.
Most investors usually continue to invest even after this point to increase the gap between their expenses and passive income, which leads to more cash available to them for personal or business uses.
Start a Business
Group Investing/ Investment Club
Decide to start or join a group investment opportunity
Or join an investment club
a. Type in investment clubs in your area and explore information and attend an event in person Below are case studies of people who have become wealthy or accumulated a degree of wealth in their lifetime.
1) Brian Tracy- A man who did not finish high school and had many other disadvantages found a way to become wealthy. Brain made the decision to become wealthy and took responsibility over his life. He often says” success is predictable” and if you follow what people have done to become successful and wealthy and practice them continually that you will achieve your desired level of success and wealth. Setting goals and ongoing learning played a huge role in his success.
2) Ronald Read- A janitor that died with about 8 million dollars in investments. This was accomplished by the power of compounding through stock investing. He was also a frugal man.
3) Earl Crawley- A parking lot attendant who never made more than 12 dollars an hour had amassed around $500,000 of wealth. Earl is not too much different from Ronald because Earl also lives below his means, saves money little bit at a time and invest into investment tools that compound and grow over the years and decades.
4) Do Won Chang-A immigrant who founded Forever 21. Before he founded Forever 21, Chang worked three jobs. He saw an opportunity for business and prepared himself then pursued it.
5) Kenney Moore- once was unemployed, married, and had an infant to take care of butovercame challenges and became wealthy through a restaurant chain called highway 55.
According to business insider, in the following is a complete list of 17 habits of self-made millionaires:
1) They read consistently
2) They exercise
3) They hang out with other successful people
4) They Volunteer
5) They practice “Dream” setting
6) They pursue their own goals
7) They sleep at least 7 hours a day
8) They get up early
9) They have multiple sources of income
10) They find an check in with mentors
11) They help others succeed
12) They’re positive
13) They don’t follow the heard
14) They practice good etiquette
15) They dedicate 15 to 30 minutes a day to just thinking
16) They seek feedback
17) They never give up
If you have not already done it then begin to apply these habits to your life. Start with one and make it a habit so practice it for 30 days or until you master it then go to the next habit.
The opposite of success is to fail, have failed or a failure, though I believe it is necessary to fail in order to succeed. My illustration to demonstrate this point is when Bill Gates first company failed miserably, Walt Disney was told he lacked creativity, and Oprah Winfrey was fired by a producer and labeled “unfit for television”. Yet, all of these people continued on through failing to achieve what the world would call an amazing success obtained by first failing. These are big names but let us work our way down the funnel to see other stories at different levels. Whether heard or unheard of by the public, people have experienced failure as a means of eventually reaching success. Everyday citizens who seek to become doctors, lawyers, or any highly respected professional often come up against road blocks in their journey. A man or woman could easily fail a standardized test to become licensed in their area of professional interest. To those people who fail the exam one of two things will happen. Either a person is pushed to try harder or give up. To view failing the exam as a means to see what areas they need to focus their study on more shows growth and maturity and in doing so when they re-attempt the test assuming they pass, it shows their preparation improved because they knew what subject matter to understand better. In this, we see failure made way for success to come.
Continuing down the funnel, let us look at another level of others who had to fail in order to succeed. A low-income individual wants to get a higher paying job but lacks the experience of the jobs he prefers. In applying for an opportunity then after the interview was not selected and told the person lacks experience, what can a person do to display qualifications? It is crazy how to get a position in a certain field you are interested in but have no experience. It is almost unreal to expect to get the job. However, one way is from a failed interview the person seeks opportunities that require shadowing of a job-related position to get unpaid experience and even try to work themselves into the real position along with making firm connections with people in that specific job sector. As time goes on and the individual keeps getting job interviews for higher paying jobs one’s experience increases as one attempts to land a job in one’s field of interest. Another way is to maximize one’s opportunities by seeking every possible job position or similar position in one’s interest while in doing so one demonstrates one has other qualities just as good if not better than what the employer is looking for, then show it and present yourself in that manner when an employer conducts the interview. This person may be rejected over 100 times before acquiring a sought-after job. As this person failed each time, make it a duty to pick up something to improve so your chances are more in favor of you next time around. As this person moves forward and gains knowledge of what is expected he or she becomes a person ideal for the employers’ desired open. The goal of this individual may not be accomplished when he or she feels it should be but it will if a person keeps making progress. Regardless of how long it takes for an individual to land a higher paying job, the lesson learned is that the higher the volume of job interviews you get the more it puts you in a position to land a higher paying job. The secrets of wealth and prosperity applied here is simple. Everyone should know that to acquire financial freedom, whether it is money from one’s day job or one’s business this money needs to be used to set a pathway for one to becoming wealthier. The objective is to focus on increasing cash flow and keeping it so investments can be made. Going away from career- minded and professional success there are also other forms of success such as, but not limited to, spiritual as well as social success.
I have used traditional examples of people searching for jobs as a common means of demonstrating how a person can become successful through failure. Here, I would like to touch on an example of building wealth. Here, it is important that whatever job you have should act as a stepping stone to help you achieve more. The objective is to save money for future investments such as but not limited to business ownership, real estate or any such resource that generates income. When you work in most corporate jobs, they seem to have an issue with you getting overtime, so you have a cap placed on your salary. The people who become great are not interested in jobs but in multiple income streams and investments. Jobs will never pay what one is worth, so it is important to go out and make your own profits. I am in no way saying quit your job, but simply let the money you make be utilized to pursue your dreams and ambitions. Failure cannot scare you and plays a role in your overall success. You do not become great by just working an 8 to 5 job then retiring and then dying. People who become great pass on their knowledge and wisdom and leave massive amounts of influence that empowers others. To reach success in terms of wealth, you must calculate your life,