7 Tips for Building Wealth
Excerpt from "Get Rich" article

Most parents want to teach their children responsibility - how to become self sufficient and succeed in life (after all, no one plans on raising a dead beat). However, very few actually accomplish this task. Why? Because, as parents, we are limited to the experiences our parents passed on to us; the antiquated notion that "responsibility" is simply getting a job, saving a little money, and maybe purchasing a car or some equally important item. Hopefully these seven rules will open your eyes and help you teach your children to avoid the traps that have stolen financial success from so many people.

Your biggest obstacle to attaining wealth is YOU. Too often, people live their lives in a manner that is not conducive to creating riches and then get frustrated at "the system" when they only really have themselves to blame.

With a few notable exceptions, debt is a form of bondage; a disease that enslaves the borrower. A few years ago, there was a young lady attending college who shot herself because she couldn't pay back $2,300 in credit card debt. Although an extreme example, it is a testament to the power money has over peoples' lives. Imagine your life without owing anyone anything; your car, your house, your education, all paid for in full. Like what you see? When you want it badly enough, you will make extinguishing your debt  your number one priority.

The old cliché that "insanity is doing the same thing over and over expecting different results," holds just as true today as it did when it was originally written. If you don't like where your parents were at your age, stop what you are doing. During your childhood, they taught you all they knew about money. For many people, these early years established how they feel about their finances today. In order to become financially successful, you must do something different than they did. Otherwise, you will end up exactly as they are.

Whether you are looking for employment now or are thinking about it sometime in the near future, one of the most important things for you to do is to look at what the top-dog gets at any company for which you are considering working. This will give you an idea of how high you can expect to climb in terms of earnings and promotion. If the CEO is making $30,000 a year, you have no chance to make six figures. Select a job accordingly.

Wealth Building Rule 5: Do Something You Love and Get Paid for It

I remember going into college and being surrounded with people who wanted to be artists, scientists, and businessmen, but instead did what their parents or grandparents told them to do. There is no honor in being a doctor or a lawyer if you wake up every morning and hate your job. Pick a profession you love and you'll never have to work a day in your life.

Wealth Building Rule 6: Understand the Money Myth

Money is nothing more than a piece of paper with the image of a long-dead person on it. When you understand that any power it has over you is derived from your relationship with it, you suddenly become free from the constant pressures and stress of thinking about it. Especially at times such as these, if you are putting money away for ten, fifteen, or twenty years down the road, stop checking your portfolio every day! There is nothing you can gain from it except stress.

Wealth Building Rule 7: Your New Commodity is Not Your Labor, It's Your Ideas

With the advent of the Internet and other technological advances, you are no longer limited to supporting yourself or making a living by your physical labor. The only limit you have on yourself now is your own imagination - your ideas are the most valuable thing you possess. Every man, woman, and child is a salesman for a living; if you don't own a business or investments, then you sell your manual labor to a company in exchange for a paycheck. Change your product. The gap between the rich and poor does indeed grow larger with each passing year, but not because of inequalities or any other such injustices. Instead, it is because the rich understand money and how to use it. Capital is literally a seed; learn how to plant it to produce the best harvest. When you do this, you will rule your finances, not the other way around.

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How to Become Wealthy

Nine Truths That Can Set You on the Path to Financial Freedom

#1: Change the Way You Think About Money
The general population has a love / hate relationship with wealth.  They hate people who have it, but spend their entire lives trying to get it for themselves.  The reason a vast majority of people never accumulate a substantial nest egg is because they don't understand the nature of money or how it works.

Cash, like a person, is a living thing.  When you wake up in the morning and go to work, you are selling a product - yourself [or more specifically, your labor].  When you realize that every morning your assets wake up and have the same potential to work as you do, you unlock a powerful key in your life.  Each dollar you save is like an employee.  Over the course of time, the goal is to make your employees work hard, and eventually, they will make enough money to hire more workers [cash].  When you have become truly successful, you no longer have to sell your own labor, but can live off of the labor of your assets.

#2: Develop an Understanding of the Power of Small Amounts
The biggest mistake most people make is that they think they have to start with an entire Napoleon-like army.  They suffer from the "not enough" mentality; namely that if they aren't making $1,000 or $5,000 investments at a time, they will never become rich.  What these people don't realize is that entire armies were built one soldier at a time, and so will their financial arsenal. 

A friend of mine once knew a woman who worked as a dishwasher and made her purses out of old liquid detergent bottles.  This woman invested and saved everything she had - a few dollars at a time.  Now, she has a portfolio worth millions upon millions of dollars, all of which was built upon small investments.  I am not suggesting you become this frugal, but make a point to put two or three dollars a day into an investment account.  Before you know it, you are savings just shy of $1,000 a year.  Do not despise the day of small beginnings!

#3: With Each Dollar You Save, You Are Buying Yourself Freedom
When you put it in these terms, you see how spending $20 here and $40 there can make a huge difference in the long run.  Since money has the ability to work in your place, the more of it you employ, the faster and larger it will grow. Along with more money comes more freedom - the freedom to stay home with your kids, the freedom to retire and travel around the world, or the freedom to quit your job.  If you have any source of income, it is possible for you to start building wealth today.  It may only be $5 or $10 at a time, but each of those investments is a stone in the foundation of your financial freedom.

#4: You Are Responsible for Where You Are in Your Life
Years ago, a friend told me she didn't want to invest in stocks because she "didn't want to wait ten years to be rich..." she would rather enjoy her money now.  The folly with this school of thinking is that the odds are, you are going to be alive in ten years.  The question is whether or not you will be better off when you arrive there.  Where you are right now is the sum total of the decisions you have made in the past.  Why not set the stage for your life in the future right now?  How do you do that?...

#5: Instead of Buying the Product... Buy the Stock!
Someone once asked me why they weren't wealthy.  They always felt like they were putting money aside, yet never seemed to get any further ahead.  The answer is simple... I told them to stop buying the products companies sell and start buying the company itself! According to a survey of America's affluent (those who make over $225,000 a year or own $3,000,000 in assets) showed that 27-30% of all the income the wealthy earned went into investments and savings.  That isn't a result of being rich... that is why they are rich, and some of you reading this right now are not.  When the pain of getting out of the bondage of financial slavery is greater than the pain of changing your spending habits, you will become rich.  Either change, or be content to live like you are. 

#6: Study and Admire Success and Those Who Have Achieved It... Then Emulate It
A very wise investor once said to pick the traits you admire and dislike the most about your heroes, then do everything in your power to develop the traits you like and reject the ones you don't. Mold yourself into who you want to become.  You'll find that by opening yourself up and investing in yourself first, you will begin to provide ways for money to flow into your life.  Success and wealth beget success and wealth.  You have to purchase your way into that cycle, and you do so by building your army one soldier at a time and putting your money to work for you.

#7: Realize that More Money is Not the Answer
More money is not going to solve your problem.  Money is a magnifying glass - it will accelerate and bring to light your true habits.  If you are not capable of handling a job paying $18,000 a year, the worst possible thing that could happen to you is for you to earn six figures.  It would destroy you.  I have met too many people earning $100,000 a year who are living from paycheck to paycheck and don't understand why it is happening.  The problem isn't the size of their checkbook - it is the way in which they were taught to use money. 

#8: Unless Your Parents were Wealthy, Don't do what They Did
The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result.  If your parents were not living the life you want to live - then don't do what they did. You have to break away from the way the past generations managed their finances if you want to have a different lifestyle than they had.

To achieve the financial freedom and success that your family may or may not have had, you have to do two things. First, you have to pay off all your debt. Make a decision that you will not allow yourself to be in debt any longer, and then when you have, do everything in your power to get out of debt. Put as much money as you can toward your payments, and before long, you will be able to 2.) start investing in stocks and / or mutual funds.

Purchasing equity is vital to your financial success as an individual. Not only does it provide extra income in some cases [through means of a dividend], but also provides the opportunity for your fortune to grow in synch with that of a company. Nowhere else can your money do as much for you as when you use it to invest in a business that has wonderful long-term prospects.

#9: Stop Worrying
The miracle of life is that it doesn't matter so much where you are - it matters where you are going. Once you have made the choice to take control back of your life by building up your net worth, don't give a second thought to the "what ifs" of finance. Every moment that goes by, you are growing and getting closer and closer to your ultimate goal - control and freedom.

Rest assured, it will happen. If you are diligent and work at it, the day will come when you make your last payment on your car, your house, or whatever else it is you owe. Once that happens, do everything you can to avoid going into debt again. When you see it for what it really is - slavery - you won't have a problem rejecting it.

It is important to continually improve your understanding of your finances, and how to best manage them. If you are looking for a way to change your spending habits, change the way you think about money and achieve financial freedom, you need to understand basic principles about money. These four books challenge the traditional view of money and start you on a path to achieving true financial independence.

Most of us work or have worked for a company. In order for a company to stay in business, it must make money (profits). Most companies make money by selling products and services that people are willing to pay for. The role of the employees is to help make good products and provide quality services so that more people will buy their products and services.

During one of our corporate training projects, one of the workshops was extended by several corporate executives (and their wives). The executives were pleasantly surprised when their own productivity engineers tested and verified the measured improvements in employee health, employee satisfaction, and company productivity.

All companies say that they want happy employees, but not at the expense of making profits. One of Mr. McCulley's popular openings for his corporate classes is called "Let's connect the dots -- between health and company profits":

Healthy employees are happy employees. Happy employees are productive employees. Productive employees make more money. More money makes the company happy. A happy company gives out bigger raises and bonuses. Bigger raises and bonuses makes the employees' families happy. Happy families keep employees happy and healthy. Healthy employees remain happy.

Churches are another example of an institution that has also lost its way and its real purpose in life.

Here is how Mr. McCulley's powerful message can also be applied to your church and its members: Healthy church members are happy church members. Happy church members are more giving to their church. The church has more resources and is more giving to their church members and their community. This leads to more people coming to church. And, the church is able to grow and help even more people.

These are very simple but powerful principles. Please share these principles with your pastor, church members, family, friends, and community.

If you are a pastor, priest, church leader, or church member, please contact us -- we can help.