Making money is always at the top of everyone’s priority list. However, making money by spending time to do so is what most people have in mind when they think about what this process looks like. The action of making money passively is the pillar of building wealth. Our blog repeatedly talks about this concept, but it is so important to hammer home that reiterating it is a necessary thing to make sure that the premise is fully grasped. Let’s finally put to bed everything you have been told about making money and start learning how to build wealth instead!
Put yourself in a position to elevate
At the beginning of your journey, the process of making money by sacrificing a lot of your time and energy may be the only option for you. If you don’t have the budget to get started on any path you choose to go down, bootstrapping it and putting together some capital the hard way may be the best SHORT-TERM option. The problem here is that so many people make this short-term answer a long-term problem. What I mean by this is that many people feel it is necessary to continue doing the daily tasks themselves because if they leave the grind they feel as though they are not doing enough the succeed. The hard truth for many people, myself included, is that in order to reach higher levels of success you must elevate yourself to new heights. This means you must give up some tasks in exchange for executing higher level skilled activities. In the case of real estate investing, lead generation from cold calling and the like is great if you are just starting out, but after a few deals hiring this task out is ESSENTIAL in order to grow your business. I am in the process of this now and thanks to the mentorship I am now a part of, I am trying to focus as much time and energy as I can talking with motivated sellers every single day more than anything else. Within a few months, the next step for me will be to hire an acquisitions manager to handle the leads my VAs bring in and close the deals in the market I am in currently. This will give me the opportunity to confidently expand into other markets around the country. If you don’t have a plan to elevate yourself, you will be chasing your tail with no end in sight and no room for growth for yourself or your business.
building up time wealth
Building wealth is ultra-important for many reasons, but one stands out in particular. Monetary wealth allows you to build up time wealth. This kind of wealth, at least in my estimation, is infinitely more valuable than anything else. This is because time is a finite asset that cannot be replenished unlike money which can be. Buying back your time with monetary wealth is the best thing you can do to take control of your life and the only way to do it is by generating passive income and elevating yourself to higher positions within your businesses. At first, the thought of involving yourself in less tasks and day-to-day operations can seem counter-intuitive, however this is the only way we can grow, be visionaries, and get our time back. For me, the ultimate goal of financial freedom is and has always been to gain time freedom to do what I want, when I want, with who I want. If you haven’t already, I would recommend making what is called a vision board. This can be a poster board that you put somewhere prominent and see every day so that it instills motivation in you to keep working towards these goals. The content of what is actually on the board should reflect what you want to achieve out of financial freedom. I assume for many of you that time is a big piece of the puzzle. On your board, don’t just put “time freedom”. Make it specific to the point that you can envision what that time can be spent doing and with who. Paint a clear picture of it and put it into words. Goals are only wishes without deadlines so make sure you set some for yourself. You can break your biggest goals into 90-day increments on your board and what will be achieved in each one of those increments. This is all part of staying consistent and holding yourself accountable to the goals and deadlines you set for yourself.
The best way to stay accountable
In order to build wealth instead of just make money, we need to have a strong why. A why is a purpose beyond yourself. It should be something specific that gets you out of bed in the morning and motivates you to be your best self and to elevate to the next level as soon as the time is right to do so. To have a generic why like “I want to build wealth so I don’t have to worry about money” is a good start, however, being more specific is better. Something like “I want to build wealth so I can retire my wife from the job that she hates and buy her a dream house in Florida close to the beach so that we can walk on the boardwalk every morning” is a much more specific and precise why. Do you see why one is more powerful than the other? One paints a clear picture of what you want and who you want to do it for and with, while the other one is generic and passive in nature. Set meaningful goals and take meaningful consistent action, and you will build your wealth over time.