LISTEN TO THE LATEST PODCAST EPISODE:

9 Ways the Wealthy Think

SUMMARY

In this episode, we talk about how the wealthy think and they think differently than the rest of the population. To be successful, you not only look at what the wealthy do but also how they think. Then you can bring it to your life and create richness for yourself.

So, the first thing that you have to do is define what wealth means to you and understand what the destination or success looks like for you. After you are clear on it, follow:

The Prosperity Paradigm Profile

This framework is for grasping what manifests in the thoughts of the wealthy.

Internal

  • Creator: They all believe that they are the creator of their life, success and the meaning of it. They trust that they themselves are the creator of their wealth.
  • Committed: Another thing is that the wealthy are committed to building a life filled with richness—something that is more than money.
  • Big Thinking: Successful people think big. They don’t shrink down because of what society has led them to believe. They have the capability to think of the impossible as possible.

Activity

  • Play to Win: There’s a difference between playing not to lose and playing to win. The latter is the way to emerge in the game of wealth.
  • Self-promotion: When the wealthy search and find opportunities, they are not shy to go out and promote themselves. They step ahead to show the gifts that they have.
  • Successful Circles: They hang out in successful circles of friends, acquaintances and colleagues. Their inner circle is filled with people that are at their level or above; so they can learn and elevate with the help of those people.

Focus

  • Net worth Focus: Simply put, net worth is what you own minus what you owe. They focus their thinking on their net-worth and have a maintained liquidity.
  • Value vs Price: In this value exchange economy, instead of getting caught up on price, it is beneficial if you understand that transactions happen because people believe that they get more value in return for the payments. So, focus on creating value.
  • Manage Self First: It is easy to become wealthy if you are disciplined. So, live at a level where you are not only creating today’s joy but also allowing for tomorrow to grow.

— Begin Transcript —

Hey there, I’m Mel Abraham, the author of the #1 best-selling book, The Entrepreneur’s Solution and the founder of Thoughtpreneur Academy where we teach you how to capture, package and monetize what you know, the ideas in your head, for more impact, more time to yourself and more income.

So, welcome back to this episode of The Entrepreneur’s Solution show and in this one, I’m going to answer a question that often comes my way (1) being a financial consultant as a CPA, a business advisor, a strategist and some of the things that I do and that is:

What is it about the wealthy and how do they think that makes them wealthy?

So, what we’re going to do right after this brief introduction: I’m going to come back and I’m going to introduce you to what I call The Prosperity Paradigm Profile. It is the 9 elements, the 9 ways that I think that the wealthy think. It’s what I have observed over the years working with truly successful, uber-successful entrepreneurs, business owners and wealthy people as a strategist, as a consultant, as a mentor in that process.

So, right after this brief introduction, we will come back to that and if you’re looking to download The Prosperity Paradigm Profile, just go to MelAbraham.com/session053 and we’ll get you that download right away so you can start working on your profile.

If you’re not at your computer; if you happen to be out running around, doing things, running errands, doing something; just take your phone out, take it out and just text MYLEGACY one-word to 38470 and I’ll make sure that I send you the download link right away.

And I’ll see you back here right after this brief introduction. Cheers.

All right, welcome back, I’m Mel Abraham. Welcome back to this episode of The Entrepreneur’s Solution show. In this one, I get a chance to talk a bit about the thought process, the thinking that goes into most of the wealthy people that I have dealt with. I have had the blessing and the opportunity over the years to really work with some uber-uber-successful entrepreneurs and business owners to see what it was that drove them; to ask the questions, to understand what really drove them.

And here’s the thing, is that: The truly successful entrepreneurs and truly successful wealthy entrepreneurs—they think differently. It’s not about necessarily just what do they do but how do they think.

If we can get inside their head, if we can understand how they think then we can duplicate that thinking in our own lives, in our own ways and bring that into our life. So, that’s really how I want to bring this about is I want to talk to you about what I see as the 9 different elements of their thinking that is different than most of the public. Most of humanity, they don’t necessarily think that way and we will take it from there.

This is called The Prosperity Paradigm Profile but one of the key elements before we even get into this is that each one of us, each and every single one of us have a different definition of wealth and before you go anywhere, before you start to think about wealth or being wealthy or … because you’re going to find out that when I talk about wealth, it isn’t just about money.

It’s true richness. True richness comes from the meaning that you have in your life, it’s not from the dollars you have in your bank account and so, when we’re talking about this it’s really easy for us to say, “Oh, god. He’s all about the money. He’s all about the money.” This isn’t about money. This is about the richness in your life. The meaning in your life.

Now granted, we’re going to talk about money and all of those elements but that is not what’s driving you. What’s driving you is the WHY. Remember, the meaning that we put to it.

So, one of the first things we need to do is define for you and this is different for each and every person. Define for you:

What does wealth stand for you?

When I work with my high-level clients, many times one of the questions I ask is, “What does success look like for you?” If for you, because I know for me, if you’ve heard me speak, I think of success, wealth and richness as a holistic view. This isn’t about how much we got in the bank account.

It’s about may be what do we earn, certainly that’s one part of it but,

  • What about our health?
  • What about our relationships?
  • What about our spirituality?
  • What about our emotional well-being?
  • What about our energy, our vibrancy, our body and how we show up; that electricity?
  • What about the other friendships we have?

See, to me the concept of prosperity and wealth and richness is not about one thing and one thing only and that is the dollars in the bank account. It’s about all the things that are coming to our life that create the richness of us to live.

So, one of the first things I’m going to ask you to do here is to ask yourself and answer the question and be specific:

  • What does wealth look like for you?
  • What’s the definition of wealth?

In other words, I want you to define what the destination looks like so you know when you get there and you know which way we go because when we talk about these 9 elements of the prosperity paradigm, it’s meaningless unless you have that definition that is meaningful to you.

If I told you my definition which I have kind of done, it may not resonate with you. May be for you it’s something else and the level and the magnitude of some people saying, “I want 10 million dollars in cash so I can do whatever I want” or others will say, “I don’t need that much. I just want to travel with my family and do these things.”

And you know what? That’s wealthy to them; that’s richness to them and there’s no judgment and the point is, is that we define it our way and we live it our way. We be intentional in the process.

I think that you’re going to see that as a common thread with those that are truly successful is that they actually designed their life in a specific way. So, let’s get to the paradigm so you can start to ask yourselves these questions and work through this.

And there’s a couple of different things that we’re going to talk about.

  • We’re going to talk about the internal game, the mindset that comes into play.
  • We’re going to talk about the activities that you undertake.
  • And we’re going to talk about the focus that you have.

And this is again, coming from my experience working with successful entrepreneurs, wealthy individuals and asking the questions and seeing:

What it is that’s driving them?
How do they think inside their head?
And how does that manifest inside their life?

So, one of the first things we’re going to talk to you in the Internal part of it is this—is that they all believed that they are the Creator, that they are the creator:

  • Of their life,
  • Of their richness
  • Of their wealth
  • Of the meaning

That is was in their hands. Now, many of them are very spiritual and some very religious. So, they believe that there’s a higher power and I’m with you on that. It’s not about that there isn’t a higher power but they also believe that they have the right to choose and they have to define and they have the ability to do things for themselves to allow the gifts that we’re giving to them be magnified greatly.

So, what they look at is they realize that (1) they believe that they’re the creator of their own richness, their own meaning and their own wealth.

And here’s what I invite you to do as we go through these 9 elements and if you download the tool with this, the prosperity paradigm profile; you’ll be able to go along with this and do this, and that is to score yourself on each and every one of these elements.

Once you define what your definition of wealth is, what it looks like for you and there is no right or wrong like I said. It is right for you and that’s it. And it may change, it may evolve. Things may happen in your life that shift and change it slightly.

But score yourself as to what your beliefs are, how your thinking is on each one of these elements and again, I believe that we ought to be in the upper 20%. So, if you are not scoring yourself; if your find yourself not scoring in the 8 to 10 on any of these items; this is where we may be where we need to do some work.

  • We need to start to dial it in,
  • Be more aware of it,
  • Be more conscious of it.

> Put some things in place to raise the awareness and raise the attention and focus that we put on that area.

When you look at yourself you say, how much of you believes that you are the creator of your richnesses and the creator of your wealth and the creator of the meaning and your life. So, score that and now we will go to the next one.

The next one is really about Committed. Each and every one and I think this is, all of these are common traits and I’m going to say this a lot but they are absolutely committed to building a rich life, to building a wealthy life.

And they are clear about it; they’ve got clarity about it and they’re going to put a process in place of I’m going to say, “Wealth Creation” but I think that the challenge is that with saying that is that people define it as money but I’m going to say “Richness Creation” because to me richness is more than just money. And they’re committed to creating that experience, that life.

When I got married, and it’s going on five years now; that’s one of the things that my beautiful wife Stefanie and I talked about is that we are committed to each other but we’re also committed to creating wonderful experiences, memories and joy together for each other and we create that journey for ourselves. So, we’re truly committed.

So, what are you committed to?

At what level of commitment do you have to building that wealth, to building that richness in your life?

Then we think about the thinking process. Now, this is a challenge for a lot of people and I know that I still struggle with this from time to time but the good news is I’ve got some great colleagues, some great mentors and some great friends that’ll kick me in the behind and say, “Ah-uh, you’re thinking too small.” That every single one of them thought big. They had a bigger vision.

And the challenge, why I think this is a challenge is that our society, especially today in today’s world our society is causing people to shrink down, shrink down their dreams and I think that’s a travesty; that’s our horrendous travesty to take people and say, “Yeah just shrink down your dreams and be satisfied.”

And it’s not about not being satisfied, it’s about dreaming big and living life to its fullest. To live with the vibrancy and the excitement that life was meant to be lived. I don’t think we’re here to simply exist for the years that we’re here and again it’s about living life big.

  • So, how big is your thinking?
  • Are you thinking big?
  • Did you take those dreams and shrink them down?

Now, I’m not saying that everything is possible but I do think that in time everything is possible. If we look back; I look at some of the things that we’re doing.

Elon Musk just talked about the fact that at some point we’ll be able to summon our car and it’ll come driving over to us and we’ve got self-parking cars. If you had asked that 10 years ago, 20 years ago, it was an impossibility and that’s why I think that when we think big then a lot of possibility happens.

So, how big is your thinking?

And I talk about this all the time—this concept of possibility and bringing possibility back into our lives again and so, there is a question that most successful people will constantly ask themselves that allows them to do this because sometimes people will really quickly say, I remember I was sitting in a meeting and they said, “Absolutely we can’t do that. That is impossible.”

And I looked at them and I said, “Totally get it. It is impossible right now, isn’t it?” “Yeah.”

So, let me just ask another question, “If it were possible, how could we get it done?”

That changed the dialogue and then all of a sudden within 6 months what they said was impossible became a reality.

So, constantly ask yourself that question, “What if it were possible?” Because that’s how entrepreneurs’ think. That’s how ultra-successful people think is they sit back and they think about it and go, “Hmm, what if it were possible? What if it were possible?”

Because I think everything is.

Then we move over from this internal thought of creator, committed and big thinking to the Activity. And the first thing is, I think that they come to life to Play to Win. There are a lot of people that I see out there that had some wins, they’ve had some losses.

So, they’ve got the bruises, they’ve got the scars, and they’ve got the challenges and so what they do is they play not to lose. That’s a vastly different game to play than playing to win.

Now granted, when you play to win, you might risk but you need to be strategic with the risks that you take, to be methodical with what it is and there’s a whole lot of ways that we can do that. It’s a separate episode in of itself. But the bottom line is: How much are you playing to win versus playing to not lose?

Completely different. A slight distinction in language but it is a huge, huge shift in your life and I invite you to play to win. At what level are you playing to win the game of wealth and richness and meaning in your life?

Then we ask ourselves about promotion, Self-promotion. The funny thing is that those that are truly successful,

  • They search for opportunities
  • They find opportunities, and
  • They are not shy about going out and promoting the opportunities
  • To promote themselves
  • To promote the goodness, the richness that they bring to people’s lives and do it that way.

But are you sitting timid in the corner?

What are you doing to promote yourself?

To promote the gifts that you have, that you bring:

  • To your relationships
  • To your life
  • To your team
  • To your business
  • To your customers
  • To yourself

Because as you promote those riches and you’re serving at that level, what happens is you’re going to find that you attract more. So, self-promotion was a huge activity that I saw and not from a selfish and oppressive perspective from everyone else. It was promoting for everyone to grow.

And so, the key is to be, not be shy about it and get yourself out there.

And then, the last is that they hang out in Successful Circles. So, if

  • They have friendships circles,
  • They have acquaintance circles,
  • They have colleague circles,
  • They have inner circles,

That are made up of people that are at the level or above where they want to play because

  • They can learn skills,
  • They can learn the way they think,
  • They can elevate themselves, and
  • They make sure that they associate themselves at some level with those people at the level that they want to play and above.

And so, if you look at it and you say, “What is going on in our lives? In your life?”

  • Are you involved in some of those circles?
  • Do you have those associates?
  • Do you have the ability to go to someone and say, “Hey what’s going on?”

Understanding that at every level; there’s a different level of thinking to move you to the next level. And in order to learn that new level of thinking:

  • We need to associate with it.
  • We need to learn from people that have travelled that journey.
  • We need to find that way and the best way to do it is the networking, the association that you have with people.

So, when we get the internal part right, when we get the activities right, now let’s figure out what that Focus piece is and there’s three elements to that focus piece and that is: First when we’re talking about wealth, it is Net Worth Focus.

Now, I can talk about net worth and give you an idea but the bottom line is, what is net worth to you? When we talk about monetary net worth, it’s what do you own less what do you owe. That’s the easiest way.

So, I own some stuff and it’s going to be, it may be cash, it may investments and securities and real stake and intellectual property and businesses and all of that. But I owe some people some stuff, it may be mortgages. It may be credit card debt (hopefully not). It may be student loan debt. It may be business debt.

And you take what you own and you subtract out what you owe and that’s the net worth and what they’re focused in on is this constant increase in net worth because what happens with the beauty of compounding also is that, as you build it, it starts to gain momentum and will grow at an exponential rate.

If you think about it, there’s this rule called the rule of 72s. And the rule of 72 says that: A dollar held today and invested at 7% will double in 10 years. Or there’s another way to look at it: A dollar invested at 10% will double in 7 years.

So, let’s just think about it. I invest a 100,000 dollars and I invest it in 10% some 10% investment. In 7 years that 100,000 turns into 200,000. But what happens 7 years from there? The 200,000 just went into 400,000 so really in 14 years what you’ve done is you quadrupled your net worth, if you did it right.

And so what happens is that they focus on net worth and net worth growth. Now, I’m going to invite you to do something also because when I look at net worth, I look at it in two different ways. 1) I look at total net-worth, that’s everything I own, and then I look at liquid net worth.

Because I could be really, have a really high net worth number but have no cash, no liquidity, no ability to pay bills and be virtually bankrupt because I end up, have insolvent because I end up having to sell things to pay my bills.

So, I want to make sure that what is also growing is my liquid net worth, my ability to create cash from my net worth. So, they’re net worth focused.

The second part of it is that they focus on Value vs Price. When we negotiate and I’ve said it in a number of episodes that we are in a value exchange economy and that what people pay for is the value they get and yet, for some reason we are so caught up on price, we are so caught up on cost that we get into this discussion of cost.

But the question is:

  • What’s the value that you’re providing?
  • What’s the value that you’re creating?

Because you get compensated at the level of the value you create. That’s just the way it is. Whether you like it or not, that’s the true economics of everything. People are willing to buy something because they believe that what they are paying for is less than the value that they get back in return. And that’s the only reason a transaction happens.

So, what we need to need to do is focus on creating more value and as we create more value, people will see that value and they will be willing to pay for that value. Price doesn’t become the issue. It’s value creation that becomes the issue.

  • How much value do you create?
  • How are you creating value?
  • And how can you elevate the value and the perception of value that you’re bringing to the marketplace?

And then lastly: Manage Yourself First. People that I’ve talked to, they know that and they’ve heard me say this, that, “Wealth isn’t about money. It’s about discipline. It’s easy to become wealthy if you’re disciplined in the process.” Because time is on your side, typically. The earlier you start, the easier it is, yes.

But it’s about discipline. If we’re spending at the ends of our checks or beyond the ends of our checks and running up debt, there’s no way you’re ever going to be wealthy. Let’s face it. And so, you’re spending tomorrow’s dollars for today’s joys whereas if you’re disciplined and work through the process, and work the process properly you’re living within your means and actually I say live at a level that allows you to continue to build not just at the edge of the check.

I call it the 50% rule that I’ll talk about on another episode but you’re living definitely within your means so you’re not spending tomorrow’s dollars for today’s joy. You’re creating today’s joy and allowing for tomorrow to grow—that’s the key.

  • It’s about managing yourself first before you manage your money.
  • It’s about creating that discipline, that habit of doing that on a regular basis.

So, the reality is that—if you want to have a prosperity paradigm, a prosperity mindset, a wealth mindset, then you want to really think the way wealthy people think. These are the 9 things that I see repeatedly in each and every one of them.

And if you do this under the umbrella of the meaning you want out of your life, the purpose that you’re here to serve, the richness that you’re trying to create—yes you’re going to build monetary wealth but the richness that comes out of it in your life, the meaning that comes out of it is going to be vastly more fulfilling than any amount of dollars in the bank account.

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So, everything that we do here is going to need to be, I believe under that umbrella of meaning as you move forward. So, those are the 9 things.

Be a creator of your own. Believe that you’re the creator, that you have the ability to create your own life.

  • Committed to the process of creating a rich life and wealth.
  • Expand your thinking. Expand your possibility of thinking to think bigger.
  • Play the game to win and to not lose.
  • Being willing to go out there and promote yourself and building that.
  • And find that circle of friends, that colleagues and peers that you can bring in to associate along with the people that are already in your life.
  • To raise the bar and raise the level of thinking that you have in the game.
  • Then, focus on net worth.

In fact, today when you get done listening to this, do me a favor. Do the math on your net worth. What do you own? What do you owe? Figure out what the difference is.

I don’t care what the number is. I don’t care what the number is. I just want you to start tracking it because until you start measuring it, we can’t manage it. Until we are able to manage it, we can’t affect it, we can’t grow it.

So, let’s get in the game and let’s move forward.

  • Understand value vs price. Focus on value creation, value derivation; all of that type of stuff.
  • And then, manage yourself first and the process will work for you.

So, I hope that you found this of value. I hope that you’ll take this to heart and that you’ll download the prosperity paradigm profile. You can go to MelAbraham.com/session053 to get it and go through and score yourself. And then, spend some time understanding what do you need to do to shift the way you think?

Because until you think differently, you won’t be differently. And that’s really the key. I want you to start thinking different so you can be different, so you can show up different, so you can do things different.

And at the same time, if you’re in a relationship, if you’re married, if you have kids teach them this. Bring this to them. Allow them to think differently. Give them the tools to think differently so you’re all on the same page; you’re all going down the same path.

So, if you haven’t done so already, share this with a friend. Share this with someone that may be needs a little bit of different thinking, a different view point to help them out.

And do me a favor? If you haven’t done it. Make sure you subscribe. Click the subscribe button so we can stay together because I got a lot more that I want to bring your ways as we move forward.

And if this brought up some questions for you or some challenges that you’re unsure of and you want to ask, go to AskMelNow.com. Leave me your question. I’ll make sure that I get to it on one of the upcoming episodes just like this question was asked of me.

And I think that’s it for this episode. I’ll see you back here on an upcoming episode; in the next episode. Until then,

May your vision be grand, your journey epic and your legacy significant!

Go out there, think differently, think big, let’s make it happen. Cheers!!

— End Transcript —

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Like this? Please share it and help a few more people bring their dreams out of the darkness and give life to them again. Cheers, Mel

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Mel is one of the smartest business people I know. I don't make any decisions without him! "

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#1 New York Times
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