7 vital tips for building wealth
In many ways, owning a business is a metaphor for life; it’s a balancing act that requires resilience and skill in order to stay afloat. If you’ve been in business for long enough, however, it’s likely you’re beginning to wonder if making a profit is a worthy–enough goal. Rather than subsistence, you’re likely craving abundance and the sense of security it provides.
You might realize that building wealth is key to creating prosperity. But many people struggle with how to build wealth due to misconceptions about the nature and process of wealth-building. The good news is that with the right mindset and effective strategies in place, you can work your way up the levels of wealth, elevating your business – and your life.
The five levels of wealth
Building wealth on a large scale is a massive goal – and if it doesn’t feel impossible, you’re not dreaming big enough. To bring your vision to life, take those big dreams and break them down into smaller, achievable goals using the five levels of wealth.
Financial stability
means you are not only able to pay your monthly bills, but also have an emergency fund of at least three months of basic living expenses. You are saving more than you spend and working to become debt-free.
Financial strategy
Is when you begin to think about investments. Yes – it’s time to start investing this early in the process. The earlier you begin leveraging the power of compounding, the more money you will have in the long-term.
Financial security
Is all about confidence. You have enough saved and invested that if you lose your job or an economic winter occurs, you can get through it and come out on the other side just as financially secure.
Financial freedom
It means you are able to not only survive hard times, but to do what you want, when you want, no matter what. Your money machine is humming along nicely. This is when you can buy that nice car or expensive vacation – and not before.
Financial abundance
Is the ultimate dream. You have so much money, you can give it away. Giving back is exactly what you must do. Money itself isn’t wealth. It’s a tool you can use to find true fulfillment in other ways.
It may take a lifetime to reach financial abundance, but it can be done. Remember what Tony says: “There is a powerful driving force inside every human being that, once unleashed, can make any vision, dream or desire a reality.” Find your driving force and use it.
How to build wealth – and keep it
Whether you’ve just started the process of building wealth or you’ve reached financial freedom, you can benefit from strategies that help you adjust your mindset and not only create wealth, but keep it.
1. Understand that building wealth is about more than just money
The first step in understanding how to build wealth is realizing that abundance is about far more than just money. Tony makes a distinction between monetary wealth and true wealth. While the former secures your purchasing power, only the latter can secure genuine, lasting happiness. Money is merely a vehicle to carry you to financial freedom. Then, with financial freedom in place, you become able to pursue your dreams and find lasting fulfillment.
When you view wealth as a way to live an extraordinary life, you can eliminate any limiting beliefs about money that are subconsciously sabotaging your wealth-building strategies. Keeping this distinction between money and true wealth in mind will prepare you for the second step in building wealth: focusing on finances as they relate to your values.
2. Align your approach to building wealth with your purpose
The second step in building wealth is cementing an unshakeable mindset that recognizes your finances as a tool for pursuing what matters most to you. By building your deepest values into your approach to creating wealth, you align your financial decisions with your passions. To discover your deepest values, ask yourself: What do I want most out of life? What is missing in my life? What are my biggest fears? What do I feel is impossible? What do I want for the people I love?
Once you get in touch with your value system, you can align your spending priorities accordingly and get on the right path to building wealth, which includes building high-income skills. Incorporate these priorities into a feasible budget for living below your means and track your spending to hold yourself accountable. Once you’ve developed a baseline of financial freedom, you must “put your wealth to work” by investing it wisely.
3. Don’t trade time for money
The biggest difference between time and money is that you can always make more money – but you cannot create more time. When focusing on building wealth, too many people make the mistake of thinking that working more is the key to earning more. Unfortunately, when money is tied to work you must perform, you never really get to enjoy the wealth you build, which can lead to getting overly stressed.
Instead of trading time for money, focus on developing wealth-building strategies that involve passive income. Passive income comes from starting a business or creating a team that earns you money even when you’re not working. It can also be the product of smart investing.
4. Focus on investing
While developing a budget, saving money and making a good income are all important, the best wealth-building strategies involve investing. A smart investment strategy involves diversifying your portfolio, minimizing taxes, finding investments that match your level of risk tolerance and understanding the value of time and real returns.
There is plenty of information out there about investing tips and strategies and those who are smart about building wealth are constantly seeking new ways to educate themselves on the process. Learning how to invest wisely when figuring out how to build wealth is a necessity if you want to take your earnings to the next level.
5. Overcome emotional spending to retain your wealth
A critical component of building wealth that stands the test of time is keeping the wealth you accrue. Like growing wealth, keeping wealth requires making mindful decisions about how you invest and spend your money. Instead of letting emotional (unmindful) spending derail your finances, you must learn to control your emotions.
As you develop emotional mastery, you’ll find that, by becoming aware of how your feelings are influencing your financial choices, you gain the ability to make deliberate spending choices. In turn, as you tap into your inner creativity while sticking to your financial strategy, you’ll become confident in your ability to manage your finances and easily find ways to build wealth. The resultant cycle creates upward momentum – in learning how to build wealth effectively, you increase your self-efficacy, which in turn allows you to build more wealth.
6. Work on personal growth
Tony Robbins’ philosophy on financial freedom centers on self-discovery and personal growth as the cornerstones for building wealth. Personal growth is so pivotal to responsible money management that research has investigated the relationship. A study of more than 600 millionaires found that millionaires invest more time in personal-growth activities like reading and exercising than do non-millionaires.
Millionaires also manage time wisely, likely recognizing time as a limited resource that must be utilized strategically if they want to achieve their goals of building wealth. The study concluded that, with millionaires as the ultimate example of how to build wealth, a person’s ability to develop prosperity hinges on their ability to engage in self-discovery.
Self-discovery starts with examining your beliefs about money and wealth and identifying what is holding you back or contributing to bad financial habits. You can then go on to explore any gaps in your knowledge or education that are limiting you on your path to building wealth. Do you need to learn more about how to invest wisely? Do you require an advanced degree or additional training to excel at your job and fund your wealth-building strategies? From there, identify where you can improve and create a personal growth plan to work on those areas. Enlist experts such as a financial planner or business coach to help you overcome obstacles along the way.
7. Cultivate positive habits
Learning how to build wealth doesn’t need to be complicated. Instead, discovering your true self is really just a matter of bringing awareness to your actions, behaviors and underlying beliefs. Take, for example, actor Russell Brand who famously overcame addictive behavior by cultivating discipline and awareness into his life.
In learning to recognize negative patterns, you too can take the first step in breaking free from unhelpful behaviors that are holding you back from building wealth in your life. To jump-start your own process of self-discovery, incorporate mindfulness meditation into your daily routine. Tony Robbins completes a 10-minute priming exercise every morning to channel his energy and focus for the day. By bringing your body and mind into alignment via focusing your breath and attention, you become able to master your emotions and gain deeper insight into what drives you – so you can use that to begin building wealth.
When you understand the connection between building wealth and the life of your dreams, you can identify what’s holding you back and put in place wealth-building strategies that will take your money – and your life – to the next level.
Ready to take your wealth to unreached levels?
Discover how to build wealth with Tony Robbins’ 7 Forces of Business Mastery free content series.