I will never forget the day that I finally understood how the game of money works. I was an airline pilot, a first officer on 737s, flying from London to Nice; a rich man’s playground in the south of France, close to Monte Carlo. I gazed down at the mansions on the mountains, swimming pools glistening in the Mediterranean sun, gigantic white yachts gracing the coastline, and I wondered how those people did it.
I knew it couldn’t all be inherited money.
I did the math, and I couldn’t figure it out. I was earning a decent salary, but I had to work most of the week to get it. Even after saving and investing what spare money I had, how could I possibly reach their level? There simply weren’t enough hours in a week.
Then it hit me…
My problem was that my thinking itself was flawed. I was basing it on working so many hours a week and making a set amount of money for each hour I worked.
In short, my mentality was, like it is with most people, that you have to work for money.
When people hear this for the first time, their usual reaction is, “Well, of course people have to work for money!” You see, this is ingrained in us from an early age; in schools it’s all about getting a good job (i.e. working for money), with parents usually reinforcing the view.
The idea of working for money also appeals to our primitive, pleasure-seeking brain that expects an instant reward for any given action (i.e. getting paid for something you do), just as a lion won’t exert itself unless it’s to gain a meal (and often with the least amount of effort, by focusing on the straggler of the herd). Humans are animals, we just have larger brains than the rest of the animal kingdom, brains that allow the power of conscious thought.
So, what’s the secret entrance to riches?
Simple: stop working for money. Don’t get paid for something you do; get paid automatically, while you sleep. This is also known as “passive income.” This is money that comes to you without you doing any work, apart from some initial set up. Rental income and business income (if set up to run without you!) is an example of passive income.
A powerful example, and my personal favorite example, of passive income is ROYALTIES. As you probably know, you are paid a royalty forever because of something you create, such as a book or a song or some kind of intellectual property such as an invention. Imagine checks continually being mailed to you for doing absolutely nothing! Royalties make you feel like royalty!
Break away from the employee and self-employed, workaday mentality that both human nature and personal nurture keep you trapped in. Use that larger brain of humans by thinking it through instead of being an instant gratification seeker. Stop working for money and cross over to passive income.
Jim.
P.S. You don’t even have to create any intellectual property to have royalty checks flooding your mailbox with my royalty system that’s available to a limited number of my readers. Let us create the intellectual property, do all the hard work, test the product, handle customers, take the payments, pay the taxes, etc. etc. while you take a share of the money!
