We reject wealth.
… And we don’t even know it. What we believe and our view of the world ultimately determines our financial future.
Sounds wild to say but it’s true.
While working in banking, I studied those who became quietly wealthy. What this means is you’d never know they had cash.
My bank bosses referred to them as the high-net-worths. They were our private banking clients. They got our concierge service.
They drove Toyota Camrys and wore Levis’s jeans to meetings with me. They looked average but below the surface, they were rolling in cash they didn’t feel the need to flash.
I spent so much time around these quiet millionaires that their way of life rubbed off on me. Now I’m addicted to it. The overarching theme is this…
Getting wealthy is more about what you *don’t* do.
Here are the habits that made them quietly wealthy.
Stop doing BS work
Laziness doesn’t exist.
It’s a sideshow. What causes people to do work that’ll never make them wealthy is they work on the wrong thing.
The work they choose requires effort. So it becomes BS work. Work that feels effortless is the antidote. Let me give you an example.
Andre Agassi became one of the most successful tennis stars of the 90s. I read his book and was surprised to learn he hates tennis.
His daddy made him do it.
It was torture. WTF?
He became successful at it and got rich. But he never became wealthy because tennis didn’t make him feel free which is true wealth. Instead he took up the disgusting art of smoking meth. Idiot.
Another tennis star, Novak Djokovic, is the opposite of Agassi.
“I can carry on playing at this level because I like hitting the tennis ball…there are [other players on the tour] who don’t have the right motivation. You don’t need to talk to them. I can see it…”.
Novak loves tennis. There’s nothing he’d rather be doing, which is why he hasn’t retired, even though most players from his era have.
He’s made a lot of money too. But more than that, tennis sets him free to be anything he wants to be. It’s effortless.
That’s why Andre is rich and Novak is wealthy. One does BS work and the other does work they’d be doing on their day off.
Stay the hell away from BS work that has no meaning.
Stop hating Mondays
Some dread Mondays.
It gives them the blues and runny poos. I found wealthy people love Mondays. It’s the start of a new week. A chance to work on their craft and make humanity better with their creations.
Author Charles Bukowski nailed it:
I disliked weekends.
Everybody was out on the streets. Everybody was playing Ping-Pong or mowing their lawn or polishing their car or going to the supermarket or the beach or to the park. Crowds everywhere.
Monday was my favorite day.
I feel the same. The weekend is nice but the weekdays are when I come alive, doing the thing I was born to do: write.
If you hate Mondays it’s a sign of future regrets. And regrets destroy your freedom, which robs you of wealth, and takes away the wealth status.
Change your life so you look forward to Mondays.
Stop asking for opinions that muddy the mind
James Cameron is a badass movie director.
The two Avatar movies are some of the best imagery you’ll ever see. In 1992 a young filmmaker asked James how to be a successful movie director.
James knew a thing or two because his movie Terminator 2 made the most money that year.
If you have to ask somebody how to become a film director, you’ll probably never do it.
Opinions are a distraction. The path to wealth for you doesn’t require a million distractions. It requires focus and execution. We find out what’s going to make money through what doesn’t make money.
Financial wealth is made up of trial and error.
Small bets. Risks. Experiments. Self-education. Get clear on your vision and look at the data from your action. Spend less time listening to gurus.
Stop taking no for an answer
James Cameron has another wealth nugget.
The film industry is all about saying ‘no’ to people, so inherently you cannot take ‘no’ for an answer.
I didn’t meet a single person in my banking days who got wealthy and took no for an answer. When they’d pitch people who could transform their wealth they never paid attention to the first answer.
The first answer is often no.
So are the next 5–6 responses.
Decision-makers take time to go from no, to maybe, to yes. James Cameron didn’t pitch a movie and get millions of yeses. Just like Tim Ferriss didn’t pitch his first book 4-Hour Workweek and get yeses.
Big wins are attached to lots of noes.
I’ve experienced the same in online business. I recently had to get lots of noes to my $10,000 group coaching before I got a handful of yeses.
How bad do you want it?
That’s what it comes down to. Are you in this for decades or just tryna make a quick buck? Will you put in the work? Will you adjust your pitch as you get more noes … or get caught up in the moment and give up?
Being able to get lots of noes and still keep asking is what puts you in the Top 1%. About 10 years ago Foundr podcast and magazine owner Nathan Chan was getting started.
He needed eyeballs on his content. Everyone ignored him. I remember he pitched my friend 10+ times in 12 months.
Eventually he got a yes.
Now he has a business doing tens of millions of dollars. He’s not gifted. No. He’s persistent as hell and willing to work hard for a yes. Wealth comes to those who take noes and turn them into yeses.
Obsessed people never accept a no.
They see no as the first step, not the final step.
Stop thinking you’re not a one-person business
As soon as you came out of the ass-end of your mother, you were born a business owner.
Entrepreneurship isn’t just for fairy unicorn founders in Silicon Valley. We are all business owners.
- An employee has a business with one customer and a by-the-hour rate of pay.
- A non-employee has at least one customer and a variable rate of pay based on how much value they create.
The two are the same. A business owner is responsible. They see their finances as a piece of paper with profit, losses, assets, expenses, and passive income. There’s a focus to become more profitable over time.
Acting like a business is how you become a business. And businesses are the vehicle that makes people get quietly wealthy.
Stop wasting the dark hours
No path to wealth happens like magic.
You’ve got to work at it. No sh*t, right? Most of us start out as employees. So the building our path to wealth will likely need to happen in the dark hours. Either the early morning or the late evening.
It’s easy to waste these precious hours by sleeping in or staying up late to watch some nonsense late-night tv show full of presidential p3nis jokes.
If you’re wasting your time outside of a job, stop doing it. You’re better than that. Doesn’t mean you need to work 24/7 on becoming wealthy.
It does mean you’ll need to do some work though.
Wealth doesn’t just magically happen. Some genius mentor doesn’t just tap you on the shoulder and whisper “Let me make you rich.” You don’t just suddenly win the lottery. Your Bitcoin doesn’t just go to $1M per coin.
No. This is lottery thinking. None of the high-net-worths I came across in banking believed in luck or sudden wealth. And when they came across anyone who got lucky it rarely lasted.
How you are before wealth is how you’ll be once you get it.
The solution is to proactively schedule time in your google calendar for wealth-building activities. All of us are smart enough to do it. Even you.
Stop falling for shortcuts
I don’t believe there is any shortcut to wealth.
I’ve never seen it both in banking or my personal life. Wealth is always a slow and heartfelt slog.
Shortcuts don’t exist because the very definition of wealth is based on patience. And patience requires you to expect things to be slow. To spend 5+ years. Decades even. Or god forbid, a lifetime doing it.
As soon as you try to make money fast, you destroy the foundation that can make it happen. Wealth is slow because there’s a lot to learn. There are a lot of mistakes you’ve gotta make before you find out what will work.
Trade shortcuts for wealth-building experiments.
Take the quiet approach to wealth
Let’s finish here.
The quiet way to get wealthy is to focus on active income that turns into passive income. It’s to use the dark hours. It’s to be okay working away in solitude. It’s to focus less on telling people what you’re doing.
It’s to stay clear of status and zone in on what creates value. It’s to maybe turn on monk mode and disappear for 6 months.
Wealth isn’t noisy because most people who’ve achieved it are quiet about it and you’d never know how much money they had.
Use the quiet path to wealth to buy freedom.
This article is for informational purposes only, it should not be considered financial, tax or legal advice. Consult a financial professional before making any major financial decisions.
