Jerry Seinfeld’s thoughts about money are bizarre.
In a now-famous clip shot in the back of a comedy club in the 90s, a young comedian asks Jerry whether he should keep going.
He’d been struggling and trying to be a famous comedian with loads of money for 10 years. He says his friends are moving up in the world and making a tonne of money while he’s dirt poor.
They have big houses, fancy job titles, and luxury cars.
Jerry nearly vomits in his mouth. He tells the comedian a story about Glenn Miller’s orchestra. They’re flying to a gig and the plane can’t land because of the weather. So they land in a field and have to walk in their suits to the venue.
On the way they walk by a house and see a man, his beautiful model wife, and two kids eating dinner by a nice warm fire. There’s laughter and smiles all around. They look so happy.
The musicians are freezing their nuts off, holding heavy instruments, and exhausted. One guy famously says:
How do they live like that?
Jerry says that’s what work should be about — not money. Comparing your financial situation to another person’s makes no sense. You might like part of someone’s life but it’s guaranteed you won’t love all of it.
Financial freedom is built on top of work that doesn’t feel like work and doesn’t require money as motivation. That’s how Jerry became one of the wealthiest people in history.
1. The amount of happiness coffee gives you says a lot
Entrepreneur Naval Ravikant famously said if you can’t be happy with a delicious coffee, there’s zero chance a million-dollar yacht will make you happy.
Financial freedom is a state of mind.
It’s not a dollar figure that lets you reach this point. It’s a belief that you have enough. And the rich dudes chasing yachts and billion-dollar bank balances never have enough money, which is why they are dirt poor.
Learn to find joy in small things and you won’t need to make so much money, therefore, financial freedom can be reached sooner.
2. Money can become a form of misery
Taxes piss a lot of people off.
“Why do I have to pay this? Screw the government.”
This bad attitude gets us nowhere according to Ryan Holiday and the ancient Stoics. Death and taxes are guaranteed. If you try to avoid tax you’re focusing on the wrong thing.
Sure, minimize tax legally. But stop being upset by taxes, otherwise financial success slowly turns into misery.
3. Money is made through execution, not ideas
A guy I know gets h0rny over ideas.
“Have I got an idea for you Timmy. Ya gonna love this one, I tell ya.”
Then he proceeds to tell me he came up with Uber but for boats. Fail. Not only is it a bad idea but he has a habit of asking people to sign NDAs before he’ll tell them these silly ideas.
He never executes on any of them either.
All he wants to do is sell an idea to someone and then go flog himself on the beach. Derek Sivers has a great framework:
The most brilliant idea, with no execution, is worth $20.
The most brilliant idea takes great execution to be worth $20,000,000.
You don’t reach financial freedom with ideas. It’s the execution of an idea that makes the cash. And what’s weird is the most unsexy ideas create the highest amount of cash flow.
Like I run an online academy. There are millions of those. Yet I still make 7 figures from it in this saturated market.
Go choose a mediocre idea and execute with precision every day for a year or more. That’s how you become wealthy.
4. A simple formula for financial success that should be taught in high school (a 5th grader will get it)
My buddy Andy taught me this one:
Work brings you money. Money buys you assets. Assets bring you wealth. Wealth buys you freedom.
The goal should be to acquire assets. And we’re not talking about assets that go down in value, like Nintendos and Ford Minivans. We’re talking about financial assets: businesses, stocks, crypto, gold/silver, real estate etc.
An underrated asset is YOU. If you upgrade your skills with self-education, you can produce more income and own more assets. You can also create digital assets and have them generate passive income.
Either way, find a strategy to buy assets.
5. The type of entertainment keeping people poor
I recently read only 6% of wealthy people watch reality tv shows and 78% of poor people watch them.
If you watch junk food entertainment you’ll poison your mind. Choose to read a good book or watch a wholesome movie instead.
The world doesn’t need more surfies and bimbos locked in a house in their underwear for a month, getting up to no good, as a form of useless entertainment.
6. This is where the limiting valve on wealth comes from
Author Morgan Housel taught the world that the psychology of money is what drives us to become wealthy or live paycheck to paycheck.
The limitations many of us have around money come from society, culture, and traditional schools. We come out of our mothers free and then let outside forces limit our thinking.
Instead of making money doing something we enjoy, we choose boring careers or chase degrees because that seems normal.
If you want to reach financial freedom, just do the opposite of most people who’ve been programmed to think small. It’s a great compass for finding money in obvious places.
7. Understand the biggest change in financial history
There are a bunch of adult babies tweeting that we’re heading for a recession or Great Depression.
These same people also agree artificial intelligence will change the world.
What’s missed is if AI does do what it looks like it will, human productivity will skyrocket. This means more value will be created and we will get richer by default.
Don’t be fooled by the sky-is-falling-in crowd. See the trend of AI and learn how to leverage it. AI is a human’s second, third, and even fourth brain.
Those who master it first will get an unfair advantage that’ll lead them to financial freedom faster than any other time in history.
8. “The world rewards you for value provided, not time spent.”
This one slapped me in the face.
We live in a time-based world by default. Many professions charge by the hour. Traditional office culture admires those who stay late and they set clock-in and clock-out times.
If you leave work at 2 PM to pick up your kid from school the average boss or employer thinks you’re a monster.
But time spent has no correlation to value created. Read that again.
The money you make comes down to how much value you create. I have a friend that earns $2.5M a year and works 2 hours a day.
Money expert Alex Hormozi says “The more money you make other people, the more money you make.” The rule of thumb is that for every dollar you help others make, 10% of that is likely to come back to you.
So instead of hoping, wishing, or crying ‘poor me’ … get out there and help others make money with your skills. It’s the only way.
