This Will Change Your Relationship With Money Forever | EP 837

0:00Hi, my name is Lewis Howes and welcome to the Daily Motivation Show.

0:11I was driving me, my wife, driving to downtown. It passed through a not-so-good neighborhood, kind of like, it's called Hastings in Vancouver, kind of like the hood. We stopped in the red light. There's one guy that came to my car, spit on my car. On the window. And he gave me the finger, and then walked away. So you would see a lot of people, they think, they say, I want more money. Hey, Lewis, I want to have more success. I want to have more wealth. But deep down, actually, they have a negative association with money. Because I always do this exercise with my students. So imagine this. Imagine you're walking down the street.

0:47You hear this loud engine sound. Right? And then you see like a black Lamborghini just drives by, right? What's the first thing that comes to your mind? All the negative stuff, right? And then a small percentage would be, oh, that might be an entrepreneur, right? That may be actually a father of three, right? That he's a hardworking entrepreneur. He's been working hard and this is a little treat that he gives for himself and he only drives it, you know, maybe on the weekends. That never comes to mind, right? So I would say that negative association with money, consciously or subconsciously, they don't even know it.

1:23So that's the first thing is all people have negative association with money. The second one is they don't talk about money. They avoid conversations. Like it's like a taboo subject. Oh, why you talk about money all the time? Like, oh, we don't talk about, it's like we don't talk about that at dinner table. You don't have conversation with your kids about money. You don't have conversation with your spouse about money. It somehow is a bad thing. The best way to describe this is think of money as a person in your life. Treat money as a person. We don't talk about you. And in fact, I don't, I think you're the root of all evil.

1:52I think you are greedy. I think you're not that important to me. Do you think this person will stay around? I don't think so. They would be like, I don't want to be around. But money is not that important. Money doesn't grow on trees. Or there are other more important things than money. Like all this stuff, right? Then money is not going to stick around. So if you think of it that way. But on the other hand, if you talk about money, you cherish money. Not to be a slave of money. That's not what I'm talking about. I'm talking about, hey, you know, I value you. I value money. I save you. I invest you.

2:29like, you know, intelligently, right? Like, if we think of it that way, then money's like, okay, you treat me good, I'm gonna stay around, right? You think of like that as almost like a lover. You know, I love you, right? Oh yeah, that's good, I'm gonna love you back. Oh, I don't like you, you know, and I'm not gonna like you back. So that would be the second one. The third one is value. So poor people want money without delivering more value. Versus you and I, we understand, the marketplace cares about one thing, it cares about value. It doesn't care about our solving stories. It doesn't care about our victim mentality.

3:02It doesn't care about how hard we work. It doesn't even care how much experience we have or how many years we're in business. The marketplace doesn't care. The marketplace has no emotion. The marketplace only cares about value. And what determines our value is our skill sets. So think about this, where if someone is very motivated, they think positively, they've got no skill sets to offer to the marketplace. They're not going to make money. On the other hand, you've got someone with like, okay attitude. but he's saying that, hey, Lewis, I can help you with a Facebook ad. You can spend a dollar, I can give you$5 back.

3:31If he has a skill set like that, you'll be like, okay, I'm going to give you some money to help me with my ads, right? So it's the skill set I think a lot of people are missing. They don't understand that it's the mindset, which is what you teach, combined with your skill set. Then you've got something that works. Let's say you're a digital marketer. I'm going to use this example. You're a digital marketer. You don't really believe in yourself but let's say you know how to close, you know how to communicate your value and you're good at what you do. Well, and someone comes to you and say, hey, Lewis, you're so good at digital marketing.

4:03Let me give you$5 ,000 a month retainer to do my social. Well, that changes your belief system very quickly. So I almost like to use that as an environment. It's like I teach all my students. If you have not made a dollar closing or you're not a made a dollar cooperating, whatever that you do, make the first dollar. That first dollar, man, it's like podcast. Oh, you've never made a dollar. any money from podcast, just make your first dollar. What's the difference between professional and amateur? Professional gets paid. Make your first dollar. Now it changes. Okay. Maybe I could do this. Maybe I'm pretty good.

4:36Maybe I could get better. Maybe I can do this full time. Maybe I can make a career out of this. It's easier to use the environment to shift our beliefs than try to change it just within ourselves. That's what I believe in. Our environment is infinitely more powerful than our willpower. If you want to get fit, hang around with people who are fit. You eat better. You will want to exercise. If you don't smoke, you hang around with all your friends and smokers, guarantee you will smoke. You don't do drugs, you hang around with people who do drugs, you do drugs. We can't help but influence by the environment.

5:09So I say, why not put ourselves in an environment that is supportive of our goals? I'm very, very careful with that. Very careful. One thing I learned from my mentor, he said, Dan, you don't get rich on income, you get rich on equity. You don't get rich on income. Think about a ship, right? There's only one captain. We're going from here to there. So you look at Jack Ma who started Alibaba. Yeah, Jack Ma is very successful. But the initial founders, they didn't do too bad either. You have the people who maybe you are the founding members, the founding team with a startup that is going places with the right visionary, with the right founder and CEO, which by the way, that's also, I think, only certain people fix their profile.

5:51That's what I believe in. But everybody else, they can still contribute. And if they have equity to participate, they can still do very well financially. In fact, if naturally they know they're not the CEO personalities of materials, if they just try to be that, it doesn't work anyway. It just doesn't work. But it doesn't mean they're not valued. Yeah. I mean, to me, I play a role in my company because I have certain skillset, right? Like my team, they have certain skillsets that are way better than me. But just this morning, we had a technical challenge. I'm just like, my team could fix that.

6:22I don't know how to handle that. We're trying to set up Zoom before this. Yeah. Yeah. Like, I'm like, I have no idea. You look at that, they participate in a vehicle, in a good market that's growing, trending. And if they could be part of their founding members, they can get equity early on. They could do very well. Every one of us needs to be an investor. Doesn't matter how we make the money. I teach a concept called the wealth triangle, right? We just kind of got three parts. The first part is what I call high income skills. I define high-income skills as skills that could make you more than$10 ,000 a month.

6:54Because I noticed something about human beings. Whenever we get past that six-figure mark annually, something shifts. That I rarely see someone go past six-figure and go back to$50 ,000 a year. So I think that$10 ,000 a month,$120 ,000 a year, high-income skills. And then the second part is what I call a scalable business. A scalable business. Not just any business, but a business that is scalable. such as a software business, an influencer business, an e-com business, a scalable business. And then you have what I call high return investments. And I define high return investments as investments that would give you a 10 % return year in and year out, 10 % return or more.

7:37Now, here's the thing. If you have high income skills, you're already earning income. Your scalable business gives you profits and your high return investment builds your net worth. If someone who is like, I'm making$30 ,000 a year, I want to get into some real estate stuff. You're like, do you have high income skills? No. Do you have a scalable business? No. I want to buy some properties with no money down. Kind of risky, right? Because if you follow this, the first thing you got to focus on is increase your income, meaning develop skill sets that the marketplace would value. Do that first. Now, with a scalable business, you can start one or you can also invest in one.

8:17It doesn't always mean you have to start one. So you can invest in one that throws off profits. And then you've got your high return investments. See, when it comes to high return investments, it's about the preservation of the capital. It's not about getting the maximum return. Because I'm making money with these two things. This, I just want the capital core. You just don't want that sitting in a bank and not making anything. That's right. That's right. So now the return of capital, of investment, not just on investment, now you're making more income. you're becoming more valuable. Hopefully, your income increases every year.

8:48Your profit goes up. You take extra cash. You put in higher-returned investments. Gives you more peace of mind. Same wealth triangle goes a million, 10 million, 100 million. Exactly the same.

9:04Thank you so much for listening to today's episode of The Daily Motivation. motivation, and I hope you have an amazing rest of your day. If you enjoyed this episode, make sure to click the link in the description that will take you to the full episode of our main podcast on the School of Greatness. And if you are loving the daily motivation, please follow us over on Apple Podcasts and Spotify and leave us a review over on Apple Podcasts right now. And if you want more exclusive content and ad-free listening experience, Make sure to subscribe to our Greatness Plus channel on Apple Podcast right now.

9:44And if you want to get even more inspiration from our world-class guests and learn how to improve your life and take it to the next level, then make sure to sign up for the Greatness newsletter and get it delivered right to your inbox over at greatness.com slash newsletter. Again, have an amazing day, and I'll see you tomorrow with another episode of the Daily Motivation Show.

10:10Thank you.