The Wealthiest People I've Known Have Master These 6 Skills

Hey there, real quick before we jump into the episode, listen, if your earnings treadmill hasn't set you free yet, running faster won't either. Listen, hustle without principles just going to burn you out. So here's what I want for you. I want you to join me for my money machine experience Live. It is three free trainings. Deep dive into how to escape the treadmill and build a money machine that actually works for you. All right, grab your spot here by going to moneymachinelive.com and I'll see you in the free training. What are the skills that separate the wealthy from everyone else? And why is it that some people seem to struggle to build and keep wealth no matter how hard they try? Listen, if you've ever felt like no matter how much you save, no how much you invest, true wealth, it feels out of reach. Or if you're wondering what's it really going to take to create lasting wealth, a life of freedom and financial freedom, well, this episode's for you. In this episode, I'm going to break down the six key skills that the wealthiest people I know have used and mastered to build their wealth. And it's common amongst all of them. And more importantly, we're going to talk about how you can apply them today in your in your life to accelerate your path and your wealth building journey.

Have you ever wondered what truly sets the wealthiest apart? Not just the zeros in their bank accounts, but the unique skills that they've mastered that help them build and protect and grow their wealth over the years while also at the same time giving back. It's not about where they were born, who their parents were, what kind of education, where they went to college, how much they made even. It's about a set of skills and there's a common set of skills. And in this video, I'm going to share with you the six key skills that every genuinely wealthy person I've known have mastered. And if you work to develop these, you'll be on your way to building wealth also. But not only wealth. Living a life of your own choice and full of abundance. So let's get started. I'm going to break down these skills for you and we'll walk through them. The first one is this. Mastering the art of patience. And what I mean by this is delayed gratification. In other words, they know that they can't have everything today, but they can have everything in time. Wealthy people know that wealth building is a long term game and they're going to put money away over a period of time, over a long period of time that is going to be sustainable now. It's also about the idea of what really matters now. When Jeremy, my son, who's now 34 years old, was younger, he would get paid a commission. And that commission he would have four buckets. And one of those four buckets was generosity. One was, was, you know, so it's giving, it's investing it's savings, and it's living in the living bucket. Now. It wasn't about him having the four buckets. It was about the lessons I could teach him during those four buckets. So in the living bucket, it was about priorities. It was about him understanding what really mattered to him as far as his spending, because he knew that he couldn't buy all the toys he wanted, he couldn't buy all the things he wanted, and he had to prioritize them and say, this is for later. And this is what I mean by delayed gratification. We need to. The wealthy know that by investing early, making it a priority at the beginning, you will set yourself up for wealth and freedom down the road. And the key is, is this, is that I don't believe that this is about deprivation or as some people say, living on beans and rice until you're set. If, if getting to financial freedom is a horrible experience, there's no joy in it. There'll be no joy when you get there. You don't know how to, to enjoy it. So when we build a, a money machine master plan for our clients, with our clients, or when we talk about it in the book building your money Machine or any of the stuff we do, I want you to make sure that you have the things that actually matter to you as part of the plan. Because I know this. The more I can give you sustainable joy points in your life as you're moving towards financial freedom, you will stay on it. No different than a diet. They talk about the diet and say it's cheat days. It's not cheat days. It's to keep you on the plan and we need to do the same thing with the money. So there are some things that are delayed, but there are other things that we can do now. It's all part of the plan. But the fact of the matter is skill one is patience. And so it's important for us to look at it from that perspective. And if you're not sure how to do this, we're of the things that I tell some of my clients to do is this.

When you're ready to make a purchase, set it aside for 48 hours, set it aside for 72 hours. Don't make the purchase. Allow the emotions of the moment, of the momentary pleasure to dissipate. And then if the purpose, the purchase still makes sense and you still want, go ahead. But don't make impulse purchases. That's one of the action steps at this stage that I would do that leads me to skill number two. And this is, is probably, should have been number one. It runs everything and that is financial literacy. The wealthy people that I have worked with, they all took some time not to become, you know, gurus about money and finances or obsessed. I study the stock markets, I study the literature, I study all this, I test things, I do all of that. I don't expect that from, from, from you. You don't need it to be wealthy, but you do need a fundamental understanding of how money works, fundamental understanding of financial literacy. Wealthy people don't leave their finances to chance. They don't delegate their finances to someone else. Do they have advisors? Yes, I have advisors. But they invest the time to understand how money works, how investing works. Well, you know, what does it mean to have a cash resource plan, a budget, what is, what are taxes, what's the power of competent, the fundamental basics they have a command of and then all the nuances and the higher level stuff, they get advisors to help them. But here's the thing that, that I look at. According to the National Financial Educators Council, it is a mind boggling statistic that the lack of financial literacy has cost Americans $436 billion with a B in 2022. Bottom line is this. If you are not skilling up your money knowledge, your path to financial freedom and wealth is going to be paved with potholes and problems. Okay? So here's what I want you to do. The action step here is to start small. Give yourself 15, 20 minutes a day to read or listen or to watch something around money, money management, wealth. If you're not sure where to start, you're here, start here. Get my book, watch my show, listen to my podcast, okay? Be part of this journey in, engulf yourself in the financial journey. Okay? Now that leads to skill number three. And this one's another one. That, that one was surprising. But when I started to really build wealth, I saw the importance of this and I'm going to say emotional intelligence. But, but what I'm really mean is that removing the emotions around money, every single one of us have emotions around, including myself. Okay? We have stories because of what we observed. We watched our parents, we watched Our, our, the media, we saw people that lost their jobs. All of that creates emotions and stories around it. And when we do have emotions and stories around money, we tend to make bad money decisions. And this is the thing that we need to start to, to consider is that when we feel emotions around a financial choice, a financial decision, investment, we want to make that, then what we need to do is back off, because our emotions go up, our financial intellect goes down. I, when my emotions were up because the con man that got me into the Ponzi scheme knew how to kind of hit the buttons of aspiration, of dreams, of desire, of all those things. And all I did was raise my emotions. My intellect went down, and guess what? I got into something that turned out to be a Ponzi scheme, wiped out one third of everything I owned. There's a reason I have rules now. There's a reason I wrote about the rules. I teach about the rules and criteria is to keep you safe. And so the, the, the ones that are wealthy, what I have seen is that they've, they've been really good at separating the emotions from their financial decisions. So when the market drops, because they have financial literacy and they understand what the markets are doing, they're doing it. They don't get caught up in the panic when the market's going up. They don't get caught up in the greed. They don't become overly exuberant, cocky or, or courageous and jump at things that they shouldn't be jumping at. They follow a process in a system, and it keeps them safe. And so when you're faced with a financial decision, ask yourself, is the decision coming from logic and thinking and analysis, or is it coming from emotions? If it's coming from emotions, we need to figure out what those emotions are, what those stories are. And now look at it through a logical lens. Okay, that leads me to number four. Number four is adaptability. What I noticed with, with most of the wealthy people that I have worked with, that they all were adaptable to the changing tides of economy of the, their business. They, they actually embrace change. They looked at it and they said, with change comes opportunities. So where are the opportunities? And the opportunities will go, will dictate where we go. And so they had a tremendous amount of flexibility, if you will, to be able to pivot when they needed to. And because they built their financial structure, the way we talk about it in the wealth priority ladder in the book is that they had the, the, the liquid liquidity to be able to take advantage of those pivots. To take advantage of the possibilities to make that happen. And so when we look at how to be adaptable, this is one of the things that will keep. Keep people safe and on the road to financial freedom and, and wealth. So one of the things that I tell our, our clients to do is we're going to review your current strategies. So when I do a money master plan, a money machine master plan for my clients, we actually run multiple scenarios, even life scenarios, where we say, well, what happens if you lose your job? What happens if you decide to retire early? What happens if the market drops 30%? What happens if the, if you decide to take Social Security? Or what happens if there's no Social Security? And we run multiple scenarios. We literally run a Monte Carlo simulation of a thousand scenarios to look at the probability of success for people to make sure that they understand where they're at. And we want a probability of success in the 80% and above, so we know that no matter what happens, we're in a good place. And you got to do that with a plan. You got to be adaptable to it. And in the process, we look at it and say, wow, if there is something that could happen that could derail us, what's the solution before it ever becomes real? So we start looking for the solutions because we're anticipating the potential problems down the road. And so that's number four. Skill number five goes along with this is resourcefulness. What I've seen here is this, is that some people will get into this journey of financial journey to build wealth, and they have this one path.

To create wealth, and if that path gets blocked, they have a problem. I remember way back when I flew into Dallas, we didn't have GPS back then. We didn't have iPhones back then. So I had a MapQuest printed out the MapQuest of where I was going, and I was going to a meeting, and I rented my car. I got in the car, I followed the MapQuest until I hit a construction zone. And the street MapQuest was telling me to go on is gone. It was blocked. Now I had no way to get to the meeting. I didn't know how to get to the meeting. This is what some people do with building wealth. They have one path to build wealth, and the planets have to line up. And what happens is that the one thing that we know for certain is when you put a plan in place, it won't go as planned. And we need to be not only adaptable, which is skill number four, but resourceful, which is skill number five. To be able to say, what do I have at my disposal that I can maximize and use? Okay, Looking at my time, looking at my assets, looking at my skill sets, looking at the ways that, that I can do things. For instance, think about what happened when the pandemic hit. You had, I was a speaker. In fact, when the pandemic hit, I had a live event planned in April of 2020. I had hundreds of people that are going to show up to a live event. And in a moment I'm kind of going, well, I got to cancel this event. And instead of canceling it, that was when I first started to build my studio and said, we're going to do this thing virtually. And I did one, you know, one of the first virtual live, multi day live events from my studio. And it wasn't, I didn't have all the bells and whistles like I have today, but you had to look at and say, be resourceful. And millionaires and wealthy people, they tend to look at way for ways to maximize what exists, what they have. Resourcefulness isn't about having more, but it is about doing more with what you already have. And that's what they do. Leads me to skill number six. Skill number six is discipline. This one is literally just about. When I say discipline, I'm not talking about punishment. I'm talking about, about consistent action over time. Every single wealthy person's journey is, is dusted with discipline. It is. They have a set of habits, they have a set of behaviors, and they follow those habits regularly, even when it's not easy, even when it's not convenient. Whether it's cash flow, resource planning or budgeting, or investing or learning, the discipline ensures that they stay the course. So whether it's financial literacy, whether it's skilling up, whether it's understanding investments, you having the level of discipline to consistently take small actions over time will compound into great wealth over time. And when you look at it, there's studies out there, like a fidelity study that said discipline savers are two times more likely to achieve their retirement goals than those that save sporadically. Being dogmatically disciplined about your wealth journey, about your priorities, about your habits, about your learning will make a huge difference in your wealth journey. All right, so those are the six skills. I got one more bonus skill for you just because. And I think that this is one of the most meaningful ones to consider. I'm just going to add this in as a bonus, bonus number seven. And that is generosity. Now, I can tell you right now that I hear all kinds of people, oh, money's bad and they're greedy. And, you know, there are plenty of people that I, I think have money, and they're bad people with money. And, and that doesn't mean that the money made them bad. They were bad people before they had the money. Money expands who you are. The people I work with, the people that are that follow me, they're generous people. They give back. And one of the things that, that I see with all the wealthy people that I've worked with is a level of generosity. It's a sign of an abundance mindset. It's a way for them to say, I made it, let me do it for someone else. Let me give to someone else. In fact, if we look at charitable giving in 2022, was. Was $485 billion, okay? Much of it came from wealthy individuals. You know, this is according to the National Philanthropic Trust. The bottom line is this, is that most of the wealthy people that I have worked with incorporated some level of giving in their financial plan, in their financial journey. And that giving doesn't mean just money. They started out without money, but they had a giving spirit. So they volunteered time, they gave, they. They mentored someone, they coached someone. When they had the income that they had a compound effect of giving the income and to causes and doing that. True wealth isn't just about what you accumulate. Rather, it's about what you give. And I think that's really the gist of it. So when you look at these skills, the skills of patience, financial literacy, emotional intelligence, adaptability, resourcefulness, discipline, and generosity, that's what separates the wealthy from the rest. It also separates those that feel rich in their life than those that might have a big bank account, but a bankrupt life. So here's the great news. You don't have to be born with these skills. They're all learnable. They're all learnable. And you can develop each one step by step. So the question is, which skill will you focus on today? Which one? Let me know. I'd love to know, and I'd love to help you on that journey to develop the skills so you can be on your path to your wealthy life, to your rich life, to live the life of choice that you deserve and that you dream of, Right? So I hope that you got value of this from this video, from this training, and that you'll go out there and take the skills and start to develop them one at a time, okay? Because they'll serve you, they'll serve your family, and they'll serve your Community on the journey, financial freedom. All right, If I can help you in any way, please reach out to me, let me know, leave me a review and share this. By the same token, if you're not subscribed, make sure you're subscribed. Stay on this journey with me. I'm on a crusade to light the path to financial freedom for a million families, and I want one of those to be you. Because I believe that financial freedom is your birthright. And that's what this show's about. It's to empower you, is to educate you, and it's to equip you to take control and master your money. Eliminate your financial stress. Live a life by choice. Okay. Until I see you in another episode or on the road to financial freedom, always, always struck. Live a life.

Thank you for listening to the affluent entrepreneur show with me, your host, Mel Abraham. If you want to achieve financial liberation to create an affluent lifestyle, join me in the affluent entrepreneur Facebook group now by going to melabraham.com forward/group, and I'll see you there.

And that's it for this episode of building your money machine, where we help you learn how to master your money, eliminate financial stress, and live a life of choice. If you found this valuable or helpful to you, here's what I'd love for you to do. If you do me a favor, go to Apple, Apple Podcast, or wherever you're listening this podcast and rate and review the show. It helps us tremendously to keep us at the top of the list so we can continue to get this information and this message out to people, because I truly believe that financial freedom is your birthright, and I want to help each and every one of you claim it. Thanks so much.