A seven-step wealth ladder for entrepreneurs: starting when all cash goes back into the business, moving to extracting surplus profit, protecting assets, planning your exit, living off the proceeds, designing your lifestyle, and finally building legacy. Most founders confuse building a business with building wealth.
the built wealth ladder. Every entrepreneur kind of fits somewhere from rung 1 to rung 7 on this ladder. Rung 1 is all the money goes back in the business, all my wealth is in the business, everything's in the business. Getting people from rung 1 to rung 2 is all about, are we getting profits that we can now pull from the business and start to build a second engine of wealth? Third level is now you probably have a lot of nice things built up, but let's make sure we have the protection system around it. Before we get into what is the plan for this business, you're gonna sell it, you're gonna transition it to someone, or you're gonna die. What's the intention? How do we make that a reality? 5 is, hey, We transitioned or we sold or we whatever. Now we have to figure out how am I going to live on this money or what's next step. Number 6, this is where we start getting into the riding off into the sunset phase. What is it like to live off this money? How do we coordinate all that into a lifestyle for you that's going to be comfortable and what you want? Round 7 is where we really get a little step deeper. Making money and keeping money are two different skills. Unless you instill that next generations with the governance, start getting that stuff like legacy, legacy building. We pass along the values, the work ethic, and all that kind of stuff.
