The Five Ways of Making Money – And Why You Don’t Have Any

The head of economic analysis for the RBA, Alex Heath, recently gave a talk in Brisbane calling into question the earning power of the next generation. He said automation and artificial intelligence will be able to perform a lot of the jobs we expect to be around in the next few decades.

The biggest problem the next generation will face is the same problem we have today, and it has nothing to do with robots stealing our jobs. Let me explain.

Five Common Ways to Acquire Money

If you want to make money, these are the five most common ways of doing it:

1. Get a job.
2. Marry someone who is rich, but this usually comes with some strings attached.
3. Become a business owner or entrepreneur.
4. Be an investor.
5. Although not recommended at all, you could steal it, but only if you like looking through iron jail bars for 10 to 15 years.

Only you can decide which is best for you. This article has no advice to offer for numbers 1, 2 or 5, so that leaves business or investing. The intrepid seeker of wealth may start to study every single strategy they can on making money in either business or investing; or both, but often not a lot happens.

Why?

They main reason is because they haven’t handled something else – something way more insidious lurking deep within them. Have you ever wondered why so few people ever become rich? Have you seen people go from seminar to seminar – studying every wealth creation technique under the sun, and yet, they are still struggling?

The answer may surprise you, because a lot of being wealthy isn’t what you know. Yes, having a strategy is important, but the real key to getting what you want is often hidden deep inside you.

Why Money Myths Can Hurt You

Money is a strange thing. It certainly does weird things to people, but what is fascinating are all the hang-ups and misconceptions people have about it. Those who have money rarely talk about it, and those who don’t rarely talk of anything else.

Have you ever heard people talking negatively about money? Have you been part of those conversations? Yet the idea of talking negatively about money is as silly as talking negatively about air.

Photo by Martin Kingsley / CC BY

The truth is, you need air and, like it or not, you need money. Let’s look at the myths and misconceptions that exist about money to help clear them up for once and for all.

There is another reason this is important. People who don’t have money have lots of these misconceptions locked up in their heads, but people who have money don’t.

Here’s a big clue: Do what the people who have money do, think like the people who have money think, and you are more likely to have money.

The Biggest Money Myth of All

Here is one of the most damaging money myths of all: If you are rich, you must have done something dishonest.

There are still far too many people who genuinely believe you have to be a ruthless ratbag to succeed in business, and relentless disregard for people over profit is the only way to succeed.

If you believe this, even subconsciously, do you think it could prevent you from becoming rich? I know quite a lot of people who are wealthy. They have entirely different beliefs about money than those that don’t have it.

As I said, this is a big clue.

Amongst people who are not rich, there is almost an unspoken understanding that those who are wealthy must have done something dishonest to achieve such riches. You may have heard a conversation like this: “Well, yes they’re rich, but they have obviously worked over a lot of people to get there – and they’ve been lucky.”

Photo by aphrodite-in-nyc / CC BY

Perhaps it’s easier for people to criticize wealth and insinuate the rich have attained it through dodgy dealing than to face the fact that perhaps someone is wealthy because they don’t spend five hours a night on Facebook or watching Friends re-runs. Maybe, just maybe, that person has money because they had a plan and were determined enough to get off their backside and make it happen.

This myth about the evil of money goes hand-in-hand with the nobility of poverty – apparently the rich are somehow immoral and the poor are not. The idea that you can be rich and a good person seems totally foreign to some people, but again, I have to question whether that’s really what people think or is it just a convenient cop-out for those who don’t want to work hard for success.

Whether you were born with money or not, it makes absolutely no difference to your ability to make it and keep it. Oprah Winfrey is a billionaire who had enormous global influence, and she started her life in poverty.

There are thousands of examples of those who were born poor, and then created amazing lives of contribution and happiness. There are also thousands of examples of those born with every privilege money could buy who wasted their opportunities and lives.

The truth is, money, in and of itself is meaningless. Money doesn’t make people good or bad.

I hear this all the time: “It’s immoral to have a lot of money.” What people are saying is that it is okay to have a bit of money, but not a lot. What I say is that stealing a dollar is just as wrong as stealing $10 million. There is no degree of wrongness.

Stealing something that doesn’t belong to you is wrong. It’s just common sense, so why should having money be any different? Why is having a dollar okay and having $10 million not? What makes one acceptable and the other immoral? It doesn’t make any sense when you think about it.

You don’t become more wrong, depending on how much you steal, so why do you become more wrong, depending on how much you legitimately make? Of course, the word, “legitimately,” is important in that sentence. It’s never right, whether you’re making one dollar or $100 million, if you have to exploit or harm others in the making of that money.

What is the point? The point is, the common belief of people who attend a lot of seminars is that the rich know something that the poor and middle class do not. The myth is that they know a lot more strategies. Yes, that may be true, but what is way more signifigant is that they think in a completely different manner.

One of my favorite quotes is by the world’s first billionaire, Andrew Carnegie, who said: “I am no longer cursed by the affliction of poverty because I have taken possession of my own mind.”

It’s our mindset that has an enormous influence on our success in all areas of our lives, from making money to relationships and beyond. If you think this is a half-baked theory, consider this: it comes from over a quarter of a century of experience working with tens of thousands of people.

Yes, strategies are important and I teach those, but the big breakthroughs are nearly always a mindset breakthrough. One last thing: Andrew Carnegie was the person who inspired Napoleon Hill to write Think and Grow Rich. Remember, the first word in the title is, “think.”

By Brendan Nichols

Brendan Nichols has the audacity to believe you should work a little for a lot and shows his clients how he averages three months holiday a year. He is financially independent and a best selling author, published by the giant publisher, Harper Collins. He has appeared in the media dozens of times and about a million people watched an exclusive ABC television documentary on him. He has trained tens of thousands of people, on three continents. He originally started from nothing and had several successful businesses before he was an educator. One of these businesses was a highly successful Real Estate project marketing company, where he launched major campaigns.Brendan’s specialty is showing you the steps to make more money and have an amazing life in the process.To get more information, go to www.brendannichols.com.