What Wealthy People Do Everyday – Episode 365

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[00:00] On this episode of the Prosperity Podcast, we’re going to be talking about wealth. Now, this is beyond the millionaire next door book. This is beyond your cliche phrases. We’re actually going to be talking about how wealthy people think, act, and what is going through their heads right now. No better person to ask than Kim Butler. Well, thank you, Spencer. I’m honored to be able to share because I do get to wealthy people quite a bit. Let’s first define what exactly that means. We all know that there’s all kinds of wealth and that’s awesome. If you can’t focus on your monetary wealth right now, please, please be focusing on your spiritual wealth or your relationship wealth or your physical body’s wealth called health or the myriad of other types of wealth that one

[00:51] can be working on. And it’s so funny how in 2020, are we still using a million dollar net worth as the dividing line for wealth? That’s just insane to me. When I was 22 years old, straight out of college, first working at the bank, we defined anybody with a million dollar net worth as wealthy. And here we are 30 years later, still using the million dollar net worth. Yes. The goalposts have definitely changed. And I’m sure there’s some people out there that are going to talk about inflation or earning costs and all of that, but we have to be very clear. So what is your definition of wealth? Interestingly enough, because that million dollar measuring stick is used for something called an accredited investor, and I should clarify

[01:45] that it’s million dollars, not including the equity of your home. I do still use that as a dividing line in giving credit to the quote accredited investor definition, which so many people do not even know about that. It also has an income definition. So while I’m not a big fan of the fact that there is a definition, I’m definitely not a fan that there’s a dividing line, meaning those that are accredited can have access to certain investments that those who are not accredited can’t. I do want to give credit to said accredited dividing line because it has an income one as well. So the definition is or not and, so you have your million dollar net worth, not including your home, or 200,000 a year

[02:38] of income if you’re single, 300,000 a year of income if you’re married. So due to the fact that I work with a lot of accredited investors, that is my dividing line also. And I think it’s pretty reasonable. What’s your response to that? The two to 300 of income or million dollar net worth? You know, funny, it’s actually the same thing. That’s the benchmark that I’ve set in my head because it’s the clear, the clearest defined because if you’re making investments, you either are or you aren’t. Correct. So how to your original question, how are the wealthy, how are accredited investors dealing, thinking, acting, responding to today’s world here in the middle of 2020? And interestingly enough, if I think about our seven principles of prosperity,

[03:30] they immediately upon realization that we were clearly in a different economic space, made sure that their mindsets were tippy top. And so most of the clients that I talk with do daily mindset work. And so that means that they have some type of morning routine that includes either inspirational reading, inspirational music, some type of meditative or spiritual process that they have could be five minutes, could be a lot longer that helps them with their mindset. So that is first and foremost. Any questions about that? Nope, not at all. Because you have your own morning routine and practice. Every single day. Then the second thing that I think they are focusing on is that that they can control.

[04:27] It is so easy right now to get all wrapped up into things that we cannot control. I had an interesting discussion last Friday with a reasonably wealthy business owner. He was in his mid seventies in a part of the country where a lot of his business was not affected. Some, but not a lot. And he was still wanting to focus his money in areas that he couldn’t control. And I feel that’s really, really unwise. Most people, a business is not a controllable thing. We’ve got some things that we can do. We can market more, we can hire good people, et cetera. But a business is still subject to a lot of things that we cannot control. So to me, that makes me want to make sure that my money is in places where I can control it. And he was wanting to head off down this path

[05:26] that just wasn’t that case at all. That’s fairly unusual. Most of the clients that I talk to focus on what they can control and they make darn sure to not be overly impacted by especially messaging that they can’t control. I.e. pretty much any mainstream news is off the table right now because the information, in fact, I had another client. He said, I even had to give up my Wall Street Journal reading because every single article was about the current medical slash health oriented climate that we’re dealing with right now. This is the Wall Street Journal. Yeah. I mean, that is sickening almost. Yes. Agreed. Agreed. So we have the mindset, we have money that we can control. And then the other thing that wealthy people are focused on is the age old habit of buying

[06:19] when things are on sale. And it’s so funny to me. Some people get this immediately. We have some very specific assets that are on sale right now. And America as a whole is going to have a lot more assets that will become on sale in the next three to six months or nine months. I don’t know what the time frame is. And so those that get this are all in and quickly so and looking for deals and willing to buy when things are low, etc. Those that may fit the definition of an accredited investor. So we should be calling them wealthy, but I don’t feel like they’re acting wealthy are scared because said things are low. Yes. And to clarify listeners, when Kim is saying things are on sale right now, buying low, that doesn’t mean TVs or cars. So there we go.

[07:16] Now, I think, and this is just a hypothesis, but I think the reason why some people are scared, even though they may be accredited investors, depends on the way that they earn their money and how easy or how difficult it was. What do you think of that? Well, I think that’s really well said. Yes, because if you have not had to struggle, and usually struggles are where we learn, and you fell into a job or a business that was easy, and then now all of a sudden things are not, I think there’s some that could pivot and have some super fast learning and go on and make progress with that. But when things come too easy, I don’t think us human beings appreciate them and we get results of things that we appreciate. And I mean, appreciate as a verb, like the active mental

[08:12] appreciation of things, as well as a noun, i.e. something is growing in value. So, you know, I’m going to cover point number two, and there may be some pushback on this, but there’s also going to be some figuring out. And you said focus on what you can control. Now, Jeff Bezos, founder of Amazon, he said he’s not interested in what’s going to change in the next 10 years. He’s interested in what’s not going to change. Yes, a very interesting question. Because if you’re building a business, something that’s not going to change for 10 years, you can get in, do the research and development, create the systems, build the opportunities out and make a profit from those efforts. Whereas things that are in constant

[08:57] flux, it’s a lot harder to do that with. So I love that perspective. And I think it’s just a really wise question. When we’re going through things of extreme change, it grounds you, it helps you know that there are things like relationships that are always going to be there. How we develop them may change, but relationships are still important. There are things like transactions. Some businesses are very relationship-based, some are transaction-based, some are both. Transactions are going to continue to occur. How they occur may change, but the transactions are going to continue to occur. So asking yourself that question is a great way to shift your mindset if you’re struggling with, oh my gosh, everything’s changing, and also potentially develop some

[09:44] new opportunities because of it. Yeah, absolutely. So another piece, and this kind of ties in with other episodes that we’ve done, which is I’ve noticed in Wealthy People that they seem to have a little bit more distance in their thinking, in distance, in their emotions. And I’ve found that the first foundational piece to that is having that emergency fund. And it’s just sad because a lot of people that have faced unemployment recently are the ones that really couldn’t afford to have anything happen in their lives. A $500 thing just destroys them. And whereas wealthy people, they’re not thinking in terms of days or weeks, it may be thinking in terms of months, several months, at least years, decades out there, far, far, far out there, not

[10:38] short term. Yes, it is interesting to realize the impact of what your own thinking goes through when you shift the timeframe. So I’ll share a fun story. We have a farm and it’s fourth generation farm. And that means that there are some old fence rows and messes on the property that are just messes because of the passage of time. And when at some point I realized that I wanted to have a 25 year vision for our place, it enabled me to just back off and be so much more thoughtful and have so much better of a perspective for the work that was necessary to get done on the property. Because what used to happen is I would go into a weekend and I was kind of like your weekend sports warrior. I had to get it all done. I had to play every

[11:33] sport all in one weekend. I had to get all of the fence rows cleaned up all in one weekend. And when I shifted my timeframe, I was able to relax and just enjoy the process and get literally one one hundredth of a fence row tackled in a particular weekend and still be feeling good about that progress on Monday morning instead of being completely stressed that I didn’t get it done because I had lengthened the timeframe. So any time you can do that and then break that timeframe down into the smaller increments that helps us realize, as an example, one quarter, so 90 days, is one percent of 25 years. And 25 years, you know, quarter of a century, that’s like a nice, really cool time frame. And I think one’s life often

[12:30] ends up in 25 year increments. I mean, I know obviously childhood has a whole bunch of smaller increments too, but you think of a person from zero to 25, that’s pretty much childhood, young adult, if you will, whatever you want to call that time. And then you go 25 to 50, and that’s definitely a person’s primary career. I was struggling to get the right word there because it’s so critical to only think of it as just one span of time. Then 50 to 75 is either the continuation of that primary career, especially if they’ve developed a movement or a second business or anything like that. And then 75 to 100 is often where legacy goals are figured out and worked on. And then frankly, I think most of us should be thinking 100 to

[13:21] 125 also, because that is where life is going to continue to operate for many, many of our listeners. And we need to be focused on that 120 to 125 age span, not the typical, oh, death is at 80 or 90. Totally agree. Totally agree. I’m going to throw you one more curveball. Do you remember the first billionaire you met? One or two. Yes. Three. I could keep going. Why do you ask? So I ask, what was a lesson that you learned from them that was implied? So it wasn’t something that they said, but something that you noticed. Always be thinking one to many, instead of one to one, always be thinking of one to many. That’s a good one, listeners. What do you have? The first one was their directness with problem solving.

[14:16] Ah, I love that. And here’s the way that I have been able to condense that thought, which is they see a problem and then they identify the outcome that they want. And then they get an army of people to go and do it for them. Yeah, really well said. How fun. Yes. That was quite the lesson. So, Kim, what you’ve done today is you’ve helped explain, one, creating the foundation, daily mindset work to become that wealthy thinker, that wealthy person, two, to focus on what you can control, and three, to be buying things when they are on sale. Now, I will say this, listeners, Kim didn’t mention this before. I will say it. For accredited investors, you have opportunities to special things that other people don’t.

[15:08] You want to know what those are, send an email to hello at partnersforprosperity.com. Some of those things we can’t even just talk about, so it’s kind of cool. Make sure you send an email. Should they put in a subject line, accredited investor or something like that? Yes, good idea. Okay, excellent. And for any of you listeners, if you happen to have learned a lesson from a billionaire or could even be a wise old grandfather that shared some wealth of knowledge, send an email as well to hello at partners for prosperity. Let us know what that was and we would love to hear your feedback. That’ll be fun. We’ll curate a list of lessons. Thank you for spending time with us on the podcast, listeners,

[15:48] and we’ll get you some more episodes soon. Thank you for listening to the Prosperity Podcast. To take control of your money and have it work for you, visit us at partnersforprosperity.com. If you liked this episode, make sure you subscribe and leave a review.