In my 25+ years of being a Chartered Accountant and in the past few years working with business owners, I can tell you that the biggest myth is that you need a high income to grow your wealth.
For some reason, we’re told that if we don’t make a high income, then our chances of achieving financial freedom before retirement are slim to none.
And quite frankly, that’s just not true.
I’ve never had a particularly high income, but I’ve been good at amplifying my income using a few key steps (more on that later).
So what I want to be clear on is that your income level is not the limiting factor in generating wealth.
Of the hundreds of investors I’ve worked with, I always start with looking at the numbers.
Numbers will tell you a great story on:
- Where people are spending their money
- What they’re earning
- How they’re allocating their funds towards investing
- What they’re investing in
You get a lot of insights and can make some recommendations and decisions around this.
What I frequently diagnose is that there’s a significant disconnect between how well people perceive they’re doing and how they’re actually doing when it comes to building wealth.
I read a book called The Millionaire Next Door, where it shared some incredible statistics around how and why people with the most modest of lifestyles end up becoming unpredictably super high in net worth.
Out of the 292 millionaires, they found that many were first-generation, self-made millionaires and many owned small businesses.
91% never received any ownership of a family business, and millionaires take decades to get there.
Aside from this, my experience has shown that high incomes are often the worst at converting their income into wealth.
As their income grows, so does their lifestyle. This usually either runs in parallel or sometimes even exceeds their income.
Seen those celebrities who are in debt? Or those professional athletes who are broke after retiring? This is the reason why.
So I’m going to show you the steps you need to take to ensure you can convert any income into wealth.
Step 1: It’s Not How Much You Earn, It’s How You Create Surplus
It’s as simple as this – if you can’t create a surplus to fuel your investing, you’re always going to struggle.
It’s very easy to look at people with high income who have expensive cars, massive houses and go on big holidays, and immediately assume that they must be rich. My kids do it all the time when they see a Ferrari!
But I’ve schooled them that you should never judge a book by its cover.
I’ve worked with countless people who have these luxury items, but if their income were to dry up in the next one or two months, they’d struggle to make ends meet.
So it’s not about how much you earn, it’s about how much surplus you can create.
Step 2: Get Good at Amplifying Your Surplus Into Capital
We’ve had a long love affair for property here in Australia.
Personally, I’ve tried a whole range of wealth strategies, but I’ve found that property investing is the single most effective wealth creation vehicle (besides your business).
However, I tell my clients who own highly successful businesses all the time – you need to diversify and have the ability to generate income outside of your business.
If you have multiple income streams coming from outside of your business, this gives you the luxury to ultimately decide whether you want to continue working or not.
Many of them successfully use their business as leverage to purchase property. What’s most important though is to choose the right properties and to stay in control of the assets you buy.
I teach my clients all the time not to tolerate lemons in their portfolio and demand that their assets either deliver them capital or cash flow (or both!).
A common hallmark of a lot of high net worth portfolios is lazy capital. These are assets that have a high value (leverage or not) and are neither delivering capital nor cash flow.
Get good at investing in the right types of assets so that you can amplify the surplus you generate.
Step 3: Convert Capital Into Assets That Generate You Cash Flow
If you’re high net worth on paper, but you’re cash-starved, then you need to take a careful look at whether these assets are right for you.
If you need to rely on a high ticket sale price on your business or asset to achieve financial freedom, you’re always going to be potentially floundering.
Most business owners who reach out to me are people who have great net worth but struggle to have access to knowledge and ability to harness investments that can deliver double-digit returns in cash flow.
In Australia, traditional property strategies are great for building capital but terrible for cash flow. This is the case even for commercial properties that only yield single-digit net returns.
This is a time to think about investing outside the mainstream and start to earn double-digit returns.
In the Freedom Warrior mastermind program, one of our clients’ favourite parts is the ability to choose from a wide range of vetted deals locally and internationally that aren’t available to the general public. These are investment opportunities that can potentially yield them 8 – 12% net income every year.
Key Takeaways
I’ve worked with so many people with modest incomes but have successfully managed to follow these three steps.
Of course, there are many nuances in between that many investors either go through the process of learning by trial and error themselves or join a mastermind program like Freedom Warrior to shortcut that success.
But most importantly, it’s not about high income. It’s about playing the long game and looking for exist ramps from your business or work so that you can break convention and retire well before 65.
So tell me – do you find yourself in a situation where you’re generating plenty of net wealth but still no closer to financial freedom? If so, get in touch with me to find out how I could potentially help you.
