There are many principles—“secrets”—about money and success that will serve you well if you want to increase your wealth. Above all, however, is to first make it a priority. Make your want of manifesting financial wealth a clear intention. So many people feel guilty about earning, spending and investing more money. Or they think wealth just happens without any intention or effort. Moreover, recent economic events have made many people believe that there is a finite amount of money in the world. That is not true. More wealth is being created every day. The supply of money is truly infinite once you apply certain principles that have made millionaires and billionaires over and over again. There are people out in the world that are making hundreds of millions of dollars a year!
Secondly, I recommend that you study the laws of money and finance – both the spiritual laws of abundance and prosperity consciousness, as well as the world of investing. Read books, listen to CDs, take seminars. I read at least one book a week, often more, in the areas of law of attraction, principles of success, finance and investing, psychology, relationships and spiritual growth. You can also join an investment club. Your local library or bookstore can get you started. Peruse the business, self-help, and psychology sections. You’ll find lots of materials to begin your studies.
Thirdly, I would ask you to take the time to clarify what wealthy means to you. For some people $100,000 a year would make them feel wealthy. For someone else, wealthy might mean $20 million in the bank. So take time to sit down and write out a complete description of your ideal wealthy life. What does that word mean to you? How do you see yourself as wealthy?
The third thing is that if you want to make a lot of money, you have to play a game where lots of money is made. You will not become a multi-millionaire being a preschool teacher. You can argue that preschool teachers are more valuable than professional baseball players, and you would probably be right, but it doesn’t matter. It is what it is. As Byron Katie teaches, when you argue with reality, you always lose. So you have to enter into an arena where money can be made. You could join a network marketing company. I met a man not too long ago who lost his job as a mortgage broker and his home during the financial collapse last year. Now, less than 6 months later, he is on track to make $300,000 in 2009 as a distributor for MonaVie. He has built up a huge down line in less than half a year. He is leveraging his income through the efforts of others that he has enrolled and caused to be enrolled in the business.
Another principle of wealth building is to expand the impact of your service. Reach more people and serve them more fully. Here is where the Internet can be a great accelerator in building wealth and building it quickly. One of the people I write about in The Success Principles makes millions of dollars a year selling pool tables on eBay. He is serving thousands of people a year through the power of the Internet. Another student of mine has started an Internet-based business selling urine tests that parents can use to see if their teenagers used drugs while out that night. Take a course on Internet marketing. You’ll find hundreds of them listed on Google. My own seminar business began to skyrocket after I started doing a free tele-seminar on the first Wednesday of every month. We have had as many as 4,000 people on that call. (If you’d like to join us, go to
www.AskJackCanfield.com. You can even submit a question that you would like me to answer.)
Yet another principle of wealth building is to find a need and fill it. There are all kinds of businesses that have been built around seeing a need and fulfilling it. One company I know picks up people’s dry cleaning off a hook beside their front door, delivers it to the dry cleaners, and then returns it, saving people a lot of time. There are personal shoppers, restaurant delivery services that deliver for 30 different restaurants, people who prepare all your organic or raw food for a week and deliver it in containers that just need to be heated up. My favorite story is that of an Avery Label salesman, who discovered that his restaurant clients wanted preprinted labels with the days of the week printed on them so they could label what day their fresh produce had arrived so that they could know which fruits and vegetables to use first, thus reducing spoilage. When Avery said, “We are not in the printing business,” the salesman bought a small printer and began printing labels on the weekends. This weekend business, which was started in his garage, eventually grew into a company called Day Dots, which printed and sold millions of printed labels a day. He eventually sold his business for tens of millions of dollars!
Finally, if you are going to become wealthy, you must save and invest at least 10% of every dollar you earn. Stop amassing debt. Become disciplined in saving and investing. Live within your means. You must find ways to get your money working for you. In addition to The Success Principles, I suggest you read The Automatic Millionaire by David Bach. You’ll find both of these books, by the way, in the sections I mentioned above worth investigating at your local library or book store.
© 2009 Jack Canfield