Editor’s note: This article was first published in June 2015; its references to Facebook and WhatsApp reflect the situation at that time.
It’s true. The rich keep getting richer, while the poor never quite escape poverty (and even sink deeper into it). We have already explained, logically, why the poor keep getting poorer and the rich richer.
It’s also true that we live in an era in which the gap between the richest and the poorest is the widest in all of history, ever since that evil called money came into existence.
And of course the inevitable follows: blaming the rich for other people’s poverty, or accusing them of being corrupt or of having an unfair advantage over the rest of us.
It’s true that, in Spain at least, we have watched political and business corruption reach truly sickening levels, in such a pathetic spectacle that one could almost claim that anyone who has built a business empire in Spain must be rotten or have bribed someone.
But it’s even more true that there are honest businesspeople and wealthy people who have built their fortunes by putting in time and effort and creating thousands of jobs, which, at the end of the day, is an entrepreneur’s mission, along with creating wealth.
See also: Ray Dalio: I went from poor to rich thanks to these 4 habits
As a rule, there are no unfair advantages
You can criticise the rich and businesspeople to let off steam, but that won’t help your personal growth or your wealth, because deep down you know you’d like to have what they have. And yes, you also know that money DOES buy happiness.
Everyone has the same opportunities to create wealth.
Many authors who have built their own wealth from scratch, and others such as Steve Siebold, who has interviewed more than 1,200 millionaires, share a common message: the differences between how the rich think and how everyone else thinks are extreme. The thinking and outlook of the two groups have nothing in common.
When it comes to money, it’s as if they lived on different planets.
1. How the rich approach income
This subject may be well worn, but it never hurts to go over it again.
The masses focus on protecting and keeping their money. The rich know better than anyone that saving and protecting money is necessary, but they know that saving is not the most important thing: earning more money is. That’s what matters most when it comes to building wealth.
Most people concentrate on trimming a few cents here and a few euros there so they can save more money and, if they also have a solid financial education, on using those savings to invest and watch the money they’ve put aside grow.
But the rich don’t spend much time worrying about saving on trifles or clipping discount coupons. Their minds are busy working out business ideas that will earn them large sums of money.
See also: Warren Buffett’s first business ideas at the age of 16
As Siebold himself puts it, don’t spend your energy looking for a way to save €100 a month; use that energy to find a way to make 100 million.
2. How the rich use leverage
In the minds of millionaires, leverage is everything. The rich focus their time and energy strategically on the most profitable areas of their businesses, while making the most of their contacts and resources, and expanding them, to maximise their results.
The middle class leverages its time at work, and hard work becomes a badge of honour. For the rich, success is the badge of honour.
There’s nothing wrong with working 10 hours a day, every day of your life, at a company doing a monotonous job, because that way you help build up a company (your boss’s company).
See also: Why working for someone else is the least profitable investment you can make in your life
Most people invest their time to get a pay cheque at the end of the month. There’s nothing wrong with that, but if you want to be far more successful, you need to use that leverage to think about how to make much more money.
3. How they make money
This is closely linked to the previous point. When an average person or a self-employed worker wants to earn more money, what do they do? Simple: they work more hours.
That’s why most people associate money with time: the more hours of work, the more money.
Millionaires don’t think about money in linear terms. They make money not through hard work or long hours of effort, but by looking for ideas that meet needs and solve other people’s problems.
The poor have a ceiling on how much money they can earn, because there are only so many hours in a day.
For millionaires, the financial rewards they can get from their business ideas can be unlimited.
Great fortunes can be made in a few weeks with the right idea at the right time.
So, do you want to earn a little money? Work. Do you want to get rich? Think.
See also: What’s the best way to make a million? Millionaires answer
4. Being rich isn’t a luxury but a right
Most average people think that being rich is a privilege granted only to certain people, whom nature or some god blessed with a divine gift. For millionaires, being rich is a right that anyone must earn by being able to add value for others.
If you make other people’s lives better or easier, your effort will be rewarded with the right to be rich.
See also: Tony Robbins: the simple secret to wealth
Some people think the rich are materialistic and selfish, but it’s thanks to them that you use, among other things, a service called Facebook so you can criticise the rich, or WhatsApp so you can chat with people for 4 hours a day and then say you don’t have time to read books or articles on the subjects the rich have devoted so much time to.
So if you’re rich, keep thinking the way you do. If you’re not, you can either 1) change the way you think, or 2) criticise millionaires using the very tools they have put in your hands.
See also: 6 things the middle class just doesn’t understand about the rich
Featured image: xiquinhosilva, CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons.
