Reasons You're Not Rich

10 (More) Reasons You're Not Rich

Many people assume they aren't rich because they don't earn enough money. If I only earned a little more, I could save and invest better, they say.

The problem with that theory is they were probably making exactly the same argument before their last several raises. Becoming a millionaire has less to do with how much you make, it's how you treat money in your daily life.

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The list of reasons you may not be rich doesn't end at 10.

Caring what your neighbors think, not being patient, having bad habits, not having goals, not being prepared, trying to make a quick buck, relying on others to handle your money, investing in things you don't understand, being financially afraid and ignoring your finances.

Here are 10 more possible reasons you aren't rich:

You care what your car looks like:

A car is a means of transportation to get from one place to another, but many people don't view it that way. Instead, they consider it a reflection of themselves and spend money every two years or so to impress others instead of driving the car for its entire useful life and investing the money saved.

You feel entitlement:

If you believe you deserve to live a certain lifestyle, have certain things and spend a certain amount before you have earned to live that way, you will have to borrow money. That large chunk of debt will keep you from building wealth.

You lack diversification:

There is a reason one of the oldest pieces of financial advice is to not keep all your eggs in a single basket. Having a diversified investment portfolio makes it much less likely that wealth will suddenly disappear.

You started too late: The magic of compound interest works best over long periods of time. If you find you're always saying there will be time to save and invest in a couple more years, you'll wake up one day to find retirement is just around the corner and there is still nothing in your retirement account.

You don't do what you enjoy:

While your job doesn't necessarily need to be your dream job, you need to enjoy it. If you choose a job you don't like just for the money, you'll likely spend all that extra cash trying to relieve the stress of doing work you hate.

You don't like to learn:

You may have assumed that once you graduated from college, there was no need to study or learn. That attitude might be enough to get you your first job or keep you employed, but it will never make you rich. A willingness to learn to improve your career and finances are essential if you want to eventually become wealthy.

You buy things you don't use:

Take a look around your house, in the closets, basement, attic and garage and see if there are a lot of things you haven't used in the past year. If there are, chances are that all those things you purchased were wasted money that could have been used to increase your net worth.

You don't understand value:

You buy things for any number of reasons besides the value that the purchase brings to you.

This is not limited to those who feel the need to buy the most expensive items, but can also apply to those who always purchase the cheapest goods. Rarely are either the best value, and it's only when you learn to purchase good value that you have money left over to invest for your future.

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Your house is too big:

When you buy a house that is bigger than you can afford or need, you end up spending extra money on longer debt payments, increased taxes, higher upkeep and more things to fill it. Some people will try to argue that the increased value of the house makes it a good investment, but the truth is that unless you are willing to downgrade your living standards, which most people are not, it will never be a liquid asset or money that you can ever use and enjoy.

You fail to take advantage of opportunities:

There has probably been more than one occasion where you heard about someone who has made it big and thought to yourself, "I could have thought of that." There are plenty of opportunities if you have the will and determination to keep your eyes open.

"Do You Have What It Takes To Be Elite?"

Have You Got What It Takes to Be Rich?

Get over the notion that the rich have special powers, and look for what really drives their success. Chances are, you've got it in you too.


(MONEY Magazine) – American business lore is filled with tales of dynamic visionaries taking insane risks in pursuit of a distant dream--and then striking it rich. But get past the Texas wildcatters, railroad barons and Steve Jobs, and the heroes of the American dream begin to look more life-size, like the regular (but wealthy) folks profiled in the preceding story, "Road Trip to Riches." They look more, in fact, like you.

Are the rich smart? Sure. Ambitious? Yep. Blessed with gifts bestowed upon only a chosen few? Nah. "The people who get rich really want success," says Stephen Goldbart, a psychologist in Kentfield, Calif. who works with wealthy clients. "But where does that drive come from? I don't have a single answer."

There's nothing predetermined about getting rich, or so we'll assume until scientists identify the rich gene. Even people who end up wealthy often find themselves at a loss to explain why. "People pay me a whole bunch of money to make speeches," says author and management consultant Patrick Lencioni, who charges $45,000 to stand at a podium and does so about 35 times a year. He has also sold approximately a million copies of his five management books. "This is all foreign to me," he says.

No doubt he, and you, can get used to being rich. But before that, you have to start believing that you can make it big--and clear your cranium of all those myths about what you have to be like to do so. The rich may be different from you and me, to borrow from F. Scott Fitzgerald. But they didn't start out that way.

MYTH NO. 1 You've Got to Have Incredible Charisma

• Everyone believes a modern-day leader has to generate a few sparks. "You can't pull together resources and people if you don't have the capacity for making other people want to contribute," says Paul Reynolds, a management professor at Florida International University in Miami. Perhaps no business leader epitomized that notion more than Herb Kelleher, the chain-smoking, hard-drinking co-founder of no-frills Southwest Airlines, who revolutionized his industry, charmed the unions and inspired his thousands of employees by (among other things) impersonating Elvis and donning an Easter Bunny suit.

REALITY: It's not about charming people; it's about evaluating them. In Southwest's case, witness that the Dallas airline hasn't lost any altitude without the boss, who retired as CEO in 2001. It's on track to log profit growth of at least 15% this year. "Charisma was never the key to Herb Kelleher's success," says Bill Payne, entrepreneur-in-residence at Kansas City's Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation, which promotes entrepreneurship. "He surrounded himself with an exceptional team."

To do that yourself, you need to assess people's skills in a calculating way. Business leaders "may be social misfits themselves, but they know how to size people up," says Bill Heiden, a Lyme, Conn. financial adviser to business owners. "They have the ability to extract the value from other people."

In fact, management guru Jim Collins argues that charisma can be a liability. The force-of-nature leader appeals to employees who need a hero--so when the chief exits, no one can measure up. Even Reynolds, who thinks charisma does help snare talent, agrees that "to be effective, a person has to have something to offer beyond personality."

MYTH NO. 2 You Must Be Able to See into the Future

• What George H.W. Bush called "the vision thing" does indeed exist. Think about Gordon Moore, the Intel co-founder who predicted in 1965 that chip processing power would double every two years. Or Bill Gates. Or the Amazing Kreskin, who claims only to be a "mentalist" but could probably do more. Get the vision thing wrong, and you're dead. The only thing foretold by minicomputer magnate Ken Olsen's famous 1977 pronouncement, "There is no reason anyone would want a computer in their home," was the decline of his company, Digital Equipment.

REALITY: Plenty of visionaries were and are firmly rooted in the present. Did Henry Ford invent the car? (Hint: No.) Did Sam Walton invent discounting? (See earlier hint.) In each case, they took what existed, saw the potential in figuring out how to make it better, and then slaved away on the details.

Tom Kinnear, executive director of the Zell-Lurie Institute for Entrepreneurial Studies at the University of Michigan, refers to this pattern of action as "telescoping." Successful builders of businesses, whether they're on their own or in a corporate setting, can see the big picture well enough, but they succeed by mastering the little things. "They pay attention to the smallest details, so they can answer any questions," says Kinnear. "They want to be sure they're getting it right."

Amy Domini didn't invent the mutual fund, but 15 years ago she saw an opportunity to mass-market socially responsible funds that appealed to investors who felt they couldn't put money into businesses they found morally objectionable. Today, Domini Social Investments manages nearly $2 billion in assets.

Once she launched the business, Domini says, she quickly developed "an intense interest in minutiae." Sure she fretted over the details of structuring a product for big institutions. That seems sensible. But she also analyzed the thickness of the firm's brochure paper and looked at thousands of samples of exotic fabrics to find a combination that could muffle the sound in her company's New York City headquarters. "To build something, you have to fall in love with it," says Domini, 56. "Otherwise you might as well be a corporate cog."

MYTH NO. 3 You've Got to Stick to Your Guns, No Matter What

• "The concept is interesting and well formed, but in order to earn better than a C, the idea must be feasible," a college professor supposedly wrote in response to a student's term paper outlining the need for a reliable overnight delivery service. But Fred Smith ignored those discouraging words. "I thought this was a revolutionary idea.... I wasn't intimidated," said the fellow who founded FedEx in 1973. Kelleher, of Southwest Airlines, has been known to bray, "If it's conventional, it ain't wisdom, and if it's wisdom, it ain't conventional." After all, has anybody ever done anything innovative by consulting a focus group?

REALITY: Yes, actually. If you're intent on creating value--from either a giant company's command center or your guest bedroom at home--you carefully evaluate and absorb feedback. True, successful people don't change their minds easily, says the Kauffman Foundation's Payne. But they are strategically flexible when they have to be. In 1984, FedEx launched Zap-Mail, a high-speed fax service. But then cheap fax machines started popping up. "At that juncture," Smith once told an interviewer, "we knew we had to change."

When Sergio Zyman was chief marketing officer at Coca-Cola, he learned that sometimes things don't work out as planned. Remember New Coke? Years later, when he was on his own, Zyman raised $12 million to sell business-planning software. But he soon understood that the market was murmuring bad things about the product. "We had to kill it," he says. By the time he told his backers, he had concocted a plan for turning the Zyman Group into a consulting firm. Last year the Atlanta company raked in $65 million in sales. "You need to have enough conviction," says Zyman, "to know that you can find the right answer, even if you don't know it right away."

MYTH NO. 4 You Need to Take Big Risks

• When Viacom chief Sumner Redstone was trying to console investors after what looked like a career-crushing acquisition--the pickup of Blockbuster in 1994--he insisted, "Success isn't built on success; success is built on failure." He held on, and his big risk paid off. And Ray Kroc was down to his last two good customers as a milkshake-mixer salesman; once he saw the operations of those customers, who happened to be two brothers named McDonald, his career turned golden.

REALITY: The world offers plenty of options for those looking to live recklessly: Join a hedge fund, take up heli-skiing, make plans with somebody you've just met in a sudoku chat room. But if you're out to make a big score, you'll want to control risk any way you can. "If you know your skills, you can manage the parameters of the risk," says Kinnear.

"Invest in what you know" served as the mantra of former Fidelity fund manager Peter Lynch. And Warren Buffett has become the world's greatest investor by buying companies whose businesses he says he can understand. They have avoided the wealth-draining trap, says Reynolds, of thinking that their expertise in one area is easily transferable to another. Remember Trump Airlines? Probably not. "Successful people can forget how much they knew about a niche before they got rich in it," Reynolds notes. Redstone and Kroc, in fact, knew what they were getting into.

Now 28, Geoff Cook was 19 when he started EssayEdge, an online service that helped students with their college applications. "Editing seemed like a natural thing for me to do," he says. "I'm a good writer." The cost of starting up: a whopping $600 to cover computer servers and bank fees. Five years later he sold the business (which had grown to include ResumeEdge) to Thomson Corp. for a figure of around $10 million. In early 2005 he left his well-paid post at Thomson to follow his $250,000 investment in MyYearbook, a social-networking start-up targeted toward high schoolers. His brother and sister, both teenagers, had come up with the idea. Cook studied MySpace and Facebook, concluding that there was room for a niche player aimed squarely at teens. Having raised $1.1 million earlier this year, he's hoping to add another $6 million in funding before 2006 is out. "We've got what we need to compete, which is ideas for cool features," says Cook, who is based in New Hope, Pa. "This is either a $100 million idea or it's worthless. Either way, I know this isn't the only shot I'll have. It's just the shot I'm taking now."

MYTH NO. 5 You Need a Burning Desire to Get Rich

• "How much money is enough?" a reporter once asked John D. Rockefeller at a time when the oil tycoon was the richest man on earth. His quick reply? "Just a little bit more." To be sure, there are plenty of rich people whose sole motivation throughout their working lives was to be rich. And everyone who works hard in business wants to make money. "Certainly people who get rich want to be financially rewarded and expect to be," says psychologist Goldbart, who co-directs the Money, Meaning and Choices Institute.

REALITY: But, Goldbart adds, there's more to it than that. "Money isn't the only value they see in what they are doing," he says. "These are people who love to build." Adds Bill Dueease, co-founder of a life-coaching service in Fort Myers, Fla: "Rich people didn't get there by chasing money. They got there by chasing their passion."

So when Vu "Bill" Nguyen talks about how much he loves making it, he's not referring to all those greenbacks he's got. "I always want to make a wonderful product that people love," says the 35-year-old Nguyen, who has been part of seven tech-oriented start-ups, three of which he founded. He launched his latest venture, La La Media, last year.

The Palo Alto company operates a website where users can swap music CDs for $1. His heftiest payday to date came in 2000, when a company he'd co-founded called Onebox, a service for consolidating voice and electronic messages, was acquired for roughly $850 million. Nguyen earned more than $10 million on that deal.

He's used that windfall to underwrite a collection of 10 cars; he's also splurged on hiring brand-name bands, such as Fountains of Wayne, for his private functions. The rest? It goes into "bland muni bonds," he says. "I don't want any heartache from it." Leaving his investments in bonds lets him concentrate on his next endeavor. "I am maniacal about the product. I almost completely don't think about the other stuff."

That includes other people, he admits, and that character flaw has gotten him fired in the past. But he takes solace in the following: "I'm the living example of what your high school guidance counselor told you. Figure out what you love, and do that. It's an approach that has made me ridiculously lucky." And rich too.

Can You Handle Being Rich?

Once you've made it, how will you adjust to residing on Easy Street? Not easily, warns Thayer Willis. "People can get really obnoxious," says Willis, a wealth counselor and an heiress whose father co-founded Georgia-Pacific. Here's her prescription for a rich life.

Stay humble.

You made it. They didn't. You must be better than them, right? Feel that way and you'll end up alone with your riches. The best way to avoid arrogance is to have a strong value system--often it's grounded in religious or spiritual practice.

20 Ways to Enhance Your Get-Rich Potential

1. Practise Being a Good Communicator

Enroll for a course in improving your communications. Learn how to be more persuasive and enticing in the way you present yourself, your product and the way you package what you sell. Success in any business depends on how you market your products and services, and doing this effectively does require good communication skills. It also requires a well thought out strategy and a convincing story line. Get some professional help in this area to set you thinking along these lines. Don’t forget your feng shui though – everytime you get up to speak, each time you chat with a potential customer or client, face your sheng chi direction. This way, you will be further increasing your chances of success.

2. Think Three Steps Ahead

In the day-to-day management of your business, always think three steps ahead. Good anticipation is not only the key to success, it is also the guarantee of survival. Make it a habit to anticipate customer demands, inventory levels, price increases, staff shortages and so forth. You will find that over time, the habit of thinking ahead will become so ingrained in you that it becomes second nature. This is called experience. Doing it consciously makes this habit more powerful.

3. It’s Ok to be Imperfect

Whatever the outcome of what you do, always bear in mind that it is impossible to be perfect. Events and outcomes almost never work out exactly as you plan them to. Sometimes results exceed your expectations, and other times, your new product launch can fall as flat as a lead balloon. It is not necessary to berate yourself for the occasional failures. Chalk things up to a bad experience, even bad luck and then move on. Remember that it is by accepting your imperfections that you know you are all human. The key thing when you fall is to be able to pick yourself up again, each and every time.

4. Keep Things Simple

Do your very best to simplify all the tasks and processes inside your head. Make a resolution this year that you will NOT allow anyone to confuse you with complicated suggestions OR dilute your determination by being negative. When you keep your goals focused and clear cut, the task at hand gets simplified, and when you stay positive in your expectations, your energies are that much more powerful. The good news about keeping thought processes simple is that your own resolve becomes the engine that drives you, and this is the best way to harness your powerful inner chi.

5. Identify Your Income Sources

So many people come to me with business ideas that describe their vision and dreams – and they paint a rosy picture of how they will set up their business and yet when I ask them “so what’s the source of your immediate income” they look blankly at me. Remember that all ideas are good, but very few have the potential to be successful simply because the source of income has either not been thought through or the people behind the business is depending on some Government handouts, or on “friends”, or upon a single source that might well dry up. When a business cannot generate its own sources of income, then it is not a business. It is simply a project. Viable businesses always have the ability to generate its own source of incomes and to fill a market need.

6. Draw a Decision Tree

I learnt to draw decision trees at the Harvard Business School way back when. It’s been over twenty-five years since I studied in that august institution and I am still using those wonderful trees. They are like mind maps except these decision trees also contain what I think are the outcomes of decisions. One decision leads to other decisions and in drawing a decision tree, every branch keeps getting split into smaller and smaller branches. The process of drawing a tree forces you to engage your mind to think ahead, to not stop at each decision. This is because every decision always leads to another decision, and another and another. E.g. if you make a decision tree on whether to rent or to buy your office premises… if you decide to buy, you need to decide where, how big, use your own capital or borrow, if borrow, how much to borrow, from which bank, and then you need to think of the outcomes… will you be successful at finding the right location, at getting a bank to lend you money, and so on. Your decision trees can be as simple or as complicated as you wish… but simply thinking about it sets you thinking in the right direction, which is to think ahead.

7. Keep Your Spirits High

The secret of success lies in constantly rejoicing and keeping your spirits high. This requires real effort but once mastered, it becomes a precious skill indeed. Rejoice at every triumph but also learn to meet every setback with a smile of acceptance – and view it as a signal to change course a little. When bad things happen, you can actually feel happy that a piece of bad karma has ripened and has therefore dissolved. Its gone, passed on. And when something good happens, also rejoice, because it means some good karma has ripened. Just remember to create more good karma by doing something nice for someone or donating something to a worthwhile charity. When you look at your life this way, how can any year be a bad year?

8.Go Global in Your Search for Markets

A successful business can be built on just about any skill, product or service and sold to just about any market. The key is to find the market or markets, and this means finding new ways of reaching the marketplace – either via repackaging an old product, finding a new way of marketing a service, or generating new needs in consumers in different markets. In the past many successful businesses were built simply on the basis of imperfect markets and imperfect information. Today, the marketplace is very near perfect indeed. Information flows across the globe almost instantly via satellite and via the internet. This is the age of global communications and those of you who are clever will use the new technologies to help you go global in your search for markets. Make big allowances for the differences of markets, but go after them nevertheless.

9. Be a Niche Player

If your business is built around your passion for a sport, a hobby, or a past time, you might want to read up all about niche marketing. Some large businesses have been built this way, where the focus of all the company’s promotion efforts are directed at trade magazines and at specific outlets. Niche businesses are highly focused on a specific customer base. A lot of business can come your way when you learn to surf the Internet. Use the powerful search engines to bring you into the households of new customers.

10. Take a Fresh Approach Each New Year

At the start of every new year, I look at all the projects I have on hand and ask myself “What fresh approach can I bring to what I do? Is there anything I can do to make what I sell more attractive?” It is the process of thinking that stimulates the creativity within me, keeping me on my toes and preventing me from coming across tired and ancient. Keep your eyes open each new season. Look at everything innovative coming out during the year. Derive ideas from groundbreaking trends in colours, shapes and materials. Go in search of new-fangled products, pioneering inventions and the latest strategies. Pick out the more promising of the new trends and transform them to fit into your world.This is not an easy exercise but it gets easier with practice. Remember that all the most successful superstars constantly reinvent and repackage themselves… like Madonna, Kylie Minogue, Pavarotti… all the designer names and car brands have to keep a step ahead of the competition by coming out with a brand new models. So to stay ahead, be leader. If all you do is copy the leader, you will get left behind.

11. Build a Team

Never try to do anything completely on your own. No man is an island. Whatever business you are in, set about the task of building a trustworthy team. Make this your major priority. Invest time, effort and money in creating a team you can rely on. Remember that in any venture, having responsible people around you is more important than having clever people. There is no need for everyone to be clever, but there is a need for everyone to be reliable. A core group of lieutenants does not get built immediately. It takes time. And in the initial years, I strongly recommend to go for the flat organization chart as much as you can. This way, every member of your team has access to you.

12. Make Clever

ChoicesIf you want to succeed in business, do be discerning about the choices you make. An excellent way to decide is to generate what business schools refer to as trade-offs. Ask yourself what you will be giving up when choosing a particular alternative. Making choices are usually governed by many factors and it is never easy to choose between options, but if you list out to yourself what you will be foregoing when you choose a specific course of action, you will instantly find it easier to decide. Tradeoffs usually make you choose between long and short-term solutions and between different people’s opinions. Choices may not always be good and correct at the same time. The key is to weigh things carefully in your mind and then be decisive.

13. Get Internet Savvy

There is no alternative for those who want to grow and make money in the business world – you absolutely must get Internet savvy – if you do not you will simply get left behind. You will become uncompetitive and you will lose out. In the last ten years, technological breakthroughs in cyber space have advanced so much that the entire world’s households and especially the buying public are all hooked up. If you have not yet signed up for surfing facilities, do so immediately. Invest in a website. Get technical in all your operational and logistics needs. Today, there is an incredible amount of software that makes the operational and administrative side of doing business extremely easy. If you are the owner of your business, sign up for a course that gives you some basics in computer usage. Learn to surf, search, download and install programs.

14. Improvise

– Change As You GoIf truth be known, there really is no cook book approach to successfully managing a business. It’s not like we can have a foolproof recipe for success every time. No indeed. Successful managing of any business always requires the person holding the ropes to improvise, to change direction, to go off course albeit temporarily. This enables the business to overcome sudden obstacles and unexpected hindrances. These are the dynamics of being successful and here is where luck comes in. In a year when the chi energy works in favour of success, the cards are not so difficult to play. The year 2006 is indeed such a year. This is why this is such a great year to be brave, try new strategies and take some risks. In a year when the chi energy is not as conducive to business, it is better to lie low.

15. Create a New Angle

One way of keeping your business fresh and up to date is to work at creating a new angle and remember it’s the story that makes the angle. This means looking at the same thing from a fresh perspective, creating a totally new package from another point of view. There are many facets to almost every aspect of a product or business and the challenge to the entrepreneur is to stay constantly revitalized by offering yet another fresh outlook. You can see that even in the movie world, old hits get new treatments and become hits once again. There have been so many successful remakes that it really gives us encouragement to try applying the same strategy to our own business. This simply means looking at our same old product and giving it a new twist by adding or changing the “look”.

16. Be Adventurous

Successful business people usually have a sense of adventure and what this means is to have an attitude that is receptive to new things and new phenomena. An attitude of courage is important because only the courageous have the vision to see and try new things. Implicit in being an entrepreneur is this sense of adventure – to boldly experiment with the unfamiliar, to do something in a non-traditional way and to occasionally go against the grain of conventional wisdom. When you are adventurous, you must guard against having too high expectations. In fact, it is a good idea not to have any expectations at all. Just keep an open mind and go with the flow.

17. Make Every Day A Happy

every day a happy day. Do this by making someone happy each and every day. It is easy. A smile does it every time. A nice email sent to someone. Practising patience. Responding nicely to a customer or a salesgirl. Patting your dog, feeding your fish, giving someone a shoulder. You may not see the connection between being a success and being happy, but chi energy plays a large part in the success equation, and happiness chi is almost always more powerful in attracting success than negative chi. The next time someone causes you to raise your voice, watch your mood swing from stability to instability and you will know what I mean.

18. What’s Your Killer Talent?

We all have it. Yes, that amazing skill at doing something really well – the challenge is to discover it young enough for you to develop your skill and nurture it so you can later turn it into something of a life passion. Because what you are good at will almost always be something you adore doing. It can be a sport – golf, tennis, riding – and if it is, you can well become a celebrity sports star. That’s a business that seems to be the most lucrative these days. Or you might have a talent at some performing art – singing, dancing, acting – whatever your killer talent, don’t spurn it. Identify what you are really good at doing, study every aspect, nuance and angle of all the related industry areas that are connected with your skill, and then build a business around it. In every sport, hobby and past-time lies a whole range of businesses that can be developed. The chances of success are also that much higher when you enjoy what you are doing.

19. Salute Your Heroes

For many years I found incredible inspiration from reading books authored either as self help books or as autobiographies written by the likes of corporate heroes such as Jack Welch, Warren Buffet, Bill Gates, Donald Trump – there were so many helpful anecdotes, tips and experiences in these books and they did so much to fuel my determination that for years I followed their careers. I still do. These are not perfect icons of management expertise, but the problems and strategies they dealt with were real and although what I did was on a much smaller scale, nevertheless I could identify with them. Go in search of your business idols and use them as your inspirational icons. Let their success spur you on to yours.

20. Make A Wish List

To stay focused about your goals and aspirations, try making a wish list. You can be as outrageous as you like because your wish list is for your eyes only. When you write down your wishes, you are giving important energy to your innermost desires and something magical almost always happens. Keep your wish list inside a special silver or gold box or better yet, inside a wish-fulfilling wheel that you spin constantly to activate it with powerful energy. I have been making my wish list for over thirty years. Mine are kept inside my library of personal notebooks, which are in turn kept in a very special chest. Yes, I invest plenty of energy on my wishes - and my focused concentration is what makes my wishes come true.