Do people who are financially free think differently than those who are not?
Of COURSE they do.
I’ve learned a lot of valuable life lessons over the past 25 years or so, as I went from an average policeman to a top earner in the direct selling industry, and then went on to create my own global company in 2007. The most powerful lesson of them all, however, was this: most people are prohibited from earning both money and time freedom because time is limited.
Consider the terms part-time and full-time, for example. That’s how you’ve been conditioned to categorize job opportunities, right? “Full-time” isn’t what you think it is, though. You’ve been misinformed.
You may work “full-time” in exchange for a steady paycheck, but you’re still selling yourself short. You’re fighting time, and time always wins.
Even if you never slept and you worked 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, the maximum number of hours that you can earn on in any given week is 168.
However, if you have a car payment, a mortgage, student loans, or credit card bills, the interest meter never stops. You’re spending money 24 hours a day for 365 days per year on interest, but you’re only earning between the hours of 9 and 5, Monday through Friday.
This makes you a full-time spender, but only a part-time earner.
It does come with a perk, though. As a full-time spender and a part-time earner, you eventually become a member of what I call the “40-40-40 Club”—where you work 40 hours a week for 40 years of your life, just to retire on 40 percent of what you could not afford to live on in the first place!
Where do I unsubscribe from that mailing list?
If you’ve put two and two together already, you’ve realized that society allows you to cash in on 1/4th of the week’s time (40 hours), but they bill you for the full 168. So even if you have no debt and “break even” at the end of each month, you’ll never have the upper hand. How secure does that make you feel?
Luckily, there IS a way to fight the clock and change your fate (and no, I don’t mean getting a second job or searching for a higher-paying one; that won’t truly fix it, either).
It’s called leverage.
When you stop and think about it, virtually everything in your life exists because of a team effort. I’m sure you didn’t build your home or car by yourself—that would take way too long, and you probably wouldn’t even know where to start. So instead, you leveraged other people’s talents and time to make it happen.
That’s leverage in motion.
I teach people around the world how to put that same concept to work for them when it comes to their income, because honestly, it amazes me how most people go through life earning on just their own efforts.
The independent-earner “lifestyle” has too much risk and not enough reward: if you go to work, you get paid; if you don’t show up, no money for you. The minute you stop working, so does your income.
Is it fair? No. Is anything? Not really.
Limited time, limited income, and obligatory expenses can dock us into some pretty uncomfortable financial situations and weigh us down with stress—but what if someone could help you with that heavy lifting?
That’s what leverage is all about: having more people contributing to your income than just yourself.
I’m certainly not the only person who knows this, since the average millionaire has at least seven streams of income.
When you discover a way to turn group efforts into 24-hour income, you’ve discovered the key to financial freedom.
Like so many other people, I used to hit the PAUSE button on my income once I shut my eyes for the evening, and I used to hit SNOOZE when that alarm would go off in the morning before obligation dragged me out of bed and into the rat race. In my pre-leverage days, my dreams were much bigger than my paycheck. I never want to go back to that, and because of the sacrifices I’ve made and all that I’ve built and saved over the years, I won’t have to.
Leverage puts your income potential on fast forward for all 168 hours in the week: when you’re eating, when you’re sailing on your yacht, and when you’re taking your kids to the park in the middle of the afternoon on a weekday.
You don’t have to know it all. You don’t have to do it all. You just need to find a dedicated group of people that wants it all and get after it.
Being a full-time spender is inevitable, no matter who you are. You’re probably being charged for electricity and phone data as you read this, for crying out loud. In order to make that life-changing transition to a full-time earner, however, you must put this principle into practice: one person can never accomplish what a team of entrepreneurs can.