A lot of people don’t THINK they can get rich because of incorrect (or misguided) beliefs they have about money. And I really believe that your beliefs, affect your actions, which in turn affects your results – which only reinforce that limiting belief.
In this video I’ll go over 5 misconceptions about money that people have which keep them broke. Be conscious of what you think about because you can often put an artificial limit on your potential because you think certain things are not possible or not doable. Usually the beliefs are totally wrong or are overstated, and the result is people never get to where they want to go – even though they had the tools they needed the whole time.
Transcription:
Hey there. Ray Corcoran here. In this week’s video, we’re going to be talking about five limiting beliefs or misconceptions that are preventing you getting rich.
So on this channel before I’ve spoken about how your thoughts and what you think about really, really affect the kind of action you take and then consequently affect the kind of results that you get and then that reinforces whatever thought or beliefs that you have.
So if you think you’re bad at money, you’ll usually take less action than most people and then you’ll get lower results and then that will reinforce the belief that you are bad with money and it’s a bit of a vicious cycle. What I want to talk about today is a few limiting beliefs that a lot of people seem to have and I’ve noticed in other people that stop them from taking the kind of action they need to take so they can get the results that they want.
And as always, if you want to subscribe, subscribe or if you don’t, you don’t. I do weekly videos on how to make more money, invest your money, and how to save more money.
So the first one that I want to go over is nobody in my family is rich. So for a lot of people, they don’t try or don’t think that they could get rich because nobody in their family has ever gotten rich before. There’s no examples in their life of people who have made a lot of money so that could be within their family. It could be within their friendship circles locally. It could be just within the suburb that they live in. People just don’t really make that kind of money. The thing with that is it can really, really affect your sort of boundaries and you just think that may not be possible for you and that getting rich is not something that will ever be accessible to you.
And multiple studies that have shown that as high as 80% of millionaires in the States were actually self-made and first-generation millionaires. It’s actually more common for people that have come from more humble beginnings to become a millionaire than not so that’s sort of in your favour.
Another thing as well is if you’ve ever seen Shark Tank in the States, one of the sharks, Daymond John, who started FUBU and is worth hundreds of millions of dollars, he actually wrote a book called The Power Of Broke and it’s something that you can really use to your advantage. One of the big concepts of the book is that when you’re broke and you’ve got nothing and you’ve got everything against you, people often do their best work and they’re more hungry and they’re more driven and motivated because they’ve felt the pain of not having money. Even in my corporate career and in my business, I’ve always found that to be an advantage.
When you don’t have tonnes of money growing up, it kind of pisses you off over and over and over to the point where you really want to do something about it. If you had grown up in a really, really comfortable family, which has plenty of money and you’ve always got what you wanted whenever you’ve asked for it, it can make you soft and there’s nothing against people like that. They can’t help how they’ve been raised. But if you are someone that doesn’t have those things, depending on your perspective, you can turn that into a benefit and use that sort of energy as motivation to actually go and do great things.
Another thing to understand as well is like previous generations didn’t have access. Maybe even your parents or their parents, they didn’t have access to all this information about investing and personal finance videos like this and many others online. They didn’t have access to that sort of stuff. Even my own parents, they didn’t get access or the concept of investing in ETFs or investing in property. Not many people, not everyone was doing that. People were doing it but very few and only certain people that were in the know were typically doing it. And the truth is if nobody around you has ever gotten rich, typically they’re not doing the kinds of actions that they need to do to get rich.
So whether they’re poor or they don’t have money, that is actually not as connected to you as you may think. It can be a problem if you let it be and if you believe that. But if you kind of separate yourself from that, if you take the right actions and you focus on increasing your income, you focus on saving your money and not spending as much as maybe other people around you are, mathematically it will happen and you will build your wealth bigger and bigger and bigger and you can be the anomaly financially within your family or within your community and be sure to use this as an advantage.
I always felt like I could run off the smell of an oily rag. I was always happy to do extra hours. I didn’t care what kind of crap jobs. I didn’t care cleaning toilets or whatever it was because it doesn’t matter. If you pay me enough, I’ll do anything. I think that’s a massive advantage. You’re not too precious and you also probably appreciate a dollar and you appreciate having work more than other people.
The second misconception is that investing is hard and difficult and maybe inaccessible to you. So while investing is not necessarily easy and it’s not necessarily something you can just master overnight, these days it’s easier than ever to be an investor and to get involved in investing.
So a great example is ETFs. You can research to your heart’s content online, which is something that you couldn’t do probably 10, 15 years ago easily, but no matter what country you’re in or where you’re living, you can literally research these and start making investments for as low as a hundred bucks, couple hundred bucks. The barrier to entry is quite low. You can get started. You can get your money working for you and you can understand these financial products a lot easier than ever before.
Another thing people fail to consider as well is that you don’t need to be an expert to make money investing. You do need to have some level of knowledge and obviously having a high level of knowledge would be very beneficial but it’s not so black and white where it’s either you know stuff about investing or you don’t. With a small amount of knowledge, you can make a small amount of money and with a medium amount of knowledge, you could probably make a medium amount of money.
This is really, really important because some people think that oh, I don’t know everything so I just don’t start. And the reality is that even for myself, I was investing in a number of things and I started off with conservative stuff and basic stuff but it meant that I could get into the market and I could start getting returns on my money and get my money working for me.
The third one is people think that they need to start a business to get rich. Now business is a great vehicle to build wealth and there’s lots of tax advantages and you can control your income a lot easier and it’s a lot more on merit rather than maybe office politics. However, you can make a lot of money in a job and you might make that money with a lot more certainty and a lot less stress because being a business owner is not a walk in the park either.
And realistically, over time, in most industries, if you keep chipping away at it, you will get pay rises and you’ll get paid more. And if you are in a job, if you can just focus on continuing to increase your income and keeping your expenses as low as possible and you can invest the difference and do that over and over and over, over number of years, you will end up wealthy as well and you’ve done it without the stress and uncertainty that comes with running a business and having all that responsibility.
Don’t feel pressured into starting a business. It’s something that I chose to do but I definitely think that a lot of people shouldn’t be starting businesses and there’s a lot of people that have businesses that I personally don’t think should be in business because they can’t handle the uncertainty and the unpredictability.
It is hard at times to run a business. It’s not for everybody and for some people, they would be much better off and much less stressed being in a job and spending the weekend just totally switched off and bliss and it sounds fantastic and that might be their better option for them and if they get good at their job, they can usually get paid well in most industries.
So number four is blaming everything and everyone on why you are not getting rich. So there’s a lot of people that literally won’t get rich because they’re always pointing to somebody else. They’re always like oh, the government does this or the laws are like that or the inequality’s like this or the discrimination is like that. And while I’m not minimising those things and they are real things that have a real impact on your ability to build wealth, we need to build wealth in spite of those things.
So it’s really, really important that we focus on our locus of control. There are things that we can control: our effort, our investing ourselves, improving our skills, taking calculated risks. All these things that we can control and then there’s lots of things that we can’t control. And some of these things, hopefully they’ll be addressed over time, but a lot of these things don’t get fixed in the short term. Major systemic issues in society. That’s not getting fixed this week but what you can do this week is you can focus on your own effort. What skills have I learned? What people have I reached out to? What marketing have if I done to maybe bring in some new customers? Have I met with a recruiter that could maybe get me a new, higher paying job within your industry?
This is probably one of the most common ones I see in other people and when I hear them always blaming everything, they’re real factors. But so what? At the end of the day, you have to do something and for me, I would rather be proactive. There’s lots of times where I felt I should have got the role based on merit and results and I just didn’t get it or there was other roles where I was probably too young for that role and I felt like I could do the role and I still think I could have done the role but there was someone that looked a bit older and probably carried themselves more like a manager than I did at that time. But it is what it is and you need to focus on what you can control and not worry about … Anyone that keeps blaming, if you blame other people, you are deferring responsibility and you’re taking your own power away in terms of building, achieving your own goals.
But I think a really important thing to remember is that there’s nobody stopping you doing what you need to do. You know? Regardless of what background you come from, what systemic issues there are, nobody is stopping you from opening a brokerage account and investing in some ETFs and putting a few hundred dollars in and then a few hundred more than next month, potentially, and keep adding to that and adding to that.
The bigger that get gets, the more power that you have, the more flexibility and freedom that you have. Same for starting a business. If you’re finding a nine to five that you feel like it’s very, very hard for you to move up or there’s limitations around that, then look at starting a business. Not everybody should be starting a business but if you’re finding that in corporate you can’t get what you need to get done, then consider starting a business.
There’s no limit on what you can do with a business as well. There’s no people to please. You have to look after your customers and that sort of stuff but there’s nobody … There’s lots of E-commerce stores that nobody knows who actually runs them so there’s no discrimination or anything like that. You can just build your business, deliver something of value to people, and it’s open [inaudible] and you can make as much money as you want, as long as you provide value to the customer.
Number five is people that think that they can’t get rich because of the industry or the career path that they’ve chosen. So this is a really, really common one that I see and a lot of people may be in industries that just simply don’t pay that well and it’s a really, really interesting conversation because people always talk about should I do stuff that I love or should I do stuff that I can get paid well for even if I don’t like it?
There is potential for both and there are industries where you can get that overlap. However, I really believe that personal finance is … A lot of personal finance is making hard decisions and you need to make a decision about if you’re in a low-paying industry and there’s low potential for getting paid more later. Some industries get paid lower at the start but it gets better later. Then you really do need to make a decision about … You’ve only got a handful of options and you basically need to pick one based on what you really want to do.
So it’s either stay in the low-paying job and maybe have a secondary job to supplement that income, having some sort of side hustle or side business to supplement that income. You either move to a different industry that could pay better or you stay within that industry and you become a business owner within that industry. That will probably give you more options to get paid better within the industry because you’re taking on a bit more risk and responsibility.
But either way you need to understand that if you are in a low-paying job, some people just use that as a copout to not build their wealth and sure. Being paid low would make it harder. For sure. I’m not arguing that. However, a lot of people just go oh, I’m in a low-paying industry. I do this for a living so I’m never going to get rich and it’s just rubbish.
Anyone that agrees with you is literally lying to you. With your money that comes in, if you’re in a low-paying situation now, look at what your options are and start being open-minded. If your industry does not pay well, then you need to make some decisions around how are you going to make some money. How are you going to be strict with your expenses? How are you going to be investing that money? You may need to be more diligent than other people because you have less inflows coming in. So just something to think about.
It’s a big misconception that people go oh, I’m in a low-paying job. I’ll never get rich and if you believe that, then you’re right but there are definitely options for you and you may just need to get creative about how you approach it.
So I hope you found that useful, just a few misconceptions that I feel like I hear people say or I feel like people use as excuses or limitations about why they can’t get to where they need to get to. The truth is, at the end of the day, that you can get to any of these objectives that you want but you may need to be flexible about how you get there.
You may need to make some hard decisions and you may need to reevaluate some of your existing beliefs because if your beliefs are out of whack and your thoughts are out of whack, you’re going to take different types of action to other people and you’re going to get lower results and that’s going to reinforce your belief.
So be extra conscious of that and I think you’ll get much better results if you are a bit more open-minded with that approach. And if you like the video, please give a like. It helps it push out to more people. But with that said, thanks so much watching. I’ll see you on the next video. Cheers.