LESSONS ON WEALTH
Principle I Applied After Selling My Company For $3M
I’m invited to go out for lunch by one of the leading managers of a large retail firm we were working with. His favourite place to eat is a bit far.
I say I don’t have a car and that I came here by train, so he offers me to drive with him. We go to the parking garage. As he presses the car key, I see an expensive Porsche blinking in the background.
“This is my car. It’s nice, huh? I worked really hard for it. It cost me the savings of five years” — he says.
“Yes, it’s nice” — I reply, sounding almost autistic.
“I bet you can’t afford it working for that small consultancy firm. I’m sorry haha”
“I don’t know if I can afford it. I never went to a dealer to ask for the price”
He looks slightly irritated. We go into the car and he starts driving. We chat a little. Later during the ride, he opens up. In a way that it feels as if he’s almost crying:
“Look… Life’s hard, man. I lost my dad when I was young. No matter what I buy, it won’t bring him back and it makes me so sad and anxious. When I drive this car, it makes me feel important, admired, you know? But it’s so damn empty. I’ve noticed people want to have my car but they don’t want to have me. They use me like a puppet to get the things they want to have from me.”
Most people don’t want to have $1M. They want to spend $1M.
Many people want more money for the wrong reasons: To look important, to hide insecurities and vulnerabilities, to get shallow attention. And when they encounter a small problem or a “no”, that’s where you see their true character (or lack of it).
They scream, they make a big drama, they threaten to sue you for hurting their feelings. Ignore them. If everyone ignored them and didn’t accept any hush money from them, the world would be a much better place. So let’s start with you, reader. Go ahead and ignore them.
True wealth allows you to not to get affected by these individuals, as you might lose your job as a waiter but have two years of savings, allowing you to reorient yourself.
When I was employed and full of credits and a mortgage, I could not “afford” to quit. My boss knew it and used this to his advantage. Want to have your phone off during the weekend, even if we have an urgent issue with one of the clients? Okay. But just so you know, I have these Albanian IT workers who are ready to go on-call for much cheaper.
All that drama and anxiety did not disappear when I my coaching business became lucrative. It disappeared when I moved to a cheaper apartment and did not take any more credits.
It was because of the lack of this anxiety that I was able to make a lot of money from the coaching business, NOT the other way around.
I know it’s not easy, but it pays off
I know it’s hard when you’re struggling — when it was literally part of your life. Coming from a trucker father who was half of the time unemployed and a mother who said women shouldn’t work, I know what it is to be scared of paying $10 for a personal finance book (I had many nightmares with lack of money as a child).
But start seeing this principle as a law of nature. It will not bend to your desires. It’s as consistent as gravity on Earth:
“Money is a prostitute and will go to whomever seduces it most. True wealth, however, is wise and patient. And it will live in the stable house of those who are at peace with themselves.”
You’re in a hard situation and you’re struggling? Then yes, try and make a quick buck and grow from there. But once the basic needs are covered, seek true wealth. Not quick riches.
What did I do with the $3M, then? I didn’t use them to buy a nice house, cars, or anything like that. I did not bother about getting a 400% return buying Solana, with all the risks that would bring.
I just put the money in a savings account at a stable interest rate and it’s paying me and my wife dividends that are enough for us to live a humble, quiet and most importantly, free life.
Money should change your inner life, not your outer life
We travel, yes. But we never spend more than what we allow ourselves to spend with the dividends.
I still work, yes. But I don’t go on a gold rush to find any customers. They come to me because they want to work with me. And I have no pity filtering out those who will not make great customers. I also have no fear of going bankrupt with refunds. I can afford it.
Confidence is vulnerability management, really.
Sick leave? I don’t fret.
Vacation? It’s possible.
Children? Yes! Let them come!
The funny thing is, if I let one of my parents handle the same amount of money, I’ll come back in one month and they’ll have bought a huge villa with a forest paying a ridiculous amount of property taxes per year, going out to luxury restaurants every day and playing poker in Las Vegas.
Why do I know, if I claim above that they had such low-paying or non-paying jobs? Because there were months in my dad’s career as a trucker where he was earning $6K.
And what he did with that extra money was not preparing for 2008 or saving up for a 1-year-sabbatical to learn a higher-paying skill. He used it to buy a new car with loans, when there was nothing wrong with the old car.
Money can be acquired. Wealth never. Wealth can only be learnt.
I hope you liked my breakdown of this lesson on wealth. I find it very important that all of us, entrepreneurs or not, have the right mindset with money. Because doing that and accumulating wealth is what will bring true freedom from the shackles of shallow desire.
