There is a formula to wealth. I believe that while true in some regards, the saying “it takes money to make money,” is a bit, lazy. Instead, I find wealth creation is similar to alchemy.
Alchemists could not create gold out of thin air but supposedly, alchemy done right can turn silver into gold, or copper into gold. The moral of this here story, you need to start with something. There are three legs to the tripod of leveraging wealth, and we’re going to dissect them.
In <10 mins we’re going to dive into…
- How is wealth a tool we can use for more upside?
- Turning the ‘owned’ to ‘owners’…the Get Rich tripod
- 3 steps to using leverage in wealth creation
But first – why do you want massive wealth?
There are many answers and here is one I think makes sense. I believe the pursuit of money is noble. Truly in itself noble, when applied correctly.
After all, money is simply a tool.
While that is another cliche it rings true. When we pursue money what we are really pursuing are tools. Tools are important. They are what have allowed humankind to progress from meandering apes to civilization builders. Money is simply one of the most powerful tools to date.
And sadly, it is a tool that is slipping out of our fingers as a society and into the hands of the few. Now before you say it is going into the hands of the billionaires (also true) my belief is that the government that is trying to “protect” us, is in fact smothering us.
Packy from Not Boring said it so well,
“Inequality has gotten completely out of control. We are using tools designed for a linear age in an exponential one. Even tripling wages won’t make a dent in the gap. To win votes, politicians ignore the facts and opt to turn labor against capital, instead of trying to make everyone capital. So here’s my slogan: American Owned. (Or Make Americans Owners or something, we’re working on it.) We need to make America the place where everyone is an owner, and everyone acts like an owner. We need to make it the place where hard work and risk-taking are applauded and rewarded. The point is this: we need to stop focusing so much time worrying about protecting peoples’ downsides and start spending more time working on getting more people more upside.”
Here is my attempt to start putting some of the power back into the hands of the people, into your grimy little mitts, and into mine.
However…
I’d like you to listen to something before we go down the rabbit hole of wealth chasing…
I was inspired to write this by Charles Bukowski one of my favorite writers from his poem So You Want to Be A Writer… I’ve altered it: So You Want to Be Rich? It goes like this…
Don’t be like so many rich.
Don’t be like so many thousands who call themselves builders only to build zeros.
Don’t be dull, boring, and pretentious.
Don’t be consumed with self-love and adornment.
The internet is scattered with the skeletons of those who drove fast cars and were fastly forgotten.
We’ve fallen asleep to your kind.
So if you are doing it for all the fast things, if you are doing it to fill that empty part of you, if you are doing it out of envy or spite, just don’t do it.
BUT if you can’t sleep for the want of the world you hope to build.
If you would rather die than stop creating.
If your mind is consumed with that irrational compulsion to labor.
Then do it. It was always inside you.
It was always waiting for you.
And there is no one else to do it, just you.
Opening the Path to Ownership
I’m playing around with calling this the GET RICH TRIPOD… A perfect name for a late-night infomercial or bargain-basement self-help book. But it’s a bit catchy, it makes me wonder, “Hmm I could use a little monetary boost, what’s she gonna talk about?”
And in a world where attention is trading at a higher value than dollars, that’s intriguing to me. Let me break down for you this used car salesman-sounding slogan that in actuality is a tool worth pondering for all those who want to be the owners, not the owned.
The Greek said it best.
“Give me a lever long enough and a fulcrum on which to place it and I can move the world,” – Archimedes.
This is the single best sentence I can imagine for a definition of the power of leverage. A man alone cannot lift a boulder but a man with a lever just might be able. The tripod is a similar story, a man only can only stand as tall as the earnings he has or the money in his pocket, but add a tripod, and he can peer over buildings.
There are 3 legs…Money, expertise, time.
When I begin to talk about the path to ownership my comments and DM’s get littered with thoughts like this:
- “Wish I could buy a business, must be nice to have Daddy’s money.”
- “I’d do this if I was rich.”
- “How about something for us poor.”
Listen, I get it. I remember when I’d manically check my bank account about buying lunch to make sure I wasn’t getting charged overdraft fees I couldn’t afford. It is terrifying to feel that. The problem is when people (including me) say things like the above they’re only thinking about 1 leg of the wealth tripod → Money. The good news is if you don’t have it, you may not need it.
Let’s overlay this all on one general foundational idea. The best way to create more money is to have money and use that money to invest in things that bring more money to you. That is how generational wealth is created and the idea of passive income was born. BUT let us say that you were not birthed with a golden spoon (makes two of us). What do you do in the context of let’s say buying a business, doing a deal, investing in something, or raising a fund? These are all the fastest paths to wealth in my opinion.
So follow this path, or choose your own adventure…
IF YOU HAVE MONEY: TRIPOD LEG
IF you have money then that’s the leg that you stand on. You use your money to get more money by buying investments, businesses, etc. This is the highest and best use leg of the tripod. It requires none of your time or brainpower, it’s a third-party resource. So whenever possible I am a passive investor in businesses, deals, and investments. Then my money does my work for me.
The only leg of the tripod higher is using OTHER PEOPLE’S money. But that’s a story for another day. So when you are given an opportunity ask yourself this question: Can I make my money do the work for me? If the answer is yes, this is the leg you stand on. If the answer is no, move along.
IF YOU HAVE EXPERTISE OR EXPERIENCE: TRIPOD LEG
If you don’t have any money… you try expertise. This means I know a lot about a specific industry or business. If I am an accountant and I have an opportunity to invest in a business I may say, can I use my accounting experience to get access to this deal? I’ll trade you my insights for your potential investment return. This is where you start to sit on advisory boards, or do contract work for sweat equity.
I was chatting with Alex Leiberman of the Morning Brew and he gave money to a startup he liked. Smart. But even smarter I told him would be to say, “Hey your valuation is x, I think with my money, and using my name and expertise in email list building you could be worth X more. So why don’t you give me extra equity or warrants for my expertise?”
This is the second most high leverage leg of the tripod because expertise can be a few questions, connections, contacts, ideas, and not a large time component. So if money won’t work for you, and expertise won’t work for you, then you go to the last leg of the tripod.
IF YOU HAVE NEITHER THEN YOU USE TIME: TRIPOD LEG
Your time. Everyone has time, now whether you spend it wisely or not is another question. Here is where the magic happens for those without money. You SEVERELY underestimate how much those with money and expertise don’t want to spend their time. You can lend it to them.
You want to own a business but you have no money? Go find a business, help to close it, and have someone else fund it.
You want to invest in a startup but you have no money? Go raise from your friends and family or wealthy people you know, put together an SPV and take a cut of the management fee and carry.
You want to buy real estate but don’t know how and have no money? Go partner with someone who knows how, work for them for free on the trade-off that in their next deal you get access to it and then raise capital and go back to the above point.
Money is not the only answer.
You just don’t know the two other legs of the tripod. Don’t make excuses, just choose a different leg. If I was a smarter young Codie I would have leaned on the two other legs of the tripod 10 years ago. But fear and that little voice in my head stopped me. I thought I couldn’t play with the big dogs until I had their bank accounts. That my friends is what keeps us as owned and not owners.
A note of warning: While we value money, be careful what you chase.
I wrote this to myself as a reminder, that the things I am pursuing so relentlessly, well they will always exist. Be careful lest we lose our lives in the chase.
A short story: “I Made It…”
I F*cking Made It!
It? What is it, you ask?
Well, that is a big question. The it, one little word with such a slippery meaning. Like a fish its scales elusively out of sight. How can you catch it if you don’t know what you’re fishing for?
There’s a saying so well used it’s like an overworn shoe, life is a journey, not a destination. Maybe it’s a journey because we left the address out entirely? Hard to get a going if you don’t know to where. We’re just forever wandering around in search of… It.
Whether it’s the pursuit of purpose, love, lust, success, happiness, freedom from pain. The truth is, we don’t really know what we want. Do we? If we did the saying would be life is a destination… get here already.
Oof, she woke with a start visualizing a neon sign with the letters… get here already. She walked to splash water on a still waking face. Her nose wrinkled in annoyance at the self-help book turned dream. Sheep would do the trick just fine, thank you.
Looking in the mirror she wasn’t too sleepy to see the lines time had left behind. Few more friends every year here aren’t there? The wrinkles aren’t the only hitchhikers, she’s got a visual map of accolades won along the way. A title here, a lover there, another future line in her obituary.
Her face had known many “it’s.” She’d chased ’em down like dogs, with every achievement ticking a little checkmark in a mental book no one else ever saw.
The problem with catching them is, there’s always another bigger, hairier, meaner one just ahead. As soon as you fell the last, the next one is standing on the horizon. Its silhouette aglow, beckoning to pretty please, follow me, even further down the unknown road.
I’ll see you on the other side of… it.
Choose your roads and your legs carefully,
Codie
