Training Mindsets: A Millionaire Mindset

Money is simply a medium we use to give something meaningful value, so we can conveniently exchange one thing for another – money for a product or service. In a free market economic system, which a large chunk of the world operates in, you create wealth or earn money by serving people. That is the core belief of a millionaire mindset. The more people you serve, the more money comes to you. When money becomes the objective versus serving people evil will soon be knocking at your door. Serving people involves providing something that will improve the quality of their life. They will be more than willing to give up their money for something that will serve their needs, wants, or desires.

Is there a moral element to the service you provide? People who cater to the so-called vices can make a great deal of money. There of course are lots of moral arguments in a free society as to the ethics of serving people in these areas: illicit drugs, sex, and gambling. For most of American history these areas were relegated to the back alleys and were criminal offenses. Prostitution, opium houses, the back-room bookies and gambling houses were all businesses that catered to these specific vices and have arguably hurt society tremendously when these vices became mainstream.

Alcohol and tobacco are two major industries that have legally catered to vices. My point here is not to argue where society should draw the line between what is acceptable and not, but it is to point out that you need to decide whether a legal business is still a moral business. For example, prostitution is legal in some counties in Nevada, but is it moral and ethical? A mindset of a champion includes a millionaire mindset built on ethical service. Who defines ethical? Both society and the individual. An individual may decide something is unethical even if it is legal while someone else may decide it is not unethical even if it is illegal.

Once we realize that money follows the level of service you provide we can begin to think about personal economics and the two sides of the equation everyone must address. Income and Expenses. Understanding that our income will be in large part influenced by first our millionaire mindset, our beliefs about money, business, and wealth, and secondly by how well we serve, one of the first things to analyze is what are your beliefs about money. The second is to analyze who you are serving.

To discover your beliefs about money it will probably be helpful to do a question focus brainstorming session. What this involves is brainstorming a list of questions (minimum of 10) around the topic my beliefs about money. Once you have your list of questions (one of which should be what are my beliefs about money) you need to narrow your list of questions to the four or five that when you answer them will help identify and analyze supportive and non-supportive beliefs in this area.

It can be helpful to do the brainstorming of the questions with someone else. When you are trying to answer the question, what are my beliefs, it will be beneficial to walk away from the list when you think you have maxed out your list and come back to it in five minutes. You will probably be able to list some more questions. Doing that a third time will probably max out your list.

After you have gone through this exercise you need to identify the beliefs that are not supportive of developing a millionaire mindset and begin work on changing them. We have gone over the tools for building a millionaire mindset or any mindset in other sections of this web site.

The clear majority of us work for someone else in either the public or private sector. It seems that more and more people – by some estimates up to 20% of the work force – rely on the government for their pay check. Without getting into a political discussion here, it is important to note that the greater that percentage the greater the financial burden is on the private sector.

The public sector does not produce much of anything through voluntary exchange. Virtually all – public transportation, USPS would be two counter examples – public entities' revenue comes from people who are being required to turn over their money for some service. Granted, many would voluntarily turn their money over for some of those services, but many of the “services” they would never give their money for them voluntarily. How large that percentage can become before reaching serious societal and financial issues is debatable. Whether you work in the public or private sector you are still serving someone. Service is the core of a millionaire mindset.

In the private sector our service is two directional. We are serving our employer while helping them serve their customer or if you are a business person your are serving your employees and your customers. A millionaire mindset focuses on learning how to solve problems. If we can show how our service to our employer - solving their greatest problems - is helping them better serve more customers our value will increase, which is typically why our salaries go up over time because over time we have gained experience and specific, specialized knowledge or skills making us more valuable. On top of that, we generally are given more responsibilities.

In a small business, profit margins are often very small so regular raises are far from guaranteed, but the principle is the same. If you can help that small business owner serve more customers well you will be rewarded financially. If you run a large company – a CEO – you serve customers, employees and the stockholders. I will tell you if a CEOs first loyalty is to stockholders at the expense of customers, the customers will abandon the company and then the stockholders will abandon the CEO. Your millionaire mindset is about building this attitude of service in multiple directions.

The public sector doesn’t typically work the same way. The public sector is not serving customers who are typically voluntarily handing over their money for the service the government is providing. Union contracts often factor in automatic cost of living increases and provide tremendous employment protection from being fired from your position. Retirement pensions are notoriously generous; I know, I am the beneficiary of such a pension. Your income in the public sector is most generally related to the level of your education and your years on the job and have nothing to do with profitability because that is not a factor in the public sector or with how well you serve the clients you are in charge of serving. 

If you want to increase the income side of the ledger you either need to make yourself more valuable to your employer, become your own employer, or find other income streams. Part of your millionaire mindset is the knowledge and belief is your value comes from serving. If your income is related to how well you help your employer improve their profitability by servicing clients and you want to increase your income, you first and foremost must do your job well and secondly you need to use your mind to help solve whatever problem the business may be facing, which negatively impacts its profitability. Add value to the business and you add income to your wallet. Improve your education, skills, and ability to solve problems and you become more valuable. This is unique to the private sector and is why a millionaire mindset in the private sector has more influence on advancement.

A millionaire mindset in the public sector has less influence on advancement than it does in the private sector, which is not the same as saying it is not as important in the public sector as it is in the private sector. Your millionaire mindset is also about understanding the nature of income and the importance of your mindset on that side of the ledger. Think about the much-maligned public sector entity bureaus of motor vehicles from state to state. Who hasn’t been frustrated with long waits in lines?

Generally, most of us have no problems with the employees. In this setting, if an employee came up with a better way of servicing people would they be rewarded? Would a manager be rewarded? The answer is undoubtedly no. For example, why don’t these departments offer online appointment scheduling? Surely, they can easily gather data on the typical visit for renewing a license, getting a new license, registering a car and so on. It wouldn’t be too hard to build an on-line scheduling system and still leave people available for walk-in visits. Why doesn’t this happen? There is no financial incentive. Their customers must deal with the agency and the only incentive to change things for the better is a person in a position of power who genuinely cares about the clients they are servicing - has a millionaire mindset - and mandates a change. That does not seem to be the norm in government bureaucracies.