Secrets of the Millionaire Mind

Wealth File #15
Rich people have their money work hard for them. 
Poor people work hard for their money.
If you’re like most people, you grew up being programmed 
that you “have to work hard for money.” Chances are good, 
however, that you didn’t grow up with the conditioning that it 
was just as important to make your money “work hard for 
you.”
No question, working hard is important, but working hard 
alone will never make you rich. How do we know that? Take a 
look in the real world. There are millions—no, make that 
billions—of people who slave away, working their tails off all 
day and even all night long. Are they all rich? No! Are most of 
them rich? No! Are a lot of them rich? No! Most of them are 
broke or close to it. On the other hand, whom do you see 
lounging around the country clubs of the world? Who spends 
their afternoons playing golf, tennis, or sailing? Who spends 
their days shopping and their weeks vacationing? I’ll give you 
three guesses and the first two don’t count. 

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Rich people, that’s who! So let’s get this straight: the idea that 
you have to work hard to get rich is bogus!
The old Protestant work ethic states “a dollar’s work for a 
dollar’s pay.” There’s nothing wrong with that adage except 
that they forgot to tell us what to do with that “dollar’s pay.” 
Knowing what to do with that dollar is where you move from 
hard work to smart work.
Rich people can spend their days playing and relaxing be-
cause they work smart. They understand and use leverage. 
They employ other people to work for them and their money 
to work for them.
Yes, in my experience, you do have to work hard for your 
money. For rich people, however, this is a temporary situation. 
For poor people, it’s permanent. Rich people understand that 
“you” have to work hard until your “money” works hard 
enough to take your place. They understand that the more your 
money works, the less you will have to work.  
Remember, money is energy. Most people put work energy 
in and get money energy out. People who achieve financial 
freedom have learned how to substitute their investment of 
work energy with other forms of energy. These forms include 
other people’s work, business systems at work, or investment 
capital at work. Again, first you work hard for money, then 
you let money work hard for you.
When it comes to the money game, most people don’t have 
a clue as to what it takes to win. What’s your goal? When do 
you win the game? Are you shooting for three square meals a 
day, $100,000 a year in income, becoming a millionaire, 
becoming a multimillionaire? At the Millionaire Mind Intensive 
Seminar, the goal of the money game we teach is to “never 
have to work again... unless you choose 

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The Wealth Files - 157
to,” and that if you work, you work “by choice, not by neces-
sity.”
In other words, the goal is to become “financially free” as 
quickly as possible. My definition of financial freedom is 
simple: it is the ability to live the lifestyle you desire without having to 
work or rely on anyone else for money.  
Notice there is a good chance that your desired lifestyle is 
going to cost money. Therefore, to be “free,” you will need to 
earn money without working. We refer to income without 
work as passive income. To win the money game, the goal is 
to earn enough passive income to pay for your desired lifestyle. 
In short, you become financially free when your passive 
income exceeds your expenses.
I have identified two primary sources of passive income. 
The first is “money working for you.” This includes invest-
ment earnings from financial instruments such as stocks, 
bonds, T-bills, money markets, mutual funds, as well as 
owning mortgages or other assets that appreciate in value and 
can be liquidated for cash.
The second major source of passive income is “business 
working for you.” This entails generating ongoing income 
from businesses where you do not need to be personally 
involved for that business to operate and yield an income. 
Examples include rental real estate; royalties from books, 
music, or software; licensing your ideas; becoming a fran-
chisor; owning storage units; owning vending or other types of 
coin-operated machines; and network marketing, to name just 
a few. It also includes setting up any business under the sun or 
moon that is systematized to work without you. Again, it’s a 
matter of energy. The idea is that the business is working and 
producing value for people, instead of you. 

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Network marketing, for example, is an amazing concept. 
First, it doesn’t usually require you to put up a lot of up-front 
capital. Second, once you’ve done the initial work, it allows 
you to enjoy ongoing residual income (another form of 
income without you working), year after year after year. Try 
creating that from a regular nine-to-five job!
I can’t overemphasize the importance of creating passive 
income structures. It’s simple. Without passive income you can 
never be free. But, and it’s a big but, did you know that most 
people have a tough time creating passive income? There are 
three reasons. First, conditioning. Most of us were actually 
programmed not to earn passive income. When you were 
somewhere between thirteen and sixteen years old and you 
needed money, what did your parents tell you? Did they say, 
“Well, go out there and earn some passive income?” Doubtful! 
Most of us heard, “Go to work,” “Go get a job,” or something 
to that effect. We were taught to “work” for money, making 
passive income abnormal for most of us.
Second, most of us were never taught how to earn passive 
income.
In my school, Passive Income 101 was another subject that 
was never offered. This time I got to take woodworking and 
metalworking (notice both still entailed “working”) and make 
the perfect candleholder for my mom. Since we didn’t learn 
about creating passive income structures in school, we learned 
it elsewhere, right? Doubtful. The end result is that most of us 
don’t know much about it, and therefore don’t do much about 
it.
Finally, since we were never exposed to or taught about 
passive income and investing, we have never given it much 
attention. We have largely based our career and business 
choices on generating working income. If you understood 

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The Wealth Files - 159
from an early age that a primary financial goal was to create 
passive income, wouldn’t you reconsider some of those career 
choices?
I’m always recommending to folks choosing or changing 
their business or career to find a direction where generating 
streams of passive income is natural and relatively easy. This is 
especially important today because so many people work in 
service businesses where they have to be there personally to 
make money. There’s nothing wrong with being in a personal 
service business, other than that unless you get on your 
investment horse pretty soon and do exceptionally well, you’ll 
be trapped into working forever.
By choosing business opportunities that immediately or 
eventually produce passive income, you’ll have the best of 
both worlds—working income now and passive income later. 
Refer back a few paragraphs to review some of the passive 
business income options we discussed.
Unfortunately, almost everyone has a money blueprint that 
is set for earning working income and against earning passive 
income. This attitude will be radically changed after you attend 
the Millionaire Mind Intensive Seminar, where using 
experiential techniques, we change your money blueprint so 
that earning a massive passive income is normal and natural 
for you.
Rich people think long-term. They balance their spending 
on enjoyment today with investing for freedom tomorrow. 
Poor people think short-term. They run their lives based on 
immediate gratification. Poor people use the excuse “How can 
I think about tomorrow when I can barely survive today?” The 
problem is that, eventually, tomorrow will become today; if 
you haven’t taken care of today’s problem, you’ll be saying the 
same thing again tomorrow too.

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To increase your wealth, you either have to earn more or 
live on less. I don’t see anyone putting a gun to your head 
telling you the house you have to live in, the kind of car you 
have to drive, the clothes you have to wear, or the food you 
have to eat. You have the power to make choices. It’s a matter 
of priorities. Poor people choose now, rich people choose