“Pay and profit tell you that you are supplying a need and filling other people’s wants. They are not the motivation for your work, they are the validation of your work.” ~Rabbi Daniel Lapin
Money isn’t greedy. Money isn’t elusive. Money isn’t fair or unfair. Money isn’t status. Money isn’t a bad thing!
Money is what we make it.
Money is a piece of paper or chunk of metal, and it’s our mindset that determines our relationship with it. Wealth and poor are both mindsets!
Learn your money mindset, and discover greater wealth:
Key Takeaways:
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Sign a poor mindset is owning you [3:20]
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An origin of our “poor mindset” [4:42]
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Why money isn’t a slice of a pie…[5:19]
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Other telling signs of a poor mindset [9:09]
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What your life looks like when you have a wealth mindset [11:16]
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How I grew out of a poor mindset [14:26]
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What I learned from Paul about a wealth mindset [17:45]
Resources:
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Chris LoCurto: Do you have a wealth mindset or a poor mindset that is coming up next?
Welcome to the Chris LoCurto show where we discuss leadership and life and discover that business is what you do, not who you are.
Welcome to the show folks. Today’s quote is from our great friend, rabbi Daniel Lapin. “Pay and profit tell you that you are supplying a need and filling other people’s wants. They are not the motivation for your work. They are the validation of your work.” Thank you so much, Rabbi Lapin for that. Today folks we’re talking about mindsets. Wealth mindsets, poor mindsets. The thing you need to know is is that money isn’t greedy. Money isn’t elusive. Money isn’t fair or unfair. Money isn’t status. Money isn’t a bad thing. Money is what we make it. We get hung up on that last one sometimes, especially if you grew up in maybe a religious background that told you that having money was a bad thing. Having money is not a bad thing. That’s not the big issue. Money is a piece of paper. It’s a chunk of metal.
It’s our mindset that determines our relationship with it. Wealth and poor are both mindsets, so we’re going to talk about that today, but before we get to that, let’s talk about what’s standing in the way of your business goals. Today’s episode is brought to you by the Next Level Leadership LIVE Event. Maybe you sprint through your days exhausted, balancing the workload of 10 people. Maybe you’re always putting out fires rather than having time to strategize, maybe your revenue expectations just seem out of reach. Get the tools to solve these frustrations and lead your team to success in 2019 at the Next Level Leadership LIVE event. In three days. Yes, three days. You can get the tools to accomplish your goals, to create a culture of champions, to control your time and to change the way that you do business. Why are those all so incredibly important?
Because when you get those things down, you can have transformations like this. Here’s just four different transformations from clients that we have received that have been to the live event. 8,169% net profit increase in one year, gained 30 hours a week back, 46 percent gross profit increase in one year, 25 percent team productivity increase in eight months. So go to Chris LoCurto.com/events and get your tail to this event to get the results you want in your leadership and business. All right, today we are talking about two different mindsets around money, poor and wealth. And I can tell you I have had both a poor mindset growing up and a wealth mindset later on in life.
Now, let’s talk about the poor mindset. When we talk about this, what we mean is that money owns you whether you have it or not. You don’t have to have money to have a poor mindset that sounds obvious, but you also could have a lot of money and have a poor mindset. You can be stuck in this place where, again, money owns you. Money controls your decisions, it controls your emotions. You’re focused on the next paycheck or stressed about money or hyperfocused on obtaining things. Your lifestyle revolves around money and status. You maybe have emotional purchases that you make. You may be concerned about losing money, not having it, that if it went away, you would be back at a place that you didn’t want to be, so you could have a lot of money and still have a poor mindset. The thing is is that money is your security, and along with that comes a scarcity mindset that there isn’t enough that you can never have enough, that you know this idea that someday if you have this amount of money, then you will be okay and you will not worry about money ever again.
There’s this fear of losing money, items, things, stuff… You know, people in your life. All of that comes down to a great lack of faith. For those of us that are believers, faith should be in God providing our every need. Now, that does not mean you don’t get out there and bust your butt. I have busted my butt since I was 14 years old. It doesn’t mean that you don’t work hard. It means that you trust that your faith is not in your ability to provide. The whole commerce system is God’s commerce. He’s the one who’s created it, so I love what a Rabbi Lapin talks about. So when you have a poor mindset, you believe that when it comes to money, money is like a pie, and if somebody has a really big slice, then that means that there is considerably less for you.
Everybody else is suffering. Everybody else is struggling because somebody has a bigger slice of pie. Guys, that’s not truth. That’s not the way that money works. In fact, as Rabbi Lapin points out, money is more like the candle on top of a birthday cake. If mine is lit, crazy enough, I can light yours. I can help you. I can help others. When we get in this poor mindset and think that money is, if somebody has a lot, then that means that I’m going to have a little. Then you don’t understand how commerce works. You don’t understand how you can actually impact other people with what you have or by not having going in and making things happen. So if you’re rich, you’ve taken money away from me. That’s the belief. That’s the poor mindset. Along with that comes entitlement. Well, I deserve…because I’m breathing life
I deserve somebody to take care of me. Somebody should have to pay for me. The government should have to pay for me. Folks, if you have not learned this by now, the government doesn’t actually own any money. They don’t have money. You have money, they take it from you and then use it. So this concept that the government is supposed to take care of people and people don’t have to work in the government is just going to provide. Guess what? That is a crap concept. The only thing that’s happening is the people that are paying taxes are paying for stupid programs that we shouldn’t be paying for a lot of junk that we shouldn’t be spending money on and we’re also paying for the people that choose not to work. Now, that is not to say anything about those who cannot take care of themselves.
It’s to say about those who feel entitled because they have a poor mindset. When you have a poor mindset, you believe that you are owed something. You believe that somebody is supposed to take care of you. A poor mindset also believes that it’s all about fairness. Well, if you have $5, I should have $5. Doesn’t matter that you worked three times as hard as I have,. I should still have the same amount. I can tell you I have not seen a 40 hour work week since I was 20. I don’t know what it’s like to just work a 40 hour work week. Why? Because I believe that God has called me to do the things that I do and I’m busting my butt and it doesn’t mean that I sacrifice things that shouldn’t be sacrificed in the name of working. I work hard, but I also do it well so I’m able to take care of my work and I’m also able to take care of the responsibilities that I have in my life.
But an amazing thing is is that all my life, I’ve been working hard and watching people who choose not to work hard, who feel they deserve the same exact thing that I have. So if I choose to work 60 hours in a week and they choose to work 30, they expect to have the same results. They expect that they should get paid the same. They expect that they should have the same house or cars or be out of debt because why? They worked 30 hours. It’s not about fairness. If you want to have go and get, go and bust it and go and work for it. A poor mindset says it doesn’t matter how many hours you work. I can do whatever I want and limit myself, but I should have the same thing that you have. Because of a poor mindset. what you tend to see is people living paycheck to paycheck when you don’t have to.
So in other words, what comes in, goes right back out again, and in most Americans lives, this is most of Americans…What comes in, more than that actually goes out. Yes, most Americans actually spend more than they make. That is a poor mindset. You will also see what the poor mindset: hoarding. People will hoard stuff because of that scarcity, that fear, again, that lack of faith, that fear of loss. There was a study that was done and this isn’t about hoarding, this is just about, it will point to another poor mindset. There’s a study that’s been done every year with millionaires, deca millionaires around central park. Some of the questions that they ask are, what’s the minimum amount that you can live on? You know, what would happen if you lost money? What would happen if you only had so much? And they even have some folks who claim to be Christians… Deca millionaires living around central park.
It’s not for me to judge their salvation, but there’s an interesting response from the Christians, the Christians on average, that are deca millionaires say that they could not make it on less than drum roll please, $25,000,000. These are people that have incredible amounts of money and have a poor mindset. How is that even possible? Because that’s what happens when money owns you. These are people who are finding their happiness and their value in money. That’s what a poor mindset is. What does a wealth mindset look like? A wealth mindset: God owns you, you happen to have money. Money does not dictate your choices. You have a healthy respect for it. It doesn’t represent who you are or your status. There’s something well beyond this world. You don’t even have to be a Christian. Just understand that money isn’t your greatest happiness, so you recognize that there is something greater, greater value in your life.
For those of us that are believers, we have our hope in the next life, right? We have our hope in the transition from this world to the next one. We have our hope in Jesus, but I’m telling you, there are a ton of Christians, tons of Christians with poor mindsets. Wealth mindset is understanding God is the one who owns me. Money is something that I use. It’s a tool. It’s something I use to make things happen, to purchase things, to make a stronger business to, you know, put food on my table, but a wealth mindset says, I completely understand that God is in control of what happens in my life. If he wants to take it all away, he can do it in a heartbeat. If he wants to bless me with more, he can do that in a heartbeat. Take a look at Solomon what was Solomon’s focus?
Solomon went ballistic. God gave him a ton of wisdom, and if you know much about Israel and the land bridge, the trade routes that it was… He was able to tax the daylights out of a ton of people. Make a ton of money, become incredibly wealthy, and then go after a whole lot of, you know, not great things in his life, a lot of personal desires. And towards the end, what he says is, hey, that’s what you want. Go after it. Go ballistic. Go get it. But understand it’s all vanity because that any moment God can reach down with his pinkie and thump your life, and it’s all gone. Now, that’s not exactly, how Solomon said it, but it’s paraphrasing it’s pretty close. At any moment God is the one who blessed Solomon with what he had. God’s also the one who hurt Solomon because of his own personal choices.
God has that ability. Why? Crazy thing about God? He thinks he owns you. I’m just going to go with that He does, because he does, right? So wealth mindset says God owns me. This isn’t my story. A poor mindset says, this is about me. A poor mindset says, the world revolves around me. It’s all about me. It’s about what I do, what I get, what I obtain. A wealth mindset says, I’m here because he chose for me to be here. I’m here because I’m part of a bigger purpose. This is not my story, so I’m not going to treat it as though it is. So some examples of what I meant by a wealth versus poor mindset. I grew up with a poor mindset. There was many years in my life growing up where we were poor, we didn’t have the money and I can tell you it made an impact on us, it made an impact on how we saw things, how we experienced things.
I remember the days as a kid of eating government cheese. Now, if you are old enough like me and you ever experienced that, that was some good cheese. I remember the days that the churches would drop some groceries on our front doorstep even though we did not knock the door of their churches. I remember the days of, believe it or not, there were some days of washing my clothes out on the front porch through an old timey washer, you know, with the little ringer on it and hanging that stuff up because we couldn’t spend money on the electricity. I remember those days. I remember how much it affected me by not having. I was training to hopefully make it into the Olympics and the day that I discovered how much it costs and how much you know, there was no possible way that we were going to be able to afford that.
That was a dream that was dashed. That was something that hurt. I remember the day that my best friend told me how much because he was going to make it onto the team. His family had money. They put him on the team and I remember the day he turned to me, he said, Chris, you do realize this is how much it costs. This was before sponsorships by the way, so you had to actually pay your way to get into the Olympics and I remember how much that hurt and how painful that was. So money has had an effect on me in my life. I grew up poor. I grew up with a poor mindset as well. When I turned 18 years old, I went ballistic. I got a visa, a mastercard, and an American Express. Let me tell you, those are the days that to actually have credit cards, you also had to have money in the bank.
They secured giving you a card by knowing that you actually had money in the bank and I had my American Express card taken away from me in a VHS store. Yes. That’s how long ago this was a video store because I did not realize you were supposed to pay that thing off every single month. Talk about embarrassing. Talk about painful. That’s the mindset I grew up with guys. I busted. I’ve been working since I was 14 years old. I have been saving. I have been putting money away. I got debt free, paid off my house back in the early two thousands. I have not actually had consumer debt since 2001. I’ve not had a mortgage debt since 2005. I’ve not had debt period of any kind since the beginning of 2005 and I have guess what money. However, I want you to know that even with having plenty of money, I still had a poor mindset.
Why? Because after what I experienced growing up, I got to a place of going, boy, I can’t ever lose what I have. I can’t go backwards. I can’t end up back there again where I have to rely on the government to give me cheese. Right? And then God hit me upside the head, he smacked me upside the head with the life of Paul. It was an amazing thing one day as I was going through the Bible and I was reading about Paul and I had been over this a thousand times, right? The part where Paul tells Timothy, Hey, do me a favor. Bring me my cloak and my parchment. He’s in jail. He’s been in jail. He’s been in jail multiple times. He’s had the daylights beat out of him. And he owns what in life? A cloak and some parchment papers. Now, this is where God met me and said, who are you trusting you or me?
That’s when I realized I was trusting me. When you take a look at this life, there’s an amazing thing. Could I live right now with a cloak and some parchment papers? Abso-stinkin-lutely. Believe it or not, I could actually live that way. Do I want to? Oh Gosh, no, of course I don’t want to. The difference between Paul’s mindset and my mindset was Paul knew that if he had nothing, he had Jesus. He had heaven. He had eternity, so having stuff in this life didn’t matter. What mattered was the calling on his life, Paul, with literally nothing except for two things, had a wealth mindset. He had a mindset that what he was getting, what he was gaining, what he was going to have was a bajillion times. That’s a technical measurement, a bajillion times better than any stuff he could have hoarded any stuff he could have purchased, any amount of money he could have earned.
As I saw that and I read that and God met me in that moment to say, who you trust in men? Is it about you or is it about me? That’s when I realized that my mindset was still focused on not losing the stuff that I had, not losing the money that I had. That is what shifted me from a poor mindset to a wealth mindset. From that point going forward, stuff hasn’t ever meant that much to meet. Don’t get me wrong. I love the stuff that I have. I praise God for the stuff that I have. I praise God for how he has provided for me, that he’s allowed me to continue to grow a business that changes lives, but my mindset has gone from I’ve got to make this happen and I can’t lose it too. He owns me. I know that he owns me and he’s the one who provides or takes away, so I’m going to put my trust in him.
His wealth is not money. His wealth, his him, his love, his peace, his desire, his pursuit. For you. Why don’t we take a look at a story, and this is one that a lot of people misunderstand a piece of it, and that’s the rich young ruler. The rich young ruler who came to Jesus had a poor mindset even though he had a lot of wealth. He came to Jesus and said, how do I get into heaven? I’ve done everything and Jesus turns and looks at his heart and seize that money and stuff was his god. That was the thing that ruled him. That’s. That was the stuff that owned him, and Jesus says to him, sell all your stuff. Give it to the poor and follow me. Now, here’s the piece that we miss out on because we don’t have an eastern mindset, a Middle Eastern mindset.
We have this western culture mindset. When he walks away sad, we think that’s just it. He’s done. He’s just pissed off that Jesus said that and doesn’t want to give it up, and so he went back to his life. Well, here’s what you need to know. When it comes to a Middle Eastern mindset, he came to Jesus as a rabbi. Rabbis were given the authority to bind and loose on earth, so when a rabbi, if you go to a rabbi and you ask a rabbi what you’re supposed to do and he tells you, you are now bound to that, why did he go away? Sad, because he most likely did exactly what Jesus said to do, and the problem is is that his heart was not there. That’s the sadness. If he didn’t like what Jesus said and he didn’t believe that he was a his rabbi and that he was bound by what he’d said, he’d just go and forget that I’m out, but instead Jesus gave him a command to get rid of the thing that was more important than God in his life.
Come spend some time with God and it’ll change your heart cell, all that junk. Sell all that stuff that owns you. Give it to the poor. Give the proceeds to the poor. Take care of some people. Come follow God. Come be with me and I promise you I’ll change the desires of your heart. That was difficult and upsetting for the rich young ruler. Hopefully he did exactly what Jesus said. So here’s my question. Do you have a wealth mindset or a poor mindset? The wealth mindset seeks to multiply with money. It sees it as a surplus and invests it and uses it to bless others. A great example of that would be the parable of the talents. So here is a parable where where Jesus is talking about a guy gives five talents to one guy, two talents to another guy in one talent to another guy, and a talent back then was a measurement of money.
Um, and the guy with the most talents goes out in, doubles it. And the guy with the two talents does the same. The guy with the one talent, the guy with the poor mindset buries it in the ground. So He’s been given this thing to use this thing correctly, to use it wisely, to do something with it, to use it for good, to multiply it, to put it to work. And like so many Americans, instead of doing so, he buried it in the ground. He didn’t use it, he didn’t focus on multiplying it. He didn’t focus on making more of it so that God could use it in the ways that he wants to do. He gave it to the person who busted it. He gave it to the person with the wealth mindset. Why? Because he knew that guy was going to continue to have a wealth mindset and understand that money isn’t the happiness.
Money isn’t the thing that owns him. God owns him. Money is just a tool. Poor mindset immediately sees a surplus as an opportunity for consumption and to upgrade their lifestyle. What a difference. A wealth mindset uses money as a tool for longterm goals are. Growth uses money to create systems that continue to generate value on their own. A poor mindset is all about short term returns, hours for dollars, resources invested without an immediate return. Our resources wasted. A wealth mindset seeks to build relationships built on trust, shared values and mutual respect. People with the wealth mindset help others and cultivate relationships with no expectation of anything in return. A poor mindset. I scratch your back. You scratch mine. What’s in it for me? So folks, here’s your weekly challenge. Here’s the challenge that I have for you today. Think about where you have a poor mindset instead of a wealth mindset.
What are you doing with the resources you’ve been given? Look over your financials for 2018 and ask the question, do you have a wealth mindset or a poor mindset? Take a look at how much came in and how much went out, right? What’s reflected in your spending? What are your patterns? Ask yourself this. How can I be better this year? If you have a wealth mindset, well done, great job. What else can you do? If you discover, oh my gosh, I have a poor mindset. I didn’t even know it because I didn’t. I didn’t have a clue that I had a port. I thought because I had done so well stockpiling money. I thought, well, that must mean that I have a wealth mindset. Nope. All the lack of faith and the fears. What Jack that up? So if you discover that you have a poor mindset, what can you do differently to change that this year? What can you do with your resources? What can you do with your spending? What can you do better this year to live with a wealth mindset? Folks, if you’ve not subscribed to this podcast, please do that. Wherever you listen to the podcast, every Tuesday, you’ll get new content delivered to your device and you won’t want to miss an episode. Hopefully this has helped you today. As always, take this information, change your leadership, Change Your Business, change your life, and join us on the next episode.
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Episode 276: What Makes us Powerless and How to Stop Victim Mentality
Learn more about finding stronger relationships, and a stronger life here: Next-Level Life
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