Rich, Wealthy, or Broke?

In this episode of The Dropout Multi-Millionaire Podcast, we’re jumping right into a conversation about money— who has it, who doesn't, what to do with it, and how to achieve the ultimate goal of not just being rich, but being truly wealthy. Whether you find yourself in the fortunate position of having money or you're still working towards financial security, we encourage you to look beyond the surface of lavish lifestyles and fancy gadgets. Through cautionary financial tales, we'll explore the difference between being rich and being wealthy, sharing insights on smart investments that maintain balance and focus on the long-term goal of being wealthy, not just rich. Listen in as we unravel the myths surrounding money and guide you toward a path of lasting financial security!

Transcription

And we are back with the Dropout Multi-Millionaire podcast. And today I want to jump right in and I want to talk about money. Who has it? Who doesn't? If you do have it, what you should do with it. And if you don't, how you can get some. I see so many people who are out there, particularly online, on social media, and they are flashy rich.

They are showing the cars, the clothes, the clubs. You would think they've got a lot of money. But if you pull back the covers on most of these folks, you will find out that it is just an illusion. They are what I call bulls rich. They play the game. They have those cars. They like to drop money when they're out.

But truth be told. They're broke. And by broke, I mean that while they may have a good income, they don't have any financial security to back it up. And they are one bad month away from no cash and being in trouble. Now don't get me wrong. You can make a lot of money and be broke. I said this on a, on a reel the other day and somebody said, well, I make a lot of money.

I'm not broke. And I, and I said, there is a difference between being rich and being wealthy. Being rich simply means you make a lot of money. Being wealthy means you have a lot of money. And I would rather be wealthy. I can tell you in my first business, and this goes back to 30 some years ago, I was this guy.

I started having some success. I started moving my lifestyle up to match my income. I was living that financial lie. I was trying to impress people that didn't care about me with a lifestyle that I could barely afford. And here's the truth about that. By the way, most people that are doing this aren't trying to impress everyone else as much as they are trying to impress.

themselves. They're trying to overcome their personal self image issues. You know, if I have a Mercedes, I must not be the loser that my subconscious thinks I am. And so here's the lesson there. Don't be impressed with what somebody else has. Until you find out what they really have. Is it real or is it Memorex?

Now I just dated myself cause that was a commercial like from the seventies and eighties, but is it real or is it fake? Is it bullshit rich? Now the flip side of that is people who actually have money. My first mentor, who also turned into be a business partner of mine, was a guy named Steve. Steve had money. Steve was making millions of dollars a year and lived in a 200, 000 house when I met him. And he drove a pickup truck back and forth to work.

In fact, I remember when Steve built his first big house. It was about 13, 000 square feet. The thing was a monster. But he still drove the pickup truck back and forth to work. Steve had sold his last company and was probably worth 10 to 15 million dollars at this point. When we started our company, I was probably worth a couple hundred thousand dollars.

And I asked Steve one day, I said, Hey Steve, what's it like to be rich? What's it like to be wealthy? And he told me something that I have never forgotten. The best part about having money, he said, is not having to look at the price of anything that you want or anything that you do. He said, I go to nice restaurants, I don't look at the price.

If I go to a concert, I get the best seats. I don't care what they cost. If I play golf, I play on the nicest courses. If I go to a football game or a basketball game, I get the best seats. I'm in the clubhouse or in the front row. If my friends and relatives need something, I help them out, and I never worry about asking for that money back.

He said, I have enough money to live the rest of my life and never look at price tags if I don't want to. And that struck me when he told me that, and I was like, holy crap. I have a new goal in life. I don't want to look at price tags either. Now this is a guy who had called me one day and he said, Hey, you know, let's start this business.

The one I was just talking about, he said, I'll tell you what I'm going to do. I'm going to throw in a half a million to get started. You don't have to put anything up. Um, and I tell you what, when we start making money, we'll just pay me back then. And I remember thinking, Holy crap, this guy's just walking in here.

We've never done business before, and he's just going to throw a half a million bucks in. And, you know, we'll pay him back when we make money. Three years later, we sold that company to a private equity firm. It was an 80 million acquisition. And I was able to begin living that life. That I said I wanted that Steve had explained to me for the rest of my life. Now I'm not a billionaire. I'm not a hundred millionaire.

I don't have a jet, but I got a Cirrus SR 20. I don't have a yacht, but I do have a boat. I don't have a beach house, but I do have a condo on the beach. Don't wear expensive suits. I never wear a tie. I have a Ferrari, but it's not new. It's used. I bought it for half the price because I got it, you know, it's a couple years old, but I also don't have to go to work.

I don't have any real debt, not in relation to my income and assets. I can live the rest of my life and not look at price tax. That's the life Steve showed me. That's the life I wanted, and that's the life I got. So don't be fooled by flashy people. Most of the time you will find that under the covers of flash, it's just not real.

So what is it you want? Do you want the flash, or do you want the security? If you're coming from the bottom up, by the way, like I did, the flash is probably what drives you. That's just human nature. Just make sure that if and when you get there, you don't let all the toys take over. and ruin your opportunity for having lasting wealth.

I can tell you personally, I went from 100, 000 a year to a million a year in one year and then it went up from there and I blew through a few million dollars when we did that. I did it both quickly and I did it over time. I can tell you sitting in my garage at the time was, uh, An SL 600 V12 twin turbo Mercedes, a Hummer H2, a BMW 650, two motorcycles.

I had a boat out at the lake, two wave runners. I had an airplane down at the, at the airport. I had a house on the beach, a house on the lake. I lived in a 10, 000 square foot house. House had seven fireplaces, six HVAC systems. You know how much it costs to service an HVAC system? I had six of them. We had four separate surround sound systems in different rooms of that house.

Full house automation, a heated pool. Twelve hundred bucks a month to heat the pool, by the way. Two hot tubs, because, you know, you need two hot tubs, right? I had stuff, and that stuff constantly broke. As I used to say, the more stuff you have, the more stuff breaks, the more stuff costs. That house had, think about this for a second, that house had 240 light bulbs.

Go around your house and count how many light bulbs you've got. I had 240 plus an outdoor illumination system. It was ridiculous how many light bulbs I had to change every month. The cars, the wave runners, and the motorcycles, all the batteries would go dead. They'd constantly be dead every time I tried to use them because I couldn't drive that many vehicles all the time.

It was honestly ridiculous. Maintaining all that stuff was really expensive. I mean, really expensive. I was literally trying to have everything I ever wanted in life all at the same time. Fortunately, I came to my senses at some point and I started selling all that stuff off. I uncluttered my life. I got back to basics.

I cut my expenses, but not before I went through about four million dollars in lost value. And maintenance costs on all that stuff. I personally fell into the trap of having it all. And that was a product of getting a lot of money really quickly from a couple companies. We sold. I was fortunate enough, however, that I got out of that trap before it was too late.

And then I went back to work, created a few more companies, created more wealth, secured my future and learn that you don't need to own everything to have your best life. So what is it you want? You want to be rich. You want to be wealthy. Wealthy is better. Here's the deal though. You got to be rich first so you can make enough money to become wealthy and you got to do that for an extended period of time and then you have to start investing that money properly to create that wealth.

Personally, I like real estate. Real estate is my favorite investment these days between the tax advantages, the cashflow, the equity appreciation, but you need money to do that. So first, if you're trying to build wealth, you need to invest in yourself and your business, whether it's your business or somebody else's.

That is the single greatest income source you're going to have. Most of your wealth will be created by investing in business, not in stocks. It's funny. I, this goes back to my first business. Again, it was landscaping and I was landscaping for one of the baseball players here in Atlanta. His name's Terry Pendleton.

And I remember talking to Terry one day and we were talking about why all these athletes lose all their money, right? What's the average net worth of an NFL player five years after the NFL? They're broke. And I said, Terry, why do all these athletes lose all their money so quickly? And he said, Brian, most of these guys have no financial background, don't know what they're doing.

Uh, from a financial investment standpoint, suddenly become multimillionaires and think that they are now financial geniuses and they're going to turn their millions into billions. And so they invest in all kinds of crazy, risky things that are never going to work. He said, I make my money playing baseball, not.

Investing in stocks and bonds. He goes, I will make my money playing baseball until I can't. Until then, he said, all my money is sitting in treasury bills and bonds. My house is paid for, my cars are paid for. I know when I stop playing baseball, when my income, my massive income production stops, all my cash is still going to be there.

And I'll have enough money to live for the rest of my life any way I want to live. And oh my gosh, that stuck with me for the rest of my life. I love that story. He said too many athletes don't do that. They think they're going to become billionaires, and they end up doing stupid stuff, doing stupid investments, and they lose all their money.

So, what I'm saying here is, stocks and bonds, while they're a decent long term investment, bonds for long term income, stocks for, for potential growth, that's not where you're going to create your wealth. That's what you're going to put your wealth into. to take care of you in the future. So investing order for wealth, invest in you, invest in your business, invest in real estate.

There's really no other investment quite like that. Then stocks and bonds to secure your future. Now, I'm not saying don't buy toys. Let's be honest. This is we're humans and we need to have fun. You know, we don't want to die tomorrow having never done anything fun. Just don't be crazy about it. Remember the long term goal.

The long term goal is being wealthy. Not being rich. So that's it for today. I appreciate you being with me on the dropout multimillionaire podcast. If you want more information go to my website That's brianwillmedia.com or the dropoutmm.com and remember you have to be in the game to win the game.