What does your mindset have to do with it?

 

Your Mind is Powerful, what you believe can either expand your world or imprison you.

From your first moment of consciousness you mind is looking at a world that in effect you create. The world you see, the world that you love, the world that you fear, they are inside you. You will strive all of your life to confirm the world of your internal bias. If you seek it. It will come.

If you believe that money is hard to find and keep. You will see money come into your life. It will play with your mind then disappear from your life. You will spend, telling yourself that you will never have money. Then look at your credit card bill, look at your empty wallet, look into your empty purse. Then tell yourself how right you are. Money is too hard to get, too hard to save, too hard to live without and how you were just never meant to have money.

You have created the world that you believed in, long before you were poor. You developed a poor mindset.

I know someone, he has an important job, earns over $150,000 per year. He lives paycheck to paycheck. Never has money to save. He buys a new smart phone every few months, well three of them one each for himself, his wife and his daughter. He buys a new truck every couple of years. When he dines out with his family, they buy the most expensive cocktails on the menu. Apart from his truck all three have a car. If he cooks a meal and I am invited over, he tells the guests the price of every item that is on the plate. The house where he lives is comfortable, clean, neat and remodeled every eighteen months with this years gadgets and decor.

He and his wife are constantly telling everyone how little money they have for their next project.

The banks and their credit card companies must love them.

They have a poverty mindset.

Think of the people whom you know. Do you know people like my friend?

Having a growth or wealthy mindset is a small thing.

There is wealth out there. You can choose to change your mindset.

Look at what you want in your life. Choose to aim for that goal.

Five years ago, I decided to get serious about my finances. I knew that I could manage money. So I aimed at saving $150,000 in five years. I would do that using the skills that I already had.

I would also start with just $100 a birthday gift from my wife.

The first thing to consider with a mindset is that having the mindset to do something, is not the same thing as having a mindset for something to happen.

I did not just wish that I had $150,000 I set that as a goal. Had I just wished then probably I would still be wishing. Without a plan and action a mindset is nothing.

Create a Plan

Once you have your goal, you need to plan a way to achieve that plan. I had some skills. I can use a computer, I can make decisions, I can follow through on decisions. Yes, those are skills. You need to muster all the skills that you have in order to build your world and support your new mindset.

I took the $100, then looked about me. I saw that I could sell books, secondhand books on Amazon.com. I had books at home that I no longer wanted, I went to charity stores and bought books off the shelves. I mailed them direct to customers at first. Then as the business grew, I put the cash from sales back into buying new stock. I registered with Amazon to fulfil the orders. I would spend a day in various charity shops. Another day inputting my new stock into the Amazon website, then packing boxes of books off to an Amazon warehouse, to be sold and sent to customers all around the world.

Soon, within six months, I was buying new stock from charity stores and had cash left over, this I invested in the stock market.

My stock investments did not grow fast. I was investing for dividends. Dividends are the cash payments made by companies that are paid to shareholders for owning a stock. A share of the companies profits, paid at regular intervals. So now I had two streams of income. The books paid most of the income with dividend income coming in too.

By the end of the first year I had turned the $100 into over $11,000.

Learn, Evaluate and Change.

As you go along you must learn. If you need to learn a skill, learn it. Buy a book, read it. Watch a video on YouTube. Be open to improve your skills. You will never know everything, but the more you know the better. If it seems useless information today, you may need it tomorrow.

Be open to learning something, anything, everyday, even every minute of everyday.

Evaluate your knowledge, is it good enough to do a job or is there something that you need to know. If you need to improve a skill, or a business idea comes up. Don’t be afraid to try it.

If it takes time and money, don’t dig a hole of time and invested money. Set limits.

If you think something is worth $50 to you in time and money. Allow yourself $100 in cash, don’t invest anymore time or money than that in your trial.

Allowing time and money to pour into any project is a waste of both, your other business will suffer and your mindset will suffer too. Do not allow yourself to fall into the sunk cash fallacy of thinking.

“”I have spent all this (cash or time ) so I may as well finish.”

In the second year, I decided to add house plants to my businesses. I have always loved Chlorophytum (Spider Plants).

A Spider Plant.

I knew how to propagate Spider Plants from runners, so I spent about $40 on a mature plant, a bag of compost and a selection of plant pots.

I spent the next year growing my initial plants to the size where they put out lots of runners to grow and sell.

I also learned to write blog posts and earn income from affiliate sales.

By the end of year two, I was looking at three income streams, bringing me cash flow and a possible new income stream, the house plants for year three.

My $100 had now accumulated to $28,800.

By the beginning of year three, my book business was in ticking over mode. I was sending in books to Amazon, but just enough to maintain stock levels at just over one thousand books. I was also more selective about the books that I was sending in.

Dividends and stock purchases were also growing, increasing income there.

My blogs were getting read and income was flowing in from affiliate sales.

I was also able to begin selling some of my potted Spider Plants. As my stock plants grew on I would make cuttings of runners and grow them on, I was averaging about ten new plants per week selling those on after just a few minutes work of potting into decorative pots for between $4 and $9.

At the end of year three I was looking at my $100 having turned into $57,000

Then year four came. All was okay until February 2020. Then all closed down. My affiliate income drained away. A lot of my income had come from selling wedding stationery. My book sales collapsed, no one wanted to buy real books and I couldn’t get new supplies as all the charity stores closed. I couldn’t sell my Spider Plants.

The only income was from dividends. So I pushed all of the cash income I was receiving into stocks. Just at the time the markets fell in March 2020.

Then the markets turned.

Some income began coming in as I changed my affiliate links to other things, birthday cards, gifts that didn’t mean large sales but were still consistent throughout the year.

It had looked bad in the first part of 2020 but by the end of the year, I pushed my $100 up to $104,000.

This year has seen increasing income from affiliate sales. Amazon book sales are still low. Charity shops are still not an easy place to find books in my area. Maybe they will come back, maybe not?

Spider Plant sales are increasing a little. I have now begun selling them to a local garden center wholesale. It is income after all.

Dividends are the biggest growth portion of my businesses.

A few days ago, I passed my $150,000 in five years goal.

As of October 5th, 2021 my $100 is now worth $150,387.42.

What Now?

So, What now?

Well I will carry on. I don’t need to measure towards my goal any longer. I can measure how much I can surpass my goal.

It doesn’t matter what I do. I have now created a mindset which provides me with the knowledge that I can achieve what I set out to do.

It’s not as simple as thinking I want something.

It requires work, it requires planning, it requires gaining knowledge and it requires the ability to withstand outside influences which can at times seem to be enough to destroy all of your plans.

Accepting that you are responsible for how you behave in such circumstances is key.

I wish you all the best in your search for wealth.

I know that you can make a difference in your life, and the lives of others.