Most working professionals say that financial freedom is their goal. But if they must achieve it, they must do so within their 30-year work career time. Research shows that 80% of them are failing to achieve it. That is after grinding at a job for 30years. The big question is Why? Why haven’t many achieved financial freedom despite years of hard labour? Why have the many investments effort spanning over 30years not produced the right results? How can you achieve financial freedom in half the time?
The answer is simple.
You need to do two things.
First, you need to choose the right path. And second, you need to close the gap between Learning and Doing.
1. Choosing the Right Path
People take either of these two paths when they want to achieve financial freedom. The first is the path that leads to financial freedom. And the second is the path that leads to middle-class poverty. While no one sets out to be poor in the end, many fail to make their good intentions come through. This means that you can have good intentions and still end up in poverty. Good intentions are not good enough. You must be able to make your good intentions come through. Almost everyone knows someone who had good intentions that never came through. And for 80% of working professionals, this is their fate.
So how do you make your intentions come through?
The fastest way is to enter the right path and then to take the actions that lead to freedom
So, what is the right path and how do you find it?
You find the right path by taking three simple steps.
Step 1- Choose a Financial Freedom Role Model
The First step to achieving financial freedom is to find a person that has achieved it. If you want to do something you have not done before the fastest way is to find someone who has done it to guide you. The right person for you is anyone who was once in your shoes. But has now stepped out onto bigger shoes.
The mistake most people make at this stage is to choose popular success models like Elon Musk, Mark Zuckerberg, or Dangote. If you do this, you will fail because none of these models were once in your shoes. And a Model must be once in your shoes to guide you through that path. These models are all Business success Role Models. And you can model them when you enter the business world. Also, a business success model is 500 times more likely to achieve financial freedom than you will ever dream of as an employee. So, you must choose a model that has a similar or complementary background.
When you find your model, study them, observe what they are doing and earn their mentorship where you can or interview them. Do not make the mistake of modelling their lifestyle. If you do, you will go broke faster than you will make money. The focus here is to model their actions. Observe their mindset, perspectives, and attitude. If you are lucky to work in an organization where the CEO was once an employee like you, then you have the perfect person to model right in front of you every day.
Once you understand the actions, mindset, attitude, relationships, and rituals that are producing the desired results. You need to write them down.
The more actions you take that are in alignment with the actions of your success role model the faster you will achieve financial freedom.
Once you write down what you have observed to be the key success factors, divide them into two categories. First are actions that are easy and those that you like. And second is actions that are hard and those that you don’t like.
Now here is the golden key
The hard actions that you do not like is the key to your own financial freedom.
Every easy action and admirable life are first produced by difficult and unadmirable actions. If you make the mistake of modelling the easy things you will fail. You must model the difficult actions that produce the easy life.
Step 2- Choose a financial poverty role model
The second step is to find a person that represents a Poverty role model to you. That is someone that was once in your shoes. But today you pray never to be like. This is the easiest role model to find. And the best place to look are ex-employees like you who are now in retirement.
When you find your poverty role model, find out these two things about them. First, find out what they did when they were at the peak of their career life that you liked. And second, find out the things that their life is about now that you do not like.
Now here is the Key.
The things that you like or love about your poverty role model when they were at the peak of their career is the key to your own financial poverty. If you model them you will end up in the same place.
The same action always produces the same results guaranteed. If you do not like the end results you must never model the actions.
I know this is a difficult thing to do for most people as some of the actions seem noble. For example, most of your poverty models may have helped a lot of family members, poor people, and sacrificed a lot for other people to save themselves. But there is nothing noble about being Good to others but yourself. True nobility is about being good to yourself and then others. And this is the only kind of nobility that can lead you to financial freedom.
Step 3: Find out who you are becoming
The third step is to list the financial actions, mindset, and attitude that you are exhibiting today and compare it first with your poverty role model. And then with your financial freedom model. Who do you look more like and who are you becoming every day? Remember actions lead to results. And the quality and timing of your actions is what will determine your end results guaranteed. You cannot model poverty and become a success and you cannot model a success and become a failure.
2. Closing the Gap between Learning and Doing
The second thing you must do to achieve financial freedom is to close the gap between what you are learning and what you are doing. The truth is there are more learners in the world than there are doers. That is why poverty is on the rampage. Only doers achieve financial freedom. For example, at the end of this article, you will know how to achieve financial freedom. But by this time next year, only 15% of you would have taken any action. Knowing a thing will never lead to success and here is why.
Knowing a thing is about learning – a simpler, more passive, and easy to do an activity. Achieving a thing is about doing – a harder, more active, and more difficult thing to do. The only way to close the gap between learning and doing is to develop and upgrade your discipline. Discipline is the golden bridge to financial freedom. And if you fail to achieve financial freedom there are only two reasons why. The first is Ignorance which will no longer be the case when you finish reading this article. And the second is the lack of Discipline which is the most likely to stop you.
For example, most people know what they should do to improve their financial life, but they don’t do it.
They know they should save more than they spend. They don’t do it
They know that they should earn more than one income. They don’t do it
They know that they should plan early for retirement. They don’t do it.
If you can bridge the gap between what you know and what you do you will be far more successful than you are today.
The difference between the success of any two people five years from now is discipline. Discipline carries more weight than knowledge. And the one with the discipline to act will always beat the hard worker or the hard learner anytime.
It’s now up to you whether you choose to be a learner or doer. Whatever you decide, know that it is your life, future security and happiness that is on the line here.
Act now before you are forced to act by pain.
About the author
Grace O. Agada is the most sought-after Financial Planning expert in Nigeria. She is a renowned Author, Financial Expert and Keynote Speaker. Grace is Popularly known as the Upper-Class Mentor and Her goal is to help working professionals escape middle-class poverty and transition to the upper class. Grace is the author of three books and possibly the most widely read financial articles. Her articles are spread across seven national newspapers and four of the most popular Nigerian Blogs. Grace is also the Founder of the University of Wealth, The Rich Retirement Bootcamp, and the Wealthy Business MBA Program. Grace has been featured on BBC Africa. Business Day TV. Inspiration FM. and inside Naijatv. And she consults for Numerous Top Organizations, Company Directors, CEOs, Senior Executives, and High-Income Professionals.
Very great ideas. Pls how can I connect with you for mentoring. Thank you.
This is great…. I’ve read it this morning….. Am in need of much more articles of this kind