What really matters is how people handle failure, as it is likely a given. Self-made millionaires make failures work for them. By critically dissecting their failures, self-made millionaires learn somber lessons that they take to heart.
They connect for profit and results: Networking is generally recognized as an essential and often optimal means for personal and professional success. Even so, it’s painfully clear that most people are not capable and prosperous networkers.
Most individuals approach networking as a near-random exercise. For the most part, the majority of people seeking to gain advantages by networking are badly mistaking activity for productivity, incorrectly crediting the smallest of advances as being monumental.
Self-made millionaires regularly think about networking as a means to an end—finding the person, the information or the resources that get them one step closer to their personal and professional milestones, which, in turn, get them closer to their financial end goal.
While it’s important to have many valuable contacts, self-made millionaires usually maintain a small but deep network of relationships leading not to friendship but to personal wealth and influence. This form of nodal networking maximizes the time and effort spent toward realizing profit and identifying those things that can further enhance their wealth. A few core aspects of nodal networking include:
• Learning who the contacts of their contacts are so as to potentially benefit from the people they know well.
• Building “bench strength”—identifying people to replace members of their nodal network when appropriate—is regularly a requirement.
• Internalizing the concept and behavior called N.E.X.T.—Never extend extra time—so as not to waste resources on unproductive relationships.
Being strategic and focused when it comes to networking is vital. In this regard, there are four questions self-made millionaires tend to ask themselves when networking:
• What are they seeking to accomplish? Goals are essential, especially when it comes to networking. By adroitly setting goals for each relationship, and even each interaction, self-made millionaires are able to focus and improve their efforts.
• Who can help them achieve their goals? Knowing what they want to accomplish, self-made millionaires are better able to triage the many people they meet so as to determine which relationships can be most productive.
• Why do other people care? Generally, self-made millionaires work with the concept of “enlightened self-interest.” They’re determined to identify the core motivations, dominant preferences and critical concerns of the people who can help them so that information can be leveraged into mutually rewarding action.
• How are self-made millionaires going to get other people to care about them achieving their goals? Knowing why other people care and being able to connect these reasons to their agendas can create a powerful results-orientated network. Self-made millionaires tend to be very good at creating alignment between their goals and what will make other people care about them achieving their goals.
Being able to effectively answer these questions can be transformational. While the answers will many times change with circumstances, the majority of self-made millionaires derive tremendous value thinking strategically and purposefully.
In order to most effectively source self-made millionaires and work effectively with them, it is very useful to understand how their thought processes and actions have enabled them to create significant personal wealth. The answer is Millionaire Intelligence. At the same time, understanding how particular self-made millionaires actualize Millionaire Intelligence opens the door for financial advisors to do more business with them as well as motivate them to provide high-quality referrals.
For those financial advisors who are not self-made millionaires but would like to be, Millionaire Intelligence is the methodology to achieve this objective.