Innovation often emerges during times of challenge, particularly when you are pursuing challenges that are most inspiring to you or that are high on your list of values. It is during these times that you tend to come up with creative solutions to wealth building.

You might have already heard me speak about living by your highest priorities and highest values. Think of a young boy playing a video game. More often than not, he won’t need to be asked to play the video game – he will do it spontaneously because it’s important to him. Each time he conquers a level, he feels inspired to move on to the next level and tackle even bigger challenges, often by finding innovative and creative solutions to help him to achieve.

Now what if he was faced with a task that wasn’t as high on his list of values, perhaps cleaning his room? He’ll tend to procrastinate and might need external motivation in the form of a punishment or reward to get the job done.

In other words, it’s a natural biological, psychological endeavor to pursue challenges that inspire you, but not ones that don’t. So, if you want to maximize your innovation, creativity or genius, you want to make sure that you are sticking to ones inspiring you and of high priority, focusing on what is most important to you, and pursuing challenges you would really love to tackle. If you prefer to watch the video on The Innovator's Mindset For Building Wealth, click below. ↓

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One of life’s greatest challenges is meeting the needs of people. If you find the biggest problem that the world is facing or whatever problem you feel you can contribute to, and target that and go and try to solve that, you are likely to be the most innovative. And, if you can create an answer or a solution to that problem and do it more effectively and efficiently than somebody else out there, you will have the capacity to build the greatest wealth. 

How would you define financial wealth?

Financial wealth can be a by-product of sustainable fair exchange in economic transactions with other people, solving their problems, filling their needs, and answering their questions. So, first pursue something that inspires you, but then look for challenges that the world is facing. The bigger the problem you're able to solve, the more income you can potentially generate because financial wealth is simply the accumulation of sustainable fair exchanged transactions with other people, filling their needs, getting fairly paid for it, and putting a portion of that payment into asset accumulation. That can lead to financial wealth.

I've made a point to take a portion of whatever I've earned and put it aside to accumulate compounding assets. Most people will spend more when they earn more, often without realizing it. In doing so, they live month to month, instead of setting a portion of aside and letting it compound and grow. It requires patience and long term vision. If you live by immediate gratification, you probably won't see the impact of long-term impact of compound interest. But if you can think of long-term compound interest, it can do amazing things. So, pursue challenges that inspire you, meet people’s needs or solve their problems, have a sustainable fair exchange, and take a portion of that and set it aside and buy assets – that process creates financial wealth.

Warren Buffet once said, “ If you cannot control your emotions, you cannot control your money.” What is your take on that statement?

Money is made through following strategies more than through emotions. Your emotions can destroy financial wealth. Anything that you are infatuated with, runs you and anything that you resent, runs you. If you get elated and depressed about things, they run you. It’s wisest to have your financial strategies that override your impulsive emotions.

What are some of those strategies? Or are there different strategies for different circumstances?

I’m certain that there's a step-by-step methodical strategy to building financial wealth. It is so simple that anybody can do it.

Begin by determining your highest values and finding out where wealth building truly is on your hierarchy of values. You may say that you want to be financially independent, but your life already reflects what you value most. If your highest values include consuming depreciable items and creating liabilities and receiving instant gratification, then you may never end up saving or investing assets for your long-term future. It is wise to first raise financial wealth building on your list of values so you can become spontaneously more disciplined in saving and investing.

Then look into implementing some sort of structure that has no emotion attached to it. One of the most successful tools that I have used for almost 39 years is automated savings and investment structures where money is routinely taken out of my business bank account each week or month and moved to my investments. The process is automated. There's no emotion in it and there's no turning back. It just happens. When I started doing just that, my financial life changed. I have certainty that every week or month, money is going into those investments and every month, it's going to grow. I know what it's going to do. I don't have to question it. And it compounds, year on year while I get on with the business of serving people and getting paid for it. I just keep elevating the amount 10% every quarter by following my Forced Automated and Accelerated Saving and Investment Techniques.

It would be wise to take the emotion out of it and automate your savings and investments. Wealth begins, and is maintained, in the mind. You could literally be sitting on a gold mine and you just may not be able to see it.

You’ve spoken before about “raising your deserve level.” How do we do this so we can see ourselves as truly deserving of vast wealth?

Any self-depreciative judgments can accumulate in your subconscious mind, leaving you with shame and guilt, which can result in you minimizing yourself and holding yourself back from feeling worthy of a more abundant destiny. Your self-worth or “deserve level” impacts the way you perceive and act and what you allow yourself to notice or create within your life.

I like to use this example: imagine taking every single thing that you have ever done in your life and have it broadcast on screen in the form of a film. Now think of everything that you would not want to be in that film because it made you feel shamed or guilty. Make a list. Write it all down. In other words, everything you’re judging about yourself or where you perceive that you have made a mistake.

Then go through that list, item by item, and ask yourself how that particular action served yourself or any other involved individual. Because, if you don't see how it serves you or them, you're likely to become self-depreciate. Shame is the number one thing that keeps people from receiving and holding onto money, from valuing themselves, from not wanting to give their money away through consumerism, or from devaluing themselves when it comes to transactions - shame and guilt.

Instead, it would be wise to dissolve the shame. How do you do that? By understanding that most of the shame and guilt that you have in your life comes from the assumption that what you've done with your actions has caused more pain than pleasure, more loss than gain, more negatives than positives, and more drawbacks than advantages to yourself or somebody. And that's just not the case. While teaching one of my signature seminar programs The Breakthrough Experience, I've seen thousands of people dissolve their shame. In doing so, they increase their probability of creating financial wealth because they no longer feel that they don’t deserve it.

One of the ways you’ll know that you perceive yourself as not deserving of wealth, even on a subconscious level, is you'll buy high priced immediate gratifying consumable items to make you feel better about yourself temporarily. And then you end up with credit burdening card debt and you’ll tend to self-depreciate even further. So, clearing your feelings of shame and guilt is very powerful in helping you build financial wealth. 

You talk about the magnitude of vision determining what you can achieve in life. Can you elaborate on that in relation to building wealth?

Every time you live congruently or in accordance with your highest values, you tend to walk your talk, and be disciplined, reliable and focused. You tend to be more objective, which means you'll embrace or endure pain and pleasure in the pursuit of a goal, and you tend to achieve it and want to achieve ever greater achievements. So, every time you live by your highest priority, you tend to expand. You tend to want to do something bigger and something that you can endure for longer, and your patience tends to increase as a result. So, every time you do something that is tied to your highest values and actually achieve it, you tend to go after something that you had previously thought to be unachievable. As a result, your goals grow and become non-local and not limited to your particular immediate needs or even lifespan.

When you live by high priority, your space and time horizons will grow, sometimes beyond your own lifespan. Give yourself permission to expand and not shrink, and to create an immortal legacy, if that’s something that is high on your list of values.

You sometimes talk about the “riches within”. What do you mean by that and how does it relate to developing a wealth mindset?

Everyone has one or more of the seven forms of wealth, and genuine wealth can show up in any of these seven primary areas of life. I have intellectual property. I have knowledge that I've packaged and converted into financial wealth, but if I didn't package it and put it into financial wealth, it would be remain as intellectual property. And that's a form of wealth, a storage of wealth, but it's not financial until it's packaged and converted into or exchanged for finances. Some people have financial wealth and they just consistently methodically build financial wealth. Some people have relationship wealth. Others are socially connected and can negotiate and liaise with people and do deals. Some people have social wealth and can use it as leverage. Others have physical wealth, or spiritual wealth. There’s wealth in all seven areas of your life, but that form of wealth might not be converted into financial wealth unless financial wealth is high on your list of values.

In The Breakthrough Experience, I show you how to have self-worth, how to dissolve self-depreciating emotions, and how to create a financially wealthy mindset. The next step is to come up with a strategy, set it up, structure it, and make sure you look for hidden assets and convert them into real assets that are financially viable. 

Any last words on the subject of wealth?

If you don't get up in the morning and dedicate your life to something that's inspiring to you, you're going to end up being told what to do. And there's no reason why you have to live by other people's expectations most of the time. Serve the people you want to target with the things that you love doing and become fulfilled being financially rewarded for it. There's no reason why you can't live an inspired and prosperous life.