There is this common desire of getting rich quickly. And, of course, without getting the hands too dirty. But is this possible? And how is someones mindset behind that assumption – or has to be?

You see, I’m a self-employed business owner (with a brick-and-mortar bookstore) and entrepreneur since 2007. I took over a store, which was founded in 1947, and build a blog during Corona.
Besides running that store since 2007, I basically read my whole life. And besides opening my own blog, I read peoples stories basically my whole life.
While doing that, did I stumble over success stories? Yes, I read a lot of them. There are actually many, many, many, success stories in the history of mankind. When you read a biography of a successful person, you get a good picture about how this process of becoming wealthy usually works. If you read similar success stories online, you usually don’t.

 

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Online Story vs. „Book“ story (Pro’s ’n Cons)

What do I mean by that? Let’s put it this way: Online, it usually goes like this: I was homeless, being abused, lazy, whatever, then I found X Y and went to +$1 million (sometimes there is a subtle sales pitch about how you can do it, too) – but basically wrapping up the whole story with like 3000 characters or so, and probably with a lying-factor of >50%.

And now the honest question: Do you really think this is inspiring? Does this story enlightens any sparkles to the reader? Are such things interesting to YOU?
To be fair, if I had never read such a story before, I would be impressed. Impressed, that it is possible to go from zero to hero, because it seems to defy all the odds about how society appears to be (merciless and pre-defined – according into which “social class” you were born). So applause to that person and respect (honestly).

In a biography with about 500 pages, you get the broader picture of how such things really work and what it takes (or what it took for the person).
Online shows a polarization of life stages from „broke to rich“ in a ratio of about 50:50, which would be 50 percent of the time in an unpleasant state and 50 percent of the time in a pleasant state.
A halfway decent biography represents more accurately all the struggles in life, so that to the reader the ratio of unpleasant to pleasant stages is more like 90:10, and in some cases even 95:5.

Don’t Get Inspired By Social Media Stories From Strangers

 

Bottom line, random „online-succes-stories“ usually do not give inspiring food for thought for the reader, but rather self-celebration. This is not necessarily bad, evil, or whatever, don’t get me wrong, but people new to that idea that „you can improve your life regardless of your state“ very likely get a wrong impression of reality.
This seems to be a trend (to my subjective feeling), that somehow, if not feeling happy, you can just switch career or business, and there you have it – just like the homeless guy on Facebook who lived in the basement 2001 and now has a luxury villa.

So people open their (new) store and think they just need to wait for customers, open an online business and think people will sign up, got hired by a respected firm and expect that wealthy clients just walk in to do immediately business. And wonder when this doesn’t happen.

But the shocking truth of life is (ok, let’s say that’s ONE shocking truth of life), to get to do whatever you want to do, you have to do more stuff you’d rather not want to do at all. Not only that, but you also actually need to get GOOD at this. The bottom line is, that in order for you being successful, you, most of the mostestest (!) time, more obstacles appear along the way than smooth waves.

And it is not very unlikely that with investing it can (or will) be the same. Have you ever wondered why diversification is one of the most fundamental principles taught? Not only diversification within an asset class, but also diversification of the assets themselves. Because punches are being thrown everywhere, and you can’t have more than two fists up. The so-called overnight success is some kind of distorted perception: If the story behind was told within the above mentioned 50:50 ratio frame, it surely looks like overnight successes are possible – and actually quite common – so it seems.

Where The Edge Comes From

 

But the secret is the following: While doing the 90-95% of unpleasant work (the REAL ratio), you start to create leverage. And that leverage, when finally unleashed, catapults you from being a zero to a hero.

It’s like starting with small saving rates in finances. Because of the power of compound interest, your small saving rate (which you grinded 95% of the time over years) suddenly explodes exponentially. That exponential growth is the power of leverage.

If you read biographies carefully, you understand where the leverage originally came from. What the day-in day-out grind was. What the 90% of unpleasant work was. And as said, it is inevitable that you do this 95% work, no, I repeat, you actually have to get GOOD at it. Not only good in a technical sense, but in a psychological sense. Finding a purpose in the unpleasant work.

But most people don’t get there – as they unfortunately never get what is really going on. And therefore fail, ending up either having a midlife-crisis or ending up financially behind their potential.

Need REAL inspiration? Take a look at my recommended books-section here