5 Ways Self-Made Millionaires and Wealthy People Achieved Financial Freedom

Written By Brian Tracy | Financial Success | June 25th, 2012 | 13 Comments »

The way you think about money will determine how much of it you accumulate more than any other factor. Your attitude toward money affects your ability to learn from self-made millionaires and wealthy people to achieve financial freedom.

Learning from Self-Made Millionaires

If you are really serious about achieving financial freedom, you will want to know the five main ways that fortunes are made in this country. Number one, top of the list, top of the hit parade throughout the history of America, is self-owned businesses. It is entrepreneurship of all kinds, including in real estate. 74% of self-made millionaires in America, not only in this generation and in this century, but in the last century as well, come from self-owned businesses.

How Wealthy People Start Out

The great majority of wealthy people started businesses and built them from the ground up. In the 19th century, fortunes were built by people like Andrew Carnegie, Jacob van Astor, Thomas Edison, Commodore Vanderbilt, J. P. Morgan and others. In the 20th century, especially in the last few years, businesses and fortunes alike have been built by people like Bill Gates, Steve Case, Larry Ellison, Ross Perot and Sam Walton. Each of these people started with nothing but turned into wealthy people by building a business from scratch.

Self-Made Millionaire Start from Where They Are

The second major source of self-made millionaires in America is senior executives. Ten percent of wealthy people and self-made millionaires in America are men and women who have joined large corporations and worked with those corporations for many years. They rose to positions of seniority, were paid extremely well, given stock options, profit sharing and bonuses, and as a result of holding onto the money, they became self-made millionaires and achieved financial freedom.

Success Pays Big Rewards

Richard Eisner of Disney Corporation received a $126 million dollar bonus in a single year. Lee Iacoca of Chrysler Corporation was paid $26.7 million dollars as a bonus in a single year. It’s not hard to become a self-made millionaire when you are making that kind of money.

The Professional Road to Financial Freedom

The third source of self-made millionaires in America is doctors, lawyers and other professionals. Men and women who become very, very good at what they do and rise to the top of their professions achieve financial freedom. The top five percent in every field earn 10 and 20 times as much as the average person in that field.

Sell Your Way to Financial Freedom

The fourth major source of self-made millionaires in America are salespeople and sales consultants. Fully five percent of self-made millionaires are men and women who are the top salespeople in their fields. They never started their own businesses. They never went to college or university to get professional degrees. They just became very good salespeople for their products or services and were paid very good money. The secret was that they then invested the money conservatively and held on to it to achieve financial freedom. 99% of self-made millionaires come from these four categories: self-owned businesses – 74%; senior executive positions – 10%: doctors, lawyers and other professionals – 10%; and salespeople and sales consultants – 5%.

Other Ways to Achieve Financial Freedom

The final one percent of self-made millionaires is made up of all the people in all other areas. This one percent consists of people who have made their money by inventions, in show business, in sports, through authorship of books and songs, lottery winners and inheritances. But these wealthy people make up only one percent of the total.

The bottom line is that there are so many ways for you to become a self-made millionaire that it is almost impossible for you not to achieve this goal if you are really serious about it.

Thank you for reading this article on how to achieve financial freedom by learning from self-made millionaires and wealthy people. Please share this post with your friends and comment below!

Tags: financial freedom, self-made millionaires, Wealthy people

This entry was posted on Monday, June 25th, 2012 at 8:55 am and is filed under Financial Success.