To become wealthy, remove yourself from the equation

To become wealthy, you've got to remove yourself from your wealth-creation equation. In other words, you've got to switch from a "personal services" model of value creation to a "non-personal" model of value creation and wealth proliferation.

Robert Reich, in his book The Future of Success, wrote that one must distinguish between personal services (like nursing) and media-leveraged services. Robert Allen, in his books, often talks about the power of leverage. Most millionaires indeed advise people to use non-personal means and methods (including technologies) to greatly amplify (multiply in quality and quantity) their productivity.

T. Harv Eker, for example, in his book Secrets of the Millionaire Mind, exhorts readers to imagine a way to serve TEN TIMES more people than they are currently serving. (You've got to read Goldratt to fully understand how this is possible, but don't worry, I will write a summary of Goldratt's ideas and principles shortly!).

Serving a huge number of people is not as difficult as most people believe. But for that to be possible, you need a "genie." My favorite genie is Mr. Internet. He exists to serve YOU, and make YOU rich. Unfortunately, most people are not aware of this reality!

Steve Pavlina, for instance, makes $40,000 a month from his blog (www.stevepavlina.com).

Note: I know that it's crazy that I'm promoting a competitor, but what the heck, Steve is doing a great job!

Same thing with Matt Morris, who became a millionaire by sharing with people everything he knew (from reading tons of books) about how to achieve success.

The truth is, you cannot become rich if you rely on your personal services (unless you provide such an extraordinary service that it simply cannot be delivered by anyone else -- ex. top surgeon, magician, lead singer in a musical, etc.).

Here are other examples of people who became rich by removing themselves from their wealth-creation formula:

1. A doctor decides to go into research, creating a pill and selling it via pharmaceuticals (Note: a doctor serves people, a medical researcher serves markets)
2. A cook decides to package his knowhow into a book of recipes, and is selling his books instead of cooking every day for customers
3. An entrepreneur (somewhat like me!) decides to stop running companies, and captures his business operations into a franchising system that he sells to franchisees in 22 countries

If you look at your friends and relatives, you'll quickly realize most of them are engaged in the lifetime delivery of "personal services." That is, they work as professionals employed by a firm to deliver certain professional services.

Even if they make $100,000 a year, that's still not very rich. That's because they are exchanging their life (which is limited) in return for money.

A truly economically enlightened person earns income NOT by working, but by having systems (often operated by humans) work for him.

Okay, here's the incredible insight I want to share with you: it's not enough to create a system that works for you in creating value. Creating and managing that system is, of course, not negotiable if you want to become rich. You can read The E-Myth, by Michael Gerber, to get all the details as to how to create such as value-creating system.

You ALSO have to carefully embed your system within the larger system out there. To the extent that you succeed, this larger system will NATURALLY drive your system and that, my friends, is when you become fabulously wealthy.