My grandpa had a saying on our farm in Nebraska. If the animals don’t eat, you don’t eat.
So every morning before school and every night after, we did chores. Then we ate. Then we got on with our day.
I grew up believing the harder you work, the more money you make. It took me years to learn how wrong that was.
You’ve heard it a hundred times. It’s your mindset. It’s your subconscious relationship with money. True. But most people try to fix their mindset by thinking about it, and thinking about it doesn’t change a thing.
The money mindset shift that made me a millionaire works the other way around. You act first. Your brain follows. Let me show you how, starting with the conversation you grew up with.
Your Money Story Is an Inherited Behavior
What was the conversation in your house?
We can’t afford it. Money doesn’t grow on trees. Work hard, and you’ll get ahead. Whatever it was, you didn’t choose it. You inherited it. I call these inherited behaviors.
And they reach far past your bank account. Where do you live? A lot of people live within a few miles of where their parents and grandparents were born, and they never once asked whether they wanted to live there. How do you travel? Do you even have a passport? How big does the world look to you?
So many people live confined inside an inherited box, and then they wonder why life isn’t moving.
At some point, you have to stop and decide. What life do I want? Not only with money. What’s my career path? My health path? My spiritual path? Who do I want to be?
In The Millionaire Maker, I walk through the money myths most of us absorbed as kids. Money is scarce. Money comes monthly. Money talk is taboo. Your parents didn’t plant those to hurt you. They did the best they knew how with what they inherited. Don’t judge them. Just don’t keep living their script.
“You didn’t choose your money story. You inherited it. Now you get to rewrite it.”
Working Hard Isn’t the Same as Getting Rich
Here’s the myth that ran my life for years. Hard work equals money.
It doesn’t. Plenty of people work brutally hard their entire lives and end up with a whole lotta nothing. Plenty of wealthy people never broke their backs. In Yes! Energy, I call hard work and wealth an illusory correlation. They look connected. They aren’t.
The people who end up with more money make their money work hard for them. The people who work hard for their money stay stuck.
Bob Proctor, one of my greatest mentors, taught me what to do with an old saying like my grandpa’s. Notice it. Then flip it to the positive. When I filmed The Secret, I took “you’ve got to work hard for money” and flipped it to “money comes easily and frequently.”
Then I repeated it. Over and over.
The first hundred times, it felt like a lie. That’s normal. Your subconscious pushes back. Keep saying it anyway.
And no, this isn’t fake it till you make it. You act as if you’re the expert you already are. You act as if you’re the entrepreneur. You step into that energy and build the team and support system around you.
“Notice the old saying. Flip it to the positive. Then repeat it until it stops feeling like a lie.”
Stop Saving for It. Make It.
An old 1960s and ’70s Ward and June Cleaver conversation still runs in most households. If you want something, live below your means, scrimp, save, and someday you can have it.
I say make the money.
The middle class believes money comes from a job. Need more? Get a second job. Entrepreneurs see it differently. My parents were entrepreneurs. Dad farmed. Mom ran a catering business. They never introduced themselves by an employer’s name. They said, “I’m a farmer. I’m a caterer.”
Saving your way to what you want fails for two reasons.
First, saving delays you. Say your business needs equipment. Are you going to save for three months and give up three months of profit? Saving is just delayed spending.
Second, saving for what? When I help people raise capital, the first question is always how they’ll use the funds. What will this money do? Most people don’t have an answer. They say, “I can’t start because I don’t have enough credit.” You don’t need any of that to start.
You can make money in the next hour if you know how to monetize your skills. From about 2007 to 2019, I ran a workshop called 3 Days to Cash. In three days, every person in that room made new money. We had five-year-olds and 90-year-olds, and every one of them did it.
Services are the fastest way to make money. Selling your time isn’t an ideal long-term strategy, but it’s a worthy start. I’ve started a lot of businesses as services that later became products.
So here’s my question. If you had to make $500 today, or $1,000 this week for your family, what would you do?
“You’re not going to save for it. You’re going to go make it.”
Act First and Your Mindset Will Follow
The old personal development model says Be, Do, Have. Become a certain person, then do certain things, then you’ll have a certain life.
I flip it. Do, then Be, then Have.
Your conditioning didn’t come from lectures. It came from behavior and practice. So that’s how you reprogram it. In The Millionaire Maker, I call this the Do-Be sequence. You act the way you hope to be and let your brain catch up later.
Action leads to experience. Experience leads to evidence. Evidence leads to confidence. Confidence produces results.
The fastest evidence is money in the bank. And I mean your company’s bank account, not your personal one. If you don’t have a business account yet, set one up.
So what can you sell right now? List things on Facebook Marketplace, a vintage shop, or Poshmark. Run a house sale, an estate sale, a garage sale. Then think longer term. What product or service could you offer someone that changes their life and yours?
Here’s what stops most people: they plan to plan. They wait for it to be perfect.
Perfect creates poverty. I have a whole chapter on it in Yes! Energy. The more perfect you want things, the more broke you’ll stay, because perfect never comes. Good enough makes money.
“Perfect creates poverty. Good enough makes money.”
Surround Yourself With People Who Believe It’s Possible
As you change your money behavior, people will tell you you can’t do it. Expect it.
You need a group around you that supports you through the hard times. Becoming a millionaire isn’t difficult. It’s different.
The pattern of millionaires is simple. Make money and keep money. You make it inside a company. The company uses the tax code as written for business owners, so you legally pay less. Then you invest the difference.
That’s also where most people hit their next wall. Debt. “I have to be out of debt before I can do anything.” No. There’s good debt and bad debt, and once you learn how to use money to your advantage, you start winning bigger.
The other wall is overwhelm. “Loral, there’s so much to do.” Treat it as a learning journey. Make the money first. Then build the team to help you keep it. Then learn to invest it.
“It’s not difficult. It’s different.”
Start Today
Most of you have a plan right now, and it’s really no plan. It’s just whatever you get up and do all day. Let’s change that this week:
- Write down your inherited money story. Finish the sentence “Money is ___” and note where you first heard it.
- Flip it. Rewrite it positively and say it out loud every morning, even when it feels like a lie.
- Make $500 this week. Sell something, offer a service, or run a garage sale. Get evidence.
- Deposit it in a business account. Open one if you don’t have one.
- Find out who you are with money. Take my Financial Personality Quiz to see whether you have stunted cash flow, overpaid taxes, or lazy assets.
I want you to have a plan, a focus, and a future. For a lot of you, I want you building generational wealth.
Go to AskLoral.com. Ask a question, make a request.
