Successful Entrepreneurs Don't Follow Mainstream Money Advice, And You Shouldn't Either Following the herd and adopting "cookie-cutter" financial advice will get you nowhere new. Here's what you should do instead.
By Daniel Mangena Edited by Micah Zimmerman
Opinions expressed by Entrepreneur contributors are their own.
Advice about making money is everywhere. Thanks to the proliferation of media (both social and professional), we're given daily advice about what to do with our money. Thanks to lockdowns and war in Ukraine, we're also facing a cost-of-living crisis, which will no doubt bring about more fiscal do-gooders and "money-saving experts" to start spreading their advice.
But here's the thing: the most successful entrepreneurs don't follow popular money advice, and you shouldn't too! Here's why.
Related: The 4 Most Useful Pieces of Money Advice No One Ever Wants to Hear, According to a Financial Planner
If everyone is doing it, it is not competitive.
This is so blindingly obvious, yet we kid ourselves into believing that a "system" or "program" can produce millionaires on repeat. I'm not saying that life is a zero-sum game, but we can't just copy & paste someone else's strategy and expect the same outcome.
What worked for Elon Musk is not what worked for Sir. Richard Branson. I'd wager that the unique ways entrepreneurs fail are more instrumental in their success than the successes.
You don't become successful by following what's popular
Let's unpack what it means to be a success because success is a subjective term. What you set out to achieve in your life will be different from anyone else. Even if you want to rise to the top of a highly competitive industry or profession, how that looks to you and your reasons for doing so are unique.
This is why getting caught up in what others are doing is distracting! They're on their path, and even if you could step into the skin of someone more successful than you, it wouldn't feel like a success. You would also wind up penniless pretty quickly.
70% of all lottery winners go broke. Why? Because they're thrust into a life that's not on their terms and is not aligned with who they are on the inside. They start engaging in behaviors dictated by their subconscious and rid themselves of their riches.
The same principle holds when seeking money-making advice. What worked for someone else is statistically unlikely to work for you. At least not in the same way or with the same outcome. That's a big reason the most successful entrepreneurs don't follow popular money advice, and you shouldn't.
Related: How to Make Money Online - 32 Proven Ways to Make Extra Money Fast
The "cookie-cutter" approach to wealth serves nobody but the people selling it
If you buy a four-week program or an Amazon trading video course, it's not tailored to you. It's meant to appeal to everyone in the world. Why? Because it's scalable.
The people who produce that content are not interested in you personally. They adopt a 'spray and pray' product based on the notion that appealing to the broadest demographic possible will net their high sales.
I doubt Bill Gates will give up his position at Microsoft to become some gadget-selling tycoon on Amazon. It's hardly an "apples-to-apples" comparison. But the next Bill Gates isn't doing that either.
When you buy into popular money advice, you're rolling the dice on whether or not you are personally aligned with that advice. And the odds are that you're not! Many people struggle with implementing the direction and are deemed to 'fail.'
Related: The Financial Advice Millennials and Gen Zers Want to Know (Infographic)
If most successful entrepreneurs don't follow popular money advice, and you shouldn't too, then what advice should you follow?
Here's what I recommend: spend time working on yourself before running off to find financial advice or strategies. A big part of why money advice may have failed you in the past is that you entered them without clear intention.
If you take the time to understand your motivations, future desires and intentions, you'll have your answer. Once you understand and identify the emotional energy associated with your answer, you'll instinctively know what serves you and doesn't.
The next step is to uncover what I refer to as your "Money DNA." This is your innate gift and power when it comes to making money. Things in life will align with who you are and things that won't. That's why systems like education, the labor market, etc. produce unexpected results for people. They're the ultimate cookie-cutter method and why you've encountered things that feel like an uphill battle.
What are you going to do about it?
The point is not to give you an excuse to blame and remove yourself from any responsibility. It's to bring awareness to your struggles while highlighting why the productive methods worked.
Once armed with this knowledge, you can start doubling down on the things that you know work, not only 'for' but with you. Thus you'll be exponentially creating more wealth with less effort. Just like the Pareto Principle, don't waste time on the 80% netting 20% of your revenue.
The most successful entrepreneurs have long since figured this out and fine-tuned their most productive aspects to the point that they create wealth effortlessly. They don't follow popular money advice. They have figured out their value and then refined it to the fact that they are invaluable to their clients.
That's why the most successful entrepreneurs don't follow popular money advice, and you shouldn't too!
