Attn Real Estate Investors: Join Hundreds of Successful Active Investors on Sat Oct 5 – Details at www.YourLifeYourTermsEvent.com

Top 10 Distinctions Between Millionaires & the Middle Class

Message from Tom & Nick

See Marc Lafleur in that picture above?

He has been on the podcast three times.

The first time he was just launching TruLocal.ca…a business that he built with his co-founder to connect local farmers to consumers.

Then he was on again about 3 years ago.

And he came back this week to give us an update.

He sold TruLocal.ca for $16.8 million.

(This podcast episode will be released in about a week by the way.)

Now he’s off spending some time doing fun things like racing cars in the CASC Pirelli Sprint Championship. He won Class Champion, Overall Champion, and Rookie of the Year.

Won’t be surprised to see him on the Indy circuit soon.

He’s 32 years old, and when you hear this episode you’ll quickly conclude that he’s going to climb a lot more mountains, knock off a bunch more of his goals and leave an incredible legacy.

It’s 100% obvious.

How can we be so confident?

Because we can now reflect back on the last couple of decades. And with this perspective, it’s very apparent that people who amass some amount of wealth and live life on their own terms have very similar characteristics.

And Marc has all of them.

About ten years ago, maybe more, we read a book by Keith Cameron Smith, The Top 10 Distinctions Between Millionaires and The Middle Class.

Each chapter of the book briefly summarizes the way millionaires think and the way the middle class thinks.

We’ve handed out copies of this book regularly over the years.

You can view the table of contents of the book for free on Amazon, but we’ve listed out the chapters here as it’s a perfect summary (and we highly recommend getting your own copy!):

  1. Millionaires think long term. The middle class thinks short term.
  2. Millionaires talk about ideas, the middle class talks about things and other people.
  3. Millionaires embrace change, the middle class is threatened by change.
  4. Millionaires take calculated risks, the middle class is afraid to take risks.
  5. Millionaires continually learn and grow, the middle class thinks learning ended with school.
  6. Millionaires work for profits. The middle class works for wages.
  7. Millionaires believe they must be generous. The middle class believes it can’t afford to give.
  8. Millionaires have multiple sources of income. The middle class has one or two.
  9. Millionaires focus on increasing their net worth. The middle class focuses on increasing its paycheques.
  10. Millionaires ask themselves empowering questions. The middle class ask themselves disempowering questions.

This is perhaps the best quick summary of our personal observations.

We love them all.

Personally, I resonate with #1, #4 and #5 the most.

It’s so strange to us when people in the real estate market constantly debate the price of properties. It’s such a short term thing.

For example, we have had people tell us that the market is going to go down for at least 14 years straight.

It had a little blip in 2017.

And now it’s had a decent correction. And these people are finally cheering.

The strange part to us is that property prices are still up 100% and often over 200% over that time period.

They’re so focused on short-term price swings that they miss the long term big picture trends.

Long-term thinking has always served us so well.

And calculated risks are another one. I remember changing jobs multiple times and then ultimately quitting.

Each time many people told me that I was being “very risky”.

But it just seemed like a calculated decision to me. And it was final. I could always change my mind and reverse course.

Whenever I’ve written down the “worst case scenarios” of any big life decision, it's helped quantify the risk and think of ways to minimize each one.

When you don’t write things out they get stuck in your brain and take on a life of their own. On paper, written out, “risky” decisions often don’t look very risky.

One of our mentors once told us to write down all the risks of buying our next property on the left hand side of a piece of paper.

Then on the right hand side write out all the ways to mitigate each risk.

It’s a simple strategy we’ve used for many decisions to this day.

And a quick comment on “learning and growing”.

Here’s a visual summary of the how we think about this from waitbutwhy.com:

Learning and growing is a key part to a happy life for us.

In fact, we consider spending money on our own education an investment in ourselves, never an expense.

It’s why we’ve spent hundreds of thousands of dollars on events, conferences, books, newsletters, and mastermind groups over the years.

And we’re still “investing in ourselves” today.

We’re constantly on the lookout for new big trends in the economy. Or different ways to run a business, buy a property, enjoy family time, or get better results from existing work.

We’re literally SHOCKED when someone tells us they haven’t been to an event or read a new book or subscribed to a paid newsletter.

And that’s why we are super pumped to be able to host our own events today.

We get to create the environments we like and invite out guest speakers that we personally enjoy listening to.

And on Saturday February 11, 2023 we have a jam-packed line-up at the next Your Life. Your Terms. Event.

We have Craig Race, from Lanescape.ca, to give us a huge update on the massive opportunity with Laneway housing (he helped write the current Toronto by-laws) and infill multi-unit projects.

Greg Foss, 32-year veteran of trading bonds in Canada, to share with us what he’s seeing on the Global Sovereign Debt landscape and why we should all be tracking this stuff.

Ali & Omar Hamam, two brothers and co-founders of Tahini's, will be in-house to share how they bought one shawarma restaurant and have grown it to 20+ stores. And how they get millions of views on TikTok and YouTube shorts with their advertising.

Dan Patton, from BM Select Mortgages, to share with us the latest insights into how banks are qualifying investors in 2023. It’s constantly changing and Dan has some tips on how we can all structure our finances have the best financing success.

And we’ll be doing a complete local GTA & Golden Horseshoe real estate market update and we have a brand new Rock Star Economic Update for you.

We jam all of this in from 8:30am to 1:00pm…and we love it!

So if you’re looking to invest in yourself, come out and spend some time with us on Saturday February 11, 2023.

And more importantly, meet hundreds and hundreds of other like-minded people.

Often one tip, one story, one piece of advice from the person sitting next to you can be priceless.

You can find all the details and get your tickets right here: www.YourLifeYourTermsEvent.com

(Note: If you’re a Rock Star Inner Circle member just reach out to the team to save your spot!)

See you there!!

You’re actively investing in yourself right? Good.

Remember, we can all live life on our own terms. It’s 100% possible.

If Marc can, you can.

If two brothers from Mississauga can, then you definitely can!!

Tom & Nick

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