Why the Richest Work the Least
Work less, buy time, stay rich
The average American employee spends a third of his/her lifetime working (90,000 hours) often sitting down in an office chair. The same average American makes an average of $56,420 per year, often slightly adjusted for inflation by their boss each year (yay 4% raise).
On the other hand, your average millionaire probably makes your yearly salary every month and doesn’t even have to worry about inflation. The best part about it? He only works a few hours per week.
Look, there are 2 types of rich people in this world:
- The ones that get rich by working all the time. CEOs of Fortune 500 companies, traders, consultants… These guys have a huge paycheck, a great bonus package, but the downside is that they never see their kids and miss all the birthdays, kinda sucks right?
- The ones that get rich by working smart. Entrepreneurs who either built a business that makes them money while they sleep, or worked a ton for a few years, hit a big payday and invested it the smart way. Or both.
In this article, we’re focusing on the second type of people and how these guys work 10 times less for 10 times the money. We’ll cover 4 examples from my learnings as an employee of a startup that sold for $30M.
They understand the power of passive income
I still work for the same startup by the way, but now we’re part of a much bigger group of companies. When we got acquired, that group was in the middle of a huge spending spree, acquiring every competitor they could get their hands on while founders were eager to sell and get their big payday (this was at the peak of the pandemic).
One of the guys sold his 10-person company for a rather small amount of $9M. When it was all said and done, he pocketed $4M personally. I ran into him at our last yearly company gathering (he was a speaker there) and asked him what he did with the money. His answer was straight to the point:
“I got a financial adviser, invested everything, and now I’m making 7% per year in dividends, fully hands off.”