Getting Rich vs. Creating Wealth

In 1986 I met an orthodontist at a workshop I was doing in Colorado. We went for a walk and he told me this story:

“My practice wasn’t going as good as I had hoped and when a friend of mine came to me with a business proposition I got involved thinking that owning an auto repair franchise would be the key to me getting rich. Two years later repair franchise went bankrupt and my partner skipped town and the bank pinned the $570,000 debt on me.”

So there he was, in 1986, $570,000 in debt plus the debt for his practice and home which totally exceeded $1.4 million. Something happened on his way to ‘getting rich’…he almost ended up in the trash dump.

The rest of the story: He became a student of mine and when I say student, I mean it.  He was diligent, dedicated and determined to do something different, and that was to ‘create wealth’. And ‘creating wealth’ is totally and completely different than ‘getting rich’.

13 years later, my student and friend had a net invested worth of over $4M and no debt.  He took me to a Warren Buffet Conference in Omaha. It was a great experience for me to witness the growth, the personal evolution and development of this fine man.

The impact of becoming a ‘Wealth Creator’ versus just striving to get rich can be dramatic.  And to add to this story, the first question that was asked of Warren Buffet after he opened for questions was the following…

Q: “Mr. Buffet, what’s the difference between getting rich and wealth?”

A: “Wealth is a state of mind.  People that are trying to get rich never have enough.  Most people that are trying to get rich are doing it out of fear. The fear that they will never have enough – and that’s exactly what happens to them. They make if and then they lose it. (read the introduction in The Science of Creating Wealth™) Wealth, true wealth is about abundance.”

Well stated by the wealthiest man in the world.

 —Dr. Michael Schuster