More so than ever, a plethora of experts, gurus, coaches and consultants are available to show you and help you become significantly wealthier. In the field of coaching, personal wealth creation coaches are focused on how you need to think and what you need to do to amass great personal wealth. There are many ways to approach personal wealth creation coaching, but there are three primary scenarios:
Extensions: How much is enough? For some, the sky’s not the limit. We work with many ultra-wealthy entrepreneurs, including the super-rich, who desire to be wealthier.
Example: A person worth about US $500 million is looking for a track to follow to help him become a billionaire. The focus of the personal wealth creation coaching with him was predicated on leveraging a few of his carefully chosen vital professional relationships and turning them into his advocates.
Turnarounds: Some entrepreneurs were once extremely wealthy—but for various reasons—lost a substantial portion, if not their entire fortunes. Now, they want to regain their wealth.
Example: A business owner led a high-living celebrity lifestyle that ate up his US $40 million fortune and contributed to him crashing his business. The approach we used to help him recreate his fortune involved significantly strengthening and leveraging the business relationships he amassed over 25 years. It included building optimal professional relationships with investors who could funnel business to his new company.
Lift-offs: While these entrepreneurs have started to amass some personal wealth, they don’t want to stop accumulating but have, in some way, hit a ceiling. These are millionaires who badly wish to fast-track, accumulate wealth, and need guidance and support.
Example: A highly successful business owner worth around US $25 million desires to cultivate a “great fortune” so he can underwrite research looking for a cure for pancreatic cancer, which caused the death of his son. His generous nature was working against him in dramatic ways. A pressing example is how he tends to negotiate and how he needs to. Our focus was to align his enlightened self-interest with the business people he deals with.
Not every entrepreneur who desires greater affluence is a good candidate for personal wealth creation coaching. From our experience, the best candidates have five core characteristics:
- A tremendous desire to excel, including becoming wealthier
- The mindset, talents and skills that can be refined and directed on what it’s going to take to build or rebuild a personal fortune
- A professional and personal network that can be adroitly enhanced and monetized
- Financial or other resources (e.g., brand, intellectual capital, existing businesses, etc.) that can be innovatively leveraged
- A willingness to listen and try
What does all this mean for you? If you’re seeking guidance and advice on becoming seriously wealthy or even moderately wealthy…caveat emptor. Many ” experts ” are willing to share with you how to create a fortune for a price. Some are charlatans and fabulists, but many, if not most, are probably well-meaning. This doesn’t mean they are capable or their methodology is valid.
If you choose to engage a personal wealth creation coach, you probably should very carefully and hypercritically evaluate the professional to whom you turn. The “right” well-qualified professional can prove very supportive and provide you with a tremendous education and a collection of pedagogical processes and techniques that can prove invaluable in helping you create a considerable personal fortune. Failing to take the necessary steps to evaluate the professional you’re considering can lead you to purchase extremely expensive vaporware.
RUSS ALAN PRINCE is the Executive Director of Private Wealth magazine and Chief Content Officer for High-Net-Worth Genius. He is a strategist for family offices and the ultra-wealthy.
