Page 3 - Do You Want to Make Friends—or Make Money?

• Networking. Another area where the desire to be liked can easily interfere with becoming
wealthier is networking. A large percentage of self-made millionaires can attribute a
substantial portion of their success to their ability to connect with others and leverage
those relationships. They concentrate on building relationships that have the capacity
to open doors as well as supply resources and clients. There has to be some minimal
chemistry between the parties, of course, but the people in self-made millionaires’
networks are the ones who can deliver results—not necessarily people they are looking
to for long-term friendships.

The fact is, most business relationships are situational and will dissipate once the
business connection is gone. And yet, many people want everyone they are dealing with
to like them—an attitude that is frequently, if not habitually, antithetical to making money.

Think about it: Consider your own history. It’s probably pretty easy to identify more than a
few situations where you were being needlessly nice to other people—staff, vendors—and
it cost you monetarily.

Advice: Get comfortable with making enemies

Sometimes your journey up the financial ladder goes beyond simply not making friends—it
means making enemies along the way. This is often an outcome of significant success, so be
ready for some new enemies if you pursue big business results intently.

Indeed, proportionately more people who are wealthy make enemies. As you accumulate
more wealth, it’s very likely you’ll make more enemies than the average (less wealthy) person.

This makes sense when you think about it. As self-made millionaires create personal fortunes,
they’re very likely to have more and more people approach them with demands, requests
and proposals. The logic behind this is straightforward: The wealthy person has financial and
professional resources these other people want to access and leverage.

As the demands, requests and various proposals multiply, the self-made millionaire is
not going to have the bandwidth to deal with them all. (The triage process alone is sure
to annoy or anger some of the people making requests.) The result: enemies. When self-
made millionaires discount or disregard others’ requests, the rejected commonly see this
as evidence of the entrepreneurs’ self-centeredness, callousness, arrogance, insensitivity,
conceit and haughtiness.

Other factors also may result in people seeing those with wealth in a disparaging light, of
course. But often the very process of personal wealth creation perpetuates and enhances
their negative image.

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