Some of you know I recently took delivery of a Porsche I’d had specially built.
When it arrived, Caitlyn insisted there needed to be a bow on it.
I thought the bow was unnecessary.
She was right.
It made the whole thing feel special.
But one of my favorite parts of the experience had almost nothing to do with the car.
Along with it came a couple of great looking Porsche mugs.
Caitlyn may have been as excited about the mugs as she was about the car. And if I’m being fair, we’ve used the mugs a lot more than I’ve driven the car.
There’s something funny about that to me. You can spend years building toward the ability to buy something extraordinary, and then find yourself getting an enormous amount of joy from drinking coffee out of a mug that came with it.
But the more meaningful part of the experience was everything that happened before the car ever arrived.
The relationships.
The people I got to know…from my sales guy to the GM. From the guys who service my vehicles to the lady who runs the swag shop.
The genuine care that developed through those relationships over years.
And it got me thinking about something I think we misunderstand about wealth.
Real wealth is built on relationships.
What Wealth Actually Looks Like
There are a lot of false perceptions about wealthy people.
We imagine the person who has built extraordinary wealth as ruthless. Someone who takes advantage of other people. Someone who sacrifices happiness or spirituality or relationships in order to make money.
And we have equally distorted ideas about what wealth itself looks like.
Private jets.
Exotic cars.
Designer clothes.
A lifestyle that makes sure everybody else knows how much money you have.
But when you’ve actually spent time around people who have built significant wealth, or helped people go from having no money or being in debt to becoming multimillionaires, you start to see something very different.
Relationships are the foundation of wealth.
And I mean that in two ways.
The first is fulfillment.
If you build extraordinary financial success but your marriage is fractured, you don’t have a relationship with your kids, your health is deteriorating, and your closest friendships have disappeared, how wealthy are you?
You might be rich in terms of money.
But if you’re fundamentally unhappy, living with regret, and disconnected from the people who matter most to you, you haven’t actually built much wealth.
Because wealth isn’t simply the amount of money you’ve accumulated.
It’s the environment you’ve created with the resources you have that allows you to wake up and love the life you’re living.
The second way relationships create wealth is much more literal.
Almost nobody builds anything significant alone.
Great businesses are built through people.
Opportunities come through people.
Partnerships happen through people.
Investments happen through people.
Trust is built between people.
And the people I’ve seen create extraordinary outcomes over long periods of time tend to be very good at building and nurturing relationships.
They produce value.
They’re generous.
They’re trustworthy.
They’re reliable.
They stand for people, and other people know those individuals will stand for them.
That isn’t separate from how wealth gets built.
It’s the foundation of how wealth gets built.
The Valet Test
I have a friend who pays attention to something very specific when he’s deciding whether he wants to hire somebody, invest with them, do business with them, or simply spend more time getting to know them.
He watches how they treat the valet.
Not how they treat him.
The valet.
He’ll notice how they speak to the clerk in a store.
How they talk about the waiter serving their dinner.
How they respond to a homeless person they walk past.
Because those interactions tell you something that the big meeting often won’t.
If someone knows you have resources, influence, an opportunity, or something else they want, of course they may treat you well.
But how do they treat the person they believe can do nothing for them?
That’s the test.
If they’re discourteous or disrespectful to the waiter and then turn around and become warm, generous, and respectful toward you because they think you can provide an opportunity, pay attention.
They’ve shown you who they are.
And eventually, if the day comes when you’re no longer perceived as advantageous to them, you can probably expect that same disregard to come your way.
It’s just a matter of time.
You Don’t Get to Choose Who Deserves Your Character
The people I know who have built both extraordinary financial wealth and deeply fulfilling lives tend to operate differently.
They don’t decide who they’re going to be based on who the other person is.
They’re kind, generous, respectful, and courteous because that’s the standard they’ve chosen for themselves.
The person sitting across from them might be responsible for a hundred-million-dollar deal.
Or they might be parking the car.
They’re still a human being.
They still have value.
And the standard doesn’t change.
That’s character.
We’ve talked several times recently about watching what people actually do rather than becoming attached to what they say.
This is another version of the same principle.
Watch who somebody is when they don’t think there’s anything to gain.
And apply the same standard to yourself.
Who are you when there’s no opportunity attached?
Who are you when nobody ‘important’ is watching?
Who are you with the person who can’t advance your career, introduce you to somebody, invest in your company, or do anything else for you?
Because who you are in those moments is who you are.
Money Amplifies Who You Already Are
Money doesn’t fundamentally change this.
It amplifies it.
If you’re kind, generous, compassionate, and oriented toward service, and you end up with tens of millions of dollars, money gives you more resources to put those qualities into motion.
You can give more.
You can create more.
You can support more people.
You can produce more value.
But if you’re self-centered, disrespectful, or discourteous, money amplifies that too.
And frankly, you’re probably going to have a harder time building lasting wealth in the first place, because all wealth is truly built on the foundation of great relationships.
This is also why I wouldn’t get too caught up in what wealth looks like from the outside.
I’ve had the opportunity to peek behind the curtain with a lot of people over the years.
And more often than you might think, the person driving the flashy car and wearing clothes that look like Gucci threw up all over them doesn’t have much monetary wealth at all.
They’re living on debt and credit cards, trying to present the appearance of wealth.
Meanwhile, you can sit next to somebody who’s in the top one percent or extraordinarily wealthy and never know it.
They look like a normal person.
They may not be wearing the name brands.
They may not be driving the fancy car.
Because they understand that those things don’t necessarily create wealth.
In many cases, they take away from it.
They’re liabilities.
So don’t confuse the appearance of wealth with wealth itself.
And don’t confuse money with a wealthy life.
Who Do You Need to Be?
If you want to learn the game of wealth, it doesn’t start with asking:
What investment should I make?
It starts with:
Who is the person I need to be?
Who do you need to be so that extraordinary people want to build relationships with you?
Who do you need to be so that people trust you?
So they know you’ll stand for them?
So they want to create with you?
So they want you in the room?
Surround yourself with great people and nurture those relationships, and opportunity will become a natural byproduct of that.
But there’s a catch.
You can’t treat people well so that opportunity comes.
You have to treat people well simply for the sake of treating people well.
That’s the character that creates the relationships.
And those relationships become the foundation for everything else you build.
The car is fun.
I enjoy it.
And apparently we really enjoy the mugs.
But none of those things are wealth by themselves.
The relationships that made the experience possible matter more.
The people you get to share your life with matter more.
The person you become while building it matters more.
Because at the end of the day, having a lot of money while being unhappy, disconnected, and surrounded by fractured relationships makes you pretty poor.
Wealth isn’t simply what you have.
It’s the life you’ve built around it.
Other Ways to Engage
If this conversation resonated, I’d encourage you to revisit Issue 028 — Listen to Their Actions, where we explored why what somebody consistently does tells you more than what they say they intend to do.
I’d also go back to Issue 030 — Your Most Important Investment, where we explored how the relationships closest to you compound across virtually every other area of your life.
And as always, you can find The Connection Fix on the Blog and The Connection Fix Podcast.
One Question to Sit With
Before I wrap...
Who are you when there’s nothing to gain?
Not with the client.
Not with the investor.
Not with the person who can open the next door.
With the waiter.
The clerk.
The valet.
The person who can do absolutely nothing for you except the service they’re providing in the moment.
Because that person gets to see something everyone else eventually will:
Who you actually are.
More soon.
Have a great rest of your day, and I’ll look forward to connecting again next week.
Joey
