Episode 932 · Feb 28, 2024

17 Wealth Files That Separate Rich from Poor Thinking

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George Wright III, host of The Daily Mastermind, spent years traveling across Europe, Asia, and Australia working alongside mentor T. Harv Eker. That experience reshaped how George understood the relationship between mindset and money. In this episode, he walks through the 17 wealth files Eker developed: a set of contrasting beliefs that reveal whether your thinking is moving you toward financial abundance or holding you back.

These are not abstract philosophy. They are practical distinctions you can measure against your own daily behavior. Read them slowly and ask yourself which side of each file you actually live on, not which side you wish you lived on.

How Your Beliefs About Control Shape Your Financial Life (Files 1-3)

The foundation of every wealth file is personal responsibility. File 1 states that rich people believe "I create my life," while poor people believe life happens to them. File 2 follows directly: rich people play the money game to win, while poor people play not to lose. There is a major difference between those two orientations. Playing not to lose keeps you defensive, reactive, and focused on scarcity. Playing to win keeps you looking for opportunity.

File 3 sharpens the point further:

Rich people are committed to being rich. Poor people want to be rich.

Want and committed are not the same thing. George asks it plainly: do your actions validate what you say you want? If your daily behavior does not align with your stated goals, that gap tells you something true about what you are actually committed to.

Why Thinking Big and Focusing on Opportunities Changes Everything (Files 4-5)

File 4 says rich people think big while poor people think small. This is not about wishful thinking. It is about refusing to pre-limit what you pursue before you even start. When you set a small target, you get a small result, even if you hit it perfectly.

File 5 is one George ties directly to his prosperity pillars: rich people focus on opportunities, poor people focus on obstacles. Solutions thinking produces abundance. Problem-fixation produces paralysis. Every challenge in your business or life has a solution; your job is to orient your attention toward finding it rather than cataloging everything that could go wrong.

Who You Surround Yourself With and How You Show Up (Files 6-8)

Files 6 through 8 are about environment, association, and self-belief. Rich people admire other successful people. Poor people resent them. George makes this personal: when a friend of yours is crushing it, what is your actual gut reaction? Resentment is a signal of scarcity thinking, because if you believed success was abundant you would have no reason to resent someone else having it.

File 7 is the natural consequence: rich people associate with positive, successful people, while poor people surround themselves with negative, unsuccessful ones. Your environment shapes your thinking whether you notice it or not.

File 8 brings it into business: rich people are willing to promote themselves and their value. Poor people think negatively about selling. If you hesitate to promote what you offer, George says that is a signal worth examining. Either your product needs more development, or your belief in yourself does.

Becoming Bigger Than Your Problems (Files 9-11)

File 9 reframes how you relate to difficulty. Rich people are bigger than their problems; poor people are smaller than their problems. George points out that the goal should never be to have fewer problems. The goal is to become someone who can handle larger ones. Problems do not disappear on the road to success; they scale up with your ambitions.

File 10 is about receiving. Rich people are excellent receivers; poor people block what comes to them. George traces this insight back to events he ran and marketed for Eker. You can be a generous giver and still cut off your own abundance by refusing to receive well. Every action has a reaction, and closing yourself to receiving disrupts that cycle.

Rich people choose to get paid on results. Poor people choose to get paid on time.

File 11 is one George applies directly to his own career. He says that throughout his professional life he consistently chose to take the upside rather than a guaranteed rate, and it paid more every single time. Trading hours for dollars caps what you can earn. Focusing on results removes that ceiling.

The Mindset of Building Real Wealth (Files 12-15)

Files 12 through 15 move into the mechanics of wealth accumulation. File 12 says rich people think "both," poor people think "either/or." There is almost always a win-win available if you believe one exists. You can have success and freedom. You can build a business and have a life. The moment you accept that you have to sacrifice one for the other, you have accepted a constraint that may not be real.

File 13 shifts focus from income to net worth. Many people earn significant money over their careers and still have little to show for it because they tracked the wrong number. Building net worth through investing and smart money management is how you create lasting financial stability, not just a high salary.

File 14 is about your relationship with money itself. Rich people manage their money well; poor people mismanage it. George puts it directly: how you do anything is how you do everything. If you blow your money, you will not have money. Money is an asset, and assets require care.

File 15 makes the leverage point explicit: rich people have their money work hard for them; poor people work hard for their money. Investments, passive income, and leveraged time are what separate a wealth-building life from a treadmill. George acknowledges being in the grind himself at times, and his reminder to himself, and to you, is that the direction of work should be: your money working for you, not the reverse.

Acting in Spite of Fear and Never Stopping Growth (Files 16-17)

Rich people act in spite of fear. Poor people let fear stop them.

File 16 is one George built into his prosperity pillars directly, though he adds a nuance: fear is real, but mood is often the bigger obstacle. Most people do not fail to act because they are afraid; they fail to act because they do not feel like it. George describes himself as the laziest disciplined person he knows. He gets up and goes to the gym not because he enjoys it but because he wants the result. Acting in spite of mood, not just fear, is what separates the people who build something from those who intend to.

File 17 may be the most important: rich people constantly learn and grow; poor people think they already know. George describes meeting individuals running nine and ten figure businesses who showed up to every conversation with a notebook, asking questions, genuinely eager to learn. They knew more than almost anyone in the room and they still acted like students. The marketplace is evolving. You are evolving. Lifelong learning is not optional if you want to stay competitive and relevant.

Action Steps

Audit your actions against your stated goals this week. If there is a gap between what you say you want and what you are actually doing, treat that gap as information, not as failure, and close it.
Identify one area where you are thinking "either/or" and challenge yourself to find the "both" solution before you accept a tradeoff.
Review your financial tracking: are you measuring income or net worth? Shift your primary metric to net worth and set up a simple system to track it monthly.
Look at your three closest professional relationships. Do those people challenge you to grow, or do they confirm your current comfort zone? Intentionally seek out one new association with someone more successful in an area where you want to improve.
Choose one thing you have been avoiding because of fear or low motivation and take one concrete action on it today, before the feeling shows up.

The 17 wealth files T. Harv Eker developed are not a checklist you complete once. They are a lens you hold up to your daily thinking on a regular basis. George Wright III frames it clearly: your inner world creates your outer world. The way you think is either building the life you want or quietly working against it. Start with one file, apply it honestly, and build from there. It is never too late to start living the life you were meant to live.

READ THE FULL TRANSCRIPT

Welcome back to The Daily Mastermind. It's George Wright III. I'm your host. If this is your first time joining us, make sure you hit that like and subscribe so you do not miss any episodes. Listen, today I want to talk to you about the way you're thinking. And I know we talked about mindset a lot, but I think it's because most of you know me as 100% business, marketing strategy, sales operations. But I think today I want to just emphasize sort of how you think. And one of the things that I immediately went to is when I was traveling all over Europe and Asia and Australia with T. Harv Eker, you know, I picked up a lot. I learned a lot, obviously, from him. He's a great mentor. And he definitely is the one who bridged that gap from, you know, 20 years of my career was all business and marketing and financial. And I kind of moved into that mindset mode because I realized that your inner game or your inner world is what creates your outer world. And that the way you think is going to keep you from accomplishing the goals that you want to accomplish if you don't think the right way. So it's not just about having a good philosophy or a positive mental attitude or, you know, what the mind of man can conceive and believe it can achieve through a positive mental attitude. all of that personal development stuff. What I'm talking about is how do you apply this mindset in your life? And Harv Ecker put together a really cool set of wealth files. And what I loved about Harv is that he had this unique ability to take mindset and wealth and mindset and money and mindset and business and kind of put them together. And so, you know, many of you might have gone to a lot of personal development experiences or events or learning or books. And then you may have also been studying business and marketing and success and wealth and investing. But what he did is he put together these 17 wealth files. And I'm going to just run through them quickly with you today, but what it's going to do is it's going to start to get you thinking not just on how you should think to be successful, fulfilled, happy, productive, and active in your life, but it also helps you to realize what you might be thinking and why that is not necessarily the right way to think. And you'll understand as we kind of get going. But I'm going to run through these 17 wealth files. And when I do this, I want you to ask yourself, what do you generally do in these given situations? How do you think? Because sometimes we may think we're positive, we're going through all the motions, but we might be in a bit of a scarcity mindset. We might think in ways that are not the most optimal for us to create the best experience of life. And the goal here is to help you to create the best life that you possibly can, the one that you were meant to live the one that you deserve to live So let me go through these wealth files I hope it gives you some inspiration and food for thought And also I love to hear from you So if you have any questions you have any feedback hit me up on the Daily Mastermind on Facebook Instagram TikTok, or YouTube. And you can also email me personally. I always say I'm the only one that takes my emails. I don't have my assistant do it. Any one of my assistants do it. And it's george at g3worldwide.com. So hit me up, let me know what you're working on. Without any further ado, let's get right into it. So wealth file number one is rich people believe I create my life. Poor people believe life happens to me. And I want you to understand that he uses these terms rich and poor because it's kind of two extremes. And sometimes some of these files you might fall into on one side and some of the other, but the key is here, how do we get you thinking abundantly and successfully? So rich people believe I create my life. Poor people believe life happens to me. Wealth file number two, rich people play the money game to win. Poor people play the money game not to lose. How many times in your business are you just trying not to lose versus playing to win? Wealth file number three, rich people are committed to being rich. Poor people want to be rich. You say you want what you want, but do your actions validate that? Because if your actions don't align with what you say you want, it's doubtful you really want it. Rich people are committed to being rich. Wealth file number four, rich people think big, poor people think small. Wealth file number five, rich people focus on opportunities, poor people focus on obstacles. This goes back to our prosperity pillar of focus on solutions. Solutions will get you that abundant mindset. Don't focus on the problem. Wealth file number six, rich people admire other rich and successful people. Poor people resent rich and successful people. Now, forget about what you're like on the surface. Deep down, when your buddy is crushing it, are you wishing it was you? Are you maybe wishing they got held back a little bit? Because poor people resent rich and successful people. All the haters out there. Rich people admire success because they know that there's plenty of it out there. That's an abundant mindset. Wealth file number seven, rich people associate with positive, successful people. Poor people associate with negative, unsuccessful people. Wealth file number eight, rich people are willing to promote themselves and their value. Poor people think negatively about selling and promotion. So when you're building and growing your business, are you hesitant to promote what you have? Maybe that's an indicator of either your product is not good enough, you need to build it up, or you may not have developed that belief in yourself because rich people are willing to promote themselves and their value because they created that inner being Wealth file number nine rich people are bigger than their problems and poor people are smaller than their problems And this makes you question do you want less problems in your life? Do you? Because you shouldn't. You should want to be stronger than your problems because the bigger you can become over your problems, the more you can handle, the more success you're going to have. You're not going to create success by having your problems go away. Wealth file number 10, rich people are excellent receivers. Poor people are poor receivers. I never really understood this until I was at a few events that we did and marketed for Harv. But the bottom line is this, you might be the individual that is out there recognizing and acknowledging and giving, but are you willing to receive? Because the universe isn't going to help you. It's not going to give you what you need if you're not a good receiver. just because you're a good giver. You've got to recognize that for every action, there's a reaction. So wealth file number 11, rich people choose to get paid on results. Poor people choose to get paid on time. Are you trading your hours for dollars? See, most of my life, most of my career, I've been like, look, man, don't pay me anything. I'll just take the upside. And every single time it's paid me more, every single time, because rich people choose to get paid on results. And that's all you should be focused on is results in your life, in your business, in your relationships, everything. Wealth file number 12, rich people think both, poor people think either or. This goes back to our prosperity pillar, think win-win. There's always a solution, even when you're in difficult times, even when you're dealing with difficult relationships, partnerships, business challenges. There's always a win-win. There's always both. you can have your cake and eat it too. You can have success and freedom. You can have both. You've got to believe that. Wealth file number 13, rich people focus on their net worth, poor people focus on their working income. Are you focused on your income, but not, I mean, have you made a lot of income and not created a lot of net worth, wealth, legacy? The key should be focusing on your net worth. That's something we talk about in our summit that's coming up this next week. Remind me to tell you about that. Wealth file number 14, rich people manage their money well. Poor people mismanage their money well. Are you an excellent money manager? Do you have a good relationship with money? Do you treat it? I mean, how you do anything is how you do everything. If you just blow your money, you're never going to have money. It's the same as being an excellent receiver. You've got to learn to manage your money well. Money is an asset. Time is an asset. Building wealth is the key long-term to your freedom lifestyle. Wealth file number 15, rich people have their money work hard for them Poor people work hard for their money How many people can relate The most successful people in the world are the ones that have money work for them They have leverage They have investments They have the ability to leverage their time. Because see, time is also something you can have leverage for you. But poor people just work hard for money. And if you're just working hard, and sometimes, look, I've been in that situation. Sometimes I feel like I'm working so hard. You've got to remind yourself that you want to have money working for you, not you for money. Wealth file number 16, rich people act in spite of fear. Poor people let fear stop them. This is one of the key principles I used to develop the prosperity pillars where I said, act in spite of your mood. I do believe that fear holds people back, but at the same token, I think the bigger thing that holds people back is their mood. We don't feel like doing it. We don't feel like getting moving. And here's the bottom line. Most of the time it's because of fear, but a lot of the time it's just because of our mood and our emotions. Rich people, successful people, prosperous people act in spite of fear, in spite of their mood. None of us feel like getting up early in the morning. None of us feel like doing the reps. None of us feel like, you know, I tell people all the time, I joke, I am the laziest disciplined person I know. Everybody's like, man, you get up and go to the gym. Yeah, I don't do it because I like to. I do it because I want to and I need to. And Wealth File number 17, probably one of the most important one, rich people constantly learn and grow. Poor people think they already know. How many people are you around that don't seem open to your ideas? If you're surrounding yourself with people that are not open, I had an opportunity to work with a couple of individuals that were nine and 10 figure guys. And they happen to be guys. And I got to tell you, man, they always came in with a notebook and they were just asking questions and asking questions. And I kept feeling like, man, these guys got to know more than I do. But they were eager to learn. And I'm telling you right now, rich people constantly learn and grow. And the marketplace is evolving and people are evolving and you're evolving. You've got to constantly have that lifelong learning. So those are 17 wealth files. I hope they help you. I hope they get you thinking about not just what you should be doing, but man, what are you already doing? Are you thinking win-lose? Are you mismanaging your money? Are you working too hard for your money? Are you afraid to sell and promote yourself? These are things that you need to understand. Your psychology, your way of thinking is so important because whether you believe it or not, whether you recognize it or not, it's creating your reality. It's creating your outer world. So that's my message for today. I hope you have an amazing day. I look forward to talking with you more once again. My name is George Wright III. I'm your host. Thanks for hanging out today. I'll talk with you more tomorrow. .

About the host

George Wright III

George Wright III is an entrepreneur, investor, and the host of The Daily Mastermind. Over more than two decades he has founded and scaled several multimillion-dollar companies and built a renowned seminar business that put some of the world's biggest names and brands on stage. With 25+ years across marketing, sales, and executive leadership, he's made a career of turning bold ideas into results — and momentum into lasting growth.

Today his mission is singular: empower driven entrepreneurs everywhere to master their mindset, unlock their potential, and live their ultimate destiny. Through The Daily Mastermind, George shares the Prosperity Principles and strategies that help people create massive change — in their business and in their life.

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