You Are Not An Exception
The Amplified Impact Podcast
May 25th, 2023
Recently, I made a poll asking: Would you rather have a million dollars today or the skills of a billionaire in five years?
It’s a loaded question, and to me, the answer is obvious…you have to go for the skills. Let me tell you why.
Money is never the solution to all our problems. It can depreciate, be stolen, and even become devalued over time.
On the other hand, having the skills, knowledge, resources, and ability to make money will never leave you wanting.
However, I was surprised to find that 30% of my audience chose the million dollars. Many argued that it could improve the quality of their lives, help them acquire skills and invest for retirement.
While these things may be true, in my experience, things that are given without having been earned tend to leave us easily.
Think about the lottery. Reports suggest that 70% of people who win the lottery will go bankrupt within only a few short years. That’s a massive majority of people.
My question is…what makes you think you are the exception?
If we don’t yet have the skills or the ability to make a million dollars, chances are….we won’t know how to use it properly if it’s just handed to us.
Now, I’m not saying that everyone who chooses the million dollars will lose it. There’s a chance that some of my listeners are the 30% who can make it work.
But the point is, you have to be honest with yourself and know where you stand.
Ultimately, my message is clear: choose the skills, and you’ll never want for money in your life.
TWEETABLE QUOTE:
“If you have the ability to go out there and make money, then you will never want for money in your life.”- Anthony Vicino
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Episode Transcript:
Hey, what’s up everybody? Welcome back to the podcast. So a couple weeks ago I made a poll asking, which would you rather, would you rather have a million dollars today or in five years, have the skills of a billionaire? And this was a really interesting question. It’s kind of loaded I thought, because to me it’s very, very obvious that there is really only one.
Answer one right answer. If your goal is to live a life of financial freedom, to have control over your life, to have the ability to go and do what you want, where you want, with who you want, when you want, like the only answer to this question in my mind is you have to go for the skills because money is never the solution.
It’s, it’s never. The thing that’s going to stick with you through thick and thin, through life’s up and ups and downs, because it’s a thing that can depreciate. It’s a thing that could be stolen from you. It’s a thing that could deflate over time. It could become devalued. If we go into a market of hyperinflation, there’s all sorts of things that can happen to the money.
Whereas your skills, if you have those. If you have the ability, the knowledge, the resources, the, the ability to go out there and make money, then you will never want for money in your life. So for me, it’s always better to trade that five years to acquire the skills and, and I think it’s this type of.
Short-term thinking of, Hey, if I take the money now, like my life can be drastically improved at this moment, and then I can invest that money for retirement, I could use this money to go and acquire the skills of a billionaire, which I think in a lot of cases is true. You could do that. However, I was surprised that 30% of people opted for the money, first of all.
Like of the poll. I think we had like 3000, 3,500 people respond, and so about a thousand people a little bit over. Chose the money. And, and a lot of times the argument that they were making was, you know, this could drastically improve the quality of my life now, and I can use this money to go and acquire the skills and I could invest this money and retire off of it right now.
And the, the argument that I come to is isn’t that those things aren’t true, that you couldn’t use that money to acquire skills in that you couldn’t use that money to invest wisely. However, in my experience, things that have been given, Um, without having been earned, tend to very easily leave us. So they say easy come, easy go, or a fool and his money is, are soon parted.
And I believe that if you don’t have the skills or the ability to go out there and get the money in the first place that’s just handed to you, then by definition you don’t, you don’t have the tools, the resources, the skills yet to wield that money. And so I look for an example. To other areas of life where people are just suddenly handed large sums of money to see what was the effect, what happened in that scenario.
And the easiest place to look is the lottery, right? Like these people, they buy a ticket for a dollar and then they win millions of dollars. Well, reports suggest that 70%, 70% of these people who win the lottery will go bankrupt within only a few short years. 70% of people and. You know, I love engaging with you guys in the comment section to kind of like, you know, have my worldview challenge because maybe I’m not right.
Maybe, maybe the skills are not the right choice. Maybe the money is, and so I love hearing the counter arguments. However, my counter-argument was to point out, okay, so you believe that you could invest for retirement. You believe you could use this money to go and acquire the skills of a, of a millionaire, a billionaire, whatever, to then be able to go make money into the future.
However, what we know of people who are just suddenly handed large sums of money is that 70% of that’s a massive, massive majority of people will lose that money. In only a few years. So my question is, what makes you think you are the exception? And over and over the, the refrain that I heard was, you know, like as a person who’s following you in your content here on social media and like learning financial, um, like literacy and all these things like, That, that flatterers me.
But let’s not be, let’s not dilute ourselves into thinking that just because we are learning about these things doesn’t mean yet we know how to, to implement or utilize them. And so, If you do not yet have the skills or the ability to go out there and make a million dollars, I believe if I hand you a million dollars, you could be very well-intentioned about going out there and researching and learning and doing all the right things and there’s still a 70% chance that you’re gonna lose that money.
Cuz I, I don’t think all those lottery winners just went out there intending to lose it. I think probably some of them went into it thinking, I’m going to try and keep this money right. Now, you may very well end up being in the 30% and maybe perhaps the people who do follow me on social media, listen to this podcast.
Maybe they are the 30% because there’s something different in how they’re approaching the game. That’s very well possible. However, in my experience, if your game plan revolves around you being the exception and not the rule, then the chances are very good that you’re going to lose. Okay, so again, if you are, if your game plan is that you are the exception and not the rule, then you’re probably going to lose.
And so 70% of people losing the money in only a few years, that is a very hard statistic to look at and think, I could be the exception, I could be in the 30%. Sure. When we’re entrepreneurs and we’re going for gold, like we have to be kind of delusional in our abilities. However, like when I look at that, I just think, I don’t know, man.
I would not bet my life on a coin flip like that. However, like if I had a 70% chance of being wrong, but 30% being right, those those aren’t great odds. Whereas a hundred percent odds are that I would have the skills of a billionaire in five years. I could almost guarantee you could use those skills to make tens of millions of dollars.
Maybe you don’t go and build a billion dollar company cuz there’s probably a lot of luck built like factored into that. However, the skills of a billionaire, the people that I’ve met who are billionaires, like they have legit skills that they could just go. Start from square one and earn a million dollars, like it’s nothing, just like overnight.
They could do that. And so I would take the sure thing of that million dollars, knowing that then I have the skills that regardless of what the money does, if it how it comes or goes, or if somebody takes it or what happens to it in the future. Like I always have the skills that will compound for the rest of my life as long as I’m living.
And I think that is the right choice. And so, I just wanted to share this with you because I think the, there’s, you know, a lot of psychological psychology, cognitive biases within psychology, and one of them is what I call the, the ex, the um, the rule of the exception, which is we all believe we are exceptions.
We all believe that, yes, there’s statistics out there about, you know, driving over the speed limit or, you know, smoking or eating unhealthy and not exercising or not sleeping in a, like all these things. We know that there’s statistics about these things increasing the risk and the prevalence of mortality events in our lives, and yet we think I’m the exception that stuff can’t happen to me.
Until life smacks you in the face and suddenly you have diabetes. You get into a car accident, you lose a leg, like whatever, like all these terrible things can happen to you and you realize, oh crap, I’m not, uh, I’m, I’m not exempt. I am not the special butterfly, so I just wanted to share that because I’ve been thinking a lot about it.
Recently. We did a video. It’s gonna be coming out depending on when this podcast comes out. That video is probably already out. It’s called A Millionaire Skill Stack, where I talk about what are those foundational millionaire skills that you should acquire. I. That would set you up for life, that regardless of what industry, what market, like what market cycle that you could use those skills to go make money.
So go check out that video. It’s on YouTube. Uh, the channel is at Anthony Vino. And as always, guys, I appreciate you tuning in, listening, being here. I’m curious if you were in the camp of taking the money, has this podcast changed your mind and if you were in the camp of taking the skills. Maybe did, did this change your mind in reverse?
Did I, did I, did I, um, not help my case here? Did I, did I, um, debate myself poorly? Let me know. Go find the comments. Shoot me a dm. I’d love to hear from you guys. I love having a conversation so that this isn’t just a monologue. Come engage with me. Whether that’s on Twitter at Anthony Vino or on Instagram.
That’s the Anthony Vino, because somebody stole my name. Anyways, that’s gonna do it for me guys. I appreciate you being here. Looking forward to seeing you back here tomorrow. Until then, stay hyperfocused.
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