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You’re not bad with money. You’ve just been taught three lies that almost guarantee you’ll stay stuck in the same financial cycle. In this episode, Sharran breaks down three deeply ingrained lies about money that most people learn early and never question. These beliefs shape how people earn, spend, and invest, often keeping them trapped in cycles of high income but low wealth.
Sharran explains why income and wealth are not the same thing, showing how real wealth comes from converting income into assets rather than lifestyle upgrades. He also explores the importance of maintaining a financial gap between earning and spending, highlighting how lifestyle inflation silently destroys long-term wealth building.
Through personal stories, behavioral insights, and real-world examples, this episode reframes money as a system of discipline, patience, and awareness–not just earning power. It’s a wake-up call for anyone who wants to build real, lasting wealth.
“When you realize that no one else cares, it’s a lot easier to build some insane wealth.”
– Sharran Srivatsaa
Timestamps:
02:08 – Income and wealth are not the same thing
05:52 – Lottery winners and why wealth disappears without investing skills
06:42 – Understanding the wealth gap
08:54 – Profit first vs. invest first mindset
09:28 – Spending does not automatically signal success
10:57 – Why wealthy people often live simply
12:22 – Recap: 3 Lies about money
Resources:
– The Next Billion by Sharran Srivatsaa
– Board Member: ARC Multifamily Real Estate Investing
– Board Member: The Real Brokerage
Connect with Sharran:
– X
– YouTube
– Threads
Transcript:
[00:00:00] Hey, this is Sharran Srivatsaa. Welcome back to The Business School Podcast, and in this episode, I’m gonna tell you about how most of us learned about money from people who were also figuring it out as they went along. That means most of us are using the rules that w- were never actually true, that somebody who was not actually wealthy actually told us what it was.
[00:00:15] And today I’m gonna break down three things about money that took way too long to learn, and as soon as I realized it, it was extremely liberating, and I’m gonna break them all down step by step, starting right now.
[00:00:31] One thing is for certain: just because it’s tried and true doesn’t mean it’s working right now. So the big question is this: where can you learn what is working right now? The strategies, the tactics, the psychology, and the exact how-to. How to grow your business, how to blow up your personal brand, and supercharge your personal growth.
[00:00:54] That is the question, and this podcast will give you the answer. My name is Sharran Srivatsaa, and welcome to Business School.
[00:01:07] So, do you know someone who makes really good money and they genuinely have no idea where it all goes? Meaning they earn well, you know that they earn well. Their lifestyle, for example, looks great from the outside. They have a nice car, and they go on good vacations. They post dinners on Instagram and, like, never skip dessert and all that.
[00:01:25] But yet, if you sat down with them and you looked at the actual numbers, maybe their savings or their investments or whatever they’re building towards, can you guess that they don’t match? And by the way, I didn’t know that this existed. I’ve known a lot of people, like, you know, in Los Angeles, especially in Los Angeles real estate, you c- you call them, you call them the $10,000 millionaire, right?
[00:01:44] They have $10,000 in their bank account, but they actually seem like millionaires. And I’ve known a lot of people like this, and I never thought about this at all, that I didn’t think it was systemic. So today I wanna tell you about three things about money that most of us were never actually taught, and I actually mean the real stuff.
[00:02:00] Not like, “Oh yeah, you gotta spend less than you earn.” I know we’ve heard all of that, but I’m talking about the things that shifted for me, and I think they will help you too. So here is kinda lesson number one: Income and wealth are not the same thing. So the first thing is earning money and building weal- wealth are two completely different activities.
[00:02:19] And the reason I’m sharing that with you is that most of us, the society has focused on just one of them because we look… We actually wake up and look at ourselves in the mirror more often than we wake up and actually look at our investment accounts or bank accounts or w- our net worth statements.
[00:02:35] And then at the end of the day, we say, “Well, we’re working on all of this to get more money to do what?” Right? And I’ll give you a story. Early on in my real estate career, I read “Rich Dad Poor Dad,” and people were like, “Hey, you just gotta own houses.” Well, I didn’t have money to own a bunch of homes, so I was like, “Man, I can just figure out a way to get debt financing with hard money loans and do flipping.”
[00:02:53] So I got really good at flipping houses, and I got, uh, and because we ran a brokerage at that time, I got access to a lot of off-market deals, and I would tell the agents that, “Hey, bring me your deals first, and worst case scenario, if I– I’ll either buy it and make sure you get, uh, all the commissions, or if I don’t buy it, I’ll wholesale it for you so you still make the money.”
[00:03:10] And I built an insane system around it. I actually made more money, like bonkers money, on that activity than I did on any other part of the business. And so you… I would get the deal, I would put money in, I would fix it up, and I would sell it, and I would collect the check, and I would repeat. And I’d run that loop for five plus years.
[00:03:27] And I literally ran this as a shadow economy because I got access to so much deal flow. But at the end of five years, I’d flipped something like 100 homes. 100 homes. And I had cash to show for it, but by no measure did I not have any assets. But, like, I’ll tell you a different story. When I told that story to my friend, a friend of mine around the same time, he’s like, “Dude, I can’t believe you’re doing all this.
[00:03:46] I don’t have access to your deal flow.” And he took, because of that, he took a completely different approach. He bought one single-family home, and then a couple of years later, he took some money out of it, refinanced it, and he bought a fourplex. And then he didn’t flip anything. He just bought and held that.
[00:04:02] Well, crazy if you think about it, he took that fourplex, refinanced out of it, and then he bought a 12-unit. And when we compared notes a few years later, his net worth from real estate was several multiples of mine, like five times. And I remember sitting there, and I’m like, “Man, this is insane.”
[00:04:18] I worked so much harder than him. I’d done so many more deals, and he just held a bunch of things. He didn’t even do that much work. His properties are managed by a property management company. He didn’t get called at 2:00 a.m. or anything like that. He didn’t have to deal with the stress of hard money lending.
[00:04:31] He didn’t have to actually do the deals. He didn’t have to be completely distracted all the time, and the point is that I was actually flipping by generating this income, and he was building an asset. And the difference is insane because it– the income stops the moment you stop. If I wasn’t doing a deal, the money stopped.
[00:04:47] But his properties were collecting rent whether he was there or not. So the question I’m asking you, and I should ask it myself, is what percentage of your time right now are you spending towards generating income, and what percentage of that is going towards building things that work without you? Now, you may say, “Well, Sharran, I’m not there yet.”
[00:05:05] Well, y- you at least have to start thinking about it. And the reason you’re not thinking about it because all we have thought– been taught is, you know, well, get g– work really hard, get good grades, get a jo- you know, uh, graduate from high school. If you’re really interested, go to college or grad school, and then get the degree, and then maybe get a job, and then move up in the job so you can make more income.
[00:05:24] That’s all we’ve been taught. We don’t know anything else. But then we’re like, “Wait a minute. How am I gonna break out of this rat race?” And that’s the problem. That is the treadmill. That sucks, right? And so we have to find a way to somehow transfer our income into assets. If not, we have to learn how to become investors because the only game in all of this is the game that no one has taught us, and that is becoming an investor.
[00:05:45] The being an investor is the only game. And you may say, “Well, Sharran, that’s not true. I’ve not been trained on it.” I will tell you, when someone… y- y- let’s just assume that you got ten million dollars today. Let’s just assume you’ve hit the lottery today. What are you gonna do? That is, that’s what everyone wants, right?
[00:05:59] But if that is the case, if you got a ten-million-dollar win on a lottery today, you are now instantly forced to become an investor. And why do people who win the lottery lose all their money within the first 18 months? Why? Because they have not learned how to be an investor. That is the problem. All we’ve done is figure out ways on how you can make a quick buck, how you can get rich quick.
[00:06:18] They don’t think about how you can get rich guaranteed, right? And getting, being, getting rich guaranteed, of course, is not a financial promise ’cause I don’t know what you’re gonna do, but getting rich guaranteed is not generating more income. Do you know how many people exist on the Forbes 400 list that made it on income?
[00:06:34] Zero, right? Because the job is to take the income and turn it into assets, and the only way you can do that is by becoming an investor. Now, let me tell you part two. Did you know the average American household only saves about three point six percent of their income? Three point six percent. That’s from the Federal Reserve, by the way, right?
[00:06:51] That’s three and a half cents out of every dollar that people make. Now, you may say that’s inflation. How are people supposed to live, et cetera? Well, in China, the average savings are around forty-five percent. That’s crazy. It is the same planet, by the way, and wildly different philosophical ideas about what money is for.
[00:07:05] I don’t know if you know my main man, the late, great Charlie Munger. He spent, what, 60-plus years studying all these businesses and people and how wealth actually gets built, and he made this observation that I really like. He said that he watched people with these really high incomes, these really high earners, and at the end of their careers, they had nothing.
[00:07:23] And it wasn’t because they were not good with their money or bad luck, and it wasn’t a market crash. It was that every dollar that came in is the same dollar that went out. Because we are only taught two things: to make more money and spend more money. And then if we don’t know those things, we don’t know anything else, so we only do what we know.
[00:07:38] And the other time, if you’ve read this book called “The Millionaire Next Door,” you realize that people with pretty ordinary incomes build last– build much better wealth. Why? Well, it was not because of how much they made. It was this interesting kind of buffer, the gap between what they made and what they spent, right?
[00:07:53] And if you– if that gap doesn’t exist, that is the wealth gap, right? And so the more gap you have, the more you can do with it, the more you can become an investor. So if there is no gap, essentially, you have $100 coming in and $100 going out, you can’t really invest in anything. If you can’t really invest in anything, you’re gonna wake up tomorrow and try to make that $100 again.
[00:08:10] And honestly, this has not got anything to do with being cheap. I’m not saying don’t enjoy your life. Go, you know, drink the boba and find the Lambo and go to Mykonos. What I’m saying is that if you get a raise and the– every time you got a raise, you now went and had a bigger car payment or a bigger house and nicer trips, your income went up, but your– and your wealth actually didn’t.
[00:08:30] And the component, the thing, there’s a name for that. It is called lifestyle creep. That is, every time you turn up your income, you also turn up your expenses. And it’s, it, it, it, it’s really, really hard. And so my question for you is, you may say, “Well, Sharan, what do you want me to do?” The– It’s really simple.
[00:08:47] You want to decide a percentage, you know, that you’re going to invest before you decide a percentage that you’re gonna do with anything else. What does that mean? There is this big theory of profit first, if you’ve heard of it. I love the idea of profit first, but I actually think the guy who came up with profit first got it wrong.
[00:09:03] He talked about making a profit as to what you take home first. I actually think profit first needs to be what you’re gonna invest first, because if you don’t actually take that amount of money and say, “This is what I’m gonna invest first,” you don’t lea- learn how to become an investor. If you don’t know how to learn how to become an investor, you’re gonna work until you die.
[00:09:18] And that’s what’s important. That’s why I think I don’t subscribe to profit first, because it then puts more income in your pocket, and then you just build everything around more income, and then you take that income, and you spend it into more money, and that’s the problem. So okay, idea number three, and this is an interesting one.
[00:09:31] Uh, there’s this guy, Morgan Housel, if you have not heard of him. He actually wrote this book called “The Psychology of Money,” and he hasn’t really written anything good after that. But that’s the best part. You can write one and never have to write anything good after that, but he did a good job with that.
[00:09:43] And I don’t think he had any experience running a business. I just think he had figured out, with research, how to write this book on the psychology of money, which I actually appreciate. He is a, he was a research-based reporter, and kudos to him. He spent a part of his college years working as a valet in a pretty nice hotel in LA.
[00:09:58] So as a valet, he got to drive everything, right? Ferraris, Lambos, Porsches, the whole shebang. And one day, he had this realization. When a really nice car pulled in, he never once looked at the driver and thought, “Wow, that person’s cool.” What he did every single time was imagine himself as the driver.
[00:10:14] He pictured himself in the car. He wasn’t admiring the owner. He was projecting himself onto this fantasy of driving that fancy Lambo, and he realized that that’s what everybody does. Nobody’s watching the person in the expensive car and thinking highly of them. No one is– No one w- saw you in your brand new Lambo and said, “Man, look at him.
[00:10:30] He’s so cool.” Nobody did that, right? They’re imagining what would it feel like for them to be in that car. So what does this mean? Well, it means a lot of what we spend is to signal success that doesn’t actually show signal success to anyone. The person watching you pull up in that fancy car is not thinking about how successful you are.
[00:10:52] They’re thinking about how successful it would feel if it were them. That’s the crazy part. Instead of wearing the Patek Philippe, or instead of wearing the Rolex, or instead of wearing the Apple Watch, like people do so because they think that other rich people do that. But you will– you’d be amazed at the absolutely wealthy people that live in normal neighborhoods that drive a Honda Civic, and they’re trying to– they don’t care about anything because they’ve figured out one thing, which is they’re content with who they are.
[00:11:15] They don’t feel like they have to keep up with the Joneses. And the $100,000, $150,000, $200,000, $400,000, $500,000 car is not proof of your wealth. It is just $100,000, $200,000, $300,000, $400,000, $500,000 that you don’t have anymore. That’s all it is. Now, please, please, please, I’m not saying don’t buy nice things. If you genuinely love cars and you like watches and you can afford it, then go get the car, buy the watch.
[00:11:36] But buy it because you love it. Don’t say, “Hey, I want a Lambo because…” You say, “I want a Lambo.” Don’t say, “I want a Rolex because blank.” You say, “No, I want a Rolex.” You gotta want what you want. If you want it, work on it, get it, that’s cool because now, intrinsically having this makes you happy that you actually have it.
[00:11:54] And the, if you are doing it for someone else, I will tell you right now, they do not care. No one is impressed by you. They don’t think about you. They don’t– nobody thinks about me. The only reason you’re– as I’m telling you this, you don’t even think about me. You’re not thinking about me. You don’t care about me.
[00:12:08] It’s just, I am a podcast on that I maybe end up talking fast and have some decent ideas from time to time on your way to work, or when you’re at the gym. You do not care because everybody is taking the idea and trying to figure out how to implement it in their own life. So, the big three things.
[00:12:23] Number one, income and wealth are not the same. You can win at w- income but lose at wealth, and that’s really, really terrible because then you’re gonna work until you die. Number two, there has to be some kind of gap between what you earn and what you spend. And if you don’t actually do that, you’re never gonna have any To like rub dry powder to be an in– become an investor or learn the thing.
[00:12:43] And the third is that a huge portion of what we spend on to look successful isn’t being seen the way we think, actually think it’s being seen, which is kinda liberating by the way when you sit with it. You should be so excited. You’re like, “Wait a minute. I actually love my house. I don’t need a $30 million house.”
[00:13:01] Nobody cares. I need more security. People are gonna like… I need like 23 dogs. I need armed guards. I need a Brinks truck. I need, you know, I need four pools. I need three basketball courts. I need like more landscaping. Like you don’t need any of that. If you don’t want it, you don’t need it, ’cause nobody cares.
[00:13:18] Which, honestly, was the most liberating thing to me. Like, I do not care. And I realized, a-and I, and I thought about it for a while. I was like, man. So s- by the way, sometimes I do, sometimes I do feel like, “Oh man, if I had, if I had this or I had that, I would feel better.” Then I realized, I’m like, well, the, there’s ROH, return on hassle.
[00:13:36] The more stuff you have, the more painful it is, the more hassle there is. Life is really simple. Like, think about this. Think about like I travel a bunch for work. When I travel, I have one suitcase, right? Like my carry-on. When I go to a hotel room, I have one suitcase to like manage and pack. I live my entire life in a hotel room with one suitcase.
[00:13:52] I don’t need anything. My entire life is in that one suit- like one carry-on. And that’s when I realized my entire life is in this one suitcase and my laptop. That’s all I care about. And if I could do this for two more days or three days, or four days, everything else is just extra. You could take that extra stuff and create a significantly better life for yourself.
[00:14:07] You don’t have to figure this all out today, by the way, but I just wanted to like start this thing because, honestly, this should be extremely liberating for you because when you realize that no one else cares, it’s a lot easier to build some insane wealth. Hey, remember, however you slice it, greatness is a choice, and I hope this was helpful to you.
[00:14:22] If this was helpful, can you do me a favor? Can you screenshot this episode and just tag me? That way, I can make more like this for you. So please do me a favor. Screenshot this episode, tag me, and I can make more like this for you.
[00:14:39] Hey, this is Sharran. I have an awesome free gift for you just for listening to the podcast. As you may know, I’ve got a chance to build two billion-dollar companies the hard way. So if you like this episode, you will love getting the exact playbooks from those wins. It’s on my Substack, called My Next Billion. It has the exact frameworks I wish someone had given me when I was figuring it all out. Now you get the real lessons from the trenches as I go for a three-peat and build the next billion. So everything’s free at mynextbillion.com. Please check it out at mynextbillion.com.