Tell me if this sounds even remotely familiar:
You clock in a 60-hour week, pour your heart into your businesses, and generate impressive revenue, only to watch the profits sit unemployed in a checking account earning basically nothing. Meanwhile, you’re burning out, missing family dinners, and wondering why financial freedom feels so elusive despite all the hard work.
For many entrepreneurs, starting and growing a business isn’t just about making money, it’s about finding freedom. It’s about experiencing the fulfillment that comes from building something meaningful and living a rich life.
But while your business can give you a rich life, it also has the potential to ruin it. Success often comes at the expense of sanity, not because you aren’t smart or capable, but because you don’t have a system.
Living Life Rich: How Effective Entrepreneurs Leverage Their Income for Greater Impact
In my experience as a financial professional, I’ve worked with entrepreneurs of all stages, built five companies and managed $1 billion in assets. These are just a few of the frameworks I’ve learned how to leverage that will help you live life rich:
1. THE MINDSET SHIFT: FROM EARNER TO EMPLOYER
Think about the best employees out there: they show up every day, generate results without constant supervision, and produce value even when you’re not watching.
That’s exactly what your money should be doing for you!
Unfortunately, many business owners treat their money like their worst employee: letting it sit around, doing nothing productive, while they do all the heavy lifting. It’s time to turn this around.
Making money your best employee is the most important mindset shift you can make.
It happens when you start viewing your accumulated profits not as a safety blanket, but as potential employees waiting for their job assignments. Each dollar should have a specific role in building your financial freedom.
That leads me to the next point:
2. THE THREE-BUCKET STRATEGY: ORGANIZING YOUR FINANCIAL WORKFORCE
Just like you wouldn’t put every employee in the same role, you can’t put all your money in the same place. I use what I call the three-bucket strategy to organize my financial resources:
- Short-term bucket (3-6 months of expenses): This is your cash for immediate needs and opportunities. Think of this as your administrative staff—always available when you need them, but not necessarily your biggest wealth builders.
- Intermediate bucket (3-10 years): These are your tax-deferred investments that you won’t touch for several years. This bucket includes retirement accounts, business development funds, and strategic investments that grow while reducing your current tax burden.
- Legacy bucket (10+ years): This is your long-term wealth that grows tax-free over decades. These investments compound over time and create generational wealth that extends far beyond your working years.
The key is balancing all three buckets based on your current life stage and financial goals. Too much in the short-term, and you’re missing growth opportunities. Too little, and you’re vulnerable to unexpected challenges.
3. THE THREE INVESTMENT PILLARS: WHERE TO PUT YOUR MONEY TO WORK
Once you’ve organized your buckets, you need to deploy your money across three main areas:
- Your own business: This is often your highest-return investment, especially in the early stages. But the goal is to eventually build systems that generate profits without requiring your constant presence.
- Other people’s businesses: This includes stocks, bonds, and other securities. You’re essentially hiring other entrepreneurs and companies to grow your wealth while you focus on your own ventures.
- Real estate: Whether it’s commercial properties, rental units, or real estate investment trusts, property can provide both appreciation and passive income streams.
One of my businesses now operates completely without my day-to-day involvement and sends me quarterly distributions. That’s money working as my employee while I focus on other opportunities.
4. BUILDING YOUR FINANCIAL “MAYO CLINIC”: THE SPECIALISTS WHO MAKE YOUR MONEY WORK
When you’re facing a major medical procedure, you don’t want a jack-of-all-trades in the operating room. You want the entire Mayo Clinic: specialists who excel in surgery, anesthetics, complex equipment, and post-op care. We understand this concept in medicine but often overlook it when it comes to the health of our business and finances.
Having generalists who dabble in a bit of everything won’t cut it. You need specialists who excel in their specific fields to bring your wealth-building vision to life.
Think of these professionals as the Mayo Clinic of your financial life. Just as you wouldn’t trust your heart surgery to someone who “also does a little cardiology on the side,” you shouldn’t trust your financial freedom to advisors who aren’t laser-focused on their expertise.
Your Core Specialists:
- The Accountant: Your financial interpreter who ensures your books are accurate and uncovers opportunities for cost-saving and profit-making. They turn your ledgers into a strategic roadmap, showing you exactly where your money is working hardest and where it’s sitting idle.
- The Attorney: Your legal shield who ensures you’re protected, compliant, and safeguarded against potential pitfalls in our ever-evolving regulatory landscape. Depending on your business, you may need multiple attorneys with different specializations.
- The Banker: Your capital lifeline who provides the financial products and services that keep your money moving strategically. A strong relationship with a knowledgeable banker opens doors to opportunities and supports your wealth-building ambitions.
- The Financial Advisor: Your wealth strategist who goes beyond crunching numbers to help you navigate the complexities of investments and asset allocation. Their expertise helps manage risk, guides growth, and protects your accumulated wealth.
- The Insurance Advisor: Your risk shield-bearer who scans the horizon for potential financial storms and crafts safeguards to protect your wealth from unexpected events.
The key is getting these specialists to work together as a coordinated team. Most entrepreneurs make the mistake of working with each advisor in isolation, missing the powerful synergies that happen when your entire financial team collaborates on your wealth-building strategy.
When your money has a coordinated team of specialists working behind the scenes, it truly becomes your best employee: generating results, managing risks, and creating opportunities even when you’re focused on running your business.
5. DIVERSIFYING YOUR INCOME: THE EIGHT STREAMS THAT BUILD REAL WEALTH
Every entrepreneur wants at least one incredibly successful revenue stream, but the smart ones create multiple income streams.
Multiple income streams serve as a safety net under your financial high-wire act. One stream might falter, but you won’t hit the ground. More importantly, it accelerates your wealth journey like taking the financial expressway instead of the scenic route.
The key to building these multiple streams lies in understanding how different types of income work. Active income requires your direct involvement, like profits from your main business. Passive income is earned with minimal effort once the initial setup is complete.
The goal is gradually shifting from primarily active income to increasingly passive streams, allowing your money to work as hard as you do.
Before pursuing any new income stream, evaluate it through the Three R’s.
Required: What investment of time, energy, and money is needed?
Return: Where is your greatest financial return? Diversification protects you when one area faces downturns.
Reward: What brings you joy and satisfaction? Which streams align with your passions?
Once you understand this evaluation framework, you can strategically build any of the eight income streams that create real wealth:
- Earned Income: Your primary business income. Build systems that eventually allow this to operate with minimal daily involvement.
- Profit Income: Money from buying and selling activities, like real estate flipping. The formula: income minus expenses equals profit.
- Interest Income: Earnings from lending money. Always consider whether returns are building wealth or merely keeping pace with inflation.
- Residual Income: Getting paid after the initial work is done. I have businesses generating K-1 distributions while my daily involvement is minimal.
- Dividend Income: Earnings from stock ownership where companies distribute profits to shareholders. Understand tax implications, especially outside tax-sheltered accounts.
- Rental Income: Money from property rentals. I manage a mix of properties with systems that make this fairly passive.
- Capital Gains: Profit from selling appreciated assets. Having a skilled accountant becomes crucial for navigating tax implications.
- Royalty Income: Money from intellectual property that can continue generating earnings long after creation, sometimes for decades.
If you start and run a business, you can build these income streams much faster than someone relying solely on earned income. Your business becomes the engine that funds your diversification into passive wealth-building streams.
***
The entrepreneurs who achieve true financial freedom aren’t necessarily the ones who make the most money; they’re the ones who make their money work the hardest. When you stop being the only productive asset in your wealth-building strategy, you finally create the financial freedom that allows you to live life on your own terms.
Your money is waiting for its job assignment. The question is: what role will you give it in building your financial future?
Get Marissa’s complete financial freedom framework in her new book Live Life Rich: The Entrepreneur’s Guide to Dream Big, Multiply Your Money, and Take Control of Your Financial Freedom (foreword by John C. Maxwell). Available now at liveliferichbook.com.
About the Author
Marissa Nehlsen is the founder and CEO of an eight-figure, debt-free financial firm, managing over $1 billion in assets across forty-six states. Her journey began on a North Dakota farm where she learned the value of hard work and resilience, and for the past thirty years, she has founded five self-managing companies and coached thousands of entrepreneurs, helping them make money their best employee. A mother, grandmother, and global impact leader, Marissa co-founded the Foundation of Latin America and lives in St. Petersburg, Florida, continuing to inspire entrepreneurs worldwide.
