If you close your eyes and imagine a millionaire, what do you see? What does a millionaire look like? What does one dress like? What car does a millionaire drive? How would you know if you saw a millionaire at a gas station? Would he be wearing a tailored suit and driving a Porsche?
The “professional” world is a funny thing. One thing I remember hearing after I graduated college and first entered the “real world” (of sales) was that image is everything. This was coming from “bosses” who had issues with my long hair. But if you’re honest with yourself, have you ever bought anything from anybody because they had short hair and a tie? Now if you break down the psychology behind it all, the objective is to portray established credibility in a well put together package that subconsciously says, “This is what you want,” but on the flip side, you can dress a pig up as much as you want, it’ll still be a pig.
In this “real world,” top honors go to those who can close with confidence. I remember having a conversation with one of my trainers, and he said to me, “The way you can tell how good someone will be in sales is by how good they are with the opposite sex.” This doesn’t mean that they’d need to flirt to get sales, but if they have the confidence to close a date, they’ll have the confidence to close a sale.
The key word here seems to be confidence. Let’s go back to imagining what a millionaire looks like. If we change out the clothes and the car that we imagined with worn out jeans and a used car, but he still had the money in the bank would he not still be confident? There are plenty of millionaires who get paychecks from McDonald’s and Burger King (franchising anyone?). Some are owners of lawn care service companies that involve a lot of physical labor but have multiple branches for a wide client base. Both scenarios may have someone sweating and smelling like their job at the end of the day, but it doesn’t make them less wealthy.
The funny thing about life is it always has a tendency to balance every situation. The same person that you see in a nice car may be close to living in it. This isn’t always the case of course, but you’ll never know what’s going on below the surface unless you dig deeper. And if you dig deep enough into the lifestyle of the wealthy, you’ll likely find that they got to where they are by dressing up their habits and mentality more so than dressing up their cars, keeping up with the Jones’s. So, what does a millionaire really look like? If you dig deep enough, you should be able to find that answer in the mirror.