When it comes to building wealth, it seems like everyone is looking for an easy way out. Well, I’m here to tell you that there just isn’t one. There is no such thing as money for nothing, however, there are ways we can work smarter instead of harder. I first came across the term financial intelligence during the stock market boom of the 1980s, when people made large sums of money relatively easily and in a short space of time.

These people were trading property as if it were some kind of hot commodity, like an Ipod is today. Basically, they had come up with a certain formula that allowed them to harness the power of supply and demand and create wealth like never before. It was honestly like selling shovels to gold miners and being the only shovel seller in town. Hence the term financial intelligence.

Today, if you want to create wealth, you have to be a bit smart in terms of being able to spot a lucrative venture. It seems the art of this revolves around finding trading systems that have very low overhead and high profit. It’s an age-old formula, first used by the inventors of the world’s original currency, but it never ceases to amaze me how many people miss it and can’t recognize it, even when looking at their faces.

The Internet is one such example that, if smart enough, offers the business person a great opportunity to manufacture and deliver a product at virtually no cost. Thus, the markup on earnings becomes immeasurable. The example that follows shows why. Take this hypothetical scenario.

The hourly rate is not calculated, but a person goes and spends three days, say Monday through Wednesday, 16 hours each day writing an e-book on disassembling the engine of a BMW 320i car. They then spend another day editing, packaging (obtaining and providing graphics) and providing references, writing copyright and disclaimers, and submitting their book to the various Internet bookstores for sale. The book sells for $20.00 and they charge a 25% commission ($5.00) per sale. they sell 100 copies worldwide in the first week, 200 copies the second week, and 300 copies the third week. After this they stop counting. The formula goes something like this.

5 days @ 16 hours each = 80 hours

production cost = zero

profit week 1 = $500.00

profit week 2 = $1000.00

profit week 3 = $1500.00

Total profit = $3000.00 – for something I did once, and only once, even if it took me 80 hours to do it

Divide by 80 hours = $37.50 per hour of paid earnings.

And it grows exponentially, as sales increase. Now, not at a certain point, because there was no measurable cost factor involved, they can’t accurately measure profit in terms of a percentage. This is financial intelligence at work.

It only becomes an unfeasible model when we start to put ourselves in a measurable hourly rate. That is when, as the saying goes, time is money. But this is an illusion. I say this because how do you go about calculating what volume of time equals a specific volume of money?

Using the eBook production and sales example above, what happens if, 12 months after the date of the first sale, the profit on that BMW book is $25,000.00? So the person goes and says it took 80 hours to get the book out, so now it’s worth $25,000 divided by $80 = $312.50 per hour?

What if they have written another 10 books by then? Each one has started selling. How do you track and calculate your hourly rate?

They don’t, and they can’t, unless they want to get caught up in the illusion that “time is money.” It is much better for the person to know financial intelligence when they see it, stop the impulse to measure his value by how much money he can make per hour, and just relax and go with the flow, and enjoy doing what he does. Life is too short, at least for them, to do otherwise. When it comes to how to build wealth, I believe that financial intelligence is possibly the best resource and perspective one can have. This is what lends itself to creating simple and effective business systems. It’s what it takes to answer the never-ending quest to build wealth easier and faster than ever before.