One quick way to go broke is to attempt to get rich fast.

About one of the biggest enemies to true wealth is to get sucked into the latest moneymaking scheme. Don't let yourself get hooked into thinking that you are going to stumble into some magical system that shits out easy money. And there are a lot of those schemes around right now. It doesn't take a lot of searching to find them. I even wrote a whole post about the scam that is the Profitable Morrows Ponzi scheme.

But all these things are the opposite of wealth. They are also self-defeating because they foster the false hope that you can get wealth without work. The false hope that you can create overnight prosperity.

I'm not saying that you cannot make money fast and easy. You can. I'm saying that you have to be very wary of anything or anyone that says “Just get in now and we will do all the work for you!”

If you get rich before it all collapses you were just lucky. Luck is not something you want to associate with wealth. Luck and true lasting wealth have no relationship together.

You will see people or ads selling you this opportunity every single day. What they are actually selling is your own gullibility back to you all wrapped up in a tempting package.

We've seen plenty of pyramid schemes in the cryptocurrency field. One person talks to you about how they have made $50,000 - $100,000 - $1,000,000 already but there is still plenty of time to get in. Oh, and make sure you tell your friends about this as you can make a fortune. But sooner or later the math always catches up and it all fails spectacularly. It fails because no one is being served. Wealth is created by serving people, not clever schemes.

Take the huge popularity of gambling for instance. Gambling is a play on peoples dreams to get rich fast. The dream that you can get rich without doing any work. The casinos know this and they know the math will work in their favor. You're not getting rich there – they are! A person might get lucky but what did I say about luck and wealth?

All these wealth mirages have the big flaw of taking you out of the equation. If you want to create real and lasting wealth in your life you need to begin with become a better you. You must consciously and proactively build on your personal wealth producing strengths. No luck needed. No pyramid scheme required.

By not placing yourself in the center of your wealth creation you only sabotage your own future. You need to ask yourself “What do I have to offer the world? What do I love and want to do? How can my actions benefit more people?”

Zig Ziglar said, “You can have anything you want in life if you help enough people get what they want.”

When you read true success stories, like Pierre Omidyar of eBay, or Andrew Carnegie the Steel Magnate, or Richard Branson of Virgin. All these people had years of tough work and failure at the start. To persevere despite all of that because of their strong inner desire to achieve their vision. That vision was to serve the most people in the best way possible.

Serving others, or investing in businesses that do, is the true way to wealth. Don't let anyone tell you differently.