#1: What are your strengths and weaknesses?

Everyone has strengths and weaknesses. What is a strength in one endeavor could but a weakness in another endeavor and visa versa. What determines whether a characteristic is a strength or a weakness is whether it makes it easier or harder for you to achieve your specific goal.

Think about your personality characteristics and your habits and then ask yourself which of these would make it easier for you to become wealthy and which would make it harder. Once you have identified which fall into the categories of wealth building strengths and which are wealth building weaknesses then your task is to find ways to capitalize on those strengths and to risk manage those weaknesses.

#2: How much self discipline do you have?

Without self discipline success will never be any more than a theory. Everybody is busy. Everybody has distractions. Everybody has problems and restrictions. But the people who become successful despite all this are the people who have developed self discipline.

When John Powell, a former world record holder for the discus throw, retired from track and field an interviewer asked him what had made him such a great athlete. He replied that no matter what was going on in his life he always did his training and while he was training he always focused 100% on the job at hand.

#3: How much do you know and understand about economic cycles?

There is a saying amongst the self-made rich that economic cycles take from the ill aware and give to the well aware. If you are serious about becoming rich then it would be wise to become one of the well aware.

#4: How can you build a strong base of resources?

Resources are anything that you can draw on to help you achieve your goal. When it comes to wealth building there are at least four classes of resources that you need to build up.

The first resource class is your own psychology and knowledge base.

The second resource class is your team. These may include people who work for you, mentors who will help teach you, contacts who will lead you to opportunities, professionals who will do your books, write your contracts, and so on.

The third class of resources are physical resources. This could include working capital, computers or any other physical asset that could help you succeed.

The fourth class of resource is information. The self made rich always learn where they need to go to get information that will help them succeed. This could be information in regards to a specific project, or a field of endeavor or information about specific people or specific opportunities and so on.

#5: What is your skill as a leader and communicator?

Good communication skills open the door to opportunity and good leadership skills inspires people to help you achieve your goals.

Both communication and leadership are art forms that can be learned and with practice can be perfected. You can appoint a manager but leadership must be earned by applying leadership skills.. The better your communication skills and the better your leadership skills the easier it will be to become wealthy.

Conclusion

Mastering the above five areas will greatly enhance your ability to acquire wealth. It would be a good strategy to take stock of where you stand now in regard to each of the areas and then to put an action plan in place to help you strengthen yourself in each of these five disciplines.