Dissing People Who’ve Done Well Financially Is the Worst Way to Make Money

Photo by Dusan Jovic on Unsplash

Bashing people who’ve earned a little money has become a sport.

There is a whole group of society who spends their time online bashing people who have been successful in their respective fields. The more successful they’ve been, the harder they are attacked.

I’m *not* here to say people who have done well financially are amazing human beings you should kiss the feet of or aspire to be.

But I am here to say bashing people who have mastered their finances is ridiculous — childish even. I am also here to make you think deeply.

We don’t have to cancel people just because they have a bad day.

I’m here to bust a myth: your heroes will screw up. There is no perfect member of society. There is no role model who hasn’t done something unethical at least once or told a tiny lie.

If you’re expecting perfection then you’ve chosen the wrong species. Humans are born imperfect.

Social media mogul Gary Vaynerchuk can be the coolest human or the grumpiest person you’ve ever met depending on how many planes he has boarded. I met him in Australia on a good day. He had plenty of sleep the night before. He was in the mood for shaking hands and having cell phones jammed up his nostril, desperate for a selfish selfie.

I know other people who have bumped into him in the airport. Let’s just say he was a little cranky. Does that mean we need to cancel Gary Vee? Hell no. Everywhere you look there is imperfection.

How much energy a person has on a given day has a lot to do with how they act. When you’re tired, it’s easy to accidentally say the wrong thing or let your frustration show. Does that mean anger is good? No. Does that mean violence is okay? No. Does that mean you can break the law? No.

What I’m saying is, people are going to screw up. This idea online, that when people do the slightest thing wrong they’re evil people we should turn off, is ridiculous. Even Oprah has had a bad hair day. In fact, you do too. Expect people to have bad days to change your perspective. Bad days and screw-ups are not exclusive to people who have done well financially.

Money has nothing to do with behavior. You control your behavior.

You’ve made money so you must be an a-hole.

This is stupid. This narrative pains me — the idea that if someone has made a little money for themselves, then they’re a sellout and now qualify as pure evil. What an immature idea.

Solution

Respect the good in what they’ve done. There are parts about Oprah I dislike. And there are parts about her I admire. I enjoy some of Madonna’s classic hits, but on some days she is a little too much for me. Motivational speaker Les Brown teaches a lot through his content. Sometimes, the way he sells his products isn’t for everyone.

If all you do is see the negative in someone, you miss all they have to teach you. A lot of the time the best teachers are the worst humans. So, by focusing on people’s flaws, you miss a large amount of opportunities.

Take the good with the bad when it comes to people. You can’t have all good.

There are plenty of silent millionaires who do good for society.

You hear a lot of stories on social media about how millionaires and billionaires are terrible people. Not everybody is an a-hole in a turtle neck like Steve Jobs was.

There are plenty of silent millionaires who do a lot of good for society. They find causes and do things behind the scenes that the public is unaware of. It’s easy to point out the so-called bad eggs. What might you be missing though? Does money turn off everybody’s ability to be kind? Of course not. Are some financially well-off people selfish? Yup. Do some of them never donate a single dollar to a good cause? Yup.

Then there are quiet people like Keanu Reeves who donate stupid amounts of money to fund cancer research and then refuses to put their name to it. There are good people everywhere if you take off your sunglasses that are making the world look extremely dark.

Just because you can’t see the good happening behind closed doors, doesn’t mean it isn’t happening.

Don’t just walk around seeing people’s flaws every day and thinking you’re perfect.

This one hurts the most. It’s easy to criticize people who do well financially. It’s easy to be a critic full stop. It takes no effort.

It’s easy to dismiss hard work and replace it with the word luck. When you become a critic of someone’s financial position, it comes out of jealousy.

I did it for years in my 20s. I got angry at people who managed to run successful online businesses when I couldn’t. I blamed it on them being a trust fund baby. I spat on their luxury cars. I left snarky comments on their Facebook pages. I dropped replies to their tweets that wreaked of jealously.

The harsh truth: I was a terrible entrepreneur who was rude to every single person I met. Other people’s financial position had nothing to do with my failures. I was responsible for every failure. Once I sorted myself out, my bad financial luck changed. I found opportunities to earn a living by becoming better at interacting with others, rather than criticizing people.

You need other people to make money. Being a critic of people’s financial success is the fastest way to block yourself from future opportunities. What about you? Check yourself. How are you doing in life? Are you better than the person you’re criticizing? Are you king/queen of every hill?

Answer: nope.

Therefore — worry about, and then work on, your flaws.

The system is you, remember that.

We often think of this system that is against us. The system is made up of politics, societal standards, financial constructs, rules, beliefs, etc. This thought can occur: Life is unfair, so it must be unfair for everybody.

Life isn’t unfair. Luck isn’t working against you. You’re not destined to never discover a little bit of financial success for yourself. The system isn’t rigged against you. The system that determines your outcomes (including how much money you earn) is your mind.

The system you have to fight is you. It’s the way you think that determines whether you get stuck in the system or break free. Dissing people who’ve done well financially places you in a system you can’t control. When you think solely about your finances, you take back control.

Money critics don’t get paid well.

At best you can get a job for a newspaper writing critiques of the royal family. You’ll earn a basic living and feel terrible about yourself.

But the typical life of a money critic is worse than that. You can end up spending your days leaving comments on social media content that offends your financial morals. You can target a different person each day who has made some money following their dream.

Reminder: social media comments and ‘likes’ pay you zero dollars.

Yep, money critics mostly earn nothing. So they give up their time to be a critic, make no change in the world, see their family less, miss Valentine’s Day, and make no money for it, pushing them further into financial despair. I wouldn’t wish that life for my worst enemy.

Eventually, people stop consuming the opinions of money critics. It’s too boring. It makes people feel empty inside. At our core, we want to be inspired. Make people feel better about themselves and you’ll do well financially.

There is nothing to be gained by comparing people’s finances and drawing false conclusions about them. Every single person has their good days and their bad days. One mistake doesn’t define a human being.

Nobody, including you, is perfect when it comes to money.