The 10 Stages of Going From Broke to Wealthy

Alexa, if you were suddenly broke today—no money, no resources, no connections—what would you do to get rich? Well, going from rags to riches definitely isn't easy, but it is 100% possible. And when you look at the people who've actually done it, you'll find they all follow a very similar pattern.

All you have to do is follow it. So today, we're showing you the 10-step roadmap anyone can take to go from poor to rich, backed by real stories of those who've done it. Welcome to Alux, the place where future billionaires come to get inspired.

All right, so the first step to go from zero to wealthy is to escape survival mode, right? But what exactly is that? Well, take David Goggins, for example.

He was born into poverty with a severe learning disability. His abusive father terrorized him, and he was often the victim of racial discrimination. For him, every day was a fight just to survive, to eat, and to stay safe.

If you're spending all of your time worrying about questions like, "How will I pay rent? Where is my next meal coming from? And how do I avoid getting hurt?

" you are in survival mode. All you're doing all of the time is reacting to whatever crisis life throws at you next, which means you've got no energy left for planning, for dreaming, or for actually building wealth. But look at Goggins.

He decided to change his mindset from reactive to proactive. For him, this meant confronting his childhood trauma, taking control of his physical health, building mental discipline, and seeing challenges as opportunities, not threats. And now look at him; people call him the toughest man on the planet.

So escaping survival mode isn't just about money, okay? It's about making sure your brain isn't always in fight or flight mode so you can focus on the bigger picture here. For you, that might mean moving to a new city, quitting bad habits, or just generally adopting a new mindset.

Once you can do that, you can finally open your mind up to all the other ways that you can really change your life. Step two is to take responsibility for everything. Now, at this point in your journey, you're not constantly panicking about rent or where your next meal is coming from.

But this is where most people fall into a dangerous trap. They escape survival mode only to get trapped in victim mode. That's why step two is to take responsibility for everything.

Look at J. K. Rowling.

At her lowest point, she was a single mother on welfare, battling depression and barely scraping by. Her life was painfully small. But here's where everything changed: Rowling stopped waiting.

She stopped hoping somebody would recognize her potential, and she made a decision to take ownership of her life and write the book that she'd always dreamed of. She didn't have an office, so she wrote in cafés while her daughter napped. She didn't have connections, so she sent her manuscript to dozens of publishers.

She didn't have money, but she did have a story, and she knew it was her job to bring it to life. That's what responsibility looks like in real life. It's not loud or glamorous; it's not sexy, for sure.

It says, "This is my life, and I am not giving up on it. " Because when you take responsibility, that is when you stop just reacting to the world, and you start creating. And that is the shift you have to make at this stage—from passive to active, from hoping to building.

All right. So now that you've taken full ownership of your life, the next step is kind of obvious: define exactly what you want. Take famous Shark Tank investor Damon John.

So when he worked at his local Red Lobster, he wasn't just daydreaming about success; he was imagining FUBU with surgical precision, mapping out exactly what his brand would stand for, who it would serve, and how it would change culture. Most people get this completely wrong; they say vague things like, "I want to be successful," or, "I want financial freedom. " But that's not a vision.

That is a wish. The wealthiest people in the world don't have better luck, okay? They've just defined success so precisely that even their failures move them forward.

A real vision has edges, okay? It has detail. "I want to build a clothing brand that represents urban culture and reaches $100 million in sales.

" That, well, that is a vision with power behind it. Because clarity isn't just knowing what you want; it's being so specific that your brain has no choice but to start solving that puzzle of how to get there. And of course, that means you're one step closer to building wealth.

All right, so by the time you reach step four, it's time to learn a valuable skill. So by now you've stopped reacting to life, and you've defined exactly what you want from it. But what good is a vision without the ability to execute it?

That's why step four is learning that valuable skill. Take Chris Gardner, for example, the man whose life inspired the movie The Pursuit of Happyness. So, while he was homeless, sleeping in train station bathrooms with his young son, he was studying finance manuals by day and practicing his pitch on payphones.

Gardner didn't just want a better life; he trained for it relentlessly. So, when he was finally given a chance at becoming a stockbroker, he'd already become someone Wall Street couldn't ignore. Most people stay broke because they think being passionate is enough.

It's not, okay? Saying, "I want to be rich," is a fantasy. But saying, "I will master high-income skills that solve real problems," that is a strategy.

So now, ask yourself: what skills will turn your vision into reality? Coding, sales, copywriting. Choose one, obsess over it.

Master it, and you'll never fear poverty again. And you know, honestly, this is the single most important part of this entire journey. But let's be real, okay?

Building the right high-income skills is never as simple as picking up a book, right? You can't just watch four random tutorials and expect to become a master at anything. The good news, though, is that you've already got everything you need right at your fingertips.

Here at Alux, we're on a mission to create at least 1,000 new millionaires through the Alux app. We've already helped a few people reach that goal, but we want to help even more. So, for the month of April, we've got a fun little challenge set up for you.

If you want to build high-value skills, start a profitable business, and unlock your full potential, this is definitely for you because we want to help you launch your business in the next 30 days. We've put together a curated stack of expert-led lessons that are designed to cover all of the essential skills you need to get your business off the ground right now. We paid world-class experts to guide you through the entire journey, from validating your business idea to building your brand and setting up scalable systems to take your business to the next level.

This is your chance to take action and build the life you've always dreamed of, my friend. So, download the Alux app today. Scan this QR code on screen, and you'll get 35% off the monthly membership so you can start building your dream life right here, right now.

So, not $29, $19 a month. We want to help you build the skills that will help you unlock the next steps in this journey. But it all starts with investing in your education.

All right. So, once you've got your skills, the next step—step five—to becoming wealthy is to start saving and managing your money. And because of the skills you've built, now you've got some money, right?

But this is actually where a lot of people crash and burn. Take Shaquille O'Neal, for example. He spent his first paychecks from the NBA on cars, jewelry, and extravagant gifts for his family and friends.

One day, he walked into the bank expecting to see millions, only to discover he'd blown through nearly everything. Thankfully for Shaq, this was a wake-up call. After this, he educated himself financially and built systems like automatic transfers, investment accounts, and a financial team to protect him from his impulses.

Today, Shaq is worth over $400 million, not just from basketball, but from the discipline that turned skills into lasting wealth. So, once you've got a bit of money coming in, find ways to keep as much of it as you can. But again, this is where most people fall into a trap.

Once they've got a job or career, they get stuck there, trading their time for money and never managing to increase their income. That's why step six on your journey to wealth is to escape the time-for-money trap. Warren Buffett understood this when he was just 15 years old.

While other teens were working hourly jobs, he was placing pinball machines in barbershops around town, collecting quarters while he sat in class. That wasn't a side hustle, okay? It was his first lesson in the principle that would make him a billionaire.

Your money should work harder than you do. For Buffett, those pinball machines eventually became stocks. Those stocks became companies, and those companies became empires.

But the core principle remained unchanged. He built systems where his money and assets were hard at work while he was thinking, sleeping, and living his life. For you today, this might look like launching a digital product, building an online store with automated fulfillment, or hiring people and delegating parts of your business.

The point is, your time is limited, okay? Which means you can work harder, longer hours, develop better skills, and earn more per hour. But if your only source of income is your time, you will always have a hard income ceiling.

Plus, you'll be selling the one thing you can never buy back: your time. If you're still exchanging hours for dollars, you're not building wealth; you are maintaining it. So ask yourself what parts of your income could be turned into a repeatable, scalable process.

It might start small, but once you get it going, you'll realize you're not just working a job anymore; you are designing a machine. All right, so you've reached the point where you've built the right mindset, some serious skills, and some systems that make money for you on autopilot. Step seven is to invest in assets, which is powerful.

Okay. And to show you why this is so important, let me tell you the story of Robert Kiyosaki, the author of *Rich Dad Poor Dad*. While most people his age were saving pennies from their paychecks, Robert bought his first property with no money down.

With the income he got from renting it out, he bought another one—and another one. Eventually, that turned into a real estate empire. The wealthy understand that cash is just a temporary holding position.

The real game is in converting it to income-producing assets. So stop seeing dollars as something to hold on to and start seeing them as seeds to plant. Assets come in many forms: real estate that generates rental income, businesses that operate without your daily involvement, and stocks that grow over time and pay dividends.

The common thread is they all produce value, whether you're working or not. This is how you lay the foundation for generational wealth. Okay, but the thing is, in order to actually build it, you still need to make a big mindset shift.

So in step eight, that's. . .

When you learn to think long-term, now this step is about developing the patience to let compound growth work its magic because how you manage your assets makes all the difference. Jeff Bezos showed this perfectly with Amazon. In the early days, Amazon's investors put immense pressure on Jeff to show quick profits.

But he resisted and kept on building warehouses, perfecting logistics, and expanding his product lines. He was doubling down on growth, and Amazon barely made a dime for years. So, people thought Jeff was crazy—well, until Amazon became one of the biggest companies of all time.

That is how our brains are wired for quick wins. We crave dopamine hits. We hate waiting, and losing in the short term feels more intense than slow, progressive wins.

That's why most people panic sell when markets dip or jump from idea to idea when results don't come fast enough. Everyone thinks on weekends, but wealthy people think in decades, and that is how you have to think too. When you invest in assets, hold through market cycles; when you build a business, reinvest instead of cashing out.

When you master a skill, think about its value over your lifetime. Long-term thinking is how you go from earning money to growing wealth to building a legacy. All right, so now that you've landed here, it's time for step number nine: to upgrade your identity.

And no one embodies this better than Arnold Schwarzenegger. Arnold started out as a poor kid in Austria with a single goal: to become the greatest bodybuilder in the world. And he did.

But he didn't stop there. Once he conquered the world of bodybuilding, he built a new identity as a Hollywood action star. He barely spoke English, but he studied acting, learned the business, and became one of the highest-paid actors in history.

Then he reinvented himself again, this time as the governor of California. Each version of Arnold didn't just have new goals; it came with a new mindset, new habits, and a new set of standards. That's the part that people miss when it comes to building wealth.

Look, okay, you obviously can't soar with a minimum wage mindset. So now ask yourself: who is this version of you that deserves the life you're building? What do they do differently?

What decisions do they make? And who do they surround themselves with? Listen, the goal is not to get rich and stay the same, okay?

The goal is to evolve. Riches are not—because money without identity is like water without a container; it just slips right through your fingers. And you are too far along in your journey to let that happen, okay?

In fact, you're at the very last leg of this journey now. You have built the mindsets, the skills, the systems, and the wealth. Now, it's time to build something even bigger.

Because true wealth isn't about how much money you make while you're alive; it's about the impact that continues long after you're gone. Step 10 is about building your legacy. Just look at Andrew Carnegie.

He came to America with nothing—just a poor Scottish immigrant working in a cotton factory. But he taught himself, climbed the ladder, and eventually built U. S.

Steel, one of the most powerful companies in the world. But here's what made Carnegie different: he believed that dying rich was actually a failure. Before he passed away, he gave away over 90% of his fortune, funding thousands of libraries, universities, and institutions around the world.

And a century later, those institutions are still changing lives and still holding his name. For you, this might mean creating a foundation, writing a book, passing on financial literacy to your children, or simply using your wealth to help the communities you grew up in. That is what true legacy looks like.

It isn't just about what you leave behind; it's about the people you empower. And that's the mindset you need to adopt at this stage right now. All right, Aluxer, you started in survival mode, and now you've built a legacy that will continue on for generations.

This is your roadmap. The only thing left to do is to walk it. Now, if this video sparked something in you, hit that like button and let us know in the comments which stage you're in right now.

And if you're serious about building your skills, businesses, and wealth, check out the Alux app. We are so confident you'll love it. All right, Aluxer.

With that said, it's a wrap for today. We'll see you back here next time. Until then, take care, my friend.