The Missing Ingredient: My Wealth Building Recipe (2024)

One morning, I decided to surprise my wife, Becky, with homemade pancakes. I purchased all the ingredients the day before, and while Becky slept, I snuck into the kitchen. I whipped up the batter, heated the pan, and coated it with butter. I felt pretty good about myself until I noticed my pancakes weren’t rising. Instead of fluffy pancakes, I had thin, hard teacup plates.

Becky woke up, walked into the kitchen, and found me puzzling over the mess. Without hesitation, she asked, “Did you forget the baking soda?”

My head snapped to the counter where, sure enough, the orange box of baking soda sat unopened. I tried my best to surprise her (and in some way, I had), but I was disappointed. We decided to go out for breakfast instead.

Every baker knows that mixing the right ingredients in the correct order is crucial for making delicious breads and desserts. Without the correct measurements, something is bound to go wrong. And without the proper ingredients, you won’t quite get what you expect. Building wealth is no different. You need all of the ingredients in the recipe to reach financial freedom and beyond.

My Wealth Building Recipe: The Triple X Factor

When I first started learning about how to build wealth, it seemed like every source of information was handing out ingredients instead of recipes. For example, some financial experts focus on getting out of debt but don’t go into depth about what to do after that. Others focus on investing but don’t paint a picture of how to earn the expendable income to do so. Even rarer is a wealth building recipe that shows you how to build wealth from a biblical worldview.

After many years of experience, discussion, learning, and petitioning God, I received The Triple X Factor. This gave me the true 30,000-foot view of wealth building. I finally saw the whole recipe, and it was the key to making the metaphorical pancakes in my life rise. The starting point is investing in yourself and getting out of consumer debt. The end goal is to build a level of wealth that enables you to transform families, neighborhoods, and nations for the Kingdom of God.

So, what’s the recipe?

I’m going to give it to you in a bit of an inverted way.

Here’s a brief overview of the process, then I’ll show you how to get the ingredients list:

Step 1:

Get Out of Debt: Decrease your expenses and increase your income.

The first step to building wealth is to make more than you spend. In other words, your income needs to exceed your expenses. Forty-nine percent of credit card holders carry debt from month to month, which means they spend more money than they can afford.

Consumer debt will destroy your power to get wealth, so it’s essential to get rid of it as soon as possible. We teach the debt snowball method, and it’s the quickest way to get out of debt by far! After your debt is paid off, you can use the extra money to save and invest.

Increasing your income is another crucial step at this stage of your wealth-building journey. Start a side hustle, get a part-time job, and invest in yourself. You bring value, not time, to the marketplace, so as you increase your skill set and knowledge (value), you will make more money in your job!

Step 2: Build Passive Income

Invest until your passive income exceeds your earned income each month.

Nobody ever built wealth by earning and saving. You have to learn how to invest. It’s important to set aside some money in retirement accounts, but investing in assets that pay you monthly, quarterly, and/or annually is equally important. That’s the ticket to financial freedom– making enough passive income so that you don’t have to work a 9-5 job if you don’t want to. Instead, you’re a full-time investor who can devote more of your time, talent, and treasure to the areas you are truly passionate about.

Step 3: Invest in Kingdom Causes

Here’s the part of the wealth-building recipe that most educators miss—a biblical “why” for doing it in the first place. The truth is that one day, all of our wealth will pass away. So, we had better use it for something that has an eternal impact.

At this step, you can give away or reinvest 100% of everything above your target allowance to advance the Kingdom of God on earth. You can start organizations, give to or go on missions, invest in Kingdom impact causes, and so much more. This is the part of your financial journey where you can tap into a profound, God-given purpose and make a difference with your money.

This quote by Andrew Carnegie sums up what we are trying to do:

“I spent the first half of my life making money and the second half of my life giving it away to do the most good and the least harm.”

However, like I said, we need the ingredients! These are the virtues, habits, and practical actions you need to implement to reach each step of the process.

They are Kingdom wealth building principles that I refer to as Laws of Wealth, and they are the key to getting from point A to point B.

However, they are much too extensive to list here. That’s why I created The Triple X Factor: The Ultimate Guide to Building Kingdom Wealth to guide you through your financial journey.