2026 Financial Resolution: Beyond Passive Investing to Real Wealth

Good morning!

Wishing you a joyful Christmas and holiday season as we approach a brand-new year.

This is the time I start reflecting on my goals and putting together my New Year’s Resolutions. I’ve always loved this process—the dreaming of what’s possible and thinking through what it really takes to achieve it in the year ahead.

Today, I want to share one powerful way you can elevate your financial goals in 2026: by applying the Master Mind Principle.

I sincerely wish you every kind of blessing—visible and invisible—as we step into new beginnings together.

To greater heights,

Daniel

When You’re Ready

🗺️ Join The Wealth Expedition Membership
Weekly insights and strategies to grow assets and pursue wealth holistically.
Open worldwide.

Join the Membership

🧭 Get Personalized Financial Planning
Clarify your investing and opportunity strategy with a free discovery call.
U.S. residents only. Learn more here.

Request a Discovery Call

Investing Revisited: The Overlooked Way to Spend Money to Make Money

For most people, the word investing has become synonymous with one thing:
put money into the stock market and wait.

Buy index funds. Hold them for decades. Ride out the ups and downs.
And to be clear—that’s not wrong. Passive investing in stocks and bonds is one of the most reliable ways to build long-term wealth.

But it’s incomplete.

Because investing is not limited to paper assets. And while the stock market is effective for slow, steady accumulation, it is rarely a fast track to wealth, freedom, or purpose.

In 2026, it’s time to learn how to invest upward.

Why the Stock Market Isn’t a Fast Track to Wealth

The stock market offers respectable returns precisely because it is passive.

When you buy shares of a company:

• You don’t control strategy

• You don’t influence execution

• You don’t make hiring decisions

• You don’t steer growth

Your upside is capped by what you invest and the market’s overall performance. Historically, that’s been around 7–10% annually before inflation.

That’s excellent for retirement.
It’s not excellent for rapid income growth, time freedom, or asset creation.

Why?

Because the highest financial returns usually come from active leverage, not passive ownership.

And that leverage almost always begins with investing in yourself financially.

Investing Upward: A Different Way to Think About Money

At The Wealth Expedition, investing isn’t just about where your money goes—it’s about what your money enables.

Here’s how investing upward works across different stages of life:

1. When You Have No Assets

You invest in education and experience.

Not credentials for their own sake—but skills, knowledge, and exposure that increase your earning power or decision-making ability.

2. When You Have Income

You invest in the stock market for:

• Foundational retirement needs

• An opportunity fund (non-retirement capital)

This opportunity fund is critical. It’s what allows you to act when higher-ROI opportunities appear.

3. When You Have Capital

You invest in high-leverage activities:

• Businesses

• Systems

• Expertise

• People

This is where investing in yourself to make more money truly accelerates.

The Highest-Leverage Investment: Business Ownership

Whether you start a business or buy one, business ownership is one of the highest risk-reward investments available.

Yes, it carries uncertainty.
But even modest success can dramatically outperform market returns.

Still, business ownership scares people for three reasons. They reason:

1. “I don’t have a unique idea.”

2. “I don’t know where to start.”

3. “I don’t know how to do everything.”

All of those fears can be successfully overcome with the use of other people’s expertise.

You’re Not Meant to Do Everything Yourself

Napoleon Hill called this the Master Mind Principle:
surrounding yourself with people who are smarter than you in areas where you lack expertise.

In modern terms, this means:

• Hiring freelancers

• Paying for expertise

• Working with coaches and advisors

And yes—this costs money.

But so does buying stocks.

The difference is leverage.

A Simple Example of Spending Money to Make Money

Imagine you want to start a local carpet-cleaning business.

You have:

• The technical skill

• The equipment

• The willingness to work

What you don’t have:

• Marketing expertise

• A website

• Systems for scaling

So you invest upward by hiring:

1. A web designer
   To create a professional website and landing page that converts visitors into leads.

2. A local marketing specialist
   To build repeatable systems for lead generation and customer acquisition.

3. A business coach
   To help with strategy, prioritization, accountability, and scaling decisions.

You’re not wasting money.
You’re leveraging money.

You’re planting it in expectation of a much larger harvest.

The Role of an Opportunity Fund

Let’s say you invest $50,000 total for:

• Business registration

• Equipment

• Initial marketing

• Freelancers and coaching

This is exactly what an opportunity fund is designed for.

Now imagine these results:

• Year 1: Break even

• Year 2: $36,000 profit

• Year 3: $72,000 profit

• Year 4: $120,000 take-home as the business scales

Over time, you hire help.
You move from technician to manager.
You begin separating time from money.

After 20 years, you sell the business for a 40x multiple of monthly revenue.

Compare That to Passive Investing

If you invested that same $50,000 in the stock market at an 8% annual return, after 10 years you’d have roughly $108,000.

That’s solid.

But the business investment produces something different:

• Ongoing income

• Skill development

• Control over time

• A sellable asset

Using the example above, the net present value of that $50,000 business investment approaches $1 million—not because it magically multiplies, but because it creates future cash flows.

Using the example above, the implied internal rate of return on that initial $50,000 investment is extraordinarily high—not because of market magic, but because it creates ongoing cash flow, equity value, and optionality.

Even if you had half that success, you’d be crushing what you could have earned passively on the stock market. And you’d have the new and rare ability to structure your life for time freedom, flexibility and the pursuit of purpose.

You didn’t just make money with money.
You built an asset.

Why Investing in Yourself Financially Works

The best ways to invest in yourself share three characteristics:

1. They increase your decision quality

2. They multiply your effort through others

3. They create assets, not just income

Think about it this way.

In the stock market, investors are often encouraged to diversify.

In business, you’re doing much the same thing. You’re diversifying the risk away from depending only on yourself and your capacity to wear multiple hats, and you pay your Master Mind to build your asset with you.

This spreads the risk and makes the likelihood of ultimate success that much greater.

And returns can happen quickly.

If you pay a marketing specialist $5,000 to optimize your sales process, and you make $10,000 more over the course of that year as a result, you’ve effectively made 100% return in one year.

Investing Upward Isn’t Reckless—It’s Intentional

This is not an argument against the stock market.
It’s an argument against thinking that’s all there is.

The Wealth Expedition is a journey—one comprehensive strategy that moves from budgeting, to investing, to entrepreneurship, showing how each stage works together as a unified system.

Investing upward works best when it’s paired with a stable financial foundation:
emergency reserves, controlled debt, and long-term investments that protect your downside.

That foundation is the first stage of the expedition.
Building an asset is the final stage.

And it can happen far faster than waiting for the stock market alone to do the heavy lifting.

Passive investing builds security.
Investing upward builds capacity.

When done thoughtfully, the two don’t compete—they compound.

Take Your Wealth Expedition in 2026

If this way of thinking resonates—if you want your money to create options, not just balances—here are two ways to continue:

1. Join The Wealth Expedition Membership

Get weekly insights and strategies to build assets, deploy capital wisely, and pursue wealth holistically.
If you want a clear framework instead of scattered advice, The Citadel membership is where to start.

2. Get personalized financial planning

Clarify how much to allocate to passive investing versus opportunity investing—based on your life stage and goals.
Write me to schedule a free discovery call to get clarity before making your next major financial move.

Wealth isn’t just something you accumulate.
It’s something you build intentionally—from the inside out.

Daniel Lancaster, CFA

Forwarded this email? Subscribe here.

I’d love to hear from you. Let me know what you’d like to see in upcoming newsletters, articles, or a digital course at Contact Us - The Wealth Expedition.

Follow me on X, Facebook, LinkedIn, or YouTube