If you're too afraid to invest, it will be very difficult to build substantial wealth.
"You're worried about maybe losing money, you are losing money — and that's the great irony," Sethi told Business Insider. "The worst mistake you could make is to wait, is to say somebody is going to come save me. It's not going to happen. And every day you wait, you're actually losing."
You don't need expert-level knowledge of individual stocks or markets to invest. Sethi says most people can, and should, start with automatic contributions to retirement accounts. Once you've paid off debt and saved for short-term goals, put any extra money into a brokerage account, he says.
Historically, the S&P 500 has returned an average of 7% to 8% per year after inflation. While past returns can't predict future returns, your money is much better off rising and falling in the market over a long period of time than sitting dormant in a savings or checking account. With a diversified and well-balanced portfolio, your risk level falls dramatically, Sethi writes.
Just remember one thing, he says: "It's not about timing the market, it's time in the market."