Editor’s note: This article was first published in June 2022; the figures it cites for Romuald Fons’s course launch (a €700 course sold to 1,500 people in its first week, for over €1 million) date from 2022 or earlier.
There are different ways to make a million, as you are about to see. In fact, put the way these millionaires put it, it might even seem easy.
Getting rich, or making your first million, is not a new subject for us. We have covered it from every angle, perspective and path. This time, though, I was struck by the answers some millionaires gave in a Quora thread.
Saving and investing, along with starting your own business, are the ways that have created the most millionaires to date. Still, as we always say, success leaves clues, and it is a matter of following those clues. If someone has managed to do something, it is a matter of seeing how they did it and copying or replicating those steps, adapting them to our own situation.
How to make a million, or how to become a millionaire
1. The first way to make a million
Alan Ham is a multimillionaire. And you have most likely never heard of him, because he has never started his own business. He has not invented anything either. He did not even inherit a single euro.
All this man has done is put part of the money he has earned throughout his life into a diversified portfolio of shares since he was 20, saving and investing whatever he could. That way, the appreciation in the value of his shares plus the dividends let compound interest do its job in full.
This way of becoming a millionaire may take more patience, but it is the method that has produced the most anonymous millionaires (the ones described in the book The Millionaire Next Door). You don’t need to start your own business, and you don’t need to invent anything. You simply work, save and invest, and make sure you have a long-term share portfolio into which you keep investing a sum of money for decades.
Of course, Alan warns that when it comes to money you need to keep a very level head. He says he never spent money on assets that depreciate, such as cars, boats or unnecessary luxuries. He never tried to look wealthy by buying the symbols of wealth. He preferred to have wealth rather than merely look as if he had it.
“Fifteen days’ holiday abroad every year is one of the surest ways to end up with an empty bank account,” says Alan, who also warns of the danger of living beyond your financial means by running up debt.
“Anyone can become a millionaire if they spend less than they earn and save and invest from the age of 20. You don’t need to be a genius or take on too much risk. All you need is a system and the discipline to stick to it. That’s all there is to it.”
2. The second way to make your first million
Ms Pham works as a business consultant. She is not a millionaire, but she has a business idea that she put forward ironically, although you can be sure some people have got rich this way.
This is Pham’s plan:
- Step 1: I’ll sell an online course or write my own book on how to get rich quick.
- Step 2: I’ll promote the course or the book all over the internet until thousands of people buy it and I make my first million.
- Step 3: Then I’ll become a multimillionaire by telling people how I really made my first million.
Well, what Pham proposes has been done countless times. Making more than a million by selling infoproducts has become one of the most profitable businesses of our time.
The well-known Spanish YouTuber and entrepreneur Romuald Fons proved it with hard facts. He made more than 1 million euros, and he did it in just one week. He managed to sell a 700-euro course to 1,500 people in the first week after launch, which brought in more than 1 million euros.
Snake-oil sellers know how to do this very well. Dozens of people who appear in ads on YouTube and Facebook offering their courses reach this milestone in a way that can look ridiculously easy, although in practice it is not that easy.
You need to have done some groundwork first, such as building a community and giving your users value, and only then launching the product you are going to fire at them. It is true that others have turned up and skipped some of these steps, and they have still managed to make a million in a short time.
Making a million by writing a book?
Robert Kiyosaki is an example of this. As we saw in our article taking Robert Kiyosaki apart, the way Kiyosaki became a millionaire was through his book Rich Dad Poor Dad. No wealth was found in any of Kiyosaki’s companies until the year the book came out. And people did look.
So the formula of making a million by explaining to others how to become a millionaire has proved very effective for some people.
See also: The best books on financial education
3. Finally, this is the best method for becoming a millionaire
This formula covers every route, whether we are talking about your own business or about selling products, infoproducts, books and so on:
- Sell one thing for more than a million: something you yourself bought earlier for much less.
- Sell 100 things for 10,000 euros.
- Sell 1,000 things for 1,000 euros.
- Sell 10,000 things for 100 euros.
- Sell 100,000 things for 10 euros.
- Sell 1 million things for 1 euro.
Although on the face of it the simplest option might seem to be selling a single thing for 1 million, the truth is that the easiest is to sell things of little value, but to a lot of people.
Then you write a book about how you came up with the idea that made your first million, or you sell your own course. And that way you multiply your fortune even faster.
Put like this, making a million can seem really easy in theory. Then, in practice, we run into the usual difficulties: what to sell, how to sell it, who to sell it to and in what way. And that is where you should follow the clues to success that others have left and try to copy the system.
There are some tips you should follow to make your first million
Dharmesh Shah, co-founder of HubSpot, has a very clear view of how to become a multimillionaire or reach whatever level of financial success you aspire to. We could count this as a way of reaching your goal by the indirect route. In other words, don’t chase making a million. Instead, chase everything that will lead you to making that million.
1. Stop obsessing about money
Money should not be your priority. In fact, when Dharmesh talks about his definition of success, he says money should come near the bottom of the list.
“For me, money doesn’t matter much, although I’ll confess that at one point it did matter too much to me, probably because I didn’t have much of it.”
So let’s suppose that, like millions of people, you want to be a millionaire. What kinds of things should you do to increase your chances of becoming a new millionaire? Forget shortcuts.
See also: The 10 best books on financial education: my top picks for 2023
Although it sounds contradictory, focusing only on money is a distraction that keeps you from building everything that will make your wealth grow. So you have to change your perspective. You have to see money not as the main goal, but as a by-product of doing things the right way.
2. Start keeping track of how many people you help
The most successful people I know, financially and in other areas, are surprisingly helpful. They are incredibly good at understanding other people and helping them reach their goals.
They know that their success ultimately rests on the success of the people around them. So they work very hard to make other people successful: their employees, their customers, their suppliers… because they know that if they can achieve that, their own success will follow naturally.
They build a business, or a career, that they are truly proud of.
3. Stop thinking about making a million dollars and start thinking about how to serve a million people
When your business has only a few customers and your goal is to make a lot of money, you have an incentive to squeeze every last euro out of those customers. But when you find a way to serve millions of people, many other benefits follow: word of mouth grows, the opportunities to improve your products and services are far greater, and you have more chances to hire more employees and learn from them.
In short, find a way to serve a million people, serve them incredibly well, and the money is sure to come. That way your business will become something you never even dreamed of.
4. See “making more money” as a way to do more things
There are two kinds of people.
One does things because he wants to make money; the more he does, the more money he makes, although what he does doesn’t really matter much to him. It’s only money, and as long as it keeps coming in, all is well.
The other wants to make more money because it would let them do more things: they want to improve their product, expand their range, reach more people and offer a better product to more people, and to do that they need money.
In the second case, they want to build a great company, and they believe their product could improve many people’s lives. That is their dream, and the only way to feed that dream is to make enough money to make it possible. The most successful companies on the planet evolve and grow, and as they make money, they reinvest it to keep improving.
As Walt Disney said:
“We don’t make movies to make money; we make money to make more movies.”
5. Do one thing better than everyone else
Pick one thing that is in demand. Become a fanatic about it. Learn everything you can about it, practise, evaluate, refine. Be relentless and self-critical.
See also: 5 truths about financial success and building personal wealth that will rile your Facebook friends
Financially successful people do at least one thing better than almost everyone around them.
Being an expert, or simply being excellent at something, is its own reward, and it will give you a better reputation, greater self-esteem and, as a rule, a bigger paycheck.
6. Make a list of the 10 best people in the world at that thing
Choose 10 people who do what you want to do, and don’t just admire them. Follow them, study what makes them so good, what they did to become so good, how they think and why they think that way.
Luckily, you can read the biographies and advice of great entrepreneurs, investors and millionaires. They will be advising you from experience, with the added bonus that they already have the results.
For example, if you are a writer, pick 10 great writers who have made it onto the bestseller lists. If you want to start a company, look for 10 great entrepreneurs and read everything you can about them.
There is no doubt about it: if you want to be the best at something, you will have to learn from the best.
7. Build habits and routines, and trust the process
Success comes from building habits, developing routines and constantly tracking your progress.
Going back to the example of a writer, if you want to write a 300-page book, the easiest way to reach that goal is not to think about the 300 pages, but to make it your duty to write 10 extraordinarily good pages every day.
That way, in 30 days you will have finished the book.
The same thing happens when you start a business. Most new entrepreneurs are obsessed with getting results right now. That is understandable, given that a new company usually lacks cash and its costs can come crashing down on it at any moment.
But an entrepreneur should follow the same system, which is to look every day for ways to win new customers. Not even that: every day, visit potential customers and get in touch with potential customers. Try new forms of marketing and new forms of advertising until you find the one that works best.
That way, the number of customers grows every day. And in the end the money arrives.
But we should always set ourselves goals and create routines that support those goals. We have to fix what doesn’t work, improve what can be improved and repeat the processes until they come out right.
The main goal: to be better every day than yesterday, but not as good as tomorrow.
Warren Buffett himself said that you shouldn’t try to make $1 million, but rather look for 1,000 ways to make $1,000. And now the idea of forgetting about money is more fashionable than ever, with messages that say: “Don’t look for a way to make a million; look for a way to help a million people. If you manage it, you will make more than a million.”
It may sound like cheap philosophy, but it is precisely what people who have already made more than a million are saying, so these are the clues you should follow.
See also: How to get rich according to Felix Dennis, the millionaire who advises you not to chase wealth
Featured image: Boy Scouts of America, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons.
