Editor’s note: This article was first published in August 2014. The Ebola reference points to the 2014 outbreak.
Steve Siebold, author of How Rich People Think, is clear about it. The streets are paved with gold. Gold is everywhere, you even walk on it every day, but the problems of the middle class, and above all debt, make our minds focus only on those problems, so we fail to see the gold all around us, begging us to pick it up.
Siebold admits that after saying this, many people might think he is an idiot and insensitive, for not understanding the hard times some people are going through. So he reminds us that he was once up to his eyeballs in debt and ended up living with his wife at his parents’ house because they could not keep up with the payments. So he understands you perfectly, just as he understands that if you do nothing to change your situation, it will not change on its own.
He says the circle of the rich is waiting for you with open arms, telling you, “we want you to join us”, but the average person keeps making excuses, saying the rich made their fortunes through deceit and dishonesty. That is how they justify their lack of financial success. When the truth is that most poor people would sell their soul to the devil to get rich. And on this point I agree wholeheartedly with Siebold, because demagoguery comes cheap.
(Read: The secret of millionaires, told by millionaires)
Other people wait for outside forces to come to their rescue while their situation keeps getting worse. Those outside forces may be God or the government.
And we regret to inform you that God is busy with other things right now (Ebola, wars, etc.), and the government only wants to take away the little you have left. So nobody is coming to rescue you. Someone had to tell you.
It is easier than ever to take risks chasing your dreams
You are in debt and out of work. You don’t even know whether a few months from now you will have any income at all to feed your family. I don’t think you have much to lose by trying to do something. Anything.
New business opportunities
The rich are spending a lot of money on all kinds of services aimed at the 1%. In fact, many new multimillionaires have been made solely by managing the money of the rich. But this rise in spending on personal services should be good news, because it gives the middle class the chance to get hold of part of that money.
It can be done with small or big ideas, as we explained in two different articles with 7 business ideas aimed at the rich and 5 ideas for the exclusive club of the rich. But beyond personal services for millionaires, the truth is that big companies are looking for solutions to hundreds of problems in this new, changing era. It is a matter of finding a way to meet those needs in large corporations.
For most middle-class people, being rich would be a privilege, while for millionaires being rich is a right, above all when you have created value for others and solved problems in society with your company. You have provided a service you were paid for, you have done a good job, and of course in that case being rich is a right you have earned.
The steps to becoming a millionaire
Dharmesh Shah, founder of HubSpot, believes it is a big mistake to focus on money, because money is the consequence of a job well done.
Of course money is important, but it should not be an obsession or a primary goal.
1. Stop thinking about making 1 million dollars and start thinking about how to serve 1 million people.
Shah says that when a company has only a few customers and its goal is to make a lot of money, your motivation is to squeeze those customers as hard as you can to generate your own wealth.
If, on the other hand, you find a way to serve 1 million people, the motivation changes. Over time you hire more people to cover that million people, and your company grows. Over time, your business becomes something you never dreamed of, because your customers and employees have taken you down that path.
At that point, large sums of money coming in are inevitable, even if you tried hard to prevent it.
2. The more people you help, the more money you will make.
Shah says that the most successful people he knows are incredibly helpful. They are excellent at helping other people reach their goals. They also know that success depends on the people you surround yourself with, so helping some people succeed is like widening your circle of successful people.
They work hard to help their employees, customers, suppliers… succeed, because they know that if they can achieve that, their own success will follow.
3. Why do you want to make more money?
Broadly speaking, Shah says there are two kinds of people:
The one who does things to make more money. The more things they do, the more money they make, and they will do anything to earn more money.
The one who makes more money in order to do more things. That is, making more money to grow their world, their company, even further. As Walt Disney said:
“We don’t make movies to make money, we make money to make more movies.”
(Read: 8 habits of millionaires)
4. Find that something.
Everyone is very good at something, although many people have not yet discovered what. If you start a company, your company must also be better at something the competition is not. Sometimes your product may even be worse, but that something is what ends up gaining potential in the market. Always look for that something.
5. Make a list of the successful people you admire. Now analyse them.
Admiring certain people is not enough. You have to get inside the heads of the people you admire and go much further.
I once saw a colleague, Victoria Bernal, arguing with someone. She said her first teachers in investing had been Benjamin Graham and Warren Buffett. The other person said, “Sure, I’ve read them too”, to which she replied: “You’ve read them. I’ve studied, analysed, interpreted, adapted and applied them to my own situation.”
And that is the key. As a rule, there are two ways of doing things: doing what most people do, and doing what the people we admire do. Both science and statistics say that if you do what someone else did, you increase your chances of getting the same result (for better or for worse).
6. And finally, building routines.
I won’t go into this point too much, because we have already covered it to death.
Basically, it means taking steps every day that bring you closer to your goal (Read: The key to success with the Seinfeld strategy).
Further reading
- The one thing successful people never do
- What highly successful people were doing at 25
- 12 things millionaires know
Featured image: Betsy Weber, CC BY 2.0, via Flickr.
