Want to be Rich?
By ‘rich’ I mean in excess of ten million pounds.
These days you are not rich if you have one million. Although not
pocket-change, a million in the bank would merely allow you to live
in moderate comfort for the rest of your days. You would have to be
careful with money. You could not be extravagant. One million in
disposable capital would give you around £50,000 a year in salary
after tax, which is a lot less than a good company director gets. If you
took this salary, the million would slowly be eaten away by inflation
until it was worth just £350,000 (today’s buying power) in about
fifteen years. Hardly a king’s ransom, I think you’ll agree.
One million pounds buys you a decent house in the South of
England, that's all. After you've bought the house, all the money has
gone and there would not be a penny left to furnish it, pay the bills or
for living expenses. No, the days are long gone when becoming a
millionaire was a crazy dream. Being a millionaire is not what it used
to be. A millionaire in 1900 would have the equivalent of one
hundred million pounds in today's money!
Ten million though....ah, now we’re talking sensible money. Ten
million today is worth the same as one million used to be worth in the
1950's. A millionaire really was someone before 1950.
With ten million in the bank you can spend about £250,000 a year
(£20,000 a month) and still have modest growth on your capital, but
you would be in the bottom echelons of the wealthy, knocking for
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admittance to the fringes of their outer circle. Interestingly, if your ten
million was ever reduced to one million, you would be described as
‘flat broke’ by your new circle of friends. People would talk about
you in hushed and sympathetic voices. They would turn away and
cough politely as you walked into a room. This would not be
snobbery; just embarrassment and pity for one reduced to such
poverty.
“He’s down to his last million! Oh the poor, poor dear boy!”
The point here is perspective.
When you’ve had ten or a hundred million, this level of wealth
seems normal for you. To be down to your last million really is flat
broke - an horrific state to be in.
In contrast, when you have an overdraft and exist on a pittance,
then a paltry £10,000 feels like a staggeringly large pile of cash - a
gleaming mountain of gold. And a million? Well, this seems
unimaginable; a sum of money which simply cannot be held in the
mind, it is so vast.
It is this sense of perspective which aids the rich person and
hampers the poor. If you have made a few million, how do you think
you view your chances of making it again if you were to lose it? A bit
of a nuisance, right? An irritation. But a ludicrous fantasy? A crazy,
impossible dream? Hardly! So do you think people with this attitude
manage to make a million again if they lose it?
Yes, they do. No problem. Often they do it several times over, if
they are particularly careless with money.
But when you are broke and have never managed to accumulate
more than a fiddling £10,000 in small change at any one time, how do
you think you view the possibility of making a million or ten million?
This appears to be an unscaleable mountain, the dizzy heights of
which tower to infinity above you, a mere mortal. These slopes seem
impossible to climb. You cannot imagine how another person could
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have climbed to that lofty peak, let alone the hundreds of thousands,
possibly millions who have done so before you. There are over one
million dollar millionaires in the USA alone. How hard can it be?
Answer: certainly not impossible.
In your more frustrated moments you feel these people must have
somehow cheated and caught a ski-lift to the top or been airlifted to
the summit. Yet you know this cannot be true. A few might have
sneaked to the top by subterfuge - but a million or more? Not likely.
The truth is that such a large a horde of people have tramped this
path to the summit that they have left a deeply worn channel for you
to follow if you care to.
Look upwards and you will see a long queue of people waiting for
their turn at the peak. It’s very crowded up there. Yet your doubt
alone prevents you from following. You don't really believe you can
do it.
In contrast, those who have made it and lost it know with 100%
ice-cold certainty that they can make this kind of money again.
They’ve done it once; they’ll do it again if need be. It is this certainty
which allows them to repeat their previous success. Sure, they have
some technical knowledge and experience which comes in handy the
second (or third) time around, but the real secret is their belief.
They believe they can do it. Actually, they know they can do it.
The poor person is filled with doubt and indecision; this prevents
them from taking action. They are afraid to fail when really, they have
nothing to lose.
If you’re broke, what can you lose? Nothing.
Only Fear Holds You Back
Raw, naked fear takes many forms. One form is in the statement:
“I don’t want to be rich.” Doubtless there are people for whom this is
true, but I have never met such a person. I have met many people who
have told me this lie, but they are exposed immediately. Most of them
do the lottery!
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Do You Sincerely Want to be Rich?
I have yet to meet a person who would turn down a lottery win of
ten million because ‘they didn’t want to be rich.’ A more honest
statement would be: “I want to be rich, but I’m not prepared to pay
the price to become wealthy.” Fair enough. At least that’s coherent,
and I'll be talking about paying the price in a later chapter. But “I
don't want to be rich”? Come now!
So I have a question to ask you and I think at this stage of your life
you owe yourself the answer:
Do You Sincerely Want to be Wealthy? One Million Plus?
It’s a simple question. Think for a short while about the changes it
would make to your life. Imagine winning several million pounds on
the lottery. What would change? Would your life be better?
Time’s up!
If you need more than five seconds to think about that one, you’re
in trouble! Of course life would be better. At the very least you would
have more choices.
It would be fun, exciting, invigorating, powerful, wonderful.
Forget those 'where are they now?' lottery winning misery stories
slopped out for the TV viewing masses. You know, the stories about
how they blew all the cash on 'toys,' got divorced, ruined the ‘kiddies’
and lost all their friends. Now they wish they’d never had the money.
(Close up of bleached-blonde, hard-faced mum with a tear trickling
down one cheek. “We was ‘appier when we ‘ad nuffink. At least we
‘ad each uvah. That money was a curse, that’s what it woz. A curse I
tell you. If I won again, I’d give it all away so help me gawd...”)
Forget all that. These stories are part of the conspiracy to keep you
poor. In real life, money makes a big difference. It can’t buy you
health and it can’t guarantee you genuine success in human
relationships, and it cannot ensure happiness (that is an internal state)
but it certainly improves your chances in all of these things, and the
rest is yours for the asking. And by the way, in case you hadn’t
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noticed, poverty doesn’t do a lot for your health or happiness either,
and lack of money has certainly destroyed millions of marriages over
the years.
The 'Money Isn't Important' Fantasy
Please don’t give me any excuses about ‘money not being
important to you.'
That’s an excuse to evade the raw, naked fear which grasps your
lily-livered soul whenever you think about what it might take to make
some!
If money isn't important to you why are you reading a book with
the title '7 Secrets of the Millionaires?'
People cling to their grim, impoverished existence out of fear, and
then justify their cowardice by claiming that money ‘isn’t important,’
that their aims are ‘more spiritual’ or that they would rather be poor
than have all that ‘hassle.'
This is often a lie.
If you have ever done the lottery or bought premium bonds then
you are making a definite statement. You are saying: “I want to be
rich.” What other reason could you possibly have for indulging in
gambling like this? You cannot evade the answer; it is your desire to
be obscenely wealthy. This desire is good, although the method is
terrible!
How can you make such a strong statement (“I desire to be
wealthy”) and then do absolutely nothing whatsoever about it other
than indulge in long-odds games of chance? It’s hard to reconcile
these two positions, isn’t it?
The point is not to accumulate money for its own sake. Money is
an enabling force. It allows you to be the real you; to go wherever you
want to, to achieve whatever you desire, to actualise your dreams.
It allows a life of power as opposed to a life of quiet desperation
and hopeless mediocrity. I am passionate about living a life of power.
It unsettles me to see non-achievement in others - particularly those
with ability.
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Do You Sincerely Want to be Rich?
We only have one life. This is it. Forget that afterlife and heavenly
paradise stuff. If you believe this, you’re dreaming. This is not a
rehearsal. This is the real thing - and it’s wonderful, so how can
anyone squander this limited resource by trudging around the same
tired-old treadmill, year after year?
The answer is - inertia.
To become rich you must change, and this means breaking the
bonds of inertia. Inertia is defined as 'The inherent property of matter
by which it continues in a state of rest or uniform motion.' The
‘motion’ being, of course, on an entirely predetermined track. To
change the course of a planet or a speeding asteroid or to get a lazy
donkey walking (now why did that analogy pop into my mind?) you
need to apply a force. The force causes a change in direction and
speed of motion.
For you, this means a life-change which will take you to new and
exciting shores in the future.
What is the nature of this force which will effect a change in
direction?
The Power of Your Will
It is the force of your will which does this. Inertia stifles your
willpower and saps it of its strength. Hours, days weeks and even
years are spent in drifting through a life divided between work,
sleeping, socialising, watching TV and shopping at the supermarket.
You cannot release yourself immediately from this now, today.
Why not?
Because your life has a certain inertia. Like a supertanker it cannot
be diverted from its course immediately. To change course, the
steering wheel must be turned by an effort of your will, and then after
a few weeks or months, your life will start slowly to change for the
better as it settles into its new course.
The trick is this; knowing about the time-lag between steering
wheel movement and actual course change, you need to start turning
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the wheel early. This means as soon as possible, preferably now,
today, after you have put this book down.
Now I want to ask you another question, presuming you have
answered "Yes, I want to be wealthy" to the first question. It's a more
difficult question:
"Are you willing to pay the price?"
I’ll discuss what the price is in a moment, but first let me state that
if you are not willing to pay the price you need to adjust your mindset
immediately and accept the fact that you will never be wealthy, luck
to one side. You should not waste any further mental energy
fantasising about this, or saying “one day...” Just forget about it. Put
big money out of your mind forever and be happy with what you have
got.
This is a perfectly valid position to take.
You don't have to be rich. It’s not mandatory. I am just asking you
to stop pretending. If you’ve decided not to pay the price, then fine -
just stop talking about it any more; it’s boring. It's like saying "One
day I'm going to climb Everest," and repeating this over and over for
thirty years to anyone who will listen, but never taking a climbing
lesson or even finding out where Everest is. Everyone around you
knows this is a fantasy and will roll their eyes when you trot it out
again for the fiftieth time.
One more reality check for you if you answered "no" to the
paying-the-price question.
"Is it genuinely that you don’t want to pay the price to become
wealthy, or is it that you are scared?"
Think about that one for a while...
Now think about it again.
If it is just fear that is holding you back I would urge you to
conquer this and push forward. Growth is everything. Fear stops you
growing. Every time you overcome one of your fears, even a small
one, you grow. Every time you succumb to a fear, you die a little.
Start developing a Warrior attitude. What can you lose, really? Not
a lot. What can you gain? Everything you ever dreamed of. The
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Do You Sincerely Want to be Rich?
lifestyle you always wanted. Absolute financial security, fun, power,
achievement, comfort, respect, large shiny metal things with knobbly
bits on the end which go 'woosh, woosh' when you wave them around
above your head. Anything... And what’s stopping you? An itsy-bitsy,
pathetic little fear which you are too timid to overcome. Pah! You
don't deserve a shiny metal thing with knobbly bits on the end, and
I’m not lending you mine!
Paying the Price
So what is the price you have to pay? I will tell you more in
chapter six, but meanwhile, here is a taster:
The price involves devoting a reasonable chunk of your life to the
project of making money. Probably at least ten years, more like
twenty. Obviously some have done it in less, but very few. It takes
this long to learn how to do it. Actually it could take half this long if
you were prepared to listen to the advice of those who have done it
before you, but few are willing to do this. Anyway, it is hard to learn
from the mistakes of others - we learn best from our own mistakes.
This means that you must love whatever it is you are going to be
doing to make this money.
This cannot be a twenty year prison sentence. It just won't work.
You cannot mortgage your present for some future benefit twenty
years down the line. You cannot do something you hate whilst
persuading yourself that it will be worth it in a couple of decades
when you retire. Forget it. You won’t last three years, let alone
twenty. That job will eat you up long before then.
To make a few million you need absolute dedication to the task at
hand. This means love for your work and belief in what you’re doing.
If you can achieve this you’ll have a great working life and make a
ton of money. This is something worth going for, I think.
Do it Just for Fun!
This will sound strange but I believe you should have a go at
making a few million just for the fun of it. People who have a one-to-
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one consultation with me will know that I am fond of asking: “What
other plans do you have, apart from trying your very hardest to be all
you can be, to fight to dare and to win?”
Let me ask you - what other plans could you possibly have that are
more pressing than this? Flipping mags? Watching some more TV?
Drinking down the pub? I’m anxious to hear them...
Surely there is only one plan worth having? At least it seems that
way to me. The only plan a rational human being can have is to be all
you are capable of being. To push the limits and keep growing until
the day you die. To try for that next goal - to shoot for the bigger
dream. This is a masterful life. A life filled with power. A life worth
living.
But there is a price. The price is a busy life with little time for
standard relaxation of the sort engaged in by the poor in pocket and in
spirit. It is a ‘full to bursting’ life with your energies and talents
directed purposefully towards positive goals. I'll have a lot to say
about goals and dreams throughout this book. It is a focused life in
which you work very hard on things which matter.
That's one price you will have to pay. There are others...
You will be a driven person going from project to project.
You will be endlessly fascinated by life and challenges.
You will take on too much.
Your social life will not be good because you will be unwilling to
squander the endless hours it takes to maintain the dozens of
friendships and acquaintances craved by the insecure. That’s the truth.
Most people will not understand you. They can’t understand why
you don't want to waste hundreds of hours chatting, drinking, reading
tabloid newspapers and watching soap-operas.
What else?
Ah yes, I forgot to mention that almost the entire world will be
against you. Most people will consider you ‘lucky’ to have made
some money. To them, making money is a purely random event
which happens accidentally ‘to’ someone for no effort on their part.
They spend their lives sitting around waiting for this miracle
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to happen to them. When it happens to you, and you get 'lucky' (after
twenty years of solid effort) many people will be jealous.
You will lose a lot of friends.
When you become wealthy, it is just too hard for your friends to
cope with because the implication is that they could do it too - and
that would mean work and effort. That’s bad news. They'd rather
avoid you or bring you down than be faced with your silent
accusation every day.
The state is against you too.
They loathe wealthy people because wealth brings personal power
and individual freedom. The state detests it if a worker drone has
personal power. They prefer faceless production units hovering in a
no man’s land of false hope, kept just above the absolute poverty line
by confiscatory taxation. The burden is carefully calculated to stop
just short of causing people to riot in the streets. It is designed to
allow people to have some small hope of dragging themselves out of
debt one day, or being able to pay the daily bills.
They do not like strong-minded, wealthy individualists. They will
seek to break you down to drone status if you ever threaten to get
above your station.
When people are broke, they are part of the tacit conspiracy which
gives others the mandate to loot at their command. They give their
silent permission because, let’s face it, they are net recipients of the
loot. Perhaps this was you, too? But when you have some real money,
the jackboots are marching down your drive and it is your door which
is being kicked in. That’s a different (and non-transferable)
experience.
You’ve got that one to come...
When you try to accumulate money, strangers will stretch out their
hands and claim ‘their’ share of your money - and their demands are
backed by legalised state violence. Resist and you will be jailed.
Your protests fall upon deaf ears.
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Governments operate through the tyranny of the majority.
Whatever most people clamour for, that’s what is given. Anyway
you’re ‘lucky’ to be wealthy, remember? This was not caused by any
action on your part. It’s just a random event which happened ‘to’ you
- or so everyone seems to think, and so it's only 'fair' that your wealth
is confiscated and distributed to the needy.
All this, and more will be your lot.