People think they can't get rich unless they were born rich.Bullshit.Here's how you can go from zero to millionaire.

From Rags To Riches

Unless you win the lottery, nobody will hand you $1 million.You have to own your life:• Know what you want• Understand what it takes• Do the work. Day in. Day out

Own Your Life, Your Time, Your Work

Unless you win the lottery, nobody will hand you $1 million.You have to own your life:• Know what you want• Understand what it takes• Do the work. Day in. Day out

Own Your Life, Your Work, Your Time

Wealthy people never stop learning:• Books• Coaches• Online courses• Business teachersThey spend money to make money.An average person focuses on the $10,000 cost,A wealthy person focuses on the $100,000 they will make from it.

Invest In Yourself

People focus on in-demand skills.Instead, focus on Rare Skills.Rare skills combine multiple skill-sets into a super-power,such as an accountant who:• Understands leadership• Is a public speaker• Is a strong writer

Focus On The Rare Skills

Nothing matters more than this.When you've never achieved hard things, everything seems scary.When you've done an Ironman or an Ultramarathon, everything seems easy.<ul><li>Start small.</li><li>Take the first step.</li><li>Do hard things regularly.</li></ul>

Do The Hard Things, Every Day

You have a white-collar job,and you need a blue-collar work ethic.Whether it's your business, or a 9-5, hard work gets you the reward:• Work on the right thing• Be smart about it• Outwork others

Outwork Others

You become wealthy by learning from wealthy people.Get in the right rooms.You will become wealthy when your friends are focused on becoming wealthy.You are who you surround yourself with.Build the right circle.

Be In The Right Place

You don't become wealthy by trying to look wealthy.That's a path to the poor house.Get your money working for you.Spend less than you're making and invest:• as soon as you can• as much as you can• as consistently as you can

Spend Less Than You Make

90% of millionaires get there through real estate—the simplest path for all of us.We don't need to be smart enough to be an entrepreneur or launch a startup.Buy the right assets in the right locations.When your horizon is long enough you'll always win.

Buy Real Estate

Financial twitter tells you debt is terrible.They're right, to an extent, but not all debt is created equal.Bad debt:• Credit cards• consumer loansGood debt:• mortgages on real estate• loans to start a profitable business

Use Leverage

Taking a contrarian view isn't enough, You need to take action on those views. The single greatest driver of your financial success will be the actions you take. Day in. Day out.

Be Convicted in Your Views

• You're convicted• You are taking actionNow, you need to go deep.The average person diversifies, great.You've already decided you don't want to be average.Once you know your path to becoming a millionaire, you need to go deep.

Once You Decide, Go Deep

Once you press go,do not stop.Smart choices + consistency + time = exponential results.Get the flywheel turning and then keep it turning ever forward.

Be Consistent

If you don't start with money and want to be a millionaire:• Spend less than you make• Take alternative views• Focus on rare skills• Outwork the room• Invest in yourself• The right room• Buy real estate• Own your shit• Be convicted• Use leverage• Be consistent

This Is How You Become Rich

Stashed ideas

How To Get Rich

When it comes to financial independence, people often talk about increased salary or how much they need for a comfortable retirement.  It’s good to have goals for your savings, income and retirement fund, but it’s unhelpful when we don’t consider why we’re working towards financial independence in the first place.

The need for financial independence

When it comes to financial independence, people often talk about increased salary or how much they need for a comfortable retirement.  It’s good to have goals for your savings, income and retirement fund, but it’s unhelpful when we don’t consider why we’re working towards financial independence in the first place.

Too many blogs that promote financial independence focus excessively on luxury items. However, it's a serious risk when you get addicted to consumerism. It leads to a cycle of earning more and spending more. Many people earn millions, spend millions and still feel they're broke. But, whether you're earning millions or the average wage - if your lifestyle exceeds your income, you'll always live paycheck to paycheck. So when you're earning more, avoid spending more.

Financial independence doesn’t need to be Instagrammable

More money doesn't mean you're financially free. Worse, when we earn more, we often have more problems.  Chasing after money means sacrificing other things, such as your time, friends and energy, so you may barely enjoy life.  Adopting a long-term mindset to building wealth means you don't have to be in a hurry. You can say no to "opportunities" that pay well but don't give you the life you want.

More money doesn’t always mean financial independence

Most people want to earn more and achieve financial independence so that they can stop chasing after money forever.  However, everyone knows that it's better to live below your means. You can always find ways to enjoy life without living from paycheck to paycheck.

Lifestyle is more important than income

When it comes to financial independence, people are quick to talk about six-figure incomes. But simply having more money won't get you there.

Why More Money Won’t Lead to Financial Independence - Darius Foroux

The old school method of job progression is dead for two reasons:<ul><li>Job security is dead, no more staying at the one company forever.</li><li>The internet and technology has created the means for much more flexible work styles.</li></ul>

The Death Of Job Security

Entrepreneurship is like dating – failures are unavoidable and are a part of learning. What matters most is resilience.If the pursuit of a risky dream imparts useful business skills along the journey, then even in the worst case, the pursuer ends up learning useful skills.

That Risky Dream

<ul><li>Street smarts & practice, where you’ve learned it “in the real world” and know how to apply it. Only learned by doing it.</li><li>Theoretical, abstract knowledge you get from books and school that doesn’t have a tie to your experience and the real world. Harder to apply.</li></ul>

Two Kinds Of Knowledge

Impact requires venturing into the unknown (whose risk most people avoid) and leadership (which acts as a multiplier of impact).Four steps:<ul><li>Get financial stability: Get rid of debts, and have some savings.</li><li>Create room for experimentation: Figure out a job schedule which allows for experimentation</li><li>Begin experimentation: Use money from step 1 to experiment around (while keeping the source of money around)</li><li>Strike out on your own: Either as a part of the current organization or on your own, follow the direction set by a successful experiment from step 3</li></ul>

Making An Impact: On Your Own

Two powerful questions for making connections and providing value to people:<ul><li>What’s most exciting for you right now in your life/ business?</li><li>What’s challenging for you in your life/ business right now?</li></ul>

The Two Questions

Great networking is not about the back-and-forth, it’s about giving with no expectation of anything in return.There are two basic ways to find great connections<ul><li>Find people with great future potential and help them in reaching their goal</li><li>Add some value to the life of someone who is already established (common areas being personal finance, relationships, health, hobbies, and causes or a specialized skill which could be of use to the receiver) or connect them to someone where a connection could create a win-win potential for both parties</li></ul>

Making Worthwhile Connections

The general perception of marketing is that it’s sleazy and manipulative, the reality is that good marketing is making your potential customers know about you (or your company).A lot of businesses fail because they are not able to reach out to the right customers.

Marketing: Don't Let Your Company Remain Obscure

People don’t talk about the best-writing author; they talk about the best-selling author.

<ul><li>One can get better at a particular craft but being able to sell oneself is equally important (successful people in a craft are not always the best individuals of that craft).</li><li>Success is a skill – it consists of the skill of marketing, the skill of sales and skill of leadership.</li><li>Sales are about knowing what customer needs and if you have a good solution/product, offering it.</li><li>Leadership is about being able to influence (not manipulate) people not control them.</li></ul>

Sales As A Leadership Skill

Learning as an adult: Adults need a reason to learn something, they are involved in planning as well as evaluation, more interested in subjects having immediate relevance, more interest in problem-oriented (as oppose to content-oriented), and prefer more self-directed education (as oppose to taught).

Investing for Success: Learning

Your brand is what people think about when they hear your name.One should have a website under his/her name to establish the brand.<a href="http://scobleizer.com/">Robert Scoble</a> started blogging when there were ~200 blogs in the world. Worked in NEC sales dept, eventually hired by Microsoft and that did not go well. Currently, working as the public face of Rackspace. His biggest credential being able to build his professional presence at the right time.

Building Your Brand

<ul><li>An entrepreneurial mindset focuses on contribution, outcome and moves towards big decisions even without authority.</li><li>The employee mindset, on the other hand, focuses on entitlement, output, and turns away even from small decisions.</li><li>Entrepreneurs see current circumstances as temporary, but employees seem them as permanent.</li></ul>

Entrepreneurial vs. Employee Mindset

Entrepreneurial mindset people carve out their path as oppose to working on the path carved out by someone else.<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/C%C3%A9sar_Ritz">Caesar Ritz</a> started as a waiter, but he looked at himself in a waiter role, as a transitional point, to hotel manager one day.<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Louis_Marx">Louis Marx</a> fought hard with his employer (Ferdinand Strauss) to shut down the retail business and focus solely on toy manufacturing. He failed, so, he left and started his own company (Louis Marx and Company) which became the largest toy manufacturer in 1920s.

Work Yourself Out Of Your Job, To Take A Bigger Role

Move out of that bad job and do something on our own.

Some of the smartest, most successful people in the country didn’t finish college. None of them learned their most critical skills at an institution of higher education. And like them, most of what you’ll need to learn to be successful you’ll have to learn on your own, outside of school. Michael Ellsberg set out to fill in the missing pieces by interviewing a wide range of millionaires and billionaires who don’t have college de­grees, including fashion magnate Russell Simmons and Facebook found­ing president Sean Parker. This book is your guide to developing practical success skills in the real world: how to find great mentors, build a world-class network, make your work meaningful (and your meaning work), build the brand of you, and more. Learning these skills is a necessary addition to any education, whether you’re a high school dropout or graduate of Harvard Law School.

The Education of Millionaires

<ul><li>The American dream the middle class keeps chasing is dead.</li><li>You have to make yourself the only person who controls your dreams.</li><li>Choosing yourself begins with a daily practice of good habits in 4 areas:</li></ul><ol><li>Mental health</li><li>Physical health</li><li>Emotional health</li><li>Spiritual health</li></ol>

Some Key Points From This Unusual Book

In 2008 the American dream bubble abruptly burst. The world’s biggest financial crisis lead to companies ruthlessly cutting costs – mostly in the form of people.Almost everything can now either be outsourced or done by technology, which is why thousands of college graduates now find themselves unemployed or underpaid – the end of jobs is here.But what should you do if your fancy college degree now only gets you a job at McDonalds? Is it all bad? No. Here’s what to do.

The American Dream Is Dead

Remember this: You have to make yourself the only person who controls your dreams.If financial freedom is your dream, then you have to control your income, which means creating products, freelancing, making passive income from affiliate marketing, selling books, courses, teaching seminars – do any one, or even better, all of these.Why aren’t you the only one who controls your dreams already? Because you’re afraid.<ul><li>Afraid of what our family will think if we leave our “stable job”.</li><li>Afraid of what friends might say.</li><li>Afraid of our customers rejecting us.</li></ul>

The Only Person Who Controls Your Dreams

Rejection—and the fear of rejection—is the biggest impediment we face to choosing ourselves.Avoiding rejection is a powerful motivator. But it makes us miserable.As long as you choose to live with that fear, instead of acting in spite of it, you are giving others the power to make your choices for you.

We Usually Avoid Conflict And Rejection

There’s a saying, ‘The learned man aims for more. But the wise man decreases. And then decreases again’.This is about a new phase in history where art, science, business, and spirit will join together, both externally and internally, in the pursuit of true wealth.What you need to do is build the house you will live in. You build that house by laying a solid foundation: by building physical, emotional, mental, and spiritual health

A New Way Of Living

I have to count the things that are abundant in my life. Literally count them. If I don’t they will begin to disappear.

Only think about the people you enjoy. Only read the books you enjoy, that make you happy to be human. Only go to the events that actually make you laugh or fall in love. Only deal with the people who love you back, who are winners and want you to win too.The only skills you need to be an entrepreneur are the ability to fail, to have ideas, to sell those ideas, to execute on them, and to be persistent so even as you fail you learn and move onto the next adventure.

The Focus On The Joyful LIfe

Pretend everyone was sent to this planet to teach you.

The only truly safe thing you can do is to try over and over again. To go for it, to get rejected, to repeat, to strive, to wish. Without rejection there is no frontier, there is no passion, and there is no magic.Every time you say yes to something you don’t want to do, this will happen: you will resent people, you will do a bad job, you will have less energy for the things you were doing a good job on, you will make less money, and yet another small percentage of your life will be used up, burned up, a smoke signal to the future saying, “I did it again

Do What You Love To Do Even If You Get Rejected

Success comes from continually expanding your frontiers in every direction—creatively, financially, spiritually, and physically. Always ask yourself, what can I improve? Who else can I talk to? Where else can I look?Every time you say yes to something you don’t want to do, this will happen: you will resent people, you will do a bad job, you will have less energy for the things you were doing a good job on, you will make less money, and yet another small percentage of your life will be used up, burned up, a smoke signal to the future saying, “I did it again’.

Keep Digging

I don’t like the word purpose. It implies that somewhere in the future I will find something that will make me happy, and that until then, I will be unhappy

<ul><li>Rodney Dangerfield didn’t succeed in comedy until his forties.</li><li>Ray Kroc was a milkshake salesman into his fifties. Then he stumbled onto a clean restaurant that served a good hamburger run by two brothers with the last name McDonald. He bought McDonald’s when he was fifty-two.</li><li>Raymond Chandler, the most successful noir novelist of all time, wrote his first novel at age fifty-two.</li></ul>

Stories: Success Has No Age

Think of two people in your network who don’t know each other but you think can add value to each other’s lives. Introduce them. Do this every day. Get better and better at it. The more value you bring to the people in your network (even if it doesn’t directly bring value to you in an immediate way), the greater the value of your network. And then the greater value you will have

Be A Connector

<ul><li>If you have an idea, don’t focus on the money. Don’t focus on how you will make a living. Do this: Build your product. Sell it to a customer. Start shipping. Then quit your job.</li><li>Often the real reason someone buys from you is not for your product, but for you</li><li>If you want to be successful, you need to study success, not hate it or be envious of it. If you are envious, then you will distance yourself from success and make it that much harder to get there.</li><li>As yourself: What’s the lifetime value of the customer? What are the ancillary benefits of having this customer?</li></ul>

Success And Your Customers

What to do when struggling with idea topics:Search phrases on social media like: ‘I wish I had’, ‘I just paid someone to’, ‘is the worst product’, ‘is a horrible company’, ‘has a terrible website’, ‘is my favourite website’, ‘does anyone know how...' This will expand your thinking and provide you with puzzle pieces to connect.

Finding New Ideas: Mental LEGO

Honesty is the only way to make money in today’s world.

A holistic book on improving every part of your life.

The world is changing. Markets have crashed. Jobs have disappeared. Industries have been disrupted and are being remade before our eyes. Everything we aspired to for “security,” everything we thought was “safe,” no longer is: College. Employment. Retirement. Government. It's all crumbling down. In every part of society, the middlemen are being pushed out of the picture. No longer is someone coming to hire you, to invest in your company, to sign you, to pick you. It's on you to make the most important decision in your life: Choose Yourself. New tools and economic forces have emerged to make it possible for individuals to create art, make millions of dollars and change the world without “help.” More and more opportunities are rising out of the ashes of the broken system to generate real inward success (personal happiness and health) and outward success (fulfilling work and wealth). This book will teach you to do just that. With dozens of case studies, interviews and examples–including the author, investor and entrepreneur James Altucher's own heartbreaking and inspiring story–Choose Yourself illuminates your personal path to building a bright, new world out of the wreckage of the old.

Choose Yourself!

Science increasingly shows that there is a right amount of money for happiness, but that countless variables make the amount change for little reason. The problem must be approached another way.Philosophers have asked the same question. Every thinker who has tried to answer the question of how to live has had to wonder how much money was right to have. Here, we have the ideas on how money affects happiness from ten philosophers that might help you decide how much money is enough.

The Right Amount Of Riches

In Aristotelian philosophy, virtue is the key requirement for a life well lived. But while his stoic contemporaries thought virtue alone would assure a good life, Aristotle knew that a few other things would be needed. Among them are <a href="https://bigthink.com/scotty-hendricks/do-you-have-true-friendships-why-aristotle-thinks-you-dont">friendship</a>, good luck, and money.While he saw money as merely a tool to promote other goals, he is open about the fact that the good life requires that you have a fair amount of it. One of the items on his list of virtues needed to live a full life is magnificence, which involves the donation of large sums to charity.

Aristotle

The life of money-making is one undertaken under compulsion, and wealth is evidently not the good we are seeking; for it is merely useful and for the sake of something else.

Henry David Thoreau is famous for retreating to a cabin near Walden pound and writing a book about his experiment of living a simple, self-sufficient life in the wilderness. While his experiment is often presented as more than it was, <a href="https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2015/10/19/pond-scum">his cabin wasn’t that far from a town and his mother usually cooked and cleaned for him</a>, his ideas on the simple life are still worth considering.His time in the woods showed him the benefits of living simply; such as how much humanity can gain by spending more time in nature and how getting away from material pleasures can help us live a fuller life.

Thoreau

To have done anything by which you earned money merely is to have been truly idle or worse

Epicurus was a philosopher with some bold ideas on how to make people happy. He lived in the countryside in a large house with a dozen other people where they all lived communally. He argued that the path to happiness was moderation, strong friendships, and philosophy.Rather than accumulating wealth, one should try and live a simple life and find joy in things like friends, the pleasures of work, and philosophy. The moderate life, however, didn’t require much money at all.

Epicurus

If you wish to make Pythocles wealthy, don’t give him more money; rather, reduce his desires.

Nietzsche argued that the morality of the gospels was a slave morality which was based on a sort of sour grapes approach to things. Since the authors of the gospels didn’t have money or power they declared those things to be evil and the poverty and weakness they had to be good. Nietzsche sees this reactionary morality to be unbecoming of great people.This doesn’t mean that he thought hoarding cash was good, but he does warn us to be wary of the poor man who derides money as evil and useless to our happiness.

Nietzsche

Kierkegaard strikes out against how people are increasingly dispassionate, conforming, and detached. He blames, among other things, money for causing some of this. As the abstraction of real value, it tends to make us desire of it rather than the things it can buy or represents.Kierkegaard implores us to dive headfirst into life and live it fully and desiring too much money is a symptom of not doing so.

Kierkegaard

Schopenhauer was a pessimistic thinker who felt that most people were doomed to rather unpleasant lives. He was so convinced of this that he was one of the first prominent anti-natalists and wrote that most people were better off not being born. His advice on how to be happy is fittingly strange.Schopenhauer’s great solution to the endless miseries of life is to withdraw from them and live ascetically. Money then, that cause of infinite desire, labor, and strife, is to be avoided. The worst part of his solution is his understanding of how few people could hope to carry it out.

Schopenhauer

Wealth is like sea-water: The more we drink the thirstier we become; and the same is true of fame.

Franklin was independently wealthy. After a lifetime of wise investments, hard work, and a fair share of luck, Franklin was able to turn his attention to his social projects and not have to worry about money again.His ideas on wealth were similar to Aristotle’s in many ways. He wrote a book on <a href="http://www.swarthmore.edu/SocSci/bdorsey1/41docs/52-fra.html">how to earn and save money</a> and associated having wealth with having a least a few virtues. He also agrees that, while good to have, money is at best a tool for getting other things. Unlike Aristotle, however, <a href="https://bigthink.com/scotty-hendricks/ben-franklins-13-guidelines-for-living-a-good-life">his list of virtues</a> does not require wealth to live life to the fullest.

Ben Franklin

The use of money is all the advantage there is in having money

Marx reminds us that money, for all the bad things philosophers often say about it, is extremely useful. It drives history, grants the ability to accomplish great things, and often consumes too much of our time. His philosophy of communism isn’t so much against wealth as it is an attempt to tame it and make it the servant of humanity rather than the problem it frequently can be. The results have been mixed at best.

Karl Marx

His life story and later dedication to intellectual pleasures speak against a life of chasing money as the path to Nirvana. However, extreme poverty is no solution either. While many Buddhist monks are supposed to avoid even touching money, the rest of us are encouraged to have the “right livelihood” and earn it virtuously. This also includes not having more than we need.We are warned that there is too much of a good thing and that we should not suppose that more money is the solution to suffering. Having nothing isn’t too much fun either though.

The Buddha

Faith is the best wealth for a man in this world. Righteousness when well practiced brings happiness.

Needleman has spent decades <a href="https://www.fastcompany.com/28699/money-and-meaning-life">helping people navigate life</a>. He is often sought out as a consultant on how to handle money at the conceptual level and has a lifetime of advice on how money affects us to give out.One of his realizations is that money doesn’t solve problems or provide answers. While it might assure that we have access to necessities, it won’t cure us of worrying about having them. He reminds us that there are things that money can’t buy, like happiness, that we must never lose sight of; even if it is nice to be able to buy that trip to Hawaii without saving for it.

Jacob Needleman

Those who criticize the wealthy don’t realize that money is needed to do good things.

How To Get Rich

Why More Money Won’t Lead to Financial Independence - Darius Foroux

The Education of Millionaires

Choose Yourself!

10 philosophers on whether money can make you happy

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