How to Ruin Your Chances of Getting Rich

I will freely admit that what originally interested me in being my own boss was the idea of making a lot of money. A million dollars in particular seemed like a great benchmark to reach.

But I will also freely admit that this was back when I was ten years old and had no real concept of what I was really imagining.

What I quickly found in each of the businesses that I tried starting in high school and college was that a million dollars was a long way off but the hard work started right at the beginning.

And I discovered that what my dad had told me as a kid was probably true – that the people who get to a million dollars mostly are no longer interested in just thinking about how to spend it.

If you have the skill, perseverance, and luck to get to the point where you start from zero and make it to a million, you no longer feel the same way as you did when you had zero! You now know how much work went into that dollar amount and blowing it on material purchases just to show off your success to other people loses a lot of its appeal, if it had any to begin with!

Not everyone of course, but most of the ones I’ve met. And we’ve all heard the stories about the supposedly glamorous lifestyles of the “rich” influencers and Instagram posters who weren’t really rich at all but faking it with rented cars, AirBnB mansions, and borrowed clothes.  

The reality is that if having a lot of money is your motivation it’s very likely you won’t make it in business. There is too much hard work, stress, and sacrifice required for most people before the big money comes to keep you going. Making a lot of money is really a byproduct of having built a good business, not the reason for it.

That’s why all those people buying “how to get rich” courses never seem to get rich at all – not because the plans don’t work (although many don’t) but because they are just buying the fantasy but aren’t really interested in the actual journey. It’s no different than buying a lottery ticket so you can spend some time thinking about how you will spend the money.

So essentially in my opinion, the best way to ruin your chances of getting rich is by focusing on the dollar amount and how much you want to make and the idea of “being rich” trying to have that be your motivation.

But if that won’t work, what will? Here’s my surefire can’t miss plan for anyone to use to get rich in the next five years!

How to Actually Get Rich

Here’s my formula, feel free to steal it!

1. Find something you are good at and enjoy doing (or at least don’t mind doing) that produces a product or service people are already paying for. This could be a hobby, a profession, or something you can take classes to learn or get certified in.
2. Figure out how you can make the thing you do better than the other people currently doing it – either by forcing on a subsegment, improving the process, improving the service, offering it in a more appealing way, creating a premium version, etc.
3. Introduce your offering to the people most likely to buy it, then get their feedback, and continue to improve and refine it. Make sure you are doing this in a profitable, scalable way!
4. Grow the business by adding to your team so you can deliver more of what’s working.
5. Grow your business by expanding what you offer to those same customers.
6. Repeat and grow until you decide you’re good.

The first year will be a lot of work and little money for most people. Year two will be a lot of work but a little more money. Make sure when you add people to the team to help you grow you are also treating them very well and valuing their contribution – without them your growth is going to be seriously capped. The more you can share success, the more success there tends to be.

If you keep up with this, make sure your customers are happy with what you are doing and continue to keep doing all the things that got you off to a good start (don’t get sidetracked and take your eye off the basics or expand too fast or into other businesses), by year five you will be in a very good place.

You may even have accumulated a million dollars. But by then you won’t just be looking for ways to spend what you’ve made. And the rewards won’t be from spending – they will be the pride you take in having happy customers, great employees, and in looking at the thing you created from scratch.

Those things will mean a lot more than any particular bank balance. Of course, everyone needs a certain amount to be comfortable and take the financial stress out of life.

But for pretty much every single person on the planet that number is way less than a million dollars. And the happiness you get from the intangible stuff is what you’re going to value at that point way more than just the number in your bank.

So if you don’t want to be rich, spend your time thinking about being rich and buying get-rich-quick business courses and lottery tickets.

If you do want to get rich, then forget about money and build something truly amazing and see how it goes. Chances are the less you think about it the faster you’ll get there!