This book is a New York Times Best Seller and I can see why. If you are not familiar with the authors, they are hitters. Mark Victor Hansen is the co-author of Chicken Soup for the Soul with Jack Canfield. This book and series have sold over 65 million copies. That is really unbelievable. I read one of Robert Allen’s books back in the late 90’s called Multiple Streams of Income. This was and is a great book and is more relevant today than before. Think about it. Years ago, one person could work and support the family and then both spouses needed to work to support the family. In times like this, two people working are not enough because of the job situation and pricing pressures on living expenses. Multiple Streams of Income shows you the power of having your money working harder than you in multiple areas. I will profile that book in a future summary.
Why is this important to me? Requesting you to read a 400 page book is a tall order and request for your time. Thus I want to make sure it is worth it for you to do so. In my humble opinion, this book is worth the time. It is laid out for full mind retention. What this means is that it is two books in one. The left side of the book is the nuts and bolts and left brained stuff that shows you the how to. The Right side of the book is the right brain stuff showing you in a heartfelt story, the principles at work. This makes it much more identifiable to the reader. These two authors have a personal mission to create 1,000,000 millionaires. This is a tall vision that could be seen as a gimmick. It is not a gimmick. You will see that the principles are sound and easy to follow. One thing that drives people is incentives. The stronger the pain, the more incentive there is to fix it. This is a key component to success and it shown throughout the book.
3 This book is packed with great information as well as an excellent story to demonstrate the concepts. For the sake of time, I will chat about the Millionaire Formula which consists of the following:
1. Dream – This is the incentive part of it. The authors have a vision to create 1,000,000 millionaires. This is put in print and part of their DNA. It is what I call their Compelling Why! Without this, your dreams are really more of a fantasy. There has to be real incentive to get the job done. Imagine this, your husband dies, you are left with two kids and no money and his parents take custody of YOUR kids. They have a lot of money and you are broke. What do you do? After you suck your thumb, you find a way to fix the problem. This is the fictional story in this book.
2. Team – Every successful person talks about the power of teams. Teams allow you to leverage OPE, OPT, OPW – other peoples expertize, time and work. When you seek out teammates with the same Dream then you build upon a powerful force and it makes the job much easier to achieve. Thus you get the power of time leverage because in a nutshell, two heads are better than one.
3. Theme – Theme is the way in which you decide to setup your multiple streams of income. You can use a business, licensing, real estate, investments and the internet. I want to spend more time on theme.
I want to relate each of these pillars based on some of the stuff I have done. I am a work in progress and have experienced both sides of the sword on each of these buckets. Based on my initial result in each, I should be on the street corner with a sign that says, “Please help – need a 12 step program in how to stop losing money.” Hopefully, you can leverage the good and eliminate the bad. Remember that to truly understand a subject, you have to study both sides. Charlie Munger, Warren Buffett’s partner always says – Invert, Invert, invert.
1. Business – A business by far can generate wealth faster than any other bucket outlined. It is also the most difficult. One of the key components outlined, is the creation of the team. I can tell you that if you dig in with the wrong partners, you will lose money and grow old quick. Please give some thought about who you partner with. I have lost more money and taken more ass chaffing’s because of the wrong people, that I implore you to give some thought to this. A great place to start is to outline the exit. What happens if we both want out? How does that work? How do we value each part? When you begin with the end in mind then you at least know how you can solve the problem. The real benefit of the business is the structure. You move from “Earn-Tax-Spend” to “Earn-Spend-Tax” which is a huge advantage over time.
2. Real Estate – More fortunes have been made with Real Estate. There are several types and you need to be educated and tap in to the right resources to be successful. You make your money on the buy and the goal is to be to cash flow positive every month. If you are looking to flip then you need to make sure you use 1031 exchanges to avoid the taxes. As you all know, you can lose your tail in Real Estate if you are not careful with the debt or fall in love with the deal. Get educated.
3. Licensing – I first read about this in Robert’s book, Multiple Streams of Income. Licensing is anything that you can replicate and get paid on. Thus if you create software, music, books or content that other people want, then you can license it. We have done this in the software world and it is powerful because the cost of your next unit is almost zero. The headache involved is that you need to invest a ton of time and money upfront and your payoff may be three years in the future. This is why licensing is so strong. Today, if you are sharp, you can create mobile apps and license them for Android and Apple. This is a way where you can make a 99 cent item and get a million downloads. There are 15 year old kids doing this as we speak.
4. Investing – Paper investing is probably the easiest to do and the one where most people lose money. If you look at stock market investing, it is really difficult to beat the S&P 500 over time. Everybody knows that you buy low and sell high but there is a small force called EMOTION and 90{d4f7c08805e41e9b9974dfba619ed7230ec2da6e442055d48085a7994e8adaef} of the people end up buying high and selling low. Again, this requires education. You need to understand the difference between price and value. A $50 dollar stock may be “cheaper” than a $5 stock in terms of price and value.
The One Minute Millionaire is a good book that you should read if you are serious about creating wealth for you and your family. I thought it was a gimmick trying to leverage the One Minute Manager concept. It is no gimmick and the principles are sound. Any time you can leverage the knowledge of two people that have generated over a billion dollars in business, it is worth the time to study them.
I hope you have found this short summary useful. The key to any new idea is to work it into your daily routine until it becomes habit. Habits form in as little as 21 days. One thing you can take away from this book is DREAM. What is your compelling WHY? If you have the right incentives then the how to part is easy. Spend some time over the next couple of weeks and really decide what you want and START. Taking Action will put you in front of 90{d4f7c08805e41e9b9974dfba619ed7230ec2da6e442055d48085a7994e8adaef} of the people out there.