Building Wealth Doc's note: Are you capable of becoming rich? In today's guest essay, Dr. Steve Sjuggerud shares the secret to accomplishing this goal.
A friend of mine has a net worth that's comfortably in the tens of millions of dollars.
I don't know for sure, of course... It's not polite to ask. But I know of his business dealings. And I've been to his stunning house on the ocean in Palm Beach County, Florida. (A few years ago, he bought his neighbor's house – rumor has it he didn't like the dog barking next door. He connected the two properties, renovating the neighbor's house to match his own.)
For the last decade or so, he's spent his days doing what he wants... which, it turns out, ends up making him even more money...
My friend's story starts at a Dale Carnegie public speaking course maybe 30 years ago. In that course, my friend was asked to pick the one thing he'd like to achieve in life and give a speech on how he planned to achieve it.
My friend wanted to do so many things in life... He wanted to teach a college-level course (his father was a professor), he wanted to write a screenplay for a movie, he wanted to appreciate art as well as any critic, he wanted to write a fiction story and have it published... The list goes on. Oh, also on the list was "make a lot of money."
He thought about his list. And he figured if he accomplished the last one – "make a lot of money" – then he'd have the opportunity to accomplish the other things on that list, too. So that's what he gave his speech about... how he'd get rich.
And so my friend set out to get rich. For years, he made that his main goal. You might not like the idea of dedicating your life to amassing wealth. (And you don't need a fortune to live well.) But it worked for my friend... And it worked for Felix Dennis.
I read one of the best books ever written on getting rich. It's Felix Dennis' How to Get Rich.
Unlike most of the writers of self-help books, Dennis is actually very rich. And unlike most self-help writers, he didn't make his money pitching self-help seminars or DVDs. Instead, he made hundreds of millions of dollars publishing magazines like Maxim.
In short, he didn't need to write How to Get Rich. But I'm glad he did. It is brutally honest and filled with wisdom. You should read it with a highlighter in hand. Like my friend, Dennis set out to get rich. He makes no bones about it... which makes reading this book refreshing.
As Dennis says, getting rich isn't easy to do, and most people won't even try. People as rich as Dennis are rare. Few people as rich as Dennis have actually tried to put down on paper, for the layman, the legitimate secrets of getting rich. Dennis did, and did it well.
I have spent a lot of time with many hugely rich entrepreneurs... I have heard the stories of how they got to where they are now... I've heard their insights. No book I'm aware of captures those insights as well as this one.
Are you capable of becoming rich? Are you willing to make it your goal now, so you can later conquer all your other dreams like my friend and Felix Dennis?
Read How to Get Rich and find out...
Good investing,
Steve