Eight Self-Defeating Behaviors Preventing You
From Becoming The Millionaire You Say
You Want To Be.... And What To Do About Them
By Dr. Jeffrey Lant
Most people I know say they want to be a millionaire, but
most of them say so in a way that makes me absolutely
certain they never will be. Why? Because they speak about
this blessed condition as a matter of hope and not
certainty. They are redolent of wistfulness and
implausibility, treating this achievement as unlikely, if
desireable, not absolutely sure. Such people, of course,
would be only too happy to have the lottery rain riches on
them... but as for getting it themselves, why that is just
too much bother, and frankly a vision they really don't have
for themselves, whatever they may say at cocktail parties.
If this is you, go back for your third martini; you're
probably beyond help. This article is for people who want to
do more than talk about being a millionaire between canapes.
In my ongoing research into what it takes to achieve
millionaire status, I have identified 8 significant self-
defeating behaviors that must be overcome. If you can
identify them and overcome them, your chances of becoming a
millionaire, the first step to truly significant wealth, are
vastly improved. If you cannot, you'd better hope a maiden
aunt leaves you her fortune... or that, while in couch
potato mode, you see your lottery number on the t.v. screen.
Otherwise, being a millionaire just isn't in your future.
#1 You Haven't Set Becoming A Millionaire As Your Goal
Real, as opposed to imagined, future millionaires know
they'll join the Seven-Figure Club. They posit this as a
goal, they resolve to make the necessary sacrifices and take
the necessary actions... and they live accordingly.
What's astonishing about all self-made millionaires (the
only kind I'm talking about here) is just how confident they
are about their future status... before they achieve it.
They have a vision of themselves as millionaires. They see
themselves with the money... have an indelible mental
picture of themselves enjoying the perquisites and
conveniences their money will bring.
Many report that before they achieved millionaire status,
this certainty of impending wealth and status made them
figures of fun to classmates, relatives and disbelieving
friends. In weaker moments, the scarcasm, ridicule and lack
of confidence of these people, frustrated and disappointed
the future millionaires. But they always were able to get
back on course... either because of their own inner
certainty... or, in rarer instances, because a mentor
intervened to assist them. One thing is certain, however:
they never allowed the undermining, mediocre, entirely
unhelpful atittudes of their "friends" to sabotage their own
belief in themselves, a belief which is and continues to be
a sine qua non of achieving millionaire status.
#2 You Haven't Set A Time By Which You Will Be A Millionaire
Once you've set your objective about becoming a millionaire,
you've got to set a precise moment when you want to get
there. Whether this moment is realistic or not, I'll discuss
shortly, but you can't make progress towards your goal
unless you have a precise goal to progress to. In this case,
that goal is the exact date by which you want to be a
millionaire.
This date is an essential part of the mathematical formula
you must create to become a millionaire. Once you have set
this date, you know precisely how much time there is before
you reach it... and precisely what must be done in the
intervening period. You now have the essential clarity that
you must have to reach your objective. You know just what
you are trying to achieve... and just when you are trying to
achieve it. Given that this is your priority, everything
else, by definition, becomes less significant accordingly.
#3 You Don't Know How Much You Have To Make Every Single Day
To Reach Your Objective
There are, of course, many ways to become a self-made
millionaire, but the best and most certain way is to do it
the way a mouse eats cheese: a little bit at a time, gnawing
one's way to success. What this means in practice is that
you must know exactly how much money you need to make every
single day, both from earned and unearned income, so that
you'll achieve your millionaire objective.
Please note that I said from unearned as well as earned
income. As you'll soon see when we discuss the need for a
regular investment program, only a fool attempts to become a
millionaire exclusively through earned income. The goal is
to use the benefits of investment growth and compound
interest to assist your ascendant progress.
Thus, say you were age 30 and wanted to be a millionaire by
age 40. And say, for the sake of argument, that you hadn't a
penny to your name today. Fair enough. Between your 30th and
40th birthdays, there are 3650 days of which about 3030 are
business days; (this doesn't include either Sundays or 10
holidays a year). This means, to become a millionaire by age
40 you must increase your net worth by $330.03 per day,
every day. In the beginning, this increase must come
exclusively through earned income, you having no other
assets. By the end of the decade, a certain part of it will
come through your various investments.
Once you have arrived at this goal, you need to post it
prominently. You need to see it every single day and arrange
all the activities of your life to achieve it. Otherwise,
you either:
- don't really want to achieve the objective (and are thus a
flatworm), or
- have set yourself a too ambitious objective, thereby
ensuring failure and a tarnished self image.
Neither outcome is desirable.
#4 You Don't Have Daily Sales Quotas And The Necessary
Marketing Plans For Your Products And Services That Will Net
You The Amount Of Capital You Need To Reach Your Objective
Using my illustration above, you now know you must net at
least $330.03 per day for capital investment purposes. Do
you have sales quotas and the necessary marketing plan that
will enable you to achieve this objective?
If you're like most would-be millionaires, you don't. How,
then, can you possibly expect to achieve your objective?
The achievement of millionaire status involves the creation
of an exact mathematical formula and arranging your life to
achieve it. There's no mystery to this; instead, there's the
grace, simplicity and certainty provided by mathematics.
Thus, if you must net $330.03 per business day, you must:
- figure out precisely how much you need to gross daily.
This involves determining how many of your products and
services you need to sell to both gross and net the right
amount, and
- develop a marketing plan that ensures you reach the right
number of prospects so that you can gross the necessary
amount.
Right now, most people selling products and services simply
engage in undirected and non-goals related activity. That
is, they go to work for the sake of going to work; sell
products and services without having a vision of what
they're doing this for. The goal of work is never work
itself, just as the goal of selling products and services is
never merely to sell products and services. Instead, selling
products and services are small but absolutely necessary
steps in the achievement of your ultimate objective,
millionaire status.
What's important, however, is that you have your strategy
down pat before you engage in any of the tactics of product
and service selling. That is, you must not only know what
you need to net each day but must have a clear idea of
precisely what activities are the most likely to get you
there... and whether what you're doing now is sufficient.
Say you're a consultant currently selling your time alone
and say that you currently make about $30,000 a year. Right
now, given your expenses, etc., there's no way you can
invest $330.03 per day. This means that part of your
marketing plan must involve things like:
- enhancing your perceived value as a problem-solver so that
you can raise your hourly and daily fee;
- spinning off problem-solving products like audio
cassettes, Special Reports, booklets and books so that you
can tap into new markets and develop so-called "passive"
income sources, and
- diversifying your problem-solving skills to tap into new,
more lucrative markets.
All these activities, of course, take time. You may decide,
therefore, that it is entirely unrealistic in years 1 and 2
of your Ten-Year Plan to invest $330.03 per day and instead
in years 7-10 to invest more per day based on your then
enhanced earnings.
This is fair enough... if you mean it and don't simply
engage in the kind of self-defeating "put off until
tomorrow" behavior that so many would-be millionaires fall
victim to. I know many people who say that in five or ten
years they'll be reaping the benefit of their current self-
improvement work... but I don't believe it. Too often, it's
just too easy to say you'll make the necessary sacrifices
tomorrow (and investing is always a sacrifice of some
current pleasure), when you don't have the personal habits
today that are a necessary prerequisite for success. That's
why I think it better to set a longer, more realistic
investment time-frame for the achievement of millionaire
status and to both make and invest what you can right from
the very beginning.
#5 You Haven't Mastered Your Craft So You Can Make The Money
You Need
The sad truth about most people wanting to become
millionaires is that they just don't know enough about their
business to achieve this status. I have long said that you
can become a millionaire in virtually any business.
Certainly in each distinct business and professional group
there are self-made millionaires. The trick is finding out
just how each of these businesses works and arranging your
activities so you can make it work for you.
Thus, self-making millionaires are necessarily studious
creatures... they study their craft, perfecting it, seeking
to understand precisely how things work... and precisely how
money can be made. They are not afraid of seeking out
mentors and leaders in their field and asking intricate,
probing, even indiscrete questions about how things work...
and how money is to be made in any given situation.
Sometimes this incessant inquisitiveness will lead to a
rebuff... more often it leads to insight into just how their
business works... and how they can profit from it.
The sad truth is, most people have very little in-depth
knowledge about just how their business works. They have a
nodding familiarity with day-to-day activities but no
insight into how the truly successful people made their
money... and how they themselves can profit from both
regular and extraordinarily business opportunities. In
short, they just don't know enough. As a result, they are
doomed to remain part of the mediocre, unmoneyed mass.
#6 You Continue To Do Trivial And Inconsequential Things You
Shouldn't Do
Recently, a young chiropractor called on me who said he
wanted significantly to develop his practice and make more
money. He said he wanted to create a booklet as a marketing
tool to get more clients, but couldn't seem to get started.
Upon quick analysis, I knew why. In addition to his regular
work, each night he felt compelled to go out drinking with
friends, be seen at the "right" parties, etc. He simply had
no time left to spend on the development of his practice and
his income showed the consequences. It doesn't take a rocket
scientist to figure this out... but it does take a dedicated
and resolute mind to do something about it.
Millionaires focus. They focus on making money from both
earned and unearned sources. They realize they need time and
concentration to do this, particularly in the early stages
of their career, before they've totally mastered their
craft. To get this time, they must be ruthless about weeding
out the more mundane activities that clog other people's
lives... things like washing dishes, doing clothes, loafing
about the house, having time-consuming, soap-opera-ish
problems. All these must go as unproductive.
When one is young and green, one may like to do these things
and be "part of the crowd." As one ages, one realizes one
doesn't have enough time to accomplish everything and tends
to become more rigorous about excluding the unproductive
from one's life. But certain millionaires earlier develop an
acute sense of the limits of time... and of the need to use
it wisely. Even when young, they know tempus fugit. Thus,
they do whatever they can to shuck off the trivial and
inconsequential and FOCUS. They know that nothing else is as
important as the achievement of their goal.
#7 You Don't Have A Regular Investment Program
Virtually no self-made millionaire has actually earned every
penny of his fortune. No, indeed. Millionaires are wise in
the ways of money and use investment growth (that is time)
and compound interest to assist them in reaching their goal.
So must you. That is why you must have a daily investment
program, even if the amount you invest at the beginning is
picayune.
Say, for instance, that right now all you can afford to
invest is $10 per day, $60 per week. Compounded at just 8%
annually the $3120 you invest the first year will be worth
$6236.89 in 10 years and will be producing $498.95 a year in
income. That nearly $500 you don't have to make through the
sweat of your brow!
Now, think of it. Could you afford to save just $10 a day?
Your first reaction may be, "No way!" But think! Are you
willing to make the necessary sacrifices in current comfort
to achieve long-term comfort and security? Most people,
people who will never be millionaires, will never make these
sacrifices. In the age-old struggle between the grasshopper
and the ant, they are quite clearly blithe, unthinking
grasshoppers. But you can't be! If you don't have the money
to invest now, you must rearrange your life to find the
necessary money. Otherwise, you are losing out on two of the
millionaire's best friends... time and compound interest.
You don't have to be a Wall Street mogul to take advantage
of unearned income, but you must have a regular, consistent,
inviolate investment program... and that program needs to
start when you're far from being a millionaire.
#8 You Will Settle For Less
Would-be millionaires may fall short of their goals. They
may be thwarted, disappointed, frustrated, cast down and
stomped on. But, unless their spirit has been broken, they
don't settle for this condition of events; they study and
scheme for ways to escape it... because they won't settle
for anything but the best.
All around me every single day I see people who have settled
for less... for a home that's not as grand as they'd like...
for clothes that are not stylish... for a school for their
children that doesn't deliver a top-quality education... in
short, for things that are inferior. Future millionaires
will live with the inferior when necessary; they realize
that sacrifices are a necessary part of their early lives.
But they never settle for the inferior as a constant
presence in their lives. In fact, they despise it... not
merely for being lowly in itself but for representing a
state of mind in which one has accepted the inferior as
somehow acceptable, inevitable for oneself and one's family.
Future millionaires see situations clearly. They cannot
delude themselves, as so many people do, that the inferior
is somehow acceptable. Temporarily accepting the inferior
may be expedient as a means of helping achieve ultimate
success but to people of the millionaire mind the inferior
will always be nothing other than inferior... something,
that is, to escape as early and completely as possible.
And who will help them escape it? Why, the would-be
millionaire alone. Millionaires, you see, are not waiting
for some deus ex machina in the form of a winning lottery
ticket or expiring aunt to set them up for life. They know
they must do it for themselves and accept full
responsibility for doing so. If you can't accept this
responsibility for yourself and act accordingly, you can
never, never be a millionaire yourself. Merely a penny-poor
wishful thinker, which is too, too bad.
______________________________________________
Tens of thousands of people are using Dr. Jeffrey Lant's
books to make themselves rich selling more products and
services faster. Use CASH COPY: HOW TO OFFER YOUR PRODUCTS
AND SERVICES SO YOUR PROSPECTS BUY THEM... NOW! (407 pages,
$27.95 postpaid); TRICKS OF THE TRADE: THE COMPLETE GUIDE TO
SUCCEEDING IN THE ADVICE BUSINESS (315 pages, $34 postpaid),
and HOW TO MAKE A WHOLE LOT MORE THAN $1,000,000 WRITING,
COMMISSIONING, PUBLISHING AND SELLING "HOW-TO" INFORMATION
(550 pages, $38.50 postpaid). Get them from The Sure-Fire
Business Success Catalog, 50 Follen St., Ste 507, Cambridge,
MA 02138 or call (617) 547-6372 with MC/VISA. Don't forget
to ask for your FREE YEAR'S SUBSCRIPTION of this quarterly
Business Resources Guide featuring over 125 ways to make
your business more profitable NOW!