The ‘not so secret millionaires’

We can guess if our friends or neighbours are millionaires. They dress rich and buy expensive things to announce the arrivals of their fortunes. We live at a time of proving we are better than the ‘Joneses’.

The self help market is full of ‘experts’ who are happy to show how rich they are. Even church pastors don’t want to be left behind in the game of ‘show-offs’. I struggle with some of the self help books that suggest we can all be millionaires, if only we try harder. The ‘millionaire fast lane’ is one of those books and there are others that I am sure you know.

Unrealistic mumbo jumbo

It is unrealistic that there is enough money for everyone to be millionaires. Really? And who will buy all the great products and services that all these millionaires and billionaires produce? Life is about realistic expectations, but none of us want the truth. We want people to sell us dreams no matter how unrealistic the dreams are.

Of course we can all dream big, aspire to live to our full potential and be the best versions of ourselves. Yes, we all have the potential to be great, but do we want to pay the price for success? I am not sure everyone can or whether it is necessary. In the ‘millionaire fast lane’, there is a reference to making a product or offering a service that you can sell multiple times to a great number of people, especially using the internet.

There are several restrictions on people achieving these goals. There is nothing wrong in people living in the ‘slow lane’ of life, if that is their preferred option or if that is all they are capable of doing.

Affirmations or just day dreaming

On the other hand, another book the ‘Millionaire next door’ describes the practical aspect of saving money and growing wealth. This is a tough way to get wealthy, but we don’t want to listen to that stuff. That is tough, slow and takes a lot of hard work.  We prefer affirmations, the secret of how we can become rich by sharing our future with the universe. It makes little sense that we will come into money through any of these methods. How many people can be rich through meditation? If that is true why are  monks not very rich?. We are told to attend sessions to get motivated, of course, but what happens after that bout of motivation?

Burn you boat and you die without achieving anything

I find it difficult to believe some of the ‘burn your boat and you have nowhere to go but to succeed’ principles are still making the rounds even now.  Again, this may work for people with some clever ideas that may eventually succeed. It will not work for the vast majority of us. This is why I believe that for most of us to be successful, we must combine what is best for us. If you love your 9-5, keep to it and do other things on the side. This will lead to variety and can provide the necessary additional income for your investments and speculations.

The calm in the chaos. – Blogsoulfood

Just a gimmick

I find the idea of ‘millionaire fast lane’ ridiculous and impractical. Here is an example, part of your success plan is to build a money tree. By the way, a money tree is a process or system that generates money on its own, such as a rental system, licensing of knowledge , a distribution system like Amazon, Appsumo, software system or content such as writing books or putting some courses together to sell. So move from being a  consumer to a producer. A few examples of some of the ideas  MJ Demarco recommended in his book.

Find people’s needs

Find things that people need- really?. The entry to the market must be difficult, ok those are helpful, you must have control of the full process, be able to scale the products or services (software), can you imagine how that is going to help a lot non technical people? How many millions of people will benefit from these ideas?

Here is the next joke. Your product or service must  impact millions of people and it must be something that does not need you to keep putting your time in, such as a book or a system that runs itself. With millions of books being written and released on Amazon yearly, add your own bestseller to it. Whao!!! Where in the world do these people come from?

With the ‘simple’ criteria above and how many people will be able to come up with such ideas. These are some of the ideas that led to hundreds of people setting up blogs, recording on TikTok or starting YouTube channels. These are idealistic at best and downright idiotic at worst. Of course, people like these authors live away from the everyday life of the ordinary people.

Yes, there is a need to be prudent with our spending and to invest in the future. The ‘Richest man in Babylon’ has more practical ideas on saving and investment than most of these books. Given the choice, my preference is to be a discrete millionaire than a fast one

Of course authors have to come up with strange ideas to catch the attention of the vast majority of people or at least be controversial enough to get media attention. Well done for that, but how about we start living in the real world again.

The truth is whether you will rather be a secret or fast millionaire.

What are your thoughts?

Shovels and gold rush