How to get Rich in Three Steps
Upset that you aren’t rich? I think I have the secret. I have provided it in a handy “choose your own adventure” format:
How to get rich in three steps. (Choose your own adventure):
Step 1. Be rich. Money makes money. It is very simple to turn lots of money into even more money. There is almost no way to get rich with out this first step. If you don’t have your own money you must know people with access to money. Again, it is very difficult to become rich without the money to generate more money.
Ok, now you are ready to get rich. Now comes the choose your own adventure part. Assuming you have lots of money that belongs to you it is easy to get very rich. If you personally have a net worth of at least a five million dollars skip to section I. If you have access to some money (parents most likely) skip to section II. If you only know people with money, skip to section III.
–Section I—
Step 2: Move money around. Also known as investing. You will try to buy things that will grow in value faster than inflation. This is simple, as long as you don’t make any large and foolish investments this money will grow. If you are slightly shrewd you can grow this money to be astronomically huge. This is the Warren Buffer or Donald Trump system of getting very wealthy.
Step 3: Repeat forever. You will be very rich.
–Section II–
Ok, you don’t have enough money so that just rubbing it together will make you rich. So you need to somehow generate enough money to get started on the money train. So, lets pick your poison, do you like movies or technology? If you like movies, continue. If you like technology, skip ahead to section IIb.
Step 2: Go to Hollywood and work for free in the entertainment industry. If you are artistic, start directing movies. This will be expensive, so budget around $100k per year in creating your own movies. Meanwhile you will work at various jobs in the industry for no money, making connections. If you keep this up long enough eventually you will be in a position to get paid to write or direct movies, or you will be big enough player that you will get percentages of the products being made (TV or movies). You will soon have enough money to head back to section I.
Note: make sure not to find a trade. Avoid trades. As soon as you have a trade you aren’t going to get rich, because you are a cost for people who are rich, and they hate paying costs.
–Section IIb–
Step 2: Start a technology company. This can be quite risky, so make sure you don’t spend your own money. Use your own money so that you don’t need to make a salary at first. Make sure you have investors to take the risk. Your best bet is to build this company big enough that someone will buy it. Don’t take less than a hundred million dollars. You will only get a small cut and you will need this for getting very rich. Take your cut of the sale and head back to section I.
–Section III–
Step 2: So, you don’t actually have much money of your own, and your parents don’t have much either. Ouch, that makes it much harder to get rich. Well, as long as your parents are at least upper middle class you need to focus on education. Tutors, the works. You must make straight A’s. Also, you should be editor of your High School yearbook. I recommend that you start some sort of charity or business as well. Meet friends of your parents with connections. These connections should be donors or administrators at an Ivy League school. When you are finished with high school go to a large state school or an Ivy, it doesn’t matter which. At this point make sure you are an attractive person. This is very helpful in the next part.
Study something, anything. Engineering, science, or humanities are great. After college get a job at a family friend’s company. Excel there. After two years you need to cash in those connections and go get an MBA. You must get your MBA at Harvard, Stanford, Yale, etc. An MBA that isn’t from a top ten school isn’t going to work. Network yourself into the ground in Business School. When you graduate get a job and a finance firm of some kind.
Step 3. After several years of working very hard you will be making a very good living. You will have been promoted several times. Now is when you get rich. You must get hired as a senior executive at a large public company or promising private company. This job will come with stock options. Lots of stock options. Sell these options after several years. You are now very wealthy. Skip up to step I.
–Things that don’t work–
1. Do not provide a service yourself. Services are always a cost, and people will want to pay as little as possible for that service.
2. Do not practice a trade or profession. Again you will be a cost. You must avoid being a cost. What you do must generate money.
September 29th, 2007 at 6:40 pm
hmm… what about step 4?
-Section IV-
If all else fails, develop a product. Services are not scalable at a high enough rate of return (see also: “Do not practice a trade”.) Instead you need a product that you can sell the shit out of. Sometimes it helps to advertise this product. Sometimes it helps to have late night infomercials. Either way you need to be able to sell several million copies of whatever the product is. Bonus points are given for selling a digital product because these items are very scalable.
September 29th, 2007 at 7:39 pm
Good point. The product option is important too. I think I had that before and erased it. The trick to products is that the must be much less expensive to produce than they sell for. Its all about low marginal cost, which is why digital products, like software, are such a good way to get rich.