I Talked to 1000 Millionaires - here’s what makes you rich

In Unscripted, MJ DeMarco—entrepreneur, investor, and best-selling author of The Millionaire Fastlane—insists that there’s only one way to achieve financial success: Adopt an entrepreneurial mindset.

He claims that most people don’t practice this mindset and can’t achieve financial success because they have unproductive beliefs about money that dissuade them from pursuing an entrepreneurial path. However, he argues that though these beliefs are pervasive, they’re surmountable: You can remove their influence, cultivate an entrepreneurial mindset, and achieve your financial goals.

This guide walks you through DeMarco’s advice for cultivating an entrepreneurial mindset and achieving financial success, covering:

• How beliefs about money fall into one of three financial mindsets—each influencing how you manage your finances and the amount of wealth you accumulate
• Eight unproductive beliefs about money that prevent you from achieving the wealth that you want
• Actionable ways to remove the influence of unproductive beliefs and adopt an entrepreneurial mindset

Additionally, we’ll supplement DeMarco’s ideas with psychological research and practical advice from financial advisors and successful entrepreneurs.

In Secrets of the Millionaire Mind, self-made millionaire T. Harv Eker reveals the difference between the way rich people and poor people think and feel about money. Eker argues that these thoughts and beliefs impel you to take actions that either move you toward financial success or away from it—if you’re not happy with the state of your finances, it’s because your unproductive thoughts and beliefs about money hold you back from the financial success that you want. According to Eker, you can dramatically improve your finances by taking conscious control of your thoughts and adopting a rich attitude that will inspire you to take new actions that lead to your financial success.

In this guide, we’ve reorganized Eker’s ideas into three distinct parts that walk you through his philosophy and give you actionable advice on developing a richer mindset. Additionally, we include research underlying why people often fail to meet their financial goals and actionable ideas from other self-improvement authors, financial authors, and psychologists.

Rich Dad, Poor Dad is one of the best-selling financial books in history, selling over 35 million copies. The premise: when growing up, author Robert Kiyosaki had two dads advising him: 1) a Stanford-educated PhD who followed traditional career thinking and was financially illiterate (the Poor Dad, his biological father); 2) a high school dropout who built a business empire employing thousands (the Rich Dad, his best friend’s father).

The two dads are a parable for two different approaches to wealth: Poor Dad recommends getting a secure job with good benefits and retiring with a pension. Rich Dad recommends amassing assets that make money for you, becoming financially literate, and practicing independent thinking.

In this book, learn how to achieve financial independence, why it’s a terrible idea to see your home as your biggest investment, and how to overcome the biggest mental blocks to becoming wealthy.

In The Millionaire Fastlane, multimillionaire entrepreneur and investor MJ DeMarco challenges conventional wisdom about how to create wealth and offers a simple formula to shortcut your path to riches and early retirement.

According to DeMarco, all financial strategies follow one of three formulas—Insatiable Consumption, Hopeful Accumulation, and Active Production. Each formula represents a distinct attitude and approach that determines both the amount of money you can accumulate and the speed at which you can achieve your financial goal.

The Millionaire Fastlane explores DeMarco’s key ideas about each of these three formulas and his argument that the first two represent common shortcuts to wealth that don’t guarantee financial freedom. However, he claims, there is a way to generate a massive income in a short time. DeMarco explains how, providing actionable advice to fast-track your path to wealth. Throughout this guide, we’ll compare and contrast DeMarco’s key ideas with research and practical advice from financial advisors and successful entrepreneurs.

Most of us assume financial success depends on education and intelligence. But in The Psychology of Money, finance expert Morgan Housel presents an alternate hypothesis: The key to financial success lies in understanding human behavior. Housel posits that when you understand how emotions and beliefs influence your financial decisions, you’ll make better financial decisions.

In this guide, we compare Housel’s advice with that of other finance experts and supplement his ideas with concrete recommendations. You’ll learn why people fail to achieve financial success and what’s behind your desire for money. You’ll also learn what to include in a financial strategy, how to create one you can follow for decades, how to follow it through those decades—and how to pay attention to the information you need to do so.

Zero to One is entrepreneur and venture capitalist Peter Thiel’s unconventional advice for technology startups. Thiel, co-founder of PayPal and the first outside investor in Facebook, argues that technology has stagnated. Most new companies improve incrementally on existing products, but Thiel argues that the most valuable and game-changing startups create something new. They move the world from zero to one. Creating new things is not only the best path to profits—it’s also the only path for human progress. In this guide, we’ll compare Thiel’s perspective with W. Chan Kim and Renée Mauborgne’s Blue Ocean Strategy, Geoffrey Moore’s strategy for high-tech startups, and the insights of other innovation experts.

In Discipline Is Destiny, Ryan Holiday examines the power of discipline through the lens of the ancient Greek philosophy of Stoicism. Holiday argues that your ability to practice discipline—one of the four cardinal virtues of Stoicism—determines how successful you are (aka your destiny). This is because discipline dictates whether you work consistently and avoid the temptations that prevent you from attaining or maintaining success.

Holiday is a modern-day Stoic philosopher who’s written or co-written several best-selling books on Stoicism, including The Obstacle Is the Way, Ego Is the Enemy, and The Daily Stoic. Published in 2022, Discipline Is Destiny is the second book in his four-part series highlighting each of the four cardinal virtues of Stoicism. (Courage Is Calling was the first.)

In this guide, we’ll explain what discipline is and why it matters. Then, we’ll describe how to practice discipline throughout various stages of your life. Along the way, we’ll compare Holiday’s ideas with those of other self-help experts.

In his epic 707-page Tools of Titans, Tim Ferriss shares the habits and beliefs of 101 people at the top of their game, including tech investors like Chris Sacca and Peter Thiel, entrepreneurs like LinkedIn’s Reid Hoffman and Evernote’s Phil Libin, superhuman athletes like Amelia Boone and Wim Hof, media figures like Edward Norton and Whitney Cummings, and more.

These are the principles that successful people use to achieve audacious goals, improve themselves, and be happier. The premise: if you can apply the lessons from this book, you can be more effective.

Many successful leaders and businesspeople are lauded as “great geniuses,” but psychologist Angela Duckworth argues that talent and intelligence matter less to success than grit: the personality trait behind perseverance, hard work, and goal-setting. In Grit, she explores what grit is, where it comes from, how it drives success, and how you can develop it.

Duckworth is primarily interested in how to raise gritty kids, and her insights have inspired parents and educators around the globe since the book’s publication in 2016. However, she believes that adults, too, can develop grit, and she lays out specific, measurable ways to do so.

Her work has fueled debates about which matters more—talent or effort. In this guide, we examine these controversies and consider insights from other psychologists who either support Duckworth’s ideas or reveal nuances of them.

Many people believe that if they work hard, practice consistently, and focus on the things they’re good at, they’ll succeed. However, these aren’t the keys to long-term success. What gives successful people their competitive edge? The answer is high-performance habits.

High performers are people who maintain success and well-being over a long period of time. They excel more than their colleagues and can adapt to almost any situation. In High-Performance Habits, personal development trainer Brendon Burchard defines the six habits you need to become a high performer. These habits range from maintaining your health to generating influence. By developing them, you can take your first steps toward increasing your performance.

Minimalism offers a formula for how to live a meaningful life by first getting rid of clutter (like excess stuff and debt) and then focusing on five key areas: your health, relationships, passions, growth, and contributing to others.

The authors Millburn and Nicodemus achieved the American dream of corporate success and conspicuous consumption, but it left them unhappy, exhausted, and deeply in debt. They quit their jobs, re-examined their lives, and started the popular website TheMinimalists.com. In this book, they explain how anyone can follow their path of self-examination and how to make small daily changes to achieve a clutter-free, debt-free, and fulfilling life.

In today’s fast-paced world, our lives increasingly revolve around productivity, efficiency, and work. It’s now normal for many people to answer emails during dinner and pack their days with as many tasks as possible. Yet in Do Nothing, radio journalist Celeste Headlee argues that by trying to do too much, people are working less efficiently because the human brain isn’t designed to multitask or work without rest. In addition, the culture of overworking has led to worse health outcomes and increased social isolation.

So if all this work isn’t serving us, how can we end an addiction to productivity? And if not work, what should we be doing? Headlee’s solution is to embrace true leisure—doing things just for the fun of it. In this guide, we’ll explain the historical origins of the modern work addiction, how it impacts society, and what you can do to live a healthier life. We’ll also supplement Headlee’s ideas with more context on global labor trends and tips from other wellness and productivity experts.