By Amber Lee Mason, editor, DailyWealth Trader
"I want to get rich."
My friend Dean and I were out for a drink the other day. He recently quit his job. It was a stable, six-figure government post. But it was boring… and there wasn't much "upside" beyond his current position.
If he'd stayed, he would have ended up doing the same thing, earning about the same money, for the next 30 years.
He knew he couldn't live with that, so he walked away. He took a job with a small, fast-growing company. "It's a lot more fun than government work," he says. "But I'm not making nearly what I used to." So he feels like he's a lot farther away from getting rich.
Here's the thing: If he takes some ideas to heart, Dean has a much better shot of becoming rich now than he did before. And you can get rich, too, if you follow Dean's path.
Before we get to the details, there's one thing I need to make clear…
When Dean says he wants to be rich, he's not talking about becoming a billionaire. He doesn't need a fancy car collection or a 10-bedroom mansion. He drives an eight-year-old motorcycle. He wears old Converse shoes. He's happy with both.
"I don't want a yacht," he told me. "I want freedom." He wants to be rich enough to afford to live where he wants, to spend his days doing something he enjoys, and to not worry about money.
By that definition, he can be rich in five years or less. Here's how…
Idea No. 1: Join or start an "ideal" business.
The first thing Dean did was quit a dead-end, no-growth job and take a risk in a new line of work. And here's the important part: His new industry is just about as close to the "ideal business" as possible…
Longtime newsletter writer Richard Russell laid out the requirements for the ideal business in a classic essay…
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You can (and should) read Russell's full essay for free right here. But I'll give you some highlights…
| • | The ideal business is "portable." A retail store may be stuck on the corner. The ideal business is not. |
| • | The ideal business leaves you with free time. High-powered investment bankers might work from 6:00 in the morning until 8:00 at night. That's not ideal. |
| • | The ideal business is interesting. It's something you can do every day and still enjoy it. |
| • | The ideal business is scalable. A doctor can only see so many patients in a day. Someone in the ideal business can serve one customer as well as 10,000. |
(Again… I urge you to print off Russell's essay and read it several times. It's one of the most valuable things you or your children could ever read.)
Dean's new job is in publishing… It might not be the perfect business. But it's close…
He can do his job from just about anywhere in the world. In fact, in a few weeks, he's leaving town to go live on a small island in the Pacific… His job will leave him enough time to finish a business degree at a top-10 school…
His job is interesting. "I learn something new every day," Dean says.
And most important, the business is scalable. If his company continues to grow, it can make more money without hiring a lot of new people, which means the current people working in it can make more money.
In other words, Dean's job has a lot going for it. He might be earning less than he was at his government post. But he's a lot closer to his definition of rich – living where he wants, spending his days doing something he enjoys, and not worrying about money – than he was before.
And if he's smart about this job, he's going to be in MUCH better shape in a few years…
In tomorrow's essay, I'll share the second big idea for becoming rich. It's one of the single greatest secrets of wealth-building… and if you apply it to your career, it's one of the fastest ways you can build significant net worth.
Regards,
Amber Lee Mason
curated by Glen Brink, InvestmentMarketingTips.com
