4 Key ideas to become a millionaire

Key ideas

• “Making money is not a thing that you do, it’s a skill that you learn.” — Naval Raviknant
• “Ideas don’t make you rich. The correct execution of ideas does.” — Felix Dennis
• You must never have a linear relationship between your income and your time
• There are two ways you can make money, adding value or diminishing suffering

Introduction

What I love the most about the English language is the verb you must use when you’re talking about “earning” money. My mother tongue is Spanish, we do not “make” money, we “earn” money in Spanish. The decision to “make” something is up to you, you decide (or not) to make something happen. When the word “earn” is involved, somehow it looks like there is a lot of luck on it.

I want to start this post by saying that there is not even one single idea here that is new, original, or even mine. Making money is as old as the instinct of cooperation between human tribes. I will only summarize knowledge from people who did way better than me and I will combine that with my own experience. We will divide the content into 4 key factors to make money.

Making money is not something you do, is a skill you learn

Do not focus your energy, time, and will to pursue a career that is not for you only for the money.

I’m a software engineer currently working as a Product Development Director for an ed-tech startup. I fell in love with technology since I sat down for the very first time on a computer when I was 4 years old. Guess what, every single time I did it only for the money, I profoundly hated it. The truth is, to become a millionaire, you will need to excel in whatever you do. Why? Well.. because money is no more than a debt that society has with you. When you do something that society needs, society will reward you with this thing that will allow you to buy the time and effort of other people in the future, and we agreed to call it money. If you focus all your resources on doing something just because you’re getting a good paycheck at the end of the month, you’re not allowing yourself to start a path of self-discovery to find what you can excel at. I do not want to say “follow your passion” because is not true, not only because maybe you do not know what your passion is, but also because it creates the false illusion that a passion is something you find and not something you develop. If you start a path of learning and self-discovery using your genuine curiosity as a guide, you will find not only wealth but fulfillment. At that point, you will discover that no matter what you do, you always can create strategies to monetize skills and create leverage to create wealth.

Ideas don’t matter, execution does

Deliberate practice will run any distance, no matter where you started.

I’m sure this is not something new for you, you heard this a million times, I’m here to remind you only 1 more time: the cemetery is full of poor people with nothing but ideas. An idea by itself (if you’re not a politician or a philosopher) will not drive you anywhere. And even if you have aspirations to become a politician (God forgive your soul) or a philosopher, the measurement of your impact will be defined by the extent of your words. Public speaking is a skill (maybe one of the most valuable skills) but your ideas will not have any impact if you cannot even articulate those in a cohesive and appealing speech. You need to become a doer, a creator. If you do not know how to build apps, create content. If you do not know how to create content not just learn, also learn how to create speeches that allow you to collaborate with people which goals and ideals are aligned with yours. Create, manage, and, at the end but not least, scale.

Leverage, Leverage, and then… more leverage.

You must never have a linear relationship between your income and your time

The secret of the entire wealth created in this world is defined in one word: Leverage. Everyone in this world has the same 24 hours that you and I have. If you want to compete in the most well-connected and knowledgeable society of entire human history, you will need to collaborate with as many brilliant minds as you can encounter. Let me summarize this for you, there are three different kinds of leverages:

• Capital: Money leverage, when “your money works for you” kind of thing. This is how banks make their fortune for example.
• Labour: Simply management. Learn how to collaborate and coordinate tasks with other people. First, learn how to do it by yourself, then systematize what you learned, and then delegate what needs to be done.
• Code: We lived in a world where you can create products with 0 costs of replication. You can literally have the same cost selling to only 1 customer than to 1 thousand. The entire digital wealth created in the last 25 years was created based on this idea.

Following the pain, you will find only opportunities.

There are two ways you can make money, adding value or diminishing suffering

Every startup has a “unique value proposition” and a “Minimum viable product” that will use to find the well-known “product-market-fit” in the industry. Those words mean nothing. product-market-fit means that I did something that creates value for a collection of potential customers (that’s a market) and they are willing to pay a reasonable price for both parties to acquire it. That’s all. If there is no pain, whatever you’re doing is not a medicine, it’s only a vitamin. You need to be the bucket full of water when your potential customer has their house on fire. No the vitamin that helps them to maybe improve their calcium.

I would like to finish this post with a brilliant quote from Felix Dennis, who was one of my mentors with his book “How to get rich” and also it influences Naval Raviknant, whose ideas inspired me to write this post.

“Anyone not busy learning is busy dying. For as long as you foster a willingness to learn, you will ward off sclerosis of the brain and hardening of the mental arteries. Curiosity has led many a man and women into the valley of serious wealth.” — Felix Dennis