book info

Book Title: The 10 Pillars of Wealth: Mind-Sets of the World’s Richest People
Author: Alex Becker
Goodreads rating: 4.07/5
ISBN: 9781612549200
Release Date: May 17, 2016
Page Count: 208 pages

summary

For a book like this, I think some context is necessary. There’s this genre of books where the author claims to be a successful entrepreneur and tells the story of how they got rich—with the promise (explicit or implied) that by reading the book, you can do the same.

I’m not exactly sure when this genre started popping up. Probably sometime in the latter half of the 20th century. But earlier versions of this kind of book were more like memoirs—written by industrialists during the Gilded Age and into the World War I era.

I’ve read a lot of books like this. Even if the author is full of it (which, in this case, they’re not), at the very least, you walk away with a jolt of motivation that lasts for a little while.

Now, for the author to be considered legit, there are some basic qualifications:

They must have actually started a business.
That business must be successful.

Alex Becker checks both boxes. After serving as an aircraft firefighter in the U.S. Air Force from 2007 to 2011, he transitioned into digital entrepreneurship—mainly because he hated the Air Force (he was washing firetrucks and cleaning toilets all day). In 2011, Becker founded Source Wave, an SEO software company that scaled to generate millions annually. Later, he launched Market Hero, which was rebranded as Hyros in 2019. He sold Hyros to Banzai International for approximately $110 million (mostly in stock) as part of a merger agreement in December 2022.

I’ve read a bunch of other entrepreneurship books too—actually, most of the ones I’ve read were by legit founders. I’ll review them someday. But my biggest takeaway from reading these kinds of books is always the same: if they could do it, I can probably do it too. Even if I only manage to achieve ten percent of what these ultra-dedicated people did, that’s still more than enough for me.

Anyway, below are my notes and summary of the book.

Rejecting Get Rich Slow

There are ten pillars or principles of getting rich. It is not easy, but it is very simple. Everyone can get rich as long as they truly adhere to the principles.

Normal career model is riskier than being an entrepreneur.

No matter how hard you work, how much money you save, or how educated you become, there is always a chance that the tide will come in and knock over that financial sandcastle that you have been building for thirty years.

Most people think having a business is risky is because they overlooked the inherent riskiness of being an employee. They also have this innate belief that failing is bad.

Getting rich quickly is extremely low risk for one and only one reason. YOU CONTROL EVERYTHING.

First and foremost, when you play the get-rich-slowly game, you are instantly forfeiting material luxuries.

Second, and far more important, is your overall level of stress.

Most important of all, though, are choices and personal freedom.

So, the three key ideas to take away from this are:

You control your life.
You can get better at anything.
You are allowed to fail.

When you live life in a get-rich-slowly fashion, you:

Are extremely likely to be put in financial hardship.
Give up control of your financial future (a.k.a. risks you cannot control).
Let 71 percent of your young life be monopolized by work.
Lose any chance of obtaining your dream life.
Live your entire life under financial stress.
Can’t make your own choices because they are solely based around money and time.

Separating Time from Money

There is only one thing you have a finite amount of in a day: time.

If you think of a potential business, you need to ask the following questions before you dive in:

Can this business make money while I am not present?
Can this moneymaking process be done by others or automated by machines?
If this business becomes successful, could I train someone else to run it?
Would it be possible to make the process of delivering on $100 in sales the same as delivering on $1 million in sales? Can I scale this business without having to increase my time involvement?

Keep in mind that no business will be time free at the start. Most time-free businesses are much more time intensive at the start than time-required businesses. The key is to always create businesses that are moving towards a time-free business. The questions above will allow you to do this.

For those who already have a business:

What part of my business can be automated by a staff or technology?
Is there a way to get people with my skill set to work for me and sell their time instead of mine? Is there a way to hire someone so I can make use of my time better?
What skill sets do I lack that are needed to grow this business, and what skill sets do my new employees need to possess?

Time is the only thing you can never generate more of, and every human has the exact same amount of in a day. To become wealthy, you have to learn how to generate more time by hiring people (and/or building machines), using their time as your own, and using your time to grow the business. If you look at the most profitable businesses in the world, the owner’s time is usually so separated that he does not even have to be there. Every successful person I know understands this, and the richest are the ones who abuse it.

Accepting that you must be better than everyone else

If you only remember one pillar from this whole book, make sure it’s this one. This pillar can be powerful enough to create massive wealth. But, without the support of the other pillars, it almost always leads to a massive loss of wealth.

Building your business must be your number-one priority in life for you to actually succeed. If it’s not your number-one priority, that’s okay. But you have to accept the fact that it is very unlikely that you will become a multimillionaire. Instead of making excuses all the time, just admit to yourself that family or comfort or being lazy or living a “normal” life are bigger priorities than becoming wealthy.

My questions for you are: Do you think you are great? Do you have advantages that others do not have? If you were in a room with ninety-nine other people trying to do what you do, would you be the best, smartest, most competent, most capable person in the room? If your answer is no, or even a hesitant yes, I am sorry, but you are 100 percent screwed. Statistically, only 1.1 percent of households are considered millionaires. (And way less than 1 percent of individuals are considered millionaires.)

By wanting to become wealthy, you are also saying that you want to accept the challenge to be better at making money than 99 percent of the people on this planet. Just by attempting this, you are going to have to accept the fact that you must not just be good, you must be incredible. If you think differently, then you are done before you even get started. If you are part of the 99 percent and never change your belief system, all this book will be is amusing, wishful toilet reading.

What we want to do is adopt the blind confidence of a moron while adopting the practicality of a rocket scientist. Sometimes you simply have to ignore common sense and give in to blind faith. This is something that average people cannot do, and therefore they can never bet on themselves and move forward if there is any chance of risk.

Because of this, when people want to be rich, they do two things: They stop themselves before they even begin. They don’t believe they are great or deserve wealth, so they don’t even try to succeed. They try to become rich while still being average. They do not take on challenges, they play it safe, and they never leave their comfort zone

Both of these paths prevent people from becoming rich. The good news is that there is a way to overcome these obstacles, which is what this whole chapter is about. Can you guess it? Say it with me: “I must believe and accept the fact that I am great.”

Accept the fact that you are going to have to work hard and become really fucking good at whatever niche you choose. Once you accept this, it becomes very clear what you need to do. All you have to do is whatever it takes to become great (yes, it’s that easy). If that involves learning a whole new skill set, hiring a dozen people, or selling to people twelve hours a day six days a week until you become an expert at it, so be it. Eventually, if you work hard enough at something, you will become good—dare I say great—at it. Then it will be much easier to accept the fact that you are great.

If you want to start a business but are bad at communicating with strangers, simply ask the question, “What would a successful person do?” Suddenly, it will become brutally apparent that you have no option but to become a skilled communicator.

It doesn’t have to be anything drastic, but this thought process will get you moving in the direction of greatness. Instead of saying “Screw it. I suck at communicating with people, so I better keep my day job,” you will begin searching on Google how to improve your speaking and writing skills.

If your goal is to make money in your business, but being the best isn’t an equal goal, then you probably won’t stay in business very long or won’t be able to grow your business to its full potential.

What you will see many times in this book is that repeated actions are all it takes to achieve desired goals. The only major hindrance is that actions are controlled by beliefs. The belief that you are great will result in great actions. The belief that you are average will result in average actions.

Knowing everything little thing is 100% your fault (responsibility)

In business, no matter whose “fault” it is, you will be the one who pays the price. The only way to prevent this is by always pointing the finger at yourself so you think about ways to take control away from other people or variables.

Socially, you may even be right, and friends and colleagues would agree that, “Oh, if it wasn’t for so-and-so, your life would be so awesome.” The only problem with this is that this “so-and-so” will never pick up the tab from the damage they have done. They might accept the blame, but they will never truly pay for it.

Adopting an abundance mindset

The world is what you see. Making money is not a zero sum game. Money is not the root of all evil. It is a neutral reflection of how much value you have contributed to society.

Always look for ways to expand your business.

Forgetting “what if” And focusing on “what is”—just address the #1 thing right in front of you right now. Then the next. Then the next.

The single worst thing you can do when trying to reach your goals is not doing anything at all.

Most people think that true education and skill are taught by action. While this is true, the best way to learn is not just by taking action, but by making mistakes.

When you start any business in which you are not experienced, there is going to be a period of time where it just flat-out sucks. Everything will go wrong, and you will make a lot of gut-wrenching mistakes. These mistakes might knock you down, make you feel stupid, or deter you from continuing, but you have to try your best to fight those negative thoughts.

Every time you are presented with an action-stopping what-if, you need to ask yourself these what-ifs instead:

What if I do not take action on my goal?
What if I am poor for the rest of my life?
What if I fail to reach any of my goals?
What if I have to work at this job that I hate for the next thirty years?
What if I cannot provide for my family?
What if I end up regretting all of this on my deathbed?

Go ahead, try it. Think about a few of the big what-ifs that are stopping you from starting a business or trying to get rich. Write them down if you have to. Then ask yourself the what-ifs above.

Most of the time, simply wanting to be rich will not be enough to push you past your what-ifs. You have to understand that, as humans, we are much more motivated by avoiding pain than we are by achieving gain. As I mentioned earlier in this book, if your current situation is tolerable, then you probably aren’t going to have a strong motivation to get out of it. This is why many people want to be rich but never become rich because of their what-ifs.

The sole desire to become rich will never get you past your what-ifs. Your entrepreneurial what-ifs would result in pain if you fail, whereas your current life circumstances do not actually cause you pain. Possible pain versus current comfort won’t push you to work hard and succeed. You must find a deeper current agony to make a change.

…I have worked with many beginners via large, mass business coaching groups. I no longer do this, and here’s why: I could give an entire completed business plan to beginners, and instead of taking action, they will create what-ifs. Even worse, they will not move forward until someone solves these what-ifs for them. After the what-ifs are solved, you’d think they could finally start taking action, right? Nope, they go on to create more what-ifs. It drives me up a damn wall.

So, as a beginner, you must develop a system to keep you on track with your goal. You must also realize that you don’t have to do everything perfect the first time to eventually succeed. What you must first do is recognize your “absolute simple problem.” This is the problem that is stopping you from getting rich, and you need to identify it down to the simplest and easiest describable form. By doing this, it makes finding the solutions quite easy.

Every successful person I know is plagued by what-ifs just like every unsuccessful person I know. The only difference is that the successful people chose to focus on the what-ifs I listed a few pages ago (“What if I never reach my goals?” etc.) because not answering those is far more painful than the consequences of your fear-based what-ifs. Then, they focus on solving the immediate what-is problems in their life one at a time. By always focusing and solving what-is issues, you are always moving forward, which is the opposite of what happens if you focus on negative what-ifs.

Anyone can say, “I want this” or, “I want to become that,” but very few people can define what their goal truly means in terms of exactly what they want, what it looks like, and what it feels like as a finished product or met goal.

So why is it that so few of these people ever reach their goals? It’s because they know nothing about the details or how to achieve them. All they see is the “success event.” The success event is the moment they’ve made it and have tons of money, thus earning the “good life.” But that’s as specific as they will get. They think, “I’ll have so much money, and I won’t have to work at this crappy job anymore.” That’s it. However, if you ask them any details about that moment or how they could get there, they are clueless.

So now let’s go over defining and mapping out your goals.

STEP 1: WHAT IS YOUR BIG GOAL?

Take some time right now to write down all the things you want in your life that require money. Be specific. Don’t just write down “I want a house.” Write down the style, size, location, etc.

Now I want you to go online and figure out the exact price for each of the things you want. Then calculate how much money you’d need to acquire all these things and achieve the lifestyle you want. I’m serious; go and do that right now.

Now let’s imagine that you need $5 million to buy every single thing you’ve ever wanted. The next question is, “How are you going to generate $5 million?”

If you don’t know yet, then you immediately know what you need to define next in your dream. You must figure out how you are going to make money. This is problem no. 1 (like we talked about in the sixth pillar). For now, to complete this exercise, just imagine something you would enjoy.

STEP 2: WHAT ARE FIVE SMALLER GOALS YOU MUST ACHIEVE TO REACH YOUR BIG GOAL?

What I want you to do is look at your proposed business and try your best to think up the five biggest factors that would go into generating your income goal.

STEP 3: BREAK DOWN EACH OF THESE FIVE GOALS INTO EVEN SMALLER TASKS.

Let’s imagine I did this for every single one of my five goals. I would end up with a very clear path that I’d need to follow to reach my ultimate goal of $5 million. Instead of having one big lofty goal with no definition, I have a specific and easy-to-follow recipe. This recipe not only makes the actions more manageable but also makes it much more likely that I will start working towards this goal and actually achieve it.

At the end of this exercise, you now (hopefully) know:

The exact lifestyle you want, including the exact house you want to live in and the car you want to drive.
Precisely how much money you need to do what you want.
A clear, ultimate business goal defined by actual math to reach your monetary goal.
Five clear-cut goals you must achieve to reach this ultimate monetary goal.
Smaller goals that make reaching your five larger goals simple and straightforward with clear action steps.

Focus solely on what gets you paid (and realize this shifts as you advance—formal high-level tasks become low-level tasks to be delegated)

No matter who you are, you are just one person who can only learn so many skills and can only put in so many hours of work each day. With the right people, though, you become something far greater.

So many entrepreneurs fail to understand this idea, and it restricts their growth for years. They feel like they are the only ones who can handle certain tasks, and they view bringing other people on as expensive and unnecessary. But, if you hire the right people, every employee could make you ten times what you pay them

When many people get started, they are all over the place with their actions. They are reading self-help books, doing research on ten different things at once, and essentially flopping around like a horny fish. Their actions are very ineffective because they are not doing what will actually make them money.

To repeat myself for the nine-hundredth time, you need to find out the one (or two or three) thing(s) that will make you money in your business. Most of the time, this thing will be selling, but as I’ve mentioned before, even that can be broken down into other, smaller actions.

You won’t see Mark Zuckerberg coding software; there’s no way a single coder could generate a net worth of $26 billion.

You won’t see Warren Buffet leading a single company. That would not generate enough money fast enough. You will see him investing and guiding two hundred companies at the same time so that he is reaping two hundred times the reward for his time.

While we can certainly increase the amount we charge per hour or per item we sell, the easiest way to increase your ROI is by hiring other people so we can focus on our main task. A man with a thousand employees (or freelancers) performing actions can create a seismic earthquake-like ripple of ROI, but one man alone can work only as much as he can physically work.

You have to understand people to get money

This chapter is about selling. Alex recommends everyone who has a business to learn more about how to sell to people.

Selling comes in a thousand shapes and forms, but at the core of it is understanding people and knowing how to influence their actions. Once you know that, everything becomes quite easy.

Mediocre entrepreneurs provide and sell products. Wildly successful entrepreneurs provide and sell emotions.

As a beginner, there are two things you need to focus on right now: selling and being comfortable with people (and leading them to do things)

SELLING IS EVERYTHING Business doesn’t happen until somebody buys something. This means that you need to understand the ins and outs of selling as quickly as possible. Find all the best books about selling you can find and read them. Enroll to courses about selling. Do whatever you can to get better at selling everyday.
BEING COMFORTABLE WITH PEOPLE The next thing you need to do is learn how to be comfortable with people. This is actually quite simple. To become more comfortable with people, the only thing you need to do is force yourself into situations where you have to deal with people.

So, the biggest lesson I can pass onto you is this: be proactive about throwing yourself into challenging social situations. On top of that, never shy away from something that makes you feel socially uncomfortable.

Competitive friends and suitable mentors (someone 6 months or 1 year ahead of you)

Most people quit when things get hard. They say they want success—whether it’s learning guitar, getting in shape, or starting a business—but barely make it past the first roadblock. However, the second you get them hooked to World of Warcraft, they can stay up for twenty hours straight working on their character and fighting strangers. See the messed up logic here?

If you put in real effort and stick with something, you will get good at it. The problem is, most people don’t, because of laziness, lack of time, or just being surrounded by the wrong crowd. That’s why being in a group of like-minded people is such a cheat code. It naturally pushes you to work harder, stay consistent, and compete—in a good way.

Successful people understand this and go out of their way to build those kinds of environments. Think about who you regularly talk to—how many of them are actually building businesses or pushing themselves forward? If the answer is “not many,” that might be a problem.

The goal isn’t to only make friends with millionaires. It’s to find people in the same niche or lane as you, who are serious about what they’re doing. If you’ve got a small group of people like that, you get two major benefits:

A competitive push to level up faster.
A space to swap insights, strategies, and lessons—so everyone grows quicker.

Alongside competitive friends, you also need solid mentors. Way too many people try to figure everything out alone. A good mentor is someone who’s already done what you’re trying to do. They’ve faced the same problems, made the mistakes, and can show you how to skip the dumb stuff.

The key is finding the right mentor—someone a few steps ahead, not miles ahead. Ideally, they’re not full-time coaches or “gurus.” They actually run a real business and mentor on the side.

Last thing: if you’re always hanging around people with small mindsets—people who talk in circles, always playing it safe—you’ll start thinking and acting like them. Humans copy each other more than we realize. So if you want to grow, surround yourself with people who are growing.

Book Review: 10 Pillars of Wealth