How to Become Millionaires: 7 Fresh Steps

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Last Updated on July 24, 2021 by Tyler Clark

So, you want to become millionaires? I don’t blame you one bit. The cost of living keeps going up and wages continue to remain basically stagnant. This can leave many of us looking for better options to fortify our financial futures.

But becoming a millionaire sounds super daunting right? Don’t we just read these articles for fun? Millionaires are just people you see on TV or folks who live in that nice neighborhood you drive through every now and then right? Well, yes and no.

One of the first things you want to know about millionaires is that you can benefit from their advice regardless of where you are financially.

You don’t need to be wealthy to learn from the wealthy so to speak.

I was always surprised at how useful and applicable their advice was to a small business person or someone with a job who was looking to get ahead.

So though you may not become a millionaire tomorrow, you can certainly benefit from their advice today.

Below are 7 of My Best Thoughts on Becoming a Millionaire

I also put a bonus tip at the end. 

I’ve tried to put in the ones I feel will have a bigger impact on your success no matter where you are in your personal financial pursuits. Some points are more generic but others go against the grain and offer some subtle differences I feel are important in the study of the self-made wealthy.

Now let’s dive right in to advice on how to become a millionaire.

1. Don’t “Save” to Become a Millionaire

If you’re saving to become a millionaire, the article should read “how to save to become a millionaire when you retire”. There’s nothing wrong with that, I just don’t think that’s what you were searching for when you came here.

We’re not going to calculate how to save $500 dollars a month at 6-10% annual interest that will add up to a million dollars  in 39 years.

Don’t get me wrong, I think saving is incredibly important and when done well, it can be a powerful financial tool.

But for this article, we’re talking about the select few who took a more aggressive approach.

So instead of saving, you might want to look at how you can put your money to work.

Or even better, how you can get to work on something you can invest in.

Not one of my clients became wealthy by saving their money. They made their money through their enterprises and then, they became wealthier by saving some of their money. Some also invested to grow their money but initially, they made it all with their businesses.

2. Start a Business

It doesn’t have to be your main business, it can be a side hustle or something small.

Just start something.

Create something and grow it.

And as I say that, I highly suggest you grow it online.

Here are a few ways to get the ball rolling.

Possible Spending to Speed Things up:

• Pick a good market that has enough people to make you some real money.
• Start a website, update your site, add products, run ads, offer services or add membership section to your site.
• Develop your online platform and extend it’s reach as far as you can.
• Hire people to work on it to increase the amount of products and or services you can offer.
• Expand your business in any way possible to continue attracting new customers.

Once you get down the above list little ways, things can really get going. The problem is that everyone gets stuck at the starting line.

I’ll save you the worry, you’re going to make all kinds of little mistakes. Just accept that you’re going to swing and miss a bunch so don’t overextend, just get ready to take a bunch of swings.

I’ve tried multiple businesses in the past and the ones that fly, fly. They start to take flight even if you’ve set up just the bare minimum.

If you’re not sure what to do, try a few small businesses and see which ones go well.

This will help you find out what you like, what works and what has the potential to make you some serious money.

3. Stop Listening to Everyone Else

If you want to follow the path of a millionaire, you’re going to be following the path less travelled. This path is not only less travelled, it’s less supported by societal norms. We’ve all been told go to school and get a job. This credo is deeply ingrained in our psyche. Many of us will never change that outlook and that’s fine. It’s a good baseline process to follow but if you want more, you will have to augment your approach.

As you strike a different path, understand that some may question your choices. As a result, advice and guidance will be tough to come by and scrutiny will be commonplace.

If you do listen to people, make sure they have your interests at heart and that they’re helping you achieve the goals you desire.

This may be a great time to find a mentor or someone that can help you follow the path less travelled.

4. Use A TRUE Millionaire Mindset

To me the most important aspect of the Millionaire Mindset was how much faster they think than us.

With whatever you do, try to think of how you could do it faster.

All tasks are up for grabs. How can you do it faster, bigger, quicker.

That’s what really counts. 

If you start a lawncare company, sit down and figure out how you can cut the most lawns in the shortest amount of time. Don’t just go out the door and start cutting lawns one by one.

It may be faster to buy a lawncare company from someone who’s ready to retire and has $80,000 dollars in lawncare equipment and is willing to sell it to you for $7500. You could ask them to offer you consulting for two months to help you get things rolling as well.

This blows the average person’s timeline out of the water!

This small investment will put you miles ahead of anyone who’s just operating a one-person-show and allow you to bid on bigger jobs much sooner.

Your learning curve will also be much faster. Sure, you may be taking on a slightly larger challenge but once again, we’re looking at how successful business folks approach things.

Don’t overwhelm yourself but do take a look at what you can take on for better results.

4. Don’t Try to Become a Millionaire by being Lucky

I was so sure all my clients had won the lottery when I started working with them. I didn’t even really think running a business could make so much money. The numbers are tough to add up when you’re fresh out of college.

You know people who make $50 or $60 grand a year, maybe $150 thousand but who’s making that a month or every week?

It just sounds crazy!

What kind of business are you running that’s bringing in that kind of money?

I think my brain couldn’t put it together so it just defaulted to thinking they must have won it all or got all the money from a rich uncle.

Luck had to play some kind of role right?

I eventually came to find that luck had little to do with making money. It had a few little effects on the businesses the millionaires were running but it wasn’t what made them wealthy.

After training all these successful people, I realized, they were the main ingredient that counted in the millionaire recipe. I kind of feel like many of them would’ve found a way to become wealthy. That was just where their compass was pointed. They were going to take a shot or multiple shots at some point in their lives. They weren’t going to ride a desk forever and be satisfied.

They all had such strong entrepreneurial spirits and passion for creating and growing something. As a result, they were working on projects that had the potential to make them wealthy and they were trying really hard.

This has a much better effect than hoping for luck. If anything, trying to use luck in any way is the opposite of the approach you want. 

If someone is hanging around, hoping for a lucky break, they’d be bypassed quickly by someone who’s working hard.

The hard worker would get the company up and generating a bit of revenue.

They would fly by the person hoping to start a million dollar business.

Here’s Where Luck Can Factor In:

• You may get lucky times where your business is booming and can take advantage.
• You’re able to make larger investments that earn more than the average person.
• The business skills and knowledge you develop help you to spot opportunities earlier than your competitors and you once again appear “luckier” than others.

All of these “Lucky” situations generally stem from having a business and growing it in the first place. Though opportunities sound like they happen all the time, it may take ten or twenty years before a lucky real estate deal passes your desk and you parachute out with millions. What are you going to do until that happens?

It becomes clear very quickly that you can’t depend on luck to make you wealthy.

If it comes your way, congrats, take advantage and reap the rewards. Until then, understand that you will likely become wealthy from the regular business your company engages in.

5. Be Careful With the Idea of Delayed Gratification

Delayed gratification is a commonly touted millionaire trait. It loosely translates to work hard today and reap the rewards down the road.

I feel this once again only works if the rewards are for sure and they’re substantial. Remember, this is how to become a millionaire. We’re not talking about putting in a good day at work and keeping your fingers crossed.

It has to be a good day at the right kind of work in the right kind of job. If you can’t see the million dollar finish line, or at least a better finish line, there won’t be any gratification at all.

When I was training millionaires, I learned really quickly that if I ever wanted to make more money, being a personal trainer wasn’t going to cut it.

There was no delayed gratification that was going to come from working hard and smart as a trainer. It just wasn’t going to happen if I wanted to follow their lead.

Delayed gratification only works if it’s pretty much guaranteed.

If the lawncare and personal training business aren’t going to work out, it’s time to cut loose and figure out something that will.

Your time is precious so make sure it’s going to lead you as directly as possible to the gratification you desire.

6. Don’t Do Everything a Millionaire Does

If you hate journaling, that’s ok, you can still become wealthy without journaling all the time.

I promise you that there are many ways to become wealthy.

Don’t shoot yourself in the foot just because you can’t follow every habit of every successful person.

All of the millionaires I trained followed many millionaire habits. That being said, none of them followed all of the habits I saw. You don’t need to lose yourself in trying to follow every perfect step and habit of the wealthy.

Forge your own path in their general direction, use their advice and I’m sure you’ll do just fine.

Managing Failure

I’ve thought a lot about this section and what to say.

I believe you could write endlessly about how to manage failure and I want you to understand first and foremost that it’s ok to fail. You may fail because of things you do and you may fail because of external factors that are out of your control. No matter the reason for a failure, all you can do is how you manage and react to it.

So try to manage your failures in a positive and expeditious way.

Don’t beat yourself up.

Learn from what happened and pick yourself up and keep going.

Set up your level of maximal manageable failure. You don’t want to take on a loan or risk that will knock you out of the game if things go wrong. We don’t want to line ourselves up for certain and complete failures.

Some believe millionaires take on huge risks and bet it all to succeed. This is completely false. What you want to do instead is make sure you can handle the potential failures that will come up.

You want to protect your downside and cover your loss before it becomes insurmountable.

• Can you survive the failures?
• Do you have the contingency plan in place if things go wrong?
• Can you manage the risks you’re about to take on?

These are the types of questions that can help you set things up to better manage failure. It’s much easier to deal with a failure if you’re ready for it. If you know generally how big it’s going to be and have a few ideas to manage it, you’re going to be far better off managing the failure.

I noticed the millionaires pretty much could’ve cared less about failing in business.

What they did care about was failing repeatedly at the same thing.

Once they failed, they quickly made changes.

They didn’t want to repeat the same mistake twice. If things didn’t sell well during one part of the year, they didn’t try to sell them again at that time during the following year.

If they tried a new business approach and it didn’t work, they did not force the issue.

They moved on.

They dealt with failure quickly and always learned from it.

As I said, we could write so much more on how to benefit from basic failures that occur in business but hopefully, this gives you a few starting tips.

Now that we’ve covered many thoughts on becoming a millionaire, let’s look at the first step you can take to put this advice in motion.

7. How About Spending Along the Way?

Short of blowing every dime you have, you should be able to spend along the way. Remember, if you do this right, you should be making much more money than you would from an average job.

This should allow you to spend a little more too.

We’re not talking going crazy amounts but, the idea that you need to scrimp and save along the way just doesn’t make any sense. You can if you want to but you shouldn’t have to.

Remember, you’re not “saving” to get rich. If that worked, we’d have a lot more millionaires. Ever notice that guy splitting toilet paper generally isn’t wealthy?

Do You Need Multiple Income Streams?

I sure hope not!

It sounds super cool to have multiple income streams but is it really feasible from the get go?

It’s hard enough to run one successful business and now we’re going to get 8 different revenue streams going?

Sure, a lot of people online discuss that they have multiple income streams. They invest and they have affiliate income and they have two blogs, two rental properties and they sell various products and these are all different incomes teams. But are they? Every time I look at their businesses, I tend to see one main hub that most of the money came from originally.

Why don’t we just focus on that original income stream? It seems to be the thing that gets everything going.

That’s easier, much more likely to succeed and much less stressful.

It’s that first hub that we’re after, the first big income stream we can create.

Focus on that for now and don’t worry about trying to grow several income streams at once.

The one caveat to this is doing a side hustle while maintaining your regular full time job. This is fine and feel free to call your side hustle a second income stream.

The millionaires became wealthy with one key business first.

That’s your goal.

You’re looking for a good business to start. You want that side hustle income stream to turn into a raging river of money. You don’t need to go out and start five businesses. You likely won’t be able to concentrate enough energy on them and keep them all going.

I was training some real business wizards and even they had trouble running multiple companies.

Quick Bonus Tip:

I was told point blank by one of my top millionaire clients, focusing on his main business strategy was his top priority. He would check back often to make sure he was still on track with it over and over. It was all about one really good business for him, not multiple businesses or income streams.

His thoughts echoed many of the millionaires I trained.

Bonus Tip #1: Evolve Forever or Die

If you’re already a consultant, start working on ways to service more people at a time.

Instead of working with one person at a time, can you see two or three at once? Can you write guides for other consultants? Are you able to complete paperwork, duplicate it and sell it as templates to multiple clients?

All of these modifications allow you to see more people, do things quicker and thus increase your income.

This was a huge piece of the millionaire mindset. They were never interested in creating a job and stopping there. It was always about building a bit more of a business structure that they could grow beyond themselves.

Don’t Do It Forever

If you work as a consultant and you have a good grasp of the industry you’re in, start looking for ways you can grow and evolve your business.

Millionaires are constantly evolving and growing their vocations. They’re very aware this is part of the business process. In many jobs, you do the same thing and repeat your process whereas in business, things continue to develop and change.

You must be ready to evolve with your business as it changes and grows.

Are you comfortable with a much more dynamic world?

The millionaires didn’t exactly gather dust in their businesses. They were on the move and working on the next stage of their enterprise all the time. They might have cut a few lawns to get their feet wet in the industry but soon after, they were on to bigger and better business actions.

It was this “going for the next level mindset” that had helped them build their companies to great levels. They somehow knew not to stop. They knew the trick was to continue to grow. We’re all thinking “Isn’t that enough?!” whereas they knew to keep going forward.

It was growing that had got them there so growing was what they trusted. For them, the challenge became learning how to slow down. For the rest of us, the challenge is learning to how to speed up and continue to evolve.

Once you reach a level you’re comfortable with, you can of course stop. You can look to new challenges and go from there. The millionaires took on a diverse set of new things once they’d made their fortunes.

Philanthropy, world travel and personal training were among some of their new interests.

Bonus Tip #2: Your First Step to Become a Millionaire

Start a platform. You can read my full article on how to do this but for now, just understand that a platform is what you want to create.

You’re creating something.

A stage, forum, website, blog, structure, or a system. Basically, you’re creating something.

Some kind of a business platform.

You can be part of your platform but we’re putting the platform in the spotlight, not you. A platform can sell unlimited products and services, unlimited numbers of times. It is through this wonderful multiplication of sales that you can make lots of money.

Trading dollars for hours doesn’t stand a chance.

Understanding this difference in business format is the key to becoming a millionaire.

If I tell you to go start a business, that can mean so many different things to so many different people. If I tell you to start a system, that sounds complex and intricate. If I tell you to start a platform, you know what I mean right away.

That’s what the millionaires were doing.

They were creating platforms.

The platforms had things for sale on them. The platforms could be scaled, manipulated and grown to incredible size.

It’s like you’re creating something outside of yourself.

This is the type of business that you want to create. This is the business format the millionaires were following.

You’re reading on an online platform right now and I’ll bet you can see how it works. The format and approach to the business are sound and can be adapted and grown to any level. This is a great business format you can make money with.

Whether you choose to build a real world platform or an online platform, understand that this approach can be very lucrative. It’s how my clients made their money and I hope it’s how you can make some too.

Good luck and I wish you all the best in your pursuits to becoming a millionaire.

Best of Wealth,

Tyler