Get On the Path to Wealth Through Your Own Business: Start Making Millions and Become Rich

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Preface

The Three Components of Happiness

Man is born to be happy – this is undoubtedly the desire of every normal human being. But what is happiness? Happiness is comprised of a simple triangle: to live surrounded by loving and caring people, good health, and material abundance. When one of these components is lacking, then man cannot be completely happy. Although each of these three components is relative, happiness is an absolute concept, and it manifests in each person with different powers of sensation.

Three components are mutually interlaced and interactive. It is possible, of course, to add other components of happiness, for instance, the execution of cherished desires, achieving professional goals, performance of duties, and many more. But all these are special cases.

I have placed material abundance on the list of the components of happiness, following conventional moral traditions, in last place. But, in fact, this is the core component, without which the existence of the first two is impossible. It is difficult to imagine a normal, healthy human who lives in an environment of love but at the same time does not know how to control this, and yet who will say that it is no problem and that he or she is completely happy.

There is general consensus that money cannot buy happiness. This idea, to which everyone likes to refer, was expressed by Benjamin Franklin: Money has never made man happy, nor will it. I agree absolutely with this statement in principle. However, it should be noted that recent surveys of Americans show that people today see a direct connection between their income and their feelings of happiness.

But in any case, even if money alone cannot make a person happy, a lack of money can make him extremely unhappy. Therefore, in this book we will discuss the core component – material abundance (or wealth) and we will look at what is required to acquire it.

What is Wealth?

There are many determinations of wealth and everyone understands it differently: from saving a small amount of money up to having a million net worth. But this concept can be displayed in real terms. According to a survey by Fidelity Investments for 2012, a third of millionaires believe that for them to feel wealthy, they need to have at least $5 million (the truth is that the rest of the millionaires also feel good with less than this amount of money).

It is difficult to designate a clear boundary of when the sense of being wealthy is attained. Obviously, this appears somewhere between the almost childish joy of buying expensive and not particularly necessary things, and the entrancing pleasure of being in one’s own home or having a luxury car. It is easier to draw the line of where wealth begins. Perhaps wealth begins at the point at which a man is calm for himself and those close to him regarding the financial tomorrow. This is, certainly, only the beginning. It is still far to the goal, but the road to real wealth after this beginning already comes more easily.

Initial Statement

Let us look at ourselves and say aloud honestly:

We want to be rich!

We deserve it!

We were born to be happy, and that means being rich!

Wealth is good and poverty is bad!

Then what is the problem? Forward, let’s move on!

Why Do We Want To Be Wealthy?

It would seem that this is understandable to all. Here are some simple truths:

We want to be confident in the future.

We want to obtain in life all the possible degrees of freedom: freedom of choice, thought, action, movement, and so on.

We want to ensure that those close to us enjoy a financially worry-free existence.

We want to have ability to help those that we want to help.

Attaining these becomes possible only if we have power – the power of wealth.

Who Is This Book For?

It may be easier to say in brief who this book is not intended for. This book is not for the following:

Those who would attempt to attain wealth in overly adventurous ways that include games of chance – playing the exchange, lotteries, betting, etc. Although we wish success for everyone, I think that this is the wrong way to achieve it. Too many destinies have been affected negatively by these activities (read the biography of the greatest player in the history of the stock exchange, Jesse Livermore). But if someone cannot exist without this adrenaline rush, then it should be done at least within a reasonable approach.

Those who attempt to gain wealth by illegal means. Here no further comment is necessary.

Those who have obtained wealth through inheritance or as a gift, or who have, after all, won money by one of the adventurous means already described. These people have had luck, and I wish them good luck also in the future.

This book is for you, everyday people, who suffer dissatisfaction in your routine lives earning money through work, and who want to reach this charmed state: being rich.

People who earn money through work can be divided into three characteristic groups:

–   The main big group: workers who are employed and obtain a wage.

In this group, there are a few who attain financial prosperity. Other than the small proportion of people who reach a wealthy state usually at the end of their career, for example holding managerial positions in large companies or becoming high ranking officers in the army, the main representatives of this category have limited incomes and financial capabilities.

–   The especially small group: people in the arts and sports.

This group includes people with a wide range of incomes: from artists, whose earnings are inconsistent with rare instances of high earnings, to the stars of show business, including the stars of professional sport.

–   The entrepreneurs.

These people dare to take off and try to attain financial prosperity organizing their own businesses.

This book is intended primarily for those who want to belong or already belong to this last group, the entrepreneurs. These are the people who desire to establish their own business. Today, this is the only way (besides the rare starry flashes in show business) in which it may be possible to attain financial prosperity within a relatively short timescale, and this is the only way to gain freedom… the freedom to do what you want to do.

Special Features of This Book

A sufficiently large quantity of articles and books has been written about the subject of wealth and financial prosperity. These works may be divided into the following groups:

a) a somewhat naïve call to universal love and self-development;

b) exoteric description;

c) complicated economic treatises by university luminaries.

The authors of the first works, which are based mainly on psychological coaching, promise us rapid enrichment purely through the engagement of our fantasy. Even if they make a call to action, they only vaguely suggest what specific action they are talking about.

Unlike the authors of the first group, the authors of two following groups envelop us in a reverential and ghastly fog. Those in the second mystical group wrap us in the mists of the Astral Plane. It is often difficult to work out if they themselves understand what they write. The authors in the last group – highly educated economists – suppress us with a haze of cold hard numbers. In this case, they have a sound understanding of their subject, but in view of their position, they are unable to express it in accessible language.

It should be noted that in the works of the representatives of each group described above, there is a rational grain, in which useful experience is accumulated. And it should also be noted that despite some criticism, I nevertheless give credit to a number of the authors of these three groups, and many other authors, who are located between these extreme camps. There are many interesting works, but they are rather problematic for the unprepared (or uninitiated) to understand.

In contrast to others, in this book, universal knowledge is gathered from all spheres of human activity directed toward attaining wealth, reinforced by my personal experience. In addition, the maximum effort is made to represent the available knowledge in the simplest terms. My main purpose is to give the reader tools that can help him embark on the road to wealth and that the reader will be able to use based on his outlook on life and personal experience.

For each subsection of the book, it would be possible to write a separate book. But, as this work is a brief guide, I have deliberately tried to make the explanations of key elements as short as possible and draw before the reader the entire circle of problems in a focused form. On the other hand, I wish to encourage and stimulate the reader to undertake in-depth study of the themes in the book by him or herself, which in itself must help additionally to achieve rapid positive results on the fascinating and desired route to financial success.

Thus, we hit the road to riches. A pleasant journey!

Introduction

1. There Is Sufficient Wealth for All

The first thought that occurs on reading this phrase is: This is not true. How can there be sufficient wealth for all? The money is already distributed and God, please, give me strength at least to survive up to the end of the month, or at best to save up for a decent vacation. What a profound mistake! Not to mention the mental setting, which in itself will not give you any possibility of becoming a wealthy man, this erroneous opinion stops many before even entering on the road to wealth.

Richness, or in the simpler definition, money, may be sufficient for all!

Here, the author not going to go into depth in terms of the mechanisms of money formation and redistribution. However, it is possible to say with confidence that people are not obligated to be divided into the poor, middle class and rich. All can be rich! This gives rise to another issue. All cannot be rich equally. This statement helps us to simplify the solution of the problem of universal enrichment. All people are different and all have dissimilar destinies. Therefore, wealth and the concept of what is wealth for all will be not the same. Furthermore, everyone sees the necessary level of wealth differently – for one person it is sufficient to ensure his family has all it needs, whereas for another the first billion seems insufficient.

The next aspect, to which all have to relate philosophically, is the fact that all people are allotted different initial possibilities; it is this aspect that essentially determines the level of the maximum wealth that is accessible.

But is how much money we have in real terms so vital? The author suggests that this is not important. The only truly important thing is how much money it is necessary to have in order to be happy.

There are some additional considerations, which somewhat simplify our task of making all people rich. Not everyone will want to travel the path to wealth. Others will attempt to attain wealth by means the author does not recommend. Another group of people will not participate in the creation of a utopian society of universal wealth, either not believing in it or wanting nothing to change in their life due to natural sluggishness. And the last group of people simply will not read this book (an ironical smile here).

But now let us repeat the main axiom: there is wealth enough for everyone who wants it! Therefore, it remains the most simple thing to achieve wealth (a smile again).

2. Wealth and Money

2.1 Determination of wealth and money

Before we start on our way, let us dip into the concept and history of wealth and money.

Determination of wealth:

Wealth – an abundance of means, such as money, means of production, real estate, or personal property.

But what is money?

Money – this is the measure (and equivalent) of the value of goods.

The additional functions of money, besides being the measure of cost, are the means of financial turnover, the means of payment, and the means of saving.

Today, speaking about wealth, it is not so important whether we operate with the concept of monetary cost or money in relation to bank accounts, real estate, treasures, etc. In contemporary terms, money, which today rules the world, is generally only a means of payment, guaranteed by states within the territory where that money is used. Today, money also relates to the object of buying and selling.

2.2. Brief historical information concerning the development of financial relations

We shall take a short journey into history to begin to imbue in us the spirit of wealth.

First, commercial–financial operations, which occurred even in primitive communal systems, comprised the exchange of necessary goods, such as food, clothing, weapons, and tools of work. The beginning of this prehistoric period is estimated to be 150,000 B.C. We can only surmise about this period, developing our imagination and representing how it was in reality.

The earliest documents on financial operations and therefore concerning the movement and accumulation of capital come to us from the ancient Sumer in Mesopotamia (4000 B.C.). It is a curious and attention-grabbing fact that in most of the cuneiform tablets found by archaeologists in this area, financial operations were recorded, in particular bills of debts. Ancient financial documents have also been found in Egypt, another country in this center of contemporary Western civilization, which includes the Near East and North Africa. In both these countries, Sumer and Egypt, the first steps in the development of international trade were taken in approximately the same period, 3000 B.C. The merchants of Sumer reached India with their caravans and the Egyptians traded across the Mediterranean and North Africa. During this period, the main goods for buying and selling were treasures, food (including spices), textiles, and clothing.

We should note especially the salient role played in world history by Sumer as the country-founder of written language, state institutes, and laws – in our understanding of this word