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Review:
The Millionaire Zone
The
word "millionaire" has always conjured up images of the good
life---sitting by the pool sipping margaritas, having our driver
Charles bring the car around for our Sunday drive in the country.
Of course a million hasn't really bought you this life since
the days of The Great Gatsby, but nevertheless few of us would
turn our noses up at being millionaires. Given the negative
savings rates in this country, a million dollars is still significant
wealth to most of us, and a goal worth pursuing. Financial writer
and successful entrepreneur Jennifer Openshaw's new book The
Millionare Zone aims to get us there.
While The Millionaire Zone is subtitled "Seven Winning
Steps to a Seven Figure Fortune," I'd submit that the book preaches
that there's really only one step that matters: working for
yourself. While some of the advice here is directed to those
still working for The Man, the message is that you'll rarely
get rich on someone else's payroll. The Millionaire Zone's
seven steps, therefore, are really about how to start your own
business and make the serious money that millionaires enjoy.
I could quibble with some of the Seven Steps---not so much the
advice but the gimmick of forcing the advice into a seven-step
framework. What's the difference between "Wiring your LifeNet"
and tapping into your "Home Zone" again? It's not always clear.
But this is how books are sold; they know you're more likely
to buy if you believe that you can follow a step-by-step formula
versus just getting a lot of great advice. So I won't quibble---I'll
just tell you where the great advice lies.
Openshaw's
bedrock advice is to consistently look to your LifeNet for support,
ideas, and contacts as you pursue success. Initially I scoffed
at the term LifeNet as just a new way to talk about networking,
but the word "networking" tends to mean mostly those you've
exchanged business cards with, while Openshaw's LifeNet is more
about tapping into everyone you know, even those---or especially
those---in your family and friends who can help you or who know
someone who can.
Few
of us ever take the time to really sit down and think about
all the people who are close to us or who have been close to
us in the past, and think about what they do, who they know,
and how they might be able to help us. After all, if the people
who know and love you the most won't give you a hand, who will?
I liked the idea of diagramming out your network, and of not
being afraid to simply come out and ask if anyone knows how
to buy an investment property, or has a contact in retail wholesaling,
or is familiar with the ins and outs of buying advertising,
etc.
Openshaw's
advice on expanding then working within your comfort zone is
also solid. We all want to stay in our comfort zone, so it's
often helpful to expand your comfort zone to maximize opportunities,
and to start new ventures that are related to what you already
know or are passionate about. After all, it's easier for a software
developer to start a software consulting business than it is
for that software developer to own a NASCAR racing team.
There
is also some good advice here about figuring out if the ideas
you have are the basis for a multimillion dollar company or
simply ideas for an interesting hobby, and then how to push
forward the winning ideas.
Some
of the advice is clunkier. "Turning Rejection Into Opportunity"
sounds good, but the examples here don't so much show how to
exploit a rejection for gain as much as they simply tell you
to keep trying and your opportunities will come. (Although to
be fair those opportunities sometimes come via references from
the same people that rejected you earlier.)
Openshaw
provides profiles of both the super-rich and the much more modestly
rich in illustrating her ideas. For me, the profiles of outrageously
successful people like Warren Buffett or Steve Jobs could have
been left out in favor of more from the smaller scale (yet still
very lucrative) success stories that Openshaw cites throughout
the book. Trying to compare ourselves to larger-than-life business
titans can be intimidating and might stop us from even taking
the first step, thinking we could never be like them. But telling
us about the divorced mother who used past job experience to
start a human resources consulting firm is more likely to get
us to say "I could do that."
In the end, getting you to say "I can do it" is what The
Millionaire Zone is all about, and it definitely accomplishes
that goal. If you're looking for the motivation to make a serious
financial change in your life, The Millionaire Zone will
give you the kick in the pants you need.
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