Book Review #23: One minute millionaire (Left Side): Authors: Mark Victor Hansen & Robert Allen

The objective of the book 'One minute millionaire' written by Mark Victor Hansen and Robert Allen is to create one million enlightened millionaires. As per the authors, this will create a domino effect that will have a positive societal impact.

Who is an enlightened millionaire? An enlightened millionaire is one who follows three principles. First one is do no harm. An enlightened millionaire do not undertake any wealth building activities that harm or impoverish other people. Second principle is to do much good. And the third principle is operate out of stewardship. They realize that their money is not just for them, but it is for blessing the lives of many people. 

How can one become a millionaire in one minute? As the book explains, it takes just one minute to generate a million dollar idea. The rest is all execution. The formula to become a millionaire is Dream + Team + Theme = Millionaire Streams. The path to millions starts with a dream, a goal, a want, a need to become a millionaire. That goal will drive all the subsequent steps. Having a goal is not enough. One should build a team to support them in their quest. Finally, one will need one or multiple themes to become a millionaire. There are four themes that one can use. They are Real Estate, Investments, Business and Internet. One should identify their primary theme and multiple secondary themes that they will use to become a millionaire.

The key idea in this book is that the journey to a million dollar starts in the mind. The primary focus of the book is on the mind of the individual. There are four steps to a million dollar journey. All of these steps happen in one's mind and help one prepare their million dollar journey. First of all, one has to decide that it is okay for one to become a millionaire. Decide that enlightened accumulation of wealth is a worthy goal. One has to work on her core beliefs and align them with the goal of wealth creation. Second step is to practice enjoying an abundant lifestyle. Visualize riches and wealth. Third step is to spend less than one earns and the fourth step is to invest the difference (between income and expense) in the theme of one's choice. 

Enlightened creation of wealth depends on a set of principles which the authors refer to as 'Ahas'. The book discusses 24 millionaire Ahas. First Aha is that everyone manifests their inner thoughts. They become what they think. If they think abundance, they will manifest wealth. If they think poverty, they will manifest the same. If one want to become a millionaire, one should continue to think abundance, they should think like they are already millionaires. Other Ahas are 'Be-do-have', 'Clarity is power', 'Size of the question determines the size of the answer' etc. A list of all the 24 Ahas with a brief description is given in this POST.

Since everyone manifests, the book focuses on Seven Manifestations that are necessary for anyone to become a millionaire. These manifestations are thought processes that fundamentally alter one's perspective. The manifestations help people remove their insecurities and doubts and place them firmly on their millionaire journey. The seven manifestations are:

Seven Millionaire Manifestations

The seven manifestations and the 24 Ahas together will give one the required mental rigor that will carry them through their millionaire journey.

One will need leverage to hasten their millionaire journey. The book describes five types of leverage. These are:

• 'Other People's Money (OPM)' 
• 'Other People's Time (OPT)' 
• 'Other People's Experience (OPE)' 
• 'Other People's Ideas (OPI)'
• 'Other People's Work (OPW)

To apply the maximum leverage, you will require 6 forms of leverages. These are shown in the diagram below:

SIX FORMS OF LEVERAGE

There are three advantages to having a mentor. First is that a mentor can give a different perspective on the challenges that one face. They can point out areas which one has overlooked or show a different angle to the issues. Second benefit is that a mentor can provide proficiency by filling the knowledge gaps. Third, a mentor can provide patience to handle challenges. There are four model of mentoring. First is the serendipitous mentor. These are mentors that one accidentally find on the way. Serendipitous Mentor need not be a person. A serious illness or a defining moment in life could be a serendipitous mentor. Next form of mentor is the Hands on Mentor. These are normally people who have already completed the millionaire journey. They can guide by showing the potential pitfalls. The third model of mentor is the Hero / Shero Mentor. These are often famous people, both men and women, who can provide guidance. While they may be unreachable, one can learn lessons from them by reading as much as possible about them. Authors advice us to identify our list of mentors and be in constant touch with them where possible. The best form of mentors are Transformational Mentors, who help transform one to a higher level.

The single biggest decision to be made in the millionaire journey is the selection of team members. One needs a dream team to reach the goal. The dream team should comprise of people who fall into each of the four categories, Hares, Owls, Turtle and Squirrels.

FOUR TYPES OF TEAM MEMBERS

Hares are the idea generators, Owls create strategy and action plans to realize the ideas generated by Hares, Turtles play the 'Devil's Advocate' and examine and analyze the idea in detail from all angles and finally, Squirrels are the troopers who do the execution of the selected idea. The book also provides pointers on how to conduct effective meetings with the team to get the best out of the team resources.

The third form of leverage is the network.This is the most powerful leverage available. One of the most effective form of network is the 'Weak Ties' network. Some of the suggestions for building the leverage is to use the 'network of networks'. One must learn to cultivate the network assiduously by giving something free that could be valuable to the network. Another way to cultivate the network is by being regularly in touch with your network. 

The next form of leverage, Infinite Networks, is about tapping into the wisdom of the universe. There are three ways to do that. One is by giving. One should get into the habit of being a giver of money, happiness, smile, kind words, respect, courtesy. When it comes to life, always be a giver and not a taker. Second way to tap into infinite network is by maintaining integrity. The path to infinite network is through one's thoughts and attitude. One should always be thinking positive and self-enhancing thoughts and always display positive, upbeat and enthusiastic attitude.

There are multiple skills that one has to master through their journey. One should be adept at using modern tools like computer and other paraphernalia. One also need to learn negotiation skills. Yet another is listening skills. One should learn to separate 'position' from the 'issue'. Millionaires also have seven money skills depicted in the diagram below.

SEVEN MONEY SKILLS

Finally, enlightened millionaires are skilled at managing their time. They instinctively know how to prioritize their work and focus on the high priority activities. The book provided 10 critical time management tips which are depicted below (Diagram: 10 Tips for Time Management).

10 TIME MANAGEMENT TIPS

None of the leverages mentioned (mentor, team, network, infinite network or skills) above will work without proper systems in place. Enlightened millionaires are adept at creating and maintaining systems. First system that they put in place is benchmarking. They set benchmarks for each of their goals and regularly monitor performance against their benchmarks. They also follow 'Zero Out' philosophy. This means that they are always on the look out for system to create wealth while investing Zero Cash, Zero Energy, Zero Time, Zero Management and Zero Risk. Finally, enlightened millionaires assiduously look out for creating multiple sources of income and residual income. They list out potential sources of income and systematically move ahead stabilizing one source at a time till each source provide streams of incomes within the 'Zero Out' philosophy.

Final part of the book take a deeper look at the themes. Due to the familiarity of authors with real estate, that theme is covered in a lot of detail. Different strategies are presented on how to make money in this theme with 'Nothing Down'.  Next, the book discusses the theme of business. 10 different business tracks are presented including B2B, B2C, B2G etc. Other business models like Infopreneurship, Writing a book etc are also briefly touched upon.

Finally, some general observations.

This book is packed with ideas and tips to become an Enlightened Millionaire. This is a very ambitious book. It tries to be all things to all people. Authors point out that people learn in two different ways. Some people are comfortable with logical learning. Also called left brain learning, this approach involves imparting lessons in the form of logically and sequentially organized data. The left hand side of the book (that is reviewed in this blog post) provides lessons in a logical way with facts and figures and bullet points and action items. The right brain approach to learning is more visual and experiential. The right brain people learn best if the lessons are imparted in the form of story telling. The right side pages of the book does just that. It tells the story of Michelle, who has to earn one million dollars in about 90 days to get possession of her children. How she manages to do that, by following the lessons of the book, is the story. 

From the point of view of a reader, much less a reviewer, it is very confusing. To do justice to the book, a conscientious reviewer like me will have to review the same book twice. Reading once itself was a tough exercise of my brain cells. And I have to read it again? 

Having reviewed many books in this genre, I was surprised by the lack of structure in this book. As a reviewer, one looks first at the table of contents to see the layout of the book and form a mental picture of the flow of information. The table of contents of this book treats every section the same. For example, there are six sub-sections under the main section of 'Leverage'. However TOC shows the main section and the sub-sections in the same level. Another issue that I found with the structure of this book is that while discussion on Leverage cover half the book, the same not mentioned in the introduction to the book at all. On the other hand, the millionaire formula (Dream + Team + Theme = Millionaire Streams) which is covered extensively in the introduction to the book is but given scant mention once you start reading deeper in the book. 

Having read the left side of the book for about 6 times, I realize now that there are three sections to the book. First section is 'Millionaire Principles' covering discussion on enlightened millionaire, the millionaire Ahas and seven manifestations. The next section is on application of the principles. This covers  the six forms of leverage. Final section is a detailed discussion on the four themes vis. Business, Real Estate, Investments and Internet. 

The authors have a worthy objective of creating 1,000,000 millionaires. To this end they have provided links to many a resources available in their website which the reader of this book can freely use and learn. They also provide the requisite motivation by sending regular mails to keep the reader going forward his / her millionaire journey.

I will give this book a score of 3 out of 5.