The Rules: Our Wealth Building Program
These rules are adapted from Stuart Goldsmith’s Double Your Way to a Million.
Rule 1: You must find your seed money.
You can find it on the sidewalk, on the floor where you work, etc. You can even use a penny from the “leave a penny/take a penny” dish at the local 7/11. Once you find your first coin, any money you find lying in the street later on can also be added to your stake. Similarly, if you find something of value discarded on the street and sell it, you may add those proceeds to your stake as well. The important thing is, you must not use one penny of your own money.
Rule 2: You may never add outside money or resources to your stake.
You can never add any of your own money. If you have 47¢ and you need 50¢ to buy something you think you can sell for $1.00, too bad. You must either find three more pennies, or move on to another idea. This also includes adding resources you’ve bought with your own money. For example, printing flyers on paper you bought with outside money is not allowed.
Rule 3: If you more than double your stake with one strategy, you may spend the excess.
Say you have $50, and manage to turn it into $120. You can spend the extra $20 on yourself if you like. This is the only time you’re allowed to withdraw money from your stake before reaching a million. If you progress very far in the game, you will be sorely tempted to spend the money you have accumulated. Allowing you to dip into the money a little from time to time is a way to keep you in the game. This is optional, however. If you have sufficient self control, you may reinvest the entire amount.
Rule 4: You don’t have to double your entire stake in one transaction.
Say you have $50. You can buy 100 cans of soda for 50¢ each and sell them for $1.00 each at the golf course. In other words, you don’t have to double your whole stake at once.
Rule 5: You must keep a journal of your progress.
This site serves as my journal. You can document your progress in our forums, by starting your own blog, or in a notebook if that’s what you prefer. The point is you need a record of what you’ve done, and a place to brainstorm about ideas for the next step.
Rule 6: Focus on the current step. Don’t think about future ones!
One of the easiest ways to be thrown off track is to think too far ahead, and start worrying about how you will ever double, say, $50,000 into $100,000. Don’t do it! Part of the game is the learning process. In each successive step you will learn more about how to make money grow. If you have $5.00, worry about how to turn it into $10.00, and nothing else.
Rule 7: Don’t stop until you have a million dollars.
You will be sorely tempted to spend the money once it gets to a reasonable amount (e.g. $50,000). Decide from the outset that, except as described in Rule 3, you are not allowed to withdraw one cent from your stake until you have $1 million.
Stuart Goldsmith’s comment on this rule from Double Your Way to a Million is worth reading and taking to heart:
I have to tell you that most people remain poor for one major reason - lack of discipline. This indiscipline permeates their lives from top to bottom. [This rule] is the toughest of the lot. Do you have what it takes? You think so? Hmm, I wonder. Imagine you have $100,000 in the bank right now. Can’t you think of a lot of ’stuff’ you would want to run out and buy? Can you resist this temptation? We’ll see…
In short, your stake is sacred. Keep it separate from everything else in your life. And always remember, it all just came from change you found on the street.
Rule 8: The game must stand apart from your normal life and work.
You may not work a couple of extra hours of overtime to earn stake money, even if you wouldn’t normally, and you may not use your employer’s resources as a way of getting a free ride. All resources you use must be paid for out of the stake money.
You need not be overly obsessive about this. You can make reasonable use of your car, PC, etc. in your efforts, but use your common sense. A few trips to the store to buy materials is fine, but using your car to run a taxi service for money is not.
Rule 9: If you lose money on a step, you must go back to the appropriate previous step.
At some point, an attempt to double your money may fail and actually lose money. If that happens, just go back to the step represented by your remaining money and continue from there. If you fall all the way back to zero, start scanning the ground for change again. Remember, no stopping until you reach a million dollars.
Rule 10: You may invest your own time, but not wages earned working.
For example, you can buy a broken laptop, spend time fixing it up, and sell it for twice what you paid. You may not, however, mow someone’s lawn and be paid $20 for it. The reason for this is important: You can never get rich by working for wages in a conventional manner.
To quote Stuart Goldsmith again:
Use the stake money to create a value which you can sell for more. Ponder on this. Meditate on it. Herein lies the key to your success. Incidentally, this is the master strategy behind every single company, large or small, across the globe.
Following these rules, it takes only 24 steps to go from a dime to well over a million dollars. Sticking to it is all that’s required. So, do you have what it takes?
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