How to (actually) become a millionaire on a low salary.

28, Jan 2023

How to (actually) become a millionaire on a low salary.

The Hyperfocused Entrepreneur
January 28, 2022
Read time: 15 minutes

When I started my wealth building journey 10 years ago I was living in a van, had $80k of debt, was working at a climbing gym making slightly more than minimum wage, and I had ~$1,000 in savings.

It was from this place of dire necessity that I realized I really needed to figure out this money game, cause I was getting my ass kicked.

So, I did what anybody would do and I went to the internet and searched,

“How do I make a bunch of money if I’m starting out dead broke?”

And wouldn’t you know it, there were lots of people out there giving advice on how to make money off a low salary.

I thought, perfect, that’s me. So I dove in and watched video after video, and read countless articles and books, and here’s the thing…

Literally everybody was saying the same damn thing.

Not only the same thing, it was the same WRONG thing.

Today we’re breaking down:

The conventional wisdom on how to become a millionaire on a low salary
Why it’s completely unhelpful AND absolutely wrong
The step-by-step strategy I personally used to make my first million dollars

By the way, if you follow the Million Dollar Roadmap, I can almost guarantee you’ll make your first million dollars within the next 10 years.
Sound good?

Cool, then let’s dive in.

Careful Who You Take Advice From

A mentor pulled me aside once and said something that’s stuck with me throughout the years (in fact, I think about it pretty much every single day).

He said this:

Don’t take advice from somebody who you wouldn’t want to trade places with.

That means don’t take fitness advice from an unhealthy person.

Don’t take relationship advice from a single 19 year old.

And don’t take financial advice from somebody who is not making the kinds of money you aspire to.

The reason most people are broke is because all their friends and family are broke, and those are the people they’re taking financial advice from.

Instead, find the people who are where you want to be, and then just do what they did.

It’s a pretty simple strategy for success, all told, but it works.

Here’s why I bring this up:

There are a ton of videos on YouTube right now that cover this exact topic and they all tell the same stories and give the wrong advice because they have not actually done the thing they are trying to teach you to do (which is make a million dollars off a low salary).

The first story they all like to tell is that of our boy Ronald Read.

Now, Ronald was featured in a book called “The Millionaire Next Door”, which is actually a pretty good book that did some statistical analysis on the lifestyle of your ‘average millionaire”.

In particular, the book made two interesting observations:

The majority of millionaires in the United States are self-made. Which means, they did not start out wealthy.
The majority of millionaires in the United States make less than $100,000/year (in fact, I think it was closer to like $50k, but I can’t be bothered to fact check that at the moment).

So, back to our boy, Ronald.

Ronald became famous because when he died he left over $7M to his family. Pretty good chunk of change, right?

Well yeah, and it’s especially impressive when you consider Ronald was a janitor who had made less than $40k/year for the entirety of his life.

And this got people really excited about the fact that you could become a millionaire off an incredibly low salary..

Now Yes, if you just start investing right now, even a modest amount of money (say a couple hundred dollars a month), and you do this every month for the next 40 years, then sure, you’re gonna look up at retirement and probably have a million dollars sitting in the bank.

Good job.

But here’s the thing that annoys me about this story, and it bothered the hell out of me all those years ago when I was living in the van trying to figure out how to make money…
I don’t want to be broke for the next 40 years while I’m saving up for “some day” when I finally get to enjoy the fruits of all my labors.

I wanted to win the money game as quickly as possible so that I could start living the life of my dreams right now.

So here’s what I did, and this goes back to the part where I said be careful who you take advice from, I went out and found people who had managed to amass wealth relatively quickly (in about a decade).

Now, these days I probably know a couple hundred millionaires and I can say with a high degree of certainty that practically NONE of them got that way by squirreling away a couple hundred dollars a month in a Vanguard Index Fund.

No, they played the game completely differently.

And it was from observing how they played the game that I created My Million Dollar Blueprint.

A plan of action that would enable me to fast-track my progress towards millionaire status so that I could get there within a decade.

As it turns out, I ended up getting there in only 3 years, but I probably got hella lucky.

Now this blueprint I’m going to lay out is the closest thing I have to a guaranteed process for getting to a million dollars in under a decade…

Even if you’re starting out right now only making minimum wage.

The system is pretty simple:

You’ve gotta change your Beliefs, Thoughts, and Actions.

It Starts With Your Beliefs

There are only two types of beliefs in this world.

There are Limiting Beliefs, the type of beliefs that hold you back from getting to where you want to go.

And there are Empowering Beliefs, the type that propel you forward towards your greatness.

Here’s the thing, any belief held strongly enough will be made TRUE, so be careful what you choose to believe, because it will become your reality.

Now these are the three money beliefs I see holding most people back.

Money is the root of all evil.
Money is scarce and that there is only so much to go around.
Making money is hard.

Simply put, most people believe making money is Bad, Limited, and Hard.

If you truly want to make money, these beliefs will not serve you.

Instead, you must adopt empowering money beliefs such as;

Making money is a vehicle for positively impacting the world, I cannot help others if I cannot first help myself. It is from my overflowing cup that I can fill your cup, because…

Money is infinitely abundant and there is no reason we cannot all become wealthy, which we can prove because the average person on the planet today is living “better’ than King Louis the 14th did 300 years ago.

And finally, making money is not hard if you have the right strategy, systems, and skills.

Now, it’s from our Beliefs that our daily Thoughts are forged.

Three Ways to Think About Money

1. Wealth is the ratio between what you make and what you spend.

For instance, if you currently make $50,000/year, but your living expenses are only $5,000/year, then each year you work you create 10 years of wealth.

That means, if you maintained that lifestyle for the next 5 years, you would be able to retire for the next 50.

Okay, so you probably can’t reduce your living expenses to $5k/year, but this is just an extreme example to show the point.

The mistake most people make is that as they start making more money, their expenses also increase. This is called lifestyle creep.

This is a problem because if you’re making a million dollars a year, but it’s costing you a million dollars in expenses, then despite the fact that you make a really good income, you will literally never be able to retire.

Think about that.

2. Raise your baseline temperature.

See, we all have an internal money thermostat. That is, a dollar amount that feels “normal”.

Any amount of money over that number feels like ‘a lot’, whereas any number less than that feels “doable”.

For me, I used to think in $1,000 increments, because $1,000 was like 1/40th of my income, it was about the cost of my rent, so it was a good amount of money, but not a ton.

The first jump you probably have to make is to start thinking in $10,000 increments, then $20k, then $50,000, then $100,000, and so on.

This is important, because as you start moving through the levels of wealth, you’ll acclimate to these numbers and eventually plateau. So you have to constantly reset your internal thermostat to normalize higher and higher numbers.

Afterall, who do you think is going to have an easier time pitching a customer on a $50,000 service or product? The person who thinks $1,000 is a lot or the person who thinks $1M is a lot.

How you think about money impacts how you ACT towards money.

So think bigger. Act bigger.

And here’s the third way you have to start thinking about money.

Or rather, how you have to STOP thinking about money.

3. You don’t need money to make money.

A lot of people think the opposite.
This is wrong and limiting.

It does not take money to make money.

It takes creativity, financial literacy, and consistent right action.

Now it’s that last word upon which this whole money making game is won or lost:

Action.

Which is where we’re going to turn our attention to next.

The Universe Doesn’t Care How You Feel or What You Think… It Cares What You DO

There are three things, and only three things, that you can do with money.

You can Spend it. You can Save it. Or you can Invest it.

Now there’s a trite little phrase that people like to say that goes:

“The poor spend, the middle class saves, and the wealthy invest.”

In my experience, this is generally true.

Obviously if you’re trying to build wealth, Spending isn’t gonna get you there cause as we already mentioned, wealth is the ratio between what you make and what you spend.

Spending less is a great way of increasing your wealth.

The mistake most of us make, however, is in thinking that we can Save our way to wealth, but the truth is, this path is incredibly difficult and will take a very long time to get you to a million dollars.

The quickest and easiest way to win the money game (and this is the lesson I learned when studying all those people who had amassed great fortunes in very little time) is to simply increase your earning capacity.

See, you can only cut your expenses so much. You can take it to zero, and that’s it. Whereas the upside to your earning potential is limitless.

You could literally make a billion dollars in a year. It’s crazy to think, but it’s true.

So the question is… how do we invest to get to a million dollars?

And the answer is simple…

We invest in Assets.

See, there are only two things you can put your money towards: Assets or Liabilities.

Here’s the simplest way to think about this:

Assets put money IN your pocket.

Liabilities take money OUT of your pocket.

That car (which requires insurance, taxes, and a monthly payment) is a liability, because it’s taking money out of your pocket each month.

If you took that same car and rented it out on Turo, however, and now it’s putting more money into your pocket than it’s taking out each month, it’s not an Asset.

Assets are good. Liabilities are bad.

So, on our wealth building journey, the goal is to acquire more and better Assets (or things that put money into your pocket).

When we put money into an Asset it’s called an Investment.

But if you recall from the beginning of this video, I talked about how the common wisdom says you should invest in an index fund in the stock market, do your 401(k) match, get a Roth IRA, and invest a couple hundred dollars every month for the next 40 years.

And sure, this is fine way to invest if you are okay waiting 40 years.

Not such a great way to invest if you want to build wealth more quickly.

So the question then becomes, where should we invest to get the biggest bang for our buck in the shortest amount of time possible?

And this is where you’ll hear people talking about crypto or angel investing or real estate or forex…and all sorts of nonsense.

And all of these people, while being well intentioned, and technically not wrong about the validity of these investment vehicles, they are completely wrong.

If you’re currently earning a low salary, and want to become a millionaire within the next decade, here’s the only thing you should bother investing in…

Yourself.

Specifically, you must invest to increase your earning potential.

And that’s exactly what I’m going to outline next.

This is how I personally would go from zero to $1M of net worth in under 5 years if I were starting all over again right now.

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The Millionaire Roadmap

1. Pick a High Value Skill

Elon Musk said, “You’re paid in proportion to the magnitude of the problems you solve.”

So if you want to make more money, you must solve bigger problems.

The biggest problems people have revolve around four things:

Money
Health
Relationships
Status

Helping somebody improve one of these four things is a surefire way to make more money.

Personally, my preference is to help people make money… more specifically, help businesses make more money.

Why?

Because if you help them make more money, then you know they have more money they can pay you. It’s a virtuous cycle.

So, in the beginning, develop a skill that’ll make other people more money and you’ll be on the fast-track to making money yourself.

Here’s a video where I broke down the 6 skills in particular that have helped me make millions, so that’s a great starting point.

But real quick for those that don’t want to click over, here are some of the best money making skills given the current market environment.

Coding
Accounting
Copywriting
Video Editing
Graphic Design
Digital Marketing

2. Get Good Enough At That Skill

Most people think you have to master a skill in order to make a ton of money. That’s not true.

In fact, mastery is a waste of energy and completely unnecessary.

There’s marginal benefit in being “great” versus “good enough” given how much more effort is required to make the jump from good to great.

Instead of trying to become the best at one thing, focus on becoming “good enough” at more things, combine those skills synergistically and watch your earning potential skyrocket.

Here’s 5 ways to get “good enough” at any skill:

Read books
Watch YT videos
Take online courses
Practice that skill a TON (way more than you think is necessary)
Network daily with experts, you can either pay to get in groups with these people or hang out with them on Twitter. In fact, come find me over there and let’s hang. @anthonyvicino)

3. Deliver Free Value Using Your “Good Enough” Skills

In this step we’re building Network, Experience, and Social Proof. The goal is NOT to make money yet. First, we build something way more valuable: Goodwill and Reputation.

Here’s the thing:

You’ve probably heard people say:

“It’s not about what you know, it’s about who you know.”

This is wrong. The correct way to say this is:

“It’s not about what you know, it’s about who knows YOU.”

Right now, nobody knows you, what you do, or how it can help them.

Which means they couldn’t give you their money even if they wanted to.

Sure, you could build a website and start driving cold traffic, but here’s the problem…

You have no proof you’re actually any good at the skill you’ve been developing.

This is problematic for two reasons:

Without proof, nobody will believe you can help them.
Without proof, do YOU even believe you can help them?

I mean, if you’re a sane person with a little bit of self-awareness, you’ll likely doubt yourself.

Ya hear people all the time talking about faking it til you make it. Here’s the problem with that:

You’re not fooling the most important person: Yourself.

Without true conviction in what you’re doing and your ability to help people, you will ALWAYS struggle to convince those people you can help them.

So it starts by building conviction and confidence in yourself, which we do by…

DOING the thing.

Knowledge is knowing the right answer. Skill is having the ability to apply it.

Up to this point, you’ve acquired theoretical knowledge but now it’s time to transmute that into real world ability.

This is done in the crucible of real life where theory smashes headlong into practice.

Here’s how to deliver FREE value to people through the lens of Copywriting (adapt this to whatever high value skill you choose):

Find Ideal Client
Subscribe to their email list
Study their onboarding email automation
Look for opportunities to Improve it
Send improvements via DM or email to that client
Suggest other areas you could help, but…
Don’t ASK for anything.

Your only goal here is to add value without expectation of return.

Then, here’s the most important part:

Repeat this 100x every month.

Yes. Seriously, 100x.

Here’s what this ACTUALLY looks like in real life:

Find 100x ideal clients and reach out to them every single month. (by the end of the year you’ll have reached out to 1,200 people and gotten practice improving 1,200 email automations (that’s a ton of reps, chances are you’re starting to actually get pretty good at this)

By the way, this means you’re gonna reach out to 3 clients every single day for a year, which might sound like a lot of work because, well, it is.. The question is, do you want an extraordinary life or an easy life.

Yeah, that’s what I thought. Let’s continue:

Now here’s where the rubber really meets the road;

Most people will completely ignore you. Truth is, your work probably isn’t THAT good yet, so they might look at what you send them and think, yeah, you can’t help me. That’s okay, don’t get discouraged. A small percentage of people WILL reach back out (though they probably won’t engage you for more work quite yet).

IF they do, awesome! If not, that’s okay. Put these “responders on a list” and follow up with them every single month adding more value.

Stay present in their lives on a long enough timeframe, without actually asking for something, and you’ll start to build goodwill and begin cultivating one of the most powerful influence concepts: Reciprocity, which you can learn more about by checking out the book The Psychology of Influence by Robert Cialdini.

Now, again, this is going to be a lot of work, ‘cause in the beginning, all you have is brute force and hard work to get the flywheel going.

So commit 3-4 hours every single day to this strategy for at least a year.

4. Convert Free to Paid

If you did the previous 3 steps chances are good you’ve got some people you’ve been doing some work for. It’s time to add fuel to the fire by:

Establishing Authority
Overcoming Obscurity

To Establish Authority you need to:

Craft a compelling offer
Create a landing page
Collect testimonials

I’m not gonna go into detail on how to do all this right now, but I plan on releasing a couple free Crash Courses on this topic to our Beyond the Apex community, which you can join for free with the link in the description below.

Here’s the number one rule for Overcoming Obscurity that have served me well over the past decade to build multiple 7 and 8 figure businesses and raise over $25M of capital from private investors:

“Ask for the referral, not the sale.”

To do this, you go back to those 1,200 people you delivered value to in the past year, let them know about your compelling offer, and then ask them:

“Do you know anybody who might be a good fit for my services, and if so, would you do me a favor and make a connection?”

If you’ve actually done a good job of delivering value to these people without expectation, then I would bet you could easily get 25 paying customers from this one ask alone.

If you’re charging let’s say $2,000/month for your copywriting services, ya multiply that x 25, and that’s $50,000 a month, which is $600,000 year.

Not too shabby, and you’re probably able to do this within the first 3 years. Plan to dedicate 1 year to learning, 1 year to delivering free value, and 1 year to start monetizing.

Now, let’s move to step 5 which is the most important part if you want to hit $1M.

5. Over-Deliver Value

If you live and breath by this simple concept, you will have more business than you could ever need.

“Price is what you pay. Value is what you get”

If you consistently over-deliver value then you will always have a full pipeline AND the ability to raise your prices.

Listen, from our previous copywriting example, you could make the jump to $1.2M in two ways:

You could double your clients
You could double your prices

Which do you suppose is easier?

That’s right.. Raising your prices..

But only if you’re actually delivering value in excess of what you’re charging.

So that means during this phase you need to bust your ass doing whatever it takes to over-deliver value so that your customers don’t even blink an eye when you go to raise your prices in the next year.

And that, my friend, is literally My Million Dollar Roadmap.

It’s worked for me, and I know if you adopt the Beliefs, Thoughts, and Actions necessary to execute this gameplan every single day for as long as it takes, then it’s gonna take you way less than 40 years to become a millionaire.

Until next week, my friends,

Stay Hyperfocused,

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