Explainer

I am writing a new book.

As an experiment, I am going to be publishing chapters (as they are edited & ready for publishing) here on the site. When it is complete, you will have all chapters hosted online and I will likely leave it here for free consumption.

Some links may be inactive until the final chapters are written.

Introduction

Who sets the “cap” on a person’s potential? How do some people become extraordinarily successful, wealthy, and influential? Why are other only marginally successful? Still, why do others seem to work just as hard but never make really make it?

Where does “drive” come from?

Better yet, where does “power” come from? Can you set your life up in a way to hit your goals automatically, without having to strive & grind for them? 

Is it possible to be happy in the midst of struggle? 

Let’s look at these questions through a different lens. 

If I give you a recipe for a cake, complete with the ingredients and a full set of instructions on how to bake it exactly the same way I do it; Do you believe you could follow the recipe to create a similar outcome? The way you answer this question determines in large part the way you answer all of the questions I started this book with… 

What is the first thing you should do when you want to recreate a masterpiece? You find the recipe. 

Maybe you’re not that into cooking or baking. I don’t know how to cook very well, but sometimes my wife and I watch cooking shows for fun.

I have learned to enjoy the process these great chefs go through. In fact, I shouldn’t even call them all chefs - because many of them are NOT chefs. They just fell in love with the process of cooking, and decided to test their abilities. 

Since taking up this hobby of watching others cook, my wife has developed a knack for cooking and baking. Our house has become increasingly populated with cooking books and recipe binders. Last Thanksgiving we had friends over, and I decided to try my hand at a meal. 

Instead of buying a recipe book, I looked up a recipe on YouTube and— lo & behold! We made a smoked turkey and it was delicious. This past Independence Day, my wife told me that I did such a great job with Thanksgiving, I should try smoking ribs! 

I found a recipe, and smoked a batch of ribs for the first time. They turned out great and I noticed a principle: the fastest way to recreate someone else’s outcome, is to find the process they used to get it, and imitate the process.

You don’t have to be a “natural,” or a “prodigy.” The great thing about the day and age we live in, is that no matter what your goal is there is probably somebody, somewhere, who has achieved the goal and put together the steps they used for you to model. 

To recreate a meal in the kitchen, you can find and model the steps they took (also known as a recipe) to get there. If you want to recreate a person’s life, you can likewise find the steps they took to create that life, and model them. 

Now, you may be thinking, a “life” seems quite a bit more complicated than a Thanksgiving dinner recipe. You are right. To recreate a person’s life requires understanding their thinking, their habits, their perspectives, their philosophies, and their skill sets…

However, I am going to make a bold statement. I absolutely believe it is true: your ability to identify and imitate the patterns of people ahead of you is the greatest skill you can develop early in life. I will add an “addendum” to that as well by saying this: it’s the greatest skill you can develop LATER in life, also!

The title of this book is “Millionaire Recipes,” because inside are the recipes, the ingredients, and the processes I’ve discovered both by building my own life and through training & studying tens of thousands of other individuals. When I started my entrepreneurial journey, back in 2014, I was kind of a loser. I just didn’t know anything. I didn’t have any recipes! 

Believe it or not, I carried a net worth of -$20,000 (that’s a negative twenty thousand dollars) in 2013 — and I remember getting a $5,000 tax bill and not having a clue how to pay for it. From 2013 to 2021 I learned the receipts. I hired several hundred people. I created multiple 9-figures in revenues. Better yet, I’m helping the people who work for me build their net worth and go after their dreams. 

I am not telling you this for accolades or bragging rights. There is nothing that you can give me that feels better than helping my team and my clients win. I’m already rich in more ways than I ever thought possible. I have the wife of my dreams, my kids are healthy, and I get the opportunity every day to serve people in some way, shape or form. 

The reason I’m telling you this is so that you do not waste your time. We’ve all read the books or listened to the podcasts by someone who hasn’t really “made it.” They’re learning on the job and documenting the process — and that’s totally admirable (as long as they’re OPEN about that). But at this point in my career, I’m not that person. So there’s a level of merit that should be installed into the foundations of what I’m going to teach you.

It doesn’t make any sense for you to sit down to bake a brand new cake, and the recipe you pull is from a beginner who has never baked a cake before! I’ve been at this for a while, my life is healthy, my teams are healthy, my clients are healthy. 

Speaking of “healthy,” it is an interesting word and it is chosen for a very specific reason. I believe it is harder to be consistently healthy than it is to simply “get rich.” Many people are able to “get rich” by sacrificing their entire lives to do it. I don’t want you to do that. I want you to have everything you want — but in the proper order of importance. 

One day last year, my daughter came into my home office and asked me to play dress up. I couldn’t do it — I had too much going on. There were emails, slack messages, texts, appointments. I told her I couldn’t play dress up and she became desperate. She needed me to play dress up and I needed to get my work done. As she started crying to get her point across, I realized something terrible: I was doing it wrong. I didn’t like myself, I lost respect for myself. What is life for, if you can’t play dress up whenever your 3 year old wants to play dress up?

I realize there are sacrifices to be made, if you are to have a life of meaning and of plenty. But I found myself making the wrong sacrifices, and in that moment I decided to change. There are things in life that outrank money. I intend to teach you how to build health in your finances without sacrificing health in other areas of life. 

Rest assured, by following the recipes in this book you are replicating a good outcome. Not just from my own life, but from my mentors and the people I have studied. I will teach you how millionaires think, and how billionaires think… and how they differ. I will show you how to think about generosity, sales, business, exercise, and competition. We will journey together through painful moments in my life and career, and how the worst moments made me stronger. 

And we will delve into both the ups and the downs of life, in general. I want you to learn how to think, speak, walk, talk, and lead like a truly healthy individual. 

This is my “recipe book,” and if you follow it bit by bit, you will learn how the processes of my life has been meticulously assembled, from a self-prescribed “loser” in 2014, to a savant with the momentum of the world behind me just a few short years later…

HOW BOOK IS PUT TOGETHER

The chapters in this book are short, and to the point… they are designed for application. If you read but do not pause to think, “how can I implement this?” YOU ARE MISSING OUT…

There are also a lot of chapters… I don’t want you to read this book “all at once” or in one sitting. I want you to select a schedule (ex. One chapter a week, one chapter a day, etc). As you read the chapters, let them enrich you, implementing the contents day-by-day. 

This is a genuine opportunity for you to thrust your life forward with rapid acceleration. At times you will read these recipes and think, “That doesn’t sound like a big deal.. Next.” Other chapters will make you rethink everything -- and you will benefit because of it. 

Do not grade this book by it’s “newness,” there is nothing new under the sun. All of the things I want to teach you have already been written, but they have not been written this way, in this order, or with my requisite level of struggle— which has given me authority over the subject. 

At the beginning of the book I will outline simple ingredients that I have found to be most important. As a last reminder, before we dive in, remember that most of the principles rich & wealthy people adhere to are very simple. They’re also simple to ignore. You — and only you — will be the deciding factor on whether you’ll implement, or ignore.

Most people do not respect what does not glitter. … they think, “Ahh, tiny, BAH boring.” 

But in much the same way, a child might not understand the “importance” of the oven being at 350 degrees instead of 425, or the difference between a bit of flower versus a bit of powdered sugar (they “look” the same, right?)... 

The life you want is found at the end of a long line of little distinguishments.

The recipe only works when implemented down to the tiny details. It will not be the huge, sweeping, massive “ah ha” strategies that do it, it will be the small things… 

Like the difference between flour, and sugar… stacked up over time. Again and again; these little things create big empires. 

Let’s dive in.