How To Make a Million Dollars

Last week I was invited to speak to a group of 200 students at Duke University. The organizers gave me pretty much free rein in picking my topic, so I decided to talk about this:

How to make a million dollars is: a) something students are interested in, and b) something I am qualified to talk about. And the talk went really well. So well, in fact, that I have received requests for copies of the presentation.

I did not make a tape, so what I have done here is lay the talk out in writing for you to read at your leisure. I hope that it is helpful to you, and and that it shows you how to begin walking down the path to wealth.

Let's get started on making your first million dollars...

If your goal is to make a million dollars, there are a couple of easy ways to reach your objective:

If you are looking for the easiest path to wealth, inheriting the money would have to be at the top of the list. Of course you have little control over this.

Marrying the money would probably be the next easiest, assuming you can find an appropriate spouse (Note that I did not take my own advice here and followed the path of "true love" instead).

You can buy lottery tickets or head for Vegas and hope for the best.

Or there is the well-worn path to a lawsuit. The problem is, a lawsuit can take a long time and you have to spend most of that time talking to lawyers. I'm not sure the rewards outweigh the pain.

It seems like there should be an easier way, and in fact there is...


If you want to make a million dollars, all ya gotta do is put $5 in a bank account every day. Just about anyone can come up with $5 a day. It is not a huge deal -- heck, a pack of cigarettes costs $5 in a lot of places these days. You put the money into an account, like a stock mutual fund, that gives you 10% per year interest on average and presto. In 42 years you have a million bucks. What could be easier than that?

The problem is, who wants to wait 42 years? It takes too long. What do you do if you want to short-circuit the process and make a million bucks in a couple of

And really, this decision to start a business gets us to a key part of our conversation. There are two mentalities at work in our economy today. Either you can be someone else's employee, or you can be the one who hires the employees. You can work for a business, or you can own a business of your own.

See Also

The Teenager's Guide
to the Real World
by Marshall Brain
(20 free chapters online)

Making money with web sites

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Now please note that I am not saying that "being an employee" is a bad thing. There are lots of good reasons to be an employee. For example, being an employee is a great way to learn how a business works so that you can open a business of your own. You simply need to become an employee with that approach in mind.

In other words, you work so that you can learn the ropes. Go into the job with the intention of learning everything you possibly can while someone else pays you to get your education. Many large coporations even make a point of advertising this fact. For example, McDonald's says on its Web site: "You'll be encouraged to grow, learn and develop the broad-based skills you'll need to move up fast -- with McDonald's Corporation, an independent McDonald's franchisee, or almost any company in the world. Having such experience on your resume will open eyes, not to mention doors." [ref] And that is true.

Compare this to a normal college education and you will realize how great a deal this is. When you are in college, you pay to get educated. When you are an employee, someone else pays you to get educated -- it is a much better deal.

So let's assume that you have made the decision to start a business, and you have worked to learn the ropes. If you follow this "start your own business" path, then what people will call you is...