True story: The year was 2005 and I was waiting in a hotel lobby in Denver to meet a client. I had a name but not a face.
A man hurried into the lobby, scanned the room, and came up to me. Obviously, he had a name but not a face.
“Are you Rich?” he asked.
I shrugged. “I make a good living,” I said.
He did not see the humor, and continued to look for his appointment.
Time to go old school and consider the OG of motivational self-help books. I am a big fan of Napoleon Hill’s approach as the author of the book Think and Grow Rich. This 1937 classic sparked the self-help genre. Thanks to the advice of my business coach, Boaz Rauchwerger, I used to read a page a day.
At the start of the 20th century, Hill interviewed 500 of the most successful people in the world. Trust me, they were rich. And he asked them what constituted their riches.
Hill came up with a rank-ordered top 12 list of “The Riches of Life:”
- A Positive Mental Attitude (PMA)
- Sound physical health
- Harmony in human relationships
- Freedom from fear
- The hope of achievement
- The capacity for faith
- A willingness to share one's blessings
- A labor of love
- An open mind on all subjects
- Self-discipline
- The capacity to understand people
- Economic security
The most interesting thing about the list of 12 riches: only one has to do with money or finances, and it comes in at number 12. (To me economic security means you know how to make money by providing a valued product or service at a price people are willing to pay that makes you an attractive profit).
No. 1 on the list is a positive mental attitude. No matter what happens to you or to your business, maintain a positive mental attitude.
As the late great Zig Ziglar used to say, a person with a positive mental attitude will go chase Moby Dick in a row boat and not forget to bring the tartar sauce.
If you think you can, you can.
Caveat: Now, I am not here to deify Napoleon Hill. Some researchers say he was more scam artist than success guru. Were his research methods bogus? Maybe. But a wise man once said you judge a tree by its fruit. What fruit does this list of 12 riches produce? You be the judge.
By the way, more than 100 million copies of Think and Grow Rich have been sold. I have read the book countless times and listened to the book countless times. About 15 years ago I had an office down the hall from a man who worked for the Napoleon Hill Foundation reading Hill’s books for audio books. I am a big fan of Audible and if you are an author I recommend you get your book on Audible.
Hill interviewed those 500 most successful people and then made a career out of writing and speaking about the results. In marketing research terms we would call what he did depth interviews.
Marketing research authors and experts like Chris Stiehl (we used to teach together at the University of California, San Diego) tell me you can learn more with nine depth interviews than you can with nine focus groups with ten participants in each session.
My advice for attracting high-paying clients: collect the information that your prospects want to know about how they compare to their peers. Then share this in workshops, whitepapers, articles, blogs, podcasts, speeches, and of course, books.
