Category: Books

The Unemployed Millionaire (Book Review & Summary)

Book Review: The Unemployed Millionaire

Escape the Rat Race, Fire Your Boss, and Live Life on YOUR Terms

The Unemployed Millionaire Book Cover

I purchased this book from Amazon.com last week, and it sat on my coffee table until today. I can’t remember the last time I’ve picked up a book and read it all within a day, but that is what I did with The Unemployed Millionaire by Matt Morris (I started it at a coffee shop this morning and finished it at home tonight). I think I liked it just as much as The 4-Hour Work Week.

If you are like me and don’t have any plans to “escape the rat race, fire your boss, and live life on YOUR terms”, this book can still help us all. I took notes today and have posted them below in case you won’t have time to read the book. If you do read the book, I’d love to hear your thoughts, and I’d love to compare my notes with your own. Since it is getting late I need to head to bed but wanted to share as soon as I could, so forgive any spelling or grammar errors as I am copying/pasting straight from my word processor.

Key Points & Takeaways

  • Introduction
    • When he turned four years old, his parents divorced. A year later, his father broke into their home and murdered my mother’s boyfriend by shooting him dead right in front of her. After serving his time in prison, he returned to severed alcoholism while my mom raised me, working two jobs with no child support and on food stamps at times, while working to finish her degree. When he was 13 years old, his father committed suicide. When he turned 18, he decided to become an entrepreneur and by 21, he was such a miserable failure I ended up $30,000 in debt, homeless, and living out of my little beat-up Honda Civic, bathing in gas station bathrooms.
  • By age 21 he was a self-made millionaire. By age 32 he has generated well over $20,000,000 for his companies and feels like he is just getting started.
  • The book starts with Morris in a college Marketing class. The professor, Dr. Nguyen, won’t let students go to the bathroom and if they do go to the bathroom they are considered “absent”. Additionally, for each class, he has assigned seating.
  • The professor said the only way to really “make it” in business is to have a degree. The only way to be “great” at business is to have a master’s degree. The only way to really climb the corporate ladder is to get a PhD. Morris has a desire to work and not hear theories from professors who have never stepped foot in the business world, which leaves him to literally stand up and leave the Marketing class one day and never return to college.

“When you reach the end of your rope, tie a knot in it and hang on.”

— Ben Franklin

The Rock Bottom Moment

Would sleep in his car in church parking lots because he figured “criminals who might want to rob me (as if I had anything to take) might think twice doing it at a church”

One night it was pouring rain, so he decided to take a bar of soap and try bathing in the rain. He says “if you’ve ever showed in the rain, you’ve learned as I did that even when it’s raining really hard, it takes a long time to shower because there’s no concentration of water like there is from a shower head. I said to myself, this is going to take all night! Then my second stroke of genius hit me. Looking over at the church, which had no gutters, there was a huge concentration of runoff from the roof pouring down onto the asphalt. I walked myself under the runoff and had my shower! After getting back in my car and drying off, I did some serious soul-searching. I was 21 years old, homeless, sleeping in my car, lonely, over $30,000 in debt, and bathing in gas station bathrooms – I even showered naked in a public church parking lot because I stunk so bad. That was my wake-up call. I committed that night, even though I had no idea how, that I was going to turn my life around and become a huge success.”

The ONE and ONLY Formula for Success

SUCCESS = Your Skill × Your Effort

(Your success is equal to your level of skill multiplied by your level of effort.)

Core Success Principles

Limiting Beliefs

I’m here to tell you that whatever limiting beliefs you’ve created for yourself are absolute and total crap and are nothing more than a story you’ve made up about yourself.

Embrace Failure

The most successful people in the world actually have more failures than the rest. Tom Watson, the founder of IBM, once said that if you want to greatly increase your chance of success, double your rate of failure.

Mindset Matters

“Watch your thoughts, they become your words. Watch your words, they become your actions. Watch your actions, they become your habits. Watch your habits, they become your character. Watch your character, for it will become your destiny.” – Frank Outlaw

The Key Characteristics for Achieving Any Goal

  1. You must have a specific goal.
  2. You must have a specific time frame to achieve your goal.
  3. You must write your goal down.
  4. You must determine a compelling purpose why you must achieve your goal.
  5. You must develop an action plan to reach your goal.
  6. You must think about and look at your goal every day.

Simple Goal-Setting Sheet

  • Goal and Deadline
  • Purpose for Achieving Goal
  • Action Plan for Achieving Goal

Leadership Laws

#1 – The Dream

The leader always has a dream larger than those he or she leads.

#2 – The Vision

The leader always conveys an inspiring vision.

#3 – The Attitude

The leader always has a superior attitude than those he or she leads.

#4 – The Bar

The leader sets the bar high.

“Being rich is having money; being wealthy is having time.”

— Margaret Bonnano

“Success is not the key to happiness. Happiness is the key to success. If you love what you are doing, you will be successful.”

— Albert Schweitzer

Join the Discussion

Have you read “The Unemployed Millionaire”? What success principles have you found most effective in your own life and career?

Gary Vaynerchuk’s CRUSH IT Book Tour

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I got to meet Gary Vaynerchuk who is one of my idols at a book tour in Berkeley tonight.  Tyler was really good for the first twenty minutes of his presentation, but I decided to take him outside to play because I could tell I was pushing my luck.  In Gary’s book (only a quarter of the way through it) he talks about making family first, so I was living that tonight!  Gary was extremely pleasant and very personable, as one would expect.  He signed my book and was even nice enough to take a picture of us together.  I was able to get the entire presentation on video, so I should have it up later tonight or first thing in the morning.

The 4 Hour Workweek

Book Review: The 4-Hour Workweek

Escape 9-5, Live Anywhere, and Join the New Rich

4HourWorkWeek

I discovered Tim Ferriss because of the podcasts he has been doing with Kevin Rose. I loved most of what Tim has to say, and I find him completely fascinating. One of the episodes mentioned Ferriss who wrote the 4-Hour Workweek and since I loved what he had to say I naturally wanted to read his book.

Now those of you who know me know I’m not an avid reader, I would much rather watch a movie or YouTube video synopsis as I don’t have much of an attention span to sit in one place for more than 5 minutes. I have to tell you his book captivated me, I loved it, and it made me do a lot of thinking about the way the world operates (and in my job communicates).

I took some notes and decided to type them up so anyone who reads this post could benefit. I highly recommend buying the book, but if you aren’t going to buy the book, here are some of the things I found interesting (note these are my notes, so it may not all make sense to you). Hope you find this useful and buy the book!

Key Insights & Wisdom

  • The goal of the book is to free up time and automate your income
  • Ferriss nearly fails kindergarten (begins his disdain for authority)
  • Ferriss had a joy of baseless overconfidence
  • Don’t be a “living dead”
  • Would you tell me, please, which way I out to go from here? That depends a good deal on where you want to get to, said the Cat. I don’t much care where…said Alice. Then it doesn’t matter which way you go, said the Cat. – Lewis Carroll, Alice in Wonderland.
  • Have mini-retirements throughout life
  • Focus on being productive instead of busy
  • There is never a good time to have a baby, just like there is never a good time to quit your job to do what you love
  • Ask for forgiveness, not permission
  • Emphasize strengths, don’t fix weaknesses
  • Risks aren’t that scary once you take them
  • Most people will choose unhappiness over uncertainty

“It’s lonely at the top. Ninety-nine percent of people in the world are convinced they are incapable of achieving great things, so they aim for the mediocre. The level of competition is thus fiercest for “realistic” goals, paradoxically making them the most time and energy consuming.”

Questions to Ask Yourself

  • What would you like to do if there was no chance of failing?
  • List 5 things you dream of having, being (great cook), doing (visiting Thailand)
  • What would you do day to day if you had $100 million in the bank?
  • What would make you most excited to wake up in the morning to another day?

Productivity Principles

Effective vs. Efficient

Being effective vs. being efficient. What you do is infinitely more important than how you do it.

Parkinson’s Law

Parkinson’s Law dictates that a task will swell in (perceived) importance and complexity in relation to the time allotted for its completion.

Question Everything

Am I being productive or just being active? Are you inventing things to do to avoid the important?

“Reading, after a certain age, diverts the mind from its creative pursuits. Any man who reads too much and uses his own brain too little falls into lazy habits of thinking.”

— Albert Einstein

Practical Implementation Tips

Communication Management

  • Check email twice a day at 10am and 2pm
  • Turn off the audible alert in Outlook
  • Use 2 telephone numbers (office and cell for emergencies)
  • Respond to voice-mail with an email
  • If someone proposes a meeting, request resolution via email instead
  • Meetings should only be held to make decisions about a pre-defined situation

Automation Resources

  • Wordtracker.com
  • no-ip.com – can redirect traffic (DNS) in 5 mins
  • Freestockphotos.com
  • Getty.com – professional photos
  • tollfreemax.com
  • Angel.com – get an 800# with professional voice menu

Mindset Shifts

  • Emergencies are seldom that. People are poor judges of important and inflate minutiae.
  • Never automate something that can be eliminated
  • The bottom line is you only have the rights you fight for
  • It’s amazing how someone’s IQ seems to double when you give them responsibility

“The first rule of any technology used in a business is that automation applied to an efficient operation will magnify the efficiency. The second is that automation applied to an inefficient operation will magnify the inefficiency.”

— Bill Gates

My Favorite Quote from the Book

Slow Dance

Have you ever watched kids on a merry-go-round? Or listened to the rain slapping on the ground? Ever followed a butterfly’s erratic flight? Or gazed at the sun into the fading night? You better slow down. Don’t dance so fast. Time is short. The music won’t last.

Do you run through each day on the fly? When you ask: “how are you?” do you hear the reply? When the day is done, do you lie in your bed with the next hundred chores running through your head? You’d better slow down. Don’t dance so fast. Time is short. The music won’t last.

Ever told your child, we’ll do it tomorrow? And in your haste not see his sorrow? Ever lost touch, let a good friendship die cause you never had time to call and say “hi”? You’d better slow down, don’t dance so fast. Time is short. The music won’t last.

When you run so fast to get somewhere, you miss half the fun of getting there. When you worry and hurry through your day, it is like an unopened gift thrown away. Life is not a race. Do take it slower. Hear the music before the song is over.

Join the Conversation

Have you read “The 4-Hour Workweek”? What techniques from Tim Ferriss have you implemented in your own life?