Secrets of the Millionaire Mind

Diamonds, which was written over a hundred years ago:
I say that you ought to get rich, and it is your duty to get rich.  
How many of my pious brethren say to me, “Do you, a Chris 
tian minister, spend your time going up and down the country  
advising young people to get rich, to get money?” Yes, of course  
I do.  
They say, “Isn’t that awful! Why don’t you preach the gospel 
instead of preaching about man’s making money?” Because to make 
money honestly is to preach the gospel. That is the reason. The men 
who get rich may be the most honest men you find in the community.  
“Oh,” but says some young man here tonight, “I have been told all 
my life that if a person has money he is very dishonest and dishonorable 
and mean and contemptible.” My friend, that is the reason you have 
none, because you have that idea of people. The foundation of your 
faith is altogether false. Let me say clearly... ninety-eight out of one 
hundred of the rich men (and women) of America are honest. That is 
why they are rich. That is why they are trusted with money. That is 
why they carry on great enterprises and find plenty of people to work 
with them.  
Says another young man, “I hear sometimes of men that get 
millions of dollars dishonestly.” Yes, of course you do, and so do
 
 

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I. But they are so rare a thing in fact that the newspapers talk about 
them all the time as a matter of news until you get the idea that all 
the other rich men got rich dishonestly.  
My friend, you... drive me... out into the suburbs of Philadelphia, 
and introduce me to the people who own their homes around this great 
city, so beautiful homes with gardens and flowers, those magnificent 
homes so lovely in their art, and I will introduce you to the very best 
people in character as well as in enterprise in our city.... They that own 
their homes are made more honorable and honest and pure, and true 
and economical and careful, by owning them.  
We preach against covetousness...in the pulpit...and use the 
terms...“filthy lucre” so extremely that Christians get the idea that...it 
is wicked for any man to have money. Money is power, and you ought 
to be reasonably ambitious to have it! You ought because you can do 
more good with it than you can without it. Money printed your Bibles, 
money builds your churches, money sends your missionaries, and money 
pays your preachers....I say, then, you ought to have money. If you can 
honestly attain unto riches...it is your... godly duty to do so. It is an 
awful mistake of these pious people to think you must be awfully poor 
in order to be pious.  
Conwell’s passage makes several excellent points. The first 
refers to the ability to be trusted. Of all the attributes necessary 
for getting rich, having others trust you has to be near the top 
of the list. Think about it, would you do business with a 
person you didn’t trust at least to some extent? No way! 
Meaning that to get rich, there’s a good chance many, many, 
many people must trust you, and there’s a good chance that 
for that many people to trust you, you have to be quite 
trustworthy. 

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What other traits does a person need to get rich and, even 
more importantly, stay rich? No doubt there are always 
exceptions to any rule, but for the most part, who do you have 
to be to succeed at anything? Try some of these characteristics 
on for size: positive, reliable, focused, determined, persistent, 
hardworking, energetic, good with people, a competent 
communicator, semi-intelligent, and an expert in at least one 
area.
Another interesting element in Conwell’s passage is that so 
many people have been conditioned to believe that you can’t 
be rich and a good person or rich and spiritual. I too used to 
think this way. Like many of us, I was told by friends, teachers, 
media, and the rest of society that rich people were somehow 
bad, that they were all greedy. Once again, another way of 
thinking that ended up being pure crapola! Backed by my own 
real-world experience, rather than old, fear-based myth, I have 
found that the richest people I know are also the nicest.
When I moved to San Diego, we moved into a home in one 
of the richest parts of town. We loved the beauty of the home 
and the area, but I had some trepidation because I didn’t know 
anyone and felt I didn’t yet fit in. My plan was to stay low-key 
and not mix much with these rich snobs. As the universe 
would have it, however, my kids, who were five and seven 
years old at the time, made friends with the other kids in the 
neighborhood, and pretty soon I was driving them to these 
mansions to drop them off to play. I remember knocking on a 
stunningly carved wooden door that was at least twenty feet 
high. The mom opened it up and, with the friendliest voice I’d 
ever heard, said, “Harv, it’s so great to meet you, come on in.” 
I was a bit bewildered as she poured me some iced tea and got 
me a bowl of fruit. “What’s the

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catch?” my skeptical mind kept wanting to know. Then her 
husband came in from playing with his kids in the pool. He 
was even friendlier: “Harv, we’re so happy to have you in the 
neighborhood. You have to come to our BBQ tonight with 
the rest of your family. We’ll introduce you to everybody, and 
we’re not taking no for an answer. By the way, do you golf ? 
I’m playing tomorrow at the club, why don’t you come as my 
guest.” By now I was in shock. What happened to the snobs I 
was sure I was going to meet? I left and went back home to 
tell my wife we were going to the BBQ.
“Oh, my,” she said, “what will I wear?” “No, honey, you 
don’t understand,” I said, “these people are incredibly nice and 
totally informal. Just be who you are.”
We went and that evening met some of the warmest, 
kindest, most generous, most loving people of our lives. At 
one point the conversation shifted to a charity drive that one 
of the guests was heading up. One after another, the check-
books came out. I couldn’t believe it, I was actually watching a 
lineup to give this woman money. But each check came with a 
catch. The agreement was that there would be reciprocity and 
that the woman would support the charity the donor was 
involved in. That’s right, to a T, every person there either 
headed up or was a major player in a charity.
Our friends who had invited us were involved in several. In 
fact, each year they made it their goal to be the single largest 
donor in the entire city to the Children’s Hospital Fund. They 
not only gave tens of thousands of dollars themselves, but 
every year they organized a dinner gala that raised hundreds of 
thousands more.
Then there was the “vein” doctor. We became quite close 
with his family too. He was among the top varicose vein 
doctors in the world and made a fortune; somewhere in the 

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range of $5,000 to $10,000 per surgery, doing four or five 
surgeries per day.
I bring him up because every Tuesday was “free” day, when 
he would do surgeries on people in the city who couldn’t 
afford to pay. On this day, he would work from
6:00 a.m. to 10:00 p.m. doing as many as ten surgeries, all for 
free. On top of this, he headed up his own organization whose 
mission was to get other doctors to do free days for people in 
their communities too.
Needless to say, my old, conditioned belief that rich people 
were greedy snobs dissipated in the light of reality. Now I 
know the opposite to be true. In my experience, the richest 
people I know are the nicest people I know. They are also the 
most generous. Not to say that people who aren’t rich aren’t 
nice or generous. But I can safely say the idea that all rich 
people are somehow bad is nothing more than ignorance.
The fact is, resenting the rich is one of the surest ways to 
stay broke. We are creatures of habit, and to overcome this or 
any other habit, we need to practice. Instead of resenting rich 
people, I want you to practice admiring rich people, I want you 
to practice blessing rich people, and I want you to practice loving 
rich people. That way, unconsciously you know that when you 
become rich, other people will admire you, bless you, and love 
you instead of resent the heck out of you the way you might 
do them now.
One of the philosophies I live by comes from ancient Huna 
wisdom, the original teachings of the Hawaiian elders. It goes 
like this: bless that which you want. If you see a person with a 
beautiful home, bless that person and bless that home. If you 
see a person with a beautiful car, bless that person and bless 
that car. If you see a person with a loving family, bless that 
person and bless that family. If you see a

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person with a beautiful body, bless that person and bless their 
body.