The people you hang around will influence you and therefore your wealth. So make sure you hang around the right people.
Video by One Percent Better
Key Takeaways
Although this book can help you become a millionaire, it’s really more about the power of networking, connection, and purpose.
So whether you are looking to break free of your financial struggles, find a purpose to live for, or heal a sense of loneliness, then listen to this book summary of tribe of millionaires.
The book is a fictional story with six main themes that reflect the power of being in a tribe of the right people.
The 6 Main Themes
Effect 6: The Influence Effect
Your destiny is shaped by those around you.
If you consume success content then you’ve likely heard this before, but here’s an interesting exercise for you:
- Write down the first names of 10 people who you interact with most.
- Then put their annual income next to their name.
- Add the incomes up and divide the total by 10.
- The answer will likely reflect your annual income.
As the old saying goes — Your net worth is your network.
So why on earth does the world work like this? Why can’t you hang around your poor friends, but also grow a business or invest to become wealthy?
The secret — it’s a reflection of our hardwired biology.
Early humans acted in tribes to help each other survive. These days you can live in your own apartment, work from your laptop, hop down to the supermarket, and grab your food. It’s not as difficult these days to meet your basic needs.
Back then it was crucial to be in a tribe so that everyone could share their time, energy, and skills to hunt and gather food, maintain shelters, and keep predators away.
To stay in a tribe and therefore maintain your survival, you had to be like the tribe in order to be liked by the tribe. You couldn’t afford not to conform to the tribe — how you think, what you believe, what you wear, and what you do.
The people you hang around will influence us and therefore your wealth. So make sure you hang around the right people.
Effect 5: The Multiplier Effect
Understand why the right group of people compounds your efforts — this is called the multiplier effect.
Here’s Dr. Proctor and here’s chiropractic Carl. They live in the same town fixing patient’s problems.
- Dr. Proctor often diagnoses patients with back problems, but he doesn’t specialize in fixing back problems. So Dr. Proctor has an idea, and goes to Carl.
- I have many patients who come to me with back problems and I end up turning them away because I don’t know how to help them. What if I sent them to you and in return you hand me 10% of the money they give you?
It’s a win-win for both of them.
Now imagine if Dr. Proctor and chiropractor Carl made friends with Sung Yuan the salesman. Sung Yuan can help boost their sales from clients and in exchange, Proctor and Carl can help Sung Yuan with his health.
As Sung Yuan becomes healthier, he thinks more clearly, makes better decisions, and is able to help Proctor and Carl make even more sales. As they make more sales, the more they are able to help Sung by investing in his health.
Can you see how the benefits compound for these men the more they connect with each other?
So imagine the tribe of three take this further and connect with social Cecil. Cecil is a connector, which according to Malcolm Gladwell author of the Tipping Point, is a person who knows a lot of people and has an extraordinary knack of making friends and acquaintances. You probably know one.
According to Malcolm Gladwell,
"It isn't just the case that the closer someone is to a connector, the more powerful or the wealthier or the more opportunities he or she gets. It's also the case that the closer and idea or a product comes to a connector, the more power and opportunity it has as well."
This is the power of tribes with the right people. Connect with those where you can create a win-win situation.
Effect 4: The Accountability Effect
Responsibility to others is the world’s most powerful force.
If you’re the work-from-home entrepreneur then nobody is telling you when to get up in the morning. Natural selection led us to want to fit in with others. It was a survival advantage.
Accountability is an extension of that. Those who followed responsibility and commitment to their tribe were an asset and that meant that they reproduced more often. Therefore those who were accountable passed their genes on.
Thousands of generations later we still have what you might call a legacy of accountability. We feel a sense of commitment to others and need to keep our promises and follow through on our word.
This is part of the reason why the author David formed the tribe Gobundance — to elevate the lives of driven men and to hold each other accountable.
Effect 3: The Authenticity Effect
You find your true self among those you trust. With trust you feel more comfortable being your authentic self.
You might run a company and always put on a face to make your employees think that everyone is ok or you might act like someone else in order to please a client.
Take a moment to think back to a time where you met someone and you felt like you could share everything with them. When you were around them, you are able to talk about anything without being judged.
If you’ve never had that experience, then I encourage you to open yourself up to new experiences with others.
- That might mean joining a rock climbing group where trust is required between you and a partner in order to climb a cliff.
- Or any other activity where it challenges you to trust somebody else.
Effect 2: The Purpose Effect
The right people reveal your richest source of power.
Money isn’t a purpose. It’s wild how much time we spend on thinking about money, saving money, spending money, fighting over money, worrying about money.
In regards to your work ask yourself: if I didn’t make money, why would I do it?
When you have that answer you will have found purpose.
When you leave yourself to your own devices it’s easy to fall back into the how behind things and into things like fame, beauty, money, and all this nonsense.
Remember — money is not the purpose — it’s a tool to help you serve your purpose. The right people will remind you of your purpose.
Effect 1: The Connection Effect
Your life will be measured by the quality of your relationships.
In the book, “the top five regrets of the dying,” here are regrets that stand out:
- I wish I’d stayed in touch with my friends.
- They also said I wish I’d had the courage to live a life true to myself, not the life others expected of me.
- Also I wish I’d had the courage to express my feelings.
By being in a tribe of the right people, you can avoid all these regrets at the end of your life. After all, what’s the point of anything you are doing right now if you’re only going to bed on your deathbed and regret what you didn’t do.
Take my word here, I know multiple entrepreneurs in my life who seem to have it all —great with women, have lots of money, are sharp thinkers etc etc etc but I’ve seen them on their knees riffing in pain behind the scenes only to have them emerge as new selves who’ve expressed to me through their words and actions that connection is the highest purpose of all.