Do You Want To Win A Million Dollars Template

Making a million dollars is a mutual goal, but how do you really do it? To answer that question I'll share with y'all my proficient insights from my experience making my beginning million, also equally the insights of two other millionaire entrepreneurs. The road isn't easy, but if you follow the steps we outline, you can commencement on your fashion to your ain first million..

The half dozen Proven Steps to Making a Meg Dollars:

Step one: Go out of debt
Step ii: Save coin for when you need it most
Stride iii: Invest in your hereafter
Footstep four: Find a one thousand thousand-dollar business idea (it's easier than you remember)
Step 5: Observe your commencement client
Stride half dozen: Invest once more—just this time, in yourself

Now let's see our millionaires: Erik K. & Shannon B., and me, Ramit Sethi.

Erik

Before starting his own business, Erik was a freelance UX/UI designer. Now he runs an online schoolhouse called Learn UI Design, where he teaches user interface blueprint to students all over the world and still freelances on the side.

His email newsletter has more than than 30,000 subscribers, and the business organization grew more than sixty% last year.

Oh, and did I mention the concern had made more than a one thousand thousand dollars?

Erik says:

"Information technology's incredibly gratifying to not be living my life by someone else's clock. I enjoy beingness able to train Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu almost every day, never having to commute, and taking whatever spur-of-the-moment trips with my married woman and kids that nosotros'd like. Right at present, my toddler is "packing" for a mid-week trip to Disneyland to "meet some princesses." I think that basically speaks for itself!"

Shannon

With 3 kids to have care of, Shannon knew she had to really learn the fine art of the grind in order to quit her job and have her freelancing seriously.

That's how she was able to grow her freelance CPA consulting hustle into a full-fledged business organisation (Annoy and Badger CPA) that she runs with her husband. It's helped earn her her kickoff meg-dollar year in 2017.

"It was a huge mentality shift to how much can I ramp it up while still working full fourth dimension in my other chore," she says. "There's a quote by Dave Ramsey that goes: 'Live like no one else, and so you after can live like no one else.' My husband and I were really disciplined when we got started, and it fabricated the process less difficult."

Ramit

I'm Ramit Sethi, New York Times bestselling writer and founder & CEO of I Will Teach You To Be Rich. I started this blog from my Stanford dorm room in 2004 and have built it into a multi-million dollar business with more 10 products on how to start a business organization, earn more than on the side, land a dream job, and live a Rich Life.

Erik, Shannon, and I are going to share our strategies on how we got to where nosotros are — and how you can do it as well.

NOTE: Making your first million normally takes some time, and so if y'all demand money FAST, check out my free Ultimate Guide to Making Coin. It'southward loaded with everything you lot need to start making extra cash correct at present.

How to Earn Your First Meg

All three of united states of america were able to earn our money through a powerful combination of two things:

Investing and saving
Earning more coin through side hustles

Though you can really make a meg dollars on investing and saving alone, you can spotter your net worth explode if you combine them both — which I suggest you do.

Pace one: Get out of debt

The number i barrier preventing people from compounding wealth is debt.

That'southward why getting out of debt is step one on the road to condign a millionaire. Earlier you even call up nigh investing, saving, or earning more than coin, you need to take steps to get out of credit bill of fare debt.

Getting out of debt was too a priority for Shannon when she and her married man/concern partner start got married.

"When my husband and I were offset married, we were actually disciplined nigh getting out of debt and saving," Shannon says. "We paid off all of our debt out of college. Nosotros paid off all of our motorcar debt. And now we're paying off our firm."

Paying off your credit card debt is ane of the most important investments you can make into your Rich Life. I've written extensively about this earlier, both on the blog and in my New York Times bestselling book.

If you're in debt and want to larn more virtually my organisation, I highly suggest y'all read my article on how to get out of debt fast.

If you're worried about your personal finances, you tin can improve them without even leaving your couch. Check out my Ultimate Guide to Personal Finance for tips you can implement TODAY.

Step 2: Save coin for when you lot demand it most

By saving money, you give yourself the freedom to earn more money.

Shannon says:

"My husband and I were actually good about saving money," Shannon says. "We created a half-dozen-month emergency fund that allowed usa to take a small step back financially when I quit my job. But because nosotros saved early on, it gave us a lot of freedom to invest and earn."

That's why it's important to fix savings goals.

To find out how much you demand in your emergency savings fund, yous simply accept to take into account three to six months worth of:

Utility bills (net, h2o, electricity, etc)
Rent
Car/home payments
Nutrient/groceries

Basically, whatever living expense that you have should be accounted for.

You should also start an account exclusively for your emergency savings fund. Most banks allow you to create a sub-savings account forth with your normal savings account. (You tin even proper name them too!) So create one for your emergency fund.

Stride 3: Invest in your future

Graph of Roth IRA vs. savings account earnings over time

Investing your coin is the best way to guarantee you lot become a millionaire. In fact, I promise you, if you follow the systems below you will eventually become rich.

Shannon knows that too.

"My married man and I have been putting ten – 15 pct of our earnings into our retirement accounts for a while now," she says. "Nosotros as well have a 529 plan for each of our kids."

When information technology comes to accounts for retirement, you have 2 options:

401k
Roth IRA

These are retirement accounts. That ways you'll be able to accrue gains with big revenue enhancement advantages with one caveat: you lot promise to save and invest long term. That means you can buy and sell shares of about anything as often as you want as long as yous leave the money in your account until you get most retirement age.

Let's accept a look at each one.

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401k: Complimentary money from your employer

A 401k is a powerful retirement account offered to you by your employer. With each pay flow, you put a portion of your pre-tax paycheck into the account. That ways you lot're able to invest more money into a 401k than you would a regular investment account.

Merely here's the best office: Your company will lucifer you lot 1:1 up to a certain per centum of your paycheck.

Say your company offers three% matching. If your yearly salary is $150,000 and y'all invest 3% of your yearly salary (~$5,000) into your 401k, your company would match you lot that corporeality — doubling your investment.

Check out the table below that illustrates this.

Age	Your Contributions	Employer Match	Rest without Employer Match	Balance with Employer Match
25	$5,000	$5,000	$five,214	$x,428
30	$5,000	$v,000	$38,251	$76,501
35	$5,000	$5,000	$86,792	$173,585
forty	$v,000	$5,000	$158,116	$316,231
45	$v,000	$v,000	$262,913	$525,826
50	$5,000	$5,000	$416,895	$833,790
55	$5,000	$v,000	$643,145	$1,286,290
60	$v,000	$5,000	$975,581	$one,951,161
65	$five,000	$5,000	$1,350,762	$2,701,525

This is free money!!! If your company offers a match, you should ABSOLUTELY have part in their 401k programme.

For more on 401k's, be sure to bank check out my article on how the account is the all-time way to grow your coin.

But 401k's are just i role of the equation when you want to commencement saving for retirement. The other account you should become is a Roth IRA. And ideally, you have both.

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Roth IRA: The all-time long-term investment

A Roth IRA is simply the best bargain I've institute for long-term investing.

Call up how your 401k uses pre-tax dollars and you pay income tax when you take the coin out at retirement? Well, a Roth IRA uses subsequently-tax dollars to give you an even better deal.

With a Roth, y'all put in already taxed income into stocks, bonds, or index funds and pay no taxes when yous withdraw it.

For case, if Roth IRAs had been effectually in 1970 and y'all'd invested $10,000 in Southwest Airlines, y'all'd just have had to pay taxes on the initial $ten,000 income. When you withdrew the money 30 years later, yous wouldn't accept had to pay whatsoever taxes on information technology.

Oh, and by the way, your $10,000 would have turned into $10 1000000.

That's an exceptional example, only when saving for retirement your greatest reward is time. You accept time to weather the bumps in the market place. And over years, those tax-free gains are an astonishing deal.

NOTE: Afterward yous invest in your retirement accounts, you can actually stop correct at that place. After many years, your money will compound and earn you well into the millions if you continue investing.

Say you lot're 25 years old and you decide to invest $500/month in a low-cost, diversified index fund. If you do that until you're sixty, how much coin exercise you think you'd have?

Take a expect:

$1,116,612.89.

However, if yous want to be able to hit a one thousand thousand dollars sooner than that, there'south simply 1 actually skilful option: Earning more coin.

Why do I focus on earning more instead of saving more? Information technology's uncomplicated:

There'south a limit to how much y'all tin save, just no limit to how much y'all can earn.

If you lot're willing to put in the piece of work and develop a hustle that'll scale and grow, yous tin earn as much money as y'all desire. And while at that place are a lot of ways yous tin make more money, my favorite manner is by starting a freelance hustle.

That's what Shannon and Erik did, and they're going to bear witness you how.

Bonus: Having more than than one stream of income can aid you lot through tough economic times. Acquire how to first earning money on the side with my FREE Ultimate Guide to Making Money

Step 4: Find a million-dollar business organization idea (it's easier than yous think)

One very mutual misconception about starting your ain freelance hustle is that y'all need to come with the "perfect" idea to do it — when that couldn't be further from the case.

I know information technology's difficult to imagine that y'all might accept profitable skills already — merely you practise. In fact, Shannon has a perfect solution to find out those skills: Look at what your friends ask y'all to help them out with. That'south how she got her start as a freelance CPA consultant.

From Shannon:

"I had a colleague who needed aid sorting through her finances. She asked me to help her out, and she became my first client. Then I had another friend who started a law office and needed help, so I helped them out with all of their accounting. I'd come across with them to brand certain that they were all the same compliant and help with their tax returns.

It just started with helping people every bit a hobby, but so my husband pointed out that I was getting clients without even trying. Somewhen, I was able to start a freelancing concern from it."

Sometimes information technology's merely a matter of trial and error similar it was for Erik. He says:

"Before freelancing, I was at a large tech company, and regularly tried my mitt at fiddling entrepreneurial side-projects. Come up to think of it, I've attempted to sell fabricated-to-measure men's suits, novelty wall clocks, coaching, and both product and digital pattern services. But naught really stuck until Learn UI Blueprint."

Spend well-nigh 10 – twenty minutes now writing down five skills that you already have and could accuse money for. Once you lot're done, congratulations — y'all now have 5 potential business ideas that you tin can grow into a flourishing side hustle.

For now, just choose one business idea. It's okay, you tin can always alter information technology after. For at present, we're going to simply attempt one out and try to detect a client with it.

Need to discover a way to earn money without leaving your firm? Check out my free List of 30 Proven Business Ideas to find the perfect opportunity for your lifestyle.

Step 5: Find your beginning customer

In order to get-go earning money, you lot need to observe the people who will give you coin for your ideas.

Merely the question is…how? Where do you discover these people?

1 way to detect potential clients is to start an e-mail list. That'south what Erik did subsequently writing his slice on designing user interface, "seven Rules for Creating Gorgeous UI (Function 1)."

"Before Larn UI Pattern, I had kept a blog for a few years, and if that experience taught me anything, information technology was the cyberspace does not magically testify up on your doorstep. Marketing is difficult," Erik said. "I didn't actually accept a newsletter, simply over the next couple years, it nerveless about viii,000 emails. By the time I finally built and launched my course, I had a whole bunch of folks ready to learn blueprint! (Although, hilariously, I got a couple replies back "This looks astonishing, but who are you again??")"

Another way to notice potential clients is to go online and detect out where they alive. Ask yourself:

Who is my client?
Where do they go when they want to look for a solution to their problems?
Where are they ALREADY looking for solutions to their problems?
How tin you lot connect them to your service?

At this bespeak, you're too going to want to niche downward your market in order to actually tailor your services and draw in customers.

"Stay in your niche," Shannon suggests. "We had a few instances where we veered from the niche and we paid for it dearly. It might feel cheesy to sit down downwards and effigy out what your target market is or what your goals are for the company, but you have to practise that. All that legwork needs to be washed upfront. It'due south just practical."

So think about who's an case of a client who might want to buy your product.

A few questions to jumpstart your research:

How old are they?
Where do they live?
What are their interests?
How much do they make?
What books practise they read?

Using this information, find out what your clients need by going to the places they get.

For example:

Want to pitch to moms that blog most children? Go to The Mom Blogs and start with the ones under "Popular Blogs."
Looking for physical or massage therapists within 50 miles of your firm? Yelp should get you started hands.
If yous want to do big canis familiaris grooming and sitting, well there's probably a local pet store or canis familiaris park near y'all where owners are all congregating just waiting for y'all to offer them a solution.

Here are a few suggestions of another great sites freelancers can apply to find business online:

Writers: MediaBistro.com, Upwork.com, FreelanceWritingGigs.com
Illustrators/Designers: 99designs.com, Designs.net
Programmers: Toptal.com, SmashingMagazine.com

Step 6: Invest again — just this time, in yourself

Investing takes many shapes. It's not all stocks, bonds, and retirement accounts. Investing can also be in yourself — and information technology's something you demand to do if you want to earn a meg dollars. Be continually curious.

From Erik:

"I read pretty voraciously. Reading takes time, merely if y'all learn the correct lessons now, they pay dividends later. Many of the best books I've establish I read months or years before I really used the lessons they taught.

And while it's not related to Acquire UI Design directly, some other smashing book-as-investment that's helped me in freelancing and life is Chris Voss'south negotiation book "Never Split the Divergence", which toll me $xviii and saved me $1797 inside ii months. That's a 100x ROI on a book!"

I love this. It hits on an idea that all IWT readers should embrace: Be continually curious.

Ask questions when you don't understand something and don't be agape to seek out more information through books, courses, or schooling. It's only so that y'all tin hope to truly live your Rich Life.

That'southward why my team and I have worked hard to create a guide to help yous invest in yourself today: The Ultimate Guide to Making Coin.

In information technology, I've included my best strategies to:

Create multiple income streams so you always have a consequent source of revenue.
Start your ain business and escape the 9-to-five for good.
Increase your income by thousands of dollars a year through side hustles similar freelancing.

Download a Gratuitous copy of the Ultimate Guide today by entering your name and email beneath — and first blowing up your net worth today.

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