The Millionaire Secrets

Many people have the perception that the fabulously rich and powerful are dishonest and unethical. And who can blame them after hearing stories of how millionaire executives rip off their shareholders in scandal after scandal on Wall Street? Think about Enron, China Aviation Oil, WorldCom, ACCS, REFCO and the list goes on.

Certainly, there are unethical and unscrupulous rich people around (incidentally, their wealth and business rarely last), but the truth is that most self-made millionaires share a common habit of personal integrity. Interestingly, in the best-selling book ‘The Millionaire Mind’, author Thomas Stanley interviewed 733 multi-millionaires and asked them what were the key factors that contributed to their wealth. Ranked number one was ‘being honest with people‘.

Surprised? This factor was ranked way ahead of factors like ‘making wise investments’, ‘working hard’ and ‘having a competitive spirit’. What is integrity and why is it so important to long-term wealth?

I guess now you know what is the millionaire habit #6, it is…

Acting With Integrity

These teachings are from Adam Khoo’s book, Secrets of Self-Made Millionaires. As you may already know, Adam Khoo is a young, self-made millionaire from Singapore. He is my favorite wealth teacher. That is why I strongly recommend anyone who are serious in building massive wealth in their life should buy his book, Secrets of Self-Made Millionaires. Think about it, by only investing a small portion of your money, you will learn all about wealth building, start from your mind until you build a successful wealth fortress.

Integrity is about being honest with others and adhering to high moral standards. It is also about doing what you say you will do. When you act with integrity, your customers, colleagues and staff will place their trust in you. They know that you mean what you say and that you will not let them down. They know that you will give them the best quality for their money and they know that you will not cheat them.

It takes twenty years to build a reputation and five minutes to ruin it. If you think about that, you will do things differently. -Warren Buffet, world’s richest man.

In a world where so many people are unethical and dishonest, build your reputation on integrity and you will have an endless supply of customers, suppliers, investors and business partners. One of Singapore’s multi-millionaire Vikas Goel, Founder and CEO of eSys Technologies, arrived in Singapore without a dollar, but managed to build a global billion-dollar company in five years.

Vikas Goel, Ernst & Young World Entrepreneur of the year awards. Click here to read more.

How did he do it? Where did he get the money to get started? Initially he worked at a company called Karma. When the recession hit in the late 1990s, Karma’s parent company collapsed. Instead of waiting to be retrenched, Goel took the proactive step (Millionaire Habit #2) of undertaking a management buyout of the Singapore unit. In order to keep the business going, he persuaded his customers to pay him in advance so that he could use the money to buy the products from his suppliers.

The only reason his customers agreed was because Goel had built up his reputation as an honest and trustworthy man while dealing with them in the past. A few months later, he bumped into his old boss at Sim Lim Square. When he told his ex-employer that he was running out of money to sustain the business, Goldkist gave him $300,000 simply because he knew that Goel was a man who would never run away with his money.

This is the power of building a reputation of trust and honesty. That was not all. Goel also happened to meet up with an old friend and ex-customer in Sim Lim Square. When he asked for help, his ex-customer wired $1 million into his Seagate account so he could buy goods from Seagate.

As you can see now, integrity is above everything else. So, always act with integrity and you will possess one of the greatest strengths of all.

==> You can straight away download the complete version of The Nine Millionaire Habits here in PDF, without having to go all over my articles.