The Millionaire in the Mirror: How to Find Your Passion and Make a Fortune Doing It--Without Quitting Your Day Job

289 Pages·2008·2.87 MB·English

by  Gene Bedell

The

Millionaire

in the

Mirror
H OW TO FIN D YO U R PA S S I O N AN D
M A KE A FO R T U N E D O IN G I T—W I T H O U T
QUIT TING YOUR DA Y JOB

Gene Bedell
To Zoe and Zach:
Not everything in life is possible.
But love and Outstanding Success are.
Then all else will take care of itself.
The ladder of success doesn’t care who climbs it.
Attributed to Frank Tyger

contents
Epigraph iii
IN TRODUC T ION Outstanding Success 1
Part I
Outstanding Success Strategies
CHAP T ER 1 Outstanding Success Strategy #1:
Become a Heat-Seeking Missile 21
CHAP T ER 2 Outstanding Success Strategy #2:
Stay in the Zone 43
CHAP T ER 3 Outstanding Success Strategy #3:
Maximize Your Value 61
CHAP T ER 4 Outstanding Success Strategy #4:
Swing for the Bleachers 81
CHAP T ER 5 Outstanding Success Strategy #5:
Deliver the Goods 101
CHAP T ER 6 Outstanding Success Strategy #6:
Take Ownership 123
CHAP T ER 7 Outstanding Success Strategy #7:
Don’t Self-Destruct 141
Part II
Putting Strategies into Practice
CHAP T ER 8 Coach Yourself 159
CHAP T ER 9 Strategies for an Imperfect World 185
CHAP T ER 10 Getting Unstuck 205
CHAP T ER 11 The Entrepreneurial Option 227
CHAP T ER 12 Questions Not Asked Frequently
Enough 253
Acknowledgments 274
About the Author 277
Other Books by Gene Bedell
Credits
Cover
Copyright
About the Publisher
introduction
Outstanding Success
In this Introduction:
• What it means to be an Outstanding Success,
• How you can control your luck,
• Why hard work and sacrifice are overrated, and
• Why you’re already talented enough to become an
Outstanding Success.
If I could drop dead right now,
I’d be the happiest man alive.
Samuel Goldwyn
2 Introduction
ENOUGH MONEY TO CHANGE PEOPLE’S LIVES
It was a cold winter Sunday afternoon in Virginia—
raining, gloomy—a day to spend indoors, surrounded by
sleeping wet-smelling dogs. With nothing better to do, I
decided finally to clean out my old files and books, which
grow in my basement like barnacles on the bottom of a
boat. I went downstairs with a large plastic trash bag and
good intentions.
And there they were—my tax records for every year of
my life since I started paying taxes. Hmmm. That was the
end of my good intentions. I decided instead to add up
the amount of money I’d earned since I began my career.
Then I adjusted the amounts for inflation to see what it all
came to in today’s dollars.
The total wasn’t in Bill Gates or Warren Buffett terri-
tory, but it still seemed like a lot of money. A half hour of
research on the Internet, and I learned I’d earned more
than ten times the amount earned by the average house-
hold during the same period. Less than 1% of all United
States households earned more. Assuming an inflation
rate of 3.5%, those just starting their careers today would
have to earn $42 million over the course of forty years
to be in the top 1%. This amount won’t put them among
the idle rich, but it’s more than enough to change most
people’s lives. And I had done it without sacrifice to my
family and personal life. It has been, at least most of the
time, a hoot.
Money has never been the dominant driving force in
my life, so my reaction to seeing how much I earned was,
“Can you imagine that? How on earth did I get the world