I recently got an e-mail from P.C. about my post, How I Will Become A Millionaire – And Everything You Need Too:

Hi there, I thought that your list of the things that you need to do to become a millionaire was very clear and comprehensive. I like it. I am not sure that I entirely agree with the point that unless you know who to ask then you don’t know what you are doing. I think this is the most challenging aspect of personal business development and I am sure there is a book waiting to be written on how to pick and gain access to the “right” role model (Maybe there is one already!)

Here’s my response:

Thanks for the e-mail!

Anthony Robbins says that a shortcut to achieving anything you want in life is to find someone that has achieved what you are seeking and do what they’re doing. When he wanted to lose weight and keep it off, for example, he said that he found someone that accomplished that and asked him what he did.

So I think the idea of modeling is more to figure out your objective and find someone that has achieved what you are seeking in that facet of their life.

Getting access to the right role model is all relative. I am making it my personal mission to study billionaires and multimillionaires because they are (obviously) doing something right. If I can get one or two tips from every person I study, it is worth it. I’d love the opportunity to talk to Warren Buffett one on one and ask him how he invests, but I really don’t need to talk to him to learn a lot about him – there is so much information available on the internet that I believe anyone can accomplish anything if they just take the time to research it.

What I was saying in that article was not necessarily to know who you need to model and talk to them. What I meant was that it is important to make contacts that might be helpful. It could be as simple as sending someone an e-mail just to introduce yourself, or to give someone a call and pitch a project. Be social. Interact with people.

According to Thomas Stanley’s “The Millionaire Mind”, virtually every millionaire they interviewed said that social skills helped them achieve success. No one is an island, although sometimes society makes it seem that way.

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