How to Get Rich: The MFM Framework for Building Wealth
Hayes Barnard flunked first grade. He has dyslexia. His first job paid 4 billion. The trajectory sounds impossible until you learn the mechanism: he never tried to be the smartest person in the room. He surrounded himself with people who were.
Shaan Puri failed twelve times before making his first million at age 30. Leila Hormozi weighed 230 pounds, had been arrested six times, and flunked out of college before building a 6.50 an hour as a barista to billionaire through design agencies and holding companies.
The stories differ in detail but converge on a pattern. On My First Million, the question of how to get rich has been examined from nearly every angle—and the answers are more systematic than they first appear.
The Four Rules of Money
Shaan Puri distilled his framework into four rules after studying his own failures and the paths of people who had succeeded without exceptional luck, talent, or inheritance. The rules are sequential. Skipping one undermines the others.
Rule 1: Master One Money-Making Skill
There are only four core wealth-building skills: Selling, Making, Designing, and Hunting.
Selling means persuading people—marketing, closing deals, understanding what makes someone say yes. Making is creating products: apps, websites, videos, books, anything tangible. Designing requires taste—understanding form and function at an aesthetic level. Hunting is spotting opportunities and finding deals before others recognize their value.
Warren Buffett once noted that all of his success came from about twelve good investing decisions—out of hundreds of thousands of opportunities he evaluated. That is what hunting looks like at the highest level. He read a 4,000-page Moody’s Manual cover to cover, looking for mispriced stocks. The skill is volume combined with ruthless selectivity.
MrBeast took a different approach. At age twelve, he decided to master making YouTube videos. He forced daily ideation using random dictionary words to generate concepts. It took more than 100 videos before he reached 10,000 subscribers. Now each video generates hundreds of millions of views.
The insight that changes the math: mastering one skill creates millionaires. Mastering two creates billionaires. Steve Jobs combined Designing and Selling. Elon Musk combined Making and Selling. You do not need to be in the top 1% at anything. Being in the top 20% at two uncommon skills is rare enough to be extraordinarily valuable.
Rule 2: Own Equity, Don’t Rent Time
Nassim Taleb has a line that captures the trap: “The two most addictive things in the world are heroin and a monthly salary.” The comfort of predictable income becomes the obstacle to building wealth.
The path from skill to ownership runs through three channels: Code, Content, or Capital.
Code means building digital products that can sell while you sleep. One designer went from 2 million in annual cash flow by turning his skill into Shopify themes. He now lives half the year in Bali, half in Japan. The hourly rate disappeared. The leverage multiplied.
Content turns expertise into assets. Alex Hormozi took his selling skill and converted it into books and courses. His last book launch sold three million copies. With add-on courses, he made $100 million in a single weekend.
Capital means using money-making skills to find and execute deals—real estate, acquisitions, investments. The skill creates the deal flow. The deals create the wealth.
Rule 3: Be Impatient with Action, Patient with Results
Naval Ravikant articulated what might be the most important psychological insight in wealth-building: you cannot plant a seed and scream at it the next day. Most people reverse this formula. They delay action while demanding immediate results.
You only need to get rich once in a lifetime. That fact should inform the time horizon.
Steve Martin could not tell a C chord from a G chord when he picked up a banjo. His teacher told him he had no natural talent. His response was a mindset shift: “I’ll play for 40 years. I can’t imagine still sucking after that.” He won multiple Grammys within a decade.
The long-term time horizon flips the odds from 90% failure to 90% success. Most people think waiting a quarter is long. The people who build wealth think in terms of years.
Rule 4: Proximity is Power
Shaan left Australia and moved to San Francisco with a simple insight: “If I’m the smartest guy in this room, I’m in the wrong room.” The relocation was intentional. Physical proximity to the white-hot center of his industry created opportunities that talent alone could not.
If you want to change your life, change your zip code.
The tactic extends beyond geography. Living with other ambitious people chasing the same dream accelerates everything. Luck becomes more systematic when you position yourself at the intersection of relevant conversations.
The Wealth Levels Framework
Andrew Wilkinson went from barista to billionaire through what he describes as five distinct levels. The framework helps clarify where you are and what transition comes next.
Level 1: Hourly to Skilled. Move from minimum wage to skilled work. Wilkinson went from 60 an hour designing websites.
Level 2: Self-Employed to Boss. Stop selling only your own time. Start selling other people’s time. His design agency Metalab reached over $1 million in annual profit in his early twenties.
Level 3: Liquidity Event. Build something that can be sold. His Shopify themes business Pixel Union sold for 3 million in his bank account—a psychological shift that changed how he viewed risk.
Level 4: CEO of CEOs. Hire professional CEOs to run your businesses. Wilkinson describes his personality as “incredibly lazy”—not as self-criticism but as explanation. He structured a life around not being operationally involved in what he owns.
Level 5: The Weight of Wealth. Realize that money does not solve internal problems. The wealth that seemed like freedom becomes a management burden. Having 100 times the food you can eat creates its own complications.
The progression is not linear for everyone. But the levels clarify what changes at each stage.
The “Enough” Framework
Before pursuing wealth, the question worth answering is: how much is enough?
The framework has three steps.
Step 1: Launchpad. Approximately $250,000 per year in passive income. This is the point where you can quit your job and pursue projects based on interest rather than necessity.
Step 2: Enough. Calculate your annual dream spend and multiply by 20. If your ideal life costs 60 million.
Step 3: Life’s Work. Discover activities that create meaning once money is no longer the primary constraint. Naval has a frame for this: “Retirement is when you stop sacrificing today for an imagined tomorrow.”
The calculation matters because many entrepreneurs overshoot. They chase billions when they need a fraction of that to fund their actual desires. The goal is freedom, not a number.
The Psychology of Wealth Builders
The podcast has surfaced a pattern that initially seems counterintuitive: trauma often precedes exceptional leadership.
Hayes Barnard learned early that his dyslexia meant he would never be the smartest person in the room. So he developed a different skill—surrounding himself with smart people and letting them operate. When all your competitors die, that is when your company creates value. He survived the 2008 mortgage crisis by refusing to sell subprime loans when everyone else was chasing volume. “The devil doesn’t tempt you with spinach,” he observed. He walked away from massive revenue because the unit economics did not work.
Leila Hormozi hit rock bottom at 19—six arrests, 230 pounds, college dropout. The turning point was overhearing someone say she used to be pretty but had gotten fat. Her father told her if she kept going, she would kill herself. She lost nearly 100 pounds and moved from Michigan to California. On her first date with Alex Hormozi, they talked about business for four hours. Gym Launch scaled to over $15 million in year one.
The common thread is what Jim Collins calls Level 5 Leadership: great compassion and empathy combined with the willingness to empower rather than micromanage. Someone with dyslexia learns early that trying to do everything alone does not work. Someone who has rebuilt their life from destruction understands that the business is just a vehicle for personal growth.
Focus Beats Diversification
Nick Huber built a $100 million self-storage empire and then made what he now considers a mistake. He started more than ten companies over a three-year period. Four have been shut down.
His evolved perspective challenges the holding company narrative he once championed:
“Running a HoldCo is overrated. I’ve been labeled a ‘HoldCo guy,’ but you really have to know your stuff to run more than one company. Most wealthy people I know focused on one thing for a long time.”
Peter Thiel has a similar observation: if a company has seven revenue streams, it means they do not have one great one. Brad Jacobs grew United Rentals by running the same plays for ten years. The richest people focus rather than diversify prematurely.
The advice that follows is tactical. Do not say the word “influencers” until you are at $300,000 a month just from Facebook ads. Master one distribution channel and one revenue stream before expanding.
The tortoises win.
Multiple Paths to Success
The profiles on My First Million demonstrate that intensity is not the only formula.
Hayes Barnard operates at level ten. His 5 AM Lake Tahoe routine includes breathwork and cold plunges. He does everything with maximum energy. Being “energy rich” matters more to him than being money rich.
Wade Foster built Zapier to 1 million in funding. He still lives in Jefferson City, Missouri. His approach is the opposite of intensity—introverted, nerdy, in the weeds, and perfectly content with that.
Eric Glyman built Ramp to a $10 billion valuation by age 35. He knew the company was exactly 253 days old during one interview. He tracked account approval times down to 7.3 days. He is extremely nice and extremely intense simultaneously.
There is a million ways to achieve your dreams. You do not need to adopt someone else’s personality to build wealth.
FAQ
How long does it take to get rich?
The honest answer is years, not months. Shaan failed twelve times over ten years before his first million. Hayes started at Subway and took decades to reach billionaire status. The pattern across all the stories is patience measured in years, not quarters. The advantage of accepting this timeline is that it makes the path more certain. Long-term time horizons flip the odds from 90% failure to 90% success.
What if I do not have any money-making skills yet?
Find the number one producer in your chosen field and sit next to them. Double their inputs—100 calls instead of 50, 100 doors knocked instead of 50. From 9 to 5, get practice reps. From 5 to 9, study and learn how to improve. The skill acquisition is the prerequisite that makes everything else possible.
Do I need to move to a major city?
Proximity is power, but the implementation varies. Shaan moved to San Francisco. Wade Foster stayed in Missouri. The principle is being near the action in your specific industry, which might mean a physical location, an online community, or a specific network. The question to ask: are you the smartest person in the room? If so, find a different room.
What is the difference between skills and equity?
Skills generate income. Equity generates wealth. A salary is trading time for money—there is a ceiling. Equity is ownership that compounds: businesses, real estate, investments, content that earns while you sleep. The transition from skill to equity is the critical bridge.
How do I know when I have “enough”?
Calculate your annual dream spend and multiply by 20. That number, invested conservatively, generates enough passive income to fund your ideal life. The formula clarifies the target and prevents the common mistake of overshooting. The goal is freedom, not accumulation.
Sources & Episodes
- How to Get Rich (without luck, talent, or a trust fund) — Shaan’s four rules framework
- How I Made My First $1M - The Andrew Wilkinson Story — Wealth levels, Enough framework
- [[episodes/from__4_hour_to__4_billion_net|From 4 Billion Net Worth]] — Rags to riches, Level 5 Leadership
- I Failed 12 Times Before Making My First Million (Here’s Every Failure) — Shaan’s failure journey
- Leila Hormozi: From Minimum Wage Employee to $100M Net Worth By 29 — Personal transformation
- 56 Minutes of Money Wisdom for High-Earning Couples — Ramit Sethi’s frameworks
- The Richest People I Know Do One Thing — Focus vs. diversification
- I Spent 24 Hours With The Most Intense Billionaire Alive — Multiple paths to success
Related: Shaan Puri | Sam Parr | Hayes Barnard | Andrew Wilkinson | Leila Hormozi | Naval Ravikant | Nick Huber | Skill Stacking | Boring Businesses | Sweaty Startups