It seems there are a variety of ways, depending on how sure you want to make the life-bet. Here is a rough list of ways you might approach it:
- Leverage
- Gambling
- Mike Rowe (Dirty Jobs guy) style work
- Doctor/Lawyer
- Engineer
- Business Man
- Influence Peddler
- Relationships (Marriage, Parents)
- Luck
The only ones not really discussed previously are dirty jobs and influence peddler. So I will try to expand on those ideas.
I think an influence peddler is a bit like the so called Sociopath in
The Gervais Principle (well worth a read as it is related to the topic). The fact that you have to be willing to sell your soul for money wouldn't bother a sociopath given that they don't believe there is a purpose to life and reject the middle class losers style life. I knew one guy at a previous work place who part time did influence peddling at the lowest levels but he was a true believer. The problem was, he wasn't hungry, he was principled and that seemed to limit his reach. I suspect you have to be hungry and lack principles to move up in this sort of marketing of ideas approach.
Regarding dirty jobs, all I can say is Mike Rowe talked about how many of the people he worked with were millionaires because they not only found a business they could use to generate additional cash but because they had a sort of moat because the job was too dirty for most people to want to do. He notes these folks don't follow their passions, they follow the money and go home at night to have a life then. I don't know if this scales up to the 10s of millions, but it might.
Then there are two ideas Scott Adams has suggested which I think are both useful, but not direct answers:
- Be around rich people
- Make many small bets where you can scale cheaply
Adams said he tried about 30 different ideas in 20 years and only 2 or maybe 3 ideas actually worked. I don't know if Adams is in the 1% but it seems like lots of inventors and business folks have had a string of failures before they become an 'overnight' success. I suppose the last related point is to get good at the fail->recover->try new idea life cycle.
Adams also seemed to suggest that at least one friend of his tried being around the rich and found he too became rich. While that isn't much of a data point, there is something to the idea of being in a community gives you access to that communities social capital and given that they also have a great deal of capital too might mean they are more willing to share that with you (e.g. "Invest in you"). I don't have more to say on that topic as it is not a strategy I have tried.
To sum it all up, I suspect you don't just adopt one thing (e.g. take a million bucks and put it on black) but synthesize a system with multiple of these elements. One example is two doctors married together, each making 200k a year, investing 200k of that in cash and another 50k in tax advantaged accounts. Assuming they own their own practice, that 250k will grow as they add employees, maybe 50k a year in growth and here is what 4 years looks like: 250k + 300k + 350k + 400k = 1.3 million after tax. Add in investments and probably a ton of leverage and you could easily get to 10 million in 1 to 2 decades. I suspect it isn't just one element that gets you to 10 million, particularly if you want to get there under 60-70.