Rules of the Rich: Seven Steps Toward Serious Wealth

What does it take to become a billionaire—or even “just” a multimillionaire? If you think there’s no single right answer, you’re correct. There are actually seven components to building a pathway to becoming extremely financially successful.

So says Russ Alan Prince, one of the leading authorities and consultants in the area of private wealth. He’s collected insights and intelligence he’s identified among the many multimillionaires and billionaires he’s worked with over decades and has distilled them into what he calls the Billionaire Money Rules—and he recently shared with us his perspectives on these important mindsets and action steps.

Reasons for becoming seriously wealthy

It probably won’t surprise you to learn most people who are already wealthy and successful are interested in becoming even wealthier and more successful. Think about what happens when you reach a goal in your life: Chances are, you get motivated to keep going and see how much more you can accomplish. The mountaintop you reach starts to feel familiar and normal—and you look to higher peaks off in the distance.

But it’s important to examine what actually drives successful, affluent people to keep growing their wealth. Often, the assumption is that these hard-charging people are excessively greedy—they want more simply because they want to own and control more assets and resources.

Let’s face it: That’s the case with some people, who want wealth for the sake of wealth. But in general, we find that the pursuit of greater and greater wealth is motivated by a handful of key goals that give the affluent a life of meaning—such as taking care of family and loved ones and supporting causes that are important to them.

For example, take one group of successful people we’ve studied over the years: entrepreneurs. Among successful business owners who want to be wealthier, 94% say it’s because that would enable them to make sure their loved ones are financially taken care of. And more than 70% of this group are tremendously charitably inclined. So they see more wealth as a way to do more good on a small and large scale. Additionally, about one in eight successful business owners is considering ideas and projects tied to their business that will change the world in a very positive way. (1) These possibilities are, at their core, extensions or variations of the owners’ businesses.

And by and large, those same drivers are found among various types of affluent cohorts—they’re not unique to business owners.

That said, to make those goals real, a level of personal wealth of at least $20 million is a good target to be thinking about. The reason: That amount is ample to give most successful people the latitude needed to take care of their families, ensure their own secure financial future, meaningfully support their chosen causes and maybe even “put a dent in the universe,” as Steve Jobs liked to say. If you hit the $20 million mark, it’s reasonable to consider yourself “seriously wealthy”—and chances are you’re going to have the maximum amount of freedom to do … well, just about anything in life.

The Money Rules

Of course, all that raises the issue of how to get there—or at least, how to get to whatever you decide is your own personal amount you need.

It takes discipline and focus to become seriously wealthy. By evaluating the attitudes, behaviors and actions of self-made billionaires and self-made multimillionaires when it comes to private wealth creation, some precise, dominant and persistent patterns emerge—let’s call them rules.

This set of seven Money Rules used by people who earned their significant wealth (as opposed to inheriting it) encapsulates the key mindsets, strategies and tactics that can potentially make you seriously wealthy. Again, these are drawn from the insights of Russ Alan Prince, who has worked closely with ultra-wealthy families and individuals for more than three decades.

• Commit to extreme wealth.
• Engage in enlightened self-interest.
• Put yourself in the line of money.
• Pay everyone involved.
• Connect for profit and results.
• Use failure to improve and refocus.
• Stay highly centered.

Important: Don’t fret if you don’t feel like adopting these rules en masse. Although these rules can have the maximum impact if you implement them all, even following a few of them and implementing them in modest ways can enable you to generate significantly more wealth than you currently possess. The fact is, not everyone wants to make the sacrifices that are required to become seriously wealthy. Taking only what works for you will still get you on the right path to much greater personal wealth!

1. Commit to extreme wealth.

Truth be told, many people would like to be rich but haven’t committed the time or effort necessary to get there. Doing so can often mean being faced with choices that help you reach your goal of being wealthy at the expense of something else that may be important to you. Following this rule means having a clear sense that money is a critical objective. This is often overlooked or underappreciated because it’s a mindset issue rather than an action. But a deep and steady focus on becoming very wealthy has to be in place or the other strategies and actions won’t really be as effective as they should be.

2. Engage in enlightened self-interest.

Operationally, enlightened self-interest takes many forms. One example is making well-reasoned decisions, and the way to do that is by constructing pro formas per decision. Another example of this behavior pattern is evident during negotiations. Skilled negotiation is at the heart of successful economic endeavors. As Bill Gates said, “In business, you don’t get what you deserve, but only what you negotiate.”

3. Put yourself in the line of money.

Some endeavors are more fruitful and rewarding than others. For instance, being your own boss gives you a greater chance for personal wealth than working for somebody else. Following this rule means pursuing the fields and initiatives that have the greatest potential for outsize returns, now and in the future.

Often a key aspect of being “in the line of money” is having a piece of the action. It’s very much the norm that the self-made Super Rich are successful business owners with equity stakes in enterprises and endeavors that, they conclude, are likely to make them wealthier.

4. Pay everyone involved.

We find that when exceedingly wealthy business owners build a team around themselves, they assume everyone has a degree of self-interest. They never assume people are willing to work solely for satisfaction or fulfillment, and they therefore reward handsomely—with cash, equity or some other form of currency—in an effort to cultivate loyalty and specific behaviors.

5. Connect for profit and results.

The way you build your connections and networks of people in your life can help you raise your game. Look to maintain a small but deep network of relationships that can lead to power and influence, as well as friendships. This form of nodal networking—in which a person has a few very powerful, highly impactful, deep relationships with people who in turn have an array of similar relationships of their own—maximizes the time and effort spent realizing profits and identifying those things that can further enhance your success.

6. Use failure to improve and refocus.

A lot of people don’t think enough about failure—specifically, about how important it can be. A key money rule is to use failure to improve and refocus. You have to start, as multimillionaires and billionaires do, by accepting that failure is inevitable and that you will experience it. When you internalize that fact, you stop worrying about avoiding failure at all costs and instead focus on how you’re going to learn from the one bad experience (or more) that you encounter.

Mistakes both big and small can hold lessons you can use to get an advantage the next time around—and that’s something that extremely successful people seem to understand at a deep level. Rather than obsessing about lost opportunities and getting discouraged, study your failures and do all you can to prevent repeating missteps.

7. Stay highly centered.

The wealthiest among us know there are very few things they do exceptionally well and what role these skills and expertise play in generating wealth. Being highly centered means sticking to your plan and not getting distracted by other opportunities or events that call for new and different skill sets. The self-made Super Rich are exceptionally capable of focusing and delegating to others in a way that leaves little room for derailment or doubt.

Conclusion

You may decide that adopting all these rules is just too much to take on—that doing so would require you to make too many compromises that would throw your life out of balance. That’s okay. The key is to determine what amount of wealth you require in order to live a life of financial freedom and financial meaning. Armed with that number, you can start to incorporate the best practices of the self-made Super Rich that will accelerate your success and get you to where you want to go!

1 Source: Russ Alan Prince and John J. Bowen Jr., Becoming Seriously Wealthy: How to Harness the Strategies of the Super Rich and Ultra-Wealthy Business Owners, AES Nation, 2017.

ACKNOWLEDGMENT: This report was published by the VFO Inner Circle, a global financial concierge group working with affluent individuals and families, and is distributed with its permission. Copyright 2025 by AES Nation, LLC.