Book Review: The One Minute Millionaire

Book Review: The One Minute Millionaire by Mark Hansen & Robert G. Allen

I chuckled when I first saw the title to this book but when I opened it up, I just happened to turn to a page that intrigued me so much that I had to add it to my "future reads" list. If you have an entrepreneur’s heart you would probably love this book. It is compelling, practical, and inspiring. It is written by two millionaires, Mark Victor Hansen is the guy behind all those “Chicken Soup For the Soul” books and Robert G. Allen is famous for his “No Money Down” real estate books. The book is separated into two parts – mirroring the left and right side of the brain.

The right side pages are a story of a girl named Michelle. Michelle has lost everything important to her until she meets a striking older business lady named Sam. Sam becomes Michelle’s wealth-making mentor and helps her to attempt an impossible sounding task – to make a million dollars in 90 days! If she fails, the consequences will destroy her and everything she holds dear. I was actually on the edge of my seat as I read this side of the book first and although the writing is nothing special felt myself getting emotionally involved in the storyline. I enjoyed it enough that I shared it with my wife Jobina and she also read and enjoyed it.

The left hand side of the book is the “how to” side that shares the authors’ unique philosophy and tactics to make money. They refer to themselves as “enlightened” millionaires. This is partly because of the unique, borderline new age approach they apply as well as the fact that they have high ethical standards on how to do business and what to do with money. I liked how they started off this section reminding readers that money is not the most important thing, in fact it is several places down their priority list. Yet it is still important and they have a generous approach to sharing it. For Christians many parts of this book may make you feel uncomfortable but I just skimmed over such parts to get to the “meat.” And there is plenty of it. Using four main profit vehicles; real estate, business, the internet, and investments the authors show you how it is indeed possible to make a million dollars in a very short period of time.

The biggest thing I pulled out of this book was probably the importance of multiple streams of income – not depending on one thing to provide you with cashflow. I also pulled out the importance of having a team approach to making money – how important other people are to increase leverage and thus increase profits. Both of these points hit home to me through the story of Michelle. I really enjoyed this book and would recommend it to anyone who seems to have a gift or passion for wealth building– or wants to. I give it 4.4 ninja stars out of 5.