Book Review: Seven Years to Seven Figures

Seven Years to Seven Figures is the road you too can travel if you follow Michael Masterson’s example, set a primary goal and persistently sell, network, leverage, shamelessly self promote and reinvest until you reach that goal. That’s good advice, if only you can follow it.

The book itself is a great example of how it could be done. In it, Masterson, shamelessly self promotes: his other books, his newsletter, his copywriting course and ultimately himself. Needless to say, wherever possible he also makes plugs for others in his network. I would expect nothing short of such execution excellence from an Agora author.

For those who may not know, Agora is a very aggressive direct marketer – a hawker of investment services, newsletters and unrelenting emailer of offers you just can’t refuse. Needless to say, direct marketing is exactly the sales tool that Masterson glorifies in his book as the means to the coveted end.

Masterson claims that in writing the book he started with “tabula rasa” (a clean slate) and considered other ways to get rich in seven years. Yet, he admits that the book was written based on his assistant’s interviews with “a dozen of my friends and colleagues who had made lots of money quickly.” Not surprisingly, their stories in large part ran parallel and often intersected.

Everybody interviewed for Masterson’s book had equity in a business that either created or acquired a low cost product or service or promoted it through direct marketing, creative advertising and sales. Aggressive sales and marketing increased values of what was being sold and thus grew values of businesses making the offerings.

Masterson’s friends also reinvested large portions of their profits into other similar businesses or in real estate. Real estate can be great, of course, but as with everything else, you either need to know what you are doing or be very lucky. And as we all know, over the past couple of years luck has been running away from real estate investors worldwide.

So, that’s the book in a nutshell – shallow in its premise, unscientific in its approach, lacking in details and undeniably self promoting. Despite all this, I did pick out three redeeming morsels of wisdom, which made the time spent reading Seven Years to Seven Figures a bit less of a waste:

1. You can almost always get whatever you want simply by being persistent.
2. Before you do anything else, figure out how you will monetize your idea.
3. You can make money by writing.

Now all I have to do is sign up for Masterson’s copywriting course, so I too can learn how to write amazing sales pitches, just like Agora’s. And then I’ll be able to realize my life long dreams of selling Brooklyn Bridge to Donald Trump and sand to the Saudis and classes in underwater basket weaving to residents of Liechtenstein – oh, I have so many wonderful business ideas!

I will be persistent, so I know I will succeed. And if I have to forget scruples, ignore ethics and put a hold on conscience along the way – so be it – success requires sacrifices!

This book is available from Agora Book Publishing.

Comments

[396679:]

Jake,
I liked your review. You delivered a little masterpiece in short prose - it was a delight to read. And who says bottom-feeding trash can't be turned into treasure when handled with grace and style?

Keep them coming!

May 22 08:29 PM

[onebir:]

Sign me up for basket-weaving 101!

May 23 04:20 AM

[jgbooker:]

I'd rather stick to the stock market ;-)

May 23 08:00 AM

[donzelion:]

Looks to me like a business plan as likely to succeed as "investing" in lottery tickets.

May 23 02:54 PM

[jacflash:]

If you want a good book on writing hard-sell web copy that doesn't involve endless sales pitches for $2000 seminars and the like, try Maria Veloso's "Web Copy That Sells". If you want a guideline to building wealth via information products that won't make you barf, try Tim Ferriss's "The Four-Hour Workweek". Avoid anything by Mark Joyner, Joe Vitale, and this guy.

Great review, btw. Spot-on.

May 24 11:54 AM

[Buy and Hol...:]

Great review.

Agora sure seems to peddle a whole hell of a lot of get rich quick books. I know who's getting rich from it, and it sure ain't gonna be the buyers of the books!

May 25 12:49 PM