Alex Becker’s guide to becoming a multi-millionaire in 10 years

Alex Becker took his company net worth from 0 to $170 million in under 10 years. Even a fraction of his success is a life-changing amount of money for anyone in the regular 9–5.

If you were unaware, Becker is an entrepreneur, author, and online marketing expert. He is the founder of multiple successful businesses, including Market Hero (now known as Hyros), an analytics and tracking platform for marketers, which he had sold at an incredibly valuation.

A few weeks ago I watched a video of his in which he broke down the path to wealth building as comprising four levels.

At each level there is a key set of skills and ideas that one needs in order to achieve success. If you follow these, you will be moving along the path of highest probability.

To advance to a higher level, you need to master the skills that level requires and all the previous levels before.

In essence, it’s a game of skill stacking.

So let’s get to it — there are four levels of wealth:

• Level 1: $0 — $100 k
• Level 2: $100k — $1 mil
• Level 3: $1 mil — $5 mil
• Level 4: $5 mil — $20 mil

Level 1 ($0 — $100k) — Focus is Cashflow

• At the first level, you want to be acquiring knowledge and skills, and then selling those skills
• Get good at Sales (a key skill in entrepreneurship).
• Other high leverage skills are writing, marketing, design and coding
• Freelance — Sell your time

Do not:

• Try to raise any capital (like I did)
• Try to build a big business (like I did)
• Get a mortgage to buy a house (like I did)

(If only I’d seen this video sooner)

Level 2 ($100k — $1 mil) — Focus is automate and scale

• Now you can grow your business and start selling other people’s time
• For your service, focus on getting new leads and sales, while training a team to deliver the service

Level 3 ($1 mil — $5 mil) — Focus on building an asset

• eCommerce stores
• Building software (SaaS model, extensions, plugins, etc.)

Level 4 ($5 mil — $20 mil) — Focus on building equity

• Gain stakes in large companies
• Help to grow their valuation

While this may seem simplistic, it is an incredibly useful guide on what you should focus on. A lot of the popular success seen about in papers, is about people who are on their Level 2 or 3 journey of wealth building. It wasn’t their first successful venture.

Those that achieve success by starting a Level 2 or Level 3 business on their first try are the exceptions and rare. It’s not just about hard work, you also need luck and a confluence of factors to work in your favor. It’s not a path you want to bet on.

This framework is an excellent way to think about business, especially when starting out. Just like there are starter vehicles and starter homes, there are starter businesses.

For example, as I hinted above, I made some mistakes on my first startup. It was a software company that helped you with your grocery shopping from your favourite retailers. It was a Level 3 business and required us to raise capital to build it out. It ultimately fizzled and failed because we weren’t able to raise enough capital in time. We were also doing many things for the first time — we didn’t have a good enough skill stack to attempt this kind of business.

The business idea was (and still is) sound, but we were not ready as entrepreneurs to attempt it.

Now, I’ve gained a better understanding of the types of businesses out there and how one should go about starting a business based on the skills they have accumulated at that point.

Hopefully, this gives you some insight into that process as well.

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Also, drop a comment if I sparked an idea in your head, I’m curious to know more!