On a regular basis, I attend a variety of meetings in Chicago that are centered around building wealth. As you’ve probably heard, one of the secrets to success is to surround yourself with “like minded” people. I’ve found this to be a great way to connect with others and learn about real business opportunities that work.

A philosophy I subscribe to is to find what other people are doing to be successful and replicated it. There’s no need to overcomplicated or make things harder than they should be when all of the hard work has already been done for you.

Take inventors, for example. Thousands of people rack their brains to come up with the world’s greatest gadget. They come up with a great idea, spend thousands of dollars on creating prototypes, spend thousands more on advertising to bring their product to market and wait for the paychecks to arrive.

A few weeks pass and there’s no results, so they dump more money into advertising with a different message and medium. After they’ve exhausted their life savings, they finally admit to themselves that they had a good idea, but there just was no market for their product. It’s a sad story, but it happens all the time.

Those on the fast track to wealth do what already works.

What I’ve observed over the years of attending small “master mind” meetings is that the members built their wealth in pretty similar fashions. In fact, with an exception of a few people, you can break down the members into 4 groups:

• Real Estate Investors
• Network Marketers
• Internet Entrepreneurs
• Equities Traders (stocks, options, forex, etc)

Many of these individuals own other businesses or invest in antiques and art, but just about everyone I encounter is involved in one of or all four of these areas. The reason being that these are tried and true business models that work.

The business models above can produce passive and residual income, can be automated, and profits naturally grow over time with the right attention. That’s not to say that these are easy ways to make money - they all require significant up-front effort - but these models possess some of the best qualities you can find in owning a business.

Another observation that I’ve made is that every successful person I come across had someone they considered their coach, which has formed the way they attack their business. For example, there are a number of ways to make money online (think eBay, website advertising, membership sites, etc), but if you were to ask one of the Internet millionaires in my group who they studied under, you could immediately understand how they approach their business.

Having a coach allows you to have a focused and effective strategy, which is critical to your success.

I could probably rattle off 100 different ways to make money online - some better than other - but most with the potential to produce a significant amount of income. If you tried to tackle every one of those methods, you would fail miserably. But if you were strategic and followed a focused plan that works, your success is only limited to what you allow yourself to achieve.

Once you’ve identified how you want to create your wealth, then you want to find a successful coach. In the past, finding a mentor was a bit tricky. I remember as a young real estate investor I had to basically beg investors to allow me to work for them for free in exchange for their mentoring. Most would refuse, but eventually after regularly attending real estate investing meetings, I would build relationships with the big player and find someone that was willing to show me the ropes. It wasn’t until after I proved I was serious about building wealth that anyone would listen to me.

Looking back, I can’t blame them…

There are too many people seeking the magic bullet, but not willing to put in the effort to build a real business.

Finding a coach is a lot easier today. Since most people now have high speed Internet and more services allow streaming video, some of these successful people are offering one-on-one coaching programs online. Instead of going to meetings and having to find someone locally, anyone can receive coaching from the top entrepreneurs from across the globe.

This, of course, will typically come with a fee, which is really an investment that should produce and income that far exceeds your initial payment. If it does not, quickly pull the plug. There are better places for your to invest your money and many business models that will allow you to produce an income pretty quickly (given that you put in effort).

Should you join a mentoring program that happens to fail, you should have no problem getting 100% of your money back. Any respectably coaching program will guarantee you produce $X in a certain number of days or your money back.

On the online world, Mack Michaels is a well known entrepreneur that grosses over $2 Million a year by promoting other people’s products online (read his story here). Not long ago, he turned his focus towards helping others build an online business, and his private coaching program has been wildly successful.

Mack’s personal mentoring program provides a way for you to get off the ground running and not just produce some money online, but create a giant stream of income. There are plenty of guides and resources you can read to learn how to make money online, but no book is as dedicated to making sure you are a success as Mack is. His reputation relies on making sure you make money by doing exactly what he tells you to do.

You can find out more about Mack’s Maverick Money Makers program, but you may want to watch some of this video first…

Here’s the link to Mack’s Maverick Money Makers coaching program.

-Ryan