how to be richNo, I’m not trying to be facetious. Nor am I suggesting that to be rich one should hang out with rich people in order to steal money from them. Rather, this is a simple formula by which one can become rich themselves without ever having to worry about taking advantage of anyone. Here’s what you need to know:

It’s Not about Taking

The first thing I want to make clear is that when I say to be rich you should hang out with rich people is that this isn’t about taking. Or rather, it’s not about having your hand out for money from people who have it. Instead, it’s about taking something which is free – knowledge.

Your Choice of Friends Influences You Greatly

Take a moment to think about your friends. Who are they? Hopefully, they’re decent people who aren’t into being axe murderers or burning crosses on people’s lawns (and if they are, then my friend, you have bigger problems than how to become rich). However, they also influence how you think about the world.
If your friends have relatively simple dreams for themselves, then you probably will have the same relatively simple dreams. And even if you happen to be one of those people who dreams of moving up in the world, those friends of yours likely aren’t going to know how to do it, short of winning the lottery.

It’s about Attitude

If you hang out with rich people by comparison, you start to see the world in a different light. Rather than seeing things stacked against you, you see opportunity everywhere. You’ll begin to see that to become rich, one simply has to be a risk taker. And yes, that means failing occasionally, but so what? Almost every successful person on the planet had their initial failures before they became who they are.

It’s about Knowledge

The other thing that you’ll get from hanging out with rich people is the knowledge of how to put those attitudes into practice. Simply handing over your money to someone who has an idea is a bad idea for example. However, doing your due diligence to ensure that you know what it is that person wants to create will help you to invest wisely.

It’s about Opportunity

Finally and probably most importantly, if you want to become rich, you need the opportunity to do so. Rich people may well be in the process of investing in a new real estate development, a new software company or a new bio engineering company or any of a million other kinds of ventures.
These kinds of investments aren’t available to the general public, because they’re private companies which are just starting up. However, if you hang out with rich people, you’ll have a much better chance of hearing about them (and thus being able to invest in them) than if you didn’t know these people.
Now, could you lose money on these deals? Of course you can – however, as I said above, rich people know that in order to make money, you need to risk some money. It’s an attitude that you need in order to become rich yourself.

Where to Meet People

For those who are serious about these ideas and who want to learn about the things rich people know, you need to start hanging out where rich people go. No, that doesn’t mean you need to drop $500 for a fillet mignon. However, you might want to go to business conferences where rich people often go to learn about what’s going on.
You also may want to look for opportunities that wealthy people offer to meet with them. For example, one great way to meet a rich person  is to look up John Chow’s Twitter feed. He’s become a millionaire off his blogging activities and he regularly invites people to hang out with him while eating Chinese food. He also offers to meet people at conferences when he travels to them.
Look for him or others like him and you’ll find it’s not as hard as you may think to meet people who are rich and to become friends with them in order to learn what it takes to become rich yourself.