Editor’s note: We’re so excited for you to start your wealth-building journey. 

You’re about to read Mark’s official welcome message—and it’s important. But before you do anything else, I strongly encourage you to watch Lesson 1.

This first lesson sets the tone for everything that follows. It explains how this Club is different… and why becoming financially independent isn’t about luck, stock tips, or chasing the next hot idea.

It starts with how you think.

If you commit to watching Lesson 1 today, you’ll begin this journey the right way — grounded, focused, and ready to take the first step on your wealth-building journey.

Start here.

Start Your Journey to Financial Independence Today

By Mark Morgan Ford

Welcome to the DIYwealth Club. I’m glad you joined and committed to making it a good and profitable experience for you.

Of all the ventures I’ve started over the past nearly 40 years, I’m most excited about this one. Why? Because it represents two of my most persistent ambitions: to understand how wealth is created and to teach anyone who is ready to learn.

I’ve been interested in acquiring wealth ever since I was a child. I was one of eight children. We lived in a dilapidated house across the street from the municipal gravel pits. I wore hand-me-down clothes, donated by local charities. We drank powdered milk because our parents couldn’t afford real milk.

I was ashamed of our relative poverty. Often, at night, I dreamed of being driven to my grammar school playground in a stretch limousine, stepping out in a tuxedo to the admiring gasps of my schoolmates.

My parents were intelligent and well educated, but they knew nothing about money and cared little for material things. But they instilled in their children a strong work ethic and a belief in learning. I applied that belief, among other things, to learning about wealth.

My parents were teachers—very good ones. My siblings and I inherited their love of teaching. It’s a part of my DNA.

I set to work on building wealth at an early age. I worked for my neighbors starting at eight or nine years old, published and sold my first “book” at 11 (Excuses for the Amateur), and worked two jobs (paper route and car wash on the weekends) when I was 12.

I had my own business at 17 and used it to finance my undergraduate degree. I worked two and sometimes three jobs during graduate school. I learned some important lessons about making money back then, but the big breakthrough came much later, when I was 32.

I was editorial director for a startup newsletter publishing company in Boca Raton, Florida, then, and took a Dale Carnegie course to acquire public speaking skills. I learned a bit about that, but I also learned an important lesson about achieving goals.

The lesson was that if you really want to accomplish something you have to make it your top priority. You had to make a serious commitment to putting that goal above all others. I had many goals back then—becoming a teacher and a writer, mastering martial arts, traveling the world, etc.—but when it came down to putting one goal above the others, I decided it would be to “get rich.”

And that changed me. Over the next seven years, I went from a young executive making $35,000 per year to a decamillionaire. I retired briefly and then went back into business. In the following 10 years, I multiplied that wealth several times.

Before I turned 50, I had accumulated more wealth than I was ever going to be able to spend. I removed wealth building from my life’s priorities and focused on my other goals: writing, teaching, and martial arts.

Who Is Mark Ford?

Mark is a New York Times bestselling author, entrepreneur, self-made multimillionaire, and wealth coach.

Mark started his first business when he was 11 years old. In the decades since then, he’s started hundreds more.

Mark grew up in Brooklyn and Long Island. He has a bachelor’s degree from Queens College, CUNY, a master’s degree from the University of Michigan, and did Ph.D. work at Catholic University. After college, Mark joined the Peace Corps and spent two years teaching students at the University of Chad in Africa.

In 1982, Mark moved to Palm Beach County and took a job with a small publishing company. He worked as an apprentice to a well-known businessman in South Florida. He helped that company grow to $135 million in annual revenues, became a multimillionaire himself, and retired at age 39.

After a year of writing poetry, he became a consultant to the health and investment publishing industry. He was involved in the development of dozens of multimillion-dollar businesses, including one whose revenues recently exceeded the $400 million mark.

He has also written a dozen books on entrepreneurship, personal productivity, and wealth building. Three of these were New York Times and Wall Street Journal best-sellers.

After turning 60 years old, Mark “retired” again. He now focuses on growing his investments and writing for the DIYwealth Club.

Mark currently lives in Palm Beach with his wife, Kathy.

I spent my fifties writing four to eight hours per day. I wrote about what I knew: how to start and grow entrepreneurial businesses and how to accumulate wealth. Under the pen name Michael Masterson, I wrote more than 2,000 essays and eight books on those topics.

When I turned 60, I retired for the second time and in doing so retired my pen name. From then on I intended to write fiction and poetry.

I did some of that. I wrote two books of poetry and dozens of short stories. But in 2011 a successful protégé of mine, Tom Dyson, persuaded me to write about wealth building again by working with him on his investment publication at the time called The Palm Beach Letter. (Tom and I both live in Palm Beach County in Florida.)

That was a terrific experience for me. I found that all I had learned about entrepreneurship was just a fraction of what could be learned about wealth building. So I began to apply what I had learned as a businessman to the general subject of investing. And that’s how I came to be writing for DIYwealth.

Our Promise to You

Years ago, we sent out a survey to our readers, asking them about their financial situations and financial goals. I was surprised to learn that a large percentage of readers were either already retired or planned to retire in seven years or less. But what disturbed me was that many of these folks were not, by any means, financially independent.

What they wanted—to live a comfortable life in “retirement”—was not going to happen for them. They had subscribed because they recognized our mission was to help them achieve wealth. But they were still under the illusion that they could do that simply by buying the right stocks.

Me and Sean at a business dinner in Japan.

I knew enough about wealth building to be certain that this strategy would not be sufficient to achieve their goals. And that made me feel bad. I didn’t want to contribute to their false belief by allowing them to believe that our stock selections, however good, would accomplish their goals.

I decided to do something about it. I had umpteen meetings with Sean and the DIYwealth staff. I told them candidly that we had an obligation to provide this group of our readers with much, much more.

We began a series of very frank conversations about what it really takes to become financially independent in seven years. As it happens, I had plenty of ideas. Because that is exactly what I have been thinking and writing about for over a decade.

So we agreed to combine all of our intellectual capital—my experience-based ideas and the experience-based knowledge of Sean and his team—and create an entirely new and unique service for people who need to achieve financial independence in seven years.

That service became the DIYwealth Club. Our promise to Members—of which you are now one—is to provide all the tools and resources needed to achieve a seven-figure net worth in seven years. If you’re wealthy already and confident in your wealth-building knowledge and skills, for you, the club may be simply a vehicle for additional ideas. That’s fine—either way, there are more than enough ideas here.

Get Ready to Work Hard!

>>Watch Lesson 1 Now<<

Once we started moving in the initial stages, the ideas came on fast.
It soon became clear that we were putting together an immense curriculum of wealth-building strategies. So far, we have developed a few programs, each of which is like taking one or several college courses.

We could have easily stopped then. But we are adding more programs and more components to existing programs every month.

The amount of teaching and coaching we will be giving you as a Club Member over the course of just your first year is great. In fact, it may feel overwhelming.

Don’t feel that way. If you can’t keep pace, it’s not a problem. Take it as you can. But be assured that everything you will be receiving—every idea, every strategy, every recommendation, and every resource—is valuable. It is all based on real-life experience—mostly my own but sometimes on successful wealth builders I know.

It’s a ton of stuff, but let’s be frank. If you are “not wealthy” now and want to become wealthy in seven years or less, you will have to dig in and work hard.

Begin by Being Honest About Your Situation

The DIYwealth Club is unlike any other moneymaking program I know of. It is not an investment strategy. It is not a course in business building or Internet marketing. It is not a collection of stories and ideas given to me by “rich” relatives. It is a comprehensive curriculum of every legitimate wealth-building strategy I have ever used.

And it is not meant for wealthy people who can afford to spend lots of money and take big risks. In developing this program, the team and I kept reminding ourselves that this is a club for the “not yet wealthy.” I like that phrase because it conveys two important ideas:

In creating this Club, we gave ourselves a considerable challenge. It is—in my opinion—relatively easy to give stock recommendations to affluent investors. It is much more difficult to help unwealthy people turn their lives around in seven years or less. But that is the job we have taken on at the DIYwealth Club.

And I promise you—no matter how many other investment newsletters try to pick up on this promise in the future (and they will)—you will not be able to get the kind of experience-based advice you will get from us.

I know this because I know just about everybody in this industry. I know how rich they are (most aren’t rich at all), and I know how they got the wealth they acquired (mostly by touting stocks or teaching options or Internet marketing). I know them and I know their programs.

The DIYwealth Club is better than all that. And I can tell you this with confidence: In joining the Club, you have made a very good decision.

It is not going to be easy. And it is not going to be fast. But it can be done. And if you give us your trust and follow our recommendations, you will achieve financial independence in seven years or less.

To accomplish this, I am going to teach you everything I have learned about acquiring wealth. That includes all that I learned from developing dozens of multimillion-dollar businesses and also everything that I have learned about investing.

I will also give you access to every person and organization I know of that are helpful in achieving this goal. In every channel of wealth building, there are people and businesses that have particular expertise. People and businesses I’ve come to admire. These will all be made available to you.

Begin Your Journey Today

Every journey begins with a single step. And your first step, as a new Member, is to read everything I am sending you this week. I want to begin strongly, by challenging your assumptions about what wealth is and why you are not yet wealthy.

Some of what you will read may not please you. You might find some of it obvious. If you do, then ask yourself: If it is obvious, why haven’t I already done it and achieved success in doing it?

You might find some of what I have to say condescending. You might feel “above it.” Again, I hope you don’t feel that way. I am not being condescending. What you might be hearing is my earnest and enthusiastic desire to excite and motivate you. That is, I assure you, all that is behind my words.

Your reading assignment for this week is mostly about change. It is based on the assumption that you are responsible for your current financial situation.

Please note: I didn’t say it was your fault. There may well have been unavoidable reasons that prevented you from becoming rich. But guess what? That doesn’t matter. It is still your responsibility to change your life. The government can’t and won’t help you. Neither will your banker or your broker or your friends and relatives.

Your future is your responsibility. It is up to you.

Facing this fact squarely and truly (not just saying it, but accepting it deep in your heart) is something you must do. And in the next week that is exactly what we will be doing together. As I said, it may not be easy. In fact, it may be the single biggest challenge you have ever faced in your search for wealth.

If you are already turned off by what I’m saying, I hope you will have the courage to face the truth about your situation and get beyond it. If you can’t do that, ask for a refund right now. Everything that follows will have no value to you.

I Will Teach You How to Succeed

One of my favorite aphorisms is a Zen saying: “The master will appear when the student is ready.” Most people take this to mean that when you are ready to learn something important, some new wise person will appear in your life. This is not how it actually happens in real life.

What happens is that the teacher has usually been around, trying to teach you for some time. He keeps saying things that you discount or ignore. And then one day you wake up and realize he was right all along. “So that’s what he meant!” you say.

I am hoping that you are ready to learn. The secrets I will be teaching you are the same secrets that I have given to at least a dozen individuals who I personally coached over the years… and all of them, without a single exception, became wealthy in seven years or less. (That’s why I’m willing to make that promise.)

So take some time today (not tomorrow—for tomorrow never comes) and begin to read over what I’ve sent you. Read it with an open mind. When you read something you think you know, ask yourself, “Do I really know this? Have I really done it? Have I really incorporated it into my life?”

The answers, if you are honest, will be a few yeses and many nos. But that’s fine. After all, if you had already applied all of the fundamental lessons of acquiring wealth, you would already be wealthy—and you are not!

I was poor once. I remember how that felt. It felt bad. I felt angry. I felt ashamed. But I didn’t spend a moment blaming anyone else for my situation. I decided that I had only one choice—and that was to change what I was doing.

If you are ready to do that, then I can help you. And of course, it won’t be just me. The entire DIYwealth Club team is excited about getting behind you on this. You are going to have all of the help you need.

Let me get back to the reason you joined this Club. You have an ambition, a worthy ambition. You want to become financially independent in seven years or less. I am confident that I can help you achieve this goal. But to do so, you must begin now.

As you get older, time speeds up. You know as well as I do that the next 52 weeks are going to go by very quickly. If you commit to change today, you will see a big difference one year from now. If you don’t, those 52 weeks will fly by just as quickly. The only difference is that you will be just where you are right now, frustrated at your lack of wealth and wanting a solution.

This is the best solution you are ever going to be offered. I promise you that. Please take advantage of it.

Starting by watching Lesson 1 here. 

All the best,

Mark

P.S. If you are serious about becoming financially independent, don’t put this off.

Set aside 15 minutes today and watch Lesson 1.

You say you want to change your financial life. Good. This is where that change begins.

If you cannot make time for the first lesson, you should ask yourself a hard question: How serious am I, really?

Start now.