A GoBundance Publication

OceanofPDF.com
Copyright ©2019 GoBundance. All rights reserved.
All rights reserved. Printed in the United States of America. No part of this
publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted
by any means—electronic, mechanical, photographic (photocopying),
recording, or otherwise—without prior permission in writing from the
author.
Cover design by Dino Marino
Interior design by Dino Marino
ISBN: 978-0-9982882-2-2
eISBN: 978-0-9982882-3-9

OceanofPDF.com
OTHER BOOKS BY THE AUTHORS OF
TRIBE OF MILLIONAIRES
David Osborn (with Paul Morris)
Wealth Can’t Wait : Avoid the 7 Wealth Traps , Implement the 7 Business
Pillars , and Complete a Life Audit Today!!!
David Osborn (with Hal Elrod)
Miracle Morning Millionaires : What the wealthy
do before 8.00 a.m. that will make you rich
Pat Hiban
6 Steps to 7 Figures : A Real Estate Professional’s Guide
to Building Wealth and Creating Your Own Destiny
Mike McCarthy (with Hal Elrod, Lindsay McCarthy
and Honorée Corder)
The Miracle Morning for Parents and Families : How to
Bring out the best in your KIDS and your SELF
Tim Rhode
1Life Roadmap Journal : The Basic Inner Coding Needed to
Dream, Plan and LIVE your best Life.

OceanofPDF.com
 PRAISE FOR
TRIBE OF MILLIONAIRES
“A wonderful story and a compelling guide to why
surrounding yourself with the right people
is so important to success.”
Jeff Hoffman, serial entrepreneur
and co-founder of Priceline.com
“This book has the potential to open your eyes
to the hidden forces that are determining your life.”
Rob Dial, founder of MWF Motivation Podcast
“My eyebrows nearly jumped off my face with excitement
when I started reading Tribe of Millionaires.
Why? Because I love business books that teach lessons
through a realistic parable. This book kept me fully engaged from the
first page to the last. You’re going absolutely to love it!”
Dr. Sean Stephenson, author of Get Off Your ‘But’ -
How to End Self-Sabotage and Stand Up for Yourself
“In my younger years I surrounded myself with people who eventually
helped me lose my wife, house, and family. To become the first human
being to run across the Sahara Desert, I had to surround myself with a
team of people who would allow me to finish. Today I only surround my-
self with those who add to my life and reject all those that make it ‘less
than.’ The lessons in Tribe of Millionaires are the lessons of my life.”
Charlie Engle, bestselling author & ultra-marathoner
“This book is a special chance to learn how to design a
legendary life from a special tribe of healthy, wealthy, and
generous Badasses. You gain insights into how powerful it is to follow a
different path to make your place in the world.
Tribe of Millionaires unveils a rarely used, yet
pressure-tested, method of changing one’s life, that is told
in a way that I’ll never forget.”
Christopher Lochhead, bestselling author of Niche Down

OceanofPDF.com
HOW STRONG IS YOUR TRIBE?
This book includes FREE access to the
GoBundance Tribal Strength Assessment.

Get your personalized results and learn how

to strengthen your tribe and transform your life at:

www.TribeOfMillionaires.com

OceanofPDF.com
 TABLE OF CONTENTS
FOREWORD BY HAL ELROD
INTRODUCTION - THE STORY BEFORE THE STORY
CHAPTER 1 - THE HAIL MARY
CHAPTER 2 - THE TICKET
CHAPTER 3 - THE FIRST EFFECT
CHAPTER 4 - THE TRIBE
CHAPTER 5 - THE SECOND EFFECT
CHAPTER 6 - THE THIRD EFFECT
CHAPTER 7 - ONE SHEET TO RULE THEM ALL
CHAPTER 8 - THE FOURTH EFFECT
CHAPTER 9 - THE GROTTO
CHAPTER 10 - THE FIFTH EFFECT
CHAPTER 11 - THE CLIMB
CHAPTER 12 - THE SIXTH EFFECT
CHAPTER 13 - THE GIFT
CHAPTER 14 - HOME
LESSONS - TRIBE OF MILLIONAIRES
GOBUNDANCE - THE “REAL” TRIBE OF MILLIONAIRES
PROFILE - DIEGO CORZO
PROFILE - AARON AMUCHASTEGUI
PROFILE - JOHN EDWIN
PROFILE - DANIEL DEL REAL
PROFILE - WALLY ELIBIARY
PROFILE - JOHN WHITE
ARE YOU READY TO PLAY AT A HIGHER LEVEL?
ABOUT THE AUTHORS
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

OCEANOFPDF.COM
 FOREWORD
BY HAL ELROD
There’s a certain irony in me being the first person you hear from on this
journey.
I’m probably best known for writing a book called The Miracle Morning,
that teaches you to wake up before everyone else and spend time in
solitude. It’s a practice that helps you take control of the most important
part of the day so that you can transform your life.
But there’s more to life than mornings. There’s a whole busy day that fol-
lows—a day of decisions to make, businesses to run, and work to do.
Unlike the morning, navigating the rest of the day successfully is anything
but solitary. Creating the life you want, it turns out, is very much a team
sport.
The famous author and entrepreneur Jim Rohn knew this well. His claim
that you become the average of the five people you spend the most time
with is perhaps the most important piece of wisdom I know. I believe those
words hold the secret to finding everything you want in life.
Yet, as profound and essential as they are, they’re almost universally ig-
nored—when it comes to Jim’s words, we tend to be all talk, no walk.
The authors of this book are on a mission to change that. GoBundance is a
group for men and women who want to lead epic lives— lives filled with
health, wealth, generosity and strong, connected relationships.
When I attended my first GoBundance event, I was still working on my
business dream of reaching $1 million in annual revenue. I quickly doubled
that after joining, and I’ve never looked back.
But GoBundance is much more than entrepreneurship and so much more
than networking. At its core, the group revolves around a deep commitment
to the things that are most important in life—things like relationships,
health, and abundance.
That was a commitment I needed to learn.
I used to say that family was the most important thing in the world. And I
believed what I was saying, too. Then I got cancer.
 That experience quickly woke me up to the fact that I was talking the rela-
tionship talk, but I was far from walking it. I was doing exactly what I’d
seen so many others do: ignore just how important the people around you
truly are, and how profound their impact is.
Too many entrepreneurs say that family is their number one priority. Yet
their lives tell a very different story. They are overscheduled, overworked,
and often overwhelmed.
With the help of GoBundance, I’ve gone from saying and believing that
relationships are the most important thing in my world to actually aligning
my life with that philosophy. Because of it, my business and my life have
flourished.
If you’ve struggled to make change, or it seems like you’ve done every-
thing right and something still seems wrong, my bet is that you’re discon-
nected from the fundamental truth that who you surround yourself with de-
termines your future.
Your opportunity to rediscover that truth—and change your life—lies in
this remarkable story.

Yours in abundance,
Hal Elrod
GoBundance Member & Author of The Miracle Morning

OceanofPDF.com
 INTRODUCTION
THE STORY BEFORE THE
STORY
Once upon a time…
Two guys meet at a real estate industry event. True story. We’ll call them
David and Pat, because those are their real names.
At the time, they were both hard-charging entrepreneurs in their 30s. A lit-
tle competitive by nature, a little driven by design, these two go-getters had
an idea: What if they could be better together than apart?
We know what you’re thinking—that they joined their companies and cre-
ated an epic new business that took over the world.
Wrong.
In fact, they kept their own businesses, but they used the power of work-
ing together to become more accountable, to leverage each other’s talents,
and to support each other when the going got tough.
It was a knock-out success.
One went on to become the top ReMax real estate agent in the world. The
other built a nine-figure net worth (and counting) and became a New York
Times bestselling author. (And lest you think it was all work, no play, they
also traveled the world with their families, transformed their health, and
gave a whole lot back, too.)
Along the way, their little accountability experiment grew. One day at an
industry event in Chicago, Pat met Tim, who would transform the group’s
values to embrace contribution and a more balanced life. Later, Mike and
Rock would also join, helping to lead the tribe’s beginning as a mastermind.
They got better at working together and supporting each other. They built
a specialized toolkit of processes and techniques to help leverage the power
of groups. And somewhere, on a long road trip across the southern US, they
came up with a new idea: What if we took what we have and brought it to
EVERYONE?
Right then, on that hot, straight line across Texas, GoBundance was born.
 GoBundance is a unique, group-based approach to help entrepreneurs and
business professionals lead epic lives. It’s a way of using the power of like-
minded people to do more than you ever could alone—not just in business,
but in your health, your relationships, and your lasting legacy here on the
planet.
That little idea—that we’re better together than apart—is what started all
of this, and it’s what this book is about. What you’re reading is our best ef-
fort to convince you that no matter what you think you can do alone (or bet-
ter yet, what you think you can’t), you can do it faster, better, easier, and—
best of all—more happily, with others.
What follows is a story about the power of groups to transform your life.
It’s about how something magical happens when you put the right people
together in the right ways. It’s about how groups can not only help entrepre-
neurs grow their businesses, but how they can help them heal, forge endur-
ing friendships, and, when all is said and done, find peace in a world where
peace isn’t always easy.
Abundantly yours,
The Founders of GoBundance
P.S. This book is a fictional story, but like any good tale, it has its roots in
truth. To discover the real-life transformational stories of GoBundance
members, read on to the end…

OceanofPDF.com
 CHAPTER 1
THE HAIL MARY
I sat in the car and listened to the rain hammer the roof.
Hail Mary Friday, I thought. How appropriate.
I looked at the building through the beating windshield wipers. It was a
sprawling century home at the edge of town—one of those majestic places
with just the right amount of haunted-house curb appeal.
At least I’m dressed for the occasion, I thought.
That was the only positive thing that I could come up with: I was appro-
priately dressed. Sad, but true.
The steady drum of the rain let up. I took a deep breath and stepped out
into the drizzle.
***
It was Jasmine who started calling it “Hail Mary” Friday. Leave it to my
wife to nail the perfect combination of brutal honesty and optimism.
It was also Jas who pulled the suit out of the deep recesses of my closet.
After some complaining on my part, I agreed to wear it.
She straightened my tie. “You look handsome,” she said.
“I think I look desperate.”
“Honey,” she said, patting my chest. “You are.”
“Very funny. I feel like a beggar. Like I’m asking for handouts.”
“How about we call it asking for help, instead? People actually do that,
you know.”
“Not this guy.”
She was right, though. This was a last-chance situation and I needed help.
Or a miracle, perhaps. My startup company had burned through cash like it
was on fire. Everything had taken longer than expected. Two years had
seemed to vanish, and now I was facing my worst nightmare: we were com-
pletely out of money.
Every direction I looked was as gloomy as the rain I was now walking
through. It wasn’t just the looming failure of the business. That was bad
enough. But if I didn’t find a fresh infusion of cash, I wasn’t going to make
payroll. I had a team of a dozen people counting on me. Their families, in
turn, counted on them. I felt buried alone under a mountain of responsibility
—a mountain that was about to let loose an avalanche of disappointment.
In a last-ditch attempt to hold back the crash, I’d arranged two meetings
for today—what had become Hail Mary Friday. More than two meetings
would have been better, but I’d already called in every favor and connection
I had to fund the business in the first place. My options were limited.
Somehow, I hated that part the most—the asking for help. For favors. In
the end, though, I’d ended up with two meetings. Two chances to save my
business.
I’d blown them both.
In both meetings—one over coffee, one over a desk—I knew the answer
was no before I’d finished shaking hands. The rest of the time was just awk-
wardly running out the clock, everyone knowing the outcome, everyone
waiting to move on.
I could hardly blame them, really. My company was in serious trouble,
and I didn’t have anything reassuring to say. I just need more time wasn’t an
investor pitch. It was the flailing, hail-Mary pass of a losing quarterback.
Two chances. Two failures.
And now this.
So much for Hail Mary Friday.
***
As I tugged opened the front door of the old brick mansion, I felt a twinge
of resentment. Why now? This was like kicking a man while he was down.
It felt so unfair.
Just get it over with, I thought. I’d show my face, and then I’d head home
to forget this week and avoid thinking about the one to come.
A deep voice pulled me from my self-pity. Just inside the door, a tall, bald
man in a black suit stood as if waiting for me.
“Good afternoon,” he repeated. “Can I help you?”
The man was in his fifties, I guessed, but he was a fit fifty. Tanned and
lean, he stood tall, with a kind face.
I looked past him into a wide atrium lined with a series of dark wooden
doors. Each bore a small sign.
 I looked back to the man. “Martinez,” I said.
The bald man paused, then nodded ever so slightly.
“It’ll be the quiet one,” I added.
He said nothing, but I thought I detected something around his eyes.
Something that said, Really? Are you so sure?
All he said was, “The second door on the left.”
I walked down the hall, but before I’d even reached the door, I knew it
was the wrong one. I could hear the dull roar of a crowd from inside, and I
looked back down the entryway, counting doors, looking for the one I must
have missed.
The bald man at the entrance caught my confused look and nodded at me,
adding, “That’s the Martinez gathering.”
I shrugged, turned the handle, then pushed the door open.
***
The room was packed. And not just with quiet groups of subdued funeral
goers. It was alive. The noise I’d heard outside the door was a pale shadow
of what was going on inside.
There were groups of people everywhere, nestled together, holding drinks,
laughing. Young kids ran around the room. Teenagers stood, awkward, but
not unhappy, against the far wall. Everywhere in the room I looked there
were people. Everywhere I looked there was life.
Except one place.
There, in an open casket at the front of the room, lay my father.
I slipped quietly through the crowd.
To one side of his coffin stood five men. All of different ages, but all
dressed in identical black suits. The same suits, I realized, that the bald man
at the front door had worn. The same healthy—and now that I saw them to-
gether—wealthy look. They just looked... prosperous.
At first, I thought they worked for the funeral home. But as I watched, it
was clear they were here as guests, not staff. They spoke amongst them-
selves—nodding, sharing a smile, a pat on the back. It was obvious they
knew each other well, and were close.
Who were these men? How did they know my father?
I walked closer to the coffin.
My first thought came out of left field: He looks better than he did twenty
years ago. That was a surprise. After all—who looks better in a casket than
they do alive? Somehow, the years had been kind to my father.
What was more surprising, I hated to admit, was that I’d been keeping
track of those years. I was a teenager the last time I’d seen my father. My
memories were not fond. He was self-absorbed. A failed businessman, de-
spite being a workaholic. He was also a drunk, and as far as I knew,
friendless.
That, I realized, was the biggest surprise of all. I was here for the funeral
of a man who I assumed had died broke, unhappy, and alone. Instead, I
found a room filled with vibrant energy. Filled with a community. It made
no sense. Unless funeral homes were hiring extras, something had changed
in my father’s life.
As I stood there, the room grew quiet.
One of the five men approached the coffin. He patted my father’s hand af-
fectionately, almost as if he were still alive. Then he placed a small white
card under the clasped hands, paused a moment, then stepped away. His
eyes shone with tears.
Behind him, another man in a black suit did the same. Then another. Each
man’s interaction was slightly different. But they all did the same two
things: placed a small white card under my father’s hands, and stepped
away in tears to join the rest of the suited men. Finally, the bald man
stepped up to the casket, and tucked a final card in with the rest.
I looked down at the collection of six cards. Each one was embossed with
a simple monogram:
ToM
I looked closer. There seemed to be words written on each card, but the
text was too small to read.
My curiosity flared up. What was on the cards? Who were these men? For
the first time in two decades, I realized I actually wanted to know some-
thing about my father’s life.
Before I could look closer, however, the six men moved to flank the
coffin, three on each side.
Too little too late, I thought, and felt an unexpected pang of regret.
The bald man—the one from the front door—closed the lid of the coffin
gently.
 Then, as if moving as one, the six men lifted the coffin from its pedestal,
and carried my father from the funeral home and out of my life for good.
***
The rain had let up by the time I left, but I felt unsettled inside. For years,
I’d told myself a story about an isolated, selfish man. A man who didn’t
know his priorities. A man who had no time for his family.
I couldn’t reconcile that with what I’d seen inside. A room filled with peo-
ple who, at least as far as I could see, genuinely cared about the man lying
in the casket.
A sadness spread through my chest. Had I gotten it all wrong? What had
happened over those twenty years?
I walked down the wet sidewalk to the curb and noticed the same tall bald
man from inside walking down the street. A long black car pulled alongside,
and he gracefully stepped in, the car barely slowing. In a hiss of wet tires,
the limo was gone.
Nice ride, I thought. Apparently, my father had traded up in the friends
department.
When I reached the curb, I could see paper under the windshield wiper of
my car.
Great, I thought. Your business is failing. Your father is dead. For the per-
fect Hail Mary Friday trifecta, here’s a parking ticket.
It wasn’t a ticket. Tucked under the wiper was a small envelope with
Ethan written neatly on the front.
Inside was a simple card, just like the ones in my father’s casket. On one
side were the same embossed letters:
ToM
I flipped it over. In the same neat handwriting as the envelope was the
following:
Ethan,

We need to discuss your father’s estate.

S.
OceanofPDF.com
 CHAPTER 2
THE TICKET
In the end, of course, it was Jas who convinced me to go.
“He’s just trying to control me,” I said. “This is just like when I was a kid.
It’s the same thing all over again.”
“Ethan,” she said gently. “Your father is dead.”
When she said it that way, it made me feel a little foolish. He is dead, I
thought. What harm can there be in finding out who he was?
That was immediately followed by a sense of sadness. My father is dead.
I pushed it away.
Jas was right. But what really tipped the scales was the argument that nei-
ther one of us wanted to speak aloud. It was like a checklist that I knew we
were both ticking off on our mental fingers:

1. We were broke.
2. We were just about to get a lot more broke. We were going to lose
the business, and almost certainly our home.
3. A mysterious stranger named “S.” had just invited me to discuss
my father’s estate. (Really? Who signs things with just an initial,
anyway?)
4. This “S” had a hell of a nice suit, and left in hell of a long limo.

It was a compelling list, but it made me feel squeamish. Like I was a

cliched TV villain, rubbing my hands in glee as a casket was lowered into
the ground.
Still, it was hard to ignore what might have just landed in my lap. The
business was in serious trouble, and maybe this was the miracle we needed.
Was it possible that Hail Mary Friday hadn’t been a failure after all?
“Does walking away from this do anything good?” Jas asked.
I had no answer to that. Which, I figured, was the same as saying, “No.”
***
 That was how, after a night of painful soul-searching, I found myself at
the address written on the back of the crisp, white card that the mysterious
“S” had left on my car.
I looked out and up through the windshield, craning my neck to see the
sleek glass skyscraper that towered over the block. I’d never been in the
building, but I knew the address. It was in one of the most expensive com-
mercial districts in the city.
Thank God it’s Saturday, I thought. I wasn’t sure I had a credit card with
enough space for parking.
I stepped through the front door to find a vast, marble-floored atrium. At
the opposite side, I could see a reception desk. I walked toward it, my foot-
steps echoing across the high glass ceilings, trying to look as if a guy who
couldn’t afford parking actually belonged here.
Finally, I gave up trying to be cool and simply gazed around in wonder.
This place is huge. Had my father worked here? I had no idea. I knew noth-
ing about him, beyond my unpleasant childhood memories.
Still, I couldn’t help but speculate. The closer I’d gotten to downtown that
morning, the more I’d begun to wonder. I had absolutely no idea what his
estate was worth, if anything. But still… was this my Hail Mary? My
miracle?
Don’t be weak, said a voice in my head. You don’t need charity.
But I needed something. My father had never given me anything as a kid.
I had to find my own way, make my own money, build my own life. Maybe
now was my chance to get something from him, even if it was just money.
“Sir?”
I jerked back to reality. A receptionist-slash-security guard stood at the
desk, his hands clasped behind his back.
“I...” I trailed off. I didn’t know what to say. Was there a law office here? I
had no suite number, not even a floor. I didn’t even know the name of the
person I was supposed to meet. What was I supposed to do? Wink and say,
“S sent for me, my good man,” and then wait for the secret door to open?
This wasn’t James Bond. People didn’t go by letters in real life.
“Sir?”
With no idea what else to do, I finally reached into my pocket and handed
him the white card with the embossed letters. T o M.
“Yes sir,” the man said. He reached below the desk, and I heard the click
of a button.
The wall beside the desk slid open to reveal an elevator.
I’ll be damned.
“Let me guess. There’s a martini in there? Shaken, not stirred?”
“Sir?”
“Never mind.”
But I thought I saw just a hint of a smile.
***
The elevator opened on an enormous office. Not into a hallway, or waiting
room, but right into the office. After a brief pause, I stepped into a breath-
taking, modern room. The walls were almost entirely glass, punctuated by
the odd stretch of bare concrete graced with stunning artwork.
There was a sitting area of leather couches. Across from that, a large con-
ference table. Illuminated glass art cases rose from the floor on concrete
pedestals.
“Hello Ethan,” said a deep voice.
I turned to see the tall bald man, once again in his black suit. The mysteri-
ous S, I thought.
He stepped from behind an old desk—it seemed tiny compared to the rest
of the room--and strode to greet me.
“Thank you so much for making the time for me,” he said. “My name is
Simon. I was one of your father’s closest friends.”
I felt an unexpected pang of jealousy.
Simon seemed to sense my discomfort. “I know you and your father
weren’t close. My job is… well, first things first. Please,” he said, “make
yourself comfortable.”
Simon had a formal, almost old-fashioned, manner. He spoke clearly, and
for the first time I picked up a hint of an accent. South African? Something
European? It made him all the more mysterious.
He motioned to one of the two chairs facing the tiny worn desk. As I sat, I
could see the same initial carved into the wood of the front. T o M.
As if by magic, a man appeared, carrying a tray of coffee. He offered to
pour. I helped myself.
The bald man walked to the window. It was only then that I realized how
high we were. This must be the most valuable piece of square footage in the
whole city, I thought. Despite myself, I began to speculate again about my
father’s will.
“It was your father’s wish that I be the executor of his estate,” Simon said.
“Is this my father’s business?” I asked.
“No. This is the main office of my business. Although your father and I
worked together many times.”
“Tom? That’s your business? I haven’t heard of it.”
Simon either hadn’t heard, or he was ignoring me. He continued to stare
out at the skyline.
“Your father’s will is quite specific,” he said.
“I can only imagine,” I said. It came out a little bitterly.
Simon’s eyes never moved from the skyline outside.
“It was his wish that his entire estate pass to you, his sole heir.”
I felt my heart quicken a little. Maybe something good could come of all
this, I thought. It was possible, wasn’t it? After all the resentment, the emp-
ty years, that perhaps now I was going to see some benefit?
He turned back to me. “There are, however, certain conditions.”
And there it was.
Of course there were conditions. Weren’t there always with my father?
Everything was an exchange. Everything was a transaction. This for that, tit
for tat.
Simon picked up on my shift in mood and turned back.
“Let me just itemize them for you.”
“Sure. Why don’t you do that?” Here we go.
He sat at the desk and opened a leather-bound folder. He lifted a sheet of
paper.
“There is some legalese,” he said. “I have a copy here for you. With your
permission, I’ll read just the salient points.”
“Read away.” I made no attempt to hide my irritation.
“I, Roberto Martinez, being of sound mind and body, do hereby bequeath
my entire estate and all its assets to my only son, Ethan, subject to the fol-
lowing conditions.”
I felt my hackles rise at that word again: conditions.
“Number one,” Simon continued. “Ethan will, within 24 hours, report to
the executor of my estate. Number two, Ethan will for seven days remain in
the custody of Simon and the other group members. On day seven, all my
assets will be transferred in full to Ethan.”
Simon put the paper down. “That is the essence. I should add that any and
all expense incurred during the seven days will be covered by the estate.
Which includes—”
He lifted some more papers, then pushed a letter-sized envelope toward
me. The same T o M logo.
“What’s that?” I didn’t bother picking it up.
“It’s a ticket,” Simon said.
“To where?”
Simon didn’t answer. He just folded his hands on his desk and waited.
So I waited.
Then waited some more.
“Fine,” I said at last. “What do I get?”
“Pardon me?”
I was heating up, now. “What do I get? If this is all just a big transaction
—Ethan does this, and then gets this—then I want to know what I’m
getting.”
Simon looked at me carefully. “Your father has left you something of
great value,” he said at last, in his clipped English.
“And that is…?”
“Ethan, your father’s legacy is of—well, a specific nature. But I’m afraid
I’m forbidden from revealing it until the end of our week together.”
That was it. I’d had it. “Oh, I know what the estate is,” I said.
Simon cocked his head.
“It’s bullshit,” I said. “Just like everything else about my father.” I stood
up. “If I learned anything from my father, it was how to cut and run. Thanks
for your time, but the answer is no.”
I walked to the elevator and stepped inside. I reached over to hit the “1”
button. I stopped, my finger poised over the button.
“By the way,” I said. “Nice office. Who’s Tom?”
“Tom?”
“Your company. I’ve seen the Tom logo everywhere. You’re Simon.
Who’s Tom?”
“Ah. That I can tell you. It’s not a name. And it’s not my company.”
The doors began to slide shut.
“It stands for Tribe of Millionaires.”
 I jammed my hand between the closing doors.
“Tribe of Millionaires?”
Simon just sat still, watching me, his hands still folded on his desk.
I held the elevator doors open.
I had no idea what my father’s estate was worth. Perhaps nothing. For all I
knew, this really was an effort to somehow control me from the grave.
But I also knew a Hail Mary when I saw one. Tribe of Millionaires?
Given what I was facing, that sounded like Tribe of hell yeah to me.
Which was why, after almost twenty years of intentionally separating my-
self from a man I barely knew, I found myself doing exactly what he asked.
***
I had barely reached the lobby and slid out through the “secret” elevator
door when reality set in.
What had I done? It was like my mind had been taken over by someone
else. Just seconds after turning down the offer, I’d walked right back into
the office and signed the paperwork on Simon’s desk. We’d shaken hands,
and I’d left holding nothing but a sealed envelope.
Now, here I was standing on the street realizing that I’d just turned the
next week of my life over to a perfect stranger.
I felt sick to my stomach. What had I done? My company was running on
fumes. I needed to be there 24 hours a day for the next week, not running
around with some “tribe” like a trust-fund brat.
Trust-fund brat. Was that what this was? As soon as Simon had said the
word ‘millionaire,’ I’d changed my tune almost instantly. Was that what I
was hoping to become?
I knew it wasn’t true. What I saw wasn’t easy money—it was an opportu-
nity to find financing for the business. If I could get a last-minute investor
on board, I was sure we could push through and get to market. I didn’t want
to be a trust-fund brat. I wanted to create something.
In the meantime, I had work to do. I was leaving in the morning. There
were calls to make. I had to pack.
Pack. I looked down at the envelope in my hands. Where was I even
going?
I ripped open the envelope, expecting to find a plane ticket. Instead, all I
found was another white card, and another address.
OceanofPDF.com
 CHAPTER 3
THE FIRST EFFECT
Breaking the news that I was leaving turned into a farce worthy of a reality
show.
With the exception of Jas, everyone I told—from my assistant to my in-
vestors and other team members—thought I’d lost my mind.
“I’m trying to save the company,” I told my operations manager, Andrew.
“Great. Where are you going?”
“I have no idea.”
“Ooookaaay. Who are you meeting with?”
“I’m not sure.”
After a few conversations like that, I gave up trying to explain. I just
switched to the “my father passed away,” story. Everyone understood that.
Everyone except me, that is.
Jasmine sat on the bed while I packed. It seemed to take forever. I had no
idea where I was going or what I was doing. Twice I slammed my suitcase
shut in frustration, saying, “That’s it. I’m not going.”
Twice Jasmine calmed me down. “Embrace it, Ethan,” she said. “Maybe
something good will come from your father after all.”
Right. Fat chance of that.
But I thought of Simon’s extravagant office, my father’s estate. And my
own humble office and the people counting on me.
And I kept packing.
***
The address on the card was for a private airfield about an hour from the
city.
I arrived to find a single plane on the runway—a private jet, shining in the
morning sun near a small terminal building.
Simon was waiting on the tarmac. He stood, now casually dressed, the
wind ruffling his legs of his pants.
“Where are we going?” I asked.
 “Onward,” he smiled.
Suitcase in hand, I took a deep breath, looked around the airfield, and
climbed the steps.
I ducked my head, stepped inside, then stood and gazed around the luxuri-
ous space.
“Is this your first time on a small jet?” Simon asked.
“Is it that obvious?”
Simon smiled again and motioned for me to sit in one of the large leather
seats. “Make yourself comfortable,” he said, in his clipped English. “We’ll
be taking off shortly.” He took a seat opposite that faced me.
“Look, I appreciate the sense of mystery,” I said, “But where are we
going? I had a tough time explaining this to the people around me.”
Simon cocked his head. “The people around you,” he mused. “How
perfect.”
He reached into the bag at his feet and pulled out the same monogrammed
leather folder I’d seen on his desk in the office.
“I’m not trying to be particularly secretive, Ethan,” he said as he opened
the folder. “I just know from experience—as did your father—that learning
new things is a process. It happens in small stages. In layers that build over
time.”
Learning? What was he talking about?
Simon pulled a single piece of paper from the folder. “We have a few
hours ahead of us, and I’d like to put them to proper use.”
Simon handed me the sheet of paper. It was blank, save for two parallel
columns running from top to bottom.
“You mentioned ‘the people around you’,” he continued. “And that’s real-
ly the perfect place to begin. While I arrange some details with our pilot, I’d
like to offer you a short exercise.”
He handed me a pen.
“I’d like you to write down—in no particular order—the people you
spend the most time with. Come up with ten if you can. Just jot down their
first names in the column on the left.”
With that, Simon stood up and walked to the cockpit. I could hear him
greet the pilot and co-pilot, and the murmur of conversation.
I looked out the window, across the tarmac. Is this crazy? I wondered, not
for the first time that day. Then I thought of Jasmine. Embrace it, she’d said.
 I looked down at the paper in my hand. Ten people. Let’s see. There was
Jasmine, of course. And her brother—he and I had become close, and I saw
him often. I also had two close friends from college who lived in the city,
and we had drinks once a week, and an ongoing text chat. They were the
guys I knew I could simply call anytime, with no reason.
That was four. Who else? I remember the couples we had dinner with reg-
ularly, and I jotted them down. That gave me ten.
I looked over the list. There it was: my ten closest friends. It was strange
to write them down like that—to commit it to paper—but it was true. Those
were the people I spent the most time with, the people I naturally fit with.
We vacationed together, ate together, laughed together. When the going got
tough, we supported each other.
I realized they all would have been at my father’s funeral if I’d told them
about it, and I felt a flush of shame.
There was a small jolt as the plane began to move, and I looked up to see
that Simon had returned to his seat.
“Buckle up,” he said with a smile. “You’ve got quite a journey ahead of
you.”
***
Moments later, we were in the air.
Simon busied himself with some paperwork. I simply looked out the win-
dow. There was, I realized, nothing for me to do. I felt like I’d just stepped
off some metaphysical cliff. Now I just had to wait to find out what waited
at the bottom.
An unexpected feeling of relief washed over me. I was committed. There
was no going back. For better or for worse, this was the path I was taking.
“How did you fare with your list?” Simon asked.
“Done,” I said. “Ten names. Very mysterious,” I added, with a smile. I
was beginning to relax. As crazy as this all was, here I was in a private jet. I
knew if Jas were here, she’d be elbowing me, saying, Smile, Ethan. This is
amazing. Embrace it.
Simon leaned forward.
“Now, for each name on the list, I’d like you to write down how much
they earn in a year.”
“Seriously?”
 “You might have to guess at some—we don’t always like to talk about
money in our culture—but do your best.”
I scanned the list. Some were easy—I knew what Jasmine’s income was
down to the penny. Especially recently, when every penny seemed to matter.
I wrote it down in the right column beside her name.
I could make accurate guesses about my two friends from school. We’d
talked about money enough, and I jotted down from my memory what they
earned.
Jasmine’s brother was an entrepreneur like me, but I had a ballpark guess
on his income from our late night, scotch-fueled business conversations. I
listed it in the column as well.
Our “couple” friends were trickier. We didn’t really talk about money—at
least not so overtly. But I knew about their homes and their cars, and I knew
about their jobs. I was pretty confident I could get within 10-15%, so I
wrote those numbers down as well.
So there it was. All the people closest to me and their incomes. How weird
is this?
“While you’re at it,” Simon said. “Write your income down as well.”
I wrote the number at the bottom of the page.
“Now, I want you to take the average of the ten incomes you wrote
down.”
I added up the numbers and divided by ten.
Whoa.
Simon saw the expression on my face and chuckled. “Remarkable, yes?
I’ve never seen it come out any other way.”
I looked at the list. My income wasn’t exactly the same as the average I’d
calculated, but it was so close that it was shocking.
“I could ask you to do the same thing for your body fat,” he said, “or any
number of other things, and you’d see a similar result.”
I thought of my friends. They were certainly different shapes and sizes.
But we weren’t that different.
I could feel Simon watching me.
“Okay,” I said. “So I hang out with people similar to me. Nothing odd
about that.”
“Not at all. It’s commonplace. But have you ever wondered why you’re so
similar?”
 I hadn’t. “I guess that we’re similar, so we tend to spend time together. We
fit.”
“You’re partly right,” Simon said. “But let me ask you this. Do you think
you spend time together because you’re similar?” he tapped a finger on the
sheet of paper. “Or are you similar because you spend time together?”
“Wait. What?”
Simon smiled. “I know it feels like a chicken and egg scenario,” he said.
“But there’s a deep truth here that’s important to understand for our time
together.”
“I’m all ears.” And I really was. Simon’s little exercise had my curiosity
muscles twitching.
“We tend to feel like we make conscious decisions about our lives,”
Simon said. “We make decisions. We take action. We get results. We shape
our destinies.”
“That’s certainly how I feel. I think every entrepreneur does.”
“We are indeed agents of change, Ethan. The successful people of the
world do make decisions and consciously shape their futures. What we
don’t realize is that subconsciously, there are powerful forces at work that
affect how we think and act.”
“What kind of forces?”
“We’re being subtly shaped by the world around us all the time,” Simon
said. “Just being here in this jet, for example, is changing you the way you
think. It might make you more motivated. Or it might make you insecure. It
might make you more confident. The point is that it’s having an effect be-
low the level of your awareness. It’s what we call the Influence Effect. It
means that, even without you being aware of it, your environment is con-
stantly changing you.”
I looked down at the list of names in my hand. “And that’s why my in-
come is so close to the average of my friends?” I asked.
“Precisely,” Simon said. “They’re a type of influence. In fact, the most
powerful form of the Influence Effect comes from the people around you.”
“Like peer pressure?”
“Peer pressure is an overt form of the Influence Effect,” Simon said, “but
the real effect is much deeper, and it’s invisible to almost everyone.”
“But I still feel like I make my own choices. I certainly didn’t collaborate
with all my friends and agree to make the same income each year.”
 “No, you didn’t conspire with your peers,” Simon said with a smile. “But
you were perhaps conspired against. The Influence Effect goes back much
farther than your peers, Ethan. Back to the early days of humanity, to a time
when the people around you weren’t just your friends or family. They were
your ticket to survival.
“Back then, it took enormous effort, persistence, and good fortune just to
live long enough to reproduce. Early humans drew on an advantage that
many species did—they banded together in tribes. You can call them packs,
groups, or families if you want, but they all served the same purpose: to
help us survive.”
“So the people in the tribe influenced each other?”
“It’s more nuanced than that. Belonging to a tribe offered survival advan-
tages. But in order to belong to a tribe, you needed to fit in. You had to be
like the tribe in order to be liked by the tribe.
“Now, hundreds of thousands of years later, we still have that drive. Deep
in our primitive brain, the neural circuits that push us to fit into the tribe
around us are still firing as if every day is a fight for survival.”
A light bulb began to glow in my mind.
“Is that why people dress alike?”
“Absolutely. How you dress, what you buy, how you eat—those things are
all influenced by those around you. But more importantly, so is how you
think. What you believe is possible, what you believe you are capable of,
these things are dictated by the Influence Effect. You are, whether you like
it or not, a product of your tribe.”
Just then, the pilot’s voice came over the cabin speaker.
Gentlemen, the voice said, we’re just a few minutes out. If you’d like to
buckle up, we’ll get you on the ground and on your way.
The plane banked and I leaned to look out the window.
Wow. Beneath me, a beautiful island sat in a twinkling turquoise sea.
Rimmed by beaches, covered in a thick jungle canopy, it seemed deserted,
except for the furthest tip of the island where a short landing strip had been
carved from the jungle. Offshore, I could see the light colors of sand and
coral reefs just off the beach, then a deepening blue further out as the water
deepened.
It was stunning.
Simon motioned at the island through the window. “It’s easy to think
you’re an island, Ethan,” he said. “In fact, you’ve been trained to think that
way. By your parents, by the media, by your peers. Our whole culture pro-
motes the idea that we’re all rugged individualists, making our way alone,
independent. We were explorers, then rugged pioneers, then self-made men,
then entrepreneurs. Our whole history has been told in a way that casts us as
self-sufficient lone wolves.
“It’s simply not true. No man is an island. In fact,” he nodded out the win-
dow. “No island is just an island. What looks like a lone island in the sea is
constantly being transformed by the Influence Effect. That beach is shaped
by the waves. That beautiful lagoon is the remains of an ancient volcano.
Like the island, you’re constantly being shaped by forces around you. And
the greatest of those forces is people.”
I buckled my seatbelt as the plane began to descend. Was it true? Were the
people around me truly that influential? I turned the idea over in my mind.
Somehow, it seemed right.
Moments later, the plane touched down with a soft thump.
“Here we are,” Simon said.
I looked down at the list of names in my hand. What did it all mean? Was
I supposed to abandon my friends and family if I wanted to succeed?
Simon followed my gaze. He pointed at the numbers. “It’s right there in
the numbers. The people you’re closest to change how you think, what you
believe, and how you act. Their influence can be an anchor that holds you
back, or sail that moves you forward; the choice is yours.”
There was a click, and the door of the plane opened. Bright sunlight
poured through the opening. A moment later, a wave of hot, humid air blew
across us. I could smell the sea.
“So…let me get this straight. The people I spend time with are actually in-
fluencing my income?”
“They’re doing more than that, Ethan,” he said. He picked up his brief-
case and stood up. “They’re determining your destiny.”
And with that, stepped past me and walked to the door.
“Wait,” I said. “Where did you learn this from? The Influence Effect—
who told you about it?”
Simon paused in the door of the jet, as if lost in thought. After a moment,
he turned back to me.
“Your father,” he said.
OceanofPDF.com
 THE FIRST EFFECT
SUMMARY

THE INFLUENCE EFFECT

Your destiny is shaped by those around you

You’re being subtly and powerfully shaped by your environment

—often below the level of your awareness.
The most powerful of environmental influences is the people
around you.
The people you choose to surround yourself with can be an anchor
that holds you back, or sail that moves you forward; the choice is
yours.

OceanofPDF.com
 CHAPTER 4
THE TRIBE
My father?
There was little time to process what Simon had said. As he disappeared
through the door, I grabbed my bag and followed him into a blast of tropical
heat and humidity.
I squinted in the sun as my eyes adjusted. As I’d seen from the plane, the
runway had been carved from the jungle. To one side of the airstrip was a
wall of green forest. To the other, a turquoise sea twinkling in the sun. In the
distance, a conical mountain loomed over the jungle.
Simon was already down the stairs. He placed a worn fedora-style hat on
his bald head and strode across the tarmac toward a waiting jeep.
***
Our driver greeted Simon like an old friend and gave me a firm
handshake. We hopped aboard the jeep and left the runway, following a dirt
road that disappeared into the dark of the jungle.
We sputtered along the path, apparently in no rush, the driver chatting
amiably with Simon, occasionally pointing into the deep green around us.
“You’ll have to adjust your watch to island time,” Simon said with a
smile. “Things tend to move a little more slowly here.”
I peered into the jungle alongside the road. Vines hung from enormous
trees. Colorful birds flitted from branches. Somewhere deeper, I heard the
chattering cries of something wild. Monkeys?
I felt a pang of anxiety. Should I really be here? Traipsing around some
tropical island while my company slowly sank into the sea back home?
I looked over at Simon. His formal manner seemed out of place here, yet
he was more relaxed than I’d seen him before. Was that the Influence Effect
at work? Maybe a little island time will help, I thought, and I resolved to
make the most of the day.
“The exercise from the plane,” I said to Simon. “Is it just my closest
friends that create the Influence Effect?”
“I used your closest friends because they’re a particularly effective exam-
ple,” Simon said. “But the Influence Effect isn’t just your friends and
family. It spans your whole life. The people around you change you. In sub-
tle ways, yes, but those changes compound over time. They stack up to
change the trajectory of your life.”
“Is it all a function of time? The more time I spend with someone, the
more influence?”
Simon thought. “Great question. Time is certainly a factor. But influence
can also be created by intensity.”
“How so?”
“A great example would be people who go through a highly emotional ex-
perience together. Think of troops in battle. Even a short period of time to-
gether bonds them very closely. In those cases, the Influence Effect can be
very strong.”
“Am I going to have to enlist to harness the effect?” I asked, with a smile.
“Nothing that dramatic. You simply need to make more conscious choices
about the people you allow to influence you.”
Hmm. I’d never thought about the people around me as being particularly
conscious choices. In my mind, I had personal relationships and profession-
al relationships—everything fell into one of those two buckets.
Was there anyone in my life that I’d consciously chosen because of their
influence? I didn’t think so. I’d chosen Jasmine for love—I knew that. I had
hired the people in the business for their skills. And my friends? Well, I sup-
pose they were just people I enjoyed. Had I been conscious in choosing
them? I wasn’t sure.
My thoughts drifted to other people in my life. Now that I was seeing
things through a different lens, I began to wonder: were they influencing
me? I had one friend who loved to exercise—we often did things outdoors
together, like hiking. Another friend was different. He loved bars and
restaurants and movies. When I was with him, I realized, I had fun, but I
tended to make different choices; not all of them were great ones.
Then it hit me: was I going to be asked to change friends? I couldn’t
imagine it. Whatever it was I was here to do, I was determined that aban-
doning my friends was not going to be part of it.
The jeep emerged from the jungle into a large clearing on the edge of the
ocean. The clearing was like a movie scene—coconut palms shot into the
sky, casting shade over a series of beautiful thatch-roofed buildings that fit
perfectly against the surroundings. No wonder I hadn’t seen anything from
the air.
The driver stopped the jeep in front of the largest of the buildings. It was
an enormous circular lodge made of a beautiful dark wood. A set of stairs
swept up to a long shaded porch.
“Here we are,” Simon said.
We unloaded our bags, but I still felt a nagging question about the influ-
ence effect.
“Simon,” I said. “I understand what you’ve been telling me about the
Influence Effect. It makes a lot of sense. I can already see how my life has
been shaped by the people around me.”
Simon took off his fedora and wiped the sweat from his brow.
“What I’m wondering,” I continued, “is how I put that to work. Am I sup-
posed to get rid of my friends and family that don’t… well, serve me?”
“Another great question,” Simon said. “And the answer is no. I don’t ex-
pect you to abandon your friends and family, unless they are truly a nega-
tive influence.”
I ignored the voice in my head that said, you already tried that with your
father.
“That’s good,” I said.
Simon slipped his fedora back on, and then picked up his suitcase.
“Rather than abandon your tribe, Ethan,” he said, “the plan is to expose
you to a new one.”
And with that, he marched up the stairs and beneath the thatched roof of
the huge building.
***
I followed Simon through a door into a large open room with a high roof,
crisscrossed with dark hand-hewn beams. The entire ocean-facing side of
the building was open to the beach and sea, and I could smell the salt
breeze.
There were perhaps forty people milling about the room in groups ranging
in size from pairs to four or five. Conversation filled the air, punctuated by
bursts of laughter. The air was almost electric—a hum of activity filled the
space.
It was clear that everyone in this room knew each other, and I scanned the
room, feeling out of place. At first, I recognized no one, then I caught sight
of one familiar face, then others: they were the men from my father’s funer-
al. They were casually dressed in shorts and comfortable shirts rather than
black suits, but there was no mistaking them.
Beyond the wooden railings and the low thatched roofline, I could see an
unbroken stretch of perfect sand beach. Wind rustled the fronds of the
palms along the shore. Inland, in the distance, the dark rock face of the
mountain rose above the jungle.
I realized that the room had grown silent. I pulled my gaze away from the
beach and realized that everyone in the room had stopped speaking. They
were all watching me, nodding, smiling.
I could hear the gentle lapping of waves on the shore. In the distance, the
cry of a seabird.
“What is this?” I asked Simon, under my breath.
“Ethan,” Simon said with a smile. “Welcome to the Tribe of Millionaires.”
***
The rest of the afternoon passed in a blur. Someone put a drink in my
hand, and Simon and I moved through the room, with Simon greeting each
person warmly and introducing me.
For the first few handshakes I tried to remember names, but eventually
there were just too many, and I simply tried my best to keep up.
What stuck with me long after the names had vanished was the way in
which so many of the men greeted me. “It’s so nice to finally meet you,
Ethan,” was a phrase that I heard over and over. It was if they all knew me
somehow. It was unsettling, but, I had to admit, it was also comforting.
I paid special attention to the men I recognized from my father’s funeral.
Like Simon, each seemed fit and healthy, but also gave off an almost palpa-
ble energy—a strange mixture of confidence without arrogance, content-
ment without complacency. Each was different, yet they were alike in that
I’d never met anyone quite like them.
After introductions, Simon gave me a tour of the compound and showed
me to my room—a basic but beautiful hut perched at the edge of where the
jungle met the beach.
“Freshen up,” he said. “Relax a little, get your bearings. Then meet back
at the main lodge for dinner.”
 I thanked Simon, then dropped my bags inside. I showered, then sat on the
porch of my hut, staring at the sea.
What was I doing here? Was this really the right choice?
I heard Jasmine’s voice in my head: Embrace it, Ethan.
She was right. I stood up and headed for the lodge.
***
I met Simon back in the large room, where he offered me a drink. We sat
looking out at the beach as people began to drift into the room.
“You told me earlier that you learned the Influence Effect from my
father,” I said after we’d sat in silence for a few minutes. “Where did he
learn it?”
“Your father invented it,” he said. Then he laughed, “That’s not true, actu-
ally. No one invented the Influence Effect. It’s like gravity. It’s always been
here and always will. You can’t escape it, only use it to your advantage.”
“But my father taught it to you?”
“Like the apple falling on Newton’s head, your father was just the first
person to notice and articulate it. He taught it first to me. Then, together we
taught it to others.”
That just doesn’t sound like my father. But, then again, how much did I re-
ally know about him?
As the sun set, we moved off the thatched veranda and down to the beach
where long tables had been set in the sand. Tall bamboo torches flickered in
the ocean breeze.
We served ourselves from platters of fresh seafood heaped over rice, and
strange but delicious vegetables that I assumed must be local to the island.
I leaned over to Simon. “I never thought I’d say this, but I’d like to ask
you more about my father.”
He nodded. “All in good time, Ethan. Your father was a great man.
Extraordinary. It would be my privilege. But tonight,” he said, motioning at
the table around us, “just relax. Enjoy. You have a lot ahead of you.”
Extraordinary? My father? A lot ahead of me? One mystery after another.
Embrace it, Jas said, in my inner ear.
As we ate, a full moon rose above the mountain. The waves, smaller now
in the night, splashed smoothly against the sand.
As the buzz of conversation and laughter continued long into the night, I
looked up at the stars overhead.
Embrace it.
For the first time in as long as I could remember, I felt something inside
me. A long-forgotten sensation.
It was just a glimmer, a beginning. But I could swear that it was a sense of
peace.

OceanofPDF.com
 CHAPTER 5
THE SECOND EFFECT
I awoke disoriented, reaching for an alarm clock that wasn’t there.
A strange jungle cry chattered in the distance. A wave crashed on the
beach.
The island.
It all came flooding back. Simon. The flight. The beautiful island, the jeep
ride. And the night of warm conversation.
And that feeling—that sense of being at peace. At being home. Was it all
real?
As dinner had carried on into the night, I’d eventually felt the day catch-
ing up to me. Simon had noticed my head nodding, and we excused our-
selves. That path back to my “room” had been lit with torches, and within
minutes, I was in the comfortable bed with a pale mosquito net hung over
me like a canopy. It was beautiful.
Now, in the morning sunlight, I stared up at the shimmering canopy.
Jasmine would love this.
Damn! I’d forgotten to let her know I’d arrived safely. She’d be worried
sick.
I reached for my phone and switched it on. Had I really just gone an en-
tire day without looking at my phone? It was hard to believe.
I dashed off a quick message to Jas, but it was no sooner sent when a bar-
rage of inbound messages began.
The last of my peaceful feeling vanished. Here was reality finding me
even here on a remote island. One message was flagged with a subject line
in ALL CAPS. I sighed, and clicked on it.
It was from Andrew, my operations manager, and probably the person I
spent the most time with. In our small office, he did a little of everything,
but he’d insisted on the title of VP of Operations—which I’d given him. To
me, it was little more than what was printed on a business card, but it was
important to Andrew.
I knew when I hired him that I wasn’t a detail guy. It was a strength, in a
way, but also a weakness, and I needed someone who could focus on those
things.
Lately, though, Andrew’s attention to detail had become almost pathologi-
cal. The more we moved into crisis mode at the office, the more I needed
him to be flexible, but as things got trickier, he became more entrenched in
his procedures.
I knew that it was beginning to bother me, but this morning I realized I
was more than bothered. I was angry at his message. Even though he was
simply keeping me up to date, I found myself feeling resentful that I
couldn’t seem to escape, even here.
As I considered how to reply, I heard a noise on the porch of my hut. A
small, white envelope slid under the door.
I climbed out of bed and retrieved it. It carried the usual T o M embossing
that I’d become familiar with. Tribe of Millionaires. Only then did it hit me
that I’d just met the actual Tribe.
I opened the envelope. There were two pieces of paper inside. The first
was a handwritten note:
Good morning Ethan,
See you for breakfast at 9. Dress for hiking.
We have ground to cover.
- Vikram
Vikram. I’d met him the night before. He was one of the men who’d car-
ried my father’s casket, and was, in many ways, Simon’s opposite. He was
short, with dark skin and thick, bristly grey hair. A chiropractor, if my over-
loaded memory was correct.
The second piece of paper was thick white cardstock, printed with the
following:
THE INFLUENCE EFFECT
Your destiny is shaped by those around you
I thought back to the exercise on the jet. It was a compelling argument.
One, apparently, that Simon had learned from my father.
I dropped the card on the dresser, got dressed, and headed to breakfast.
 ***
Vikram was exactly as I remembered him from the night before, short and
incredibly warm, with a near-constant smile.
He gave me a firm handshake. “How are you feeling? Overwhelmed?”
“Exhilarated, I think.” It was true. Despite the challenges awaiting me at
home, I felt more optimistic than I had in ages. “Thank you for the reminder
of the Influence Effect. I’ve been thinking about it almost constantly.”
“It’s a compelling idea,” Vikram said, beaming. “And, I can assure you,
it’s quite true. I’m living proof. If it wasn’t for your father’s theories, I
might be in a very different—and much worse—place.”
There it was again, this mention of my father. I was curious to know
more, but for the rest of breakfast, we were interrupted almost constantly by
a stream of other tribe members who arrived steadily for breakfast.
It was nearly an hour before we wrapped up, and I followed Vikram out-
side. “I hope you like walking,” he said. “We do a lot of it here.”
He led me away from the main lodge, onto a path that meandered away
from the beach, and into the jungle. The green canopy was alive with the
sounds of birds and other chattering creatures.
“Yesterday,” he began, “did Simon ask you to identify the people you
spend the most time with?”
“He did. It was very insightful.”
“Indeed,” he smiled. “I did the same exercise once, long ago. The
Influence Effect states that you are a product of your environment, in partic-
ular the people around you. Choose the wrong people, and they hold you
back from your potential. Choose the right ones, and they help you to reach
it.”
“I think I’ve become a believer in just a few hours,” I joked.
“Good,” Vikram said. “Very good. But my job today is to tell you what
the Influence Effect doesn’t reveal.”
“What it doesn’t?”
“Yes. It teaches us that the people around us change us. But it doesn’t re-
veal the extent. It doesn’t tell us just how much. That’s my job.”
Vikram paused on the jungle trail. He pointed into the canopy to where a
group of monkeys swung nimbly across a series of thick vines.
“I’m a chiropractor,” Vikram said, “so I deal with the nervous system.
Your body contains a vast network that underlies everything else. It’s that
network that controls your organs, maintains your health, and allows you to
run, jump, breathe, and,” he smiled and motioned to me, “have a
conversation.”
Vikram was incredibly personable. I don’t think I’d ever met someone
who made me feel more immediately comfortable.
“Your nervous system,” Vikram continued, “is simply a collection of con-
nections. Like those vines allow the monkeys to connect, your nerves allow
your various body parts and functions to communicate with each other.
When that network works well, it’s a great boost to the system. But take
away those vines,” he said, “and the monkeys would have a tougher time
getting around.
“The people around you are like a network, too,” he continued. “And the
number and quality of those people affects your system—your ability to
‘get around’.” He smiled.
“Makes sense,” I said. “That’s the Influence Effect.”
“Yes,” he said. “But there’s more to it. Do you have a phone?” He asked.
“Of course.”
“I imagine you use it a lot,” he said.
“Probably more than I should,” I admitted. “But it’s hard to imagine life
without it.”
“It’s an incredibly useful tool,” Vikram said. “But let me ask you this. If
you were the only person with a phone, how useful would it be?”
I didn’t have to think long to answer. “Not at all. I couldn’t message or
call anyone. It would be pointless.”
“Exactly. What if just one more person had a phone—say, your wife, for
example.”
“That would be better, but certainly nowhere near as valuable as if every-
one I knew had one.”
“Precisely,” Vikram said. “The more people in your network who have a
phone, the more valuable the connection is. In telecommunication technolo-
gy, there’s a law for that. It’s called Metcalfe’s Law. It says that the effect of
the network grows in proportion to the square of the number of connected
users.”
“Wait…what?”
Vikram chuckled. “That’s a fancy way of saying that effect of the network
doesn’t just go up in a straight line. It gets proportionally more valuable. In
our tribe, we have a similar rule. It’s called the Multiplier Effect. It says that
whatever you do alone, you can do far better in a group.”
I thought about this. “So. When I’m alone, I’m like a single cell phone.
I’m not that useful.”
“Yes!” Vikram said. “And as you surround yourself with more people,
your ability to make things happen is multiplied.”
“Hmm. Is this true of any group?”
“Ah… excellent question. No. The Influence Effect is always at work. A
broken phone doesn’t add to the value of a network. It may even decrease
the value. Choosing to surround yourself with the right people is still criti-
cal. What I’m telling you is that those people don’t just add to your efforts.
They multiply them. The right group compounds. The wrong one, however,
just confounds. It gets in the way.”
We came to a fork in the trail. Ahead of us, the trail began to climb slight-
ly, and I guessed we were getting closer to the large mountain at the island’s
center.
Vikram followed the branch to the left.
“We’ll be taking that trail later this week,” he said. “For now, we can fol-
low this back.
“What’s happening later this week?” I asked.
“Ah. A special event,” Vikram replied, then said nothing more.
Fine, I thought. Keep your secrets.
A pair of monkeys scampered through the trees overhead, and I mulled
over what Vikram had said about the Multiplier Effect.
“I’m not saying I don’t believe you,” I said to Vikram. “But how exactly
does the Multiplier Effect work? I mean, phones are one thing, but a
telecommunications network is a lot different than a group of people.”
“It is indeed,” Vikram said. “But the effect still holds. In the context of
people, however, the effect is due to some very specific reasons.”
“What are they?”
Vikram was silent for a moment. “When I joined the Tribe of
Millionaires,” he said, “I was struggling in my chiropractic practice. I knew
intuitively that being alone wasn’t helping, but I didn’t realize the true value
of the people around me until I experienced it. After I joined the tribe, my
business literally tripled in just a few months.”
 “Really?” I could certainly use some tripling, I thought.
“Really,” he said. “All I had to do was to let the network work. The
Multiplier Effect took care of it from there.”
“I’d love to hear a bit more,” I said. “How did the effect really work?”
“Funny you should ask,” he replied. “I always feel like the best way to
learn something is to experience it. I understand from Simon that you’re in
some difficulty with your business.”
Have these guys been talking about me? I wondered. How does Simon
even know that?
“You could say that,” I said.
“I hope you don’t mind,” he said, “But I’ve made arrangements with the
tribe. With your permission, I’d like to show you the Multiplier Effect in
action.”
***
When we arrived back at the main lodge, there were a dozen or so tribe
members gathered on the porch. Several were sweaty from morning runs.
Another group carried diving masks and fins. Clearly, this was an active
bunch.
“Good morning everyone,” Vikram said. “Thanks for coming out. You all
met Ethan last night. I’ve asked you here today to help us bring a little tribal
magic to Ethan’s business.”
The assembled members took seats around tables. Vikram motioned to
me. “Ethan, why don’t you give us a quick summary of your business and
the challenges you’re facing.”
“Uh…sure.” I stood awkwardly in front of the group. I looked out over
their heads at the ocean and tried to figure out where to begin. I felt like I
was at some sort of support group. Hello, my name is Ethan and I’m a
failure.
I felt strangely nervous. My palms began to sweat. “I… uh… I,” I stam-
mered. The group waited expectantly. Finally, I blurted out in one rapid
stream, “We’re-out-of-money-and-nothing-is-
working-and-it’s-all-a-failure.”
My revelation was met with silence.
One man leaned back in his chair. Tall and stocky, he was built like a re-
tired linebacker. His sheer physicality seemed to grant him a certain author-
ity, and I recognized him immediately. Like Vikram, he was one of the pall-
bearers from my father’s funeral.
“Well,” he said in a gruff voice, “You nailed the quick part.”
I felt my face redden.
Vikram rescued me. “Ethan,” he said, “why don’t you tell Terry and the
rest of us a little more about your business itself?”
Terry. Vikram. Simon. I was slowly getting to know those closest to my
father.
“Sure,” I said. I took a deep breath and tried to center myself. “We make
software that allows fitness and wellness centers to offer rewards for regular
attendance.”
“What kind of rewards?” It was the linebacker-sized man again, Terry.
I began to relax. I was in pitch mode now. This I can do, I thought.
“Gyms, yoga studios, and the like—they work on a membership system.
The customer pays a monthly fee and uses the service as much or as little as
they want.”
I noticed heads nodding around me. I began to settle in.
“The problem is that attrition is high. People sign up at the start of a new
year, for example, and use the gym for a week or two, then end up cancel-
ing their membership early, or not renewing.”
“So where do you fit in?” one man asked.
“We combine retail and consumer service partners with an app that tracks
attendance. When people work out, they get reward points that they can use
at businesses in the area, or with online vendors.”
“How do you get paid?” Terry asked.
“We get a small monthly fee for every active user that uses the system.”
“In essence,” another man said, “you get a piece of the monthly member-
ship in exchange for increasing customer retention.”
“Exactly.” Wow, I thought. These guys are sharp. When I pitched this idea
to gyms and studios, it was always an uphill battle. I often had to start by
explaining the basic premise of customer retention, period.
I was, I realized, in a room of very different people. The Influence Effect, I
thought.
“So what’s the problem?” Terry asked.
I refocused. “Well, it took a lot longer than we thought to create the rela-
tionships with the neighborhood partners. But we eventually got a test mar-
ket up and running.”
“That doesn’t sound like a problem.”
It is if you’re broke, I thought. But I remembered Vikram’s story. Let the
network work. Maybe he was right. The delay was just that—a delay. And,
now that I was facing it down, I knew it was more of an excuse.
I took a deep breath. “The real problem,” I said, “is that it hasn’t been
working.”
No one spoke.
This was the first time I’d admitted it aloud. In fact, I hadn’t told anyone
this. Not even Jasmine. Especially Jasmine. Some of my more astute team
members could tell the results weren’t meeting targets, but I kept up a game
face. People just have to learn, to change their habits, I’d say. But privately
I thought, I’m trying to build a company based on the idea that habit
change is hard. And now I’ve just bet everything on yet another habit
change.
I looked out at the ocean. I felt like I was taking a deep dive.
I turned back to the group and explained how our system just didn’t seem
to be leading to increased attendance or retention. All it did was grant re-
wards to the same people who would be going to the gym anyway.
“Ah,” Terry said. I could hear some hushed mumble and murmurs among
the group members.
“Ethan,” Terry said, “We have a process for these types of things. Would
you be open to trying it out?”
“If it’ll help, I’ll try anything.”
For the next twenty minutes, Vikram guided the group through a discus-
sion based on my business. It was clear they’d all been through the process
before, but for me, it was a revelation. It began with a clear statement of the
goal, which Vikram wrote on a whiteboard he’d retrieved from a corner of
the room:
To generate possible solutions for Ethan’s business problem
“Okay, Vikram said, “Ten minutes, groups of six.”
There was a grinding of chairs and tables and the group quickly broke into
three smaller groups. Vikram and I stood aside, as the groups immediately
dove into animated conversation.
“What are they doing?” I asked Vikram.
 “They’re generating ideas,” he said. “Brainstorming.”
“Don’t they need me to be involved?”
“You will be,” he said. “But not yet. You’re too close to the problem. For
now, you have to let the network work.” There was that phrase again.
After ten minutes, Vikram stopped the groups. “Okay,” he said. “What
have you got?”
A spokesperson from each group got up and began to list off ideas.
Vikram jotted them down in point form on the board. They covered a wide
range of ideas from quit to get better/more partners. Most I understood im-
mediately, and in fact, had been discussed already back in the office. A cou-
ple jumped out at me, however, and I pointed at them.
“Could I get some more on these?”
Vikram read the first one. “Take the same infrastructure to a different
industry.”
A short man with glasses from the second group raised his hand and stood
up. “Hi, Ethan. I’m Davis. That was me.”
I recognized the man as another of the pallbearers from my father’s
funeral.
“You’re rewarding people for something,” Davis continued. “I see that.
It’s a great idea. But if people don’t go to the gym, nothing really happens.
There’s no penalty.”
“That’s true,” I said.
“So your business is about the carrot, not the stick.”
That’s an intriguing way to look at it, I thought.
“So what if you brought your idea to a different industry—one where
there was already more incentive to do the behavior? Perhaps one where
there was already a stick, and you could add your carrot?”
“Like what?”
“Well. I’m in multi-family real estate,” Davis said. “Apartment buildings,
condominiums. I was thinking maybe your system could be used to reward
people for paying rent on time, reporting maintenance issues promptly,
things like that. Those things do have a penalty for not doing them—either
in the form of late fees, or inconveniences, or repair costs—but people still
struggle to take action. If I could reward my tenants for the right behavior,
that might be helpful for everyone.”
I had never even considered switching industries. We were so locked into
our idea that it wasn’t even on our radar. It would mean a lot of effort, but—
could it work?
“Thanks, Davis,” I said. “I never thought of that. We already have the
partners in place. I guess it could be done.”
Davis nodded and sat down.
“How about this one?” Vikram read off the second one I’d asked about.
“What if you paid people in cash to work out?”
A different man stood up—yet another of my father’s pallbearers. “G’day
mate,” he said, in a thick Australian accent. “I’m Bruce.”
Really? I thought. An Australian named Bruce?
Simon, Vikram, Terry, Davis, and now Bruce. I tried to keep track of the
names.
“This one came up in our discussion,” Bruce continued, “and we thought
it was worth considering, too.”
“How would it work?” I asked him. “I mean, we can’t even pay our bills
right now.”
“You’ve already got a network of partners, right? The people that provide
the rewards in exchange for exposure?”
“Yes. Hundreds, in fact. It was the hardest part—other than making mon-
ey, that is.”
“We actually did some additional brainstorming on this one,” Bruce said.
“We went a little deeper. We have a list here that you can look at, but here
are a couple of possibilities.”
Another man handed him a sheet of paper, and Bruce read from it.
“One was what we called ‘micro-sponsorship’. Get people to post to so-
cial media or use branded swag when they work out, in exchange for being
paid for each gym visit. It’s basically like taking amateurs, and ‘sponsoring’
them to work out as if they were athletes. The network you’ve created to
give rewards could provide cash rewards instead for people becoming walk-
ing billboards.”
Bruce scanned the list.
“Another was a to create a secondary marketplace to convert the rewards
you’ve set up back into cash. I might not want my rewards points for the lo-
cal sandwich shop, but if there’s a way to convert them to cash, I might be
more motivated. It’s been done before in other reward systems.”
I’d never considered it. It was a complete reversal. Pay people to
exercise? In cash? Was it even possible?
As I stood in amazement. Bruce spoke again. “I have a contact in the
credit card reward business. I’m almost sure he can connect you with some-
one who could help you.”
“Likewise,” Davis said. “Plenty of contacts in real estate. In fact, I’m per-
sonally interested. If you want to discuss further, just let me know.”
***
After a few more questions and some discussion, we ended the session. As
the men drifted off in twos and threes, I was astonished by how nonchalant
they seemed. As if completely transforming someone’s entire business was
just all in a morning’s work.
“Well?” Vikram said. “Was that helpful?”
“Wow.” I paused, almost breathless. “That… it… this could be worth a
fortune to my business.”
“That’s what the Multiplier Effect teaches us,” Vikram said. “The right
kind of influence doesn’t just add to your efforts. It compounds over time. It
multiplies.”
“I’m still not sure I really understand what just happened,” I said.
“You’re seeing very specific elements of the multiplier effect,” Vikram
said. “When Terry asked you about your business, he was digging for clari-
ty. To push you to more clearly define your situation.”
“Well, he succeeded,” I said. “That was the first time I’ve ever stated the
real problem we’re facing.”
“Excellent,” Vikram said. “Then, when the group began to bat ideas
around, they were leveraging off each other, increasing the creativity of the
group as a whole. One idea would spring from another, creating new ideas
that simply wouldn’t come up without that group dynamic.”
Vikram pointed at the two ideas circled on the whiteboard. “Then, once
you’d focused in on a possible opportunity, the group was able to provide
you with connectivity—people in their network that you could tap into to
test the idea or put it into action.”
“Clarity, creativity, connectivity,” he summarized. “Those are the ele-
ments that multiply what you can do alone. You simply cannot get the same
results on your own in those areas.”
“The Multiplier Effect,” I said, in awe.
 “The Multiplier Effect,” Vikram said, smiling.
***
I spent the next hour back in my hut—although hut was hardly the right
word, I realized—furiously scribbling notes. It was like my brain had been
split open, my mind widened, and ideas were pouring out.
This could work, I thought. We could pivot. Change directions. We could
stay alive.
No, I thought.
More than stay alive. We could thrive.
We could multiply.

THE SECOND EFFECT

SUMMARY

THE MULTIPLIER EFFECT

The right group of people compounds your efforts.

The right group doesn’t just add to your efforts—it multiplies

them.
Multiplication happens through creativity, clarity, and
connectivity.
The best groups don’t make decisions for you. They give you the
raw ideas for more options, the clarity to choose the best course,
and the connections to help execute faster and better.
The wrong group confounds. The right group compounds.

OceanofPDF.com
 CHAPTER 6
THE THIRD EFFECT
I awoke the next morning to another envelope under the door. As with the
previous day, it contained two pieces of paper.
The first was a note:
Ethan,

Pier. 9AM.
-Terry
I remembered Terry from the brainstorming session the day before. He
was the gruff, linebacker-sized man. Apparently, he was also a man of few
words.
The second piece of paper was another card embossed with the T o M
logo:
THE MULTIPLIER EFFECT
The right group of people compounds your efforts.
Again, I thought back to the previous day’s session, and the incredible in-
sight the group had shown for my business. I should follow up with Davis
and Bruce, I thought. Their suggestions were so creative, and after thinking
it through the night before, I had a way in which I could perhaps use both
their ideas.
I picked up my phone to message both men, since they had given me their
contact information after the session. Immediately, however, my attention
was captured by multiple messages from Andrew at the office.
More ALL CAPS.
More Urgent Requests.
More exclamation points. God, how I was coming to hate exclamation
points.
To be fair, Andrew wasn’t the only one. There were other messages—
from other staff, from investors. As I read through them, I felt my optimism
slipping away.
Damn it, I thought. I can’t do my job when I’m being hounded by a group
of—
I paused. A group. I looked at the card Terry had left. The right group of
people compounds your efforts.
The bedside table was covered in paper from my previous night’s work. I
began to pick through the sheets, tossing aside them this way and that, try-
ing to find what I wanted.
“There you are,” I said to the empty room.
In my hand, I held the matching card Vikram had left me. The Influence
Effect: Your destiny is shaped by those around you.
I looked at the two cards, then down at my phone with its list of urgent
messages.
I sat down and began to type.
Five minutes later, I was out the door.
***
After a quick breakfast in the main building, I hurried down to the beach
where a long wooden pier jutted into the turquoise water.
Several small boats and a pair of jet skis were tethered in the shallows. At
the end of the dock, I could see men gathered around a large covered boat.
Even from a distance, I recognized the towering figure of Terry, who
loomed a few inches over everyone else.
I walked quickly down the pier. Terry nodded at me.
“You’re late,” he said.
“Sorry,” I said. “I had a few things to sort out at the office.”
Terry looked as if he might say something, but instead, he handed me a
mesh bag. In it were a set of fins, a dive mask, and some other gear.
“Ever been scuba diving?” he asked.
“No,” I said. “I’ve been in the water a lot. I’m a good swimmer. I can
snorkel. But I’ve never actually been diving.”
“You’re in for a treat,” he said. “Climb aboard.” He turned to the other
two men. “Let’s do this.” One of them hopped aboard and started the boat’s
engines. The other began to untie the dock lines.
I grabbed the railing and stepped aboard.
 ***
Moments later, the boat was cruising smoothly over the sea. I turned my
face to the sun and felt the salt breeze in my hair. Ahh. More than ever, I
was sure I’d done the right thing before I’d left my room.
I turned to Terry. He stood at the rail of the boat, staring out at the sea. It
was difficult to tell how old he was, but I knew one thing for certain: he was
fit. He was tall, muscular, tanned. He had to be in his fifties, yet he looked
as strong as a twenty-year-old.
“I’m sorry I was late,” I said to him. “I got your card this morning, and I
guess it came at the perfect time. I wanted to put the lessons to work—the
Influence Effect and the Multiplier Effect. So I did. Or, at least I think I
did.”
“How so?” Terry asked.
“As you know, we’re in a bit of a crisis in the business. I’m trying to lead
us through it, and I think that being here can help. But every time I feel my-
self getting the clarity and the headspace to see things from a higher level, I
get jerked back to reality by details at work. My team is constantly on me.”
Terry nodded but said nothing. The boat began to slow, then the captain
stopped the engines, and we drifted to a stop in the still water.
“Anyway,” I said, “that’s why I was late. I told my team I was unavailable
for the week. That I understood the situation, and I needed their help so I
could lead us through it. I think cutting them off will give me a few days
grace to learn from the Tribe.”
“That was a good call,” Terry said.
“Thanks, I—”
“But,” he said, cutting me off with a wave. “That doesn’t mean you can be
late.”
What a hardass, I thought.
Terry looked over the side of the boat, then motioned to me. I leaned over
beside him.
Wow. The water was like glass. I could see straight down to a stretch of
white, sandy sea floor, dotted with coral outcroppings.
Everywhere I looked there were fish. Fish of all sizes, colors, and shapes.
They flitted in and about the coral, some in schools, some alone.
“Incredible,” I said.
 I watched the fish spin and weave around each other. They never collided.
It was like an infinitely complex dance, where every fish somehow knew
what to do.
“There are so many different kinds,” I said, awestruck.
Terry stepped away from the rail of the boat. “A lot like life, in a way. It
isn’t one big homogenous pool of like-minded people.”
“No kidding.” I grinned, but Terry didn’t crack a smile.
“You were smart to create some time here this week,” he said. “But re-
member, there will always be those around you who are difficult. You’re al-
ways going to have people who make demands on your time, or who don’t
see things your way.”
Terry tossed me a short-sleeved wetsuit.
“That doesn’t mean that they’re bad people,” he continued. “All it means
is that you have to manage their presence in your life. This Tribe isn’t about
isolating yourself from the world, or from people who don’t see things your
way. It’s about learning how those around you affect you, and using that
knowledge to everyone’s advantage.”
The captain barked a quick command. A few moments later, the crew
dropped anchor, and Terry began to pull out dive gear. Tanks, regulators,
weight belts—they were all things I recognized but had never used.
“Don’t worry,” Terry said, “I’m going to take you through some short
training exercises. I’ll show you how all the gear works, get you comfort-
able, and then we’ll do a safe dive in very shallow water.”
Terry handed me a mask, and for the next hour, he took me through the
basics. We spent some time in the water with just our masks on, looking at
the myriad of colored fish. He taught me to clear water from my mask, and
how to move safely around the reef, and how I shouldn’t touch anything.
He watched as I explored. I sensed he was trying to gauge my comfort
level.
Back on the boat, we dried off and Terry showed me how to assemble my
scuba gear. He attached a set of long hoses to the top of a tank.
“This is your regulator,” he said, pointing to a house with a mouthpiece at
the end. “It’s what you’ll breathe from underwater.”
I pointed at a second mouthpiece on another hose. “Why are there two?”
“Great question.” I could sense Terry’s gruff exterior start to slip away a
little. He clearly loved the ocean. “This is a spare regulator. We call it an oc-
topus.”
“So if the other one breaks, I use that one?”
“Yes. But it serves an important second purpose. It’s also a spare for your
buddy—that’s me. If my equipment fails or I run out of air, I can breathe
from this until we can get safely back to the surface.”
Terry attached one end of the regulator to the valve on the tank.
“The octopus brings up the most important part of scuba,” he said. “And
that’s the buddy system. You and I are buddies.”
“Aw, shucks,” I grinned.
Terry didn’t smile.
“In diving,” he said, “the buddy system is the one thing, more than any-
thing else, that keeps you alive. It’s more than friendship. When we’re un-
der the water, we’re responsible for each other.
“If you’re too far away from me,” he continued, “and I need this,” he
grabbed the spare octopus regulator, “it’s no good to me if you’ve wandered
off. I need to trust that you have my back.”
“Got it,” I said.
“And the same applies to me. We’re buddies. That’s a sacred bond in scu-
ba. We’re accountable. If I need you, I have to know you’ll show up.”
I couldn’t tell if that was a jab at my morning lateness, but there was no
time to dwell on it. Terry taught me the ins and outs of what he called ‘bud-
dy breathing.’ It was the process we’d use if something went wrong with
our equipment. We practiced it on the deck, went over a few basic hand
commands, and then moments later, we were in the water.
***
The dive was magical.
I remembered what Terry had told me about the buddy system, and I was
sure to keep a close eye on him throughout the dive.
Still, I spent long moments mesmerized by the life around me. The fish,
the coral—it was as if I’d entered another world, a parallel universe where
groups of strange creatures interacted in new ways.
After our conversation on the surface, I couldn’t help but see the marine
life through a new lens. I marveled at how a thousand silver fish could
somehow move in perfect unison.
It’s the Influence Effect, I thought. They’re all responding to those around
them.
I gazed around in wonder. The power of groups is everywhere, I thought.
Once you see it, it’s everywhere.
***
The dive ended all too quickly, and I bid a silent farewell to the undersea
world as we returned to the boat. I struggled to climb the ladder with my
heavy tank, and the crew more or less hauled me aboard like an enormous
tuna. I turned to help Terry, but he was marching up the ladder like his tank
was filled with helium. It seemed effortless. The guy was in unbelievable
shape.
“That was amazing,” I said, tugging off my mask.
Terry nodded, his face as serious as ever.
“Good work down there, Ethan. Excellent first dive. I could tell you
hadn’t forgotten your buddy.”
“When a guy your size says I need to be accountable,” I joked, “I’m going
to pay attention.”
Terry cocked his head as if he was considering something.
“Accountability isn’t just about scuba diving,” he said. “It’s the main tool
that we have as a Tribe to make things happen. One of the problems with
being a leader, as most entrepreneurs and professionals are, is that there are
fewer people holding you accountable each day. Sure, you have customers
and investors. But they’re not telling you what time to get up in the
morning. They’re not telling you which things to do when. And they’re defi-
nitely not,” he looked directly at me, “telling you to be on time.”
I felt my cheeks flush.
“It’s fine,” he said. “But here’s the lesson. You remember the Multiplier
Effect from yesterday?”
“The right group compounds your efforts,” I recited.
“Right. And you saw part of how that works. Clarity, creativity, connec-
tions—they all elevate what you’re able to do on your own.”
It was true. I’d seen it first-hand.
“But there’s still a catch. For all the power of the Multiplier Effect, what a
group can’t do for you is take action. They can support, and advise, and
even pitch in once in a while. But they can’t do the work that needs to be
done. Only you can do that.”
 I watched the sun scatter off the water into a million sparkles of individual
light. “It sounds like you’re saying that the group helps, but then—well,
you’re kind of on your own. Is that right?”
Terry looked out at the ocean. “If that were true,” he said, his voice soft-
ening. “I’d be a very different person right now.”
“How so?”
He continued to stare into the distance. I sensed he was trying to make a
decision. At last, he spoke. “Would you believe I used to weigh almost two
hundred pounds more than I do now?”
I felt my mouth fall open. “Actually, no. No, I wouldn’t believe it. You’re
in incredible shape.”
“I played a lot of sports as a young man,” Terry said. “I was always big
for my age. But once I started working—well, I got busy. The business,
family, life. I started putting on weight, and not the good kind. I still had the
appetite of an athlete, but none of the activity. I started gaining fast. Then I
started eating even more. Stress, maybe? I still don’t know, to be honest.
But it was like the scale went up every day. Over the course of a decade, I
gained almost twenty pounds a year.”
I did the quick math. “Whoa.” That was all I could think to say. Terry
gave a short bark that I thought was something like a laugh.
“Well said. Only I didn’t have my whoa moment until I joined the Tribe.
Suddenly, I was surrounded by all these healthy, successful, happy people.
And there I was, hiding inside of two hundred pounds of fat.”
He pulled his gaze back from the ocean.
“Not long after,” he said, “I started exercising. Just walking at first. Then
working out. Then running. Two years after I joined the Tribe, I ran my first
marathon. When I crossed the finish line,” Terry’s voice became raspier, “I
was a different person.”
“Just from the Influence Effect?”
“That certainly started things off. At first, just being around the tribe
changed how I saw things.”
“And that was enough to turn you into a health fanatic?” I tried to keep
the skepticism out of my voice, but I knew he heard it.
“No,” Terry said, “that just made me realize how bad things really were.
Even after that, I was still a couch potato. What really made the difference,”
he tapped the scuba tank at his feet with his toe, “was the buddy system.”
 “I’m not sure I follow,” I said.
“Once the Influence Effect started to kick in, I saw things differently. I
started to want to be healthier. I wanted to be like these new people I was
spending time with. Then with the help of the Tribe—and the Multiplier
Effect—I got some real clarity about where I was and where I wanted to go.
The problem was, I still had to do the hard work. I had to eat better, and ex-
ercise regularly.”
“Right—the group couldn’t do it for you,” I said.
“They couldn’t. But what they could do,” he said, “was make me want
to.”
At that moment the boat engines fired up, and we began to move through
the sea, picking up speed as we headed for home. Terry began to methodi-
cally collect the gear into piles, and I helped as best I could.
“How did the group make you want to be healthy?”
Terry handed me my mask and fins and I stuffed them in the mesh bag.
“Your business is struggling,” he said. “It may fail. Is that right?”
Ouch. “Yeah. I guess that about sums it up.”
“Tell me this. Why do you care if it fails? Why do you keep showing up
every day?”
“Because failing sucks.”
“Not good enough. Why does it suck?”
“I don’t understand. It just does.”
“What if you were so wealthy that it didn’t really matter?”
I thought about that. “I guess that would mean I could still pay the bills,
but… no. It would still suck.”
“Why?”
Damn this guy, I thought. What a hardass. “I think I would feel like I let
everyone down. Jasmine has supported me through so much sacrifice. The
people I’d hired would lose their jobs. That would be awful. My investors
trusted me—I would have breached that trust.”
Terry nodded gravely. “Right there. That’s why. It’s the buddy system.
You feel accountable to the people who are important to you. To the people
you’ve made commitments to. If it weren’t for them, you could pack it in
any time. But they keep you going—going through the pain, the struggle.
The insurmountable problems.”
He was right. I was motivated to succeed, certainly. But what was keeping
me up at night wasn’t really the business or the money. It was the people
behind it all.
“Do you have any idea,” Terry said, “how hard it is to exercise when you
weigh 400 pounds? Trust me, it’s hard. The only reason I crossed that
marathon line is because this Tribe held me accountable. My health was hit-
ting crisis levels, and they helped me turn it around.”
“They were like,” I searched for the right word, “like dive buddies in
life?”
Terry barked the gruff laugh again. “That’s exactly right, actually. In the
Tribe, we call it the Accountability Effect. It says that accountability is the
world’s most powerful force. While most of us are able to meet our basic
responsibilities, few of us are held accountable to the things that matter
most.”
“So the Accountability Effect is the reason you started to make change?”
Terry looked out to the sea. We were closing in on the island, and I could
see its volcanic peak looming over the jungle below.
“The Accountability Effect,” he said gruffly, “is the reason I’m not already
dead.”

OceanofPDF.com
 CHAPTER 7
ONE SHEET TO RULE THEM
ALL
We helped the crew unload the equipment and rinsed it with fresh water. I
bid a silent farewell to my octopus regulator, grateful I hadn’t needed it, but
still trying to process the lesson Terry had taught me.
“Thanks for the dive,” I said to Terry, “and the insight.”
Terry grunted what I thought was a ‘you’re welcome,’ and continued to
pack up equipment.
“And,” I struggled to find the right words. “Congratulations on… well,
changing. I’m glad you escaped the unhealthy Terry. I’m glad you… outran
him.”
Terry put down the wetsuit he was folding and looked at me strangely. He
cocked his head again, like he was seeing something new.
Then he nodded curtly. “Thanks,” he said.
And that was it.
As I walked down the pier, I pondered the Accountability Effect.
Accountability is the world’s most powerful force, Terry had said. But
what exactly did that mean? Clearly, it had worked for him—he’d gone
from a walking heart attack to someone who was trim and healthy. But ex-
actly how? I understood that he’d changed his lifestyle, but what was it
about the tribe that made it happen? I still felt like I was missing a piece of
the puzzle.
As I stepped off the dock onto the warm sand of the beach, I saw a famil-
iar figure in the distance—the tall lean form of Simon in his distinctive hat.
I realized I’d seen very little of him since the first day. I waved, and he
waved back, motioning for me to join him down the beach.
He smiled as I reached him at the water’s edge. “How was your dive?” he
asked, in his deep, clipped voice.
“The diving was great. The lesson even more so.”
“Ah,” Simon smiled, “the Accountability Effect.”
 “Did you know Terry when he joined the tribe?” I asked.
“Of course. And, to answer what you’re not asking, yes, he was indeed in
serious trouble. His health was very bad.”
“He credits the Accountability Effect with saving his life,” I said. “But
I’m still not sure I understand how it works. I mean, Terry’s transformation
is remarkable. I don’t think many people could have done the same thing in
his position.”
“Don’t be so sure,” Simon said. “Accountability can seem like a rare com-
modity, but we all have it. Do you remember on the plane when I told you
that gathering in tribes was wired into us through evolution?”
“You said that natural selection led us to want to fit in with others. It was a
survival advantage.”
“Precisely. Accountability is an extension of that. Those who felt a re-
sponsibility and commitment to their tribe were an asset. They helped the
tribe survive. And that meant that they reproduced more often. Therefore,
those who were accountable passed their genes on. Thousands of genera-
tions later, we still have what you might call a legacy of accountability. We
feel a sense of commitment to others. A need to keep our promises, follow
through on our word. That can be an incredibly powerful force.”
“That makes sense. But then why aren’t we all more accountable?”
“Almost everyone experiences a sense of responsibility in some
moments,” Simon said, “but most of us are a little rusty. What we’ve done
here in the Tribe of Millionaires is harness the power of accountability in a
way that allows people to tap into it on demand. We’ve taken something
that’s buried in your genetic code, and learned to activate it at any time.”
I had to admit, that sounded impressive. Plus, I seemed to be surrounded
by evidence every day that these principles worked. Every tribe member
seemed… well, not perfect, of course. But accomplished. Healthy. Happy.
Like they were at the peak of their game.
Just like your father did, said a voice in my head.
I thought back to that day at the funeral home. How my father had looked
better than when I’d last seen him.
“Of course,” Simon said, “you shouldn’t take my word for it. You should
see it in action. Try it yourself. This evening we’re going to put our system
to work.” He smiled warmly. “I’ll see you for drinks on the veranda,” he
said, and turned to leave.
 “Wait—before you go,” I said. “At the funeral. I—” I trailed off.
Simon waited while I fumbled to find the words.
“This might sound morbid,” I said at last, “but I had this weird thought
that my father looked better in a casket than he had twenty years earlier as a
younger man.”
Simon seemed to understand. “There are many things you don’t know
about your father,” he said. “But, for now, let me say that I think you’re
probably right. A lot happened over those two decades.” He motioned at the
groups of Tribe members that dotted the beach. “Including all of this.”
I thought back to the funeral. To Simon and the other men slipping the
white cards under my father’s clasped hands.
“The cards,” I said, “the ones you and the others put in my father’s casket
—they’re the same ones I’ve been receiving, right?”
Simon smiled. “Indeed. We all learned a lot from your father, but each of
us—including you—has a lesson that we need most in life. An effect that
the right group can offer. Our job this week is to pass those lessons on. The
cards are reminders of the things that are most important for those who
want to lead meaningful, fulfilling lives.”
“I understand the first two effects,” I said. “But I don’t quite see how the
Accountability Effect plays out. One year Terry’s on death’s door, the next
he’s as healthy as a horse. How does the group help create that?”
“Ah,” Simon said in his deep voice. “For that, we have a powerful tool.
It’s powered not only Terry’s transformation, but many others. It’s propri-
etary—only the Tribe has it—and extremely effective.”
“Sounds impressive,” I said. “I’d love to see it. What is it?”
“It is,” Simon said, his eyes twinkling, “a sheet of paper.”
And with that, he nodded, said goodbye, then turned and walked away.
***
Dinner that evening was on the main veranda—the same place I’d had my
group brainstorming session the day before, and the place where the Tribe
seemed to spend the vast majority of their time. When they weren’t doing
something active, they were on the veranda knocking around ideas, laugh-
ing—there was always plenty of laughter—or engrossed in quiet, intense
conversation.
I arrived a little early and joined Simon and the other Tribe members for a
drink. The room was buzzing with conversation, bursts of laughter, and
even occasional shouts as the Tribe members ribbed each other good-
naturedly.
I still had questions for Terry about the Accountability Effect, and I
scanned the room for him, expecting to see his large form towering over a
group somewhere on the veranda. When I did finally find him, I was sur-
prised to see he was alone, tucked away in a corner. He was leaning over
the table in front of him, deep in concentration. At times he would nod to
himself. Moments later, he’d scribble something on the paper in front of
him.
Simon followed my gaze. “You’re going to see the Tribe at work again
this evening,” he said.
“What’s he doing?” I asked.
“He’s getting ready to engage the Tribe. To put the Accountability Effect
to work.”
I opened my mouth to speak, but Simon lifted a hand. “You’ll see, Ethan.
You’ll see.”
***
We sat for dinner, and after much jostling and pouring of wine and more
of what I had come to think of as a sort of affectionate mayhem, someone
clinked a glass, bringing the group to order.
I looked down the long table and saw Vikram, the chiropractor, holding a
spoon and wine glass, calling the Tribe to order.
“Alright everyone,” he said. “Let’s get to this. Who’s first?”
“I am.” I recognized the gruff voice. I looked to the opposite end of the ta-
ble where Terry stood with a single sheet of paper in his hand.
Vikram nodded at him and sat down.
“Okay,” Terry began. “Let me give you my numbers first.”
The last of the murmurs at the table died off.
Everyone looked to Terry, and he began to speak.
I was stunned.
Terry spoke matter-of-factly, as if he was reading something as ordinary
as a shopping list. But what was coming from his mouth was anything but
ordinary. In a few short minutes, he told the entire room the most intimate
details of his life.
 First, there was financial data—his income and his net worth, how much
he gave to charity, and how much passive income he had. Then, there was
physical data on his body fat, muscle mass, and exercise levels. Even some
blood work. And he even had numbers for his personal life—how he rated
his happiness and his relationship with his wife.
Halfway through Terry’s recitation, I realized my mouth was hanging
open. This is crazy, I thought.
For every number, Terry also revealed how much that number had
changed over the previous year. After five minutes, I felt like I knew more
about Terry than I knew about my best friends.
It’s more than that, I thought. You know more about him than you know
about yourself.
And that was just the start. When he finished his list of personal metrics,
Terry began to talk about his plans for the coming year—plans for his busi-
ness, for his family, for himself. I was particularly intrigued when he spoke
of his health.
“So far this year,” Terry said, “I have four marathons booked—one each
quarter. That’s an increase of two from last year, and I feel good about that.”
A hand went up in the crowd. It was Davis—the short man with glasses
who had offered the real estate advice during the brainstorming session.
“Terry,” he said, “I know I speak for all of us when I say that your
willpower is tremendous, and your transformation from when we first met
is… well, it’s remarkable. To see you up and running each morning while
many of us are still sleeping—it’s truly inspirational. You are a testament to
exactly why this tribe exists.”
There was a round of boisterous applause, and a few hoots and hollers.
“I know you’ve made great strides in many areas,” Davis continued, “but
I noticed that your life satisfaction has stayed the same, year on year. I’d
like to ask you: what are you doing to change that?”
I saw Terry’s jaw tighten. He took a breath, then visibly relaxed.
After a pause, he said, “As you all know, I took Ethan diving today. He
was my buddy, and he handled himself well.”
I looked up at the unexpected mention of my name.
“But he also taught me something.”
Now I was truly surprised. What could I have taught him? I felt the heads
at the table swivel my way. The room was silent.
 “Ethan said something after our dive,” Terry said. “He said he was glad
I’d outrun the ‘old Terry’. The unhealthy one.”
I’d completely forgotten I’d even said it.
“That really hit me. I realized that…well, I hadn’t actually outrun him. I
was healthier, yes. I’d lost the weight. I feel good. But,” Terry faltered, his
voice cracking with emotion, “I’m still… I’m still running away from the
old me.”
There was a murmur of voices. A few people nodded at me.
It was Bruce who spoke first. “How can we help, mate?”
Terry took a deep, steadying breath. “I think you know I tend toward…
well, let’s say the somber side.”
“Really? We hadn’t noticed,” cried a voice at the table.
There was a wave of laughter, and Terry cracked a small smile. I could see
the relief wash over him.
“I don’t think I’m exuberant by nature,” he said. “I don’t think anyone
will ever call me jolly. But I think I have some bad habits. I work too much.
And,” he paused, as if considering, “perhaps I do work out too much, as
well.”
“What I’d like,” he continued, “is for you to hold me accountable to doing
something fun—not related to work or exercise. Just something enjoyable
—at least once a month.”
“No problem,” Bruce said. “I’ll check in… say, the first Tuesday of each
month?”
“Perfect,” Terry said. “Thank you.”
I saw Bruce make a note in his phone.
Vikram spoke up. “Terry,” he said. “I also find you tremendously inspira-
tional. I’m certainly healthier because of your friendship, and I want to
thank you.”
Terry nodded.
“But I’d also like to push back a bit. You’ve signed up for more marathons
this year.”
Terry was silent.
“Do you think those extra races will make you much healthier?”
“Probably not,” Terry admitted.
“And how do those extra races fit with your goal to stop running away
from the old you?”
 Terry’s jaw clenched again. “They don’t,” he said, at last.
Vikram said gently, “Would you consider canceling one or two of them?”
After a pause, Terry said. “Done.”
I saw Vikram make a note on the pad of paper in front of him.
***
Terry sat down to a round of applause. Moments later, our dinner arrived,
and I realized I was ravenous. I tucked in like I hadn’t eaten in a week.
After the main course, another member stood up to do his ‘one-sheet’,
listing off his various numbers, revealing his goals, and asking for support
in one way or another. After he sat down, another tribe member followed.
I began to see the pattern emerge. Every member shared not only what he
was measuring, but how it had changed. Then they were able to ask for sup-
port and advice.
It was almost like the brainstorming session—I could see the clarity, cre-
ativity, and connection coming from the group—but there was an extra ele-
ment. The person speaking was being held accountable. The other members
at the table seemed to have what I could only describe as a bullshit detector.
If a Tribe member was avoiding something difficult or dodging what was
important, they were called out on it—but in a very supportive and loving
way. And then they were tasked with describing what they needed to get
things done. Some members needed help getting to the gym. Others were
blocked at making progress in their business, stymied by a certain next step
that they, more often than not, were a little afraid of or confused by.
In each case, the Tribe rallied to support them and to promise to hold them
accountable to specific actions.
***
There was a short break before dessert, and Simon took me aside.
“Well? Did that answer your question about putting the Accountability
Effect to work?”
“And then some,” I said. “I can see exactly how making things public and
being held responsible to the group makes a huge difference.”
“In fact,” Simon said, “What’s really happening is even more powerful.
You’re not being held accountable to the group. The group is there to make
you more accountable to yourself.”
It was like a light went on in my head. Of course. The group can’t do the
work for you.
“Change is hard at first. But once you take action, it gets a little easier all
the time. Eventually, Terry won’t need the group to help him make time for
some simple pleasures in his life. He’ll be accountable to himself. The
changes will be internalized.”
“Like when he started exercising?”
“Exactly,” Simon said. “Terry doesn’t need our help anymore to get out
for a run, or to eat better, or to go to the gym. He’s become self-accountable
for those things. But it’s our job to hold him accountable in the areas where
he hasn’t yet developed that same capacity. He’ll turn to the group each
time the challenge is greater, or the road more difficult.”
“It’s amazing. I think accountability might really be the world’s most
powerful force.”
“In that case,” Simon said, “How’d you like to go next?”
“What?” I felt my heart jump.
“You don’t have to give as much detail as the others. Just ballpark your
numbers, and then use the group to hold you accountable to something you
truly want to accomplish.”
My heart sped up even more. Could I really stand up there and talk about
my business finances and my health? My income? My marriage?
“Well?” Simon said.
I took a deep breath.
“Maybe next time,” I said.
Simon simply nodded. “Let’s get dessert,” he said. Then he patted my
shoulder and walked back to the table.
I had the feeling he wasn’t surprised.

OceanofPDF.com
 THE THIRD EFFECT
SUMMARY

THE ACCOUNTABILITY EFFECT

Responsibility to others is the world’s most powerful force.

Most of us are not held accountable to the things that matters

most.
Accountability is wired into us by evolution—we just have to
learn to activate it.
The right group can’t do the work for you, but they help by hold-
ing you accountable to yourself.

OceanofPDF.com
 CHAPTER 8
THE FOURTH EFFECT
When the envelope slid under my door the next morning, I was already
awake.
Part of it was expectation—I knew the envelope was coming, and I was
anxious to learn what lay ahead.
The other reason I was awake, however, was that I wasn’t entirely com-
fortable with how the previous evening had ended. When Simon had asked
me if I wanted to really experience the Accountability Effect by doing my
own ‘one-sheet’, I’d frozen like a deer in headlights. I’d refused, and while
he hadn’t pushed me, I had felt uneasy about my decision all evening.
Rather than take the initiative, I instead watched as another three tribe
members stood up and delivered their one-sheet. Each time, I was first tak-
en aback by the complete transparency of their presentation, and then blown
away by the support of the tribe. With just a few questions and a handful of
jotted notes, it seemed that they could transform a difficult challenge or a
vague goal into a plan for action, backed by accountability.
It was so notable, so unusual, that I wasn’t even sure how to describe it.
I’d often seen successful people and wondered, “How do they do it?” Now,
here on a tiny unnamed tropical island, I was being shown the answer. I was
seeing right to the heart of what differentiated successful people from the
rest of the world.
Yet, I’d turned down an opportunity to participate. Why?
That was what had awoken me early. I was here to make the most of the
experience. I was here to save my company. Yet at the first glimmer of
something difficult, I had cut and run like a scared kid. In the light of day, I
was more than uneasy—I was ashamed.
My failure had kept me tossing and turning all night, and by the time the
envelope slid under the door, I was on my feet to snatch it up almost before
it slid to a stop.
I opened the door hoping to catch my mystery courier, but outside my hut,
there was only sea breeze and morning sunshine. I was about to step back
inside when I realized there was a small box on the porch. I picked it up and
brought it inside.
I sat on the bed and opened the envelope. This time there were three
pieces of paper inside.
The first was a white card, with yesterday’s lesson:
THE ACCOUNTABILITY EFFECT
Accountability is the world’s most powerful force.
I thought back to Terry, my dive buddy, and his remarkable transformation
from obesity and poor health. From what I’d seen of him and the other tribe
members in action, accountability really did seem like powerful stuff.
The envelope also held a folded sheet of letter-sized paper. Scrawled on
the top was a short note:
In case you change your mind.
- S.
I unfolded the sheet to find a printed form. I scanned it and realized it was
a blank copy of the single page the tribe members had been using the night
before to deliver their one-sheet presentations. I looked it over briefly, not-
ing the blanks to fill in everything from financial information to relationship
details, health data, and goals. Then I set it down. I was still deeply uncom-
fortable with the idea of sharing such personal information, but I wasn’t
quite sure why.
There was one more piece of paper in the envelope—another card, this
one holding a note.
Good morning Ethan,

Great day ahead today! If you can meet me at the main lodge for
breakfast, I’ll fill you in.

Please bring the attached box—but don’t open it yet!

Best,

Davis
 PS - Bring a beach towel!
I scanned the blank one-sheet form again, still feeling vaguely uneasy
about the whole thing, then I set it aside. I’ll deal with that later, I thought.
Besides, the day ahead felt good. Davis seemed much more cheerful than
Terry, and anything that involved swimming suited me just fine.
I left the envelope and its contents on my dresser next to the other cards
and notes. I tucked the small box in the pocket of my shorts so I wouldn’t
forget it, then grabbed a towel and headed out the door.
***
Davis was easy to pick from the group milling about the breakfast buffet.
Where Terry was a looming giant with a serious disposition, Davis was his
opposite in almost every way—a short, bespectacled, lovable nerd, he
popped from group to group at breakfast, calling everyone ‘pal’ or ‘buddy’
or ‘brother’ and laughing endlessly at his own jokes. He was, I soon real-
ized, impossible to dislike. He simply made everyone feel welcome. Like
they belonged.
He approached me with arms open wide. “My software-making, habit-re-
warding buddy,” he said with a smile.
“I guess that’s me,” I said.
“You ready for today?”
I held up my beach towel.
“Good,” he said. “One thing first. You were going to connect with me
about the possibility of using your software in real estate.”
Damn. I’d been so caught up in things, I’d forgotten.
“I’m sorry,” I said. “I’ve been—well, I’ve been just trying to keep up.”
His face grew somber and he peered at me. “Is that supposed to be an ex-
cuse?” he said.
I was taken aback by his serious tone. “No. I mean… I… I was—”
Davis grinned. “I’m just messing with you!” He slapped me on the back.
“I heard that Terry busted your balls yesterday.”
I let out a silent sigh of relief. “He did give me a good lesson on
accountability.”
“What he might not have told you is that accountability doesn’t have to be
intimidating. It’s a powerful force, but it’s not about power.”
 Davis led me to the buffet line, and we loaded our plates with fresh fruit
as he chatted amiably.
“Imagine I’m your boss,” he continued. “Because I have some power in
our relationship, I can hold you accountable by flexing that power—using
my status. You’ll show up and do your job because otherwise, I can fire
you.”
“True.”
“The catch is that accountability rooted in power is never the highest
form.”
“So what is?”
“That,” Davis said with a grin, “is what today is all about.”
We spent a few minutes in silence as we ate our breakfast, and I pondered
what Davis had said. I thought accountability worked much like the boss-
employee situation he’d described. Yet, the more I thought about it, the
more I realized it didn’t really explain what was going on with the tribe.
There’s something different happening here, I thought.
I was about to ask Davis for more insight when I heard the roar of a small
engine coming to life outside. Moments later, a second motor joined the
chorus. Then another.
“That’s our cue, buddy,” Davis said with a grin. “Let’s go!”
***
The noise grew louder as we stepped outside and descended the stairs into
the clearing I had arrived at with Simon on my first day. That seems like a
year ago, I thought.
The source of the noise was obvious. A long line of dirt bikes stood in the
clearing in a semi-circle, their engines idling. I watched as tribe members
loaded their towels and other gear into the back of a waiting jeep, then
headed over to claim a bike and helmet.
I added my towel to the mix, but when I turned, all the bikes were taken.
A voice called over the roar of revving engines. “Ethan! Over here!”
I turned to see Davis grinning through the visor of a helmet. He was strad-
dling one of the larger bikes.
“It’ll be easier to ride with me your first time,” he said.
I was dubious.
“Get on, pal. We’ve got ground to cover.”
 “Are you sure?” I said.
Davis pushed his visor up so I could hear him more clearly. “Ethan,” he
said, evenly. “Trust me.”
I looked at the line of tribe members. They were all waiting on me.
I took a breath and climbed on.
***
For the first ten minutes I fought the urge to scream at Davis. To yell
“Stop!” and jump from the bike and just walk away.
From where I sat behind him, I could barely see the road ahead. The roar
of engines rang in my ears. A wall of green jungle flashed by me at what
seemed to be increasingly insane speeds.
Are these guys crazy? Why didn’t I get my own bike? I felt out of control.
Corners arrived out of nowhere, and I had to grab Davis to keep from being
tossed off the bike. Every rock or bump in the road seemed to lift me six
inches off the seat without warning. The whole experience was terrifying.
Until… it wasn’t.
Just as I had decided I’d be better off flinging myself from the bike into
the jungle, I heard Davis’s words in my head: Trust me.
My mind immediately flashed back to the night before. How I’d chick-
ened out of doing my own one-sheet.
He’s right, I thought. I should trust him.
If I was on this ride, then I was on it. I agreed to it. What good was it to
freak out? It was clear Davis had done this many times. He was a skilled
rider. What reason had he—or anyone here—given me to not trust?
I took a deep breath and I simply gave myself over to the experience. Let’s
do this, I thought.
And just like that, the ride went from terrifying to amazing.
***
Within moments, I forgot about whether or not I was going to die. As I re-
laxed, I realized that because I wasn’t driving, I had the luxury of looking
around. I watched the jungle flash by, seeing unusual birds, massive
flowers, and towering trees—things I’d never seen before, anywhere. Even
at this speed, the jungle was beautiful.
The more I relaxed and let go, the more I found the ride becoming some-
how easier. I stopped fighting the bucking and turning of the bike, and be-
gan to move with it, leaning into turns, absorbing bumps with my legs. A
few minutes later, I realized that I was grinning like an idiot.
I’m enjoying this, I thought. Two minutes ago I was terrified, and now I’m
like a kid on Christmas morning.
Eventually, the landscape began to change. I started to see gaps in the im-
penetrable wall of green. Trees began to give way to rock. And then, just
like that, we emerged from the jungle on to a broad expanse of black, vol-
canic rock, like a stone shelf set into the side of the island.
Davis stopped the bike. One by one, the remaining motors fell silent until
the only sound was the faint ticking of the cooling engines.
A chugging sound grew from the silence, and I turned to see the jeep with
our gear emerge from the jungle. It pulled to a stop beside us, and tribe
members began shedding helmets and plucking towels and backpacks from
the rear of the vehicle.
Davis tugged off his helmet and glanced at his watch. “We’re a little
early,” he said. “We’ve got twenty-nine minutes to kill.”
Twenty-nine minutes? That sounded absurdly specific. Was Davis more
tightly wound than I thought?
I watched the other tribe members mill about. Some spread towels on the
black rock, but most stood in the sunshine talking. It was clear we were
waiting for something.
“What’s going on?” I asked Davis.
“You’ll see,” he said brightly. “Did you bring the package I left for you?”
I reached into my pocket and handed the wrapped box to Davis.
“I understand you’re feeling a little reluctant about the one-sheet,” he
said.
I felt my cheeks redden. “It’s a lot to take in,” I said. “I’ve never seen peo-
ple be so—” I searched for the right word, “—so forthright. I think I feel a
bit intimidated.”
“Fear not,” he said, and held up the package with a grin.
Davis pulled the paper off the small packet to reveal a deck of cards in a
box. He pulled the crisp stack of cards from the packet, and I noted that
each one was marked with the distinctive T o M logo.
“Let me make this easier for you,” Davis said. “Did you ever collect base-
ball cards as a kid?”
 “Sure.”
“My childhood cards are long gone,” Davis said. “Too bad—they’d prob-
ably be worth a fortune.” He grinned. “But these,” he held up the deck, “are
a good substitute.”
Davis spread out a large towel on the flat rock surface and we sat down in
the sunshine.
“A baseball card has two sides,” he began. “One side is the player’s pic-
ture.” He held a card with the T o M logo toward me. “The other side,” he
said, flipping the card over to reveal a jack of diamonds, “holds the player’s
stats.
“Think of the one-sheet like the back side of a baseball card,” he said.
“The side with the stats. Without that information, you don’t really get a
sense of a player. You’re just running off what you see,” he flipped the card
over and tapped the T o M logo. “It’s like trying to play poker using just the
front side of a deck of cards. You’re running blind.”
Davis laid the jack of diamonds down on the towel, face up.
“Now here’s where things get interesting.” He pulled another card from
the deck, with the logo toward me.
“Not only does the picture not tell you much, but it’s also just a snapshot
in time. It’s static. Unchanging.”
Davis flipped the card over and placed it next to the jack: the queen of di-
amonds. “But,” he said, “as you get more information you get a clearer pic-
ture. Do that for long enough,” Davis quickly flipped over another card next
to the queen: the king of diamonds. “And you start to see a pattern
develop.”
Jack, Queen, King.
“In poker, that pattern tells you whether or not you’re building towards a
hand that’s worth something. In baseball cards, you might see a baseball
player building towards a World Series season.”
Davis flipped over another card: the ace of diamonds.
“For you, the one-sheet tells you where you are, but also where you’re go-
ing. Just like watching a player’s batting average from season to season, or
watching a poker hand build to a royal flush, the one-sheet lets you see the
direction you’re headed. And that’s really important. The tiny things you do
every day might seem small, but they stack up, and over time they chart the
course of your life.”
 I stared at the line of cards. It made sense, but something was nagging at
me.
“So the one-sheet helps you track your direction and progress,” I said. “I
get that. But couldn’t I just track my progress, only… keep it private?”
“You could,” Davis said, “and there would be some value in that. But let
me tell you why it’s important to share.
“In poker,” he said. “You can’t control what comes next. It’s random. But
in life, you can change the next card—like a ballplayer can change their
next season. What drives that change is accountability. Whether the next
card is an ace of diamonds,” he flipped over an ace. “Or a not-so-good five
of spades,” he flipped over a five, “depends on accountability.”
“How so?”
“There’s a certain value in tracking things. In knowing your stats. But
what really makes the change happen is sharing the information. You can’t
be held accountable if you don’t disclose the information to other people.
That’s like playing poker by yourself. The game’s no fun without other
players, and without some stakes.”
I had to admit, that made a lot of sense.
“Plus,” Davis said, “if you don’t fully disclose, it becomes tempting to
only reveal the good stuff to the world. Like social media—you become
that person who only shares their best selfie, or the great hair day, or the va-
cation photos. Underneath all that you could really be struggling, but no one
knows, because you’re not sharing the whole picture. And that means no
one can help.”
I knew it was true. Yet, when I thought back to my embarrassment during
the first group session—when the tribe had grilled me about my business—I
felt a nervous churn in my stomach. Thinking about exposing all the details
of my life and business didn’t seem helpful. It just made me feel queasy.
I looked at the spread of cards before me—a nice line building toward a
winning royal flush.
“I just feel strange about sharing all that information,” I admitted. “How is
it that everyone seems to do it so easily?”
“Ah,” Davis said. He looked at his watch. “That’s why we’re here.”
Davis swept up the cards and slipped them back into the box. “Just leave
those here,” he said, handing me the pack. “For what’s next you won’t need
anything but your shorts.”
 With that, he stood up. “Okay guys, let’s do this!”
***
Whatever was happening, it was cause for excitement. The tribe members
stood up, and stripped off their t-shirts, and began to bunch together in a
group. I looked at Davis, who nodded at me, so I followed suit. In moments,
we all stood shirtless on the open volcanic rock.
“I’ll bring up the rear with Ethan,” Davis said. “Who’s first?”
Terry raised his hand. “Got it,” he said. He turned to the group. “Guys.
Remember to keep moving. No dallying. Get out of the way, or get hurt.
That’s the rule.”
Get out of the way or get hurt? I looked over at Davis, but he only grinned
and gave me a goofy thumbs-up.
Terry turned and began to walk toward the edge of the rock shelf. The oth-
ers began to follow.
I kept my eyes on Terry, trying to discern what was happening. What was
I supposed to do? What was I supposed to get out of the way of?
Then, just like that, Terry vanished.
It was that sudden. One moment I could see his head, towering over the
nearest tribe members who stood behind him. Then his head was gone.
I leaned, trying to see around the line of men in front of me, but Terry had
simply vanished. I stood on my tip toes. No Terry.
Then, as if by magic, another tribe member disappeared. The line shuffled
forward.
Then, in quick succession, two more vanished. There was no sound. One
moment they were there, the next they were simply gone.
From my vantage point, it was if their heads were simply disappearing.
What the hell was going on? I felt my heartbeat ratchet up. I turned back to
Davis, but he simply grinned, clapped me on the back, and nodded for me
to keep moving.
I stood there, feeling increasingly nervous, the line inching forward. All I
could see were heads vanishing. There was no sound. No… anything.
I spun around to face Davis. “What the hell is going on?” I asked.
His face was now completely serious. “You wanted to know why account-
ability works,” he said. “You’re about to find out.”
I felt the knot of anxiety tighten in my stomach. I wasn’t so sure I wanted
to know anymore. I spun back toward the front of the line to see how many
tribe members were left.
They were all gone.
And that’s when I understood.
***
With the exception of Davis and I, everyone was gone. In front of me I
could see a large, natural hole in the black rock shelf, perhaps three feet
across.
I leaned forward and peered into the hole. Darkness.
Had they all climbed down here? I looked for ropes or some kind of lad-
der or even handholds, but there was nothing.
And that’s when I realized they hadn’t climbed. They’d jumped.
I turned back to Davis. “No way,” I said.
“You’re next, buddy,” he said.
“You want me to jump in that hole? What’s at the bottom?”
Davis said nothing.
I took a step closer, as close as I dared, and took another look. It was ab-
solutely dark.
I turned back to Davis. He held up his wrist. “You’ve got thirty seconds,”
he said.
“Thirty seconds until what?” I said. Now I was feeling more than nervous.
I was scared.
“Just do it, Ethan.” The joking, amiable Davis had vanished. Now he was
all business. “This is what you came for. You wanted to know how to suc-
ceed. How this works. What your father created.” He held my gaze. “Well
this is it. This is your chance.”
“I can’t.”
“You don’t get something for nothing, Ethan,” he said, firmly. “These
people? All this?” He waved his arm at the ocean, the bikes, the mountain,
the everything. “None of this comes without risk. Without going further.”
Davis took off his glasses and tucked them in the pocket of his shorts.
“You want to know the secret sauce? The magic ingredient? It starts here.
It starts with me asking you this: Do you trust me?”
My brain was a swirl of thoughts. I felt my heart hammer in my chest.
“Ten seconds, Ethan.”
 Had my father done this? This…whatever it was? I thought back to the
ride here—how I’d let go. Trusted.
Do you trust me?
I looked back at Davis. He said nothing. Just nodded, almost
imperceptibly.
I turned. Took a breath.
And stepped into the blackness.

OceanofPDF.com
 CHAPTER 9
THE GROTTO
I fell in absolute, terrifying darkness.
One moment I was standing in the sunshine, exposed on the hot, volcanic
shelf; the next I was falling through utter blackness with no idea what was
below.
Then, in an instant, it was over. I felt a painful slap on my feet, then I was
engulfed in water. I quickly rose to the surface in the darkness, sputtering
and heaving deep, panicky breaths.
The words flashed in my mind: Get out of the way or get hurt.
I began to blindly swim. I had just enough time to note the heads of the
other tribe members floating in the dimness nearby before Davis rocketed
into the water beside me and I was covered again in water.
I sputtered again, shaking off the salty water. A cheer erupted, echoing
oddly. I stopped swimming and looked around.
My eyes had adjusted enough for me to see we were in a natural cavern—
a sort of small, hollow volcano. Around me, tribe members bobbed in the
water, high-fiving each other and chattering with excitement, their voices
bouncing wildly off the walls.
I looked up. More than twenty feet above me, I saw a small circle of blue
sky. The hole, I thought. The light from the opening illuminated the cavern
enough for me to begin to make out the faces of the men around me.
We floated in place, treading water, and the chattering of conversation
continued to grow, bouncing eerily about the cavern. Davis looked at his
watch.
“Here we go,” he yelled.
The voices lowered, then became murmurs, then stopped altogether.
I looked at Davis, not understanding. He just smiled. “Wait,” he
whispered.
And then it happened.
A hazy, wide beam of light shot almost straight down from the hole in the
ceiling. It struck the water, transforming it. One moment I was treading wa-
ter in an inky-black liquid, the next I was suspended in a green-blue sea so
clear I felt like I might fall.
The light reflected from the ripples on the surfaces, bouncing wildly. The
cavern walls, once black and almost invisible, were illuminated with a thou-
sand flowing lines that danced unpredictably over the rough rock surface.
It was beautiful. The water was so clear it was like air.
I felt my mouth open in wonder. I leaned back, my legs rising in the salt
water until I lay floating on my back.
I hung there, suspended in the crystal water. It was if I was floating in
space, the cosmos spinning around me. In that moment, I forgot my troubles
at work. I forgot the loss of my father. I forgot my uncertainty.
I became somehow aware that the men around me were doing the same
thing, floating in silence, staring up in wonder. Sharing something that
could only exist right there, right in that moment.
And then I forgot everything and we floated as one; soundless brothers in
space and time, suspended in a kaleidoscope of light and stone and water.
***
We stayed that way for a few, long, magical moments, and then the sun
continued on its path. The beam of light diminished. The water of the cav-
ern grew dark and impenetrable.
No one spoke. In silence, we moved as one, following an unspoken com-
mand, and drifted from the cavern through a short tunnel, where we
emerged moments later, squinting like newborns, feeling our way blindly
into the light.
A set of stone steps had been roughly hewn into the side of the rock ledge.
One by one, we climbed the rock face, streaming salt water, and lay on tow-
els, drying ourselves in the sun.
There was no discussion, no debrief. There was no talking. Just shared si-
lence as the sun baked the water on our skin leaving us bare to the world.
***
The ride back to the lodge followed the identical path as the one we used
to reach the rock shelf, but it was anything but the same.
On the trip there I’d felt anxious. Even after I calmed down, I’d still felt—
something. What was it? I struggled to name that feeling, then it came to
me: I’d felt separate.
The plunge into the unknown had changed me. Now, I felt like I belonged.
The drone of the engines faded away, and I watched as the bikes seemed to
turn as one, leaning in unison, a single organism winding its way to a shared
destination.
***
When we reached the lodge, the spell had begun to wear off. Some of the
men headed for naps, others to the beach. I sought out Davis.
“That—today,” I began, “it was—” I broke off, unable to express what I
was feeling.
“I know,” Davis said warmly. “We all know.”
“You’ve done that before?”
“Every year. There’s only one moment when the sun hits the rock at the
right angle. Nothing like the first time, though.”
We walked onto the large veranda and sat overlooking the sea.
“This might sound weird,” I said, “but I felt different after. Changed.”
Davis nodded. His joking demeanor had slipped away, again, shrugged off
like a heavy jacket.
“You are,” he said.
He was right, I knew. I could feel it. But what, exactly, had changed?
Davis seemed to read my mind.
“Do you remember when Terry mentioned you at dinner the other night?”
he asked.
I thought back to the night when the men had presented their one-sheets.
“He said I’d made him realize that he might be running away from some-
thing,” I said.
“Right. That wasn’t just gratitude,” Davis said.
“I don’t understand.”
“Earlier in the day, you’d gone diving. You were Terry’s buddy,” Davis
said. He took off his glasses and polished them with his shirt. “That was
more than just a tropical swim. Terry had to trust you. He had to know you
had his back. During that dive, you earned his trust. That trust allowed him
to be more comfortable. More open. More authentic. That’s why he took
what you said so seriously.”
In the distance, I saw Simon and Vikram and a few other tribe members
walking on the beach. “That’s good to know,” I said. “But how does that ex-
plain the feeling I had today?”
“I’m sure you know by now that the people around you matter more than
you think,” Davis said. “They change you.”
“Right. They influence you. And multiply your efforts.” I mentally ticked
off the lessons in my mind. “And they hold you accountable.”
“Precisely. But those around you aren’t just a lens to help you navigate the
world more effectively, they’re also a mirror. They reflect you. They allow
you to see yourself more clearly. And the closer the bond you have with
those around you, the more accurate the reflection becomes.”
“So I’m seeing myself more clearly because of today?”
“What happened today is that you learned to trust. And with that trust,
you began to feel more comfortable being yourself. Your real self. Not
some puffed-up version of you. Just you.”
I thought back to the ride back. How I’d felt like I’d belonged.
“That’s when the reflection is the clearest. When you’re with people you
trust. That’s when you can let all the acting, all the insecurities, fall away.
That’s when you grow closer to your authentic self. And,” he leaned toward
me, “the closer you come to your authentic self, the easier life becomes.”
“It does?”
“Absolutely. First of all, if you aren’t sure who you are, it’s difficult to
know what you want. And if you don’t know what you want, it’s hard to get
it.” He smiled. “Once you feel comfortable in your own skin, you start to
make better decisions. You might, for example, choose a better mate—one
who truly fits you.”
I thought about Jasmine. That, I thought, is one decision I made right.
“Or,” he continued, “You might create a company or choose work that
aligns with what you believe and who you are. And then you add friends
and peers who complement that. Those are all things that are difficult to do
when you don’t know yourself.
“The best part,” he continued, “is that authenticity helps you surround
yourself with the right people. And the right people…” he trailed off.
“I know this one” I said. “The right people shape your destiny!”
“Exactly,” Davis said. “All of that drives from trust. Yesterday, you saw
how the Accountability Effect works. But what you didn’t see is what al-
lows it to work. The missing ingredient is trust. If you don’t trust those
around you, none of this,” he waved his arm, “works worth a damn. There’s
no real influence. No multiplier. And definitely no accountability. You can’t
be held accountable if you aren’t willing to be honest. To reveal your
strengths and your weaknesses. Your dreams and your fears. You can’t be
held accountable to yourself if you don’t know who you are.”
I stare out the expanse of sea. “I still don’t know if I know who I am,” I
said at last.
“That’s not the point,” Davis said. “The point is that the only way to find
out is through people you trust. Until you trust others, deeply, and without
prejudice, you’ll never be yourself. You’ll never know yourself. You’ll nev-
er find yourself. Trust is at the core of authenticity.”
I watched as Simon and the others walked up from the beach. They were
smiling, chatting in easy conversation.
“This isn’t just about your business, Ethan,” Davis said. “It’s about life.
Your relationship with your wife. Your kids. Your parents. They’re all im-
proved by trust. Once you’re willing to trust, you open the door to finding
your true self.
“After that,” he paused, smiling, “everything else is easy.”
***
I spent the rest of the late afternoon and evening not just enjoying the sur-
roundings, but feeling wrapped in them. Something had changed. I was no
longer worried about what the tribe thought. I wasn’t separate. I was, I real-
ized, becoming a part of something.
It wasn’t as if anyone had been judging me, I realized. The group hadn’t
changed. I had been judging myself. The only reason I hadn’t felt this way
from the beginning was the missing trust that Davis had spoken of. But that
trust was building. The dive with Terry. The ride on the bikes. The
terrifying, yet mind-expanding plunge into the grotto. It had all built my
trust in the tribe.
And now? Now, I realized, I was feeling something new. I was feeling
like…. like myself. My true self.
Through happy hour, and dinner, and early evening, I mingled easily. I felt
happier, more relaxed than I had in weeks. No, months.
As the moon began to rise that night, I felt a new sensation. The comfort
remained, but something else began to tug at me. It took a few minutes for
me to realize what it was: unfinished business.
I made the rounds, said my goodnights, and headed back to my room. As I
walked the torch-lit path, I felt my steps quicken.
I walked into my hut and went straight to my bedside table. The one-sheet
form Simon had left for me sat folded where I’d left it.
I carried it to the small desk at the window. I sat, smoothed it out, and as
the moon lit the beach and sparkled on the water, I began to write.
***
An hour later, I sat back. I was tired but pleased. The sheet had taken
some work, but that wasn’t the hard part. The hard part—building the trust
—was behind me. I felt comfortable. No, I thought. More than comfortable.
I realized I was excited.
I brushed my teeth and climbed into bed. What an unbelievable day, I
thought. Another lesson learned.
As I closed my eyes, I thought of the elders of the Tribe. Simon, who I’d
met first, and traveled here with. There was cheerful Vikram, with his
bristly grey hair. Terry, the huge man of few words. Davis, the short, exu-
berant, funny man who’d taught me so much today. And I’d met Bruce al-
ready, although I hadn’t spent much time with him.
My eyes flickered open.
There had been six men at my father’s funeral. I’d met five of them. I had
spent time with four of them.
Who was the missing sixth man?
I thought back to funeral, trying to pull the details from my memory. I
vaguely recalled a lean rugged man. All the Elders were fit, clearly, but this
man didn’t look gym fit. He looked, well, outdoors fit. It was the only way I
could describe it.
How old was he? I couldn’t remember. And besides, with the tribe, I’d
discovered it was hard to tell. But the picture in my mind was of a wiry
man, grey, close-cropped hair. That was all I recalled.
But where was he? I hadn’t seen him all week.
That was the last thought I had before I fell into a deep, dreamless sleep.

OceanofPDF.com
 THE FOURTH EFFECT
SUMMARY

THE AUTHENTICITY EFFECT

You find your true self among those you trust.

The people around you are a mirror that helps you see yourself
more clearly.
Trust is the key ingredient to find and align with your authentic
self.
The closer you get to your authentic self, the easier life becomes
and the faster you achieve your goals.

Note: You can download the real-life tribal one-sheet!

You’ll find the tool and helpful instructional videos at:
www.TribeOfMillionaires.com

OceanofPDF.com
 CHAPTER 10
THE FIFTH EFFECT
I was dragged back to consciousness by an incessant pounding on the door.
I stumbled out of bed, groggy and unsure. What…? Where was…?
It was only when I squinted around the room that I remembered where I
was. The island. I thought of my plunge into grotto the previous day. Had
that really happened?
There was another round of knocks on the door, followed by a muffled
voice: “Mate? You up? Oy!”
There was no mistaking Bruce’s Australian accent.
I stumbled out of bed, and opened the door, squinting as a blast of sun-
light filled the room.
“G’day!”
Bruce, cheerful as ever, stood at the door holding an envelope. He wore a
hat with one side of the brim turned up, Australian desert boots, and some
sort of safari shirt with a seemingly unlimited supply of pockets.
I looked him over. “Really?”
Bruce looked down at his shirt. “What?”
“Never mind.” I opened the door and motioned for him to enter. “I’m so
sorry. I was dead asleep.”
“No worries, mate. That trip to the grotto is always a bugger on your first
go.” He handed me the envelope. “Thought I’d just give you this myself.”
I quickly ripped open the envelope, and removed the white card inside:
THE AUTHENTICITY EFFECT
You find your true self among those you trust.
“Good day yesterday, right?”
My head was starting to clear. “Amazing,” I said. “And not just the grotto.
The whole idea of trust and finding your authentic self.”
Bruce seemed to consider something. “Right,” he said. “On that whole
trust thing, mate. I should tell you my name’s not really Bruce.”
I knew it. “It did seem a little,” I groped for the right word, “much, I
guess.”
“It’s a nickname. It’s the Australian thing. My real name is Alan, but none
of these bastards ever call me that.”
“So… I should call you… Alan?”
“Nah, mate. Bruce is great,” he said happily. “Just wanted to be straight
with you.”
I looked down at the card again. “Last night felt—well, different, some-
how. I felt like I fit in. Like I belonged.”
“Ah. That’s trust at work.”
“But it happened so fast. One minute I was the new guy, the next I felt
like we were brothers in arms. It was that fast.”
“That’s the power of chemistry,” Bruce said. “When you jumped down
that hole, mate, your body was pumping neurochemicals like a firehose.”
“Like adrenaline?”
“Oh yeah. And others—especially oxytocin. That’s been called the trust
molecule. It helps mothers give birth and nurse babies, but we all have it,
and it’s released during exciting times, and in social settings like meals.
Even a hug releases oxytocin and increases trust.”
Now that I thought about it, the tribe members were surprisingly physical,
for me. There was a lot of hugging, slaps on backs, reassuring hands.
“So—I’m bonded to you all?”
“Yep. Think of brothers in arms, like you mentioned. They can be
strangers, but a few intense experiences can bond them very tightly. I know
veterans who have had four marriages—and counting, the nutters—but
would still take a bullet for a guy they trenched with.”
It made sense. Intense experiences did seem to bond people. And there
was no question that I felt different after my adventure at the grotto.
“What’s on for today?” I asked.
“Ah,” Bruce said. “Today, we’re going to do something really exciting.”
***
Bruce left, and I quickly showered and dressed, promising to meet him at
the main lodge.
As I brushed my teeth, I thought of his parting words—that we would ‘do
something really exciting.’ I felt uneasy. I’d found my entire time on the is-
land exciting, but occasionally terrifying—what the hell was something re-
ally exciting going to look like?
I thought of the previous day’s message. You find your true self among
those you trust.
I looked in the mirror. The face staring back at me was already turning
brown from my few days in the sun. I looked different, at least on the out-
side. But had anything else changed?
You’re going to have to let go and see where this takes you, I thought.
It didn’t calm my nervous stomach, but moments later I stepped out of my
hut and headed for the main lodge.
***
The tribe members were all gathered in the same clearing where we’d be-
gun our trip to the grotto. This time there were no jeeps or motorbikes; if we
were going somewhere, we were doing it on foot.
The group greeted me warmly, but I could tell something was different.
The mood had shifted, and I sensed it had nothing to do with the previous
day’s sense of belonging. Something was up. No one was unhappy, but it
was somehow more subdued. There was a sense of nervous anticipation.
I scanned the group, and spied the elders off to one side, deep in discus-
sion. Simon, Vikram, Terry, Davis, and Bruce had been joined by a sixth
man, and I recognized the look of lean, outdoor ruggedness about him. He
was the missing sixth elder—the man who’d been at my father’s funeral.
I couldn’t hear what he was saying, but it was clear that the others were
listening to him intently. He had an aura about him—a zen-like calm mixed
with a natural leadership ability. He seemed quiet and contemplative, but
somehow durable, like some strange combination of monk and cowboy.
I watched as he said a few more quiet words to the nodding elders, then I
was interrupted as another tribe member tapped me on the shoulder in
greeting.
By the time I looked back, the mysterious sixth man was gone.
***
We began to walk.
There was no instruction, no preamble. I had no idea where we were
headed; I simply followed the group. After a few minutes, Bruce fell in be-
side me. I noticed he was the only member of the group who carried any-
thing—a small backpack, stitched with, of course, an Australian flag.
I noticed we were following the same path I had taken days earlier with
Vikram. I remembered he had taught me that the right people could multi-
ply my efforts. That seems like months ago, I thought. I had been skeptical
at the time, but now, just days later, I had no doubt it was true.
“Where are we headed?” I asked Bruce.
“Like, existentially?” Bruce smirked and walked on.
I shook my head. I was going to get no answers from him.
We continued on in silence, and I recognized the point where Vikram and
I had turned back on our walk. We passed it and pushed on.
Uncharted territory, I thought.
It was all uncharted territory, I realized. The entire week had challenged
what I believed about myself and the people around me. If someone had
asked me a month ago if I thought I’d be spending a week on a remote trop-
ical island with a group of mysterious millionaires with no idea why, I’d
have said they were crazy. Now I was wondering if I was the crazy one. My
life back home was starting to seem less and less sensible all the time. Why
did I surround myself with the people I did? Why did my social and profes-
sional circle change so rarely? This whole week had challenged me tremen-
dously. Why had it taken my father’s death to shake me out of my life
enough to get some perspective?
I wasn’t sure I had any answers. All I knew was that my life back in the
‘real’ world seemed so… unexamined. I was just doing what everyone else
was doing. I was spending all my time with the same people, doing the
same things, believing the same things—without ever wondering why.
When I contrasted that with my experience here, it seemed almost
ridiculous.
The real world. The thought troubled me a little. Not just for the chal-
lenges I faced with my business—they were daunting, but I was beginning
to at least see there was hope—but how would I settle back into my world?
What would life be like when I was no longer hanging around with the
mysterious Tribe of Millionaires?
***
The cool of the morning jungle was quickly giving way to the heat of the
rising sun. The thick jungle offered some relief from the direct sun, but the
humidity under the canopy was like a blanket. I was already sweating pro-
fusely, and as the trail turned uphill, I began to wish that I’d brought some
water.
I looked around. None of the other tribe members seemed to be drinking.
Of course, I thought, feeling edgy. These guys are all too perfect to need to
drink.
To take my mind off of things, I turned to Bruce.
“Can I ask you something?”
“Of course, mate,” he said amiably.
“All these things I’ve been learning,” I said, “these effects that people
have on us. They all make so much sense. And when I look at how success-
ful you all are, it’s so compelling. But...” I trailed off, trying to find the right
words.
“But you’re worried it’ll all fall apart when you get back to the real
world,” Bruce said, his voice growing serious.
I looked at him. “How did you know?”
“Come on, mate. We’re not superheroes. Look around you. We’re all hu-
man. We all struggle with this stuff. We all have bad days. We all feel inse-
cure at times. We worry.”
“It sure doesn’t look like it. Everyone seems… well, amazing. So success-
ful, happy. Like you have it all figured it out.”
“You need to understand something,” Bruce said. “We don’t come togeth-
er like this because we’re so amazing.” He stopped walking and looked at
me. “We’re amazing because we come together.”
“I guess that’s the whole point,” I said. “Being with the right people
makes everything better.”
“Exactly,” Bruce said. “But you’re right to consider what happens when
you get home. It’s one thing to keep your head on straight here. It’s another
thing entirely to do it when you get back to reality.”
“So how do you manage it?”
“Well, for starters, we stay connected. We don’t just do this once a year
and then hope everything works out. Each of us belongs to smaller sub-
groups, ideally ones that are close geographically. We talk every week. We
help each other with challenges, with staying on track. And we get together
as often as we can—not us, but we with our families and spouses, too. That
keeps us in touch with what’s important. It keeps us on purpose.”
 “On purpose—you mean accountability?”
“That’s certainly part of it,” Bruce said. “If I say I’m going to do some-
thing, the guys in my group will hold me to it. But purpose is something
different.”
“How so?”
“Let’s say you set a goal to grow your business or improve your health.
That goal is just a target. It’s what you’re trying to accomplish, or where
you’re trying to go—like a destination on a map. A purpose, on the other
hand, is the reason you’re trying to reach that goal. It’s your why.”
“What does the why do?”
“The why is different from the what. The what is the destination, but your
purpose is like the gas in the tank to move you forward. It’s the drive, the
energy, to keep going when things get hard. Because, believe me, at some
point, things get hard.”
They sure do. I felt a twinge of anxiety as I thought back to my impending
cash shortages in the business.
“So,” I said, “given a big enough why, you can accomplish more?”
“Given a big enough why, mate,” the Aussie said, “and you can accom-
plish anything.”
Then he strode off, leaving me with nothing but a dry mouth and more
unanswered questions.
As the sun rose into the sky, we marched on.
The temperature began to soar.
***
The trail followed an uphill, gently curving arc. I suspected we were near
the volcanic cone that dominated the island, but the jungle was so thick it
was impossible to tell. Other than our narrow footpath, everything was a
dense green wall.
As the sun rose higher, the heat and humidity climbed. With the damp air
came mosquitoes. Plenty of mosquitoes. I noticed the other tribe members
swatting at them.
To distract myself, I mulled over what Bruce had said—that with enough
purpose, you could accomplish anything. Could it be true? It seemed like a
tall order. But considering what I faced at home, a tall order was exactly
what I needed.
 I stepped up my pace to catch up to the cheerful Aussie.
“These mosquitoes are making me nuts,” I said as I caught up to him.
“Mozzies? Never noticed,” he said. I couldn’t tell if he was joking, but I
thought I saw a smirk cross his face.
“I’ve been thinking about what you said about purpose,” I said, “What if I
really want to be wealthy? Can’t making money be my purpose? Then it
would be aligned with my goal, which is to get my business into the black.”
Bruce nodded, almost as if he were expecting the question. “I know that
seems like a good idea,” he said, “but if there’s one thing I know for sure,
it’s that money makes a lousy purpose.”
Something struck me. “If it’s so important to find a purpose other than
money, then why is this called the Tribe of Millionaires?”
I tried not to let the satisfaction sneak into my voice, but I knew there was
a hint of a-HA!, as if I’d caught Bruce in the cookie jar.
“Ah, you’re a sharp one, mate. Good question. For starters, it’s bloody
good marketing, right?” He gave a hearty laugh and slapped me on the
back. “Got you here, didn’t it?”
I had to admit, he was right. I flashed back to the moment in the elevator
in Simon’s office when I’d asked him what “T o M’ meant. There was no
doubt the money had been a turning point.
“Come on,” Bruce said, as if sensing my embarrassment. “It’s fine.
Nothing wrong with it. As my mum used to say, it doesn’t matter what door
you come in, as long as you’re home.”
“I suppose. But it does make me question my motives.”
“Mate, we all have a financial motive. Most of us spend the vast majority
of our lives dealing with money—earning it, worrying about it, saving it, in-
vesting it. It’s a big part of life. To deny it is simply foolish. The trick,” he
said, “is to understand that wealth isn’t a purpose.”
“It just seems that we spend so much time focused on it. Like it’s the big-
gest purpose of all.”
“That’s the trap right there,” Bruce said. “We’re all focused on the how of
money. How do I earn it? How do I earn more? How do I invest it? How,
how, how, how. What we should be focused on is the why of money.”
I thought this over. “But seems like that it is why we all go to work. If we
didn’t make money, why would we do it?”
Bruce smiled. “That, mate, is exactly the question you need to answer.
When you have that answer, you’ll have found a purpose.”
***
Bruce left me to ponder his words, and I settled back into the painful real-
ity of the hike. I was dying for a drink of water, but as I looked around, no
one else seemed to be drinking. Or complaining. So I trudged on, my
tongue beginning to feel thick and pasty in my mouth. I could feel the fa-
tigue in my legs, too. I wasn’t entirely out of shape, but compared to the
tribe, I was a full-on couch potato.
All this walking uphill was hard work. And for what? I wasn’t even sure
where we were headed, and Bruce seemed determined not to tell me. The
relentlessly cheerful Aussie just trudged on. He didn’t even seem to be
sweating much.
I felt a blister begin to swell on my right foot. A seed of resentment began
to form in my mind. This is nuts, I thought.
***
My thirst began to intensify.
Before long, I was thinking of nothing but water. Anything for a drink.
As if in answer, there was a crash of thunder, and a heavy rain began to
fall. Within seconds, any part of me that wasn’t already soaked in sweat was
drenched in rain.
Unbelievable. Of course, it would rain.
I realized the other tribe members were staring up into the sky, catching
the rain in their mouths, and I did the same. I stood, gaping upward, letting
the rain fall into my open mouth. Even in the heavy downpour, it wasn’t
much, but it was something. I swallowed the little water that I managed to
catch, then opened my mouth again for more. I stared into the canopy,
squinting into the pouring rain, catching what moisture I could.
When at last I lowered my gaze, the path ahead was empty.
The tribe was gone.
***
My first feeling was one of anxiety. I’m alone. Then I realized that the
trail was obvious, and there had been no forks so far—finding the tribe
shouldn’t be hard. I broke into a brisk walk, expecting to find them just
around the corner, but at the next bend, I saw no one.
I pushed on in the rain, now jogging along the path, and my anxiety began
to be replaced by the growing irritation I’d felt earlier. Why had they left
me?
My shoes were soaked, and I felt my blisters grow. The rain had muddied
the path, and as I rounded a bend I slipped, falling hard.
“Damn!” One side of me was completely covered in mud. I’d twisted my
ankle, too. I could still walk, but it wasn’t improving my state of mind.
I stood, flexed my ankle carefully, then pushed on. Minutes later I still
hadn’t seen anything but footprints. How fast were they moving? Had they
left me on purpose? Questions, then doubts, began to enter my mind, and
through it all came a growing sense of futility. Where the hell were we even
going, anyway? My mood worsened.
As I trudged on, the rain tapered off, and the sun reemerged. Even through
the forest canopy, I could feel the intensity. The temperature began to climb
further.
Abruptly, the jungle gave way to heat and open space. One moment I was
in the shaded green of the jungle, the next I was standing on bare rock in the
open air and blazing sun.
I realized I’d finally climbed high enough to rise above the treeline. Now,
I stood on the black volcanic rock of the mountain itself. In the distance, I
could see the ocean, and far, far below, the beach that fronted the main
lodge.
The trail, which had been a dirt path, was now a hewn rock ledge. To one
side was a sheer drop facing the sea. To the other, a steeply sloping wall of
stone. My eyes followed its slope upward, and high above me, I could just
make out the conical peak of the dormant volcano.
Closer—perhaps a hundred feet or more above—I saw what looked like
another path cut into the stone, just like the one I was one.
I looked back at the path I was on. The wide stone ledge curved gently up-
wards, and around the volcano, eventually disappearing from view.
I looked back up at the path above.
Then it hit me.
We were going to the top.
And not only were we going to the top, but we were almost certainly tak-
ing this slow, spiraling path that circled the volcano over and over.
 How far was it? I looked to the peak and tried to judge, but I had no idea
beyond a certainty that it was hours and hours of walking on hard stone
rock, exposed to the blazing sun, with no food or water.
I stared back up at the distant peak, squinting into the burning light. The
heat was like a blast furnace. The sun beat down relentlessly, soaked up by
the black rock of the mountain, and forced back out at me like a hot stag-
nant breath.
Beneath my feet, the heat of the rock seeped through the soles of my
shoes. My feet had begun to swell; I could feel each blister like a hot coal.
My thirst raged.
There’s no way, I thought. I can’t do it.
I put my back against the rock and looked out at the ocean. I leaned my
head back into the sliver of shade and slowly slid down until I sat, sun-
burned, dehydrated, and dejected, on the black stone of the mountain.

OceanofPDF.com
 CHAPTER 11
THE CLIMB
The leg cramps woke me.
Both hamstrings had seized, clamping me in a grip painful enough that I
cried out. I gripped the backs of my thighs, gritting my teeth against the
pain, and began to massage the seized muscles.
When the ache had subsided enough for me to focus on something more
than the pain, I noticed that my thin sliver of shade had expanded; the sun
had moved, and I was now almost completely sheltered.
How long have I been asleep? I tried to get to my feet, but the cramps
grabbed my thighs again in vice-like grip. At the same moment, bolts of
pain shot through my feet as my shoes squeezed my blisters.
I fell back against the stone.
I can’t.
I can’t go any further.
In that moment, I made my decision: it was time to go home. Not just
back to the lodge. Not just back to food and water. But home. Back to my
real life. It was time for the experiment to end. I had a company to save. I
had a family to care for.
I began once again to massage my aching hamstrings. I would crawl if I
had to, but I was going back. I’d had enough. I knew there was no possible
way I could climb any higher. What little strength I had left I would use to
get back to safety, and then back to reality.
It was, I told myself, the only sensible choice. After all, why push on? I
had nothing to prove out here. Nothing to accomplish. Whatever lesson
Bruce was trying to teach me, he could teach me back at the lodge over din-
ner and cold drinks. Plenty of cold drinks. And then I’d grab the first flight
out of here.
I gave my reluctant hamstrings one more rub and using the stone wall for
support, I carefully stood. It was painful, but I was at least upright. And go-
ing back will surely be easier, I thought.
I turned to begin the trek downhill.
 That was when I saw the backpack.
It was small, carefully placed in the very center of the trail home, its
straps neatly folded beneath it. There was no way I could miss it. And there
was no mistaking who it belonged to; sewn to the top pocket was an
Australian flag.
Bruce, I thought. I sat beside it and unzipped the top.
Inside the pack was a rectangular wooden container, no bigger than a
shoebox. And beneath it, a bottle of water.
I barely registered the box, but stripped the lid off the water bottle and
drank deeply. It was the best thing I’d ever tasted, and I gulped at the water
until the more rational part of me said, easy, Ethan. Easy.
I felt immediately better. The last of the tightness in my legs subsided. I
carefully screwed the lid back on the bottle, then turned my attention to the
box. Maybe there’s food, I thought.
The box was ornate and beautifully crafted, made from a wood I didn’t
recognize. Its sides were so well polished that they seemed to glow from
within. On the lid, the letters T o M had been carefully carved.
There was a small brass catch. I unclasped it and lifted the lid. A white
tribal envelope lay inside, and I opened it to find a white card.
THE PURPOSE EFFECT
The right people reveal your richest source of power.
I thought back to what Bruce had said. About why. Was that what he was
trying to tell me? That I needed a powerful reason? But for what? My big
why right now was to get something to eat and drink, and to put my feet up
on something soft.
I set the card aside and turned my attention to the box. A carefully
wrapped black cloth bundle lay inside, embroidered with the tribal logo. It
was soft and gave way to my touch.
There was a small brass plate affixed to the underside of the lid. Engraved
on in a fine, sloping script were the words:
Roberto Martinez
Beneath the name were two dates. I recognized them as the years of my
father’s birth and death.
I looked again at the carefully wrapped package.
 And then I knew.
***
I don’t know how long I stared at the cloth bundle in the box. When I
looked up, I realized I was still facing downhill, back toward the lodge.
Back to safety, I thought.
And back to being alone, a different voice seemed to say.
Behind me, upward, lay the unknown. A hard march. A lot of pain.
Perhaps danger. But in that direction, I realized, there was now something
else: a purpose.
For all my misgivings about my father, for all his failures, I was here right
now because of him. Everything I’d learned this week, the sense of belong-
ing I’d discovered, and the lessons I hoped could save me and my company
—they had all, whether I liked it or not, been handed to me by my father.
Placed in my hands by a man I barely knew.
I looked down at the ornate box.
And in return, you’re being asked to do one thing, I thought.
I gently closed the lid and returned the box to the pack. I took a small sip
from the water bottle, then carefully capped it and stored it away.
The white card I stuck in my pocket. It would probably be soaked in
sweat and grime, but I didn’t care. I knew I would need it close at hand.
I tested my feet: sore, but I could walk. I would walk.
Then, I shouldered the small pack holding my father’s ashes, and began to
make my way slowly uphill in the direction of the tribe.
***
It was slow going at first. My feet ached. At some point, I felt the blisters
swell, then pop. But I pushed on.
My lips cracked in the sun, and I was thirsty. Very thirsty. But somehow, I
knew I could manage. I took occasional, careful sips from my remaining
water, and simply pushed on.
The thought of stopping no longer entered my mind. At times my negativ-
ity would start to build—I’d notice the fatigue in my legs, the pain of my
sunburn, the cracking of my lips. My steps would falter. But in those mo-
ments, I reached into my pocket for the white card and reread the Purpose
Effect. I thought often of Bruce’s words: With the right purpose, you can
accomplish anything.
Then, I would think of my friends somewhere up ahead—at some point, I
realized, I’d stopped thinking of them as tribe members, and began to see
them simply, powerfully, as friends—and I’d think of my father’s ashes,
nestled carefully against my back.
My resolve would build, then, and I would walk on.
Now that I had a purpose—and the right people to remind me—my fa-
tigue had faded into the background. The suffering wasn’t gone; I was in
constant pain, and at some level I was aware that my steps had shortened,
and I was perhaps closer to stumbling than walking. But it was as if my
doubt had been replaced by something more important.
Purpose, I thought.
And I pushed on.
***
I had been right about the path. The mountain was far too steep to climb
directly, and so the trail simply wound its way around, slowly gaining
altitude.
Who built this? I thought at one point. Then the thought vanished as an-
other wave of fatigue washed over me. I thought of my friends. And my fa-
ther. And I trudged ahead.
As the sun moved lower in the sky, I began to find more and more shade
on one side of the mountain, and I instinctively sped up during those cooler,
protected sections.
When I rounded to the sunny side and entered the blast furnace of the af-
ternoon sun, I slowed, sometimes taking the now-battered card from my
pocket, and holding it in front of me, like a compass.
And I then I would push on.
***
The path seemed to spiral forever. I trudged forward, stopping occasional-
ly to take a tiny sip of water. At some point, I lost my voice, and when I
spoke to myself it was in a hoarse, painful whisper.
As the sun fell lower in the sky, the shady side of the mountain grew cool-
er, but the sunny side seemed to only grow hotter, the black rock of the
mountain too hot to even touch.
 In those moments I simply stumbled forward, my eyes squinted against
the glare, my tongue swollen in my mouth, and prayed for an end to the
heat. When I thought I could go no further, I would feel the reassuring
weight of the box against my back, and I would put another foot down, and
take another step.
It was in this way, step by painful step, driven forward by the sole purpose
of carrying my father to his resting place, that I found the tribe.
***
Dusk had fallen on the mountain. With it came enormous relief from the
heat, but a new fear: what would happen after dark? I wasn’t sure I could
safely find my way forward, but I was equally uneasy about spending the
night perched just a few feet from a plunge to my death.
I was trying to focus, to consider my options, when I heard a sound.
Voices.
I pushed forward toward the noise. When I rounded the next corner, I saw
a flicker of orange light ahead and heard the sound of conversation.
I moved closer, my legs deadened, my feet screaming, and as I emerged
into a clearing, I found the men seated around a large campfire.
The conversation trailed off as I teetered unsteadily into the center of the
light.
So thirsty.
I scanned the faces in the circle until I spotted Bruce.
He stood, tentative. Uncertain.
I stared at him. There was a very long, very silent moment.
“G’day, mate,” I whispered.
He broke into a broad grin, stepped forward, and embraced me in an enor-
mous bear hug.
The men erupted in cheers. Hands slapped me on the back.
Someone put a cold beer in my hand. A cold beer.
I lifted it to my lips and drained it.
That’s the best thing I have ever tasted, I thought.
Then everything went black.
***
“Mate? You good?”
 I opened my eyes to find Bruce staring down at me.
“Jesus,” he said, relief flooding his face. “You scared the bloody hell out
of me.”
I could feel the rock ground against my back, and I struggled to sit
upright.
“Lucky I was here to catch you,” Bruce said.
I rubbed my eyes and looked around. The tribe members were all staring
at me.
“I think I might have pushed it a bit too—” I broke off as I remembered
the wooden box. “The backpack!” I said, scrambling to my feet.
“Right here, mate. Right here.” Bruce handed me the pack. “Easy does it.”
Someone placed a bottle of water in my hand, and I took several long
swallows.
“I’m not sure how I made it this far.”
“I think I have an idea,” Bruce said, nodding at the backpack.
I looked down to see I had the bag clutched to my chest in a white-knuck-
le grip. I relaxed and lowered it, then reached into my front pocket and
pulled out a barely-recognizable white T o M card. It was soaked in sweat,
stained and battered, but the print was still legible.
“This helped,” I said, showing Bruce the card.
“With the right purpose—” Bruce said.
“You can accomplish anything,” I finished.
***
A few bottles of water and a good meal later, I was feeling remarkably
restored.
From what I could tell in the dark, the fire I had nearly fallen into stood at
the center of a flat, open area on the side of the mountain. The tribe had set
up camp on this plateau; how they’d done it, I had no idea, but after my ex-
perience that day, I was beginning to see that how something was done was
far less important than the reason why. Clearly, this ritual was important to
the tribe.
We sat around the fire, cross-legged. My blistered feet still ached, and I
could tell my face was badly sunburned. Still, I felt strangely satisfied, al-
most peaceful.
“I don’t know how I made it,” I said to Bruce. “I was going to quit,” I
confessed, “and then I saw the pack.”
 Bruce shrugged, as if it were obvious. “That’s the power of purpose,” he
said.
I looked around at the tribe members, engaged in smaller groups, deep in
conversation. “Every lesson I’ve learned here,” I said, “is about how the
people around you can impact your life. This idea of purpose—how does it
fit? Purpose seems very individual.”
Bruce stirred the coals of the fire.
“You’re right,” Bruce said, “everyone’s why is unique and personal. The
challenge with why is that it’s easily consumed by how. We get caught up in
the day-to-day. It’s easy to lose sight of your purpose or to have it hijacked
by things like money, or power, or beauty. Those things don’t endure, yet
they have a way of leading us away from purpose.”
“And the tribe?”
“The tribe brings you back,” he said, poking the embers of the fire. “The
right people reveal your richest source of power. They keep you on purpose
when you can’t do it yourself.”
***
A delicious meal behind me, I felt much restored. But I was relieved to
see that although they were nowhere as exhausted, the tribe members all
seemed ready for an early night.
Our camp was a series of simple canvas tarps strung over ropes. The sim-
plest of shelters, with the barest of bedding on the hard rock.
But for all its rugged simplicity, I lay down, took one look at the stars
through the open end of my tent, and fell into a deep and dreamless sleep.

OceanofPDF.com
 THE FIFTH EFFECT
SUMMARY

THE PURPOSE EFFECT

The right people reveal your richest source of power.

Wealth is only a tool—it’s a means, not an end.

A powerful purpose can help you overcome the greatest obstacles.
Surrounding yourself with the right people keeps you in touch
with your why.

OceanofPDF.com
 CHAPTER 12
THE SIXTH EFFECT
My eyes flickered open.
The thought came instantly: This is my last day.
I lay on my back, staring at the ropes and canvas tarp that served as my
tent. I gingerly flexed my feet. They were sore, but I’d be able to walk. A
few bandages and a good sleep had served me well.
It was hard to believe how much had happened in a week. My father’s fu-
neral, and meeting Simon. Traveling to this island and meeting the Tribe of
Millionaires. The diving, the grotto, the adventures. The quest to carry my
father’s ashes up the side of an ancient volcano. It was a week that seemed
to last both an instant and a lifetime.
Despite the fact that I was camped on the peak of a tropical mountain, I
began to feel the tug of home. Not just the pull of the familiar—of my own
bed, of my routine, of Jasmine—but a growing sense of uncertainty, too. A
week had passed here, but it had also passed at home. My company was
still deeply troubled. There was work to be done, there was a team to be led.
There were problems to be solved.
My mind began to churn with the thought of what was waiting for me.
Had I learned enough? I thought of Simon and the other elders, and the
lessons they’d taught me. There was no question I’d learned a lot, but was it
enough to save my company?
I mentally reviewed the lessons of the week. Influence. Multiplier.
Accountability. Authenticity. Purpose. I knew they were powerful, but could
I apply them?
That was a problem I’d solve at home. For now, I had one day left, and
one lesson to learn.
Gingerly, I sat up in my sleeping bag and peered out at the breaking dawn.
From this height it was breathtaking. I unzipped my sleeping bag, to go
closer to the edge of the mountain for a full view.
At my feet, laying crisp and white against the black stone of the mountain,
was an envelope. Inside, an embossed card carried the lesson of the previ-
ous day—reprinted on fresh paper.
THE PURPOSE EFFECT
The right people reveal your richest source of power.
I thought back again to the previous day’s struggles. Just twenty-four
hours ago, I would have dismissed the card as a nice platitude, nothing
more. In light of what I’d accomplished, it now seemed like I’d been hand-
ed the world’s most priceless wisdom.
I reached into my pants pocket. I had, not surprisingly, fallen asleep in my
clothes. I pulled out the torn and battered version of the same card and re-
called how much it had meant the day before.
At the darkest moment of my climb, when I was burned and thirsty and
broken, I had given up. I honestly believed I couldn’t go any further. Then,
when Bruce helped me find a powerful why, I had found the strength not
just to push on a little further, but to push on for hours. It was the hardest
thing I’d ever done. And also the most rewarding.
I reached for the wooden box holding my father’s ashes. I had slept beside
it, and now I placed both cards in the box next to the carefully wrapped
bundle.
I looked inside the envelope for a note to tell me what to do next, but it
was empty. I felt a momentary rush of anxiety. Was it over? I was so certain
there’d be another lesson, something to tie it all together. But was that just
my assumption? Had Simon or anyone else ever actually said how many
lessons I’d learn?
What do I do now? I thought. Was this it?
My spinning mind was interrupted by a sound.
I looked up to see a man squatting on his haunches at the opening to my
tent. Where had he come from?
The tanned, rugged face. The stubbled, shaved head. The piercing eyes.
That aura not of authority, but of steady competence. It was the missing el-
der—the mysterious sixth man that I had seen at my father’s funeral.
“Good morning, Ethan.” He had a deep, warm voice, the slightest south-
ern hint. Soft, but powerful. “My name is Mason,” he said, extending a cal-
loused hand. “I was your father’s best friend.”
***
 With that barest of introductions, the mysterious elder stood and walked
slowly away from the camp. I stepped out of the tent to follow, then paused,
indecisive. I ducked back under the canvas and picked up the wooden box,
then limped slowly in the direction Mason had taken.
The small plateau where we had made camp ended in an abrupt drop,
where the view widened to a complete panorama. I stopped, captivated. The
breaking dawn was spreading an orange glow across the sea. We were thou-
sands of feet up. No wonder my feet are sore, I thought.
I looked around for Mason and spied a trail leading off from the plateau.
Skirting the edge of the cliff, I followed the path, which quickly turned into
a steep uphill climb.
Here we go again, I thought. But the climb was short, and moments later I
found Mason perched cross-legged on a narrow ledge, watching the sunrise.
I inched my way nervously closer, the box clutched to my chest. In front of
me was a nearly sheer drop of thousands of feet.
As I reached Mason, I discovered to my relief that the ledge widened con-
siderably, and I could sit quite easily with no fear of falling. I realized we
were at what must be the highest point of the mountain. The ocean stretched
out in every direction, sparkling in the morning sun.
“I see you brought someone with you,” Mason said.
I looked down at the box but said nothing.
“The last time I was here was a year ago,” he said, “and I was with your
father.” He stared out at the ocean, but I could tell he was looking at some-
thing that was no longer here.
“He was sick, then,” he said. “He didn’t say anything, but I think he knew.
We sat here for a long time, just like this. And he talked and talked.” A
smile played at his mouth. “I’d never heard your father talk so much.”
“I guess I wouldn’t really know,” I said.
Mason nodded as if considering his next words.
“Yesterday,” he said, “how did you feel when you found yourself alone?”
I thought back to my near-breakdown on the trail. “Angry, at first. I was
tired, thirsty. To be honest, I had decided to give up.”
“What changed your mind?”
I looked down at the box, still clutched in my hands. “This,” I said.
“So,” Mason said, that slight smile playing around the corner of his mouth
again, “it helped to have some extra weight to carry?”
 “Very funny,” I said. But he did have a point. How did carrying more
make climbing the mountain easier? “I know it was the Purpose Effect that
made the difference,” I said. “I’m just not sure I understand how.”
“One of the great secrets of life,” he said, “is that we are all capable of far
more than we imagine. Your father was fascinated by this idea—it became
his lifelong quest to find out how to tap into that vast store of potential.”
“Where did he get the idea?” For me, this was yet another unknown as-
pect of his life.
Mason turned his attention from the sea to the ground beside him and
picked up a jagged piece of volcanic rock.
“Way back in the 1930s,” he began, “long before your father was born, a
man named Kurt Lewin wrote an equation. Your father mentioned it often.
He used to tell me that Lewin should have been as famous as Einstein and
that his equation should be as well-known as E=mc2.”
Mason used the rock to scratch some characters on the stone ledge, where
they stood stark white against the dark rock:
B=F(P,E)
I stared at the letters. “That’s Greek to me.”
Mason tilted his head, examining the writing. “It’s not as complicated as it
looks. What it says is that someone’s behavior,” he motioned to each letter
in turn as he spoke, “is a function of the person in their environment.” He
scratched a line under the equation. “In essence,” he said, “people act dif-
ferently depending on their surroundings.”
“I guess that makes sense,” I said.
“It does, yet most people go through life believing something quite differ-
ent. They are convinced that how they think and behave is due to their per-
sonality, or some other inner state. They don’t realize that, below the level
of their consciousness, the world around them is constantly influencing their
behavior.”
“That sounds like the Influence Effect.”
Mason smiled, a full grin this time, and it lit his rugged face. “Like father,
like son,” he said. “Roberto loved the idea of influence. But he was fasci-
nated by how one part of the environment, the people, affected behavior. He
didn’t care if northern latitudes made you depressed, or if growing up poor
made you anxious. What he cared about was how the people in your life
changed you. The Influence Effect was your father’s first effort to try to
codify what he was learning about how people impact our destiny.”
“So he started the tribe?”
Mason chuckled. “What you see now is a far cry from where things start-
ed, but, yes. He wanted to move beyond just knowing that people change
us. He wanted to consciously harness those effects. It’s one thing to under-
stand that the people around you have an effect. It’s another thing altogether
to build a system that can use that knowledge. The tribe is that system.”
I thought of how accomplished all the tribe members seemed.
“It’s hard to deny that it works,” I said. “Everyone here is so—” I strug-
gled for the right words, “so successful.”
Mason made a non-committal grunt.
“I mean,” I continued, “I’ve never seen so much money, so much accom-
plishment in one place at the same time.”
“It’s no secret that we all appreciate the benefits of wealth,” Mason said.
“We don’t call it the Tribe of Millionaires because we’re broke.”
“Bruce told me yesterday that wealth couldn’t really be my purpose.”
“Well,” Mason said. “It can. It’s just not a very satisfying one. Do you re-
member the Multiplier Effect?”
“That the right group of people compounds your efforts?”
“Exactly. Money is like that—it’s another multiplier. But what it multi-
plies is up to you. You can use wealth to gain power or to consume more
and more. You can use it to keep score, or to boost your ego.”
“Or,” he stood, and tossed the rock from the cliff edge. I watched it sail
out, and then drop from sight. “You can use wealth as a tool to enable you
to fill a higher purpose.”
“Is that what Bruce meant? About purpose?” I asked.
Mason sat down beside me again. “Life will give you whatever you de-
cide to demand of it,” he said. “I hope you’ve learned by now that, with the
right people around you, you can accomplish anything. The point is that you
need a reason to demand things—a purpose—and the reason can’t be the
things themselves. Bruce’s role is to show how the tribe can help you find
and follow your unique purpose through different stages of life.”
“Then what’s your job?”
“My job is different. It’s to make sure we connect to the one purpose we
all share.”
 I thought of the tribe. Of Simon’s fancy office. Of this beautiful private
island.
“The only thing I know for sure you all share is wealth,” I said. “Everyone
is so different.”
Mason nodded thoughtfully. “You know the old saying,” he said, “that ‘no
one ever dies wishing they spent more time at the office’? I believe—and
your father did, too—that deep down we all know that work isn’t every-
thing and that you can’t take your wealth with you. What’s difficult is for us
to keep that in perspective.”
“So how do you do it?”
Mason smiled at me. “You’ve been here for long enough. Why don’t you
tell me?”
“Let me guess,” I grinned. “By surrounding yourself with the right
people.”
“Exactly,” Mason said. “The tribe teaches us to better ourselves. To mas-
ter our health, our wealth, our relationships. But more than anything, the
tribe keeps connected to the one purpose we all share.”
“Which is what?”
Mason seemed to ponder this. “Do you remember the one-sheets?” he
asked.
With a flush of embarrassment, I thought about how I’d been too intimi-
dated to participate. “Yeah. I do.”
“The one-sheet is a scorecard. But at the end of life, there’s only one score
that’s going to matter. You might call it the ultimate one-sheet. You only get
to fill it out once, and all the math happens in an instant—that instant when
your life flashes before your eyes. It’s that moment when you face the end
of your life, and you look back and wonder, “Why was I here? What did it
all mean?”
“That sounds like a question that has no answer.”
“It does sound that way. And there was a time when I certainly believed
that. So did your father—in fact, for years there were only five effects. The
sixth was added in his final months of life. When he knew the end was near.
When everything was being stripped away—literally and figuratively—and
he was left with the simple knowledge of what matters most. That’s what he
shared with me on our last trip here.”
We sat in silence. I imagined my father and Mason sitting just like this,
watching the sun.
“What did he tell you?”
“Your father was an imperfect man, Ethan,” Mason said. “And there’s no
shame in that. None of us is perfect. But he tried. He deeply regretted his
early life. He deeply regretted that he couldn’t reach you—that he’d lost
you. Of all the lessons he left for us, this one more than any other is the
greatest. It applies to everyone. But it was written for you.”
Mason held up his hand. He had a white envelope pinched between his
fingers. I opened it and read the card inside.
THE CONNECTION EFFECT
Your life will be measured by
the quality of your relationships
A flood of images poured through my mind. Of friends. Of family. Of
Jasmine. Of all the important moments in my life, and how they all in-
volved other people.
“There’s a tide in life,” Mason said. “It’s not strong. It’s not a tidal wave.
It’s a slow, invisible, inexorable force, and year by year it pulls us from
each other. Your job in life—the one that matters more than any other—is to
hold on to those around you. To make sure the tide doesn’t pull you from
the people that matter most.”
I stared at the card in my hand, unable to speak.
“More than anything,” Mason said, “this is what the tribe is for. Your fa-
ther knew that without a structured way to use these effects for good—espe-
cially the Connection Effect—people had a tendency to slip. To drift slowly
away. To lose the bonds that unite us.”
Mason nodded at the letters he’d scratched in the rock.
“This tribe is a formula, Ethan,” he said, “for creating the oldest, most
powerful magic the world has ever known. And your father?” He looked
down at the box in my hands. “Your father was the wizard.”
Until now, my entire experience on the island had done nothing but rein-
force how little I knew about my father.
Now, for the first time, I felt something shift. I felt some sense of know-
ing. A feeling of knowing my father not as the man who’d left us, and who
cared for no one but himself, but as someone who cared about the people
around him more than anything.
“I should have let him connect,” I said, fighting back tears.
“We’re all here to learn lessons,” Mason said. “We don’t always get to
choose the timing. But that doesn’t take make them mean any less.”
We sat like that, in silence, me gripping the box, watching the sun finally
clear the ocean and begin to rise into the sky.
“So now what?” I asked.
Mason placed a hand on the box in my lap.
“Your father wanted this to be his final resting place,” he said.
He ran his fingers over the letters on the box, for the briefest of moments.
Just a whisper of callous on wood.
And then he stood and walked away.
***
I watched the sea for some time, thinking about what Mason had said.
About the tide that pulls us apart.
After some time, I pocketed the card he’d given me, then opened the box,
and lifted the cloth bundle from inside.
I placed it on the warm stone of the mountain, and carefully unfolded its
many layers. Inside, a mound of white ash lay stark against the black cloth.
I imagined my father sitting here for the first time. I wondered what he’d
felt.
I realized that I’d never know. He was gone. But he’d left behind not just
the most important lessons of his life, but a group of people to help me fol-
low them. And, I realized, they all knew my father. Through them, I could
not only follow my father’s lessons, but learn to understand his life.
A slight breeze rose, building on the heat of the warming mountain. I
watched a bird of prey rise in lazy, thermal circles, then drift away.
Ahead of me was the rising sun. Behind, the last of the night.
The breeze began to swell, rising up the sides of the mountain. A small
puff of ash lifted from the cloth, and floated, dreamlike, off the summit and
into the air where it seemed to vanish.
The breeze grew, and more ash lifted, carried away on the currents of
wind and time. As I watched, a gust caught the last of the ash, carrying it
away from me, northward. Toward Jasmine, and home. Toward my future.
I carefully closed the lid of the box.
 I took one last look at the spreading rays of the sun, then I tucked the box
under my arm and headed back in the direction of my tribe.
As I picked my way back down the footpath, I realized I’d never felt more
connected to my father. It was as if some weight, some nagging doubt, car-
ried for years, had finally been lifted.
And I realized something else.
It was time to go home.

OceanofPDF.com
 CHAPTER 13
THE GIFT
The trip down the mountain was difficult, but not impossible. Walking
downhill was harder than I thought, but I was fueled by a new purpose:
home. Business was calling, yes. But more important, so were the other
people in my life.
Since the moment I’d left the summit, I’d been consumed with the idea of
heading home—home to Jasmine, home to our family and friends. The mes-
sage of the Connection Effect had struck me deeply; I wanted to be with the
most important people in my life.
Still, I knew that list of important people had grown this week. The inten-
sity and novelty of the experiences I’d shared with the tribe had bonded me
to them deeply; I was taking something with me, but I couldn’t help feeling
I was leaving something behind.
I walked near the back of the group, and from my higher vantage point on
the downhill trail, I could see the entire tribe strung out before me, a long
line of brothers winding their way down the mountain. In the middle of the
pack, I spied the elders. There was the lanky Simon, with his fedora. Next,
Vikram, with his white bristled hair standing stark against his brown skin.
He seemed elf-like next to the towering figure of Terry, who loomed behind
him, casting a shadow big enough to keep Vikram in near-constant shade.
Behind Terry, I caught the hyperactive bounce of Davis, the tiny man’s
laugh bubbling through the air as he tried in vain to trip Terry. And behind
them, Bruce, the Aussie with his safari outfit and desert boots. And finally,
the lean, rugged form of Mason the ‘cowboy monk’ who moved with a
graceful, effortless stride.
As I watched them, I thought of the lessons each had taught me about the
power of the right people to transform us.
Then the path entered the jungle, and the line of men disappeared from
view.
***
 The night torches were blazing, and they lit the path as I walked from my
hut to the main lodge.
I was exhausted from the trip down the mountain, but I knew I would be
gone before breakfast in the morning, and I wanted one last evening with
my companions.
Plus, if my courage held—and I thought it would this time—there was
one more thing I needed to do before my time here ended.
I arrived to find the main room lit with colorful patio lights. Tropical mu-
sic played. There was a hum of cheerful conversation. For the first time
since I arrived at the island, Mason had joined the crowd at the bar. The
mood was clearly festive.
Mason smiled and waved me over, and I pulled up a stool next to him.
From somewhere behind me, I heard the gleeful laughter of Davis, followed
by some stern admonishment from Terry that I couldn’t make out. Then a
louder roar of laughter from the group.
It was warm and wonderful, and I felt a pang of sadness at the thought of
leaving it behind.
Noticing my expression, Mason pointed his beer at a plaque that hung be-
hind the bar:
The most important thing in life is to live for something more than just
your own life.
– William James
“If I had a nickel for every time your father said that, I’d be a wealthy
man.”
I smiled. “I’m guessing you’re already a wealthy man.”
Mason shrugged. “My favorite part of being with the tribe is that I’m re-
minded that money is the least of our riches.”
“I was thinking on the climb down,” I said. “Why is it so hard to prioritize
all these lessons? They seem so obvious right here and now. But I worry
that back home I’ll forget just how important all of this is.”
Mason nodded in understanding. “That’s the tide your father spoke of.
The one that threatens to pull us apart.”
“So how do we keep that from happening.”
“You do what we all do,” he said. “You never stop swimming.”
He tapped the neck of his beer bottle against mine and took a long sip.
 “Your father believe that a good life consists of one question,” he said.
“It’s the most important one we can ever ask ourselves.”
“What is it?”
Mason stared ahead. “We have a tendency to ask ourselves, what’s miss-
ing in my life?” he said. “And the answer often leads us to things like
wealth, or status, or possessions.
“In reality,” he took another sip, “we should be asking not what is
missing, but who.” He turned to look at me. “That one question can change
everything.”
I nodded, and took a long swallow of my own beer. “I think my father
picked a good person to take over as leader,” I said.
Mason shook his head. “No. Roberto was adamant that he was just one
part of something larger. He wasn’t our leader. He was a catalyst to help us
lead ourselves—individually, and as a group. That’s the whole point. As
long as we remind each other why we’re really here—to forge bonds that
enable us to serve—then we guide the tribe collectively. As long as we re-
member the effects, we’re guiding ourselves, our tribe, our families and the
world, to something better.”
“So the tribe has no real leader?”
“Effectively, no. There are some of us who play parts, like your father.
What truly leads us are the same effects you discovered this week. What
leads us is the power of coming together.”
I looked around the room, savoring the mood, the expressions of joy on
the gathered faces. An arm touched here. Two heads bent in deep conversa-
tion there. And everywhere, laughter.
“Shouldn’t be too tough a crowd for you,” Mason said.
I felt my stomach tighten. I’d almost forgotten what I had ahead of me.
“I don’t know,” I said. “I just find it so hard to get up there and talk about
myself. About my life.”
Mason signaled to the bartender for another round, then turned on his
stool to look at me.
“Let me reframe this for you,” he said. “Every time you share. Every time
you speak the truth. Every time you deliver your one-sheet, you’re doing
more than talking about yourself. You’re doing more than asking for help.
You’re giving a gift to someone else.”
“I don’t understand,” I said.
 “When you share, authentically,” he said, “you’re reminding people that
we all have goals. We all dream. But we all struggle, too. We all hurt. We
all need help.”
The bartender placed two more beers in front of us.
“In that simple act of sharing,” Mason said, “you do the most important
thing of all. You remind us that we are all, in the end, human.”
He raised his beer to me.
“The one-sheet isn’t about you, Ethan,” he said. “Not really. It’s about us.
All of us.”
Before I could process his words, I heard the clinking of a glass, and the
clamor in the room subsided. I turned on my barstool to find Simon stand-
ing, drink in hand.
“Before we get to dinner,” he said, “I believe there’s one more person
who’d like to do their one-sheet.”
Every head in the room swiveled to look at me. I took a last nervous sip of
my beer, and then stood.
***
I started strong.
It still felt strange to tell the group the personal details of my health and
my finances. But something had shifted. I knew these men, now. I trusted
them. And so I pushed on.
But when it came time to talk about my relationships, I began to stumble.
“Let’s see. For relationships. Uh. I know—I know that you all knew my fa
—” I broke off.
I understood all I had to do was read what I had written on the page. To
tell, in plain and simple terms, how my relationships were, and what I
hoped for the future. And what was standing in my way.
But I was frozen in place.
How could I tell them? How could I explain that I had no idea how to cre-
ate good relationships? That I would always wonder if I would be a good
father. A good leader. A good man. That I was still chasing the ghost of a
man I would never know—one who would never know me?
How could I tell them all that?
I looked toward the back of the room. Mason stood at the steps to the
beach, leaning easily against the wooden framework, watching me closely.
 He gave a single, slow, nod.
I heard his words echo back to me:
In that simple act of sharing you do the most important thing of all. You
remind us that we are all, in the end, human.
I took a deep breath.
“I never knew my father,” I began.
And the words flowed.
And when I finished and looked to the back of the room, Mason was gone.
***
The buzz of delivering my one-sheet was starting to fade as I made my
way along the torch-lit path to my room. I knew its impact would continue
long after the night was over, but now I felt a deep fatigue settling into my
body. It had been a long couple of days.
I was about to climb into bed when I heard a knock at the door.
I opened it to find Simon on the porch, his face illuminated by torchlight.
In his hands, he held a small cardboard box.
I stepped back to let him into the room.
“A week ago,” he said, “you stood in my office and asked me, ‘What do I
get?’ ”
I flushed. “I’m sorry. That was rude.”
Simon smiled warmly. “Not to worry. You were hurting, Ethan. Your fa-
ther had died, a stranger to you. I hope that you’ve found some peace here.
That some of that hurt is behind you.”
It was, I knew. I felt it that night. My view of the world had changed this
week, and along with it my view of my father. I’d found a peace I hadn’t
expected.
“I only wish…” I trailed off. What did I wish?
I’d learned so much about my father this week. I felt like I understood
him. I’d even discovered, to my surprise, that I felt proud of him—of what
he’d built. Of his legacy.
Yet, there was still that nagging sense that while I now knew him, he
would never get a chance to know me. His final gift—the Connection Effect
—would be something he’d never truly experience at the deepest level.
I realized that Simon was still waiting, patiently.
 “Sorry,” I said. “I was just thinking that I know so much about my father.
It’s a shame he never got to know me. I like to think—well, perhaps he
might have been proud.”
Simon gave me a strange look.
“What?”
He seemed to gather himself, and he regained his formal manner.
“Ethan,” he said quietly. “I’m here to answer your question from last
week.” He paused as if wondering where to begin. “I know that you’re ex-
pecting some—” he broke off. “Some financial consideration.”
I flushed again. In truth, I had been. But that was a week—and a lifetime
—ago.
“Maybe, in the beginning,” I said. “But that... that was…” I searched for
the right words, “a different… me.”
Simon nodded. “Very well. You should know that your father left his fi-
nancial estate to our tribal charity. He believed strongly that money was a
force for good. It was a means to an end, not an end in itself. And as you
know from hearing our one-sheets, we all give a large portion of our wealth
to worthy causes.”
I nodded. I didn’t know what to say. The money did seem unimportant in
light of everything I’d learned. But I couldn’t deny that money might have
helped solve my problems at home.
“The answer to your question of ‘What do I get?’ is this.” Simon held out
the box. “This is from your father. For you.”
I took the box from Simon. It was a simple shoebox—old, battered around
the edges, worn from much handling. It was from some long-defunct brand
that I’d never heard of. On the lid was written in simple handwriting, Ethan.
I looked up at Simon. He nodded. “Open it,” he said.
I lifted the lid.
The box was filled with photographs. All shapes and sizes. Some black
and white. Some in color.
I picked up the top one. It was a photo of me as a baby. Beneath it was an-
other: me again, this time grinning from the seat of a shiny two-wheeled bi-
cycle. I remember this, I thought.
I dug deeper. There was me, graduating from high school. Another of me
standing awkwardly with my prom date.
I looked up. “How did he get these? He left long before this.”
 Simon smiled knowingly. “A tribe is a wonderful thing, Ethan.”
I felt my throat tighten. Tears pricked my eyes.
I looked through the box. There were photos from every important mo-
ment of my life. Our wedding—Jasmine, looking radiant, me looking shell-
shocked but happy. There were Jasmine and I, arms around each other in
front of a real estate ‘for sale’ sign.
Another, with the two of us holding paintbrushes, grinning like fools.
Me holding the first check from our business investors.
Us, at the Eiffel Tower.
“Turn them over,” Simon said gently.
I flipped over one of my baby pictures. There was a sentence, handwritten
in faded ink:
Your destiny is shaped by those around you.
I looked up at Simon in surprise.
“Your father was always connected to you. You were what motivated him.
I would often find him, late at night, making his notes, your pictures spread
out on his desk.”
Simon nodded again at the photos. I turned over another—this one of me,
at age five or so. A toothy, awkward grin. In the same handwriting was an-
other faded phrase:
The right people reveal your richest source of power.
I began to pick up photos, turn them over. The back of each was marked
up with notes, arrows, small diagrams. Bullet points. Some were crossed
out. Reworded. But in all of them, I saw the seeds of what I had learned this
week. Every effect.
They were all there, handwritten across a record of my life.
I realized I’d been holding my breath.
“How… how long,” I whispered.
“Years. Many, many years,” Simon said. “This was your father’s gift to
us. To the world. To you.”

OceanofPDF.com
 THE SIXTH EFFECT
SUMMARY

THE CONNECTION EFFECT

Your life will be measured
by the quality of your relationships

A life dedicated to connection is a life free from regret.

You are here to live in service to others.
Connection is the greatest purpose of all.

OceanofPDF.com
 CHAPTER 14
HOME
The knock came early.
The earliest glow of morning had yet to appear on the horizon, but the
jungle was coming alive. The first cries of tropical life echoed through the
morning silence. Dawn wasn’t far off.
I opened the door. Once more, Simon stood on the porch.
“Ready?” he asked.
I nodded and took a last look around my hut. Considering how little time
I’d spent in it, it felt remarkably like home.
Still, I knew home was elsewhere. Home was with Jasmine. Home was
my work, my family, my friends.
We passed through the empty main lodge on our way to the waiting jeep. I
scanned the bar area, hoping I might get one last farewell with the others,
but the compound was dark and silent.
I felt a pang of sadness. In just a few short days, I’d gone from being a
stranger in a foreign land to feeling a true sense of belonging. Now it felt as
if things were running in reverse. Today, I’d leave everyone behind, even
Simon.
We drove in silence through the pre-dawn. The headlights of the jeep lit
the jungle walls to either side of the road. I pulled my jacket tighter in the
damp chill.
“I feel like I’m leaving a part of me behind,” I said at last.
Simon nodded thoughtfully, his eyes on the road. “Perhaps,” he said, after
a moment, “you are also taking something with you.”
I settled back into the seat. He was right. I was taking an enormous
amount with me. So why did I feel such a sense of loss?
***
The jeep pulled to a stop beside the small hut at the edge of the runway. It
was still dark, but I thought I could see the barest glow on the horizon.
I pulled my bag from the back of the jeep and turned to face Simon.
 “Is the plane here?”
“It’s there.”
I squinted in the darkness.
“Here,” Simon said. He pulled a lighter from his pocket and lit a tall bam-
boo torch beside the hut. Its flickering glow did little to dispel the darkness,
and I peered again in vain, trying to see the plane.
As I stared into the dark, another flame sputtered to life some twenty feet
ahead of me. Seconds later, another flame appeared just a few feet past it.
Then another.
As I watched, more and more torches flared to life, lighting the darkness
and stretching in a long line across the open runway to a waiting jet.
There, in the growing glow of torchlight, I saw the tribe.
***
They were all there. Every one. Every elder, every member, had turned
out to say goodbye. They stood, smiling, each holding a tall bamboo torch,
forming a long line that stretched from where I stood.
I looked at Simon. He simply smiled and stepped aside, and I began to
walk.
My vision began to blur with tears before I reached the first torch.
***
By the time I’d reached the last torch, my face was wet with tears, but I
was smiling so much it hurt.
Each man had given me a firm handshake or a warm embrace. Each had
offered short, powerful words of friendship and encouragement.
The last man in line was Mason. He looked as timeless as ever, stoic and
strong. He shook my hand, then pulled me to him.
“Your father would be so proud of you,” he whispered.
And then it was over.
***
I watched from the jet window as we lifted off. The torches of the tribe
winked out one by one in the breaking dawn, and the island shrank, grow-
ing ever smaller until all I could make out was the volcanic peak where I
had spread my father’s ashes. Then we entered a bank of clouds, and I saw
nothing. The island was gone.
As I turned away from the window and settled into my seat, it occurred to
me that I still had no idea where the island even was. I thought back a week
earlier to my struggles to explain to my team where I was going. At the
time, I didn’t know what to say. Here it was a week later and—the thought
brought a genuine smile to my face—I still had no idea.
What was I going to say? The closer I got to home, the more the world of
the island and the energy of the tribe began to be replaced by the reality of
what I was returning to.
In an effort to stem my growing anxiety, I turned to my one-sheet. I re-
viewed my top five business goals. I looked at my aspirations for my health
and my relationships. I knew I had to trust the process, and trust what I
learned from the tribe, but I felt so uncertain.
I looked down at the shoebox on the seat beside me. My mind swirled
with conflicting thoughts and emotions. I hadn’t really expected my father
to leave me a small fortune that would solve my problems, had I?
The truth was, the idea of a possible inheritance had been on my mind
from the first moments in Simon’s office. That was, after all, the reason I’d
even shown up in the first place. It had been a lurking, almost distasteful
truth that neither Jasmine nor I had spoken aloud. But it was there,
nonetheless.
And although the idea of a financial estate had faded during my time with
the tribe, I realized that it had never really left me. When I had told the team
that I was retreating to solve the problems of the business, what I had really
meant was that I was hoping to find a pot of gold at the end of a tropical
rainbow.
I picked up the box and sat it on my lap. I’d found something more valu-
able than gold, I knew, and I wouldn’t trade it for anything. But a shoebox
of photographs and ideas wasn’t something I could use to make payroll—I
was right back where I started. My trip to the island was nothing more than
just another last-ditch effort.
I looked at my watch. It was Friday. How perfect, I thought. Another Hail
Mary Friday.
And another failure.
Now what the hell was I going to do?
 ***
Of course, the insight came from Jasmine.
I had been home for a week when she commented on how much more en-
ergetic I seemed. “And you’re losing weight,” she teased. “You should go
away more often.”
It was true, I realized. I’d been to the gym daily since I got home, and my
eating habits had shifted. Something had happened to me during my time
with the tribe. I could feel it.
Part of it was my one-sheet. The simple act of capturing my goals and
tracking my progress was remarkable effective. But what had really made
the difference was the local Tribe of Millionaires group that I’d joined. I
hadn’t met them in person yet, but already they were supporting me with
daily encouragement. It was remarkable how the combination of account-
ability and friendship seemed to make all the difference. I was getting more
done than ever, and still finding time to exercise and spend time with
friends and family.
But still, the business was in a precarious position. I couldn’t quite seem
to right the ship. It just wasn’t flowing.
It was Jasmine who helped me crack the code.
After seeing my transformation (and putting up with me talking endlessly
about it for a week), she said off-handedly, “The effects are so powerful. It’s
too bad everyone can’t experience them.”
I’d agreed, of course, then continued blathering on about my amazing
experience.
Later, though, her words came back to me—it’s too bad everyone can’t ex-
perience them—and I began to think about our business. Our job was to
help gym and wellness centers improve retention by helping their members
participate more. What I needed was to help our users—the customers who
we were trying to motivate—to feel better about themselves. To do more,
and as a result, become more.
What I realized, hearing Jasmine’s words, was that I needed them to expe-
rience what I had.
I went upstairs to the bedroom and opened the bedside table. There, bun-
dled with an elastic band, were the cards I’d received during my time on the
island. I spread them out on the bed. Six cards. Six effects. Six lessons.
 Was it possible?
I stood back and looked at the cards. Every effect was about the power of
the right group of people to help us create better lives, and in turn, a better
world.
Wasn’t that what I was trying to do in my company? And if so, couldn’t
these six lessons help?
I considered my business. We’d been trying to help people, but every sin-
gle step of the way, with every feature, every bit of code, every partner—
we’d been thinking only of individuals. We’d never once considered the
power of groups.
In hindsight, it was so obvious I felt like an idiot. Why hadn’t I thought of
the power of connecting these people to each other? After all, they were all
trying to accomplish something challenging, trying to improve their lives—
why not try together?
I felt my heart race. I knew—I knew—I was onto something. I bundled up
the cards, hopped down the stairs two at a time, and flew through the
kitchen, stopping just long enough to kiss Jasmine on the cheek.
“Gotta go to the office,” I said.
“Now?”
“Now.” I grabbed my coat. “Thank you!” I said.
“For what?”
“For everything,” I called back.
Then I was out the door, my body in the car, my head in the clouds of a
mysterious tropical island.
***
And so it was that, in the end, it wasn’t money that solved my problem—
it was the tribe.
More accurately, perhaps, it was my father.
Now that I look back, it seems so blindingly obvious: people didn’t need
rewards to make changes in their life. They didn’t need money. What they
needed was other people.
It wasn’t easy. We did almost go bankrupt. Almost—it was close. The
changes to the business took a little time, and time is money, as they say.
But time is also life. It’s that thing you don’t get more of. For the first time
I felt like I was investing my time—my life—in something that truly mat-
tered. I had, I realized, found a powerful why.
Within a month we had a new business model and a new approach—one
that connected people as a way to help them make change. In effect, it cre-
ated a tribe—a place for them to belong.
Along the way, it taught them all the effects I’d learned from my time on
the island—and from my father. And the results were astonishing. Our beta
users more than tripled their time at the gym. They got results. Our fitness
and wellness business clients got what they wanted.
But that wasn’t the best part.
Somewhere, somehow, the whole thing developed a life of its own. For
months, we had pushed uphill, spending a fortune on advertising, attracting
new users. Then… it just went, building up a wave of momentum. People
started finding success, but then they started using the tools for things we’d
never intended. They began to eat better. Make changes in their work, in
their relationships. They began to connect more deeply with loved ones.
They began to give back. They began to connect, in every best way
possible.
Our efforts to create a business had started a movement. A tribe, one fo-
cused on positive change, connection, and abundance. One that taught that
we truly are better together.
And so, in the end, you could say my Hail Mary worked. Not in the way I
expected—there was no quick fix, no financial miracle.
But as I discovered, the right group of people is its own special kind of
miracle.
You just need to find them.
THE END

OceanofPDF.com
 LESSONS
TRIBE OF MILLIONAIRES
THE INFLUENCE EFFECT
Your destiny is shaped by those around you.
THE MULTIPLIER EFFECT
The right group of people compounds your efforts.
THE ACCOUNTABILITY EFFECT
Accountability is the world’s most powerful force.
THE AUTHENTICITY EFFECT
You find your true self among those you trust.
THE PURPOSE EFFECT
The right people reveal your richest source of power.
THE CONNECTION EFFECT
Your life will be measured
by the quality of your relationships.

OceanofPDF.com
 GOBUNDANCE
THE “REAL” TRIBE OF
MILLIONAIRES
Tribe of Millionaires may be a fictional story, but there’s more truth in these
pages than you might realize.
This book is based on GoBundance, a real-life tribe created for the same
reason that Ethan’s father created Tribe of Millionaires: to help people be-
come the best version of themselves.
It works. The effects in this book are all based on things that have hap-
pened time and time again to GoBundance members. We’ve watched first-
hand as our tribe members use the power of surrounding themselves with
the right people as a springboard to taking their lives to the next level and
beyond.
Like so many good things, we created GoBundance because we needed it
ourselves. We knew from painful experience how limiting and lonely life
can be, even when you’re on your way to success. GoBundance was our
way of creating a reliable, productive way to lift each other up, and turn life
into a fantastic adventure at the same time. It was our way of asking not
what is missing from your life, as Ethan’s father so eloquently phrased it,
but who.
The result? We became healthier, happier, wealthier and felt like our lives
—perhaps for the first time—were full of the most important things: close
relationships, meaning, and a sense of purpose.
Like Ethan, many of our members were facing Hail-Mary moments of
their own when they found GoBundance. We wanted to share with you
some of their stories so you can see what happens when you make con-
scious decisions about the world around you. You’ll find those stories in the
pages that follow.
As our Ethan says, finding the right group of people is its own kind of
miracle. We hope you’ll agree.
To your epic life,
 - The Founders of GoBundance

PS The “one-sheet” that Ethan discovers in the story is a real thing! You
can download your own copy and get full video instruction on how to use it,
all for free. We’ve also included our tribal tools for calculating your net
worth and horizontal income. You’ll find all that, and more, at:
www.TribeOfMillionaires.com

OceanofPDF.com
 PROFILE
DIEGO CORZO

“They gave me the confidence.

Everything they told me would
take my life to the next level, I did.
They gave me the courage,
they set a game plan for me,
and now here I am.”
— Diego
DIEGO CORZO was born in Lima, Peru and moved to the United States
with his family at the age of nine. His parents always told him that America
was the land of opportunity and that with persistence and hard work he
could accomplish anything.
Reality, it seemed, didn’t quite agree.
As an undocumented immigrant, Diego found many doors closed to him.
Despite graduating third in his high school class and being accepted into
college, he realized that he wasn’t eligible for student loans or financial aid.
Many of the scholarships that he won were withdrawn because of his un-
documented status. And to make things worse, his situation meant he
couldn’t find work to support himself as a student.
“But I was able to still find a way,” Diego recalled. And he did, eventually
graduating in the top 1% of his class and becoming a software developer.
Still, Diego had bigger dreams. He earned his real estate license and be-
gan educating himself by listening to podcasts from other realtors—includ-
ing GoBundance elder Pat Hiban—hoping to learn how to improve.
“My dad told me that this is the land of opportunity,” Diego said, “but it is
up to us to find it. So no matter what obstacle I faced, I knew that there was
a solution.”
For Diego, that solution was GoBundance. With little more than the infor-
mation on the website, he took a chance and attended a week-long group
event in Steamboat, Colorado. It would be a pivotal choice.
As Diego recalled, “I needed to surround myself with individuals playing
life at a big level. They challenged me. I turned 24 at the end of that event
and I knew my life would never be the same.”
Diego was right. Within four years, his net worth increased from $25,000
to over $600,000, and he now owns multiple real estate properties.
For Diego, however, the impact of GoBundance went far beyond wealth.
“I used to stutter,” he said, “I was always the kid in high school that would
skip class so that I didn’t have to read, write or talk or give a speech. I was
afraid of talking on the phone.
“GoBundance lightened something in me. Now, I’ve told my story in
front of 200, 300 people. I even gave a TEDx talk. It’s something that I nev-
er, never imagined in my life, but those guys gave me the confidence.”

OceanofPDF.com
 PROFILE
AARON AMUCHASTEGUI

“When you are surrounded by guys

that do amazing things,
they don’t seem so impossible anymore.”
— AARON

AARON AMUCHASTEGUI found GoBundance at what, for him, was the

ideal time. “I was needing a new fresh start and fire in my life,” Aaron said.
“My dad had just passed away, and when he died, I made a promise to my-
self and my family that from then on I would really go for it in life, and live
every day like it is my last.”
That, however, was easier said than done.
“Before GoBundance I was afraid of flying,” Aaron recalled. “I wasn’t
athletic. I wasn’t an adventure guy. I was kind of scared of life.”
That’s all changed. Since joining, he’s done Ironman triathlons and been
diving with great white sharks. He got his first passport in order to attend a
GoBundance event. Now he’s traveled the world with his family and flies
100,000 miles a year.
At his first event, Aaron noted that they asked everyone who had written a
book to raise their hands. He was surprised and inspired by the count.
“I never thought I would write a book,” he said, “but my wife and I wrote
a book about the changes that occurred in our lives after joining
GoBundance. It’s a bestseller and is helping to change families.”
The tribe also helped Aaron’s business. Six months before joining
GoBundance, he was broke. “Since then,” Aaron said, “I’ve pretty much
doubled my income, too.”
Best of all, Aaron no longer feels isolated in his work. “I was really excit-
ed about business, but I was completely alone. I had nobody to talk to about
the wins or the losses. And I remember feeling very free at that first event to
be able to finally, for the first time, say those things.”

OceanofPDF.com
 PROFILE
JOHN EDWIN

“We aren’t one of these groups where

we’re passing out business cards to each other.
We’re not a networking group.
We are here to support one another
to be the best versions of ourselves.”
— John

JOHN EDWIN had spent nearly two decades becoming one of the premier
personal trainers in the country. But for all his success, he was feeling
unmoored.
“I had gone for a long time feeling, feeling like I was on an island,” he
said. “Like I was alienated, and I didn’t have anyone to help me or someone
to aspire to be like.”
That all changed at his first GoBundance meeting. “As soon as I walked
in,” John said, “I knew I’d found my people. I knew it was the right place
for me to be. I knew I was at home.”
The timing was fortuitous. John had recently been forced from his training
facility, and his business was in flux. With his life and business in transition,
he joined GoBundance.
Within a year, he’d more than doubled his passive income, something he
attributes entirely to his relationships within GoBundance.
“When I started getting involved and connecting with the caliber of the
men there, I realize they’re all setting the world on fire. It gave me some-
thing to aspire to, and people I could ask questions, to help understand
things.”
But the effects go deeper. Since getting his family involved, John’s seen
his three kids blossom. His oldest son, who struggled for years with a diffi-
cult health challenge, is now 15 and has even started his own online
business.
“Every aspect of my life and my family’s life has been impacted through
GoBundance,” John said. “I cannot put into words my gratitude towards
this tribe.”

OceanofPDF.com
 PROFILE
DANIEL DEL REAL

“
I was grading my life at a different level.
What I thought was normal—it wasn’t.”
— Daniel

DANIEL DEL REAL was in his thirties when he was approached by

GoBundance Elder Tim Rhode. “I was working a hundred hours a week,”
Daniel recalled, “and I was doing great. But I was working hard. I was ne-
glecting my family a lot.”
Tim convinced Daniel that there was more to a full life than wealth, and
before long, Daniel found himself at a GoBundance event in Lake Tahoe
where he faced his work habits head-on.
“They were asking me the important questions,” he said. “What does that
mean for your family? How’s your health? How’s your relationship with
your kids?”
The more Daniel looked at his overworked life, the worse things seemed.
“I had pre-hypertension,” he said. “I was pre-diabetic. I weighed 270
pounds. I was just not fit at all. I was overworked, overloaded, and suffering
from panic attacks because I felt like there was just too much to do and not
enough time.”
With support from the tribe, Daniel reframed his approach to work and
life. “I started getting myself into shape and I ended up doing a 70.3
Ironman in Austin,” Daniel said. “That completely transformed my health.
I’ve gone from not being able to run a mile to doing eight Ironman races.”
Through it all, Daniel was also dealing with his long work hours. “I was
addicted to my business,” he recalled. “I was too scared to step away. They
challenged me to have breakfast with my kids two days a week. They would
text me in the morning to see if I was doing it.”
It was hard at first, but the group supported Daniel, challenging him to
make it work. And he did. Now, three years later, he’s working a fraction of
what he used to, spending time with his family every day, and his business
is more efficient than ever.

OceanofPDF.com
 PROFILE
WALLY ELIBIARY

“It’s very rare that you’re able to find

a group of men that you can be
authentically transparent with
and you don’t feel judged.
I’ve never had that my adult life
until GoBundance.”
— Wally

WALLY ELIBIARY was 14 when his family turned their back on him. As
a teenager trying to grow up on his own, he struggled with challenges of
trust and self-worth. As an adult, it was his peers in GoBundance who of-
fered him a place to be himself.
“They allowed me to be me instead of trying to be who I thought they
wanted me to be,” Wally said.
Surrounding himself with successful people he trusted and who hold him
accountable has allowed Wally to change his approach to work and life.
“I was the one that always worked really hard—no one outworked me.
Through GoBundance I was able to learn how to work smart and have oth-
ers work hard for me. I was able to learn from them how to turn three steps
into two steps.”
That education has paid off. Since joining, Wally’s been able to double his
income. He no longer works evenings or weekends, and he’s taken twenty
weeks of vacation in the last year—more than ten times what he ever had
before.
Much of that freedom has come from developing passive income. “When
I joined GoBundance,” Wally said, “I owned zero rental properties. Today I
own 59.”
But the single biggest motivator for Wally isn’t wealth or
accomplishment, or the 25 pounds he’s lost. It’s his family.
“There are people in your family that deserve a better version of you,”
Wally said. “It could be a more loving person. It could be a better listener. It
could be a better role model or a better man of faith. It can be a healthier
husband that can be there for your family.”

OceanofPDF.com
 PROFILE
JOHN WHITE

“You have a group of people

who wouldn’t be where they are
if they weren’t confident,
and yet they have this sense of humility.
It’s unique.”
— John

JOHN WHITE is a wealth manager. He’s accustomed to being around suc-

cessful people. But as his thirtieth birthday approached and he was begin-
ning to find his own business success, he realized there were limits to what
he could share with others.
It was GoBundance Elder David Osborn who told him, “Sometimes you
get to a place where you have your biggest win in life and you can’t really
tell anybody else.”
John remembers thinking, “I need that—other guys who are doing things
similar or bigger, who you can celebrate your biggest wins with and no one
is going to judge you.”
It turned out that his new peers would offer much more. At one event,
John recalled a poignant moment during a GoBundance adventure.
“We’re having a very vulnerable conversation about our personal relation-
ships,” he said. “And I remember looking over the mountains, thinking, I
didn’t even know these guys three days ago. I remember just how good it
felt to have a conversation like that with people that I knew had no reason
to judge me. And to do it at the top of a beautiful mountain where you can
see for miles.”
After more than half a decade with the group, John sees his GoBundance
membership as a unique investment, even to his seasoned wealth manager’s
eyes.
“When you invest in a financial asset,” he said, “you’ve usually got only a
couple of ways that money is working for you. The return on GoBundance
is holistic. You’re getting a return in yourself; you’re getting return in your
relationships. You’re getting a return on your business. Where else am I go-
ing to get that?”

OceanofPDF.com
ARE YOU READY TO PLAY
AT A HIGHER LEVEL?
To learn more about GoBundance membership,
please visit www.GoBundance.com

OceanofPDF.com
 ABOUT THE AUTHORS

DAVID OSBORN
David Osborn is a New York Times bestselling author of the books Wealth
Can’t Wait and Miracle Morning Millionaires, and is co-owner of the sixth
largest real estate company in the U.S., with an excess of $10 billion in
sales. In addition to being a primary investor and operator of countless real
estate-related businesses, he is Co-Founder & Chairman of Magnify
Capital, a private equity firm in Austin. Overall, he has done business in
more than forty U.S. states and in Canada.
Firmly rooted to the principle of knowledge-sharing and giving back,
David is a founder and operating partner of GoBundance and is the leader
of the Champions Division there. Further, David sits on the boards of the
1Life Fully Lived nonprofit and Habitat for Humanity Austin. He con-
tributes to various causes including Charity Water and the Dell Children’s
Hospital.
David is the proud father of two amazing daughters and one son and is
married to the wonderful and talented Traci Osborn.
PAT HIBAN
Pat Hiban started out as a real estate agent fresh out of college and hustled
his way to top honors at multiple companies, eventually becoming the #1
agent in the world at Re/Max International. Over time he invested in hori-
zontal lines of income and retired from full-time real estate sales at 46 years
of age. He is the author of the New York Times Bestseller 6 Steps to 7
Figures and the co-founder of GoBundance. Pat actively plans the in-
ternational bucket list trips for the GoBros and hosts the GoBundance
Podcast as well as his own podcast – Real Estate Rockstars. His family in-
cludes 2 daughters, Heather and Kayli, and a wife of almost three decades,
Kim. He resides in both Folly Beach, South Carolina and Columbia,
Maryland.

MIKE MCCARTHY
Mike McCarthy is Co-owner and Operating Partner for the Greater
Pennsylvania Region of Keller Williams Real Estate. He is a Co-Founder of
GoBundance and is the leader behind FamBundance an organization that
teaches families to connect more deeply and build their family legacy to-
gether. He has co-authored The Miracle Morning for Parents and Families
along with his wife Lindsay and Bestselling Author Hal Elrod. His GoBros
affectionately refer to Mike as “McLovin,” and he resides in a suburb of
Philadelphia PA with his wife and two children.

TIM RHODE
Tim Rhode comes from a very humble background, growing up in a blue-
collar family in a rural blue-collar town. His family’s tight financial situa-
tion left an indelible mark on Tim, and although he barely graduated high
school and never attended college, Tim went on to dream, plan, and create
his own “magnificent life” and retired financially free at the age of 40. Tim
is one of the founders of Gobundance, and also the Founder/ CEO and vi-
sionary behind 1Life Fully Lived; a non-profit organization he started in
2011. He is totally committed to helping people of all ages plan their best
future, including helping transform the “life education” of young people.
Tim’s passions include his family, skiing, hiking, and mountain biking. Tim
has three grown children and lives in Portola, California with his wife Tina.

OceanofPDF.com
 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
The Authors would like to first and foremost thank their families. The
Osborns: Traci, Cheaven Roberts, Bella, Luke, and David’s sister Ann E.
Osborn. The Hibans: Kim, Heather, and Kayli. The McCarthys: Lindsay,
Tyler, and Ember. The Rhodes: Tina, Chris, Sarah, and Andy. And of
course, to all of our parents who helped make us the human beings we are
today. Next, we’d like to thank Dan Clements who traveled all the way to
Japan to meet with 22 GoBros on an international bucket list adventure so
he could help us put our company’s soul into an incredible story. Thank You
to Rock Thomas, Joe Polish, Gary Keller and Front Row Dads. To Joshua
Dorkin, David Greene,Brandon Turner, and the entire Bigger Pockets
organization. To Robert Herjavec, Robert Kiyosaki, Sean Stephenson,
Aubrey Marcus, Rob Dial, J.P. Sears, Charlie Engle, Ben Hardy, Jeff
Hoffman, and all the other speakers we have been honored to have at our
events, thanks for enriching our lives. We would also like to thank our
original mentor who taught us the value of a mastermind and extreme
accountability: Dr. Fred Grosse.
To Jon Berghoff, our newest Gobundance Elder- for designing, leading
and transforming our annual mastermind events, for co-founding and
bringing the Gobundance Women’s tribe to life - you have enabled us to
grow and evolve exponentially, since the day you arrived!!!

OceanofPDF.com
It’s important for us to recognize our first official class of GoBundance.
This group of founding members believed in our vision so much that they
put up hard-earned money to join without it having proven itself yet.
Adam Roach, Andrew Cushman, Bob Wells, Brett Levine, Dan Grieb,
Darren McMahon, Diego Corzo, Gabe Deukmaji, Gary Jonas, John
White, Mark Jeffries, Mark Schwaiger, Matt Aitchison, Mo Choumil,
Paul Morris, Samuel Wegert, Saul Zenkevicius, Wally Elibiary

Then we would like to thank our Champion Members, who inspire us all on
a daily basis (Champions have a verified net worth of over 5 million dollars
and/or earn an adjusted gross income of one million dollars annually):
Aaron Amuchastegui, Aleksandar Memca, Arnold Kozys, Dan Lesniak,
Daniel Del Real, Daniel Ramsey, Dave Codrea, Gary Jonas, John White,
Josh Friedensohn, Kamil Maras, Michael Hananel, Nate Martinez, Nick
Waldner, Paul Morris, Rick Hale, Scott Smith, Steven Hatcher, Vitalijus
Kaleinikovas, Wally Elibiary

Our badassadors past and present who have stepped up as leaders and gate-
keepers for our organization, showing that we are truly a member-led tribe:
Adam Roach, Cory Older, Diego Corzo, Erle Thompson, Fred Hubler,
Josh Painter, Matt Aitchison, Matt Templeton, Mario Mazzamuto, Pat
Cullinane, Shawn Lowery

Thank you to our Growth Partners who have been massively influential in
helping us grow:
Aaron Amuchastegui, Adam Roach, Bob Wells, Brandon Turner, Cory
Older, Dan Grieb, David Osborn, David Greene, Erle Thompson, Hal
Elrod, Hans Box, John White, Josh Friedensohn, Mario Mazzamuto,
Matt Aitchison, Matt Faircloth, Matt Donnelly, Mike McCarthy, Mo
Choumil, Neal Collins, Patrick Hiban, Patrick Cullinane, Rock Thomas,
Saul Zenkevicius, Shawn Lowery, Steven Hatcher, Tim Rhode

And to the entire tribe of high achieving men, who, without your energy
and willingness to grow and embrace the beliefs of GoBundance, this book
would have never been written!!
Aaron Amuchastegui, Aaron Velky, Aaron West, Adam Cole, Adam
Roach, AJ Osborne, Alan Schnur, Aleksandar Memca, Andre Kajlich,
Andrew Cushman, Andy Gilbert, Anthony Vigilante, Anton Bayer,
Arnold Kozys, Bart Swinnen, Beau Eckstein, Ben Balsbaugh, Ben
Riehle, Bob Wells, Brandon Rumbley, Brandon Turner, Brendan
Lawrence, Brent Flewelling, Brett Levine, Brian Galura, Brian Murray,
Brian Oatis, Brian Overly, Brian Wentz, Buddy Martin, Calvin Chin,
Casey Wright, Cav Vassau, Chad Swanson, Charlie Engle, Chris Dufala,
Chris Dunham, Chris Lochhead, Chris Marrone, Chris Papa, Chris
Plough, Christopher Savino, Chuong Pham, Cody Bjugan, Cody
Littlewood, Cooper Callaway, Cory Nemoto, Cory Older, Courtney
Atkinson, Craig Jones, Dan Grieb, Dan Lesniak, Dan Trinidad, Dana
Amato, Daniel Casey, Daniel Del Real, Daniel Nunney, Daniel Perez,
Daniel Ramsey, Darren McMahon, Darsh Singh, Dave Codrea, David
Greene, David Lawver, David Mantek, David Osborn, David Sollis,
Dean Devries, Denton Aguam, Derek Blain, Derek Weichel, Devin
Elder, Diego Corzo, DJ Savoy, Don Hayley, Eddie Overdyke, Eric
Forney, Erik M Hardy, Erle Thompson, Frank Smollon, Fred Hubler,
Gabe Deukmaji, Gabriel Hamel, Garrett Gunderson, Gary A Jonas Jr,
Gary Wilson, Gino Barbaro, Hal Elrod, Hans Box, Ian Kurth, Ian
Meierdiercks, Ian Milligan-Pate, Imran Khan, Jace Mattinson, Jack Yen,
Jake Harris, James Cowherd, Jamie Gruber, Jared Addis, Jason Baxter,
Jason Griggs, Jason Parisella, Jason Shinpaugh, Jay Bourgana, Jeff
Delone, Jeffrey Block, Jeremy Mathis, Jeremy Reisig, Jeremy Taylor,
Jim Campbell, Jim Sheils, JJ Mueller, John Antonelli, John Edwin, John
White, Jon Berghoff, Jon Wanberg, Jonathan Holt, Jordan Bennett,
Joseph Colasuonno, Joseph Gozlan, Josh Friedensohn, Josh McCallen,
Josh Mente, Josh Painter, Joshua Lewis, Justin Jarboe, Kamil Maras,
Kelly Gilson, Ken Wimberly, Kendall Kirk, Kevin Swartz, Kurt Buchert,
Kyle Fogg, Lon Breitenbach, Marcelo Munoz, Mario Mazzamuto, Mark
Berns, Mark Jackson, Mark Jeffries, Mark Malevskis, Mark Schwaiger,
Mark Walker, Martin Eiden, Matt Aitchison, Matt DeBoth, Matt
Donnelly, Matt Faircloth, Matt Hermes, Matt Holm, Matt Lenza, Matt
O’Neill, Matt Shaw, Matt Templeton, Max Paisley, Michael Tomasetti,
Michael Hananel, Michael Pouliot, Miguel Cordova, Mike Aiello, Mike
Ayala, Mike Dillard, Mike McCarthy, Mike Nuss, Mike Sroka, Mo
 Choumil, Moe Mathews, Muhizi Condo, Nate Martinez, Nathan Leinen,
Nathaniel Smith, Neal Collins, Nicholas DeMaiolo, Nick Romano, Nick
Santonastasso, Nick Waldner, Paresh Mehta, Pascal Wagner, Pasha
Esfandiary, Patrick Cullinane, Pat Hiban, Paul Mead, Paul Morris, Paul
Sloate, Randy Visser, Ratmir Rafikov, Ray Bayat, Richard Biechler,
Richard Sherman, Rick Bosl, Rick Hale, Robert Fitzgerald, Robert
Creamer, Robert Shoemaker, Rock Thomas, Ryan Paquin, Ryan Pineda,
Sam Monreal, Samuel Wegert, Saul Zenkevicius, Scott Haire, Scott
Smith, Sean McGovern, Seth Dailey, Shane McCullar, Shawn Lowery,
Stephen Castro, Steve Dye, Steven Hatcher, Tariel Gusseinov, Ted
Brockman, Tim Rhode, Tom Donnelly, Tommy Christy, Tony Sarenpa,
Tony Trinh, Travis Baucom, Vitalijus Kaleinikovas, Wally Elibiary, Will
Yoder, Wyatt Graves

And to our founding members of GoBundance Women. We look forward to

the incredible innovations you will create that will inspire women around
the world.
Ariel Bertsch, Gayle Bertsch, Shanna Blanton, Karen Briscoe, Terese
Brittingham, Bianca Bucuram, Megan Butler, Aileen Castellano, Adair
Cates, Cathleen Christen, Linzee Ciprani, Gabrielle Clayman, Kelly
Clements, Penelope Cuevas, Brianna Greenspan, Jaime Hope, Micaela
Hornstein, Shannon Huffer, Felicia Keith-Jones, Amrita Khurana,
Alexandra Kontos, Christine Lee, Nicole Lenz, Janel Loughin, Angie
Macdougall, Michele McBride, Asmaa Methqal, Wendy Mueller,
Lindsay Musser, Vanessa Peters, Dolores Quinonez, Kelly Resendez,
Chelsea Rodriguez, Tanya Salseth, Saba Shoaeioskouei, Jamie Smith,
Lindsay Smith, Marni Task, Sherry Thacker, Lorri Wolfe
To learn more about GoBundance Women membership,
please visit www.GoBundanceWomen.com

Thank You to the GoWives who have stood next to their men on the roller-
coaster that is entrepreneurship. Without their undying love, support and
overall badassery in their own right, their men could not shine so brightly. A
special Thanks to those who joined us in Arizona and Costa Rica to learn
more about themselves and develop relationships with other women who
truly understand each other.
 Andrea Del Real, Amber Wimberly, Esther Parisella, Jen Choumil, Jenn
West, Jill Friedensohn, Kaleena Amuchastegui, Kellie Overly, Kristina
Baucom, Koreen Thompson, Laura Kaleinkovas, Lindsay McCarthy,
Patricia Maras, Rosi Zenkevivius, Sarah Codrea, Shelby Campbell, Traci
Osborn, Vilma Kozys, Whitney Ramsey

We would like to thank our Fambundance Member Families, for trusting us

with your most precious asset and allowing us to all Grow together, know-
ing that our legacies is only as strong as the hands we equip to carry them
forward. For more information on our Family events and programs, please
visit www.fambundance.com
Amuchastegui Family, Dailey Family, DelReal Family, Edwin Family,
Maras Family, Massey Family, McCarthy Family, Osborn Family,
Overly Family, Sarenpa Family, West Family, Block Family, Casey
Family, Choumil Family, Clidy Family, Elibiary Family, Gusseinov
Family, Hatcher Family, Kirk Family, McBride Family, McCallen
Family, Mueller Family, Thompson Family

Big hug and thanks to the incredible behind-the-scenes team at GoBun-

dance... our GoTeam!!
Ally Evangelista, Braden Deloneay, Cecil Cummins, Dani Lipsky,
Elizabeth Santiago, Jeff Tucker, Khary Alexcee, Matt Duncan, Melanie
Andreetta, Minnie Torres, Missy Hacker, Sam Webster

And a big shout-out and thanks to our helpful book team as well:
Honorée Corder, Jackie Dana, Dino Marino

Special TY to Mr. Dirk van Reenen

and Jeremy “Brotha James” Reisig.

The Charity of Choice for GoBundance is 1Lifefullylived.

Go to http://1lifefullylived.org for more information

OceanofPDF.com