by Steven Gomez

Created on: October 26, 2008

T. Harv Eker shows us that the Secrets of the Millionaire Mind are to keep any concrete advice that will help others get rich a secret, even when you write a book claiming to disclose these secrets. This keeps the hunger knowledge of the masses sated, while allowing the rich to stay rich: in order to be rich, most others need to remain poorer than you. Most books sidestep telling us the secret that Eker implies over this 192 page hardcover piece of motivational fluff.

Seriously, though, this book so lacks concrete advice that for bookstores to sell it in a hardcover edition can seem borderline insulting. I doubt it would have value as a paperback: this 192 page rah-rah text that gives you little more than a magazine article would.

Eker intersperses his book with Wealth Principles and Steps to Change Programming, though these are largely affirmations and steps to creating personal affirmations, such as writing down statements affirming where you are in life and what you want to be. And as other writers do, he tells a lot of anecdotes about his successful investment career, while avoiding going into any serious detail on concrete steps people can take to match his success.

While my first paragraph was in jest, there is some truth to it. Wealthy investors become wealthy by outmaneuvering those around them to corner markets for big gains. If many others were to follow in their footsteps, it would dilute the markets these investors succeed in to the point of unprofitability, and the revenue streams would dry up. Thus it behooves these investors not to give advice others can use to match their actions.

However, books on financial planning, seminars, and motivational speakers remain in high demand. This gives successful investors an opportunity to trumpet their success and generate revenue streams aside from their investments. Caught between the rock of keeping a lid on their secrets, and the hard place of a market for their words beckoning... many financial writers take the compromise of writing their books while making sure not to put anything in them that others can use to steal their financial thunder, plus manipulating the poor's habit of falling into unproductive behavior cycles by using their books to promote other books, seminars and products for readers to buy. It's a sad truth that writers like T Harv Eker and Robert Kiyosaki need to write books like this that motivate people, but don't give them the tools to follow through on their motivation, out of self preservation.

Thus, like most financial planning writers, Eker's book becomes a thinly veiled advertisement for other, more expensive materials. IN Eker's case, he offers dozens of seminars available for sale through an 888 number, as well as a library of DVDs and CDs. He also hawks his availability as a motivational speaker, his camps and website. The appendix with all this information had more concrete information than the 192 pages of main text that preceded it, though sadly its intention was to sell more of Eker's material.

Secrets is a self-help book that doesn't really help you. It claims to be a guide to Mastering the Game of Inner Wealth, though by page 192, the only mastery the reader will have attained is that of the attention span needed to finish such a pointless exercise.

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