Review: How to be Rich and Happy (by Tim Brownson and John P. Strelecky)

Note: There’s a bit of background here before I get to the review. If you want to skip it, scroll down till you hit the subheading “Overview”.

I’ve been a big fan of Tim Brownson ever since I started out with “serious” blogging. I met him on a forum, he welcomed me into an email group of (at the time) newish bloggers – and he pretty much made me his fan for life by sending me a free book.

Giving me a book is a even faster way to my heart than giving me chocolate, and Tim’s book was good. I read it while waiting for my interview for my creative writing MA, and it helped me laugh, think and stay calm. (I’m currently a year into the MA… thanks Tim! ) His blog, The Discomfort Zone, quickly became one of my favourite reads. I even guest posted there a couple of times.

So when Tim mentioned that he and bestselling author John P. Strelecky were writing a book together, I was pretty excited. I must admit, I had a bit of a big question mark about the title – “How to be Rich and Happy” – but when Tim sent me the pre-release review version, I dug right in.

And here’s what I thought…

Overview

How to be Rich and Happy is a 218-page, co-authored book with accompanying videos.  There’s also an introductory video, a blog and a free sample available on the How to be Rich and Happy website.

The price

$25 for the print version, $19 for the ebook version.

This is very cheap compared with hiring Tim or John, and they really pack the book with their knowledge – plus they’re using the profits to raise money to give away copies to the folks who need them most.

What’s included

How to be Rich and Happy is a 218 page ebook with several accompanying videos. The 31 chapters cover a number of different topics, from defining what rich and happy really means (hint: probably not what you think it does) and helping you explore your values, to teaching you some advanced, in-depth techniques for being in full control of your state of mind. I know that these are techniques Tim uses with coaching clients, and I’ve not seen anything as in-depth as this anywhere else.

You can download a free sample of How to be Rich and Happy, which includes the introduction from Tim and John, the list of chapters, and the first three chapters. Just go to the How to be Rich and Happy site, and click on the “Click to Download the First Three Sections for Free” button.

Good stuff

There was a lot to love in How to be Rich and Happy: I’ll try to focus on just a few points!

Design

I’ve bought a number of ebooks in the past, and something that I often notice is they’re often quite bland – sometimes little more than word documents that’ve been run through a PDF converter.

I was very impressed by the design of How to be Rich and Happy. I’d like to say that, as a writer, all I care about is content … but it’s nice when authors are willing to invest in paying a designer to make the reading experience that bit more pleasurable! The ebook was easy and comfortable to read on-screen.

The How to be Rich and Happy website gives an idea of the design, but you can also download…

Free sample

Tim and John provide the first few pages of the ebook for free on their website. If, like me, you’re always a bit suspicious of sales copy, being able to get a sample of the actual product makes it much easier to figure out if you want to buy. The one drawback to ebooks is that you can’t flick through them before buying like you would with a “real” book: having a sample for download goes some way towards fixing that!

Expertise and depth

Tim and John have a wealth of experience between them: in personal development, life coaching and writing. As I read through How to be Rich and Happy, I had the strong impression that they’re not holding anything back here: they’re sharing the core ideas that they’ve learnt over many years.

How to be Rich and Happy discusses a number of high-concept issues, but where appropriate, Tim and John don’t shy away from giving very concrete, step by step details and examples.

Bad stuff

I had a few nitpicks with How to be Rich and Happy. (I’ve discussed these with Tim, though, and I can see why he and John did things the way they did.)

The “formula”

The website and Chapter 1, which you can get as part of the free sample, talk about a “formula” for becoming rich and happy. This didn’t resonate well with me, partly because I’ve never got past the first few pages of Napolean Hill’s Think and Grow Rich and I hate being promised some “formula” which I’ll, apparently, figure out if my mind is open enough. So this first chapter made me concerned that Tim and John might be holding back.

Having read the whole ebook, my first negative impression was wrong. The “formula” metaphor doesn’t really get used in the rest of the book, and this definitely isn’t some woo-woo personal development text that insists you have to follow the exact steps in some weird method in order to become magically rich and happy.

Tone and style

This is perhaps an unfair niggle, as any co-authored book is going to suffer from this problem – and I’d rather have the knowledge and experience of two authors than have a beautiful style with no real content.

However, I did find that the style of How to be Rich and Happy switches noticeably at times: I imagine because some parts were written by John and some by Tim. The authors use “I” throughout (without making it clear which of them is writing), though I can’t think of any good alternative to this!

There were a few times when I wanted to get my red pen out and polish the text a bit, but that’s the writer in me being nitpicky, and it’s not really specific to Tim and John – I have the same feeling about a lot of personal development books!

Extra: Bad Stuff into Good Stuff…

There was one aspect of How to be Rich and Happy that I initially thought was a down side. In fact, I felt a little bit cheated! Some of the content seemed very familiar to me: there was a certain déjà vu, as though I’d read it before.

I realised that Tim has used and adapted some of the best content from his blogging and from his book Don’t Ask Stupid Questions: There Are No Stupid Questions (the one he gave me!) and he’s also used the Values process and some other stuff that he went through with me when he coached me.

It took me a little while before light dawned. Of course Tim wasn’t cheating by reusing this content: and I’d be a bit miffed if he left out great big chunks of his knowledge just because he happened to have once written about them elsewhere!

So, out of what seemed like a niggle at first, I found one of the book’s greatest strengths: Tim and John are giving their very best here, and they’re providing as comprehensive a book as possible – without any fluff or padding.

Verdict

Is How to be Rich and Happy a life-changer? It definitely has the potential to be: but reading an ebook is not  going to change your life – you need to be committed to actually putting into action what Tim and John teach. The $25 may be a little more than some books, but I’d rather have something high-quality than a cheap book that doesn’t really help me.

So I’d say … go and buy How to be Rich and Happy, if you’re commited to putting what you read into action.