Lewis Howes on the 7 Signs You're About to Get Rich: Myron Golden's Four Levels of Value, Saying No to Money, and Measuring Runway

High-Level Overview

In this solo episode of The School of Greatness, Lewis Howes lays out seven signs that wealth is building before your bank balance shows it. He draws on more than 13 years of interviewing wealthy guests and on his own path, from being broke on his sister's couch to earning six-figure speaking fees. His central claim is that the people he has met with real wealth rarely point to one big deal. They point to a stretch when they started thinking differently about what they were worth and what they would say yes and no to. He warns that most of these signs don't feel good. They can feel like losing friends, turning down work, or moving slowly, which is why people often mistake them for failure.

The tone is warm, motivational, and personal, with plenty of candid stories about scarcity, burnout, and learning to manage money emotionally. The conversation moves between mindset reframes, frameworks borrowed from past guests Myron Golden and Anthony O'Neill, and Lewis's own anecdotes, and it closes with one simple practical assignment.

The Discussion Explores:

• Why resenting or judging wealthy people keeps you from becoming wealthy yourself
• Myron Golden's four levels of value: doing, managing, communicating, and imagination
• How Toastmasters and learning to communicate changed Lewis's earning power
• Walking away from money that doesn't fit your values, timeline, or peace
• Why a raise doesn't fix money problems, including Anthony O'Neill's 48% statistic
• Building emotional neutrality so money stops dictating your mood
• Planning for people who don't exist yet, such as future spouses and children
• Measuring wealth in months of runway rather than income

Deep Dive into Main Ideas

Sign 1: You Stop Talking About Money the Way Broke People Do

Lewis opens by asking why so many hardworking people stay in the same financial place for decades. His answer is that they never stop resenting the thing they say they want. He lists common remarks about wealthy people, such as that they must have inherited it, stepped on someone, or done something illegal. These comments feel harmless because everyone around you says them too. But, he argues, "You will never become the thing you speak badly about." Your subconscious will protect you from turning into someone you've insulted.

The shift he describes is replacing judgment with a question. When you see someone ahead of you, you ask how they did it, who they had to become, and what they know that you don't. He then goes a step further: celebrate them. Lewis admits he used to feel jealous and insecure, and that this energy kept him stuck in comparison and a sense of not being enough. Today he congratulates people freely. He once sent a DM to a stranger after a big launch, saying he was happy for their success, and the person replied warmly. His summary is that "money goes where it's respected," and you can't respect something while trashing everyone who has it.

Sign 2: You're Paid Less for Doing and More for Deciding

Why can two people work the same hours and end up ten times apart in income? Lewis explains it through Myron Golden's four levels of value. The first is doing the task, which is where everyone starts and which is capped by your hours and your body. The second is managing people who do the task, which pays more but still has a ceiling. The third is communicating, meaning moving a message that makes people feel something and act. Lewis says this is where wealth begins, because you can say something once and reach thousands. The fourth is imagination: seeing something before it exists and putting resources behind it, which has no ceiling at all.

To illustrate communication, Lewis tells how he met a man at a salsa club who earned multiple six figures speaking at colleges. Over coffee, the man said the one skill that unlocks money and opportunity is "the ability to enroll people in your vision." Because Lewis was terrified of speaking to groups, the man told him to join Toastmasters, which he described as costing about 50 to 100 dollars a year, to attend every week, and to finish the curriculum. Lewis calls it one of the greatest gifts he gave his younger self, and says it has paid off for 18 to 20 years. For imagination, he points to his books Make Money Easy and The Greatness Mindset. Both began as ideas he chose to fund and turn into lasting assets. Along the way he adds that "Inner peace is the new rich."

The sign itself, he says, is getting paid for something that didn't require your hands: an idea, a meeting, something you said. It often feels like you're getting away with something. He remembers his first few hundred dollars for LinkedIn advice. He also remembers a $500 speaking fee after a year of speaking for free, and the fees that later climbed much higher. His conclusion: "you don't get wealthy by doing more. You get wealthy by moving up."

Sign 3: You Can Walk Away From Money

Lewis grew up taking any job he could find, including truck driving, bouncing, mowing lawns, and cutting golf greens at 5 a.m. So saying no to money felt strange. Citing Myron again, he says you have to work with human nature: if you chase, people run. The key distinction is "I have to make a sale. I don't have to make this sale." When you need a specific deal, you over-explain, discount before anyone asks, take clients you know will be a nightmare, and accept numbers you resent.

He links his burnout around 2017–2018 to saying yes to everything as opportunities flooded in. Eventually he made a yes/no list for podcast sponsors and turned down a $20,000 ad read that didn't fit the show's values, concluding that not all money is good money. He also stopped doing $10,000 one-hour coaching calls because they weren't scalable. He says he has since declined sponsorships worth millions, speaking gigs worth hundreds of thousands, and equity deals. It feels terrifying at first, he admits, but "The first time you turn down money, your time gets a price."

Sign 4: Your Raise Stopped Being an Event

Lewis shares a number from Anthony O'Neill that he says he hasn't stopped thinking about: 48% of people earning over $250,000 a year are still living paycheck to paycheck. His takeaway is that a raise alone doesn't save you. If nothing else changes, "a bigger number just gives your bad habits more room to operate." The sign is when extra money no longer turns into a weekend, an upgrade, or a bigger car payment, because you've already decided where it's going before it arrives. As he puts it, "What you earn and what you keep are two different numbers."

He also passes along Anthony's point that a credit score can lie about your wealth. A great score means you're good at borrowing, and you can have an 800 score while owning almost nothing. Lewis admits he went to the opposite extreme and hoarded out of fear of going broke again. He took Greyhound buses and multi-connection flights, slept on friends' couches, and went without a car he could afford. That money never grew or helped him, so he invites listeners to ask whether they're spenders or hoarders.

Sign 5: Money Stopped Giving You a Feeling

For most people, Lewis says, money is a mood. A deposit gives a lift, a bill causes a drop, and checking the balance reorganizes the whole day. He has lived both extremes: checking multiple times a day for a year, and avoiding his account for a year because it made him feel like a failure.

The healthy version, he says, is boring. You open the app without bracing, and a bill is just information. His example is his Los Angeles electric bill, which roughly doubled during a hot summer. It shocked him until he learned the whole neighborhood's bills had gone up. People sometimes worry they've gone numb or lost their hunger, but Lewis argues the money has simply stopped running their mood. You'll know you're there when a good month or a bad month doesn't feel like news worth telling anyone. He says he wrote Make Money Easy for his younger self, who stayed afraid of money even after he started earning it.

Sign 6: You Make Decisions for People Who Don't Exist Yet

Lewis argues that two people given the same million dollars behave differently because they are playing on different timelines. One thinks in months and about themselves. The other thinks in decades and about others. He recalls Anthony O'Neill writing a will in his 30s, which led his family to assume something was wrong. That reaction shows how unusual it is to plan past your own lifetime. Quiet examples include filling in a beneficiary line or opening an account for a young child. As Lewis notes, "People in survival mode don't think in decades."

His personal example: at around 26 or 27, he bought a life insurance policy for a future wife and children he hadn't met. He paid into it monthly for years before meeting his wife, Martha, and having twin girls. He frames the point as thinking beyond yourself with your money, and he stresses that what gets passed down also includes habits, beliefs, and what feels normal in your home.

Sign 7: You Change the Unit You Measure In

The final sign is shifting from "how much" to "how long. Dollar targets keep moving, from $100,000 to a million to a billion. Drawing on Anthony again, Lewis says: rich is a number. Free is a length of time. The real scoreboard is how many months you could go without working. If the answer is zero, You're renting your life one month at a time." If it's one month, you're one bad month from starting over. At six months, he says, your life has changed, because that margin gives you options: leaving a job, turning down a client, or starting something.

He tells a vivid story from his broke years. Wearing a full arm cast after breaking his wrist, he stuffed cheese, crackers, and bread into his pockets at a free networking event. A man named Frank Egan noticed and took him to lunch, saying he looked hungry.

His assignment is simple: divide what you have by what you spend in a month. Don't make the result mean anything about your worth. It is just information, because "a vague fear about money is always bigger than the actual number sitting underneath it." From there, the goal is to add one month at a time, since "every month you add is another decision you're allowed to make." Lewis says his automated investing now gives him peace.

Conclusion

Lewis Howes's message is that wealth shows up in identity before it shows up in the bank account. The signs include celebrating instead of judging, moving up Myron Golden's levels of value instead of grinding harder, saying no to misaligned money, keeping what you earn, staying emotionally steady around money, planning for future generations, and measuring freedom in months of runway. He closes by noting that no one announces when you're close. The season before everything changes looks just like the one before it, which is why so many people quit with the evidence already in hand. He says the wealthy people he has met aren't more talented or harder-working. They kept going through the quiet, boring part, "And then the money showed up late like it always does." For listeners who want the full stories and his reasoning behind each sign, the episode is well worth hearing in full.

This is a summary of "7 Signs You're About to Get Rich | Lewis Howes" from The School of Greatness, giving you the GIST so you can decide if you want the REST. Listen to the full episode.