The Science of Getting Rich—Finally Completed
The Lucrative Income Structure Wallace D. Wattles Hinted At—But Never Finished (And What’s Still Missing From Coaching and Entrepreneurship)
“To think what you want to think is to think truth, regardless of appearances.”
—Wallace D. Wattles, The Science of Getting Rich
Do we really need another mindset course?
Another vague sermon about “abundance”?
Or do we just need a structure that actually holds?
For over a century, The Science of Getting Rich by Wallace D. Wattles has stood as a cornerstone of personal development—a metaphysical manifesto wrapped in free-market pragmatism. Wattles taught that wealth doesn’t come from talent or luck, but from “thinking and acting in the Certain Way.” His ideas helped shape the philosophical backbone of many prosperity and personal development frameworks—and his influence still runs through modern coaching and entrepreneurship spaces.
As a former academic and recovering “starving artist,” his book gave me the pragmatic permission I was quietly craving: to earn more without compromising my integrity. I’ve used his work with clients who also needed spiritual or social permission to earn—especially those whose values made prosperity feel incompatible with integrity.
Wattles gave voice to what many of us could only sense:
That building a prosperous, ethical business shouldn’t feel like a contradiction.
But even the most powerfully reprogrammed belief system won’t matter if it’s trapped inside a structure that contradicts it.
Something else was missing…
This article is especially relevant for founders, consultants, and organizational leaders seeking to repair income misalignment at the structural level—especially when internal compensation or clarity fails to reflect actual contribution..
Executive Summary:
Wallace Wattles offered a profound worldview—but not a completed system.
Napoleon Hill presented a more tactical approach to the ideas during the Great Depression when he published Think and Grow Rich in 1937.
Earl Nightingale, who recorded The Strangest Secret in 1956, translated them for the corporate world.
Bob Proctor, who published You Were Born Rich in 1984, spread the ideas further with his seminars—and he was later featured in the movie The Secret.
Modern authors like Jen Sincero (You Are a Badass at Making Money) and others still echo his teachings today.
After over a century of reinterpretation, most of the coaching industry still stops at “reprogramming your subconscious mind.” It’s vital work—and Wattles’ text is worth rereading until it feels embodied.
But one essential element remains missing:
A behavioral and structural architecture that could actually hold the truth Wattles preached.
Because even if you change your beliefs, a business model that doesn’t match how you’re wired won’t hold—and that’s the part no one has ever architected in full.
This article picks up that thread—and formalizes the architecture Wattles never built.
In my recent essays, I explored how three modern thinkers—intentionally or not—each gave form to a piece of the framework Wattles never finished:
Charlie Munger, who revealed the behavioral architecture of incentives
Jack Bogle, who proved the power of structural simplicity and compounding
Marianne Williamson, who reclaimed the emotional and spiritual integrity of economics
They didn’t just echo Wattles’ ideals.
They began to construct the scaffolding his philosophy would require to function in the modern real world.
This fourth essay unifies those threads—linking each one directly back to key Wattles teachings—and introduces the system I’ve developed to finally hold it all:
A behavioral and structural diagnostic that maps how you earn best — so your business stops fighting your wiring.
VOICE → VALUE → INCOME
“There is a Science of getting rich, and it is an exact science, like algebra or arithmetic. There are certain laws which govern the process of acquiring riches; once these laws are learned and obeyed by any man, he will get rich with mathematical certainty.” (Chapter 2)
Wattles promised mathematical certainty. But for over a century, no one formalized those laws into a usable system.
So The Lucrativity System™ was built.
It’s a proprietary diagnostic that maps how income flows through your behavioral patterns, business infrastructure, and value expression—so you can earn more by aligning with how you’re actually built to operate.
It is not mindset work, not spiritual bypass, and not a coaching script. It’s built to help you hold your full economic power—without distortion or dogma. It doesn’t depend on charisma, hustle, or magical thinking.
It translates Wattles’ framing of how to work with the universal laws into a practical method for revealing your behavioral incentives, structural alignment, and emotional congruence.
If wealth is governed by laws, this is the map.
If richness is a science, this is the behavioral math that lets it hold—not numbers on a spreadsheet, but the patterns and mechanisms that can determine whether your income behavior is congruent or not.
But this isn’t just for entrepreneurs. The Lucrativity System™ is a diagnostic framework designed for anyone whose income is misaligned with their behavioral patterns—including employees, educators, and institutions. It has the potential to shift how we train, compensate, and retain talent—by rooting income in structural and behavioral congruence instead of performance or conformity.
To complete what Wattles began, we must name the mechanics he left implicit—beginning with the most powerful force in economics: incentive.
And if you missed the original essays and would rather read them first, you can find them here:
1. Charlie Munger: Incentives Are the Hidden Currents Beneath "Thinking in the Certain Way"
“Success in life is becoming what you want to be… and you can become what you want to be only by making use of things, and you can have the free use of things only as you become rich enough to buy them.” (Chapter 1)
Wattles begins with a foundational premise: you need wealth to fulfill your potential. Not for its own sake, but because the freedom to use things—to create, to contribute, to become—is only possible when your needs are fully resourced.
But how does one actually become rich?
Wattles tells us: by “thinking and acting in a Certain Way.”
That phrase appears throughout the book—often capitalized, as if it were a codified method. But here’s the problem:
What that Certain Way actually looks like remains ambiguous.
Most practitioners interpret it to mean aligning with universal laws. But beyond that, Wattles offers few specifics. He describes the effects of acting in this Certain Way—but doesn’t break down the mechanics other than to say “thought and personal action must be combined.”
How do you know if you're acting in the Certain Way?
How do you sustain it?
And what happens when your actions contradict your intentions?
That’s where Charlie Munger comes in—offering a real-world answer:
It’s the behavior your incentives actually produce.
In The Psychology of Human Misjudgment, Munger outlined 24 cognitive and emotional biases that quietly distort our actions. He wasn’t trying to make people more positive—he was trying to make them more aware of the forces that quietly undermine their clarity.
That’s directly in line with Wattles:
“You must form a clear and definite mental picture of what you want; you cannot transmit an idea unless you have it yourself.” (Chapter 4)
But Munger reveals why clarity alone isn’t enough:
If your internal incentive structure pulls you toward urgency, approval-seeking, or short-term gains, your actions will quietly betray your vision—no matter how “aligned” your thoughts may seem.
Munger is the missing behavioral lens Wattles needed: a way to explain why people fail to act in the Certain Way even when they believe the right thoughts.
Munger’s vision is not motivational—it’s architectural.
He showed that behavior follows incentives, not intentions.
He made clear that misalignment isn’t a moral failing—it’s a system design flaw.
And that’s exactly what The Lucrativity System™ translates into a usable diagnostic:
A clear, behavior-based map of how incentives interact with identity, income, and internal wiring.
2. Jack Bogle: How the Index Fund Is What “Acting in the Certain Way” Looks Like in Practice
Riches secured on the competitive plane are never satisfactory and permanent; they are yours today, and another’s tomorrow. Remember, if you are to become rich in a scientific and certain way, you must rise entirely out of the competitive thought. You must never think for a moment that the supply is limited. (Chapter 5)
Wattles insists that mental clarity must be paired with unwavering consistency. But that consistency is often eroded by comparison, urgency, or hustle—what he called the competitive mind.
Jack Bogle built the financial instrument that embodied Wattles’ creative principle: the index fund.
Rather than chasing short-term wins, Bogle bet on structural compounding over hype and performance. He taught:
“Don’t look for the needle. Buy the haystack.”
The index fund is the Certain Way in practice: stable, repeated, dignified action in the face of volatility.
Wattles emphasized consistency of thought.
Bogle created the earning structure that lets it hold.
“By thought, the thing you want is brought to you; by action you receive it.”
(Chapter 11)
That line matters more than most people realize.
Because what if the reason your income hasn’t held isn’t mindset—but infrastructure?
What if the missing piece wasn’t belief—but a business structure that actually lets you receive?
That’s where Bogle did what Wattles only implied. He didn’t just say “trust.” He said: Build something that holds value even when the market doesn’t.
And what if that structure could also support your nervous system—and your heart?
His entire philosophy echoes Wattles’ deeper call to action—just with more modern fidelity.
Bogle’s legacy wasn’t reactive. It was rhythmic. Not about guessing—but about grounding.
Index investing is what efficient action looks like—when purpose, principle, and structure align.
So what does this look like in business?
A long-term client relationship with calm, recurring revenue
A premium signature offer that stays in demand under any market conditions
A curriculum that grows in value the more it’s taught—not the louder it’s launched
A low-drama, high-integrity sales process that doesn’t rely on urgency or trickery to convert
These are examples of models that let value accumulate—not through speed, hype, or drama—but through consistency and structural design.
You don’t need constant validation.
You need a structure built on congruence.
Bogle proved that simplicity outperforms drama.
He showed that wealth doesn’t come from momentum, but from sustained alignment.
And that’s the logic I’ve translated into income design.
There’s a quiet power in structuring your business like an index fund—not by copying the market, but by aligning with the internal engine that compounds your value without requiring constant performance.
Just as index funds let value compound through structure, The Lucrativity System™ is designed to help your income reflect that same integrity—a structure that honors your values and expands without emotional distortion.
It is the architecture for sustained faith and compounding congruence.
3. Marianne Williamson: You Cannot Leave the Impression of Increase While Betraying Yourself
“Convey the impression of advancement with everything you do, so that all people shall receive the impression that you are an advancing person, and that you advance all who deal with you.” (Chapter 14)
Many coaches interpret this chapter as a call to perform: show up bigger, speak louder, radiate more energy. But Wattles wasn’t talking about performance—he was talking about integrity: becoming someone whose presence quietly signals expansion.
“You must so impress others that they will feel that in associating with you they will get increase for themselves. See that you give them a use value greater than the cash value you are taking from them.” (Chapter 14)
This line captures the heart of charging with integrity. But too often, this principle gets distorted into overgiving, over-functioning, or pretending to be okay when you’re not.
That’s not increase. That’s emotional distortion.
Marianne Williamson has always been the soul’s reminder.
She writes:
“Love is the essential existential fact. It is our ultimate reality and our purpose on earth.”—A Return to Love
She teaches that any system requiring you to contort your truth, suppress your spirit, or perform perfection is a lie dressed up as ambition.
In Chapter 4, “The First Principle in the Science of Getting Rich,” Wattles wrote:
“There is a thinking stuff from which all things are made, and which, in its original state, permeates, penetrates, and fills the interspaces of the universe. A thought, in this substance, produces the thing that is imaged by the thought.” (Chapter 4)
But what if the “thinking stuff” is warped by spiritual bypass?
What if the consistency Wattles calls for requires emotional congruence to actually function?
Too many entrepreneurs operate in emotional overdrive. They may not realize their business is being fueled by bypass, people-pleasing, or pressure to perform. That emotional incongruence can sabotage income just as quickly as mispricing or strategy misalignment.
Williamson names what Wattles never said plainly:
Money without love is manipulation.
Structure without soul becomes control.
Wattles made it clear: thought must align with truth.
But in a distorted emotional economy, truth isn’t easy to hold.
And Williamson reminds us: that without inner congruence, outer success becomes another performance.
That kind of clarity isn’t a vibe—it’s emotional discipline.
Williamson’s vision is not performative—it’s restorative.
She gives language to what Wattles left unsaid: The Certain Way includes emotional integrity. Your business cannot be a true vehicle for increase if you’re leaking energy, bypassing your needs, or contorting for resonance.
And that’s the truth embedded at the core of The Lucrativity System™ I’ve created:
Congruence is not a luxury. It’s the precondition for sustainable prosperity. And in this system, congruence becomes currency—so you’re not just earning more, you’re earning in a way that holds.
If increase is the goal, Williamson made one thing clear: it can’t come at the cost of yourself.
4. What They All Pointed Toward—but Never Completed
Wattles offered the principle.
Munger warned us of misalignment.
Bogle gave us structural proof.
Williamson reclaimed the soul.
But we’re still missing the thing everyone needs most:
🧭 A full-spectrum system that connects behavioral truth, structural alignment, and emotional integrity into a business model that actually holds.
We need “thinking truth regardless of appearances” to stop being a faith test—and start being a behavioral map and a structural certainty.
“Do not try to ‘project’ your thought in any mysterious or occult way, with the idea of having it go out and do things for you; that is wasted effort, and will weaken your power to think with sanity.” (Chapter 11)
This is where many abundance frameworks lose the plot.
Wattles wasn’t inviting mysticism—he was inviting infrastructure.
He wanted thoughts to shape structure, not substitute for it.
Munger gave us behavioral clarity.
Bogle gave us structural proof.
Williamson gave us emotional permission.
But no one gave us a unified system that maps how a person actually earns—nothing that shows whether your business model, pricing, sales, and leadership behavior are truly in coherence.
That’s what The Lucrativity System™ is built to do: diagnose and expose the behavioral misalignments between how you think you earn and how your structure actually allows you to earn.”
5. The Future of Getting Rich Isn’t Bigger—It’s Truer
“You must get rid of the thought of competition. You are to create, not to compete for what is already created. You do not have to take anything away from any one.”
(Chapter 5)
This isn’t about mindset.
It’s about system design.
I’m not teaching a better funnel.
I’m not trying to “raise your vibe” to “10X your income.”
The future of economic power is not performative.
It’s not algorithmic.
It’s not built on virality or hustle.
It’s built on:
Behavioral coherence
Emotional congruence
Structural clarity
…compounding in alignment over time.
A system:
That doesn’t leak emotional labor
That doesn’t punish congruence
That lets value grow in integrity—without collapse, distortion, or debt to yourself.
Wattles gave us the metaphysics.
Munger, Bogle, and Williamson revealed fragments of the mechanics.
I built the system that makes those fragments whole.
This isn’t the law of attraction. This is what happens when structure meets soul—and income becomes more predictable, because you're offering value that deserves to be paid for, without distortion.
And this can serve more than just individuals—it can be used to clean up compensation structures, realign incentives, and reduce burnout at scale.
This isn’t just the science of getting rich.
It’s the architecture of staying rich—without having to perform to do it.
🧭 Where Wattles Ended—and Where I Begin
“Desire is a manifestation of power.” (Chapter 13)
Wattles said it plainly: desire is not weakness. It’s proof of capacity.
But most of what’s called “mindset work” today is just recycled self-help material—without a structure to hold that power.
People still quote The Science of Getting Rich over a century later—
often asking questions like:
“What if you just believed?”
“What if you had more faith?”
“What if you applied more will power?”
But almost no one asks this harder question:
What happens when your behavior, your business model, and your emotional patterns directly contradict the beliefs you’re trying to hold?
That’s the question I’ve been answering.
I built the system no one else did—a replicable, testable infrastructure for income that integrates behavior, structure, and congruence into a single diagnostic and alignment framework. It’s not just a philosophy of income, but a structure that holds the weight of your desire. Because if desire is a manifestation of power, that power needs an optimal structure to move through.
Where Wattles taught creative thought...
Munger revealed behavioral incentives.
Bogle proved the power of compounding structure.
Williamson reminded us of emotional integrity.
The Lucrativity System™ unifies all three—into a complete diagnostic and income design framework. One that maps your behavioral patterns, business model, and emotional wiring—so you can earn in a way that’s structurally sound, ethically aligned, and financially sustainable.
Not only is the system designed for individual clarity, its broader application offers something rare in today’s economic climate: a values-neutral framework for repairing income dysfunction at scale—without requiring performance, polarization, or institutional permission.
If richness is a science, The Lucrativity System™ is the behavioral and structural math that lets it hold.
This isn’t a better affirmation.
It’s the infrastructure that lets truth become income.
Because after all, like Wattles said:
“To think what you want to think is to think truth, regardless of appearances.”
(Chapter 4)
He named the principle.
I gave it form.
The Behavioral, Structural, and Emotional Foundations
If you missed the original essays and would rather explore the groundwork, here are the three that led to this one:
“Because all things have contributed to your advancement, you should include all things in your gratitude.”
— Wallace D. Wattles, The Science of Getting Rich
PS: For Organizational Leaders
If you’re facing internal friction—burnout, stalled growth, unclear roles, or misaligned compensation—The Lucrativity System™ offers a structural lens to fix what mindset work can’t.
This is for teams ready to:
Align earning behavior with role clarity
Reduce burnout without sacrificing results
Reconnect compensation with real contribution
If the system feels off, this diagnostic shows you where—and how to fix it. Let’s talk. Here or on LinkedIn.
PS: For Entrepreneurs & Small Business Owners
If you’re ready to align your own income with a structure that uniquely fits you—here are a couple of powerful places to start:
A 1:1 Diagnostic Session—Your Next Lucrative Move:
This is a precise, personalized way to spot exactly where your earning misfires are happening—and why—using The Lucrativity System™ proprietary diagnostic tool. In 90 minutes, we’ll map out your current architecture, surface key misalignments, and identify your most structurally sound next move.
Interested in a Long-Term Private Recalibration and Support System?
Lucrative Elite 1:1 is my exclusive signature high-level coaching partnership for structurally intelligent entrepreneurs and founders ready to rewire their income around who they actually are. I offer 9-month packages or custom arrangements.
Not guesswork. Not rigid scripts. Just clarity, alignment, and revenue you can believe in.