Christopher Day Came Back to Scribe Media for The $25 Millionaire, His Third Book
“The biggest checkmark of approval you can get was a return, a repeat customer, right? So here I am again with Scribe.”
Christopher Day, author of The $25 Millionaire
Christopher “Toph” Day grew up poor on a farm and went on to start eight businesses in seven industries. He published his first book with Scribe Media, then came back for two more. His newest, The $25 Millionaire, is built around one goal: to help build a million millionaires.
He thought wealth was for other people
Clip · Toph Day on growing up poor on a farm · 50s
“I always thought that in order to achieve wealth, that you had to start a business and take a bunch of risk and try to achieve wealth that way. That was the only path. And that the stock market or things of that nature were for other people.”
— Christopher Day
It did not click until he was around 40. Small amounts of money, invested and left alone for a long time, could make an ordinary person wealthy. That realization became the book.
The million dollar lesson
Clip · Toph Day on the million dollar lesson · 32s
The story arc of the book is simple. Invest $25 a week starting at 18, and at an assumed 10% a year you wake up at 65 with around $1.4 million. Toph is careful to add that past performance does not guarantee future results.
“If you do the exact same thing at 30 years old, you end at 65 with $400,000 roughly. That’s the million dollar lesson.”
— Christopher Day
The villain of the book is delay. To make it visible, he built a free wealth calculator at buildamillion.org that shows the gap between starting now and starting later.
“I put a dynamic calculator, dynamic wealth calculator on that website that shows you a term that I coined called the time tax.”
— Christopher Day
Why it had to be a book
Clip · Toph Day on why it had to be a book · 23s
The message could have been a course, a newsletter, or a thread on social media. Toph chose a book because the hardest part of investing is staying with it when the market drops.
“I felt like that this was something that had to be tangible. You had to be able to see it and touch it and feel it and hold it and put it on your nightstand in those moments of weakness to flip back to some of the pages that you might highlight when you read it.”
— Christopher Day
The book is a how-to, with four example plans and a step-by-step guide to setting up and automating an account. A companion guidebook, The Official Guide to The $25 Millionaire, helps parents and educators start the money conversation with the next generation.
One of the book’s stories goes back to 1987. Toph was a high school senior on Black Monday, when the market fell 22% in one day and his teacher spent the class period on the end of the world. Writing the book, he went back and researched what happened next.
Clip · Toph Day on what happened after Black Monday · 36s
“In 48 hours, the market had recovered 57%. In less than two years, the market recovered to where it was before the crash happened.”
— Christopher Day
Why he came back to Scribe
Clip · Toph Day on coming back to Scribe · 42s
Toph’s first book, Pillar-Based Marketing, was written with Scribe Media. A friend in the tech world, Sangram Vajre, had written a book with Scribe and recommended it.
“And this goes back to the good old relationships in life. And I’m like, well, if it works for Sangram, it can work for me.”
— Christopher Day
He was happy with how that first book turned out, so he came back. The first time he used a ghostwriter. This time he wrote it himself.
“In the first one, we used a ghostwriter. And this one, I did it myself. Some days, I’ll tell you, I wish I had used a ghostwriter, I think.”
— Christopher Day
The ghostwriter with zero marketing background
Clip · Toph Day on the ghostwriter who asked every question · 55s
Pillar-Based Marketing was about a technical, data-heavy corner of marketing. Toph insisted his ghostwriter have a marketing background.
“And we got our first call with our ghostwriter. And sure enough, she had zero background in marketing. And it was the best thing that ever happened to us.”
— Christopher Day
She kept asking questions until the ideas made sense to someone outside the field. Sometimes it took an hour on a single point. In the end, she would restate the idea more clearly than they had.
“These ghostwriters I have so much respect for how they can take a topic they know nothing about, but because they have the creative skills and their brain works in a different way, right? It was magical.”
— Christopher Day
Writing it himself: a first draft by 3 a.m. Monday
Clip · Toph Day on a first draft in one weekend · 39s
Asked whether writing the new book tested his own philosophy of consistency, Toph’s answer was one word: brutal. It started with a single weekend.
“I came home one night, six o’clock on a Friday. This came pouring out of my system. I think it was gurgling around the back of my brain for the last 15 years. And it was almost like a calling. And it just poured out of me. And I probably slept six hours that weekend. And I kind of finished a rough first draft at 3 a.m. Monday morning, just going solid.”
— Christopher Day
From then until about a month before this interview, he worked every night and every weekend. Several times he thought about giving up. He kept going because, in his words, consistency beats brilliance.
His advice: have no fear
Clip · Toph Day on having no fear · 23s
“Have no fear. We can be our own worst enemies. Just have no fear. What’s the alternative? What is the alternative? The alternative is having to work the rest of your life. The word freedom shows up 88 times in this book for a reason.”
— Christopher Day
And the one line he would put on a billboard? “Your origin does not dictate your destiny.”
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