Would you like to make the big bucks writing a self-help book on how to be successful? Here are seven secrets you have to know:

1. Use the word “secret” in your title, even though you’re not revealing anything remotely secret. Just because you don’t know something, doesn’t mean it’s a secret. I don’t know particle physics, but it’s not a big secret. I don’t know how to cook a goose, but it’s not a secret. But if you want to sell a goose cookbook, call it “The Seven Secrets of Cooking Your Goose.”

2. Do you want to know the secret of how to make a million dollars on Wall Street? It’s not really a secret; you simply start out with $2 million. In no time, you’ll have a million dollars. Don’t get greedy and try to make half a million dollars. Once you have your million, quit.

3. When you say “secret,” what the reader hears is “trick.” What’s the trick to making millions? Here it is: Pick rich parents. This, more than any one thing you can do, will make you rich beyond your wildest dreams. Sadly, you won’t appreciate it. You will spend most of that money on therapy, complaining about your rich parents.

When you say “success,” make sure that you mean “making a lot of money.” Sure, getting four kids through college on, say, a teacher’s salary is a thousand times harder than running a Fortune 500 company. But no one considers that a “success” because you’re not living in a $10 million mansion with your fourth wife and spoiled children who hate you. That’s success.

4. Give plenty of examples of successful people. Tell the stories of how they started out in the mail room and, through grit and determination, clawed their way to the top over the backs of other people with the same grit and determination – people who were fired as soon as possible so they wouldn’t be a threat to their success.