Before getting out of bed, he did the math.
Savings: $6,100. BRK.B stock: $4,050. Google stock: $188,742. BMW: $14,500. Apartment on Lake Shore Drive: $487,000. Warehouse on Halsted Street: $2,340,000.
Total net worth: $3,040,392.
He had three million dollars and change, an ironed shirt hanging on the back of the bathroom door, and a forty-two thousand dollar-a-year job he had to be at by eight o'clock.
He made coffee. He watched the patch of water in Texas.
At one point, he thought, "I should go somewhere else. I actually have somewhere to go. There's an unobstructed view of Lake Michigan, two parking spaces, and a concierge named Mrs. Pardo who already knows my name."
He put on a shirt and headed to work.
The Eisenhower was running well for a Monday, which meant it only had a minor malfunction, not an imminent danger. Maxwell took the left lane and cruised comfortably at 60 kilometers per hour most of the time; the 328i glided down the road like a machine, treating highway driving like a gentle warm-up.
He stood in the parking lot for 60 seconds before getting in.
This had become a habit for him in the five days since the BMW incident. He used that minute to consciously become the person his balance sheet said he was, not the one his office ID said he was. He sat with the three million dollars as someone sits with a large meal after eating: without showing satisfaction, simply letting reality take over.
Then he placed it on the shelf where he kept things that weren't available during work hours, got out of the car, and took a Lyft to the 14.
At 8 a.m. on Monday, Hartwell & Associates was a typical organization, having used the same processes since 2001 and long since stopped questioning whether those processes were the best. The phones rang with a routine. The emails arrived with the same routine. Greg Paulson's laughter by the coffee maker followed a pattern: the same sound, the same frequency, never accompanied by anything funny to justify it. The printer on the south wall made its startup sound, like a small appliance reaching an existential conclusion.
Maxwell logged in and opened his Fidelity app under the desk.
$3,040,392.
He closed it. He opened his email.
He had been at his desk for exactly six minutes when Sarah Chen appeared at the edge of his workspace with a cardboard folder, two printed spreadsheets, and the expression of someone who had been thinking before most people woke up and had reached the point where she needed a second opinion.
She placed the folder on his desk without asking if he was free. He liked it. "Meridian Cold Chain," she said. "This is your personal project." "I know what it's about." He pulled a chair up to his desk and sat down without asking. "That deficit you found in the East Corridor, I made up for it. I saved fourteen thousand per quarter, that's all. Now I'm talking about the entire account." She spread the two sheets on her desk and showed them to him. "Look at the frequency of deliveries during the day." He looked at them. He glanced thoughtfully, quickly, not because he needed time, but because speed mattered. In twelve seconds, he understood. "Thursday," he said. "Thursday." He pointed to a column. "Forty-three percent of your weekly volume is delivered on Thursdays. It's not a routing problem." It's a single person, their warehouse manager, a man named Collins, who's been in the job for nineteen years, who handles the peak staffing on Thursdays because that's how it's always been done, and the routing model was designed around that, not the other way around.
The system beeped.
Maxwell kept his eyes fixed on the spreadsheet.
[Hidden Reward Unlocked]
[Condition: 1461 Consecutive Days Perfect Financial Management]
[All bills. All payments. All obligations. Paid in full. On time. No discounts. For 4 full years.]
[Zero late payments. Zero overdrafts. Zero delinquency.] Zero exceptions.]
[Credit Score: 812]
[Reward: 10,000 shares Apple Inc. (NASDAQ: AAPL)]
[Market opening price, March 12, 2012: $535.11]
[Total Value: $5,351,100.00]
[Deposit: -$4,471 at the end of the Fidelity account]
"Which means that by flattening the curve, we get a 12 percent reduction in freight costs per unit, fewer driver overtime hours on three delivery days, and another $22,000 in carrier capacity rates per quarter," Sarah concluded. She sat back down. "Here's the picture." Maxwell was reading two things at once: the system panel, which floated transparently above his field of vision, and Sarah's spreadsheet below it. Both were resolved with clarity, a cognitive experience she was still cataloging. It was like using two monitors. She'd learned to manage it in ten days. It was getting easier each time.
"What specifically worries you about Collins?" she asked. Her voice was the same. Her expression was the same.
"Nineteen years." She leaned forward slightly, as she did when working on something she was truly passionate about, rather than a routine task. "If I told her that her Thursday model was inefficient, she'd think it was a nineteen-year mistake. She'd object on principle, even if the data was correct."
"Frame it as an opportunity to increase capacity," Maxwell said. "Tell her that her Thursday system is actually underselling; that the right routing model would allow her best distribution window to capture the volume her Thursday setup is missing. She'll interpret that as nineteen years of sound judgment not being fully utilized." She paused. "If he thinks it's in his best interest, he'll want to fix it himself."
Sarah was silent for exactly three seconds. "It's…" She stopped before starting a sentence she hadn't even thought of, which was unusual for her. She continued, "Yes. That's the idea." She began gathering her spreadsheets as if someone had what they needed and was ready to complete them. "Do you want to co-submit Hartwell's report, or should I?"
"It's yours. Do it."
"He'll give you credit for uncovering the original inefficiency anyway."
"Perhaps. But this analysis is yours. Fourteen thousand were mine. Thirty-six thousand are yours." He looked at her intently. "They're different things, and if you present them correctly, everyone will understand."
She looked at him with a scrutinizing expression, the same one she used when she was trying to discern whether he was being strategic or sincere, because with Maxwell, there was often no difference between the two. Once she had said it unintentionally, and immediately it seemed as if she hadn't said it at all.
"Okay," she said.
She stood up. She took three steps back, toward her desk. She paused.
"Maxwell."
"Yes."
"What's really bothering you?" she asked casually, not accusingly. With the tone of someone who had been asking a question for a while and finally decided it wouldn't hurt to ask. "And I mean it." It's not what you're thinking right now, it's what's happening out there, all the time, that makes you... She gestured slightly like this.
Maxwell looked at her. He thought about the $5.3 million worth of Apple stock that had arrived in his Fidelity account four minutes earlier, when they'd been talking about warehouse manager Collins. He thought about the apartment by the lake. He thought about the warehouse in Halstead, which brings in $18,400 a month. He thought about the transmission fluid under his left thumbnail that he'd cleaned off on Sunday.
"Too much," she said.
"That's not an answer."
"No," he agreed. "It isn't."
He gave her a look that was simultaneously sharp, heated, and slightly irritated, something he'd been registering since November and still didn't quite understand, and returned to his desk.
He waited. While she stared at the screen, he opened the Fidelity app. $8,391,492.
He closed the application. He opened the freight management software. He started the morning as usual: from the beginning, moving forward, doing one thing after another.
He was twenty-four years old. He had eight million dollars and no one to tell him. A man who worked with him tried to read him like a printed book in a language he'd never read. He had transmission fluid under his thumbnail.
He opened a routing file.
There were things to do.
�� Power Stones Wait. Look at these numbers.
$5,351,100 worth of Apple stock.
This happened while Maxwell was explaining warehouse planning to Sarah Chen.
He didn't stop. He didn't blink. He gave her the best way to reframe a difficult conversation with a client and, at the same time, managed five million dollars.
Now he has a net worth of $8.3 million.
He earns $42,000 a year.
He has transmission fluid under his thumbnail.
He's about to eat his lunch at his desk.
This is Chapter 10. Fill this book with 20 Power Stones this week and get five bonus chapters: five additional chapters about Maxwell managing his secret billionaire life, while his biggest problem at work is whether Greg Paulson's laugh is getting louder.
The Power Stone button is right below. It's free. It'll only take you less than two seconds. Maxwell didn't miss a single bill for four years to earn Apple stock. The least you can do is tap once.
Let's get started! Maxwell started!