8 ways to make a million bucks - 4

But Szymanski hung on. She processed and packed the eggs herself and delivered them to small grocers. "I would drive an hour to the farm, work, drive back into town, deliver the eggs, go to my apartment, try to figure out where all the money had gone and what I was going to do, go back out to farm, do some more work, come home about 11 at night and do the books. It was a scary existence," she says.

Her big break came when King Soopers, the leading grocery chain in Colorado, agreed to carry the eggs, and a local newspaper wrote about Nest Fresh. Customers liked the look, taste and idea of the cage-free eggs enough to buy them at $2.79 a dozen, more than three times the price of regular eggs.

Once Nest Fresh took off, Szymanski's relatives jumped into the business, and so did other big grocery chains. "Farmers are not known for forward thinking," she says. "The market had to be booming."

As for Szymanski, in 2006 she sold the Nest Fresh brand to Hidden Villa Ranch of Fullerton, Calif., for a sum that put her squarely in the millionaire column. "I wanted to change the way eggs are produced in the U.S.," she says. "I accomplished that."
Now Szymanski and her husband, Steve, enjoy a cushy life that includes neither eggs nor chickens, both of which Szymanski dislikes. They invest in real estate and take horseback-riding vacations with their 8-year-old daughter, AnnaBelle.

Says Szymanski of her wealth, "I have 'eggsistential' guilt."
Millionaire Lesson No. 7
It doesn't take a fortune to build one. Saving a little at a time is an established path to accumulating wealth.

You don't need to earn much to make millions. Paul Navone, 78, never made more than $11 an hour as a quality-control inspector in a glass-container factory. But last year he gave $2 million to two New Jersey schools. He has about $1 million more saved for his retirement.

Navone, who lives in Millville, N.J., was hired by Wheaton Glass when he was 16. After taking a break for Army service, he returned and moved in with his older sister (paying her for his room and board) until he scraped together $6,500 to buy his own duplex at age 23. He lived in one half and rented the other. Eventually, he bought two other properties in Millville and two in Atlantic City.
Paul Navone

Paul Navone
Income from his rentals paid Navone's living expenses. "I never spent any of my wages," he says. He owns no phone or TV. He collects Hummel figurines -- dozens of the ceramic pieces decorate his home.

But for the most part, he squirreled his money away in savings and investments, and he gives credit to "four very good brokers." Navone invested in "a little bit of everything" and stuck with a buy-and-hold strategy. He is partial to utility stocks, with their steady earnings and dividends (which he always reinvests).

When he retired two years ago, Navone couldn't help wondering "what all this accumulation was going to amount to." He decided to give part of his fortune to St. Augustine College Preparatory School in Richland, N.J. His current broker, Douglas Smithson of Wachovia Securities, suggested that he also speak to Cumberland County College in Vineland, N.J.

Last year, Navone donated $1 million to the college for its nursing-education program and $1 million to the high school for a swimming pool.

"I never had the pleasure of a swimming pool," he says. "I used to go to the swimming hole at the gravel pit."
Millionaire Lesson No. 8
Forgo the safe route and find an employer who will help you live up to your potential.

By the numbers, Gurtej Sandhu is one of the most prolific inventors in the U.S. What's more, he has parlayed his education and ingenuity into millionaire status.

Sandhu holds more than 700 patents, which puts him among the top 10 patent holders in the nation. He works for Micron Technology, which makes memory microchips that are used in most digital devices, from cell phones to MP3 players. The semiconductor business faces cutthroat competition, and all of Sandhu's patents focus on making microchips more efficient.
Gurtej Sandhu

Gurtej Sandhu

The son of two chemists, Sandhu, 47, was always attracted to math and science. "I liked engineering better than medicine because I didn't have to deal with blood," he says. He earned a degree in electrical engineering from the elite Indian Institute of Technology in New Delhi and received a doctorate in physics from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in 1990.

Turning down a job offer from a bigger rival, Sandhu joined Micron, which at the time ranked 16th among makers of memory chips. His physics professor and mentor, W.K. Chu, persuaded Sandhu to take the Micron job because it would give him an opportunity to learn many aspects of the chip-making business rather than being locked in to a specialized job at a larger company.

Inspiration comes quickly, says Sandhu -- "Suddenly it clicks, and there's a flash" -- but it takes dedication to develop an idea from creation to a patent. And sometimes, you don't even comprehend the magnitude of what you've discovered. For example, Sandhu developed a method of coating microchips with titanium without exposing the metal to oxygen, which would ruin the chips. Initially, he didn't think his idea was a big deal, but now most memory-chip makers use the process.
Micron is based in Idaho, and Sandhu enjoys bike riding and spending time with his wife and two teenage sons in and around Boise. "The isolation works for me," he says. "I'm more open to new ideas here."