Your wallet is almost totally empty. The same goes for your checkbook. There were two credit card bills in yesterday’s mail, you owe your neighbor 10 bucks and, if you had a savings account … well, let’s just say you don’t much.

You work hard, you reach for your dreams, but you still can’t seem to catch a break, which means you’re doing it all wrong, says Dennis Kimbro in his new book “The Wealth Choice.”

This morning, you decided what you were going to have for breakfast and what you’d wear all day. You chose when to leave the house and where to go – but did you choose to be wealthy?

That’s an important thing, says Kimbro. It’s a decision you “must make” in order to control your life and seize opportunity. And yes, there are opportunities to be had; you just have to be on the lookout for them.

“Riches,” Kimbro says, “are lying everywhere for the observant eye.”

In order to find them, though, you’ll need to think and act like a millionaire, and two of the “common factors” Kimbro discovered about African-American millionaires are their “relentless commitment to lifelong learning” and their focus on a purpose in life.

Millionaires also utilize their unique strengths to “master whatever field [they] enter.” They’re self-starters with “grit” and a strong work ethic, inquisitiveness and an understanding that ideas have power. They practice thrift, salesmanship and spirituality. And failure is not an option.

To step on your own personal path to wealth:

• Learn how to “add value,” not only for your customers but for employees and your community at large.

• Be an optimist.

• Read all that you can to educate yourself (and to set an example: recent studies show that nearly half of African-American 17-year-olds are “functionally illiterate”).

• Understand that looking rich and being rich are often two vastly different things.

• Don’t be afraid of work. In fact, love your work and stop being afraid of Mondays.

• Learn how to network and how to stop wasting time.

• Practice Praise.

• Believe in yourself, know who you are, and play up your strengths.

• Invest in yourself.

• And finally, own your own business. That, says Kimbro, is one of the major “laws” of wealth.

Tired of nothing but dust in your wallet? Sick of paying with pennies? Then crack open “The Wealth Choice” just about anywhere, and get ready for real change.

With dozens and dozens of anecdotes and examples (including his own), author Dennis Kimbro explains how millionaires are made – and not just monetarily. Because he tends to repeat himself in various ways, readers get a hard examination of attitudes and traits of the wealthy, making it nearly impossible to avoid assimilation of these habits.

And that’s good because, really, who doesn’t want to be successful?

Though it’s written mostly for the benefit of African-American readers, this book can certainly be utilized by anyone. If you want to be one of the thousands of millionaires around the world today, “The Wealth Choice” won’t leave you empty.

Terri Schlichenmeyer’s reviews of business books are read in more than 260 publications in the U.S. and Canada.