How Billionaires Become Billionaires

The Tycoon Playbook

I just added 11 more pages of detail for anyone seriously interested in getting the Tycoon Playbook.

 

The Tycoon Playbook Site Goes Live

The Tycoon Playbook website has finally been launched.

The Tycoon Playbook

How Billionaires Become Billionaires: The Youngest Australian Tycoon

Australia's Youngest Tycoon: Nathan Tinkler

Nathan Tinkler was a $400/week electrician not too long ago. Then he took a chance to jump into a fast growth sector of the Australian economy: mining.  Then in just 18 short months he parlayed an A$1 million grubstake into A$445 million.

...Nathan Tinkler is on track to becoming Australia’s youngest and fastest-ever self-made billionaire.

This rags-to-riches tale, highlights how the mining boom is changing lives and creating a new generation of super wealthy in Australia. As a teenager, Tinkler left his small hometown of Inverell and made his way to the coal rich mines of the Hunter Valley. There he earned A$400 per week working as an apprentice electrician, before starting his own business servicing the mines.

But Tinkler was hungry for bigger things. In 2004, he saw an opportunity in a small unwanted Queensland coal mine.

The gamble paid off with Tinkler's current net worth estimated to be A$610 million ($596 million USD). Tinkler now has even grander plans.

“I have plans to develop the infrastructure around the mining industry as well as developing more minerals assets the team and myself have identified,” he said. (source)

There are a couple of obvious take-ways here for anyone interested in building wealth. One, you need to focus on fast growth industries. Two, at some point you have to overcome your fears and roll the dice. Most people just wait and wait for more proof until the opportunity has passed.

More on how billionaires become billionaires.

 

Full Contact Capitalism

Full Contact Capitalism

It's here.

To find out more about Full Contact Capitalism go here and sign up for the free mini-course. It will start immediately. Find out how they do it and if you have what it takes to follow in their footsteps.

 

Lessons From a Self-made Chinese Billionaire

What I Learned From A Chinese Billionaire

He taught me the basic principles he relied on to go from grinding poverty to enormous wealth.

- Shaun Rein

Forbes has an interesting article on what one of their writers learned from talking to one of the new Chinese billionaires. Here are the three main lessons:

Mr. Chen's first lesson is to believe that anything is possible and the only thing that can stop you is yourself. He never ceased to believe that he would make something of himself. As a poor peasant child with no high government connections, he had the odds stacked again him. He had to drop out of school in his teens because his family had no money.

The second lesson Mr. Chen taught me is that to get what you want you have to respect everyone and sometimes eat humble pie.

Finally, Mr. Chen believes in sharing wealth. He lets business partners make more than he does, so that the next time they secure a good deal they'll think of working with him first. He sees no point in ever trying to shortchange business partners.

Go read What I Learned From A Chinese Billionaire in full. It's a brief piece.

If you're wondering what this blog is about, it's about learning best practices from billionaires who made their fortunes wheeling and dealing in assets.

Business Turnarounds: How Dana White Made UFC into a Financial Champ

The UFC Turnaround

This is a short ten minute interview by the CBC's George Stroumboulopoulos with UFC boss Dana White on how he turned a once hated brand into a crowd favorite.

Dana White on The Hour with George Stroumboulopoulos 

Warren Buffett Endorses Billionaire Strategies Course?!

Warren Buffett's Billionaire Strategy Revealed

“I don't look to jump over 7-foot bars: I look around for 1-foot bars that I can step over.” - Warren Buffett

I'm not aware of Warren Buffett having enrolled in Billionaire Strategies, but reading the above quote almost makes me wonder if he has secretly. This quote sums up the course's philosophy quite succinctly. By all accounts, Warren never stops learning. He's always investing in his mind.

I recently heard about a study which involved millionaires, members of the middle-class, and those not doing very well, shooting basketballs. The farther the thrower sank a basket from the more money he or she won. The middle-class and poor chose the farthest distance to shoot from and won very little. In contrast, the rich shot from in close where they could win a dollar every time. As a result, they went home with the biggest winnings by far.

This also sums up the Billionaire Strategies philosophy. The best route to billionaire status is through making money on a lot of deals as opposed to putting all your eggs into one basket.

How would you like to be a hero? You can be a hero to someone by telling them about this course. If you know someone smart, ambitious, entrepreneurial, and chomping at the bit to accelerate their growth, they deserve to know about this course. They will thank you later.

Just send them here.
 

“You only have to do a very few things right in your life so long as you don’t do too many things wrong.”

- Warren Buffett

“Someone’s sitting in the shade today because someone planted a tree a long time ago.”

- Warren Buffett

"Some people are committed to having their goals and others are committed to wanting them."

- Wanda Grindstaff

P.S.  Just for the record, Warren's name is still not showing up on the list of enrollments, so maybe it's all just a coincidence? Or is it?

 

Career Freedom: Around the World in 80 Trades

Career Freedom: Around the World in 80 Trades

Although this blog maybe about learning the strategies and tactics of self-made billionaires on the surface, at rock bottom it's about freedom. With that in mind, I'd like to share with you a great tale of a man who found freedom for a year.

Suppose for a moment that time travel was possible and you found yourself 1000 years back in time somewhere along the old Silk Road with a limited grubstake of money. Could you survive by trading?

The series, Around the World in 80 Trades, is about a man who places himself in such a predicament in order to test his mettle. Conor Woodman quits his job in "The City" (i.e, London's Wall Street) and decides to trade his way around the world using a limited amount of personal capital. When I say "trade" picture it the way it was done for thousands of years by traders and nomads traveling along the Silk Road. Conor trades in anything that he thinks can provide a positive ROI: camels, horses, wine, coffee beans, jade stones, surfboards, etc. Since its his own money, every trade counts. He travels across Africa, Asia, South America, and Mexico.

Each of the four episodes is approximately 50 minutes long. Watch Conor get off to a bad start when he's shut out of a camel trading trading market by the locals. This is great stuff if you're into adventure travel and commerce.

I include this series here for another important reason. Most of the billionaires we study in the Billionaire Strategies Course are or were superb traders. It's a key business skill to cultivate.

Episode 1 Part 1 of 5

Episode 1 Part 2 of 5

Episode 1 Part 3 of 5

Episode 1 Part 4 of 5

Episode 1 Part 5 of 5

You can catch the other three episodes of Around the World in 80 Trades at Youtube.

Billionaire Profiles: How Would You Have Handled This?

Billionaires have quick reaction times to both opportunity and crisis.

Here's a great story from Martin Fridson about the importance of quick reaction time to crisis. Future billionaire Phillip Anschutz was contract drilling for Chevron in 1968, when a spark from a truck set his entire field ablaze.

Anschutz found himself facing ruin as he had borrowed heavily to secure the lease. The average person watching his capital go up in smoke would have been forgiven for curling up into a ball on the floor and going catatonic. Not Anschutz. What he did was quickly buy the lease of his panicked neighbor by assuming his liabilities and then raising $100,000 by selling Universal Studios the rights to film his burning oil rigs for their film Hellfighters, which had John Wayne playing the famous oil field fire-fighter Red Adair. The money allowed him to then hire the real Adair to put out the fire. In the end, Anschutz realized a "healthy profit."

How would you have reacted if that had been your oil field?


"Living well is the best revenge." – Oscar Wilde

"When I die, I want to come back as myself." – Mark Cuban

Second chances are rare man, you should learn to take better
advantage of em’. – anon

--

If you're a serious business person and not just a Lookie-Lou, check out this free mini-course.

Click here if you're looking for startup capital.

Londongrad From Russia With Cash - The Inside Story Of The Oligarchs

The Russian Billionaires

I have been reading about the Russian oligarchs (aka "billionaires") for a few months now as you may have noticed. While they are highly controversial figures, you have to give them credit for having big brass ones. If you're a tycoon in Russia, you commute in an armored limo accompanied by a convoy of SUVs filled with men toting automatic weapons. It's the only way you can survive. The threats can come from rival tycoons as well as any of Russia's hundreds of different police and security units. One oligarch, Vladimir Gusinsky, was estimated to have a private security force of 1000 former military and police men guarding him and his assets.

Here's the latest book on these men. It focuses on the ones who fled to London after Putin took over from Yeltsin a decade ago. Putin has been gradually clawing back some of the assets that they obtained for next to nothing in exchange for providing political support to Yeltsin in the 1990s.

Londongrad From Russia With Cash - The Inside Story Of The Oligarchs by Mark Hollingsworth and Stewart Lansley.

The amazing true story of how London became home to the Russian super-rich - told for the first time ever. A dazzling tale of incredible wealth, ferocious disputes, beautiful women, private jets, mega-yachts, the world’s best footballers - and chauffeur-driven Range Rovers with tinted windows.A group of buccaneering Russian oligarchs made colossal fortunes after the collapse of communism - and many of them came to London to enjoy their new-found wealth. Londongrad tells for the first time the true story of their journeys from Moscow and St Petersburg to mansions in Mayfair, Knightsbridge and Surrey - and takes you into a shimmering world of audacious multi-billion pound deals, outrageous spending and rancorous feuds.But while London's flashiest restaurants echoed to Russian laughter and Bond Street shop-owners totted up their profits, darker events also played themselves out. The killing of ex-KGB man Alexander Litvinenko in London to the death - in a helicopter crash he all but predicted - of Stephen Curtis, the lawyer to many of Britain's richest Russians, chilled London's Russians and many of those who know them.

This is the story of how Russia's wealth was harvested and brought to London - some of it spent by Roman Abramovich on his beloved Chelsea Football Club, some of it spent by Boris Berezovsky in his battles with Russia's all-powerful Vladimir Putin. Londongrad is a must-read for anyone interested in how vast wealth is created, the luxury it can buy, and the power and intrigue it produces.

You can get more information on the book here: Londongrad From Russia With Cash - The Inside Story Of The Oligarchs