How Billionaires Become Billionaires

Where Good Ideas Come From by Steven Johnson

Where Good Ideas Come From by Steven Johnson

So where do those good ideas come from? This post is a continuation of the one from the other day on the neverending war over who came up with the Facebook concept. The lesson here is that it's extremely difficult to point to any one person as being responsible for a particular idea that turned into something successful. Along the path from mere idea to reality there are normally a lot of people involved who will make a contribution to it..

The bottom line: Chance favors the connected mind, and I might add, those who actually bother to take action on their idea.

 

A List of Great Excuses for Not Doing Anything

If you need more excuses for doing nothing, here's long list.

The Wolf of Wall Street: A Remarkable Story of Success, a Fall, and Redemption

Jordan Belfort: The Wolf of Wall Street's Comeback

If you still don't know who Jordan Belfort is, you will when the new movie about his life comes out with Leo DiCaprio in the lead role. Rumor has it the film is being produced by Martin Scorcese and directed by Ridley Scott. You can't name a trio bigger than that. In a nutshell, Jordan was a Wall Street high-flyer who made some bad decisions in life, spent 22 months in jail, and now is rebuilding his life. If you have seen Boiler Room, you will understand the type of business he ran before it all crashed around him. This interview is loaded with a lot of very valuable advice from a superb salesman on how to be better at it.

Lessons From Self-made Billionaires - Part II

How to Become a Billionaire

Writer Shaun Rein does it again after last month's piece highlighting the lessons a self-made, indeed rags-to- riches, billionaire shared with him. (Click here for the lessons.) The second piece adds more lessons:

• Most self-made people worry about their kids growing up to become new Paris Hiltons. As a result they do their best to instill in them the virtues of discipline and hard work. Often this means giving them entry-level jobs in the family business.
• They do everything they can to keep costs down. Many of them have offices in low rent areas and live fairly modest live-styles. He adds that the CEOs with the ostentatious offices and perks are using shareholder money to pay for their lavish lifestyles.
• Being born rich doesn't mean that you don't have problems or insecurities. Mr. Rein points out that many of the born rich fear that others look down on them for it. Others fear being attacked by the media or being the target of kidnappers. A lack of trust is another big issue. Are they my friends because they like me or because they like my money?

You can read the full article here.

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?

 

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.

The 6 Rules of Success by Arnold Schwarzenegger

The 6 Rules of Success by Arnold Schwarzenegger

The meaning of life is to move ahead, to go up, to achieve, to conquer. - Arnold Schwarzenegger

Back in May of 1990, I read a long article on Arnold Schwarzenegger in Smart magazine (which I still have). The article described in detail his ability to constantly overcome great odds. For starters, Arnold was born and raised in a small village in Austria where most people aspired to nothing more than a steady job with the  government. Unlike everyone around him, Arnold craved more from life. He wanted to achieve something great with his life. As a teen he committed to becoming a body-building champion because he saw the sport as a means of getting to the USA. The plan worked spectacularly well due to his unrelenting will-power. He became the champion of champions in the sport. Years later, as his athletic career started to draw to a close, he switched his focus to becoming an actor in Hollywood. Once again, he faced huge odds because of his thick Austrian accent and massive physique. Yet once again, he succeeded in a most spectacular fashion by starring in a number of wildly successful movies, including the Terminator franchise.

The magazine article called him a real life Terminator. That was May of 1990. It’s 2010 now and he is into his third successful career as a politician and governor of California.

Here are Arnold’s six rules for success in life.

Video part 1.

Video part 2.

PS You may not like his performance as governor in these troubled times, but you have to give him credit for achieving every goal he has set for himself. Can you name anyone else who has succeeded this much in three completely disparate fields? I can't. Want to be a business terminator?

How to Succeed & Get Rich: Inspirational Words From Felix Dennis

How to Succeed & Get Rich: Inspirational Words From Felix Dennis

This is the self-made British billionaire Felix Dennis speaking.

 

You must believe in yourself. Otherwise why should anyone else believe in you? – Felix Dennis

Here is his book  How to Get Rich: One of the World's Greatest Entrepreneurs Shares His Secrets
 

Business Lessons From The Richest Man In The World: Carlos Slim

Business Lessons From The Richest Man In The World: Carlos Slim

"When you live for others' opinions, you are dead. I don't want to live thinking about how I'll be remembered."

"I think one of the big errors people are making right now is thinking that old-style businesses will be obsolete, when actually they will be an important part of this new civilization. Some retail groups are introducing e-commerce and think that the "bricks" are no longer useful. But they will continue to be important."

"When there is a crisis, that’s when some are interested in getting out and that’s when we are interested in getting in."

"When we decide to do something, we do it quickly."

"I don't believe in working 20 hours or 16 hours or 14 hours. When you work too much, it is because your job is beyond you. If you need to work 15 hours, 16 hours, this is because you're not organized. You don't have delegation of your responsibility, and I don't believe that in any business, in any activity, you need to work 15 or 16 hours, and you don't have time for yourself or for your family or for anyone."

"All times are good time for those who know how to work and have the tools to do so."

"I’m a paper man, not electronic. My children gave me a lap top for Christmas, but all I know how to do so far is push the on button."

"I spend most of my time studying new technologies. My main task is to understand what's going on and try to see where we can fit in."

"We started doing something similar for Telmex employees about a year ago. We sold 28,000 computers at a very low, accessible price to employees. Eventually, we want all of the workers in several of our companies to have computers so that they and their families can use them. You can't attend your Internet clients well if you yourself don't know how the system works."

"First, you begin creating your organization with a team of salesmen, not with one. You need to create many hundreds of salesmen to go to the market to offer the product. What you can do, maybe, if you are going to begin, is to find which area the casualties are lower, the risks are lower, because there are less stolen cars and accidents, and you can begin in this place. You will begin selling one maybe at 11 o'clock, but at 5 o'clock, maybe you've sold 100, and 200 next day, and 600 and 1,000, and as much as you go there, you're taking a statistical risk."

"Do not allow negative feelings and emotions to control your mind. Emotional harm does not come from others; it is conceived and developed within ourselves."

"Live the present intensely and fully, do not let the past be a burden, and let the future be an incentive. Each person forges his or her own destiny."

Learn more about Carlos Slim's strategy.

How I Built It: Barry Sternlicht on Buying Hotels

How I Built It: Barry Sternlicht on Buying Hotels 

Barry Sternlicht, the founder of Starwood Capital, talks to the WSJ about investing in real estate and founding a successful hotel company.

Find out how tycoons like Barry Sternlicht build their empires.