It is not everyone’s goal to become a billionaire, and it’s fine. We all have our different goals in life. Whatever makes you happy and satisfies you should be the number one thing to pay attention to. However, I am quite aware that there are people like myself who really want to become billionaires, and believe you me, it is very possible to have that strong mindset or optimism and achieve it. After taking so much study on billionaires, I discovered that they have a different approach towards building their wealth. So, I will be sharing some basic facts that hold true in which you can position yourself on such path.
Skills Cannot Make You A Billionaire: The honest truth is that there is a clear behavioural traits between those who have skills or talents and those who eventually become billionaires. I have heard of people speak out of excitement that they want to become billionaires, and all I see is that they just have a skill or talent. Here’s the reality of things, when you have a skill or talent, you can only earn when you put in the work, and you do not earn when you do not put in the work. Now, I’m not saying people with skills cannot become billionaires; I am saying that with skills alone, there will be restrictions on the flexibility of your earning ability.
Just like the clear distinction I made in an article between a freelancer and an entrepreneur; a freelancer is someone who gets the job done and gets paid for it while an entrepreneur earns even when not working. Yes, once he doesn’t get a job done, there’s no payment for a freelancer. For an entrepreneur, he has structures in place for his skills to be running even when he’s not working. This means an entrepreneur can go on vacation, and still be earning while a freelancer will not because he has not worked to earn money.
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Your skills must work for you: You must get to a point where your skills work for you, and not you with your skills. This is a billionaire game; it means your skill must have a high valuation. I am not writing this out of assumptions or from a particular book. Pay attention; J K Rowling made a billion dollar from the sale of her book Harry Potter. Writing of the book Harry Potter is a skill but that’s not the first book that anyone in the world has ever written. Did they all get to that point? So what’s the setback? Should I rather say there’s a secret to it. It’s still depending on the law of compounding.. The first lesson to bite is that your skill must have high valuation. I have said this earlier. What I mean is that your skill must be able to convert to huge money when you work with it.
If it does not have high value when you work with it, then it cannot work for you. It grows exponentially because of the value it already has. The book Harry Potter is an epic book. The book by itself should be worth some billions of dollars if it was published under normal circumstances. Just an ordinary book cannot be worth some billions of dollars just like that. This means that her writing skill is not of this world. Her skill is firstly of high valuation before the skill can work for her. The same thing applies to having money; your money must be able to work for you. So, in order to chase the billionaire dream, your skill must be able to permeate different corners and places while you’re also working with the skill. This itself is rare anyway.
Understanding Numbers: This itself is a very difficult one. Not everyone really finds numbers interesting, so, not everyone can be a billionaire. Matter of fact, I really find numbers very boring but I try my best to keep studying it. Not all entrepreneurs understand numbers as well. Being a billionaire is never by mistake. You can be a millionaire by mistake but can never be a billionaire by mistake. All billionaires who built businesses understand numbers.
This is how numbers work, and it still works based on the law of compounding. It states by my own definition; 1 million dollar and 1 million dollar car are not the same except both can yield the same interest. Unfortunately, both cannot in every case. The law of numbers has to do with understanding money. Money spent to buy physical items is no longer money and has lesser value than money. Let’s talk about Beyonce and the money she was given from Coachella sometimes back; rather than use it to get something of instant gratification, she pushed it into compound interest where the money can work for itself. Warren Buffet is a king of that. This is what I was referring to in the last point that money needs to work for you at some point.
Jay Z didn’t become a billionaire through music alone but by making music work for him. He followed the law of numbers; “if I invest a million dollars into this young talent, how much will it fetch me or if I get a house worth a million dollars, how much will it fetch me”. That’s numbers!
Most times, businesses themselves cannot make a billionaire if the entrepreneur doesn’t push the business to the point that it both runs on itself and at the same time makes money multiply itself. We can call it understanding investment. But understanding investment is just beyond putting a dollar in the bank. How does the money in the bank work for you?
This is not a path for everyone. However, for those on the path like myself, this is part of the things you should know.
From the mindset of billionaires; they don’t only live for the moment, they live for the future and channel their resources ( both skills and wealth) towards making it happen. Well written, great analysis and educating article.
Many things are involved on the road to becoming a billionaire. Your skills and money working for you may not still be enough, you will need to have other external factors to be in your favour, herein lies the unpredictability.
Someone wrote a book and earned over a billion, there’s no metric to measure if a book could worth so much, it then depends on where you are and who the promoters are. You can write a ‘superior’ book but in the eyes of few people who really move the world, you did little, and therefore can only earn little. What we call ‘valuation’ is dependent on unknown factors most times, but the biggest factor is the promoters, they are the ones who tell the rest of mankind how great the work is, and because they are ‘authorities’ people come to believe them.
Look at all the inventions and innovations in the world, which of them do you consider most useful and important to you? But in the valuation game, they may never matter so much, it is those who make the call that tell you the most ‘valuable’.
So you can set out to become a billionaire, just play your part well, and then hope that the other side will smile at you; no magic wand there.
I’d tell you being a billionaire is not a game of uncertainty, neither is it a game of chances. I see your perspective but I feel you skipped some salient facts which I analyzed.
I wish I could highlight them again but time wouldn’t permit me. The billionaire game has external factors, rightly said. However, they are dependent on internal factors.
An ordinary book cannot make a billion dollars in sales if the promoters are from Pluto. The game of hype versus heart, I’d want you to read through when I post it.
Great article! There is a measure of uncertainty in every project, it doesn’t matter what steps you follow. For events to happen, external factors independent of you must Also be present along side dependent factors. The turnout of every future event, I repeat every future event, is unpredictable ,but a couple of processes like you rightly pointed out could increase the chances of the event happening as planned. Great article once again.
Fantastic article. To add to your comment, billionaires have been able to influence external factors that you and I thought to leave to chance.
Chai! This is well thought!