Ideas on how to become rich - How to become a billionaire, part 2
Welcome to the series here on my site that explores how to become a billionaire. In the previous post here on how to become a billionaire, I listed out my methodology and exploration method of this very interesting topic, and here in this post I will be giving the general lessons that we can learn from billionaires and how we can follow these ideas. In other words, this is a very general summary of how to become a billionaire and become very rich.
In the previous post, I explained the methodology, in future posts I shall show various examples of companies that made their owners billionaires and explore those ideas. In this post, generalisms - to the extent that generalisms can be true, since they differ from case to case. Here's a summary of "how to become a billionaire"... ...
Summary and general points on how to become rich the way billionaires made their money
1. Usually the starting point is a great idea or a great concept, and usually that has nothing to do with making money initially, but providing a service or some product that is needed or will soon be needed. This means that sometimes the starting point to becoming rich is a great idea or a great concept, and that idea or concept translates into money much later.
2. If not a great idea, then it usually turns out to be that the person who eventually became very rich started working very hard and very young. Most millionaires and some billionaires became rich this way, working their way up the corporate ladder. This seems to be a very common way of becoming a billionaire eventually anyways. Getting promoted and getting various higher paying positions and eventually the CEO position is one key way of becoming a billionaire.
3. The company gets listed on the stock exchange. This is the one single point that we will take as given, for reasons explained in my previous post.
The learning point from point number 3 is that "how to become a billionaire" can be expressed as "get your company listed and hope that it becomes very big and expands, along with your paycheck and along with your stocks".
That's why the next few posts will deal with looking at various case studies of billionaires and their companies, and mostly focuses on the companies that make the billionaires possible. In other words, the businesses. The various businesses that took different routes, but ended up rich and prosperous and made their shareholders rich and in some cases billionaires.
4. The company expands by wise strategic moves and by excellent leadership - or in some cases luck and fortune. This differs from company to company and in some cases mergers and acquisitions are the order of the day, whereas in some other cases some companies do not merge with other companies but instead expand their range and power via products and reach. Some conduct international trade, and some discovered the internet, and some make their money BECAUSE of the internet. More on that interesting and very obvious story later.
5. The billionaires in question become very rich because of their control of a great company that makes a lot of money.
That's it. It is simple but true.
This also shows you that the best way to become a billionaire or to become fabulously rich is to have stocks. Either you have a great idea that turns into a money making company that is listed and you have lots of company stock as well as ownership of a such a money making and great business ; or you have to have wise investment strategies that enable you to buy other people's companies in which those great ideas make money for their shareholders (including yourself). Therefore, as many pundits have concluded, and it is rather clear to me, ownership of stocks, and in particular well performing stocks, is the key here to becoming very rich. If you own the company, well and good and you have the potential to become a billionaire. If you don't own the company, then you have to buy little parts of it, but you can still become very rich, so there aren't any worries there if you are astute, well researched and clever.
Now you have it - the secrets of becoming a billionaire and very wealthy. It all seems very simple in theory.
The devil of course is in the details, and more important company analysis to come here in future posts! Stay tuned here for more, cheers, and thanks for reading.
Note and disclaimer:
Note here that my analyses in both the previous post and this one both do not cover:
people who became billionaires by inheritance,
lawsuits,
marrying a rich person who already happened to be one,
foundations that already possess such wealth,
national leaders/ sovereigns/ kings, among other wealthy people.
If you want to become a billionaire via those means, then it might work for you. This site explores ideas of how to become rich and these ideas in the posts to come are workable and tried and tested ideas rather than those that depend on fortune - marrying rich, being born rich, and the like. Thanks for the understanding.
Ideas on how to become rich
Ideas on how to become rich - How to become a billionaire, part 2
Ideas on how to become rich - How to become a billionaire, part 1
Ideas on how to become rich - How to become a billionaire, part 1
Welcome to this series on my ideas on how to become rich site. This series on my site is about how to become a billionaire, as promised earlier. I have done research into this field and will simplify my analysis and share some ideas about this topic. Then after this series, I should be writing more about investment and finance as usual, and probably have a series on how to make money on the stock market by borrowing ideas from fund manager Peter Lynch and his book "One Up on Wall Street", but that's all in the works and in the future. This series here is about "how to become a billionaire".
First up, my research methodology for researching on this important topic: regarding how to become a billionaire, the most obvious way seemed to me to have a look at Forbes list of billionaires and see how they made their money, where they got their sources on income and the like. And it shouldn't strike you as new or special or something innovative that all of them made their money in some field or other, and they are all billionaires because their companies are listed. Therefore, the question "how to become a billionaire" can be easily answered as "get listed on the stock market and do well there" (and with tongue in cheek, of course get listed on the stock market and do well there but not in a recession - get listed and make money when the stock market is doing well!). Clearly the direct correlation is between being a billionaire and having lots of stock, either in your own company or in Warren Buffett's case, in other companies. Thus this is not the answer we are looking for. We can definitely become billionaires if we have stocks in the right company and/or we own companies that are very successful, and we have stocks in those companies.
The focus will be on the fields that the billionaires are working in, what they do, and how they earn their money - because ultimately the stock price follows their companies' incomes and revenues. This is the main focus of "how to become a billionaire" - the ways in which the rich and famous earn their money, and how their companies made them rich.
Therefore the next step was for me to take a list of billionaires that I wanted to emulate and then observed how they made their money, and that was the basis of my case studies. However, in the case studies, those were rich men, and with the exceptions of Trump and Buffett, none of the others were billionaires, although they were millionaires. To summarise, in this series I correct my former case studies and now make instead a summary and a collation of various billionaires, but not on the billionaires themselves but on the way in which they made their money - in other words, their companies and what they did.
In summary: I will be writing on "how to become a billionaire". I looked at the list of billionaires and selected a few to research on. The focus was not on their stock price but instead on the ways and ideas in which they made their money and how their companies developed.
Some of the richest men and women got their money through court cases, lawsuits, and via inheritance. Those will not be considered here in my ideas site.
The billionaires that I looked at were:
Sam Walton of Wal Mart
Brin and Page of Google
(I got all their information off the internet, and as to the validity, well, I consulted Wikipedia... of all things)
Sergei Popov
Roman Abramovich - you all know this guy if you watch football, and by football I of course am referring to the English Premier League football!
Warren Buffett
Donald Trump
as well as
Jack Welch
Henry Ford
Thomas Edison - believe it or not!
among others
Therefore the main companies that we will be looking at are:
Wal Mart
Google
Berkshire Hathaway
Ford
General Motors
General Electric
We will learn how to become a billionaire from these companies and their founders, and basically this series is a case study series not of people and not of rich people, but superrich people and superrich and huge companies. In these times of 2008 and rapid economic change and problems in the international economy, it is important to learn what is timeless and what does not change - namely the skills of how to make money, the ideas behind the companies that make money, and the history of how some companies made it big and what we can learn from that. More to come here on my site on Ideas on how to become rich! Stay tuned, thanks for reading.
Ideas on how to become rich!
Ideas on how to become rich - Some Great Ideas by Jack Welch
Ideas on how to become rich - Some Great Ideas by Jack Welch
I have been busy with my Economics examinations and have not had much time to blog, but I received a very nice email from someone who had some interesting tips and ideas on wealth and money making, because she read a book by Jack Welch. Thus my post for today is "Some Great Ideas by Jack Welch" on how to become rich and successful. A short introduction to Jack Welch in case you aren't sure who he is or in case you wish to have a reminder:
John Francis Jack Welch was former Chairman and CEO of General Electric and is incredibly rich and wealthy, having successfully managed GE from 1981 to 2001. He is known for his uncanny business acumen and his wise business strategies that have done very well.
Here is the contribution by Sally, and here is what she wrote to me (edited):
Some great ideas by Jack Welch
"I am in SIM reading this book by Jack Welch and these are some of the tips which I thought I would like to share with you:
a) invest in people
people matter in our lives, value good friends and people
b) dominate your market or get out
This is like what you said to me and sounds exactly like the advice you gave to me! This is a good idea.
c) never sit still - we have to be relentless and restless because sitting on our butts, we cannot achieve anything great.... and the ship can only sail when it leaves the port of safety. This is a good idea as well!
d) one should also think service - according to Welch, one should also know how to provide good service and in particular better service, better than someone else... because people remember your service after the product is gone and waned.
e) forget the past and move on to the future -- what is gone is gone, the most important thing is to harness energy for the future because that is where we can embrace the new and look forward to new things and new money making opportunities and ideas.
f) learn and lead - life is about learning everyday, and life is also about leadership. We should learn new things every day and learn how to be leaders!
g) no bull - do not bullshit , be honest and straightforward - this is typical Jack Welch!
h) kill bureaucracy
i) stick around - be persevering and persistent, for money making opportunities and new ideas are always around the corner, and finally
j) manage the corner store - look out for things that seem insignificant and keep track of what is going on... I realise that I have to make sure that I am keeping abreast of what is going on around me. That's all I have to share regarding Jack Welch and his great ideas.
All these tips from Jack Welch of GE"
Thanks to Sally for her invaluable contribution to my ideas on how to become rich site! Thanks for reading and more important posts here on finance, investment and money making ideas to come soon. Thanks and cheers!
Ideas on how to become rich
