Jeff Bezos, Elon Musk, Warren Buffett – what do they have in common? I
Don’t mean billions in bank accounts. It would be too obvious an answer. I’m wondering if they have something in common at the level of thinking, attitudes towards money and life in general?
Anyone can become a billionaire
Agree, five years ago no one could have imagined that Volodymyr Zelensky would become the president of Ukraine. Life is unpredictable. The same thing happens with money.
Today you deliver pizza, and in a year your startup is bought for a billion. The main thing is not to live with the assumption that you will never become a billionaire. Faith in one’s strengths and capabilities will sooner or later turn into a tangible result.
Workaholism
Billionaires cannot sit idle. This quality accompanies them from childhood. For example, Elon Musk made his first $500 selling the video game Blastar at the age of 12. Now he works up to 100 hours a week.
The inveterate workaholism founder of Tesla and SpaceX explains simply: “If other people work 40 hours, and you work 100 hours, then in four months you will achieve what it takes them a whole year to achieve.”
Sad but true: if you like to kill time by hanging in social networks or computer games, you have no chance of becoming a billionaire.
Ability to attract talented people
It is very important who you learn from. After graduation, Jeff Bezos got into the cool company of a mathematics professor. The professor wanted to prove to the whole world that he could leave mathematics for business and become a billionaire. He opened an investment fund and thanks to his knowledge he really earned a billion.
Jeff Bezos knew how to attract money, and from the professor, he learned to find talented people in his team.
And the aforementioned Elon Musk, when recruiting employees for his companies, asks candidates only two questions: what was the most difficult problem they had to work on and how did they manage to solve it? It is very important for him as a leader that the people in his team have exceptional abilities.
Don’t be afraid to take risks
When Jeff Bezos started the business, the Internet site market was growing at 2500% per year, and there was not a single major player in this market.
He seized the moment and founded Amazon. Bezos groped for a growing market, attracted investments. I found talented people and became not just a billionaire, but the richest person in the world.
Elon Musk believes that the main key to success is to try yourself in something “new and strange.” Thanks to courage and radical decisions, he managed to become a billionaire.
Warren Buffett has bought stocks in “quality” companies during difficult times. For example, in the 1980s, he bought stock in Coca-Cola after the failed launch of New Coke. And during the financial crisis of 2008, he bought shares of General Electric.
The golden rule of an investor is not to succumb to the herd mentality and “be able to separate your mind from the crowd.”
Don’t be afraid of failure
When Bezos founded Amazon, it wasn’t all smooth sailing. But even in difficult periods, he continued to attract investments and scale the business.
Buffett’s first investment was a failure. At the age of 11, he had saved $120, signed up his sister as a partner, and bought three shares of Cities Service Preferred for $38.25 each. Shares fell three times, and as soon as they rose to $40, Buffett immediately got rid of them.
And how upset he was when, a couple of days later, the stock showed a rapid five-fold increase! The first failure did not discourage the desire to invest. On the contrary, Buffett learned from it one of the most important rules of the investment market – to play long.
The life stories of the richest people on the planet prove that success is not a lucky coincidence, but a certain way of thinking, multiplied by workaholism and unshakable faith in one’s business.