10 golden rules to become rich!

11-13 minutes

Home > India > Business > Budget 2008-09 > Personal Finance10 golden rules to become
rich!February 21, 2008 11:35 IST

Once you decide to put your money to work to build long-term wealth, you have to decide, not
whether to take risk, but what kind of risk you wish to take. Here are 10 investing rules that can
make you rich:

1. There's no escaping risk

Once you decide to put your money to work to build long-term wealth, you have to decide, not
whether to take risk, but what kind of risk you wish to take.

Yes, money in a savings account is dollar-safe, but those safe dollars are apt to be substantially
eroded by inflation, a risk that almost guarantees you will fail to reach your wealth goals.

And yes, money in the stock market is very risky over the short-term, but, if well-diversified,
should provide remarkable growth with a high degree of consistency over the long term.

2. Buy right and hold tight

The most critical decision you face is arriving at the proper allocation of assets in your
investment portfolio -- stocks for growth of capital and growth of income, bonds for
conservation of capital and current income.

Once you get your balance right, then just hold tight, no matter how high a greedy stock market
flies, nor how low a frightened market plunges. Change the allocation only as your investment
profile changes. Begin by considering a 50/50 stock/bond-cash balance, then raise the stock
allocation if:

 You have many years remaining to accumulate wealth.

 The amount of capital you have at stake is modest.
 You don't have much need for current income from your investments.
 You have the courage to ride out the stock market booms and busts with reasonable
equanimity.

As these factors are reversed, reduce the 50 per cent stock allocation accordingly.

3. Time is your friend, impulse your enemy

Think long term, and don't allow transitory changes in stock prices to alter your investment
program. There is a lot of noise in the daily volatility of the stock market, which too often is 'a
tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing'.

Stocks may remain overvalued, or undervalued, for years. Realize that one of the greatest sins of
investing is to be captured by the siren song of the market, luring you into buying stocks when
they are soaring and selling when they are plunging.

Impulse is your enemy. Why? Because market timing is impossible. Even if you turn out to be
right when you sold stocks just before a decline (a rare occurrence!), where on earth would you
ever get the insight that tells you the right time to get back in? One correct decision is tough
enough. Two correct decisions are nigh on impossible.

Time is your friend. If, over the next 25 years, stocks produce a 10% return and a savings
account produces a 5% return, $10,000 would grow to $108,000 in stocks vs. $34,000 in savings.
(After 3% inflation, $54,000 vs $16,000). Give yourself all the time you can.

4. Realistic expectations: the bagel and the doughnut

These two different kinds of baked goods symbolize the two distinctively different elements of
stock market returns.

It is hardly farfetched to consider that investment return -- dividend yields and earnings growth --
is the bagel of the stock market, for the investment return on stocks reflects their underlying
character: nutritious, crusty and hard-boiled.

By the same token, speculative return -- wrought by any change in the price that investors are
willing to pay for each dollar of earnings -- is the spongy doughnut of the market, reflecting
changing public opinion about stock valuations, from the soft sweetness of optimism to the acid
sourness of pessimism.

The substantive bagel-like economics of investing are almost inevitably productive, but the
flaky, doughnut-like emotions of investors are anything but steady -- sometimes productive,
sometimes counterproductive.

In the long run, it is investment return that rules the day. In the past 40 years, the speculative
return on US stocks has been zero, with the annual investment return of 11.2% precisely equal to
the stock market's total return of 11.2% per year.

But in the first 20 of those years, investors were sour on the economy's prospects, and a tumbling
price-earnings ratio provided a speculative return of minus 4.6% per year, reducing the nutritious
annual investment return of 12.1% to a market return of just 7.5%. From 1981 to 2001, however,
the outlook sweetened, and a soaring P/E ratio produced a sugary 5% speculative boost to the
investment return of 10.3%.

Result: The market return leaped to 15.3% -- double the return of the prior two decades.
The lesson: Enjoy the bagel's healthy nutrients, and don't count on the doughnut's sweetness to
enhance them.

5. Why look for the needle in the haystack? Buy the haystack!

Experience confirms that buying the right stocks, betting on the right investment style, and
picking the right money manager -- in each case, in advance -- is like looking for a needle in a
haystack.

Investing in equities entails four risks: stock risk, style risk, manager risk, and market risk. The
first three of these risks can easily be eliminated, simply by owning the entire stock market --
owning the haystack, as it were -- and holding it forever.

Owning the entire stock market is the ultimate diversifier. If you can't find the needle, buy the
haystack.

6. Minimize the croupier's take

The resemblance of the stock market to the casino is not far-fetched. Yes, the stock market is a
positive-sum game and the gambling casino is a zero-sum game . . . but only before the costs of
playing each game are deducted. After the heavy costs of financial intermediaries (commissions,
management fees, taxes, etc.) are deducted, beating the stock market is inevitably a loser's game.
Just as, after the croupiers' wide rake descends, beating the casino is inevitably a loser's game.
All investors as a group must earn the market's return before costs, and lose to the market after
costs, and by the exact amount of those costs.

Your greatest chance of earning the market's return, therefore, is to reduce the croupiers' take to
the bare-bones minimum. When you read about stock market returns, realize that the financial
markets are not for sale, except at a high price.

The difference is crucial. If the market's return is 10% before costs, and intermediation costs are
approximately 2%, then investors earn 8%. Compounded over 50 years, 8% takes $10,000 to
$469,000. But at 10%, the final value leaps to $1,170,000 -- nearly three times as much . . . just
by eliminating the croupier's take.

7. Beware of fighting the last war

Too many investors -- individuals and institutions alike -- are constantly making investment
decisions based on the lessons of the recent, or even the extended, past. They seek technology
stocks after they have emerged victorious from the last war; they worry about inflation after it
becomes the accepted bogeyman, they buy bonds after the stock market has plunged.

You should not ignore the past, but neither should you assume that a particular cyclical trend will
last forever. None does. Just because some investors insist on 'fighting the last war,' you don't
need to do so yourself. It doesn't work for very long.
8. Sir Isaac Newton's revenge on Wall Street -- return to the mean

Through all history, investments have been subject to a sort of law of gravity: What goes up must
go down, and, oddly enough, what goes down must go up. Not always of course (companies that
die rarely live again), and not necessarily in the absolute sense, but relative to the overall market
norm.

For example, stock market returns that substantially exceed the investment returns generated by
earnings and dividends during one period tend to revert and fall well short of that norm during
the next period. Like a pendulum, stock prices swing far above their underlying values, only to
swing back to fair value and then far below it.

Another example: From the start of 1997 through March 2000, Nasdaq stocks (+230%) soared
past NYSE-listed stocks (+20%), only to come to a screeching halt. During the subsequent year,
Nasdaq stocks lost 67% of their value, while NYSE stocks lost just 7%, reverting to the original
market value relationship (about one to five) between the so-called 'new economy' and the 'old
economy.'

Reversion to the mean is found everywhere in the financial jungle, for the mean is a powerful
magnet that, in the long run, finally draws everything back to it.

9. The hedgehog bests the fox

The Greek philosopher Archilochus tells us, 'The fox knows many things, but the hedgehog
knows one great thing.' The fox -- artful, sly, and astute -- represents the financial institution that
knows many things about complex markets and sophisticated marketing.

The hedgehog -- whose sharp spines give it almost impregnable armour when it curls into a ball -
- is the financial institution that knows only one great thing: long-term investment success is
based on simplicity.

The wily foxes of the financial world justify their existence by propagating the notion that an
investor can survive only with the benefit of their artful knowledge and expertise. Such
assistance, alas, does not come cheap, and the costs it entails tend to consume more value-added
performance than even the most cunning of foxes can provide.

Result: The annual returns earned for investors by financial intermediaries such as mutual funds
have averaged less than 80% of the stock market's annual return.

The hedgehog, on the other hand, knows that the truly great investment strategy succeeds, not
because of its complexity or cleverness, but because of its simplicity and low cost. The hedgehog
diversifies broadly, buys and holds, and keeps expenses to the bare-bones minimum.

The ultimate hedgehog: The all-market index fund, operated at minimal cost and with minimal
portfolio turnover, virtually guarantees nearly 100% of the market's return to the investor.
In the field of investment management, foxes come and go, but hedgehogs are forever.

10. Stay the course: the secret of investing is that there is no secret

When you consider these previous nine rules, realize that they are about neither magic and
legerdemain, nor about forecasting the unforecastable, nor about betting at long and ultimately
unsurmountable odds, nor about learning some great secret of successful investing.

In fact, there is no great secret, only the majesty of simplicity. These rules are about elementary
arithmetic, about fundamental and unarguable principles, and about that most uncommon of all
attributes, common sense.

Owning the entire stock market through an index fund -- all the while balancing your portfolio
with an appropriate allocation to an all bond market index fund -- with its cost-efficiency, its tax-
efficiency, and its assurance of earning for you the market's return, is by definition a winning
strategy.

But if only you follow one final rule for successful investing, perhaps the most important
principle of all investment wisdom: Stay the course!

[Excerpt from Investing Rules from the Masters by John C. Bogle, a doyen of the
American mutual fund industry who was designated by Fortune magazine as one of US
investment industry's four 'Giants of the 20th Century.']

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documentaryreviewers.com
The 6 Best Documentaries about Billionaires
and Their Secrets to Success...or Failure -
The Documentary Reviewers
6-7 minutes

The dream of becoming a millionaire is so 20th century. Why limit yourself? It’s time to think
big…really big. That’s what each and every person did in these documentaries about
billionaires.

Some may have married into wealth or inherited from their parents, but others were born with
the rare talent it takes to build a billionaire fortune all on their own.

Either way, there are a lot of reasons to watch these billionaire documentaries.

Even a small lesson may take you one step forward to your own fortune.

Subscribe to our email list for notifications of new documentaries and what you should be
watching!

Some links on this page many contain affiliate links. For more information, see our disclosure
policy.
 In Becoming Warren Buffett, the king of billionaires, or at least the
humblest, is profiled from birth until current day.

Warren Buffett’s story is inspirational for a ton of reasons – he’s a self-made billionaire,
outrageously dedicated, and hard working. He’s just like us!

Most importantly, this documentary lays out some of the critical traits that helped Buffett get to
where he is.

All of these traits can be emulated, so there’s a ton that can be learned from this great billionaire
documentary.

It’s a definite must-watch!

Betting on Zero is a great business documentary that profiles

billionaire Bill Ackman as he makes a billion dollar bet against nutritional supplement giant
Herbalife.

This documentary not only provides a glimpse into the life of a successful hedge fund manager,
but also delves into the world of multilevel marketing and begs the question – what exactly is the
difference between multilevel marketing and a good old fashioned pyramid scheme?
Bill Ackman is pretty sure he knows the answer, but he’s got a lot to prove if he wants to be
right.

This is a great documentary about billionaires and perfect if you want a glimpse into the world of
Wall Street!

Naploeon Hill (author of Think and Grow Rich) based his

entire career off of studying the uber wealthy, all after a chance encounter with possibly the
world’s greatest billionaire, Andrew Carnegie.

Andrew Carnegie saw potential in Hill and not only took him under his wing, he also introduced
him to other powerful men of their time – Harvey Firestone, Thomas Edison (seriously!), Henry
Ford, and many more.

After a few successful books, Napoleon Hill finally created a documentary – Napoleon Hill’s
Master Key – that lays out exactly what you need to do to become successful, based off of
everything he observed from his billionaire counterparts.

Of all the documentaries about billionaires, this one will certainly provide you with the most tips
to create your own wealth. Be ready – it’s OLD. Like, really old. But that only adds to the value
and proves that the best lessons on building wealth are truly timeless.

Agnelli is an inspiring documentary that tells the tale of Gianni

Agnelli, playboy billionaire and head of Fiat, within the backdrop of post WWII industrialism.
What DiVinci was to Italy’s art and scientific renaissance, Gianni Agnelli was to Italy’s
industrial renaissance. He was a beacon of sexuality, power, and wealth. If that wasn’t enough,
he captured the minds and hearts of everyone. As the documentary puts it: “Every woman was
in love with him. Every man wanted to be him.”

In addition to entertaining you, this documentary will inspire you to make a difference in the
world, become your own person and to warn you against the person you don’t want to be.

This is a good one! Time to update your watchlist.

Related post: Agnelli Documentary Review

Not all billionaires have brilliant lessons to teach us. Some give us
the valuable opportunity to learn from their mistakes…even if that wasn’t their intention.

In The Queen of Versailles, Jackie Siegel (wife to billionaire real estate mogul David Siegel)
invites a film crew to follow the construction of the country’s largest home – her soon-to-be-
home, to be exact.

Amidst the filming, however, the Siegel’s are hit by the real estate bubble and slowly start to lose
their fortune.

This is a sometimes comical, but always entertaining documentary about billionaire lifestyles,
big bets, and even bigger losses. It’s one of our all-time favorites, so squeeze it into your watch
list!
 How to Be a Billionaire profiles 3 different self-made billionaires:
Naveen Jain, Dmitry Itskov, and Michael Birch.

Each made their wealth in different industries and now focuses on separate passions.

But one thing is similar with each of these men: they are outrageously passionate about their
goals and think BIG. We’re talking really, really, really big.

This is a quick watch, but you’re likely to have a lot of ah-ha moments.

Related post: How to Be a Billionaire Documentary Review

There’s a lot to learn from each one of these documentaries about billionaires, no matter how
entertaining they may also be! Let me know if you’ve seen other amazing billionaire

documentaries and we’ll add them to the list! Happy watching.

You may also be interested in:

 The Absolute Best Documentaries for Entrepreneurs

 The Best Big Business Documentaries that They Don’t Want You to See
 10 Documentaries that Will Make You Happier, Healthier, and Wealthier
 The Secret: The Next Life-Changing Documentary You Need to See

Subscribe to our email list for notifications of new documentaries and what you should be
watching!
cheatsheet.com

How to Become a Billionaire: Do You Have

What it Takes?
4-5 minutes

Nelson Almeida/AFP/Getty Images

Ah, to be rich.

Not just McMansion in Orange County rich, but really rich. Like Scrooge McDuck kind of
rich. That is what everyone wants, isn’t it, to be enormously wealthy? To earn your fortune by
becoming a titan of industry, a world-renowned talent, or by inventing a world-changing new
technology or product is on the mind of nearly everyone. At the very least, the riches and
rewards that await as a result are often on the brain. But what it comes down to is getting there.
And to get there, it takes some special qualities.

The question is, do you, the average American, have what it takes to become a millionaire, or
even a billionaire? In order to answer that, we need to figure out how billionaires actually
acquire that status.

According to the Wealth-X and UBS 2014 Billionaire Census, there are fewer than 2,500
billionaires on the planet, along with 12 million millionaires. Of those billionaires, 13% are the
fortunate recipients of large inheritances, 27% inherited some amount of wealth and made the
rest of their money through reinvestments, and about 60% are self-made. All told, the world’s
billionaires control around 4% of the entire planet’s wealth, at $7.3 trillion.

Clearly, there are some significant barriers in the way of billionairehood, and only a small
handful of people have been able to get to that status. That must mean that those individuals are
either incredibly lucky — which some are, given that 40% of them had some help in building
their fortune through inheritance — or that the kind of raw talent needed to amass at least $1
billion is exceedingly rare.

So, how do you know if you have what it takes to ascend the economic ladder to join the
billionaire ranks? And what exactly does it take?

The truth is, there’s no direct answer. But we can look at some commonalities between those
who have become billionaires. Obviously, looking for similarities between those who have
inherited their wealth won’t do much good, but there is something to be said for those who have
inherited a pile of money and managed to keep it, or grow it exponentially.

What we should focus on instead is those who have built themselves up from nothing, or from
little. These are your entrepreneurs, inventors, artists, musicians, and more. People who come to
mind immediately are individuals like Bill Gates, who has built Microsoft from scratch, or even
the founders of companies like Google or Facebook. While these individuals may have had an
advantage in education or personal connections, they still put the work into building products
and companies that were, by and large, unproven.

On Quora (and also covered by Slate), the question was asked that if an individual has a set goal
of becoming a billionaire, and is willing to put in the amount of work necessary, would that be
enough?

The answer, provided by Justine Musk, was a simple “no.”

“We live in a culture that celebrates determination and hard work, but understand: these are the
qualities that keep you in the game after most everybody else has left, or until somebody bigger
and stronger picks you up and hurls you back out to sea,” Musk wrote. “Determination and hard
work are necessary, yes, but they are the minimum requirements. As in: the bare minimum.”
Musk says that the only way to get there is by not only working hard and devoting yourself
completely, but through a bit of luck, and by being the right person for the right job, in the right
place, and at the right time.

“The world gives you money in exchange for something it perceives to be of equal or greater
value: something that transforms an aspect of the culture, reworks a familiar story or introduces a
new one, alters the way people think about the category and make use of it in daily life,” she
wrote.

In a world in which there are millions willing to work their asses off — assuming that’s all it
takes, according to some — we would be seeing a lot more billionaires. But we don’t, because it
takes so much more than that. And there’s no real way of putting the pieces into place, especially
for the average person.

Like Musk writes, being willing to work hard and sacrifice is what gets you in the game — but
your ultimate level of success will probably depend on luck or fate.

More from Business Cheat Sheet:

under30ceo.com

10 Billionaire Biographies You Must Read

About The Author Jared

12-15 minutes

Here is our list of top business biographies and best selling autobiographies from
billionaire entrepreneurs!

Who wants to be a billionaire? We may not all get there but we sure can dream. More
importantly we can learn from some of the great minds who have achieved such great success.
Below we have compiled 10 books written about, and a few by, some of the most notable
business men and women of our time. You can’t go wrong picking a book from this list. Leave a
comment with any we may have missed.

1. Losing My Virginity: How I Survived, Had Fun, and Made a Fortune Doing Business My Way

“Oh, screw it, let’s do it.”

That’s the philosophy that has allowed Richard Branson, in slightly more than twenty-five years,
to spawn so many successful ventures. From the airline business (Virgin Atlantic Airways), to
music (Virgin Records and V2), to cola (Virgin Cola), to retail (Virgin Megastores), and nearly a
hundred others, ranging from financial services to bridal wear, Branson has a track record second
to none.

Losing My Virginity is the unusual, frequently outrageous autobiography of one of the great
business geniuses of our time. When Richard Branson started his first business, he and his
friends decided that “since we’re complete virgins at business, let’s call it just that: Virgin.”
Since then, Branson has written his own “rules” for success, creating a group of companies with
a global presence, but no central headquarters, no management hierarchy, and minimal
bureaucracy.

Many of Richard Branson’s companies—airlines, retailing, and cola are good examples—were
started in the face of entrenched competition. The experts said, “Don’t do it.” But Branson found
golden opportunities in markets in which customers have been ripped off or underserved, where
confusion reigns, and the competition is complacent.
And in this stressed-out, overworked age, Richard Branson gives us a new model: a dynamic,
hardworking, successful entrepreneur who lives life to the fullest. Family, friends, fun, and
adventure are equally important as business in Branson’s life. Losing My Virginity is a portrait
of a productive, sane, balanced life, filled with rich and colorful stories.
2. Steve Jobs

Based on more than forty interviews with Jobs conducted over two
years—as well as interviews with more than a hundred family members, friends, adversaries,
competitors, and colleagues—Walter Isaacson has written a riveting story of the roller-coaster
life and searingly intense personality of a creative entrepreneur whose passion for perfection and
ferocious drive revolutionized six industries: personal computers, animated movies, music,
phones, tablet computing, and digital publishing.

At a time when America is seeking ways to sustain its innovative edge, and when societies
around the world are trying to build digital-age economies, Jobs stands as the ultimate icon of
inventiveness and applied imagination. He knew that the best way to create value in the twenty-
first century was to connect creativity with technology. He built a company where leaps of the
imagination were combined with remarkable feats of engineering.

3. Delivering Happiness: A Path to Profits, Passion, and Purpose

You want to learn about the path that we took at Zappos to get to over $1
billion in gross merchandise sales in less than ten years.

You want to learn about the path I took that eventually led me to Zappos, and the lessons I
learned along the way.
You want to learn from all the mistakes we made at Zappos over the years so that your business
can avoid making some of the same ones.

You want to figure out the right balance of profits, passion, and purpose in business and in life.

You want to build a long-term, enduring business and brand.

You want to create a stronger company culture, which will make your employees and coworkers
happier and create more employee engagement, leading to higher productivity.

You want to deliver a better customer experience, which will make your customers happier and
create more customer loyalty, leading to increased profits.

4. The Accidental Billionaires: The Founding of Facebook: A Tale of Sex, Money, Genius and
Betrayal

Eduardo Saverin and Mark Zuckerberg were Harvard undergraduates and

best friends–outsiders at a school filled with polished prep-school grads and long-time legacies.
They shared both academic brilliance in math and a geeky awkwardness with women.

Eduardo figured their ticket to social acceptance–and sexual success–was getting invited to join
one of the university’s Final Clubs, a constellation of elite societies that had groomed
generations of the most powerful men in the world and ranked on top of the inflexible hierarchy
at Harvard. Mark, with less of an interest in what the campus alpha males thought of him,
happened to be a computer genius of the first order.

Which he used to find a more direct route to social stardom: one lonely night, Mark hacked into
the university’s computer system, creating a ratable database of all the female students on
campus–and subsequently crashing the university’s servers and nearly getting himself kicked out
of school. In that moment, in his Harvard dorm room, the framework for Facebook was born.

What followed–a real-life adventure filled with slick venture capitalists, stunning women, and
six-foot-five-inch identical-twin Olympic rowers–makes for one of the most entertaining and
compelling books of the year. Before long, Eduardo’s and Mark’s different ideas about Facebook
created in their relationship faint cracks, which soon spiraled into out-and-out warfare. The
collegiate exuberance that marked their collaboration fell prey to the adult world of lawyers and
money. The great irony is that while Facebook succeeded by bringing people together, its very
success tore two best friends apart.

You want to build something special.

5. The Mary Kay Way: Timeless Principles from America’s Greatest Woman Entrepreneur

Mary Kay Ash built a global independent sales force that today numbers
1.8 million women, and is respected by business and academic leaders. How? The secret is in
this book.

For forty-five years, the principles in The Mary Kay Way have helped the company succeed
through changing economic times and explosive global growth. It has been said that no company
wholeheartedly embodies the values and reflects the beliefs of its founder more than Mary Kay
Inc. Now you can put the same inspiring principles to work for you.

Recognized today as America’s greatest woman entrepreneur, Mary Kay Ash stepped out in
1963 in a man’s world to blaze a new path for women. She grew her business based not on the
rules of competition, but on The Golden Rule. By “praising people to success” and “sandwiching
every bit of criticism between two heavy layers of praise,” this energetic Texas titan opened new
opportunities for women around the world and built a multibillion-dollar corporation.

Mary Kay’s unconventional business philosophy was first published in 1984. Now revised and
updated for the first time, with examples from her company’s top independent salespeople, The
Mary Kay Way is perhaps her most important legacy.
6. Sam Walton: Made in America : My Story

Meet a genuine American folk hero cut from the homespun cloth of
America’s heartland: Sam Walton, who parlayed a single dime store in a hardscrabble cotton
town into Wal-Mart, the largest retailer in the world. The undisputed merchant king of the late
twentieth century, Sam never lost the common touch. Here, finally, inimitable
words. Genuinely modest, but always sure if his ambitions and achievements. Sam shares his
thinking in a candid, straight-from-the-shoulder style.

In a story rich with anecdotes and the “rules of the road” of both Main Street and Wall Street,
Sam Walton chronicles the inspiration, heart, and optimism that propelled him to lasso the
American Dream.

The national bestseller that tells the fascinating life story and unique business philosophy of
billionaire Sam Walton, founder of Wal-Mart. Meet a genuine American folk hero cut from the
homespun cloth of America’s heartland, who parlayed a single dime-store in a hardscrabble
cotton town into the largest retailer in the world.

7. Pour Your Heart into It: How Starbucks Built a Company One Cup at a Time

Since 1987, Starbucks’s star has been on the rise, growing from 11
Seattle, WA-based stores to more than 1,000 worldwide. Its goals grew, too, from the more
modest, albeit fundamental one of offering high-quality coffee beans roasted to perfection to,
more recently, opening a new store somewhere every day. An exemplary success story,
Starbucks is identified with innovative marketing strategies, employee-ownership programs, and
a product that’s become a subculture.

Whether you’re an entrepreneur, a manager, a marketer, or a curious Starbucks loyalist, Pour

Your Heart into It will let you in on the revolutionary Starbucks venture. CEO Howard Schultz
recounts the company’s rise in 24 chapters, each of which illustrates such core values as
“Winning at the expense of employees is not victory at all.”

8. One Click: Jeff Bezos and the Rise of Amazon.com

Amazon’s business model is deceptively simple: Make online shopping

so easy and convenient that customers won’t think twice. It can almost be summed up by the
button on every page: “Buy now with one click.”

Why has Amazon been so successful? Much of it has to do with Jeff Bezos, the CEO and
founder, whose unique combination of character traits and business strategy have driven Amazon
to the top of the online retail world.

Richard Brandt charts Bezos’s rise from computer nerd to world- changing entrepreneur. His
success can be credited to his forward-looking insights and ruthless business sense. Brandt
explains:

– Why Bezos decided to allow negative product reviews, correctly guessing that the earned trust
would outweigh possible lost sales.
– Why Amazon zealously guards some patents yet freely shares others.
– Why Bezos called becoming profitable the “dumbest” thing they could do in 1997.
– How Amazon.com became one of the only dotcoms to survive the bust of the early 2000s.
– Where the company is headed next.
9. The Snowball: Warren Buffett and the Business of Life

Here is THE book recounting the life and times of one of the most
respected men in the world, Warren Buffett. The legendary Omaha investor has never written a
memoir, but now he has allowed one writer, Alice Schroeder, unprecedented access to explore
directly with him and with those closest to him his work, opinions, struggles, triumphs, follies,
and wisdom. The result is the personally revealing and complete biography of the man known
everywhere as “The Oracle of Omaha.”

Although the media track him constantly, Buffett himself has never told his full life story. His
reality is private, especially by celebrity standards. Indeed, while the homespun persona that the
public sees is true as far as it goes, it goes only so far. Warren Buffett is an array of paradoxes.
He set out to prove that nice guys can finish first. Over the years he treated his investors as
partners, acted as their steward, and championed honesty as an investor, CEO, board member,
essayist, and speaker. At the same time he became the world’s richest man, all from the modest
Omaha headquarters of his company Berkshire Hathaway. None of this fits the term “simple.”

10. Oprah: A Biography

For the past twenty-five years, no one has been better at revealing secrets
than Oprah Winfrey. On what is arguably the most influential show in television history, she has
gotten her guests—often the biggest celebrities in the world—to bare their love lives, explore
their painful pasts, admit their transgressions, reveal their pleasures, and explore their demons. In
turn, Oprah has repeatedly allowed her audience to share in her own life story, opening up about
the sexual abuse in her past and discussing her romantic relationships, her weight problems, her
spiritual beliefs, her charitable donations, and her strongly held views on the state of the world.

After a quarter of a century of the Oprah-ization of America, can there be any more secrets left to
reveal?

There is a case to be made, and it is certainly made in this book, that Oprah Winfrey is an
important, and even great, figure of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. But there is also a
case to be made that even greatness needs to be examined and put under a microscope. Fact must
be separated from myth, truth from hype. Kitty Kelley has made that separation, showing both
sides of Oprah as they have never been shown before. In doing so she has written a
psychologically perceptive and meticulously researched book that will surprise and thrill
everyone who reads it.

self-made.io

15 Things These Billionaires Would Do Today

If They Had To Restart From Scratch
4-5 minutes

One way to discern the lessons that billionaires have learned along the way to building their
world bestriding, titanic fortunes is to consider what they would do if they had to start all over
again from scratch and attempt to rebuild with nothing but the knowledge they now have as
billions of dollars worth of the world’s valuable resources have eagerly passed through their
hands and increased under their watchful care and profoundly capable management.

This is a question that more than one billionaire has been asked in recent years and in this article
on Self Made I’m going to reveal their answers and some insights into how you should think
about those answers to make them the most useful to you. Because remember, while these
transformed the world around them in legendary ways, they were also completely transformed by
the process that made them billionaires. They have strayed so far from the safety of predictable,
comfortable, and understandable. They have ventured so far into the abyss and fearlessly pushed
forward in the dark, creating their own path as they went.

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You cannot simply do what one of them would do if they had to start over and become a
billionaire yourself. You will have to use their answers to realize what you will need to do
yourself starting from scratch for the first time to get to their level.

Before we take a look at some answers to this question from luminaries like Bill Gates, Warren
Buffett, Mark Zuckerberg, and Mark Cuban, let’s turn our attention briefly to the apocryphal
story of the Italian billionaire…

1. Buy a nice suit and go to parties…

So there’s this story of an Italian billionaire (which there are more than 40 Italian billionaires
living today, so it could be a true story) who was asked if he had to start over what would he do
to rebuild his wealth from zero to a > $1 billion again. His answer was simple: He would take
whatever job he could find and save up $500 to buy a really nice suit. Then he would go out and
find nice parties to crash where there are clearly lots of successful people in attendance. He’s
sure he would meet someone at the party who would offer him a high paying job with a lot of
responsibilities and get his foot in the door of middle management somewhere or would be able
to make some introductions to someone else who would.

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That would save him a couple years of climbing through all the initial obstacles to get to that
point and he would start in earnest doing great work and moving up the company, learning the
industry, and saving up to start his own business. (In the final analysis, pretty much if you want
to be a billionaire you’re going to have to start your own business.)

But the real moral of the story is that networking is absolutely key for people who are on the
level of billionaires. They are people. They don’t do everything themselves. How on earth could
they! Your daily effort cannot scale up to a billion dollar operation. You have to find and work
with and get help from and manage other people’s expertise, other people’s efforts, even other
people’s money to grow anything to those proportions. You can’t do it without other people.

The Italian billionaire knows he could get hired by hanging with well-connected people in
positions of authority because he’s a billionaire. He’s got the savvy and knowledge and people
like the ones he’d be networking with can read other people like a book, and they would be able
to tell that they want the former billionaire working for them. That billionaire level of cred
probably oozes out of this guy’s pores. You’ll have to earn that yourself by doing exceptional
work, tackling the problems that no one has tackled, and learning the answers that no one knows.
If you are not good with people, start out by reading “How to Win Friends and Influence People”
by Dale Carnegie. Then get a good book on understanding body language.

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greatperformersacademy.com

The Inpirational Stories of 10 Self-made

Billionaires Who Grew Up Poor
STAFF

6-8 minutes

In the world of business, billionaires are the highest achievers. Being a billionaire by global
standards means that you have over $1 billion. This is a tremendous achievement and we aspire
to become as wealthy as they are. Some individuals are billionaires through inheritance. They got
their fortune from their family. Others are entirely self made. Being self made means that you
acquired your wealth from your own efforts and enterprise. By applying a winning attitude, years
of blood ,sweat and tears, some people made it from poverty to billions. Here are 10 self made
billionaires who grew up poor.
J.K.Rowling

She is one of the most successful authors of all time. Her name is literally synonymous with
Harry Potter and has $1 billion. It is almost impossible to believe that only 20 years ago, Joanne
Rowling was so poor that she and her child relied on government welfare to survive. After
getting a meagre meal, Joanne would put her child to sleep and work voraciously on her first
novel, 'Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone'. Once this book was published, the world loved
her work so much that it was developed into a series of blockbuster movies. J.K. Rowling's life
turned around for the better and she is a legitimate billionaire.
Leon Charney

Worth $1.3 billion, Leon is a master investor and an expert of Middle Eastern geopolitics. His
illustrious career as an investor and presidential advisor began with only $200. Leon was down
and poor when he decided to get a full understanding of the Middle Eastern business and
political scene. By burning the midnight oil, Leon became an expert and began to offer his
guidance for a free. He also invested his own money in the right places and his fortune grew
from a few hundred dollars to billions.
Oprah Winfrey

Almost everyone in the world has heard of Oprah, the talkshow queen. With a current net worth
of $2.9 billion, Oprah lives a luxurious life. Her beginning was nowhere near her current life.
When she was a child, her family was so poor that Oprah actually had to wear potato sacks as
clothes. Despite her unfortunate beginning, Oprah followed her dream of being a talk show host.
She became a news reporter in Tennessee. After that, she started her own talk show and struck
gold. Syndication companies began to pay her millions of dollars. She expanded her enterprise to
include holdings and investments in media firms and eventually built a billion dollar portfolio.
Of all the billionaires who made it from abject poverty, Oprah is one of the most striking figures.
Shahid Khan

Another name that might not ring bells is this one. Shahid is the owner of a massive auto parts
enterprise and the Jacksonville Jaguars NFL team. He is also an expert on how to build an
empire slowly. Mr. Khan moved to the USA from Pakistan. When he arrived, he had to live at
the local YMCA for $60 per month. It was not a glorious residence but Shahid made it. He
washed dishes and saved up enough money to start an auto parts business. Thanks to great effort
and dedication, he grew his small business into a billion dollar enterprise.
Kenny Troutt

He owns a telecommunications company and is worth $1.7 billion. Kenny had to work for every
single dollar in his fortune. His father didn't make much money. So after high school, Kenny sold
life insurance so as to pay for his tuition at the Southern Illinois University. After graduation, he
founded a phone company known as Excel Communications in 1988 and he had it listed in the
stock exchange in 1996. In 1998, Kenny's company merged with another in a deal worth $3.5
billion. Currently retired and a racehorse enthusiast, Kenny Troutt made it from scratch to
billions.
Howard Schultz

Every time we have a coffee at Starbucks, we have Howard Schultz to thank. He is worth $2
billion and thus very wealthy. Life was not always so rosy for him. He was raised in a housing
complex that was built for the poor. Being good at sports, he won a football scholarship from the
University of Northern Michigan. Afterwards, Howard took over a small coffee establishment
known as Starbucks and converted it from a 60 shop network into a worldwide chain that is
worth billions.
Kenneth Langone

He is an astute investor and business owner today. Having built two companies (one of which is
Home Depot) and then taken them public, Ken can be considered a business genius. He knows
the rough side of life because he grew up poor. His parents were a plumber and a cafeteria
worker. They mortgaged their house and combined the money with savings from Ken's odd jobs
to pay for tuition at the Bucknell University. After graduation, Ken worked for these companies,
took them over, made them highly successful and made a tidy sum for himself.
Kirk Kerkorian

Coming from an Armenian family, Kirk left school early and became a boxer. He would use his
winnings to survive and was referred to as 'Rifle Right Kerkorian'. Later on during World War 2,
he was with the Royal Air Force. Once peace had returned, Kirk looked to Las Vegas and built
some of the biggest hotels and resort some of the biggest hotels and resorts in the gambling
paradise. Kirk fought his way from poverty to $3.9 billion.
John Paul DeJoria

His business career began when he was only 10 years old. John sold cards during Christmas and
also newspapers for the purpose of supporting his family. Eventually, his parents could not
support him and he was sent off to live with a foster family. He felt unsettled and joined a gang
before going to the military. There, he acquired a $700 loan and established the John Paul
Shampoo which he sold door to door. During this time, he lived in his car. Later on, he founded
the Patron business and paved his way to billions.
Roman Abramovich

Born into abject poverty in Southern Russia, Roman was orphaned at two years old. His uncle
raised him in the Northern part of Russia close to the Arctic. Roman's entrepreneurial skill
entrepreneurial skill showed early because he founded a small company for producing plastic
toys while still a student at the Moscow Auto Transport Institute. This opened up his horizons
into the oil industry and he joined it. While the CEO and majority owner of Sibneft oil company,
he signed a deal with Gazprom that made him part of the ownership of the fourth biggest oil
company globally. Roman is currently worth $8.2 billion.

The Important Take Away

Each one of the billionaires mentioned above made it from very humble beginnings. Theirs is a
story of hard work, grit and dedication. We can learn how to follow our dreams and do what is
necessary to achieve them from the billionaires in this list.